Grocery delivery guy showed up on my doorstep last night. Because, you know, I ordered groceries. I don't have a car, the supermarket isn't exactly 'round the corner and carrying a week's worth of shopping isn't fun. And since supermarkets let you order everything online, well...
It was around 9 o'clock and pitch-black outside. And inside. The lights in our corridor keep dying. Heck, all the lights around the fucking house keep dying, because there's something wrong with our wiring. At least that's what I assume when I plug in my camera via USB and get zapped whenever I touch the on/off button. But maybe that's the NSA, who simply don't want to see my dick anymore. You can never be too sure these days.
So the grocery guy looked at me and asked, "So... you're into medieval stuff, eh?"
And I thought to myself, "I always knew this day would come. This is the price I have to pay for having my groceries delivered to my doorstep. He's gonna rape me. Any moment now."
But my response was really more among the lines of, "What?"
Turns out he's been looking through our window and he saw my sword (no euphemism), the kite shields and all that stuff. Ooooo! Whew! The guy was just watching us through our window for a while before he decided it was time to deliver the groceries. That's not creepy at all!
I don't actually use that shit, though.
In other news: The gate of some dude named Baldur. In anticipation of the upcoming Divinity: Original Sin, Claire and I have started a cooperative playthrough of the complete BG-saga. The cool complete saga, modded into one huge game. Not the stupid "enhanced" edition. If I had to name my single-most favourite game of all time, it would probably be Baldur's Gate. There was just nothing like it when it came out. Use any image you want for a character portrait, pick from all kinds of different voices or record your own, mess around with colours and builds and classes and multi-classing and gear and... hooooolyshiet, there's so much depth and complexity and replay value there!
Of course it's easy to forgive all its shortcomings whilst wearing the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. But I have to admit it's far from perfect, especially from a cooperative point of view. Claire's experience with PC RPGs is limited to Mass Effect, Dragon Age and a bunch of MMORPGs, so getting her into this old game wasn't easy and I don't think she's really loving it (yet). We're half-way through the first game and the expansion and while I'm having the time of my life, well...
Fuck you, Dragon Age 2!
Let's start with the fact that Baldur's Gate simply isn't very multiplayer friendly. Yes, it supports up to six players and everything, but cooperative gameplay can actually make the game more difficult and even tedious at times. It's one thing when you spring a trap and get half your group killed, forcing you to reload a savegame. Or facing a particularly difficult battle, forcing you to reload several times in a row. It's another story when this kind of thing happens in a coop session, where the host needs to pick the right savegame (no quicksaves here), has to wait for the other player to re-synchronise and then both players need to tick the checkbox behind every character they're currently controlling in order to restart the game. What used to require a single keystroke in singleplayer turns into a bit of a clickfest, which easily takes an entire minute, making failure a bigger pain in the ass than ever in multiplayer. Not once have I completed Baldur's Gate on a difficulty setting lower than "normal". We're playing multiplayer on easy for the sake of our sanity.
There's also the fact that the characters, by today's standards, are pretty bleak if you start with the first game and zero previous experience with the series. Wait, what? Unthinkable, right? I love Minsc and Jaheira and on most playthroughs, I use some, if not all of the "canon" characters. Claire? HA!
She kicked out Khalid and Jaheira the first opportunity she got and never even allowed Minsc into our group in the first place. A crazy ranger, who talks to a giant, miniature space hamster and she doesn't want him? How the fuck is that even possible?
That shit right there is why I hate cosplay
Well, maybe it's related to the fact that he's introduced to the player by about five seconds of speech and a wall of text. Which was great back in 1998, but of course he can't compete with the Morrigans and Garruses of modern RPGs. I hope he'll make a better impression at the beginning of the second game, where characters get a little more fleshed-out and talkative. Right now our companions include generic druid #37 and Oheyitsanotherrighteouspaladin, because they had useful stats and abilities. I don't think I have ever played with those guys, they're powerful and everything, but they're not fun like Minsc. It's fascinating. From my point of view, taking him along was an absolute no-brainer. I didn't think it was at all possible to dislike him. But the fact that Claire wasn't at all swayed still makes perfect sense, I suppose. Just didn't see it coming.
We'll see how it goes. The story gets a lot more interesting towards the end of Baldur's Gate and really kicks off with the beginning of the second game. Right now I'm just happy exploring, hacking and slashing through dungeons and hunting down all that sweet, sweet loot. I'll admit I get a bit scared when I think of Durlag's Tower. Might wanna wait a bit before we do that one.
In other news, I've made a new friend:
Glorious day at the exotic pet shop. Chameleons are weird, fucked up and kind of ugly, but also utterly fascinating. That little creature inches forward, one tiny step at a time. "I'm just gonna climb you now, okay?" Most reptiles I've encountered so far will meet people with indifference. Or they'll run away or eat your face when you go near them. The chameleon came to have a good look. Funny stuff. Of course we've also brought our own, because we never leave home without Hugo when the weather is good enough.
'sup?
This guy is our pride and joy. People always comment on how huge and incredibly tame and friendly he is. A girl came to the shop, no older than seven or eight years old and asked if she could hold him. Which was fucking insane, of course, but Claire handed him over and the little girl, barely bigger than the lizard itself, carried him around in her arms like some huge toy. She cuddled and squeezed him and said he was lovely and humongous (holy fuck, the vocabulary with kids nowadays) and the whole time I thought, "Pleasedonteatherfacepleasedonteatherfacepleasedonteatherface..."
Hugo doesn't bite. The whole family hand-fed him prawns when we brought him over for Christmas and no fingers were lost. But when little kids squeeze him till his eyeballs pop out, poke him in the nose and fuss over him like he farts rainbows, well... I wouldn't hold it against him if he acted up. I know I would. But he remained perfectly still and put up with it. Thank fuck!
When Hugo was little, he'd hiss and bite and tail-whip and do all the nasty shit a wild animal would do. Some monitor lizards can never be tamed. Other big lizards should never be trusted at all.
Iguanas look cool. Also, they're dicks.
But he remained perfectly calm when the kids poked him and carried him around, when the old lady stroked him and when one customer emitted some high-pitched female joy-noises, as she couldn't contain herself over how much she wanted one.
Pray, calmeth thine mammaries, m'lady.
I won't lie. I love our big, scary lizard and he wouldn't be as awesome as he is if we had not spent so much time with him. But walking down the street with him, seeing how people poke their heads out of their cars, everyone stopping and staring and asking questions... yeah, that's pretty fucking awesome. We didn't get him because of that, not for the sake of showing off or anything, but I'll admit I like the attention. We have owl guy, who is famous for walking around with a pet owl on his shoulder. There's parrot guy, who has hilarious conversations with his parakeet, takes him to the supermarket and everything. Maybe we'll be the crazy lizard couple at some point. I like the idea.
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