Crossover Chick

By which I mean "my body was giving me some warning signs about my period being on its way, so I slapped in a pad right before leaving for work...and when I used the bathroom around 10:30 AM, I did indeed find blood." So yeah, very glad I did that and thus saved myself some trouble later. And rather glad that my period showed up now -- like, it's not fun to have it now, but this means the worst of it should be over by the time Halloween rolls around, so yay there. I will take it!

As for the rest of my day, we had:

Work: Twas another very quiet day at work, with my time spent –

A) Doing the usual morning check scan and credit card reports

B) Going through online obituaries to look for roster maintenance opportunities (spent pretty much the entire morning going through every person with one particular name and marking almost all of them deceased)

C) Taking a call from the lady whose check is missing – had to tell her that the processors told me they were up to date, but that they’d just gotten some mail in, so… We’ll see what happens at the end of the week and if we can truly declare the check lost!

D) And doing more puzzles because I needed SOMETHING to make the day go by.

Yeah, it’s fairly boring around the office now. But given how stressed out I was Monday, I will take that. Just two days to go!

Workout: My time on the bike this evening was spent pedaling my way through –

A) The last twenty-odd minutes of “FMV ZONE: TENEBRIS SOMNIA | Hallowstream 2026 🎃” by OXBox! The final portion of Mike And Andy Play Julia’s No-Good-Very-Bad-WTF Day featured:

I. Julia successfully escaping the horrible squid thing that had appeared in the dining room set of “Devora” after she got the square stone from the meat storage room, along with all the other monsters in between her and the elevator – Andy noted that Mike could, you know, attack them, but Mike claimed “I’m a pacifist” with absolutely no hint of shame. :P Once in the elevator, Andy and Mike debated on whether or not Julia should go get the pipe before going back to the 3rd floor apartment to open the bedroom door with their new square stone – Andy was in favor of just leaving the pipe and going for the door, but Mike really wanted the pipe. Fortunately, Mike managed to remember that the pipe was actually on the 3rd floor as well (in the bar at the end of the rainy street behind the leaking door at the other end of the hall), so there was no actual barrier to him sending Julia to go and collect it! Other than the monsters in the hallway, of course, but we’re used to them. :p

( Julia dodges many horrible monsters, finds the set of ‘Devora’ and the community center where they first showed it...and some worrying pictures on her ex’s phone... )

B) And the first thirteen-odd minutes of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 24 - Operation Overlord” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! Because I figured I might as well get a jump on it. :) This chunk of The Adventures Of Useless Steve, Time To Get Dangerous Edition featured:

I. Jon looking at all the perks Steve had acquired in his travels and how he had managed to increase his skills to – well, “decent levels” wasn’t the right phrase, as Jon declared they would still all be considered sub-optimal for a Fallout 3 character, even a starting one. But he’d still increased them, and paired with all his other bonuses, that meant he was actually doing pretty good for himself out in the Capital Wasteland! Which Jon saw –

And made him decide that his shitty shitty character had had things too good for too long and it was time to change things up a bit so the challenge remained, well, challenging. >D So, good news – Steve is now Level 20!

Bad news – Jon made him Level 20 via the power of console commands, so Steve got none of the benefits of leveling up...apart from increased hitpoints, but Jon promptly used console commands to take those away and bring him back down to his original Level 1 health. He will, however, be getting the drawbacks of leveling up – namely, the game will now see fit to throw much stronger enemies at him! So there will be no more wading through the relatively squishy stuff the game throws at beginner-level characters, no – now there will be PROPER threats to Steve’s life. I’m sure Steve can’t wait. :p

( It’s Useless Steve! Learning how to harness the power of Nuka-Cola and putting on surgeon clothes to save a kid for later rewards! )

Writing: I decided to tackle the first draft of Nattie’s birthday fic today – hey, her birthday is on a Wednesday this year, so it only felt right to write the thing on a Wednesday. :p As a reminder, she’d requested Milo from Atlantis: The Lost Empire and her own OC Izzy doing some steampunk deep-sea diving and investigating a shipwreck while geeking out over their respective interests in archaeology and oceanography respectively – I thus wrote a fic featuring –

A) Milo excitedly telling Izzy (because I figured it would be easier for their suits to have a way for them to talk to each other; I specified a bit later that they’re supposed to be fusions of Atlantean super-tech and regular diving suits of the era) that he was pretty sure the carvings on the boat meant that it was from one of Eric the Red’s expeditions – only to realize she wasn’t next to him anymore when he got no reply. Cue him looking around and spotting her staring at something else a little ways away, and very carefully going over to see what it was. Because while the suits were amazing super-science, they would only stay that way if he didn’t damage them, and Milo IS canonically a bit clumsy…

B) Milo arriving to see Izzy watching one of those superheated steam vents and what he thought were a bunch of odd red-tipped reeds growing in front of it – he remarked that they looked kind of like lipsticks, and Izzy agreed –

Before telling him that she was actually pretty sure they were animals! Milo was like “really???” but deferred to her greater knowledge, as he was no botanist and she was the expert on the ocean and what was contained within. Izzy laughed and said she was pretty sure she was too young to be an expert, but thanked him nonetheless.

C) Izzy noting that she didn’t think any life could survive down here in the cold and darkness, before noting that the heat of the vent was probably sustaining the lipstick worms (as that is what they were) – Milo agreed and said that the ocean always seemed to have a way to surprise you. Izzy heartily agreed and said that was why she loved it so much, gushing about how there was always something new to find because it was so vast, and how people would probably never discover everything lurking in the depths. Milo said that just meant there would always be something new to find –

Before going on himself about how he felt the same way about exploring the Atlantean ruins outside the city, and how the original civilization was so vast and sprawling, he wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to put together a full picture. But he was going to try, damn it, because he couldn’t think of a better way to spend his life. Izzy agreed that it all sounded exciting, and that she was keen to help him –

If only to see all the ocean life that had taken over the ruins. Because, you know, that’s her thing. XD

D) And the fic ending with Milo declaring that sounded good to him, and that he could write a paper on what lived there in the past, while Izzy could write one on what lived there in the present. Causing Izzy to laugh and say it sounded like they would be doing schoolwork – Milo jokingly corrected her with “we’ll be creating schoolwork,” declaring that children would read up on their discoveries in books one day. Izzy was all for that – and all for seeing the carvings on the ship.

*nods* I think Nattie will like that! Still gotta be revised, of course, but that can wait until next week.

Whew -- and that all took WAY longer than I'd hoped, so now I have to rush off to bed. *shakehead* Night all!

To the point where I'm not even mad that I missed the 10:04 PM timestamp, because I feel like this iteration of the day doesn't deserve it. I know part of the reason I'm so grumpy is because I'm PMSing and thus the hormones are making everything more irritating, but -- still. I felt like the entire day was conspiring against me and making it so I had almost no time to do the things I wanted to do. As my write-ups will likely show --

Work: Today wasn’t the greatest start to the work week, though I suppose I must give it that it wasn’t boring. My time in the office consisted of –

A) Doing the GL – and having to ask the people at our processing company if they could please send over the deposit report for the stuff they posted on Friday, as they’d forgotten to include it in their e-mail (to their credit they got back to me with it pretty fast)

B) Doing a tiny bit of roster maintenance by looking up some online obituaries

C) Doing the QC file for the latest round of thank-yous with my coworker (who wanted to get to grips with what one did with it in case she had to do it while I was out) and discovering, along with the usual set of pledge-payments-posted-as-one-time-gifts:

I. Multiple one-time gifts posted to the new Appeal which looked like overpayments on the previous Appeal year’s pledges...only I couldn’t verify that because none of the batches had been scanned in yet

II. A recurring gift posted to the wrong couple because the person who made it online happened to have the same last name and address (the system is also supposed to check the e-mail, but it clearly didn’t in this case)

We took the wrongly-attributed recurring gift out of the file, but decided to leave in the probably-overpayments in case it inspired some people to call in

D) Taking a call from a donor looking for a check she sent in as a payment on her pledge over a month ago that hadn’t cashed yet – and, after not finding it on her record or in the day’s mail, having to send a message to our processors to see if they had it. Which prompted a later discussion with my coworker about if they were still processing a lot of checks late, which was going to have a knock-on effect on pledge billings, and – yeah. My contact at the company claimed they were current when they got back to me at the end of the day, but I’m not sure how much I believe that. Especially since she said they’d just picked up some mail to sort through, so…

E) Eating a VERY late lunch because that phone call came in JUST as I was getting ready to send the edited QC file off and then get my sandwich, meaning I had to delay eating until I’d looked at her record, made the ticket, sent off the file, AND finished off the roster maintenance I was doing when the QC file came in

F) Cleaning a bunch of papers off my desk after lunch because I had too many irrelevant notes hanging around

G) Doing a bunch of reversals to fix the mistakes I found in the QC file

*sigh* Just – yeah. That phone call making me wonder if the processors are STILL lagging behind and having my lunch delayed really made me grumpy. And it did not help that the ride in was a trafficky mess, and the ride home saw me having to deal with assholes riding on my bumper. *grumbles* Maybe tomorrow will be a bit better...

Workout: Tonight’s bike ride took me to the 1-hour-8-minute mark in “FMV ZONE: TENEBRIS SOMNIA | Hallowstream 2026 🎃” by OXBox (or, at least, the boys of OXBox), and featured –

A) Mike, after confirming that pressing the remote button hadn’t done anything to the TV in the 3rd floor version of Iván’s apartment, sending Julia down to the 2nd floor version (dodging creepy double-faced mouth ladies the whole while) to check out the TV there – and discovering that it was indeed now on, and showing the symbols scattered about the floor in the order that Julia needed to walk on them to – well, activate whatever they activated! Andy got put on “writing down the symbols” duty while Mike reset the tiles (having accidentally walked on one to get to the TV), and after carefully observing the screen for a few rounds, the boys got Julia to depress the tiles in the right configuration. This did cause the TV to explode –

But it also opened up the bedroom door! Because this is a point-and-click adventure game, and that’s what they do. :p

( Julia finds creepy statues of herself and Iván in bed, meets Exposition Dude, and takes a terrible trip to a movie studio )

Writing: I can’t say I got any actual writing done because my mood and my limited computer time today conspired against that, but I at least finally got around to sending Nattie – the tumblr friend whose birthday is coming up November 11th – a message to ask what she wanted in regards to a birthday fic. Now we just have to wait for her to respond, and I can add it to the list of things to do.

Other: As it was nice weather this afternoon, my parents and I went into the backyard to play three rounds of beanbags – and despite a very poor start in the first game (which dragged on for a while – in fact, all of them dragged on longer than they should have), I ended up as the champ in the second and third. Dad, meanwhile, smoked Mom and I very thoroughly in the first game, then managed to hold onto second in the other two, while Mom just had a bit of a bad day overall (though having to run to the bathroom in the middle of one of the games might have had something to do with that). Final scores were me 3-W-W; Dad W-2-2; Mom 2-3-3. We’ll see what happens the next time we play – which will probably be Thursday, as it’s supposed to be colder the next couple of days.

Yeah -- not exactly my best day. So I am going to wrap it up here and get ready to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow will be better and I'll actually be able to start working on the Polyship Week fics... Night all!

Yeah, I can tell my PMS is ramping up because it is becoming increasingly hard to concentrate on the things I should be doing. Especially when it comes to the write-ups, as I find myself second-guessing everything I write. >( However, after much fucking around online, I have finally managed to wrangle myself and get the record of my day sorted:

Cleaning & Laundry: As usual, changing my sheets, getting my room cleaned up, and washing my blankets, bathrobe, and pajamas was a most-of-the-day affair –

A) I started right around 10:50 AM with stripping the sheets off my bed and dusting the shelves directly above/behind it

B) Then I finished making my bed with the new sheets and got my laundry into the washer shortly after noon

C) Then I started the rest of the dusting, though I didn’t even get through most of my shelves before I had to take an hour’s break for lunch around 1 PM

D) Immediately after lunch, I got the laundry into the dryer around 2 PM and resumed my dusting

E) I finished up the dusting and got everything out of the dryer around 3 PM

F) And finally I then Swiffered and vacuumed until about 3:30 PM

*whew* Fortunately, listening to more Seth Skorkowsky made the whole experience much more tolerable – I ended up putting on his playlist of videos about the Pulp Cthulhu adventure “The Two-Headed Serpent,” which was equal parts a review of the adventure (which sees your characters traveling all over the world trying to stop the machinations of three separate sub-cults of serpent-people, each of whom wants to destroy humanity and take back control over Earth in their own way and are fighting each other over it, with a final confrontation against whichever sub-cult comes out on top in a pocket dimension that contains the lost continent of Mu) and a “campaign diary” detailing what happened when he ran it for his players (there were many instances of things being blown up by the demolitions expert, and the sole woman in the group got temporarily turned into a serpent-person herself, which she was NOT happy about). Very fun stuff –

So fun, in fact, that when it became apparent that I would finish cleaning before finishing the final episode, I ended up spending a half-hour watching it once I was done vacuuming. ^^; I wanted to see how it ended! Sue me!

Writing: After finally finishing my cleaning (and the Pulp Cthulhu with a snack), I managed to finish off Victor’s section of the Epilogue to “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” this afternoon. The final bit of that covered –

A) Victor being startled out of his piano playing by Alice asking him “...another bad dream?” and jumping from his seat to see both her and Smiler watching him from the doorway – Alice promptly apologized for scaring him, and Victor assured her it was fine while righting the bench (and feeling a bit of deja-vu because, yes, this WAS rather like how he met Victoria). He then apologized for waking her and Smiler up, stating that he’d just had to reassure himself that his hands were fine – Smiler assured him it was okay, and that there were worse things to wake up to than his piano playing. *nods* Looking on the bright side as always!

( Victor bemoans a stubborn nightmare and gets plenty of sympathy from his friends...and makes a decision regarding sharing his music with them )

YouTube: Saturday Nights are Cafae Latte Nights around here, as you all well know by this point – tonight’s mini-marathon included –

A) “CaFae Tales: Orangey & Appley (or: the White Dove)” – another entry in the “CaFae Latte cast tell each other fairy tales, folk stories, and ancient myths” mini-series that pops up from time to time! And this one was very appropriate to pop up in the month of spooks and scares, let me tell you… The video featured –

I. JC manning the Cafae, telling Nicole that they considered Cinderella to be the best fairy tale and complaining about how Disney didn’t have the stepfamily’s eyes scratched out by birds (or mice, they weren’t picky) at the end like in “the original” (AKA the Grimm version, which is very much NOT the original but we’ll let it slide), when the Wulver (Scottish werewolfy dude who runs a fish-based restaurant) showed up and asked if he wanted to know what they were discussing. JC told him their complaint about the Disney version of Cinderella’s stepfamily not getting maimed by wildlife (and thus not suffering any major consequences), prompting the Wulver to sigh about the old tales and how Disney does not do them justice. Nicole admitted that she could do without the bodily mutilation that JC was discussing, but agreed that she did not care for how “safe” Hollywood was these days, given that art was supposed to be dangerous and get people to ask questions. The Wulver then revealed that there was a Scottish Cinderella-esque tale that featured both murder and punishment, if they were interested – JC was immediately like “:D Go on…”

( Scottish fairy tales are apparently dark as shit, if you were wondering )

B) And three CaFae Latte shorts (I was hoping to watch more, but I just didn’t have the time after the above write-up):

I. “CaFae Latte: 10/10 glare” – featuring Lindsey and Erik visiting Mark at his foster home, with Lindsey noting that Mark’s first emancipation hearing was coming up and asking how it was going – Mark replied “it’s going” and said that he really hoped his father just let it happen, but he didn’t know for sure...and that that was really the worst part. Erik sympathized, nothing that it was one thing when you knew exactly where your abuser was and what they were doing, and another when they were out somewhere in the wild, with you sure that they were going to show up sometime to ruin your day but not when. Lindsey noted that was “why we have protection charms” and confirmed that Mark had the one Nicole had gave him –

And then Erik added that it was also why they had “overprotective foster fathers, lurking in the corner when guests show up.” Hudson told him that he knew the pair had been highly recommended by the other adults in Mark’s life, and that they were redeemed in the eyes of most people and society, but they were both ex-criminals who did shady shit. And that he wouldn’t be doing his job as a foster father if he just left “the impressionable 15-year-old” unsupervised with them. Mark responded, “So your solution is to glare from the corner?” –

Prompting Hudson to go “Yup” and Erik to note that it was a ten-out-of-ten glare. Lindsey agreed that she certainly had no notes – Hudson thanked them and said that he’d had a lot of practice, as some of his former fosters had had bad visits with biological relatives. And he was fine kicking those sorts out if the CPS agent was useless. He then launched into a story about how his wife once purposely burned lunch to irritate the sensitive nose of a former foster’s abuser and get him to leave earlier – Erik went “that’s awesome” while Mark facepalmed about his foster dad now bonding with these new adults. XD

( Rethu gets called a really nasty (but fortunately bleeped-out) word, and we learn what Nancy’s been up to )

Tumblr: I didn’t get a chance to do anything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today other than keep up on my dash, but I did end up answering a question over on Valice Multiverse tonight – a follow-up to yesterday’s question about why more vampires don’t just try Dominating humans who see through the Masquerade into forgetting (and which my Malkavian!Alice answered with “not every vampire has Dominate, and learning it can be tricky given you have to find a vampire willing to teach you”), in fact! The anon came back this eve with “Counterpoint, why don’t Kindred who don’t or can’t do dominate just capture Kine who find out and take them to a Kindred who can?” –

To which Malk!Alice responded “because most Kindred are assholes.” XD Explaining more specifically that many vampires would see killing the human as the quickest and easiest solution, and that those would might be inclined to try out the anon’s plan would find themselves in the unpleasant position of having to owe the vampire who helped them a pretty fucking large favor. Especially if the Masquerade breach they had to cover up was their own. Throw in the risk of the mortal authorities getting involved if the capture doesn’t go well, and – yeah. Alice isn’t surprised a lot of Kindred don’t try the anon’s plan! *shakehead* It’s called the World Of Darkness for a reason, buddy.

*nods* Not too bad for a very distracted Saturday, I suppose. But now I very much have to go to bed, as it's starting to creep toward 2:30 AM. Tomorrow, not entirely sure what I'll be doing other than finishing off the tags on my latest entry into the Valicer Halloween Not-Incorrect Quotes and finishing up "They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman" -- depends on how focused I'm feeling! Though I am very much hoping Jon uploads "The Worst Wanderer" early enough for me to watch it with my workout again...keep your fingers crossed! Night all!

Who is apparently the big 88 today, appropriately enough. :) Once again, I intended to try and get the 10:04 PM timestamp, but got totally distracted when the time came trying to get everything else for this entry done. *shakehead* But I did read some Doc-related fic on my lunch break today, and wore one of my "Save The Clocktower" shirts during my workout, and watched my little bit of extra YouTube with my little Doc plushie. :) So that counts for something.

As for the rest of my day:

Work: While today was again mostly “I do the check scan, I do the morning credit card reports, I spend the rest of the day doing whatever roster maintenance I can eke out of the names in the obituaries and working on whatever puzzles I can find,” three things happened that spiced it up a little bit –

A) I spent a few minutes this morning following up with some of the people who’d I’d e-mailed a couple of weeks ago regarding overpayments on their pledges – only got one reply back (saying to keep it and move it to the next Appeal year, which I did before leaving), but it’s something!

B) I helped my coworker figure out how to best fix the record of a donor who called in about getting an “incorrect” thank-you letter – turned out the lady is one of those who has her bank send in automatic payments (the letter was for one of those, which had been accidentally posted as a one-time gift), AND had ended up with two pledges when she sent in a second pledge envelope indicating she’d be giving an extra $1,000 on top of her existing pledge...without actually including the money. Forcing us to put it on as a pledge and causing some confusion when my coworker called her back to confirm what was on her record. After some back and forth between her, me, and our supervisor, my coworker ended up removing the “duplicate” $1,000 pledge, upping the existing pledge, and making sure all the payments that she’d sent in for 2026 were applied to it. And then sending the lady a letter to explain what we’d done. :p We’ll see if all is well or if the lady calls back to complain again!

C) And I discovered that one of the toilets in the bathroom wasn’t working correctly when I flushed it after going after lunch – and it wouldn’t stop flushing. O.o I promptly put in a ticket with maintenance, only to learn later from some people in another office that the maintenance guys had already left for the day (given they come in a lot earlier than the rest of us). Fortunately said people were able to first shut the toilet down, then fix the problem, so the toilet did not KEEP perpetually flushing, but yikes. I feel we should have a “second shift” of maintenance guys!

So yeah – all that broke up the day a little, at least! Just gotta make it through Friday now!

Workout: Tonight’s stationary bike ride took me through the following –

A) The last twelve minutes of “DREAD: Giant Jenga Horror TTRPG! 🎃 | Hallowstream 2025” by Oxventure! The big finale of Milton (Mike) And Poppy (Jane) Attempt To Flee Evil Trees featured –

I. Jane and Mike both making their pulls to get the canoe off the wall (via Jane carefully coaxing out one of the center blocks near the top, and Mike easing out one of the side blocks near the bottom, leaving the whole tower ONCE AGAIN BALANCED ON TWO SINGLE CROSS-BLOCKS), leading to Milton and Poppy successfully taking down the canoe, finding oars, and getting into the water before disaster could strike! However, as they paddled their way into what Andy eventually revealed was a lake, they happened to look back and see the tree-man they were fleeing approach the cabin –

Which suddenly crunched in on itself and turned into a sort of horrible wood golem made up of the cabin and everything in it! Ready to destroy them with malice aforethought! Jane, however, was ready to kill the tension – first, by asking if the cabin was like a wood Transformer –

And then going, “Like an Optimus Pine, perhaps?” XD Mike groaned over the pun, Ellen cheered from off-screen, and Andy pretended to reward Jane for her clever wordplay by saying she only had to do one pull to row for her life while Mike had to do two. XD He quickly confirmed that no, they both had to make two pulls, but it was very funny to hear Mike go “oh come ON” about it. XD

( So which ending did we get? Both alive? Both dead? Sole survivor Poppy? Or sole survivor Milton? )

B) And the first 22 minutes of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 23 - The Highly Visible Man!” Because I didn’t get to watch it this past Sunday and it was time to catch up, damn it. This first half of The Adventures Of Useless Steve, Completing The Wasteland Survival Guide Edition, featured –

I. Useless Steve, fresh off the triumph of completing “Operation Anchorage,” heading to the nearby Super Duper Mart to discover where the food and medicine inside was kept – giving his new Chinese Stealth Armor (which makes him invisible whenever he crouches) an outing while he was at it! Because the Super Duper Mart was full of raiders who’d chosen to make it their base, don’t you know. His initial infiltration was successful, allowing him to creep along the aisles near the front of the store and hop over some counters to the fridge where all the food was stored –

But as he made his way toward the back and the pharmacy to find the medicine, he was spotted by some raiders. Not with their eyes, but with their ears, as the major weakness of the Chinese Stealth Suit is that it does nothing to muffle the noise you make while sneaking. And Steve being Steve, he makes a lot of noise indeed. *wince* Fortunately for Steve, Jon had prepared for this eventuality and had brought along the Backwater Rifle to shoot threats with –

And unfortunately for the raiders, they chose to run around to attack him through a “staff only” hallway and bunch up together at the end, allowing Steve to throw a couple of grenades at them and take them out that way. The Backwater Rifle took care of the rest, as planned, and Steve was able to crack open the pharmacy, find the medical supplies (most of which he took for himself) and a few Nuka-Quantums, then get out of there while only having to shoot one more person (an already-wounded raider from the first massacre) by taking advantage of the fact that enemies couldn’t hear him if he was far enough away from them (allowing him to sneak around the second wave of raiders by sticking to the edges of the store). *nods* A successful mission, and a good test run of the suit! Now Jon knows how to use it the most effectively.

( It’s Useless Steve! Running hither and yon over the Capital Wasteland for Moira in hopes of getting a really good perk! )

YouTube: I snuck in my YouTube Short BEFORE my writing today because the one I really wanted to watch was one that I’d lost for a while and I did not want to risk losing it again: “GRWM 1897 Victorian Spring Costume” by thesewloartist! Which was apparently made during lockdown, and featured Ivy talking about how having many of the events that she enjoyed going to canceled did have one pleasant side effect – namely, freeing her from the need to have an outside reason to dress up in one of her fancy historical outfits! Instead, she got to make up her own reasons to get fancy, such as celebrating cherry blossom season! Which featured the lovely yellow striped dress with its black geometric trim (the “bumblebee dress,” as Ivy called it) instead of something pink because Ivy felt the latter would have been a bit too literal. XD Her “getting ready” routine for it included –

A) A shockingly red corset over her standard white chemise

B) A pair of hip pads to fill out the skirt a bit

C) A very frilly corset cover

D) Two petticoats – the first white, the second black

E) A simple sleeveless pale-yellow-checked blouse of sorts

F) The lovely yellow-striped skirt

G) The lovely yellow-striped jacket with its big lapels and puffy sleeves of a manageable size (because, as per the title, this was an 1897 women’s outfit and thus adhered to that year’s fashion trends)

H) A black velvet ribbon around the waist

I) A black velvet hat secured with a gold-beads-tipped hatpin

J) And a black parasol to complete the look!

*nods* Very pretty – I’m glad I finally got the chance to watch this! :)

Writing: Tonight’s writing session saw me start the Epilogue of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman!” Which shall be in three parts, one for each of our heroes. I started with Alice this eve, and covered –

A) Alice finishing up telling a story to the Houndsditch children involving her escaping one of Hatter’s factories with a mysterious prize and stealing away into the dark before she could get caught by any of his Eyepots! The children were very happy with it, applauding and cheering – Elsie admitted that she’d thought for sure that Alice was going to get caught and torn to pieces during the telling (Alice allowed that it had been a VERY near thing, but fortunately she’d gotten a lot sneakier as of late – and good at taking out Madcaps), while Reggie commented that he liked how she’d described one Madcap’s head coming clean off. June warned him not to try taking anyone’s head off himself – Alice backed her up by pointing out Madcap necks were very thin, so it was easier with them. XD She also added it was just kind of rude in general –

Prompting the Queen of Hearts to add “but effective,” because of course she would. Alice told her to shush. XD

B) June telling the children that that was enough story time for now, and to clean up their toys and go get washed up for lunch – the kids grumbled, but got to work. Alice offered her services to June if she needed them, and June admitted she’d appreciate the extra hand getting all the soup into bowls, as there were a lot of mouths to feed. They thus headed together toward the kitchen, with Alice asking if June was having any trouble keeping control of the place, and June assuring her that the children and her mostly got on, and the neighbors were still helping out a lot (she didn’t think she’d have to pay for a laundry service for a little while yet) –

Before noting that Alice had just told a very interesting story about sneaking into one of Hatter’s factories to steal blueprints and a list of people that he wanted to experiment on. (Hatter protested that it was a slanderous story, whining that he hadn’t done anything to anyone in months and had just spent some time in pieces himself – Alice responded that, unfortunately, he was the one guy who owned factories in Wonderland, and that he would have to just consider it part of his penance for trying to kill her earlier). A story that reminded her of one she’d read in the Doskvol Illustrated lately, about Silvestri’s Metal Shapers hiring a team of thieves to steal some of Wilson’s Boilers And Metalworking’s leviathan ship and cab company contracts – thieves who knocked two guards senseless and managed to escape despite everyone in the factory looking for them. Alice tried to play it cool, going “does it now?” –

Only for June to pull the “I’m not stupid, don’t make me think you are” routine on her, noting she’d seen Alice murder a guy, so she could admit to a robbery. XD Alice allowed that was a fair argument and confirmed that June wasn’t about to call the Bluecoats on her – June assured her that she didn’t want to get into the middle of it (she had too much to do...and had once seen Alice murder a guy), she just wanted to know why she’d done it. I left off with Alice explaining about the union rep list and how the workers were the one to hire her and her friends, not Silvestri – tomorrow, we’ll get into how the contracts ended up in Silvestri’s hands, and maybe start the Victor section! We’ll see how everything goes. *nods*

*whew* Productive day, at least! Though it has caused me to stay up later than I'd intended, so I'd better get to bed. Night all!

I fear the PMS might be starting to poke at me again -- given when I last got my period, it's a distinct possibility. Though it might just have been me worrying if I could get everything I wanted to get done, done tonight -- I was feeling a little squeezed free-time-wise in spots! But I did accomplish everything I hoped to accomplish, and a bit more besides:

Work: Today was honestly one of the dullest days at the office yet – I did the morning check scan and credit card reports, sent an e-mail to a pair of donors who had recently made a new pledge that I was pretty sure was meant as an update on their old one, then spent the rest of the day working on what obituaries I had left and doing various puzzles to keep myself occupied. Most exciting thing that happened was learning that the heat was officially on and thus I didn’t need to rely so much on my little heater to keep warm. *shrug* We’ll see if tomorrow is any more exciting! I doubt it, but one never truly knows.

Workout: Pedaled my way through another 36-odd minutes of “DREAD: Giant Jenga Horror TTRPG! 🎃 | Hallowstream 2025” by Oxventure this eve – this particular section of Milton (Mike), Zoey (Ellen), And Poppy (Jane) Discover Shit Is Going Down included –

A) Poppy and Milton, upon seeing Zoey trying to keep Sam being dragged away by some mysterious monster, refusing to help because they thought it was another prank, leading Andy to tell Ellen she would have to make two pulls for Zoey to keep a hold on her friend. Ellen went up to the very rickety Jenga tower and did a lot of tapping and poking around, trying to find a good block to pull –

But after a bit of rather nerve-wracking wobbling, she decided to abort mission and declare that Zoey just couldn’t hold on. Sam was thus dragged into the foliage, where his terrified screaming was abruptly cut off by a horrible wet crunching sound. *wince* I mean, dude, if you hadn’t smashed up the phone box so everyone could have just called for help…

B) The monster emerging from the bushes as a vague, ill-defined but definitely horrible shape, and Andy calling for everyone who wanted to run away successfully to make a pull. Jane went up to the tower and did her best to find a block, but after some poking resulting in more worrying sways, she decided to abort mission, declaring that Poppy would stand her ground with her tire iron.

...cue both Mike and Ellen making shockingly easy pulls from the tower, leading to Milton and Zoey absolutely booking it away and leaving Poppy there on her own. XD Jane was a little put out by this, as you might expect!

( Some fucking miracle pulls are made, but gravity finally gets the better of someone )

Writing: I actually got two writing-related things done tonight, to my own surprise –

A) First, I added another page to Chapter 2 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” after finishing the Dread write-up above! This one finished up Victor’s mini-POV section, and included:

I. Victor hurrying out of the peep show booth and meeting Chastity in the hall, offering her his arm on reflex when she asked “shall we?” He confirmed who she was as he led her to the “pleasure palace,” babbling out that he’d heard some “really great things” about her – Chastity just grinned and told him he didn’t know the half of it, running her nails up his arm as she assured him her name was “entirely ironic.” Poor Victor ended up extremely flustered, as you might guess! XD

( Victor enters the pleasure palace – and nearly gets got by a katana before Chastity gets got by her own worst nightmare )

B) And second, I added the first Christmas fic request to my “Christmas Drabbles” doc, courtesy of my friend Squid surprising me with it when I met up with them for our nightly online chat. They’d just had the thought that day, and figured they might as well tell me since they know I like to collect these things early. *nods* It DOES make life easier to get as many ideas as possible before the season starts Looming In Earnest… Anyway, their request was something featuring their OC Annabella and her boyfriend Skelter from VTMB – we’ll see what I can come up with closer to the holiday season!

Tumblr: I was a busy beaver over here tonight, let me tell you – getting stuff done on BOTH my blogs for a change –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I sorted out my queue for the rest of the week! Which included:

A) Some art by chenanigans-draws of their Blades In The Dark party’s Leech Possum looking quite excited in front of a giant explosion of ghosts, drawn for their friend Hannah’s birthday, for Wednesday

B) My “Valicer In The Dark: The Start Of A Recurring Bit” post, detailing how I worked in how Smiler came to start introducing the Three Pillars to people as “Alice is the Cutter, Victor is the Whisper, and I’m the Slide and the Leech,” for Thursday

C) My “Valicer In The Dark: A Thought About Why Smiler Is The Way They Are” post, detailing all the trauma behind that version of Smiler’s smile, for Friday

D) And a thread featuring the amazing monster-themed music video for “Backstreet’s Back” from the Backstreet Boys, with the original video having been posted by bebemoon and an addition with some history on how the video came to be from thessalian (did you know that the Boys’ label did not want them to make the video? They thought it would be too expensive and weird. The Boys had to pay the director, Joseph Khan, themselves to make it – and then beat the reimbursement out of the label despite the video becoming an instant fucking classic) for Song Saturday!

So I am set for the rest of the week on this tumblr, w000~

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anonymous ask to throw into my queue for tomorrow – a bit of a naughty one, so I will put it behind a cut for the sex-repulsed among you:

( Naughty anon ahead )

So yeah – that got tossed in the queue, and all is now well. Until the next time I get a weird ask. :P

YouTube: Despite having a rather busy night, I managed to sneak in a quick little video after finishing my writing and my tumblr queues – “Arts & Culture in Quarantine: Getting Dressed in 1860 for Men” by Historic Richmond Town! A two-minute-long video narrated by one Sarah Schackne about how, while it’s easier to see the changes in women’s fashion over the years, men’s fashion changed dramatically throughout the decades of the Victorian Era too, and showing off how a guy in 1860’s America might have dressed with the help of model Erik Creekmore! In order, we had –

A) The underwear – Sarah mentioned that “back-buckle drawers of muslin, linen, or cotton were a common undergarment for both me and women” during this time, and that shirts were actually considered undergarments during this time! Erik himself was sporting a “pleated bib front” shirt – basically your standard white button-down with a rectangle of pleats on the chest like a bib.

B) The trousers and cravat – Erik sported a pair of “indigo-dyed cotton jean” trousers, hitched high with suspenders as that was the fashion at the time, and a thin checked silk necktie whose color I would describe as primarily “mustard”

C) The waistcoat – which Sarah called a “nearly forgotten historical remnant,” which made me raise an eyebrow because I’m pretty sure they’re NOT. Anyway, they were a very important part of a men’s outfit because they were the first “outer” layer on the torso – shirt’s an undergarment, remember? Erik’s was a white-and-grey-checked “summerweight linen” one, which he apparently made himself! Good for him.

D) And the coat and hat – which was clearly from a different photoshoot as Erik was wearing an entirely different waistcoat (this one red) in the picture. XD His coat was a “summerweight linen paletot” in a light creamy-yellow color (apparently a very popular piece, as per Sarah), and his hat a “wide-brimmed beehive hat” (all it really needed was the veil).

*nods* Nice! Good to find something on men’s fashion for a change – even if I wish the video had been more of an actual video rather than someone narrating over still images. But, as per the title, it was made back in 2020, so maybe still images was all Sarah could get from Erik. *shrug* I’ll take what I can get!

Other: As it was another reasonably-nice day, we did indeed decamp to the backyard this afternoon to play another three rounds of beanbags – and I’m pleased to say that things were a little more egalitarian today than yesterday, with everybody winning a game! :D Though I ended up the champ because I continued my “coming second” streak from yesterday until taking the third round. :p But yeah, final scores were me 2-2-W; Dad W-3-2; Mom 3-W-3. Dunno when we’ll next be able to play, but I will update you when we do!

*nods* There we are! And I've even wrapped up this entry before midnight, shock and horror. :p I'm off to bed -- we'll see if I'm a little less wound up tomorrow! Night all!

Yeah, it was in the 30s this morning, and while it warmed up to the mid-50s this afternoon, it never got really warm-warm. I not only spent the day in my soft sweatpants and one of my warmer hoodies, I ALSO ended up wrapping myself up in my big purple blanket a couple of times to keep even warmer. AND broke out the hair dryer for the first time this fall! The cold times are a'coming, and with them the need to be bundled up. *nods seriously*

As for the rest of my day -- well, it was actually pretty good! I got most of what I wanted to get done, done, with very little fuss. :) Let me tell you about it:

Tumblr: It was another day where nothing much happened on Valice Multiverse, but I’m pleased to report that I was quite productive on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this morning! My pre-lunch plunge into my Drafts saw me –

A) Finish up my draft of “Valicer In The Dark: A Thought About Why Smiler Is The Way They Are” so it was ready for posting! Which involved:

I. Doing one final editing pass over the main text, tweaking some wording here and there and expanding out Reason Four of Why Smiler Is Like That – needs to be the Perfect Advocate to keep their Advocate family – a little bit with an example of Smiler sneaking off somewhere private to deal with sad emotions without “bothering others” at the end of the “raid on the Sanctuary” story

II. And adding the tags, which discussed how I’d had a lot of these thoughts separately while thinking about stories that would directly relate to Smiler’s trauma – the aforementioned “raid on the Sanctuary” and the “Smiler gets hypothermia” story – but it was working on “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” that inspired me to put them all together; how while Smiler being a person who wants to make others happier is a genuine part of their personality, a lot of the “looking on the bright side no matter what” stuff is a result of them feeling that’s how they HAVE to act; and how living with Victor and Alice should help them deal with some of this – even if it takes a while. :p

So yeah, that is ready to go – think I’ll pair it with the “start of a recurring bit” VITD post I finished up a little bit ago and throw that and some BITD art I’ve got bumming around in my Drafts into this week’s queue. :)

B) Write up a second scene for my latest reblog on the “Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes, Halloween Edition” post! Though it did take me two tries:

I. My first attempt at the scene featured Smiler, Alice, and Victor shopping together, and Smiler seeing a pile of pumpkins and telling their partner and queerplatonic bestie that they should do jack-o-lanterns that year. With Alice commenting “isn’t that really an American thing?” and Smiler going, “well, if you want to go get some turnips to carve to make it more British…” XD However, while writing it up, I started wondering just how easy it was to actually GET a pumpkin in the UK. So I looked it up...and after seeing that it was actually pretty simple, with plenty of pumpkin patches growing ones specifically for people to get at Halloween (though apparently some nasty drought this year means the pumpkins are small and sparse :( ), I started wondering if Alice would consider making a pumpkin-based jack-o-lantern to be particularly “American.” Like, that tradition did start here, but by the look of things at least a few other countries have picked it up! And then I remembered that that, when I did a post covering my Halloween-related Valicer headcanons a few years back, I specifically talked about the kind of jack-o-lanterns the trio likes to do, and – well. I naturally decided the scene didn’t actually make sense with my established universe and dropped it.

II. Accordingly, my second attempt at the scene featured Smiler, Alice, and Victor mid-jack-o-lantern creation, with everyone drawing on their chosen pumpkins! Smiler was of course doing a silly smiley face, while Alice was drawing a simplified version of Cheshire –

And Victor was drawing a very elaborate scene of a witch and some bats flying over a graveyard with skeleton hands coming out of the graves. Causing Alice, when she glanced over and noticed this, to gently remind him that they would need to be able to carve out the design with a knife later. XD Victor blushed and apologized, admitting he’d just gotten caught up in the sketching, while Smiler suggested that maybe they could do the design via scraping instead of fully cutting through the pumpkin – Alice allowed that was a thought, but said it would likely still take ages. Victor said he could drop the skeleton hands (he’d just added them for interesting), and Alice suggested he simplify the graveyard a bit too, so they could focus largely on the witch and bats. Victor agreed and got something to wipe some of the ink off the pumpkin –

While Smiler gave Alice a little nudge and noted it was lucky they were doing the American thing and using pumpkins rather than the British thing and using turnips. XD What, I liked the joke and wanted to keep it!

So yeah – I now have my minimum required Two New Scenes for this particular reblog! Still have to finish up the tags on the post, but I can do that next weekend. :)

Halloween Decorating: My Mom and I did indeed go out and decorate the front of the house for Halloween after lunch, and I’m happy to report that it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it might – mostly because I keep forgetting we don’t have that many decorations. And we actually had less than usual this year, because we finally got rid of the remaining big tablecloth ghosts that we made a few years ago – they were looking manky, and the lights inside of them haven’t worked properly in a while, so we ended up tossing them in the garbage. *shrug* They had a good run! But we put up all the rest of it, which included –

A) Stringing our black “creepy cloth” and white cheesecloth spiderweb all over the front of the porch (though sadly we only had one spider to stick in the web this time – don’t know what happened to the others)

B) Hanging our small ghosts, witch ghosts, skeletons, and bats from the top of the porch roof, under the mailbox, and under the flagpole on the fair side of the porch (one small ghost actually went on the lamppost farther out in the yard because I felt it needed something – just hoping it doesn’t blow away!)

C) Scattering some tiny plush pumpkins in the plants on either side of the front steps (because we had them and wanted to put them somewhere)

D) And – in a new thing this year – stringing up some solar-powered lights my Mom got last year all over the porch! She intended to use them to light up her gnome house in the back yard, but they never worked properly because the solar panel that powered the lights never got enough sun back there. *shrug* We’ll see if they work properly on the front of the house!

So yeah – that’s all sorted, and it only took us like forty minutes, from 1:30 PM to 2:10 PM. :) Huzzah!

Fallout: New Vegas: As Halloween decorating went so quickly, I was indeed able to visit the Mojave and continue the adventures of Courier Victor and ED-E today! Which consisted mostly of a game of cards, a little bit of exploring and foraging, and the discovery that things were about get a lot darker very soon… Let me tell you about it –

A) I picked up with Victor still hanging out in the Mojave Express office/Nash residence, getting ready to leave Primm now that he’d installed a new (very-slow-moving) sheriff and had done some trading with Johnson Nash to pick up some fresh supplies (including two bottles of precious purified water). However, Victor wasn’t ready to leave just yet, as he wanted to do one more thing while he was in town –

Namely, challenge Johnson to a game of Caravan! Because it had been a while since I played that mini-game and I wanted to give it another shot. Victor thus took a moment to read up on the rules again in his Pip-Boy (short version: you’re trying to make stacks of cards with values between 21 and 27; each player has three stacks, and whoever has the most stacks of the highest values wins; when adding cards to your stack, you must either play a card of the same suit as the original card, or in ascending or descending order from the first two cards – for example, if the first card is the 2 of Hearts, and the second the 4 of Clubs, you can play either Hearts or cards higher than a 4 on that stack; you can also use your turn to discard bad cards from your hand; face cards and Jokers have special properties that I will discuss later), then waited another moment for Johnson to finish sweeping his floor:



Not quite as important as not interrupting a blacksmith with a heavy hammer at his work, but it still felt polite, you know? Plus it just tickles me that the Nashes have a pink broom. :p Anyway, once Johnson was done, Victor caught up to him by the front desk again and asked if he was up for a hand – Johnson responded with a friendly “You think you have what it takes, kid?” –

And into the Caravan mini-game screen they went! Johnson offered up an initial ante of 115 (made up partially of what looked like Legion Denarii, surprisingly – didn’t think they’d have that in Primm!) – I had Victor match it, then randomized his deck for him before starting the game proper. Here’s how it went:

( I still cannot play Caravan. Also Victor discovers a lot of white horse nettle, an old railyard, and a coyote den )

Workout: Well, sadly, Jon was late uploading this week’s “Worst Wanderer” episode (by over an hour! It apparently didn’t go up until like 7:02 PM my time!), so I was forced to push The Continuing Adventures Of Useless Steve off til Friday, since that’s when I’ll have the time to watch it. Meh. Tonight’s pedal session instead took me through –

A) “Silent Hill: Townfall | Fully Ramblomatic” by Second Wind! AKA the video I watched to give Jon a seven-minute “grace period” of sorts to upload the video in. :p This video saw Yahtzee review the latest in the Silent Hill series – which does not actually take place in Silent Hill The Town, but rather St. Amelia, a village on a remote Scottish island that our hero, Simon Ordell (a very nerdy black man) washes up on in order to Go Through The Horrors. Yahtzee’s thoughts on the game included:

I. He’s not sure he enjoys the fact that the Silent Hill franchise has chosen to go international with the latest games – he’s well aware that there’s really only so much one can do with Silent Hill The Town, of course, but he feels like that by making Silent Hill more of a “vibe” a place can have, the franchise is in danger of losing its identity as a series (citing how Assassin’s Creed used to be about two very specific groups in Renaissance Europe and is now just “good guys vs bad guys anywhere”)

( Semi-spoilery stuff ahead – and a decent amount of ranting by Yahtzee )

B) And the first 24 minutes of “DREAD: Giant Jenga Horror TTRPG! 🎃 | Hallowstream 2025” by Oxventure! The return of everyone’s favorite block-based tabletop horror game to Hallowstream saw Andy take the GM’s seat this time around, and featured Mike in the role of nervous nerd Milton, Ellen as slacker Zoey, and Jane as rich girl Poppy! The trio of PCs were all students at Greggs High School (a joking reference to Brad’s infamous jacket that kept leading to him getting misnamed in the original Dread episode) on fall break, and had all found themselves at a remote cabin in the woods owned by the family of one of Poppy’s rich friends, Bill Schnarr, who had invited all of them up for a weekend of debauchery after stealing the key to the bar from his parents. Poppy had driven Bill, her buddy Kevin Pearson, his girlfriend Sara Yu, and Milton up there, while poor Zoey had had to hitchhike – we’ll see if that becomes relevant at any point in the future. :p Anyway, the group did some serious partying, and all seemed like it would be well for a while –

And then, as the game proper began, Zoey found Kevin dead in the basement den, with an extremely drunk Poppy next to him and Bill and Sarah nowhere to be found. Her scream brought Milton running and woke Poppy, and the trio were faced with figuring out who killed Kevin and where their other friends were – hopefully without dying themselves. So far, the beginning of the stream has featured –

I. Andy introducing the giant Jenga block tower that served as the centerpiece of the game’s action as if it was the star of the show (and to be fair, it had a table all itself surrounded by dramatic mood lighting), perfectly describing how it was set up and whose trademark it could be purchased under, causing Mike to note that he felt he should applaud and Jane to respond to Andy’s prompt for them to introduce themselves with “the supporting cast of non-blocks.” XD

II. Andy reiterating all the mechanics of Dread, and Jane suddenly finding herself having to come to grips with the whole “if you knock the tower over, your character dies” mechanic, noting that she’d known about it intellectually, but now that she was faced with it actually happening…

( Milton acts like the world’s most stereotypical nerd, Zoey makes ridiculous claims, and Poppy worries about her muddy shoes )

*nods* Not too bad -- little sad about no "Worst Wanderer" tonight, but I'm happy about the Giant Jenga Dread Episode -- looks to be a fun ride. :) And now I have to hit the sheets, because tomorrow is a work day -- though I am going in a bit late so Mom and I can get in some early voting. *nods* Very important! Night all!

Like yesterday, it wasn't the best, nor was it the worst -- though it was a lot wetter, as we had some pretty heavy rain today. And we're due some thunderstorms overnight, apparently, which will be fun. *sigh* Anyway, let me give you the write-up:

Work: My final day in the office this week unfortunately ended up dragging on for a while, with my time spent –

A) Doing the GL – which did not take very long, as not much actually got posted yesterday

B) Taking one credit card payment call from a regular donor (one of those who prefers to call in their own payments rather than do automatic)

C) Noodling around with the obituaries and going through more people who all shared the same last name (or occasionally full name) to clean up any duplicates and deceased I could find

D) Working my way through more puzzles, including another crossword, Kubok 16, and a crypto-quip

Yeah, it was fairly boring – but, as I will always say, I will take “boring” over “stressed!” And it was Boss’s Day, which prompted my coworker to bring in cupcakes, so I got a cupcake with my lunch. :) So that was all right then. Still, glad it’s the weekend once more!

Workout: My final stationary bike ride of the week saw me pedal my way through a couple of videos by good old Seth Skorkowsky (who I first discovered during last Saturday’s cleaning session) – namely –

A) “Call of Cthulhu: Part 1 – Introduction!” The first in a series he did talking about the Seventh Edition of Call of Cthulhu, one of his favorite RPGs, which involved him going through all the various bits and bobs to explain why it’s a favorite. This entry was, as the title said, the introduction to the whole series, and featured:

I. Seth explaining what CoC actually is, roleplaying-game-wise – basically, instead of being a game focused on combat and adventure, with characters’ roles defined by classes and advancement happening via gaining enough experience points to level up and get more abilities and HP and whatnot – like in Dungeons & Dragons – Call of Cthulhu focuses on horror and investigation, with characters having occupations that give them a foundational basis in a few skills and advancement happening by simply using skills enough to get better at them (there is NO gaining more HP in a game of CoC – your investigators remain very squishy throughout!) Everybody is human, and nobody becomes a super-powerful demigod after a certain amount of time – it’s all very focused on “you are an ordinary person uncovering dark secrets about the world and trying to stop other people using those dark secrets to do terrible things, if at all possible. This is going to be bad for your health and sanity, but gosh darn it you’re going to try.” XD Though Seth made sure to specify that CoC was not better than D&D – rather, it was an entirely different animal and should be treated as such.

( Seth gives players some touchstones to check out, gushes about backward compatibility, and busts a few myths )

B) And “Call of Cthulhu: Edge of Darkness - RPG Review!” A review of one of CoC’s classic “beginner” modules – or, rather, a RE-review of it, because apparently Seth reviewed this already ages ago but the audio quality in THAT video was so shitty he felt he needed to do an updated re-release. Also the old one was made before Jack The NPC existed and thus didn’t have his amusing asides about what things looked like from the player character’s perspective. :p Anyway, this is a classic from the Fifth and Sixth Editions of the game (Seth was very disappointed that it wasn’t part of the Seventh Edition from the start, though fortunately Chaosium, publishers of the game, eventually released a Seventh Edition version), ideal for a Keeper looking for an easy one-shot adventure that doesn’t require the player characters to have specific professions or to have any experience with the Mythos or even have met before the game starts. The premise is that the PCs are called to the bedside of a dying friend (in Jack’s case – *checks card* – Rupert) who bequeaths upon them a little cabin in the woods – with two main rooms, an attic, and a basement – and asks them to fulfill a final request. Said request apparently being “please take care of this horrible lurker creature that keeps raising zombies in the area.” XD Seth didn’t go into TOO much detail about what the module contained, but did mention that the big climax of the adventure is the investigators having to perform a dark ritual to banish the Lurker – which involved some of them standing in a magic circle and reciting a specific chant over and over again for two solid hours while the Lurker did whatever it could to stop them (generally, sending zombies their way). Which Seth admitted was fantastic from a story perspective –

But didn’t exactly make for great gameplay, as any person playing an investigator doing the chant might feel left out because, well, their character is too busy chanting. So Seth revealed a few things he’d done to spice things up and make sure everybody got a chance to roll and have some fun, such as:

I. Having all the chanting players recite the chant in real life at the very beginning of the ceremony, then having someone make a Throw roll to toss some mystical powder in the nearby fireplace to continue the ceremony – if they made it, great; if they didn’t, the players would simply have to try again until someone did (Jack noted it took his party three tries)

II. Having the chanting players roll Constitution every so often to see how their characters were doing – if they were getting a dry mouth, coughing from the smoke in the room, etc – in lieu of having the PLAYERS chant for two solid hours. XD The rules specified that any individual chanter could stop for a moment so long as SOMEONE was keeping up, so such rolls would help show who might need a break for a second before taking up the chant again. Of course, if all three players failed the roll, then the chant was broken and shit might go down…

III. Allowing the Lurker’s zombies into the house to disrupt things (because the Lurker itself couldn’t get in – the cabin was very conveniently warded against it), giving the lookout players something to do – namely, stop the zombies from making a mess of the ritual

IV. And customizing the Lurker’s final gambit – appearing as an attractive or alluring person right before being banished – so that it appeared as whoever was most important to the character as per their sheet (Jack noted that they lost one character that way – I presume they got too close to the Lurker)

*nods* Nice! Certainly makes for a nice dynamic climax. :) Seth wrapped things up by stating it was an excellent, classic adventure with just a few flaws (like a lack of a map and artwork – he told aspiring Keepers to draw what they thought the glyphs around the doorway to the cabin should look like because the players WOULD ask), and noting that, if you wanted to run this as just the first adventure in an ongoing campaign, it gave the characters a lot to work with – not only more story hooks (like potentially dealing with a cult that might come for a box on the premises), but a potential base of operations in the cabin! Place came pre-warded, after all. :P Good stuff! I like listening to Seth talk CoC – he obviously knows what he’s doing when it comes to running it!

Writing: Wrote up another page on Chapter 5 of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” after Game Night (Sequence this time – or, rather, its bootleg variant YMBNRHHF, which Mom picked up in a store a little while back not realizing it was the same thing; the last two games ran REALLY long, which was annoying, but I did end up the champ, winning three games to Mom and Dad’s two each) – tonight’s session covered –

A) Smiler attempting to continue arguing that they were the “weak link” in the score by pointing out their flash bomb hadn’t worked nearly as well as they had hoped – only for Victor to retort that neither he nor Alice would have been able to make it at all and that it had still distracted the guard! He then added that their Eyeblind powder had worked just fine – which, of course, they well knew, given the person it had worked on was them. Which segued into him apologizing again for not pinning the flailing guard’s arms, and Smiler gently poking him and saying that they knew he’d just been trying to help and they should have blown the powder earlier –

While also quietly noting just how pink around the ears Victor was getting about Alice being practically in his lap (as she’d had to lean over him to silence Smiler earlier). Yes, someone is getting it into their head that they might want to play matchmaker later… :P

( Smiler is confronted with the fact that they’re the ones responsible for there BEING a score in the first place and is forced to admit that they did okay, actually )

YouTube: Snuck in another Baldur’s Gate III-themed YouTube Short after my writing was done – “Bard class is terrifying in Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream! Featuring how the various companions react after a Bard Tav manages to successfully convince Yurgir – a powerful devil found in Act 2, who is trapped in a contract with everyone’s favorite asshole cambion Raphael, and who is normally a boss fight – to kill himself in order to complete said contract and thus be free of it (basically, the contract is in the form of a song, and he has to kill anyone who has heard him sing it; a Bard Tav has special dialogue informing him that the problem is YURGIR HIMSELF has heard it, meaning...yeah). In order, we had –

A) Gale proudly but nervously commenting, “I see the art of eloquence is alive and well!” before adding, “I’m awed, impressed, and a little bit scared of you right now.” XD

B) Karlach staring at Yurgir’s corpse and going, “Damn...now there’s something I never thought I’d see. Brutal.”

C) A stunned Wyll exclaiming, “Balduran’s beard! What a performance! You put the Five Flagons to shame!”

D) A coolly-impressed Lae’zel stating, “An acceptable conclusion” – before adding, “But it is a shame I won’t know the pleasure of executing a war devil. Well – there is always next time.”

E) Shadowheart noting, “That silver tongue of yours is dangerous” – before adding with a smile, “Bravo! I can’t believe you actually pulled that off!”

F) And Astarion – who, at this point in the game, almost certainly has a contract of his own with Raphael which goes “kill Yurgir and I’ll tell you what the scars Cazador carved into your back actually say” – wondering with an impressed-but-nervous expression, “Does...does that count as us killing him? That had better count.” XD Don’t worry, Astarion, it does indeed count.

Fun! I’m looking forward to reaching that point in the game myself and having Smiler attempt the check. Just hope they make it – they should be persuasive enough by that point, right? :P

And there you have it! And now it is time for me to head to bed. Tomorrow -- well. The weather's supposed to be pretty icky, but Mom said we may try to decorate for Halloween if it's not too bad in the afternoon. So while I'd LIKE to do some gaming, I won't commit to a game just yet. Instead, I will just state that I'd like to get some work done on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tumblr drafts and catch up some more on my CaFae Latte shorts. *nods* Those two items feel achievable no matter what happens. Night all!

Well, outside -- it was shockingly cold in my office today, to the point where I had to warm myself up with my little heater! O.o I don't know HOW it stayed so cold in that building with the temperature outside getting up to 81F, but it did. At least it warmed up a little when I opened my window a bit more... Still, good reminder to always bring a sweater to the office around this time of year! *shakehead* But enough about the brief return of summer -- here's how my day went:

Work: It turned out to be a pretty quiet, chill day at work overall, I’m pleased to say – my time in the office was spent –

A) Doing the usual check scan and morning credit card reports

B) Helping my supervisor fold up a bunch of little programs for the donor appreciation thing that’s happening this weekend – between her, my coworker, and me, we folded up about 255 of ‘em

C) Tooling around with the obituaries, which led to me going through all the people who had one particular last name and cleaning up any other duplicates and deceased donors that I could find (of which there were a few)

D) Answering an e-mail my supervisor sent to me from a donor asking for another link he could use to update his credit card on his pledge by resending him his last payment confirmation e-mail via our credit card processors’ site, then sending a follow-up to let him know if the link in THAT one didn’t work, to call our office so we could do it over the phone (the guy didn’t e-mail or call back, so I’m HOPING the link in the confirmation e-mail worked)

E) And doing a last-minute reversal to change someone’s overpayment to an early one-time gift to the next appeal after getting confirmation from the donor (who was very nice about it)

*nods* Yeah, that’s not a bad day at work at all. And I still found the time to finish my calendar puzzle page, plus a crossword, Boggle game, and a “cryptoquote” (an encrypted quote from a famous figure – Dolly Parton in this case) from one of my stolen newspaper pages. :p We’ll see if tomorrow is similarly chill or not!

Workout: Pedaled my way through another 38-or-so minutes of “DREAD: A Jenga Horror RPG 🎃 | Oxventure's One-Shot Wonder | Hallowstream 2022” tonight – this bit of The Horrible Adventures Of Killian (Andy), Madison (Ellen), and Brad (Mike) Trying Not To Get Werewolfed featured –

A) The gang deciding to press on down the river, as it really felt like they needed to keep going to avoid the wolves (and attempt to save Eric), with Brad getting in the front of the boat to hold the flashlight and point out dangers ahead (and live his Titanic dreams once more), Killian taking the oar on the side (very grumpily, as he’d assumed Brad would help out with this bit), and Madison taking the rear to help steer (she TRIED to say that she would also be shining her flashlight to check out for any danger behind them, but Luke overruled her – which I felt was a bit unfair, as it HAD been established that they had two flashlights). Their start of their journey into the rapids was marked by two notable events:

I. Brad spotting what looked like a large, dark shape coming down from the opposite bank and slipping into the water (oh dear)

II. Eric gasping and then going limp on the bottom of the raft – Madison checked him for a pulse, and while she found one, it was very thin; she promptly began watching him QUITE closely, trying to coax him back to consciousness while also keeping her hatchet at hand juuuust in case. :P

B) The gang braving the first section of the rapids – which required four block pulls from the Jenga tower, one for each team member and one for Eric. With Luke confirming that, if someone knocked over the tower while pulling for Eric, their character would still die. Madison and Brad promptly started wondering if they should ditch the almost-dead weight, while Killian reminded them that Eric was still a human being, and even if he did die, he deserved a proper burial – Brad tried to argue that dumping him out of the raft was “burial at sea,” but Killian was not having it. They owed it to the guy’s wife to try their best, damn it! Luke took the opportunity to remind Mike and Ellen that their characters didn’t have to work as a group if they didn’t want to… :p However, in the end, Madison and Brad were persuaded by Killian to leave Eric be for now, and everyone successfully pulled their blocks (with Andy pulling for Eric, as he felt that was only fair – it was his character making them take him along, after all) and got through the initial rapids. Yay!

( We have our first loss of life, and the decision to stand and fight )

Writing: Added another page to Chapter 2 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” this eve – this one covering –

A) Hatter, in response to Alice thinking about how they were going to get the other dancer out of the way, noting that the peep show had “a private room for private affairs” – sure, it was generally used for sex, not murder, but he was sure it could be repurposed! Alice was sure as well and thus waved Victor over to tell him her plan:

I. She ended the lockdown, allowing him to enter a booth and pay for a show while she snuck into the private dance room and hid, invisible, by the door

II. He figured out which dancer was Chastity and asked her for a private dance at the first opportunity

III. If Chastity said yes, he brought her into the room, and Alice would figure out how to off her as quietly as possible

IV. If Chastity said no, Victor instead asked the other girl – if she said yes, he’d bring her into the room instead, and leave the door open a moment so Alice could slip out and instead take care of Chastity while she was on the stage

V. And if they both said no, then he came into the room alone and he and Alice worked out Plan B.
*nods* Pretty simple and straightforward, all things considered!

( Alice and Victor talk about how necessary killing Chastity is )

YouTube: Slipped in another YouTube Short from thesewloartist after my writing tonight – “Late Victorian Walking Suit!” Featuring Ivy dressing up in an 1897 Victorian women’s walking suit in honor of the two inches of snow her home got that day. :p Highlights from the video included –

A) Ivy showing off her “wrapper” – a large loose floral-patterned dress with lace accents that was the Victorian equivalent of hanging around in your yoga pants, or maybe a bathrobe. Came with pockets too! We always love a pocket. :)

B) Ivy putting on a very fancy corset – bright blue with lots of lace on the top – fancy petticoats, a pretty corset cover, a dark blue skirt, a nice white blouse, and a little bowtie while explaining WHY she chose to wear something from 1897 for this occasion – basically, to her, it’s the “Goldilocks” year of historical fashion. The sleeves are puffy and the skirts full and great for twirling, but neither are so large that they get in the way and make life hard to manage! She also liked how the dresses of that year took inspiration from menswear (hence the bowtie), and she figured it was a chance to wear something fairly SENSIBLE for a change, rather than some of the more complicated and impractical outfits she’s shown off in the past. XD

C) And Ivy finishing up her dressing with a dark blue jacket, leather gloves, and a black velvet hat secured with a pretty hatpin while explaining that she’d actually already HAD a Victorian walking suit – but that one was made out of not-sensible-at-all yellow silk. Which would not do well on a winter afternoon! XD So she chose to make/get (I THINK she made it, but don’t quote me on that) the navy blue wool one for this video to show off something closer to what people of the era would actually wear, at least for a snowy day. It would be easier to care for too, which was a plus. :)

Nice! I do like watching her get dressed up in these fun historical outfits. :)

*nods* Not too shabby. But now I must hit the sack and try to get some sleep. *nods* Night all!

Partially because I ended up sleeping in later than I'd expected (almost til 10 AM! Though I did wake up at 8:07 AM, as I did every day this weekend, to use the bathroom), and partially because it ended up being a mildly stressful day with a few distractions -- like figuring out where my parents went this morning (the Scituate Art Festival, which they reported was really awful, full of junk jewelry sellers and the like); helping out with the chores (I once again spent some of my morning folding towels I got out of the dryer); and reporting that we were low on milk (causing my parents to realize that they'd never gotten the milk out of the car when they went grocery shopping on the way back from the art festival; by some miracle it was still coldish). *shakehead* So no writing and no CaFae Latte today, which was a bit of a bummer. But I got everything else I wanted to get done, done, at least:

Tumblr: Just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today – which is good, because I had another late start this morning thanks to the aforementioned sleeping in AND having to fetch a load of laundry out of the dryer. I still got a couple of things sorted, though –

A) I finished and posted the “Hypothetical Table Talk” reblog of the “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” post! :) Just had to go over the main text one more time to fix typos and clean up some awkward bits here and there and finish the tags, after all. Maybe I could have saved it to queue for later, but I really wanted to get it up so I personally could enjoy it. :p Here it is so you can enjoy it too!

B) And I quickly tweaked the tags on the upcoming “Valicer In The Dark: The Start Of A Recurring Bit” post (the one showing off the section of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” that shows off the beginning of Smiler introducing The Three Pillars to people as “Alice is the Cutter, Victor is the Whisper, and I’m the Slide and the Leech”) because at the time I first wrote it, I hadn’t actually written Smiler thinking “Maybe I am a Slide” as the trio escaped the factory, and the tags reflected that. Now that I’m past that point in the rough draft (and have posted the above “Hypothetical Table Talk” stuff, which ALSO features Smiler wondering if they have the wrong playbook), I figured I should update the tags accordingly!

So yeah – glad that I was able to get the one thing that I really wanted to get done this weekend done, at least! And now I can read it and giggle whenever I want. :)

Baldur’s Gate III: Well, friends – as of today, I have spent 88.8 hours playing this game! And have not got even anywhere close to completing Act 1. XD Look, there’s a lot to do in this game, and I can only play in short bursts at most once a week. But I had a fairly productive trip to the Sword Coast today – at the very least, Smiler forged a stronger connection with Shadowheart and found a few useful items out in the world! Let me tell you about it –

A) I picked up right where I left off last time – with Smiler and friends hanging out in their wilderness camp, chilling after raiding the owlbear cave and learning about Shadowheart’s Shar worship. I naturally thought the others would have some thoughts on this shocking revelation about one of our companions, so once everything had popped into existence, I had Smiler turn to Karlach and start a conversation –

Only to get her standard “Copper for your thoughts?” greeting. Nothing about Shadowheart at all. *blink* I – would have sworn that the other companions would have unique dialogues about her confessing to being a Shar worshiper. ...maybe, like me, they all figured it out way earlier and were just like “old news, but at least she’s finally ADMITTED it.” XD Like I’ve said before, Shadowheart isn’t as good at keeping it a secret as she thinks she is – especially given she’s been wearing the goddess’s symbol ON HER FOREHEAD this whole time!

Anyway – as Smiler was already chatting to Karlach, I decided to just go ahead and exhaust the last of her unique dialogue options by having them ask her “In your expert opinion, what’s the best way to kill a devil?” Karlach instantly got thoughtful and explained, “Depends on the type. Ice devils hate an inferno, but that’s an easy one. Orthons love projectiles – what they don’t love is getting their bombs lobbed right back in their faces.”



She then became more animated as she warmed to her topic, adding, “Demons, on the other hand – every demon is absolutely singular. You can’t ever think you’ve got ‘em typed out. Sharp instincts, sharp weapons, and a knack for improvisation. That’s the only way to survive ‘em” – before realizing that she’d gone perhaps a touch overboard and asking what they’d been talking about. :p Smiler, however, was very content with the information she’d provided – they could be facing all sorts in their adventures, and it was smart to figure out how to deal with them while things were still quiet! Especially since they’d already been visited by two devils who didn’t exactly wish the party well...shame only Raphael gets a boss fight...

( Smiler has a long chat with Shadowheart then finds some goodies out in the forest )

Workout: Tonight’s bike ride started my (second) trip through the very first of Oxventure’s old One Shot Wonders – “DREAD: A Jenga Horror RPG 🎃 | Oxventure's One-Shot Wonder | Hallowstream 2022!” Dread, for those who are unaware, is a TTRPG that focuses on putting characters into scenarios straight out of horror movies, and which does not use dice rolls to resolve tricky actions! Instead, if a player wants their character to try something which is outside their wheelhouse, or is particularly difficult, they must pull one or more blocks out of a Jenga tower and put them on the top. They can only use one hand to pull out a block (though they can switch hands at any point during the process so long as only one hand is touching it), and if the tower topples, their character dies. So the stakes are pretty high! Though players are allowed to back out of pulling a block if they don’t think their chances are good of getting it out safely, letting their character fail but live. And if they want to perform a heroic sacrifice, there’s always the option to DELIBERATELY topple the tower to have their character die succeeding at whatever it was they were trying to attempt. *nods* All very horror-movie-esque. This particular session featured Luke as the GM and cast Andy, Ellen, and Mike as Killian (a snobby poet), Madison (a bossy bitch), and Brad (a jerk of a jock) respectively – college students who’d spent their spring break on a “detox” retreat (no phones, booze, or drugs allowed!) exploring the Grand Canyon! Hiking and rafting and climbing and all that jazz. With the game picking up as the trio settled in to spend one last night in the woods before rafting back to civilization the next day...only to hear some horrifying noises in the night, and discover their guide savaged… I got through about the first 37 minutes during my pedal session today, which included –

A) Andy pretentiously reading a soft-cover classic novel while introducing his snobby “throw off the economic shackles” artist Killian, and Mike promptly calling him and Ellen’s character Madison “nerds” while introducing his super-macho asshole Brad (explaining that Brad considered anyone Not Him a nerd shortly thereafter)

B) Mike declaring Brad gives Killian an atomic wedgie and Andy saying Killian stops him doing that during Luke’s explanation of what’s going on, prompting Luke to decide to get going on the adventure because he wanted to make them pull to actually do those things XD

( Killian is pretentious but does try to help, Madison takes charge, and Brad occupies himself with football spinning )

Other: As it was a very nice day once the morning clouds fucked off, we headed out around 4 PM (as we learned from Saturday’s round that going out at 5 PM is a little too late these days) to play a few games of beanbags – and I’m pleased to say, despite a very first throw of 0 in the very first round, I came back and ended up the day’s champ, with three wins and two seconds under my belt! Dad, meanwhile, managed to have a decent day with two wins, and Mom – well, she tried, bless her. XD Final scores were me W-2-W-W-2; Dad 2-W-2-3-W; and Mom 3-3-3-2-3. ...at least she didn’t straight up lose every game? *shrug* We’ll see what happens the next time we play!

*nods* Not too bad -- and I probably should have guessed I wouldn't have much time for writing after playing BG3. Even a short session takes a while to sum up, and I was interrupted partway through for beanbags, so... We'll just have to pick up with "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" again tomorrow! In the meantime, I have to hit the sack so I'm decently rested for work tomorrow -- night all!

Which I know I have been saying a lot, but... *sigh* Basically, it's rough living in this day and age, especially with a family member who has terminal cancer and thus can have a bad day at any time. Not that Dad had a bad bad day today, but there were some moments there and there that weren't great. :( Combine that with a long cleaning day (see below) and some general malaise, and -- yeah. I suppose it's not a surprise I spent a good portion of the night reading TV Tropes and old "Freefall" comics. ^^;

Anyway -- despite everything, I did get a few things done:

Cleaning: Oooof – you’d think that a Saturday where I didn’t have to do laundry would mean that I would finish my cleaning faster...but, well, Mom was doing laundry, and when she asked me to check up on the stuff in the dryer (towels and some of her sheets, mostly), I ended up bringing it all upstairs and folding it because I didn’t want it to sit around. Which ended up cutting a pretty big chunk out of my dusting time, as you might imagine. And between that, the usual hourish-break for lunch around 1 PM, and a bunch of other littler delays – well. I started the dusting at my semi-usual time of 10:40 AM –

And I didn’t finish up with the vacuuming until 4 PM. When I promptly rewarded myself with one of the giant chocolate-and-almond biscotti Mom made earlier in the week. XD But yeah, the cleaning was definitely a bit of a slog today. :( At least I found a new interesting guy to listen to – Seth Skorkowsky, a TTRPG Game Master on YouTube whose channel focuses on stuff like Traveller and KULT and Call Of Cthulhu – the latter of which was my focus today. Listened to him and his “sidekick” Jack The NPC (Seth in a game-era-appropriate outfit filmed in black and white or sepia) talk about how to make a character in the game, review the newest version of “Cthulhu By Gaslight” (the mostly-stand-alone Victorian Era supplement to the main game), review the “Quick Start” box, and review various adventure modules that Seth had played (either as a “Keeper” – the COC version of a Game Master – or as a PC – where he apparently dies a lot). It was fun stuff – I’ll have to keep him in mind for future Cleaning Saturdays. :)

Writing: I did find the time to finish Chapter 4 of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” today like I hoped – the final page of the trio’s (mis)adventures in Wilson’s Boilers and Metalworking included –

A) Smiler spotting a flash of yellow hair out of the corner of their eye, and turning to see Aldo and Cundey nearby, examining the remains of the flash bomb – inspiring them to see if the pair could help the trio. They thus began waving and “psst”ing to try and get their attention – fortunately Cundey spotted them before the guards could, and pointed them out to Aldo, who gave them a stare that said clearly “why are you still here?” XD Smiler responded with a big “oh it’s all under control (please believe me)” smile and a bunch of hand gestures (which I ended up acting out myself while writing) combined with a couple of mouthed sentences to convey that they had the list, they just needed some help actually getting out of the building in the form of them distracting the guards. They and Victor then pulled out their best desperately pleading looks, hoping it would be enough to convince the pair…

And after a beat, Aldo and Cundey grinned and gave them a thumbs up in return. Yay! The puppy dog eyes must have done the trick. Well, that and the triple-six Smiler got on the Sway roll. :P

( Aldo and Cundey save the day and our heroes flee into the eternal night )

YouTube: Thanks to getting started a bit later than I intended and pausing at one point to make sure Dad was okay (he was coughing a LOT tonight – we’re not sure why, but eventually it seemed to go away), I only made it through four CaFae Lattes instead of my usual Saturday five. *shrug* C’est la vie – at least the ones I did get to watch were fun –

A) “CaFae Latte: prison library” – featuring Bob admitting she was quite impressed by how big the prison library was – apparently it was even bigger than the yard! One of her fellow prisoners explained that they’d had a very dedicated bookworm some decades ago who harassed the local government until a check was cut and a bunch of books donated, and ow they have an outside organization who donates a fresh batch every few months. They then held up a copy of Citadel, noting it was one of their favorites and asking Bob if she’d read it – Bob confirmed she had –

And then turned to the camera to announce, “The sequel comes out in late March.” XD Her fellow prisoner was excited, at least! Said prisoner then said hello to someone named “Julia,” asking, “You almost out?” prompting Julia to appear on the screen and reveal she just had five months and three days to go. She then began bitching that her son hadn’t visited her once during her entire sentence – the other prisoner invited her to “join the club,” noting family was just too hurt sometimes –

And then asking, “Didn’t your cult stuff get him homeless?” Causing Bob to blink in surprise as Julia complained that she’d offered her son enough money to take care of himself, but he’d just gone back to the FBI to tell them she had more “ill-gotten funds,” moaning that they’d been donations and that he was just too damn stubborn, then ask what Julia’s son’s name was. And I don’t think what Julia said will be a surprise to anyone (especially anyone who saw the “fan inspiration” short) –

“Oscar.” Yup, Julia was his scammer cult-starting mother! Julia personally considered Oscar an “ungrateful brat” and accused him of acting like a teenager despite being 150 years old. An unimpressed Bob noted that “he seems to have a very strong moral code” – Julia responded that said code was likely to get him killed one day, if it hadn’t already. She then bitched some more about how he hadn’t even phoned her during her fifteen years in lock-up, asking Bob if she could believe it –

Prompting a cool “Yes” out of Bob. XD The other prisoner then pointed out that Julia was already planning to start up a new church the moment she got free – Julia protested there was nothing illegal about her doing so, going “God’s grace is needed now more than ever.” Bob noted that maybe it was –

Before adding disgustedly as she turned away “though I doubt that’s coming from you.” XD Yeah, you tell her, Bob! What a bitch – I’m glad Oscar’s gone no contact with her!

( Bob chats with Oscar, learns about Rake Day, and has a prison fight – with a surprise ally )

Other: We did go out and play beanbags at around 5 PM this afternoon – though doing so revealed that we should probably start going out and playing earlier on weekends, as it DID get fairly dark out by the end of it. I guess we are a third of the way into October… We still got in our usual five weekend rounds though, and I ended up having another day where I decisively won two games, then lost every other one. Because apparently my mojo only works in spurts. :p That was better than what happened to poor Dad, though – he couldn’t get above a second no matter how hard he tried. Leaving Mom to become the ultimate champ with three wins and no losses at all! Good for her! :p Final scores were me 3-W-W-3-3; Dad 2-3-3-2-2; and Mom W-2-2-W-W. We’ll see if we get to play tomorrow, and how the scores work out then!

All righty -- and with that, I REALLY have to get to bed, as it is VERY late and I need my sleep. Tomorrow will see me probably have to make my granola in the morning, but I'm hoping I can also fit in finishing that "table talk" reblog on the "They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman" outline; some Fallout: New Vegas (gotta get Victor and ED-E back to Primm to solve the sheriff problem once and for all); and the next "Worst Wanderer" (please upload on time, Jon!). We'll see what happens -- night all!