faerie_music_box

Yeah, went to bed closer to 2 AM than I'd originally planned, and ended up getting up around 8:30 AM, which probably explains why I'm feeling much more tired now. Well, that and the secondhand stress I caught from Mom having computer troubles this morning (a BIOS update borked her laptop because it didn't play nice with Windows, and for some reason the Windows people need a MONTH to reset it, the fuck). You know, part of me was thinking it was time for a new computer, and then that happened and I'm like "I think I'm good." XD

Anyway! Here's what I accomplished today:

Writing: Got another chunk done on Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” today (once I got done getting distracted reading ahead – what can I say, I like this chapter, even if it is very hard on poor Alice!), which featured Alice leaving the library via the secret passage she’d just opened up, and finding herself in the mysterious “medieval torture chamber except the torture involves electricity flying everywhere thanks to ceiling-mounted Tesla coils” room. ...Look, you come up with good names for some of the weirder places in Grout’s mansion. XD Anyway, Alice managed to avoid being shocked right away (though she did pick up a good chunk of static electricity crawling between the various deadly bars of current), and not only found two of the levers she needs to disengage the danger, but also the Tarulfang! An occult item that decreases a Fledgling’s chance to frenzy, so I had it make Alice feel a little bit calmer about things. Which, naturally, confused her a tad, but she still stuck it in her pocket. XD I left off with her creeping around and pulling levers – next time, she continues on her horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad adventures! Which heavily feature more lever-pulling and more backtracking. Because reasons.

Sims 4 Teen Valicer Save File – The Planning: I did get a little bit done on that this evening after all the YouTubery, setting up a section for my thoughts on what I want out of the file in the same doc where I keep track of my mods and CC. So far I’ve gotten down the basic conceit of the file (following the trio through their high school years in Copperdale; their university days in Britechester; and finally their adult lives in either Windenburg or Ravenwood – haven’t decided where they’ll ultimately settle down yet), and created a list of for each of them of their “primary traits” (aka the traits they would get in CAS/on their age-up to Young Adult), “primary aspirations” (the aspirations that I DEFINITELY want them to complete, other than “I might do this along the way if I think it would benefit them/I could get some easy aspiration points by completing it), and “occult status” (what occults I want them to become). Smiler’s so far the most fleshed out, with their three traits (“Cheerful,” “Outgoing,” and “Geek”) locked down, their eleven aspirations listed out (they have a lot of things I want them to do!), and their occult status set (mostly because they HAVE to start as a Spellcaster to get their iconic yellow eyes). Victor’s next, with his three traits sorted (“Music Lover,” “Socially Awkward,” and “Clumsy”), eight aspirations listed (some of which overlap with Smiler, as I figured everybody should do ones like “Academic” (helps guide you through college) and “Paragon Partner” (the official Polyamory Aspiration)), and occult status set (he’ll be becoming a Spellcaster as well); while poor Alice only has two of her three traits locked in (“Gloomy” and “Creative” – I’m still deciding if I want “Erratic” or “Cat Lover” for the third) and five aspirations listed (again, some of which overlap with the other two). Though I do have her occult status set too – gonna make her a Mermaid like I’d planned to do in the Tiny Town save. *shrug* It’s a start! And I’ll probably get more done when it’s not late at night and I’m not really tired. XD

YouTube: Spent the better part of the afternoon/evening emptying out my Watch Later, yay –

A) First up, we had “The Sims 2: 50 FASCINATING FACTS You Might Not Know!” by onlyabidoang! Which featured Abi sharing not only a bunch of fun facts he discovered about the second entry in the franchise (largely with the help of “TheSims2Fanatic,” a redditor who did a thread of one interesting Sims 2 fact per day for a year and who thus contributed a lot to the list) – but also his FACE! Yeah, for once we didn’t have Abi’s self-Sim hosting the video, but Abi himself, in the flesh! He said that he just wanted to try something new and that he didn’t plan to do face-cam bits often (hell, this first one was just at the beginning of the video), but if people were interested, he’d keep going with it. Most of the comments were variations on “wow, your self-Sim in Sims 4 really does look just like you!” XD Anyway, Abi’s fascinating Sims 2 facts included:

I. Why the freezer bunny is called the “freezer bunny” – it’s because we first saw the cute pink rabbit shoved into the top of the commercial freezer in grocery stores in this game

II. The reveal that the Thai version of the game has absolutely NO nudity – Sims bathe in their underwear, and there’s no censor grid when they sit down on the toilet

III. Abi singing “Hold Me Closer by Tiny Dresser Co” to demonstrate how the furniture’s name was a reference to the song “Tiny Dancer” by Elton John XD

IV. The reveal that there was going to be a special cinematic cutscene for Sims discovering their partner cheating on them, but it was cut before release – however, if you have a special mod, you can still look at the (very glitchy) animations

V. The discovery that if you have two TVs playing the same channel on a lot, the footage on them both will be perfectly synced

VI. The reveal that if you use “move_objects on,” you can attach objects to various parts of Sims’ bodies – anything attached to their hands will disappear after a bit, but stuff attached to torsos and heads will stay stuck until you remove it

VII. And if you hold shift while using “move_objects on” on a Sim, you can create a bunch of clones of that Sim, who act autonomously but who don’t show up in other Sims’ relationship panels – Abi was confused too XD

Fun stuff! :) He’s always good at tracking down stuff like this – what makes him so fun to watch!

B) Then we moved onto “Reacting to The Sims 4 Enchanted By Nature Trailer!” by James Turner! Because I always did intend to watch it, I just really wanted to watch more CaFae Latte first. XD As you might expect, the video featured James watching and reacting to the release trailer when it dropped (at 1 AM for him, poor guy), then reading the associated blog posts from EA and going through the trailer much more slowly to see what sort of things caught his eye. As I expected, he was into the main character’s plant-filled room at the start of the trailer (James loves a good houseplant or five in his builds), and he was really into the pack giving Sims the ability to fully live off the land via foraging for food, bathing in ponds and lakes, and straight-up sleeping on the ground (his Bigwallet legacy family does a rags-to-riches basically every generation, and having the ability to survive with no money would REALLY make the early days of those easier). However, I didn’t expect him to be so impressed by some of the fairy stuff – specifically, their tiny forms, and how they looked like actual Sims! Though, admittedly, in The Sims 3, a fairy’s tiny form was just a ball of light, so it is fairly impressive that this version of fairies actually features a proper shrunken-down version of your Sim for their tiny form. You wouldn’t have expected Sims 4 to go that far! Anyway, he was also intrigued by the Apothecary Table (which allows you to make natural remedies for the Ailments that come with the pack, along with a variety of other interesting elixirs) and the new Naturopath career (which is a ten-level career that allows you to make a living curing Sims of Ailments – sounds like it’s a work-at-home career, which is nice), and thought the world and the builds in it looked really good (he especially liked one build that was a tiny house in a BIG tree). Though he admitted that he was worried that the neighborhoods would be mostly set dressing without a lot of things to actually DO (mentioning that a lot of neighborhoods in Sims 4 feel both too big AND too small thanks to this). And he caught that one of the houses in the initial overview of the coastal town neighborhood was accidentally filmed in “walls down” mode, which was pretty funny. XD All in all, though, he seems pretty interested in the pack! I remain kind of “meh” about the whole thing, but perhaps that will change as more information comes out and we get a better idea of what the pack will bring to the table. We’ll see!

C) Then it was onto the OXBoxtra videos of the week, featuring:

I. “The Only Game Endings that Made Me Ugly Cry” by Ellen over at OXtra! Ellen taking us through the three games whose endings made her go full-on sobbing waterworks and why (spoilers incoming):

a. Ori and the Will of the Wisps: featuring the big boss Ori’s been fighting throughout the entire game going and curling up in the corpses of his parents to die (ouch) and Ori himself having to become a spirit tree to save his world (double ouch)! This one got to Ellen because the game FORCES you to crawl to the point where Ori must “embrace the light” and become a tree, with flashes to all of Ori’s friends appearing in the background, and all she could think of was how Ori would never get to hang out with them again, and he’s already done so much to try and save the world, but he still has to make this ultimate sacrifice, and – yeah. And then the post-ending sequence shows all his friends and loved ones still spending time with him as his tree grows and becomes strong, and that’s just some extra bittersweet feels on top of everything else! Just – it’s a lot.

b. God of War: Ragnarok: Featuring Kratos, post-credits and post-funeral of one of his dwarven buddies, finding a prophetic painting from his son’s new giantess friend showing him being worshiped and loved as a god, instead of feared – and breaking down in tears because, well, despite being a god of rage and war, that’s all he truly wanted. This one at least was a “happy tears” situation for Ellen, who was simply so glad to see him get a glimpse at a potential happy ending after all the character growth he’d gone through in the newer games, and how hard he’d tried to be better than the “destroy everything” monster he was in the original trilogy. She’s also just in favor of letting men, especially big burly “no emotions” men, cry every once in a while, and encouraged the boys in the audience to do a purge every so often. It’s good for you!

c. Stray: Featuring the cat’s little robot/possible last human consciousness stuffed into a robot buddy B-12 sacrificing himself to open the roof on the underground city of robots so they could experience sunlight and make it outside. Yeah, uh, Ellen had ALREADY spent most of her livestreams playing this game crying over how cute the cat was, so she was PREPPED to sob over the death of B-12. And she was very angry about it, because how dare this game take her down emotionally? XD But yeah, B-12 choosing to destroy his software to give the other robots a chance to escape their dark, sad, hostile-alien-infested city and help the cat get back out so he could find his family was just – a lot. And the game having the cat curl up next to the dead drone while behind them the roof slowly but steadily opened, letting in the sun...fuck, I’m tearing up just thinking about it. It’s just – damn it, it’s full of feels, okay?! Now give me a moment to master my emotions…

II. “7 Best Game Mechanics Nobody Copied For Some Reason” – Andy, Jane, and Mike talking about those awesome game mechanics that never made it out of their games of origins, to everyone’s detriment. Want to control your boxing punches via careful motions made with the right analog stick of your controller, like in EA Sports: Fight Night? Sorry, no other boxing game seems to have picked it up! Actually enjoy rearranging your attache case to make sure you have enough room for everything in games like Resident Evil 4? There’s a handful of other games that use the system (like Dredge), but your options for scratching the itch elsewhere are limited. Want a dynamic difficulty level that not only makes things easier when you’re doing poorly, but harder when you’re doing well, like in God Hand? ...what do you mean that’s the “rubber banding” that these three actually recently complained about, it’s a TOTALLY different thing. XD (To be fair, the system Mike described in God Hand seemed a bit better tuned than the rubber band AI stuff you might see in any given Mario Kart.) But yeah, there are plenty of game mechanics that have not gotten their due in the wider gaming world. Me, I say more games need the awesome quadruple jump Alice gets in Alice: Madness Returns – now THAT is a way to get around!

D) And finally, we wrapped up with the next CaFae Latte video I had to catch up on: “CaFae Latte Season 62 - TikTok Compilation!” This one was themed around the cookbook coming out and the results of a certain election, and featured:

I. JC and Janine talking about the results of the election and how they were holding up afterward (Janine said she was very used to living out of spite, while JC said how Bob had offered to enchant their gun to make sure the bullets always hit their target despite not liking guns), and Bob wondering if bringing out their cookbook was a good idea (JC was like “we planned on this date MONTHS ago, it’s not our fault the Orange Cheeto is now overshadowing it all,” while Janine was like “I think we could all use some sweet treats, even if they’re homemade”)

II. Cyrus and Rethu talking about how they were holding up (apparently Rethu got put on a Wildlife Services watch list for having a fiery fit over Lake Superior), and Cyrus revealing he was back on his socials and watching people argue about if books are political (Rethu: “Tell me they aren’t that stupid” Cyrus: “My beloved, they are”); JC poked their head in to ask if they thought the upcoming cookbook was going to be political, and Cyrus pointed out, “Well, it has a queer author, so…”

III. JC getting roped by Bob and Cyrus into doing a promo for the new cookbook on release, only to constantly ruin takes by swearing, telling people to make sure to mark which cookies are for the MAGA uncle so HE gets the laxative, and talking about how making the food will keep you distracted from the bullshit for a little while – ended with Bob and Cyrus just showing the front cover of the (actual, in real life, can be purchased by us on this side of the screen) cookbook

IV. Nicole showing up at the cafe after an absence and letting Cyrus know about how scared and upset some of her students were in the wake of the election (including one popular trans kid who was SO excited for Trans Awareness Week until the Orange Cheeto won), how others have taken to harassing their fellow students (specifically boys telling the girls “your body, my choice”), and how it’s all making her feel like what the fuck is the point – and Cyrus reminding her that he and Bob came to America in the 1840s and thus saw stuff like the end of slavery, followed by the rise of Jim Crow. And women taking over factories in the 1940s to help win World War II – only to be shoved back in the kitchen in the 1950s. Basically, this is how history works – progress is made, is slapped down, then rears back up again. So you have to make sure to keep on fighting. ...good stuff still very relevant a year on.

V. Husniya serving a distracted and sad-seeming customer and asking what was wrong – turns out she’d just broken up with her fiance because he was a Trump supporter. Husniya assured her that she’d done the right thing, given how personal and powerful politics are, and the customer (who’d been told by some of the OTHER people in her life that it was stupid to break up over politics) thanking her as she’d needed to hear that. :) And then Husniya confided to Bob that she and her husband were thinking about resigning from the CIA, because they could NOT have that asshole in charge again, and Bob told her that she’d be happy to take her on full-time, and that all employees AND their families get health and dental…

VI. JC asking Nicole about her Thanksgiving plans, and Nicole saying she was going to spend it with her family and asking JC if they wanted to do Thanksgiving or Christmas – and JC revealing they wanted to do both, as they were cutting their parents off entirely for voting for Trump and prioritizing lower gas prices over the safety of their nonbinary kid (and daughter, as Kelly was cutting them off too – John, their brother, didn’t vote and refused to take sides, so he got put in the “I won’t fully go no contact but I’m not gonna be TRYING to contact you” bucket). Nicole promptly went “so we’ll see you both for the holidays,” explaining Kelly was her friend and deserved to be a part of the celebrations as well. :) Nice to see JC and Kelly both have a substitute family in Nicole’s parents!

VII. JC being a bitch in the kitchen – specifically, snapping at Drek for not washing a pot fast enough – and, upon Cyrus’s questioning, revealing that they REALLY wanted to get high right now. And they usually dealt with it via stress baking (or going to the firing range, or having lots and lots of sex with Nicole). Cyrus thus quietly texted Nicole once JC got their pot, and she showed up a little bit later with enchanted “Zen Charm” sunglasses that would help calm their stress and make them less of a pain to be around. JC thanked her verbally, and thanked Cyrus by not removing his hand when he inevitably stole some of their goodies

VIII. And Drek stumbling across Vet Grampa and his buddy doing “Fuck, Marry, Kill” (or “Bed, Wed, Behead” as the “polite company” version) while collecting dishes – Oscar noted that he’d always had trouble with that game due to being demisexual and thus not knowing if he’d want to wed or bed someone right away, while Drek warned that doing it with people you KNOW can be relationship-ruining. And then he came up with a “gay” edition for the trio to attempt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Henry Cavill, and Beneditch Cumberbatch) – Vet Grampa was like “you couldn’t have chosen someone closer to my age? Like Sir Ian McKellan?” (Oscar happily agreeing he likes Sir Ian), while Vet Grampa’s friend – a supposedly straight man – INSTANTLY went for “wed Ben, bed Henry, behead Joseph” and justified it as being fine with Henry Cavill tying him up so long as he did the Geralt voice (from The Witcher TV series). Drek was like “none of you people are straight” XD

Lovely stuff, as always – and it was comforting to see the CaFae Latte cast comforting each other and bolstering each other up after the results of the election. Especially Cyrus’s speech to Nicole about how bad shit always happens, but you can’t let it stop you from fighting. Very important words, those. *nods*

Yeah -- perhaps not a heck of a lot, but I got all the important stuff done, I feel. Would have liked to have added some tumblr stuff to the list, but alas, it was not to be (partially because I had less computer time than expected today, partially because nothing happened over on Valice Multiverse). And now I have to head to bed -- tomorrow's Father's Day, and I can't sleep through it! I dunno if Dad's gonna want to do anything special for the day or not, so I don't know if I want to make any firm video gaming plans (though I really should get back to Ada and Victor tracking down The Mechanist in Fallout 4) -- I will say that I do want to finish off the Polyheart OT3 House post waiting in my drafts in Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and of course keep up with Jon's latest Fallout: London video. The rest is to be determined! By Dad, however indirectly. :P Night all!

Current Mood: tired

crossover_chick

Yeah, I ended up wound up again today from a bunch of little annoyances (like people tailgating me on my commute home, that was not fun), meaning I wasn't in the best mood for a lot of it. Which I suppose is appropriate for Friday the 13th, but still. Meh. But even with that, I managed to get through the day and accomplish stuff:

Work – A slightly-busy Friday to cap off the workweek – I did the GL (which took most of the morning thanks to a bunch of credit card stuff having been uploaded Thursday); I did the couple of exceptions that came through and weren’t checks or matching gift stuff; I put on a couple of checks for the director (both unusual cases); I took a few credit card calls; and I took a quick peek at the failed credit cards of the week. All pretty typical Friday stuff, and it did all make the day go by. *nods* Still glad to be out for another couple of days, though!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike, pedaling my way through:

A) The end of “Now This is Space Racing! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 2” by Oxventure! We wrapped this particular episode up with alien teens Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) participating in the big race to win tickets to the Ultimate Party happening on the planet Rez T-75 with their new buddy Memples (not Meeples like I may have said before, that was me having a brain fart)! As each speeder required a pilot (to actually drive the speeder) and a gunner (to fend off all the other competitors), they divided up into two teams of two to double their chances of winning – Radian with Memples (with Radian as the pilot and Memples as gunner), and Kae’l and Galaxa (with Galaxa as pilot and Kae’l as gunner – mostly because neither girl was great at flying, but Kae’l had an edge in the “fighting people off” department thanks to her power armor and her giant black laser blade) – then hopped about the rustiest, most crap speeders in the race and took off! How did things go? Well –

I. Radian and Memples made a great start, escaping the crush easily and soaring into a good position at 15th place; Kae’l and Galaxa, meanwhile, got caught in the crush thanks to the speeder stalling a bit (bad rolls were bad) and only just barely managed to get into 39th place without being utterly destroyed by another speeder, oof

II. Fortunately, by being sneaky (thanks to one of Galaxa’s talents) and spending a whole lot of adversity tokens to buff up a bad roll, Kae’l and Galaxa were able to weave through the crowd and get out of the crush on their next turn, moving up to 29th place – and then Kae’l managed to use her laser blade to disable a speeder, send it careening into a rock wall, and start an avalanche, VASTLY reducing the competition. While terrifying poor Galaxa. XD Radian and Memples, meanwhile, surged ahead to 10th on a decent roll...and then Memples pulled out a rocket launcher and utterly OBLITERATED the two people in front of them on a fantastic Fight roll, moving them up to 8th! As you might imagine, Radian was a bit “holy SHIT you’re scary” after that happened!

III. The next roll saw Galaxa (VERY motivated by the avalanche behind them) manage to get in the zone and kick the speeder into high gear, getting them all the way into 12th place; Radian and Memples, meanwhile, got all the way up to 3rd with Radian’s piloting skills – and with the tickets to the party within reach, Radian fell to Memples’s bloodlust and encouraged him to take out 1st and 2nd with a rocket, which Memples happily did. Seeing this, the girls decided to help thin the herd even further so their friends had the best shot at winning –

AND CHUCKED ONE OF THE PLASMA GRENADES GALAXA HAD STOLEN OFF THAT SMUGGLER. Utterly obliterating everyone between them and Radian and Memples, and bringing them into second! And infuriating everyone who’d survived, as you might imagine. XD Man, these kids went from “this guy accidentally killed himself in front of us and it was really traumatizing” to “WE WILL DESTROY ALL TO GET TO THIS DAMN PARTY” rather fast, didn’t they? XD

IV. And finally, with some good rolls, both teams were able to avoid all the blaster lasers and rocket fire and whatnot coming from behind them and zip over the finish line neck-and-neck, with Radian and Memples JUST taking the win! :D Galaxa attempted to spin to a nearby camera and do the promised promo for Storacle as she followed them over, but a bad roll meant that she forgot she had to keep both hands on the speeder controls and ended up plowing it, and her and Kae’l, into the sand. XD Fortunately Radian took care of the promo for them, so that fish lady will NOT be coming for their hides, yay~

And with that, the quartet scored their tickets to the party! :D Next week, we’ll continue on with this mini-series and see how that goes! I’m assuming chaotically, with this group. XD

B) The entirety of “Resident Evil 9 LORE EXPLAINED | Who is Grace Ashcroft? When is it Set? | Resident Evil Requiem” by OXBox! Which was roughly seven minutes of Andy answering the titular questions and speculating a bit more on what was revealed in the recent trailer and what it could mean. Specifically:

I. He let us know that Grace Ashcroft is the daughter of Alyssa Ashcroft, reporter and one of the player characters of the multiplayer title Resident Evil: Outbreak, and the only canonical survivor of that game (which makes it a little sad that she’s now a murder victim and her daughter has trauma over it :( )

II. Given that Alyssa was canonically alive in 2016 (as per a newspaper article written by her about the Baker family’s shenanigans in Resident Evil VII) and the trailer specified that she’d died eight years before the events of RE9, the game could be set in 2024 at the earliest – though Andy was banking on it being set in 2026, the year it’s due to release

III. Looking at the ruins of the bombed Raccoon City (complete with giant ashy crater) made Andy think that either one, this city was never cleaned up or demolished after the big bomb for some reason (what is this, a Bethesda Fallout game?), or two, we might be exploring the ruins shortly AFTER the bomb in some sort of flashback sequence, which would be cool

IV. He’s pretty certain that at least one of the series’ mainstay protagonists should be showing up in some capacity, saying that if you really stretched your ears, you could maybe guess that a couple of the voices in the trailer belonged to Leon, Jill, and Chris. Personally, given that Chris showed up in both RE7 and RE8, I think it’s about time Leon got an airing in a RE game that wasn’t a REmake. And we DID get a pretty close look at the old Raccoon City Police Department building, which was the place he was going in RE2...

V. And he thinks that, based on what we saw in the trailer, we might be getting a new, unique villain (as the guy heavily hinted to be a villain didn’t look like a Wesker, or the ancient founder of Umbrella) – though if the game does NOT feature another fun alphabet virus to turn people into zombies, he will very much eat his hat XD

So yeah – it wasn’t much, but it at least helped explain who Grace was a little better and provided some fun speculation as to what might be coming up in the new game. :) I’m looking forward to seeing what pops up next regarding this latest entry in the series – I may not play these things directly, but I do enjoy watching others tackle the Residents Evil! OXBox in particularly does fun LPs, and I’m sure this one will be no exception. :)

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – tonight, Alice listened to Grout’s latest recording (where he talked about how silly his fellow vampires were, commenting in particular on their ridiculously-flowery language...until he realized he was doing it too – Alice was most amused) and solved the upstairs candle puzzle with the help of another note and a few explorative pulls, opening up a secret passage downstairs! Only for Cheshire to point out that she could have skipped the whole thing if she’d just noticed the secret “book” lever in the nearby bookcase that did the exact same thing. XD Alice was like “well, being able to do candle puzzles is a very important skill in this house, so I won’t beat myself up about it.” :p Tomorrow, she ventures into the secret passage to see what’s inside! (Lots of deadly electricity, if you’re curious.)

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check, but only just – between beanbags (below) and Game Night (BTTF Yahtzee – Dad won two games while Mom and I each won one, with me edging Dad out in my game by a mere POINT) eating up most of my regular computer time this afternoon/evening, I got to summing up the workout videos and doing my regular writing very late. Meaning I had barely any time at all to watch any YouTube stuff. :( But I wanted to watch SOMETHING –

So I turned to Proxy Gate Tactician and raided the earliest videos on his channel for “Baldur's Gate 3: Cheesing To Defeat the Tutorial Boss Fight On Tactician Mode (Patched Method)!” Four minutes of Proxy explaining how he found a way to cheese the tutorial “boss” fight against the devils on the Nautiloid shortly after the game came out of Early Access. For reference, when you reach the helm of the Nautiloid, you’re confronted with a mind flayer fighting a devil who tells you to get to the weird nerves at the front of the ship and connect them so you all can get out of Avernus already. And while the devil he’s fighting IS technically an enemy you can battle, you are strongly discouraged from doing so by the following:

I. He’s level 8 with almost 200 HP and resistances to pretty much EVERYTHING, especially anything a puny level 1 character can throw at him

II. He will summon some other devil buddies to help him a few turns into the fight, who are a little less powerful than him but still a LOT for a level 1 character to take on

III. You’re on a time limit of 15 turns to reach the nerves and trigger the “escaping Avernus” cutscene – take too long and the ship just straight-up crashes, killing EVERYONE on board

So yeah, almost never worth the fight. But Proxy was very curious if beating him and all his minions was even possible, and what loot you got off the bodies if you did. So he experimented, and experimented, and experimented some more –

And after ten hours of failure (including one very near-miss where, thanks to him taking a bit too long and the timer disappearing, the ship crashed just as he had whittled the final cambion down to 13 health), he finally struck upon a winning strategy – Abusing The “Mage Hand” Cantrip! Specifically, abusing the fact that, at the time he recorded, “Mage Hand” could only be cast once per short rest – but if you short rested with a Mage Hand active, you could cast the cantrip again and get a second Mage Hand. And there’s little “heal” stations all over the Nautiloid that function very much like a character taking a short rest… Cue Proxy:

I. Faking a multiplayer game on his computer to get himself three player characters and buff his party up to six with his three PCs, Us, Lae’zel, and Shadowheart

II. Getting everyone buffed up as much as possible with “Bless” and Bardic Inspirations and whatnot before the fight kicked off

II. Having Shadowheart Command the leader devil, Zhalk, to drop his weapon – this doesn’t have much of a chance of working, but Proxy got lucky – and Lae’zel loot the blade so he couldn’t get it back

III. Directing most of the party to work on killing Commander Zhalk...while one of his PCs snuck off and started summoning an ARMY of Mage Hands near one of the heal stations

IV. Getting the Mage Hands into the fight where, despite being the world’s crappiest fighters (with terrible accuracy and damage), they DID help him kill all the devils in time. Sure, poor Lae’zel got nearly killed by the mind flayer when it briefly went hostile during the fight after Zhalk went down, and sure one of the other PCs had to sacrifice herself to blow up a cambion with all the explosive jars and such she’d collected wandering the ship, and SURE, Proxy wrapped up the fight at the absolute LAST MINUTE, nearly risking another ship crash, but he DID succeed! And his reward?

A couple of tridents, a handful of scrolls and potions, the Everburn Blade (which isn’t THAT good, as he’s revealed in other videos), some special arrows, and enough XP to immediately take the team up to level 2 (which was the REAL useful reward). Proxy was proud of himself for managing it, but warned everyone “do NOT do this, it isn’t worth the stress.” XD Not that it matters, because apparently the same day he released the video, Larian patched that “summon infinite Mage Hands” exploit anyway. Proxy jokingly griped that Larian needed to stop using him for QA in his pinned comment explaining this. :P (Hey, at least they’re DOING QA, which is more than I think I can say for EA these days...)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing for me to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight (or, at least, nothing I had time to do), but over on Valice Multiverse I had a surprise reply from TheCovenWars on our “Richard’s missing and Seth goes to Alice and Victor for help” thread from back in May! Apparently life got nutty for them and they could only get back to it now. Anyway, Seth told Victor and Alice that he and Richard had been wandering around the village when he disappeared, and he only took his eyes off the kid for a second, and I queued up a reply where Alice declared that they needed to head into the village then to see if anyone had seen him, asking if they’d been near the square or farther afield, and Victor assured him that the villagers here were nice and would help them look. We’ll see tomorrow if we’re back to more regular activity on this or not!

Other: As stated above, we did get in a round of beanbags when I got home from work today – and while I did poorly in the first two games, a switch flipped in the third and I suddenly did REALLY well while my poor parents absolutely sucked ass. Dunno what triggered THAT, but I’m happy to have at least won one game! Final scores were me 3-3-W; Dad W-W-2; Mom 2-2-3. We’ll see if things even out a little more the next time we play!

Yeah, thinking I should have said "no" to beanbags so I could have gotten in more computer time...well, too late to speculate about that now. I have to get to bed before it gets too late. Plans for tomorrow include working some more on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland;" if not actually PLAYING Sims 4, then figuring out what I want to do in the new "Teen Valicer Save" I want to start and putting that down in black-and-white; and watching at least a few of the videos currently cluttering up my Watch Later. We'll see what I manage to get done -- night all!

Current Mood: stressed

crossover_chick

I mean, there were a few stressful moments (I was in a grumpy mood this morning because I was worried about getting to stuff on time, and of course the minute any of watch any portion of the news, that's kind of it for a good mod), but overall I'd say it was a pretty good day! Let me take you through it:

Haircut: Despite some trouble actually getting to the hair salon (starting straight from Mom having trouble backing out of the garage because she gets confused by the way my car beeps when you’re too close to something – didn’t help that Dad’s truck was a little closer than normal on the driveway – to us taking a really roundabout way to the salon that led to us getting stuck in traffic a few times), we made it to my appointment on time, and didn’t have to wait too long until the stylist, Jenn, came out of the back and took me in. The place was nice and quiet (I had been worried about it being really crowded and setting off my anxiety), and Jenn was very nice and very professional – snipping off a full foot of ponytail before the main cut so we could send it off to Locks Of Love; giving me a full shampoo and condition; then taking her time to cut my hair in the layered bob style I wanted (just about chin length – little shorter in the back, little longer in the front) and sympathizing with me about how it’s been hard to want to leave the house over the past few years. *nods* Anyway, the whole thing took about an hour, and I’m quite happy with the results. :) It’s so nice and light and fluffy now! Gonna be a lot easier to wash it, that’s for sure – and a lot cooler for sleeping! The one issue is going to be making sure the longer bits in the front don’t get in my face, but a) that’s an issue that I had even with the ponytail (all the bits that were just too short to GO in said ponytail), and b) I have some headbands that I hope will do well in keeping the longer bits behind my ears. *nods* Overall, glad I bit the bullet and got it cut!

Dentist: Visit here went pretty well, I’m happy to say – though traffic meant that I got there JUST in time for my appointment. *grimace* Gotta remember to leave a little earlier next time! But that did mean I was immediately called back, at least, and didn’t have to wait around for ages in the waiting room. *nods* Anyway, the hygienist did the yearly X-Rays and cleaned my teeth, and one of the wandering dentists popped in to do a quick examination and do a cancer screening. I had a slight issue with my gag reflex during the X-Rays (sometimes when I need to bite down on the thing, my body just goes “NO”), but other than that, they were no problems, and I was sent away with a wave and a smile and a “keep doing what you’re doing!” :D So that’s all set for another six months, yay~

Mini-Golf: We headed up to our usual haunt, West End Creamery, after I got back from the dentist (and had used the bathroom and gotten my Adventure Hat and whatnot). Happily, today was MUCH quieter, and we were easily able to get in eighteen holes. Unfortunately, it wasn’t my best game – I got a lot of threes and fours, and one on an early uphill hole that I think was the real killer. Mom did a little better – including getting the only hole-in-one of the day – while Dad managed to get a lot of twos and thus claim the champion spot. :) Pretty sure the final scores were me 67; Dad 53; and Mom 63, but don’t hold me to that. At any rate, we then headed over to the ice cream shack and got our treats for the day – Mom her usual fat-free sugar-free coffee in a cake cone; Dad a hot fudge sundae with cherry vanilla ice cream; and me a homemade brownie sundae with Snickers ice cream. :) And let me tell you, that was a really nice sundae – there was a LOT of very nice brownie in it. :) All in all, a very nice trip out! Even managed to avoid getting sunburned, yay~

Tumblr: Despite not having a lot of time on the computer today, I did actually get some stuff done on both my tumblr blogs –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Accomplished two things of note over here:

A) First, I managed to put alt-text on all the pictures in my big “hey, the Polyheart OT3 House is fully done” post in my drafts! I had to do it in two bursts – I got most of them done in the half-hour or so before my dentist appointment, then did the final three right before my workout – but I DID get ‘em all sorted! Even found some time to work on the main text a little. I’d love to get this post up before Pride is over, so I’m hoping I can buckle down and get it done this weekend!

B) And second – well. While I was working on my queue for Valice Multiverse (below), I got it into my head that I should reblog the big list I made of the gender and sexual identities of all the characters in the big “Running Headlong Into The Bullshit” mega-polycule (Victor, Alice, Smiler, Victoria, Emily, Christopher White, Richard Hatter, Preston Garvey, and Piper Wright) plus Lizzie and Bonejangles, a couple years abck – but when I went to do so, I noticed that my tags from the initial VM reblog mentioned that I would have added Doc and Marty to the group if I’d felt less periody. And then I was like “well, if I’m gonna do that, I should do it on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) first.” So I stuck a reblog of the post in the drafts with a quick sketch of some of my ideas for Doc, Marty, Clara, and Jennifer (so far, I feel like Doc is some variant of demi/gray-ace as he found women confusing until he met Clara; Marty might be hetero or a little bi (questioning, maybe?); Clara might be similar to Doc; and Jennifer’s so far just plain old straight). Maybe I can get something done on THAT this weekend too and post it the same week as the Polyheart OT3 house. :)

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I did put one thing in the queue – another “rpmemelibrary” ask meme, this one all about LGBTQ headcanons for your Muses! You know, if they’re LGBTQ, how did they realize it if they are, what were the reactions to them coming out if they’ve done that, etc. Given most of my muses are queer in some capacity, it felt appropriate. XD (And inspired me to find that list of gender and sexual identities, which led to item B) above. Would have been nice to put the list in the queue with the ask meme, but I’ll wait until I get the BTTF stuff done on VLA(NS) first!)

Writing: I went back to editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight, with Alice escaping the weird pair of mirror-image rooms Grout set up (leaving 6768 and 6789 to hang out on the couch in the first room, and the other two ladies to play tic-tac-toe on the wall with their knives in the second); declaring her intent to murder Grout and damn the consequences if she finds any children in this hellhole; managing to take out another clawed ghoul who tried to attack her by slamming his head into a wall and then running for it; getting confused when her path took her back into the library (specifically, onto its upper level) because she could have sworn she went off in a different direction; and exploring the library’s upper level, finding the hatch over the ladder up and down, some furniture, some fake windows (which Alice found confusing mostly because they were on an interior wall), another candle puzzle, and another one of Grout’s horrible tape recorders. I left it off with Alice bracing herself to listen to Grout’s latest round of utter nonsense – tomorrow, she reacts to his ramblings and solves herself another puzzle! It’s fine, she’s used to it from Wonderland. :p

YouTube: Got in a couple of good videos in today despite all the running around –

A) First up, something that I forgot was coming out today until I came home from mini-golf and saw James Turner’s reaction video to it in my Recommendeds – “The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature | Official Reveal Trailer!” Yup, the trailer for the upcoming pack dropped today, featuring a young woman who loves nature and fairies heading out on her own to live the life of a foraging vagabond (with her parents’ blessing)! Or, rather, a Nature Nomad, as that seems to a new aspiration coming with the pack. Anyway, she demonstrated how Sims with this pack can now forage for food in random places, bathe in ponds and lakes (at least in the new world), sleep where they will, and make their own cures for various odd ailments (such as Simoleon Fever – which makes your Sim sneeze money, so perhaps that one shouldn’t be cured too fast). And then, at the very end, she stumbled across some fairies having a party in a fairy house and got transformed, just like she’d always dreamed. :) Cute little trailer, though I dunno if it’s fully sold me on the pack – seems like there’s a lot of fun Build/Buy stuff in it, and the “being able to sleep anywhere, forage for food, and bathe in any body of water” will be great for rags-to-riches challenges and the like, but as someone who never played Sims 3 and thus doesn’t miss fairies, and kind of already did the “living off the land” thing with Cottage Living and Eco Lifestyle in her last save file...yeah, so far it’s a *shrug* from me. (And Paralives finally getting an Early Access release date doesn’t help either – why spend the money on a new pack if I may be spending it on a whole new simulation game by the end of the year…)

B) And second up – well, you might have been expecting me to watch that “James Turner’s reaction to the Enchanted By Nature trailer” video, but I was really craving some more CaFae Latte, so instead I went with “CaFae Latte Season 61 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! This season featured:

I. A customer coming in to get the iPhone they left behind (which Drek found while clearing tables and turned into the front counter)...and then promptly accusing Cyrus of having tried to steal it, to his complete befuddlement; the guy was completely unconvinced by all of Cyrus’s arguments (including “I CAN’T LIE”), but left without causing too much of a scene, and Cyrus bitched to JC about how he WISHED he could blame the brainrot on technology, but people have always been that stupid :P

II. Oscar thanking JC, Rethu, and Cyrus for helping him get all the necessities for his apartment (with JC admitting that the place where they found Oscar’s bedframe and mattress MAY have been a mob front) and attempting to reward them with pizza...only to get into an argument with JC about whether or not they would all chip in (JC) or it would be his treat (Oscar) – Rethu told Cyrus they’d agree to Oscar treating him and then slip some money in his coat pocket XD

III. Drek giving the Sphinx Of The Stream a laser pointer workout while voicing his worries about how he doesn’t really want to do a “tried and true” campaign (like Curse of Strahd) as his first campaign for the D&D group, since it won’t exactly wow all the much-older people he plays with, and the Sphinx letting him know that they’re probably not EXPECTING him to wow them and are perfectly fine with him using “training wheels,” so to speak; then Drek asking why she’s having him come by more often and her revealing that, after the serial killer incident, she wants to get stronger so she can protect the whole forest. And then sharing a bunch of riddles with him so he could use them in upcoming campaigns. :D

IV. Yarn Granny and Vet Grampa showing up at the shop, meeting Oscar, and having a bitch about Starbucks (where all of Vet Grampa’s fellow firefighters/EMT went until Yarn Granny gave them coupons to CaFae Latte) – only to be interrupted by another customer accusing JC of having fallen for the Devil’s latest scheme by being nonbinary; Yarn Granny promptly turned the customer’s bigotry around on her by saying she’d pray to God for him to open her heart to compassion and stop being a bigot, and said bigot left in a huff XD

V. Yarn Granny and Vet Grampa talking about their faith after Oscar confirmed he’d seen them at the Unitarian church he goes to sometimes (he bounces between a lot of different places of faith) and JC admitted they thought the pair would have been Baptist – turns out they are, but they left their Baptist church after their old preacher retired and the new one turned out to be a homophobic “traditional values” asshole. They needed a church that would be open and welcoming to their entire family, including their recently-came-out-as-a-lesbian granddaughter. Which prompted Yarn Granny to start going on about how the girl’s closet had absolutely NO door, given she was always into girl celebrities and the like growing up –

And for both Vet Grampa and Oscar to go “well, who hasn’t had a few gay thoughts in their life?” Prompting Yarn Granny and JC to both be like “…” XD Oh dear, that will be fun for them to unpack eventually…

VI. JC telling Husniya about Vet Grampa and Oscar’s little revelation, and how they might be able to, say, sprinkle a few breadcrumbs to help them figure out the whole “you might be bi” thing – followed immediately by Husniya dealing with a bafflingly racist customer who accused Husniya of thinking they were stupid for asking them if they needed help...when they automatically assumed SHE didn’t speak English and was apparently thrown by the fact she could. Bob was like “wtf” when she was summoned so the customer could make a complaint, and told him to get out before she cursed him so he couldn’t speak English himself

VII. And Oscar dealing with a Karen who took offense to him daring to sit down during his shift when he could do his job just fine that way (and this poor man does a LOT of overtime, so he needed a rest!), only for Bob to intervene, silence her, and curse her to be unable to speak to blue collar workers until she learned a bit of respect (she didn’t do “you can’t sit down for eight to twelve hours at a stretch” because that is technically a form of torture). Oscar then delightedly informed Bob about how the new apartment was coming, and Bob told him to let her know if he needed any further help with it

Good stuff, as always – I really liked Drek and the Sphinx’s chat, it’s sweet to see them growing a proper friendship. :) And of course the stuff with Yarn Granny, Vet Grampa, and Oscar was absolutely delightful. Best part is, thanks to a certain thumbnail for one of the more recent seasons, Chris saying she’d consider more polyamory rep in the “Hot Takes” video, and some spoilers on the TV Tropes page for the series, I already know Vet Grampa and Oscar WILL figure out the “bi” thing eventually… :P

Workout: Got back on the bike tonight to watch more of alien teens Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) have fantastic space adventures (overseen by GM Jasper) after hijacking Galaxa’s dad’s new flagship starship in “Now This is Space Racing! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 2!” Today’s chunklet saw the teens head out to explore the hot blue sands and underground cities of planet Rez T-75 – Kae’l in the ship’s one suit of power armor, Radian and Galaxa in customized EVO suits (Radian made his rotate through all the colors like a fancy RGB computer; V.I.N.N.I.E. the ship’s AI was rather jealous given he had to remain cloaked) and encounter the following:

A) A smuggler sitting at the “gates” of the city in the cave so to speak, who – after some back-and-forth about whether the teens were actually teens or “mature students” – demanded their suits or he’d shoot them with his blaster. Radian tried to intimidate him by smoking his stubbed-out cigar (which resulted in him seeing double) and then, when that didn’t work, tried shooting him and failed miserably. The smuggler then promptly tried to shoot them back, but Radian got a good roll and easily rolled out of the way –

And the smugger got a bad one, shot a reflective wall, and took the laser shot right between the eyes. Cue the poor kids panicking while V.I.N.N.I.E. (observing this through their “smart watch” communicators) commented it was pretty awesome. XD Galaxa ended up stealing everything off the corpse (including his gun, plasma grenades, and his fancy vest, which she draped over Radian like a blanket – also a fidget spinner, which she promptly used to calm herself down), while Kae’l hid the body under a mound of sand (fairly poorly) and Radian tried to come to grips with what had just happened, while V.I.N.N.I.E. tried to talk him through it, without much success (mostly because he kept saying things like “it was your actions that led to that guy’s demise” XD). Excellent start to their space adventures!

B) A small big-eyed alien that introduced himself as Meeples, who asked if they were there for “the party” – after some back and forth (with the kids claiming to be awesome space explorers who have visited every planet, impressing Meeples), it transpired that the party he was talking about was going to be a Big Deal, but that you needed a ticket to get in. Fortunately, there was a way to earn tickets – win them during a big old space-racing event! And wouldn’t you know it, there were four tickets up for grabs. The kids promptly suggested to Meeples they team up, promising him that they’d give him their spare ticket if they won if he promised to do the same if he won. Meeples was for it, and – after the gang managed to direct his attention away from the dead body mound by pretending it was a religious thing – leapt onto Radian’s head so he didn’t have to keep up with these much taller offworlders on foot. Galaxa promptly scrambled onto Kae’l’s shoulders so she didn’t miss out on the fun. XD

C) The city marketplace, to see about getting some snacks and necessary items before heading to the racing venue – the kids proceeded to:

I. Buy some cola themed around the missing advanced race that invented teleporter tech before buggering off when everyone started fighting over it (Kae’l and Radian found it merely delicious, while Galaxa found it so good that she immediately got addicted, and hissed at Meeples when he tried to take it away)

II. Take the business card of some lawyers advertising nearby, just in case they needed legal representation thanks to the whole “stole Galaxa’s dad’s spaceship” thing (Galaxa gave the guy at the front 100 credits, twice the retainer fee he was asking for, in an attempt to buy his loyalty; the guy promptly went in and closed the shop because hell yeah he has 100 credits and that’s some serious moolah here XD)

III. And buy some weapons from Storacle, a shop run by a fish woman who specializes in various bladed weaponry, since Meeples suggested it would be a good idea before heading to compete in the race (Kae’l got an awesome huge black laser katana for half price by promising to promote Storacle should they win the race – the fish lady was like “that’s fine, but if you don’t win or don’t do the promo, my boys will come after you” (cue two shark people showing up and looking menacing) – and Galaxa got a pair of little hot pink laser knives and utterly failed at haggling for them because she wouldn’t listen to what the lady was saying – Raidan eventually just handed over the amount she said she’d take, and the fish woman went off for a much-needed smoke, despite being in an EVO suit of her own)

IV. The racetrack itself, which was a long course that wound around some rocks on the very edge of the city, with a whole wall of eager spectators waving banners and whatnot! I left off with Meeples asking how they wanted to split up, as each cart needed a pilot and a “gunner” to get through the race – tomorrow, we’ll see how they pair off, and how the race itself goes!

Other: And in other accomplishments –

A) I spent roughly an hour after mini-golf and before beanbags getting all of Moose’s messages answered! So now that’s all sorted and hopefully we can get back on track regarding our schedule. :)

B) And, as indicated above, we did play beanbags around 5 PM – and unfortunately, my bean bag game was even worse than my mini-golf game. I just could not get it together! :( Though I suppose as a small plus, Mom managed to win one game, preventing another Dad Sweep. Final scores were me 3-3-3; Dad W-W-2; Mom 2-2-W. *sigh* Maybe tomorrow will be better...

So yeah -- busy day, but in a good way. And I'm very glad I was able to snatch some time here and there to do stuff like answer all of Moose's messages and get all those pictures alt-texted on the Polyheart OT3 house post draft -- makes me feel like I was properly productive online as well as off. :) And now it's time to wrap things up and hit the sack -- got one more day of work tomorrow before the weekend arrives! Ah, Thursdays off, you are so weird... Night all!

Current Mood: content

crossover_chick

Yeah, I'm sad to say that I spent most of the day in a grumpy, wound-up mood -- I blame having a dream about the world's worst road trip where I was arguing with my Mom about something right before I woke up. And anticipating all the stuff we'll be doing tomorrow and mentally preparing myself for it. Basically I haven't felt like I could relax most of the day, and that did not do good things for the old mental state. *sigh* But I got through it, and even managed to accomplish some stuff:

Work – Very quiet day at work again – there was one call in the morning from a lady updating her credit card on her pledge, and then I spent the rest of the day working on the latest obituaries (and doing a little bit of extra roster maintenance that cropped up as a result), helping get rid of some old fliers and such we didn’t need anymore, and doing a bunch of reversals. *shrug* This has been a very unexciting week, I must say! At least tomorrow will be more interesting, given I’m running around going to the hairdresser and the dentist and mini-golf instead of to work...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night pedaling my way through the adventures of Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) as they had adventures as Teens In Space! Today saw me get through:

A) The last eight-odd minutes of “Dad's Gonna be So Mad! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 1!” Kae’l managed to fire some perfect warning shots to warn the guards chasing them off (and embarrass Dad Spacemountain even more), and the trio were able to make it into space and to a “null gate” (essentially a man-made wormhole to other places in known space, you know the drill) – which, fortunately for them, was manned by Kae’l’s cousin! Who, after some initial confusion about what the hell was going on, decided that his cousin stealing a luxury line spaceship was really cool and helped them out with a random jump to the very hot planet of Rez T-75! Which led into…

B) The first half-hour or so of “Now This is Space Racing! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 2!” Featuring our intrepid trio of runaway teens –

I. Finding ways to pass the time they spent actually traveling through space-time to the other side of the null gate – Radian spent a good hour in the holodeck “learning about ancient civilizations” (though he had no proof as the browser history had been mysteriously wiped XD); Kae’l and Galaxa took a look down at the mysterious Restricted area in the lower deck, only to find that V.I.N.N.I.E. had laser cannons at his disposal to stop them going in (a fact that surprised even V.I.N.N.I.E.) – they were unable to charm the AI into going against his programming, but Galaxa had an inkling she could try to reprogram him a bit, if she was very careful about it (it helped that V.I.N.N.I.E. himself was keen on trying to figure out what was behind the door); Galaxa assuming a new tree-person form, complete with falling cherry blossoms (that turned into goo once they got far enough away from her); and everyone going up onto the Observation deck to look at space-time fragmenting beautifully around them – Radian and Kae’l were both overwhelmed by the wonder and majesty of it all, while poor Galaxa was like “emotions? Lock those down like Dad said” and had to pretend she was overwhelmed. She didn’t do a good job of it XD

II. Coming out of the space-time slipstream – only to find that, thanks to null gates being imperfect technology, they’d suffered some interesting side effects from their trip. Specifically, their feet had switched with their hands. XD Fortunately, as per the dice rolls Jasper made everybody do to figure out what the side effects would be, it was an impermanent situation that would only last an hour. Unfortunately, it made it impossible for anyone to hold on when V.I.N.N.I.E. took them down to investigate Rez T-75 and everybody got rather banged up from the bumpy reentry. XD To be fair, though, they could have suffered much WORSE swaps, as Radian and Galaxa noted, so…

III. Deciding, as implied above, to go ahead and take a look at the planet they’d jumped to, because why the hell not, they should get to explore a little while they’re on the run from the space cops! XD V.I.N.N.I.E. gave them the stats on the planet – it’s a very hot desert planet, covered in beautiful blue sand, with all the water underground, meaning most of the lifeforms live beneath the surface (as you would) – and took them down into the atmosphere, and after spotting and assessing a few landing sites, Radian was all for landing in the cave that seemed to lead directly to the underground area where all the locals lived. The ladies were on board with this, as was V.I.N.N.I.E. – though everyone was less on-board with V.I.N.N.I.E.’s suggestion to go in guns blazing. XD Kae’l was like “we will put that on the ‘maybe’ pile” and managed to convince him to go in cloaked instead. I left off with the gang preparing to sneakily land and head out (in special environment suits, of course – hot planet is hot) – we’ll see what happens to them on old Rez T-75 tomorrow!

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – tonight saw Victor attempt to explain more about what happened to him, in particular how he finally got away from Emily and out of the ghost field, but Nell was rather distracted by the reveal that Victor ended up in Silkshore (aka the “red lantern district”) and quickly became convinced that her son had done the local equivalent of sowing his wild oats (I’m still trying to come up with a Duskwall-appropriate phrase). Victor tried to say it wasn’t like that, but he didn’t help his case by admitting Alice and Smiler had taken him to the Mangled Mermaid. ^^; At any rate, Nell eventually told him that if he wanted to make things right, he could go and mingle at the party, try and chat up a new noble girl, and Victor reluctantly entered the ballroom to do just that (or try to, anyway). I left off with him slumped against the door, bemoaning how the day couldn’t get any worse...yeah, you can probably guess a certain “what ghost would marry our Victor” moment is imminent. :p That’s for next week, though – tomorrow, it’s back to “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” for that Alice to continue experiencing a new form of hell!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check, with an actual Subs video and a bonus –

A) First up, from Josh Way, we had “YouTube Doesn’t Understand (or Care) What Riffing Is!” A short update video from Josh letting us know that YouTube has Officially Demonetized his channel (which, incidentally, he’s had pretty much since YouTube LAUNCHED), because, apparently, they think he’s not adding enough “entertainment value” to “other people’s content” with his riffs on public domain educational shorts. Like, seriously. Josh attempted to appeal, but YouTube was firm, and has set impossibly high goals for him to achieve if he wants to appeal again (such as getting ten fucking million YouTube Shorts views in ninety days – Josh doesn’t even DO YouTube Shorts!). So yeah – no more YouTube revenue for Josh. He doesn’t plan to abandon the channel – mostly because he’s enjoying making “Fun With Shorts” again; he already has two more written and ready to go once he finds the time to record – but he is going to be looking for a potential new home for his content (such as Twitch, if he can get back into his account). *shakehead* What a shame… I’m sorry for you, Josh! Twenty years of loyal uploading and this is what you get. :(

B) And second up, as I didn’t have enough time to watch the CaFae Latte video in my Watch Later, I instead went with another short video from Proxy Gate Tactician – “10 Instant Death Cutscenes in Baldur's Gate 3 (Acts 1 and 2 Only)!” As per the title, Proxy showing off all the ways your character, or even your entire party, can die or be defeated in Acts 1 and 2 if you make the wrong decisions (or get unlucky on a die roll, in some cases). Basically, if you don’t want to find yourself either getting an early game over or having to revive a character back at camp:

I. Don’t let the injured mind flayer in the wreckage of the Nautiloid suck all your brains out (obvious)

II. Don’t put on any of the Whispering Masks in Auntie Ethel’s horrible basement (she WILL mind control you through them)

III. Don’t let Lae’zel kill you (and herself) when you start showing signs of turning into a mind flayer (even if you have other party members to revive you, you’ll lose Lae’zel as they’ll have to fight her, and apparently she can’t be revived after they kill her)

IV. Don’t let Astarion drink as much blood from you as he wants, as he WILL essentially suck you dry (though admittedly, you can be revived the next day, and it can result in some amusing dialogue as Astarion tries to downplay murdering you XD)

V. If Gale dies, don’t ignore the warnings of his specially-created projection that he has to be revived in two days (because otherwise that Netherese orb in his chest is going to go off pretty fucking explosively)

VI. Don’t jump down that chasm underneath the blighted village into the Underdark without casting Feather Fall (or Fly, if you have that spell, as per one of his myth-busting videos)

VII. Don’t goad Philomeen into blowing up the barrel of runepowder she has when you confront her, because she is NOT bluffing when she threatens that (and you will go very much boom)

VIII. Don’t mouth off to Vlaakith, “God-Queen” of the githyanki (she’s actually a very powerful magical lich, but nobody mention that in her presence), as she is more than happy to use the spell Wish to insta-kill you (but NOT to insta-kill Orpheus inside the artifact. Interesting)

IX. Don’t steal the Blood of Lathander mace from the monastery the githyanki are using as a base, lest you arm the sunlight-powered super-laser outside – or, if you do, make sure to either find a way to disarm it or fucking RUN as fast as you can in the four turns you get before it goes off (or, if you can’t save everybody, make sure Astarion gets left behind because he has some pretty fucking hilarious dialogue if he dies to that thing and you revive him afterward)

X. And if the Dream Visitor/Emperor warns you that taking a certain course of action would remove the protection he gives you from the Absolute (such as trying to go back to the Mountain Pass of Act 1 once you’ve entered Act 2), FOR FUCK’S SAKE DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO BECOME A MIND FLAYER

So now you know! And knowing is half the battle. (The other half is getting lucky on the initiative die roll. :P)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I finished off my queue over there with a reblog of my old Song Saturday featuring “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr! Because I had to do that one after queuing up the Ghostbusters Mega AU for Thursday. XD (As for the song parody I had in mind – I don’t have enough of it done, and it would take too long to try and wrangle into shape. I’ll have to save it for another time, when inspiration strikes again!)

Other: We did play beanbags when I got home from work, and it was one of those days where Dad absolutely smoked Mom and me, winning all three games while Mom and I traded second place back and forth. Final scores were me 2-3-2; Dad W-W-W; and Mom 3-2-3. *shakehead* I dunno why I’m so freaking off lately with my throwing...though I suppose I should just be grateful I did that little bit better than Mom. We’ll see what happens the next time we play!

So at least that was all okay. And now I have to go to bed, as I can't stay up late -- my appointment at Fantastic Sam's is at 9 AM, so I have to get up normal time. :( And then I have my dentist appointment at 11:45 AM, and then Mom wants to do mini-golf in the afternoon, as per the above...we'll see how it all pans out. Night all!

Current Mood: grumpy

crossover_chick

Well, except for the weather, which was rainy and miserable and kinda chilly. *shrug* Can't have everything! But yeah, I feel like I had a pretty good day overall, as my write-up will show --

Work – A pretty quiet day today – I ran the morning reports; did some obituaries and other related roster maintenance work; took a call from a guy wondering where his gift was (discovering in the process he had a duplicate record, so good thing he called); and then spent the rest of the day working on the QC file for the latest set of pledge billings we’re sending out for the Appeal. *shrug* Nothing too exciting! In fact, it was kind of boring, so I was very glad we were allowed to leave early. :P We’ll see if tomorrow is any more exciting or not!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Dad's Gonna be So Mad! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 1” by Oxventure! The adventures of Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) continued today, with –

A) Galaxa, hiding from her father in good form, overhearing her dad have a private conversation with one of her teachers about how important the Galaxa spaceship is, and how it’s vital that they have the best of the best when it comes to students on board...after all, he couldn’t put someone like his kid on it, could he? Cue Liv having to make a Grit roll as Galaxa seized up like non-Newtonian cornstarch glop (fortunately, she passed and didn’t cause a scene). XD

B) Galaxa THEN having to cover her compatriot’s attempts to escape from the room (Kae’l)/up onto the roof through an extractor vent of some kind (Radian, who had gone out the window and was desperately clinging to the wall) after both Jane and Andy rolled fairly poorly – fortunately, an extremely awkward “hi Dad I just wanted to say how great it was that you named the spaceship after me, we should totally go away on vacation together soon” conversation did the trick, and Kae’l was able to slither out of the room and gradually uncube herself out of sight, while Radian (thanks to exploding dice) was able to do a big leap up into the vent, get on the roof, then race down through the access hatch and down the stairs into the hallway. XD Dad Spacemountain was not happy to see any of them, but fortunately didn’t cotton on that they’d been in his office and just sent them home.

C) The gang having to avoid their “friend” from before (the one who was so intimidated by Kae’l he gave her his wallet) as they passed the hot dog spot on the way to the hangar where the Galaxa ship was docked, spinning a bullshit story about how it was an optical illusion that made them look like they were walking away from him, they were TOTALLY walking forward, please keep those eleven hot dogs you ordered for us for some reason warm XD

D) The gang having to get past the cybernetic dog-alien guards at the hangar – Radian claimed they were doing a school project, on behalf of their teacher Mr. Spaceship (it took GM Jasper a few minutes to recover from THAT one XD). The guard they spoke to demanded a note, so Radian hastily forged one behind his back (having to add more and more crap, like their full names and the school’s fancy crest to the top, as the guard got more and more specific about what he needed to see to let them in) – it didn’t QUITE pass muster, but it got the guards out of the way via the medium of them going around and showing it to each other and agreeing it looked suspicious before walking off to find more people up the chain of command XD

E) The kids finding the ship, and Jasper having Liv and Andy roll to determine the personality and accent of the onboard AI, with Jane getting naming rights – they ended up getting an angry Cockney AI that Jane named V.I.N.N.I.E. (Virtual Intelligence Neural Network Interactive Environment) XD

F) After some back and forth with V.I.N.N.I.E., who alternated between berating the kids and bragging about what a great spaceship he was, Radian managing to get the AI to let them on-board by asking if he’d seen the game the other night, prompting V.I.N.N.I.E. to open the doors to show them he had a game on now

G) V.I.N.N.I.E. leading the kids on a tour of the ship, featuring Galaxa ordering what she THOUGHT was an alcoholic drink from the canteen (proved to be merely Space Sprite) – and the reveal there was something [REDACTED] down in the lower deck, hmmm…

H) And, of course, the moment we were all waiting for – the kids hijacking the ship when the guards showed up with rifles and Dad Spacemountain, with Radian taking the pilot’s seat and “accidentally” pressing buttons to get them moving; Galaxa monitoring the shields and power levels and such – when she wasn’t sticking her head out the window to essentially tell her horrified father to suck it, that is; and Kae’l manning the weapons, upsetting V.I.N.N.I.E. a bit by reprogramming the lasers to not kill anybody because he’d been promised he could kill some people (“later on,” she pacified him). XD Tomorrow, we wrap things up with the last few minutes of their grand escape, and start episode 2 to see what shenanigans they get into once they’re actually in space!

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I got another chunk done right before my workout, with Victor heading to the main ballroom to find his parents – only to get surprised by them coming out the exact same side door he’d intended to go in. Nell was IMMEDIATELY on him, demanding to know where he’d been and what he’d been doing, and telling him all about how he’d wrecked their reputation and his chances with Victoria Everglot (now engaged to an “Imperial lieutenant” – hi Christopher, you’ll get named eventually!) with all his shenanigans. And while poor Victor is currently doing his best to explain what happened with Emily, his parents are already skeptical of his claim that she dragged him into the ghost field...and I’m afraid things are just going to go downhill from there...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check plus, as – thanks to the extra free time I had from the early release – I got to watch a whole three videos today –

A) First up, we had a video I saw on Sims Community yesterday but didn’t get a chance to watch until this afternoon – “Paralives - Release Date Trailer (Early Access)” by Paralives! Yes, the Paralives team dropped a trailer the other day featuring a look at the town they’ve built for all the Paras to live in; a quick glance at how the UI works; a timelapse of a particular Para throughout her life to show off how aging works in the game; and lots of interactions between Paras, from a lady listening intently to someone playing piano at a dinner party, to a son comforting his mother when she ended up having a breakdown by the bathtub, to some ladies sharing a kiss at a party. And, most importantly, as per the title, the Early Access release date – December 8th, 2025! So by the end of the year, we’ll be able to take a look at how this game actually works! :D I suspect I know what I’ll be buying myself for my birthday this year…

B) Then, tonight, we had “Reacting to YOUR CaFae Latte Hot Takes!” by C. M. Alongi! 47 minutes of Chris reacting to people’s thoughts about the series – the characters, the arcs, and the world she’s created. It was pretty interesting stuff, with Chris:

I. Straight-up shooting down some ideas (like Bob getting a partner – “No. She’s aromantic”)

II. Explaining why other ones may not happen the way the author might want (“Rethu and Cyrus looking at the nurse with the streamer ex-boyfriend and considering going poly for her” – probably not going to happen, not in the least because Rethu’s demi and Cyrus is ace (meaning they aren’t the type to have instant attraction to someone), but she’s open to doing poly rep in GENERAL; “you should do some darker storylines” – she’d LIKE to, but between TikTok’s censorship policies and the fact that it’s easier for her do happier/sillier stuff for the most part when she’s acting, it’s tough to actually do darker stuff in the series. In the BOOK, though...)

III. And even adding a few ideas to her “filler” list of potential skit ideas (“JC’s parole officer and/or the officer who arrested them should show up at the cafe” – that could be interesting, yes, she will note it down).

She also confirmed a few headcanons (yes, JC IS a stress baker and will bake all the things if they’re struggling with their old addictions), admitted to some faults in her storytelling (yes, Drek isn’t as developed as the rest of the cast, mostly because she’s been writing him by the seat of her pants), and promised repeatedly that the upcoming book series would satisfy a good number of the complaints some people had (not only darker storylines, but a redo of Patrick and Janine’s Enemies-to-Lovers arc in the second book, Heart of Silver, since she is willing to admit that maybe they got together a touch too fast (personally, I think the sped-up, fluffier nature of the relationship works for the web series just fine)). Interesting stuff – it’s cool to get a look behind the scenes, and see what other people think about the show! :) Though I am glad that I didn’t watch it earlier, because that would have deprived me of the delightful shock I got upon seeing Eric in one of the more recent compilation thumbnails RIGHT AFTER watching the “Betrayal” arc (she revealed in this that she had plans to bring him back). Looking forward to watching THAT one eventually, let me tell you!

C) And finally, because I still actually had some time to watch videos even after the hefty treat that was the CaFae Latte Hot Takes (getting out early from work is really awesome), I went ahead and wrapped things up with “I Busted More Baldur's Gate 3 Myths in 2024” from Proxy Gate Tactician! Because I do very much enjoy his myth-busting videos. :) And in this video, he tackled:

I. Is it possible to hit Level 12 (the max level in an unmodded game) before reaching Act III? TECHNICALLY, but Proxy doesn’t think it’s really plausible – while he was able to find a way to min-max every encounter in the game for max XP, getting him all the way to Level 11 and roughly halfway to Level 12 by the end of Act II, AND he was able to find an infinite-farming opportunity against an enemy who will consistently raise zombies that you can kill for 3 XP each if you keep going in and out of combat with him, the sheer number of zombies you have to kill (over 4,000!) would probably cause the game to crash just from rendering all those bodies. So it’s probably POSSIBLE, but extremely unlikely. Though he did prove you can get damn close!

II. Can any animal larger than a peacock enter Baldur’s Gate? Nope, with the POSSIBLE exception of one spider companion a Beastmaster ranger can pick up (Proxy wasn’t quite sure if it was larger than a peacock or not). But yes, as it stands, after doing a lot of testing with the guards at the gate to Baldur’s Gate (as none of the other guards react to animals once you’re IN the city), Proxy was able to confirm that, apart from that one spider, anything bigger than a house cat, blue bird, raven, or crab was NOT allowed entry. Not even Scratch, the goodest boy! D: And no, trying to fudge the rules by using spells to make the kitties big and the oxen small did NOT fool the guards. XD

III. Are crate walls overpowered in outdoor fights, like the one where you have to protect the portal Halsin pops into to lift the shadow curse on the shadow-cursed lands? Nope – but barrel walls are! Basically, while a crate wall is good for getting the high ground and stopping melee attackers from doing anything, thanks to a quirk of BG3’s engine, ranged attackers can fire arrows, spells, and other such things right through the crates – their hitbox just doesn’t exist in those instances. So stacking up a bunch of crates only protected the portal for a little while. However, BARRELS are solid no matter what – an enemy can’t shoot through them, they have to look for a gap. So stacking a bunch of barrels in front of the portal protected it for the required full five turns. Basically, if you want to cheese certain fights, put your faith in the barrel, not the crate!

IV. And is it possible to get a funny fourth-wall-breaking cutscene from Karlach organically in the game, instead of fiddling with the game’s files to trigger it? Nope – not only did Proxy not find any hard evidence of someone triggering the cutscene without using cheats or mods, data-mining indicates that the cutscene simply cannot be trigger organically. Proxy even offered up $500 to anyone who could trigger the cutscene without cheats or mods, film how they did it, and then upload the video so other people could follow their method before Patch 7 came out, and it was never claimed. So yeah, that one is busted, and if you want to see it, be prepared to hit up NexusMods! Or YouTube – plenty of videos on it on YouTube. :p

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – well, a check and an N/A, as once again I didn’t have anything happening on Valice Multiverse. But I got my queue on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) sorted through Friday earlier tonight, with:

A) A post from “citizenscreen” about how the original Ghostbusters hit theaters on June 8th, 1984 (complete with gif of them getting ready to face off against Gozer, and promo still of them post the Stay-Puft explosion), and a post from “graceashcroft” of gifs of Jillian Holtzmann from Ghostbusters: Answer The Call (aka the 2016 reboot) that I had in my drafts, for Wednesday

B) My two posts detailing my Ghostbusters Mega AU for Thursday

C) And a post from “dreemurr-skelememer” featuring a picture of someone apparently “insane about own AU” as per the label, and a post from “rookamell” about how writing isn’t the hobby, being insane about fictional people is, and writing is the only outlet, for Friday

Yeah, I stumbled across that post about the Ghostbusters release date while looking for any posts on the original movie that might go well with the 2016 GB gifset I already had in my drafts, and went “wait, the original’s release date was Sunday? Okay, gotta go with the GB theme now.” XD Made life a little easier, that’s for sure! Still have to figure out my Song Saturday though...with the issue there being, well, obviously I should probably feature the classic Ray Parker Jr. song...but there’s a half-completed parody of ANOTHER song that keeps playing in my head that I kind of want to feature too… We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

And there we have it! Amazing the difference that getting out an hour early can make. *sigh* I wish workdays were just shorter in general...but I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon. Meh. As it stands, though, I'm gonna try and hit the sack earlier, as I have been getting to bed entirely too late and thus need to try and yank things back a bit. Hopefully tomorrow will also be a halfway decent day! Night all!

Current Mood: content

crossover_chick

It, uh, hasn't been quite as nice as Alice and Smiler's birthdays (I mean, for starters, I had to work, plus there was an -- INCIDENT with the toilet when I got home -- I won't go into it, you don't want details), but I am making a distinct effort to try and concentrate on some of the better things that happened today. Such as reading a bunch of Corpse Bride fanfics on my lunch break (a couple of Victor/Victoria/Emily poly fics, and a couple chapters from "In A World Of My Own," the Forgotten Vows Verse "Victor and Alice exploring Victor's Otherland" story I wrote ages ago)! Or having a nice dish of Cookies & Cream ice cream with lots of cookie bits and chocolate sauce! Or listening to some really nice CB-inspired ambience as I caught up on webcomics and such! Or -- and this is the big one --

Getting my new mouse! Yes, it was waiting for me on my desk when I got home today, and I am pleased to report that so far it's working very well! It moves REALLY smoothly over my desk, and oh man, is it SO NICE to be able to click on something and not worry that the mouse is going to think that I double- or triple-clicked! I'm still getting used to the scroll wheel (though it is pleasantly clicky), and I don't think I can make the glowy bits glow any other color than green unless I download some software from the Logitech site, but I am pleased with its performance as of this moment. May it last for at least a BIT longer than the Alienware mouses I had before!

Anyway -- let's do the write-up of the day, and at a DECENT hour for a change:

Work – An okay day to start the week, I’d say – I spent the morning doing the GL and clearing out some exceptions (had to send a check back to a guy because he put two different amounts on it), then the rest of the day was spent working on a QC file for the next thank you to go out, with a couple of breaks to take phone calls (clearing up some issues we had with a parish check, and establishing which of two different pledge amounts a couple wanted (as they’d each sent in a pledge because they go to church different days)). Oh, and learning the new online time card system from the lady in charge of such in the Fiscal department. Nothing particularly exciting, other than having to fight with the printer a bit this morning, but nothing particularly horrible either. *shrug* I’ll take it!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, and another night with Oxventure, as I started “Dad's Gonna be So Mad! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 1!” This is a short miniseries of Jane and Andy playing the Teens In Space RPG with Jasper and Liv of Three Black Halflings! I’m always thrilled to see them come on the channel – they’re such fun people. :) Anyway, the conceit of Teens In Space is that you are, well, teens in space, traveling around on your own spaceship and having teen-media-appropriate adventures across the known galaxy, with the dice rolls working roughly how they do in Deadlands – you get dice with more sides for the stuff that you’re better at, and if you roll the highest result, the die “explodes” and you get to roll it again. The conceit of this particular mini-series of Teens In Space is that Andy, Jane, and Liv are the three alien teenagers Radian Inu (who is basically a giant bipedal Shibu Inu in a denim jacket), Kae’l Crex (a blue three-fingered alien girl with a steely stare and no actual bones), and Galaxa Spacemountain (a purplish girl with tentacles for hair, big eyes, and the ability to melt into goo), who – after a dedication ceremony at their school for the newest luxury-model spaceship, the Galaxa (named after teen Galaxa, as one of the people behind its creation was her father) – decide to sneak over to the drydock where it’s being held and have a snoop around inside. This will of course inevitably lead to them straight-up stealing it and going on fantastic space adventures, but we haven’t gotten to that part yet. XD What we covered in this first half-hour was instead the following:

A) A history lesson on the setting – specifically how this super-advanced race 300 years ago came up with teleporter technology and went around sharing it with all the “lesser” races, only to be nonplussed by the “lesser” races fighting for their favor and leaving, warning said races not to venture out beyond “known” space or try to figure out the teleporter tech on their own, or they’ll come back and “delete” all “unworthy” races – the teens were all very bored as they already knew all this stuff from school

B) The discovery that, in this world, there’s a special enzyme that can be added to punch that automatically makes any alcohol in it evaporate if it detects it’s being poured into underaged mouths; it was later established by Andy that some kids still try to get drunk off the vapor as it comes off the punch

C) The teens, bored at the afterparty, deciding to go and check out the ship because, after all, it’s named after Galaxa, it’s practically hers – spurred on by a friend of theirs showing up and revealing that his brother had been chosen to pilot the ship (upsetting Radian, who considered himself the best pilot in all the simulations) AND he knew where the keys were as a result. Galaxa was able to handily charm the location out of him (in a safe in Galaxa’s dad’s office), while Kae’l’s steely stare made sure that their friend didn’t want to come along with them for the ride (and scored her his wallet as a bonus)

D) Galaxa becoming somehow convinced the ship was actually a late birthday present from her dad and going and hugging him – and then becoming immediately disillusioned when a reporter asked Dad Spacemountain why he’d named the ship Galaxa, and it turned out that he’d actually called his very first spaceship the Galaxa, meaning that his daughter had been named after his ship, and things had just come around full circle with this latest space liner

E) The gang having a run-in with the janitor while on their way to Dad Spacemountain’s office, and managing to get him to leave them alone after he obliquely threatened Radian by pointing out that that was creepy, and openly asking if he was responsible for disappearing kids in the past; the janitor was quite freaked out by these accusations and quickly headed off, with Jasper noting that he was probably going to seek gainful employment elsewhere XD

F) After failing to cut open the lock with a laser (Kae’l) and break the door down (Radian), Galaxa turning into her goo form to slither under Dad Spacemountain’s office door and open it from the other side – Kae’l and Radian were both VERY shocked by this, because Galaxa hadn’t ever done it in front of them, though fortunately Kae’l was able to keep Radian from making any incriminating noises

G) Galaxa stealing all the money, the little phaser, and the two “smart watch” spaceship keys from her dad’s safe after seeing a big old picture of him with his spaceship, with his family tiny in the background XD

H) And the kids having to hastily hide when they heard Dad Spacemountain approaching the office with a reporter for a photo op – Galaxa went into goo form; Kae’l folded herself up so she could fit in the safe (with a little help from Radian), and Radian elected to hop out the window and stand on the ledge, pressing himself up tight against the wall to stay out of site. We’ll see tomorrow if Andy’s roll was enough to make that plan happen, or if poor Radian is potentially going to go splat three stories down before the first episode’s over. XD

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – and yes, we’re starting with the Valicer In The Dark stuff this week, as I wanted to work on the story that’s from Victor’s POV on his birthday. Which I feel is understandable! Anyway, today we got through Victor trying to bring Alice and Smiler into the house with him to meet his parents (mingling with their guests in the main ballroom, as per Barry) and hopefully give them a reward (they protested a bit – Smiler more than Alice, admittedly – but Victor assured them he really wanted to give them something for helping him) –

Only for Barry to be like “uh, no, they’re clearly from the lower classes and will poor up the place, they need to wait at the servants’ entrance.” Victor was quite peeved and tried to argue the point, but Alice and Smiler were both like “no, Victor, it’s okay, this is an unnecessary argument, we’ll go wait there.” Which Victor was still annoyed about, but he recognized that they were probably right and that it was easier not to argue about it (and that putting his mother and Alice in the same room was likely to be a recipe for disaster), and so let them go. I left off with Victor preparing to head inside while Alice and Smiler were brought around to the servants’ entrance by Barry – tomorrow, we meet the local versions of Nell and William Van Dort, and discover just how dickish they really are! (Spoilers: very!)

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got in both videos that I really wanted to watch today, hooray –

A) First up, for my Mandated Watching Of Victor Van Dort-Related Content For His Birthday, we had “Victor Van Dort scenepack 🖤” by ☽skyler-vogel☾! Seven minutes of various short clips of Victor from throughout Corpse Bride. Featuring classic moments as him playing the piano in the Everglots’ front foyer; the candle refusing to light in the disastrous rehearsal; his attempts to flee Emily both in the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead; him getting caught with Victoria by Emily; him making up with Emily via piano duet; him choosing to marry Emily when he thought Victoria had married another; and the fork-vs-sword fight with Barkis. Good stuff, though I do wish a couple of moments had been allowed to play out for longer. The cuts between moments were a little jerky at times. *shrug* Ah well, it was still fun to watch.

B) And second up, we had more C. M. Alongi with “CaFae Latte Season 60 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured the resolution of the “John going into the woods to try and figure out what’s happening to all those missing hikers and campers...only for his walkie-talkie to mysteriously go out” cliffhanger from the previous season, and included:

I. Nicole telling Herla back at the Stoughton Street Coven headquarters that he had to get to the nearby forest by sundown, otherwise there would be death, and Herla thus getting his horse, dogs, and bow ready because he’s not dumb enough to ignore the visions of a witch

II. A bloodied John running through the woods and encountering the ghost of one of the missing people, Jessica Valentine, who led him to the stream and our friend the riddle-and-cat-toy-loving sphynx; it was then revealed that the reason the ghost-detecting charm wasn’t doing John any good before was because the people who were killing all the campers were two very human serial killers, with a device on them that jams walkie-talkie and cell phone signals (though, fortunately, they weren’t straight-up cannibals, as Jessica clarified when the sphynx misunderstood her commenting that they like to “play with their food” – only a small mercy, though, that!)

III. The sphynx and Jessica doing their best to help John escape the killers so he could follow the stream back to civilization – the sphynx distracting one of the brothers, Brady, and clawing out one of his eyes, while Jessica did her best to stop George – unfortunately, he had an anti-ghost charm bracelet meaning she couldn’t do shit to him, AND he proved callous enough to not want to help his brother, so – yeah. Not good!

IV. George catching up with John, and getting ready to start whacking him up with his axe – only to get an arrow through the wrist from Herla, aka our beloved grumpy cavalry (Jessica was VERY happy to see that)

V. And John and Herla talking to the cops afterward to explain what happened – and it being revealed that Herla not only carried John (who’d collapsed right after the danger had passed, both from exhaustion and a concussion) out of the woods in a bridal carry, he’d started tending his wounds before the EMTs arrived and had refused to leave his side. Actions that had convinced the cop they were talking to that they were a couple. XD Herla was quite annoyed by this, and bemoaned the fact that back in his day, men were allowed to be human, while John tried to get him off using words like “sodomites” to describe gay people. XD At any rate, they’re at least closer to being friends (even if Herla refuses to admit it), and the season ended with John delighted that he got to ride Herla’s flying horsey (because, you know, can’t drive with a concussion)

Lovely stuff, as always! I didn’t THINK Chris would kill off John, but it’s nice to see for sure that he’s gonna be okay. And yes, there were plenty of comments declaring that people would LOVE to see Herla and John get together. XD Me, I’d be happy with them as a couple or just grumpy besties – they’ve got a good dynamic either way! :)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitute check – just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and of course the main thing I wanted to get done over there was the plushy celebration picture! Because I couldn’t do them for Alice Dolly and Smileon and not for Victor Plush! Fortunately, I already had an idea in mind, so I was able to set up and take the picture right before my workout, then make the post tonight, while I was writing up the Teens In Space stuff – behold poor Victor Plush having a bit of a hard time riding Us, while Alice Dolly, Smileon, and Dougie offer assistance and moral support. XD To be fair, Victor’s long legs probably make riding the big old intellect devourer a bit more difficult than it is for Alice Dolly or Smileon! :p I’m just glad it came together so well and so quickly – I had the basic poses set up in an instant, and just had to tweak them slightly so Alice’s face was in frame and Smileon was facing the right way before snapping the pics. :) And now those are all set for another year, yay~

*nods* Not bad. And now I am going to get off and get some sleep, as I am VERY tired. As you might expect given how late I got to bed last night. *shakehead* Gotta do something about Sundays...night all!

Current Mood: cheerful

crossover_chick

Yeah, this was far from my most productive Sunday, and a lot of the blame for that could be laid at the foot of my damned mouse, which was EXTRA glitchy today. (The rest of the blame could be laid at the feet of me being extra tired and rather distracted by certain thoughts this morning involving Victor getting his brain lovingly melted.) Like, trying to move any windows or highlight text or do just about ANYTHING that required a single click was a pain in the fucking ass bar none. It got so bad, in fact, that I ended up telling Dad at lunch --

Prompting him to ask me if I wanted a new mouse, and me to go "yeah, I do, let me research what I want first." Meaning a decent portion of my afternoon was spent looking up gaming mice and settling on the Logitech G502 HERO mouse (since it seemed to have the most good reviews out of the bunch); figuring out with my parents when we were going to GET the mouse (I was okay with going out today, but Dad pointed out that we could have some issues with beach traffic since it was actually a nice day today; ended up with Mom agreeing to go pick up the mouse from Best Buy after she went and visited one of her friends); and finding out if we could get a certain coupon to use on the mouse if Mom brought my old Alienware one in to be recycled (which took WAAAY too much time to determine, thanks to horrible phone menus and a Live Chat guy on the Best Buy site who just did NOT get what we were asking -- he eventually said that trading in the Alienware mouse should get us the coupon, but we'll see). *sighs* Why is everything such a fight these days...well, hopefully it all works out for the best, and tomorrow I'll have a mouse that does NOT randomly act like I'm double or triple-clicking when I'm just trying to do stuff on the computer. Fingers crossed!

Anyway -- while the majority of my Sunday was taken up with The Mouse Issues, I did manage to accomplish some stuff:

...which I will have to do tomorrow, as it's nearly 12:40 AM and I HAVE to go to bed. *grumbles* I'll edit this thing tomorrow morning with the actual write-up -- for now, night all!

7:45 AM 6/9/2025: Okay, managed to finish off the last bit of the Sunday write-up -- here's what I did:

Tumblr: Well, it was another “nothing’s happening on The Valice Multiverse” day, and there really wasn’t much going on over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) either (didn’t help that I had a VERY late start thanks to a slow morning). But, if nothing else, I sorted out the pictures and started the very first draft of the “hey, the Polyheart OT3 house is done!” post over on VLA(NS). I didn’t get very far, mind – thanks to my mouse issues, rearranging the pictures the way I wanted them was something of a nightmare – but I have all the screenshots plus a tiny bit of starter text. Here’s hoping I can use some of my extra free time this week to get that properly sorted!

Writing: As I didn’t do any gaming thanks to The Mouse Issues (yes, I play Fallout 4 with my old XBox 360 controller, but I have to use the mouse to get into the game, and I didn’t want to deal with any misclicks opening up extra windows or any of that bullshit), I did indeed spend my afternoon working on a rough draft of my friend Nebby’s birthday fic (it’s coming up fast on the 22nd!). And it’s an interesting one – when I asked her about it a few days ago, she told me she wouldn’t mind seeing my Valicer trio getting involved somehow with the events of her “MediEvil Resurrection II” story (where she’s rewriting the events of MediEvil II in order to bring the action back to Gallowmere, like in the first game, and develop the relationship between protagonist Dan and his love interest Kiya the Egyptian princess mummy) and gave me a few ideas of where they could show up. And I ended up glomming onto them getting involved in the fight in the freakshow/circus that one of the protagonists, Professor Kift (the guy who brought Dan back from the dead in the first place), works for in Chapter 2. Mostly because I couldn’t stop picturing Alice as a knife-thrower at said circus. XD So yeah, after a couple of false starts, I managed to whip up a fic where Alice (indeed a knife-thrower), Smiler (does an alchemy show on the exhibition street), and Victor (a visitor who lingered late) got trapped in the freakshow when all the horrible magical bullshit went down (imp stole one of the professor’s spellbooks, long story) and found themselves watching Dan fight the recently-zombified “Pincushion” freak (a giant fat man bristling with swords...who, unfortunately for Dan, knew how to use them). Alice ended up throwing a knife to help Dan avoid getting beaten by his foe, then asking Kift – who showed up shortly thereafter to shoot the zombie so Dan could finally get the upper hand – if she and her friends could hang out with them. Kift was slightly uncertain, but Alice was like “I’m the best knife-thrower in the place; Smiler has all their alchemicals on them and isn’t afraid to use them; and Victor apparently fought a guy with a sword while armed with a fork once, so he can’t be useless in a fight.” Kift: “...I’ll see what Dan thinks.” XD Hopefully Nebby will like it once it’s all cleaned up!

YouTube: Another Sunday, another episode of Fallout: London with Jon of Many A True Nerd – specifically, “Fallout: London - Part 46 - Best Served Cold!” The adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they took out the people who made Mad Jack’s life a hell when he was a little boy! Even if Jon was rather concerned that all this violence wasn’t REALLY going to be good for Mad Jack’s psyche...anyway, this trip hunting down the worst of the worst in London involved:

A) The pair meeting up at The Pilgrim, the location of Jack’s old gym, where Mad Jack told Aria about their targets – James Goodrich, AKA “The Professor,” the inventor of all the torture devices at the camp (like the slave collars and the cattle prods and whatnot); The Meat Merchant, the guy who took all the corpses of the dead slaves and disposed of them (Jack never actually met the guy, but he’d heard rumors that he was butchering up the bodies and selling them to the Beef Eaters for a profit); Myra Lane, the head prison guard at the camp (who really enjoyed punishing people when they crossed her); and Jonah “The Gent,” the leader of the whole operation (and thus, in Jack’s eyes, the one most responsible for everything). They all sounded like utterly horrible people who genuinely deserved to die for what they’d done to children, that’s for damn sure! Even if Jon was not pleased by Mad Jack talking about how he wanted to see the look on Myra’s face when he was the one doing the punishing midway through. “No going into this talking about how much we want to see these people suffer, Jack! No!” XD

B) The pair traveling to Bromley to take out the first man on the list, “The Professor” – he proved to be camped out on a rooftop, in the middle of a whole bunch of Hooligans. Upon initially spotting him, Aria noted that not only was he not immediately hostile, he also appeared to be cowering in fear, like he was the victim of the raiders rather than a fellow member. And when she and Jack approached after killing their way through all the Hooligans, he insisted that they had the wrong guy and to please give him a chance to explain. Aria, very sure that they wanted to kill the RIGHT person if they were doing any killing, agreed to hear him out, prompting him to spin a tale about how he was the son of a caravan trader, who’d fallen on hard times and had thus chosen to live here in isolation for the past 46 years. And that there was no way he could have done all the heinous crimes they were accusing him of – why, he knitted, wasn’t that enough proof of his innocence? Mad Jack, however, immediately declared he was lying –

And that’s when “The Professor” started cackling madly, revealed that he’d used that story to buy enough time to set up his “last resort,” then declared he’d see them in hell before setting off a suicide bomb. Cue poor Aria getting blown to pieces as she couldn’t get away fast enough (though, interestingly, JACK survived the explosion, as per the “death cam”). Fortunately, being a Bethesda protagonist, Aria could just rewind time to before the conversation – and on the SECOND go-round, she happily called “The Professor” out on his shit and handed him over to Jack, who took him out with one solid axe blow as the dude pissed himself. *nods* Most righteous, Jack – most righteous.

C) The pair then traveling to Camden to track down The Meat Merchant (with Jon taking a moment to note with delight the next Vagabond quest popping up in Aria’s log), who was apparently working as a barber not far from Cyberfox. However, this mission required a bit more finesse than the last one, as Mad Jack didn’t actually know what the Merchant looked like – he’d never met him in person. All he had to go on was his friend’s extremely vague description – brown hair and average height. So he asked Aria to confirm that this guy was the one they were looking for before they did any killing. Aria was more than fine with that, and they entered the barbershop –

To find three members of the Wells family waiting within. Aria reasoned that, since all the horrible stuff happened to Jack when he was a kid, the most likely candidate to be the Meat Merchant was the oldest one of the lot, patriarch Todd – and noted with her keen Perception that he had some awfully beat-up hands for a barber. Todd attempted to explain that he’d been a farmhand before his change in careers, and that he was originally from Borehamwood – but Aria, suspicious and facing down an Intelligence check, did some drugs and put on Merlin’s fancy beret, and got the clarity of mind needed to point out that the farms in Borehamwood had been the first to fall to the radiation. Todd quickly claimed that he was actually from Bournebridge – but when Aria said that he couldn’t keep running from the people he killed, he reflexively protested that he’d been on disposal before trying to cover up the slip. It was too little too late, however, and after conferring with Jack, Aria prepared to put Todd down –

Only for him AND the other two members of the Wells family, Artie and Ruby, to all go hostile. Aria hastily took out Todd, which caused Artie and Ruby to flee...and Mad Jack to chase after them. He returned after a few minutes, but the other two very much did not. And while Jon couldn’t PROVE that he’d hunted them down and murdered them...yeah, he was a bit concerned Jack might have gone too far there. To be fair, Jon, YOU could have had Aria order him to stay before he went tearing off...then again, I shouldn’t judge, I know how fiddly the Fallout interface can be.

D) The pair then heading to Wimbledon to track down Myra Lane, who had apparently set up a camp for herself not far from the Tennis Museum. Once they found the place, they were greeted at the entrance by a raider named Byron, who recognized Mad Jack and warned him that if he was there for Myra, he wasn’t going to get her –

Because she already had too many husbands and none of them got enough time with her as it was! XD Yeah, uh, it appeared after the dissolution of the slaver camp, Myra had set up her own little harem of adoring husbands to keep herself safe and entertained. Mad Jack was VERY flustered by this, while Aria decided to go ahead and antagonize Byron by saying Myra would probably like Jack better than him –

Only to immediately regret all her decisions when the entire camp went hostile. XD She managed to hold her own against the Husband Legion for a little while, while Jack found and wailed on Myra herself, but a well-tossed molotov made it so she had to rewind time for herself again. She still chose to antagonize Byron, but THIS time made sure to get to cover faster, and was able to take out all the husbands while Mad Jack took down Myra. She didn’t immediately die, though, instead just sprawling on the ground with a quest marker over her head. Aria took that to mean that she had something to say and, after finishing off the last of the boytoys, went over to talk to her –

Only to find that Myra just got up and regarded her silently. Wouldn’t speak at all. And a reload didn’t fix the problem. So Aria just shot her in the head. XD Sorry, Myra – I know it’s not your fault your AI bugged out, but you should have spoken up sooner if you wanted to live longer!

E) The pair then heading to find Jonah “The Gent” where he’d holed up in a squatter’s den near Voxtel, with a whole bunch of Hooligans. Jack and Aria managed to take all his cronies out without TOO much issue (beyond Jack getting in the way of Aria running away from a land mine she’d accidentally set off – and then saying “hey, you stepped on an explosion,” causing Aria to be like “I KNOW”), and Aria found Jonah all the way on the top floor, holed up in an apartment with his pet radger (rad badger), Buttons. Jonah said some very nasty things to Jack and Aria and ordered Buttons to kill them – Aria thus concentrated on taking out Buttons, confident that Mad Jack had Jonah handled –

Only to find that Jack was nowhere to be seen. Turns out his pathfinding had gotten a little confused and he hadn’t actually come upstairs with her. Aria thus had to run back down the stairs to HIM, chased by Jonah, so he could actually get the climatic kill on the man who made his life hell. *facepalm* Oh, the Bethesda was really Bethesdaing at times in this video…

F) Aria checking in with Mad Jack to make sure he really did feel better, because she knew she had a complicated relationship with violence and killing and all thanks to his upbringing...only for Jack to tell her that he felt great and that he was sure the world was a better place without those people in it. XD He did, however, reveal to her that he’d lied about the note. Not about its existence, fortunately (THAT would have been a worrying twist), but about how many addresses had been on it. For it seems that his old buddy had ALSO included the address of their old orphanage in the list...with a note stating they hadn’t been STOLEN from it, they’d been SOLD by it. Mad Jack didn’t really want to believe it, but said he wouldn’t really be able to put things to rest until he got to the bottom of this final mystery and asked if Aria was still in. Aria was of course like “heck yes – this is the one part of this mission where I am all FOR some bloody murder.” XD So they headed over to the nearby Ross Home for Orphaned Boys –

Only to find nothing but a pile of rubble. Jack was quite surprised, but said that they needed to find the headmistress, Dr. Ainsley Ross, if she was still around, as he was sure she could set them straight on what happened. After all, he remembered her being so warm and kind – the closest thing he ever had to a mother! Jon was immediately like “oh, this isn’t going to end well…” Anyway, Aria and Jack thus proceeded to poke around the wreckage –

And found a dead Tommy in there. With a note from one former General Asquith, saying that they’d heard some worrying rumors about the place and he was empowering this Tommy to look into the matter. And that, if he didn’t find anything here, that he should check out the Bankside Power Station in Southwark (right behind the Globe Theater), as they’d found evidence that whatever was going on in the orphanage was related to whatever was going on there. The pair thus headed over there and fought their way through dozens of Industrialists before reaching the inner sanctum of one Dr. Ross –

And there found a very cold woman who, upon being questioned by Jack (who was still sure she’d tell him she hadn’t sold him and his brothers off), calmly informed him that yes, she HAD sold them to the slavers – and that in fact she’d given him growth hormone ever since he was a baby to make him a more valuable bit of property. And that she’d happily burned down the orphanage once the Tommies started nosing around. And that she had a very powerful rifle in her desk if he or Aria planned to make any moves against her. A furious Jack declared she was going to die today, and Dr. Ross did indeed grab her gun –

And then Aria shot her a few times with the freezing 9mm and she ended up dying in a single VATS round while lying frozen on the floor. XD Aria happily claimed her rifle (a Gauss rifle, nice), then checked in with Jack again, acknowledging that he had to be in shock – Jack confirmed that he was going to need some time to process this, but thanked her for helping him do all this in the first place, saying she was the best mate he’d ever had. :) He even tried to give her his staggering boxing gloves, Judy & Diane, as a reward – Aria, however, took one look at that 31 damage and was like, “thanks, but you keep them.” XD However, she was very happy with his companion perk, “Fisticuffs,” which she received straight afterward – gave her +50% more damage dealt and +50 damage resistance when facing three or more opponents (kind of like Preston’s perk in main Fallout 4). And given MOST opponents come in groups in this bloody game – yeah, that is going to be VERY handy for Aria as she starts wrapping up her adventures!

G) And finally, the pair swinging by the Swan & Meiter to check in with Gaunt and get the measure of his big plan to finally get the upper hand in the Vagabonds’ war against the Syndicate on the Isle of Dogs! Which, unsurprisingly, involved Aria going on another murder spree, as Gaunt informed her over a game of pool that he wanted her to slaughter three of the tacticians in the Syndicate, the three who’d helped one Thomas Black orchestrate the “Red Treaty” and kill his father – lieutenants John Lockheed, Enforcer Sinclair, and Pieter the Fence. And he wanted her to be big and showy about it all too, doing it in public and in her Vagabond best (aka the hat he gave her), so people would know that whoever crossed the Vagabonds would bring fury down upon them. Though he was also nice enough to warn her that this was very dirty business he was sending her on, and to expect Syndicate enforcers hunting her the minute she pulled the trigger on the first. Aria indicated she understood and asked where she could find her targets – Gaunt informed her that his lieutenants had leads on the men, and pointed her to good old “Chill” Winston to get the skinny on Lockheed. So yeah – next week, Aria chats with Winston and starts her next set of assassinations! And we’ll see if Jon remembers that he was hoping to have Gaunt REMOVED as leader thanks to his revenge-loving ways...though maybe the lieutenants will have some thoughts about that when Aria talks to them to get her missions...

Workout: Hopped back on the bike this evening to start this week’s workouts with some OXBox Hitman goodness: “HITMAN JAMES BOND | Let's Kill Mads Mikkelsen | Elusive Target The Banker!” An extremely new Elusive Target (as in, apparently this DLC was announced and dropped FRIDAY, with this video having been posted SATURDAY – they really saw this thing come up and went “well, that’s our weekend sorted” XD) based on the Bond movie Casino Royale, in honor of developer IO doing a Bond game! Complete with that movie’s main villain, La Chiffre, played by Mads Mikkelsen, making an appearance as a banker with criminal world ties, who must win a high-stakes VIP poker game to earn the money he needs to pay off his debts to the ex-fascist dictator Murillo. 47’s job – to make sure La Chiffre doesn’t win that money and does not survive the night! Andy was on the controls for this one, with Jane and Mike watching on and offering support, and they followed the mission story which saw 47 sneak his way into the VIP game to win all the bananas and make sure La Chiffre got murdered by his exiled dictator partner (this is apparently the one that follows the plot of the movie the closest). How did it go? Well, let me give you a few quick highlights:

A) Andy started things off by dressing 47 in the exact same outfit that La Chiffre was wearing, as an intimidation tactic of sorts (though he later regretted that he couldn’t have walked in wearing the clown outfit Mike loves so much)

B) Given three options for getting an invite to the all-important poker match, Andy going with killing an ex-informant for 47’s CIA buddy Mr. Smith (for once fully clothed and NOT in immediate danger that 47 had to save him from) – 47 remarking on how weird it was to see Smith with all his clothes on made Jane and Mike go “hang on a second, WHO is this guy again??” XD

C) Everyone being very deeply suspicious about how easily 47 was let up into the VIP lounge after presenting an invitation that didn’t even have his name on it (though the guard did radio La Chiffre to okay it), and berating 47 for letting his guard down and actually drinking his champagne when he met La Chiffre for a pre-game chat – sure enough, after the first round (in which La Chiffre managed to fake everyone out with a fake tell and win the game), it was quickly revealed that 47 had been poisoned and he had to rush out of the room and down to the shed by the carpark for the antidote. The gang was like “Oh no, we’ve been hitmanned ourselves!” and “well, that’s kind of what you get for wanting to impress Mads Mikkelsen.” XD

D) Mike, at one point after 47 antidoted himself, noting that if he’d been the one at the controls, he would have already tossed an explosive duck at the problem and called it a day XD

E) 47 ultimately winning the whole pot by first bribing, and then threatening, the dealer to stack the deck in his favor, and then following La Chiffre to the attic room where he was meeting Murillo to see the execution first-hand – unfortunately, he got caught by a wandering guard while crouching down behind some boxes, and got gunned down on the stairs, meaning Andy failed the mission – snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, as Mike put it

F) Andy THEN going into the “Elusive Target Arcade” and redoing the mission, THIS time just waiting at the door and continually opening it so he could see the execution from afar...then, because nobody liked that the ex-dictator wasn’t one of the targets (though apparently you kill him in a DIFFERENT mission), sneaking in, taking the guy out, then running away in a hail of gunfire. XD Happily, this time he survived, and managed to get out the front gate to end the mission!

G) Andy getting the rank “Flexible Murderer” and a new personal best of zero stars at the end XD

So yeah – required a little trip into an alternate timeline via the arcade, but we got there in the end! Oh, I do love watching these three play Hitman – even if it’s just one of them on the controls, the commentary from the other two is always delightful. XD Excellent stuff!

Other: We did indeed play beanbags, as the weather was nicer today – and once again, Mom had a great game, winning three out of five rounds and only coming last once, while Dad and I struggled to keep up! I ended up having a slow climb to a final victory (where I beat Dad by a single point!), while poor Dad had a crash from glory and only somewhat recovered at the end. Final scores were me 3-3-2-2-W; Dad W-2-3-3-2; and Mom 2-W-W-W-3. *shrug* What can I say – she’s on a hot streak! We’ll see if things change the next time we play!

Not bad -- not GREAT, but I'm glad that I hit all the usual stuff. And now I have to run off to work -- tonight, I'll tell you all about that, and my attempts to celebrate Victor's birthday! (Usual stuff -- watch some Victor clips, listen to some CB music, write some Victor-related stuff, read some Victor-related fanfic if I can. Don't think I'll be able to get to a Victor-related game, though.) Bye!

Current Mood: frustrated

crossover_chick

Welp, the rain finally showed up to wash some of the humidity away -- and by "showed up," I mean "Dad gave me a couple minutes' warning to get the fan out of my window, and then the sky FUCKING OPENED." O.O Like, it rained so fucking hard so fucking fast that the road outside promptly started looking like a shallow river with all the water running down it. Mom's estimate is that we got like three inches in ten minutes, and -- fuck it, I'm prepared to believe that. O.o It did eventually calm down, and I'm glad it DID rain because it is now much drier and cooler than it's been the past couple of nights, but STILL. That was -- something. O.o Very glad I didn't have to go out on it!

As for my day -- it was typical in some respects, a little unusual in others:

Cleaning: Pretty typical Cleaning Saturday, as I feel I say every time – I got started around 10:35 AM; finished the dusting and the Swiffering right before lunch around 1 PM; then finished off with a thorough vacuuming after lunch, finishing everything off around 1:45 PM! *shrug* Nothing particularly special, though I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with washing my blankets or anything – obviously I changed my sheets, but those just went in the communal hamper to be washed with all the other stuff tomorrow. And I got to relisten to an excellent Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark episode, “Into The Deathlands” – featuring the gang stealing a train locomotive by setting up a fake crash out in the titular deathlands! Key highlights been the return of everyone’s favorite murder-children, the Gutcutters, to help with the score; Zillah accidentally getting put to sleep with slumber essence (while they were trying to deal with a rail-riding hobo on the same train they were trying to steal), then smacking Edvard straight out of his shoes with a sleep punch while he was attempting to rouse her with smelling salts; Barnaby refusing to wear goggles for traveling in the harsh gritty winds atop the train because they didn’t go with his ensemble, getting essentially blinded...and then, with the help of a lucky dice roll, managing to argue that he can actually see better in the smoky cabin with his sand-blasted corneas and successfully knocking the stoker over the head with an old whiskey bottle; and the gang having to deal with some deathlands scavengers before they could get the locomotive back to Volisport – who, thanks to the voice Luke ended up choosing for them, I now headcanon as the skeletons from the hammer in the Original Oxventure, having turned to scavenging after the gang finally passed on and magic was forcibly sucked out of the world (don’t ask how they’re okay, the skeletons have always been OP). XD Excellent stuff – very sad I only have three episodes left to go! Though I suppose I can always listen to other Oxventure stuff once I’m done...

Writing: As I was feeling a bit uninspired when it came to video games (like, I wanted to start working on my new Sims 4 save file, but I couldn’t figure out where the heck I wanted to begin), I decided after I finished my cleaning and did the usual rounds online this afternoon to instead just dive straight into another page on “The Van Dort Vacancy!” Having seen yesterday that the his parents seemed to having a party, Victor brought Alice and Smiler up to the front door with him today, hoping to find the Van Dorts’ butler, Barry, there to explain what was going on. Fortunately, Barry was indeed there (instructing a footman on the proper care of Lord Goth’s luggage), and was also only too happy to start giving Victor the “where the hell have you been” speech when he saw him. Victor introduced him to Alice and Smiler (Smiler doing their usual “I’m going to blast happiness and cheer directly in your face and there’s nothing you can do about it” routine XD), and the trio proceeded to learn the following facts from him:

I. That the Van Dorts were having a big old multi-meal party to make up for the wedding not happening on the 30th

II. That while the Van Dorts HAD looked for Victor the Names before the wedding, they hadn’t actually done much searching for him since, too busy trying to fix their own reputations

III. And that hampering the search further, their driver, Mayhew, had died – Victor was horrified, though not surprised to learn it was the cough that had done him in, and somewhat comforted by hearing that his corpse had been picked right up by the Spirit Wardens (no ghost Mayhews for him to worry about!)

So yeah – so far, the Van Dorts are NOT acquitting themselves well when it comes to looking like they actually care about their son! And things are soon to get worse, as Victor’s going to ask to speak to them the next time I work on this story – and learn that he can’t take his friends along with…

Baldur’s Gate III – The Planning: Yup – since I was feeling uninspired when it came to actually playing a game, I figured that I should spend this afternoon trying to get some work done on planning out what my Tav!Smiler should be like (what abilities they should prioritize, what skills they should have proficiency in, what spells they should have, etc) for my eventual restart of BG3. And I’m pleased to report that I actually made some halfway-decent progress! Specifically, I –

A) Went through all the skills available in the game and checked what they actually did and where checks involving them were likely to come up to figure out which ones Smiler should have proficiency in (and thus get bonuses to those checks) – I already knew that they needed proficiency in Persuasion, but looking at what’s on offer, Arcana, Investigation, Nature, Insight, Medicine, Deception, and Performance all feel like good candidates for proficiency as well. (Which puts me in a bit of a pickle when it comes to Smiler’s background, as “Guild Artisan” gives Persuasion and Insight proficiency, but looking at the inspiration triggers, I’m still leaning toward “Entertainer” as more generally Smiler…)

B) And, after doing that, I went back and look at their ability scores and went “...yeah, I need to swap the Dexterity and Wisdom scores, Smiler should definitely have higher Wisdom than Dexterity given the skills I want to specialize in. And I should probably drop Charisma just a TINY bit so I can boost Wisdom up to an even number and get some better modifiers – Cha 16 and Cha 17 give the same modifier, after all!” So yeah, looks like Smiler’s ability scores are gonna be Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Constitution 12, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 14, and Charisma 16 whenever I get back into the character creator!

Not too shabby – considering the last time I tried this I rather stalled out because I was focusing too much on my mod issues, I was very pleased to actually get something done over here. Maybe next time I can figure out some spell stuff! And that damn background issue...

YouTube: Cleared the three videos waiting for me in the Watch Later, which was nice –

A) First up, we had the OXBox list video of the week: “7 Hardest Optional Bosses for Elite Players Only: Commenter Edition!” Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about more horrible ultra-hard optional bosses, as per the comments on their last video on the subject! Are you a Dark Souls III player looking for even more punishment? Shove the giant dragon Darkeater Midir into a pit, then jump down there to give him and his horrible black mouth laser a try! Looking to suffer in Soulcaliber 3’s story mode? Follow a certain path and you can fight Night Terror as the final boss, and learn what it’s like not only to get your shit wrecked, but be unable to win via “Ring Out” because your opponent can, you know, fly! Want to see how weird and hard Super Mario RPG can get? Track down Culex, the one Final Fantasy-esque boss in the game, and be prepared to suffer at the hands of this shirtless 2D monstrosity! Basically, if you think you’re hard enough, you can find an optional boss ready to destroy you in this list. The rest of us will be over here maintaining normal blood pressures, thanks. :P

B) Then, it was over to Petey Plays It for “101 Sims 4 Tips, Tricks And Secrets From 7,000+ Hours Played!” Yes, apparently Petey has played 7,777 hours (and 35 minutes) of The Sims 4, and feeling this made him something an expert on the game, decided he had to share a whole bunch of various tips and tricks with us. Granted, most of these were tips and tricks he’d shared in other videos – such as the Discover University soccer ball and the City Living basketball hoop being the ultimate tools to have your Sims gain fitness, lose weight, and become ripped; honey from the bee box in Seasons granting a moodlet that makes Sims temporarily immune to temperature effects; and how you can buy a special low-maintenance crow with a golden perch from the ghost salesman Waylon in Life & Death – but there were a few new things too! For example, I didn’t know that the “Breeze Through Homework” interaction on homework for children was unlocked by having level 3 in all the child skills (I thought it was related to their grade in school) – nor that it actually made them complete their homework faster (also thought that it was just a textual change). And if you get them up to level 7 in all the child skills, they’ll get the “Dominate Homework” interaction and complete it even FASTER! I also didn’t know that a human Sim who happened to have inherited one of the magical bloodlines from a Spellcaster parent, after asking a Sage to turn them into a spellcaster, wouldn’t have to go through the mote-finding “quest” most Sims have to do – the Sage will just turn them right away because they already have a hidden magical nature! And while I knew that the solar panel roof from Eco Lifestyle gave Sims power, I didn’t know that the living grass roof from that pack actually provided water! So yeah, that was neat. :) Plus there’s a hexagonal wood flooring from that pack that apparently reduces your bills, which I will definitely have to think about using in my next save file for my Teen Valicer trio...maybe in a house renovation? :P Anyway, good stuff as always – and here’s to the next 7,000 hours, Petey!

C) And finally, we visited C. M. Alongi for the next CaFae Latte video I had to catch up on: “CaFae Latte Season 59 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured:

I. Bob catching two teenagers vandalizing the store (smashing pumpkins and painting random pentagrams and whatnot on the wall), giving them the choice of coming to the cafe at 5 AM to clean up the damage or going to the police, and then taking a bit of their hair to curse them both to be bright pink as insurance to make sure they actually showed up to fix things

II. One of the kids, Logan, showing up the next morning at the appointed time (with his very-grumpy father) and cleaning everything up, which earned him a free coffee, a free scone for breakfast, his skin going back to normal color, and some life advice from Jennifer Charles (namely, get better friends and talk to someone about the anger issues) – and the other, Alex, showing up just before school with his pissed-off mother to bitch about the curse; the mother bitched out Bob for cursing her “baby boy” in the following video, but Bob held firm, saying that his actions had consequences and she’d given him his choice of outs from said curse. And when the mother threatened to sue, revealing that she’d already gotten documentation of all the damage and that she knew the curse caused no actual harm to the kid (other than being kinda humiliating), so no lawyer would take their case. The pair eventually stormed out to talk to a lawyer anyway, and JC was like “I’m usually NOT a fan of blaming the parent for the kid’s behavior, buuuut…”

III. JC bringing Rethu (who’d been out for a few days due to a Jewish holiday, Sakkot) up to speed on what happened with the pranksters (turns out Alex and his mother finally went to the police after Alex’s dad said “we’re rich, we can afford a good lawyer to make sure this doesn’t affect his record too badly,” as per the Drek gossip line – looks like he’ll probably only have to pay a fine, and he did get un-pinked for confessing to the police), and Rethu telling them about the holiday and how there’s some shit going down in the woods with missing hikers, and how they think it’s a ghost – only for the pair to be interrupted by a customer angry that neither of them had come over to refill their drink, instead “unprofessionally” talking about their personal lives. JC and Rethu set them straight on how things worked (namely, that this is a CAFE, not a restaurant, and that they’re allowed to chat to pass the time), causing the customer to declare they’d just lost their business and flounce out. JC was like “you promise?” XD

IV. And Herla showing up with a unicorn corpse at the Stoughton Street Witch coven, to turn it into various charms to reward his lieutenants for their good and loyal service (the coven gets some small fees, a hoof, and the teeth out of the trade), only for Ghost Hunter John to show up a little bit later to buy a ghost-detecting charm from Nicole for his latest job – tracking down whatever’s been spiriting away those unfortunate campers and hikers. The plan was that he’d go out on initial recon, figure out what the problem was, then report back to his HQ –

But when we cut to him actually out in the woods, he didn’t find any evidence of paranormal activity. His keychain charm wasn’t even glowing. But then his cellphone lost signal, and…yeah, that’s where Chris left things. O.o Oh cripes, I am like – 99% certain she wouldn’t actually kill John, but that is still a hell of a cliffhanger! I am REALLY hoping that Herla will have a big damn heroes moment so they can have a heartfelt bitchy friends moment afterward. They have earned it.

Tumblr: Didn’t do MUCH on the tumblrs, but I accomplished some stuff – to the point where doing something on one blog helped me with the other –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Didn’t do any draft stuff, as is usual for a Cleaning Saturday, but I did straight-up reblog two things:

A) A truly awesome video of a steampunk carousel, complete with flying machines and boats and mechanical animals that moved around! :D It was so freaking cool and made me think of Secundus and how they’d DEFINITELY have that somewhere in the city – maybe some sort of event building or park? So yeah, had to put that on the blog!

B) And a photo post featuring two screencapped tweets about the “fell first/fell harder” trope and how it’s not about one of the characters loving the other more – instead, it’s about one character slowly falling and getting used to pining over the second one, sure it’ll never lead to anything...and the second character just being hit by their feelings like a truck one day and deciding they HAVE to be with their beloved. XD Which, when I looked at it, made me realize that dynamic could describe Victor/Alice AND Victor/Smiler very well, so – yeah. Reblogged it, tagged it both “#valice” and “#valicer,” and explained the “Victor falls first but never wants to act on his feelings because he’s sure the others won’t feel the same way/Alice and Smiler fall harder and are just clobbered by their feelings” dynamic in said tags. XD It’s just fun!

Valice Multiverse – And then, since there was nothing happening over here, I went ahead and reblogged the steampunk carousel post off Victor Luvs Alice into this account’s drafts! Because Secundus IS one of my verses over here, and it felt appropriate to feature it on both. :) Hooray!

*nods* Fairly productive overall -- I fully expected to want to play Sims and do some save file stuff, but that just wasn't in the cards today. *shrug* Maybe I need to plan that out a little more too before diving into it...or maybe my brain's like "let's not start anything until the 'weather effects indoors' bug is fixed." XD At any rate, I was happy to make some progress on figuring out Tav!Smiler! One step closer to actually properly playing the game again...

Anyway -- I have to get to bed, as I have once again stayed up too late. Tomorrow, goals include working on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts (gotta get the one for second Polyheart OT3 House update started so I can properly show off the exterior!); either working more on the Tav!Smiler stuff and writing up the first draft of Nebby's gift OR playing Fallout 4, making more progress toward the Mechanist, and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc appropriately; getting in a workout; and keeping up with Jon of Many A True Nerd. Again, hopefully all achievable goals, but we shall see! Personally, I'm just hoping the humidity is okay...night all!

Current Mood: intimidated

crossover_chick

Was juggling multiple conversations before, along with trying to stay caught up on my tumblr dash and working on finishing up all my write-ups. Just another Friday night/Saturday morning in the Victoria household! But now things have calmed down and I can officially do my Update On The Day:

Work – Fairly quiet Friday to end out the week – I did the GL; I looked at the failed credit cards and contacted a few people about failures (successfully rerunning one guy’s card at his request); I updated one pastor’s pledge at the assistant director’s request; I took a couple of credit card gifts and a pledge from people who called in; I cooed over the director’s baby when his mom came in to drop him off with his dad (she had an appointment); I said goodbye to the director, my coworker, and the assistant director as they all left early; I did some puzzles; and I finally said “screw it” and left a little bit early myself because it was Friday and I was alone and nothing was happening. XD I’ve had much worse Fridays! And I appreciated getting to spend most of it in an air-conditioned building because that humidity today – bleeh. It was SUPPOSED to clear out by the afternoon, but the thunderstorms they mentioned never showed up! >( Hopefully tomorrow IS better like they said! It is cooler tonight, so I am desperately hoping...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week saw me pedaling through:
A) The end of “D&D But... It's Cluedo | Oxventure!” The big finale of the absolutely redonkulous “playing Clue via D&D” live show featured:

I. Reverend Green (Luke) successfully locating a dagger with Spanish writing on it in the dining room and rushing off to show everyone, which Johnny ended up describing as like someone calling a meeting in the game Among Us XD

II. Colonel Mustard (Mike) being allowed to search the study before being dragged off to the meeting (despite Professor Plum (Andy) being like “we don’t need to see what he finds”) – good thing he was too, as on a nat 20 he immediately discovered the murder weapon – a bloodied candlestick! But no blood on the study floor, as was later established when it became apparent Johnny forgot to tell Mike that in response to the nat 20 XD

III. Everyone presenting their findings, and Ms. Scarlet (Emily) discovering it was a prop knife – she promptly berated Reverend Green for wasting their time, then just as promptly felt bad as he pathetically apologized –

And then even more promptly pulled her revolver and began demanding that the murder confess already. XD Leading to Professor Plum trying to launch a wad of grease from his hair at her hand to get her to drop the gun (guess what spell Andy was trying to cast!), only for her to make her Dex save and coolly catch the gun midair as it spun. Everyone was very impressed. *nods*

IV. Acting-Constable Arthur Beefs, the policeman nominally in charge of this investigation, bodying himself through a window to stop the suspects trying to kill each other and get them back on track (that was NOT happening, Johnny!)

V. Professor Plum deciding to “tear the mask” off Colonel Mustard – one unsuccessful Constitution saving throw later, he’d gotten the man’s Velcro mustache (gasp!)

VI. The climatic vote, including one from the audience via “noisemeter” (aka judging the guilty party from the loudest cheers” – the audience couldn’t decide between Professor Plum and Colonel Mustard, but the assembled suspects were pretty sure it was Mustard –

And they were right! :D Mustard was indeed the murderer, revealing he’d killed Mr. Boddy as the man had intended to reveal that all of his grand military stories were fakes! Which was kind of obvious in retrospect as the man was worse at keeping his battles straight than Professor Plum was at keeping his animes straight, but still! XD Anyway, the whole mess ended with Mustard having a big climatic rant, culminating in the reveal that he hated mustard; Ms. Scarlet shooting him after said confession at Acting-Constable Arthur Beefs’s insistence, with Mustard dying saying that at last he’d seen combat; Reverend Green finding the deed to the house and presenting it to Ms. Scarlet; and everyone refusing to respect Professor Plum. XD

VII. And finally, the post-adventure reveals that the players revealed like 60% of their collective motives for wanting to kill Mr. Boddy, and that Reverend Green was genuinely motivated throughout most of this adventure by being very hungry. XD

Delightfully goofy stuff, as always! I do love watching this group play TTRPGs together. Next week, we start catching up on the Teens In Space miniseries they did with Jasper of Three Black Halfings before the release of Oxventure: Wyrdwood!

B) The entirety of “5 Hidden Failsafes BG3 Devs Made For 0.1% Of Players” by Proxy Gate Tactician! Because I’m still enjoying going through his videos. :) As you might expect from that title, this one was all about him talking about and showing off those hidden failsafes in the game that most players would never even experience – or, if they did, wouldn’t realize it was meant to be a failsafe. Examples included:

I. What happens if you don’t put your ENTIRE party on the boat to Grymforge, then lose the fight with the duergar who pull up beside the boat to demand to know what happened to the original owner (the bodies of the party members who lost the fight wash up on the same shore where you can find the duergar’s bodies if you successfully fight them, and the duergar complete their trip to the shore where any remaining party members wait, allowing them to get past them and use the boat to sail to Grymforge and, hopefully, revive the dead party members)

II. What happens if you kill the people who are supposed to be watching over/entertaining the tiefling children when the tieflings go into “battle-ready” mode protecting the grove from the incoming forces of the Absolute (normally Alfira the bard is entertaining them with the story of the founding of Baldur’s Gate; if she’s dead, one of the kids, Mirkan, is telling them about her near-escape from the harpies; if SHE’S dead as well, the kids are just hanging out and urge you to go back and join the fight – Proxy was particularly shocked by this one because he didn’t think ANY players would bother coming to this location, especially with a fight imminent!)

III. And what happens if certain NPCs who were supposed to give you important information or a quest reward die before they can, either by your hand or another’s (the game usually has a back-up NPC ready to spawn in and give you the reward or the info – though in the case of rescuing the Gondians from the undersea Iron Throne prison, if you kill the one gnome who’s supposed to be a GUARANTEED escapee and thus tell you where to go next to free their families, the NARRATOR will instead step in and summarize another gnome telling you the same thing should you approach them. Given this is an Act 3 quest, I’m guessing they just didn’t have the time to record another NPC saying the lines!)

Neat stuff, as always – Proxy is always very thorough in his investigations into these matters. :) Though I will tell any Embrace Durges who may be reading this NOT to kill the leader of the Bhaal cult, Sarevok, AND both of the “neutral” assassins hanging around the place during the fight with Orin, as you’ll go through all of Sarevok’s backup NPCS like that and thus screw yourself out of a reward to help you with the final boss that way. Just FYI!

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – the trip back to the Van Dort mansion continued tonight, with:

A) Alice pointing out that, fun as talking about future birthday celebrations was, they had to get settled in the here and now first...and then successfully guessing that Smiler already had plans for a big “cleaning day” celebration once she secured her new lodgings in Six Towers XD

B) Victor and Smiler both offering whatever talents they had to the upcoming “cleaning day,” with Smiler being uncharacteristically serious about the dangers of mixing certain chemicals together (this IS their area of expertise, after all) and offering to bring their “Smile Sweeper” (the steampunk roomba they cooked up with Dr. Gladwell), shocking Victor with the reveal that it’s entirely mechanical (they felt it cruel to stick a ghost in such a small Hull!)

C) Alice interrupting Smiler explaining how the Smile Sweeper works (with me working in that punchcard looms are a thing in this world because they’re cool) by asking Victor if that’s his house ahead – and Victor being VERY STARTLED by the sheer amount of carriages outside, saying that it only looks like this if his mother’s throwing a party...

Aaaand yeah, not even Smiler could convincingly say it might be a search party. *grimace* I left it with them making for the front door to try and learn from whoever’s stationed there what’s going on – tomorrow, we meet the Van Dort’s butler, Barry, and see what the Van Dorts have been up to while Victor’s been missing! Pro tip – don’t bet on them searching for their missing son!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – didn’t have quite enough time after Game Night (Parcheesi – I THOUGHT about suggesting Clue, but Mom picked the game before I could XD) and writing to watch more CaFae Latte, so instead I went with “Busting More Myths in Baldur's Gate 3” by Proxy Gate Tactician! Because I enjoyed the last myth-busting video and wanted to see what other myths he was going to tackle (pre-Patch 3, at any rate). In order, we had:

I. Will long resting too many times in Act I cause the Druids to complete the Rite of Thorns and seal off the grove? – Nope, none of the triggers for sealing off the Emerald Grove have anything to do with long resting! They’re more about killing people you shouldn’t kill or trying to move onto a new area without heeding the warnings (which triggers an automatic long rest, which Proxy thinks is the source of the myth).

II. Will using Disguise Self really help you avoid getting caught while stealing, or using the cantrip “Friends” on traders (which, on higher difficulties, can fail and make people mad at you)? – Nope, at least pre-Patch 3 – you can disguise yourself all you like, but the people you steal from (directly via pickpocketing or indirectly via looting the area) or attempt to make like you better via magic WILL still be annoyed with you and require compensation/apologies. Which doesn’t make much sense, you were DISGUISED, so it makes sense that they patched it in Patch 3 so people will INTERROGATE you, but not immediately declare you the thief!

III. Is Feather Fall the only way to survive a jump into a certain chasm that leads into the Underdark? – Nope, but it IS your best bet for getting down there, given that most OTHER ways of surviving such a huge fall don’t work in this particular instance. Proxy tested a lot of things that should have kept the unlucky jumper alive – having more health than the game said they’d lose if they jumped; using the Misty Step teleport; protecting them with a magical ward, etc. – and of the options he tested, only the Fly spell/ability allowed the PC to get down to the Underdark alive, and only the Blood of Lathander (a mace with a special ability that can revive you after death) allowed them to automatically resurrect after making the deadly jump. Anything other than those two or Feather Fall insta-killed them if they made the jump – and ONLY Feather Fall triggered the right cutscene for discovering the Underdark via that jump. So yeah – there’s technically other ways to get down there, but just use Feather Fall. It’s easier.

IV. Will disarmed enemies re-equip their weapons in combat? – Yup, but depending on the enemy, they won’t be very smart about it! The testing Proxy did against some goblins showed that they’d only pick up and re-equip their weapon if they couldn’t do ANYTHING else that turn (aka, were stuck in a situation with an unreachable enemy). Otherwise, they’d just charge into the fray with their fists. The comments mentioned some other enemy NPCs (like the Paladins of Tyr hunting Karlach) would pick up their weapons much more quickly, though generally not immediately – like at the end of a round of combat or at the start of their next turn or something. So if you disarm an enemy, you SHOULD go get their weapon, but you don’t have to be THAT quick about it.

V. And does using a trap disarm kit or thieves’ tools successfully consume the item? – Nope, and I was VERY confused to see this one as I thought it was common knowledge you only lost them if the attempt failed (with the in-game explanation being they broke, I believe). However, it looks like a lot of people, Proxy included, were confused by the “Used Thieves’ Tools/Trap Disarm Kit” pop-up that appears and thought that meant the stuff went away even if you successfully used it. Fortunately Larian cleared up how they work in the tooltips in Patch 3, so that should prevent all future confusion!

*nods* Good stuff! As previously stated, I do appreciate how thorough Proxy is at testing all these myths – he will not rest until he can be sure that something is busted or confirmed! Makes you feel sure of his conclusions. :)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, and I didn’t really have anything that needed doing on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler). And even if I had, I was too busy chatting with Nebby to do it, sooo… *shrug* Here we are then!

And there you have it. And now I should seriously consider getting to bed so I'm not up half the night. XD Tomorrow is a Cleaning Saturday (though fortunately just cleaning -- don't have to worry about laundry), with my other goals consisting of getting more written on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" either playing Sims 4 and maybe start working on getting the new Teen Valicer save file ready, OR seeing what I can do with making some PROPER progress on getting Baldur's Gate III with my Bardlock Smiler up and running; and watching some more CaFae Latte. *nods* I would HOPE these are all achievable goals, but we shall see. Night all!

Current Mood: ditzy

crossover_chick

Like, yeah, we got a taste of SUMMER summer today, with temps up in the 90s and heavy humidity. Work wasn't so bad because the AC was on, but at home, we were reduced to shutting all the windows and shades and running as many fans as possible to hide from the heat. Beanbags was NOT happening today, let me tell you! I've gotten it down a not-oppressive temperature with the help of my window and ceiling fans, but I get the feeling sleeping tonight is gonna be a little difficult... Anyway -- let's have the write-up, shall we?

Work – A very quiet day today – after putting on the checks and running the morning reports, I spent most of the day matching scanned cards to ID numbers on our processor’s special scanning site that we use to see the stuff they’ve put on. And looking up a couple of pieces of returned mail. And quietly finishing off a crossword puzzle. XD Yeah, there’s just – there’s just not that much to DO around there right at the moment. It’s getting gradually harder to find ways to keep myself occupied. I’m sure the supervisors will eventually come up with some sort of roster maintenance project for us, but for now, the name of the game is to putter around and look busy. Which should be a little easier for me tomorrow, as I’m doing the GL and looking at failed credit cards again. We’ll see how it goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... It's Cluedo | Oxventure!” The “forcing D&D to be the murder mystery game Clue” shenanigans continued tonight, with such highlights as –

A) The group moving from the billiards room to the lounge to check Ms. Scarlet’s (Emily) alibi (since, despite finding a probable murder weapon, they hadn’t been able to pin it on Reverend Green (Luke), and Ms. Scarlet hiding the revolver in there in the couch so well from the menfolk that even Professor Plum (Andy) and Colonel Mustard (Mike) getting nat 20s on investigation rolls couldn’t uncover it (they found letters instead)

B) Colonel Mustard asking if anyone could read his letter, as it was in French...and then, after Mike checked his character sheet, abruptly recalling that he knew French (you expect Mike to read things on his character sheet? XD)

C) The letters being first, a French missive from a friend of Mr. Boddy’s talking about how he’d heckled Professor Plum at one of his recent lectures and how Plum had given him a look that could kill, giving him a pretty strong motive (a babbling Plum claimed that he’d only come here to give Boddy a piece of his mind, maybe rough him up a bit); and second, an unopened letter from Boddy’s doctor, informing him that he was a medical marvel who was so unallergic to rope he could never be harmed by it (Plum promptly threw the unneeded rope out the window)

D) Reverend Green and Ms. Scarlet getting into an argument about if some flowers growing in the greenhouse were petunias or not, as Scarlet said she was studying them during the time of the murder (Green’s high wisdom score proved him right, but Scarlet claimed to just be bad at botany)

E) The group finally learning from Professor Plum that he was in the lounge, going there, and then demanding to know what he was doing; cue Plum failing to convince anyone he was lounging on a particular piece of furniture and then doing increasingly bizarre “lounges” while insisting he was definitely a lounger XD

F) Ms. Scarlet finding a bunch of Colonel Mustard’s books (pristine personally-signed hardback first editions, no less) in a box labeled “to be shredded,” and Colonel Mustard insisting that was a mistake, he was a war hero, fought off Jerry and such – everyone then insisted “how old are you?” and Johnny was forced to pick a year that synced well with rotary dial phones and Plum being a professor of anime (they chose 1957 XD)

G) Professor Plum VERY POORLY trying to swipe a solid-silver ink pot from the writing desk in the room and hurling it across the shop (because not all of Andy’s rolls could be Nat 20s)

H) Reverend Green, seeing this and determining that Plum might be in poor financial straits, deciding to try and find out via spilling unholy water on Plum’s jacket and seeing how he reacts (via a complicated process of using a “Doom of Ill Fortune” spell of some kind); Plum then retaliated with “Tasha’s Caustic Brew,” shooting a stream of acid into Green’s face and burning him – he justified this by saying that chemicals must have gotten into the tweed while he was working in the “anime lab” (developing rare anime filmstrips!), causing Johnny to just get up and walk away for a moment, clearly wondering what the hell was their life XD

I) The group deciding to split up and search some of the other rooms for clues/potential murder weapons because the NPC Acting Constable Beefs kept throwing bricks through the window essentially telling them to “get a move on,” and Johnny having to admit that, in all the weirdness going on, they’d forgotten to check off what rooms they’d actually visited already XD

J) Professor Plum visiting the kitchen, finding a pot of mustard (which he found very suspicious thanks to being around Colonel Mustard) and a lead pipe on the wall – which proved to be a pipe carrying water when he yanked off, resulting in him getting sprayed, his jacket going off again, and all the food becoming inedible

K) Ms. Scarlet visiting the ballroom, finding more papers proving that Mr. Boddy helped destroy her husband’s fortunes through the use of numerous shell companies, stuffing a few important ones in her pocket, and hiding the rest in the covered grand piano, all the while thinking this work was beneath her (“I know musical notation!”)

L) And, when I left off, Reverend Green visiting the dining room, spying a big bowl of fruit on the table, and promptly taking a giant bite out of a wax apple. Johnny made Luke do a funny voice, then promptly regretted it as Luke wouldn’t stop doing it. XD

Yeah, it’s – it’s been a ride. XD Though a very fun one, I admit! Tomorrow, we’ll wrap this up and see if we actually figure out who the heck killed Mr. Boddy!

2. Continue editing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I have officially started Chapter 2, with the trio walking Victor home through the streets of Nightmarket! Chatting all the way, of course, about such things as:

A) What the Van Dort mansion looks like (Victor had to warn Alice and Smiler it was quite fishy – then hastily clarify in LOOKS, not SMELL)

B) How much Victor now loathes eating fish (with him revealing that he didn’t even know chickens were edible until he was ten, thanks to how much fish William made them eat)

C) When the trio’s birthdays are (thanks to Duskwall having weird double-length months, they’re all actually in the same month, Suran – Smiler was all for having a big combined celebration until Alice revealed that her birthday was the 4th… then they just went “ah well, the birthday holiday for all of Duskwall is right before Victor’s birthday, we’ll make do” XD)

D) And what they might like to do for those birthdays (as Smiler is determined to celebrate them – and as it’s come out that Victor’s never been to the Spark Grounds (too bohemian for his mother’s tastes) and Alice never got to go to the opera (her parents died before they could take her), they already know where to take their new friends! They of course want a big old party for their birthday, but they’ve promised Victor and Alice a quiet corner where they can hide XD)

Yeah, they’ve been busy. XD I do like writing them just TALKING, I have to admit – it’s fun to see where they’ll ramble off to! But I’ve got to wrangle them a bit, as they’ll be coming up on the Van Dort mansion soon...and discovering a whole lot of carriages parked around the place for some reason...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to swap C. M. Alongi for Proxy Gate Tactician today, since I wanted to watch a couple more of his videos! And so I headed to his channel and viewed:

A) “Baldur's Gate 3 - Tips and Tricks For The 9 Skills Every Class in The Game Has” – a bunch of tips, tricks, and advice from Proxy about those abilities every character in the game has – Throw, Jump, Hide, Shove, Improvised Weapon (aka pick up anything and try to hit someone with it), Dip (dip your weapon in something for a few turns of extra damage), Disengage (get yourself out of getting wrecked by attacks of opportunity), Dash, and Help (another character who is dying or suffering a status effect). And while this info was over a year old, it was still pretty interesting stuff! For example, did you know it’s often better to try and jump a distance you’re trying to cover, rather than walk it normally, because you may in fact cover more ground without using as much of your movement per turn? And that you can jump out of dangerous surfaces to take the minimum amount of damage from them? How about the fact that ANYONE can pick up ANYTHING as an improvised weapon (though, obviously, what will work best depends on the character’s strength) and thus be able to bludgeon enemies – especially those weak to such damage? Or the fact that, if you build a tower of 100 boxes, throwing anything at anyone, even an old shoe, will crush them under eighty points of damage due to the height? I mean, Proxy doesn’t recommend you do that, but… XD All in all, a very helpful and interesting video – hopefully I can remember some of these tricks going forward! Especially the “Jump” stuff, all of that seemed VERY useful…

B) “3 Mind-Blowing Exploits In Baldur's Gate 3 (These are Now Sadly Patched Out)” – three weird ways to cheese the game back in the early days that Proxy discovered while messing around (plus a very simple and silly bonus one). In order, we had:

I. If you hit F5 (aka the quicksave button) during the death cutscene you get when the entire party is turned into mindflayers by the Absolute (easily accessed by trying to return to the mountain pass three times after meeting the Nightsong in the Shadow-Cursed Lands), you could reload your game and end up with an entire party of four mindflayers instead of your regular characters. Each with a full complement of mindflayer abilities! And all the other NPCs were too polite/afraid to mention the suddenly squidy change in your characters. XD Great if you wanted a taste of extreme power after getting through Act 1 and most of Act 2!

II. If you positioned the “go back to camp for a long rest” window so the “yes” button was above a companion, then spam-clicked, you could activate the long rest while also activating a conversation with your companion – causing the game to allow you to do the long rest in the game world, instead of actually going back to your camp through the loading screens. You couldn’t do any camp dialogues, so you missed out on the story, and the clips he showed seem to suggest that you might only have been able to do partial long rests, but it allowed Proxy to cut his long-resting time in half when he used the glitch (he had long loading screens), so… Guess it was useful for that at least!

III. If you grabbed a weapon that you normally couldn’t equip because it was too big for you (because it came from an orge or a minotaur or similarly-oversized creature), put it in your inventory, then dragged it over your equipped weapon in the inventory grid so they swapped, that would allow you to equip it! And do some SERIOUS damage to enemies, especially if you were a high-Strength character looking for bludgeoning damage to smash up undead and/or their coffins. Plus the visuals of your character carrying around the oversized weapon were pretty amusing. XD Great for those who wanted an OP monster weapon to make life easier!

IV. And, as the small bonus exploit that straight-up annoyed Proxy, if you changed difficulties (from Tactician to Explorer and back) during the game, you could get your characters a free heal. OP but COULD screw up achievements, according to the comments.

Interesting stuff! I mean, I suppose I’m glad they patched out these obvious glitches, but they looked like they were fun while they lasted. Especially the party of mindflayers – I bet a lot of people had a lot of fun with those!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Did two things over here today:

A) I went into my queue this morning to review and tweak the text and tags on my Song Saturday reblog of “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol (just updating some sentences and clarifying why I originally thought this song was originally a Valicer Soulmates AU song in the tags)

B) Then, this evening, I straight-up reblogged a post by “buckysknifecollection” off my friend Squid about how the point of shipping isn’t to see your ship go canon, it’s to grab whatever canon crumbs you can find and scurry away to put the characters in scenarios. Adding that sometimes the point of it is to open a broom closet, find three different characters from three different fandoms kissing, and realize you’re looking at your most abiding fandom obsession for the foreseeable future. XD I was going to write something about taking your favorites from different canons and throwing them in the soup, but then I remembered that, oh, right, my OTP and OT3 all chose each other and I was just along for the ride, and changed my reblog appropriately. :P It’s weird being in this head sometimes. XD

Valice Multiverse – Didn’t have any asks or threads today, so I went back to “rpmemelibrary” and reblogged the “Presents Ask,” encouraging people to ask me about how my muses feel about giving and receiving presents, how they prepare for gift-giving occasions, if they’ve ever returned or regifted a gift, if they’ve ever given something out of spite, etc, etc. *shrug* It’s something to have up, and the “Caffeinated Drinks Ask” got some attention, so maybe this will too!

Other: My stupid mouse is doing the same “treating a single click like multiple clicks” nonsense that the last mouse (same kind) did, so I decided on a frustrated whim to see if switching it from “wired” to “wireless” mode might help. It was a bit fiddly and I had some trouble with my computer not letting me click on the taskbar right afterward, but I got it resolved, and so far –

Well, it’s not FIXED, not by a long shot, but it is BETTER. I have more luck highlighting things I want to highlight, and it seems to multi-click less – probably because, untethered from the cord, I have more luck moving it into and keeping it in the position that allows it to function the best. I will probably still have to think about replacing it, but I’m hoping this has bought me a little extra time! (Ideally, I’d like to replace mouse AND computer – the latter is five years old and starting to show it a bit – but given the state of the world – yeah, probably better to stick with just replacing the mouse once I’ve milked all usable life out of it! ...that being said, I just tried to highlight something and had a fucking hellish time, so maybe this wasn’t the band-aid I was hoping for. >( )

*sigh* Yeah, I don't think I'm going Alienware again if I replace the mouse. The keyboard and the computer itself have been largely fine, but this is the second mouse in five years, and it feels like they should be lasting a BIT longer. I'll find something else glowy for the next one. *shakehead* In the meantime, though, I really should get to bed -- night all!

Current Mood: hot

crossover_chick

Which is good, because I heard some places got really whacked by the smoke, to the point where people were encouraged to stay indoors with the windows closed. But yeah, it was just a little hazy here, which I appreciated. Got to break out the sandals for the first time today too, which was fun. Gotta get myself used to them again! XD But they are comfy, and I'm glad they've lasted this long. *nods* Anyway -- to the write-up!

Work – Another semi-quiet day – I had a fair number of calls from people getting back to me about stuff I’d originally called them about (mostly credit card related, as you might expect – generally either fixing people’s wonky pledges or shutting them down entirely), and a few reversals to get through near the end of the day. There wasn’t much else to it, though – I did find myself puttering around looking for something to do a few times in the afternoon. Got a bunch of Easter Collection cards from Fiscal at the end of the day, though, so I know I’ll have THAT to do tomorrow. Hopefully other activities will also present themselves!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the Oxventure channel, skipping forward in the one-shot videos to find one that would fit at least semi-neatly into my remaining three days of working out this week! And I did indeed find one that fit the bill: “D&D But... It's Cluedo | Oxventure!” “Cluedo” being the British name for everyone’s favorite murder mystery board game (and 1980s comedy movie starring Tim Curry and Christopher Lloyd), Clue! Yes, for some reason, Johnny and company decided to kitbash together a murder mystery one-shot based on the classic board game using D&D stats and rules, instead of perhaps finding another RPG that might have worked better for such a premise – but then again, this just so happens to be a live show, so maybe they didn’t want to explain a whole new RPG to an entire audience of people at a con. *shrug* At any rate, just like in any good game of Clue, we started things off with a mansion, a staircase, a dead Mr. Boddy at the bottom of said staircase, and four potential suspects milling around the place:

I. Colonel Mustard, played by Mike, an old military man turned writer – Mr. Boddy enjoyed his books and invited him to dinner, though Mustard didn’t find very good company. He was milling around in the library examining the paintings when the body was discovered

II. Reverend Green, played by Luke, a man of what turned out to be a very hellish faith, as Luke’s only green shirt was a DOOM sweatshirt and one of the first things Reverend Green did when he tried to examine the body was stick his thumb in its eye on a nat 1, leading to him slurping it down when Professor Plum pointed out it was still stuck there. XD He was there to show Mr. Boddy the script for the next Nativity play, as Boddy had been so critical of the last one, and had been amusing himself in the billiards room when the maid screamed

III. Professor Plum, played by Andy, who was a professor of anime – but not a very good one, as Andy does not know anime. XD He was in the mansion preparing to give Mr. Boddy a piece of his mind for being so critical of his many papers like “Is This Anime?” and “I Went To Japan, Is That Anime?” XD The room he was in at the time of the murder has yet to be specified, but I’m sure we’ll visit it at some point!

IV. And Miss Scarlet, played by pinch hitter Emily from RPGeeks (as neither Jane or Ellen could make the show), who was the former owner of the house – she and her husband had had to sell it to Mr. Boddy after some bad deals. She was visiting to take in the state of the place, and was not particularly impressed – especially not with the conservatory, where she had been casting her critical eye on the garden when Boddy’s body was discovered

So yes, four people with motive and opportunity – and a distinct need to pin the deed on SOMEONE, because the police officer who showed up to investigate told them that they had to decide among themselves who was the killer, and if there was no consensus, they’d ALL be tried and convicted, and given some extra sentencing for wasting police time. Everyone agreed that was fair. XD And so the murder mystery started, with everyone trying to figure out who dun it, and with what, and where! So far, the highlights of the first chunklet have included:

A) Johnny realizing repeatedly just how hard running a Clue-based session of D&D is going to be, given the characters are capable of doing things like examining the corpse and the murder weapons for clues, instead of relying on straight-up elimination logic XD They also forgot to tell everyone to open their character envelopes at the start (so, you know, the murderer would know who the hell they are), only doing so when Andy kindly pointed it out to them XD

B) Reverend Green touching and poking EVERYTHING (not just Mr. Boddy’s poor eye), rendering all the evidence kind of useless with his fingerprints all over the shop (clumsiness or a clever ruse?)

C) The quartet visiting the library first to verify Colonel Mustard’s alibi, and Professor Plum spotting an odd, three-dimensional shape on the fancy carpet – he immediately yanked it up to expose whatever was underneath, only for a laughing Johnny to clarify that the rope he’d just found was on TOP of the rug, and had just gone flying. XD And then, when Reverend Green examined it, Johnny had to admit it had no blood on it, but that they couldn’t just rule it out for reasons unknown. XD Also Professor Plum decided to steal a painting of Mr. Boddy fighting a lion while shirtless for unknown reasons (though he did previously seem very interested in Mr. Boddy’s abs – man had an eight-pack), and rolled a nat 20 on cutting the painting from its frame. Everyone was very confused. XD

D) The quartet then going to the billiards room to test Reverend Green’s alibi, and finding the balls arranged into a Satanic symbol – apparently, when Reverend Green gets nervous at parties, he slips off and summons a demon to get his confidence back. XD And then Professor Plum managed to “Identify” something in the table (not MAGICALLY, of course, he just looked really hard) and insisted on kicking it apart to find a red-topped spanner, which Colonel Mustard declared was the bloodiest he’d seen (but his Perception roll was really poor, so don’t trust him that). And then Miss Scarlet took Reverend Green aside and tried to charm him with her wiles into saying if he was the murderer, using “Friends” for advantage on the Charisma check and getting a 21 –

Only for Reverend Green, with his enormous Wisdom, getting a 22 on the counter-check and letting her know that he wasn’t telling her anything. And that if he’d done it, it would be a mortal sin, and he’d already be bragging about it. XD I left off with an annoyed Miss Scarlet declaring herself bored of the conversation and flouncing off – tomorrow, we’ll continue this chaotic nonsensical mess of a oneshot and see how goofy it gets from here! My guess is “lots.” XD

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice got through Grout’s latest tape today, featuring him discovering the greater vampiric society of the Camarilla and deciding to accept the title of Malkavian Primogen to keep an eye on all these weirdos as part of his studies, and was thoroughly disgusted with the Camarilla’s handling of this torturing maniac consisting of “he’s capable of making full sentences? Give this man a high and important position!” Especially since she’s just as erudite and is being treated like scum on everyone’s boots. *pats her* Sorry the other vampires are almost all assholes, Alice! At any rate, she got through that nonsense (and pointed out that the Camarilla elevating Grout was a talking point the Anarchs should be using to get people to their side); learned from Cheshire that the mirrors on either side of the fireplace were in fact windows into a mirror-reflected room on the other side; and confirmed with 6768 and 6789 that they were not interested in escape before preparing to move on to the next room. Through a ridiculous trick door hidden in the back of the fireplace, because this IS Grout’s mansion, after all. I left it with her saying her final goodbyes to her new ghoul friends – next time, we’ll continue our jaunt through this horrible house! I’m not even sure we’re halfway through yet, yeeks. O.o Long chapter gonna be long again...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – another night with no Subs meant another night with C. M. Alongi, moving onto “CaFae Latte Season 58 - TikTok Compilation!” This compilation featured:

A) Kelly and her friend Chelsea visiting the cafe to celebrate Chelsea getting out of the sugar baby lifestyle (having graduated college with a computer programming degree and gotten into a great job), and the pair of them thirsting briefly over Oscar (sitting in the corner on his phone on his break), until JC and Husniya told them “not rich.” XD

B) Oscar getting the good news that he now had an apartment! Friend of a friend willing to overlook his bankruptcy-ravaged credit! :D JC, Husniya, Kelly, and Chelsea were all very happy for him, with Chelsea talking about how it kind of sucks to walk into your first apartment with nothing (since, you know, Oscar’s homeless), but how it’s also so satisfying; JC telling him that thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace are his friends for furniture; and Oscar explaining his seraphim nature to Kelly when she asked why he was glowing (happy!). And then explaining how his spouse passed back in the 80s when Chelsea mentioned they would be happy too – outliving a mortal lover is always a risk with seraphim and other long-lived beings, but he got 98 good years with his wife, so he considers himself very lucky. Kelly and Chelsea definitely joined the Oscar Stans after that. XD

C) Bob and Husniya serving a customer, who was very understanding of Husniya needing to emergency-text her husband about kid pick-ups from daycare, and even sympathized with Husniya’s busy-mom-with-young children lifestyle (being a mother of four herself)...and then started talking about how Husniya’s husband deserved a son after learning all of their kids were girls. Fortunately Husniya was able to shut her down pretty quick, and she left without much of a fight (which, lucky for her, spared her a curse). And then Husniya shared a horror story with Bob about how one of her CIA coworkers tried to get Asif to divorce her because she wasn’t pumping out as many sons as daughters for her – fortunately, Asif is a hacker, and was more than happy to spread that asshole’s private message objectifying and slagging off other coworkers around the office. XD

D) Nicole and Lindsey at the Stoughton Street Witches’ coven, organizing things and talking about Oscar’s new apartment (in a bad part of town, so protection charms are a must), when a guy came in and started asking about if it was possible to talk to ghosts. Turns out his father died recently (cancer, they saw it coming), and when he saw a psychic working near him, he decided to see if she could contact his dad. Unfortunately, while real psychics are of course a thing in this universe, they have to be certified, and this one wasn’t (the poor customer didn’t even know they could GET certification), and Nicole pretty much confirmed for him that the woman was using cold readings (guessing at answers based on body language) and hot readings (researching things beforehand on social media) to scam him. Fortunately, Lindsey knew JUST the man to take care of this grifter non-psychic bitch…

E) And Ghost Hunter John showing up at the fake psychic’s place, giving her a bracelet and suffering through a fake reading (based off the fake social media accounts he directed her to), before revealing his con of her, blasting her for hindering people getting over their grief and scamming them, and – after she tried to bribe him to make him go away – revealing that the bracelet had a wire and the police had heard everything. Cue the cops showing up at her door to take her away. XD Nice work, John. And nice work Chris – still very much enjoying these!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and while I got to it late, I did finish off my queued-up reblog on “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol for my Song Saturday! Mostly gushing about how I can totally see it as a Valicer song now – and not just for one universe, but in general! Because I do write a lot of Valicer AUs where it’s them against the world. I might give it another look-over tomorrow, just because I DID get to it late and thus am not entirely sure of my word choice, but it SHOULD be good. I think.

Other: While it was a little hazy and slightly humid this afternoon, it was still nice enough for beanbags when I got home – and I am pleased to report that our games were a lot more even today, with each of us winning, coming second, and coming third! And the games we won were all very decisive wins – Dad won his in three throws, and Mom and I won ours in four each. :) Final scores were me 2-W-3; Dad W-3-2; and Mom 3-2-W. Dunno if tomorrow will be good beanbag weather – it’s supposed to be REALLY hot and humid – but hopefully this trend will continue if we play!

*nods* Not too bad. But now I must head off to bed, for it is late and I am tired and not keeping a decent bedtime. *shakes head* Night all!

Current Mood: sleepy

crossover_chick

Yeah, the heat slowly but surely crept up today...everywhere but in the building where I work, as that seems permanently cold. *shakehead* Granted, I'm pretty sure that's partly because the AC is on (the hallways definitely feel AC cold), but it is kind of weird that it's the beginning of June and I still need a sweater in there at least part of the day. Ah well, I have plenty of light sweaters I can bring with me and then stuff in my bag for the ride home... Anyway, here's the write-up of my day --

Work – A slightly-busier day than yesterday, if only because we actually had some credit card calls (a couple of pledge updates and a payment my coworker took because I was in the bathroom at the time), plus we had to fight with the app that allows us to look at the stuff our processors have scanned in because my coworker couldn’t log in (took their IT guy calling us to fix the issue). But once that was all resolved, most of the rest of the day was me finding roster maintenance tasks to do (like going through the obituaries). There’s just not a lot happening right at the moment! Which does lead to some boring days...but as I have said repeatedly, I strongly prefer “boring” to “stressful.” I’ll find ways to fill the time! And maybe tomorrow will be a little busier, we’ll see. (Watch, I’ll suddenly be thrust into a “careful what you wish for” situation and it’ll be SUPER busy for no good reason tomorrow...)

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – got back on the bike again tonight to pedal my way through:

A) The end of “D&D But... Everyone's A Kobold LIVE! | Oxventure!” The final half-hour of the Adventure To Find The Sour Dindle Leaf saw –

I. Andy’s “Velocity The Weird” and Johnny’s “Meg The Bad Influence” get a nat 20 each to convince the villagers (who saw the kobolds and were like “huh, they look kind of like the shit we worship, we should talk to them”) to first cover themselves in glue and smash themselves together into a giant ball (Andy), and then cover their mouths and noses with the glue (Johnny). This resulted in both a giant pile of glued-up villager corpses, and a bunch of dead kobolds, as Meg was so convincing that they accidentally convinced all of their brethren EXCEPT Velocity to also glue their noses and mouth shut (bye bye Ellen’s “Gortash The Quiet,” who lasted longest among the original set!). And then Meg went ahead and snapped Velocity’s neck just to finish the “total party kill” job. XD

II. The kobolds try to get into the apothecary, which smelled of the leaves they needed, which notably featured Ellen’s new kobold “Discharge the Ceaseless” relentlessly whacking away on the lock with a rock; Jane’s new kobold (I don’t recall the name, she didn’t last long) noticing an open window next to the door –

And then Andy’s new “kobold” EGBERT THE CARELESS rocking up and throwing a bomb at the problem before leaving. XD Luke immediately made it a proper Egbert cameo, because how could you not? I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but I headcanon this as one of Egbert’s adventures before he joined up with the Oxventure Guild in episode 2 – although I’m undecided as to if he was trying to help the kobolds get into the building, or noticed the giant pile of glued corpses and thought (semi-correctly) that the kobolds had done that and should probably be put down. XD Either way, he tossed his bomb, door got blown off the hinges, and all the kobolds died for a PROPER TPK. XD “Consequences for everyone but me!” as Andy was VERY keen to say. XD

III. And the next group of kobolds searching the apothecary with the usual amount of kobold care (I.E., none), and – after some misadventures (including one inventive kobold (Andy) rocketing himself into the ceiling on extendo-legs, and another quizzical kobold (Ellen) thinking herself to death trying to read a book) – finding the leaf and running it back to the cave to force it down Gitvis’s gullet! She promptly did a big fart and felt all better. XD Delightful stuff – I’m glad I rewatched it, it was a lot of fun.

B) The entirety of “Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion Reacts to Horny Comments” by IGN! A very short video of Neil Newbon reading people’s comments about the infamous “sex with Halsin in bear form” sex scene and how thirsty they are for his character Astarion, all in the Astarion voice. Very weird and goofy, but not a bad way to fill out the final few minutes of my workout. XD

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice had a little confrontation with the two ghouls in the sitting room where she ended up at the end of yesterday’s segment today, with one attempting to knife her while the other threatened her with a poker. I’d originally had Alice feed on both women during this segment (drinking from the knife-wielder to stop her trying to stab her, and then from the poker-wielder after the woman volunteered some blood to avoid having it taken forcibly), but after writing Alice noting how thin and fragile the one trying to stab her felt in her grip...well, it just felt like having her then drink their blood was a little too mean. So she just talked to them this time – assuring them that she meant no harm (they seemed dubious), asking if they’d seen Grout recently (nope), and letting them know the way outside was clear if they wanted to escape (they were immediately like “no thanks, we’re good here,” to Alice’s grief). And asking their names, which yielded the numbers “6768” (poker) and “6789” (knife). Alice is pretty much set on trying to kill Grout once she finds him now, as you might expect. *nods* I left off with her preparing to listen to another one of Grout’s audiotapes – tomorrow, we hear the tape and see her reaction! I bet you she’s not going to like it!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check plus, as I managed to get in two videos tonight instead of just one –

A) First up, we had “SIMS 4 FAIRIES PACK OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED! (+ New World Details)” by onlyabidoang! Featuring Abi talking about the confirmation of the “fairy” occult coming to Sims 4 as per a teaser showing a fairy house with a party going on inside at the end of their latest livestream; the “Something Is Growing” website EA put up that’s been gradually releasing new info about the pack over the past couple of days (such as the world included being called Innisgreen, which will have three neighborhoods, including an enchanted forest); and his own thoughts about what features the new occult life state might have (he’s pretty sure it’ll feature a proper skill tree, and he HOPES that fairies in this generation of the game will have more of a connection to gardening and less of a tendency to pull annoying pranks, like they did in The Sims 3: Supernatural. And also that the small form gets a proper showing instead of just being a glowing ball of light. And that fairies will have the ability to properly fly instead of just teleport around. ...Abi, you DO remember this is EA, right?) It was an interesting little sum-up of what we know so far, what we think we know, and what he wants out of the new pack – though he was very clear that they should really be fixing some of the base game bugs, like “weather effects inside houses” and “save gave corruption,” first. *nods* Yeah, that WOULD be really nice, wouldn’t it? But again, EA… (Well, that and fixing bugs DOES take time, sadly.)

B) And second up, we had “Fun With Shorts: Farther Faster Safer” by Josh Way! A classic “this is not-so-secretly an ad for a product” short with a narrator talking a mile a minute about new faster and safer ways to go across the country (starting with cross-country trains before moving on to various types of airplanes, including a big old seaplane) and VERY PROMINENT shots of all these amazing vehicles being lubricated with Pennzoil Products. XD Fortunately, Josh was on hand to make the whole experience a little more amusing: comparing Los Angeles City Hall to an architectural LEGO set (and honestly, I HAVE seen LEGO sets that look like the City Hall pictured in the short); constantly declaring that all the planes on display were delayed for some reason; pretending to struggle to get a word in edgewise when the narrator kept going on and on about how awesome the seaplane was; and comparing the airplane lubricator guys at the end to ice cream truck salesmen (the outfits DID give that vibe)! Good stuff – always nice to see another short back on his channel! I’m fine with his movie reviews, but the riffs are why I stay. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do over on Valice Multiverse, but I was able to ALMOST complete my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue! We have:

A) A reblog of a cool screenshot of the Crockery from A:MR for Wednesday

B) A reblog of a gifset of Emily spinning around right before the climatic wedding at the end of Corpse Bride for Thursday

C) A reblog of some old Smiler OC fanart from “shenanigansz” that I liked for Friday

D) And a reblog of one of my old Song Saturday posts, featuring Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” for Saturday! This is the one that’s not QUITE done, as I didn’t get a chance to finish talking about how it’s now Valicer, nor the updated tags, but I figure I can do that tomorrow. :p

So yeah – very much ahead of the game there! And I’m thinking next week will be the Mega Ghostbusters AU, once I get some more stuff to go with it. *nods*

Other: Another nice day meant another afternoon playing beanbags after I got home from work – and unfortunately, I did worse today, being unable to win a single game despite finally starting to throw better. :( Dad had a pretty decent day by contrast, while Mom had a bad start but came back strong with back-to-back wins – she’s been throwing REALLY well lately, it’s kind of weird. XD Anyway, final scores were me 2-3-3; Dad W-2-2; and Mom 3-W-W. Hopefully if we play tomorrow (it’s supposed to be humid and possibly smoky from the Canadian wildfires) I’ll be able to claim one of those Ws for myself again!

*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose! And now I have to go to bed before my brain gets too keyed up to sleep, as it is trying to do right now. *shakehead* Night all!

Current Mood: ditzy

crossover_chick

Like, it wasn't super productive, but I got some stuff done, both at work and at home --

Work – Pretty quiet day at work – I got in a bit late due to traffic; did the GL; poked through the exceptions and tried contacting some people about stuff; did a little bit of roster maintenance; put on a couple of Easter collection batches; and otherwise tried to find ways to keep myself busy. There just isn’t that much happening there right now! Though I am pleased to report they let us know that half-day Fridays ARE a thing again this summer, so that’s something to look forward to! *nods* So yeah – suspect I’m just gonna be puttering around for the most part, unless a project pops up in the next few days. Which, it just might, so we’ll see what happens!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... Everyone's A Kobold LIVE! | Oxventure!” Tonight’s chunklet saw –

I. Ellen’s kobold “The Quiet” and Jane’s kobold “The Miniature” avoid being taken by a clumsy eagle right outside the bear cave (which crashed and died next to them, allowing them to take the corpse along); stumble across some poachers tying up a recently-deceased deer; ask the poachers if they have any healing leaves, only to find they weren’t the right kind (mostly because they’d been mashed up into a poultice); and get essentially kidnapped by said poachers, who planned to throw them down a well in the nearby village to stop them telling anyone what they saw. Fortunately, “The Quiet” was able to bite one of the poacher’s ears off when he tried to figure out what she was saying while they were being carted along, causing him to drop them and them both to run away; unfortunately, “The Miniature” then had a bright idea about diving into the sewer and drowned in the sewage, and “The Quiet,” in an attempt to find the leaves in the “weird square caves” around, got her arm stuck in a mail slot. XD Still, “The Quiet” is still fucking ALIVE, so that’s a win in and of itself!

II. Andy, Mike, and Johnny go through a fair number of kobolds while they were trying to catch up – “The Kipper” (Johnny), “The Squishy” (Mike), and “The Bear Impersonator” (Andy) all got eaten by the bears back in the cave; Johnny’s “The Showboat” successfully got the bears to run into a wall by doing the old “waving a cloth in front of them” trick like toreadors do, only to get smashed by them; and “The Annoying” (Andy) and Johnny’s next kobold, who didn’t last long enough for me to recall their name, got taken by an eagle when they left the cave. Mike’s “The Tinkerer,” Johnny’s “The Bold,” and Andy’s “Velocity The Weird” (who is indeed VERY WEIRD – Andy used the opportunity to be as off-putting as possible and lightly torment Luke by doing things like touching his hair and stealing his microphone XD) all then managed to find the spot where the poachers had killed the deer, and left some small bear traps around for foxes – although they ended up finding the traps via one snapping “The Tinkerer” in half and “The Bold” straight-up leaping into one. “The Weird” also ended up trapped, but via the method of deliberately prying open the trap that killed “The Tinkerer” and sticking his leg into it. XD He was soon joined by “The Librarian” (Mike) and “The Bad Influence” (Johnny), who – after “The Bad Influence” gave “The Weird” some glue to sniff (“The Weird” ate it instead, confusing BI) and dared him to cut off his own head (“The Weird” tried, but couldn’t manage it) – freed him and followed the trail into the village. I left off with “The Bad Influence” attempting to influence the church-going locals into worshiping Satan – and then having to pivot and try to get them into another god when they turned out to already be Satanists; “The Weird” gluing himself to the road after trying to glue himself to a parishioner; “The Librarian” and Jane’s new kobold “The Soulful” actually freeing “The Quiet;” and “The Soulful” having a good sniff of the town...and smelling something leafy coming from a store nearby… We’ll wrap all this kobold nonsense up tomorrow – I don’t QUITE remember what happens, but I know there’s a very special cameo coming up...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice left the tower walk behind today (much as she would have liked to linger up there longer), heading down into the belly of the mansion again and winding through more bizarrely-set-up rooms. Fortunately, she didn’t have to fight any ghouls this time, just sneak past them with a combination of Obfuscate, well-placed furniture barriers, and being very quick at opening doors. :p She has thus made it all the way to another one of Grout’s creepy and bizarre sitting rooms, with a tape recorder for her to listen to – and, as will become apparent tomorrow, some company for her to deal with…

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – nothing from Josh, so it was straight onto “CaFae Latte Season 57 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi tonight! This was a short one, covering:

A) JC and Bob serving a chupacabra at the cafe, which surprised JC, as they thought those were myths (no, their realm of existence only just started intersecting with Earth’s in the last 30 years) – turns out this one knows Bob, and came in to see if she would put up a coupon code for the products from their sheep and alpaca farm for Hispanic Heritage month (and to give her a nice table runner for the counter)! JC was like “a sheep and alpaca farm? Really?” and the chupacabra was like “I know, but it lets us slake our thirst for blood ethically, and since we have to shear the sheep and alpaca to keep them healthy anyway, we might as well sell the wool, right? Yarn Granny’s a huge customer.” XD Cool to see a more modern cryptid/myth getting some rep!

B) Bob, Cyrus, Nicole, Rethu, Patrick, and Janine all attending a Mabon party hosted by Michael, leader of the Stoughton Street Witches (while JC, Husniya, and Drek held down the fort at the cafe) – featuring Michael accusing Cyrus of somehow cheating at apple bobbing; Patrick being adorable with Mike’s kid (who was giving her pumpkin three eyes); Janine saying that she does not want children but seeing Patrick with that kid makes her almost change her mind; and Rethu saying that they were starting to come around on the “having kids” thing – startling poor Cyrus, who wasn’t expecting to hear THAT! Fortunately Rethu followed it up with “still want to wait another 200 or so years,” to his relief.

C) Rethu and Cyrus having a nice, honest, and frank discussion of the “kids” thing – both of them confirming that, if they do want kids, they want to be a few centuries older (“not until I’m 500,” as per Cyrus) and more settled. And that they’ll probably adopt, given the whole “different species” thing and all (Rethu admitting that one of the reasons she loved Batman was his horde of adopted children). However, the fun was cut short when JC (who arrived on the scene to ask their opinion on whether or not their new maple cookies should be frosted or not – they unhelpfully had different opinions) got a phone call from their sister Kelly, who was apparently having some trouble with one of her sugar daddies...cue Rethu offering herself up as a taxi and Cyrus letting Bob know they were going out on a rescue mission!

D) Rethu, Cyrus, and JC arriving at the house of Barry, the toxic sugar daddy in question...and Rethu and Cyrus quickly discovering that this wasn’t so much a “rescue Kelly from the dangerous asshole” situation as a “keep Kelly from killing the dangerous asshole” situation. Because Kelly is smart and keeps a gun for just these situations. They accordingly turned around and watched the ducks, while JC pointed out that they already had a criminal record, so… Barry let Kelly leave with the bag she’d earned after that. XD

E) And Rethu, Cyrus, and JC checking in with Kelly to make sure she was really all right – turns out what had happened was that Barry had tried to coerce her into doing something on her “no way in hell” list (which she provides to all potential daddies, along with her “yes please” and “I’m fine with these” lists), and when she refused, he shoved her. Causing her to punch him and lock herself in a room to call JC, because unfortunately Barry had been her ride to the house. Now that she was safely out, though, she was going to make sure ALL her fellow sugar babies knew what a dangerous asshole he was, with JC offering to put the word out to Pam, their former hooker friend. Cyrus noted that while they’d saved Barry from a physical murder, he was definitely going to get socially murdered. XD

Good stuff – I’m glad Kelly’s becoming a semi-regular part of the cast now, I like her. :) Given what JC’s parents and aunt Margaret are like, it’s good to see that they have one pretty decent relative. (John, their brother, I haven’t seen enough of to form a proper opinion on yet.)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – it was a Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, and as usual I never got in my drafts – but I did make sure to reblog my friend Satirical Demon’s latest plushy acquisition! “Big D” from “Hunter The Parenting,” which I believe to be some sort of web series based on the World of Darkness “Hunter” line. He is a man who looks something like a professional wrestler with very big chompers. XD But then again, I have a plush vampire bat, a plush Companion Cube, a plush The Smiler teddy bear, and a plush intellect devourer, so who am I to judge? :P

Other: As it was a very nice day today – warm with low humidity – we did indeed play beanbags once I got home from work! And, as has been usual the last few times we’ve played, I did terribly, losing the first two games and only clawing out a win in the third because Dad went downhill. And even then it was only after he’d tied me a couple of times. Final scores were me 3-3-W; Dad W-2-2; and Mom 2-W-3. At least we all won once? *shakehead* We’ll see if I can do better in tomorrow’s game!

*nods* Yeah -- nothing huge, but things were accomplished, and this pleases me. But now I really do need to wrap things up and head to bed. Supposed to be a hot one tomorrow -- we'll see if the forecast is correct or not! Night all!

Current Mood: busy

crossover_chick

Or maybe I should say a very GROGGY one, as I woke up kinda late (after the usual brief early rising to pee -- you can tell I'm approaching middle age), then spent most of the afternoon trying to focus enough to actually DO shit instead of sit around and daydream/look at various Baldur's Gate III mods and wiki pages. (Which, okay, that was supposed to be research for writing down what spells/abilities/skills I wanted to prioritize for Tav!Smiler, but I didn't really get down much -- just some basics on what I need to pick to make them look right, what their classes are going to be, and what abilities they'll be prioritizing. Nothing that I really didn't have written down in some form or another before!) *shakehead* I don't know why I was so tired/distracted, but it was kind of annoying. Didn't help that it was another kinda-chilly, windy, often-cloudy day outside. I'd ask where the hell the summer weather is, but I know -- it's showing up on Tuesday or Wednesday, when the temps are supposed to hit the 80s. *sigh* Why can't it do that on the weekends, when I'm in a better position to enjoy it? *shakes head* Meeeh...

Anyway -- I might not have gotten THAT much done, but I did get SOME stuff done:

Tumblr: Welp, it was another day where nothing was happening over on Valice Multiverse – but while I got on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) rather late today (around noon), I still managed to get some stuff done over there:

A) I spent most of my time before lunch going through some of the older posts on my dash and having a bit of a reblog spree, putting up –

I. A post by my friend Newt collecting a bunch of facial studies of the Dead Boy Detectives cast together (featuring all the main characters – Edwin, Charles, Crystal, Niko, Esther, Monty, and of course his beloved Cat King; don’t watch the show but figured I should reblog out of solidarity :) )

II. A post by “kieren-fucking-walker,” a friend of Newt’s, asking for any assistance people might be able to give to help their mother and their sister get settled in their new council flat – which, thanks to stupid fucking “we have to tear out everything between tenants” reasons, does not have a FLOOR (like, what the HELL – I sent them 30 pounds via their Ko-Fi in response)

III. A post by “idontmindifuforgetme” about JK Rowling using her massive wealth to create the “J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund,” an organization specifically designed to help deny trans people (specifically trans women, who she believes aren’t really women) their rights in as many places as possible, with a follow-up by “mintedwitcher” about how trans people’s lives matter more than nostalgia so don’t watch that fucking reboot nonsense coming out on HBO or something (seriously, how is she that fucking evil?!)

IV. A post by The Satirical Demon showing off a YouTube video “Freshy Kanal” and friends made of a rap battle between Hercule Poriot and Benoit Blanc...which actually involves a bunch more detectives horning in to accuse all the other ones of being shit – including Colombo, which is the whole reason Satirical posted it, as he’s a fan of the guy. XD It was a very fun video, though, especially the surprise little twist at the end when a certain OG detective and his mate came in to teach ALL the other ones a lesson. Good times!

V. A post by “furiousfinstann” about how some Japanese researchers might have a lead on what causes “long COVID” in some people! Apparently some people end up with leftover viral fragments deep in their nose tissues which causes continued irritation and issues, and by swabbing the affected areas once a week with a Q-Tip dipped in 1% zinc chloride solution, the people in the study saw improvements! It’s only one step on the road – there’s a larger clinical trial being organized to confirm the results – but fucking hell, it’s good to see some GOOD news related to this awful fucking virus! (Especially since, apparently, a new variant is bumming around the States, uuuuugh…)

VI. A post by “hermit-frog” with a video showcasing a scene from the movie Sinners, where the main musician at the “juke joint” where most of the movie takes place, Sammie, plays a blues song so beautifully and intensely that he ends up summoning specters of both the past and the future – represented by a variety of Black musicians and dancers (and a couple of Chinese ones, as while the majority of the cast are Black, there’s a Chinese couple important to the plot there too) performing both traditional and modern music along with him (like, there’s traditional African drummers and dancers mixed in with guys playing electric guitar and spinning records on a DJ booth and women twerking). I haven’t seen the movie, but it’s an amazing scene, especially given the way they blend all the different musical styles together so perfectly. Really fucking impressive, let me tell you!

VII. And a post from “ororium-z” featuring an Instagram video of a guy named Mark Kanemura (apparently he’s a dancer, been on So You Think You Can Dance and Glee and in some music videos) doing a fancy dance in honor of the start of Pride – swanning around in rainbow undies and a half-skirt he uses as a cape, whipping a whole rainbow of wigs off his head, fanning himself with a rainbow fan, and finally yanking off a final long-haired multicolored wig off to release a load of confetti, all to “Cut To The Feeling” by Carly Rae Jepsen! It’s kind of a tradition around tumblr for people to reblog it around the start of Pride, and I figured I might as well join in. It’s a fun video. XD

So yeah – busy morning there, as you might expect. XD

B) Then I moved some stuff in my likes to my drafts for later posting, including –

I. A post by “esamastation” about the dangers of writing “snippets” of your fanfic ideas, because those little shits can grow like motherfuckers XD (I added in my tags that, while I can keep them to just snippets sometimes, they can easily grow into monster fics, like the Londerland Bloodlines series, or into a whole TON of shorter fics, like the Valicer In The Dark series – so I’m screwed either way :P)

II. A post by “dreemurr-skelememer” with a picture of a figure labeled “Insane about own AU” (which is about as me as you can get – I rambled in the tags about how all the Valicer fanfic I’d write if I had the time, and how the image primarily applies to my beloved Valicer In The Dark AU, because oh boy am I obsessed with that)

III. A post by “rookamell” about how it isn’t writing that’s the hobby – it’s being insane about fictional characters, and writing is just the only viable outlet (again, an extremely me post, as I am quite insane about Victor, Alice, and Smiler, and writing is the only way to get it all out)

IV. And a post by “randomgirlyoudontknow” that consists of the sentence “love is stored in the fictional couple i’ve gotten overly invested in” and to which my friend Squid, where I found the post, appended the tag “sometimes it’s a throuple or larger polycule but yes” (the third “me” post in the lost, especially with that tag because currently love for me is stored in the fictional OT3 I’ve gotten overly invested in XD I made sure to tag this post with all the ship names for my favorite ships and polycules as a result)

Not exactly what I intended when I said last night that I wanted to work on my drafts over here, but it still counts!

YouTube: Sunday around these parts is Jon and Fallout: London Day, and so this evening we had “Fallout: London - Part 45 - Queen For A Day!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria as she –

A) Did Johnny Shrapnel’s “Prison Break” mission for the Vagabonds, freeing the prisoners on the HMS Dredge and blowing it the hell up! A process that involved Aria napping in a nearby factory until nightfall to avoid the worst of the guards; Aria attempting to sneakily kill the guards at the very front of the boat, and nearly succeeding – until Mad Jack chose to pick a fight with some mittenlurks nearby, drawing the attention of some other guards on the bridge next to the boat and forcing Aria to kill them as well (which at least got her a level up and the first rank of the “Sneak” perk for her trouble); Aria getting into the boat and taking out the guards within with a combination of the silenced crude sniper and the ultra-fast knife she got off Merlin’s corpse (Jon really wanted to do this proper sneaky-like, but kept getting foiled by guards spotting Aria and shooting at her REALLY QUICKLY – he did pull off ONE nice sneak attack with the knife, though!); Aria finding the Vagabond prisoners and attempting to free them via opening up their cells at the nearby terminal...only to guess wrong on the password (123456? Really, Aria?) and have to sneak up to the captain’s room in the bridge to reset it; Aria managing to get up to the bridge and reset the password without too much trouble, easily knifing all the security that got in her way (took a man’s head straight off at one point); Aria releasing the Vagabond prisoners, then backtracking to the OTHER prisoners she found along the way and – after a quick chat with the “leader,” Agatha (aka the only named one) – releasing them as well and cracking open the armory at the back of the ship so they could arm themselves before escaping (Agatha and company taking a tea break in the canteen as she did this because they hadn’t had a decent cuppa in ages XD); Agatha making her way to the bottom of the boat and finally trading her knife in for her nice solid Instigating shotgun to kill all the security down there, before planting the bombs Johnny gave her and getting out of dodge; and Aria murdering the new guards coming in around the outside of the boat before turning and watching the big old explosion as the bombs went off and the boat went up in flames! She was less impressed with how little it had sunk afterwards, but, well, it was docked in a very shallow canal, so there was only so far down it could go. The important thing was, it was definitely out of commission as a floating prison!

B) Returned to the Swan & Mitre to report on her successes to Gaunt, “Chill” Winston, “Bullettooth” Anthony, and Johnny “Shrapnel!” Winston, Anthony, and Johnny were all very appreciative, praising her good work to the skies and giving her things like stimpacks and cricket ball bombs, while Gaunt was – less than impressed, shall we say. He simply couldn’t stop bitching about how Aria should have sabotaged the Syndicate supply line instead of grabbing the train (Winston was like “if that was so important to you, why didn’t you mention it before?!”), or how she risked much for a pittance of guns while clearing out the warehouse (Aria: “I DID blow the place up afterward, you know”), or how the Syndicate would try to spin her blowing up the Dredge as Vagabond terrorism – though at least there he seemed genuinely upset that the blood of the other prisoners aboard would be on their hands. And thus properly relieved when Aria told him, “Hey, I got everyone else out, and they know that the Vagabonds helped them, so…” The meeting ended with the lieutenants firmly convinced of Aria’s greatness, and Gaunt telling her that he needed a few days to think before proceeding with the next stage of his plan to take out the Syndicate. Aria was happy to give it to him – mostly because she was pretty sure she could turn everyone against him when she came back and get him deposed before there was more unnecessary bloodshed. :p

C) Headed over to the Imperial War Museum to both:

I. Deliver Smythe’s orders to the Tommies stationed there, promoting Colonel Major to General and demoting General Asquith to – whatever rank’s below General, I don’t know and neither did Jon. XD She came in to see Major arguing with Asquith about who they owed their loyalty with (Major being firmly on the “The Gentry will promote stability for the people” side, Asquith being on the “we are loyal to the Queen and her people, not those rich twats” side). Aria delivered her message, but, as expected, Asquith made it clear that they wouldn’t be accepting orders from anyone but Her Majesty herself, meaning that Aria had to find a way to get the Queen’s signature on those papers

II. Finally tell that “Mr. Tommy” who gave her the mission to investigate the mysterious disappearance of some Tommies chasing after a distress signal in an old underground station AGES ago what had happened (as Jon had just realized he’d never turned in the quest): that the Tommies had died to ghouls in the station; that the distress signal was the result of a mechanical failure (ruptured pipes) and that when she’d tried to repair the damage, the whole place had self-destructed; and that she’d returned with this unique shotgun as proof of her words (well, TECHNICALLY – Jon wasn’t sure if she actually had the gun in her inventory or not, but Mr. Tommy was able to examine it regardless). Mr. Tommy was very sad to hear of his fellow soldiers’ deaths, but glad that they now had answers as to what had happened and that the distress signal wouldn’t be bothering the higher-ups anymore, and told her to feel free to keep the shotgun as a reward. Aria was like “thanks, but my Instigating shotgun is SOOO much better, seriously.” XD

D) Headed back to Buckingham Palace to figure out how to get the Queen’s signature on the orders promoting Major and demoting Asquith – which Jon suspected would be difficult, as Aria had sure as hell not seen any queens about the first time she visited the Palace. However, after chatting with a guard outside about the purpose of her visit, she was directed to a wing she hadn’t been in before, with a locked room at the end of it –

And something screaming and thumping around behind the door, making the entire hallway shake. Jon promptly went “okay, the Queen’s a feral,” and a visit with Princess Elizabeth, Dr. Hebertson (from Angel’s secret de-feralization lab), and Smythe’s voice over the telephone confirmed that the poor woman was a mindless monster. Aria was like “so, um, how the hell do I get her to sign these papers without getting my limbs chewed off?” –

And Smythe told her, “ask Dr. Hebertson – you already helped him find the answer, after all.” Yes, it turned out that, after Aria’s good work in helping him create and test his de-feralization serum, Hebertson had come up with an even better version, and was more than willing to let Aria test it on the Queen to see if it would bring back some mental stability. Aria thus collected the serum; got the key to the Queen’s quarters off Princess Elizabeth; and then ventured inside the royal chambers to find the erstwhile monarch. She was briefly distracted by the adorable corgis roaming around (they were so cute!), but soon located the feral Queen Victoria II, and managed to incapacitate her with Mad Jack’s help (with Jon yelling at Jack through the screen the whole time to NOT KILL HER PLEASE). One jab of the experimental serum later, and the Queen regained at least some of her senses (represented by the vicious feral version of Victoria II exploding into the saner ghoul version with nicer clothes – I know that they were probably limited in the animations they could use to represent the change, but that was still VERY funny XD), and was able to sign Aria’s papers. Though Jon did note afterward that, since the Queen is now dependent on Hebertson’s serum to stay even partly sane (Hebertson even lording it over Princess Elizabeth that he would have to keep the Queen in his care to see the long-term effects of the serum – meaning that, no matter what she said, her mother WAS his pet science project, thank you very much), Angel had just basically turned the queen into their puppet figurehead. Very sneaky, Angel – very sneaky indeed.

E) Had a heart-to-heart with Mad Jack on their way back to the Tommies to deliver the now-Queen-approved orders, prompted by Mad Jack deciding he idolized Aria after she stole some ammo. XD Jack told her that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the horrors of his childhood ever since he told her about them, and how it made him sick to think of the people who did that to him being HAPPY and never getting their just desserts. Aria, a little concerned, told him that he had to get over it sometime, and he said he knew that, it was just hard – but he thought that she could help him with it. Because, you see, he’d gotten a letter from an old cellmate of his shortly before she’d come into his life. A letter that he’d only recently found the courage to open –

And which he’d discovered had the names and last known locations of the people who’d tormented him and turned him into their killer attack dog! Meaning he now has a way to find them all and get revenge for himself and all the other people he tormented. He asked Aria to help him with this, saying that he really did want to forget and move on, but felt like this was the only way he could. Aria cautiously agreed, and Jack thanked her and said that he was going to get some supplies from his old gym, and to meet him over at the Pilgrim once she was ready to go. So yeah – seems like Jack’s companion mission will be all about bringing some justice to the gang that hurt him so. I am all for it.

F) And finally, delivered the orders demanding he step down and promoting Major in his place to General Asquith, who – after some grumbling about his station – finally submitted thanks to the Queen’s signature. The newly promoted General Major proceeded to give a rousing speech about getting out there and making the streets safe again to his men, rallying them to get out there and do their duty (with Jon warning them not to do TOO good a job, because otherwise Smythe wouldn’t be able to enforce marital law) –

And right after, one of the second lieutenants approached Aria and told her she had a call on the new General’s personal line. Unsurprisingly, it was Smythe, who congratulated Aria on her good work with the Tommies but said that there was one more thing that needed to be done before they could officially meet in person – bring down any and all rebellion in London by uniting the people against a common enemy, a fabricated monster that threatened their lives and livelihoods –

Angel! Yes, Smythe had decided to take advantage of the fact that people now knew of the organization’s existence, but not how deep it had gotten its claws into the government, to terrify the people into obedience by saying she was their only hope to stand against it. Basically “pulling a Palpatine,” as Jon called it – controlling both the government and the government’s enemy so they’d both do what she wanted. She thus directed Aria to Land’s End Inn in Peckham to pick up her luggage in Room 5 and prepare to bring Angel to the world stage…

And that is where Jon chose to end things, because who doesn’t like a bit of a cliffhanger! :P Though we’re going to have to hang from the cliff for a while, because next week, Aria’s focusing on completing Mad Jack’s companion quest and seeing if she can get him to resolve things with a minimum of violence (just for his own mental health, mind, not because the people who tormented him don’t deserve a horrible death). And hopefully also checking back in with the Vagabonds and getting Gaunt out of the leader’s seat already. We’ll see what happens next week – I am looking forward to it!

Workout: Back on the bike this week, and back with the Oxventure videos as I hit the next one in the upload order: “D&D But... Everyone's A Kobold LIVE! | Oxventure!” Which – is actually one that I’ve already seen, just not on the official Oxventure channel. This was done at a con – MCM, to be specific – and was originally uploaded on the con organizer’s official YouTube channel, which is where I watched it the first time. However, I recalled it being a very funny adventure, so I decided there was no harm in watching it again and officially marking it off the Oxventure channel! :D As this was uploaded about a year ago, I will quickly bring you up to speed on what’s going on – the premise of this one-shot is that a bunch of kobolds (played by Andy, Johnny, Mike, Jane, and Ellen – Luke is our lovely DM) have been tasked with going to the dangerous lands of The Surface to retrieve a special leaf to help cure their ailing leader, Gitvis (tended by her successor, Era the Vacuous, aka the kobold who survived the longest in the FIRST “D&D But...Everyone’s A Kobold” video). However, since they’re kobolds, and thus only have 5 HP, it is expected that nobody is going to be playing the SAME kobold for very long as they tackle the various dangers along the way. So every time someone’s kobold dies, they get up and get a new one from the “kobold vending machine” – aka a big cardboard box filled with pieces of paper containing suggestions from the audience – and then that kobold catches up with the others and joins the adventure to keep the action going. Each kobold has a name and an identifying trait, and the comedy comes from how the players express that identifying trait, and how ridiculously the kobolds die as they attempt to complete their goal. So far in the first half-hour, we’ve had:

I. Mike showing up a little later than the others in the intro...because he’d bought a dragon onesie with incredibly short shorts and had changed into it right before coming on to do a “so we’re not doing costumes?” gag. XD And those short shorts do not cover a lot, let me tell you – he’s not flashing the audience whenever he stands up to grab a new kobold, but it is a VERY near thing! XD

II. One of the first kobolds being “Izzy The Wizzy,” played by Andy, who rolled a nat 20 on “urinating freely” and ended up basically hovering thanks to the stream, only to then think himself to death trying to remember what he knew about leaves after being assigned their important mission

III. Mike’s first kobold being “Amelia the Furious” who died attempting to fight the sun (her neck snapped when she tipped it back too far)

IV. Johnny getting a little too into their role as “Astor the Smug” and telling poor Jane to not forget Disadvantage on a roll that didn’t actually require it and getting very embarrassed, poor enby

V. And, in terms of the main quest, the kobolds coming across a bear cave on their way out of the darkness of their dungeon with a sleeping mama bear and two playing adolescent cubs that they had to get past! Cue Jane’s first kobold, “Lyrical the Lavish,” dying in a very lavish way to bear claws (blood jetting EVERYWHERE); Andy’s next kobold, “The Unimaginative,” dying because he insisted on not paying attention to what he thought were just big furry rocks (he simply couldn’t imagine dying!); Mike’s next kobold “The Squishy” getting the sleeping mother bear involved by CLIMBING INTO HER MOUTH to try and stab her – and then getting tangled in her uvula; Mike then making up for that by managing to talk Luke into not insta-killing him when the other bears dragged him out by saying his squishiness should protect him (so that kobold’s now just down to 1 HP, yay); Johnny managing to distract the bears from all the other kobolds by pulling a kobold identified “The Kipper” and deciding that meant they were actually a fish that had been raised as a kobold XD; and Andy pulling a kobold called “The Bear Impersonator” of all things – and then flubbing the roll to try and talk the bears out of attacking his friends, because he didn’t know bears don’t speak Common (and also his costume makes him look like a green gummy bear, not an actual bear, because he had no idea what a bear looked like). He at least managed to nonplus the bears a bit?

So it’s been – chaotic, so far. XD And yeah, don’t worry about the kobold’s first names, it’s always the “The [blank]” part that’s important when it comes to identifying these little buggers. XD Anyway, I left off with Mike, Andy, and Johnny’s kobolds “The Kipper” (Johnny), “The Squishy” (Mike), and “The Bear Impersonator” (Andy) still dealing with the bears, having not YET died to their fearsome claws; and Ellen and Jane’s kobolds “The Quiet” (Ellen) and “The Miniature” (Jane) having actually made it out of the cave, yay! Tomorrow, we’ll see who else manages to get past the bears and join them on their quest to find that damn leaf!

So yeah -- maybe not a total loss of a day, but definitely not as productive as I would have liked. *shrug* What can you do. Besides go to bed, because I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow's a workday after all! Hopefully it won't be a bad one...night all!

Current Mood: groggy

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faerie_music_box

June 2025

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faerie_music_box

Reading

Tired Saturday

Sort Of Stressful Friday The 13th

Busy But Actually Rather Pleasant Thursday

Wound Up Wednesday

Pretty Good Tuesday

Happy Birthday Victor Van Dort!

Fucking Mouse Sunday

Drenched Saturday

Typically Scattered Friday Evening

Hot As Hell Thursday

Not Too Smoky Wednesday

Warming Up Tuesday

Somewhat More Productive Monday

Very Lazy Sunday

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June 2025

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