guess who I am?

The worst of the Christmas stress is over. Christmas Eve we spent at my brother's and yesterday my parents came to us for lunch. We cooked a three course meal for them, which was really tasty but obviously a lot of work. Today we have the last visit of a relative, my grandmother, but while it's going to be exhausting since she's a very difficult person, it won't be as much work as yesterday. Good thing we have some of the cheesecake we baked left. ;)

As always, I ate too much over the holidays, but I hope this will also end with today. I'm craving light meals and vegetables! It's going to be a few days before I'm brave enough to step on the scales, haha.

I've been having a great time the last few days though. In Genshin I'm just doing my usual stuff: dailies, resin spending, and mint picking. I'm so tempted to level some of the 4 stars I have at C6, but I really mustn't. Better artefacts for my already levelled characters have to take precedence. If I really don't pull until that Snow Maiden character (and that is only if she goes with Sandrone or Nicole), I'll have plenty of time to build some of the characters I have sitting at lvl 20 anyway.

SWTOR also continues to be fun. Yesterday I finished a super long quest chain and today I started the 7.5 story. It's a bit of a shame that I couldn't side with Empress Acina in the opening cutscene, my Ley'lah is loyal to the Empire and actually doesn't care about Mandalorians at all. But it's okay. They're wrapping up the Mandalorian war story in the first half of 2026 (if there are no delays), and I hope that afterwards I can be more Sith again. There were enough complaints about this that one could hope the devs took this into account when plotting the 8.0 xpac.

I also finally figured out how the new gearing works. In the past I'd have looked down at being able to get endgame gear just by doing solo PVE content, I was quite elitist as a progression raider, but now I'm super happy about those changes. I still don't think I'll ever do real group content in the gam again, so gearing by doing quests, dailies, and random PVE encounters is perfect for me.

It really comes as such a surprise that I actually enjoy the game again. When I re-downloaded the game I thought I'd probably just log in once and then never again, but I'm having fun. It's quite sad how dead the game is though. On most planets I'm the only one around...

What's also shocking is that I'm starting to warm up to Sa'har, by the way. I still can't stand her brother, but she's quite okay. If my Sith could turn her to the Dark side at the end of the xpac that would be cool. Most of all I want more Darth Rivix though. He hasn't shown up in so long. :( I miss him!

Since we're celebrating on Christmas Eve in Austria, I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! I hope you're all having a wonderful time with your loved ones! <3

I was naughty and tried to gamble (read: whale) for Durin's C2. What I ended up with is a Qiqi con. QQ Well, at least my Jahoda is now C6, even though I have no immediate plans for her. For once I could have won a 50/50... /sigh

At least I'm on guaranteed now. Though since I don't want any of the upcoming characters, not being able to pull even just a little to get 4 star cons for months is going to be hard. I really want at least on Illuga, just for the 4 star collection. Let's hope he's on the Lantern Rite 4 star selector, even though he has nothing to do with Liyue.

Aaah, I've been daydreaming so much about my current fanfic scenario. I like my version(s) of the Sequel Trilogy so much better than what D*sney dished up.

By the way, I'm really getting into "Die Strudelhofstiege" now. I'm more than a third through and it's actually getting quite interesting. Will read more later when we head into the city centre for lunch.

This was a very incoherent entry, but it it what it is. ;)

Can't wait to write in the evening. I need my boy Iliad to pine, pine, PINE! :3

So with the TFA ten-year anniversary coming up (or is it already here, I forgot) there have been a lot of videos on Youtube by people looking on the movie and the sequel trilogy as a whole. I think everyone here knows that I'm very critical of D*sney Star Wars. I basically dislike everything D*sney has ever done for the franchise and if it wasn't for Hux I wouldn't engage with any of it ever. Watching those videos point out everything that's wrong with the ST thus feel good. However, what I actually want to say is that the videos obviously also talk about Poe Dameron, and wow - they were a great reminder of his actual personality. Because I realised, he's nothing like how he's usually depicted in gingerpilot fanfic. He's usually written as a player who wants to get into everyone's pants and is into any kind of gross kink that you can imagine, but actually, there's nothing in the ST that would hint at that at all. In fact, I was shocked how different he is from how fandom sees him. His bad characterisation in fandom actually made me dislike him (I'm really anti-kink, I can't stress it enough), but now I can look at him again without feeling gross.

Ever engaging with the gingerpilot fandom really was the worst thing I could have done. I still don't like that ship, people have forever ruined it for me, but I can now ship Poe with another of my First Order OCs. So I'm grateful to those videos for showing me that Poe is different from what the fandom's BNFs would have led me to believe. I actually feel vindicated. I always believed he wasn't a promiscuous pig like so many want him to be.

On a more positive note, I'm enjoying my time in SWTOR. It's hilarious though that my Sith is being made to wait tables on Voss. Because sure, a member of the Dark Council would definitely do that just to make the Voss trust her. No way she would just torture the intel she needs out of them. It's cool though. I'm taking my time playing through the story and re-familiarising myself with the game. This morning I won't have time to play, but maybe I can log in for half an hour or so when I'm back from my grandmother's.