Crossover Chick

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!

Yeah, it has not been a good day for doing things when I ought to be doing them -- as you might have guessed given the fact that this entry has a later time stamp than normal. Like, my commutes actually weren't that bad, but it took me longer than anticipated to get back on the computer after supper, and then I was thrown off my usual schedule by a surprise ask on tumblr (which I will discuss) below, and -- yeah. My schedule is all mucked up and I don't appreciate it. >( But I managed to get through the day and accomplish the following despite that:

Work: You probably can guess what I’m about to say – it was another quiet day in the office. I didn’t even have any obituaries to do because our paper went missing. :( I still found ways to keep myself occupied, though –

A) Doing the usual morning check scan and credit card reports (though, admittedly, there was only one check and two reports today)

B) Going through everybody with a certain last name and seeing what roster maintenance I could do on them (turned out we had a few people who needed to be marked deceased, and one lady who needed to be merged with her late husband)

C) Calling back a guy who left a message on my supervisor’s machine about needing to update his credit card on his recurring gift – I left a message for him in turn, and he called me back to do the update (pretty standard)

D) Attempting to call back that one lady who hung up on me before I could explain that she had an overpayment, only to get no pick-up or voicemail (hmmmm)

E) Finishing off my latest crop of puzzles and getting new ones from the paper (I’m going through them too fast!)

So yeah – the day kinda crawled, but I got through it! And tomorrow should be a LITTLE busier, as my coworker won’t be in, so I’ll be responsible for putting on whatever checks come in the mail and stuff. *nods* We’ll see how it goes!

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

A) “7/10 Games That Are a 10/10 In Our Hearts” by OXtra! Andy, Jane, Ellen, and Mike discussing those solidly mid-tier games that they love despite the flaws keeping them from being a 10/10 experience for most everyone else. In order, we had –

I. Andy declare his fondness for Deadly Premonition – that bizarre classic that can be summed up as “a guy makes a video game ripping off at least some of the plot of Twin Peaks and goes to town with making it weird!” Andy liked it because it was unashamedly weird, with a strange and amusing protagonist who often talked to his imaginary friend about things like “if Tom and Jerry are in a consensual BDSM relationship or not” or “special features on VHSes vs DVDs.” XD He also praised the fact that the town all the weirdass nonsense was set in did feel like a real living town – everyone had their own schedules that operated according to the internal clock, and you could recognize people by the cars they drove, and all that jazz. It just added that extra bit of flavor, you know? Even if most people didn’t like the fact that you couldn’t drive around forever and had to refuel the cars regularly. :p In short, it was a game that stood out at the time – when it was surrounded by military shooters with rough-and-ready protagonists – and it’s a game that still stands out today – when everything has to appeal to everyone at all times to make money. A totally unique experience that you might just love! Just maybe play the Director’s Cut which fixes the combat, which Andy allowed was godawful in the original. XD

( The other OXers talk about their midtier loves, Yahtzee rants about unneeded skill trees, and the Paradevs share a little of what they’re working on )

Writing: It was back over to “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” tonight to add another page to Chapter 4 – this one covered:

A) Alice agreeing with Smiler that they should skedaddle, then – after heading to the door and peeking out – confirming it was the ideal moment to do so, as there were no guards outside. Which puzzled her a bit, as she would have thought the one at the front doors would have come looking for his friend about now. Smiler suggested said friend had already shown him all his naughty cigarette cards. XD They then suggested they just take advantage of their good fortune instead of questioning it, to which Alice agreed and prepared to lead another group Prowl action sneak out. :p Gotta get while the getting is good!

( The trio attempts to sneak away...only for a creaking floorboard to ruin their plans )

Tumblr: Well, my intended task of “figure out my Song Saturday for the week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)” did not get done – because when I got home, I discovered the following anon ask I found in my inbox: “Is there any refs for Smiler at all? I wanna kinda draw them in the Forgotten Vows verse sorta (like how Victor has Desire and Fury and Mr Explorer) (this is the plan to make counterparts for the throuple >:3 mwehehe)” Meaning I was extremely distracted answering that for most of the evening! And if you’re wondering how answering that took most of the evening, well:

A) I started off by giving the anon a bunch of reference pics I took of Smiler’s face in Sims 4 CAS in February of last year for just this purpose

B) Then I thought that I should include some full-body shots as well, and pulled a couple from my “CAS Looks” collection – one from the front in their VITD outfit, and one from the side that I took while seeing if the nonbinary Pride tattoo was any good

C) Then I went ahead and threw in a few favorite pictures of them for good measure – including two favorite instances of them smiling after pleasing gnomes during Harvestfest (one big smile and one little smile), and a headshot of them in their VITD hat

D) And then I quickly added in the Valicer Height Chart I worked up online a while back so the anon would know how tall Smiler was supposed to be in relation to Victor and Alice

And of course all of those pictures needed alt-texting, and I needed to do a bit of explanatory text and link appropriate posts related to the ask and write up the tags, so – yeah. Took a while! Here’s the final result if you’re curious – hopefully this WILL actually result in some fanart, because holy hell would I love that.

*whew* And there you have it. And now I have to get off and get to bed. *shakehead* Hopefully tomorrow will be better, schedule-wise -- night all!

The high was like 61F today -- not OVERLY cold, but cold enough that I wore a long-sleeved shirt today, and kept turning on my little heater at work. A taste of things to come, I suppose. *sigh* At least the rest of the week is supposed to be at least a bit warmer... Anyway, here's how my day went:

Work: Today’s eight hours in the office were slightly busier than the previous day’s eight hours, though not by that much – my time was spent –

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

B) Going back to that list of people with overpayments and contacting as many as I could to let them know about said overpayments and ask what they wanted us to do; got three people saying “just keep it” and one woman who hung up on me because apparently she was expecting another call

C) Doing some obituaries from the paper (there were two pages worth today and my coworker split it with me), along with whatever other related roster maintenance I could find

D) Calling back someone who called on my lunch break saying they needed to do a credit card update – got their recurring gift updated and did a one-time “catch-up” gift to make up for the months they missed

E) Doing some reversals to move the overpayments that I got replies on to the next campaign year

F) Finishing off some more puzzles in an attempt to make everything else take longer

*shrug* Made the day go by! We’ll see if I get any more answers regarding those overpayments tomorrow. And if I can find any more puzzles to do, because I am now down to one half-filled-out crossword...

Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight and pedaled my way through another 35 minutes of “Oxventure in Space! The Oxventurers Guild Plays RPG Lasers & Feelings at Metaverse” – The Third One! This chunk of The Adventures of Corazón de Estrella, Egbot, Pru D’Enzia, and Mer-Ilwen, Surprise Smugglers, featured –

A) Corazón rolling to successfully flush away all the Rigellian ultra-testicles he was smuggling and getting a single success on his single die, resulting in Johnny revealing that he gets rid of them all at the last minute, and also it’s not a guarantee the frozen margarita the inspector requested will be ready on time because of the liquid nitrogen “emergency freeze” system Pru worked up. Cue Corazón redirecting the power from the shields to the margarita machine – this worked to speed it up, but also got the attention of the inspector, who asked what the power fluctuations were. The group truthfully told him it was the margarita machine, which the inspector was willing to accept, but it did mean that, as per protocol, he would have to be accompanied by armed guards just in case. Oh dear.

( The Space Oxventurers get an inspector really drunk and repeatedly weaponize The Macarena )

Writing: Added another page to Chapter 2 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” tonight – this installment covered –

A) Flynn, upon learning that Alice was willing to pay for whatever information he had on Death Mask Productions, promptly turning into a smug jerk and informing her that what he had was “pretty hot info” and demanding $500 to give it to her. Alice noted he was not a cheap date, but that, luckily for the both of them, “I’ve secured myself a rich patron and have a very vested interest in getting to the bottom of this matter.” She thus pulled out a few hundreds and gave the “Prince of Porn” his “blood money” and demanded he spill the beans. I think he can also be intimidated into giving up the information, but Alice isn’t naturally very intimidating, so – bribery it is! Victor can afford it. :p

( Flynn gives Alice as many reasons as he can think of for her to give up her chase, and Alice refuses )

YouTube: Snuck in one very quick YouTube Short tonight after my writing – “Tapioca! | Whose Line is it Anyway?” by dyloneth2! That famous bit in a “Greatest Hits” game where Ryan asked Colin “What comes to mind when I say Ricky Ricardo and great cigars?” –

And Colin responded with “Tapioca!” And when Ryan asked why, was like, “Wasn’t that his big song?” before singing “TAPIOOOOCA! TAPIOOOOCA!” into Ryan’s face a couple of times. Which caused Ryan to start laughing as he tried to explain he’d been talking about Cuba –

And be unable to stop. Especially whenever he looked over at Colin, who was just sitting there with a friendly little :) face. XD Colin did not make things better by trying to prompt him by going, “Cuba! It’s a small island.” XD The short ended with Ryan still laughing his head off, trying to get Colin to tell everyone about Cuba – as I recall, they ended up abandoning Cuba entirely and doing a different musical style for Wayne to sing in first before coming back to it. XD One of the best, most classic Whose Line Is It Anyway? moments!

Tumblr: Ending up doing something on both tumblrs tonight, much to my own surprise –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I ended up reblogging a surprise post from my friend Nebby – featuring a link to the latest chapter of her MediEvil II retelling/fix-it fic, “MediEvil Resurrection II!” Which was, appropriately, a chapter set in a vampire-run hospital and featured the gang having to fight the ghost of an axe murderer in the morgue, find a doll for a little vampire girl, and then fight the vampire that owned the whole shebang while he was under the influence of berserker dust. I accordingly spent a good portion of the evening writing a review for it. :p Because that’s what friends do!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had an anon ask to throw into the queue! From someone purporting to be a vampire, and stating that microplastics had the same effects on vampires as they did on humans...and it was actually a good thing, as a vampire’s dead flesh was preserved by the microplastics within it and thus took longer to decay. Meaning it helped them blend into human society longer! I naturally had to have my Londerland Bloodlines!Alice answer this –

With confusion, because in her experience, vampires didn’t decay anyway – their bodies were more or less “frozen” as how they were at the time of death. So the microplastics would just be sitting there clogging up the joint. Though she allowed for the fact that there could be a clan or bloodline whose curse was that they did decay – she’d already met “has to eat people to live” Pisha, after all! So anything was possible. (And I believe there is a clan like that, though I can recall the name off the top of my head...don’t think there’s many of them around in the modern nights, though.)

So that was fun. :P

*nods* Not too bad a day, I suppose! And now it is time for me to head to bed and hopefully get enough sleep for the next one. *nods* Night all!

AKA you don't need to hit 10:04 on the clock when the date itself is 10/04. XD I didn't do much for it other than wear some of my favorite BTTF clothes (lightning socks, blue "Save The Clocktower" t-shirt, and Doc Brown hoodie), but I feel the need to acknowledge it nonetheless. :p

Anyway -- today was a better day than yesterday, vibes-wise, I'm happy to say. Dad was in a better mood (especially after the Patriots won their game), and while the weather was just sucky enough that we couldn't play any beanbags, no ridiculous accidents like a soda geyser happened, so we were all content with that. And I'm pleased to say I hit every entry on my little to-do list:

Tumblr: Twas another day with nothing going on in The Valice Multiverse – but, over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), despite getting interrupted early on by my parents returning home from a flea market they visited (Dad got a metal elephant, an amethyst elephant, and a jade koala, while Mom got a little iron gnome), and then getting slowed down majorly by a bout of “the period tireds,” I managed to start two rough drafts of new posts that will eventually be shared with the world at large –

A) “Valicer In The Dark: A Thought About Why Smiler Is The Way They Are!” A collection of my musings about why my beloved VITD Smiler does the things they do and what informs their actions/personality, which have popped into my head over the course of writing them over the past few years. Here’s the current list explaining Why They Are Like That:

I. They’re genuinely at their core a cheerful extrovert of a person

II. Their marmalisation and subsequent extra blessing by Mar-Mal has boosted their “base happiness” level

III. When they ran away from Dr. Kelman’s Sanctuary at the age of twelve, they swore to themselves that they would NEVER be as miserable as they were there again, which has resulted in a lot of stamping down of unpleasant feelings over the years (Smiler will actually confess this one to Victor and Alice in the “Smiler gets hypothermia” story while attempting to stop crying over their thoughts about how they could have died if they’d been walking with anyone else when they fell into the canal)

IV. Building on the above, they want to keep all the love and affection they gained from the Advocates when they joined the cult, and they’re quietly terrified that if they don’t act like a perfect Advocate, it’ll all be taken away

V. And building on that, they’re well aware they’re seen as the “golden child” of the cult thanks to being blessed by Mar-Mal WITHOUT subsequently turning into a smiling vegetable, and thus they feel a lot of pressure to be that perfect Advocate

So yeah – lot of intersecting traumas and expectations there! VITD Smiler really needs all the hugs and a non-evil therapist. ...they will probably only get the former.

B) And a reblog of my original “AU Thursday: That Three-Player Childhood Friends Valicer AMA AU I Mentioned Briefly Before” post from two years ago detailing my initial thoughts on my “Multiplayer Wonderland AU” (where Smiler and Victor, former childhood friends of Alice, end up getting dragged into her initial American McGee’s Alice Wonderland adventure when they come to Rutledge to visit her, and then Smiler and Alice are invited to Victor’s wedding, and the whole situation with Emily kicks off Alice: Madness Returns early and drags Victoria and Emily along for that ride as well), with the reblog adding more detail to some of the earlier “three-player AMA AU” stuff and fleshing out my subsequent “five-player A:MR AU” thoughts! Because I never actually UPDATED the original post after I decided that the verse was going to be the full “Four Victorians Riding A Rollercoaster” polycule instead of just the “Valicer” trio. I just wrote a bunch of fanfic post-all the hypothetical original stories showing that was the case. ^^; So far ideas the reblog will contain include:

I. The fact that the “making the shrinking potion” portion of AMA will actually be a LOT more fleshed out than it is in the actual game, thanks to Smiler being there and being a brilliant chemist – this will be their time to shine!

II. Smiler being so delighted with their Wonderland look (the black hair with long purple-tipped black bangs and glowing yellow eyes, natch) that when they show up for Victor’s wedding, they’ve done their best to cut their hair to match their Wonderland ‘do; Kelman is of course all sorts of annoyed, but Victor and Alice are very pleased

III. The reason that the Corpse Bride stuff is even happening being because Victor made a deal with his parents to just marry whoever they picked, no complaints, in order to be allowed to keep visiting Alice in the asylum; he’s quite relieved to find Victoria is nice

IV. Victor being in his “Beloveds” suit (Alice-blue suit with yellow waistcoat, yellow socks, and a yellow-and-purple swirl tie) and Smiler in their black-and-yellow-striped suit when they drop into Wonderland to kick off the A:MR stuff – and Victoria and Emily promptly noting that the outfit contains elements of Alice and Smiler’s outfits and guessing that Victor might have feelings for them (possibly before even he does!)

V. Emily’s Wonderland look being her looking like she’s alive again...but with her corpse-form’s blue hair, as she has to admit she kind of likes it

VI. Victoria’s starting weapon being a fireplace poker from the Duchess’s house, and Emily’s a big shard of bone retrieved from her cookpot

VII. The sequence after meeting the Queen of Hearts where Alice ends up in a hallucinatory Rutledge ALSO involving Smiler getting stuck in a creepier version of The Sanctuary, Emily getting stuck in a forest maze pursued by Barkis, Victoria getting stuck in a maze that’s a combined version of her house and the church – ALSO pursed by Barkis, and Victor getting stuck in pitch blackness while being berated about how he can’t choose between the other four. :( Fortunately, teamwork gets them all out – Alice’s and Smiler’s nightmares combine and they help each other escape; Victoria’s and Emily’s do the same thing (allowing them to realize they’re both running from the same guy); and then the four of them storm Victor’s nightmare to help get him out and make him realize he doesn’t HAVE to choose. :)

VIII. The idea that the Dollmaker should have Barkis and Kelman-themed minions in this world

IX. And the insistence that Bumby, Barkis, and Kelman all have to die in this version of reality, because we hate them

Whew – probably going to be a long reblog. :p I’ll keep working on it as time goes on!

Fallout: New Vegas: Welp, I am pleased to say that I had a productive afternoon in the Mojave, with Victor helping the NCR retake the NCRCF! I mean, the troopers did most of the work, but he did shoot a few people. XD Here’s how that went down –

A) I picked up right where I left off last time, with Victor hanging out underneath one of the billboards, getting ready to join up with the NCR strike team led by Sergeant Lee to retake the correctional facility. However, before he did that, I took a few minutes to cycle through his available quests to determine which one was putting that mystery quest marker nearby the California Drive-In. Doing that confirmed that it was “My Kind Of Town” – the “get Primm a new sheriff” quest – that was responsible, but didn’t give me any idea why. Is the NCR guy that could be convinced to be Primm’s new sheriff there? Is Myers, despite the fact that I didn’t tell him I wanted him to be sheriff? Is Beagle there for some reason?? Who the fuck knows? Not me! Not until I head over there and see what’s up, anyway…

However – I quickly decided that that would be for a future session, and that today’s session was indeed going to focus on helping the NCR take back the NCRCF and finishing “I Fought The Law” for that sweet sweet XP. I thus picked that quest as Victor’s primary and had him start heading in the direction that the soldiers were apparently in according to his map. He accordingly crossed the train train tracks running parallel to the road, then headed south over to the big sandy hill that loomed over the NCRCF. Curious, I decided to have him explore the side of the hill this time to see if there were any goodies, like pickable plants, to be had (while checking his stats and noting that he’d definitely need some water soon). He thus began working his way through the rocks sticking out of the sand and dirt, looking for the telltale green leaves of something ready for harvest –

Only to start when a voice said, out of nowhere, “Wouldn’t mind having one of those little flying robots for myself.” Cue Victor whipping around to see a Powder Ganger in a harness and carrying a crowbar behind him, having apparently snuck up on him in the dark –

And then watching as the guy turned around and walked away, because he was actually non-hostile. Despite Victor’s relationship with the Powder Gangers having recently fallen from “Shunned” to “Hated.” O.o I – guess he was really keen on telling Victor how much he wanted his own ED-E?? You and every other Powder Ganger Victor’s ever met, buddy. *rolls eyes* Though, on the plus side, watching him sidle off did draw Victor’s attention to a pickable xander root nearby, so at least the interaction resulted in some sort of gain for our dear Courier Sixtor!



( Victor does some more harvesting, meets up with Lee, and discovers that, despite their occasional glitchiness, the NCR troopers ARE very good at killing people )

Workout: Calloy, callay, Jon uploaded the next “Worst Wanderer” in time for me to watch it with my workout today! :p Though, granted, I had to watch the last six-or-so minutes after supper because YouTube objected to me rewinding the video at one point near the beginning and wouldn’t load the rest of it for a few minutes (ironically, the fix turned out to be rewinding it MORE – I guess I screwed up the buffer?). >( Fucking YouTube sometimes… Anyway, the important thing is that I still managed to complete “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 21 - Some Of You May Die…” this evening, instead of having to wait until tomorrow to watch the last bit. Which is always nice. *nods* Tonight’s installment of The Adventures Of Useless Steve, Virtual Time Travel Edition, included –

A) Useless Steve and his virtual buddy Benjamin Montgomery completing the tutorial section of the DLC by heading back out into the cliffs of Anchorage to blow up the three artillery guns that the Chinese were using to keep the American troops down! Which Jon openly admitted at the beginning he was not looking forward to because it involved having to trek through much more wide-open spaces where the enemies could get at him from all angles instead of through tight corridors where he could use the cramped space to his advantage. However, the final assault on the guns actually turned out to be not that bad for a few reasons:

I. The simulation was actually pretty generous when it came to providing health top-ups – for example, Steve encountered two in fairly close proximity as he made his way left to get to the first gun, meaning he was able to heal himself pretty quickly every time he was shot! Which was very handy, as Steve did not have a lot of health to lose

II. Montgomery was actually kind of useful as an ally for a change, often running ahead and engaging the enemy so that Steve could finish them off from a much safer position! Sure, he ran away at the very beginning in the opposite direction of Steve, but Jon chose to believe that was because he was doing good work taking down some of the enemies guarding the right-hand gun

III. Steve found a little surprise shortcut through the cliffs to the middle gun after reaching and blowing up the leftmost one, which allowed him to get to it and explode it much easier than he’d expected! Sure, it proved to be guarded by not only a regular soldier (who Steve would have sniped if Montgomery hadn’t chosen to start blasting the guy before he could even line up a shot), but also one of the Inferno Units (AKA a guy with a flamethrower), but Steve managed to take him out without being roasted, so it was fiiiine XD

IV. And when Steve and Montgomery approached the final gun, not only did they have high ground advantage against the first enemy (not that Steve was able to make THAT much use of it, as the spread on his assault rifle was awful), they also had a surprisingly clear shot at the bit that the explosive charge needed to be attached to. Meaning that Steve was able to just run in, slap the charge on that bit of the gun, then run away back to the starting point without ever having to deal with the final Chinese soldier shooting at him from the safety of the nearby bunker. Sure, he got hit a few times, but given that immediately after the gun exploded, he was warped back to base and auto-healed – yeah. No biggie.

So yeah – turns out that “final exam” for the tutorial wasn’t so tough after all. Which is good, as we all know Steve would have struggled a lot more if it had been. :P

( It’s Useless Steve! Discovering that for some reason he’s better with a virtual submachine gun than a virtual missile launcher! )

*nods* I'm happy with that. And now it is time for me to head to be so I'm at least somewhat well rested for work tomorrow. *nods* Night all!

I had a long, if mostly pleasant, day spent mostly out and about, as the below write-up should attest:

Newport Trip: Unfortunately, I must tell you all that the Newport trip we took today ended up rather like Westerly trip we took at the end of my vacation week – namely, something of a disappointment because the place we went there to see was smaller than anticipated and we couldn’t find anything else to do in the area. Though we did manage to salvage the back half of the trip with a stop in Narragansett...until we hit the traffic, anyway… Let me sum up what happened –

A) The trip up there was all right, and – after parking our car in the local Park & Ride – we were easily able to reach our initial destination, Aardvark Antiques! Which was a genuinely cool antiques place – the outside lot was full of various sculptures and fountains and swinging benches and whatnot (Dad was particularly taken with some metal elephants that had fountain nozzles in their trunks), and the inside featured a bunch of fancy furniture – tables with fancy lacquered wooden tops, a beautiful big carved bench with a seat that opened up for storage, and a lovely secretary’s desk with lots of inlaid wood – plus other neat odds and ends – like an antique lawn sprinkler! Doors with stained glass in them! Old quarter candy machines, and penny-powered “weigh yourself” stations! And some bear-shaped umbrella stands that Dad was also rather taken with –

Until he saw the prices. Because, uh, the shit in Aardvark Antiques is expensive, yo. Most of the tags I saw featured prices in the $100s, and many of the furniture pieces were in the thousands. Which was fair – they were very nice, rare pieces – but certainly meant we couldn’t pick up anything! There also wasn’t a lot of “small” stuff to look at – the place seemed to specialize in bigger items, though there were some collections of silver and jewelry and whatnot – and the whole shop was, as stated above, smaller than we originally thought, consisting of just a few rooms for customers to browse (with all other spaces being “employee only”) and that outdoor lot. Bottom line, it was nice to wander around and have a look at everything, but it didn’t take up NEARLY as much of our day as we expected it to! ...Would rank it above the Shark Museum, though.

( I make a terrible discovery in a port-a-potty, and we abandon our original plans and go have lunch somewhere much nicer )

So yeah – TL;DR version is “the one place we went in Newport was nice but didn’t take up as much time as anticipated; the trip Downtown to go eat was a bust; we ended up having a nice lunch followed by nice ice cream in Narragansett; then had a longer-than-anticipated ride home thanks to traffic.” *shrug* I’ve had worse days out! At least in Newport we were able to get snacks, unlike in Westerly… Still, glad the rest of the weekend involves me staying home and playing video games. :P

Writing: Wrote another page on Chapter 4 of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” tonight after Game Night (The Golden Ticket Game, which is a game where you play as one of the five kids from Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory (it’s EXPLICITLY based on the Gene Wilder movie) and have to play cards, move around the board, and find your way to where Willy Wonka is hanging out to gain Wonka Bars so you can get at least one of the Golden Tickets up for grabs (they are actual physical tickets hidden in plastic chocolate bars – there is always one less ticket than players); it’s a bit complicated, but we’re willing to give it another go after tonight’s trial run! Also I double-won as Charlie Bucket as my pile of Wonka Bars contained BOTH tickets up for grabs XD), which covered –

A) Victor promising to “pull out” of the attunement if he saw anything upsetting, then pulling his spirit mask out of his coat and putting it on in the hopes that it would help make sure he only saw exactly what he was looking for – Smiler said “we can hope!” and admitted that they were looking forward to seeing Victor take it for a test run, as he’d spent so much time on it. Victor told them that it seemed to work well enough when he first attuned it, then shut his eyes and started concentrating –

Then, as the wings on his mask began to twitch, opened them again and began looking around with an ethereally-glowing gaze (just like when he was searching Six Towers for ghosts back in “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of”). He quickly focused on some sort of invisible presence at the desk on the other side of the room, tracking it as it made its way to the safe and put something inside – then gasped and looked over at one of the filing cabinets. Moments later, he strode over and reached behind it –

And pulled out the safe key with a big old grin. Gleefully telling the others that he could also confirm that Wilson put the list in the safe because he just saw him do it. Alice and Smiler made sure to shower him with praise for doing such a good job. :) Congrats on that six, Victor! I’m very pleased that attunement went so well myself!

( The trio raid the safe and find goodies beyond the list to quietly slip away with )

YouTube: I was a little too tired from both my period and the day out to try and tackle either of the OX lists I put into my Watch Later earlier (and given that tomorrow is going to be BG3/CaFae Latte Day, and Sunday F:NV/Hopefully Worst Wanderer Day, I suspect I will be watching them with one of my workouts next week), so instead I just watched a YouTube short that popped up in my Recommendeds again tonight that I’ve been wanting to watch for a while: “Working class Victorian clothing 1895” by thesewloartist! Which featured Ivy explaining that that late-Victorian working class ladies layered up just like their wealthier counterparts, wearing cheaper variations of the high-class items, while getting dressed up in a sample outfit! Which featured:

I. A “Pretty Housemaid” corset – a little more comfortable and affordable than the stiffer high society corsets

II. Petticoats to fluff out the skirt

III. A basic corset cover (to keep the corset clean – very important in the days before modern washing machines!)

IV. A “shirtwaist” blouse with puffy leg-of-mutton sleeves (you know the kind, where the shoulder is big but the lower arm is fitted) – because fashion dictated that even cheaper clothes should fit the style of the day

V. A “walking skirt” (a pretty blue one with a v-shaped waistline in this case) – as skirt styles changed a lot less quickly than blouse ones, a lot of women just wore their skirts until they straight-up wore out

VI. A lovely straw hat with a decorative ribbon, secured with a pretty hatpin (apparently especially important if you were taking public transit – and not just because it would keep the hat from blowing away. I have read the stories of women who stabbed men trying to come on to them with those things!)

VII. ...and bunny slippers, because Ivy didn’t bother putting on proper shoes for this outfit. XD To be fair, the slippers did look cute!

Nice! I like watching stuff like this – not only do I enjoy Victorian/Edwardian era fashion in general, it feels like good research just in case I ever have to get into the weeds of what Alice might be wearing in one of my AUs set during the appropriate time period (or something equivalent, in the case of Valicer In The Dark). Though I would like to find some stuff on men’s fashion for Victor (and Smiler, who does generally dress masc despite being nonbinary)...

So yeah -- you can probably see why I'm tired. :p Accordingly, I shall be going to bed shortly -- tomorrow, plans are to work on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts and/or go through my tracked tags to throw more stuff to reblog later into them; play some Baldur's Gate III and see how things go with the owlbear; and catch up some more on CaFae Latte. And write some more on "They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman" if I can swing it. *nods* We'll see what happens, especially with the red curse! Night all!

Mostly because I was woken up around 3 AM by my window fan's right fan motor dying with an awful SCREECHING noise. *wince* I was hoping it would go away, but it didn't, and I ended up having to turn it off. And then I couldn't get back to sleep until I went to the bathroom and adjusted my blankets and all that jazz. *sigh* Fortunately, my parents were happy to let me have their newer model of window fan, which is doing the job just fine in blowing the cool air in. Which is good, because the weather stubbornly refuses to actually get nice, despite what the weather people keep saying -- while it was warmer today, it was also annoyingly humid, and we had like one glimpse of the sun before it got all cloudy again. *grumbles* I am now very worried about what's going to happen on Friday -- I have the day off, and we're supposed to go spend a few hours in Newport if it's nice. If not...well, I guess I'll just play some Paralives or something, so it's not a huge deal for ME, but... :p

Anyway -- despite me being in a bad mood because of the early awakening and the effect it had on the rest of my day, I still managed to be decently productive:

Work: Twas another quiet day at work for the most part, with the only phone call I received being a wrong number. Most of my day was spent tooling around with some obituaries again, going through the last names of the listed deceased and seeing who else needed some roster maintenance done to them (turns out, quite a lot of people). My only real break from that was when Fiscal e-mailed me around lunchtime to ask if our processors really had charged some credit cards back on 9/21/2026 as they hadn’t seen the gifts hit the bank yet. I pulled them a transaction report and proved that they’d all been deposited on 9/23/2026 (though admittedly one had been refunded shortly thereafter, as it had been an overpayment). This was followed by them asking me about two Capital Campaign credit card payments from 9/4/2026 that they didn’t think had been uploaded – I explained to them that they’d been uploaded as part of a batch on 9/2/2026, and since it takes a couple of days for these payments to hit the bank… *shakehead* Ugh. It all got straightened out in the end, at least. And now I just have to get through one more day...

Workout: Pedaled my way through the next 36 minutes of “Oxventure in Space! The Oxventurers Guild Plays RPG Lasers & Feelings at Metaverse” – The Second One tonight before supper, continuing The Adventures of Corazón de Estrella, Stardob MD, Egbot, Pru D’Enzia, and Mer-Llwen Aboard The Sci-Fi Horror Mining Ship! This chunk of the episode featured –

A) Egbot confirming to the others that the mining ship did not smell like coconut shrimp, causing Corazón to declare he was coming over immediately. XD However, Egbot followed that up with the reveal that the ship did smell like iron, which Stardob said was a major component of blood, so the ship might be covered in it. Corazón was of the opinion that he might just be smelling his “lunchbox” (first aid box) of blood that he was taking. XD The gang thus made their way over there with various degrees of excitement/fear (Mer-Llwen being very firmly on the latter side) –

And discovered that, oh shit, the mining ship was covered in blood, and had these weird fleshy growths down the end of the hall too. Pru was like “EGBOT” as he tried to explain that he’d thought it was just décor – he didn’t know what the organic lifeforms were into! XD

( The Space Oxventurers fight space monsters and find a lone survivor...and some disturbing stuff in the mess hall... )

Writing: Work continued apace on “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” this eve, with me adding another page to Chapter 2 covering –

A) A slightly-annoyed Victor telling Alice that he wasn’t going to pop from seeing scantily-clad women anytime soon – he’d just needed a moment to cool down and get his bearings earlier, that was all! And he very much still wanted to help her out with whatever came next, given that, from what little she’d revealed about the tape, the creators very much had to be stopped. Alice thus suggested they head outside and find a more private place to chat about what needed to be done by them –

Which ended up in them hanging out in the same alley where the unfortunate video tape guy got dragged down a manhole to his doom. Victor was understandably like “you’re sure this place is safe?” – Alice told him that she couldn’t hear anything under the manhole cover, and that she didn’t intend to let him out of her sight, so if anything did appear to attack them, it would have to come to them. And if that happened...well. She happened to be carrying around both her new handgun and her knife, so she felt like she had a pretty decent chance against whatever it might be. *nods* She’s learned not to go out into the mean streets of L.A. and the surrounding environs without protection! Especially given the shit she tends to run into...

( Alice fills in Victor about Chastity, and a plan of attack is hatched )

YouTube: Watched another YouTube short tonight – “Fallout 3's Most Suspcious Quest Reward” by EpicNate! This short snippet (which looks to be part of a larger series, or at least a longer video) talked about Moira Brown, Megaton’s resident Crater Supply woman and adorable aspiring writer, who – if allowed – will rope the Lone Wanderer into helping her do research for her “Wasteland Survival Guide” via a series of sidequests (which Nate noted were like little extra tutorials for dealing with certain enemies and locations, since you’re expected to run into Moira very early in the game). The Lone Wanderer will receive different rewards for completing each quest (especially if they go above and beyond while doing it) – and the one for sticking a data recorder in a Mirelurk’s nest in the Anchorage War Memorial involves her giving the Lone Wanderer a bunch of Stealth Boys and a unique hat! “The Shady Hat,” to be precise – a fedora that not only grants +1 Perception, like most hats, but also +5 Sneak! Why is this the most suspicious quest reward in Fallout 3?

Well, the hat’s model is identical to exactly one other hat in the game – the one worn by FO3’s version of the Mysterious Stranger. The guy who, if you have his special perk, will occasionally show up in VATS and waste an enemy for you before disappearing into the ether. Meaning the Shady Hat is, essentially, one of the Stranger’s spare hats. Causing the community to wonder if Moira somehow met the Stranger and got him to sell or give her said spare hat. *shrug* I mean, she sells ammo, and the guy has to get his bullets from somewhere! :p But yeah, that’s a neat little tidbit! Wonder if Useless Steve will ever get his paws on that hat...

Tumblr: As it was Wednesday, I just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about queue-wise – which is fortunate, as I ended up being a little busier on that tumblr than usual –

A) First, I commented on thesatiricaldemon’s reblog of my latest “Valicer As Text Posts” post – specifically, on his tags remarking that “#my favorite bit is the unresolved trauma and dark humor one #because its equally applicable to all three depending on who's going to be hit with the stick of impromptu therapy this time” XD I admitted that I’d intended for that one to be Smiler-centric, but I’d had to admit that it also fit the other two when I actually made the meme (or, at the very least, that it also fit Alice). At least I chose a good picture for it with them all clustered around the puzzle table like that!

B) Then, I straight-up reblogged two things I found on my dash:

I. A thread of posts that I saw on Satirical’s blog about how paleontologists are just now discovering how important a preserved T. Rex fossil – “Rex Junior” found on a Wyoming ranch some decades ago really is. Bottom line, it’s more of a mummy than your standard fossilized skeleton – they think Rex Junior was killed very suddenly during some sort of flash food event and buried alive – and it has a COMPLETE right arm, every bone in place, showing exactly how the arm was articulated. And given the way the skeleton was preserved, it could really be a window into what actual T. Rex anatomy was like in general – they’ve already realized it had a slimmer chest than it’s normally depicted as having thanks to the placement of the wishbone! AND there are other dino mummies in the same area, which should provide more insights into more species! So that’s cool. :D

II. And a comic depicting how tumblr goes absolutely fall-and-Halloween-mad on the 1st of October, via a drawing woman getting blasted by her computer screen and draped in Halloween décor, with a bunch of people excitedly screaming “TONIGHT” under it. XD I wanted to join in on the festivities!

C) And finally, I reset my queue speed on VLA(NS) to one post per day and filled it out for the rest of the week with:

I. A reblog of aceattorney9000’s depiction of Victoria Everglot as an adorable river otter for Thursday

II. A reblog of aceattorney9000’s depiction of Emily the corpse bride (as just herself) for Friday

III. And (inspired by the start of Spooky Season and my own work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”) a reblog of my own post featuring Darling Violetta’s “A Smaller God” from VTMB’s soundtrack for Song Saturday!

So I’m all good there, yay~ Busy night, but productive!

*whew* And now it is time for me to go to bed, and hopefully sleep through the damn night. Night all!

I had a bit of trouble sleeping last night because I kept overheating (just a little too warm in my room for my liking, and of course I couldn't use my window fan because of the rain); the weather today remained absolutely miserable (chilly and rainy and bleh); and I managed to nick my thumb with my own nail while trying to put my umbrella in a safe place to dry while at work (it's not a HUGE wound, but it did bleed a lot at first, let me tell you). All things that contributed to it being a pretty meh day all around. But I got through it, and got a few things done:

Work: Well, my coworker was back today, but I am genuinely not sure for how long (her mother is in a bad way and I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes more time off to help care for her) – and even with the extra help, it was still a fairly stressful day, with the lowlights being –

A) Getting a late start on the GL because I was surprised by some more nonsense regarding the thank-you files in my inbox this morning (apparently our processors, who also run those for us, only received a file with two people in it? Fortunately I was able to double-check that there should be another file, and they found it and were able to run that too – meant I had two QC files to go through, but that was just something to fill the time)

B) Having to help my coworker with a donor who kept changing her mind about how she wanted to pay off her pledge (she had had it on online payments, but we started sending her paper reminders after her card failed after the very first payment – she only JUST opened one to see what they were, apparently *sigh* Anyway, she was going to pay it off in full, but then started talking about doing different installments, blah de blah – we got it straightened out in the end, but yeesh)

C) Having to write up a memo to Fiscal to change a payment that was put into the wrong campaign back in JANUARY (someone made a gift to senior priests online at the same time they were setting up their Appeal pledge, and both gifts got applied as pledge payments) – AND give them a check that came in the mail from a parish that for some reason chose NOW to send in some additional Easter cash (IT’S SEPTEMBER)

*shakehead* Yeah. Add in a crummy commute both ways because of the lingering showers from the storm that passed through this weekend, and I feel confident in saying this was not one of my better days at work. Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

Workout: Twas back on the bike again tonight – and since I couldn’t watch it with my Sunday ride, I instead watched it this eve with my Monday ride – “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 20 - Reporting For Duty!” Or, well, the first 34 minutes of it, anyway. :p Was kind of hoping to watch the final ten or so after supper, but given my tendency toward long write-ups, I just didn’t have the time. Meh. *shrug* Anyway, this installment of The Adventures Of Useless Steve, Video-Game-Ception Edition, featured –

A) Useless Steve leaving Megaton and starting the journey over to where the Brotherhood Outcasts were hanging out! With Jon declaring that he was done making preparations and it was time to face the hell that was Virtual Anchorage –

And then admitting while slicing up an attacking raider with The Mauler that he did want to make one little stop along the way. XD To be fair, though, it was a very little stop, involving Steve swinging by the bridge hangout of an unnamed scavenger and trader and his two dogs –

And murdering them all with his horrible super spinny axe. Reason? The guy had three skill books in his little camp – “Duck and Cover!” for Explosives, “Grognak The Barbarian” for Melee, and “Chinese Army: Spec Ops. Training Manual” for Sneak – and unfortunately did not offer them as part of his wares. Meaning Steve’s options were to try and steal them without the guy noticing or kill him and just take them. And as Steve is so very cocking useless...yeah. Slicing them up and then grabbing the bloodstained volumes was the way to go! Just remember to pay your church taxes later, Steve!

( It’s Useless Steve! Deciding to abandon his Action RPG life for a bit in favor of faux Call of Duty! )

Writing: Despite most of my evening being taken up by the above write-up (this is why I really prefer it when Jon can get “The Worst Wanderer” uploaded early enough for Sunday’s workout), I was able to fit in writing another page on “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths!” Covering –

A) VV finally introducing herself to Alice with her chosen name of “Velvet Velour” and encouraging Alice to call her “Velvet” (as Alice isn’t quite at the “VV” level of friendship yet), then buttering her up with how she hadn’t seen anyone new in months until Alice – “a real celebrity” walked in. And how she’d heard so much about Alice, so wouldn’t Alice like to know about her? Alice admitted she would (while trying not to laugh at VV’s rather obvious bashful act), noting they had some time to kill –

And causing VV to hit her with the “I’m like a book – all you have to do is run your finger down my spine and crack me open to see what I’m about” line. Alice allowed that the analogy was interesting, but that while she enjoyed reading, she was not inclined toward “cracking open” people – at least, not in the manner VV was implying. She had no experience with it at all, in fact. VV was surprised, noting Alice was quite pretty and she’d come in with “that pale Gothic fellow” – Alice told her Victor was just a friend, and that when it came to people flirting with her, she usually got monstrous men. VV considered that a real shame –

And then asked Alice if she was up for “experimenting.” Alice politely refused, claiming she simply didn’t have the time, even if the nights were getting longer. Sorry, VV, she’s not into you! Though she does at least find you more tolerable than Jeannette when it comes to the flirting. :p

( VV finally spills the beans on why she needed to speak to Alice alone )

*nods* Little annoyed that I got sucked into doing another long update on the latest "Worst Wanderer," but at least I was also able to do my writing. Very important, that -- I do want to finish the "Londerland Bloodlines" series before the heat death of the universe. *nods* But now I need to head to bed. Hopefully I'll have an easier time sleeping tonight, but we'll see I suppose...night all!

In addition to the crappy weather (which didn't start out so bad, but gradually worsened as the day went on and the storm moved more inland -- we have a lot more wind now than we did this morning), the events of the day also included:

-->Getting woken up at 7 AM because I either forgot to turn off my weekday morning alarm or accidentally turned it back on before I went to bed; I proceeded to fall back to sleep for roughly hour-long intervals, getting up a little after 8 AM to use the bathroom and finally getting up for good at about 9:30 AM

-->Going to get my breakfast...and discovering my parents having an argument in the kitchen about how many pills Dad's taking, and how some of them don't seem to be doing shit for him (Mom in particular was upset because he was still in pain, and Dad kept interpreting that as her being upset when he yelped when a particularly big pain hit him. Did NOT make getting my cereal a particularly pleasant experience!

-->A lot of cleaning, which will be slightly more detailed in the write-up below

-->Dad feeling pretty down about everything and talking about about how it's hard for him to eat (his sense of taste is all fucked up) over lunch

Yeah. You can see how that could all combine to make a less-than-stellar day off! But I got through it, and even managed to accomplish a few things:

Cleaning & Laundry: Twas another long day of cleaning and washing things, as all Cleaning Saturdays are – I started with stripping my bed and dusting the shelves above it around 10:40 AM, and finished up with folding my fresh-out-of-the-dryer blankets around 3:40 PM (admittedly with a short break near the beginning to help my mom put away some groceries, and a longer break between 1:10 PM and 2 PM for lunch). Fortunately, I had some decent entertainment to get me through all of it –

A) CaitlinRC’s final two “best of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark” videos, covering the big finale of the second season and the surprise Christmas special they did last year

B) The song “Lasers and Feelings” by The Doubleclicks, which I found while searching for stuff related to Lasers & Feelings the one-page TTRPG – obviously, the name of the RPG comes from the song, but while Lasers & Feelings the RPG is basically a Star Trek parody, “Lasers and Feelings” the song is about a woman pining over a boy she used to know...who has become an evil billionaire supervillain, but she’s sure her love can fix things! Very amusing XD

C) And “Dicebreaker and Outside Xbox in 'Quest on Praxus Prime' - Lasers and Feelings actual live play!” Featuring Michael Whelan, AKA “Wheels,” Alex Lolies, and Johnny Chiodini of “Dicebreaker” teaming up with Andy and Jane of OXBox to do an L&F adventure! Which involved Wheels GMing; Andy playing another hotshot pilot type who relied hard on feelings (many people noted in the comments that he really was just doing Corazón again); Jane taking on the role of Chief Science Officer (no one was surprised); Alex playing an android doctor for whom feelings were strange and foreign; and Johnny playing the alien security officer/weapons master who, despite being tilted toward Lasers mechanically, did have a tendency to punch all the things very impulsively and thus made a lot of Feelings rolls. :p Their adventure centered around the icy planet of Praxus Prime, as per the title, and saw the group have to transition from “answering a mysterious distress beacon” to “stopping the machinations of Zorgon the Conquerer, which wasn’t really that hard because he was kind of lame honestly.” XD Including Andy doing lots of cool hotshot piloting; Jane and Alex accidentally getting Alex’s android character hooked to a door by jamming a cable from it into their armpit USB port too hard; Johnny “testing a tunnel for structural soundness” by punching it; the gang surprising Zorgon in his moon base and finding loads of guitars and plushies and a TERRIBLE self-made album; and Johnny beating up the captain of their ship and make loads of space-crime stuff fly out of his pockets. :P Fun stuff, even if poor Jane missed a lot of it because this was a virtual session and her internet kept crapping out.

So yeah, that got me through it. And now it is all done for another two weeks, yay~

Writing: Wrote almost two pages this afternoon on “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman,” wrapping up Chapter 3 in the process! :D Making good progress on this story, which pleases me. Today’s writing session covered –

A) Alice sneaking out from behind the planter – assuring Victor that she and Smiler would do their best to be careful – and successfully getting around the guard at the office door, followed by Smiler sneaking out as well –

And very much not successfully getting in front of the guard, thanks to stepping on the world’s creakiest floorboard. *wince* The guard promptly demanded to know who they were – Smiler declared that they were a floor inspector and told him that the company should really get that floorboard fixed. XD The annoyed guard asked if they expected him to believe that –

And Smiler replied, “Not really – I just needed you to keep your eyes on me.” Which was shortly followed by Alice clonking the guard over the head. XD The guard collapsed, unconscious, and Alice was like “floor inspector?” to Smiler. They retorted that it kept the guy from noticing her, which – you can’t argue with them about that! XD

( But then another guard comes calling, and poor Smiler rolls poorly again... )

YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to do my usual CaFae Latte shorts marathon this Saturday eve – mostly because I ended up spending most of the night watching and then doing write-ups for the other two videos I wanted to watch. But I did get through the following –

A) “7 Vampire Games Where You Can Play as an Ethical Vampire” by OXBox! This week’s list video ushered in Spooky Season with Andy and Mike going over those games where vampirism doesn’t necessarily have to mean becoming a monster! Examples included:

I. Cabernet, where you play the recently-turned Liza, who as an alternative to feeding on humans (post-feeding tutorial, anyway) can drink the blood of fluffy bunnies in the forest, or purchase the titular blood-wine of the title to slake her thirst (though Andy warned that it was very expensive, so being a vampire who DOES drink wine means you’ll be a vampire who is perpetually broke)

II. The Sims 4: Vampires, where you can make yourself a vampire Sim who only feeds on willing humans or sustains themselves on purchased plasma packs (for some reason, the option to drink the entirely-vegetarian plasma fruit was not mentioned...though given I remember plasma fruits being absolutely TERRIBLE at fulfilling vampire thirst, maybe there’s a reason for that)

III. Vampyr, where you can have main character Jonathan Reid abstain from drinking any of the innocent civilians around him and go through the game rather underleveled in exchange for getting the best ending (not mentioned: the fact that you can drink the blood of people attacking you with no penalty – I guess the game figures if they’re trying to kill YOU first, it’s self-defense)

IV. And Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, where your Fledgling can do things like kill innocent people and drain them dry...and then go dance in one of the local clubs for a bit to regain some of their lost humanity, which balances out the murder. ...guys, I don’t think that’s really being an “ethical” vampire. XD (For the record, the game DOES have bagged blood and rats you can drink for a closer-to-ethical-vampire experience.)

So yeah – if you don’t necessarily want to play a monster, these games are for you! And if you do, then these games are still for you because they don’t STOP you from being a true villain of the night, they just offer alternatives. :P

( Herla tell his backstory and Cyrus gets Bob a plea deal )

Tumblr: While I didn’t do anything over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today, I did actually have an anon ask waiting for me when I checked on Valice Multiverse tonight: “it's actually morally evil to make characters because they're not even real. you're just lying. and that's fucked up” XD (Don’t worry, everyone, I’m pretty damn sure it’s meant to be a joke!) After being like “okay, who gets to answer this one” for a minute, I decided to lean into the fact that it was kind of “John Harper Games Day” over here and had Valicer In The Dark!Alice reply with “...that's a new and interesting take on the concept of fiction. I presume you think all the authors of novels and slug stories and the like should be put in Ironhook?” (“Slug stories” being the Duskwallian equivalent of the “penny dreadful” in VITD, and Ironhook being the main prison, as a reminder.) We’ll see if anything comes of it!

So yeah, glad I got through all of that at least. And now I have stayed up very late and should hit the sack. Tomorrow -- well, I definitely want to do something with my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts, and keep up with "The Worst Wanderer" if I can. But I don't know if I'll play some Paralives or watch more CaFae Latte shorts yet. We'll see how I feel tomorrow -- night all!