Busy Week Is Looking Busy
May. 3rd, 2022 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, I am getting worried about this work week. . .at least I had a nice, productive evening as well --
Work – BUSY morning – mostly due to lots of people calling in to do credit card stuff. I was run off my feet all morning trying to keep on top of it all! Not pleasant. But at least it calmed down some in the afternoon. . .still had to sort through some exceptions, and change a bunch of gifts, but at least the phone wasn’t ringing every five minutes. AND the credit card company actually FIXED SOME THINGS, which is a Goddamn miracle. Sheesh. . .only took what, two months? We’ll see if anything else gets sorted come the morrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with the Oxventure Stream “Elf Hazard!” Having gotten Merilwen’s blessing to do stealthy horrible things to ERAWEN (not Erabor – look, I’m bad with these fantasy names) and his house (though let her know if she needs to put out any fires), the other Oxventurers broke up into teams while Merilwen went to her elven kin to get all dressed up for the party and serve as a minor distraction. Said teams consisted of Team Break-In – Corazon, who volunteered to scout our Erawen’s house personally; Team Eavesdrop – Prudence, who decided to put her Clairvoyance spell to good work to spy on Erawen; and Team-bola – Dob and Egbert, who wanted to enact the back-up plan of sabotaging the tombola with all the names in it. Johnny started with Corazon, who was able to hoist himself up to the platform upon which Erawen’s house sat (with a “trying too hard” raised garden and everything), just in time to see the guy leave on a personal errand. Corazon was able to pick the lock with only minor difficulty and get inside to find a few things of interest – namely, a half-finished speech for Merilwen’s naming, with appropriate blanks left for her new name; two jewelry boxes, one containing a fancy circlet and one containing an iron brooch; and a big fat ledger containing all the names – both pre-and-post-ceremony – of the elves in the village going back years. Johnny left Corazon pouring over that in a montage. . .
To go to Team-bola! Egbert and Dob went and located the tombola, which of course was gorgeously made and incredibly intricate. Dob, realizing that there was no way that they were going to be able to exactly replicate the damn thing, and that any illusion spells he might be able to cast would be broken by anyone who spun the tombola (because he doubted they would let non-elves spin it), came up with a new plan to sabotage the naming ceremony – he and Egbert build a “trick” tombola that has a bunch of names in it, but only the slip they make saying “Merilwen” will come out. They then find a way to steal the fancy official tombola, offer up their replacement tombola, and rig the ceremony that way. Egbert thought this was great and even knew exactly what they could use for the trick tombola – the cask of evil mimosa stuff Dogbert was carrying around! Though they had to empty it first. . .
A little while later, having roped in the “acorn wine” waiter to do the first elven keg stand and then take the first elven drunken nap, Egbert was hammered, while Dob was actually JUST drunk enough to think stuff was a great idea, while just SOBER enough to actually pull that stuff off. Case in point, building a trick tombola! Dob actually rolled FANTASTICALLY for it and made a rough-but-ready tombola that would spit out a Merilwen slip on command – Egbert, meanwhile, knocked it over only twice and then spent some time playing with Dogbert. XD Johnny left it as Dob strode confidently up to the official tombola to take a look at it, Egbert following unsteadily behind. . .
To move to Team Eavesdrop! Prudence, having seen that Erawen was going toward Merilwen’s parents place (and being very overtly “sneaky” about it – jokes about terrible video game tailing missions were made), found her jeweled ear horn (this and the glass eye now canonically stolen from poor Bismuth back at Necropolis-On-Sea) and started listening in as the group talked. Merilwen’s parents, as it turned out, knew their daughter pretty well, and asked Erawen if her refusing to be named meant she had to “take the iron” and be banished, with Merilwen’s mother even explicitly saying “can we bribe you to not kick her out permanently?” Erawen said that he had to do what he had to do, weight of tradition and all that, and no, he could not be bribed, now I’m going to make you listen to me talk all about lemon squares.
This led us back to Corazon, who got to finish up his “montage” and figure out the ledger. Namely, next to each set of names there was an indication of if they got the “crown” or the “iron” (the jewelry he found before), and then – if they took the iron – either a place name. . .or just something crossed out. Which is – a bit worrying. Corazon meta-gamed a bit to get Prudence to Message him with what she knew – Prudence then did a non-canon three-hour roast of him and his song with him unable to yap back because she wouldn’t let him. XD In the actual timeline, though, Prudence did Message him with what she’d heard, and Corazon decided to steal the ledger, the iron brooch, and then kick over an incense burner and douse it with fine elven spirits to burn the place. Because it would make Prudence happy. XD
And then we went back to Team-bola, having gotten close enough to the tombola to steal it, if there was sufficient distraction.
Dob promptly used his new Major Illusion spells to make it look like a nearby house’s roof was on fire. Around the same time that the fire at Erawen’s was discovered, making him wonder if he was double-casting while drunk. XD The elves ran around in a panic to fight the dual fires while Egbert successfully grabbed the tombola – obviously, the real one in Erawen’s house was manageable (largely confined to one room), while the fake one wasn’t responding to the buckets of water. Dob told everyone he could try to use his magic to put out the fire, made faces, stopped casting the illusion, then pretended to fall over, drained of magic. And then found some ashes and claimed straight-faced that THE ORIGINAL TOMBOLA HAD BURNED. One good roll on a Charisma/Performance check later (with advantage no less), and the elves were all like “OUR TOMBOLA D:” XD These people, seriously. . .I like to think Merilwen is watching all this in the background, like “Yup. Usual complete bullshit plan that somehow works.” XD
2. Continue writing “As Long As You Love Me”: Check – Victor, meet Alice. She’s a scary lady covered in blood with a giant knife, she talks to nothing apparently, and she is currently – cutting your bonds so you can get up from the chair you’ve been tied to for most of your kidnapping. I know this is very confusing for you, but trust me, things are going to improve for you from here. XD
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – easy one in the Subs and two bonuses –
A) Started with the latest OXtra list: “7 Soulsborne Easter Eggs in Elden Ring!” Little nods to FROM’s previous games in their latest entry (excluding recurring NPC Patches, as he’s just too obvious). This includes things like classic Dark Souls treasure chests popping up in certain areas; a bunch of blobs with shields and spikes calling back to the first big boss in Demon Souls; a similar “pizza-cutter” style “saw on a stick” weapon as the Whirligig Blade from Bloodborne; and variations on the Moonlight Sword, which has been in pretty much every FROM Software game from the beginning and has always looked badass. :) Simple, but a pleasant tip-of-the-hat to what has come before for them!
B) Then it was time to hit the Subs for GrayStillPlays and “$1 vs $1000 Escape Rooms in GTA 5!” Yup, Gray is still paying people money to torture him in the game, this time with escape rooms! Let’s get started –
$1 – Someone essentially made him a prison riot! He was trapped in a fenced area with a bunch of convicts running around randomly and had to find a way out. Gray initially thought he had to beat everyone to death with a baseball bat to get the door in the fence to open, but then realized he had an Up-And-Atomizer and was able to launch people over and into the fence, allowing him to walk out and propel himself into the win.
$10 – It’s Danny, who is now officially apprentice to Alex (the $1,000 board guy). His apprenticeship included making a horrible teleporter parkour/obstacle course for Gray to run around in. The goal was to find the correct teleporter to get yourself out of the room, instead of flung from the ceiling into the obligatory embedded wind turbine, or dropped into the middle of a raging waterfall. Though actually, you DID have to get flung into the waterfall – after trying out a few other options, Gray discovered that only the teleporter that you could get propelled into by going down the waterfall was correct! And then Danny basically blackmailed him into giving him a “$50” board by having the “no” response take Gray right back to the beginning. XD Gray promised that he’d pay him more if the comments agreed – I think the comments are gonna agree. XD
$100 – A box full of breakable panels, with Gray having to smash them open to find the correct opening to the actual win. Also an oil rig was plopped in the board for no reason. Or was it – after finding himself a shotgun in a secret nook (and a car that nearly crushed him in a secret opening), and discovering a couple of fake doors that got him out but without providing a win, Gray realized the trick was to get on top of the oil rig and use it to blast open the ceiling. Sure enough, there was a gap up there, which led to a teleporter, which led him to atop a wind turbine, where he could jump to the win, yay.
$500 – A parkour challenge with INVISIBLE PLATFORMS above a floor LITTERED WITH FIRE – the creator was kind enough to give Gray a snowman friend who would provide snowballs for him to throw so he could find the invisible platforms, but was cruel enough to put gaps between them – and, nearer the end, make some of the platforms move. As someone who had a LOT of jumping challenges in A:MR ruined by moving invisible platforms, I feel you, Gray. He fell quite a few times, but managed to make it across all the platforms, and even through a burning volcano pipe at the very end to claim victory!
$1,000 – It’s Alex. . .with a proper puzzle room! Technically the teleport was right in front of Gray, but he couldn’t access it from his spawn point – he had to get into a tube set into the wall the teleport was in front of. And how to get into the tube? Well, that involved Gray discovering that the entire board was technically underwater, and that if he left certain areas, he could swim where he needed to go; managing to find the entrance to the tube but not being able to run into it on foot (it was up a ramp and JUST far enough and high enough to stop a GTA character from jumping in); discovering a disappearing platform run that he had to fall onto and run across to access an amphibious vehicle; driving that vehicle around in jetski mode until he found the next platform he needed to drive across; tootling around some more until he found the jump that would let him access the tube; jumping the jetski into the tube, then swimming through it; making it past the Inevitable Wind Turbine in the middle; before finally falling out on the right side to access the teleport and get to win on the beach. Poor Gray, he does not like having to flex his brain-muscles like this. XD What you get for constantly paying this guy!
C) And a quick one from Simmer Erin to round things out – “BIG PARALIVES NEWS!! EARLY ACCESS, ROADMAP OF GAMEPLAY/ CHARACTER CREATOR/ BUILDING (2022 UPDATE)!” Yes, on the day that the Sims 4 team have released their roadmap for the next two months (having realized they have fucked up what a “quarter” means by starting their second one at the beginning of May), showing two more damn kits and one game pack that MIGHT be werewolves, the Paralives team has gone “hey, here’s a roadmap of all the stuff in the game that we’re currently working on – done, in-progress, not started yet – that includes stuff like the Paramaker, Build Mode, and our recent switch to Live Mode. Also while we can’t confirm a release date, we are confirming eventually we will have an Early Access release on Steam.” This group of ten people working hard on an indie game has got me more hype than the triple-A title. I might actually give this a spin in Early Access, if it looks good enough. We’ll see!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Extremely check – got the entire rest of the week sorted on Victor Luvs Alice (Chill Save update Wednesday, final link to “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears” Thursday, Beckett fanart Friday, Wyrd Sisters Podcast 37 Saturday), and four ask replies for tomorrow on Valice Multiverse (including one where the anon expressed their desire to see Victor curse out his parents, which I ended up doing a long “each Victor in each of my universes comments on that” reply to).
Well, at least the queues are good! Just gotta remember to reset the VLA queue from three to one tomorrow afternoon. . .as it stands, though, I've really got to get to bed -- been going to bed way too late lately. Meeeh. . .night all!
Work – BUSY morning – mostly due to lots of people calling in to do credit card stuff. I was run off my feet all morning trying to keep on top of it all! Not pleasant. But at least it calmed down some in the afternoon. . .still had to sort through some exceptions, and change a bunch of gifts, but at least the phone wasn’t ringing every five minutes. AND the credit card company actually FIXED SOME THINGS, which is a Goddamn miracle. Sheesh. . .only took what, two months? We’ll see if anything else gets sorted come the morrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with the Oxventure Stream “Elf Hazard!” Having gotten Merilwen’s blessing to do stealthy horrible things to ERAWEN (not Erabor – look, I’m bad with these fantasy names) and his house (though let her know if she needs to put out any fires), the other Oxventurers broke up into teams while Merilwen went to her elven kin to get all dressed up for the party and serve as a minor distraction. Said teams consisted of Team Break-In – Corazon, who volunteered to scout our Erawen’s house personally; Team Eavesdrop – Prudence, who decided to put her Clairvoyance spell to good work to spy on Erawen; and Team-bola – Dob and Egbert, who wanted to enact the back-up plan of sabotaging the tombola with all the names in it. Johnny started with Corazon, who was able to hoist himself up to the platform upon which Erawen’s house sat (with a “trying too hard” raised garden and everything), just in time to see the guy leave on a personal errand. Corazon was able to pick the lock with only minor difficulty and get inside to find a few things of interest – namely, a half-finished speech for Merilwen’s naming, with appropriate blanks left for her new name; two jewelry boxes, one containing a fancy circlet and one containing an iron brooch; and a big fat ledger containing all the names – both pre-and-post-ceremony – of the elves in the village going back years. Johnny left Corazon pouring over that in a montage. . .
To go to Team-bola! Egbert and Dob went and located the tombola, which of course was gorgeously made and incredibly intricate. Dob, realizing that there was no way that they were going to be able to exactly replicate the damn thing, and that any illusion spells he might be able to cast would be broken by anyone who spun the tombola (because he doubted they would let non-elves spin it), came up with a new plan to sabotage the naming ceremony – he and Egbert build a “trick” tombola that has a bunch of names in it, but only the slip they make saying “Merilwen” will come out. They then find a way to steal the fancy official tombola, offer up their replacement tombola, and rig the ceremony that way. Egbert thought this was great and even knew exactly what they could use for the trick tombola – the cask of evil mimosa stuff Dogbert was carrying around! Though they had to empty it first. . .
A little while later, having roped in the “acorn wine” waiter to do the first elven keg stand and then take the first elven drunken nap, Egbert was hammered, while Dob was actually JUST drunk enough to think stuff was a great idea, while just SOBER enough to actually pull that stuff off. Case in point, building a trick tombola! Dob actually rolled FANTASTICALLY for it and made a rough-but-ready tombola that would spit out a Merilwen slip on command – Egbert, meanwhile, knocked it over only twice and then spent some time playing with Dogbert. XD Johnny left it as Dob strode confidently up to the official tombola to take a look at it, Egbert following unsteadily behind. . .
To move to Team Eavesdrop! Prudence, having seen that Erawen was going toward Merilwen’s parents place (and being very overtly “sneaky” about it – jokes about terrible video game tailing missions were made), found her jeweled ear horn (this and the glass eye now canonically stolen from poor Bismuth back at Necropolis-On-Sea) and started listening in as the group talked. Merilwen’s parents, as it turned out, knew their daughter pretty well, and asked Erawen if her refusing to be named meant she had to “take the iron” and be banished, with Merilwen’s mother even explicitly saying “can we bribe you to not kick her out permanently?” Erawen said that he had to do what he had to do, weight of tradition and all that, and no, he could not be bribed, now I’m going to make you listen to me talk all about lemon squares.
This led us back to Corazon, who got to finish up his “montage” and figure out the ledger. Namely, next to each set of names there was an indication of if they got the “crown” or the “iron” (the jewelry he found before), and then – if they took the iron – either a place name. . .or just something crossed out. Which is – a bit worrying. Corazon meta-gamed a bit to get Prudence to Message him with what she knew – Prudence then did a non-canon three-hour roast of him and his song with him unable to yap back because she wouldn’t let him. XD In the actual timeline, though, Prudence did Message him with what she’d heard, and Corazon decided to steal the ledger, the iron brooch, and then kick over an incense burner and douse it with fine elven spirits to burn the place. Because it would make Prudence happy. XD
And then we went back to Team-bola, having gotten close enough to the tombola to steal it, if there was sufficient distraction.
Dob promptly used his new Major Illusion spells to make it look like a nearby house’s roof was on fire. Around the same time that the fire at Erawen’s was discovered, making him wonder if he was double-casting while drunk. XD The elves ran around in a panic to fight the dual fires while Egbert successfully grabbed the tombola – obviously, the real one in Erawen’s house was manageable (largely confined to one room), while the fake one wasn’t responding to the buckets of water. Dob told everyone he could try to use his magic to put out the fire, made faces, stopped casting the illusion, then pretended to fall over, drained of magic. And then found some ashes and claimed straight-faced that THE ORIGINAL TOMBOLA HAD BURNED. One good roll on a Charisma/Performance check later (with advantage no less), and the elves were all like “OUR TOMBOLA D:” XD These people, seriously. . .I like to think Merilwen is watching all this in the background, like “Yup. Usual complete bullshit plan that somehow works.” XD
2. Continue writing “As Long As You Love Me”: Check – Victor, meet Alice. She’s a scary lady covered in blood with a giant knife, she talks to nothing apparently, and she is currently – cutting your bonds so you can get up from the chair you’ve been tied to for most of your kidnapping. I know this is very confusing for you, but trust me, things are going to improve for you from here. XD
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – easy one in the Subs and two bonuses –
A) Started with the latest OXtra list: “7 Soulsborne Easter Eggs in Elden Ring!” Little nods to FROM’s previous games in their latest entry (excluding recurring NPC Patches, as he’s just too obvious). This includes things like classic Dark Souls treasure chests popping up in certain areas; a bunch of blobs with shields and spikes calling back to the first big boss in Demon Souls; a similar “pizza-cutter” style “saw on a stick” weapon as the Whirligig Blade from Bloodborne; and variations on the Moonlight Sword, which has been in pretty much every FROM Software game from the beginning and has always looked badass. :) Simple, but a pleasant tip-of-the-hat to what has come before for them!
B) Then it was time to hit the Subs for GrayStillPlays and “$1 vs $1000 Escape Rooms in GTA 5!” Yup, Gray is still paying people money to torture him in the game, this time with escape rooms! Let’s get started –
$1 – Someone essentially made him a prison riot! He was trapped in a fenced area with a bunch of convicts running around randomly and had to find a way out. Gray initially thought he had to beat everyone to death with a baseball bat to get the door in the fence to open, but then realized he had an Up-And-Atomizer and was able to launch people over and into the fence, allowing him to walk out and propel himself into the win.
$10 – It’s Danny, who is now officially apprentice to Alex (the $1,000 board guy). His apprenticeship included making a horrible teleporter parkour/obstacle course for Gray to run around in. The goal was to find the correct teleporter to get yourself out of the room, instead of flung from the ceiling into the obligatory embedded wind turbine, or dropped into the middle of a raging waterfall. Though actually, you DID have to get flung into the waterfall – after trying out a few other options, Gray discovered that only the teleporter that you could get propelled into by going down the waterfall was correct! And then Danny basically blackmailed him into giving him a “$50” board by having the “no” response take Gray right back to the beginning. XD Gray promised that he’d pay him more if the comments agreed – I think the comments are gonna agree. XD
$100 – A box full of breakable panels, with Gray having to smash them open to find the correct opening to the actual win. Also an oil rig was plopped in the board for no reason. Or was it – after finding himself a shotgun in a secret nook (and a car that nearly crushed him in a secret opening), and discovering a couple of fake doors that got him out but without providing a win, Gray realized the trick was to get on top of the oil rig and use it to blast open the ceiling. Sure enough, there was a gap up there, which led to a teleporter, which led him to atop a wind turbine, where he could jump to the win, yay.
$500 – A parkour challenge with INVISIBLE PLATFORMS above a floor LITTERED WITH FIRE – the creator was kind enough to give Gray a snowman friend who would provide snowballs for him to throw so he could find the invisible platforms, but was cruel enough to put gaps between them – and, nearer the end, make some of the platforms move. As someone who had a LOT of jumping challenges in A:MR ruined by moving invisible platforms, I feel you, Gray. He fell quite a few times, but managed to make it across all the platforms, and even through a burning volcano pipe at the very end to claim victory!
$1,000 – It’s Alex. . .with a proper puzzle room! Technically the teleport was right in front of Gray, but he couldn’t access it from his spawn point – he had to get into a tube set into the wall the teleport was in front of. And how to get into the tube? Well, that involved Gray discovering that the entire board was technically underwater, and that if he left certain areas, he could swim where he needed to go; managing to find the entrance to the tube but not being able to run into it on foot (it was up a ramp and JUST far enough and high enough to stop a GTA character from jumping in); discovering a disappearing platform run that he had to fall onto and run across to access an amphibious vehicle; driving that vehicle around in jetski mode until he found the next platform he needed to drive across; tootling around some more until he found the jump that would let him access the tube; jumping the jetski into the tube, then swimming through it; making it past the Inevitable Wind Turbine in the middle; before finally falling out on the right side to access the teleport and get to win on the beach. Poor Gray, he does not like having to flex his brain-muscles like this. XD What you get for constantly paying this guy!
C) And a quick one from Simmer Erin to round things out – “BIG PARALIVES NEWS!! EARLY ACCESS, ROADMAP OF GAMEPLAY/ CHARACTER CREATOR/ BUILDING (2022 UPDATE)!” Yes, on the day that the Sims 4 team have released their roadmap for the next two months (having realized they have fucked up what a “quarter” means by starting their second one at the beginning of May), showing two more damn kits and one game pack that MIGHT be werewolves, the Paralives team has gone “hey, here’s a roadmap of all the stuff in the game that we’re currently working on – done, in-progress, not started yet – that includes stuff like the Paramaker, Build Mode, and our recent switch to Live Mode. Also while we can’t confirm a release date, we are confirming eventually we will have an Early Access release on Steam.” This group of ten people working hard on an indie game has got me more hype than the triple-A title. I might actually give this a spin in Early Access, if it looks good enough. We’ll see!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Extremely check – got the entire rest of the week sorted on Victor Luvs Alice (Chill Save update Wednesday, final link to “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears” Thursday, Beckett fanart Friday, Wyrd Sisters Podcast 37 Saturday), and four ask replies for tomorrow on Valice Multiverse (including one where the anon expressed their desire to see Victor curse out his parents, which I ended up doing a long “each Victor in each of my universes comments on that” reply to).
Well, at least the queues are good! Just gotta remember to reset the VLA queue from three to one tomorrow afternoon. . .as it stands, though, I've really got to get to bed -- been going to bed way too late lately. Meeeh. . .night all!
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Date: 2022-05-05 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-05 03:33 am (UTC)