I finally beat that damned douchey wizard I was talking about yesterday.
Beat him on approximately my fifth or sixth try. And I would love to say that my strategic brilliance eventually won the day, but the truth is that the bright and shiny paladin NPC whose welfare was the whole point of this question (Dickweed the Pathetic wanted to ENSLAVE her) got some really good rolls and that turned the tide.
Whatever. The fucker’s dead, as are his wormy apprentice, his magic robot, and, sadly, his halfling slave. I finished him off with a massive fire attack, which was satisfying.
Told him I had more power in my little finger than he had in his whole tower.
SORCERERS RULE, WIZARDS DROOL.
In the final cutscene, the paladin delivers an awesome speech of sheer self righteous fury, then lifted Fuckface the Buttmuncher over her head then smashed him onto her knee in a move known in wrestling circles as “the Backbreaker”.
Which was very badass and awesome, though a little too brutal for my tastes.
But then, interestingly, she said that instead of feeling victorious, she felt sad in a way that she did not understand.
My theory is that she feels bad because in that final moment, she didn’t vanquish a powerful enemy, she murdered a pasty nerd in a robe who was already lying on the ground moaning in agony and halfways dead.
He was done. Defeated. The point was made. My firebombing of him had done him in.
So I don’t feel good about what she did either, as badass as it was.
Oh well,. Modern games always have these moral grey areas and difficult choice in them. It’s how they make the same old tropes seem deep and relevant.
My generation had grimdark to do that. It was superhero noir, as expressed by the ur-God of grimdark, Frank Miller.
Now they have all the products of Robert Kirkman and George R. R. Miller to be their inspiration for the gritty and dark fundamentals of human storytelling.
Things like suffering, betrayal, personal politics, lust, revenge, tragedy, the cruelties of fate in an uncaring world, the daily struggle against despair, and all the little human moments that make life worth living.
And that become all the more golden and precious when seen against a backdrop of misery and darkness and despair.
Wow, you never really know when I’m gonna get real deep, do you?
I sure don’t. I just write whatever seems to come next. I don’t slow down to carefully consider every single word – if I did, I would never get anything written. I would be too paralyzed by indecision and self-doubt.
Hence the complete lack of format for this little blog o’mine. A format, subject, focus, or goal would defeat the purpose of this thing, which is to be a way for me to get whatever is in my head out onto the page so I can be rid of it and free up some mental space.
And I don’t know what the hell is going to be there waiting for me to express it when I sit down to write.
I just know that whatever it is, that’s what I have to write. Writing anything else would be sheer torture as what I really wanted and needed to write kept trying to pull me away.
I guess, then, that from that point of view, this blog is about as self-indulgent as it gets.
So thank you from the very bottom of my heart for reading this dang ol thing.
Because while I love my audience, the truth is, I don’t write it for you.
I write it for me.
Thanks for coming along for the ride anyhow.
More after the break.
Not so good
That’s how I have felt since my latest nap.
I got up around 8:30 pm. Got out of bed in the usual way and sat my king sized butt down in the computer chair. Started up Baldur’s Gate 3 like normal.
And at first I was too sleepy to notice anything being awry. But as I woke up more I noticed that I felt kind sick and sort of wrong.
The usual gang of symptoms had shown up. Mild headache, check. Touch of nausea. yup. A little dizzy, uh huh. Feeling a tad lost at sea, yup.
But something else, something far more worrying, was there too.
My heart was pounding uncomfortably hard.
No actual pain, but I could feel it both in my chest and as a throbbing in my temples. Ka thump, ka thump, ka thump.
That worried me. I pay a lot of attention to what my heart does. Ever since I got my stents put in a few years back,. I have been quite justifiably paranoid about the prospect of having a heart attack or a stroke, so anything along those lines bears watching.
While also not letting myself panic over it because that would just make things worse.
Being me can be so complicated.
Thing have calmed down now, but my chest still feels funny. Kind of numb and cold around where I felt my heart pounding.
And to think Doctor Handsome thought I should start exercising.
Not unless there’s a goddamned cardiologist present.
And that’s not all.
POOP ADJACENT NEWS WARNING.
I have some kind of rash or something in my perianal region, otherwise known as the area directly around my anus.
I can’t see it, of course, but I can feel it, and I think it is getting worse. And I remember when I had something real, real nasty happening back there many years ago and had to bare myself quite intimately to the wound care nurses until it healed.
I don’t want to go through that again.
Oh, and I have some nasty spots on my legs again too. Joy.
All this means I need to get to see Doctor Chao pretty soon.
And that is assuming things don’t get worse. If they do, then I will have to go (sigh) back to the ER for the third goddamned weekend in a row.
For now, I am going to do my best to take it slow and easy, especially when getting up.
I hope I don’t have to go back to the goddamned hospital, or “Urgent” Care.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.