Posse and Chain Gang

And we're all very pleased about that. :P Seriously, the weather was pretty nice -- not too hot and with actual SUNSHINE, gasp -- and my day went pretty well, all things considered:

Work – Very quiet Friday to end the week – we had a couple of credit card calls early in the day (an expiration date update and a payment on a pledge), then the rest of the day was just the usual “trying to figure out what to do with myself” routine. I ended up cleaning out a bunch of old paper from my various folders and tossing it in the shredder in the basement to pass the time. Also put on some Easter collection gifts when they arrived in my e-mail inbox and finished off one of the newspaper crosswords I was working on. :p Ended with me and my coworker cutting out about five minutes early because both supervisors were gone already and there was just – nothing happening. *shrug* Could have been worse! We’ll see what Monday is like!

To-Do List –

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

A) The second half of James Turner’s “Full renovation of Tiny Town! - Part 29!” Which featured him:

I. Finishing off all the paths around Tiny Town and loading them up with pretty plants along their edges (plus one awkward bench looking at Sonny’s place because James wanted to do a “beach view” XD)

II. Actually removing the path that went around the front of Reuben’s house and instead just shoving more plants in there because the gravel just wasn’t working for him (probably because it sort of highlighted the hard edge of the lot too much, while he could get one or two of the plants to come over the edge)

III. Stressing over how to renovate the interior of the town hall, because he didn’t want to rebuild the whole thing but also he really wasn’t happy with the “hallway” areas or the pool (admitting that he wasn’t sure building a BTTF-style clock tower as the town hall was the smartest move, given it was classic small-town Americana and didn’t fit with the rest of the town...James, NOTHING in Tiny Town fits with anything else, that’s the POINT XD) – he ended up leaving the pool alone, because it would have been too much trouble to renovate it (though he did at least change the tiles in the bathrooms so they better matched the pool area), but ended up completely changing the hallways: swapping out the tiles for carpet, putting up new wood paneling on the wall, changing the fences and stair railings to match the fence he’d used outside and actually removing most of the upstairs hallway because the bit in the middle didn’t actually LEAD anywhere and he thought it looked much better open

IV. Turning the “banquet hall” room into quite a nice “wedding banquet” room for Scarlet and Patchy’s eventual nuptials, complete with the pipe organ that was in there (thanks to Sonny, I’m sure) being given its own special nook and special tables for the champagne and eventual cake :)

V. Making the roof look a bit nicer by clearing off most of the random crap and hiding the weather machine behind the clock better

VI. And revamping the town hall basement by hiding Pablo’s secret vault entrance/exit behind a second wall with a normal door (instead of just having a big old Batuu door between the stairs); turning the “storage room” into a new, better, larger gym; removing the old tiny gym room and sticking a couch and some plants there for people to sit; and reminding himself that he had to have Krystoff paint some more portraits of all the “spares” in Tiny Town, and that he had some photos he had to decide if he wanted to keep or not next to the hallway of Tiny Towners XD

So yeah – Tiny Town is now Officially Renovated! Only thing left now is for James to actually go around and wrap up everyone’s loose ends in gameplay – getting Scarlett and Patchy married; making sure Vivienne gets her Book of Life (as she still lacks one due to being unable to write one for herself); having Krystoff paint all those extra portraits; etc. Which he is determined to do BEFORE Enchanted By Nature comes out and he once again gets distracted. XD We’ll see if he manages it! I would like to see the series wrapped up properly, I admit – it was a lot of fun, and the kids deserve a proper send-off.

B) The entirety of “Baldur’s Gate 3: 9 Tips and Tricks I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing (No Spoilers)” by Proxy Gate Tactician! One of his earliest videos (looks like it was made while the game was still in Early Access, in fact), this went over all the tips and tricks he thought it very important for a new player to know when they started up Baldur’s Gate III! Which ended up being more than nine, because he included a bunch of “bonus tips” at the very end. XD Anyway, the video included things like:

I. Informing the viewer that the fact that you can pick up locked chests and crates and send them to your camp from your inventory allows you to amass a pile of containers at your camp and smash them open for the goodies within at your leisure

II. A list of the hotkeys that all players should know (in addition to “Alt” for finding goodies in the nearby area, you can also press “C” to hide/crouch (and “Shift+C” to make everyone hide), “Spacebar” to quick-loot containers, and “Z” to jump

III. Explaining how you shouldn’t always go for the spell with the highest damage – other spells with utility effects might be more useful (for example, comparing how “Firebolt” does more damage to a target, but “Ray Of Frost” can freeze blood and water on the ground to create icy surfaces to slip up enemies, and “Sacred Flame” doesn’t need you to fire a projectile, so it has a higher chance to hit if you’re awkwardly positioned)

IV. Telling the viewer that examining enemies to figure out what they’re all about (including, significantly, what they’re weak to and strong against) and using “T” to “inspect” things (like spells and items) to see what bonuses and/or detriments they have is very useful indeed and both abilities should be used liberally

V. And you can always equip a torch in your off-hand to light up rooms and use as a simple melee bludgeoning weapon, because it doesn’t require proficiency to wield correctly – plus it gives wizards and warlocks an emergency melee option if they need it

*nods* All solid stuff! Even if I don’t believe for a second I’m going to remember all the hotkeys. XD I mean, I know “Alt,” I’ve been using that, but – maybe I should write some of these down. XD

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – today’s chunklet featured Alice and Smiler being surprised mid-conversation by the servants’ entrance by a fellow in the Van Dort livery, using a cane and carrying a box! Smiler apologized for being in his way, offered to help with the box, then opened the door for the man when he said he had the box handled because they wanted to do SOMETHING to help. He hobbled in, and Smiler remarked to Alice that the poor guy shouldn’t be lugging around boxes when he had a bad knee –

Causing Alice to go, “well, the Van Dorts do seem the type to make him do that, from what we’ve heard from Victor...but are they the type to hire someone with a bad knee at all?” Making Smiler realize that the guy’s outfit didn’t quite fit, and causing the pair of them to decide to follow him inside and see what he was up to. Just in case whatever he was planning might hurt Victor (they of course gave no shits about Nell or William). He was already gone when they entered the house, but Cheshire indicated that Alice should try a couple of double doors nearby if she wanted to find him… I left off with Alice opening said doors onto chaos – tomorrow, the pair brave the Van Dort kitchen in full “the mistress is having a party” mode! Should be fun. :P

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and I actually did keep up with my Subs tonight, as the video of the evening was “Fun With Shorts: The Dingbat Story” by Josh Way! A surprisingly-long short (seventeen minutes!) first extolling the virtues of the titles on a motion picture and how they allow the viewer to adjust into “movie-watching” mode and give you an idea of what kind of movie you’re about to watch...and then transitioning into an art department being given the task of remaking some simple titles that had a mistake in the final print (the “i” in “The Dingbat Story” being upside-down, which – is something I would have actually EXPECTED for the titles of something called “The Dingbat Story”) and going ENTIRELY OVERBOARD. In a way that allowed the viewers to see how movie titles are made, of course (complete with segments on animation, live action footage, and how they combine that all with the actual text). The actual title sequence at the end may have been extremely overdone and tonally confusing (featuring spliced-in footage of cheerleaders in a stadium full of people in a bat logo, a cartoon bat flapping around the place, and a gratuitous woman in a bikini holding a beach ball to make the “i” in “Dingbat” at one point), but Josh’s riffs were pretty much perfect, highlighting what a goofy mess this all was (and how creepy the men leering at the bikini woman while her stuff was shot really was). And I have to give the film credit, they put in a fun joke at the end (with “THE END” being rendered “TNE EHD” XD). Very enjoyable – I’ve missed him doing these longer shorts in one go, instead of chopping them up to get two or three videos out of them! ...though it occurs to me that this might be a side effect of his channel being officially demonetized...meh. Still gonna enjoy the longer shorts.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – I didn’t have anything pressing to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – nothing I can’t do tomorrow morning, anyway – and there was no activity on Valice Multiverse either. *shrug* Well, nothing wrong with having a quiet night, I suppose. :P

Other: Being the first and only truly nice day this week, we were able to get out and play beanbags today...aaaand I’m back to throwing like absolute garbage, I am sad to report. Mom and Dad were throwing like they’d never stopped playing at all, while I struggled in the last game to get into the double digits, score-wise. *wince* Yes, I got second place once, but trust me, it was sheer luck. Final scores were me 3-2-3; Dad W-3-W; and Mom 2-W-2. We’ll see if I do better the next time we play!

*nods* I'm pretty satisfied with that! And now it's time to start wrapping things up so I can hit the sheets. Tomorrow, plans include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts, getting some posts ready for next week and the upcoming Valicer Anniversary weekend (July 7th is the big date, after all); playing some Sims 4 and working a bit on a new build idea I had while I wait for the July 1st patch that's supposed to fix a bunch of bugs ("Vampires eyes not glowing anymore" was NOT mentioned, but I live in hope); writing more of "The Van Dort Vacancy" (Alice and Smiler braving the Van Dort kitchen!); and hopefully getting a couple of videos out of my Watch Later (if nothing else, I want to watch the next compilation of CaFae Latte I need to catch up on). Fingers crossed these are all achievable goals -- night all!

The "heat dome" has fully descended upon us now -- today was in the 90s, and it felt it during those brief moments when I was outside. Very glad that I could hide most of the day in the air conditioning, let me tell you! Especially since tomorrow is only supposed to get hotter... *grimace*

As for the "annoying" part, that refers mostly to my afternoon/evening, starting with coming home only to find Dad's truck in the middle of the driveway, preventing me from pulling in (I HATE when he does that -- fortunately I was able to find a place to pull into and call my parents to get him to move it), then moving onto supper being a bit late (for a good reason, admittedly -- Dad had to water the plants and naturally needed a shower afterward), then moving onto having to peel and cut my own carrots for lunch (which took longer than I would have liked as they needed a wash and a very good peel -- some of them were developing roots!), meaning I got on the computer later than I wanted, which threw off my hoped-for schedule for the evening, and -- yeah. Just -- not the greatest afternoon! *huffs* Hopefully tomorrow's will be better...in the meantime, here's the daily write-up:

Work – A decent-enough day, I suppose, though sprinkled with little annoyances – like, I got through the GL without any issues, but I had to contact our processor’s IT guy to resolve an issue where I couldn’t log into their scanning app; I got a call back from someone I contacted about a bad credit card gift (and was able to set up their pledge the way they wanted), but I also had to get our boss to poke our processors about some gifts that feel like they’ve been waiting a very long time; I kept busy with obituaries and other such roster maintenance for most of the day, but I also discovered a gift that had apparently been posted on the wrong account at the very end of the day helping my coworker look up something. Oh, and I thought the AC in the kitchen was broken, but fortunately it was just a case of the thermostat that controlled it had been shut off. So yeah – nothing horrible, but nothing amazing either. *shrug* We’ll see what Tuesday is like!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike and back with alien teens Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) for the final half of “A Whole New (old) World! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 4!” The big old finale of this whole miniseries featured –

A) The teens and their new N-O-Alith (that’s closer to how Jasper pronounced it) friend successfully powering up the ship with the help of the dolphins and their big old cable – but as everything came back online, the group happened to look up and see a bunch of ACP ships pop through the “hole” left in space-time by the teens’ trip. Followed by a bunch of N-O-Alith ships appearing in the same space. Followed by two of the ships breaking off and coming up close to each other, presumably for some sort of diplomatic chat –

Followed by the ships beginning to fire on each other because the diplomatic chat did not go well. D: The teens were like “oh shit we gotta get out of here,” but there was a problem – their warp drive was out of fuel. And while their N-O-Alith buddy, Breezy (so called because the closest thing he had to a name was an image of a beautiful hillside caressed by a gentle breeze, and it was the nickname they came up for him based on that that he hated the least XD), had more fuel on his own ship – that ship happened to be in the war zone. Meaning that if they wanted it, they had to brave the fight going on between the N-O-Alith, the ACP, and oh yes, the leviathan with a laser cannon on its head that E.T.T.A. released into the fray to try and send these assholes fighting in Earth’s space packing. But as the alternative was remaining stuck on Earth, we moved on to…

B) The teens braving the war zone to get to Breezy’s ship and get the fuel they needed to warp out of there already! Things started off pretty solid, with Kae’l managing to cut a perfect hole in the hull of a wrecked N-O-Alith ship for them to sail through with the lasers (allowing everyone a look at the inside and a chance to figure out how N-O-Alith ships work – allowing Galaxa to do a tiny bit of hacking and screw up some of their weapon systems later), but some iffy dice rolls meant that poor Galaxa and V.I.N.N.I.E. spent a lot of time panicking instead of doing anything useful, while Radian’s attempts to pilot the ship were a chaotic mess at best. Which, actually, ended up helping them, as it made it incredibly hard for the N-O-Alith to hit them (at least, that’s what the dice said, as for some reason Jasper kept rolling REALLY low on his “Fight” rolls to target them despite Andy rolling pretty shittily on his “Flight” rolls to avoid getting shot XD). However, the constant hits on the shields, the constant use of the thrusters and automatic laser systems to try and get themselves out of trouble, and Radian at one point getting V.I.N.N.I.E. to repurpose the holodeck to fake them flying away to cover Breezy jumping over to his ship once they were close enough REALLY overstressed all the systems on the ship, and the N-O-Alith finally getting in one good hit ended up taking all the shields, lasers, and the holodeck down as the ship at last overheated (Radian was VERY upset to lose all of his holodeck settings XD). Fortunately, it was right around that time that Breezy returned with the fuel, leading to –

C) The teens doing a warp jump in hopes of getting back to the known universe and their home planet! Liv did the honor of rolling the die to see if they got home safely, with Jasper warning the group that they’d need a seventeen at minimum to succeed, and –

Got a four. Andy let her use Radian’s “Lucky” ability to reroll (with Jasper’s blessing), and THAT produced a nine, which, when boosted with everyone’s adversity tokens and whatnot –

Gave them a sixteen. Meaning that they got back to their home planet...but in the wrong universe. :O The kids immediately sensed something was wrong, but figured they should go down to look anyway, maybe seek out their alternate selves, and thus brought the ship down to land at one of the ACP landing sites. Where Dad Spacemountain came running up to meet them –

And greeted Galaxa with a delighted “you’re alive!” and began showering her with kisses while TV crews and news cameras descended. Turns out, in THIS universe the kids had gone off to try and end a war the ACP was having with the N-O-Alith (who were threatening to destroy everything, like the ACP had said they were going to do in the main universe), and the arrival of this ship was seen as them having returned in glory (and with an N-O-Alith prisoner/new ally). The teens and Breezy were like “Okay, we’ll roll with this for now, seems fine,” and the episode ended with them enjoying a big party held in their honor...only for a big old N-O-Alith warship to appear in the sky above them. O.O Yeah, uh, looks like if they ever do a second miniseries with these characters, they’ll have a VERY IMMEDIATE plot hook to latch onto! XD But for now the Space Teen adventures have ended, meaning I need to find something else to watch. And I have a particular oneshot of theirs in mind...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – today’s chunklet focused on Alice finding some goodies in one of Grout’s surgery rooms, with the help of the Queen of Hearts and her own nose. Specifically, she found a cold storage room that she could pick open, which contained five blood bags – three normal ones –

And two shockingly potent ones that smelled so good Alice had to exercise all of her self-control not to chomp into them immediately. She managed to resist, though – mostly because, according to the writing on the bags, the blood inside was from Grout himself, and she did NOT want to risk getting blood-bonded to the asshole. No matter HOW good his vitae smelled. The Queen was very grumpy about having to concede the logic. :P Alice is at least willing to take the blood WITH her, though, and I left things with her looking for a cooler. Tomorrow, she packs up her snacks, then continues on with her trip through the horrible mansion! Because this place is both huge and not done traumatizing her yet.

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got to this a bit later than I wanted, but still soon enough to watch one of the remaining videos in my Watch Later: “The Sims 4: 20 ABANDONED FEATURES!” by onlyabidoang! A list of twenty things in The Sims 4 that he feels have been abandoned by the devs, including:

A) The list of achievements you can get in the game for maxing out certain skills, reaching the top of certain careers, and even doing things like wetting yourself on a lot with five toilets XD (this hasn’t seen an update since adding the “Polar Bear Plunge” achievement for the release of Seasons)

B) The Sim Stats panel, where you can see various stats about your Sim, like how many showers they’ve taken or how many times they’ve woohooed (which hasn’t added any new stats relevant to new packs – apart from, weirdly, Vampires)

C) The Lifestyles added in Snowy Escape, which serve as semi-permanent traits reflecting the way your Sims live their lives and come with various benefits and drawbacks (the system was never expanded with any new lifestyles or updates to old ones – and the ones that DO exist are often a bit poorly tuned. Like, if your Sim dares to have a close relationship with more than four people, even inside their own family, they are GOING to get “People Person”)

D) The “destination worlds” added with packs like Outdoor Retreat and Jungle Adventures, which are worlds specifically for vacationing in (these just stopped being made after Jungle Adventures – well, except for the Annoyance That Was Batuu – and officially went by the wayside once they introduced the update that allowed you to put vacation rental lots in residential worlds with Snowy Escape. Abi does not mind the new system at all, as it’s way more flexible and interesting, but thinks they could at least go back to Granite Falls and Selvadorada and make them properly residential at this point!)

E) And the whole idea of “Sims Sessions” as a periodic music festival event that popped up in the game every so often for your Sims to attend, rather than being behind-the-scenes videos of artists recording their songs in Simlish (this one makes me sad, because sending my Chill Save Victor and Alice Sims to Sims Sessions was a surprisingly fun play session! But since Smiler didn’t exist at the time, they didn’t get a chance to enjoy it, and – yeah. That really would have been their jam. :( )

Yeah – there have been a lot of new features added to this game that simply haven’t gotten the love that they deserved! And probably never will, because fixing or updating these features isn’t profitable for EA. Meeeh. When’s Paralives coming out again??

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – another Monday where I never got into the drafts section of Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), mostly because everything else took too long. :( Granted, I didn’t have anything in there that I specifically HAD to work on, but it still would have been nice! We’ll see how things go tomorrow.

*shrug* Not TOO bad, but yeah -- really wish I'd had more time for computer stuff instead of carrots! Ah well, lunch is important too... And now I have to hit the sheets. Night all! Stay cool!

I mean, I'm still up later than I should be, but the entire write-up of my day is actually finished, so that's better than I've been doing on Sunday lately! So let me paste that in there so I can hit the sack sooner rather than later --

Tumblr: Had a pretty productive day over on the tumblrs, I am happy to report –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Once again, I accomplished two things of note over here:

A) First, I indulged in a little reblog spree to put some posts I’d recently seen and enjoyed on my dash, including –

I. A post from “nondelphic” about why they write – “because it’s the only way to silence the characters pacing around my brain like victorian ghosts with unresolved issues that prevent them from moving on” (which, yes, is a mood)

II. A trio of posts from “honestlyvan” in a chain, talking about how fandom needs to start “projecting on tops” more, and explaining in a couple of reblogs that what they mean by that is writing fewer tops/doms that are fully comfortable and confident in their sexuality and desires, and writing more that are struggling with them and have complexes about being horrible freaks who want to hurt people (I went on in the tags about how I haven’t touched on this MUCH in my writing yet, but this IS something I think about a lot with Alice, who – thanks to my particular intersection of kinks and shipping dynamics – should be absolutely baffled and horrified by her desires to see Victor hypnotized and compelled into doing things, never mind that he’s into it. Might be something to bring up in future fanfics, perhaps)

III. A post by “boringkate” featuring a picture of a kinky collar...with a little tie attached to the ring at the front, with a joke about “Finally some appropriate business formal atire [sic] for high powered executives like you and me” (I knew the minute I saw that damn thing that Smiler and Alice would buy it for Victor, and I enjoyed the tonal whiplash of reblogging it right after the ‘give doms complexes’ post XD)

IV. A reblog chain by a bunch of people talking about how The Blues Brothers movie should be more popular on tumblr, given it involves (to quote the first person in the chain, “boccs”): “Attention and respect to pioneering black musicians, open hostility to nazis, open defiance to police, Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher and flamethrower, a soundtrack that goes hard as hell, John Belushi so blasted on cocaine that he continues to do somersaults despite having a broken ankle,” with the others in the chain adding fun gifs and pointing out things like how 60 cop cars are destroyed in the film (having seen and enjoyed this movie thanks to my parents renting the extended edition, I had to reblog with some tags encouraging people to go see it, especially if they like the “I hate Illinois Nazis” gif set)

V. And a post by “alloftimeandspaceisours” with an Instagram video of “rubin_allergy” warning about the heat dome coming over the US over the next few days, and some tips about how to keep yourself safe and how to recognize signs of heat stroke and heat exhaustion (an important PSA – we’re getting into the worst of it on the East Coast over the next few days, so stay safe everybody!)

B) And second, in my drafts, I started a new collection of pet-related Valicer In The Dark Not-Incorrect Quotes! Because I’ve been meaning to do that ever since I wrote up the post about their various pets. So far I have:

I. Alice getting yarn at the market and telling Victor and Smiler she intends to take up knitting...only for Victor to correctly guess all those balls are pet toys for Guide, her cat (Alice insisted she WILL learn how to knit once Guide is done with them)

II. Victor playing fetch with Dogmeat in the “backyard” – only for Benny the lap dragon to swoop in and steal the stick

III. And Alice (genuinely learning how to knit) hearing a yarn ball getting batted about and looking up expecting to see Guide – only to find Us playing with the balls (they said it looked fun when Guide did it, which Alice can’t argue with).

Just need to figure out a couple more scenes (including one with Smiler and Sooty, their raven friend), and I will be all set, yay. :)

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to drop into the queue, saying how you couldn’t spell “ghost” without “ho” – because that would just leave you with “gst,” and that didn’t count as a word. XD I had the Valicer In The Dark trio respond (since they’re the most familiar with ghosts), with Alice saying that she now wanted to make “gst” a word, or at least an acronym; Smiler noting that it would have to be a special ghost indeed to get its own acronym, and asking Victor his opinion; and Victor admitting that (like me), his brain was stuck on “gooey” for the G. XD I put in the tags that suggestions for what GST could stand for were welcome – we’ll see if anyone takes me up on that!

Writing: Wrote up the first draft of Gig’s gift fic this afternoon after lunch – as requested, it does feature Smiler in Secundus, but in the interest of keeping it a surprise I won’t say more than that. :p Just hope you enjoy it when it comes out in about a week!

Superliminal: I went collectible-hunting in the second level of this game today, searching out the secret goodies in “Optical” (so named because there’s a lot of optical illusions, natch). And with the help of the guide on my phone, I was able to find:

A) The secret blueprint stuck on the outside of the big square “hotel” room that you have to escape by grabbing an exit sign and using it as a ramp so you can jump over the wall into the backstage area (I actually managed to set up my escape route so I dropped down right in front of the blueprint, which was nice)

B) The “constellation room” (a hidden room absolutely FULL of stars) tucked away in a darkened hallway underneath the stairs in one of the backstage areas you have to traverse, where, when you stand in the right place looking at the right clump of stars, you can reveal a constellation of a dining table on its side (the guide claimed that it was hard to line this one up, but I got it pretty quickly)

C) The red pawn chess piece sitting atop a random bit of scaffolding/fake wall in the middle of the same backstage area, beside the stairs and the second “Hello. My name is Dr. Glen Pierce” radio (as per the guide, I went back and grabbed the exit door from the previous “hotel” room I’d just left to make a ramp up to grab it)

D) The blue knight chess piece sitting atop the end of the vents running around the backstage room where you have to find the right place to stand to create a real giant green chess piece out of a painted wall and pipe, because once it’s real you can pick it up and create a cutout in the wall to proceed to the next area (yes, this game is weird) (this one took a bit to get, since those vents are HIGH up, but eventually I got it by making a die I found in a garbage can in the SECOND secret room in this area – it’s a room high up on the wall you can only access if you find the right way to climb up it; I got in there in an earlier run to pull a fire alarm and empty a fire extinguisher for THAT achievement, but I didn’t realize there was a special die you could manipulate in the garbage can until the guide told me – absolutely giant, making the chess piece equally big and putting it next to it, then using a bit of catwalk on the upper level of the room to jump onto the big die, then onto the chess piece, and finally onto the vent, right by the knight piece. Whew!)

E) And the second secret blueprint hidden on the roof of the final “hotel” room, only accessible through the open skylight windows through which you grab the moon so you can pluck the exit door off its surface (again, THIS GAME IS WEIRD) (this one again took some fiddling to get the moon both the right size and in the right spot so I could jump up onto it using a cheese ramp (as the moon also has a wedge of cheese on its surface – along with a letter block, a soda can, and a radio, because why not), and then jump off the moon through one of the windows – got there in the end, though, and found the blueprint around the back of the roof area, beside the secondary skylight)

Whew! Bit tricky to locate some of these, but at least I can be sure that all the goodies for this level are now got. :P Along the way, I also learned:

I. That turning the “look sensitivity” of the game down a bit (from 20 to 15) really helped with not feeling motion sick while playing, yay

II. That I’d missed both pulling a fire alarm (in one of the hotel hallways) and emptying a fire extinguisher (in the big square room) in this level! No wonder the achievements for doing those haven’t popped yet… I’ll have to be on the look out for any others I may have missed as I go along!

III. That the spinning ball projectors on the roof of the final “hotel” room can be turned off, removing the night sky and revealing that you’re stuck in a perfectly ordinary room with a perfectly ordinary ceiling (well, I say that, it’s a dream room, so it’s not THAT ordinary, but still)

IV. That there’s some hidden text written on the walls in one of the “hotel” rooms (the one where you have to climb up onto the elevated sides to line up a painting of an exit door with the hinges taped on a column to turn it into a real door and thus open up the room’s exit (WEIRD GAME)) – on one side, it says “why are you doing this” (because it’s fun); on the other it says “please don’t snoop around” (but how am I supposed to find the collectibles then?)

V. And that all the sodas have funny “taglines” on them – I told you about Baking Soda’s “what have we done?!” last week – today, I was able to check out the ones for Red Soda (“So smooth...and reeeeeeeed!”), Diet Soda (“Smooooooooooooooth!”), and Green Soda (“Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!”) XD Now I have to see what the other kinds of soda say!

Good times! There’s a lot of fun stuff to see in this game if you know where to look. :) Next time we play, we’ll be hunting for constellations, chess pieces, and blueprints in level 3, “Cubism!” Somehow I get the feeling this will involve cubes. XD

YouTube: Another Sunday, another episode of Fallout: London over on Many A True Nerd – tonight’s being “Fallout: London - Part 48 - Pardon My French!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they –

A) Returned to the Swan & Mitre, headquarters of the Vagabonds, to talk to Gaunt and let him know that Aria had negotiated ceasefire terms with Black. Gaunt initially was like “why the hell would I want to hear about those, I want that fucker dead,” but Anthony told him that they should at least hear her out, learn what the terms were. Gaunt was extremely grumpy about it, but agreed to a meeting, and they all headed inside to talk. Things didn’t get off to a great start, with Aria lying to Gaunt about not knowing where “Blind” Nelson was when he asked (Gaunt easily guessed it was a lie and said he’d figure out if she’d killed him and was avoiding retribution or hadn’t killed him when she should have later), but she was able to explain to him, Anthony, Winston, and Johnny the agreement – the Vagabonds would keep their territory in Bromley, while the Syndicate would keep theirs on the Isle, and they’d just leave each other alone. Gaunt immediately said that they’d never honor those terms and Aria was an idiot for thinking they would; Anthony and Johnny were in the “let’s give peace a chance” camp (with Johnny saying that they could still hate the Syndicate, but peacefully – “make hate, not war!” XD); and Winston was like “a ceasefire would feel like a surrender, but...I’m willing to consider it.” You could tell who Aria only did one job for. :P Gaunt called them all idiots and demanded the full terms of the ceasefire, and Aria admitted that Black wanted her in charge of the Vagabonds. Gaunt was like “fuck that, the Gaunts have been running this area since you were in nappies,” accusing Aria of always being a follower, not a leader, and asking what she’d done that might make people follow her –

Cue Aria happily bringing up how she successfully looted that Syndicate supply depot before blowing it up; stole that supply train without any issues; and sunk that prison boat after freeing all the prisoners. Causing Anthony, Johnny, and Winston to all back her up, point out the good work she’d done, and essentially tell Gaunt, “we’re all sick of this war, please step down and let her call it off – nobody’s kicking you out of the gang, we just need a new direction.” A furious Gaunt told them they were all gutless cowards and promptly accused Aria of having been working for Black this whole time (telling Winston to shut up when he tried to remind him they initially found her in a test tube). Aria, in turn, used all of her Intelligence-boosting gear and drugs to get smart enough to tell him “look, if you want your own revenge, I’m not going to stop you – go try and kill Black if you must, just don’t drag the entire gang into it.” Gaunt said that was the first sensible thing she’d said and promptly went off to do just that, telling the others that if he succeeded, he wanted them to remember this day. Anthony, Winston, and Johnny admitted that it was a shame things had had to end that way, but welcomed Aria as their new leader, with Winston saying that he was sure the others would get used to her soon enough. (Jon: “Uuuh – if this is the end of the quest line, I’m about to completely disappear from the Vagabonds – Anthony, you were the one who backed me first, you’re my deputy and thus de facto leader!” XD) After a rousing cheer of “make hate, not war,” Aria headed up to Nelson’s room to let Black know that she was now in charge and accepted his ceasefire terms (and that Nelson was welcome to come back anytime, even if he had been a dirty spy), and the questline ended with her getting the “Peacemaker” perk, which scored her double XP from all speech checks! Now THAT is nice. :D Shame you didn’t do this earlier in the LP, Jon, you could have gotten a ton more XP from all those speech checks Aria makes!

B) Headed to Peckham to try and find a faction that the comments informed Jon that he had missed on his first trip through the area! Aria thus set about exploring, and found a mysterious Tommy camp, where no one (not even the named character) was willing to speak to her; a nearby dump that wasn’t even marked on his map that had a bunch of Gatherers in it who were INITIALLY chill – and then a few took offense to Aria’s presence and she had to gun them all down (with John worrying that she was killing the very people she was trying to meet); and finally a football stadium within said dump –

Where Aria was promptly held at gunpoint by a pair of French ghouls. Jon, playing up his Englishness, was very annoyed at this turn of events. (Never mind that he’s dating a French woman.) XD At any rate, after hearing them argue in a mix of English and French in front of her for a bit (something about needing a uniform?), Aria asked what was happening – and then, upon being told it didn’t concern her, went “Look, guys, I will do ANYTHING for money so long as you get to the point.” XD Fortunately, this brashness worked, and one of the men, Eugene, told her that she could impress him and earn a few tickets if she went to the Tommy camp she’d passed before and freed one of their friends held prisoner there (Segolene, as per the quest goals). And if she didn’t, he’d kill her and all her loved ones. Aria was like “I don’t know how you’d do that given you don’t know my name and wouldn’t know how to track me down if I just left right now, but fuck it, I’ll go get her, sure.” XD I mean, we established last time Aria has no morals or price – just whims...

C) Learned the history of the group they were preparing to help (as Eugene proved to be a lot more friendly and willing to talk once Aria agreed to the mission) – apparently the faction was called “L’Chouans,” though the individual members were called Normans (like Normandy), and they started life as a pre-War terrorist group trying to overthrow the French government for being too servile and refusing to take its place at the top table. They were aided in their endeavors by a fellow from the British Embassy, one “Billy Wickham,” who provided them with guns, supplies, and intelligence for their operations. Eventually the French government started noticing their actions, and began trying to wipe them out, bu the group held on long enough to get one last huge shipment from Billy at their usual drop-off point, along with a note that made them think that, if they attacked the Channel, they’d get assistance from the British Navy –

And then they attacked the Channel and were nearly wiped out, because no, the British Navy was NOT helping them. By sheer persistence and luck, Segolene was able to get them a boat, and the remaining members of L’Chouans were able to escape across the sea and to the British shore. The group naturally was united only in their hatred of Eugene, their leader, at this point, and Eugene thought about just killing himself because without his men, he was nothing –

Aaaand then the apocalypse happened, and it turned out a group of well-armed and well-trained French terrorists were very well equipped to survive in the new world order. Apparently Eugene helping them to survive once the bombs dropped got him some measure of respect back from his underlings, and when they exhausted all the “lambs” on the coast, they moved inward, to London. *nods* Interesting stuff! I will say this about Fallout: London – they do flesh out their NPCs really well.

D) Broke Segolene out of the Tommy camp! Which consisted of Aria talking to Sgt Williams, who revealed that he caught her trying to break into their (empty store), and that he couldn’t just release her until he got word from HQ about what to do with her – and then Aria flashing her tickets at him and going “I hear the locks are fragile around here…” XD Sgt Williams responded that he didn’t need tickets, he needed ammo, and that if Aria could get him what he needed, he’d release the prisoner into her care. Fortunately for Aria, she was already carrying everything he wanted, and thus the trade was made without her having to go anywhere else at all! Aria thus freed Segolene, then stole a bunch of ammo from one of the toolboxes in the camp before hustling back to the dump to reunite the Frenchwoman with her fellows. Because come on, Aria couldn’t just let them have that ammo – she needed something in return! That wasn’t a grumpy French ghoul terrorist. :P

E) Got roped into L’Chouans’ next mission – steal a boat from another Tommy outpost over on the Isle of Dogs! Mostly because Jon was like “yeah, I figured this would happen – sounds like you guys are eager to get back to France” and thus happily had Aria agree to help them “make history.” XD Eugene told her that all she needed to was get a Tommy uniform, charm her way into the base, then open up the back hatch so they could sneak in and steal the boat – though he also warned her that they’d only be in position at night, so if she went in during the daytime, she was on her own. Aria was fine with that, and once her new employers ran off, executed her own personal three-part plan:

I. Procure the uniform, which she accomplished by heading back to the nearby Tommy base, locating a guy on his own, taking him out with one sneak attack from her super-fast little knife, and stealing his clothes before running off

II. Head to the base under the cover of night – which proved to be a shed next to the water with a little speedboat-type dealie behind it, instead of on a gigantic gunboat like Eugene had implied. O.o Methinks they found out a little too late that they couldn’t get/make some of the assets they were hoping to use in this quest!

III. Charm her way past the guards inside (a very simple speech check saying she had a message for the CO got her through), which allowed her to open the back door, then fiddle with a fuse box to extend a bridge behind the shed so that Eugene, his second-in-command Jean, and Segolene could run up it to the boat. Which they then stole without any fuss from the Tommies inside. …yeah, something definitely changed between when the dialogue for this quest was written versus when the quest was actually implemented in the game.

F) Learned Eugene’s ACTUAL ultimate goal for stealing the boat once they successfully parked up in The Most Radioactive Bit Of London (near the Vaulzon Warehouse where Jon thinks Aria got her Instigating Shotgun, in fact) – to blow up Westminster Palace and take over the British government! Segolene and Jean were like “WHAT?!” while Aria was like “COOL!” XD Segolene and Jean attempted to talk sense into their compatriot and get him to realize that they SHOULD use the boat to get home to France and start over, but Eugene held firm – and Aria, unable to resist the thrill of blowing up yet ANOTHER London landmark (after downing the Millennium Eye), sided with him. Segolene and Jean thus walked off, determined to find their own way back home, and Eugene sent Aria on a shopping trip to the Millennium Dome to get the munitions they needed. Aria happily picked them up from his recommended vendor, Samara (paying 2,000 tickets for 50 cartridges – she’s rich, she can afford it), and hurried back to Eugene to tell him the good news –

Only to be informed “thanks for all the help, here’s a sword, now run along.” An astonished Aria was like “wait, what? I thought I was going to help you do this?” and Eugene explained that, well, she was irrevocably tainted by being English, and thus once they took over the government, she would be their subject, not their equal. Thus she couldn’t be allowed to help in blowing up the Palace, lest she get ideas above her station, I suppose. Jon was very annoyed (especially since the sword wasn’t very good), but managed to refrain from immediately killing Eugene because he still had some small hope that the guy would remain true to his word and blow up the Palace. But if he doesn’t get his fireworks, Eugene...well, remember what you told Aria about killing her and all her loved ones? Aria can much more easily do that to you.

And so we left off with a disappointed Aria preparing to head back to Peckham and hit up the Land’s End Inn to collect that package Smythe left for her and start the final part of Angel’s plan to fully and irrevocably take over England! Seems like we’re slowly coming up on the end of the series, folks! Very eager to see what the endgame will look like – and how many more atrocities Aria will commit along the way. XD

Workout: Back on the bike (in our nice cool basement) tonight, and back with alien teens Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) for the final episode of the Teens In Space miniseries: “A Whole New (old) World! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 4!” To my surprise, this episode did not feature the teens having to fight the leviathan that was mentioned at the end of the last episode, mostly because they were able to talk AI E.T.T.A. (a holographic artificial intelligence tasked with preserving life inside of a freshly-hollowed-out Earth when the sun turned into a black hole – I’m pretty sure the acronym as given was actually E.T.R.A., as per my last recap, but Jasper the GM keeps pronouncing it “ETTA,” so… *shrug*) out of trying to introduce them. XD Instead, it featured:

A) E.T.T.A. telling the kids that the two best groups to approach for their power needs would be either the crows or the dolphins, as they were both super smart...and then having to explain what both species actually were as the kids tried to bluff that they totally knew. XD The kids decided to go visit the dolphins, because, as per E.T.T.A., they craved knowledge above all else, so they could just tell them about their corner of space instead of having to pay them with money/shiny things like the crows

B) E.T.T.A. telling the kids that they were not to hurt any of her precious creatures, not even in self defense (she was initially like “you’re the ones coming into THEIR space, so if your options are ‘fight back’ or ‘lay down and die,’ go for the latter” but eventually softened it to “you can run if you want, but no fighting!”) – cue Radian attempting to sneak his blasters by her by claiming they were special devices that “measured peace.” XD He did NOT sell this lie, and E.T.T.A. forced him to leave them behind, to his deep annoyance

C) The kids going to see the dolphins, who had cool mech suits they could lay on top of for when they wanted to do things on land – Radian attempted to communicate with them via the medium of cool kickflips done on his hoverboard (which he had apparently taken with him), but while the dolphins found this amusing and even did some flips of their own, he was unable to express the idea of “hey we need power” via this method. As you might have guessed. :P Kae’l then attempted to mime what they needed – only for it to be revealed the moment she spoke that the dolphins have universal translators. XD And thought the teens were too primitive for spoken language because they didn’t START with that. XD Whoops.

D) Radian’s kickflips impressing a troop of chimps in the nearby rainforest, who immediately began hacking down trees to make their own boards to imitate him – Radian successfully rolled to become leader of the troop and began giving them all instruction, claiming to be the legendary “Tony Hawk” XD

E) Kae’l and Galaxa telling the dolphins about their adventures on Rez T-75 and the whole thing with the space pirates in order to get their help in getting power to the ship – and let me tell you, the dolphins seemed worryingly into the whole concept of being “space pirates…”

F) The dolphins agreeing to help supply the needed power (in exchange for a look at the ship), and the ladies managing to convince Radian that he had to come back with them and not be leader of the chimps. XD He thus passed on his authority to one of the apes, who started a worryingly-violent chant of “HAWK! HAWK! HAWK!” among his fellows as his very first act. XD E.T.T.A. was not amused!

G) The teens leading the dolphins (dragging some giant cables with them) through the rainforest back to the surface and their ship – only to find themselves watched by a mysterious presence in the trees. Galaxa tried blowing sand on it to reveal it, only for the figure to decloak as she did –

And reveal itself to be a – okay, I’ve avoided writing this so far because I wasn’t sure how you spelled it, but the way Jasper pronounced it, it sounded like “Noa-Alith,” so that’s what we’re going with. Anyway, it was a member of the precursor race that invented all the warp technology like the warp drive they used to get to this planet! You know, the ones who said they would wipe out all “unnecessary” races if they ever used such technology to leave the known universe. Yeah. Cue the kids frantically pretending to be a weird dolphin (Radian), a dog (Kae’l – note: Radian is the one who ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE A DOG), and Michelle Obama (Galaxa, who shapeshifted into the woman after the Noa-Alith pointed out she didn’t look like a human, she looked like a tree). The Noa-Alith did not buy these stories for a second, as you might expect from a hyper-advanced, hyper-intelligent race. XD The embarrassed teens thus revealed the whole “we heard you were going to kill us all if we ventured outside of known space” thing –

Only for the Noa-Alith to be utterly shocked because, wtf, they never said that! Turns out that the story THEY’D always heard was that the Noa-Alith race was KICKED OUT of the known universe by the ACP (the organization that Galaxa’s dad is part of) because they tried to democratize space travel by giving the warp drives they’d invented to everyone, and the ACP did NOT want their “bottom line” affected. Capitalism – ruining everything even in space! Anyway, the teens were rightly pissed off by this reveal, and vowed to get their ship back home so they could tell everyone the truth! And convinced the Noa-Alith to come with them – which didn’t take much doing, as they were quickly revealed to be a teen themselves (allowing for a fun title drop). Though there was some confusion involving the phrase “egg on their faces” first that led to Kae’l smashing an egg on the Noa-Alith’s face because they thought that was something the others wanted to do to give them protein or something like that. XD I left off with the group preparing to get back to the ship (leaving behind a giant statue of Radian, and a littler one of Galaxa as Michelle Obama, built by the chimps) – tomorrow, we see if they can get their ship repowered by the dolphins, join up with the Noa-Alith’s ship (waiting in low orbit), and get back home! Because yes, Galaxa’s dad needs to be humiliated EVEN MORE after THIS little reveal, that’s for sure!

Other: Since I had a little free time this afternoon, I was able to make some progress on my “start reading and commenting on fanfic again” New Year’s resolution, getting a little more than halfway through a collection of stories based on fairy tales by laurasimmonsdaughter, “A Take On Fairy Tales!” Including such fun shorts as various bits of fairy tale “case law” (such as a witch trying to argue that she should be allowed to turn a Prince back into a frog after he was almost immediately turned back into human by a kiss from his platonic life partner – this was denied), and the witch from “Rapunzel” finding the unlucky husband trying to steal her lettuce – only for the pregnant wife to show up and accidentally charm the witch into sparing him by explaining why he did it (to help clear an awful mustiness from her mouth brought on by the pregnancy), leading to the witch offering a potion to help with the problem...and accepting an invitation to dinner. XD Fun stuff – I’m looking forward to reading the rest of them!

*nods* Pretty nice day, all things considered! Just wish the period tiredness had been less of a thing...ah well, we're almost past the worst of it. And now I must hit the sheets already -- night all!

Like, I TRIED to stay focused on what I need to do, but it wasn't exactly easy -- dunno if it's just tiredness (given I got to bed later than I should have last night) or early-onset PMS (as we're starting to approach that time of the month again. Either is not great! And it really didn't help that I got water in my ear during my shower earlier, meaning I spent a decent amount of the night just trying to get that OUT of my ear. *sigh* But I managed to get through everything important in the end, fortunately --

Work – Busier-than-I-expected Friday to end the week – mostly because I had a surprising number of phone calls in the morning, from people checking in on their pledge payments or not-yet-processed gifts, and in one case changing their parish before making a gift (because their new one wasn’t properly reflected on their record). But I managed to get through it, completing both Wednesday’s and Thursday’s GLs; posting most of the checks that came in today’s mail (one had to be saved for my coworker as she had the password to look up who it was from on the business’s site); and doing a bunch of reversals around all the calls. *shrug* Can’t say it didn’t make the day go by, at least! And now it’s the weekend, yay~ Cleaning weekend, yes, but still the weekend!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – and my last night on the bike this week featured yet another video from Proxy Gate Tactician: “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 While Locked In First Person PoV?” (Plus a rewatch of Petey Plays It’s video on how to get the Crystal Creations crystal tree just to fill out the time.) Yes, since I watched his video on how he used a collection of mods stitched together in a terrifying Frankenstein configuration to put BG3 into first person POV on Wednesday, I figured I should watch his attempt to complete the game in same tonight! And what was the answer to the titular question?

“Yes, but you will get distracted a LOT by how pretty the game is and how much detail there is up close...and also how some bits of the game have no ceiling as you were never expected to be able to look up.” XD Yeah, Proxy really enjoyed his run through Baldur’s Gate III in first person POV, because it let him appreciate just how amazing the environments are in a way he never had before! He was constantly stopping to marvel at things – or to chastise Larian for never putting a ceiling in the lower levels of Moonrise Towers, or never actually animating their ropes moving. XD It also made certain battles scarier (like the imps on the Nautiloid seemed a hell of a lot more threatening when their fireballs were coming straight at your face), and certain moments more poignant (like poor Us getting killed by the cambions in the escape sequence D: ). It did come with some caveats, however (beyond the whole “having to stitch together these specific mods in a specific way” thing) –

A) Because it was very awkward to control other characters while the camera was locked in his Tav First Person mode, Proxy basically had to go with a solo run (shoving Lae’zel off the Nautiloid and carefully avoiding all other companions)

B) Because first person made it a little harder to see where he was going vertically, he couldn’t jump his way past some problems like he was used to (though he could sneak past some of them, at least)

C) Using druid wildshape form was a complete mess, putting him in the middle of a very hollow-looking owlbear suit

D) And the Gauntlet of Shar’s invisible maze was arguably even HARDER in first person, when Proxy thought it would be EASIER. Proxy was NOT amused. XD

Despite all these little quirks and foibles, however, Proxy was pretty easily able to make it through all three acts of the game – and, because he wanted to see how each class played in first person, he even did the “multiclass into each class once during level-ups without respeccing at Withers” challenge while he did! He liked Sorcerer the best, as the spells seemed the best suited for throwing at people in a first-person perspective. :P But yes, his character easily slaughtered goblins to save the grove; braved the Underdark to get some mithril goodies; fought the githyanki in their mountain pass after upsetting them by breaking too many targets in target practice; found passage through the Shadow-Cursed Lands by hanging out with a horrible spider-man; slaughtered all of Moonrise; aided the Emperor in fighting off the githyanki attacking him; watched Gortash’s coronation because why not; saved and then slaughtered all of the Gondian gnomes (because why not); and finally ended the game as a full-fledged mind flayer, having betrayed the Emperor, taken out the Netherbrain, and made no friends. But then again, I don’t think most mind flayers need friends, so – happy ending! XD I am enjoying all these challenge run videos of his – looking forward to when I can watch the famous “can you beat BG3 as a cat” one...

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I got a late start thanks to trying to get the water out of my ear, but once I actually began writing, I quickly got into the groove. Which is good, because tonight’s chunklet featured Victor meeting one Lord Barnaby Fortescue III – aka Mike’s character from Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark! Given Barnaby’s first words to him included him saying that you couldn’t expect the middle classes to look where they’re going, Victor wasn’t exactly happy to make his acquaintance. XD I had a lot of fun describing the few facts Victor knew about Barnaby during their conversation – in particular, Barnaby being ultra rich; Barnaby being a bit boorish because he has enough money not to care about other people’s opinions; and Barnaby being always drunk. Which included referencing Mike referring to his character as a “walking drinks cabinet” in one episode via rumors that Barnaby designs his many elaborate and expensive coats to function as such, and the hilarious moment where Luke justified a bad roll by Barnaby to subdue a bad guy by throwing a glass of unknown liquid at him by saying the liquid was water by having people whisper Barnaby doesn’t know what water looks like. XD Come on, I had to! Anyway, Barnaby got a lot more interested in Victor once he learned he was William and Nell’s son, complimenting him on being the most interesting member of the family and complaining about how he REALLY didn’t want to hear William go on about his cannery earlier. Which, okay, that is a sentiment Victor can sympathize with, at least. XD I left it off with Victor looking around the grand ballroom, noting that the cannery did help buy all this – tomorrow, Barnaby agrees that the Van Dorts have done very well for themselves...and gets weirdly into asking if they have a vault...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Half-check – between it being Game Night (Clue this week – I won three games; Dad and Mom each won two; and one game had to be declared null and void because Mom didn’t realize she could prove herself wrong when she looked at the cards in the envelope) and me being distracted trying to get the water out of my ear, I just didn’t have time for any proper videos. So instead I watched a bunch of shorts about Us from Baldur’s Gate III. Specifically:

A) “Talking to our companion Us in the Prologue vs Acts 2-3 #baldursgate #baldursgate3 #bg3 #dnd” by pjmaster92, comparing what Us sounds like in the tutorial level when you first pick them up versus what they sound like when they become a proper summon at the end of Act 2 – they get higher-pitched as a summon, curiously

B) “The BRAIN DOGS in Baldurs Gate 3! #baldursgate3 #baldursgatelore #shorts” by Fextralife, talking about what intellect devourers are and how they work (apparently they can grow to giant, rideable size should they live long enough to becoming intellect gluttons). Interestingly, they are apparently called “brain dogs” despite Us choosing to disguise themselves as a cat in public when you pick them up as a summon. I guess that’s what makes them different XD

C) And “BG3 Newbie: Getting 'Us' (Intellect Devourer) as summon companion in Act 2!” by Sefearion, which looked like a clip of someone’s livestream of playing Baldur’s Gate III and being like “wait, is this the same intellect devourer from the Nautiloid” when they spotted Us in a cage in the Mind Flayer Colony in Act 2. And looking rather touched to discover it was their old brain-friend, who remembered them well. :) How can you not love Us, seriously…

So yeah – calling it a half-check because they were all shorts, but at least I was able to entertain myself with cute clips of Us. :) Maybe next Friday I won’t have water-in-my-ear problems and can watch an ACTUAL video!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check, if not quite as check as I was hoping –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – It took longer than I wanted, but I did at least finish my Song Saturday post on “Three” by Gaia Consort over here! I just needed some time to figure out how to put my thoughts about how the song isn’t a PERFECT fit for my OT3, but the vibes are there, into words. Wrestled it into shape in the end! Unfortunately, I didn’t get Nebby’s gift fic queued up, but I am VERY tired now, so that is gonna have to wait until tomorrow. *shakehead* Don’t worry, Nebby, I WILL get to it!

Valice Multiverse – And over here:

A) I answered Satirical’s latest replies on my asks – one giving me the rough timeline on how we got from Black Mesa messing with portal tech to the earth being taken over by the Combine (with me going “there’s a Cave Johnson laughing somewhere because Aperture never screwed up like THAT”); and one telling me how the “kuei-jin” were retconned out of the 5E version of V:tM, citing one of his favorite web series, “Hunter: The Parenting” (about a family group of hunters in Norfolk, UK) calling them nothing more than LARPers who mashed together a bunch of different Asian traditions with no regard to what they actually meant (I wondered what Ming Xiao actually was then, given she canonically can transform into a big old sea creature form; Satirical pointed out the retcon didn’t happen until 2018, so I could either go with the kuei-jin being real like they were in the original 2004 game, or maybe make Ming Xiao something like a Tzmisice – I chose to go with keeping the kuei-jin true to the original game, but maybe dropping hints that the Kindred don’t really understand what the group truly is and thus get a lot of things wrong by ascribing stuff to them that doesn’t really fit).

B) And I answered an anon ask from someone saying that they’d just learned the Falkland Islands used to have a really sweet native wolf species that would swim out to boats to greet them – and that of course they were quickly wiped out by the people coming in to settle the islands. :( Inevitable High School!Alice said that stories like this just taught her that the minute settlers step foot on an island, all the wildlife is in trouble, which, fair.

*nods* You know what, I'll take all that. But now I really have to go to bed, for I am TIRED. Tomorrow is a Cleaning and Laundry Saturday, so that'll be a good portion of my day -- rest of it should be spent writing more on "The Van Dort Vacancy" (be nice if I could finish off this chapter, but we'll see); getting Nebby's gift fic queued up for tomorrow on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); and hopefully catching up on the stuff in my Watch Later. We will see how everything goes! Night all!

Yeah, it's been quite the day, and I can already tell I'm going to be staying up a bit later than I should to complete this write-up, so let's get straight to it --

Cape Cod Mini-Golf Trip: So, today was the day of the great trip to Cape Cod to play a few rounds at two of the mini-golf places up there (Skull Island, which has one course, and Pirate’s Cove, which has two – the “Captain’s Course” and the “Blackbeard Course” – we did both), have lunch, and get some ice cream! How did that go? Well, I would say it was a fun afternoon of mini-golfing –

Sandwiched in between TWO HORRIFIC CAR RIDES. Because holy HELL did we have a shit time getting up to Cape Cod and back! Between a multi-car accident (on the other side of the road; we were caught in the looky-loo traffic) and MULTIPLE instances of road construction and just plain heavy traffic, what my parents had said was supposed to be an hour trip up to the Cape took almost THREE FUCKING HOURS. And it would have been an even worse trip if we hadn’t managed to find a rest stop with a bathroom along the way, because let me tell you, Dad and I were getting fit to burst sitting in all that traffic. *facepalm* The trip home wasn’t quite SO bad – taking maybe about two hours? – but we still got caught in some truly miserable traffic at one point, taking like forty-five minutes at LEAST to move a mile or so. *sigh* Just – ugh. AND we had trouble finding a place to eat after completing the Skull Island course, because the restaurant that Mom found first proved to be ULTRA busy, and then, while trying to find another place, she accidentally managed to turn down the brightness on her (already dying) phone, meaning she couldn’t see the damn map to direct us any place else. Fortunately we found a place across the street from Pirate’s Cove, but for someone who was EXTREMELY HUNGRY after having had smoothie glop for breakfast because it was hot and humid, it was pretty fucking frustrating to have to wait THAT LONG to get some food! *grimace*

However – lest my above bitching make you think I didn’t have a good time, let me list what WAS fun about the trip:

A) We saw some fun sand sculptures along the way in front of various places, like the rest stop (which had some aliens visiting the cape) and a bank (which had a dolphin with some coins)

B) Skull Island was a decent mini-golf course, with plenty of fun stuff to look at as we went through (though I suspect I would have liked it better if we’d played there AFTER we ate)

C) Lunch, once we got it, actually proved to be really good – the place we went to was called D.C. Porcelli’s Pizzeria And More, and while it was definitely a “sports bar” kinda place (with darts and a pool table and arcade games and, yes, a bar with screens showing a baseball game), the food was quite tasty! Mom got a turkey club, Dad a meatball sub, and me a chicken parm sub, and all were very filling. And the fries were great – “Jersey Shore” style, meaning they had an extra coating and were deliciously crispy. Reminded me a bit of the ones we had back at Dunn’s Corners pizza, when that was a thing. Just what I needed after being hungry for so long!

D) Pirate’s Cove’s two mini-golf courses were quite fun – and the “Captain’s Course” was very kind to me, as I managed to score FIVE HOLES-IN-ONE. I’m not even kidding. I had the absolute BEST luck on that course, making shots I never expected (or even tried!) to get. My parents did decently too – we actually ALL got a hole-in-one on one particular hole, which was very cool. :D Very proud of myself there – that’s probably the best round of mini-golf any of us have EVER played!

E) Lest you think I utterly crushed my parents, though, I did not – we actually all ended up winning a game, with Dad taking the original Skull Island course, and Mom edging out Dad and me in the “Blackbeard’s Course” at Pirate’s Cove. So that was nice!

F) And we had decent ice cream at Cape Cod Creamery to celebrate our wins before braving the road home – not great ice cream (Mom’s coffee ice cream had grounds in it, apparently; Dad wasn’t able to get his wanted cherry vanilla in his hot fudge sundae; and my hot fudge sundae with chocolate ice cream with brownie chunks didn’t have as many bits of brownie as I would have liked), but decent enough. I couldn’t complain about how chocolately my sundae was, anyway.

So yeah – nice day out, but horrific trip up and back. Makes me VERY glad I have nowhere to go this weekend!

Writing: Despite the long day out, I did find the time to continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy,” with poor Victor (having just been forced to go and mingle in the main ballroom by this mother) overhearing his parents talk about the story he just told them...and his mother go “what ghost would marry our Victor” in such a derisive tone that it just – hit him straight in the heart. :( And then made him absolutely FURIOUS as he realized that his parents had never truly cared about HIM, and the people who DID (who’d know him for FOUR DAYS and still treated him better than his mother and father) had been forced to go around to the SERVANTS’ ENTRANCE for looking too poor, and that he didn’t WANT to stay in this horrible gilded prison anymore, he wanted to be with Alice and Smiler and damn the consequences! Leading to him storming off while thinking about how he could get up to his room and what he wanted to pack –

Only to bump into someone because, well, not paying attention to where he’s going. XD I left it off with Victor apologizing to the guy – tomorrow, Barnaby “The Butcher” Fortescue III finally gets a speaking role in one of my fics! And let me tell you, I’m absolutely thrilled about it. :D

YouTube: I continued my trip through the C. M. Alongi CaFae Latte backlog tonight with “CaFae Latte Season 65 - TikTok Compilation!” And let me tell you, this episode was EPIC, featuring –

A) A quick meta-short at the beginning with C. M. pitching the Kickstarter of her candle supplier, Wares By Fiend, in-character by Bob promoting in the store – and assuring JC that all the candles are ethically sourced and made when they expressed some worries about them giving money to an unethical big corporation. Hopefully it gave Wares By Fiend a nice boost at the end of their Kickstarter!

( Okay, This Gets Long, So... )

...and I also did some stuff on tumblr, but completing the entry with that is gonna take too long, so I'm gonna call it here for now and edit this sometime tomorrow (hopefully in the morning but we'll see) with what I did over on Valice Multiverse (short version -- responded to a reply and stuck three asks in the queue). As it is, I need to hit the sack, as I do have work tomorrow -- my coworker and supervisor took the day off, so HOPEFULLY it will be a quiet day in the office. We shall see. Night all!

6/20, 7:46 AM: Okay, had just enough time to finish this off this morning -- here's the missing tumblr stuff I did yesterday --

Tumblr: Well, I wasn’t able to get anything done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), sadly – finishing up my Song Saturday post and getting Nebby’s birthday post sorted will have to wait until tomorrow – but I did get some stuff done on Valice Multiverse (as of course the day where I was out and about for most of it was the day where it was actually busy over there):

A) First, I responded to Satirical Demon’s reply on the “Fact Core: Presidential Seal is actually a sea lion” post – I’d mentioned in the tags I vaguely knew that Aperture Science had done some government work in the backstory (as per Victor saying so in the main reply), and Satirical let me know that, as per his research, Aperture and Black Mesa (their rival science firm from the Half-Life series) were competing for government contracts in the 50s with different kinds of portal tech – Aperture with its famous portal guns, Black Mesa with the interdimensional/extraterrestrial stuff which led to them meeting the Xen and the Resonance Cascade that kicks off the original Half-Life. I replied that I didn’t know much about the Black Mesa/Half-Life thing, but as I was pretty sure that the Resonance Cascade led to Earth being taken over by aliens...yeah, probably the US government in that verse regretted funding EITHER company. XD

B) And second, I answered three anon asks and stuck them in my queue:

I. A follow-up to the “Brits call mac & cheese ‘macaroni cheese’” ask where, in response to Cuddlepile!Alice saying “well, England invented the dish, so it’s you Americans who are adding that ‘and’ unnecessarily,” the anon asked how she’d feel if we started calling fish & chips “fish chips” – Alice was unruffled, saying the anon could do as they liked, but pointing out that removing the “and” in this case might make people think that they were talking about a form of fish sticks, or fried fish medallions if we went with the American version of “chip” (aka like a potato chip). Whereas if you call mac & cheese “macaroni cheese,” people should at least picture the same dish. XD Don’t think you’re winning this one, anon!

II. An anon giving dating advice – mainly, that any relationship meant to annoy your parents should be kept very casual, as such a reason for getting together wasn’t viable for sustaining something long term. Naturally, I had my Cuddlepile!Victor respond that it was a good thing that “pissing off his parents” was just a fun bonus of his relationships with Smiler, Alice, Emily, Victoria, Preston, and Piper (and Christopher and Richard, as his metamours)! XD He truly loves them, but ticking off Nell in the process of loving them IS fun.

III. And an anon asking “If Kuei-jin are Kindred of the East then does that make Kindred Kuei-jin of the West?” I had my Londerland Bloodlines!Alice let the anon know that “kuei-jin” are actually pretty much a separate set of supernaturals and resent the comparison to Kindred, as Ming Xiao told her in their first meetings. And that while Ming Xiao turned out to be PERSONALLY a bitch in league with LaCroix, she would allow that reducing the kuei-jin to just “Kindred of the East” was – not great. Granted, she’d allow a kuei-jin to call Kindred “kuei-jin of the west,” as they deserve it for their nonsense, but – still. *grimace* Yeah, apparently that book is one of the more racist ones in the Classic WOD line, so – gotta be careful when talking about stuff like that!

*nods* And THERE we go. I have to get ready for work -- talk to you later!

Weather was once again pretty crappy -- gloomy and getting gradually more and more humid as the day went on. To the point where we put the air conditioners in the windows this afternoon, after I got home from work, so we could stay cool and dry tonight. *shrug* It makes sleeping easier, AND we were gonna have to do it soon anyway, as we have got some pretty damn severe heat coming our way next week. High 90s and humid as fuck. *grimace* Fun. But yeah, other than that, not too much to report, as my daily write-up shall probably reflect:

Work – Very quiet day at work – I had one call to update a person’s pledge with a new credit card, and one thing I had look up for my boss regarding someone’s gifts (wanting to make sure the amount we had on file was correct), then the rest of my day was spent on obituaries and related bits of roster maintenance. And quietly finishing a crossword in the paper when I ran out of those. *shrug* There’s really just not that much to DO around the office right at the moment! Makes me glad I’ve got tomorrow off, yay~

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, but not back with the Teens In Space miniseries on Oxventure! Reason being, we’re going out tomorrow to Cape Cod to play mini-golf (three courses’ worth), and it’s supposed to be very hot and summery, so it’s very probable I will not want to work out once we get home. So I’m saving the grand finale of Teens In Space, with the teens fighting a freaking leviathan, for next week. Instead, it was back over to Proxy Gate Tactician’s channel to watch a couple of his videos:

A) “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Using Only Throw?” – what I believe was the first of his “can you beat the game with this ridiculous challenge enabled” videos, where Proxy set himself the task of beating Baldur’s Gate III with a party that was only allowed to throw things! ...well, okay, they were also allowed to walk around normally, talk to people, and build towers of crates to climb to make their throws more powerful (because technically stacking crates isn’t an “ability” that consumes an action, bonus action, or reaction, and that’s what Proxy was avoiding), but that was about it. So, could Proxy’s brave party of halfling barbarian Bom Trady (and I JUST FUCKING REALIZED: TOM BRADY), Shadowheart, Lae’zel, and a dwarf hireling defeat the Absolute while only allowed to throw things?

The answer was “Yes, but it was a REAL PAIN IN THE ASS sometimes!” Mostly because for the majority of the game, most of the party members didn’t have any throwable weapons that automatically returned to the wielder after being lobbed, meaning Proxy spent a lot of the playthrough picking up all the knives to chuck at people, then going around and picking them up again after every fight. Some of the platforming sections got a little tricky at times too, as obviously nobody was allowed to JUMP – fortunately, this is where Bom being a halfling came in handy, as he was small and light enough for the other party members to throw across gaps. And of course he had to actually DO the terrible invisible maze in the Gauntlet of Shar, instead of cheesing it like he always did, a fact he complained mightily about. XD But he conquered all these problems with a combination of skill, luck, and incredible cheesing. With some of my favorite examples of the latter including –

I. Building a MASSIVE crate tower so Lae’zel could launch Bom down to the actual forge in the Grymforge to pick up his Mithril armor without having to jump (Bom then had to use crates to avoid the big automaton stomping around in the middle, but it was worth it to not have to give up either the armor or the challenge!)

II. Having the rest of the party members all gradually sacrifice themselves in one of the platforming sections so Shadowheart could get down to the Nightsong and kill her (as otherwise somebody would have had to “Help” her – as in, use an action to get her back on her feet – in an upcoming boss fight in order to progress it, and that would have broken the rules of the challenge)

III. Using the fact that you can cancel a “Throw” action before you actually throw to steal one of the big bads, Gortash, out of his own coronation as Duke and carry him all the way to a bridge before dropping him off the side XD

IV. Buying fireworks specifically to use as throwables against the Absolute herself because MOST thrown weapons miss the big old brain, but fireworks still cause damage so long as they explode near something – just not a lot, so he had to chuck a LOOOT of fireworks

V. And, on a meta level, carefully structuring the rules so it was only the four main characters in his party who had to be “throw only” – because, well, the Emperor HAS to channel a certain spell in order to, you know, defeat the Absolute and kill her. Given he’s an NPC and not an actively controllable character, this did feel fair.

So yeah – it took some doing, but Proxy did beat Baldur’s Gate III using only “Throw!” Or at least came close enough to, if you’re not willing to let him wiggle out of having to let the Emperor channel that spell. :p Looking forward to watching the rest of his ridiculous challenge videos!

B) “How To Play Baldur's Gate 3 In First Person PoV (PC Only)” – a video Proxy made to tell everyone how he turned BG3 into a first-person game for another one of those ridiculous challenge videos! Because enough people wanted to know what he did and how he did it (including Swen, Larian’s CEO!) that he felt compelled to tell them. As you might expect, it was a complicated process involving multiple mods to change how the camera worked, adjust the character’s size so the camera wasn’t too high, and turn the character invisible for certain actions, like jumping. Fortunately for everyone who wanted to try it, Proxy was willing to share the settings he used for fixing the camera into place and getting the character the right height and all that. And for those of us who are perfectly fine with BG3 being third-person – well, it was interesting to see him fucking around with the game like that. XD Guess I should prioritize watching that “beating BG3 in first person” video next!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – having broken into the inner mansion and annoyed herself with another one of Grout’s tapes yesterday, Alice started exploring the rooms around the initial foyer today – and found them very wanting. Specifically, to her right she found a horrible surgical theater full of bloodstained beds and maddened ghouls that reminded her far too much of Rutledge; and straight on she found a second terrible surgery room, this one with chairs that reminded her of the one in Vandal’s hidden room in the blood bank where he was keeping Lily captive (as well they should, as I’m certain it’s the same reused model). Causing her to wonder if Vandal got his chair from Grout...and if Stanley the serial killer would have gotten along with the primogen, given their proclivities. *shudder* I left off with her preparing to leave – only for the Queen of Hearts to shout at her to wait. Because, as will become clear when I next work on this, she’s sniffed out something extremely potent in the freezer at the end of the room...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check plus, thanks to a video actually being in my Subs today –

A) First up, we had the latest from Josh Way – “Fun With Shorts: Despotism!” Yuuup, an old educational short from Encyclopedia Britannica about how one recognizes the rise of despotism in one’s community, using various ruler-based metrics (specifically, if power is spread out or concentrated; if respect is given to all or a few; if the economic distribution is equal or slanted; and if information is free to spread or tightly controlled). As you might imagine, most of Josh’s riffs were variations on “this short is TOTALLY NOT RELEVANT to our current situation in the United States!” *wince* Like, it was funny, but – damn. I did not need an old educational short from the 50s to let me know that the current world is kinda fucked.

B) And second up, we had the next video I had to watch from C. M. Alongi – “CaFae Latte Season 64 - TikTok Compilation!” This set of Tik-Toks featured:

I. JC ranting at a customer who came to say they had a problem about how, no, they WEREN’T going to say “Merry Christmas,” they say “Happy Holidays” because they have everyone from atheists to pagans to Jews to Muslims to Christians just behind the counter and Christmas is included in the “Happy Holidays” people do not need to be such ASSHOLES about it – only for the very amused customer to butt in and explain they found a hair in their muffin. An embarrassed JC gave them a new one, and the customer assured them the rant was okay – after all, THEY worked retail too. And had worked the Black Friday shift, so “know your place, peasant” (said with love – and a middle finger, but with love XD)

II. Drek being surprised by his old middle school guidance counselor, Mrs. Williams, showing up in the cafe – the two chatted about Drek’s current life plans, or lack thereof (with Mrs. Williams encouraging him to go to trade school); the fact that EVERYONE knew Drek was gay before Drek knew (apparently his old middle school teachers had a betting pool regarding when he’d come out XD); and Mrs. Williams’s current situation – turned out she too was now in retail (having burned out in her old job) and found it very relaxing! Turns out life is just easier when there’s no administrative drama and no need to call CPS on the regular. (Apparently based on something that really happened to one of C. M.’s friends!)

III. A customer with a service dog showing up at the cafe to order something for both herself and her dog – only for another customer to show up and basically demand to pet Mr. Maple when she saw him, despite the other customer saying that she needed him to concentrate on his job (she has fainting spells and he can warn her so she can sit on the floor and let her blood pressure stabilize). The Karen was only too happy to accuse the disabled customer of making it all up, and Bob was thus only too happy to curse her with the inability to pet any animal for two years, or until she learned to respect animal and animal owner autonomy. Rethu was like “damn, I would have just roasted her.” The Karen flounced off; the disabled customer ended up having to sit on the floor after Mr. Maple warned her of an upcoming incident; and Mr. Maple got an extra dog treat courtesy of Rethu, who justified it as a “Protector of the Realm” discount to Bob. XD Doggo definitely deserved that extra treat!

IV. Nicole showing up at the cafe shortly after this incident (and remarking on the new floor cushions Bob scattered around so any customers like Mr. Maple’s wouldn’t have to sit DIRECTLY on the floor) and ordering her hot chocolate...only for the guy in front of her to start asking where she’s from. And not accepting “Minnesota” as an answer, because, well, Nicole is black. Rethu and Nicole managed to shut him down after a couple of buts, with Nicole saying that no, she’d never done any DNA tests to figure out what part of Africa her ancestors were from because HIS European ones did their best to make sure she had no connection to them, and Rethu just telling him straight up he was not owed anyone’s family history and to stop being a racist. ...Granted, once he was out of earshot, Rethu admitted that he thought Nicole would have researched her family tree just because it seemed like her jam, and Nicole said she had, actually – her mother’s family has roots in a Union soldier from the Civil War who was probably an escaped slave, and her father’s in an enslaved family on a plantation. Meaning her family has been here longer than most of the people who question her family’s have been. She seemed a little rightfully smug about that. XD

V. And JC finding Erik’s lost last paycheck, which prompted a chat between them and Bob about how they haven’t gone to visit him in jail...but they do miss him a little, as he was entertaining (a bit clearly inspired by the “Hot Takes” video, as someone had complained about how the others in the cafe had so quickly stopped thinking or talking about Erik). This then led into JC wondering what Erik was paid – just over $20 an hour – and a customer overhearing this and being like “you pay your employees THAT MUCH?!” Bob explained $21.45 is basically the minimum living wage in the state and she wants her employees to be paid enough to, you know, live – the customer objected on the grounds that food service staff was being paid more than EMTs, but Bob said that, while it wasn’t fair, she didn’t have the ability to raise EMT wages. All she could do was pay her own employees well so she didn’t have to deal with them leaving or mutinying. Causing the customer to leave in a huff...and JC to ask how many mutinies Bob has had to put down in her life. She was apparently a “slow learner” back in the bad old days. :P

Good times! I do enjoy these compilations...though I’m getting a little sad that I’m getting close to the present day with them. Soon I’m gonna have to just wait around for the next one, same as everyone else who has caught up. Meeeh. Ah well, it’ll be worth it.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Half-check – I just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and I did find a song for Song Saturday to add to my queue by raiding the Poly Songs list created by tumblr user “polyamorousmood” – “Three” by Gaia Consort, which I ended up liking after a listen – but the actual post is nowhere near finished because I kept getting distracted. *shakehead* Still, it’s IN there, and I’ll hopefully have some time tomorrow afternoon/evening to finish it off, so – yeah, half-check. That feels fair. :P (Though, before I forget, the “Polyheart OT3 House Is Done” post went up today, so if you want to see ALL the pictures of the completed lot, here they are!)

And there you have it -- my day in a nutshell. *nods* And now I have to head off to bed, because it's another one of those days off where I can't actually sleep in -- we're leaving at 9:30 AM to head out to the Cape, meaning I want to be up by 7:30 AM to have enough time to eat breakfast and get dressed and actually wake up a bit. Which means going to bed normal time. Meh. *shakehead* Hopefully the day out will be fun enough to justify it! Night all!

Despite getting to bed later than I should have last night, and waking up early a couple of times (seriously, brain, can we STOP with that??), I got enough sleep to be functional today, which is good. I am actively making an effort to get to bed earlier tonight, though, so let's get straight on with the round-up for the day:

Work – Fairly quiet Monday to start off the work week – I did the GL; I took three calls from people updating credit cards/bank account numbers on pledges; I e-mailed some other people about failed credit cards; I did a QC file for the next capital campaign billing to go out; and I looked at some returned mail and filled out one write-off form for a pledge that hadn’t had anything paid on it for a while. *shrug* Nothing exciting! Though I am pleased to report that my commute was easier today, as the kids are slowly but surely getting out of school, meaning there’s less buses and such on the road. One of the perks of summertime, that. :) Hopefully tomorrow will be good too!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with alien teens Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) as they continued their space adventures in “Party Time! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 3!” This episode saw them:

A) Quickly check in pre-party with both the Storacle lady to make sure she knew they’d won and done the promo, as promised (she’d seen it on the big screen and was very happy with their work – though she warned Galaxa not to push it when she started hinting at getting free stuff XD) and their lawyers because, well, they did kill a lot of people in that race and wanted to make sure they were adequately protected against wrongful death lawsuits (the lawyers were rather horrified by the list of names, as well they should be); they also consulted with Memples about what they should wear – Memples said that Kae’l in her awesome black power armor and Radian in his RGB EVO suit would be fine, but Galaxa MIGHT want to rethink the out-of-fashion hot pink on her EVO suit (thanks to a failed roll, she did not XD Barbie for life!)

B) Head to the party venue where, encouraged by Memples, they tried to skip the queue on the basis of being famous space racers – they ran into some initial trouble with one of the robot bouncers, with Radian offering an absurdly-low bribe and Kae’l offering to autograph their chassis (which it didn’t think much of), but then a pair of EXTREMELY good charm rolls saw one of the other bouncers recognize them, shove his colleague out of the way, and bring the four upstairs to the members lounge, giving them top-quality alcoholic drinks on the house (the kids were VERY excited)

C) Enjoy the fancy lounge with views of the rolling blue sands of the planet’s surface, drinking their drinks (Kae’l and Radian managing to handle theirs pretty well by taking small sips, while poor Galaxa gulped hers down and ended up doing the morpher version of a somersault where she briefly melted into goo for a second before snapping back), lying to Memples about how they live out in space (to avoid telling him the name of their home planet) and that they live so dangerously because they’re over the hill for their respective species – a whole 24 years old (Jasper ruled that all the players at the table had to take psychic damage XD), and – in Galaxa’s case – seeing a fellow goo shapeshifter and actually forming a bit of a bond despite being the most awkward person on the planet XD (especially since the shapeshifter apparently was a huge celebrity, yet still found Galaxa genuinely intriguing – it was kinda sweet, actually)

D) Have their good time ruined by pirates breaking in through the windows, killing Galaxa’s new celeb friend, and demanding all their valuables – cue Galaxa absorbing all the remaining goo from the celeb’s corpse and becoming 23% more fabulous; Memples sacrificing himself to save his new friends by arming some plasma grenades and throwing himself at the pirates; and the kids just BARELY getting out of the room before getting swallowed up in the twin plasma blasts, with Kae’l’s power armor and Galaxa’s EVO suits getting damaged thanks to poor rolls (better than dying!)

E) Flee back to the ship in absolute terror, with Galaxa using her new fabulous extra mass to bat pirates away while poor Radian (on a bad roll) smacked straight into the cloaked ship; fortunately, an excellent roll right afterward allowed Radian to PUNCH the controls and get them out there at practically warp speed, just SMASHING straight through one of the pirates’ ships on their way

F) And finally, discover that Galaxa’s tinkering with his systems had made the ship’s AI, V.I.N.N.I.E., feel more kindly disposed toward them – and, more importantly, open the mystery door downstairs; Galaxa thus dragged herself down there while the ship continued rocketing away from Rez T-75, pursued by pretty much all the pirates looking to avenge their fellows –

And found a warp drive based on that teleporter technology that was supposed to be banned after the super-advanced race that invented it got sick of all the lesser races fighting over their attention and left. She was – shocked, to say the least. O.O However, it quickly became apparent that using it might be their only chance to get away from the pirates, who were starting to shoot rather a lot of shit at them. I left off with the teens pooling their adversity tokens to help boost Galaxa’s brains roll up to the necessary 20 to figure out how to use the drive – tomorrow, we’ll see where the warp takes them! :D

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – we continued with Alice’s adventures in Grout’s hellhouse today, with her finishing powering down all the Tesla coils in the electricity room; briefly wondering how the hell she even works as a vampire – specifically, why she doesn’t need to pee anymore – only to get disgusted by Carpenter suggesting she could do as vampire bats do and pee as she feeds (no thank you); finding a mysterious lever in the hallway past the electric death room and, at Wonderland’s urging, pulling it, triggering a mysterious “grrunch” noise from the wall; and finally following the hallway up some stairs and to a door – only to discover it was the mysterious locked door she passed on her way to the library the first time. Meaning she’s basically come all the way back around to the beginning again. She promptly accused the mansion of being entirely backtracking. XD Anyway, tomorrow she’ll invisibly sneak her way through the front foyer and back into the big old staircase room – where she will discover another path has opened up for her to explore...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – went back to C. M. Alongi tonight for “CaFae Latte Season 63 - TikTok Compilation!” This series featured:

A) Cyrus and Rethu planning a date night together when a woman came in and asked if Cyrus was “Blue Johnson” – and when he confirmed that was his legal name, asked if he was still a defense attorney. Which he confirmed, to my and Rethu’s shock. O.o Turns out he got a bunch of degrees back when college was still cheap, and a law degree was one of them. And he was only too happy to break it out again for the woman – one Rebecca Black Bear, who explained that she’d been accused of murdering her boyfriend after he went missing recently after a morning jog...

B) Cyrus representing Rebecca at her interview with the police, where she downed a truth potion (with the cop’s off-duty friend acting as a control) and firmly insisted that no, she did not kill her boyfriend Xavier, nor had anyone else do it for her. And revealed that Xavier was an abusive asshole who had threatened to beat her the morning he disappeared. Cyrus was not happy but also not surprised to learn she’d tried filing some reports, but never got any help. :( Anyway, she insisted that she was just trying to find a way to get out of the situation without getting murdered – and then another cop showed up, revealing that they’d just found Xavier’s body…

C) Cyrus getting the second cop to reveal how Xavier died – apparently it looked like starvation or exposure. Which was very weird, given the area he was in was 10 square miles, very near civilization, and was a place he knew like the back of his hand according to Rebecca. The cops started wondering if Rebecca or someone else had enchanted or drugged him – but then Cyrus noted that Rebecca was Lakota, and that the death had happened on Lakota land, and asked if any of them knew about “Deer Woman…”

D) A scene switch to Kenny the goblin and Patrick the werewolf hanging out in a bar near the Lakota lands, talking about how Kenny had just learned Patrick himself is half-Lakota (the other half is Irish – and werewolf) – only for the bartender to ask for Patrick’s help because he was pretty sure some creep had drugged one of the women at the bar. Patrick was immediately on it, easily cutting through the creep’s lies, and choking him when the creep offered to share his conquest. He got Kenny to get a picture of the guy’s ID so he could send Bob the creep’s full name for cursing purposes and chased him out of the bar before going to help the woman...only to suddenly notice she had hooves for feet…

E) A swap back to Cyrus talking to the police and telling them about Deer Woman, a magical woman who specifically hunts abusive assholes and enchants them so they can’t take care of themselves, turn into catatonic zombies, and slowly waste away – the cops were a little skeptical, but admitted that they didn’t have anything else against Rebecca and told her and Cyrus they could head out; then a swap back to Patrick, who apologized to Deer Woman for ruining one of her hunts (she was sour, but later admitted she wasn’t TOO mad as, of course, he was just trying to do the right thing) and called Bob for her when she said she wanted to speak to the fairy – aaand of course it turned out they knew each other, with Bob being only too happy to hit the creep with an especially nasty curse to give him ill health, ill fortune, and ill luck and make him unable to hurt anyone in any way except for self-defense until he truly redeemed himself. Patrick was like “I dunno why I’m surprised you two are acquainted.” XD

F) And finally, a wrap-up back at the cafe, with Patrick revealing that, post-phone call, he and Deer Woman hung out playing XBox games and eating pancakes together (he lost. Badly); Cyrus revealing that Rebecca was totally cleared and paid him in awesome Lakota food (a big jar of wojapi berry saw and a stack of fry cakes); and JC and Nicole revealing how Thanksgiving went at Nicole’s parents place after JC asking about wojapi ended up turning the discussion toward how it compared to cranberry sauce (JC and Nicole’s dad Charlie argued about if aliens were real or not, while Kelly and Nicole’s mom Abigail chatted makeup and how shitty is was when an ‘inclusive’ brand actually looked terrible on Black skin). Best holiday JC and Kelly have had for a while, apparently – and JC already knows they’re gonna give Charlie loads of sci-fi novels for Christmas as a prank of sorts. XD

Lovely stuff, as always – and proof that I haven’t managed to spoil myself on everything in this series, as Cyrus being a defense attorney came TOTALLY out of left field for me. I mean, good for him, given he canonically has dyslexia (in fact, he cited that as the reason he works in the cafe rather than as a lawyer – less paperwork), but still – damn. I wonder what surprises the next compilation will bring?

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, surprisingly – I actually managed to make it into the drafts of Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to work a little bit on the “hey, the Polyheart OT3 house is done” post, tweaking the main text and turning a couple of the bulkier paragraphs into lists to make them easier to read/match what I did later in the post better. Didn’t get past the section on the pool, but it felt good to make SOME progress! That being said, not entirely sure I’ll be able to get this up this week after all – depends on how much time I’ll have to spend on it tomorrow. We’ll see what happens!

Other: We did indeed play beanbags once I got home from work (and from getting gas), and I am sad to report that I had another terrible game, losing all three rounds while Mom and Dad traded wins and seconds. *sigh* I just don’t know why it’s so hard for me to throw higher than a four these days… Anyway, final scores were me 3-3-3; Dad W-2-W; and Mom 2-W-2. *sigh* Maybe I’ll do better tomorrow – we’ll see.

*nods* There we are then! And now I have to go to bed while it is still a Reasonable Hour. Night all!

I got to bed later than I should have, and I woke up earlier than I should have -- a couple of times, in fact, as I was sucking down water last night and really needed to pee. The first time wasn't an issue -- I used the bathroom then went back to sleep -- but the SECOND time, I became aware of some water in my ear and got distracted trying to get it out. Which, for some reason, caused my NOSE to run at one point, and at that point I saw it was around 9 AM and I was like "fuck it, I'll get up." Thinking I'd be okay and that maybe I could turn the time to something more productive --

Nope. I ended up feeling groggy and out of it pretty much ALL FREAKING DAY. I ended up skipping my workout because I was so tired! I didn't really feel like I woke up properly until I took my shower, right before supper! Which, as you might guess, is a bit of a problem, because, you know, I SHOULD be feeling tired the closer I get to bedtime, not more awake! Ugh...at least I got a nice chocolate chip pancake for breakfast, because Mom made blueberry pancakes for Dad for Father's Day and had leftover batter. And Dad liked the Father's Day card I got him. And I got chocolate cream pie for dessert because, again, Mom wanted to do something nice for Dad. And I got the following done, even despite being tired:

Tumblr: Not an ideal day over here on the tumbls, but I did get stuff done –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Despite my exhaustion, I was able to make some progress on both “Pride-related” posts sitting in my drafts over here pre-lunch:

A) I got the main text sorted on the “Polyheart OT3 House Is Done” post, describing the updates I made both inside and out – though I feel like I’m going to want to go over it again and make sure it’s all up to snuff on a day when I’m feeling more awake

B) And I started adding the BTTF characters (Doc, Marty, Clara, and Jennifer) to the “Mega List of Gender And Sexuality Headcanons” post I made before – though so far all I’ve gotten done is their gender identities (they’re all cis people, so that was easy). I THINK I know what I want to say for all of them, but I need a moment to turn all these headcanons around in my head more, make sure they’re truly what I feel is right for them all

*shrug* Not as much progress as I was hoping, but – it’s something!

Valice Multiverse – And tonight, I had two anon asks to stick in the queue over here:

A) One sending me the very first question on the list of “LBGTQ Asks” I reblogged a little earlier: “Is your Muse LGBTQ?” I answered that OOC, with the short answer being “yes, mostly!” and the long answer going into detail about Alice, Victor, and Smiler, as they’re my primary three on the blog these days – as a refresher, Alice is a cis woman, demipanromantic (no gender preference, but needs an emotional bond), and gray-asexual (mostly uninterested in sex but a few very specific things get the motor running); Victor is a cis man, biromantic, and bisexual (he can be attracted to multiple genders, though he leans a bit toward women partners thanks to his repressed and rigid upbringing); and Smiler is nonbinary, panromantic, and pansexual (their gender is firmly “other,” and they have no explicit gender preferences – they just like what they like). We’ll see if anybody asks me any of the other questions and makes me think a little bit more about what I want to say! XD

B) And one playing Fact Core and saying that the Presidential Seal has ear flaps, so it’s really a sea lion. XD I had Aperture Wage Slave!Victor respond admitting he couldn’t just dismiss that as one of Fact Core’s obviously nonsense “facts” because, well, he knew Aperture had done work with the US Government, and he wouldn’t put it past Cave Johnson to give the President a seal. Or a sea lion thinking it was a seal. XD Haven’t had one of these asks in a while – was fun to answer one again. :)

Superliminal: Yes, Superliminal! Everyone’s favorite weird and slightly-fucked-up perspective puzzle game was my game of choice for today, and here are the reasons why:

I. I’ve been feeling rather uninspired when it comes to my usual Sunday game, Fallout 4 – I do want to finish up the whole Mechanist quest line and get going on all the other quests I have waiting in the wings (including, you know, the MAIN quest), but I just haven’t had much motivation to do so. I think the problem is a combination of “I really want to play these OTHER games” (see below) and “it takes soooo freaking long to play the game, write up a summary of what I did in the game, update the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the fanfic version of what happened in the game, then write up a summary of how THAT differs from my previous summary.” Which wouldn’t be SO much of a problem if I didn’t do it on Sundays, where not only do I have to go to bed at a decent time (theoretically – we know what I’m like) but I have a rather long video that I can only watch late at night that I ALSO need to summarize. (Well – I don’t NEED to, but I think we can all agree at this point that I’m GOING to whether any of us like it or not. ...actually, you know what, tell me if you like it or not, maybe if people are like “why are you doing this,” I can finally get my brain to be a little less of a bastard about it.) I’m thinking that a potential solution, at least for the summer, would be to bring back “Fallout Fridays” once my half-day Fridays start up in July (because, while I’d still have Game Night and, depending on the weather, beanbags to deal with, I’d also have no long videos to watch and the ability to stay up later to get everything done as necessary), but that sure as hell didn’t help my lack of motivation today, so – yeah. No Fallout 4 today!

II. While I do very much want to dive into both my “Teen Valicer” Sims 4 save file AND my “This Is It The Big One The One I’ve Been Waiting For All My Life” hopefully-FULL playthrough of Baldur’s Gate III with my Tav!Smiler, both of THOSE are still in the “planning/preparation” stage of things. Specifically:

a. For the “Teen Valicer” save file, I still need to figure out everybody’s traits, what aspirations I definitely want them to complete, what degrees they’ll be getting in university, what jobs they’ll be getting as adults, where I want them to live after university, if they’ll be getting pets, if they’ll be having kids, etc, etc

b. For the “Final Tav!Smiler” playthrough, I still need to figure out what Smiler’s starting skill proficiencies should be, what their background should be, what spells I think they should specialize in as a Bardlock, etc, etc

c. And for both, I have to figure out what mods I’m using – and in BG3’s case, if I’m using the external fan-made mod manager or the internal official one. Oh, and of course, there’s still the whole “Smiler’s yellow eyes don’t glow anymore and that bugs me” issue in Sims 4 too. Gotta figure out how to fix THAT before anything else.

Yeah, it’s a lot to tackle, and I never seem to have much time to think about any of it! *grumbles* So yeah, both those games were off the table too today.

III. As for “why Superliminal in particular?” – it’s a game I haven’t played for roughly two and a half years (last time I played it was 12/31/2022); it’s a game I remember enjoying, even if parts of it were fairly obtuse; and – most importantly – it’s a game with a bunch of collectibles in it that I’ve never gotten! And I do like to get as close to 100%-ing a game as I can if it’s one I like…

So yeah – new plan is, whenever I’m feeling like I can’t get into any of my “core three” games for whatever reason, I’ll hop into Superliminal and work on getting collectibles! With the help of a guide, because I’d have NO idea where to look otherwise. XD Accordingly, I played through the first level of the game today, retrieving the hidden blue chess piece and blueprint available there! Both of which proved a little tricky:

A) The blue chess piece was available in the room where you have to shrink down a giant cube into a tiny one to open the door to the next chamber – the guide I was using told me it was “on the ledge,” and that I should go through the hidden doorway behind the giant cube, get a soda from the soda machine in the backstage area, make it as big as possible, and then use it and the cube to reach the ledge and retrieve the chess piece – though the author mentioned that you could also use one of the planks nailed up over the doorway to make a ramp if you wanted. I thus grabbed my soda, my planks, and my cube, and began trying to build a pathway up onto what I thought was “the ledge” – a duct above the soda machine. And then, when that proved to be the incorrect spot, up to what LOOKED like a ledge atop the doorway into the backstage area. Which also proved to be incorrect. It wasn’t until, confused as to what the hell I was supposed to do because I simply couldn’t get anywhere building these terrible structures, I watched the video the guide had provided about how to reach the chess piece that I realized –

“The ledge” was in the puzzle room itself. Specifically, it was a ledge atop the little paneled walls in the right-hand corner closest to the exit door. *facepalm* Guide writer, you could have been a LITTLE more specific about what ledge you meant! Anyway, after seeing that, I easily used one of the chunks of wood to make a ramp up to the chess piece I sought so I could grab it. *shakehead* Lot of wasted effort for a collectible that should have been very easy to snag!

B) The blueprint, meanwhile, was in an even trickier location – a “hidden” room at the very end of the level! “Hidden” being in quotation marks because – well. When you come to the end of the first level of Superliminal, you have to knock down the panels that make up the testing room around you with a piece of cheese to access the backstage area, as the proper “exit” door to the room is all bricked up (it makes – SOME sense in context). You then go around the backstage area until you find a corridor with what looks like a room full of blue sky and clouds at the end – this is the room with the blueprint. However, when you try to approach this room, you discover that the patch of deep shadow stretching across the room at about the halfway mark hides a gap, which you fall down until you land in a bed, triggering the next level to start. So the room that you need to access isn’t exactly hidden, it’s more that you can’t get to it in normal gameplay. The guide told me that the trick to getting across the gap was to use your wedge of cheese to create either a ramp so you could jump over the gap, or a bridge to walk over it. I didn’t trust my jumping skills, so I tried to make the cheese big enough to make a bridge –

And let me tell you, that shit’s nearly impossible. It’s VERY hard to get the cheese into the exact right position where it’s big enough to stretch across the entire gap without falling in! I lost my cheese down the gap more than once and had to restart from the nearest checkpoint (which fortunately was at the very beginning of the corridor) to try again. And yes, I did try jumping once – and I was right to distrust my jump, as I fell down the gap and accidentally triggered the second level to load. Forcing me to go to the level select, return to the first level, and do it all over again. >( Fortunately, given this is the tutorial level and I HAVE played this game a few times, once in Challenge Mode, it didn’t take long to get back to where I was and resume my “please make a bridge cheese” adventures. So, how did I finally get across the gap?

Well, by managing to glitch myself into the increasingly giant-cheese and accidentally launch myself briefly out of the top of the level before landing on the other side of the gap! I was like “...you know what, if Bethesda physics-ing myself across is what works…” XD Anyway, with that sorted, I headed into the room, went around the blue-sky-and-clouds backdrop, and found the blueprint taped up behind it. To my puzzlement, it was blank when I first found it – but when I clicked on it, suddenly a rough sketch of the layout of the first level appeared! Neat. :) With that finally collected, I exited the room and hopped down the gap of my own volition, to start level two properly instead of by accident. I then proceeded to spend a bit of time wandering the initial halls, attempting to throw away a soda can “unsuccessfully” to get an achievement (yes, there is an achievement for failing to throw away trash properly in this game, though as you can probably guess I’m not sure how you get it) and reading the text on it (I went for a can of “Baking Soda” just for funsies, and was deeply amused to see the tagline on the can was “what have we done?!” XD) –

Before realizing “uh, okay, the game is actually making me feel a little bit motion-sick” and saving and exiting! Yeah, unfortunately the game is VERY sensitive to the mouse, so it’s easy to get a bit of a “dicky tummy,” so to speak, after playing for too long. Have to remember to see if I can adjust that – and if I can’t, to make sure I don’t play for more than an hour at a time. *nods* Still, it was fun, and I’m glad I was able to get those two collectibles! Next time, we’ll see what I can get in Level 2!

Writing: Well, as I didn’t play Fallout 4 today, I couldn’t update the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc, meaning I had to find another writing project to work on today! Fortunately for me, I already knew what I could do with my writing time – get the second draft of Nebby’s gift fic done! Because her birthday just so happens to be next Sunday, the 22nd, and I figured if I got the fic sorted today, I could just chuck it into the end of my queue when I set it up later this week. So that’s what I did. :) The second and final draft of “Victor, Alice, and Smiler in the ‘Freakshow’ chapter of Nebby’s fic ‘MediEvil II Resurrection” ended up being about half-a-page longer than the first as I rearranged some things, gave some dialogue to different characters (for example, Alice was the one who explained the sword-laden “Pincushion” freak’s whole deal to Victor in the original rough draft; in the edited version, it’s Smiler), and generally cleaned up a bunch of awkward phrasing and unclear sections, but the general gist remained the same – Alice (as a knife-thrower at the carnival), Smiler (as an alchemist who did regular shows on the midway), and Victor (as a guest who lingered after closing time) hiding from all the dangerous magical bullshit going on and spying on main character Dan as he fought the zombified Pincushion. And Alice intervening with her knife-throwing skills when it looked like Dan was going to lose. Because she’s awesome like that. :P I’m pretty happy with the end product – just hope Nebby is too! (Don’t worry, Gigs – your story is coming up next!)

YouTube: I may not have played my own Fallout game this Sunday, but I still made sure to watch Jon play his, getting through “Fallout: London - Part 47 - Black & Blue” this evening! The continuing adventures of Aria and Mad Jack as they worked to bring about Gaunt’s plans of revenge against Black and his lieutenants John Lockheed, Enforcer Sinclair, and Pieter the Fence – well, kind of. Here’s how things actually went down –

A) First, Aria spoke to “Chill” Winston, “Bullettooth” Anthony, and Johnny “Shrapnel” about how to take down Lockheed, Sinclair, and Pieter in turn:

I. Winston informed her that he’d gotten Lockheed’s mistress, Meg, to turn on him by using her addiction to chems against her – and that he wanted her to go to Meg’s apartment, secure the place, and then wait for him to show up and kill the fucker slowly. Gaunt was like “what? No, this is a dangerous job, I don’t want you anywhere near there” but Winston furiously protested that Lockheed had killed his entire family and he wanted his fury, damn it. Leaving Gaunt to put his foot down and tell Winston he’d stay behind if he didn’t want to meet his dead wife again, and Jon to go “...I did not expect that from the guy called ‘Chill,’ getting really worried this entire gang is bad news, not just Gaunt”

II. Anthony told Aria that Sinclair was based in a metalworks factory up north, using slaves to make things (what wasn’t specified), and that he’d gotten one of the workers, Lexi, to turn against her – just enough to let Aria into the factory, anyway. He said that she probably wouldn’t meet too much security, though he warned her that Sinclair had some sort of “big dog” (I immediately went “she’s got a pet womble, doesn’t she,” which was echoed by Jon later), and that if she wanted the best chance of taking her down, she needed to get the drop on her. He then told her to burn the body in one of the furnaces after she killed her –

Causing Gaunt to protest “hang on, I want all these bodies on display. To send a message, remember?” Anthony retorted that Sinclair was a monster and the last thing he wanted was her to be martyred – he wanted her forgotten and erased. Gaunt was unmoved, though, and Aria realized at this point that once again she was being given an opportunity to undermine Gaunt by doing what his lieutenants wanted instead of following his orders! Which she was VERY happy about, as she really didn’t like him and wanted control of the gang already, damn it XD

III. And Johnny let her know that Pieter did a lot of work with the Gentry these days, meeting them in his own private back room in a private club called the Aeneid, and that he’d managed to get her at least temporary admission...so long as she didn’t bring any weapons in with her. Gaunt was like “how the fuck is she going to kill him without weapons?” –

And Johnny admitted that he didn’t want her to kill Pieter at all, just scare him off and steal his ledger so he’d have to retire. Turns out they were mates back in the day, and while he knows Pieter is the enemy, he just – he knows the guy isn’t a killer. Gaunt was like “you weak little shit” and told Aria to get in there however she needed to, murder whoever she needed to, and bring him back that ledger soaked in blood. *raises an eyebrow* Dramatic much, Gaunt? I don’t think that’ll endear you to Aria any further...

B) Second, Aria went around London in her Vagabond cap (completely missing that she had a matching set of clothes to go with it – to be fair, I didn’t realize there was an outfit either, I think Jon cut receiving it out of an earlier episode) fulfilling her various missions –

I. She found Lockheed on the Isle of Dogs in the Brass Nail, the brothel Meg worked out of, as promised – she gave him Gaunt’s regards when he demanded to know who she was, and he immediately started panicking and begging to cut a deal. Winston then showed up, openly defying Gaunt’s orders and demanding his revenge for his family –

And Aria was like “uh, I’m sorry, Winston, but I’m not about the cold-blooded torture, at least not today. Could you please just go so I can put this guy down quietly?” Winston, as you might expect, was furious, calling her “a boot-licking little shit,” but did indeed back down, and Aria took Lockheed out with a single headshot from Scaramanga, her golden gun. As you might imagine, the comments had a lot to say about Aria suddenly being against a guy maybe torturing someone else to get revenge for his murdered family when she’s happily committed full-scale acts of terrorism for Angel – not to mention SLAUGHTERED THE ENTIRETY OF CAMELOT (though, admittedly, that one wasn’t fully her fault, as the game wouldn’t let her kill Arthur in a quieter place thanks to competing quests nonsense). Just, it seems an odd time to have a moral twinge, Aria. Especially after Mad Jack’s Murder Revenge Quest last week!

II. She found Sinclair over at London Smelters & Co, next to Canning Town and just over the water from the Millennium Dome – as promised, Lexi was waiting outside for her, and let her into the factory through some nearby doors before running for it –

Aaand almost the minute Aria stepped into the stairwell, we realized why she was so eager to get away – turns out she’d led Aria straight into a trap. Sinclair quickly revealed she knew Aria was there and said she was now a rat in a maze, and proceeded to throw not just a bunch of goons at her, but also her dog Willie. Who was not, as Jon and I speculated, a tame Womble, but a giant glowing corgi! Jon approved. XD However, Aria was well-prepared to deal with all this, and with her lovely guns and a bit of Hero, she managed to kill all the goons and Willie and make her way to Sinclair, stabbing the woman to death with the super-fast knife she looted off Merlin’s corpse as Sinclair tried to beat her to death with a sledgehammer. Aria then dragged her body off to the nearby furnace and, after a little trouble, dropped it into the lava to appease Anthony. Because if she couldn’t get Winston on her side when it came time to depose Gaunt, she at least wanted him and Johnny to back her up!

III. And she found Pieter at The Aeneid in Westminster, as promised. She proceeded to swipe her way in with her new membership card, no problem; easily bribe the lady at the front desk with 200 tickets so she didn’t have to turn in her weapons (it just made things easier for John so he didn’t have to rebind all his hot keys); pick open a locked door and discover a birthday party in the making (Jon was delighted); then make her way to Pieter’s room to tell him to hand over his ledger and get out of town, or Johnny would be very sad to learn of the death of an old friend. Pieter said he supposed he should be grateful to have the choice and admitted he felt bad about what he did to Johnny, handed over his ledger without a fuss, then told the two Gentry ghouls he was dealing with, Bill and Ben, to go fuck themselves before heading out into retirement. XD To Aria’s surprise, though, the ghouls then asked what she wanted –

And the game gave her an option to turn them into customers for the Vagabonds instead! Presumably hiring them to steal things and kill people they wanted killing. The pair were initially like “why should we side with you little gang,” but fortunately for Aria, she was Respectable thanks to an earlier quest, and said if they signed up with her gang, she’d make sure they dealt only with her, not the riff-raff. This was acceptable to them, and Aria happily went on her way, pleased to have gotten not only the ledger, but also some new “friends” for the gang. :)

C) Third, Aria returned to the Vagabond’s headquarters to let Gaunt know she’d finished all her missions – Gaunt thanked her, then called in Blind Nelson to tell him what the word on the street was. Nelson informed him that Lockheed had been discovered murdered in the Brass Nail, with a man in Vagabond clothes having been seen lurking nearby earlier (Gaunt was pleased, but said that he wasn’t sure how anyone could have mistaken Aria for a man – revealing that, hilariously, Blind Nelson hadn’t realized Aria was a woman XD), but that while Sinclair’s factory was full of bodies, hers wasn’t one of them, and people were assuming her slaves had finally revolted and dumped her in a furnace, and that Pieter had been seen leaving the city with a good chunk of Syndicate cash, still very much alive. Gaunt was quite sour, as you might expect, and gave Aria the business about it all. Though he was glad to hear from Nelson that his true target, Black, would definitely know that it was the Vagabonds who had pulled all that off. Nelson warned him that Black would regroup and try to annihilate the Vagabonds, but Gaunt waved him off, and dismissed both him and Aria, saying he needed time to think. Jon thus assumed that Aria now had to go find something else to do before Gaunt called her back in –

Only for the game to tell him, “Hey, have Aria go talk to Yvette.” Who, when Aria said hello, delivered a note to her from Nelson, before talking about how she felt a metaphorical storm on the wind and was going to check the perimeter for trouble. Aria read the note, which directed her up to Nelson’s room to contact him on a hidden radio. She thus found it and tuned him in, and he told her that he knew Black was getting ready to flee the city via biplane, and thus he needed her to come to Canning Town and intercept Black’s personal subway train before he could get away –

Alone. Aria was instantly suspicious and asked why Gaunt, who very much wanted to kill Black himself, wasn’t involved – Nelson claimed he didn’t want Gaunt to get hurt, as she knew how he got whenever Black’s name was mentioned. Aria conceded the point, but was still suspicious of a set-up and headed downstairs to tell Gaunt about the message. He was furious and demanded to know the details –

And then Yvette burst in to reveal that the perimeter guards had seen lots of Syndicate enforcers coming their way! Gaunt realized it was his job to rally the troops and beat back the invaders, and reluctantly told Aria to go ahead and get Black, giving her some bullets to do the job – Aria was still like “I feel like this is a trap” but headed out. Making sure to kill plenty of the Syndicate Enforcers outside first, of course.

D) Fourth, Aria headed to the Docklands Light Rail Station in Canning Town, where she shot her way past all the Syndicate Dogs and Mercenaries and Enforcers in her way before hopping on the train, which promptly set off. Aria then proceeded to fight her way up to the front of the train, taking down all and sundry with her Instigating Shotgun –

And found Blind Nelson waiting for her. Turns out that this whole thing was indeed a trap – but perhaps not quite the one she’d expected. Nelson explained to her that he’d been an informer for the Syndicate for years, ever since Gaunt’s father Gabriel died, and that he’d used the position to do his best to keep the gang small because that helped keep them alive. However, from the moment Aria had shown up, she’d thrown that fragile equilibrium completely out of whack. So he’d tricked her onto the train to deliver an offer from Black – switch sides and join with the Syndicate, or die slowly with the rest of the Vagabonds. Aria was like “there must be another way – most of the gang is tired all the endless fighting, can’t we have a ceasefire instead? Just stick to our own territories and not bother each other?” Blind Nelson said that he didn’t know how Black would take it, but they could at least present the idea to him –

And so they headed up to see Black, in his office at the top of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf! Black greeted them like a proper supervillain, standing over them on a balcony high above, and gave a big long villain speech about how this place was a temple to money, a place where people lost their souls in the pursuit of value, and how he had taken the lesson that money can be used to own people’s very souls to heart (citing the fact that he paid Nelson to be a traitor, and watched the guilt eat away at him and make him more and more of a puppet). He knew he could never buy off Gaunt, though, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t just buy off Aria (Aria confirmed this by saying she just did what she pleased whenever it pleased her, which – yeah, does pretty much sum up the LP) – but he was willing to extend her a job offer as one of his Syndicate, as he wanted someone like her on HIS side. Aria promptly responded with her counter-proposition regarding the ceasefire, pointing out that wiping the Vagabonds would cost Black dearly even if he won, and that this stupid war was draining both sides while their enemies, the Gentry, profited. Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped fighting, drew firm boundaries, and worked to improve their own stations instead of all this nonsense? Black admitted that she made some good points, and he would be willing to entertain this idea –

But that Gaunt never would. Which meant, if there was going to be any chance for peace, Aria would have to take out Gaunt and take over the Vagabonds. Aria was like “I have been wanting to do that for a WHILE, good sir.” So yes, next week, having gotten Black to agree to an end to hostilities if she takes over the gang, Aria will be heading back to the Vagabonds to confront Gaunt and see who she can sway to her side! She’s pretty certain she’s got Anthony and Johnny’s support – we’ll see about Winston, I suppose! Ooh, this is gonna be tense...

Okay, I stayed up to finish this, which I'm not sure was the right call, but I was so stressed out the last time I had to finish one of these the following morning that -- yeah, it's probably a six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other situation. *sigh* I'm not going to worry about it -- I'm just going to go to bed. Night all!