There's light somewhere

I didn't do much writing today; I managed to get like 4k done yesterday, so I took it easy. I did do some planning for the next chapter, though, so I'm very much looking forward to cranking that out.

I played a lot of Baldur's Gate 3 today and getting through parts of Act 2. I didn't realize how much I had missed from my first playthrough--I purposely kept Minthara from dying during my goblin camp escapades, so she's a funny new recruit to have. I also didn't realize she also has a fuckton of ilithid powers unlocked? Insanely funny when she's doing that shit while in the same party as Halsin. Makes me want to dig around on AO3 to see if anyone has done Halsin & Minthara interactions beyond being enemies. Also, I managed to have Rolan stick around the Grove, so I'm seeing his storyline, and I understand why people love this little asshole.

I also finished reading a longer short story called "Pushkin's Photograph (1799-2099)" by Andrei Bitov. It's apart of a 1989 short story collection from Soviet-era literature, this one being the first in the collection. "Pushkin's Photograph" was one I had to take in over the course of several reading sessions since it was a bit dense and trippy as hell in the beginning. The story liberally swings between time and place, but that's not a bad thing, given the main character Igor is a time traveler from 2099 trying to make contact with Russian poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, and he goes a bit off the rails the longer he stays in the past. The thing that really makes it so weird is the "present" author asides and just how they almost "randomly" pop in. I say "randomly," but by the end, it feels thematic?

It's really hard to get my thoughts nice and readable; translation is hard and playing catch-up with the literary references that are second nature to Bitov's original audience (or at least, I'm thinking they are?) did throw me for a loop, but I'd at least recommend it as a piece of weird fiction. If nothing else, there are a lot of juicy themes here on chasing an elusive muse and the horrors of the march of time.

BG3 really has me by the throat. I'm honestly thinking about doing a series of oneshots just to get these dumb little ideas out of my head. My notes are so far:

• Cast being split up into two teams: Team Chaotic Good (Karlach, Gale, Wyll, Shadowheart, and Halsin) and Team "Make 'em Worse" (Astarion, Lae'zel, Durge, and Tav). They probably meat up in Act 2 and boy is it a shitshow.
• Shadowheart is a Regression protag, she's not happy about it. Everyone is confuse because she doesn't explain shit.
• hehe Karlach Origin goes brrrr
• Wyll probably gets a bit more of a dive into his character. My guy deserves to have a lot more to his character arc!!
• Digging into Gale having Thoughts (tm) about being shunted back to Level 1
• Astarion and Tav fighting to see which goes ilithid first!
• Durge is just trying to get people to like him ):
• Tav is terrified of being knifed by Lae'zel
• Durge picks Tav as a morality pet because she's small and cute!! Tav is unhappy about this turn of events until it keeps her from being merked. Astarion, meanwhile, is very annoyed.
• Tav is regular person who was in the wrong place/wrong time when the Nautaloid passed through. She's a halfling chef of some mid-level restaurant, so she's good with directing people but kinda sucky when it comes to person-to-person interactions.

I'm thinking of poking my nose into the Beta and other cut content for further fun inspos. Just learning of the hags, the original flavor of the Dream Guardian, and other stuff gets my brain juicing.