Posse and Chain Gang

My car said it was 70F when I left work today, and I could believe it -- I cracked the car windows open on my drive home, and one of my room windows when I got back. Fucking NICE to have some warmth, let me tell you -- and we have seen a HUGE reduction in the snow now, yay. :D Granted, it's not supposed to stay this nice -- tomorrow is going to be in the 60s, and then it drops back into the 40s -- but I'll take what we get while it lasts! Given how utterly wretched the world can be today, it's good to have SOMETHING to enjoy.

Anyway -- now that I'm done cheering the lovely weather, here is the daily write-up:

Work – It was actually a pretty quiet first day back at work – which, trust me, I was grateful for, given today’s the second day of my period and thus my brain is still a little foggy:

A) I spent most of the morning working on the GL again, since we had a good chunk of stuff uploaded on Friday

B) I then spent some time before lunch examining some returned mail to see why it was returned – not sure why a couple of pieces were sent back, as the addresses seemed legit, but one lady had straight-up died, which was understandable

C) And after lunch, I sent out a couple of tax letters to people who called looking for them and started working through a fresh set of obituaries

No credit card calls, no complicated issues in my e-mail, no nothing – worse thing that happened was my coworker asking me how to do a particular sort of reversal on my lunch break, and that admittedly only took a couple of minutes. We’ll see how tomorrow plays out!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike and back with “Baldur's Gate 3 Cast play D&D #2 | High Rollers Presents: Shadows of Athkatla!” Tonight’s pedal session featured:

A) Shadowheart and Lae’zel entering The Bhaalspawn Experience – with Shadowheart’s new best friend Bing Bong the imp clinging to her hand like an eager little kid (much to Lae’zel’s disgust). After “gathering their party” in the entrance room, the ladies and Bing Bong stepped through a magic portal into the first room of the experience, featuring clockwork wooden automatons of Jaheira and Minsc (and Boo of course) in cages with explanatory plaques of who they were and how they were connected to The Bhaalspawn, along with various paths to travel. Bing Bong insisted on checking out the automatons first (Lae’zel grumbling over Shadowheart indulging the imp’s curiosity while Mark insisted that he did NOT intend for Bing Bong to be helpful to them in ANY way), but quickly got bored with their repeated phrases, and Shadowheart and Lae’zel headed down the corridor going straight on, through a room with some sort of fake magic generator (complete with illusions of lightning zipping around the room, scaring Bing Bong onto Shadowheart’s shoulder) and deeper into the exhibit –

Where they encountered the smashed-up remains of a couple of other automatons. And a long smear of fresh blood on the ground, as if someone had been dragged away. The ladies instantly agreed that the smart thing to do would be to follow the blood, and tracked the trail through a junction (where they discovered another smashed-up automaton of some sort of monster in a chamber to the right, and where Bing Bong managed to endear himself to Lae’zel a bit by licking the blood off the floor) and into a room which (as per another interlude with our lovely Narrator) mimicked the terrible cloning labs of the late Jon Irenicus, complete with vats and tubes of evil glowy blue-green stuff with various fake monstrosities in them (at least, I hope they were fake!). From there, they could see that the blood trail continued on through a recently-opened secret passage in the wall, and prepared to investigate further…

( Got Longer Than Anticipated )

2. Start final edits on Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got the chapter uploaded to FF.net’s Document Manager for the final scan, and made my way though Victor bringing Alice and Smiler to his room to him offering them some of his clothes to be repurposed into clothes for them after having another guilt attack regarding how much STUFF he has (in this case, sixteen suits when he knows neither of them has anywhere near as many clothes). I left off with Alice and Smiler reassuring him again that he doesn’t have to apologize for growing up rich – we’ll see how much I can get through tomorrow! (Given the chapter’s only nine pages – likely a lot. :P)

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – well, no check in the sense of “did I watch something other than chunks of what I watched during my workout so I could do an accurate write-up for you above and/or a quick clip of Victor in preparation for starting final edits on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy?’” *shakehead* One of these days I’m going to force myself to rely on my memory instead of going back to check certain details in my workout videos – it inevitably makes the whole process take longer! Maybe I can get to those CaFae Latte shorts I wanted to watch tomorrow...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Monday, only keeping an eye on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), not much going on there, what can you do. I should still have enough in my drafts to get a queue sorted for this week tomorrow!

Yeah, as usual, the workout write-up ate up more of my time than it should have. One of these days I am going to wrestle it back into submission, and then maybe I'll be able to get back to more usual nightly routines. As it stands, I should make an effort to get some decent sleep -- night all!

Weatherwise anyway -- it was pretty cloudy all day, and we don't think that it got quite as warm as they said it was going to get. Though it definitely got warm enough for some of the snow to melt -- the patio looked pretty wet when I glimpsed it when Dad went outside to make sure the garage's back door was locked. Slowly but surely getting evidence that this snow is going to go away! My parents ended up spending most of their day on the couch watching their shows, while I spent mine working on my tumblrs, playing Baldur's Gate III, and watching some stuff on YouTube --

All of which I will have to tell you about tomorrow as it is so late and I just cannot finish all my write-ups in time. Especially since it's Spring Forward day and thus it's about to be 3 AM, not 2 AM... *sigh* This is what I get for playing BG3 AND watching a longer-than-usual CaFae Latte compilation video in the same day. Anyway, watch this space for the full write-up of what I did today tomorrow. Night for now, and remember to set your clocks ahead!

EDIT 3/8/2026: Welp, as it turned out, part of the problem was ALSO the fact that I was just about to get my period -- fucker showed up late this morning. >( Fortunately I listened to my body's warning signals and had a pad in when it did, but -- ugh. I may possibly elaborate on that more in today's actual entry -- in the meantime, here's the write-up of the things I did yesterday:

Tumblr: Had a pretty decent day over on the old tumbls –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I am pleased to report that I managed to update two of my drafts over here today –

A) I properly wrote up the “Victor, Alice, Smiler, and the rest of the party encounter Mirkon being lured by the harpies in the Secluded Cove – and after seeing the harpy music charming Alice and Smiler and starting to affect the others, Victor gets mad and uses one of his own Duskwallian spells to open up a portal to the Void Sea over the rock the harpies are hiding on, leading to three of them getting snatched by a leviathan and the fourth deciding to cut her losses and flee” scene in my latest “VITD Meets BG3 Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitposts Collection” post, complete with Victor screaming after the fleeing harpy “YEAH, SEE HOW YOU LIKE IT!!!” and Gale trying to ask Wyll if that was Hadar, only for Wyll to go “FUCK NO.” XD Honestly, this post is pretty close to done, I think – I just need to edit all the scenes in it now and do some proper tags for it! …and then maybe start a FOURTH post of scenes like this, because I really want to do a scene of Victor, Alice, and Smiler delightedly eating rat to SOMEONE’S surprise in the game, but this particular post is getting a little long. XD

B) And I worked a bit on the “Valicer Eats God” post where I’m trying to turn my OT3 into muppety menaces from the RPG Eat God! I didn’t make a huge amount of progress, but I did:

I. Decide that Victor’s third Trait, to go with the already-selected “Fast Feet” and “Sticky Steps” should be either “Dexterous Digits” or “Lanky Limbs” – though I’m leaning toward the latter, as “Dexterous Digits” allows those who have it to pull off all sorts of sleight-of-hand stuff, and I don’t think that’s really Victor-ish, whereas “Lanky Limbs” just gives him a hell of a lot of reach, and Victor IS quite lanky! (I did also briefly consider “Aquatic Aspect” to cover the fact that he’s the son of fish merchants, but quickly discarded it – being associated with fish is more his PARENTS’ thing than his, and I still want to do a kind of mothman look for him)

II. Come up with an Expression (a short sentence on how the Trait informs her personality) for Alice’s “Menacing Missiles” Trait (which allows her to file natural projectiles at people – I’m thinking an organic version of her Cards from the first game): “Most problems go away if you pepper them with enough projectiles (aka throw enough shit at them).” XD I mean, you can’t say she’s wrong, especially when it comes to the problems she faces in her games!

III. Also come up with an Expression for Smiler’s “Vile Venom” Trait (which allows them to inject people with a hallucinogenic substance – Joy Serum, natch): “If I can make people feel happy with one jab, why shouldn't I?” Feels in-keeping with a Smiler who’s based a little more on the ride’s actual themeing than most of my others!

So that’s good – I would like to get this post sorted sooner rather than later!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I actually had an anon ask to answer! From, uh, yesterday, but I forgot to check this account last night because nothing has been happening on it for just about two weeks, soooo… *shrug* Anyway, the ask was a fake news report talking about how a woman was arrested after “breaking into a home to eat cereal and pet the homeowner's dog.” She was caught at the kitchen table chowing down on Fruity Pebbles, and admitted to consuming marijuana before the incident. XD I had Londerland Bloodlines!Alice reply that she could totally believe the woman had had weed before committing that crime, yes...but that it was also nice to have a relatively wholesome crime on the news for a change, as it was normally a lot more depressing. A sentiment that both Victor and myself (in the tags) totally agreed with. *sigh* I’d kill for more silly, relatively-harmless stuff like that in the news...

Baldur’s Gate III: Well, after a week of watching the people behind the Origin companions play their first-ever game of proper D&D (and poor Theo Solomon learning the dice hate him almost as much as Larian seems to hate his character), it was only natural that I’d return to the realm of Faerûn this Saturday to have some more adventures with Tav Smiler and their companions! Today’s session consisted mainly of the gang searching the harpy hangout for goodies, followed by Smiler having a very interesting experience with Gale back at camp – let me tell you all about it:

A) I picked things up at the little beach of the Sheltered Cove, with Smiler and company having just saved Mirkon from a terrible fate by slaughtering the harpies luring him to his doom. And as the tiefling kid was officially out of danger, and Gale was officially out of “hi you’re gaining approval with me at a staggering rate” stories, it was officially time to loot the bodies! I thus had the gang search the corpse of each harpy, looking for goodies –

And ending up sorely disappointed. >( True, the harpy right next to Smiler on the beach had 28 gold on her, which wasn’t bad, but the one that Astarion killed up on the ledge overlooking the water had naught but a bone on her person (which Smiler didn’t take because we already had a couple of bones taking up space in the camp chest), and the one in the water and the one lying on the lower ledges of the big pointy rock island they’d called their own both had absolutely nothing. >( Like, Smiler and friends did all that back and forth, climbing up and down twisted roots and wading through nearly-waist-deep water, for no benefit! Or, at least, that’s what I thought –

Until I spotted a wooden chest lying near the water’s edge on the opposite side of the big pointy rock island. I had the group approach it cautiously, just in case it was trapped, but fortunately it proved to be completely benign, and provided them with the following:

I. 30 XP as they approached it for – unknown reasons. O.o Like, seriously, no clue why the gang got a bunch of XP there – possibly it was the game having a Johnny-come-lately moment and suddenly giving me some location discovery XP? Or there’s some other trigger that dumps XP on you for finding that chest...I mean, I’m not complaining, I’m TRYING to get everyone up to Level 4, but still. Just odd.

II. 60 gold pieces – hooray, the gang’s personal stash continues to grow! Their ability to buy things is restored! XD

III. And the “Hat of the Siren’s Call” – a fancy cap from my big old “extra equipment” mod by GraphicFade that grants the wearer the Sonic Blast cantrip! Which is a custom cantrip where you release a cone of sound that inflicts thunder damage on enemies and – if they fail their Constitution saving throws – pushes them three meters away from you. Potentially useful!

So yeah, that was a halfway decent reward for fighting all those harpies. *nods* Thank you chest – and GraphicFade, of course. :P

( You lot all know how wordy I get now )

YouTube: I’m happy to report that I was able to fit in two videos this evening instead of just the one (though, given I’m posting all this the following day, maybe I should have just focused on one):

A) “7 Times The Real Ending Was Hidden in DLC: Commenter Edition” by OXBox! Andy, Jane, and Mike talking about more of those times where the real ending to a video game’s story was hidden in downloadable content – or, in the case of the last entry, Fable, which was released before DLCs were really a thing, an entirely new version of the game you had to buy – as per the comments on their last video! Examples included:

I. Thought Dead Rising 4 ended with Frank sacrificing himself to the zombie horde to make sure his friends Brad and Vick got out of Willamette in time? Nope – as per the “Frank Rising” DLC, he ended up turned into a sort of super-zombie with special powers, managed to regain some control of his faculties with the help of science, got cured and returned to being a human, escaped the town, and then – depending on how many wasps you collected during the whole thing – either retired from the public eye and had nightmares about being a zombie for the rest of his life, or wrote a best-selling book about his time as a zombie and helped expose the government’s involvement in the zombification incident.

II. Thought Fable ended with with a big boss fight against the fully-human Jack of Blades? Nope – as per the enhanced edition Fable: The Lost Chapters, that was only round one, and to truly stop his reign of terror, the Hero had to fight him again, this time with Jack in the form of a dragon! And then take his mask and either consign it to the lava...or claim it himself and become a worse villain than Jack ever was…

III. Thought Dragon Age: Inquistion ended with Solas firmly on your side in sealing the breaches in the Veil separating the regular world and the spirit world? Nope – as per the “Trespasser DLC,” he’s actually the avatar of the elven god of BETRAYAL, and was hoping to rip the Veil fully asunder – at least, until his initial plan to give his magical orb to the big bad of the main game went wrong. Thus justifying Jane’s decision to have him live in the library and never come out on missions because she hates his stupid bald head. XD

Bottom line? You can never truly trust a game to end satisfyingly if the company behind it thinks they can make more money by hiding it in the DLC and forcing you to pay a few extra bucks for it. Because capitalism. *serious nod*

B) And “CaFae Latte Season 84 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! Which featured more Adventures In Opposing ICE by the CaFae Latte regulars, including:

I. Oscar on aerial ICE-watching duty, reporting in to Andy about how the truck he was tailing had just stopped for gas at a station with a “DON’T TREAD ON ME” sign in the window (after being refused service at an earlier station) and letting him know the coordinates so David and Asif could add it to their “places to boycott” list. Which, as he noted, was pretty close to CaFae Latte...he then continued following the truck as it made its way toward the very street CaFae was on (wondering if they were going after the Mexican restaurant across the way again) –

Only to be told off by a seraph ICE agent also in the skies, telling him to get out of their airspace, he was interfering with an investigation. Cue Oscar blowing the hell out of his whistle and getting into a little bit of a scrap with the guy, then phoning Bob to let her know ICE was coming –
While the ICE seraph tried to shoot him in the back! D: Fortunately he missed because Oscar’s friends loaded him up with good luck charms, but fucking hell, poor Oscar!

( Because these always get long too )

...yeah, you see why I couldn't do all that last night. Especially with the time shift. *sigh* Anyway, talk to you all this evening, where hopefully I WON'T be staying up half the night doing write-ups...

It's not TOO bad yet, but -- I am definitely having my fair share of "staring off into space" or "getting caught up in something I didn't mean to get caught up in" moments. And I have in fact been suffering a few of those moments working on this entry, so let's get this posted and get myself to bed:

Work – Another mostly-quiet day, fortunately, though it was a bit more stressful than yesterday –

A) I had to do up a new “gift confirmation” letter for a guy who called saying he’d received an incorrect one, and he needed something with “received by” dates and amounts and whatnot for tax purposes

B) I had to take a couple of credit card calls (with my coworker grabbing a third at the end of the day)

C) I had to help our main database contact get a bunch of credit card batches posted, which involved calling a guy to let him know that he’d created another unnecessary gift in an attempt to pay his pledge (bit sad, really)

D) I had to e-mail our credit card people again about an issue because they had yet to get back to me

E) And I attempted to research some returned mail, only to not get far thanks to everything else (though I was able to find some updated addresses and send a couple of letters back out)

Yeah, it was busy, but not OVERWHELMINGLY so, at least. And the commute up and back was a LOT better today, so I will accept it. Here’s hoping Friday isn’t a total shitshow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Baldur's Gate 3 Cast play D&D #1 | High Rollers Presents: Shadows of Athkatla!” Tonight’s half-hour featured:

A) Astarion checking through Tav’s pack and finding – tucked away amongst all the various pots and cups and far, far too many books the player character has picked up – two potions of healing (Mark the DM even gave Neil a special little jar with a die inside that Neil could roll when he used it), a scroll of Counterspell, a scroll of Detect Thoughts, and two Arrows of Fire (which are basically arrows that, when fired, light themselves in midair and explode when hitting a target, doing extra fire damage to them and possible the people around them). Astarion promptly tucked all that away and distracted Karlach with a light-up yo-yo he found in the pack. XD

B) Shadowheart wandering toward Lae’zel, Gale, and Elminster to make sure the githyanki didn’t piss their new friend off, and Wyll deciding to swallow his pride and ask if his party members could maybe provide a bit more help with all the wounds? Fortunately for him, Mark decided that their chat with Elminster and cleaning up after the fight and such could count as a short rest, restoring some of their special abilities (Wyll got the spell slot he expended casting Darkness back, Lae’zel recovered her action surge, etc) and allowing Wyll to spend some of his “hit dice” – three dice that a character can roll to help recover hit points! The way they work is, you roll a die (the size of which depends on your character class – Wyll as a warlock had a D8, Karlach the barbarian had a D12, and poor squishy Gale the wizard had a D6), add your Constitution modifier to the result, and recover that amount of hit points. You can roll however many you like, but you only get three (at least until a long rest), so… Wyll thus rolled his first “hit die” –

And got a fucking one. XD Poor Theo! At least he had a +2 Constitution modifier, so he was able to bump that up to a three! He ended up spending another die to get another +6 HP, bringing him up to 15, while Gale rolled his and recovered 5 HP overall. *nods* At least nobody’s actively dying!

( It’s That Time Again )

2. Continue editing Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – kind of had to squeeze this in at the last minute thanks to the above write-up taking so long, but I DID get about a page edited, covering:

A) Victor remarking that the Advocates cult was the weirdest he’d ever met (after Smiler told them yesterday that they hadn’t forced the publishers of the magazine Amusements to join them, since it wouldn’t have made them happy) – Alice was like “have you met many cults?” and Victor had to admit no, but also any cult that allowed potential recruits to just say “no” like that was – well, he would have said “weird,” but then his fingers bumped into a mysterious feathery something under his bed…

B) Victor feeling around under his bed until he could find a handhold on the object and pulling it out – to discover it was an old masquerade mask he was kind of hoping to never see again because he wore it on a particularly upsetting night out. Alice and Smiler both noted how fancy it was, and Victor explained to them that he’d worn it to a party at the Kingsleigh’s, back when his mother was still parading him in front of noble daughters, and that his main memory of that night was standing around in a ridiculous costume, watching all the other men chat easily with the ladies...and then trying to imitate them while introducing himself to the daughter, only for her to laugh in his face and start immediately making fun of him to her friends while he went and hid by the buffet. Smiler was immediately like “do you have any happy memories?!” (Victor: “Meeting you and Alice?” Smiler: “...any more than four days old?”)l

C) And Victor assuring Alice and Smiler that he has actually been happy before after Smiler admitted they were tempted to drag him back to the MOJ and stick him in one of the art rooms until he could feel joy again and Alice admitted she was tempted to let them – just that the doom and gloom kind of overshadowed all the happier moments. Smiler declared that was why Victor was getting out, after all, and reiterated their stance on “if you have terrible parents, you leave them and find new ones.” Victor noted he was a little old to be adopted by anyone now – Smiler countered that their parents would probably be happy to claim him. After all, they were happy to claim Smiler…

And that is where I left things for tonight! Tomorrow, we should hopefully be able to finish off this chapter with Victor making a decision about what to do about this mask – and then next week, we can focus on getting this baby posted! Yay!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – I was hoping that I might be able to fit something in, but the work-out write-up took way too long, unfortunately. *sigh* I’m getting WAAAY too into the details of what I watch when I do my write-ups, and I really need to cut it out.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – didn’t do anything with my queues on either Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) or Valice Multiverse, but I did straight-up reblog something on the former – a thread all about the latest bullshit internet censorship laws going to a “markup vote” to get in front of the House today, and who to call if you wanted the people on the “House Energy and Commerce Committee” to reject the markup vote entirely and stop the bills in their tracks. Just felt important, you know? With all the bullshit happening everywhere? *sigh* I hate this timeline, seriously.

And there we are, and now it is time for me to go get some sleep. At least the weekend is only one day away! Night all!

Yeah, the weather was notably worse today -- afternoon saw snow turn to freezing rain, meaning the roads were all slushy as hell and getting home was a bit of a battle. Not a full-on nightmare like some days -- I was able to take the highway, and traffic wasn't quite as bad as I'd feared -- but it was still a slog! But in most other respects, it was a nicer, more productive day overall:

Work – Fortunately for my sanity, it was a quieter day at work today. There were still problems – like finding out I couldn’t update someone’s pledge (which they’d set up wrong on the website) because of credit card bullshit, and being able to put on a batch at the end of the day because the right source code hadn’t been set up for it, and discovering some more payments that needed moving – but I was finally able to finish that batch I’ve been working on for the past couple of days, and clear a few things out of my e-mail inbox, and automatically take care of one exception when the person it involved called in about something else. And the credit card people HAVE started uploading batches again, which is also good – if they get posted without too much bullshit, of course. We’ll see how tomorrow goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Baldur's Gate 3 Cast play D&D #1 | High Rollers Presents: Shadows of Athkatla!” Tonight’s chunklet saw the group continuing their combat with the Glass Warrior and its army of weird Glitchy Magic Spirits, and featured:

A) Gale declaring his intent to hit the Glass Warrior with Ray of Frost, which everyone agreed was an excellent move – well, until Mark the DM pointed out that Gale was essentially going to have to fire blind thanks to Wyll’s Darkness, and thus he would have to make the roll at Disadvantage. Cue Shadowheart immediately asking “can I cast Guidance on him?” XD Mark said she could not (Guidance doesn’t effect attack rolls – good to know), but she could actually cast something better – the spell Bless, which DOES affect attack rolls! ...on her turn, using her action. Though Gale did have the option of holding his action until it was her turn if he wanted that bonus. After a bit of back-and-forth about “do I want to Bless Gale or do Shield of Faith on Tav,” she decided that she wanted to Bless Gale, and Gale thus held off on frosting the Warrior for the moment…

( It Got Long! )

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got a good chunk edited today, covering:

A) Beckett confirming to Alice that no, he had no interest in stealing the Ankaran Sarcophagus – in fact, he would have much preferred the damn thing stay where it was so he could study it and prove it was just a relic from a bygone age. Mostly because all the talk about it containing an Antediluvian and being a “portent of Gehenna” was getting on his nerves. XD

B) Alice and Beckett taking about Antediluvians and what their deal was, with Beckett correct her misremembered musings that they were the childer of Caine – they’re the grand-childer, actually – and confirming again that they’re the supposed “founders” of each clan and bloodline, and that some Kindred insist they still exist in the present. Alice mentioned what Skelter told her about slumbering elders controlling all those who share their blood, and how it had creeped her out – Beckett agreed it was an unpleasant thought, and reassured her that he believed that, had any Antediluvians survived to the modern era, they would have much better things to do than meddle in the squabbles between Camarilla and Anarchs and Sabbat. “I understand something called ‘Big Brother’ is now popular on the television?” XD (I looked it up, and that WOULD have been the right era for it!)

C) Alice then asking Beckett about why the sarcophagus would be considered a “portent of Gehenna,” given she wasn’t familiar with the concept – he explained in a bored tone that it was supposed to be the inevitable Kindred apocalypse, where Caine and the Antediluvians would come to either kill or devour all their childer. He did not think that was going to happen anytime soon, though – and when Alice asked why, started by explaining his theory that Caine, the First Vampire, was not actually a real person, but just a mythological figure intended to mark the transition from nomadic societies to ones centered around farming. He admitted he was willing to consider the idea that there was SOMEONE named Caine in ancient times, and that perhaps he even killed his brother, but Caine as the Dark Father of all vampires? That he most certainly did NOT believe. Alice admitted she’d prefer if the mythological mega-Kindred stayed in the ground herself and asked if people thought Caine was the one in the sarcophagus – Beckett said he hadn’t heard that theory, stating that most of the masses seemed content to assign one of the “lesser” Antediluvians to it – like Ventrue, or Arikel (the Toreador Antediluvian), or Malkav – and considered that enough of a sign of the End Times.

D) And Alice and Beckett talking about other portents of Gehenna – specifically, thin-bloods popping up everywhere. Alice noted disdainfully that she’d already heard some Kindred get “murderously nervous” around them, and asked why, when thin-bloods were so weak, causing Beckett to explain it was exactly that weakness that made Kindred anxious – given that thin-bloods often don’t display any obvious traits or powers of their clan, cannot usually Embrace, and are sometimes rumored to be able to reproduce the typical human way (or use strange alchemy to twist Kindred vitae in ways not even Elders have dreamed of – had to throw that in from V5 as I thought it was an interesting concept), other vampires think they signal the eventual end of all the clans. Beckett personally thought this was a rather ignorant and reactionary response, and Alice fully agreed, saying that the Santa Monica thin-bloods had been extremely nice and hadn’t deserved all the hounding they got. And that maybe thin-bloods would be more inclined to share their alchemical discoveries if people were nicer to them.

*nods* Solid stuff! We’ll pick up with Alice and Beckett talking about apocalypse myths and the origins of Kindred next week – tomorrow, it’s back to Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” to start finishing that up!

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check-ish, in the sense that I watched most of a video my friend Squid recommended to me yesterday – “How Silksongs True Ending was beaten Blindfolded” by MyPetCactus! Basically someone analyzing the 19-and-a-half-hour run done by some dude named Brisk who was determined to beat Silksong and get the true ending, all while blindfolded. Oh, and he did it on PERMADEATH mode because he needed a specific bonus that only appeared in that mode. *shakehead* Challenge runners, I swear… Anyway, I confess I skimmed over a few bits here and there because it was a 45-minute-long video, and, being unfamiliar with Silksong, I did find some of it a little confusing – but the stuff I watched was pretty damn impressive! Especially for someone doing it blindfolded! Stand-out moments included:

A) Brisk holding forward and down on the keyboard in a certain area with spike pits all around so Hornet (the protagonist) was constantly swinging her needle as she ran, which would allow her to do an accidental “pogo” out of a spike pit should she fall in

B) Brisk abusing the fact that one enemy was in the same area as a friendly NPC with some battle chops themselves, and luring said enemy down to them so they could kill it XD

C) Brisk taking regular breaks to “farm” certain enemies to get the currency needed to buy tools and upgrades and equipment (including, at one point, a key to skip a boss fight he was SO not ready for) – notably, at one point, he went and killed two specific enemies one hundred and sixty-nine times for their stuff. It was pretty wild!

D) Brisk cheesing as many boss fights and arena battles as possible with the strategy of “hang on the wall just out of reach and let my little helper bugs attack them when they get too close, occasionally jumping off to avoid an attack or get a few hits in myself” XD

E) Brisk pulling off a very tricky skip to get out of the boss fight for “Fourth Chorus” – basically, what you’re supposed to do is wait for the camera to shift left, then doing a big jump AS it shifts, then dash and heal to get a little extra distance once the camera follows you in order to land on a very narrow ledge off to the side. Brisk naturally couldn’t see the camera shift, so he did the heal animation FIRST to buy a little time, which allowed him to do the jump around the time the camera shifted and do a dash to get onto the ledge. It was close, but he made it!

F) And Brisk doing the Ascent – a long mostly-vertical platforming section where Hornet is running away from rising lava with the help of her new “shoot up like a rocket with the power of your silk” skill – really, REALLY well for a blindfolded guy! Sure, the version I saw was the successful portions of three different attempts stitched together, but still. It was very cool nonetheless. :)

Yeah, that guy EARNED his victory scream at the very end of the run! *nods* Proud of you, Brisk. Even if you seem to have inspired another lunatic to try a run where they attempt to 100% the game blindfolded. XD Seriously, what is UP with the Silksong community...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – was another “nothing” day on Valice Multiverse, but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I got my queue for the rest of the week sorted quite easily, dropping in:

A) Some fanart of Beckett from Vampire: the Masquerade by trefa for Wednesday

B) That cool Alice In Wonderland lightbox bookshelf decoration by ariesmoonscorpiorising for Thursday

C) That cool “butterfly wings and flowers encased in glass” window corner decoration by – well, by LonesomeHoboGlass, but posted by jetix for Friday

D) That short video of Corpse Bride clips featuring Victor & Victoria and Victor & Emily being romantic together to Mitski’s cover of “How Deep Is Your Love” by jmaticedits for Song Saturday

E) And the “A Smiler In Secundus, Part 2” post I whipped up this past weekend, where I shared Gigs’s Christmas fic of Smiler meeting Alice and Chester at Victor’s house, for Sunday!

So yeah, we’re all good for the rest of the week, yay~ Good to have that off my plate!

*nods* Not bad, not bad at all! But I really do need to head to bed now, so off I go. :p Night all!

We had a bit of snow this morning, but while it looked like it might turn into something serious for a few minutes, it didn't actually amount to anything but a bit of fluff in a few spots. Halle-freaking-lujah -- we do NOT need more snow! And according to Dad, it looks like -- after tomorrow's arctic burst -- the rest of the week is going to be mostly rainy, which should help continue to melt all the snow that's still piled up outside. Though he did also mention the weather people getting nervous about ANOTHER big storm that's apparently hanging out somewhere...oh, I hope we're not going to get a third snowstorm. One each during January and February was ENOUGH. *sigh*

As for my day, I am pleased to say I accomplished pretty much everything I hoped to accomplish:

Tumblr: Twas another day when nothing happened on Valice Multiverse – but I did manage to add a couple of things to my drafts for later over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) An old post by polyshipprompts (which I found on the blog polyamorousmood) which offered up this prompt: “imagine your polyship sharing a bed for the first time and trying to figure out who should sleep where” Which I reblogged with this addition: “As per the "Sleepytime" set of Not-Incorrect Quotes I did for my OT3, Alice and Smiler very quickly figured out during that first time that if Victor didn't sleep in the middle, he stole all the covers. XD” Because yeah, that headcanon was literally the first thing I thought of when I saw the prompt. XD As per the tags (and the linked post), though, Victor actually really enjoys sleeping in the middle, as it makes him feel very safe and loved, so it all works out!

B) And the post “Secundus Sunday: A Smiler In Secundus, Part 2” because it occurred to me recently that I’d never cross-posted Gigs’s “Secundus!Smiler ends up coming home with Victor and meeting the family after the whole ‘getting a permit to sell their wares’ things” Christmas fic over on tumblr. It just kind of fell by the wayside after all the medical bullshit we’ve been dealing with. So I figured I should correct that and whipped up a post with the story and the notes on how it came to be. It’s not going up THIS Sunday because I was a little groggy earlier thanks to my late wake-up this morning, and thus I want to give the post a second look before actually posting it, but I figure it can go into the queue for NEXT Sunday this week. :)

Hooray, a few extra things to queue up if I need ‘em! :P

Writing: I made sure to edit a page on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodines: Downtown Queensland” after lunch today – today’s session included:

A) Alice getting into the “workshop” area of the museum, which initially involved navigating a dark and dingy storage space with various boxes full of potential exhibits the museum staff hadn’t gotten to yet – she wondered how long some of them had been waiting, noting one in particular had a pretty healthy layer of dust on it, which prompted Carpenter to complain about how the item inside must crave the spotlight and how the museum might as well send it back to its country of origin to see if THEY want to display it. Alice was like “we’ll see what happens once I get the sarcophagus – I somehow doubt that many places will want their precious artifacts stored here after the theft is discovered” in response

B) Alice finding a door in the wall that would have been nearly impossible to see if not for the keycard reader next to it (making her wonder if the reader should be painted to match the wall to deter thieves...before going “wait, no, you’d want the STAFF to be able to figure out where they’re going”) and using Auspex to confirm that it was the right door for her – cue the Insane Children drawing a pair of arrows pointing to the door on either side –

And a frazzled Alice face on the door itself, causing Alice to complain that that was rather contradictory of them. :P She wondered if that meant that there was a guard on the other side that she needed to watch out for, then noted that she hadn’t seen any guard-shaped outlines through the wall when she had Auspex on (reminding herself (and me) that she needed to use that aspect of the power more often, as it was useful), so maybe it was a camera she needed to hide from instead. Either way, though, she didn’t see any other doors anywhere nearby, so she took a chance and swiped her card to open it. Leading to…

C) Alice stepping through the door into a big old workroom with all sorts of stuff in it – including a big blood-spattered crate she recognized from the Elizabeth Dane – but no sarcophagus. And then being startled almost back to life by the sudden appearance of Beckett behind her, commenting on how he wasn’t sure why anyone would want to steal the “box with a very ancient corpse. This city’s not that dull.” XD She asked what the hell he was doing there, and he explained that, as an archaeologist himself, he’d wanted a look at the sarcophagus that was sending the city into a tizzy. His guess was that all that was in there was a mummified Mesopotamian king, but he needed confirmation. Alice told him that he wasn’t getting it here and asked if he was sure it was supposed to be in this room (as she’d wondered briefly if it had been moved) – he assured her that he’d had it on good authority the sarcophagus was supposed to be in here, meaning someone had stolen it – “or ‘intentionally misplaced,’ if you prefer.” XD Beckett really does have some excellent lines.

And so I left off for today with the pair staring at the empty examination table where the sarcophagus should be, wondering who took it and why! Tomorrow, Alice and Beckett start talking potential suspects before veering off into discussing how it ties into the Gehenna superstitions that Beckett hates so much. Should be fun – like I said, Beckett does have some banger lines. :p

Portal 2: My grand return to Aperture Science proved to be a little less grand than I’d expected, as I only completed two test chambers today. ^^; But they are getting a little harder, and I only played for about forty minutes (so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed trying to summarize a long gaming session and the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode later), so… *shrug* It is what it is! Today’s chambers were –

Chamber 12: Another test featuring everyone’s favorite architectural feature created from sunlight – the hard light bridge! Along with a bit of actual plot stuff before the test itself, courtesy of Wheatley sabotaging the door leading into the chamber by dumping a bunch of bird eggs into the mechanism so GLaDOS would go off and fix it and he could check in with Chell. Granted, his check in was interrupted by him being attacked by the furious mama bird, and his impassioned declaration that he was going to break him and Chell out soon was rather undercut by him admitting he still had to think of how he was going to do that, but – it was still nice to see him again. XD Anyway, he disappeared once more when GLaDOS returned and announced she’d basically killed the door mechanism for failing her, allowing Chell and I to get on with the actual test, which went like so:

( Sparing your reading pages because every game write-up I do is long )

Workout: In a surprise twist this Sunday, I ended up watching two videos with my workout today – mostly because Jon was a little late uploading the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode again today, which led to me watching one short video I found in my Recommendeds while seeing if it would pop up or not. So today’s workout saw me pedal my way through:

A) The entirety of “GLaDOS Actor Reacts to Your Comments” by Fall Damage! A seven-minute video of voice actress Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS, responding to various YouTube comments about her role! Including:

I. “I can’t believe the voice actor for a murderous robot villain is just a nice old lady I love that” by mothbrain – Ellen jokingly responded that she only pretends to be nice >D

II. “Imagine they used AI voice instead of a voice actor. Her performance was so incredible” by keith3915 – this one made Ellen reveal that, at the time the original Portal was made, you had to license the only true AI voice out there, meaning it was actually cheaper for Valve to hire an actual voice actress to play GLaDOS and then just run her voice through a filter. Ellen apparently got the job by virtue of sounding the most like the robot voice! Good for her!

III. “The worst part about Portal 1 and 2 is that you can never play them for the first time again” by rubric167 – Ellen said that was so sweet...and then revealed she’d never played the games herself. Her husband, fellow voice actor John Patrick Lowry (The Sniper in Team Fortress 2) has, but Ellen just couldn’t get past the first room when she attempted the original. Apparently she’s “sort of a technophobe,” which is very amusing given GLaDOS must be the role she’s most famous for now.

IV. And “The TF2 announcer is pretty much the only person I could imagine playing chess with Glados” by gilamasan – after having fun trying to figure out how to pronounce their name, Ellen admitted that the Administrator – whom she ALSO voices – would probably give GLaDOS a run for her money, martini in one hand and cigarette in the other. And that the Administrator is one of the toughest characters on her voice (along with the Broodmother spider-monster from DOTA 2).

It was a fun little video, and I am glad that I got the chance to watch it. :)

B) And the first twenty-four minutes of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 32 - The Beginning of the End” by Jon of Many A True Nerd, with the final fourteen minutes watched after supper! As is my wont. *nods* Today’s episode saw our favorite drunken melee courier P. D. Shoot tackle the first of her two finales in this series – wrapping up the main game with an NCR win at the Second Battle Of Hoover Dam! A dangerous task which involved:

I. P. D. descending into the very deepest level of the Dam to report to Cassandra Moore that President Kimball was safe (as she stopped his assassination last episode) while Jon explained how this made the NCR ending probably the most dangerous for old P. D. – mostly because, rather than starting at the top of the Dam as she would if she was doing the House or Yes Man endings, and fighting her way across to the Legion camp at the other side, she would first have to fight her way back up to the top of the Dam through all the Legion invading the place and then make her way across! There were four extra zones worth of Legion she would have to face off against! (He didn’t mention how the ending would have worked if she’d stayed with the Legion rather than turning on them rather last-minute, but I presume it would have involved fighting her way into Hoover Dam to take it from the NCR – another not-ideal situation!) Meaning there was a non-zero chance that P. D. was going to find herself wrapped up in at least one firefight she couldn’t avoid. Jon had a route in mind for her to follow while trying to get out of the power plant, and failsafes in the form of her Stealth Boys and precious Turbo, but he fully admitted that P. D. getting through this ending was not guaranteed! (Though, on the plus side, he was able to show off how, if you get into the lower levels of the Dam, you can slip out a side door and take a look at the actual dam itself from the bottom. It’s pretty cool, honestly!)

II. P. D. then reporting to Cassandra that the president had survived the assassination attempts last episode and safely evacuated, resulting in her getting her orders to report to the newly-arrived General Oliver as soon as possible, and triggering the game’s “hey, you’re locking in fighting with the NCR during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and getting their ending – if there is anything else you want to do, now is the time to back out and go do it” warning pop-up. P. D., content in getting a save at that exact moment that she could warp back to once this whole mess was over, told the pop-up she was ready, then went to talk to General Oliver, who informed her that – thanks to the work she’d done for them – the NCR had an opportunity to assault the Fort and take the fight to the Legion. He revealed that he’d called in all their allies, and once they arrived, they’d start their plans for the big push in earnest –

Aaaand then cue one of the maintenance workers rushing in to tell the General, “So the Legion are invading us through the clogged intake tunnels, and their leader the Legate has set up a camp on the eastern bank.” Welp, so much for a surprise attack on the Legion, eh, Oliver? XD P. D. was thus tasked to get to the camp and take out the Legate to hamstring the attack –

And then was promptly warped via cutscene into a nearby room where panicking engineer Mike Lawson told her about the Legion coming in through the intake tunnels and how someone needed to stop them, preferably by finding a way to restart the turbines and shred the incoming Legion...which P. D. had no interest in doing, because Jon did not feel that side objective was in any way worth it. It would just put her in more danger than she already was! She said she’d try just to keep Mike off her back, but – yeah. No turbine murder for you, Mike!

III. P. D. then backing into a corner the moment she left the conversation and slapping on a Stealth Boy to prepare for her stealth mission back up to the top of Hoover Dam...followed by her having to do a dose of Turbo to maneuver around all the Legionnaires pouring into the room through its one door. Mostly because, for this portion of the final fight, the game cheated and basically subconsciously told all the Legionnaires where she was, meaning – even if they couldn’t actually detect her, they still automatically went to her position. It’s like how a couple of the enemies in “Lonesome Road” just KNOW where to aim to give the Courier a bad time – I think it’s intended to FORCE the player character into helping out instead of letting the NPCs do all the work. P. D. however, was like “fuck that” and simply speed-crouch-walked past all the various fights, passing through every door on her way up that Jon knew would spawn friendly NCR reinforcements instead of Legionnaire enemies. She made it past almost all of the nonsense in her way without much trouble, though she did have to take a second dose of Turbo to shake a conga line of Legionnaires who were tracking her thanks to their game-given “we can tell where you are even if we can’t actually detect you” powers –

And then she went to go into the Visitor’s Center level and the game crashed. XD Figures, eh? Fortunately the game had autosaved fairly recently, so she just had to trek her way through the final power plant again (and THIS time, there were a few friendly NCR lads hanging out ready to fight the Legionnaires trying to follow her – though she still took that second dose of Turbo, just to be safe), and her second attempt to get into the Visitor’s Center went just fine. *whew* Glad that game crash didn’t screw her over – New Vegas is gonna New Vegas, people!

IV. P. D. then reaching the top of the Dam, greeting the arriving Great Khans, and proceeding across to the eastern bank to get into the Legate’s camp! Which at first involved her taking the road running along the side of the Dam so she didn’t have to get involved in the fighting –

Before deciding, “Eh, I should probably help out if I can” and hopping over the wall onto the sandbag-wall-covered top of the Dam itself to weave through the Legionnaires and punch a few of them into the stratosphere. XD This strategy did not always work out for her – punching off the head of a Legionnaire near the door to the second half of the Dam put her into [CAUTION] because his buddy noticed the death (I mean, how could you MISS it?), while trying to help out Alpha Squad (who’d she’d just Speech checked into trying to overwhelm the oncoming Legion by pushing the advance on them – aka, running forward to serve as decoys as she snuck past) by punching the three Legionnaires trying to attack them resulted in two misses despite a 95% chance to hit (Jon was absolutely BAFFLED, but I think at least one of them just moved out of position before she could pull off the punch) – but she did kill a few (including the ones she missed previously)! And between that, all her allies drawing fire, and her Stealth Boy making her much harder to detect, she made it over to the other side of the dam, past the one Legionnaire who runs down to the bottom of the Dam instead of joining the fight at the top (Jon doesn’t know why that happens but thinks it’s hilarious) and the Legionnaire and his dog guarding the front gate, and into the camp! Yay!

V. P. D. then crouch-running through the Legate’s camp, killing a few lone Legionnaires standing around and using her Repair skill to lock the Legion Mongrels inside their little pen so they couldn’t get out and cause trouble, before quickly reading a “Meeting People” magazine to raise her Speech to 100 and doing a final dose of Turbo (via Implant GRX, because Jon suddenly remembered “oh right, I got that perk at the end of last episode, I should, you know, MAKE USE OF IT”) to outpace the two NCR Rangers running toward Legate Lanius so she could start the conversation with Lanius early and save their lives (because, otherwise, those two Rangers end up murdered by the Legate to show off how badass he is. Having seen Jon save them by accident recently in the “Worst Courier” series, it was kind of sweet to see him pull it off deliberately in this one!). She then proceeded to chat with Lanius and pass all the Speech checks to convince him that crushing the NCR at Hoover Dam would lead to the destruction of the Legion in the long term – mostly through telling him that, if he chose to focus his army’s efforts on holding the newly-conquered West, he’d have to give up all the hard-fought territory they’d won in the East. The empire would just be too big for the Legion to handle. Which caused Lanius to admit that the East had been a “hard-fought campaign” and that he’d already felt that Caesar had directed too many members of the army to the Mojave on the quest to take Hoover Dam. He then declared the Dam to be “just a place” and that “I will not have it be the gravestone of the Legion – whether quickly, or as you describe, slowly...by attrition.” P. D. thus convinced him there was victory in wisdom (pointedly AVOIDING the option asking if he agreed to retreat, since that would make him realize she was bullshitting him and make him challenge her to combat anyway), and he agreed to leave with his remaining troops and head back east – though he warned that, eventually, he would return to fight the NCR again, and they would meet on the battlefield once more. And if there were more people like P. D. to fight that time – perhaps it would be a worthy battle indeed. *nods* I’m glad Jon showed off the entire conversation in this run – as he himself pointed out, Legate Lanius only appears for a very short time at the end of the game, but he leaves an impression with his iconic stone mask and his excellent voice acting. And it was cool to see P. D. talk him down, even if Jon still thinks that’s a weird way to wrap up that fight. (And even if Jon also lamented for this specific run that there was no special dialogue for Couriers who did a lot of Legion work before swapping sides to the NCR. Ah well – can’t cover every weird player case in 18 months of development!)

VI. P. D. then wrapping up the mission by going back to the main gate and chatting with General Oliver once he and his rangers blew it open and came through – saying “thank you, I couldn’t have done it alone” when he praised her for helping secure the NCR’s future, before telling him that, if there was nothing else, she had to head out – and getting her ending slides! Which included:

a. The NCR, post-victory celebration, annexing the Strip and the other communities around it

b. P. D. getting the Golden Branch, the highest civilian honor the NCR had, despite her rather brutal methods not being improved of by many NCR citizens

c. The Brotherhood of Steel and the NCR managing to maintain their truce in the Mojave, with the NCR surrendering all their salvaged power armor in exchange for the Brotherhood helping to patrol the I-15 and Highway 95 to encourage trade

d. Veronica feeling better about the Brotherhood’s immediate future in the wake of the truce...but realizing there was a gap between herself and her fellows that could never been bridged, and spending much of her time hiding out in Old World libraries, researching incredible technologies she knew the Brotherhood would never use ( :( LET HER PUNCH MCNAMARA)

e. The NCR evicting the Followers of the Apocalypse from the Old Mormon Fort – and, after a little bit, Outer Vegas altogether

f. The Great Khans returning to Red Rock Canyon...only for the NCR to eventually come in, kill a bunch of them, and exile the rest to a “barren reservation” far north of their trade routes so they could have the land

g. The Nightkin, having never actually gotten a cure for their schizophrenia, leaving Jacobstown and attacking the local humans as their conditions worsened, leading to reprisal attacks on Jacobstown, eventually leading to the rest of the mutants abandoning it as well

h. The Kings and the NCR actually managing to maintain their truce in Freeside, coordinating on relief efforts to help all the citizens – and the Kings stubbornly maintaining their independence in the face of repeated NCR pushing to join the Republic (I don’t know if that extended to Freeside, given it was said to be annexed in an earlier slide, but still)

i. And Primm Slimm turning out to be a decent sheriff for Primm, even if he was so slow some criminals got away clean (Jon decided that this was the best ending for Primm and said that handing control over to a cowboy robot is obviously how you get a perfect society XD)

Yeah – a pretty mixed ending there! Though I’m glad the Kings were all right in the end – and Primm. But yes, this is just more evidence that I should do the Independent Vegas ending in my own run – the NCR do NOT seem to treat the people under their purview as well as they ought!

VII. P. D. then going back in time to the moment when the pop-up warned her she was committing to an ending and going “I’m not ready!” so she could do the remaining bits of DLC that needed doing! Though, in order to keep things fair, she stored a Stealth Boy and two doses of Turbo in Colonel Moore’s desk, so her inventory matched what it looked like at the end of the main campaign (though she did forget that she used a “Meeting People” – Jon promised he’d store one of those away too before she moved on into “Dead Money” when the comments reminded him). On the plus side, doing so allowed her to discover that Moore kept the Hoover Dam saferoom key in there, meaning Jon had once again Learned A New Thing about New Vegas. Neat! :)

VIII. And Jon ending the episode by telling all the people who have been telling him in the comments of the past few episodes, “Hey, before you go into ‘Dead Money,’ go back into ‘Lonesome Road’ and kill the super deathclaw Rawr – his hand is a quest item, so Elijah can’t take it off you, meaning you can convert it into a super-powerful deathclaw gauntlet once you’re in the Sierra Madre” that no, he will NOT be doing that. Because to him, it’s just too much of an exploit – the whole point of “Dead Money” is that you arrive in there with nothing – it’s important to both the difficulty and the story. And he wants to respect that, damn it. (...I suspect he also worries that P. D. would never be able to take on Rawr, but we’ll see what happens once he actually finishes “Lonesome Road” and actually meets the Deathclaw. XD)

And there we have it! Next week, poor Jon finally faces his fears and starts the “Dead Money” DLC. Having never seen him play it before, I am very eager to see just how terrible and painful it is. Hopefully his decision not to take the Light Step perk does NOT screw him over!

YouTube: While I don’t usually watch anything other than the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode on Sundays, today saw me watch one other video that I spotted this morning while looking for stuff to listen to as I made my bed: “Velma Losing It in the Background Is the Best Part (Scooby-Doo 2)!” A short by Heartsnreels showing a silly throw-away joke from Scooby-Doo 2 that they felt was one of the best in the movie! Basically, the gang has been captured in big rolling ball cages (don’t know why, never saw the movie), and their fellow captives (in different balls) are a Girl Scout and a pair of evangelists. The Girl Scout asks if they want to buy some cookies, followed by the evangelists asking if they’ve heard the good news –

And cue Scooby going, “Yeah! There’s cookies!” XD And yes, the actress playing Velma IS laughing in the background as he says it. XD Just a few seconds, but it was fun!

*nods* Not bad at all! Was hoping to get a bit more done on tumblr, but -- I woke up late this morning, so it is what it is. *shrug* And now I have to head to bed, as it is a work day tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be too bad...night all!

As my write-up will show very effectively, I feel:

Work – I am sorry to report that it turned to be a very busy and rather rough Friday at work:

A) I discovered that, while the credit card people DID put up all the missing 2026 payments that I told them about (and seemed to put up all the missing 2025 payments this afternoon), there were still a bunch missing that I could see from pledges put on a little later in the month – I will have to go through all those and figure out what’s missing

B) I was continually interrupted in this task by various phone calls (which only seemed to happen whenever my coworker got up from her desk and thus wasn’t available to take them) – a mix of credit card calls and more general maintenance stuff

C) One of the parish priests showed up shortly after lunch and dropped off some gifts (which he wasn’t supposed to do, they’re supposed to be mailed to our PO Box) – and of course, they were mostly cash gifts from his parishioners, along with a few credit card gifts (which we aren’t allowed to process – we can only take card numbers over the phone, nothing written down). The credit card stuff got sent off to our processors (who CAN process that sort of thing), and my coworker and I counted up the cash and got it posted, but hmph.

D) My old supervisor, who now works for a different department (handling bequests and endowments and stuff) dropped off two batches of checks made out to a specific endowment that he needed us to put on for him – now, this was a more reasonable request than you think because the gifts for that department DO live our database, and he’s actually currently the only one IN that department (his coworker has left for a new position). But we do still have to look up all the donors and make records for the ones not currently in the system, so it is a lot of work

E) I got a call from the guy whose pledge wouldn’t go through yesterday, checking up on it – unfortunately I had to tell him that his pledge still wouldn’t go through and that I hadn’t heard back from the credit card people yet. He was very understanding, but it still frustrated me

F) And after I did my time card for this week using the “building closed” code to cover the hours that the building was closed Wednesday and Thursday (since we had delayed starts those two days – 10 AM instead of 8:30 AM), we got an e-mail from HR saying that we weren’t allowed to use the “building closed” code when doing our hours for those two days. Meaning I had to use a full 8 hours of vacation time to cover the day off I took on Wednesday instead of 6.5 – you know, the actual hours THE BUILDING WAS OPEN THAT DAY. Which – I know it’s only 1.5 hours, but tracking our hours has NEVER worked like that in the past! You always got to save the time that the building was fucking closed! Fortunately my supervisor agreed this was bullshit and said she’d try to get us that bit of time back however she could, but still. *huffs* That really pissed me off.

Yeah – as you might imagine, I was very glad to come home and have pizza and play Scrabble after all that! And now it’s the weekend again already, so I don’t have to think about this bullshit for two more days. Small mercies.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedaling through:

A) The second half of “Reacting to YOUR Greek Myth Hot Takes” by C. M. Alongi! Said reactions included:

I. As I said yesterday, responding to someone’s take on how Medusa was unfairly killed and how her “curse” was supposed to be protection from rapey men with a long chat about the Medusa myth – explaining how in the earliest versions, she was just always a monster; how the more modern “tragic backstory” interpretation was the result of Ovid, a Roman, giving her one when he recorded the tale; and how the Greeks were very victim-blamey when it came to rape because women were more property than people back then (with the only way for an assault victim to regain her honor being to kill herself), so Medusa being punished by Athena for being assaulted by Poseidon in her temple by being turned into a monster would made made sense to them – it’s the modern audience who played around and made it Athena giving Medusa a way to fend off future attackers. (Though she admitted she’d heard SOMETHING about the Ancient Greek equivalent of domestic abuse shelters using Medusa’s head as a symbol and protective charm...but that she had no idea of the validity of it because, well, why would the Ancient Greeks have anything like domestic abuse shelters)

II. Responding to someone commenting on how God Of The Forge and Craftsmen, Hephaestus, is a nice example of disability representation in the myths by going over the origin story of the god (born so ugly Hera tossed him off Mount Olympus, which broke at least one of his legs; raised by nymphs in the ocean; turned out to be incredible at making jewelry, which led to Hera reclaiming him and making him an Olympian after seeing the nymphs showing off their necklaces and whatnot) and saying that he’s not great representation as he’s more of a background character in most myths (having made the magical sword or shield or whatnot the hero may be using), but agreeing it was nice to see a disabled god in ANY role back then

III. Responding to someone’s claim that Apollo was “very problematic” when it came to all his lovers by explaining that she had to push back against the inclusion of Hyacinthus (a handsome Spartan warrior) on the list, because what happened to him wasn’t Apollo’s fault – they had a perfectly nice relationship that only ended because Hyacinthus took a discus to the head while they were throwing it around, and THAT was either an accident or the god Zephyr, jealous of Apollo having gotten the cute guy, killing him under “if I can’t have him no one can” rules – but that in every other case...yeah, calling him problematic was VALID

IV. Responding to someone saying that the “incest ‘issue’ in mythology is overblown, it doesn’t matter with supernatural godly beings, the real problem is a lack of consent whenever the gods mess around with mortals and demigods” with admitting that she KIND OF sees where the commenter is coming from with the incest thing but also it’s still ew and she can’t help but side-eye people who try to downplay it, but totally agreeing that consent between gods and mortals/demigods was a real issue, since no mortal or demigod had any REAL ability to safely say no

V. And responding to someone going “Nyx, Primordial Goddess of Night, is the only god Zeus fears, though I don’t remember where I read that” by saying she too had read that somewhere and explaining some of the Greek hierarchy of greater beings (which goes Primordials – Titans – Gods) and how Chaos formed the first Primordials, which included Nyx...before noting that EROS was also said to be a Primordial (being the personification of love) when he wasn’t Aphrodite’s son (or even when he was, sometimes, apparently the Greeks were good at that sort of double-think), which veered off into a tangent about how much she LOATHES the “ancient creature falls in love with teenage girl” trope, which is why Eros is not only Aphrodite’s son in Monstrous, but also only about twenty years old at the start (while Psyche was aged up to about seventeen at the start of the book, using the excuse that her parents put off her marriage for an unusually-long time to keep getting offerings from the citizens worshiping their gorgeous daughter). Girl is fixing creepy and illegal age gaps in her literature! :p

Interesting stuff, to be sure – and I’m sure she enjoyed getting to flex her knowledge of Greek myths. :)

B) And a series of shorts by DragonsDream, because I had some time to kill at the end of the workout and I couldn’t find a full-length video that would fit the time I had (or, rather, I was looking for one I’d seen in my Recommends earlier, but it took me so long to fail to find it that I instead went to their channel and just watched some shorts), including:

I. “The most wholesome friendship in Baldur's Gate 3” – DD showing off Gale and Tara (his tressym, aka winged cat, friend) hanging out together at the epilogue party and bantering, with Tara claiming the party spot doesn’t compare to Gale’s mother’s sitting room and asking him if all his friends were always so ugly. XD Cute – but also a surprise to me, because Tara’s voice is a LOT different than I thought it would be! I was expecting something younger and maybe higher-pitched, but no – pure middle-aged woman. Okay then. XD

II. “The developers knew someone would try this” – DD using Shadowheart to show off what happens if you follow Meli after he steals the locket from Barth and then steal it off him before Barth can follow him up the ladder and confront him! Basically, Meli protests that he doesn’t have the locket as usual...then, when Shadowheart asks him why he stole it, is very surprised to find that, no, he actually doesn’t have it. Shadowheart then told Barth that Meli may be good, but she’s better, and handed the locket over to Barth – Meli was a little embarrassed, but also rather impressed by Shadowheart’s skills, while Barth was appropriately grateful. He then warned Meli to stay out of his pockets, causing Meli to taunt him with a silly face –

And Barth to backhand him across said face. D: Jerk! And I really don’t like that many of the comments were approving of him doing that. Meli may be a little shit, but he’s a KID, possibly an orphan – cut him a break!

III. “What if you tried to romance both Shadowheart and Minthara” – DD showing off Minthara’s pretty contemptuous reaction to discovering that you were romancing Shadowheart along with her – wondering if their character wasn’t worried “the little amnesiac” wouldn’t forget them in the morning; responding to “I was hoping I could have a relationship with both of you” with accusations of Shadowheart being needy under her cold exterior and declarations that she doesn’t share what she desires, and – after the character said they didn’t want to give up their relationship with Minthara – informing them that they’d have to tell Shadowheart, but not to worry, as the pain of the loss would probably be a religious experience for her. XD God, Minthara is such a bitch and it’s great.

IV. And “When annoyed companions breaks the fourth wall” – DD showing off various annoyed lines the companions will spout if you spam-click their portraits during a fight! My favorites were Astarion’s pissed grunt and “I’m trying to focus on murder!”, Halsin’s irritated “Battle is afoot – you can poke me once we are safe. Perhaps try attacking the enemy?”, and Minsc’s very Minsc “I am armed! Armored! And entirely sick of your foolishness!” XD

Very fun stuff! Now I just have to figure out what I’m watching next week...

2. Continue editing Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got just under a page edited today, featuring:

A) Smiler assuring Victor that eventually he wouldn’t feel like he was flaunting his wealth at them with his very existence, if only because they and Alice were willing to keep reminding him that wasn’t the case, with Alice adding that Victor had to remember that she too actually grew up rich – her father was a dean at Doskvol Academy, after all, and owned six suits (with one just for special occasions, no less). Her comfortable childhood was just cut short. Victor confirmed he remembered her telling them about that and explained that the issue was mainly that he was a Van Dort, and, thanks to his parents, being one of those comes with – connotations...

B) Smiler immediately being like “and those connotations should apply to your parents alone – don’t punish yourself for their sins,” and Alice backing them up with telling Victor he shouldn’t have to apologize for what his parents do – especially since he’s so unlike them, wanting to hide in the background rather than shove his wealth in everyone’s faces. Victor confirmed he’s the type who prefers a quiet night in to a loud party, and grumbled that Nell never understood that, because she was so obsessed with yelling about how much better she and her family was than everyone else. Despite being the daughter of a Coalridge factory worker herself, and having married a man who was solidly middle-class before starting the cannery.

C) Smiler noting that some people are just not happy unless others are unhappy, and while it’s terrible, there’s not much they can do about it – stating they preferred to live a life that focused on making themselves and their loved ones as happy as possible, and minimizing the unhappiness they caused others. Victor said he liked the idea behind that, but didn’t know how good he was it – Smiler promptly informed him that he’d made them much happier by being their friend. :) And they were sure the same was true of Alice, who confirmed that she’d enjoyed getting to know Victor – before teasing him that he wasn’t nearly as annoying as she’d feared. Victor laughed and did his best to shoot back by saying she wasn’t as terrifying as he’d thought someone from a madhouse would be – she was startled for a moment, then laughed herself, admitting that she hadn’t thought he had it him...but he ought to work on his delivery. XD Victor said he’d probably have more opportunities to practice, living with her, and she confirmed that she expected him to give as good as he got. :P

Not too shabby, I feel. I ended with the group preparing to get back to packing (again), with Victor stowing his sketchbook and sketches in his carpet bag – next time, the rest of Victor’s things will get packed up! Well, almost – he still needs to look under his bed for something...

3. Watch something on FreeTube: No check, but that’s not a surprise at this point – especially considering it was Game Night (as previously stated, we played Scrabble – and thanks to some lucky letter draws and some fruitful searching on Merriam-Webster’s Scrabble word finder site, I ended up winning). I do have some plans to clear the rest of the OXBoxtra stuff I want to watch tomorrow, if I can – we’ll see what happens!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Again, N/A as Valice Multiverse was quiet and I didn’t have anything pressing on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler). *shrug* We’ll see if I get anything done over here this weekend.

Yeah, that work day really took it out of me. Which is sad, as it's the only full day of work I've worked this week... *sigh* Anyway. I've stayed up later than I should have reading TV Tropes, so I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is a Cleaning & Laundry Saturday -- I hope to also play some Little Corners, and watch at least one of the OXBox videos still waiting around in my FreeTube Subs. Hopefully that is an achievable to-do list -- night all!

Yeah, it was a pretty stressful day for my mother (Dad ended up in the bathroom early this morning both throwing up and having diarrhea -- ended up waking me up -- and then was in a bad mood a good portion of the day thanks to that and his computer not working correctly), so I ended up spending a lot of it helping her out with various chores (like helping to clean the kitchen and do the laundry) and errands (going out with her to help bring the mail order to the post office and pick up Dad's prescriptions and whatnot). Meaning I didn't have as much time on the computer as I originally anticipated. No Little Corners today, that's for sure! But I still accomplished a few things on the old interwebs:

Tumblr: Only had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, it being a Wednesday – and while I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked thanks to the interruptions to help Mom and the bad vibes, I did do a few important things –

A) First, I made sure to get my queue for the week sorted this morning, with:

I. A couple of drawings of Alice from Alice: Madness Returns by jmppromise (a bust sketch of her looking askance at something with a little smirk, and a full-body sketch of her walking with the Hobby Horse, skirt floofed) for today, Wednesday

II. The “Smiler in something pretty” drawing by shenanigansz (featuring their Smiler OC in a lovely off-the-shoulder yellow blouse, black-and-white-striped waist cincher, and bow tie choker) I picked up yesterday for Thursday

III. The “Emily recognizes Barkis” Corpse Bride gif set by ghiblin (featuring Emily revealing Barkis was her fiancee who left her for dead, and Alfred the skeleton finding that literally jaw-dropping) I picked up yesterday for Friday

IV. And a video by gemini-serpentis featuring footage of the fem!Malkavian fledgling dancing on The Asylum’s dance floor set to “Cotton-Eye Joe” by...huh. I don’t actually know. *looks it up* Okay, so the song’s been around since at least the late nineteenth century, but it looks like the version in the video was done by a band named “Rednex” – good to know! *edits the tags on the post before queuing* Anyway, yeah, that video for Song Saturday

So that’s out of my hair, at least – and gets a couple of older things (those Alice drawings and the VTMB “Cotton-Eye Joe” video) out of my drafts. Yay!

B) And second, I managed to make one small update to my “creating a timeline of Valicer In The Dark stories” post draft – namely, deciding that the second “greenhouse” story – where the trio actually gets plants for their greenhouse in Barrowcleft – should have them dealing with another organization based off an Alton Towers ride during the score. Currently I haven’t made up my mind if that organization should be a cult worshiping the Nemesis monster, or the Beornen lead by Wickerman, but at least I have an idea of who should be the antagonist in that story now! Now I just have to flesh out some of my other ideas a bit more...

Writing: Got another page of Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” edited today before my workout – this one featuring:

A) Victor taking Alice’s suggestion to prioritize what clothes he wanted to bring with him to his new home under advisement (and thanking her and Smiler for helping him by taking down his butterfly sketches; Smiler assured him it was what friends did, and besides, he’d already helped Alice pack before, so) and fetching his carpet bag out of his closet to see if it would be big enough for everything he wanted to take. Cue Smiler looking over their shoulder to reassure him it would almost certainly be fine and let him know they needed to get Alice’s bag before they left – only to get distracted by the sheer number of suits that Victor had in his closet

B) Smiler apologizing to Victor for staring when Victor asked “what is it,” explaining that they’d never seen that many suits in one closet before; Alice was initially like “really?” and started explaining how her father had had a fair few suits for his work in Doskvol Academy – only to turn and see Victor’s overstuffed closet for herself and be like “oh, wait, no, I get it now.” Cue her guessing there were twelve suits in there, and a deeply embarrassed Victor confessing it was actually fifteen, with him wearing the sixteenth. Smiler was like “didn’t know you were so into fashion,” causing Victor to retort that he wasn’t, Nell was, because she knew that having lots of trendy clothes was the best way to show off their wealth (“you should see her hat collection”)

C) Victor, now riddled with guilt over how many clothes he owned, spontaneously offering some to Alice and Smiler, explaining that they could take them apart and get a tailor to turn them into clothes for them instead; Alice cut him off with an “is that a genuine offer or one made because you feel bad about having grown up rich,” to which Victor replied “It can’t be both?” XD Smiler comforted him and said it was a very kind offer, but he didn’t have to make up for being well-off to them, and Alice agreed that if they were judging anyone for the amount of clothes Victor had, it was his parents, since they were the ones who bought them and made him wear them

D) And Victor allowing that, yes, okay, him having so many suits was his parents’ fault (with a side complaint about the sort of things his mother dressed him up in as a kid, and how they tended to make his bullies “creative”), but he genuinely was all right giving them a suit or two to repurpose because they deserved nice things – cue Smiler offering a compromise, telling Victor to take his three favorite suits and one he wouldn’t mind being cut up, and if they wanted they wanted to repurpose that one, they could. Or, rather, if Alice wanted to repurpose it, she could, as they had enough clothes. XD Alice allowed that she was rather lacking in things to wear and that if she could trade one of her dresses for one of Joytide’s, then she could accept a suit-turned-into-a-dress from Victor as payment for letting him join her at Elder Gutknecht’s. Though, admittedly, she had already intended to tell him how much she liked the kitchen maid outfit she already had one…

And that is where I left it! Tomorrow, Victor will let her know she’s welcome to the dress and start picking out what suits he wants to take, and the packing shall continue! Hopefully with less “rich boy guilt” on Victor’s part. :P

Workout: Hopped back on the bike this evening to watch another chunk of “Creating CaFae Latte: Behind the Scenes” by C. M. Alongi! Tonight’s section focused largely on her filming every character’s individual scenes for the next few sets of videos, and featured stuff like:

A) Chris revealing that, when she does a script, she makes sure to highlight all swear words or anything else that TikTok might censor to let Video Editor Nic know what needs to be expressed with emojis in the captions (seriously, it always weirds me out that she can say “fuck” in the audio but it has to be a duck emoji in the captions)

B) Chris getting through filming JC’s section and realizing too late that she forgot to bring the fake goatee that identifies Drek’s Dad in videos, and choosing instead to just tie some of her hair under her nose because that was easier than renting out the space again later to do his bits

C) Chris talking about where she got Herla’s costume – basically, his black piratey shirt was one she already owned; his black-and-cold leafy crown was from Amazon; and his iconic bird skull necklace was one she made at a “make your own necklace” place

D) Chris getting all excited to show off Wendy The Wraith’s costume (which was just a “spooky ghost” costume she got at Spirit Halloween) – only to realize before she started filming that she had to do the scenes for John and Mark first, whoops

E) Chris revealing that Drek’s protection charm necklace was actually a gift sent in by a fan, which was sweet – somebody also sent her in a bunch of different sunglasses, which have come in handy for various videos

F) On the flip side, Chris revealing that Oscar’s original shirt, along with the vest for her BookTok version of Citadel, were both stolen from the building after she (she admits stupidly) hung them on the outside of her filing cabinet – she was much more pissed about losing the vest, as that had been a custom job from a friend using material donated by a fan

G) After finally filming all the other characters (including having to go BACK to Drek to film some more bits after filming all of Oscar’s scenes for a skit and realizing that she’d forgotten Drek was in it; she ended up doing some severe squats to get his height right XD), Chris FINALLY getting to show off the Wendy costume...only to put it on backward at first XD And then have to magnify her script 250% so she could actually read it through the mesh face covering

H) Chris admitting that one of the big reasons she doesn’t have an assistant is that she gets really self-conscious recording around other people, especially with the way she films everything – though apparently she’s absolutely fine with public speaking, so good for her there

I) And Chris treating herself to some lovely Vietnamese food after a long day of filming :)

Very cool to learn all this stuff, I have to admit! Though I am sorry someone straight up stole some of her costumes...anyway, I left off with her showing off how the editing process works (with her cleaning up Nic’s rough cuts of her videos) – tomorrow, we’ll finish that off, then see if we can start the “Greek Myths Hot Takes” video! Would be nice to get THAT one watched too...

FreeTube: I didn’t get to do a “full” video catch-up day thanks to helping Mom with all those various chores and errands, but I did manage to knock three videos out of my unofficial “to watch” list tonight –

A) First, I managed to get through the two OXBox lists I had waiting for me:

I. “7 Scariest Theme Parks Ranked from Creepy to Nightmare Fuel” – Mike, Jane, and Andy talking about the spookiest theme parks in video games (that players did not build themselves)! Ranging from the caffeine-fueled Coffee World from Alan Wake II (where the rides are no longer working because the operators have all been taken over by the Dark Presence, making them even MORE inclined to painfully murder tourists), to the fizzy fun of Nuka-World from Fallout 4’s “Nuka-World” DLC (where the rides are no longer working because of the end of the world, and also the place is now home to raiders, gatorclaws, and colorfully-painted feral ghouls), to the silent horrors of Lakeside Amusement Park from Silent Hill 3 (where the rides are working – but given the carousel features flayed poison-spewing horses and the roller coaster tries to run you over, you’ll wish they weren’t). The moral of the story? It’s a lot more fun to be the one designing the killer haunted theme park than it is to be the one attending it. Think of that the next time you play Planet Coaster! (And then promptly ignore it so you can drop your guests into a ravine.)

II. And “7 Bosses So Hard They Had to Be Patched” – Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about those bosses (or, in one case, extremely difficult racing minigame) that proved to be much too much for the average player and had to be patched! Like Promised Consort Radahn from Elden Ring’s “Shadow of the Erd Tree” DLC, whose range attacks were so bad that they had to both lower the damage and shorten their range so players had a chance! Or “Fairplay,” the aforementioned racing minigame from Mafia: City Of Lost Heaven, where it proved so difficult to actually win the race and progress in the game that they had to adjust the AI so the other drivers didn’t go quite so fast (and then rejigger it entirely when they remade the game eighteen years later in 2020). Or Childe from Genshin Impact, whose ultra-powerful and nearly-unavoidable attacks were so nasty that they had to lower his damage multiplers and his HP to give new players a chance! ...in the “Story Mode,” anyway. Apparently there’s a weekly “bonus boss” version of him that still functions like he did pre-patch. Given how controversial nerfing some of the earlier bosses on the list proved to be for the player base (with people who managed to beat them pre-patch being pissed that the developers were “bowing to peer pressure” and other such nonsense) that was probably the right call – best of both worlds!

B) And second, I managed to squeeze in a video uploaded today – “Fun With Shorts: Education in America - 17th and 18the [sic] Centuries (Part 1)” by Josh Way! Eight minutes of a Coronet short about – well, look at the title. XD Specifically, it covered how the Puritans educated their children, with the focus being on “everyone needs to be able to read so they can read the Bible and understand its text as law.” Girls learned sewing and cooking and not much else; boys, meanwhile, went to schools where they could memorize the Bible and related literature. Not exactly a thorough curriculum for growing minds! Josh was appropriately disdainful of the short and everything in it – snarking about Super Cuts being available in the 17th century in response to a kid’s hairdo; making repeated pointed comments about Puritan Christianity and how oppressive and grim it was; and laughing over the name of the law that made it compulsory for towns and villages to have schools to educate their children in Massachusetts (the “Old Deluded Satan Law” – you can see why he laughed). Fun stuff, even if I wish he’d stop splitting up shorts into two pieces like this – oftentimes the second half comes out so long after the first one that I’ve forgotten what the short was originally about!

So that's not nothing -- and I'm glad I was able to help out Mom, even if it was kind of stressful at times. Seriously, the vibes are ending up absolutely rancid in this house more and more often... *sigh* Anyway, I need to head to bed -- since going out with Mom proved the roads are in mostly-good condition, I WILL be going to work tomorrow. Though we do have another late start, at least, so I'll have a bit more time to hang out and relax in the morning, at least. Might try to get my writing done early -- we'll see how that shakes out, though. Night all!