Posse and Chain Gang

It was kind of chilly, weather-wise (though it did get warmer than they said it was going to, which was good -- probably helped it was full-on sunny today); I found some more annoying stuff at work (which I will elaborate on in the write-up below); and when I got home, I discovered that my mother had not picked up milk like she said she would, meaning I had to go out and get it myself. Which was incredibly annoying, because I did not particularly WANT to go out again after getting home, and cut rather severely into my free time this afternoon, but...needs must. *sigh* Anyway, here's the write-up:

Work – It was a pretty “meh” Wednesday at work, it must be said:

A) I spent the morning e-mailing people about credit card stuff (one guy who needed a card update – fortunately he’d managed to do it himself by the time I contacted him – and four people who had two types of gifts running at once) and looking through the returned credit card pledge cards in the exceptions to see who still needed to be contacted (most of them – I just keep getting distracted by other problems)

B) Then I spent the afternoon looking through a handful of batches put on by our processors in March to identify more gifts that were meant for the newspaper office after getting a call from ANOTHER donor whose newspaper office donation ended up as part of our Appeal gifts. Found another seventeen or so people whose gifts will have to be taken off and the money given to the people at the newspaper. All because one church did a collection for them, and then sent the envelopes to OUR PO Box. *sigh* It’s annoying, it really is…

So yeah – not exactly a great day. We’ll see how Thursday goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “HITMANNIVERSARY! Hitman 10th Anniversary Stream | The BEST Maps and Our NEVER-BEFORE-TRIED Missions” by OXBox! Today’s chunklet featured more of the gang playing “The Envy Contention” from the “Seven Deadly Sins” missions, and contained –

A) Jane finally managing to finish off Level 2 of the mission – well, after dying in a hail of gunfire in one of the lavender planters because everyone saw 47 punch Emma Carlisle unconscious and then snap her neck when Jane was unable to shove her over the railing because she turned around at exactly the wrong moment. XD But she was able to use the whole mess as a learning experience, and completed the level by:

I. Heading over to the kitchen by the buffet, knocking out the staff inside when they caught her trespassing (she managed to avoid the urge to snap their necks this time, instead sticking them in a nearby cupboard at Andy’s urging), and getting a waiter’s costume and the emetic rat poison vital to her plan

II. Going out and lurking by the canapes that Emma samples and managing to poison them at JUST the right moment this time – that is, after the old guy eats a few, but before Emma could – making sure Emma was the one who ended up with the dicky stomach

III. Following Emma around to the deserted railing where she chose to go and puke, with the intent of pushing her over – only to press the wrong button and end up subduing her instead. Prompting Mike and Andy to start going on about that being her “signature move.” XD She did at least manage to snap the woman’s neck and make her escape WITHOUT immediately being shot at this time!

IV. Taking advantage of the fact that she was able to go downstairs into the super-fancy technological heart of the winery in her waiter’s costume to get close to her second target, a scientist with a stupid haircut, and wang the special curvy cat-knife she’d been given as a reward at the beginning of the level (for Andy’s good work in beating the first mission) into his head – this did not go as smoothly as she might have hoped, as she had to get closer than she’d originally thought to actually hit him in the head with the knife (instead of just tossing it somewhere near him), meaning she got caught and had to flee in a hail of gunfire – fortunately, she easily managed to outrun her pursuers and get back to the kitchen, where she donned her original outfit and rejoined the party to avoid being murdered (again)

V. Making an attempt to get at the third target after realizing that 47’s weird mirror double “rival” in the high-fashion hoodie hadn’t gotten to her yet (in the hopes of crushing her in a wine press, as per the optional objective) – unfortunately, despite managing to knock out the guard on the doors she needed to pass through with a nice bottle of wine she found in while wandering the party, she was unable to get past him (mostly because another guard noticed the knocking-out and woke the guy up), and the high-fashion rival got the lady instead. Everyone was very annoyed he was allowed to kill her however and not use a wine press, and by his very uncouth celebration in the picture-in-picture

VI. Completing the mission by returning to the starting chair, and receiving her score – “Black Cat, 0 Stars.” Given how much bad luck she experienced during her attempts, that does feel appropriate. :p

( Here is your cut for ease-of-reading purposes )

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – managed to do about seven pages today, covering:

A) Alice leaving Skyeline Apartments, talking with Wonderland about how bubbly Victor’s blood made her and how she’s grateful to have him in her corner, especially with most of the vampires of L.A. treating her like their servant

B) Alice looking to get a taxi and complaining both about the one cabbie that seems to be stalking her (even though that shouldn’t be logically possible) and – in her head – about her inability to say anything about the potential Blood Hunt on Nines out loud even to herself, and about how she would like somebody other than herself to show some sympathy for Grout’s lost ghouls (because what happened to them was horrific and shouldn’t go uncommented on)

C) Rabbit running off while telling Alice she shouldn’t get distracted and leading her to the abandoned hospital, where she was promptly nearly run over by a panicked man emerging from it; he told her that he was the host of Haunted LA, and that something had attacked his camera crew, and that it was coming for him, before running off in terror

D) Alice heading into the hospital in the hopes of trying to help the crew, and being forced to take the long way around all the various junk walls and such in her way, spotting camera feeds showing the unfortunate demises of two crew members along the way and getting to personally witness the third after getting down to the basement (which did not please her in the slightest)

E) And Alice spotting the monster apparently behind all the murders in the hospital morgue, and getting ready to knife them – only for Cheshire to advise her NOT to put her blade to work just yet, but to instead see what the “mantis” had to say, and thus instead approaching the woman for a chat

Not too shabby, I suppose – I would have liked to have made it to page 16 tonight, but I had a lot more edits to make in this section, so it just wasn’t happening. Tomorrow, we continue, starting with Alice’s conversation with Pisha! Hopefully I can get at least another seven pages done...we will see!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – which is getting quite annoying, as Josh actually uploaded another Fun With Shorts recently. I’m gonna have to carve out some time to watch that damn thing sometime this week!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I was hoping to figure out what I wanted to do for Song Saturday over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight, but it just didn’t work out.

Yeah, I was hoping to get more done today, but...well, apparently time forbade. At least I got the most important stuff done (aka, the LB:DQ editing). We'll see if Thursday goes a little better -- night all!

Yeah, for whatever reason, my get-up-and-go got up and went today. Probably at least some of it can be blamed on a poor night's sleep last night -- went to bed too late, woke up too early thanks to needing the bathroom and not really being able to get back to sleep afterward -- but otherwise, no clue why I was so distracted and generally out of it most of the day. Meh. At least I managed to accomplish a handful of things:

Tumblr: Just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today – and while I was hoping to get more done, I did at least manage to get a little more written on that “when do Victor and Alice (and occasionally others) find out Smiler’s birth name is ‘Marmaduke’” post that I started yesterday, adding in an entry for when the Running Into The Bullshit mega-polycule finds out that fact and an “Honorable Mentions” category for Victor and Alice finding out a particular Smiler is Mar-Mal, eldritch being of happiness! So that’s slowly coming along. ...and it occurs to me that you guys might want to know the answer to that question too, so here’s a quick sum-up:

( I mean, I say ‘quick’...also, Gigs, potential spoilers for an upcoming birthday fic )

Whew! You see why I didn’t try to sum all that up for you guys last night. :p

Portal 2: Welp, today’s half-hour trip to Aperture Science ended up surprising me, as it turned out Wheatley was rather closer to breaking Chell out of the testing track than I had originally thought at the end of last week’s session, meaning today’s session consisted mostly of rather a lot of madcap running around and careful-yet-speedy jumps...let me tell you all about it –

A) I started things off right at the entrance to Chamber 21, the second-to-last test chamber on the testing track, having just been informed by GLaDOS that there was a “surprise with tragic consequences” awaiting Chell at the end of the next chamber. So she had that to look forward to! :D Anyway, I entered the test chamber itself to discover it was a rather tall room, sporting a couple of deadly water pits on the floor – one by the entrance to the left, and one by the exit (which, incidentally, was halfway up the wall) to the right. The one by the entrance had a hard light bridge stretching across it into a portal-able patch of wall and a cube dispenser over it – though, unfortunately, the cube dispenser was just to the left of the hard light bridge, so any cubes dispensed would be immediately fizzled in the deadly water – while the one by the exit was just there to make life a little bit more difficult for Chell when she had to find a way to reach said exit. There was also a big red button on the floor in front of the exit; a cube dispensing button in a little notch to the side of the exit, also elevated off the floor; and a few more patches of portal-able wall around the place. After taking in the landscape, I started out by putting a portal in front of the hard light bridge and another on the very narrow patch of wall by the exit, in front of the cube dispensing button nook – to my delight, this not only provided access to the cube dispensing button, but also a platform for the cube itself to land on! I thus cheerfully walked through the portals, hit the cube dispensing button, and prepared to walk over and pick up the newly-dispensed cube –

Only for the lights to turn out and the hard light bridge to disappear. Cue Chell falling to the floor (safely, thanks to her long fall boots) and the cube plopping into the water to fizzle while I and GLaDOS both wondered who had turned out the lights –

And then cue the portal-able bit of wall in front of the hard light bridge opening up, and Wheatley popping his eye through the gap! Greeting Chell with an ATROCIOUS Texan accent that he claimed was beyond GLaDOS’s range of hearing. XD He then informed her that he knew he was a little early, but that they had to go right now, instructing her “Walk casually toward my position and we’ll go shut her down.” Naturally, I had Chell do just that –

As slowly as possible, because I was pretty sure he had additional dialogue to urge you along if you didn’t walk over to him fast enough. XD Unfortunately, none of it actually triggered – he just kept staring at Chell as she inched toward him, not saying anything at all. Eventually I was like “either I’m misremembering or you have to keep him waiting for a WHILE,” gave up, and just had Chell approach him normally. Prompting GLaDOS to inform Wheatley coolly that she could hear him –

B) And Wheatley to tell Chell in a panic, “Run! I don’t need to do the voice. RUN!” as he opened up the wall fully so she could get through. Cue me running into the backstage area, making onto a catwalk with the help of the reactivated hard light bridge, and then sending Chell on a desperate jog through the maze of catwalks and stairs and tubing and whatnot back there, trying to keep Wheatley in sight so I knew where the hell to go. Wheatley being Wheatley, he kept up a steady stream of encouraging babble throughout, telling Chell to keep moving and informing her of the plan – “We are going to shut down her turret production line, turn off her neurotoxin, and then confront her!” Sounded good to me, and I’m sure it sounded good to Chell too! After a bit more scrambling about trying to keep our favorite Intelligence Dampening core in sight, I had Chell exit the latest catwalk to instead book it across the top of a hanging chamber, as there was nowhere else to go –

And then GLaDOS, commenting on how Chell had almost finished the testing track, opened up the chamber next to her, revealing a pre-solved cube-and-button test with a heart on the wall and an entrance door with fake greenery inside. She encouraged Chell to step inside via a hard light bridge and finish things properly, as it would be better than whatever ridiculous plan Wheatley had come up with, prompting Wheatley to scoff and ask, “Oh, what? How stupid does she think we are?” –

And me to wonder, “...I do have the achievement for going inside that chamber and getting killed by GLaDOS, right? Ah, hell, even if I do, let’s go ahead and do it anyway, it’ll be fun.” XD So I slapped down a save and had Chell head inside the chamber, to Wheatley’s horrified astonishment. She made it all the way to the fake exit door before GLaDOS slammed it shut in her face, locked her inside the chamber, and gassed her. XD What can I say – I’m a very compliant test subject!

( And here is your second cut to spare your reading pages )

Workout/YouTube: Back on the bike tonight, and back with the OXBoxers to watch the trio try to take down another Elusive Target in “Hitman 3 Ways to Play: GRANNY MURDER Elusive Target | Angel of Death!” (With the last five minutes being watched after supper, hence the dual category.) This one saw Andy, Jane, and Mike all try to kill Etta Davis, a retired nurse who tended to poison her charges back when she worked (taking out many a pensioner in a retirement home), who was roaming around the original Hitman (No Subtitle) level of Marrakesh! With a retinue of military bodyguards, which was a bit troublesome, as you might guess. And, as usual, they all committed the assassination in their own unique ways:

Andy arrived in the level in the cream-colored summer suit, intending to be a conscientious hitman and fulfill the optional objective of murdering Etta with lethal poison, as per the client’s request. He thus not only had the ICA smuggle in some poison in a syringe for him, but – just to be on the safe side – infiltrated the military base in the level to grab some poison from the general’s office. He then sent about finding his target –

Only to discover that she had no less than four bodyguards. At least one of which was a noticer and would see through his disguise. Fortunately, having to flee from her and her guards into a rug shop ended up setting up the perfect opportunity for him to get rid of said bodyguards – namely, lure them into the shop with a distracting coin, then strangle them and hide the bodies! And so the Strangling Spot was born, where people got strangled and then hidden in a box. The grand opening was a little rough – the owner of the shop spotted 47 trespassing, which then led to the noticer guard seeing 47 wasn’t one of his men, forcing Andy to make a tactical retreat to the roof (where he had to knock out the people already up there) – but it did result in him managing to choke out at least ONE of the bodyguards, and once he cleaned up his mess, the remaining stranglings went a lot smoother (especially once he knocked out the actual shopkeeper and took his clothes). He eventually got rid of all her bodyguards (though the last one involved having to hastily change into his victim’s outfit when his strangling was noticed by some passersby), then proceeded to follow her around on her loop, watching her do all her window shopping, until FINALLY she went down a side alley where there were no NPCs, allowing him to prick her with the syringe and murder her nice and silently. From there, it was just a matter of looping back to where he’d left his summer suit and swapping back into it (couldn’t just leave it on the ground in the base, his tailor would be FURIOUS), getting out of the base without being seen, and heading for the marketplace exit to successfully end the level. Envenoming Assassin, 2 Stars! Which is a low score for Andy, but he did strangle a LOT of people! And leave at least one unconscious witness in the shopkeeper. Ah well.

Jane arrived in the level in the bright red suit that makes 47 look like a Pitbull cosplayer and – having smuggled in a sniper rifle – made her way up to the rooftops through one of the shops, knocking out the woman hanging out up there before waiting for what she felt like ages for her target to actually appear (wandering around from sniping spot to sniping spot to stretch 47’s legs from time to time). Eventually she spotted Etta by the entrance to the cafe and tried to shoot the sign down on top of her (as she’d never done such a kill before) – unfortunately, the falling letters JUST missed her target, and she went into temporary lockdown in the VIP lounge. Jane descended back to street level and checked on the target (as she’d picked up an invitation to get into the lounge during her wanderings on the roof), then tailed her for a while once the lockdown was lifted, contemplating killing her with her old friend Screwy the Screwdriver (picked up from a local mechanic) –

But then decided “No, I brought in the sniper rifle for a reason,” went back up on the roof, and eventually successfully sniped Etta from above. Unfortunately a wandering soldier meant that she couldn’t just flee down the most convenient flight of stairs; fortunately, she was easily able to climb down the front of the building instead, moving onto a different, lower rooftop, and from there to the front gates of the market, striding out scot-free. Shadow ICA Assassin, 3 Stars! (Probably because she didn’t have to choke out a lot of people like Andy.)

And Mike arrived in the level dressed like a clown, immediately went to pick up his drop from a nearby alleyway – an emetic gas mine – and immediately compromised himself by carrying the clearly-illegal item around, sending everyone into a panic. XD Cue him:

I. Fleeing up to a rooftop to hide and setting off an unnecessary explosion with a propane flask when he couldn’t bring it down off the bit of roof it was on without throwing it and causing it to start leaking

II. Eventually murdering one of the guards after him and swapping into a private’s outfit so he could carry around his emetic mine without everyone causing a fuss

III. Somehow being the FIRST to get eyes on the target and tailing her around until he could throw said emetic mine INTO HER HEAD (because unfortunately he realized he could do that while wandering through the civilians in the market and had to try it out) in the lamp store – and getting compromised again

IV. Fleeing back up onto the roofs and murdering so many guys coming after him, before getting an elite soldier disguise off one so he could go back to looking for his target...and then someone woke up the one guy he left alive, and he ended up having to change disguises again, eventually shooting one of the local shopkeepers who found him on a rooftop where he wasn’t supposed to be (it wasn’t even the shopkeep who outed him, I think!)

V. Wandering into the consulate carpark while looking for his target (who he thought MIGHT be throwing up somewhere) and inflicting “hammer time” on all the guards (i.e., hitting them in the head with a hammer to knock them out) before realizing where he was and leaving through a nearby store...which involved him murdering a bunch MORE militia members after his latest “hammer time” crime was noticed

VI. Compromising his shopkeeper outfit, killing a guard in view of the target and sending her into lockdown, then going on a rampage against even MORE militia members which swarmed into try and arrest him

VII. Going BACK into the consulate carpark to get a fresh disguise (admittedly a compromised one, but at least he wasn’t being actively hunted) – only to discover the military guys he was trying to flee from coming down; cue him killing EVEN MORE of them, including shooting one guy in the crotch until he died, then having an ammo crisis and picking up a sword from a shoe shop instead

VIII. Heading into one of the local bathrooms and setting up a sink overflow trap to maybe lure in a waiter to get a new disguise; instead he got some more military dudes (one of whom got choked out for making the mistake of taking a leak, and one of whom fell to the sword) – and fortunately, one cameraman, who got knocked out and stripped

IX. FINALLY locating his target again on a hostile rooftop and trying to distract her guard with precious coins on the stairs so he could knock him out with a brick – only for the guard to abruptly teleport back onto the roof because the game was just DONE with Mike’s shit; fortunately the second attempt to coin him down worked out a lot better

X. Dropping a remote-control mine just by the stairs to kill his target – but, for some reason, not immediately blowing her up when she came to investigate the disturbance on the stairs, which led to her spotting the body of her guard and panicking; Mike attempting to flee, only to be caught by a DIFFERENT militia guy coming UP the stairs; and Mike finally running back, knocking his target out, then blowing her and the militia guy up with a carefully-thrown bottle of nitroglycerin

XI. Killing the last few militia guys who came to investigate the disturbance and then FINALLY fleeing the level, admitting that was the most south any of these Elusive Targets has ever gone and commenting on how “this proves that, in ten years, I’ve learned – basically nothing.”

...Yeah. Messy Amateur, 0 Stars. Mike fully admitted he deserved that. XD But damn was it fun to watch.

And there you have it -- not much, but at least I had fun with what I did do. *nods* And now it's time to head to bed and prepare to go to work again. *sigh* Night all!

As you might guess from that title, I didn't have a particularly good day today -- in addition to the cleaning taking much of the day (as it so often does), Dad had a bad day after getting his post-chemo immune system booster this morning -- basically, he felt kind of nauseous most of the day, which led to him and Mom getting into something of a fight around suppertime and then him throwing up later. And since I'm on my period and thus getting vibe-checked by my own body, with heightened emotions to match...yeah. It was just -- not fun all around. *sigh* Here's the few things I did manage to do today --

Cleaning: As I said, this took most of the day – partially because I got a later start than I wanted thanks to my parents stopping back home early after Dad got his shot before going out again to get my aunt a gift certificate for her birthday; partially because I ended up having to throw in a couple of loads of laundry after going to toss my sheets and pajamas in the hamper and finding it full to bursting (Mom’s been letting the white stuff pile up). >( So yeah – I started the dusting a little before 11 AM; threw in the first load of laundry a little after noon; broke for lunch a little after 1 PM; finished the last of the dusting, the Swiffering, and the vacuuming around 2:45 PM; and took out the last load of laundry – want to say around 4:30 PM? Somewhere around that time. *shakehead* At least I had some good entertainment while I did it – spent the time listening to Jon of Many A True Nerd’s video essays on –

A) The problem of Speech in the Fallout series (and how it’s often one of the most overpowered skills in the game, and REALLY easy to cheese up to a high level early on to boot)

B) The evolution of the Atom Store in Fallout 76 (and how it went from a simple store offering pretty much only cosmetic items at the start to being a horror show of flash sales offering exclusive items for very limited times and “convenience” for the players in the form of stuff like weapon repair kits and fridges to store food in and whatnot, for prices that the average player who was trying to earn Atoms through gameplay only probably couldn’t afford)

C) And the history of VATS in the Fallout series (starting with its origins as the Aimed Shot mechanic in the original isometric games, and continuing on with a discussion of how it was implemented in FO3, F:NV, and FO4 – Jon actually likes the last one the best for creating builds specifically centered around it)

Plus the first few minutes of his essay on how Fallout 3 is better than some people think, which was interesting enough that I’ll probably listen to the whole thing during my next Cleaning Saturday. :) Small win, I suppose, but given what today was like, I will TAKE it.

Writing: Sadly, I didn’t quite manage to finish editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” – the addition of another new scene meant that, when I stopped for the day, there was still just about a page left to go. Meeeh. At least I can say with confidence I’ll be able to wrap it up tomorrow! In the meantime, today’s edits covered –

A) Victor telling Alice that at least she’s not a fool (in response to her commenting at the end of yesterday’s editing session that she’d heard Gary doesn’t suffer fools gladly), and Alice saying that’s nice of him, but they’ll have to see what Gary thinks, before adding that now she has to go and get packed – because she has no idea how far away Hollywood is from Downtown, and she wouldn’t want to waste time fighting the traffic both ways anyway, she thinks the smartest way to handle being sent to Hollywood is to take some of her things there and rent a hotel room down there for however long it takes her to find Gary. Unless Baron Isaac gives her some lodgings, which she doubts because of what just happened with Nines –

Cue Victor being like “What?? What happened?” and Alice having to explain the whole “LaCroix has accused Nines of murdering Grout and made it legal for people to kill him in retaliation because I stupidly mentioned seeing Nines emerging from Grout’s house when I first arrived while telling him about Grout’s death, and now the Anarchs are mad at me about it” mess to him. Because she wasn’t able to explain it last night because of the Dominate. Victor admitted that he could see why the Anarchs were mad, even if Alice didn’t actually say Nines killed Grout (which she stressed she had not), and Alice admitted that while she’d managed to convince the ones Downtown she was a patsy, she wasn’t expecting a warm welcome from the ones in Hollywood as a result. (This is not going to stop her from getting EXTREMELY ticked off at Isaac demanding “tribute” at the beginning of “Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” if only because she is going to find him pulling that beyond pretentious, noting “LACROIX doesn’t ask for tribute!”)

B) Victor asking if she’d like him to come to Hollywood with her, and Alice saying she’d quite enjoy that, in fact – she’s grown quite fond of his company, after all, and on a practical level, having someone who can walk around in the daylight would be useful. She added with a smirk that she also didn’t want to stick him with the rent, should he be at the apartment when it came due, because after all, she was the one earning all the money –

Causing Victor to stare at her for a rather long time. And then go, “Oh, you genuinely don’t know.” Alice was like “Don’t know what?” but Victor told her just to look up his family on the computer, as it would be easier than him trying to get it out. Puzzled, she went upstairs and did so –

Aaaand cue her getting the shock of her unlife as she learned just how fucking rich the Van Dorts actually were. XD Victor was like “I did tell you we had lots of money,” causing Alice to respond “I DIDN’T THINK THAT MUCH.” XD She also asked why the heck he was in a hotel in Santa Monica instead of a mansion in the Hollywood Hills or something – Victor explained that it was largely because he left Burtonsville in a snit and was trying to use as little of his parents’ money as possible to fund his trip. He very much did not want them controlling what he did, after all! But he still has access to his trust fund, so – yeah. Alice is now prepared for all monetary possibilities!

C) And Alice jokingly asking Victor if he could just buy Hollywood out from under Isaac, and Victor laughingly saying it would probably take too long for LaCroix’s liking –

Only for Cheshire to come in to warn Alice that, even if he could buy the town, he probably shouldn’t, as – if she truly wanted Victor to be free – she very much did not want other vampires learning of his existence. *grimace* I left things off there, in fact – tomorrow, we wrap things up with Alice realizing that yeah, best the other vampires don’t know about Victor, lest one of THEM try to ghoul him, and Victor insisting that he wants to buy her something after all the bullshit she’s gone through. Which is very sweet of him – and Alice can think of a very practical present, luckily… It will feel good to get that wrapped up, let me tell you!

YouTube: Finally did get to watch this week’s OXBox list video – “7 Most Obnoxious Trends in Mobile Game Ads!” Andy, Mike, and Jane going through all the ways that mobile game ads are terrible and irritating liars who lie. Crimes against viewers included –

A) Pretending that your game has entirely different gameplay than it actually has, like any game whose ads advertise it as a pin-pulling puzzle game, or an endless runner-type game, or an “eat all the things smaller than you” game, only to turn out to be a match-three puzzle game

B) Showing off deliberately awful gameplay (either from “real people” on the screen or from an unseen virtual player) to enrage the viewer and get them to download the game to do it PROPERLY

C) And straight up using AI to create ads that have absolutely NOTHING to do with the game, like Kingshot (an idle medieval survival game) having ads showing a random hand using a knife to cut through a heart made out of a long line of diamonds. Yes, this was actually in the video

*shakehead* Mobile ad makers should be ashamed of themselves. ...and also subject to lawsuits, because as the comments noted, this shit IS false advertising. Ugh.

Other: I spent most of the afternoon finishing off my write-up of yesterday’s BG3 session with Tav Smiler (covering a bunch of party banter, them meeting a dying Absolute cultist and his two siblings/novice recruits and learning more about what the Absolute cult is up to in the area, and finally Smiler having to wrest control back of their body from their parasite when the tadpole in the now-dead cultist started basically going “eat me and get all this guy’s memories”) – you can see the completed version here.

Yeah, not exactly my most productive day, I must admit. But at least I got my writing done, and got to watch my list video. *sigh* Anyway -- should probably head to bed now. Tomorrow, I REALLY hope I can finally do some work on my drafts over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); play some Fallout: New Vegas (Victor may be hiking back to Goodsprings briefly to get some water and sell some guns he really doesn't need); finish off my "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" Chapter 6 edits (just under a page to go!); and get in a workout, hopefully to Jon's latest episode of F:NV YOLO Remastered (keep your fingers crossed). We'll see what happens, though. Night all.

It was not a nice day weather-wise, that was for damn certain -- it was rainy all morning, cloudy the rest of the day, and the temperatures barely made it into the 40s. Quite the turnaround from the 70-degrees-and-sunny Tuesday we had! >( Fortunately the heat was on at work, and I had my space heater in case I needed a little extra blast, but still. It's April -- you'd expect these kinds of days to be over and done with! Meeeh... At least the rest of my day was pretty decent --

Work – I am pleased to report that it was a decent enough Thursday to end out this short work week:

A) While the commute in was pretty bad thanks to it being miserable and rainy this morning, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and I was only like a minute late

B) The day itself was very quiet – my phone didn’t ring once! O.o I spent the morning doing the GL, answering a few e-mails, and putting on some cash gifts; then the afternoon was spent going through and putting on a bunch of check gifts, attempting (and failing) to figure out who sent in an IRA check we received in the mail (pro tip people – put your name on those damn things!), and doing a couple of last-minute reversals to remove a pledge that was causing trouble (because the donor had a recurring gift and the database system kept insisting the recurring gifts be applied to the pledge, despite the fact that the pledge was fully paid and the donor had elected to keep the recurring gift). Nothing particularly exciting, but it made the day go by!

C) And the commute home was actually pretty quiet and smooth for the most part – helped by the fact that I got out a couple of minutes earlier than normal (nothing major, but it was still nice)

So yeah – I’d say that was a perfectly fine way to end the week. *nods* And now I have four days off, hooray~ Hopefully they’ll be good!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped on the bike again and pedaled my way through the following:

A) “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Using ONLY Shove?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! For I was in the mood for some BG3 content, and what better content than one of his ridiculous challenge runs? As always, the rules were simple in theory, excruciatingly painful in practice – Proxy’s party was not allowed to use their actions, bonus actions, or reactions for anything except Shove, either in or out of combat (with the sole exception being equipping items, like changing a helmet or something). All enemies had to be killed via shoving them off a sufficiently high place (multiple times if necessary); potions and elixirs could only be used if shoved off one of Proxy’s Patented Box Towers and smashed on the floor so the party could run through its contents; and the only reason Gale got pulled out of his portal was because it didn’t cost an action point (though some wags in the comments still complained XD). So, under these restrictions, was Paul The Pusher, a Wood Elf Rogue, and his companions able to traverse the Wilderness, survive the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and take down the Netherbrain before it destroyed Baldur’s Gate?

Technically yes, but Proxy himself was rather dissatisfied with how the run ended thanks to an extremely strange bug in the final boss fight. Let me sum things up in a way that I hope is relatively quick –

I. Tutorial – much more deadly than it had any right to be, because Shove is extremely ineffective against flying imps, and not much more effective against the other enemies in the control room. Paul managed to connect the nerves and start the game proper in the end, but it was a pretty near thing!

II. Act One – the easiest act, as you might expect, simply because the enemies aren’t too hard and there’s plenty of high things to shove them off of. (Though using Shove to get all his companions across a river nearly broke him because it required pixel-perfect precision to get the shove-ee across to the right spot, and Shove is not a precise action.) Proxy had Paul and all his friends become Thief Rogues to get those sweet extra bonus actions; abused ladders during a couple of fights to trick enemies into continually climbing up to them to be shoved back down; had Paul learn how to play musical instruments by helping Alfira with her song in the grove, then used those new skills to lure goblins (and Minthara) to their doom in their own camp (he also learned in the process that if you upset the goblins by playing BADLY, they may throw a rock at you, as poor Wyll found out when he plucked his lyre); visited Grymforge and stole a set of Devilfoil Masks to help boost his party’s Strength to ridiculous levels (while tanking some of their other stats, as nothing is free in this life); and killed the githyanki guards outside the creche for some XP, though avoided massacring the rest of them in the actual building because the ceilings were too low for him to build his iconic box towers (Shadowheart was sorely disappointed). Sure, the party died a few times (once, notably, to some gnolls with ranged weapons and the ability to stop people using their bonus actions), but at this point, the challenge looked manageable.

( Got a little long, so let’s pop in a cut )

B) “New Vegas Non-Unique Unique Weapon #shorts” by N_orte! A short talking about how one of Fallout: New Vegas’s unique weapons is not so unique, as there’s two copies of it in the game, not just one. Or, rather, in the DLC, as the affected unique weapon is Elijah’s Advanced LAER gun from Old World Blues! Turns out that, if you’re looking for it, you can collect it either in the Little Yangtze camp OR from the roof of the Signal Hills Transmitter (which isn’t even that far away). Bit of an oversight from the game developers – though, given that Elijah’s Advanced LAER is a powerful gun with the durability of a wet sheet of paper (as proven by Jon in Useless Steve’s OWB adventures), having an extra copy of it that you can use to repair the damn thing is honestly quite welcome! XD

C) And “Larian bet on a MADMAN healing her #baldursgate3” by SuNStereO! A short showing off a unique line you get if your player character (with Speak With Animals active, of course) chooses to heal the injured owlbear mother in her nest before officially meeting her, then fails the check to try and intimidate her or persuade her to leave you alone – “Thanks to you, I’m healed enough to cut you from belly to snout!” Followed by the owlbear attacking Sun’s PC (slashing at her, naturally), and said PC noting “Healed – but she doesn’t look much happier.” Much as I have become rather disillusioned with Larian thanks to some nasty stories about how the CEO is a dick, I will admit that this was some interesting forward thinking on their part. They did prepare for a lot of scenarios!

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another page sorted tonight, featuring –

A) Alice muttering to herself about how she hoped Victor had had a better night than her (because this one had only been somewhat better than the night before) as she stepped out of the elevator – only to be startled by Victor saying he was sorry to hear this night hadn’t been particularly good either. Turned out he was already waiting for her by the open door to their apartment! Alice let him know that most of the museum bit hadn’t been that bad until the very end, then asked how he’d know she was coming up –

Prompting him to admit that he wasn’t sure, honestly. And to tell her that he seemed to have some sort of weird sixth sense for when she was in a bad mood – not in the sense of sharing her feelings, but in the sense of knowing she needed his help somehow. And that, if she was close enough, he could use it to sort of tell where she was. Alice noted this was very odd –

And then realized that this was probably why Victor practically threw himself out the door the other night. With Victor confirming that it had been like having an alarm in his head telling him to go ease her burdens, but with no way to turn it off until she was right outside the door. Cue Alice picking up some fresh guilt to go with all the other guilt she’s accumulated over the years!

B) Alice apologizing and saying she hadn’t realized this was a thing with ghouls, as neither Knox nor Mercurio had mentioned it – then taking a moment to confirm that Victor knew who the hell Mercurio was, as she couldn’t remember if she’d mentioned him or not. Victor admitted she might have, but they’ve both been through a lot this week, so… XD Alice thus refreshed his memory (emphasizing that Mecurio was much less excitable than Knox – not that that was a high bar to clear), then reiterated that neither ghoul had mentioned this strange ability – and, of course, she hadn’t thought to ask about such things, because she hadn’t expected to have a ghoul living with her. But at least this gave her another excuse to go see Mercurio on the morrow! (...cue “Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” starting with Mercurio learning about Victor’s “your domitor needs you” sense and going “if that’s a ghoul thing, it’s one I ain’t got.” XD)

C) Victor saying he’d appreciate her asking Mercurio about it, as he would like to know more about his condition...then rubbing his throat and getting a strange look in his eyes as he started to ask if she was sure it would be bad if she gave him more blood. Alice shut that thought down immediately, reminding him that, as good as vampire vitae tasted, it would eventually make him a slave, and she would not be complicit in that. Victor managed to come back to himself a bit after hearing that, apologizing – Alice assured him it was all right, she understood, she just wanted him to stay her friend and not her servant. As she liked him how he was. “Vampire kink and all.” XD Cue Victor blushing and asking if she had to bring that up. XD

D) And Alice informing him that yes, she did, because that incident was one of the few things to make her laugh tonight – Victor muttered “Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” then asked if her night had truly been that terrible. Alice replied that, again, it had been better than last night, but not by much, then headed over to the couch and plopped down, patting the cushion next to her and telling him he could quiet the little voice in his head demanding he be useful by listening to her complain about having to kill a Nagaraja.

And that was where I left things off! On page 273 of 275. :D On track to get this round of edits done by the end of the week – fingers crossed I make it!

3. Watch something on YouTube: ...I mean, what do you think? *sigh* I really tried to keep that Workout Video Write-Up short too...though admittedly I was rather sabotaged tonight by my PMS making it hard to word at times. Tough to write things up quickly if you’re not sure how exactly you want to PUT them! Hmph...at least this weekend I should have some more time for video watching!

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

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I took a moment this morning to reblog the post I wanted to use for my Song Saturday into my queue – an audio post by kuma-kami with a thumbnail of a smiling Rick Astley and the title “Exactly what you think it is,” urging the viewer to press play, followed by various reblog reactions ranging from “DELETE THIS POST” to “*clicks play in morbid curiosity* *hammers reblog button*” to “Ikrit almost spat out his smoothie XD” In case you’re curious, the song in the original post IS “Never Gonna Give You Up” – it’s just a REMIX of said song in a different style. I don’t know if it’s aping a specific other song or not, but it’s definitely not like the traditional RickRoll! Here, this is where I found it – go take a listen for yourself!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, while I didn’t have anything to put in my queue, I did have a reply on the “octopus threatens cat with eight guns; cat mocks him for being one short” ask I answered the other day (you know, where Alice said it might be crueler to leave the cat with one life and Smiler noted she seemed to be taking the whole thing too seriously) from thesatiricaldemon, noting “Weirdly enough, this is kind of a plot point in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.” I immediately responded “Is it?? I don't know much about that movie, only that there's a wolf who is basically Death in it,” and he explained “Thats why Death is involved, actually. Puss is on his last life, and Death thinks he's been wasteful and frivolous with them and decides to target him personally (in a sort of metaphor for coming to terms with one's mortality).” I replied “Interesting! If extremely stressful for Puss, I'm sure. XD” and he confirmed “It is, on both accounts. Highly recommend watching if you can, its a very dynamic movie with incredible animation work.” To which I said “Hopefully it's available at the local library then!” since that’s where we often get our movies. :) So yeah – that was nice! And perhaps I will see if we can get the movie – we don’t have much to watch these days, and we did enjoy the original Shrek and Shrek 2, so...

*nods* Pretty productive, all things concerned! And now it is time for me to consider heading to bed. Tomorrow's goals -- work on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; continue editing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" Chapter 6; play either Baldur's Gate III or Fallout: New Vegas (leaning toward the former currently, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow); and watch the latest OXBox list video (it's 12 minutes, I HAVE to be able to fit that in somewhere!) Oh, and get in a workout, obviously. We'll see how I do on all these -- night all!

Today was SUPPOSED to be in the low-to-mid 60s, but according to my car, it was 75 F when I left the office today! Practically summer weather! I opened my windows for a bit when I got home. :) And tomorrow was already supposed to be warmer than today, so -- I guess we'll see what happens! Would be nice to get some good weather after all the bullshit we had this winter. *sigh* Anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – It was a somewhat stressful but also rather productive day at work today:

A) I managed to finish off the QC file for the latest round of thank-yous from yesterday...though I finished it later than I wanted to because of interruptions (like helping my coworker research a potential duplicate, and telling our database person to delete some extra pledges out of a credit card batch she was trying to post as the donor had made multiple ones by accident trying to get their card to go through), and I found a few more gifts that should have gone to the newspaper office in the process

B) I managed to track down a guy’s missing check for him by calling the parish and learning they still had it – cue him calling me a miracle-worker for getting back to him so quickly while I thought “dude, trust me, this was sheer luck” XD

C) I wrote an e-mail to a couple who had both a pledge and a recurring gift...and an EXTRA gift that I am PRETTY sure was intended for the wife’s mother (as it had a different name on the Give Central account I found the gift on, but the wife’s name on the credit card) to ask which they wanted to keep, and to confirm that the extra gift was for said other person

D) I went through the next bundle of exceptions after my supervisor had looked at it and made sure all the failed credit cards were properly blacked out and such (so many people this year have forgotten to include their expiration date with their main credit card number! Bit annoying, honestly)

E) I also told said supervisor about the credit card issue I’d discovered with our processors yesterday – turns out she’d missed my original e-mail, so I’m glad I spoke up! She called the affected donors while I issued a refund (fortunately, the affected payment had been uploaded in one of the batches that day)

F) And I did a bunch of reversals at the end of the day to clear up some other mistakes I’d found during my review of the QC file (mostly having to apply payments to pledges)

Whew! Busy day, with some definite annoying moments, but at least I got some shit done and some important problems cleared up. Now we just have to see what Wednesday brings – it is April Fool’s Day, after all...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Hitman 3 Ways To Play MILLA JOVOVICH | Patient Zero Requiem: Explosions! Firing squads! Rampage?” Today’s little-over-a-half-hour session covered –

A) Everyone exploring the secret virus lab underneath the mansion:

I. Andy was in total “squee” mode, talking about how cool it was that they’d gone so hard on this particular mission and basking in the Resident Evil-ness of it all. He particularly liked listening to the audio logs around the place – which consisted of one in an old lab of a scientist talking to Zachary about the virus and how, once they fixed the rat exploding problem, it could be reengineered into being cure for so many diseases (going on about how he hoped the virus had a badass name like the ones in the RE series), and one in the next hallway along, surrounded by dead bodies, that featured (I think, I’m not 100% sure) that same scientist cursing Zachary out for telling H.E.R.B. they were moving the virus AND giving the AI control of the lasers to stop them, before dying on-tape (yes, it DID mean that H.E.R.B. was the murdery sort of artificial intelligence, which could be problematic later, but it just had SUCH excellent RE vibes!). Seriously, it’s like this whole thing was tailor-made for Andy, given his delighted reactions. XD

II. Jane, by contrast, was all “oh, that’s what they always say!” about the scientist talking about how the virus could do so much good for mankind, grumbling about how they were always like “it’ll either cure everyone or turn them into zombies – we have to take that risk!” in these situations. Which, you know, is a fair reaction to have to things. She also continued taking snaps of things that interested her – namely, the face of one of the dead scientists in the hall, so she had evidence of H.E.R.B. being a little bit murdery (and probably that the woman was infected with something bad).

III. And Mike was just amused by the first log talking about the exploding rats (it IS an interesting problem to have during clinical trials). Though, to his credit, he was also the first one to spot through a little internal window where exactly Lilith had got to – a big old scary chamber deeper in the facility! He promptly went and chased her, pausing just momentarily over the body of the first scientist to toss a baseball in her general direction, much like he had with Alexa. And then retrieve it because, honestly, he might need that. :p

( My write-ups remain long )

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – in fact, I actually wrote up a whole page’s worth of new content tonight! Which was inspired by all the comments on the last chapter that told me “hey, LaCroix’s Dominate command to ‘not speak of this to the Anarchs’ regarding him deciding whether or not to call a Blood Hunt on Nines was too specific and Alice could have totally loopholed it by writing a note.” As I decided I didn’t want to change the original command (I considered it, but – I dunno, I liked it as it was), I instead wrote a new bit to explain why Alice didn’t go with the loophole, which consisted of –

A) Jack asking Alice to stick around for a moment when she bade him adieu, asking exactly what command LaCroix gave her when he Dominated her...and upon hearing it, telling her “for future reference, you can totally loophole that bullshit.” Cue Alice going very still as Jack explained that the whole “speak” part of the command meant that she probably could have gotten away with writing a note and slipping it under the door or something, before telling her that she shouldn’t worry about it, Nines knew some sort of bullshit like this was coming, and she’s so new to being a vampire, it’s not surprising she didn’t think of this. He just wanted her to know for the future!

B) And Alice, still unnaturally calm on the outside, thanking him for being helpful, leaving the bar, and proceeding into an alley...where she promptly screamed “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS” and turned on the Wonderlanders in full Hysteria mode, demanding to know why they hadn’t pointed out the loophole last night. Carpenter and Hatter both attempted to claim that they weren’t “omniknowing” and that, as figments of her imagination, they were kind of limited by the information she had, but Alice immediately called bullshit on that, pointing out that they warned her all the time about shit she shouldn’t logically know about, and wondering openly if they were trying to get her killed by not letting her warn Nines (The Queen Of Hearts: “Well–” Alice: “NOT YOU”) She then accused them of doing nothing but getting in her way and making her life harder –

Leading Hatter to angrily protest that they were plenty useful to her, and had warned her about all kinds of things in the past! In fact, she wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Cheshire getting her out of Grout’s mansion! And Cheshire to appear on the scene and ask her to answer him one question before she continued trying to get violent – namely, if she really thought she would have been in a fit state to talk to anyone about Grout’s last night. (I mean, she managed to talk to Victor about it, but admittedly that was after a shower and him making a blanket nest for her…)

And that’s where I left it for the moment! Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up this new scene and start working our way toward finishing off the chapter proper. Would be nice to get it done this week so I can start the final editing pass next week...we will see!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check again, unsurprisingly – the damn Workout Video Write-Up took too long once again. I have really got to reign in the amount of detail I go into with those things, especially when it gets to the point of me rewatching parts of the video to properly sum it up...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Double check tonight, surprisingly –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I got the next three days of my queue sorted with:

A) A mini-thread featuring a post by langernameohnebedeutung with a screenshot of a “how big is your English vocabulary” test asking what word was a synonym for “companion” – fool, mirror, entrapment, partner – and saying it had dropped some new ship dynamics, followed by a post by polyamorousmood featuring a meme picture of a hand preparing to smack a button labeled “all four” with the caption “(This is a poly meme all four are different people)” for Wednesday – I added some tags saying how the whole thing made me think of my “Four Victorians Riding a Roller Coaster” fivesome, with Victor as the original “companion,” Smiler as the “fool” (silliest one), Victoria as the “mirror” (most like Victor), Emily as the “entrapment” (trapped Victor in the Land of the Dead when she thought they were married), and Alice as the “partner” (only one left/Alice is the original other half of the OTP that this ship is built off of). :p It’s just fun, you know!

B) That post from lysimachias about how it doesn’t matter if a ship is supported by canon or even reasonable; what matters is if the thought of the characters being near each other makes you want to chew concrete for Thursday (because, again, Valice/Valicer mood)

C) And my post of “Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes, Easter Edition” for Friday!

So that’s all nice – we’ll figure out Saturday tomorrow, hopefully!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I finally had an anon ask that I actually wanted to answer – a very silly one featuring an octopus facing off against a cat with a gun in each “hand,” and the cat taunting them that “You’re still one short, buddy!” After a bit of thought, I had the Inevitable High School!Alice reply that perhaps leaving the cat with a single life was actually the octopus’s aim – because as cruel as it would be to kill the cat, it would be crueler still to leave it with one life left, knowing that the next screw-up would be its last…

Followed by Smiler going “...I feel like you're taking this ridiculous hypothetical way too seriously.” XD Look, it just amused me – and hopefully it will amused the anon too!

And there we have it! And there I must leave you, because I absolutely have to get my ass to bed. *shakehead* Night all!

Yeah, I had slightly better focus today, and didn't feel as thirsty all the time like I did yesterday -- though I still had moments of extreme annoyance over little things. *sigh* So we cannot count my horrible hormones out entirely yet. We can merely be relieved they didn't cause me too many problems today. :p In fact, I actually ended up having a pretty productive, nice Sunday:

Tumblr: Well, it was another quiet day over on Valice Multiverse (who is surprised), but I ended up having a very nice, productive day over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I’m happy to say –

A) First, despite a late start (took me a bit to get going this morning), I was able to finish off my Easter-themed set of Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes! Which included –

I. Smiler jokingly asking Alice via text if the White Rabbit knows the Easter Bunny, and Alice reporting back that said Bunny is apparently Rabbit’s “father's cousin's sister's nephew's roommate's fifth sibling” – cue Smiler asking Alice to remind them if she’s seen Spaceballs or not because they genuinely can’t tell if she’s fucking with them XD

II. Victor knocking on Smiler’s door, asking if they’re ready to go on an unspecified trip, and Smiler yelling back that they can’t find their special Easter shirt – Alice promptly teases them that their regular wardrobe makes them look like an Easter egg anyway, and Smiler goes “ha ha ha, get in here and help me look”

III. Smiler very carefully mixing dyes in their kitchen for an Easter egg decorating date they’re having with Alice and Victor, with Alice watching and telling Smiler that they don’t have to go that hard on getting the dyes just perfect, she and Victor won’t be able to tell if something is a shade off what Smiler wanted – and then Victor showing up with a pysanka egg (you know, the ones with the fancy designs drawn on them in wax) decoration kit and cheerfully showing off past attempts on his phone, causing Alice to be like “actually, Smiler, be as precise as you want mixing those colors” XD

IV. Victor texting Smiler about if they’re looking forward to Easter or not, and Smiler saying yes, they’re hoping for good weather so maybe they can have a picnic, and perhaps do their family’s version of the Easter Egg hunt – clarifying when Alice asks what’s special about the Alton egg hunt that their parents gave them eggs to hide from them the night before Easter, so everybody could have fun hunting eggs down. Victor and Alice were more than game for that, with Alice suggesting color-coded eggs for each of them – then saying that she and Smiler could finally figure out which one of them loved Victor more by seeing who found more of his eggs. XD Cue Smiler laughing and Victor insisting he will make sure they both find an equal amount XD

V. Smiler asking Victor if he liked Easter growing up (as they know he likes spring holidays thanks to May Day), and Victor admitting it wasn’t a favorite just because the first half of the day had to be spent at church listening to Pastor Galswells deliver a long sermon about how it was all about Jesus’s sacrifice and how the day should be solemn and sad. Smiler said that did sound rough, then admitted they didn’t always like Easter too as a kid – cue a surprised Victor being like “Really? But it’s so colorful and you,” and Smiler pointing to their teeth and explaining that they got bullied sometimes for having a smile like theirs, being called “bunny boy” and having carrots thrown at them (they have buck teeth, remember). And that having an Easter Bunny go “oh, you must be related to me” upon seeing their chompers didn’t help. Victor sympathized with the bullying, and Smiler said that at least their parents had shut it down fast, and that actually, the “bunny boy” comments had helped them figure out the “nonbinary” thing because they eventually realized they objected to the “boy” part more than the “bunny” part. And that anything was better than being teased for their name –

Causing Victor to realize that neither he nor Alice know Smiler’s legal first name. Smiler, grinning: “Yeah, that’s deliberate.” XD I put in the tags that I do now have an idea for a new post detailing when various Victors and Alices learn that Smiler’s legal name is “Marmaduke” in the tags!

VI. And Smiler opening a bag of Cadbury Mini-Eggs, only for Victor to appear on the scene and immediately start eyeing them up – cue Smiler being like “oh no, these are mine” and resisting Victor’s pout…leading to Alice coming into the room a bit later to find the pair wrestling on the floor, and the bag shoved on a nearby side table to prevent it spilling. She promptly steals it and runs off, pursued by Victor and Smiler (“You don’t even like candy!”) XD

Yeah, as you might be able to tell, I had a lot of fun writing these. :) Reminds me of why I did them so often when I first came up with the trio! I should do a proper summer-themed one at some point… Or add onto the food one now that I know that there’s a UK snack called Shrimps & Bananas (midway down the page) that surely could support a new scene...

B) And, while catching up on my dash, I reblogged a post by lysimachias about shipping into my drafts – namely, how it doesn’t matter if a ship is supported by canon, or even reasonable by any standard metric – it matters if “the thought of these characters standing next to each other make you want to chew concrete and then break apart a nearby automobile with your bare hands.” Which, yeah, I’d argue is a Valice/Valicer mood. :p So yeah, I’ll plop that in a future queue! (Or maybe even this week’s, we’ll see how I feel.)

Writing: Edited another page of Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” this afternoon – a process which involved –

A) First, taking a bit of time to watch some “research” videos – specifically, the first seven minutes of “Opera, Chauncey and Makeout Spots - The OX Crew play BITD” by CaitlinRC (the compilation of “best-of” moments from the first episode of Season 2, “The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh” – featuring Kasimir suffering after having brunch with Barnaby, Barnaby trying to make “punked” a thing, and Edvard shouting “IT’S ALIVE!” in his mind every time he pulls a big lever as part of an opera’s lighting crew), and the entirety of “Corpse Bride Practicing Vow” by Qing 345 (which as you might expect is the bit of the movie featuring Victor practicing his vows in the forest and accidentally waking up Emily). Again, trying to keep my characterizations and speech patterns accurate!

B) And second, doing the actual editing, which covered:

I. Kasimir commenting that, if the guards on the vault are former City Watch, then they’re probably open to being bribed, which makes their lives easier – Alice asked if that meant they’d be offering them a cut of what they stole, and Kasimir said no, it meant they’d be offering them a “special little something” that would knock them out cold as he pulled out a tiny vial. Smiler, the chemist of the group, promptly recognized the slumber essence and agreed that would do the trick if they could get it into their mouths – well, unless Kasimir had a blowdart pipe on him? Kasimir said he didn’t, explaining that was more their friend Edvard’s thing, as he was the one into “innoventions.” And that they’d had to stop him trying to send one of his Wonderful Mechanical Men to get a job at the Van Dort mansion. XD At least his sighing over Edvard’s antics was slightly fond!

II. Kasimir then saying that he had a bottle of whiskey, and he could tip the slumber essence in and offer it to the guards to pass around...before looking at Barnaby and noting that maybe someone in the group might have some more high-quality spirits that would be more tempting to folks used to the usual pub swill? Barnaby obligingly revealed that he had a bottle of very nice gin that he’d bought recently, and that he’d planned on sharing with Squiffy at the club, but if needs must, he could spare a drop. Alice pointed out that, given that they planned to drug the drinks, the guards wouldn’t drink more than a glass each, if that, so he should still have plenty to share with his friend –

And originally I had a bit here featuring Barnaby complaining about how it would taste different if poor people had drunk any of it, but I decided that was WAY too mean-spirited for him – plus out of character, as he’s only too happy in most cases to offer drinks to people. So instead I had Victor say that, if Squiffy wasn’t impressed by the opened bottle of gin, he could always share what he and Kasimir had stolen from the wine cellar – cue Kasimir saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about” while clinking a bit again. XD Much funnier, and more in-keeping with the spirit of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark!

III. Victor ignoring the clinking and telling Kasimir that the plan he’d come up with was a good one, as he’d heard from the other servants that the guards were very fond of a drink – Barnaby was promptly like, “Who doesn’t?” only for Alice to be like “Me – never liked the taste and my head’s weird enough without outside help.”

Cue Barnaby being absolutely shocked and demanding to know how Alice gets through each day – and when she said, “Well, I’d say like anyone else who doesn’t drink, but I’m mad, so – I really don’t,” going on about how “only a madwoman wouldn’t drink” and declaring he’d be useless without his regular tipples, isn’t that right Kasimir? Kasimir responded blandly that he had no idea, since he’d never seen Barnaby sober – the closest he’d ever come was when they caught him drinking rubbing alcohol out of Zillah’s kit for bruises. A stunned Victor was like “I thought that was a rumor” (referencing a line from the cut bit where he thought “I’ve heard that you would drink rubbing alcohol if you thought it would get you plastered” in annoyance over Barnaby being a snob) –

And Barnaby was promptly like “I was out of port! And they shouldn’t call it ‘alcohol’ if you’re not allowed to drink it. It was all fine in the end!” XD Yeah, this is all WAY better than the bit I cut. This is why you revise, people!

IV. And Victor deciding he doesn’t want to know and commenting that, okay, they have to go by the kitchen anyway to get Alice and Smiler’s things, so maybe he can pop his head into the kitchen to ask for some glasses – only for Barnaby to produce two cut crystal tumblers from his coat as well, stating he always comes prepared as you can’t trust the middle classes to have proper glassware. Cue a moment of silence, broken by Alice saying “I’m going to get my bag” and heading off to the changing room, and Victor just facepalming and muttering “thought that was an exaggeration too” (“that” being the rumor referenced back in Chapter 2 about Barnaby’s coats being walking drinks cabinets) before telling everyone where they’d be going once Alice got back. XD

Some really good stuff today, as you can see! I was quite pleased with it. Especially the new stuff, since it was so much more amusing than the old stuff. XD Tomorrow, we’ll have the gang actually encounter the guards and try to drug them – which will go not quite according to plan, thanks to my earlier dice rolls...

Portal 2: Today’s visit to Aperture Science saw me complete two more test chambers for GLaDOS as she got gradually more and more explicit about murdering Chell once she was done with the current testing track – one big, kind of complicated one, and one much more simple (but still a little bit tricky) one –

Chamber 19: This was the big complicated one – literally, the room past the entrance door was absolutely HUGE. Here, this should give you a sense of how big this sucker was:



Massive, right? And that’s only as much as I could fit into one screenshot. Anyway, the full complement of stuff that was in this room that I could see from the starting ledge included:

A) A laser spinner on the ledge next to me

B) A Laser Redirection Cube on a little pillar platform on the right, far enough away that there was no jumping to it

C) A laser coming out of the far wall waaaay to the right

D) A nook with another laser spinner directly next to the laser emitter on the far wall

E) A low-set nook with a trio of faith plates in it on the far wall directly across from the starting ledge

F) A second Laser Redirection Cube on the floor, resting on the only portal-able patch

G) The exit door in another nook on the far wall to the left – guarded by a bunch of turrets, though fortunately they were all facing to the left and thus weren’t interested in killing Chell right away

H) The receiver for the laser beam on the far wall to the left of the exit

I) And not a hell of a lot of portal-able surfaces – one big patch on the floor (as mentioned), a few patches on the wall, and the ceiling of the starting area

Obviously, the goal was to get the laser through both spinners and then into the receiver using the cubes – but how did one go about that? Well, like so:

( Yeah, let’s put in a cut, just to be nice )

...I did also watch the latest episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series, but summing that up is taking longer than expected, so I'll edit this post with that write-up tomorrow. As it stands, I really do need to get to bed -- it may be a short week, but I still have four days of work to get through! Night all! EDIT 3/30/2026: Finally completed the write-up of the F:NV YOLO Remastered episode -- you can see it below!

YouTube: Well, today, irony abounded, as it turned out that the Sunday I skip my workout (since I did all that walking yesterday) is the Sunday where Jon finally uploads an episode of the F:NV YOLO Remastered series early enough for me to watch it with my workout again. *shakehead* Ah well – at least it was there for me to enjoy tonight! And in a nice compact 30 minute size too. (Not that that helped me get this done any faster in the end...) :p Tonight’s episode of the Drunken Melee Adventures of P. D. Shoot was entitled “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 36 - A Leap of Faith,” and featured –

A) P. D. having to make a return trip to Salida Del Sol to grab something important from the area where she’d left God to deal with the firework switches – the vending machine code to get the “Bear Trap Fist – Heavy Duty Springs” mod! Which she very much wanted because the Bear Trap Fist was currently her primary weapon, and that mod added a flat +3 to the thing’s base damage. And while that didn’t sound like a lot, as Jon pointed out, she was often working with at least one damage multiplier during fights (sneak attack critical, various modifiers from doing special VATS attacks, etc), so even a small increase in damage could lead to much bigger numbers in actual combat. Even better, there was a vending machine in a little side shop nearby (past a couple of traps, which fortunately she did manage to spot and disarm in time) –

Unfortunately, she couldn’t buy her mod from that one, as it proved to cost more chips than she had on her (250 chips to her 128). :( Fortunately, she was easily able to loot some more from the cash register right next to her (47 chips, to be precise), and scouring around the main Villa area provided enough spare cigs and clothing for her to sell back to one of the local vending machines, bring her chip total into the 260s and allowing her to buy and install the mod. Hooray!

B) P. D. recruiting Christine to take her into Puesta Del Sol and bring her to the switching station to turn on – er, I’m not actually sure, it was never specified. To turn on something important to the Gala Opening, I know that much! Jon was not eager to do this, both because the starting area had four Ghost People – two in the first plaza, two in the second right next to it – that could easily spot him and cause an all-out fight if he (or Christine) wasn’t careful, and because the whole thing ended with a dungeon that featured deadly speakers, deadly cloud, and the worst thing of all – JUMPING PUZZLES. In a game where the jumping was very much imprecise. But it had to be done, so he had P. D. collect Christine and head to Puesta Del Sol North. Once inside the new map quadrant, P. D. immediately went and hid behind a tree, peeping out at the plaza beyond to see where the Ghost People were. After a bit of waiting and watching the red ticks on the compass, one stumbled into view, and she decided to try and take him out with a sneak attack –

Only for the OTHER Ghost Person to be facing in her direction and immediately spot her. Whoops. XD P. D. promptly slapped on the Med-X and the Implant GRX, then ran forward and battered one guy to death manually while he was distracted trying to throw spears at Christine. The other enemy smartly tried to target actual threat P. D., but she was on him in VATS before he could do more than raise his throwing spear, and a few crosses too him down. This all caught the attention of the Seeker in the next plaza over, but fortunately he was a bit slow, and hadn’t even tried to throw his gas grenade yet, so P. D. was able to use her super speed to get up to him and kill him before he ever got the chance. She then retreated back to the entrance plaza, wondering where the hell the fourth guy was –

And getting her answer when she suddenly went into caution for no reason. A quick peek at the street between the two plazas revealed the fourth guy had seen the corpses of his friends and was staggering this way. P. D. was thus prepared to wait out of sight until he passed and then kill him –

But, well, Christine had other plans. Plans that involved running straight up to the other guy and trying to punch him. XD Fortunately, this did mean that she served as an excellent distraction while P. D. swooped in and murdered the guy with bear trap fist punches, but damn. Girl, please, we need you to be smarter than Dog!

C) P. D. then leading Christine through the plaza, into a side room in one of the buildings, up two flights of stairs to the rooftops (disarming a tripwire and a bear trap along the way), onto the roofs with the help of a little wooden bridge (disarming another bear trap that was tucked up right under where the terracotta roof sections meant the recessed area in the middle – Jon said that he’ll never forget where that one is because it’s so evil), onto a lower roof above some cloud, then along the terracotta tile pathway into an office where she could park her butt and keep an eye out for the next enemy to stumble along. She ended up waiting there for quite a while as she watched the Ghost Person up there on the roofs with her and Christine stumble back and forth, wanting him to be in the absolute perfect position – and after what must have been quite a bit of waiting (as Jon sped up the section), she finally decided circumstances were good (AKA, the murder of this Ghost Person would not be seen by his buddy down below), ran up behind him, and killed him. She then retreated a bit, waited the other Ghost Person below to chill out, then sprinted for the next office safe zone. This one had a radio in it, but fortunately Christine’s special companion perk allowed her to counter it with a special frequency long enough for P. D. to turn it off. Even better, it had a terminal in it that allowed P. D. to activate and deactivate a security hologram – she promptly turned that on for a bit and listened to the chaos downstairs (including one explosion) as the hologram attacked and killed all the Ghost People (and Christine attempted to join in, or at least watch, from the rooftops). *nods* When you’re P. D. “Never Allowed To Heal” Shoot, you must find many ways to work smarter, not harder!

Once it was clear the downstairs was no longer full of creepy monster-people in hazmat suits, P. D. switched the hologram back off (couldn’t take the risk it wouldn’t like the look of her and Christine, after all), then traversed the rooftops over to where the door leading inside what I presume to be some sort of power plant (aka the dungeon he was not looking forward to) was. She had to use another dose of Implant GRX to get through the cloud lingering at the bottom of the stairs she had to drop onto to get to the door, admittedly, but – well, the last thing she needs is to take any more damage! Once inside, she used her high Repair skill to jury-rig the electrical box right at the beginning of the power station room to get the lights on, then began running from safe space to safe space to keep the local speakers from blowing up her head, Christine trailing behind. This got her through the initial hallway, down the stairs, and into the next room –

D) Which was the room of Jon’s nightmares, as THIS was the room with The Jumping Puzzle. Or, rather, the Leap Of Faith. You see, this room was a big room with a bunch of generators in it – covered in a haze of low-lying Cloud. Cloud that not even P. D. could get through with her precious GRX without being poisoned. The only way to get through it safely was to leap off the railing of the catwalk on one side onto a (fortunately-wide) pipe in the middle of the room (which looked like it was in the Cloud, but really wasn’t, it was just visual effects), then hop from the end of that onto a staircase on the other side. And then, to be absolutely SURE she was safe, she had run like hell up and around the nearby catwalk, past another deadly speaker, and into a little office area overlooking the whole thing to hack the terminal there and turn off the local speakers. WHILE making sure to disarm the tripwire trap in front of the terminal so it didn’t release a bunch of grenades on her head. *grimace* Not a fun time for poor old P. D.! But she still had one dose of her precious Implant GRX, so Jon felt like she’d be okay. ...Unless he fluffed the jump, which would make everything go wrong very fast. *wince* He thus got her up onto the railing of the catwalk, then ran and took the leap –

And made it! :D He promptly had P. D. use her final GRX dose, leapt onto the staircase, and started sprinting, getting out of the little bit of Cloud there before it could hurt her and around the speaker before it could blow her head up. She had a little bit of trouble disarming the trap in the tiny office (Jon couldn’t get the targeting reticule in the right place), but the game made up for that by letting her get the password for the terminal on the first try (UTOPIA, ironically). She thus deactivated the speakers, then headed back the way she’d come and through a door over by the staircase that she hadn’t been able to access before because of the speaker. A door that led her through a room and to something very very important –

The big old terminal for the ventilation system! One hack of that, and much of the Cloud, both inside and out, was vented away. Yay! :D So if P. D. ever has to wander through this godforsaken area again, at least she won’t have to worry so much about choking to death. *nods*

E) P. D. then taking Christine into the next room over on their journey – one full of catwalks, with a turret standing guard on a little balcony in the middle. Fortunately, that turret had the same level of Perception that Jon normally has when it comes to traps, and thus did not actually pose much of a threat to the ladies. XD P. D. thus zipped across the first set of catwalks to a door that, after a little fiddling, she was able to unlock – that brought them to an internal office-type area where she was able to hack a terminal to turn off the speakers in this room as well. She then exited back onto the catwalks for a moment, going right behind the turret, before entering the next mini-office, grabbing Ennis’s key off a nearby desk (no clue who that is, but I’ll trust that it’s important), then going around the corner to crack the Remote Maintenance Terminal. Why did she have to hack that?

Well, because if she did, she could transfer control of the facility to that terminal. Meaning that Christine would be able to stay up here to pull off whatever she needed to pull off for the Gala Opening, rather than be escorted down to the basement. Which meant that P. D. both got to avoid escorting her into the basement (which I’m sure would have been a horror show) and managed to make Christine happier with her, meaning she’d be much more likely to be friendlier later on when it came time to wrap up her personal stuff. And P. D. was all about making Christine (who, if you didn’t know, is in fact a trained Brotherhood assassin, essentially) happy so she’d be on her side! Girl needs friends in this DLC, that’s for sure… Anyway, she got the terminal hacked, let Christine take her place at it, then hopped in the nearby elevator and rode it up to the surface, emerging in a building just around the corner from the first plaza. She thus went to leave and escape this horrible place for a tiny bit –

Only for Jon to suddenly go, “Flip – why didn’t I wait in the facility? I could have gotten my Implant GRX back!” Whoops! Though, admittedly, he immediately wondered if he would have been allowed to wait because of the turret still being active...guess we’ll never know!

F) P. D. thus spending the final few minutes of the episode trying to find a good place to wait so her daily doses of subdermal Turbo would be refreshed before she tried to get Dean Domino into position! Her first thought was to try and get into the “service route” area near the entrance – but the door in was locked, and not able to be picked. Fortunately, given her antics with the hologram earlier, most of the Ghost People in the general area were dead – and because she’d turned the ventilation systems back on, most of the Cloud was gone too. Meaning she was free to wander around and try to find a way into the “service route!” She’d thought she might have found a shortcut in through a pickable gate nearby the main door – but, unfortunately, after she cracked it, she just found another door that wasn’t opening unless she had the right key. She thus picked her way through the previously-deadly plazas until she found the right building –

Only for Jon to get briefly spooked when she came across a tripwire trap that he couldn’t disarm. Fortunately, when she accidentally triggered it, it proved to have been already set off or something, and thus was harmless. Jon didn’t like that, though, nor the fake “Cloud” visual effect that was lingering at the bottom of the nearby stairs, so he had P. D. get down there, grab the Foreman’s Key, and then get out of there. From there, it was back to the “service route” doors, to finally crack them open and head into that area –

Only to find she couldn’t wait in there. Apparently it didn’t count as one of the vanishingly rare “safe spaces” in the DLC. Annoyed, Jon thus sent her back over to the Medical Center, his designated “wait zone” for her –

Only to find that there was a new Harvester hanging out near the entrance. Which really puzzled him because, while he knew the enemies around here could respawn, he hadn’t expected it to be so soon. Worrying... Fortunately, the guy was easily killed, and P. D. was finally able to get into the Medical Clinic so she could wait for her GRX to refresh –

Only for Jon to realize that it was just past 11 PM in-game. Meaning all P. D. would have really had to do was stand around for a few minutes anywhere that didn’t have any enemies around, and she would have been fine. XD He had her wait an hour anyway so he could just get the GRX back, but sheesh. What a way to end the episode!

And so the episode ended with P. D. returning to the Fountain to eventually collect her one remaining heist mate, Dean Domino! Next week, she gets him into position (which Jon admitted shouldn’t be too bad, as he’s in the same general area as Christine, meaning it won’t be nearly as dangerous), then perhaps attempts the terrifying run to the controls to start the Gala opening (down a narrow section of map absolutely packed FULL of nightmarish bullshit). Looking forward to it! Man, I really hope she manages to complete this DLC, I am INVESTED now.

I feel a bit grouchier and more snappish than normal, and it wouldn't be all THAT surprising for the hormonal changes to be setting in about now...could just be tiredness, though, or something else I haven't accounted for. We'll see, I guess! In the meantime, here's the daily write-up:

Work – It was a Friday full of little annoyances at work, I’m sad to report –

A) The GL took until about 12:30 PM because one, it was indeed massive, thanks to two days’ worth of batches from our processing company on top of all the other stuff posted, and two, because I kept getting interrupted by phone calls (someone setting up a pledge for their employer – admittedly we’ve been trying to get in contact with that woman for a while now, so – and someone else updating their card), visits from people from other departments, and my coworker asking me to look up stuff with her – I was very hungry and very cranky by the time I finished. >(

B) The lady with the credit card update actually only had to update her expiration date, but didn’t tell me that until I was already ready to do a full card number update – I wish she’d led with the expiration date thing, it would have made life a lot easier!

C) One of the things I had to help my coworker look up was a gift that she couldn’t find on our credit card company’s page to confirm it was meant for the person it was credited to...aaand when we found it on one of the transaction reports, it turned out that it was a payment on a pledge for someone else entirely. Because a glitch in one of the batches meant that the actual donor’s info was overwritten by that of the person right above them. Meaning I had to send another e-mail to the credit card company to get them to fix it. *sigh* We’ll see how long THAT takes.

D) And a lot of the other things my coworker asked for me to help with felt like stuff she COULD have figured out on her own? Like someone who has two gifts to two different parishes, and a history of making two gifts to two different parishes, probably did indeed mean to do that? (Granted, I understand her getting a little confused about not being able to see the associated parishes on their profile on the credit card site, but still.) Just got under my skin.

So yeah – not a full-on horrible day at work (apart from those couple of calls, it was pretty quiet), but not the best either. At least it’s the weekend now. And at least we got confirmation that we’re getting a long weekend for Easter – I’ve got Good Friday AND Easter Monday off, yay~ Something to look forward to!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike was spent pedaling my way through:

A) “Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan Answers DnD Questions | Tech Support | WIRED” by, well, WIRED! A little something I saw in my Recommendeds that I decided to watch because one, I was pretty sure I’d seen part of it in gif/photoset form on tumblr and wanted to know what else was in the video, and two, because I’d also seen clips of Brennan on a DIFFERENT show where he was quite funny, so I figured he’d be amusing enough to fill a workout. And I am pleased to say he was! :) Highlights of the video included:

I. Obama_prism_VHS asking “The most iconic (famous) D&D monster?” and Brennan immediately going with the mimic, if only because he loves what their existence implies – namely, there’s enough adventurers out in the world delving into creepy dungeons and opening treasure chests for an entire species to thrive by mimicking treasure chests. XD His own personal favorite monster is the owlbear, though, because he considers it mildly ridiculous (bears are so much more dangerous than owls!).

II. I_love_ur_mom3 going “Q: What’s the GREATEST magic of all? A: Friendship. Right?” and Brennan immediately being like “NO. CHRONOMANCY.” XD As it turns out, “friendship is the greatest magic” is a pet peeve of his because, to him, any instance of someone being saved by friendship or love magically protecting them is SUPER cruel to all the other people in the world who died, because it implies they didn’t love or weren’t loved themselves enough. So yeah, give him time manipulation (used to protect friends and loved ones, of course) any day. This is the bit I’ve seen in gif/photoset form on tumblr – it was cool to see it in person!

III. CamilleDoesDND quoting “the difference between paladins and warlocks is one’s got an employer and the other’s got a sugar daddy” before going “but like...which is which…” Brennan clarified the whole deals of paladins and warlocks for her – paladins being “heroic holy knights who swear an oath to an ideal,” warlocks being “people who have sworn a pact to an otherworldly entity capable of granting them magic” – then admitted that, of the two, the warlocks are the ones with the “sugar daddy” vibe...but that he personally feels that CLERICS also have that vibe (being in service to a god) and admitted that the difference between a cleric and a warlock could come down to aesthetics. (Not true in all cases, of course, but my own Tav!Smiler would probably be a cleric if Mar-Mal was able to ascend to proper godhood!)

IV. SessionsCanceld complaining “Why do we always start games in TAVERN?!” and Brennan answering it with the fact that, if the group isn’t already familiar with each other, the local public house is a great place to meet...before advancing his own theory that the whole “you all meet in a tavern” bit was probably unconsciously inspired by the scene in The Prancing Pony Inn in The Fellowship Of The Ring and the hobbits meeting Aragorn there, since it’s “a seminal text that serves as a basis for a lot of the lore in Dungeons & Dragons.” *nods* Seems legit to me!

V. And florarune_ inquiring “A question for #dnd and #ttrpg friends! What is your favorite magical item?” and Brennan immediately going “THE IMMOVABLE ROD!” XD Apparently this is a rod with a button on the end that, when pressed, just straight up freezes it wherever it is. Wherever it is in space, there it will stay, and it CANNOT be moved. Simple concept, but Brennan absolutely loves how players use it to commit all sorts of chaos – from jumping up and then using the bar to hang in the air, to someone in an airship being pursued by another sticking one over the side, freezing it, and forcing the DM (presumably him) to figure out what happens to an airship when it collides with a small but EXTREMELY immovable object. XD

Fun stuff! Brennan is a funny guy – and quite informative and sweet too, encouraging a newbie DM looking for tips that “you’re already doing a session 0, you are ahead of the curve” and talking about how important is to remember that you’re playing with your friends and you want to make this fun for them. And, even better from my point of view, the list of other TTRPGs he likes to play when he’s not playing D&D includes Blades In The Dark! (Along with Vampire: The Masquerade and Call of Cthulhu and Wanderhome – no, not sure what the last one is.) Always nice to see the RPG that inspired my beloved Valicer In The Dark AU get some love. :) Maybe I should seek out some other clips of Brennan around the interwebs…

B) And “Banned From Every Casino in Fallout: New Vegas” by CyberStuffRX! A Short that I spotted while looking for a way to fill the last couple minutes of my workout, showing off how, if you win too much gambling at the three big casinos on the strip, they will actually ban you from their tables because you’re bad for business! Though they’re always sure to remind you that you can still go buy drinks and pay to see the shows. XD The weird part is, you actually get a present first from at least two of the casinos when you get near the “banned” threshold – I guess they’re trying to bribe you to stop playing? *shrug* Anyway, If you’re curious about the exact numbers, here’s what was featured in the short:

I. Gomorrah – at 6,750 chips won, you will get a comment about how you have to give the casino a chance to win something back and a set of reinforced combat armor; at 9,000 chips won, you’re ejected from the tables and told to “go rob The Tops”

II. The Tops – at 10,000 chips won, you’re ejected from the tables and just told “thanks for playing” – kind of a disappointment compared to the other two!

III. The Ultra-Luxe – at 11,250 chips won, you will get a comment about how you’re the “talk of the casino right now” and a key to the Bon Vivant Suite, aka a free place to hang out and keep your stuff (though, judging by the comments, it sounds like they may also try to murder you if you actually sleep in there); at 15,000 chips, you’re ejected from the tables and told “you’re simply not in vogue any longer” and “we’ve just had quite enough of paying you to play our games” XD

Good stuff! Though I don’t think this short shows the full story, as I’d swear I saw in a Jon video one of his protagonists getting a drink for winning a lot at blackjack in The Tops… *checks the wiki* Oh yeah, you get a free bottle of Vodka when you hit 2,500 chips won! In fact, they offer you a lot of stuff, including a free brahmin steak and some wine at 5,000 chips, and the High Rollers Suite key at 7,500 chips. Seems like you can get a hell of a lot of free stuff from the casinos before being banned! Now I slightly regret giving Courier!Victor not-great Luck. :P

2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – though I have to admit, I had a LOT of trouble getting started this time around. Took me AGES to figure out what I wanted to have happen after Mrs. Pemberly told Barnaby she didn’t expect HIM to come and tell her he was borrowing her staff, she just though a warning in general might have been nice. *shakehead* Another reason to suspect the PMS is setting in...but I managed to get over the hump in the end and do a page, which featured:

A) Victor saying that Mrs. Pemberly not getting her warning was his fault, and that he should have tried to contact her, and Mrs. Pemberly agreeing, but noting that “what’s done is done” and asking if the tour was coming to an end or not –

And then noticing Victor’s bag and asking why he had that. Cue a slightly-panicked Victor lying that the bag was one of “theirs” (gesturing vaguely in the direction of Alice, Smiler, and Kasimir) before claiming that his mother had banned him from the party for arriving so late and suddenly and instead sent him to go check on the new servants. And that he’d run into Barnaby along the way, who’d agreed to help find them if he got a tour of the wine cellar. Barnaby added that they’d found the servants in the greenhouse picking who-knew-what and taken them down into the cellar with them, and Smiler continued that Victor had then asked them and Alice if they’d been to the servants’ quarters yet, and upon learning they hadn’t (as they’d been late arriving, don’t you know), had offered to get their things and show them the way. Victor allowed that he knew this was odd, but he’d wanted to keep busy – and away from the party. Mrs. Pemberly understood that totally (well acquainted with what Nell Van Dort is like when she’s in a mood), but noted that the bag didn’t look like the one Smiler and Alice had arrived with – fortunately, Kasimir claimed it was his, and Victor said he just must have missed Smiler and Alice’s, with Alice saying she’d fetch it out of the changing room herself to free up some space in there. Whew – good thing I already established that Mrs. Pemberly wouldn’t be a problem for them in my outline by rolling that critical success on the engagement roll! Otherwise she might start questioning some of these cockamamie stories. XD

B) Mrs. Pemberly agreeing that all this was a good idea, then telling Smiler and Alice that she expected them back in the kitchen as soon as possible, as she wanted to see how good Alice was at carving and put Smiler’s magic touch to work on some sauces. Smiler saluted and said they’d be back as soon as they could, while Barnaby noted that he’d probably personally wander back toward the ballroom now, especially since he’d confirmed dinner wouldn’t be a waste of his time. “Don’t want to stay too long in the poor areas of the house.” XD Victor could hear Mrs. Pemberly resisting the urge to roll her eyes at that. Mrs. Pemberly thus left to go back to the kitchen, telling Victor to let his mother know if he did see her that they were getting her caviar shoes out as fast as they could, and that she wanted to have a chat about the new hires as soon as possible. Why, she’d thought “Allison and Simon” were trying to con her at first when they so suddenly showed up in her kitchen! Cue poor Victor feeling very awkward and guiltily thanking her for all her hard work –

And Mrs. Pemberly unknowingly twisting the knife a bit by thanking him for being willing to lend a hand and telling him he was a good man, and they’d send something up this room if asked. XD Yeah, is it any wonder the next section is going to start with Smiler asking if anyone else feels guilty that they’re going to end up screwing her over with their plan? Sorry, Mrs. Pemberly – I’ll make sure you get a good position after you inevitably get fired from this one for letting in thieves!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but that’s no surprise, given I almost never have time to watch anything on Game Night (Yahtzee, if you were curious – Dad rolled one Yahtzee and won one game; Mom rolled two and won two; and I didn’t roll any but still somehow managed to win a game with some good rolls in other categories). Not sure what I would have watched either, so – *shrug* No big!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – still nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse, but I got a few things done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, this morning, I took a moment and added my ideas for a Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes collection centered around Easter to my drafts, just to make sure they were in a place other than my phone. Plan to write those up this weekend so they can go up on Friday!

B) And then, tonight:

I. I replied to my friend Newt’s (dont-offend-the-bees) answer to my ask wishing him a happy (probably belated) birthday and letting him know I had a fic for him (he’d thanked me for the reminder, explaining he’d intended to save the fic for when he had “a spare non-gloomy moment” but had deleted the notification and – yeah, doing so is always chancey because there was a good chance he’d forget about the thing entirely; I replied that he was welcome, and that I’d just figured I ought to send him a birthday ask as I’d seen him answering ones from others (and that I was very glad I had now), and not to worry about the notification thing, as it was a problem with me too)

II. And I reblogged his commentary on his birthday fic (which he’d thoroughly enjoyed, yay) – he’d noted that there was some definite “culture shock” happening with Edwin and Charles, given how they’d found themselves in a place not friendly to ghosts at ALL (and that they’d really lucked out in the first people they’d properly met being the VITD crew), and how the Cat King probably would not react well to being in Duskwall – “All big staring glowing eyes and stressed-out energy.” XD My reblog thus responded that it was no surprise there was culture shock, given how fucked up Duskwall and the Shattered Isles are, but that it was very lucky that Edwin and Charles had run into the VITD trio, as running into some Spirit Wardens would have gone very poorly for them. And that the Cat King, if he found his way there, might be in even more trouble that Newt thought, as there was no guarantee the local cats would listen to him… Just good to know that he did like it! I was getting worried yesterday.

And there we have it! And now I am going to bed, as I am extremely fucking tired. I'm going out and about with my parents tomorrow, so I shall hold off on making any computer-activity-related plans for the moment -- we'll just see what happens when I get home, I suppose! Night all!