Ok well we got this can of wyrms open now, so I'm kinda going to dig in a little, if people will indulge. Just like bit from the personal vault.

(sidebar) The strangest thing I think about this whole Early Access experience, and now that the game lives in Full (and on console, and just wait when the Mac drops too) that we've all been this captive audience for a hot minute here. Most of the time we don't get a whole lot of oversight or direction. There's a low key expectation that our feedback and telemetry is useful, and that our friends at Larian are sorta behind the big DM screen keeping tabs, but also keeping their heads down. Probably wisely ya know. Like maybe it's the same as having someone watch over your shoulder when you're trying to just finish sketching it out and sorta drafting, but also really wanting to knock it out the park. And they kinda are, so fuck yeah! Right? I mean right? I think so, and I really didn't know at a few points if I would. I had my doubts about an EA and a lot of strong feelings both on D&D and BG. So some definitely with some skin in the game.

So anywhere here we are now, all of us, sorta stuck together. The unwitting party. Where you're really not sure how everyone's aligned or what their skills might be, or much of much, but you gotta push on right?�I've seen since I've been here some pretty great feedback and some wild characters and a lot of surprises honestly. I'm talking about forums denizens. Sometimes a couple disappointments sure, like where you think, oh cool these people both got ideas, they'll probably get along. But then they totally don't and like decamp to different quarters intantly hehe. Someone castes invisibility or cone of silence. Someone else fireballs up pithy quip,. Some are caustic but endearing. Some are like way too into their gods, but like maybe�still spin a good yarn, or dole out sage wisdom. You'd love for 'em all to work together somehow and make it happen, but who could say. It's just sorta how they set it up here for�us. But everyone's coming at it from somewhere, and probably has a contribution, and reasons for their strong passions or aversions, on whatever it is.�
Over time the longer you kick around you get these flashes of people that will endear you, or maybe revolt you, but either way it's something, and the only real thing for sure that they've all got in common is BG3. But that's a surprisingly solid bind.

When I was little, I had a couple issues. They didn't really know what was up. Difficulty paying attention and something like an overactive imagination. Because this is the 1980s, and who knows right? But basically they're starting to figure it out these days. Way back when, Aristotle coined a term, phantasia, to describe a kind of sixth sense which you'd euphemistically translate in English as something like 'imagination.' Some humans have this thing where when their visual cortex is developing the works can get�jostled a bit, and there are lot of what I guess you'd just politely term 'moods getting out of order. We can go with that. Might all be connected in some way to that stuff with how you visualize and perceive space and time, and there can be some markers associated for other stuff, though not in my case. But anyway, hyperphantasia is what they call it now.

It's where you get a lot of visuals knocking around that are hard to control, and it makes it hard to concentrate sometimes, and depending on how it goes you might have other senses leaning into it too, haptic stuff a lot of times, sound as well. For me it's almost mostly visual though I get a lot of the�chain chain thoughts and the time warp daydreams.�It's probably on a spectrum like everything else. Clearly it's why I have no capacity for brevity and can ramble ramble, sometimes precariously.

But I tripped out pretty hard when I read a saw a few weeks back that our game's Narrator Amelia - that incredible human who did so much heavy lifting for this thing her vox box - she has the mirror opposite condition.

Wait what? She dropped it casually in a podcast about BG3. Like 'oh yeah, this is a thing that exists.' Or this is a thing that I have that helps me do what I do for this work. Paraphrasing, she's way funnier than I am. But like that. On the far side of the spectrum.

Aphantasia. That's apparently where the visuals don't knock, or at least aren't knocking as hard, so other things come into play to sorta compensate. Like it's still mental imagery I guess, but has to form in a different way, that isn't an image like I get,�but still an image of a sort or I don't know exactly. I guess I couldn't really, but it totally had me vibing. This is so fascinating to me, that such a thing would be the case, but then the podcaster kinda blew past it without lingering overmuch heheh.I mean probably cause that's a courtesy, like you don't want to be all wading too deep probably for fun videos about game narration. But anyway, really�that was like a true 'holy shit, how rad is that' moment for me. And just a few weeks back. I'd have just never come across that ya know, or probably not anyway, were it not for BG3.�

None of that is super important here, just a little set up.�So when I went to see the kid head shrinker so they could try to parse it out (unsuccessfully, cause it really wasn't known back then I don't think or the language was sorta inadequate at the time, just kinda lumped in with a general deficit of attention) but while I was there the lady had a literal sandbox, and you guess what the fuck was inside of it?
Pewter figures by�Ral Partha!!! And can you guess which one I picked up?�It was this dude!

[Linked Image from i.ibb.co]

Now I don't know, maybe he's not a dwarf, or maybe he was, but she let me hold onto it. Like a true gift, in the highest spirit of xenia. Then later my grandma would get me another one for my birthday from the hobby shop that was in the same strip mall. The guy with a boards head, and then later a Dragon! But his wing got bent in the move, like did tend to happen hehe. Not the Dwarf though. He had some kinda constitution I guess.

Anyhow I think that was the first in for me. Like the legit first hook. Before the artbooks, and the actual tomes, before Pools of Radiance or the floppy days, or Hobbit cartoons and later Ultima and BG and such. There was that dwarf with his battle axe lol. So, of course, you know I'm going to be on the look out�for that callback. I mean if we can! How could I not?

Granted the argument is pure pathos, but I want a Dwarf! You can't wrong there haha
�
Also I totally agree, Korgan had has he own thing going on. It was just amusing to me cause their names were so similar, and if you didn't know better you might have even mistook him for a returning character, like 'oh no?! did they recast Kagain? But then realize you don't care cause the new one still does the trick. So yeah, I think they could do that again more or less, and it'd be enough of a nod for me. Here's pulling for any kind of shorty. You gotta have an anchor and touchstone.