erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Thu Feb 22, 2024 5:48 pmyes and he also has two swords named Twinkle and Icingdeath
to my surprise and delight, Drizzt Do'Urden is an enormous (by which I mean tiny, he is 5'4") dork
There's a video rolling around of women in a hair salon (employees, I mean) being asked when the last time they washed their hair was, and for most of them it's been 3-4 days. Predictably, the comments I've seen about it are mostly from men and mostly awful, but can I just say, like
So, I was 100% raised to believe it was disgusting to not wash your hair every day. I won't go into the eldritch horrors of my (unfortunately) extremely common AFAB Hair Trauma experiences, but my mother was generally a proponent that any issue I had with my hair was due to me being unhygienic. Tangles? Dandruff? Dry scalp? Didn't matter; I either wasn't washing enough, or not washing good enough.
Then I joined the USMC and talked with other women (notably, women of color) who were like girl do NOT wash your hair that much, that is the literal problem, so I started only washing my hair with shampoo once every couple of days and the change was almost instantaneous. My scalp stopped being so dry, my hair felt nicer, I stopped having as much anxiety about having terrible wretched disgusting dirty hair, and in general my life improved and I felt better about my appearance.
Anyways I don't know where I'm going with this because it's late and I'm about to go to bed, but like, I am confused as to where this beauty/health standard of daily hair-washing has come from because it's kind of the worst thing to do and I know so, so many people who have had it beaten into them
also not washing hair =/= not washing your body, I am not sure why that's difficult to comprehend
Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D Manga, Vol. 3 and Kikuchi's Vampire Hunter D Manga, Vol. 4 by Hideyuki Kikuchi and Saiko Takaki 
Five wet cat blorbo stars
(I am having a confusion regarding Vol 4 because Goodreads says it's actually Vol 5 and I'll have to research that later, so I'll just use the cover art for Vol 3)
I'm reviewing these as one unit because, to be honest, I am only reading the manga because it's Vampire Hunter D, and not because I actually like manga. I don't dislike manga/comics, but it's not my preferred form of storytelling and not something I generally seek out. When I was a teenager I did a little bit, mostly because that's one of the things you do when you're a nerdy teenager, but anyways! All that means I'm a) not really super qualified to have a critical opinion and b) my personal opinion doesn't amount to much more than "neat!"
I enjoyed the art, these two particular stories (Demon Death Chase and Tale of the Dead Town) are both good source material, and I do love seeing my boy Mayerling in action. The splash art of him and Charlotte is particularly good, lemme see if I can find it on Google Images--
see that?????? that's the good shit
#books2024
Homeland by R.A. Salvatore
Five genuine and earnest stars
Y'ALL
why did no one tell me Drizzt Do'Urden is a nice little himbo boy???? 
I talked about this with @mek a little bit already, but as an outsider to Forgotten Realms novels/deep lore, I assumed Drizzt Do'Urden was a sort of edgy, brooding character. I pictured him like that first scene of Strider in the Lord of the Rings, when he's hanging out in the dark corner of the tavern and scowling under a cloak. I'm trying to think of why I thought this, and I think it's because of a) how white straight dude D&D fans (who I associate with Drizzt and the R.A. Salvatore stories) be and b) most of the art makes him seem incredibly humorless:
like, that does not look like a pleasant man, you know???
so imagine my surprise when I read this (which is the first of the trilogy that's his origin story) and I found out that Drizzt Do'Urden is a super chill and nice dude! His core trait, actually, is that he is kind, and his origin story is that he values kindness enough to leave his homeland and try to pursue a better life. He's definitely a main character special boy (lavender eyes where Drow normally have red, quickly becomes essentially the best swordsman in Menzoberranzan, etc.), but I found him charming and earnest. He likes to do the Drow equivalent of climb trees instead of reading books, he becomes best friends with a cat after seeing the cat for .05 seconds, and he delivers the absolute fucking scorcher "may a true god damn you all!" when he leaves his Lolth-worshipping family.
I genuinely loved this book, is what I'm saying; it very obviously was not written with a queer lens, but as someone who also had to make a specific choice in my life to be true to myself or to fit in to a harsh religious climate for safety, I appreciated the themes a lot.
#books2024
okay all caught up on that!
Weekend! It exists!
I did some chores this morning and then dooted around and did chores in Final Fantasy 14, which included leveling dragoon to 80 and I think getting the last of the things I wanted from this current phase of the Moogle event. I'll have to double-check and see, but I have a bit longer to grind it out if there's anything else I want. Then I took Baby Dog on a nice long walk along the lake, which was lovely;
and then I came home, ordered a burrito, ate half of the burrito, and laid down with Baby Dog for a bit because it was a lot of meat and carbs and my body is weak. I decided not to take a nap, so I just rested and was cozy a bit and it was nice! I think I'll consider the walk my exercise for today and transition into hermit mode here shortly, which in this case means cleaning the kitchen and changing into pajammers. After that I'll probably doot around with either a drawing project or more bungame, and once people start to hop in party chat later I think I'll play Elden Ring!
Tomorrow I need to get groceries, in particular, and also probably go ahead and pay bills and double-check my planner and do a few more adulting things, but mostly it should be a chill weekend which is good.
erikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Thu Feb 22, 2024 5:54 pmerikavonkaiser wrote: ↑Thu Feb 22, 2024 5:48 pmyes and he also has two swords named Twinkle and Icingdeath
to my surprise and delight, Drizzt Do'Urden is an enormous (by which I mean tiny, he is 5'4") dork
to add another Drizztfact (tm), his mother's name is Malice, just in case, like
you were wondering whether she was a nice person, or not
no context WIP hours
I had a fun and I feel uniquely Elden Ring (/Soulsborne) experience last night:
I figured out where I left off from last time I played, more or less, and was streaming for Sophie while she was drawing. I ended up in the Gelmir Hero's Grave instance! I decided to do it blind -- I use a guide for content that I think would frustrate me to lose progress on (longer dungeons like the magic academy or the underground city), but for the little stuff I try to do the best I can. If I can't figure it out I either look up a guide or, since it's usually an enemy that's whooping my ass, I put a map marker down to remind myself that Greggo and/or Sam need to help me.
(I actually call these "no pickles" markers, as in "Greggo I asked for no pickles")
Anyways!
This particular dungeon involves a bit of puzzlework in the sense that there's a giant death machine that rolls down hallways, so you have to figure out where to hide and where to jump. I made it a little further each time, and then was like "hey! I'll summon someone!" and I summoned Sole Heir:
Who showed me that you could jump down onto a hidden alcove for a part I was stuck at (by "showed me," I mean we communicated by jumping up and down and then he rolled off the ledge to show me), but I whiffed the jump and died. Then I summoned Reamer, who showed me you could jump on top of the death machine, but I whiffed that jump and died, and by that time I had to go to bed but I was making it a little further each time while hanging out with Sophie and having a blast. This morning I cleared it with Greggo (I was right at the end! I was glad I asked Greggo for help tho cuz that wolf would've destroyed me, I am extremely bad at Soulsborne combat) and then we did the no pickles markers I had active, and now I'm ready to play some more and progress further.
I genuinely couldn't play this game if I didn't have people willing to steamroll through stuff that's too hard for me, but it is fun when I can try again and again and feel satisfied instead of frustrated.
Also I decided this is my Tarnished's canonical look (I currently wear Radahn's armor for actual gameplay because it has better poise/stats but the raven cloak whips ass)
It has bird bones in it!!! That's so cool!!!