The Thessaliad Redux

I have been excessively busy. Admittedly, largely with Tumblr. But with other stuff too! Honest!

First is the new job. I'm back to temping, but once again, the agency I'm with is more or less keeping me in the same hospital and has been for over a month now. Big difference? It's a private hospital. The pay's way better, there are fewer people yelling at me and they don't expect one person to do the work of three! (Often.) All in all, it's better, and the only thing that really sucks about it is having to go through Victoria station every morning. I thought King's Cross was bad...

Also, Mass Effect. I preordered the Mass Effect 3 collector's edition but I have been playing it veeeeeeeery slowly because I don't want to play through the ending. Not because I never want it to end, but because ... well, from the massive spoilers I've had about the end, I just don't want that. I'll play it through until the end eventually, but I'm approaching it like a chore, not a thrilling thing. Which is sad because the rest of the game is awesome. Just ... put it this way. When I was presented with a choice of playing through the last half-hour or so of Mass Effect 3 and starting a right-from-ME1 playthrough of my Engineer Shepard ... I chose the latter option. I chose the Mako, the somewhat clumsy combat mechanics and the godsawful approach to mineral surveying over playing the ending of ME3. This ... should tell you something, if you remember me bitching about the Mako the last time. But it really is only that last ten minutes! And I don't know what's happening with that because people seriously got up in arms about it and there's going to be 'clarification' of that mess, according to Bioware. Protip: if you need to sit down and explain the ending to what looks like a pretty hefty majority of your fanbase, you screwed up your ending.

Yes, I know I'm a collosal geek. Still, geekdom can be fun and even a bit profitable. About a month ago, I started a little project I originally referred to as Scent of a Warden, which involved people sending me descriptions of their favourite headcanon Wardens from Dragon Age: Origins (or Hawkes from Dragon Age 2) and I made a themed perfume based on said description. Kind of like BPAL. But on the very first run someone asked if I would consider doing NPCs and then I thought it would be nice to add Shepard blends and then the Mass Effect NPC requests came in and long story short? It's going well. People love the idea, it has been incredibly fun and I'm thinking of trying out bath gels. And maybe learning to make solid soaps, or scented candles. Hey, I found a useful way to channel my geekery and my aromatherapy hobby! I can't really complain.

So in short, all's more or less well in the wide world of Thess. I will try to be a better LJer, I promise.

Because of some conversation on Tumblr, I decided that this weekend was Fereldan Food Weekend and set out to make some interestingness. The first thing I tried - ironically the quickest and easiest of the dishes on offer - was what I call Sten Approves +100 Chocolate Chip Cookies with Seheron Spice. Because I am a fangirl and an utter dork.

My base recipe was Felix's Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies, but I made the following changes:

1) At the 'flour/bicarb/salt/baking powder' stage, I added a quarter-teaspoon of nutmeg, a teaspoon of ginger powder and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

2) Instead of just softening the butter, I melted it down on the stove on low heat, adding a quarter-teaspoon of whole clove. I let that stand for a few minutes then strained the cloves out, then added the sugar/eggs/vanilla extract.

3) Instead of chocolate chips, I crumbled a half a bar of chilli chocolate and half a bar of orange chocolate into the resultant dough.

After that, I followed the recipe as written. Then I tasted the dough. Raw chocolate chip cookie dough is always awesome, but this was truly spectacular.

Then I baked them and tasted the result.

I HAVE CREATED THE ULTIMATE COOKIE. Seriously, try this. It is gorgeous.

Next up? Alistair's Fereldan Lamb and Pea Stew (with Improvements by Leliana).

I am all alone in the office this afternoon. Everyone has gone home early, or had the day off, or worked from home or something. I don't know what the girls downstairs are doing, but it's peaceful, just me. And at least someone gave me the key code for the office door up here, so if I have to leave the office, I don't have to worry about leaving the door open. Apparently, we don't do that when the office is empty. Which makes a certain amount of good sense. (It still doesn't justify the fact that the other float still forgets to lock down her computer before she leaves her desk despite my having shown her how, mind you. I'm going to have to remind her. I think I'll maintain a three-strikes-and-you're-out policy there; I've told her, and she gets two reminders before I report her.)

I wonder if anyone would mind if I borrowed someone else's desk for the next couple of hours. See, there's one minor problem with my current office space; it faces a window. A west-facing window. And the blinds are missing a few slats so it does not block out the sun. Everyone knows I'm pretty prone to migraines, right? Well, imagine how it feels to spend from about 2pm 'til sundown getting comprehensively blinded by the sun shining right in my face with no hope of blocking it out. Right now I'm managing by adjusting how I sit so that the slats that are actually in the blinds are blocking the sun from my direct line of sight (mostly) but that's just doing in my left shoulder. I'd shift my computer but there's no actual room to do so, because 'my' desk is actually storage space for I don't know what-all rubbish from the IT department. Gods almighty, I hate this place sometimes.

In other news, I participated in the Secret Swooper deal for the swooping_is_bad LJ community; basically it's Secret Santa for DA fanworks, or Yuletide with a specific fandom. I wrote a piece of Anders-centric fic that I'm actually fairly proud of (I may post it later, but I want to wait until the person I'm Secret Swooping for sees it; it's their present) and I got the loveliest bit of fanart. But of course, my working on this kind of thing shows how much of a dork I can sometimes actually be, because as per usual with this kind of thing, I planned so many bits and pieces of fanwork (a fanmix, a couple of pieces of fic that are half-written already, stuff like that) and then just hit on this idea and bashed it out in an hour and a half and posted that rather than agonise over it anymore. So this whole thing actually just generated way more fan-stuff than just the one gift-piece. Is that what these things are supposed to do? I've never done anything like this before, so the fact that I accomplished it at all is pretty stunning. Maybe I'll actually try Yuletide next year.

Or maybe someone should hit me in the face with a shovel before I fic again.

Aaaaaaaanyway. Yes, I'm goofing off. I'm alone in the office, I've worked my arse off all week and the weekend's coming up in not very long at all. I think I'm entitled to a little bit of goofing. I still do more work than the girls downstairs. This weekend is going to be more or less chores, too - grocery shopping, laundry, stuff like that. I may buy a tiny artificial Christmas tree if I can clean off enough shelf space to put the sodding thing, and there are at least a couple of Christmas gifts I should likely pick up, though I imagine most will be purchased online. (Not that there are that many to begin with.) So ... busy busy. You know how it goes.

Right. Now to Google gingerbread recipes. Also, type letters.

I haven't been doing the NaNo thing this year; haven't really had the energy. No guilt. I'll write what I can when I can. For now, I think I'm owed some chill-time after having been so sick last month.

So I played through Dragon Age 2 as a Rogue instead of a Mage for once, as I think I mentioned. Finished the playthrough now, and did Legacy; just have Mark of the Assassin to go. The first few levels kind of bite for a dual-wield rogue, but it's so worth it by the time you get to, like, level 5. And then come the specialities. I ended up as Assassin/Shadow dual wield and man do battles go faster that way. Awesome tip for any DW Rogues out there: Stealth, sneak up to the nearest mage, Assassinate, Backstab or Twin Fangs if required. Take the mages out quick and clean and right at the start so you don't have to chase the fucker around the place when s/he does that mini-teleport bullshit or wait out the force field. (Especially when dealing with saarebas; some of their spells are nasty.) Also, the cutscenes for killing things like the high dragon, or Corypheus ... soooooooo much more awesome as Rogue. So ... yeah, that was fun. Will have to do that again. Trying to ponder my best party for Mark of the Assassin too; Fenris is my go-to warrior but I have to decide whether I want an archer (Varric) or a mage (probably Bethany).

Still not doing the sneak bullshit in Castle Hate. Noooooo.

Also have a plotbunny hopping around in my head for DA2 fic as a result of this newest discovery of "Rogue = awesome". Probably best not to ask ... at least 'til I inflict it on you.

I've still been on Warcrack, but really only in fits and spurts. Still working on my Belf Pally, who's now got to the point where she can have dual-spec proper. So now she's a Prot/Ret Pally and kicking arse in Grizzly Hills, because I can't be bothered with doing heavier, more level-appropriate shit. Still pondering soloing the lower-level dungeons just to say I did 'em. But for the time being it's mostly Grizzly Hills and various dailies. It's a slow way to level but it works.

Soooooooo glad it's the weekend. I can just relax and veg and play video games and unwind from hell-week. Hooray, unwinding!

So I went to MCM Comic Con, and have made an executive decision: I am so not cut out for the convention thing.

I mean, Dragonmeet is one thing: you pay your admission, you go in, and while you can shop, there are other things to do. Going alone is not such a big deal because all you have to do is sign up for a game or two and you're hanging out with cool people for a few solid hours, doing a bit of one-off RP and having an awesome time. And I don't recall having to pay for John Kovalic's autograph while I was there the last time ... though I suppose he's not in quite the same league as some of the people at MCM this year.

But, see, therein lies the problem. There are things I just don't do. I'd happily run around in costume potentially making an idiot of myself, if it didn't mean that half the planet would be pointing a camera at me. I don't hug random strangers, however they're dressed. I barely know how to use a decent camera and my phone's camera is kind of crap, so pictures are kind of out. And I have a serious objection to spending a sum that would buy me a week's worth of groceries on a single autograph - a name scribbled on a piece of paper elevated to that level of financial worth just because the name is a famous one - particularly after the amount I spent on the entry fee. I know they have to pay the appearance fees for the famous folks, but seriously, some of that struck me as just a liiiiittle excessive. I didn't have the kind of money to shop, I certainly couldn't have afforded the three autographs I most wanted and on the whole, I felt unutterably out of place and alone.

Meeting the awesome folks off the DA fan communities I'm in ... didn't entirely help, I have to admit. They all knew each other, I didn't even know where to start having a conversation with any of them (beyond the one lovely lady whose name I have since forgotten who left at around the same time I finally got around to visiting the convention hall proper on Saturday) and, beyond taking a few pictures, a few random additions to conversation and a hug from the utter sweetie dressed as Merrill amongst the group, I mainly sat on the fringes and watched everything. Actually, that's how I spent a lot of the weekend - sitting on the fringes and watching things. This is where I prove that however I come across, I really am way too shy for this kind of shit. I can manage to have conversations with people I've never met in person, but that's only after I've talked to them online for months. And while the DA crew seemed like really nice people who I'd love to get to know, I didn't even know if I knew any of them. So on the whole, MCM comic con was a slightly depressing and socially awkward experience...

And I find out via Twitter that I have just entirely missed meeting Adam Howden with the rest of the crew I met up with yesterday, because I couldn't find them this afternoon and went home. FML completely.

Yeah ... I suck at this con thing and am now just really depressed. Fantastic.

Hope y'all're having a better weekend than I am.

Right; about time I started posting again. Partly because the Dragon Age friending meme has turned up on one of the fan communities again and there's whole bunches of new people. Hi, folks! I may actually subject you to fanfic at some point; sorry. *g*

Okay, someone please explain Tumblr to me? Because I keep hearing about this thing and I really don't get it. I have my Twitter feed and I'm a recovering Facebook game addict, but Tumblr, while I keep hearing it around, is Greek to me. From what little I can gather, it's like a combination of Twitter and Blogger or something. But I honestly do not know.

This weekend has been largely devoted to being curled up in bed watching Criminal Minds. Currently on S2 again. I had to look up the name James Van der Beek and when I did, I flashed back to A-level era summertime weekday afternoon TV and realised that the guy who played Dawson actually has acting chops if he can play serial killer with dissociative identity disorder that well. Also, between that two-parter and S3 of True Blood, it seems that acting chops run in the Swayze family, as does that very distinctive eye shape and jawline. And the makeup job on Jane Lynch is phenomenal, given the promo shots I've seen of her in Glee. This is a game I play; the 'I've Seen That Face/Heard That Voice Before' IMDB game. It's how I know that I've actually seen Gideon Emery (Primeval) and thus will recognise him at the MCM Expo next weekend. I make my own fun. *g*

The rest of the weekend ... Dragon Age, mostly. I finally got through Mark of the Assassin ... though not in the way that earns one a particular sneaky-play-related achievement. ( Cut for spoilers goes here and... )

Anyway, after that, I went back to Origins to work on some favoured playthrough stuff. Sometimes the savegen that the fans came up with just doesn't work as well as I'd like. So I'm working the Dalish Elf origin right now, because the standard one they give you is actually reeeeeeeally close to my headcanon but not quite close enough. I've just got out of Lothering so I've got a ways to go yet but I've also got an Elven Mage playthrough I want to work on. There just aren't enough hours in a day.

*sigh* Sunday evening. There needs to be more weekend, damnit.

I've been quiet out here in journal-land, I know. Mostly I've been cat-sitting and having a much-needed holiday. The biggest bonus to staying at mitchy's place to look after Rob T Furball is that I have had no stress at all over "I should be at work". I suppose it helps that I'm in an entirely different city ... and never mind the fact that the fast train into King's Cross from here is actually faster than the train I get to St Pancras every morning, and they're basically the same station. I'm farther away and thus there is no guilt over "I should be working!" Somehow I have managed to avoid thinking about how much work will have piled up in my absence. Gods, I hope they got a float secretary in...

Anyway, maybe the other part of the non-stress over work absence has been the needy furball. It's not 24/7, the neediness, but he'll alternate between curling up in his cat bed / on the armchair dead to the world, and then all of a sudden he'll decide that if he isn't fussed and petted and scritched RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND he will die of heartbreak. Cue the yowling and the feeling that someone has replaced his fur with velcro. This is not a bad thing, but it can be tricky when one is trying to chat to someone over IM and just stopping the petting gets the big-sad-eyes look and a plaintive yowl. I'm such a sucker. Anyway, the point is that I might feel guilty about taking time off if it was just me at home on my own not doing much of anything, but since I am elsewhere, maybe not seeming to do much of anything but really ensuring that a lovely furball is fed and watered and petted and fussed, at least I am being useful to somebody. Apparently this assuages my work-guilt somewhat. So ... yay!

I'll be glad to be home, though. There are definitely things that my place lacks (bathtub, gas stove, decent-sized fridge with freezer that doesn't frost over every three days, space) but it's mine and I miss it. I miss my bed and my computer 'desk' ... hell, I miss my computer, full stop. Not to mention Warcrack - I decided that it was too much addict behaviour to travel all the way home just to check on my little Azeroth denizens mid-week, so I didn't. I'm not overly jonesing, thankfully, but then again, I had DA2 as a placebo. Not to mention a particularly stellar DVD collection - my tastes and mitchy's don't always coincide, but I have to admit that she's introduced me to more TV shows than any other single person I know. Most people, it's a show here or there; it's been at least a half-dozen with mitchy - more than anyone else, fewer than it could be (I just can't get into NCIS: LA, but I love the original and Criminal Minds is growing on me).

On the subject of video games and various bits of entertainment ... Sebastian Vael. I swear, the only reason I'm not sorry I got the DLC is that the extra quests give XP. You get him way too late in the game to build him up properly, and you end up with this relatively useless rogue who can't pick half the locks or disarm about a third of the traps and, despite his mail-and-plate armour, goes down like a twenty-quid hooker the minute anyone carrying a sword looks at him cross-eyed. Mostly I just leave him tucked away in the Chantry and don't deal with him until he demands that we go do quest types of things. I haven't got through a full playthrough with him yet so maybe his hissy-fit over the events in Act 3 will make having him as a full-on party member a little more worth it. As it stands, Varric is still my all-time archer in-game BFF, kthnx.

(Also, Sebastian, character-wise, is a cross between Leliana and Hamlet.)

Warcrack-wise ... still hacking my way through Northrend. I do not like Coldarra. It's creepy-death. Or ... well, it would be creepy-death if I weren't playing a Paladin. I would say I don't think Paladins can die but I have seen proof otherwise. (I still want to know how a massive 75-Elite patrolbot managed to sneak up on me in Hellfire Peninsula when I was doing my purgatory time in Outland.) Anyway, a lot of that is Nexus dungeon and since I don't really have the sort of party backing required to hack my way through one, I feel justified in abandoning the zone entirely beyond a couple of little quests and a flyover or the 'Explored Borean Tundra' achievement. I could probably move on to Dragonblight now, but I think I'll move to Howling Fjord and grind a couple of levels there first. I like level-grinding in lowish-level areas. Particularly when I've been logged out in an inn for a week and a half. The 'Well-Rested' XP bonus is going to last forever...

I haven't been on as my belf pally as much as I could be because I don't really like Northrend all that much, though I do hack through a level or two, time to time. I have, however, been working a little on my other characters - I've made a few as alts that I might actually stick with for awhile. Dwarf Pally, Gnome Warlock and Goblin Shaman, mainly - that last a holdover from my first spate of character creation early on. At least there's kind of variety, and a good Alliance/Horde spread. Though given that the Dwarf and Gnome starting levels are more or less the same after level ... oh, six or so? I kind of have to alternate with the other two so I don't get bored out of my skull.

There have been other things - potential writing projects, finally having solidified what I want to do for this WoD site that I still need to talk to lithiumdoll about as re: Jove when she's less busy and had some relaxy time, stuff like that there - but a lot of it's too vague to yammer about here and I'm thinking moar coffee. Then haul my lazy arse (and a mid-sized wheely suitcase full of books OMG heavy) back home, likely via somewhere I can get some lunch. Then probably right back out again to pick up something for dinner because I made sure that my fridge was empty before I came out here. I didn't want to find something gaining independent life in my fridge when I got home.

Ah, relaxing weekend. Nothing to do but veg out, do a bit of grocery shopping and poke around with the computer. It's good.

I've been giving my belf paladin a little more attention this weekend. Just recently hit level 44 - up from ... *checks last Warcrack post* level 37 last weekend, which was more or less the last time I played it with any degree of seriousness. Which, given I used to consider myself lucky if I got one level in a weekend, given the party-centric FFXI set-up, is pretty freakin' impressive. FFXI, I think I gave up around about this level, and I'd been playing ... oh, at least a year. But Missandei the belf paladin is still trucking away, having gained 44 levels in the last two and a half months or so. Well, less, really, when you consider that I didn't start the belf paladin 'til ... holy crap, 44 levels in a month? Of on-again, off-again play, no less. More to the point, solo play. Shit, I see why people kind of gave FFXI a miss now...

Actually, I think one of those levels was entirely because of mining. Seriously. See, I ended up in Thousand Needles for some reason (man, that place got wiped by the Cataclysm) and ended up with this quest for this weird kind of buff that lets you swim continuously with no need to come up for air, and also increases your swimming speed to about your walk level. And seriously. Mithril. EVERYWHERE. I spent a good two hours going, "Screw this questing shit; mithriiiiiiil!" and swimming around, barely getting attacked by anything and mining until my mining bag filled up and my inventory couldn't take any more. Then I spent another hour or so in Orgrimmar, smelting mithril ore and making mithril filigree. My jewelcrafting skill is starting to seriously rock.

(Oh, hey, wingedkami? You didn't tell me about gem bags. Gem bags are awesome. So now I have a gem bag, a mining bag and a couple of really big bags replacing the diddy ones I looted off mobs way back when. I still get that annoying 'inventory is full' gabble now and then, but it's a lot easier now that I have more storage space, a lot devoted to ore and metal bars, and yet more devoted entirely to gems and copper wire and mithril filigree and other jewelcrafting stuff. More space can be devoted to the crap I get from mobs that are on occasion standing right on top of my metal vein.

...But yes, I do more than just mine when I do these things. Quests quests quests. Of course, sometimes by the time I respond to some quest where the 'Horde war machine' is trying to send me someplace, I'm too high level to actually bother with any of it? But still, at least I get to explore. But the mining in the Dustmallow Marshes is crap. Craaaaap crap crap. Anyway, the Booty Bay pirate stuff was fun. Though I had a kind of scary moment where the last "KEEL THE PIRATE GUY!" moment of that particular quest chain got interrupted mid-battle by ... well, net connection hiccup. So I'm maybe two-thirds done killing this guy and I'm at full health and then all of a sudden, I can't use any of my skills, even though they light up when I click on them. Sure mid-battle sign that my net connection has just keeled over. My reaction? "FUUUUUUCK!" However, when I managed to get everything up and running again and logged back in, I was in the inn in Booty Bay, apparently having killed the pirate guy and gone down with the ship which the Booty Bay pirates had been cannonballing to death, and they fished my half-drowned pixellated near-corpse out of the water or something. It's a part of how that whole quest series goes, I figure. Either way, at least it wasn't death by connection glitch. I hate that.

So yes, tyrell, still loving Protection spec. Though I kind of wonder if you're still allowed plate armour even if you do use another spec for paladin. Anyway, fact is that my belf is almost entirely decked out in plate (I haven't quested up a bit of plate chest armour yet, but I have everything else; I just don't buy armour much beyond level 3) and the last time her health dipped below 90% was when there was a mob of maybe five tower guards all at once on top of elite big bad. Though part of that is various auras, seals and a very good shield that no one has managed to offer me a superior replacement for since. Paladins are soloing machines.

No, I really haven't been doing much else with my weekend, though I did play some DA2 (I'm steeling myself for doing the Anders friendmance thing again, just for plot relevance and eek factor) and there has been a little bit of RP, which has been more or less awesome. It's good to have people around again, though not many and not often. It's the summer and I guess everyone else is out doing meatspace stuff. Which is cool and all, but I haven't done it much of late. I'm perfectly happy with my human interaction taking place predominantly through a keyboard and computer screen on the weekends, at least partly because the job tends to make me lose a great deal of faith in humanity and the last thing I tend to want to do at the end of a long week is to actually deal with people. I'm pretty sure that there are some I'd really like just hanging out with, but it tends not to happen. Partly because I do not make an effort and I really need to get better at that.

Aw, crap, it can't be 7pm on a Sunday already. Really? Seriously? Weekends are way too short. I need a day off. At least just one damn day off. Preferably attached to a weekend but I am so not picky as long as it means that I can sleep in and don't have to go into work. Oh well, at least the other admin (not Schrodinger's Admin; the other one) is back tomorrow so I don't have to be all things to all people. Bleh.

I'm beginning to get a handle on just how messed up this place actually is. Frankly, no wonder the NHS is teetering the way it is if this herding-stoned-cats way of dealing with things is the norm. And I swear, it is driving me in the general direction of a stress-related grave.

See, I work in this hospital, and this hospital specialises in neurology and neurosurgery stuff. On the premises, there are technically two establishments in a variety of buildings; the hospital and the Institute. These two things are not the same. They do not have the same staff, payroll, infrastructure, anything. Well. I say 'anything'. They do share some things. Administration buildings, for instance. And a need to get onto the hospital computerised document record system and the electronic patient record. But, because they are not hospital staff, they do not have access to the hospital's computerised document record system or the electronic patient record. This ... presents a problem. They can't get onto the system to look up who they want to invite to join in clinical studies (which is more or less the remit of the Institute), they can't book the patient notes they 'borrow' back to medical records, they can't do much of anything. So what do they do? They get hospital staff to do it. Despite the fact that technically the hospital staff is not being paid to do so. Which is why I've got a psychologist cluttering up my office looking up patient letters (and watching shit on YouTube) with my login codes, and an admin in the next bit of office who's asked me to book several dozen sets of notes back to medical records because she's "sick of looking at them" (and who has also stolen my hole punch without so much as asking, even though she had to lean directly over my left shoulder to do it). In other news, I am apparently the only person who ever takes any post to the post room, medical records hasn't picked up any of the notes we've booked back to them in the last month, a total stranger called me 'Princess' in the most condescending way possible this morning, the nurse specialists cannot get "patient requires transport" through their thick skulls and I hate the security managers with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

To summarise the summary: I. Want. To. Set. This. Place. On. Fire.

So I bought the shiny new Dragon Age 2 DLC. And it is shiny ... for varying definitions. The story is a little ... erm ... well, look at it this way: I started the whole thing by rolling my eyes and grumbling, "Yeah, we get it, Hawke is speshul, whatever" ... and then there was just a lot of "........oh shit". Some of it was the laughing, "I do not believe they just said that" kind of 'oh-shit' (the dialogue. It was awesome. Varric can, at one point during the final battle, be heard to say, "If this guy pulls a dragon out of his ass, I'm leaving!"); yet more of it was the "this is going to come back to bite me in the arse, isn't it?" kind of 'oh-shit'. (Relevant icon is relevant.) Some of the decision pivot points are ... a little weird, mostly because they're trying to be so climactic and revelatory when frankly, if Hawke had the brains the Maker gave an amoeba s/he'd have figured out that particular 'plot twist' in the first half-hour of gameplay, but on the whole it's a pretty good game. Though it's kind of sad when you realise that it looks for all the world like they paid more attention to backdrop and level design for this one piece of DLC than they did for DA2 itself. Apparently someone listened when the fans complained about the same four or five layouts repeated over and over and over again.

Know what I didn't like? The 'new breeds of darkspawn'. Actually, I have issues with them advertising them as 'new breeds of darkspawn'. For one thing? Genlocks are not new. Genlock alphas are not new. Hurlock alphas are not new. Most of us played Origins. We know from freakin' genlocks, okay? Second of all ... hey Bioware? Sorry to break it to you, but ... genlocks: UR DOIN IT RONG. It would be nice if the breed of darkspawn you get at least vaguely resembles the species of female that was Broodmothered to spawn them. Xref your own canon, guys - you taint a female dwarf, you get a Broodmother that breeds genlocks. You taint a female human, the resultant Broodmother breeds hurlocks. Elves? Shrieks. Qunari? Ogres. Okay, you kind of bit your own canon in the arse when you gave us magic-capable genlocks when dwarves aren't supposed to be able to use magic, but you've also said that dwarves are resistant to magic, which they're so very not, and that they cannot enter the Fade, which ... well, that's clearly about nine different kinds of bullshit. And then there's Sandal. Still, having the DA2 genlocks look like the product of a mating between a bronto and an orangutan? Nnnnnnnot working for me.

In addition, combat was a bitch and I was playing on Easy. And this was after endgame. I pity the poor morons who play on Nightmare. Still, for all that, it was fun enough, I'd play it again and it wasn't expensive so I'm not exactly thinking that it was a total waste of money. Which is about all I could really ask of a bit of DLC after some of the crap they gave us for Origins. I know that's as damning-with-faint-praise as 'it's better than anything else on TV right now', but it's what we've got.

*sigh* Right, back to the salt mines. Some total moo in patient records apparently feels that digging through piles of notes is beneath her so I have to go fish notes out of piles. Thankfully I know where at least some of them are off the top of my head. There's one, though ... well. I'll manage. I hope.

Annnnnnd another moment that makes DA2 so worth playing...

I was at the docks with Isabela, Fenris and Varric, just having talked to the last surviving Harrowmont for some quest or other, and as we're looting Carta bodies, this random wandering-around-the-area NPC chick out of the blue comes out with:

NPC: I know your face. The boys from Orlais named an itch after you.
Isabela: A sneer on your lips but want in your eye.

Okay, I know the recycled areas annoy everyone. But if that's the price of little moments like that, where the wandering NPCs randomly react to the people you've got in party? I'll pay it gladly. (Yes, it would have been nice if they'd done both. But then it'd load slower and we'd have had to wait forever for it to come out.)

[Edit: Shit, everyone in the docks talks to Isabela!

NPC: Didn't ... didn't you board us once in Rivain! Woman, you left us drifting!
Isabela: I'm sorry; I don't speak 'never-gets-sex-again'.

*gigglefit* Love this game so hard...]

In other news, my bank holiday weekend is going smashingly, thank you. The weather has been delightful, I haven't shut my window since Thursday night, and ... well, okay, I haven't actually been outside beyond a couple of shopping forays, but it's sunny. I don't do well in sunny. It tends to trigger my migraines. This is not good. The number the pollen's doing on my sinuses and the fact that my glasses are scratched all to hell is bad enough. I'm not adding sun-triggered migraine to the low-level hurt already there.

There will have to be chores, eventually. Dishes. Laundry. That kind of thing. Right now, though? I'm happy enough just faffing, playing video games and chatting to people. Though I do need to take my stupid antihistamines. I so need this long weekend, you have no idea.