My sister thought it'd be a good idea and volunteered to drive me, so I figured might as well.
They confirmed the obvious; I have second-degree burns.
They updated my td shot, and showed me how to apply the ointment I'm to use (which they gave a prescription for), and also how to wrap the bandages.

I could probably have done most of this on my own.
But it helps for them to give me all of the right supplies, with a demonstration of proper use of them.
So, not a wasted trip, since I'm pretty sure we only had like half the stuff needed at most. And there's a difference between knowing the theory and having the reality.

All-around, glad I went; I didn't feel like I wasted time in doing so.

So it turns out things are worse than I thought.

I have four blisters.
Two on the pinkie, one of which is both ginormous and also awkwardly positioned.
One on the ring finger, which is actually the least-terribly-off of the blisters surprisingly enough given I thought it'd be the worst.
And one on my thumb which is gigantic and, disconcertingly, in two hours, over doubled in size.

And worst of all?

Every single one of them shows evidence of having burst.

With the other three, this evidence was minute; the bandaids having liquid which shouldn't have been there, an icky gooey texture that didn't look like it was from the stickiness innate in a bandaid.

But with my thumb, the evidence is ongoing as it is still. leaking. Continuously.

​I've reached out to as many sources as I can to find out what to do as I have no clue.

...But hoh boy is it by far the most painful. Hurts like a capital-b-witch.

The pain comes in waves, too. I'll be in a lull: not fine, but with less pain...and then...bam. Heavy, constant wave after wave of excruciatingly painful sensations flowing throughout my hand. I'm pretty sure that also feeling cold is a very bad sign for burns and yet sometimes my hand feels like it's freezing instead of burning. And then it goes straight back into feeling like it is on fire again.

Heck, I might be feeling it shoot up my arm; there's sensations somewhere further up, maybe elbow, maybe armpit, where I feel something there, but eh, that could be entirely unrelated. Pretty sure it wasn't there before, tho, and yet is there now. Could be as simple a matter of me subconsciously positioning my hand/arm differently and that affecting blood circulation/flow in the arm, but still it's annoying because everything is hurting.

I have a high pain tolerance.

None of this pain is actually debilitating. It is ow. It is hurt. On a scale of 1 to 10, it's at least a solid six, maybe even seven. But as much as it is YE GODS hurt, pain, ow, suffering...I know that it's not a true ten level of debilitating, crushing, destroying, life-wrecking pain because it's just not that bad.

It's bad.

Really bad.

But I can manage.

Doesn't stop it from being annoying.

Painkillers are, admittedly.
A little tempting.

It's a bad enough pain that I know that a good, solid, 90-97% of people experiencing it with easy, cheap, readily available access to painkillers.
Would take those painkillers.

But again, I have a high pain tolerance, ridiculously high pain tolerance, so while it hurts...I'll live.

I'll still whine like a baby about it, tho.
Constantly complain about how much it hurts.

Because, yeah.
This is definitely the worst burn that I've ever had.
I've had a lot of burns, mind you. But this is unambiguously definitively the worst I've ever experienced, no doubt about it.

​So I'm gonna keep moaning about it in the hopes that complaining helps lessen the pain.

You know why?

Because my right hand basically is on fire.
Almost literally.

It's bandaged up pretty badly right now as the after-effect of treating my severe burns. Thumb, ring, pinkie fingers, all nailed and nailed BADLY. Used six bandages and all that to get close to covered. After applying neosporin, which my mom actually knew the location of.

Adrenaline's wearing off now, so all I feel is hotness and ow and pain and pain and more pain and ow tomorrow's gonna suck and I wonder if anyone at work will even notice/question the bandaid-laden hand and for that matter whether the bandaids will even stick that long.

​All around owness.

It's a good one, too, but I'm not sure how to schedule the time out for actually getting it done. When I start doing art, I want a solid bloc of time, where I start on the art and do nothing else until I finish the art. Anything less than that is considerably sub-optimal, to say the least, and the quality of the art will be vastly affected as a result. I thought I might be able to manage it today, but no, I got distracted doing work on the civ 3 mod (not a bad thing, mind you, as that is a project I need to work on; I finished implementing buildings and played around with pcx editing; I currently have one horrifically botched pcx file edited and I need to closely investigate the trick to make it not be botched since I've read about the method but don't quite understand it).

I'm not sure how long it'll take me to complete it, either. It'll be a full-torso, most-of-arms drawing taking up a full sketchbook page, and I'll need to gather up a ton of reference images to pull it off right. Multiple hours is the estimate, and I need to go to bed at midnight, so even if I started it now, not sure I'd finish. (Also, I'm typing this blog before I eat, at 8:40ish, so that's your reference point.)

Basically, my idea this time is to revisit a little-known piece of art I did before I even knew I was a girl. I'm not even sure I'd be able to find the original piece of art, it might be permanently lost to the ages, and was only posted in one place as far as I can recall, a site of someone who was a vague associate (not really even a friend).

What I'm aiming for is to redo that, and have it be more complete.
The original drawing I did was a combination of my two widely-used avatars at the time.
On mastin2 (this is so old that it predates the trololol avatar I later used), and on all Mastin accounts, I originally used the same avatar, originating back from my days on the battleon forums. The signature grin of the ebil (not a typo) blue moglin Zorbak, the Zorbak grin as I believe the filename is technically called.

It is the signature look of Mastin/mastin2, even if people don't think about it now as being so. Here, have a look.

...That would be a yes, I do have it.
​The original original (which I don't have anymore) said 'For SCIENCE!', and after I came out, it was kinda a big deal, so I changed my avatar (and what it said) appropriately so to match that. (And, yes, this is the much, much, much better done version. I could track down some horrific pictures of the original version but I much prefer to focus on this more refined version even if this refined version isn't perfect.)

The drawing that I want to redo combined both of them; I made a fullbody furry scientist, blue fur, semi-transparent, semi-opaque glasses, labcoat, bunny ears, red eyes, a full hybrid of the two, but again, image probably lost to the ages and even if not, was before I realized I am a girl.

Additionally.

It was before Red Hood Rider.

Ruby has since become one of my signature avatars. Black Ruby has replaced upside-down Argus as the most-used image of myself (though that's slightly debatable; upside-down Argus is pretty much mostly my gravatar image and lots of sites use gravatar), and I've used other versions of Ruby as my avatar as well.

I genuinely think that it'd be possible for me to draw an image (not meant as an avatar) that would hybridize all three designs; the anthropomorphic bunny with the ebil grin, the scientist, and Ruby. The scientist look is (minus the glasses and labcoat), mind you, meant to be an accurate representation of me; keep in mind that for the longest time, I had a ponytail on the back rather than...the thing I do now. (Is it a pigtail? A side-ponytail? I honestly don't know.)

What I have in mind is difficult. What I have in mind would take effort. And it'd be easy to screw up, so much needs to go right for it to work well. But I genuinely think I can do it, if I can set aside the time for it.

It will look so cool if done right, even in just the black and white of pencil.

But I need to actually do it and nail it​ in order for it to work that way.

When you go out of your way to watch MSI games (with no need for it) and you play a few matches on your own (also with no need for it), what else can be said of you other than exactly that?

Unfortunately, I don't remember most of the details and the details I do remember, I mostly remember because they were contradictory as far as narratives go--not "in dream logic, this made sense" contradictory. Outright complete contradiction; it was me spotting this plot hole (and yes it was an outright well and true, proper, plot hole) that woke me up, in fact. Because it was just that jarring of a contradiction, one no amount of dream logic could write off.

Still!

It was a lovely dream all the same until said contradiction came to my attention.

I know that the dream took large, LARGE inspiration from The Promised Neverland. A group of kids were being hunted, trying to escape, from a monster, and were living in an oppressive society of some sort. There was a small contradiction in that originally the monster hunting them wasn't part of said society and later in the dream monsters such as the one hunting them were common; there was a small contradiction in that originally the monster was hunting only one human with said human's death motivating the escape of the others, and then later it being the monster hunting them all with one human caught (in both instances, a surviving kid vowed revenge), but these?

These were dream logic errors that I didn't realize until just now when trying to type out the narrative and finding it less coherent than I remembered even given the glaring error. I think the setting stayed the same, though; it was a dream-labyrinth mall. Which is exactly what it sounds like; a mall, as shown through a dream, in such a way that navigating it was like navigating a labyrinth.

I believe that stayed consistent.

Later in the dream, there was a shift of perspective, however. We went from following the escaping kids to, after the ghost of their deceased comrade came back to warn them, following the ghost--ghosts in this dream world setting are restless spirits but are treated as a whole different class with almost equal power to the ruling class...because of their innate abilities to cause incredible harm if they weren't given that status.

They have common ghost powers; flight, intangibility, and have some unspecified further abilities, not to mention, can travel fast. Uniquely, there exists a way for ghosts to inhabit a tangible form, which travels with them when they go intangible, but these bodies are not something that come from the ghost themselves; they are manufactured. (Basically, said manufactured bodies are 'possessed', and once possessed, they travel with the ghost even when the ghost is using their ghostly powers.)

The ghost of the kid stole a body to possess that they weren't meant to have, and was able to warn the group, but had to leave them to not be exposed and played the part of a genuinely new ghost proven worthy of having that body, or something like that.

However, this focus on the ghost proved to be the dream's undoing, because it exposed the contradiction I couldn't reconcile. The ghost was a girl, and in at least one version, it was a girl killed...but in at least one version, the version that I believe came first, it was a guy who was killed. And realizing this made me endlessly try and loop back to that scene, to play it forth and figure out, "was it a guy who was killed, or a girl who was killed?" and I couldn't figure it out because I think it kept changing originally and this is what caused the dream to basically explode as I was catapulted awake in confusion and disappointment.

Because it was a good dream, darnit, even if it was filled to the brim with blatant continuity errors.

If the dream had kept going, I'd have explored the society via the ghost more, and then maybe looped back to the characters, with them meeting back up at some point. At least, that's my theory. But we'll never know because I stupidly realized the dream's flaws.

Basically to sum it up quickly, I kinda sorta want to just make slightly modified versions of the civ 3 scenarios I haven't modified. (Or maybe in the case of the fall of rome one, make a proper one rather than my original botched one.)

The sorts of changes that aren't adding units/wonders (or if so, are only minimalistically so and logically done), and which don't extensively modify things, but which do provide some change.

I don't particularly enjoy some scenarios as much as others and I don't think modifying them would fix that.
I don't really enjoy the WWII scenario and no modification will change it.
I enjoy the stuff in the Mesoamerican scenario, but playing it once kills all feeling of need to play it again. Also, its unique features are easily imported into the Age of Discovery scenario.
I enjoy the Sengoku/Shogun scenario, but playing it once kills all feeling of need to play it again especially once you learn that literally the only difference between the civs is their starting location; the only difference in playthroughs is in which method of winning you decide to pursue. (War Council is ridiculously easy to get elected to if you can manage to keep the island nations stuck on being islands and literally control the entirety of the mainland via having wiped out altogether all mainland nations.)
I enjoy the Mesopotamian scenario, but as-is the only changes I'd make are to the VP limit (it needs to be like, double, because it's too easy to achieve) and the time limit (it could use being longer). Maybe retaining culture of cities captured but that's a feature I love regardless of scenario anyway.

​Rise of Rome I've modded already, multiple times in fact, it being my favorite scenario and all that, so I wouldn't be doing it again.

​Which leaves Fall of Rome, The Middle Ages, Age of Discovery, and Napoleonic Europe.
Napoleonic Europe, I'd make one change only; the ability to culturally convert cities (seriously why the heck is that option ever off?), which would make Espionage actually be useful. (What's the point of it if not to use Propaganda? Troop movement is useless because on any computer due to whatever coding went into the system, civ 3 can only show so many units moving even with animations disabled before you get the laggy wheel of doom that causes you to miss what said units are doing. It also only lasts one turn and is redundant since just HAVING a spy tells you troop amounts and if you know how many troops they have you can deduce said troops' locations fairly easily. World map's worthless especially on a map you have fully revealed. Tech? You can do that without a spy. Investigating a city? You can do that without a spy. Sabotaging production? In a scenario with no wonders to build, worthless.)

Okay maybe I'd make it so that other cavalry units than the Cossack have Blitz? Because Russia's ability to Blitz with Cossacks makes nobody else worth playing.
Maybe I'd eliminate the war weariness that's annoying for playing as France? You're literally LOCKED IN A WAR YOU CAN'T MAKE PEACE IN and have to deal with war weariness as a result, not to mention the invisible warmongery penalties that I know exist but don't know the exact mechanics of because I don't particularly care to. (Butstill, are bs because you can incur severe warmongry penalties for a war you didn't even start.)

Very small, minute changes to make the scenario something more fun to play in. Still wouldn't play as anyone other than Russia or France (France has the best units stat-wise bar none and starts with three armies, so if you're in any way shape or form aggressive you can conquer the world ridiculously easily, it's just a matter of being aggressive to surpass the city advantage Russia starts with), but it'd make the scenario be more replayable to me.

For Age of Discovery, I'd retain culture on capture of cities--given that it's almost impossible for me to win by culture (I've tried with the Mayans who're best suited for it and while I came close, didn't manage it), it'd be tempting to leave that variable unchanged, but I recognize that I would need to adjust it somewhat. Not a full double, but maybe like 1.5x as much.

I'd definitely double the amount of turns in the game, though, because seriously, even if you go 100% science the entire game (only possible on Chieftain difficulty, mind you, as the easiest difficulty's the only one where you're not penalized for having no treasury), you can't actually research all tech. (Dropping the minimum turn number for techs from 4 to 2 would help there, too.)

Victory Points is difficult to do as well; as Portugal literally wiping out everyone except the Spanish to have complete control of the map and limiting the Spaniards to Cagliari (basically, preventing them from EVER settling anywhere else if you put so much as a caravel in the straights of Gibraltar), building every single wonder, and having as many units transporting treasure as I could get, I only barely pulled it off.

So like culture, I'd probably give it an increase, not full double but like 1.75x as much.

I'd make a lot of other changes, too, though.
I've tested the Mayans; there is literally no reason to go for the Mesoamerican civs. Even if you maintain a stranglehold on all of America (difficult, but possible, to do) and all of its surrounding landmasses, even if you have 100% science going the entire time...you can't out-compete with the European civilizations. Sure, you can eventually match their tech level, but you can never surpass them. You run out of time before it's possible.

It's also impossible to out-European the European civs, meaning the only way to get all of those wonders they complete first would be to launch an invasion of Europe.

I can't fix that, but I can mitigate it. My plan for that would be to give the Mesoamericans entire upgrade paths for units that all have the Enslave ability. A Mesoamerican Pikeman with Enslave; a Mesoamerican Longbowman with Enslave; a Mesoamerican Medieval Infantry with Enslave; a Mesoamerican Musketman with Enslave.

I would, in addition to making those units, make them cheaper than their European equivalents shield-wise to make.

This would give an actual incentive for me to play them; it would make them more unique and give them more of the vibe they are meant to give off. Sure, they would still lose the tech race and not have the European wonders, but this ability to have units that're cheaper, just as effective, and yet have Enslave, compared to their European versions? Worth. it.

Also I'd give them some of the Mesoamerican buildings as well, fit into their tech tree path.

I wouldn't just modify the Mesoamerican civs, though.
Currently, you have literally zero incentive to ever play as a Protestant Monarchy. Why? Because Jesuit Colleges are just too gamebreakingly powerful. Missionaries mass-produced, and boosting your scientific output? Not something you want to miss out on. So even if the theme were lost, I'd make them available to all governments.

Yes, this would mean less reason to play a Catholic Monarchy, but there are reasons to have the Catholic Monarchy even beyond their Jesuit College. The two governments are basically equals in terms of value without taking into effect their buildings/wonders; with said buildings/wonders, you'd never have reason to go Non-Catholic.

I might modify the Missionary unit, make it nationless and maybe not require upkeep (they are, after all, mass-produced!), but most of my modifications would in fact be to make Portugal not be the only viable player nation.

England's Sea Dogs would become nationless, because seriously them not having a nationless sea unit kinda defeats the point of producing that line of unit in the first place. I'd probably also give them the Ship-of-the-Line unit so that they have unquestioned dominance over naval sea power, their intended specialty.

Amsterdam I'd buff their Swiss Mercenaries and reduce their shield cost as to make them viable.

France, I'd make their Musketeers be much, much cheaper.

And similarly, Spain's Conquistadors? Why the heck is a 3/2 unit cost 70 shields when it is replacing a unit costing 20? Why the heck is a 3/2 unit with amphibious assault costing 70 shields when the other amphibious assault units cost 30/40 shields and have stronger attack/defense (respectively)? I'd half its build cost as a result, to be ~35ish.

Would this perfectly balance things out? No, but it'd make it more equal all-around, because as-is, really. You just never have any reason to ever play anyone other than Portugal. They're just...the best all-around as-is. They can conquer Europe and conquer the New World without really breaking a sweat. In spite of having no unique unit, what they are given is just...it's enough where it's basically impossible for them to lose if you're playing even remotely competently/aggressively.

Since that's a lot of changes to Age of Discovery, probably not the one I'd work on.

But there's still Fall of Rome and The Middle Ages.
For Fall of Rome, what I'd basically do is "do what I did before, but properly rather than messily".
Give the Sassanids the entry tech on the Barbarian tech tree but compensate the other Barbarian nations by giving them the first three levels in it. Nerf Legionary defense by one. Increase Horseman/Heavy Cavalry/Raider/Marauder/Pillager/Warlord movement by one. Make Warlords cheaper than Heavy Cavalry, and create Pillagers instead of Marauders. (Because you have incentive to keep Pillagers as they create Workers themselves.)

A few wonder tweaks/additions.
Sassanids starting with a couple extra Heavy Cavalry and an Army because I don't want to bother with the save scumming necessary to create one every single game (which I did on every single one of my Sassanid playthroughs, save scummed until one of your starting two "Immortals" heavy cavalries produced a leader).

Change the city elimination to be 10 instead of 8. (Frankly I'd like it if I could set that at 12, but the max is 10.)
Frikkin' fix the land bridge for Constantinople so I don't have to travel half way across the map in order to take the city, a feature unique to this scenario only (as literally every other scenario with that location has there be a land bridge--Mesopotamia, Rise of Rome, The Middle Ages, and Napoleonic Era all have it be land, not sea).

Double the needed VP points to win and increase (but not double) the number of turns in the game.

Small stuff, but which I messed up the first time. (I set the VP points way too high, for instance, and literally doubled the turns which is tortuously long, making the scenario nigh-unwinnable except with an insane amount of time spent.)

And then there's the Middle Ages scenario, which I wouldn't need to add a thing to, just tweaking existing things as to make it be less annoying.

I'd have the Christian civilizations start with the first three in their tech tree, to make it harder to out-Christian the Christian civilizations. (Harder, but not impossible.) Because I can easily build the Holy Roman Empire as the Kievan Rus, Turks, Abbasids, and so on and so forth. You just have to focus on it the second you can, and if you complete it, magically, you get two bonus techs; if you were in any way behind because of focusing on the wrong tech tree, those two techs boost you up and mean you lose nothing.

I'd rework all the cavalry units. I'd make the Sipahi have three movement and gain blitz, make the Ansar Warrior have four movement, buff cataphracts' defense, and buff knights' attack, or something like that. Not sure the exact tweak I'd make, but I'd do something to make each of the four cavalry units be different from the other and the difference be something that makes them not be inferior, because as-is, you never have reason to use anything other than the Sipahi or the Ansar Warrior. Sipahi for being the best in attack; Ansar Warrior for being the best in movement.

I'd probably buff the berserk as well in some fashion.
I'd make the Kievan Rus be able to build both Longships and Dromons rather than just one, doing whatever would be necessary for that.

I'd make the pure Viking civilizations start with three of their techs, and have the three Caliphates start with three levels of their Arab techs. The Byzantines would also have three Byzantine techs. The Kievan Rus would start with both the first Viking tech and the first Byzantine tech (because seriously, it says that they favor the Byzantine tech tree but they start with nothing in it so that's an outright lie pretty much), with the Turks having the second Arab tech.

Beyond that, it'd just be a matter of unit tweaks. Specifically, making swordsmen upgrade into medieval infantry (who I'd add amphibious assault to) upgrade into crusaders (who'd gain the amphibious assault ability as well).

From there, all I'd need is minor building tweaks. Hospitals for city size 3 instead of 2, because screw only coastal cities being possible to get metropolises. A building being repurposed to include pollution reduction. Small tweaks to buildings, mostly in their cost, to match their more cheaper build costs. Maybe minor tweaks to wonders, but nothing that unusual.

Little stuff.

Stuff that takes less than a day's work, I'd guess.

But who knows if I'll follow through, the idea sounds more and more boring and tedious the more I outline it.
If for no other reason than I still don't know how to get scores for custom scenarios recorded and these modified scenarios count as custom scenarios. A feeling of "what's the point" exists, more or less.

...But I've never managed to quite figure out how to go about them. Basically, idea is there, thought is there, exact execution of it I just can't make work. Writer's block of sorts, I guess you could call it. Butyeah, I've had ideas, but nothing has come close to being reality.

I really do like giving blog entries which are more than just the bare minimum, where each day actually gives something new, something fresh, something insightful, something which lets people see into my mind even if only a bit more than they already see.

There's only so many ways to say "sorry, can't blog today" before saying "sorry, can't blog today" stops doing that, so I feel obligated to make more than that, to make even paltry attempts at a blog like this one. This one might not be much and I know it won't amount to anything more than a few paragraphs, but it's at least something.

​​This is something that I might've made something similar to in the past, but nothing literally identical to, in that there's nothing quite like this blog entry. It's small, it's not much, and it's something that's not groundbreaking, but it's still unique and definitively an original entry.

I don't know if I can keep this style of blog up indefinitely (heck I think that it's only possible by virtue of being in the magical state of mind of "not too tired to make a coherent entry, not too coherent to prevent going off on tangents", in that I am prone to having thoughts wander off when tired but taken too extreme can't blog at all), but while I would prefer even longer entries talking about the type of blog entry I had in mind for days like today?

Failing entries like that?

I'd settle for an entry like this one every single day.

Beats "sorry, can't blog today" literally being 100% of the blog, 100% of the time.

I wrote a blog for today about something I want to talk about, but I didn't get around to posting it in spite of having plenty of time to do so. Oh well. Now, I want to stay up later, but I'm just...kinda, well. Shutting down. I can't wake up right now, even though I want to. OH WELL.

There's always tomorrow!