I wish...

Yeah, uh, late fall has chosen to come back for a while -- today was cloudy and cold, with temperatures in the low 50s all day. We had soup for supper, for fuck's sake! Soup! In MAY! *shakehead* The weather has gotten really fucked up as of late, let me tell you. And tomorrow's supposed to be even worse, with heavy rain and high winds. And I have a car inspection in the morning, lovely. *grumbles* I really hope that a) 9 AM isn't the height of the storm and b) the inspection doesn't take long. I don't want to be out and about any more than I HAVE to be tomorrow.

*shakehead* Anyway -- have the daily write-up:

Work – A middling Wednesday to end my work week, I’m afraid to report – I ran into some computer issues during the day (a check scanner that wouldn’t properly restart after an item misfeed, and my computer randomly flashing a black screen at me trying to update some Intel component until I forced a restart), my coworkers were rather annoying behind me today (reality TV nonsense mostly), and my ride home wasn’t great thanks to an accident I had to get around (RIGHT where two lanes merged, bleh). Fortunately, the work itself wasn’t too bad – I eventually got all the checks scanned; did the morning reports; called a few people about credit card stuff; went through the exceptions from our processing company; took some credit card calls; and finished off the roster maintenance project I was working on. *shrug* Made the day go by, at least! And now I am free for five whole days, hooray~

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike yet again, and back with “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by Oxventure yet again! Today saw Backpacker Pearl (Ellen), Skull (Andy), and New Yorker Meowth (Johnny) –

A) Open the mysteriously-heavy backpack and find it was full of Rare Candies! The kind that help speed up a Pokemon’s evolution. Meowth was VERY interested, and VERY pleased when Pearl kindly gave them one (acting a bit like an addict who had been denied a fix for a while). She also gave one to Spearow for being a good Pokemon –

And then Skull was like “I have this useless Magikarp on my team, you wanna help me evolve it with those?” Cue the gang stuffing twelve rare candies down its gullet until it finally basically exploded into a Gyarados (a much bigger, much more dragon-like Pokemon). Skull’s attempts to stuff it into a Pokeball resulted in it biting him – and then, when he let out a pitiful scream of pain – swallowing him as an unfit trainer. Pearl tried to scold it into spitting him out, and managed to impress it a bit with her moxie (also her trying to get Spearow to attack it) –

Aaaand then it transpired that the swallowed Skull had taken advantage of the fact that the Gyarados hadn’t had time to DIGEST the Rare Candies and – upon landing in the stomach – had scooped them up and eaten them himself. As they’re meant to evolve Pokemon, they had no effect on him, besides being tasty –

But they sure as hell had an effect on Gyarados, who promptly lost all its levels and evolution and turned back into a Magikarp. Cue Skull ending up basically wearing an overstretched Magikarp skin like a mascot outfit, and Meowth being like “uh, kid, this is the kind of thing that gets you kicked out of Team Rocket for being TOO horrifying and destructive. Also, that was Team Rocket property you just destroyed.” XD Skull wasn’t too worried about them coming after him for a Magikarp, though, and to be fair – it’s a Magikarp. The franchise itself likes to harp on about how weak and horrible it is. XD

B) Find their way to the very center of the mountain, where they encountered a spire of rock, pushed up by tectonic activity, with some valuable-looking fossils on it...being examined by a kid. A kid in a hat. With a pair of Pokeballs on his hip. Pearl and Skull quickly conferred and decided that the best thing to do was to send Pearl’s sneaky Ekans to try and steal the Pokeballs so the kid would be at a disadvantage if it came to a fight, and Ekans managed to get all the way up to the trainer and get its jaws around one ball –

And then a familiar yellow face with long ears and pink cheeks popped up over the trainer’s shoulder, hissing “chuuuu” quite menacingly. Yup, the final boss of the mountain was none other than the world’s most famous Pikachu and – well, Luke named him Trainer Red from the games, rather than Ash Ketchum from the anime, but still. :P Cue a battle in which Plant-Skull the Weepinbell failed repeatedly to put any of its opponents to sleep; Pikachu however similarly kept insisting on shocking Plant-Skull despite Weepinbells being resistant to electric damage; Skull got into a slap-up with Trainer Red, and – despite his kidneys – eventually successfully grappling him; Trainer Red managed to get his Geodude out BRIEFLY, before Skull managed to press the “recall Pokemon” button on his ball (Geodude was frankly kind of relieved to not be part of this mess); Pearl stuffed the remaining six Rare Candies down Ekans’s throat to evolve it into an Arbok; the Arbok actually scored a successful hit on the nimble Pikachu, poisoning it while Plant-Skull FINALLY managed to smack it around with a Vine Whip attack; and Skull managed to successfully render Trainer Red unconscious without killing him (it was a near thing, given Trainer Red only has four hit points, same as them, but fortunately Luke made the Constitution saving throw). All while Meowth wrote letters to his ex-wife and son apologizing for not being a better husband and father respectively, then started his paperwork for the mission early, listing both Pearl and Skull as “Deceased” because he was pretty sure they weren’t making it out. XD That’s where I left things off – tomorrow, we’ll wrap this up with the end of the fight! And it’s not looking good for Trainer Red or Pikachu – because not only is Skull being his usual chaotic self, Pearl has realized that snagging that Pikachu is the ticket to getting her beloved backpack back from Giovanni...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice made it back through the atrium and into the newly-unlocked big staircase room today, where she worked her way around until she found the candle lever on the side of the staircase that opened the trap door at the top. Unfortunately, since she hasn’t maxed out her Obfuscate yet, this meant that she had to turn visible to activate it...which meant that a couple of the ghouls attacked her – specifically, the clawed man and – after Alice took him down – one of the ladies. Alice ended up shooting both with her shotgun, and felt pretty horrible about it afterward, trying to assure the other women cowering in their corners that she wouldn’t attack them if they didn’t attack her and that she really wanted to get them help, all to no avail… :( Yeah, it was not a fun time. And it’s not going to get any better as she continues her journey through the house, that’s for sure...sorry, Alice – this is going to be a rough chapter for you.

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one GrayStillPlays video today: “Testing big car wheels vs big bike wheels in GTA 5!” Yes, today we had a team-based point-earning challenges, with the wacky-wheeled cars going up against the wacky-wheeled motorcycles (specifically the tiny-sized, medium big, and huge wheels on the cars versus the tiny-sized, large slim, and large fat wheels on the motorcycles). Each challenge was worth a point, and whichever team managed to pick up the most points by the end got the win. So let’s get right on it, starting with:

I. Five sets of stairs, with each set getting one meter shallower and one meter taller – so you started with very long but not very tall stairs, and ended with pretty short and very tall stairs. The tiny-wheeled car showed an amazing aptitude for merging with the stairs, and the big-wheeled car got decently far before beginning to breakdance all over the place, but the ultimate winner was the Large Fat Tires Motorcycle, which used its completely baffling aerodynamics to soar to the top and get a point for the bikes!

II. A gradually-narrowing road with a bunch of sideways wind turbines embedded into it, their slowly-spinning blades becoming gradually bigger and bigger speedbumps for Gray to deal with – and Gray had to deal with them AND jump the gap at the end in under 26 seconds if he wanted the point. The Large Fat Tires Motorcycle kept getting its rear end smacked around, and the tiny-wheeled car got stopped by basically the first “speedbump,” leaving the ultimate winner as the Huge Tires Car – which, it took QUITE a few tries to make it to the end in the time limit, but it managed it eventually, and scored a point for the cars!

III. A very long, very bumpy Minecraft tightrope, with various gold and diamond swords sticking through it, that Gray had to traverse in 25 seconds or less if he wanted to progress. The Huge Tires Car did its best, but its general bounciness and giant size meant it was uniquely unsuited to weaving around the sword hilts; while the Medium Big Tires Car did better, but couldn’t get to the end in time –

And then the Large Slim Tires Motorcycle did the challenge first try, no problem. Gray, who had just said that he didn’t know of anything this bike excelled at, was pretty dumbfounded. XD But that brought the score two-to-one in favor of the bikes!

IV. A long submerged tightrope road that Gray had to follow, going around various curves and taking various hairpin turns, all while the road sunk deeper and deeper into the water. And again, there was a time limit – 69 seconds, natch. :p Gray gave the Large Slim Tires Motorcycle a try, but when it proved to flood out if he stopped moving for a second even near the start of the challenge, he promptly switched over to the Huge Tires Car as the only one that could stay out of the drink long enough to complete the challenge. And complete it it did, though it took a couple of tries for Gray to learn all the turns and such. But it got there in the end, and tied the score back up two-two!

V. And finally, a challenge where Gray had to drive through a very contained slice of a neighborhood – bouncing off rooftops and driving through yards and taking out people’s fences – in under 30 seconds to reach the ramp to the final win. Gray attempted the challenge with the Huge Tires Car, but it almost immediately got possessed and refused to stop break-dancing, forcing Gray to grenade it –

And swap back over to the Large Slim Tires Motorcycle, which – after the requisite handful of failed tries – managed to get enough air to make it to the end of the challenge, and thus the win! Meaning the bikes won this one three-two! Just goes to show, when you want big tires, put them on a motorcycle, not a car. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – another Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day where, with no immediate need to stick anything in the queue, and other things distracting me, I didn’t actually get anything done over here. Hoping to finish off some drafts over my long weekend instead!

And there you have it! And now I have to get to bed, because, as stated, I have a morning car inspection, which means no sleeping in tomorrow -- I have to get up regular time. After that's all done, though, goals include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; keeping up with the YouTubes (in particular, the OXBoxtra lists of the week); and -- well. Our plans for the long weekend include going out mini-golfing if we can, and so far the best day for that is looking like Sunday. So I'm thinking I'm going to play some Fallout 4 tomorrow, do some Mechanist stuff, and then update the FO4 Playthrough Progression accordingly. Meaning I'll be working on "The Van Dort Vacancy" Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. *nods* I think this is a good plan, but we'll see how tomorrow goes -- night all!

It wasn't exactly FUN -- my coworkers showed up at basically the last second; the whole thing went on for way too long; and then my parents were late coming to get me (I'd had them drop me off because there was no parking to be had around the building for the regular employees) because there was some sort of accident on the highway. And it was a pretty chilly day today, so it wasn't exactly pleasant to wait. But I got through it, and now all that remains is to see if this one makes me sick too (as I caught Covid after the LAST one of these a couple of years ago). Just gotta see how I feel in the morning!

Happily, the rest of my day was pretty nice:

Tumblr: Good day over in tumbl-land, I am happy to report –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I was pretty damn productive over here today, if I do say so myself:

A) First, this morning, I took a moment to edit my tags on the reblog of the “if i'm not supposed to be attracted to the rollercoaster then why'd you make it so attractive huh.” post sitting in my drafts, to better explain how my Valicer OT3 came about (specifically, to explain how it’s all Victor’s fault since he’s the one who wanted to date the coaster – I just wanted to use the themes in fun sexytimes between him and Alice!)

B) Then I spent the rest of the morning working on the “How To Write Smiler Alton” post! Because I’d like it to be ready to post next week, as a lead-up of sorts to Smiler’s birthday next Saturday (the 31st, opening date of the coaster). I didn’t complete it, sadly – figuring out the wording for some of the bits proved pretty hard – but I got through a good chunk of it, covering the “Big,” “Cheerful” (and the different levels of such), and “Charismatic” portions of their personality, and getting a start on the “Intelligent” bit. Hopefully I can use some of my extra time this long weekend to get it sorted! There shouldn’t be that much more left, but you know me – writing up this stuff always takes a while.

C) And then, tonight, I got my queue for the rest of the week sorted, with:

I. A third reblog of the “Help: How Do Tav!Smiler in BG3???” post for Wednesday, just to get it out there one last time (who knows if it’ll help, but I figured I could at least try)

II. That post with all the VTMB-inspired keychain designs I put into my drafts earlier for Thursday (they’re pretty~)

III. A Severance gifset comparing Helly (Innie!Mark’s love interest) and Gemma (Outie!Mark’s beloved wife) and showing off how they’re actually kind of similar (it’s cute and makes me hope for World’s Weirdest Polyamory for the three of them XD)

IV. And a video of someone performing BOTH Christine and the Phantom’s parts during the big “Phantom of the Opera” musical number, with the help of a double-sided costume and a looot of breath control (very amusing AND very impressive, an excellent combination)

So THAT’S all good! :) Nice to be fully ahead of the curve.

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anonymous ask to put in the queue, featuring two anonymous people arguing if “Good morning” counts as a quote from Confucius, with one being like “oh, so you think he NEVER said good morning to anyone ever?” XD I had High School!Smiler offer up that they couldn’t prove that Confucius was a late sleeper and thus greeted everyone with “Good afternoon,” to Victor’s amusement. XD They couldn’t resist being silly!

Writing: Edited another page of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” this afternoon after the Mass, which featured Alice first realizing that the candle puzzle opened up the door she’d seen before in the atrium (the one with all the weird bands on it holding it closed), then very reluctantly listening to Dr. Grout’s second audio diary in the library at Wonderland’s urging. You know, the one where he laments the death of the traditional insane asylum, and all the horrors that occurred within. *wince* Yeah, uh, Alice is struggling mightily with the desire to murder this guy the minute she sees him, as you might expect from a former patient at Rutledge. And she’s pissed off with all the elder vampires (aka Strauss) who were apparently perfectly fine with this guy extolling “blissful gurgles of the lobotomized” and possibly kidnapping people off the street to experiment on them! Basically, she is not in a good mood – and given I’m about to send her into a room where she can’t just sneak past or knock out all the ghouls like she’s been doing, it’s only going to get worse...

YouTube: No Subs Tuesday again this week, so – since I had some extra time thanks to finishing my writing early – I went instead with a double-shot of CaFae Latte by C. M. Alongi! :D Hooray for getting to watch more than one episode at a time. We had –

A) First up, “CaFae Latte Season 49 - TikTok Compliation” – aka “the really dark one.” This season featured:

I. The gang doing their best to figure out what happened to Cyrus, with Husniya getting help from her husband’s FBI friends (everyone was a bit “…” over that), Patrick and Janine out driving around trying to find him and his car with Rethu providing aerial support, and JC trying desperately to phone Erik to see if he could help – only for him not to answer…

II. Cyrus waking up in the Stone Oak Coven kidnapping basement, learning from the head witch that they’re planning to have him harvested for parts but their doctor was running late, and after being a little snarky, getting one of the henchmen to scratch his nose – and then biting off his finger

III. The witch and henchmen discussing the Cyrus situation, with the henchman who got his finger bit off being all for putting a bullet in his brain – head witch said no, that would damage the merchandise, they’d just stay well away from the fairy; there was also a discussion of how their client basically “gave” them the fairy by putting a bad luck charm in his car, and how, as a result, he was getting his immortality potion for half off…

IV. The gang continuing to look for Cyrus, with Husniya’s husband getting them the address of a place the Stone Oak Coven just bought, and Patrick finally picking up his scent; meanwhile, the doctor finally arrived at the location, and they started discussing plans on how they were going to kill Cyrus – only for a VERY BLOODY Cyrus to show up with a knife, revealing that he knew how to get out of handcuffs and that the three henchmen they left him with were very dead…

V. Patrick and Janine arriving at the place just in time for Janine to catch the fleeing doctor...and then discovering that Cyrus managed to kill ALMOST EVERYONE ELSE IN THE BUILDING (obviously he didn’t catch the doctor, and he left the henchman whose finger he bit off alive) with the help of the glamoured knives disguised as pins on his hat; he also revealed that he’d overheard some stuff before his murder spree –

VI. And cue a furious Bob and JC arriving at Erik’s, where it was revealed that Erik set all of this up to get an immortality potion (Cyrus called him from the witch’s cell phone, which had records of all of their calls and texts). Erik claimed that they told him that they could do it WITHOUT killing Cyrus (and that he wasn’t going to pay them if they did), but Bob noted that the fact that Erik was still okay with Cyrus getting HURT for it was – upsetting, to say the least. Erik tried to weasel out of it with a “no harm no foul,” but Bob pulled a knife and refused to let him off that easy. Instead, she gave him a choice – he could be arrested and put in prison for what he did, all nice and legal, or she could sell her morals, get him a fruit of immortality from some pretty nasty acquaintances of hers in the Fae Realm, and give it to him with a curse – for as long as he lived, he would never have a friend, ally, lover, or even a pet. Erik, in the first smart decision he made all episode, chose to be arrested (asking just for a beer before they went to the station).

VII. And finally, Bob and Cyrus having to talk JC out of quitting because they knew their baker was only doing it out of misplaced guilt (JC having been the one to talk Bob into hiring Erik in the first place). They both firmly insisted that it wasn’t JC’s fault, only Erik’s, and that neither of them blamed them…
And then Cyrus used the opportunity to guilt JC into making cupcakes (which JC had refused to make previously, considering them inappropriate for a coffee shop) for the bakery to sell for a week. According to him, the resentment and fury really bought out the flavor. XD Nice to see things end on a lighthearted note after such a heavy episode. Fucking hell, Erik...you could have had a family there, but no. Shame.

B) And second up, “CaFae Latte Season 50 - TikTok Compilation,” aka “the one where Cyrus and Rethu get together!” :D This season featured –

I. Bob finally revealing to Husniya that she’d figured out she was a CIA agent sent to keep tabs on her (it was the way she read people and her response to Cyrus’s kidnapping) – Husniya owned up to it, confirming that both she and her husband were part of the agency (said hubby, Asif, is her handler, since he can’t lie to save his life) and asking if Bob wanted her to put in her two weeks; Bob said no, she wasn’t ready to lose another employee yet, and she and Cyrus were fine with the government watching them (and ONLY them – Husniya immediately confirmed she hadn’t told on any of the other employees or customers), so Husniya could continue working there. Though she would owe Bob a favor, so we’ll see how THAT plays out in the future…

II. Rethu going around to Patrick’s to ask his advice because they’d recently realized they were in love with Cyrus (well, they knew they were getting a crush on him, but the kidnapping kind of cemented the feelings), and they need to know if there were any “landmines” to look out for. Mainly, if Cyrus had truly moved on from the death of his last partner, Sean. They just didn’t want to make things awkward, you know? Patrick was like “look, I’m sure it’ll be fine, but for you I will try to do the ‘sneakily finding out if your crush likes you’ thing so we can avoid any potential drama. Because I only like that in books.” :P

III. Patrick checking in with Cyrus after finishing off their current D&D campaign with Janine, Toothy, and Drek (Drek wants to DM the next one!) and trying to sneakily figure out his feelings by talking about his own upcoming romantic getaway with Janine and the fact that they should invite Rethu to the next campaign – however, Cyrus knows his best friend, realized something was up, and got him to spill by revealing JC figured out dog-safe fudge. And then, right after Patrick spilled, revealed he’d been into Rethu for MONTHS. He’d just been reluctant to make a move because a) Rethu’s demi and it felt presumptuous, and b) he wanted to make damn sure that they were truly over the “love spell” incident with Jenny, because, you know, traumatizing. Patrick agreed that was probably for the best but said it was time to resolve things with an honest conversation, and Cyrus groaned and agreed. XD

IV. Cyrus having an encounter with a customer who needed help with figuring out what one of the pride flags stood for – only to have a blue screen moment when it turned out she knew exactly what “asexual” and “aromantic” meant, she just thought that the aromantic flag was the asexual one. Like, it was a good blue screen, but still. (Meanwhile, in the background, Bob cursed another customer for being a total dick about the LGBTQ representation, and good for her.)

V. Cyrus talking about his encounter with Rethu (he/him that video as per his pin), who was similarly shocked; confirming that Rethu was doing okay in the wake of Jenny; then telling Rethu that he’d learned about his feelings from Patrick and that he wanted to take him on a date. Rethu was a little annoyed at first that Patrick had spilled, but eagerly consented to the date, and they agreed to Friday. <3

VI. Husniya and Asif reporting back to their boss about the latest happenings in the cafe (also revealing that Erik used a plea deal to get his sentence down to three years, and that while he’d had no contact with any CaFae Latte staff, he should probably be watched)...and then Husniya dishing to Asif all about Cyrus finally asking Rethu out on the drive back to their house XD

VII. And Cyrus and Rethu’s date (with bonus JC being stunned because THEY didn’t see this coming at all; Drek, by contrast, thought they were ALREADY dating XD) – featured them going out to Rethu’s favorite Hebrew place; a brief argument over the relative merits of Jane Austen over Alexandre Dumas after Cyrus paid for Rethu’s one-minute book dash; and a trip to the arcade where Rethu beat Cyrus handily at a motorcycle-racing game – and then covered him as he broke into the ticket machine so they could get the good prizes XD

Excellent stuff, both episodes – I know I always say that, but it is. I really enjoy this series – looking forward to catching up to the present!

Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by Oxventure! Today’s adventures saw Backpacker Pearl (Ellen), Skull (Andy), and New Yorker Meowth (Johnny) –

A) Finish off the battle with Hiker Jim and his Growlithe via Pearl’s Ekans successfully chomping (though not successfully poisoning) the Growlithe and grappling it; Skull entering the battle (after asking Meowth what it’s like inside a Pokeball – apparently it’s a too-small void) and having his Weepinbell Plant-Skull use Sleep Powder on JIM (it was very effective); Growlithe getting annoyed at this, shaking off Ekans, and attempting to use Ember on Skull – only to roll a crit 1 and only belch out a bit of smoke; Ekans using another Poison Sting bite to bring Growlithe down to “fainted” status and cause him to retreat into his Pokeball; and Skull throwing both the Pokeball and a photograph Jim had on him of him and his Growlithe over a ledge. XD Even Meowth, a seasoned veteran of Team Rocket, was like “damn, that’s cold.” XD

B) Continue on their path and find a cavern with a bunch of Clefairies dancing around a gorgeous shiny moonstone on a pedestal – the “precious thing” the Clefairy who met with Meowth before mentioned (what I misremembered as some sort of “big guy” last time, my apologies). Cue Skull, realizing that the moonstone was worth something, rushing in (despite his kidney infection) and snatching the moonstone (trying to show initiative as a new Team Rocket member); the Clefairies getting VERY upset by this, as evidenced by Luke’s menacing stare (Ellen made him do it to the camera so everyone could see how spooky it was), and indicating (in Pokespeak, of course) that they were considering dumping him down the hole in front of the pedestal as a sacrifice; Meowth quickly stepping in to defuse the situation, claiming that Skull got excited and grabbed the wrong precious thing – and then telling Skull that if he didn’t put the damn thing back his femurs would be sticking out his shoulders; Skull obligingly putting the stone back; and the Clefairies asking the group to make amends by sacrificing something else to the Precious Thing via dumping it down the hole. Treasure, a Pokemon, a human – the Precious Thing wasn’t picky.

Guess where Hiker Jim ended up. XD Yup, Skull IMMEDIATELY went back and got his unconscious ass, and he and Meowth dumped him into the hole while poor Pearl threw up, horrified. The gang then joined the Clefairies in their dance to the precious thing (with the camera sloooowly zooming in on poor, awkward, “how did things get so bad so quickly” Pearl) until the Clefairies finally tuckered themselves out and fell asleep –

Aaand cue them sending Pearl’s recently-healed-up Spearow down the hole, because Meowth had pointed out just before dumping Hiker Jim that there was probably a load of treasure down there, and if they sent a Pokemon who could fly down, they could make some serious moolah. Unfortunately for everyone, Spearows are actually fairly dumb (-4 on Intelligence rolls, poor thing), and it didn’t really see anything worth taking in the huge treasure cavern full of goodies and skeletons (and one very dead Jim). However, Spearow is a loyal bird it appears, as what it ended up bringing back for the team was a backpack for Pearl! (With a skeleton attached, but fortunately that slipped back down the hole before Spearow presented it to her.) A mysteriously-heavy backpack, no less...we’ll see what’s in it, and where the team goes from here, tomorrow! I imagine it will involve much more chaos because, as Luke pointed out, he forgot while planning this one-shot that this is Oxventure. XD

*nods* Not too shabby! And now it's time for me to go to bed, because I do have work tomorrow. While a nor'easter blows in. Yay. *sigh* We'll see what happens -- night all!

Like, it started out decently nice, but as the day went on the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. It never actually RAINED, but it proved miserable enough that didn't play beanbags today. Though my parents DID get the lawn mowed, so -- something? *shrug* Anyway -- I just stayed inside and had a reasonably good day --

Tumblr: Decent day on the old social media site, all things considered:

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Was very productive over here, I am happy to say, accomplishing two main things of note –

A) First, I reblogged three things from my dash which spoke to me:

I. A post asking everyone to call their senators and ask them to oppose the “Interstate Obscenity Definition Act,” aka a federal porn ban with an EXTREMELY broad definition that’s gonna be weaponized against queer people, because, you know, that’s what happens

II. A Red Dwarf gif of Lister (one of the main characters) banging his head against a wall while Kryten (another main character, a robot) bangs him on the head with a pole whenever he lifts his head, with the caption “How life feels sometimes” – not in the fandom, but that is a mood

III. A post from “gift-from-the-bellow” demanding “username lore” – answered in the tags that my blog is named after my OTP, and that I tried to rename it after my OT3 late last year, but that broke all my links so I had to revert it (that’s why I refer to it as “Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)” over here – the (N Smiler) part is technically not official even if it’s now part of my blog title)

B) Then, I spent the rest of the time before lunch finishing off that “Help: How Do I Do Tav!Smiler” post I’d been working on – and then, because I’d included a poll in it that would run for an entire week – went ahead and just straight-up posted it! You can see it here if you are so inclined. I then ended up reblogging it later in the day (right before my workout, in fact), because it got absolutely no engagement when it initially posted (despite the stuff I reblogged right before it getting reblogged by some of my friends) – it’s picked up a couple of likes now, but – I do not have high hopes for anyone responding to it, I have to admit. *sigh* Why is it whenever I TRY to reach out for help or interaction, I’m always fucking ignored over there...

Valice Multiverse – Still no asks or thread replies or anything like that for me to reply to over here – but I discovered that I hadn’t actually ever reblogged my “hey here’s a link to read ‘A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded’ from the beginning now that the story’s done” post from Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), so I went ahead and threw that into the queue. *shrug* It’s SOMETHING!

Fallout 4: Had a short but reasonably-productive playsession in the Commonwealth today, getting Victor and Ada over to the Mechanist’s headquarters and taking a quick poke around inside –

A) Started where I left off a few weeks ago, with the pair at the little settlement just outside the Boston Airport (which I’m pretty sure was some sort of lounge or other waiting area, judging by the chairs), ready to go and start the final boss battle with the Mechanist already. I thus reactivated the “Restoring Order” quest in Victor’s Pip-Boy to make sure I had my quest markers ready (you people know how easily I get lost); had him quickly set up a little blue tent in the settlement so he’d have a place to sleep the next time he swung around this area; then had him and Ada head down the road past a bunch of flooded streets over to the RobCo Sales & Service Center! Once there, I hit quicksave and had Victor open the door to head inside –

And after the world’s LONGEST LOADING SCREEN (seriously, I don’t know WHY some locations take so freaking long to load – and it’s always the ones with the plain black loading screens, never the ones with the fun animated “have some fun facts about the game” loading screens), he and Ada found themselves in the opening lobby/store area of the Center! There were a bunch of wrecked shelves on the walls (Victor got himself a fuse off one); a little waiting area with a burned-out lamp and a crisped trade magazine; and a bunch of terminals lined up on rows in counters in the middle. Most of them were busted, as you might expect, but a few were still online, waiting for a customer to interact with them. And so Victor went around and checked out –

I. The E-330, the “most reliable client terminal” – which, naturally, was the only terminal whose main screen immediately got corrupted and which registered multiple internal faults :p

II. The RX-9000, the most advanced gaming terminal they had with “cutting-edge graphics” – I had Victor go ahead and pop the “Automatron” game holotape in there for a few rounds (which I did not do very well at because none of these holotapes explain their controls properly and I’d forgotten how you shoot the enemy robots)

III. The E-601, “streamlined for business,” which had the most stuff on it, including a Daily Itinerary function (automatically compiled from your calendar and contacts – some RobCo meetings about fourth-quarter earnings and the benefits of a global merger were listed as examples); a customizable calendar (where you could list things like anniversaries, doctor and dentist appointments, birthdays, and major holidays); a customizable contacts list (complete with fields for phone numbers, street addresses, and little notes about what each person is like); and a message system (basically internal e-mails, or “intramail” as they called it, with automatic timestamps and the ability to confirm when a message was opened – example message was someone e-mailing a colleague to tell them they should have a meeting to agree on the budget and dress code for the Halloween party (i.e., whether or not costumes were mandatory)). Dunno how I feel about the computer trying to guess what I should do each day rather than letting me decide, but other than that, actually seemed like a pretty solid computer option!

IV. And the RX-6550, a “personalized home computer for the whole family to enjoy,” which let you keep track of everything everybody was doing and protect everyone’s personal profile with their own password – there were entries for “Mom,” “Dad,” “Timmy,” and “Janine” on there, but none of them had anything in them.

Interesting stuff – even if I was kind of hoping there would be secret Mechanist files on at least one of them! Feels like a missed opportunity. Ah well, there will be plenty of time to snoop on the Mechanist’s personal logs later...

B) Of course, this room also had a front desk, with its own working terminal and – when I sent Victor around to check it out – a floor safe immediately underneath it. I had Victor crack the Advanced floor safe with his lockpicking skills (mostly ammo – including missiles – a gold watch, a subnosed .44 pistol, and some pre-War money – I had Victor take the non-missile ammo, the watch, and the money), then hack the Novice terminal to see what was on it. Beyond the safe controls, and a warning that all employees were subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement so keep your yaps shut, there were two options, “Announcements” and “Service Requests.” “Service Requests” was just full of fun fluff text about people bringing in their computers to be repaired – including Henrietta Blanche, whose terminal just “suddenly stopped working” over a matter of days, crashing on boot (the front desk person suspected the computer was overheating due to the fact that the woman was apparently covered in cat hair); Bronwyn Sullivan, whose terminal refused to send intramail or notify her of anything (as per the tech, apparently a former employee sabotaged the computer before leaving the company – he recommended giving her a new computer as he wasn’t 100% sure he could fix the old one); and Calvin Crenshaw, who was complaining about his seven-year-old terminal crashing when he tried playing “Red Menace” (tech was like “he HAS to buy a new computer at this point, this one doesn’t have the memory for anything other than text-based games”) –

But “Announcements” had something more interesting in it – a message from the General Manager reminding all employees that following the code of conduct meant no tampering with ANY shipments labeled “RB-2851,” under threat of termination and prolonged questioning from the folks downstairs; wearing your name tag correctly; and no longer letting customers, friends, or family into the back room. Suspicious, eh? Well, to you – I already know what’s going on here, and it involves loads of unethical experimentation on people’s brains! You know, just standard Fallout science. :p

C) With the front room thus explored, and Victor and Ada now aware there was something fishy going on here even pre-War (who is surprised), it was time to head into the back room! After disarming a laser tripwire at the entrance, of course (free crystal and fiber optics, yay). Victor and Ada thus headed down a short hall, then around a small catwalk and down some steps into a very large room full of cabinets, crates, tools, and other such repair-related junk. I had Victor poke around for a bit, picking up some useful junk from some of the cabinets; checking out the one “working” terminal down there and the work order next to it (turns out it was Henrietta’s computer, and it did indeed need a clean – unfortunately, when Victor tried to get into it, all he got was a message about how “terminal unit systems have been stopped.” Maybe they didn’t get the cat hair out of it before the apocalypse); grabbing a laser pistol to disassemble later from behind a couple of the crates –

And finding a strange device on the wall, next to a bit that was slightly recessed. He called over Ada, who scanned it with her new M-SAT “I’m totally a Mechanist robot” scanner –

D) And sure enough, the wall opened up (after a prolonged sequence of hidden doors designed to resemble the door sequence from Mystery Science Theater 3000 – apparently the creators were fans :) ) to reveal a mysterious hallway sloping down to another security door at the bottom! Victor and Ada thus cautiously made their way down, avoiding some rad barrels, and I prepared myself for trying to find the terminal to open the doors –

Only for a voice to go, “Returning robot detected, opening security doors,” and, well, the security doors (all three sets of them) opening. Okay then! That’s useful! I made note of the sign on the wall saying this was “Robotics Technology Facility RB-2851” (aka where all those mystery shipments were going,” then had Victor head in. The opening area looked like some sort of big checkpoint, with a gated “front desk” with a skeleton slumped over it; a small personal storage area full of lockers; and a big old generator off to the side. I had Victor head into the locker area to look for goodies –

Just in time to hear the announcer say, “No biosigns detected. Continue.” What, is Victor suddenly not alive anymore? O.o I think I would have noticed if he wasn’t, announcer! (Though I guess maybe the announcer thinks he’s a robobrain because he’s with Ada...or it’s just broken. Either way.) Anyway, I had Victor grab a couple of items from the lockers, then have a nice healthy Hungry Man dinner and a can of water when he informed me he was hungry and thirsty. I then had him explore around a little more, discovering that dead ahead, past the check-in area, was a hallway full of all SORTS of laser traps to discourage unwanted visitors – but off to the side, at the back of the generator room, was a little tunnel dug into the foundations of the building. Meaning all I had to decide was whether I wanted to sneak down the tunnel, or spend my time disarming traps in the main hallway!

E) ...I chose Option 3: “Retreat back to the main repair room and have Victor set up his tent and go to sleep since he’s been tired since 6 PM and I expect him to crash any minute.” Yeah, no matter which path he chose, I wanted to make sure he had enough AP to take on whatever came his way. And so Victor headed back and hit the sack at 8:30 PM, getting a nice full eight hours of sleep before rising at 4:30 AM the next morning. I had him putter around the room a bit more, grabbing some Wonderglue and a flip lighter from a toolbox I hadn’t noticed before, then set up his portable workbench and had him scrap the laser pistol he’d found for parts –

Then noticed the weird Deadeye Submachine Gun that I’d picked up that was still hanging around in my inventory. And went, “You know what, I don’t intend to use it here, but it might be something I want to use in the future – maybe on a Silver Shroud mission? I know he has his own Silver Submachine gun, but this might be better than that...let’s go ahead and upgrade it!” So I went ahead and had Victor give it a Powerful Receiver, a Reflex Sight, a Short Light Barrel, a Recoil-Compensating Stock, a Large Quick-Eject Drum, and a Muzzle Brake. Required him to stop midway through to get more items with screws off Ada, but hey – worth it to get the gun fully upgraded! Have no idea if it’ll be a good gun for me, but we’ll give it a try during a future mission, see if the Deadeye ability makes firing these notoriously-inaccurate monsters a little more bearable. (And if not, well, now it’s worth more to any traders who might want it.)

And that is where I wrapped things up for the day! Next time, with Victor freshly rested and ready to go, the pair shall go off and start making their way through the Mechanist’s headquarters! Dunno yet if I’m going to do the big fight or sneak in via the back elevator, but I suspect I’ll have plenty of time to think about it. :P

Writing: Another Sunday spent playing Fallout 4, another Sunday spent updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression document – and while I was able to straight-up copy a few things from the above write-up (mainly the stuff about the computers on display in the front lobby of the RobCo Sales & Service Center, and all the Service Requests on that computer), I did also, as usual, make a number of changes to the fanfic version of events (beyond having Alice and her new cat tagging along, of course) –

A) Victor never bothered setting up a tent outside the Boston Airport, because he doesn’t consider that lounge area one of his settlements – to him, that’s Brotherhood of Steel territory (and it IS a VERY weird place to have a settlement, so I think his take is more logical)

B) Alice helped check out all the computers in the front room of the Center with Victor (looking at the E-330 and the E-601, and admitting the latter didn’t seem like a bad computer), and cracked open the floor safe behind the desk while Victor handled the terminal (and did indeed take the snubnosed .44 pistol that was in there, as SHE could use another gun). Also Victor did not waste any time trying to play a game on the RX-9000 (though he did mention he would try one of his game holotapes if they DID have the time), and got into the front desk computer thanks to Alice passing on a hint from Wonderland (“everyone went up in this even before the bombs, thanks to the tortoises having their way” – a reference to the fact that the right word for this terminal was “SMOKE” and that the brand on the in-game cigarettes you can collect for crafting (they give you cloth, funnily enough) is Grey Tortoise)

C) In a rare major change, I swapped around the order of events after the gang discovered the mysterious device on the wall next to the hidden doors! In this universe, Victor yawned midway through telling Ada to try the M-SAT on the device, realized how tired he was, and decided that it made more sense to camp out in the repair room for the night and did all his gun scrapping and upgrading the evening of 3/30/2288 before hitting the sack, then had Ada open the door so they could check out what was beyond it the morning of 3/31/2288. I felt that made a little more sense in a non-video-game universe than them STARTING to probe into the Mechanist’s lair, only to give up a few minutes in and head back to the repair room because Victor was tired. *taps head* Logic!

D) And, just to be thorough, Alice was the one who discovered the secret tunnel in the generator room, while Victor was checking the lockers in the storage area in the checkpoint (and getting confused when the announcer said “no biosigns detected,” since he was pretty sure he’d have noticed if he woke up dead. XD

So yeah – a handful of little changes, and one big one because I felt it made more sense timeline-wise. Nothing too dramatic, though, I’d say! Next time, Alice, Victor, and Ada (Kit has been left behind in the repair room with their cart of junk to lick his butt in safety) start working their way into the Mechanist’s lair! Remind me to have Victor take out the Tactical Tesla Electric Death Machine – I suspect it’s going to be useful in a facility full of robots.

YouTube: With Gray now officially part of my Sunday Workout Block (see below), the only video I had to worry about watching tonight was the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout: London - Part 43 - It's Your Funeral!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria as she –

A) Let Mad Jack tell her all about his absolutely horrible and heartbreaking backstory – turns out the reason he has some issues with fighting? It’s because he was abducted with a bunch of other boys from the orphanage where he grew up by raiders and made to fight all his friends to the death. Ending with his best friend Sam, who refused to fight him because Jack had practically raised him. D: Poor Jack became the best at fighting out of a mad desire to live, and ended up as their best prize fighter for a while, until other gangs began refusing to send people to fight him, because he was so good he just kept killing their best guys. Eventually Jack finally saw an opportunity for escape, mutilated his handlers, and fled. It was just – cripes, this poor man. No WONDER he struggles with depression and suicidal feelings – especially since the career he fell into once he was free was just straight-up beating people up again! I feel like his companion quest should be giving him a hug, because he DESERVES it. No wonder Jon said that probably the best part of the Fallout: London experience is getting to know the companions – they really do knock it out of the park with their personalities and backstories!

B) Decided to finally finish up some of her business with the Vagabonds, since she had a day to kill before the funeral of the woman she’d murdered to help advance Angel’s plans last episode – after all, she’d rather left them hanging after breaking Yvette’s friend out of an Isle of Dogs prison so long ago! So she proceeded to the safe house in Greenwich to cap off that quest (Yvette cheerfully thanking her for her good work), then headed back to the Vagabond’s pub headquarters to talk with leader Sebastian Gaunt. He was very pleased with her work and offered her a place in the Vagabonds permanently, if she wanted it, to share their blood and their fate. Aria was interested, but wanted to know what Gaunt saw as the Vagabond’s fate –

And as it turned out, what he wanted most of all was to wipe their enemies the Syndicate off the face of the earth. The gangs had been at war for ten freaking years, and Gaunt wanted to end it, and end it decisively in the Vagabond’s favor. Aria was a little “um, this seems a little worrying, why the hell are you so revenge-focused?” and managed to coax out of him the real reason he was angry – basically, his father, who was all about uniting the boroughs to try and stand up to the gentry, was killed by a Syndicate member. So now Gaunt wants them all dead, and damn the consequences. Accordingly, his final initiation task for Aria? Kill a Syndicate enforcer and bring him their lapel pin as proof. Aria was like “okay, I’ll do it, but I am thinking that maybe we should think about replacing you as leader, since you seem to be stuck in a terrible cycle of violence.” And to be fair, she may not be the only one who feels that way, as when she went to Johnny “Shrapnel” (a guy with, you guessed it, some shrapnel stuck in his head) for a few supplies for the job, she was able to use her Lovecraft-heightened Charisma to coax out of him that he too was starting to get tired of the bloodshed – where will it end and all that. Hmmmm...something to keep in mind going forward!

C) Went looking for a Syndicate enforcer (known as a Sniffer, amusingly enough) to kill for their lapel pin – in the heavily-irradiated MILLENNIUM DOME of all places. Because, apparently, there was a guy there, just hanging out in the middle of the London equivalent of the Glowing Sea of all places! Well, Aria had been meaning to finally check that place out, so she and Mad Jack ventured forth, starting at the Golden Elm pub on the edge of the irradiated hellhole and making their way inward. Fortunately, Aria’s supplies of Rad-X and Rad-Away were big enough that she could rely on them and not have to break out the hazmat suit to survive the rads – which is good, because along the way, she and Mad Jack ran into a whole flock of Lamphrey Floaters (which Aria eventually had to desperately outrun in a panic), a Legendary Glowing Deathclaw (which, again, was supposed to be a Womble – apparently they’ve glitched in Jon’s game and returned to their original reptilian form), and – right outside the Dome itself – a whole mess of bloatflies, including a bloatmother (ewww). Fortunately, the pair managed to survive all these encounters, and – after a quick trip into the nearby tube station, which mainly just had ghouls in it, along with a flooded tunnel that Jon suspected might be a back entrance into the Dome – got into the Dome without issue! Where they found everyone was chill with them –

EXCEPT the Isle of Dogs guy they were sent to kill, because apparently word has finally gotten around that Aria’s throwing her lot in with the Vagabonds. No more walking around the Isle of Dogs safe and sound in her neutrality for her, it seems! Anyway, Aria, who didn’t want a bloodbath, snuck up on the Sniffer and only killed him once he started shooting at her – then, once his lapel pin was collected, decided to see how this place could be one of the biggest trading hubs in London when it was in the middle of, you know, the most irradiated place in London. Answer?

Unclear! I mean, yes, a lot of the people in the main trading area were ghouls, and a number of the others were wearing hazmat suits, but there were still plenty of just regular people hanging around the shops, apparently deciding getting radiation poisoning was worth the selection. And the main market floor itself was in the middle of the dome, which is apparently FUCKING OPEN TO THE SKY. Like, even if the area wasn’t Radiation Central, wouldn’t you want a roof to keep out the weather? *shakehead* I guess It Just Works ™ Aria at least had a decent time wandering around the shops, and while she couldn’t get any of the named characters to chat with her (suggesting that the location is part of a faction quest line – at least if she has to come back here for Angel, she’s got the place marked so she can fast-travel now!), she was able to purchase some Magic Milk from a guy named Charlie, which can reduce a rad count of over 600, so – yeah. Totally worth it to brave the radiation and the Floaters and the Bloatflies to come here!

D) Returned to the Vagabonds to show Gaunt her newly-collected pin and get officially inducted into the gang – this involved him telling her to keep the pin as a trophy and bestowing upon her an official Vagabond hat, which just so happens to give +2 to Luck. A pretty decent hat for someone who loves her criticals as much as Aria – though I doubt she’ll ever be swapping her crown out for it. XD Anyway, with that sorted, Gaunt then invited her to join him and the boys in the lounge to talk about his big plans for the gang war – Aria went ahead and did so, and it transpired that what he wanted was to use Aria as a sort of elite Commando unit to help really put the hurt on the Syndicate and pay them back for the last time they ventured deep into Vagabond territory. Preferably before they got their nuclear reactor up and running, because THEN the Gentry would send their Tommies into the area to help secure the power source and the Syndicate would be basically untouchable. So he’d tasked three of his men to come up with plans on how to do that. Aria (with the help of some Intelligence-boosting drugs) noted that Blind Nelson, the guy USUALLY in charge of the plans, was nowhere to be seen – Gaunt explained that he was sitting this one out, as HE wanted them to lay low for a while, but Gaunt wasn’t having that. Aria quietly noted that Blind Nelson could potentially be an ally if and when it came time to overthrow Gaunt, then did the rounds and asked the three fellows present about their plans:

I. “Bullettooth” Anthony mentioned that one of the big problems they were facing was that the Syndicate simply had more and better guns than they did, and wanted to steal a bunch from a depot the Gentry had in a warehouse near West India Quay. Gaunt was like “there’s no way Aria could do that on her own” – Anthony tried to convince him by saying he had a friend who could just make a few crates go missing, so all Aria had to do was open the loading bay doors, but Gaunt insisted that the best thing to do would be to just blow the place to kingdom come and deny the Syndicate the weapons. If Aria could grab some stuff while getting the explosives placed, fine, but the important thing was to wreck the depot and cripple their enemies.

II. Johnny “Shrapnel” said that what HE wanted to do was take out the Dredge – a floating prison boat with a bunch of their guys on it. His plan consisted of freeing everyone on board, then sinking it to the bottom of the river – Gaunt was like “how the FUCK is she supposed to get on the most closely-guarded boat in the whole of London? And if we go blowing it up, we’re gonna get labeled as terrorists by the Syndicate – they’re already making noises to that effect, given how we busted out Yvette’s friend.” (Excuse me, weren’t you JUST team “blow it up” in regards to Anthony’s plan?) Johnny reminded him that the guys stuck on the boat had grit, and they’d be better back in the gang than rotting in prison; Gaunt admitted they could use more hands and said that Aria thought she was sneaky enough (which she most definitely is), she could try it. Johnny let her know where she should go (the warden’s office near the back of the boat, since that’s where all the cells were opened), and encouraged her to let everyone out and sink the boat as per his original idea – Gaunt was like “no, just get our guys, forget the others,” but Aria was already thinking about how she could curry favor with other gangs if she let their men out too…

III. And “Chill” Winston pointed out that the Syndicate had more general supplies – namely food and medicine – than they did, and that they should try to find a way to bleed off some of their excess – prompting Gaunt to go “I swear, Winston, if you’re going to suggest another fucking train robbery…” XD Winston was like “hear me out, I know just the train she can knick, it’ll be fine” – Gaunt countered that he let Winston talk him into breaking into the lab to get supplies, and they just barely broke even on THAT –

And Winston countered his counter by pointing out the lab is where Aria came from, and SHE’S proven to be a hell of an asset. Gaunt allowed the point and said if Aria wanted to try the job, she could. Winston told Aria what she’d have to do (get to Poplar Station, take out the Syndicate there, redirect the train to Canning Town Station, then hop on and ride it there to meet the Vagabonds who would be unloading the supplies), and Gaunt followed up by handing her some explosives and telling her that if things seemed like they were going south, she was to blow up the train to deny the supplies to the Syndicate and destroy one of their main supply lines. Seems like he’s perfectly in favor of blowing shit up if HE’S the one suggesting it. >( But yeah, that wrapped up the meeting, with Aria preparing for three very exciting jobs that Jon was eager to get to. Seems like going and continuing the Vagabond quest line was the right call after all! Though the comments were warning that there might be a bit of a sad ending to it...we’ll see what happens when we get closer to that point!

E) Returned to Westminster to attend the funeral of Cecily, the woman she murdered, and get Cecily’s friend, Baron Nigel Honeysett, to authenticate Smythe’s appointment as Lord Chancellor! Though Aria actually arrived at around 2 AM, long after the main funeral was over. Nigel was still there, though, mourning his friend – and while he found Aria presenting him with the documents to authenticate to be both highly irregular and very crass, a few carefully-chosen words on Aria’s part made him realize that she’d killed Cecily specifically to let him know that radical beliefs like hers (such as reducing the length of indentured servitude) would not be tolerated, and that he should try and “smooth the waters” as it were. He thus bitterly put his stamp on the documents, more or less securing Smythe’s position as the new Lord Chancellor. All Aria had to do now was deliver the documents to the Prime Minister!

...Except, well, she couldn’t. Because, as she found out during an earlier wander around Westminster, there isn’t one at the moment – the old one stood down given the chaos currently happening in government. Meaning, if Aria wants to get Smythe her chancellorship, she first has to help grease the wheels of democracy and get someone elected as Prime Minister! Which she was more than willing to do – next time. XD So yeah, next week, we’ll see Aria help out with the election process – and, if there’s time, start those Vagabond missions she picked up! And, if we’re lucky, perhaps Mad Jacks’ companion quest will pop up too...we will see next Sunday!

Workout: Back on the bike again tonight, pedaling my way through:

A) The entirety of the latest from GrayStillPlays – “I had to choo choo choose who lives,” aka Gray plays Choo-Choose! This is a rather bizarre little game based on the famous Trolley Problem (you know, the one where you have to pick if you’re going to kill one person or five while stuck on a runaway trolley), where you are nominally in control of a steam train, and you are regularly presented with choices on who or what that train should run over. These choices range from the traditional “one person vs five,” to “cat versus pregnant lady,” to “lesbian couple or gay couple,” to “people who urinate in the elevator but graduated with honors versus people who donate blood but cut veins” to “beaver vs the concept of democracy” to “Steamboat Willie Mickey Mouse vs our version of Catdog” to “King Leonidas from 300 vs our stand-in for the Pope.” ...yeah, it’s a pretty bizarre little game. You’re given stats about the choices you made after the first couple of “acts” (how many people, kids, and cats you killed in Act 1; stuff like the average age of your victims, the sex ratio, your apparently most hated name, the act you were most likely to kill someone for, and the act you were most likely to spare someone for in Act 2), and newspaper articles showing how you affected the world in Acts 3 and 4 (the latter being an elimination tournament where whoever survives your deadly choices gets to be ruler of the world). Gray, of course, tried to make the worst choices possible – murdering as many people in a go as he could, sparing those who had bloody knives sitting next to them on the tracks, always prioritizing cats over people, destroying democracy instead of beavers, and making sure King Leonidas survived the elimination tournament – and thus got stuff like beavers building their own societies (in a nod to the game Timberborn), sleep being canceled (because he ran over a sleeping lady instead of Robin Hood), and “THIS IS SPARTA!” becoming the global greeting (guess what prompted that). Just – it was very weird. Even Gray thought so, and he’s the master of weird shit. XD But I suppose it was fun too! Good to see him branching out into games other than GTA V and Happy Wheels again!

B) The first ten-odd minutes of “D&D But... It's Pokémon | Oxventure” by, well, Oxventure! Yes, I am making an effort to start catching up on all these Oxventure videos I’ve missed, and we’re starting with “Luke Westaway crams a bunch of Pokemon into D&D and makes Ellen, Andy, and Johnny play the resultant hopefully-fun mess.” XD The situation so far is that Backpacker Pearl (Ellen) and Skull (Andy) have both joined Team Rocket – Skull because he enjoys making problems for people (being one of those NPCs who likes to block paths), Pearl because they won’t give her back her backpack until she gets them a Pikachu – and have been tasked by Leader Giovanni to investigate the viability of nearby Mount Moon and the cave systems within as a base. They’ve each been given two Pokemon (Skull a Weepinbell and a Magikarp – aka one okay Pokemon and one generally considered useless; Pearl a Ekans and a Spearow – aka two decent Pokemon who are natural enemies because Spearows like to eat Ekans) and a couple of potions, and put under the guidance of a seasoned Team Rocket member – Meowth (Johnny)! Except it’s not THAT Meowth, it’s another, more New York Meowth that also learned to talk and is very annoyed the more famous one won’t return his calls anymore. XD So far, Skull has managed through the luck of a Nat 20 on a Strength roll to beat a piece of beef into Pokemon-restoring chili, and both Pearl and Skull have used a Pokemon Center to make sure their Pokemon are at full health before they go on their journey. Also Skull renamed his Plant-Skull and Fish-Skull. XD I left off with them preparing to visit the market – we’ll see what they get and where their journey goes from here tomorrow!

Whew -- got a lot done there! AND it looks like I'll be getting to bed at least a LITTLE earlier than I usually do on a Sunday, yay~ :p So yeah, off to hit the sheets I go -- got a bit of a weird week coming up here, and I need my rest. Night all!

A rather hot and humid day today -- though while getting gas on the way home, I felt a distinctly chill breeze that I think was the first herald of the thunderstorms that are supposed to roll through tomorrow. *grumbles* I have shit to do on Saturday, weather -- I don't need lightning keeping me off the computer! Ah well, not much I can do about it other than hope the nonsense misses us...in the meantime, here's the usual daily write-up --

Work – A slightly-busier end to the work week this Friday, with me doing the GL; going through the failed credit cards and seeing who needed contacting (only one person, which was nice); taking a handful of credit card calls (updating cards and doing a few gifts); and working on some roster maintenance. *shrug* Nothing incredibly taxing, though my coworkers were QUITE annoying behind me once or twice. *grumbles* But the ride home was nice and quick, even with me needing to stop for gas, so that was good. Hooray for it being the weekend!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through two more Baldur’s Gate III videos –

A) “All Hidden Pets in Baldur’s Gate 3 (And How to Get Them)” by Toyhouze! A guide to picking up a bunch of minions and summons, temporary and permanent, across the game! Did you know that in addition to the obvious ones of Us the intellect devourer, Scratch the dog, and Shovel the cheeky quasit (a demon), you can also pick up a temporary pack of four small spider babies (they’re not summons, they just follow you around after you split open their egg until they die helping you fight something); Quothe the Raven (summonable from a special pair of gloves that you get as a quest reward in Act II); various spore-reanimated zombie monstrosities (if you can drag their corpses back to Glut in the Underdark to have him reanimate them); a mind-controlled zombie drider (a half-man half-spider person – involves tricking him into becoming a shadow-possessed corpse and then using “Control Undead” on him); and four zombie minions (if your character successfully manages to read the “Necromancy of Thay” book, then gets the additional codex in the magic shop in Act III)? Among others? It was a pretty interesting list, though I don’t like how they split up Us and the Thay zombies into two separate sections (for when you first free Us/find the book, then when you find Us in the cage/actually get the ability to summon the zombies) – they should have just had one section each, even if getting them is a two-part process. Also, I don’t like how they have no intro or close – their videos always start and end VERY abruptly. *frowns* I’m not sure I’m gonna watch anything else of theirs – I think I can find the same info elsewhere in better videos!

B) “Baldur's Gate 3 Guide to Combat Mechanics - How to Miss Less, and Win More!” by Fextralife! A guide to figuring how to get through combat without being utterly destroyed by your enemies, including such things as explaining how actually scoring a hit on an enemy works (there’s a die roll going on in the background, and you have to meet or beat the enemy’s armor class – the trick here is to stack the deck in your favor with all the modifiers you can); what weapons use what stats (if it’s ranged, it’s Dexterity; if it’s melee, it’s generally Strength, though “finesse” weapons that use the Dex modifier exist too); what things can give you Advantage or Disadvantage on a particular attack (don’t stand close to your target if you’re trying a ranged attack!); and how the action economy in a fight works (always check to see if something you’re trying to do is your main action or bonus action). What I mainly took away from it is “ranged people should always be reasonably far away from their target and up high to take advantage of high ground; many spells count as ranged attacks; KEEP SMILER AWAY FROM THE FRONT LINES unless they have a close-range spell or need to stab with their dagger.” XD But it WAS good to have a lot of the mechanics and how you get modifiers and such explained – maybe next time I go into that crypt, my party won’t be put through the wringer by the team exploring it! We’ll see. :P

2. Continue outlining “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got to it later than I wanted again, this time thanks to Family Game Night (my parents picked up Life from an antique/consignment place, so we played that tonight – I actually ended up winning because I got a TON of LIFE tiles and thus ended up with many lucrative accomplishments, such as discovering a new planet and swimming the English Channel) and me deciding to watch my YouTube video a bit early (see below). But I did get some more of the great Van Dort Vault Heist rolled up, I’m pleased to say, with the gang –

A) Making it past Slugs, the Hull that guards the vault with a pair of slugger rifles, via Victor commanding it to stand down and let him and his friends through (after a little coaching from Alice, and a lot of pushing himself – dude doesn’t actually have any dots in Command, after all, so he needed the help! Worth, though, as he rolled a 6)

B) Finding the second tripwire that would sound the alarm (with Victor managing to stop Kasimir setting off a smoke bomb under the logic of “it might help us find the wire, and if it doesn’t, it’ll make us harder to find when the guards rush in”) – took longer than they wanted, though, because it was a “success with a complication,” so I filled in more of the “Discovered By The Van Dorts” clock

C) Getting through the locked door into the vault itself with the help of Smiler’s lockpicks – which, thanks to another “success with a complication,” also took a while and filled in another chunk of the clock

D) Being briefly gobsmacked by the fact that the Van Dorts have actual physical Coins up on their wall in the vault (remember, a Coin in Blades In The Dark money represents a week’s wages for most people), before getting to the important business of robbing the place – which featured me making a fortune roll for Victor to see how well he remembered the combination to the big safe; getting another “success with a complication;” and thus filling in yet another segment on the clock as, in the story, he accidentally transposed two of the numbers on his first attempt to open it, meaning cracking it took a bit longer than it should have. (Which, it occurs to me that maybe that shouldn’t be a consequence of a FORTUNE roll, as that’s a little different than an action roll...but I do like everyone getting increasingly nervous as the time ticks away and they get more and more sure someone will notice something wrong...might let it stand, we’ll see how I feel tomorrow.) But he DID get it open, and a bunch of Coin was stolen! I ended up having Victor, Alice, and Smiler personally take four Coin (to go with the one Coin of Bumby profits Alice took from Houndsditch) – I felt like this is a good amount that will cover all their upcoming expenses (bribing Nessa of the Gray Cloaks to let them stay in Six Towers unmolested; Victor buying Alice a real-life Vorpal Blade and Smiler a traveling chemistry kit and some Leech-approved bandoliers) and still leave them a little left over.

So yeah – main portion of the heist done! Now they just have to get out of the house before they’re discovered…we’ll get through that, the post-score XP wrap-up, and downtime activities tomorrow! :) And then I can actually start WRITING THE STORY yay. :P

(Oh, and real quick, I added one more thing to the “must-happen moments” section – Barnaby’s coat getting ruined. XD What, it’s a tradition! So far I just have Victor bumping into him and making him slosh his drink on his clothes, but if I can find something better to really muck it up, I am going for it. :p)

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just the one video from GrayStillPlays today: “I opened the emergency door on an airplane,” aka Gray plays Cabin Crew Life Simulator! This is a janky simulator game all about being a flight attendant on a terrible airline on the verge of bankruptcy, flying all over the world and doing things like giving passengers their free water and napkins, making sure all the emergency supplies are in place, and pulling live cobras out of the overhead bins with the snake stick and putting them in the trash. XD And, if you’re Gray, it also involves trying to go to work in just a hat, neckerchief, underwear, dirty socks, and high heels; breaking the game by writing the world’s longest sentence as your name in the “enter name” field on the nametag and getting it stuck on the screen (though it didn’t actually object to the words, just the spaces, as we discovered later when Gray had to show the badge to security after getting the game working again); running through all the passengers as none of them had proper collision; breaking the game AGAIN by daring to access the main menu screen while doing the pre-flight checks of the emergency equipment (which froze him in place and forced him to restart – still holding the random drawer he’d grabbed); closing the door on the entering passengers (causing them to glitch together into a terrible multi-being); OPENING the main door during take-off (and then discovering it couldn’t be closed again); jumping out of the plane (which got him an achievement!); and accidentally glitching the snake through the floor while trying to dispose of it (fortunately he was able to grab it again). All actions which got him fined so severely he made no money working that particular flight. XD Ah, we do love to see Gray play a janky simulator game. They really are the jankiest. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – I didn’t have anything to do over on Valice Multiverse, and I didn’t really have time to try to do anything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler). We’ll see if I have time to work on any drafts tomorrow!

And there you have it! And now I really have to go to bed, as I am very tired. Plans for tomorrow include working on some of my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (like "How Write Smiler" and the "help Smiler needs to be a Warlock as their base class now in BG3" drafts); play Sims 4 and see if I can finish off the Polyheart OT3 House; finish outlining "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and keep up with my YouTube Subs and hopefully watch some of the videos in my Watch Later too. Of course, all of this is subject to when the thunderstorms roll in tomorrow...meh. *sigh* We'll see what happens -- night all!

Yeah, unfortunately things have not gone according to plan today when it comes to having enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Not only did I wake up a little later than I wanted, the traffic was most unkind when I was coming home, meaning everything this afternoon happened late, and -- yeah. *grumbles* Here's what I did get done today --

Work – Today proved to be one of those days where I feel like I didn’t really do a lot – mostly because I ended up distracted from what I was trying to do (get through the rest of the exceptions) by stuff my coworkers were trying to do (namely, untangle the mystery of what to do with some matching gift checks that came in about half a year after the gifts they were supposed to match). And also figure out what’s happening next Tuesday, when that damn mass for the new Bishop coming in is going to happen. Plus side, looks like the only thing I have to go to is the mass itself; minus side, it starts earlier than they said it was going to because of stupid religious nonsense. *grumbles* My own fault for staying at that place, I suppose… Just gotta focus on getting through the final couple of days this week, and then we can worry about THAT.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Baldur's Gate 3 But it's Only Bad Choices” by OXtra! You will be thrilled to learn that Shove Fighter Luke and Newbie Warlock Ellen continued to make only the worst choices – which led to them getting caught in a bit of a time loop on top of the chapel ruins for a while...let me explain:

A) After Luke was saved from burning to death in his bare feet, the pair ended up on top of the chapel ruins, with Ellen interrupting the conversation between Gimblebock and his friend as they argued about going to check out the ruins of the Nautiloid. Ellen, of course, quickly seized on attacking the pair as the worst decision to make – and she was right, as Gimblebock and his companions (the guy he was talking two and the two keeping watch from further up on ruins) easily wiped the floor with her and Luke. Good thing Luke had made sure to save during the convo!

B) After rewinding time, Ellen then managed to successfully intimidate Gimblebock and friends away (because for some reason they thought that was the one most likely to go wrong – not when you have a +3 to Charisma checks it ain’t), and she and Luke were free to explore the area! They immediately found that fragile bit of floor that dumps you into a room right next to the party exploring the interior of the ruins, and the big stone block hanging above it that you can use to smash through the hole if you are so inclined. Luke was of course promptly like “I’ll stand here and you drop the block on me,” and Ellen was happy to oblige by climbing onto the structure and hitting the rope with an Eldritch Blast –

Cue a mostly-dead Luke dropping into the room and immediately ending up in combat with everyone there. Completely unable to defend himself because, well, he was already dying. XD He got wailed on for a while before Ellen jumped in the hole after him, and while she did her best to help him (and got to show off her new “Hellish Rebuke” spell via reaction – it’s actually quite powerful), she too got wailed on until she died. Whoops.

C) However – now they knew what was going on with that block and that floor, the pair now had an idea – use the block against Gimblebock and the guy he was arguing against. So the pair rewound time again, and – after a brief misstep that required another reload – while Ellen kept the pair distracted in conversation, Luke used his new sword-throwing skills to sever the rope and smash them with the block. This worked beautifully –

But it did mean that the pair were now in combat with Gimblebock’s two OTHER friends, and Luke was now unarmed, as his sword was floating above the hole. Fortunately, Ellen’s Hellish Rebuke ended up murdering the guy with the acid arrows before he could do TOO much damage, and while taking down the mage proved to be a very tough fight (as she did like casting Sleep and Firebolt on the two), the pair did indeed best her. Luke then went to collect his sword –

And was punished for making a good decision by falling down the hole and starting fight number two with the people inside. XD He just managed to hold them off for a while (mostly because they HAD bothered to heal a bit this time around) while Ellen talked her way past the guy guarding the door on the other side of the ruins, before murdering him immediately with an Eldritch Blast and running into the fray – unfortunately, his insistence on throwing shovels and trying to flex by hitting someone with an entire chest (only to MISS) meant that he was soon taken out, and it wasn’t long before the enemies found the hiding Ellen nearby and took her out too (though she did nearly kill their barbarian with some Eldritch Blasting). They tried!

D) And thus time was rewound once more! This time, things finally went the pair’s way, with Luke successfully throwing his sword at the rope and crushing Gimblebock and friend under a stone block; Ellen successfully murdering the guy with the acid arrows (though unfortunately her Hellish Rebuke didn’t just outright murder him this time); Luke chasing the mage and managing to shove her off the very contraption that had held the block to kill her; and Luke managing to grab his sword WITHOUT falling down the hole. Cue the pair of them getting the fuck out of dodge before they got pulled back into that fight again. XD

E) With the time loop successfully broken, the two continued on their way, and – after a brief trip to the spot where Lae’zel SHOULD have been hanging in her cage, had she not been already murdered (which now just featured the random bit of weak floor hanging there in midair), and to a cliffside where the pair attempted to shove each other off the side, only to discover the game wouldn’t let them (dang invisible walls!), they stumbled across the tiefling refugee camp, and the cutscene with Aradin and his adventurers demanding to be let inside, only for the goblins chasing them to show up and kill the guy opening the gate. Once all the players were in position (including our boy Wyll), the game informed Luke and Ellen that they were part of this fight whether they liked it or not. Luke said “I have an idea, if you’re interested–”

Cue Ellen going “we join the fight on the side of the goblins?” Luke was like “that is SO much worse than what I was going to suggest – let’s do it!” XD (For the record, he was going to suggest running away.) So yeah – when I left things off, they were preparing to help out the goblin invaders! Granted, Ellen had accidentally killed one with a Hellish Rebuke thanks to the goblin attacking her on their turn, but hey – wouldn’t be a “bad choices only” run if they didn’t have EVERYONE mad at them. XD Tomorrow, we finish things off with this grand finale fight! Should be interesting!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – though rather than making any FORWARD progress, I ended up re-editing what I edited yesterday, with Alice entering the library and knocking out that ghoul playing with one of the wall sconce levers you need to fiddle with for the first of Grout’s puzzles. Mostly because I decided to double-check that I was right in assuming that the accent table with the note that explains the puzzle was indeed next to the desk with the Weekapaug Thistle bonus item –

Aaaand discovered that, while I’d gotten THAT right, I’d described the library IN GENERAL wrong. Natural consequence of these stories taking ages to write, I suppose – I forget what things look like because I haven’t actually played the game or watched an LP in a while! So I watched a bit of somebody’s video and redid my descriptions to better match the actual game. Fortunately I’m pretty satisfied with the end result, but – meh. Hoping next week I can actually have Alice solve the puzzle and continue onward!

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just one rather long GrayStillPlays video in there today: “Smallest to biggest bike wheels in GTA 5!” Yes, having done the ridiculous tire sizes on cars, Gray’s GTA team figured it was about time they did the same thing with motorcycles! Gray was thus given a set of four bikes – the little Teensy Tires, the regular Normal Tires, the oversized Big Thin Tires, and the very oversized Big Fat Tires – and a set of five challenges to complete to determine the overall winner when it came to which tires were the best! You already know the drill, so let’s get to the challenges and who defeated each one –

I. A set of three slalom courses that each had to be completed in a 13-second time limit, with the little walls Gray had to weave around getting closer and closer together and more and more numerous with each successive course! As you might imagine, the big-tired vehicles could barely make it around the first set of walls, though the Big Thin Tires DID make it all the way to the second challenge after some practice. But as expected, the one that did the best was the Teensy Tires bike, which had plenty of maneuverability despite being VERY prone to overcorrection whenever Gray turned. Needed a perfect run to get the point, but it DID get there in the end!

II. A set of growing speedbumps made up of LEGO bricks that got larger and steeper as time went on, with one particularly narrow section right in the middle just to keep Gray on his toes! Gray gave the Teensy Tires its best shot, but it proved to be too agonizing to keep going after a certain point. The Normal Tires bike also underperformed...but the Big Thin Tires bike ended up doing really well, mostly because the giant tires and ridiculously long frame meant that it could get some SERIOUS air and jump most of the obstacles. Gray still struggled on the sheer walls that were the final two speedbumps, of course, but eventually through sheer persistence and luck he got over them, and the Big Thin Tires claimed a point!

III. A lengthy tightrope challenge, which started out with a tightrope with a couple of turns in it, then transitioned to a thinner tightrope with various off-center sections Gray had to transfer between, then transitioned to an EVEN THINNER tightrope with gaps in it for Gray to jump, before ending with an enormous leap onto the THINNEST tightrope which at the very end turned into a ramp up to the checkpoint! Now, you probably think that the Teensy Tires bike, given it has, well, teensy tires, was the obvious winner of this challenge, right?

WRONG. Its tendency to overcorrect meant that it was the WORST bike for the challenge! The winner, hilariously enough, was the BIG FAT TIRES bike, because the hitboxes on the tires were so wide, Gray could balance impossibly easily on even the thinnest bits! This did not make the challenges THAT much easier – the gaps in particular had a tendency to toss Gray around – but it made it to the end after much trial and error, and snagged a point!

IV. An acceleration challenge, with Gray having to get to the end of a course full of windmills ready to slap him around in 15.5 seconds, otherwise he would crash into a sudden wall. Once again, Gray thought that the Teensy Tires would have this in the bag – but while they were fast, they weren’t QUITE fast enough. No, the honor of winning this challenge went to the Normal Tires, which had excellent acceleration and didn’t nearly send him flying on every turn to boot. There’s a reason they’re the tires we use everyday!

V. And finally, a gliding challenge, with Gray having to launch himself off a ramp and glide over some mountains, past a weebmill, and into a giant tube over the ocean that led to the win! Gray has a lot of experience gliding motorcycles, and he was able to get both the Normal Tires bike and the Teensy Tires bike a pretty fair distance –

But the one that was most able to defy physics while in the air was the Big Fat Tires bike. Meaning, after a few flubbed attempts, that was the one Gray was able to float over to the tube and drive into the win! So it appears that the bigger and fatter your tires, the better they will be! Who would have thunk? :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check-ish – I did figure out what I wanted to do for Song Saturday over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – reblog the post on K. Flay’s “Make Me Fade,” since it’s a song I associate with “Londerland Bloodlines” AND I could make it at least a little Valicer – but I wasn’t able to finish off the post properly, nor edit the one for Squid’s gift fic. I just didn’t have the time. *sigh* Hopefully tomorrow I’ll able to go over both and finish them off properly!

Other: It was SUPPOSED to rain this afternoon, but the prophecized wetness never showed up, so once I got home from work and changed, we did indeed play beanbags (which did contribute to “everything is late today,” sadly, because I didn’t get in pretty much any computer time before my workout, meaning I had to catch up AFTERWARD). And fortunately, I was a little better today than yesterday, scoring a few good throws in the last game and pulling out one win. :) In fact, we all won one today – final scores were me 3-3-W; Dad W-2-2; and Mom 2-W-3. :) So that’s nice! Dunno if we’ll be able to play tomorrow – depends on if this rain ever shows up or not, I guess!

And yeah, I really need to get to bed now, because once again, I'm running late. *grumbles* One of these days I will figure out time management, I swear...for now, night all!

As indicated by the subject line, I did finally remember to make my backups today -- and as also indicated by the subject line, it took me a LOT LONGER THAN PLANNED to complete them. Mostly because my Documents folder took AGES to back up, thanks to also being full of back-ups (namely, old Sims 4 back-ups -- I really should get rid of some of those). Good thing I started the back-up process as early as I did! *grumbles* This wasn't a problem for MOST of the day, I admit, but it started getting kind of annoying/nerve-wracking around the time that I had to go downstairs and work out. Mostly because the timing meant that I would have no time to write up what I'd done for the day BEFORE said workout. Meaning I was going to have to squeeze it all in after supper -- while also trying to sum up Jon's Fallout: London video of the week. Meaning, as usual, it's a late Sunday night for me. *sigh* Always something... Anyway, here's the stuff I accomplished today --

YouTube: Got in my standard Sunday Two today, thanks to having the time to catch up on the extra video I had laying around in my Subs –

A) First up, this afternoon, I managed to catch up on yesterday’s GrayStillPlays – “Testing Round vs Square vs Triangle Wheels in GTA 5!” With Gray having been sufficiently tortured by each type of wheel on its own, the GTA team decided it was time to put all three shapes up against each other in a point-based team challenge! Each wheel shape got a small team of vehicles – including such classics as the truck with the giant cross-shaped wheels made up of little squares; both the regular side-by-side and the square-wheeled side-by-side; and the triangle-wheeled trike and the regular-wheeled trike – and Gray chose vehicles from each team to try and complete the challenges presented to him. Whichever vehicle won the challenge got its team a point, and whoever had the most points at the end “designed their wheels correctly,” as Gray said. XD And before you ask, no, the terrible triangle-wheeled vehicles did not get a single point. XD Instead, in order, we had:

I. Gray having to get a vehicle across a pair of very uneven cube “tightropes,” with the gaps in between each cube getting bigger and bigger the farther he went! This challenge claimed the lives of many vehicles, but the Square Wheels team won it thanks to the giant cross-shaped wheels of their pickup truck

II. Gray having to get a vehicle up a set of three increasing-steep slopes (30 degrees, 40 degrees, and 53 degrees) – BUT not only did he have to climb the slope, he had to stop at a particular spot in the middle before the road rotated out from under him, then wait briefly for a wall to go down before he could proceed up the slope. Basically, he had to pick a car that was fast enough to get to the safe spot, AND had both the grip and the acceleration to stay in the safe spot for a second before completing the climb. This was another one that claimed many many cars, but eventually the Round Wheels won it with the superior traction of one of their sports cars

III. Gray then having to get a vehicle down a VERY steep slope, jump over a gap containing his mortal enemy a wind turbine, and then skid to a stop on an icy incline before going off the end so he could get picked up by the teleporter attached to a nearby circling helicopter. Once again, many cars gave their lives trying to complete this challenge (hell, the regular old trike BLEW UP after running over Gray’s throat), but the Round Wheels also took this one after the regular side-by-side, after many failures to make the jump, finally got over the windmill gap and just stopped DEAD on the ice, slope and slipperiness be damned. Gray was very surprised given its earlier missteps XD

IV. Gray then having to climb up ANOTHER incline, this one decently steep AND covered in increasing numbers of rotating LEGO bumps, that went faster and faster as he got further and further up. This one didn’t claim quite so many cars – mostly because Gray didn’t try that many before finding the winner, but it took out a few, including the regular pickup and the side-by-side, before the big cross-shaped wheels of the Square Wheels truck easily conquered the bumps and got another point for its team

V. And finally, Gray having to drive down a ninety-degree drop and through the thumbnail hole center of a Weebmill to get to the teleporter that lead into the win. The trick here was that he had to hug the road if he wanted to get through the hole – if his car ended up flying, he was toast. And many, many cars did end up flying – but do you want to know what won it?

The trike. Not the triangle-wheeled one, that was a disaster, but the regular one, which is usually ALSO a disaster. In fact, Gray was making fun of it for being absolutely useless the whole video – but it turns out this fucker has a secret gift, and that gift is sticking to the roadway during sheer drops. Gray was utterly GOBSMACKED to discover there was something this meme vehicle could do right. XD But yeah, the trike making that drop meant that the round wheels won the challenge, three points to two! And the trike gets inducted into the “Fail Vehicle That Turns Out To Have At Least One Special Hidden Talent” club! I’m sure the Sherp will enjoy the company. :)

B) And then, tonight, we had the usual Sunday offering from Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout: London - Part 42 - Face The Music!” The continuing adventures of Aria and Mad Jack as they set about enacting Smythe’s four-part cunning plan to become Lord Chancellor (aka the person in charge of the judiciary system), which will apparently allow her to suppress certain Parliamentary procedures for mysterious reasons. Hmmm...welp, Jon knew this was the Evil Faction Of Evil when he had Aria join it! :p Anyway, after reading through Smythe’s dossier, our pair of fancy hat friends managed to complete three of the four steps in this week’s episode, and even had time for a little musical distraction along the way –

I. Step One: Obtain a royal appointment to the position of Lord Chancellor for Smythe by blackmailing one Baroness Brenda Beaumont with a holodisc of her correspondence with her Thamesfolk lover! Aria thus headed off to Brenda’s quarters, which proved to be inside none other than Buckingham Palace. Aria was delighted and spent some time looking around, finding an appropriately throne-like chair to crouch on (as the game wouldn’t let her sit on it properly), and stealing some souvenirs, including a fancy Sunday Bonnet for Mad Jack. XD Eventually, though, she made her way over to Brenda, and found the woman was very reluctant to hand over the appointment, citing Smythe’s refusal to put anything in writing, and noting that even ASKING for the appointment was a serious offense. Aria tried noting that Smythe was a great statesperson, but Brenda refused to budge, so Aria told her “well, that’s your decision, but if you stick with it, this tape will be made public.” Brenda backed down pretty quickly after that, terrified of ruining her family, and Aria walked out of the palace with appointment in hand!

II. Step Two: Get an official seal put on the appointment by Baron Earle Winthrop – a dissolute rich boy whose profile indicated could be easily manipulated by appealing to whatever ephemeral desire was ruling him this week. Or just straight-up overpowered physically, if it came to it. XD Fortunately, it did not come to that – Aria tracked down Earle playing a late-night game of tennis around the back of his townhouse (in the same area where she helped save that old lady’s cat once, in fact), flattered him by saying she couldn’t believe his young opponent had trounced him, then – when he attempted to get her to retrieve some high-class gin to replace his lost booze collection in exchange for the seal – used her Black Widow wiles to get him to just put the seal on the appointment right away. Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Though it’s really lucky she’s got that Lovecraftian Presence on her side, because otherwise I don’t think Aria would be passing some of these skill checks. :p

III. Step Three: Go to the Royal Albert Hall and murder an up-and-coming barrister and anti-indentured servitude crusader, Cecily Sugar, to intimidate her patron, Baron Nigel Honeysett – the only man who had the power to look into the details of Smythe’s appointment and thus cause trouble. However, when Aria arrived at the Hall to enact Step Three, she was met by one Clive Allsop at the door, who immediately informed her that she was his only hope. A puzzled Aria was like “??? Beg pardon?” and Clive explained that he was a classic music composer, looking to spread his music to the masses. He’d been hanging around the Royal Albert Hall with his orchestra, trying to find a member of the British Broadcasting Ministry (the BBM, the in-game equivalent to the BBC) to give their demo tape to. However, none had appeared, so now he and his colleagues had decided that straight-up breaking into the BBM building and gently forcing them to listen to the record was their only option – and Aria looked like she’d be perfect back-up for such a mission! XD I mean, she DOES go around with big old spiked shoulder pads, a fancy mask, and a crown on her head, so she definitely gives off the right “intimidating but fancy” vibes. :P Aria was somewhat tempted, but had to know what was in it for her first – Clive tried to tempt her with the knowledge that she’d be contributing to the culture of British music for years to come, but when she just stared at him silently, he said “yes, fine, there are tickets in it for you.” XD He then informed her that the building’s security was entirely robotic, so if they could keep all murder to non-human entities only, that would be swell –

Before whipping out a cricket bat and taking off in the general direction of the BBM, followed by three fancily-dressed ladies wielding their own improvised weapons. Aria was like “shit – better follow them so they don’t die” and hurried after the group, and – after a quick stop at the Oxford Circus and Oxford Street so Jon could gush about how accurate everything was (he apparently worked in this area at the past, and he was really impressed with the level of detail on display) – joined them in the BBM, shooting the various protectrons trying to stop these musical invaders. After a bit of fighting, they made it to the central room, where station manager Patel Rayner shut off the remaining security before demanding to know who they were and why they were there. Clive introduced himself and explained he was there to deliver a demo tape – Patel was like “seriously?” but allowed Clive into the room when he pleaded with her, admitting it had been a while since they’d had any fans. Clive asked her to introduce him to one Bradley Fortworth, the man in charge of playing the music –

And Patel said “Uh, I can’t really do that – because he’s a computer.” Yes, as it turned out, Bradley Fortworth was a giant super computer! And while Patel could play the tape for him, she could not force him to put it on the air – he had a mind of his own, and they’d lost the manual on how to control him years ago. Aria was like “well, I don’t see the problem – just give the computer your record and see what he thinks” –

Cue Clive revealing that, unfortunately, the record he brought with him got smashed during their attack on the robot security. :( Fortunately, though, he knew the location of a copy – Empire Records, in Lewisham! He’d posted one to them ages ago in hopes of getting a deal, but they’d never actually responded to him. He asked Aria to retrieve it for him – she agreed, and after a quick chat with Patel to learn more about Bradley (apparently he was a computer system designed to help keep the public informed and chill should disaster strike, hooked up like two minutes before the bombs fell – a “Keep Calm And Carry On” machine, as per Jon), headed over to Lewisham to find the store! Turns out it was part of a row of trashed stores that some Hooligans had set up camp in – Aria easily took out the raiders, retrieved the record (which was still stuck in the letterbox in the front door), and even grabbed a nice patched suit for Mad Jack to wear to go with his lovely new bonnet. She then returned in glory to the BBM, where Clive thanked her extremely profusely, officially named the tune “Ode To The Wayfarer,” and asked Aria to present it to Bradley, as he felt she should have the honor after all the trouble she’d gone to. Aria was only too happy to, and gave the demo to the supercomputer –

Only for Bradley to go “thanks, but I want to know if this is truly the kind of music that should be added to the archive of cultural history in my records.” Fortunately, having talked to Patel, Aria had an idea of what Bradley wanted to hear, and told him that the piece had been composed to bring joy to the hearts of British citizens; that “she’d” composed it to add to Britain’s legacy of great art; and that the emotion associated with the composition was “contentment.” Bradley accepted all this, and told her that he’d found the piece worthy and would add it to his line-up. :) Clive’s composition thus went out across the airwaves, and Clive thanked Aria all over again before giving her 150 tickets. A fairly paltry sum, in the scheme of things, but Aria liked the dramatic dude, and thus was happy to have helped him. :) (And we’re all happy that it turned out his music was actually pretty good and not shit like you expect in these situations!)

IV. With that sorted, it was time to enact Step Three: Kill Cecily Sugar for real. Aria and Mad Jack this proceeded back to the Royal Albert Hall, where – after getting past a suspiciously-lax security guard – they arrived to find Cecily preparing to participate in a debate. However, before the speeches could kick off, the power went out. Giving Aria a minute and thirty seconds to set up Cecily’s death before the electrician fixed the power. Aria thus started poking around, looking for a spot to set down a bomb (since the brief had indicated that she’d be exploding Cecily, and everyone else on stage) –

But while checking out Cecily’s podium, she was given the opportunity to look at the microphone. And with her decent Perception, she quickly found a faulty fuse in it that, if overloaded, could give Cecily a fatal shock and kill her much more quietly and cleanly. Aria thus used her Charisma to fake being security to get past the electrician; used her Idiot Savant powers to flip a random switch and trust it was the right one; then headed into the audience to watch the debate once the power came back on. Turned out to be about indentured servitude, with Cecily arguing for reducing how long people could be put into servitude – at least, until she was fatally electrocuted by her own podium. Jon was immediately like “oh, damn it, she’s a decent person and I’m the bad guy for killing her, aren’t I?” *shakehead* Jon, again, you KNEW Angel was the Evil Faction Of Evil WHEN YOU JOINED THEM. And it’s worth noting that his guilt did NOT stop him from stealing the suit off her corpse and giving it to Mad Jack so he’d look even snazzier. XD Jon, seriously, never change. XD

Anyway – with three out of four steps in the plan successfully completed, Jon decided it was best to call it a part there! Next week, Aria and Mad Jack attend Cecily’s funeral (as apparently that’s something that has to happen as part of the Cunning Plan), and hopefully Aria gets to kick off Jack’s companion quest! Because he DID tell her he had something to get off his chest when they were in the BBM, and that generally means it’s time for an Important Companion Conversation. Should be fun! And probably extremely heartfelt, given what we already know of Jack’s backstory...

Tumblr: Nothing happened over on Valice Multiverse today, but I did get some stuff done over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this afternoon, while waiting for the interminable backups to finish backing up –

A) I straight-up reblogged a couple of posts in an attempt to be a little more active generally:

I. A poll asking what kind of phone background you have from my friend Squid (I chose the “an image of something I am a fan of” option and elaborated in the tags that it’s one of my Sims 4 screenshots, of Smiler and Victor about to have a New Year’s kiss while Alice looks on with a big grin)

II. And a post about how “writing is just sitting in front of a computer and making up problems for imaginary people while ignoring your own. fun and casual hobby.” (by user nondelphic) from my friend Newt (because yes, that is definitely The Writing Mood)

B) I went through all my tracked tags and threw three things into my drafts for later queuing:

I. User gllerr’s drawing of the Male Gangrel Fledgling from Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines – it was really well done, and I have some nostalgia for that particular Fledgling because Harry the Gangrel was the star of my very first playthrough :)

II. User itshypnos-is’s drawings of keychain designs for important VTMB locations – a scuffed-up one for Pawnshop Lodgings, the location of the Fledgling’s first haven; a “nice on one side, bloody and creepy on the other” one for Ocean House Hotel, home of the famous “ghost murder stalking you through the building” quest; a fancy one for Skyeline Apartments, the location of most Fledglings’ second haven (featuring the TV newsman on the reverse side); and finally a ticket-shaped one for the Nocturne Theater (where the Fledgling nearly gets decapitated) for “Hell At The Hallowbrook Hotel” (referencing the late-game quest where the Fledgling must take on the Sabbat in their base of operations). All really nice and clever stuff, perfectly fitting each location!

III. And a text post from user smilerkisser: “if i'm not supposed to be attracted to the rollercoaster then why'd you make it so attractive huh.” Because I saw that and immediately thought of how my OT3 came be – namely, Victor decided he wanted the roller coaster I was having him and Alice ride be their third. *facepalm* I mean, I’m happy he did, but still. It’s one of more ridiculous ways to come by a ship!

C) And I worked just a little bit on my “How To Write Smiler” post, adding in an extra link to my various masterposts of Valicer prompt fanfic (for the various Polyship and OT3 weeks and the recent Multiamory Month). I would have linked the masterposts all separately, but there’s at least five of them now, soooo… ^^;

Not a huge amount of work, but hey, it kept me busy!

Workout: Back on the bike to start this week’s daily exercise sessions, pedaling my way through –

A) The entirety of “When you become the Pope” by GrayStillPlays! Today’s Sunday Happy Wheels offering, this proved to be a longer-than-usual video because he had some longer-than-usual challenges to struggle through. Some real tests of his determination in this one! My personal favorite boards included:

I. The opening bottle flip, where almost everything was themed around the mighty Yeet – Gray not only got a bottle on “The Real Yeet” immediately, he also got a bottle returned to him perfectly by the spinning protective shield AROUND “The Real Yeet!” Also eventually he got the win :P

II. “The Bacon Test,” which proved to be a weird little two-part bike fight against various people armed with various blades, which ended with Gray taking a trip to outer space – despite it not actually featuring bacon, Gray quite enjoyed the journey

III. A challenge specifically for Gray that featured Bike Dad dropping off a platform into a giant cloud of homing mines that he had to get through to reach the win...which Gray ended up winning on his first try XD

IV. A giant ramp jump where you had to land in a VERY specific area to win – Gray, thanks to his boundless enthusiasm, ended up both going too low AND too high before he finally managed to fling himself into the winning area

V. And the Dylan Snider board at the end, featuring Bike Mom having to bike her way past a church shooting deadly bibles at her, up the stairway to Heaven through an avalanche of letters, past the sword-wielding cardinals of Heaven, and then down into the Sistine Chapel to run over the members of the conclave and get her baby son declared Pope. Given how many times Gray killed this lady in his attempts to beat the board, she DESERVED to get her son named Pope. XD

Good stuff, as always! There’s a reason Happy Wheels always keeps showing up on this channel. :)

B) The first ten minutes of “Baldur's Gate 3 But it's Only Bad Choices” by OXtra! A two-hour-and-twenty-minute livestream Luke and Ellen did of the beginning of BG3 (in the Virgin Media “Gamepad” in London’s O2), featuring “Shove Everything” Fighter Luke and “I Have Not Actually Played This Game” Warlock Ellen. XD The conceit of the stream was that, whenever they were provided with a list of choices to take in the game, Ellen – as the newbie – would pick whichever one she thought was the worst, and they would roll with that to see what happened. Thus making all the more experienced BG3 players in the audience really, really twitch. XD So far, we’ve just gotten through them introducing their characters, watching the opening cutscenes, and popping out of their pods on the Nautiloid, with Luke failing to shove Ellen but Ellen managing to successfully Eldritch Blast Luke (after a misfire that hit his pod instead). XD I look forward to seeing just how poorly things go from here – according to the rules of the stream, their intention WASN’T just to shove companions down chasms and such, but looking at the comments, it looks like that goes out the window pretty early on. XD (And hey, as a bonus, thanks to Ellen’s class, I’ll be able to see how Warlocks work in the tutorial fights – important information, given I’m going to be changing Tav!Smiler’s base class to that!)

Other: And here we have the last three important things of note –

I. I spent most of the time before lunch (after starting the back-up process) answering Moose’s latest set of messages, so that’s all set, at least. Hopefully your keyboard isn’t still acting up, Moose!

II. I also took the time to answer a PM from a reviewer who recently left some short reviews on a couple of my old BTTF fanfics, and was thrilled to get a response from me and wanted to send me something longer now that she knew I was still active. It was a very sweet PM, praising the fics and my writing style and all that –

It just also said she was surprised to get a response back from the author of the twenty-year-old fanfics she’d read. And that some of my fics were almost as old as HER. I – you know, I KNEW I’d been doing this for a while, but – still. Had to take a moment and be like O.O about that before answering. XD

III. And, while I was waiting for the backups, I took a moment to reread a fic I first read at my lunchbreak at work so I could give it a proper review – “A Light In The Storm,” a Severance fic by Alooxis! Featuring an AU post-canon situation where the Outies can switch on the Innies at will (thanks to a court order forcing Lumon to provide that tech), and Innie!Mark getting terrified by his very first thunderstorm. Fortunately he was hanging out with his sister Devon at the time, and she managed to help him through it. It’s a very sweet fic, and I was glad to finally give it a comment saying so – as was the author, who just commented back thanking me for my kind words. :) Hopefully I can sneak in some time to reread and comment on some other fics that have been sitting in the mental backlog soon!

Okay -- definitely took me longer than I wanted, but not as long as I feared. Small mercies. Still, I have got to get off NOW if I want to get any halfway decent sleep, so -- night all!

As you will see in the write-up for my day -- suffice to say that things did not go exactly according to plan, especially this morning:

Cleaning: Welp, this took WAY longer than it should have today, for two simple reasons:

A) I woke up forty minutes later than I wanted to, arising at 9:40 AM instead of 9

B) I ran out of the homemade chocolate granola I add to my cereal, so I had to make a fresh batch of that after I finished my breakfast and brushed my teeth.

Meaning, not only did a get a late start on the actual cleaning – starting around 11:20 AM – I also was interrupted pretty early on by having to get my nearly-finished granola out of the oven and spread the chocolate chips all over it before letting it cool, and that just – threw everything off. *rubs eyes* I am SO lucky I didn’t have to throw my blankets in the wash as well – though I did have to take a break after lunch to put away my portion of the family laundry Mom was doing. *grumbles* Bottom line, I didn’t even finish my dusting, what with all the interruptions, until well after 2 PM, and didn’t finish Swiffering and vacuuming until after 3 – finally wrapping everything up around 3:15 PM or so. *heavy sigh* Fucking good thing I wasn’t planning on playing video games today anyway, huh? At least I still got to listen to “The Wardens of Bellweather Crematorium” during the clean – would have been extra sad/pissed off if I hadn’t gotten my biweekly Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark video in!

Writing: Did the second draft of my tumblr friend Squid’s birthday gift fic, about Isaac and Romero from VTMB talking about Romero’s obvious love for Angeline, Squid’s ghoul OC – or, well, what Isaac thought was Romero’s obvious love for her, as it turns out Romero himself was totally oblivious – this afternoon, after I’d caught up on all my internet stuff. Took a little longer than I really wanted to wrestle it into the shape, but I’m happy enough with the end product, and I’m sure they’ll be happy with it too. Just gotta whack it into the old queue so it’s ready to post this Friday, and I’ll be all set!

YouTube: My late start to the day hit me here too – while I was able to get MOST of the videos I wanted to watch watched, I ran out of time to watch today’s GrayStillPlays video, meaning I’m still behind a day there. *grumbles* But I still managed to get through four out of the five, which is no mean feat given how long watching and summing them up can take –

A) First up, before my shower and supper, we had “I Reached A Secret Career Stage | Super Sim Series 19” by Petey Plays It! Yes, Tina was finally back in action, and ready to cause way more chaos as her best villainous self. To whit, the latest episode saw her:

I. Save her mother Sally from the new master vampire on the block, Rhiannon, via her Sim Ray’s freezing and mind control powers – only for Rhiannon to be impressed with Tina’s villainous ways and offer a truce in the form of “I’ll stop trying to get revenge for Sally casting spells on me if you and her join my evil Underworld club.” Tina agreed, though she wasn’t exactly happy to learn Nancy Landgraab was also part of the club – that’s her favorite punching bag, how dare Rhiannon make them work together XD

II. Progress the Sticky Fingers aspiration by continually stealing stuff – mostly from Nancy’s house, so she didn’t get any bright ideas about them burying the hatchet now that they were part of the same club XD

III. Join the Criminal career in the Oracle branch and rapidly get promoted all the way to the top, getting herself a sweet new computer and some cool new work outfits, in the hopes of impressing her new vampire boss

IV. Progress the Leader Of the Pack aspiration by holding a few Underworld club gatherings in various places (including the bar in Moonwood Mill – early misstep for the new recruit, given vampires and werewolves FAMOUSLY don’t get along in Sims 4 without mods), earning lots of club points by being mean to people, chatting about the club with the various members, and recruiting Trashley Reelperson (aka the “three raccoons in a trenchcoat” NPC from Businesses & Hobbies) as a new member, also to impress Rhiannon

V. Progress the Villainous Valentine aspiration by breaking up yet another couple (because why not? She really needs to get this one completed after all)

VI. Progress the Seeker of Secrets aspiration by eavesdropping on people and snooping around their houses for secrets – especially after Rhiannon proved to be like “fine, but what ELSE can you do for me” after Tina told her about their new member and her new job, prompting Tina to want to get the dirt on her to oust her, and on everyone else to get them to back her up during said ousting (namely, using the secrets she’d found to blackmail Nancy into supporting her despite their terrible relationship)

VII. Swap careers to join the Secret Agent career as a Villain, progressing up the ladder to the very top spot as a Triple Agent – which is actually the “secret career stage” from the title, as it turns out the Villain career track has eleven levels, not the standard ten. Sneaky!

VIII. Finish off the Public Enemy aspiration by luring Rhiannon’s friend and primary minion Marley out for a day of summery swimming in Sulani – and then, when it proved to be super rainy there, luring her to Tartosa instead and using her various tricks of the trade (namely, her Sim Ray’s “freeze ray” function and a “tranquilizing handshake,” dunno where she picked that up – guessing the Secret Agent career?) to keep her in the sun until she finally burned to death. Annoyingly, not only did Petey have to reload the save because Marley refused to burn to death the first time, when she finally DID die, for whatever reason, it didn’t count as Tina witnessing a death. Despite her being right there. Petey wasn’t sure why (possibly it had something to do with Marley being a vampire and dying in a vampire-specific way? We know the base game aspirations aren’t always updated to account for new gameplay), but he decided that, since he’d given completing it the CORRECT way his best shot, he was allowed to cheat to ACTUALLY complete the aspiration. *nods* Entirely fair to me, Petey!

IX. And along the way, unlock two Mastery Perks (“Spacebender,” which allows her to teleport, via a special Rewards Store drink, and “Skilled Sleep,” which allows a projection of herself to learn skills while she sleeps, from general gameplay); continue upgrading her two robots (Wheelo the Servo is up to level 8 enhancement, while Ivy the gardening bot is up to level 7); and continue working on mastering her ghost powers by turning herself ghostly via ghastly rituals (also proved to be a great way to sneak into Rhiannon’s house, snoop for secrets, and steal a chair).

So yeah, busy episode! But no one can say that Tina isn’t living her best villain life – well, except Rhiannon, who apparently thinks Tina is a wanna-be who is trying too hard. XD But next episode, with most of her club turned against her and her most faithful minion dead by sunlight, she’s probably going to get a rude awakening regarding just how hard Tina’s willing to try to make her life hell…

B) Then, after supper, it was time for the OXBoxtra list videos of the week –

I. “7 Bosses You Snuck Up Behind Like a Total Hero: The Return” – Ellen and Andy going through a bunch of bosses that you pretty much have to sneak up behind (or above) to defeat! Facing the horrible dog-cat-demon woman Ko-omote in Ghostwire: Tokyo after she ate your ghost buddy KK? The only way to depower her and get her to spit him up is to yank out her three mystical tails, so approach her from the rear and get yanking! Going up against the Ancient Wyvern in Dark Souls 3 and finding a head-on fight to be too deadly? Get past it and sneak up onto the scaffolding to reach a ledge where you can deal death from above to its head! Need to take down Konstantin at the end of Rise of the Tomb Raider after he yoinked all your weapons? Time to both sneak up behind AND above him so you can stab him with your climbing ax and defeat him via the power of QTE! Taking out your enemies from behind – it’s just better.

II. “7 Games That Changed Completely on a Second Playthrough: Commenter Edition” – Mike and Andy talking about those games that, when you started up the New Game Plus, suddenly changed in some significant way! Sometimes, you can get an entirely new game – for example, the second time you play Bravely Second: End Layer, you can call upon your allies from the end of your first playthrough, immediately defeat the big bad, and start a new story entirely with all new decisions you have to make! Sometimes, you just get something that helps you understand what was going on during the first run better – for example, the second time you play Lies Of P, the device that you’re hauling around that examines the “Ergo” of the puppets you fight upgrades so you can understand them when they speak to you, allowing you to suss out their motivations and occasionally feel bad for killing. And sometimes, you just get stuff that makes the second run-through a little more, ah, interesting – for example, the second time you play Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, not only do you unlock a “party” lightsaber that changes color every time you swing it, you also unlock perks that makes both you and your enemies deal extra damage, replaces standard encounters with harder enemies, and randomizes what the hell main character Cal looks like every time he dies. And as Mike put it, “...if you’re arguing that the hero of a Star Wars game turning up to cutscenes with a randomized handlebar mustache and mullet combo doesn’t change the game completely, look at this and realize how wrong you are.” [cut to serious cutscene where poor Cal looks like a completely stereotypical redneck] XD Just proof that even the little things can make a game feel completely different the second time you play it!

C) And finally, to wrap things up, we had yesterday’s GrayStillPlays video – “I say only "no" to every question,” aka Gray plays Sort The Court! This is a game where you play as a monarch who must answer “yes” or “no” to every request made of him, and his decisions affect how well his kingdom is run. Gray played this before, saying “Yes” to every request, and ended up with a shockingly prosperous and happy kingdom, but this time, he wanted to give the old “No” a try. Though despite the title, it wasn’t “no” to EVERY question – instead, he decided to be indecisive (ironically), saying “yes” to everything one day, and “no” to everything another day. How did that work out for him?

Shockingly well! There was a little trouble right at the start of the playthrough, when some of his “nos” dropped happiness to the point where people started leaving the city – but the “yes” days more than made up for that, as they led to such things as the circus coming to town, a tavern being built, and some guy’s fishing boat being fixed and bringing in loads of coin. And hell, sometimes even the “nos” helped improve things – Gray refusing to give his captain of the guard any guidance on what to do with some captured prisoners led to him going “FINE, I’m just going to train them myself and make them new soldiers.” Leading to the town gaining like three people. XD Basically, what we learned today is, in this game, it doesn’t actually matter what the hell you say, so long as you keep the overall happiness of the kingdom over 100. Hell, Georgie the devil showed up on a “yes” day and got Gray to agree to a massive demonic ritual that killed a bunch of people but gave Gray a shitload of cash – but because all the murder didn’t actually affect the HAPPINESS score, nobody cared and people kept moving in! So yeah, just make sure your “no” days only cause minor happiness disruptions, make sure to always let the circus visit town, and you will be fine as king of this weird little kingdom. :P

Tumblr: Actually did get a few late-night things done here –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I managed to sneak in some time to work on the second half of my Mega Ghostbusters AU post – fixing some typos, rewording some awkward sentences, and finishing off the last few paragraphs, with the human Busters telling Smiler that, as freaked out as they are to learn they’re an eldritch god-being, they don’t want them to leave, they’re still their friend. And, in Victor and Alice’s case, partner/metamour (though Alice DOES get Smiler first to promise not to fuck with their minds or bodies, which Smiler is happy to do, given their past “accidentally killed some of my followers by not realizing hunger and thirst are necessary for the body to live” mistake). Thus leading to the Ghostbusters becoming an Official Accredited City Service, and me talking about the hypothetical epilogue where Doc and Clara are married and bringing up baby Jules while still busting part-time; Marty and Jennifer are also married and working on their non-Ghostbuster careers (Marty his music, Jennifer her art) while also still busting part-time; Victoria and Emily are planning their wedding while helping train the next generation of Ghostbusters; and Smiler, Victor, and Alice are still doing their V-polycule thing as full-time Ghostbusters, helping train the kids as well – and sometimes freaking them out when Smiler busts out the tentacles to grab something. XD Draft is still not quite finished – I want to go over it again for final tweaks, and I still have to do all the tags – but at least it’s more finished than it was before!

Valice Multiverse – I had a couple more reblogs on the “Seth looking for Richard” Forgotten Vows Verse thread I’ve got going now with The Coven Wars, with:

A) Seth telling Victor about how Richard’s wandered off in a fugue state and wondering why he took his eyes off him – Alice tried to calm Seth down and tell him it wasn’t his fault, while Victor (flashing back to his own fruitless struggles to find Alice in London while she was wandering around in a fugue state) said that they would of course help him look, asking for a description of Richard

B) Seth providing said description – Richard is apparently on the shorter side, has blue eyes and whitish, scruffy hair, and their mother’s wedding ring on a chain around his neck. Victor was like “well, at least he’s very recognizable,” with Alice concurring and saying it helps that she’s talked to Richard before, before asking Seth where he last saw the kid. We’ll see what Seth says tomorrow at some point, probably!

Okay, this is -- not as bad as I thought it was. I mean, I still wish I'd gotten a bit more done, but I'm glad I was at least able to do some stuff on tumblr. Still, in the interest of hoping NOT sleeping until almost 10 AM tomorrow, I really do need to go hit the sheets. Tomorrow is Mother's Day, so I'm not going to make any major plans in case Mom wants to do something -- though I AM going to definitely take some time to answer Moose's latest messages. ...and do my backups, because I fucking forgot AGAIN. *sigh* In my defense, I was INCREDIBLY annoyed this morning by the whole "gotta clean AND make granola when I woke up LATE" thing...anyway. Night all!

Like, most of my day was fine -- it was decent weather for the most part, and my workday wasn't too taxing, as you shall soon see -- but the ride home from work was more trafficky than I would have liked; there was a rumble of thunder in the afternoon before my workout (fortunately just the one though); we ate supper late because Mom isn't used to cooking salmon in the oven anymore, just on the stovetop; my parents were kind of grumpy during dinner (I don't think they liked the show we were watching, plus I suspect my Dad in particular was in pain because he seemed to be rubbing his knee a lot); and I got back to the computer late because it took a while to get all the dishes from dinner and then me making my last lunch of the workweek cleaned up. *grumbles* Why does everything always take longer than I think it's going to take... Anyway, yeah, that threw me off a little, but I still got everything I needed to get done, done --

Work – Another quiet day – pretty sure the phone, or at least my phone, didn’t ring once. O.o Spent my time doing roster maintenance, going over a QC file for the latest billing, putting on one big check that we received as per my boss, and listening to my coworkers watch the announcement of the new Pope (Leo XIV, apparently, aka Robert Prevost). My coworkers were chattier than normal even before the pope announcement, which was annoying, but I got through it. Just one more day to go!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure in BALDUR'S GATE 3 | Co-op Multiplayer Baldur's Gate with Oxventure Characters” by Outside XBox! And I am pleased to say that, despite yet more chaos, the party did succeed in their goal to find the necessary dirt on Kagha to make her stop being a dick to the tieflings –

A) First, though, Corazon found something arguably even more important – a shovel! Very useful for digging up buried treasure spots, as he found when he dug up a chest containing a bunch of gold and some amber. Mike joked that Andy was pickpocketing the ground now. XD

B) Then, the party found the confrontation between Auntie Ethel and Mayrina’s brothers, Johl and Demir. Egbert’s attempts at diplomacy (namely, saying he wouldn’t let them hurt Ethel) led to the men assuming he was in league with the hag and starting a fight –

A fight that was very quickly finished by Prudence’s new spell, Cloud of Daggers. Like, those two got minced RIGHT quick. O.O (Then again, I suppose I shouldn’t be THAT surprised, given how effectively their nemesis Liliana used it against the Egbert clones when they went rogue…) Ethel faked being horrified by the men’s deaths, admitted to having Mayrina at her place (claiming she asked Ethel not to tell her brothers where she was), then invited the group around to her house to be thanked properly. They didn’t end up going there, though, possibly because Mike didn’t want any more “Egbert is hot for hag” jokes popping up in the chat. :P

C) Then they found out (with the help of an insight check Egbert managed to reroll successfully – inspiration yay) that the pretty meadow they were crossing in an attempt to find the swamp they were looking for was in fact the swamp they were looking for. They were pretty startled by the change, and proceeded to blunder around it for a while, Corazon encountering redcaps pretending to be sheep while Egbert and Lae’zel both fell afoul of traps and had to be healed with Egbert’s healing spells so they weren’t bleeding or rotting all over the place.

D) THEN they found their way to the tree where Kagha was supposed to meet with her mysterious contact – only to get drawn into a fight with wood woads and mud mephits! The former weren’t too bad – a little tanky, but one of them glitched out and actually refused to attack the group after getting caught in a Cloud of Daggers courtesy of Prudence, which made their lives easier – but the latter were real dicks, flying around, spitting mud at everyone to make it harder for them to move, and summoning more of themselves to fill the battlefield. The fight was very hard-won, with both Corazon and Lae’zel getting downed at one point (admittedly, Lae’zel kind of downed HERSELF by Thunderwaving a bunch of mephits close to her and getting damaged by their death bursts – or possibly her own Thunderwave, in a very Dob-like move) and Prudence’s Eldritch Blasts not exactly doing the job of slaying their enemies (so many misses!), but it was won, and after a short rest to restore hit points, the gang was able to search the tree –

And find a letter from Archdruid Aelis of the Shadow Druids (aka evil druids), congratulating Kagha on her good work on starting the Rite of Thorns to shut off the Emerald Grove and promising that she would be First Druid once it was successfully cloistered! Now that is some serious dirt on the woman! The party promptly fast-traveled back to the Emerald Grove –

E) And then confronted Kagha with what they’d found out! Causing the rats in the room to reveal themselves as the Shadow Druids she’d been working with. Kagha attempted to justify her actions by saying that they’d be safe in the shadows, but her fellow druid Rath wasn’t having it, and the Shadow Druids ordered her to start killing everyone in the room, starting with the “snitch” – aka Egbert, as he was the one carrying the plot-important letter. HOWEVER, at the point where I left it, Egbert was considering a couple of dialogue options to try and persuade Kagha back to the side of the light – we’ll see tomorrow if he manages to convince her to stop being evil with his Oath Of The Ancients, or if we’re in for another tough fight!

2. Start outlining “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got the doc for the next story started, writing up the main objective for the score (stealing a bunch of Coin from the Van Dort’s vault, because they were dicks to Victor and also because the trio ran into two people, Kasimir and Barnaby, who were going to rob the vault anyway and who were amendable to a team-up) and all of the “have to happen” moments! Which, uh, took a lot longer than writing up the ones for “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded,” because a lot more of this story is just regular story rather than me doing solo play to see how events go. I have some very specific stuff I want to cover, after all – from Victor pretending he doesn’t want to be a Whisper when he really does, but he feels he can’t because of his duty to his parents; to the gang arriving at the Van Dort house...only to find a party in full swing; to Victor reuniting with his parents, only to find they care more about the Everglots breaking his engagement than if he was in any danger while he was missing – and then overhearing Nell derisively ask what ghost would marry him while talking about his story with William; to Victor bumping into Barnaby, clocking he’s here to rob the place, and suggesting the team-up; to Smiler asking Alice if she minds if they move in with her (partly to get access to the Fox-Lloyd alchemy bench, partly to make sure she has living company); to them seeing Kasimir sneaking around and ending up assisting in the kitchen to keep an eye on him; to them following Kasimir to the Van Dort greenhouse and being utterly AMAZED by it (to be fair, it’s basically a greenhouse housed in a MASSIVE AQUARIUM full of radiant fish, so); to the trio reuniting in the greenhouse and Victor revealing what assholes his parents are before asking if he too can move in with Alice; to getting Victor’s stuff and Victor stripping an old masquerade mask to use as a future spirit mask because there’s nothing stopping him from becoming a Whisper now! Oh, and the formal creation of the Three Pillars after the score, with Victor blurting out the name when the trio are confronted by the leader of the Gray Cloaks upon their return to Six Towers. XD Basically there’s a lot that has to happen in this story! But I’m willing to keep the robbery itself a little more loosey-goosey – and I actually did sneak in a roll earlier, with Smiler attempting to Sway the Van Dorts’ head cook into thinking they and Alice were new hires when they first started following Kasimir! Unfortunately, they rolled a 1 and a 3, so they failed at this – the cook let the two stay because a minor emergency happened and she needed the help, but she’s quite suspicious of them, and may prove to be an obstacle when they go for the vault. *nods* Tomorrow, I hope to actually outline what protections they’ll have to get past to access the vault, figure out what type of score this is (I’m guessing Stealth) and everyone’s loads, and at least do the engagement roll! :) Feels good to be getting back into this – I do enjoy doing a bit of solo-play to figure out how their scores go!

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Substitution check – the only thing in the Subs this Thursday was another GrayStillPlays compilation (two hours of GTA V challenges), so I instead caught up with another CaFae Latte compilation by C. M. Alongi – “CaFae Latte Season 46 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured:

I. Erik having to help caffeine up Cyrus and Bob after they spent a late night at the Stoughton St Coven’s Beltane festival (with Cyrus having tried to jump the giant bonfire after Herla dared him to – Bob said that Herla meant on HORSEBACK, but Cyrus was like “I’m not going to endanger an innocent horse!” XD)

II. Drek and Cyrus helping a deaf customer (with Cyrus showing off his command of sign), only for a potential Karen to poke her head in and demand to know what they were doing – however, upon being told that the person she was pestering was DEAF, she immediately turned to leave in embarrassment –

And bumped into an arriving Patrick, soaking his shirt with her cold coffee. She fled, and Patrick took off his shirt, asking if it could be soaked in the back...cue Drek having a panicky “oh no he’s hot” moment and then revealing to Rethu and Cyrus in the back that he’d JUST figured out he was gay. Cue Cyrus being like “PATRICK led you to realize this???” (Drek: “You dated his cousin!”), Rethu being annoyed because they’d lost $20 to Husniya (who had Drek clocked from shift one), and Drek arguing that there was no way he could have figured out he was gay earlier (cue the “Drek is pretty obviously gay” flashback sequence XD). Also cue Patrick revealing when Cyrus came back up to the front to give him some scones that werewolf hearing is WAAAY better than fairy or goblin hearing, and Cyrus telling him not to embarrass the kid before very reluctantly admitting that he was probably the best choice for a first crush (even if he is the straightest person in the room), which is not something he ever WANTED to say to someone he considers like a brother, thanks XD

III. Drek asking Bob for some time off on Saturday so he and his friends could go to a party – followed by JC, having overheard, insisting on adding their contact information to his phone so if something went wrong or he got drunk and needed a ride home, he could call them for help (instead of contacting his parents if he didn’t feel comfortable doing that)…

IV. And then Drek taking them up on that offer when he thought someone had roofied their friend/designated driver Melody. JC and Nicole rushed off to the party to make sure Melody was all right – but, fortunately, it turned out there was no maliciousness involved, only ignorance. Namely, Kurt, the host of the party, had given Melody some Mike’s Hard Lemonade, not realizing that “Hard” stood for “alcoholic,” and Melody was just a lightweight since she normally doesn’t drink at all. JC and Nicole gave her, Drek, and their friend Xander (also slightly drunk) rides home, after a stop at McDonalds, and JC and Nicole ended up bonding with Drek’s parents over stories of coming out to their parents (apparently Drek’s human mom’s parents STILL think her relationship with Drek’s goblin dad is a “phase”)

V. And finally, Erik arriving early to a shift and learning of Drek’s hangover, then offering to clock in early to relieve Husniya...only for Husniya to decide to stay when a controlling asshole and his girlfriend came in, with the controlling asshole insisting on ordering tea for said girlfriend and not letting her have and food as she “still needed to lose some weight.” The controlling asshole then asked the girlfriend why she’d insisted on coming here, and Husniya clocked that the woman was planning on breaking up with him –
And THAT’S where C. M. Alongi ended that compilation! Mean. XD Well, I guess well see how that goes for everyone when I finally get to compilation 47!

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

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Got two things done over here:

A) Put up a post this evening complaining a bit about how I looked at the Poe/Rey/Finn OT3 gifset I reblogged via my queue earlier in the day and thought the quotes used for the three would be PERFECT for the VITD version of my Valicer trio...but how I can’t really do my OWN cool gif post using the quotes with them, because, well, I don’t have any cool gifs of the VITD Valicer trio, because they only exist in my head. :( The most I have are some Sims pictures of them in CAS sporting appropriate outfits. *sigh* It’s tough being a weird crossover OT3 crackshipper who loves AUs sometimes!

B) And I finished writing up the main text and tags on my Song Saturday reblog of “Angel With A Shotgun” by The Cab, explaining how I wanted to give the song another airing because one, I felt like it fit the vibes of “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” (with Alice being willing to do anything to help keep the Houndsditch kids safe, or at least safer), and two, because it got no notes the first time I posted it and I felt bad for the song. :p So THAT’S all set now, yay~

Valice Multiverse – Just one ask to throw into the queue over here – from The Coven Wars! Featuring a panicked Seth frantically knocking on the door to Victor and Alice’s home and asking Alice to please open up. *grimace* Forgotten Vows!Alice did indeed open the door to ask what was wrong, with Victor wandering in to see what was going on. I suspect something’s happened to Richard, his little brother – we’ll see when The Coven Wars replies!

*whew* And once again, I have stayed up later than intended doing all this. Time to hit the sheets -- night all!