Continued bluuuuuuuuh. I really don't feel like talking to people but feel I should tell at least one of my friend groups that I'm not dead.

I used somewhere between 250 and two thousand-some-odd GB of internet last month because my ISP is charging me for going over my limit but seemingly refuses to tell me how much I actually used. Just kind of frustrated with that and wanted to vent.

I got a bit of a hair up my ass for making Monster Hunters in Pathfinder lately and found a fun-looking combo to basically make the Insect Glaive. Pathfinder has a Hunter class that's supposedly a mixture of Ranger and Druid but really focuses heavily on the animal companion, and with an archetype (like choosing alternate class abilities) to let me choose some giant insects, I can get a Medium-sized Giant Dragonfly that's able to do Flyby Attacks AND can inflict status ailments like entangled or simply give a +2 bonus to the next ally to hit that same target. Then there's a feat chain that lets me treat a polearm (such as a glaive) as a double weapon by losing reach and using the butt-end of it like a light mace and further focus on DEX by letting me Finesse it. I haven't quite figured out if Pathfinder even lets you do the very-animé-esque mounting of monsters that the Insect Glaive is known for, but the Hunter class focuses so much on you working in tandem with your animal companion that you can easily get flanking bonuses with it and such.

Side-note: I had to go looking up the mass of dragonflies and, following some Wikipedia sources, found out our very-real-gigantic-dragonflies that lived back before fish walked on land had nearly a 4-foot wingspan (100cm) and weighed probably just over 1 pound (500g), based on some very smart people's calculations.

That dragonfly mass kind of checks out to me, but it's cool having it spelled out all the same.

Trick or Treat!

No

****

Way

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE

Christmas is coming unbelievably early this year.

I'm kind of minorly freaking out over seeing your name again. We kind of all thought you had moved on. It is SO good to see you. The world has been so trying lately that we've all been in need of a spot of good news, and you just pop back in like this.

So uh... About that.

Oh, uh, wow, did I forget a thing?

I'm not going to try the awkward lie and say "I knew it all along" but to be honest I'm not really let down to... I guess re-discover this? I have vague memories of being told about a fake user, but between a few other famous (within context) examples from other fandoms* and the several times it's happened around here (shoutouts to Oso Del Diablo), I forgot who did what. Also I'm just plain gullible / too believing -- I mean on more than one occasion I've had to been told that someone wasn't starting an argument with a mod, they were doing a bit with their own alt account for humor.

*people in the pony fandom may know the name ShortSkirtsAndExplosions and the several alts they've made, most famously Imploding Colon to write the gigantic series of unpronounceable titles that generally goes by "Austreoh"

Changing subjects, I've been having to consider that I just don't like RPGs anymore? I've mostly been thinking about it because of becoming frustrated playing Divinity Original Sin 2 and what it does or wants me to do (e.g. one-shotting me with invisible mines, expecting me to do every quest before leaving), but I can't help but think of other recent experiences like quitting Earthbound in anger after being decimated by the second? I think? boss, before I had picked up any other party members, and losing hours of progress for the second or third time, or that I never finished my play of Persona 4.

It may have to do with the difficulty because I still love Undertale, Deltarune, and all the Pokémon fangames (or just the first few mainline generations) that I blather about every so often, though even then I basically never touched Undertale after doing my first three playthroughs and I more or less did the same with Deltarune.

Oh, I thought you were just having us on. Yeah, it was a nod to this revelation. A good mask for Halloween...


That's fair. I just started playing through an SNES RPG called "Lufia & the Fortress of Doom" but I've decided to just cheat and breeze through it, because I'm not really interested in a challenge or even a grind at this point. I'm just having a harder time than I used to sticking to one game, which makes RPGs harder to get into than before.

Yeah I know a lot of games I would like to still love, such as Monster Hunter, I simply do not have the time for after so much exhausting time at work and so little sleep, but I feel like this goes beyond just the "I'm an adult now" line of thinking.

Like, I've never known myself to get so frustrated over games as I do nowadays. And I also didn't used to have such clear... expectations for games as I seem to recently. It just feels like I used to know what my tastes were, and now they've changed out from under me but I've been too busy with this "adult" life to find out what they've changed to.

All this time I secretly suspected that DIsGo was a published author dropping in for a bit of fun... there's a really mean joke I could build up to here. I won't do it, but I need you all to know how hard it is to pass that kind of shot.

I wonder if Oso del Diablo was actually Pablo.

Who says I'm not?



...

...

I do. I says I'm not.

RavenoftheBlack and Neil Gaiman- one and the same?

So, how's everyone making it lately?
I've been, well, not overwhelmed really, but looking at too big a plate to tackle all at once, as it were. It's small stuff, but it adds up.

Otherwise, been watching Arcane on Netflix as the real highlight of anything going on the past few weeks since I got back from my convention.

I've been alright. I'm at an odd lull in the semester where there is less than usual to do, which is nice, but of course it's leading into the end of the semester when I will have a ton of grading, so there's that.

In general, I'm just not a fan of this time of year. The weather is getting colder, which is something I dislike, and bills start piling up. But overall, I've been fine.

Ugh, yeah, going to hard agree on the weather. I'm practically a lizard so I enjoy hot weather, I can soak heat for days, but once it turns come, I practically try to hibernate.

The weather in BC's so bad that mudslides took out multiple highways. An entire town (village?) was evacuated. I'm fine because I live on the edge of the desert and it didn't even rain particularly hard. I am curious if it made news internationally though. The crazy part is that some of the places with evacuation notices for flooding were on evacuation notice for wildfires a couple months ago. Not a great year for weather over here.

The coincidence for mudslides and wild fire is pretty common since so much of that has to do with root structure girding the ground the same way rebar girds concrete.
That said, we didn't hear anything about it in my area in terms of international coverage.

Anyone else playing Pokémon tonight?

Ima gonna go Turtle.

Just got back from watching the new Ghostbusters.
It's been talked down in recent days, and it really doesn't deserve it. Of course, it's not going to live up to the original. Quite frankly it doesn't even have the advantage of being a kind of time capsule like the second movie did. Largely, it boils down to if you think the last ten or so minutes are worth it because the majority of it is a fairly bland movie. It's at once too comfortable relying on the original and doesn't do enough to revisit some of the story beats you might actually want to see.
The acting is understated to the movie's detriment, while the cinematography is actually really pretty awful. The score is all over the place imitating John Williams and Danny elfman in equal measure.

Still, for the many flaws it has, it's immeasurably better than the 2016 fiasco.

I never watched the 2016 version. I hold the original Ghostbusters in very high regard; I consider it a masterful movie. I believe around the time the remake came out, I did a write-up on why I think the original is so good, so when I have more time, I might try to dig that up, as I'm pretty sure it's on these forums, but I just wasn't interested in the remake. There are just some movies I don't think need to be remade. I'm not even particularly fond of Ghostbusters 2, although I can't blame them for making it.

In short, I have no interest in Ghostbusters: Afterlife, because if I want to watch a Ghostbusters movie, I'm going to pop in the original and be happy.