Rushed Tuesday Night
Dec. 13th, 2022 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickIt was busy, and I had a lot of things to get through, as per below --
Work – Reasonably quiet day, actually (though the commute in was annoyingly slow) – spent most of my morning working through an e-mail about my credit card company woes and the shit that was outstanding; then most of my afternoon working on a QC file for billings, with updating someone’s credit card on their pledge for flavor. *shrug* I have had much worse days at work – like yesterday. :p
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, going up and down virtual mountains, another night with the Live Oxventure “Tome Sweet Tome!” I picked up with Egbert being volunteered to marry the dowager widow by Corazon and Dob, and him happily agreeing to that. XD But yes, this turned into The Sidequest Half Hour, as the gang tackled the three tasks Trashsack the wizard asked them to do to help him keep up appearances. In order –
Fixing A Broken Door – Dob insisted on looking for this manually, and with his halved movement speed, it took him four hours. XD The gang did eventually find the door in question, which had fallen in quite dramatically – jam had broken, the stone around it had crumbled into rubble, all of that. The gang managed to convince the door’s owner, a nice Northern man, that they were the five randos Trashsack had wrote would fix his door, with Merilwen just BARELY stopping Corazon from charging the guy for the work. XD Which is good, because after it is revealed that Merilwen swapped out her spells and thus didn’t have her beloved Stone Shape ready, Corazon ended up using Minor Illusion to fake a fixed door. XD Dob managed to successfully distract the guy from investigating this too much by asking him about Ray, and when the guy said he’d never heard of a Ray, declaring him a suspect (Johnny was pissed because that meant they had to roll at disadvantage to investigate the door, and their first roll was a nat 20 – they ended up with a six). And then, when the guy tried to go back into his house, they claimed that he could go through the magic door, and Corazon shoved him in through the gap in the rubble, concussing him. This did at least leave him too banged up to actually notice anything weird about the door, and the fivesome promptly scarpered.
Baking Bread – The Oxventurers then went to the local bakery, where the poor baker was waiting for magic bread. Corazon suggested doing Minor Illusion to fake bread, and Dob suggested his own Major Image to get the proper smell in, but Merilwen really wanted to actually give baking bread a try, even casting Flamesword to cook it (Johnny reminded her that they WERE tracking spell slots now XD). It quickly became apparent, though, that none of these people had ANY idea how to bake bread, even with Johnny throwing them the bone of giving the bakery a fully-functioning kitchen and all the ingredients (since the baker at least wanted to keep up the LOOK of knowing what they were doing). Dob insisted on putting in lemon zest and vanilla extract (despite Prudence telling him that those were CAKE ingredients) and was so eager to get to the kneading he just smashed what they did have (flour and yeast) together; Merilwen turned into a chicken to lay some eggs, which is ANOTHER ingredient they don’t need for bread – she promptly claimed she was getting an egg wash ready; when Johnny pointed out there was no water, Dob said that Egbert had natural moisture, grossing out the audience – and then Egbert SPIT IN THE INGREDIENTS, causing even further grossing out; and then they used Egbert as an oven (with Prudence “turning his dial”), only for Dob to roll another crit 1 on the Wisdom/Perception check he needed to guess when the bread should come out of the Egbert (his mouth!) and yank it out 45 minutes late. And then the carp wriggled out his mouth Xenomorph-style to eat a third of it. Dob presented this to the baker, who whimpered at them to leave. And so they did. XD
Marrying the Dowager Widow – And so it was off to the widow to have Egbert pitch some woo! She was waiting eagerly on the porch when they arrived, with a huge pitcher of lemonade – Egbert downed the whole thing, but thanks to a decent Constitution saving throw, only got a bit gassy. The widow was a little thrown by Egbert being her intended, but admitted that she hadn’t actually specified anything to Trashsack beyond “he should like lemonade,” so yeah, this was probably on her. Dob and Corazon tried to set the mood with some nice music and Dancing Lights – all this did was make Egbert intensely aware of his own rapidly-beating heart and convince him he was having a heart attack. Dob asked Merilwen if she could quickly marry the two of them (she was ordained, right?), and Merilwen faked a “druidic ceremony” by basically doing that bit from the end of Mel Brooks movies where the preacher in charge of the wedding speeds things up by just asking “you wanna get married? Great, you’re married.” And only clarified AFTERWARD that she was still a chicken. XD The widow rolled with all of this and got out more lemonade to serve to her guests, who did happily take it –
Only to notice ripples in the glass – circles, moving outward. References to Jurassic Park immediately began flying, and (after Prudence quickly determined there wasn’t anything magical about the lemonade), a T-Rex did indeed appear before them! A – rather amateurish T-Rex, like it was created by someone who didn’t have THAT great of reference for what one looked like. Still, it was a T-Rex, and thus a threat, so everyone rolled for initiative! Shockingly, Dob actually rolled the highest and hit the damn thing with Shatter in the sound-sensing organ that modern science now suggests it had in its skull – this did a fair whack of damage, and then Dob mocking it for trying to relieve its headache by clawing at its chin with its tiny arms did a further 5 points of psychic damage. XD The action then moved to Merilwen, who involuntarily laid an egg as she and the T-Rex stared each other down in a battle for turn position. . .
And then the T-Rex said “Rawr! I’m gonna eat you all up!” like a little kid playing pretend. Merilwen was charmed until it actually attempted to eat her –
And then Johnny rolled a crit 1, and the T-Rex fell over and started crying. XD The dice have been MEAN this show! Merilwen turned back into elf form and attempted to just get rid of it with Dispel Magic (Johnny swore on-stage as a result), but actually BIFFED THE ROLL to overcome the magic of the book, so the T-Rex didn’t even notice her doing anything. The deeply unimpressed Corazon, realizing that what had happened was some kid had gotten ahold of the book and drawn a T-Rex in it, stabbed it without a lot of enthusiasm (but WITH Sneak Attack, because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t use his fifteen million modifiers). And then Prudence decided that she was going to banish it to another plane with her new Banish spell – sure, it would only work for one minute, but that was enough time for them to run and make it the widow’s problem when it came back! XD Of course, she needed something that the T-Rex would find distasteful to pull this off, and a LOT of ragging on Jurassic Park III commenced, to the point where Corazon handed her a VHS copy despite those not being a thing (Merilwen managed to claim it was a Very Hardy Scroll). Dob also suggested calling it cold-blooded when dinosaurs were nothing of the sort. Johnny was just face-palming at this point. XD At any rate, the T-Rex was banished, and the group scarpered, with Egbert throwing a “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” the widow’s way when she asked where he was going (a crowd member promptly said “and you guys called the T-Rex cold-blooded!”).
Anyway, the gang reconvened a short distance away, and it was reiterated that a kid had probably got their hands on the book. Corazon was all for killing all the children, but Johnny wouldn’t let that stand, so they started wondering where the kids in this village hung out. Dob tried Messaging Katy to see if she’d learned anything – not really. She was in the middle of roughing up the town crier, in fact, but he wasn’t giving her anything! Dob asked if she’d robbed any children, then clarified that he didn’t WANT her to rob any children, he was just asking if she had. Also, did she know what the kids did these days? Did they go to skate parks? A puzzled Katy asked if he was taking his supplements, and Dob promised he was, even though they were making him feel kinda bad. . . I left it with Merilwen, overhearing him muttering about the pills, promptly going for a sneaky look in his bag to get them. XD We’ll see if she’s successful tomorrow!
2. Continue writing gift fics: Check – edited Nebby’s today, about one of her favorite characters, Daniel Fortesque from the Medievil games recruiting in Burtonsville for help in finding and saving his beloved mummy princess Kiya from her asshole ex-husband the Pharaoh, who has her trapped with him in the Egyptian afterlife. Naturally, helping save an unfortunate woman from her terrible ex appeals to a group who so loved their corpse bride – and to a visiting Lizzie Liddell, who is already getting Bumby vibes. Took a bit to beat into shape, but I’m happy with the end result!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check, despite getting to my Subs a bit late – all three necessary videos of the day were watched –
A) Again, managed to get the latest from OXBox’s OXmas in before my workout – “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 4! Elden Ring Nude Santa Survival Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Producer Santa was very surprised when he read out this challenge and had to be reassured that no one was expecting him to strip. XD The challenge actually was to survive as long as possible in the first boss fight with Margit The Fell Omen in Elden Ring as Nude (mostly; there was a loincloth present) Santa with a club. The combatants were Jane and Andy, with Luke keeping an eye on the proceedings and Mike on the timer (starting from when Margit’s health bar popped up). How did our pair of brave warriors do?
Well, the fact that the video was less than ten minutes should give you a clue – and most of that was set-up. Poor Jane was murdered by Margit 26 seconds into her attempt; Andy rolled and healed his way out of trouble a couple of times (you were allowed to heal, btw, Jane just never got the chance) and managed to exactly double her time at 52 seconds before death. And then, because Luke had been bragging about his own Elden Ring prowess, there was a bonus round after the Christmas Point was awarded to see how long he’d last – 39 seconds, pretty much exactly halfway between Andy and Jane. XD To be fair, though, Andy admitted he’s the only one who’s finished the game, so I guess it only makes sense he’d be the best. :P So Andy picks up his second point – now, is anyone gonna let MIKE play anytime soon?
B) Then this evening, once I’d finished up writing and cookies and all that, it was time for the latest from Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Daffy Duck!” One of the GOATs of Duckember, with Josh drawing four pictures – three inspired by specific cartoons (Daffy fighting with the animation cel in “Duck Amok,” Daffy getting weirdly and terrifying sensual in an older 40s cartoon; Daffy with his bill on the other side of his head thanks to Elmer Fudd in “Duck Season”), and one just by a specific version of Daffy (the more manic “woohoo! woohoo!” version from the older 30s cartoons). Apparently Donald Duck is Josh’s favorite duck when it comes to iconography (like getting him on merch), but Daffy is his favorite when it comes to actual entertainment content (like classic Looney Tunes – don’t talk to him about the modern stuff XD). He did some excellent Daffys, and now I am eager to see his take on Donald when he gets there!
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When you evolve dinosaurs for 9,999,999,999 years,” aka Gray plays Monster Catch Run! This was another silly mobile game that consisted of Gray taking a cowboy around a winding path, picking up various upgrades for his gun so he could shoot webs at dinosaurs on pillars of gold and capture them, then bring them to an arena where he could send them to fight to the death against other dinosaurs for money for more gun upgrades. Also you could combine any two dinosaurs of the same type to make a NEW dinosaur – or similar being, as the game not only featured the classics (T-Rex, triceratops, ankylosaurus, etc), but also an itcthyosaur and – in the most powerful form – straight up dragons in My Little Pony bright colors with big eyes that breathed balls of death at their opponents. Gray had a LOT of fun combining dinosaurs and dragons and making them fight until he found the ultimate evolution. XD Just another day in GrayVille!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! Got the final post of the Chill Save update tomorrow finished off and queued all five for Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice, along with throwing in a nice photo set of waistcoats for Thursday and some fun fanart someone did of the X-Sector coasters (including their Smiler) for Friday. And on Valice Multiverse – well, got five ask replies queued, and accidentally posted a thread reply I was trying to queue while experimenting with the “editable reblogs” feature of tumblr’s xkit (which does not seem to be working correctly, shit). Meeh, but at least it’s all sorted! And I answered Moose's messages, w00.
And now I must be off, for it is late and I need sleep. Three more days this week, three more days next week! Slowly but surely working our way toward a long Christmas break. . .
Work – Reasonably quiet day, actually (though the commute in was annoyingly slow) – spent most of my morning working through an e-mail about my credit card company woes and the shit that was outstanding; then most of my afternoon working on a QC file for billings, with updating someone’s credit card on their pledge for flavor. *shrug* I have had much worse days at work – like yesterday. :p
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, going up and down virtual mountains, another night with the Live Oxventure “Tome Sweet Tome!” I picked up with Egbert being volunteered to marry the dowager widow by Corazon and Dob, and him happily agreeing to that. XD But yes, this turned into The Sidequest Half Hour, as the gang tackled the three tasks Trashsack the wizard asked them to do to help him keep up appearances. In order –
Fixing A Broken Door – Dob insisted on looking for this manually, and with his halved movement speed, it took him four hours. XD The gang did eventually find the door in question, which had fallen in quite dramatically – jam had broken, the stone around it had crumbled into rubble, all of that. The gang managed to convince the door’s owner, a nice Northern man, that they were the five randos Trashsack had wrote would fix his door, with Merilwen just BARELY stopping Corazon from charging the guy for the work. XD Which is good, because after it is revealed that Merilwen swapped out her spells and thus didn’t have her beloved Stone Shape ready, Corazon ended up using Minor Illusion to fake a fixed door. XD Dob managed to successfully distract the guy from investigating this too much by asking him about Ray, and when the guy said he’d never heard of a Ray, declaring him a suspect (Johnny was pissed because that meant they had to roll at disadvantage to investigate the door, and their first roll was a nat 20 – they ended up with a six). And then, when the guy tried to go back into his house, they claimed that he could go through the magic door, and Corazon shoved him in through the gap in the rubble, concussing him. This did at least leave him too banged up to actually notice anything weird about the door, and the fivesome promptly scarpered.
Baking Bread – The Oxventurers then went to the local bakery, where the poor baker was waiting for magic bread. Corazon suggested doing Minor Illusion to fake bread, and Dob suggested his own Major Image to get the proper smell in, but Merilwen really wanted to actually give baking bread a try, even casting Flamesword to cook it (Johnny reminded her that they WERE tracking spell slots now XD). It quickly became apparent, though, that none of these people had ANY idea how to bake bread, even with Johnny throwing them the bone of giving the bakery a fully-functioning kitchen and all the ingredients (since the baker at least wanted to keep up the LOOK of knowing what they were doing). Dob insisted on putting in lemon zest and vanilla extract (despite Prudence telling him that those were CAKE ingredients) and was so eager to get to the kneading he just smashed what they did have (flour and yeast) together; Merilwen turned into a chicken to lay some eggs, which is ANOTHER ingredient they don’t need for bread – she promptly claimed she was getting an egg wash ready; when Johnny pointed out there was no water, Dob said that Egbert had natural moisture, grossing out the audience – and then Egbert SPIT IN THE INGREDIENTS, causing even further grossing out; and then they used Egbert as an oven (with Prudence “turning his dial”), only for Dob to roll another crit 1 on the Wisdom/Perception check he needed to guess when the bread should come out of the Egbert (his mouth!) and yank it out 45 minutes late. And then the carp wriggled out his mouth Xenomorph-style to eat a third of it. Dob presented this to the baker, who whimpered at them to leave. And so they did. XD
Marrying the Dowager Widow – And so it was off to the widow to have Egbert pitch some woo! She was waiting eagerly on the porch when they arrived, with a huge pitcher of lemonade – Egbert downed the whole thing, but thanks to a decent Constitution saving throw, only got a bit gassy. The widow was a little thrown by Egbert being her intended, but admitted that she hadn’t actually specified anything to Trashsack beyond “he should like lemonade,” so yeah, this was probably on her. Dob and Corazon tried to set the mood with some nice music and Dancing Lights – all this did was make Egbert intensely aware of his own rapidly-beating heart and convince him he was having a heart attack. Dob asked Merilwen if she could quickly marry the two of them (she was ordained, right?), and Merilwen faked a “druidic ceremony” by basically doing that bit from the end of Mel Brooks movies where the preacher in charge of the wedding speeds things up by just asking “you wanna get married? Great, you’re married.” And only clarified AFTERWARD that she was still a chicken. XD The widow rolled with all of this and got out more lemonade to serve to her guests, who did happily take it –
Only to notice ripples in the glass – circles, moving outward. References to Jurassic Park immediately began flying, and (after Prudence quickly determined there wasn’t anything magical about the lemonade), a T-Rex did indeed appear before them! A – rather amateurish T-Rex, like it was created by someone who didn’t have THAT great of reference for what one looked like. Still, it was a T-Rex, and thus a threat, so everyone rolled for initiative! Shockingly, Dob actually rolled the highest and hit the damn thing with Shatter in the sound-sensing organ that modern science now suggests it had in its skull – this did a fair whack of damage, and then Dob mocking it for trying to relieve its headache by clawing at its chin with its tiny arms did a further 5 points of psychic damage. XD The action then moved to Merilwen, who involuntarily laid an egg as she and the T-Rex stared each other down in a battle for turn position. . .
And then the T-Rex said “Rawr! I’m gonna eat you all up!” like a little kid playing pretend. Merilwen was charmed until it actually attempted to eat her –
And then Johnny rolled a crit 1, and the T-Rex fell over and started crying. XD The dice have been MEAN this show! Merilwen turned back into elf form and attempted to just get rid of it with Dispel Magic (Johnny swore on-stage as a result), but actually BIFFED THE ROLL to overcome the magic of the book, so the T-Rex didn’t even notice her doing anything. The deeply unimpressed Corazon, realizing that what had happened was some kid had gotten ahold of the book and drawn a T-Rex in it, stabbed it without a lot of enthusiasm (but WITH Sneak Attack, because he’ll be damned if he doesn’t use his fifteen million modifiers). And then Prudence decided that she was going to banish it to another plane with her new Banish spell – sure, it would only work for one minute, but that was enough time for them to run and make it the widow’s problem when it came back! XD Of course, she needed something that the T-Rex would find distasteful to pull this off, and a LOT of ragging on Jurassic Park III commenced, to the point where Corazon handed her a VHS copy despite those not being a thing (Merilwen managed to claim it was a Very Hardy Scroll). Dob also suggested calling it cold-blooded when dinosaurs were nothing of the sort. Johnny was just face-palming at this point. XD At any rate, the T-Rex was banished, and the group scarpered, with Egbert throwing a “I love you, but I’m not in love with you” the widow’s way when she asked where he was going (a crowd member promptly said “and you guys called the T-Rex cold-blooded!”).
Anyway, the gang reconvened a short distance away, and it was reiterated that a kid had probably got their hands on the book. Corazon was all for killing all the children, but Johnny wouldn’t let that stand, so they started wondering where the kids in this village hung out. Dob tried Messaging Katy to see if she’d learned anything – not really. She was in the middle of roughing up the town crier, in fact, but he wasn’t giving her anything! Dob asked if she’d robbed any children, then clarified that he didn’t WANT her to rob any children, he was just asking if she had. Also, did she know what the kids did these days? Did they go to skate parks? A puzzled Katy asked if he was taking his supplements, and Dob promised he was, even though they were making him feel kinda bad. . . I left it with Merilwen, overhearing him muttering about the pills, promptly going for a sneaky look in his bag to get them. XD We’ll see if she’s successful tomorrow!
2. Continue writing gift fics: Check – edited Nebby’s today, about one of her favorite characters, Daniel Fortesque from the Medievil games recruiting in Burtonsville for help in finding and saving his beloved mummy princess Kiya from her asshole ex-husband the Pharaoh, who has her trapped with him in the Egyptian afterlife. Naturally, helping save an unfortunate woman from her terrible ex appeals to a group who so loved their corpse bride – and to a visiting Lizzie Liddell, who is already getting Bumby vibes. Took a bit to beat into shape, but I’m happy with the end result!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check, despite getting to my Subs a bit late – all three necessary videos of the day were watched –
A) Again, managed to get the latest from OXBox’s OXmas in before my workout – “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 4! Elden Ring Nude Santa Survival Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Producer Santa was very surprised when he read out this challenge and had to be reassured that no one was expecting him to strip. XD The challenge actually was to survive as long as possible in the first boss fight with Margit The Fell Omen in Elden Ring as Nude (mostly; there was a loincloth present) Santa with a club. The combatants were Jane and Andy, with Luke keeping an eye on the proceedings and Mike on the timer (starting from when Margit’s health bar popped up). How did our pair of brave warriors do?
Well, the fact that the video was less than ten minutes should give you a clue – and most of that was set-up. Poor Jane was murdered by Margit 26 seconds into her attempt; Andy rolled and healed his way out of trouble a couple of times (you were allowed to heal, btw, Jane just never got the chance) and managed to exactly double her time at 52 seconds before death. And then, because Luke had been bragging about his own Elden Ring prowess, there was a bonus round after the Christmas Point was awarded to see how long he’d last – 39 seconds, pretty much exactly halfway between Andy and Jane. XD To be fair, though, Andy admitted he’s the only one who’s finished the game, so I guess it only makes sense he’d be the best. :P So Andy picks up his second point – now, is anyone gonna let MIKE play anytime soon?
B) Then this evening, once I’d finished up writing and cookies and all that, it was time for the latest from Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Daffy Duck!” One of the GOATs of Duckember, with Josh drawing four pictures – three inspired by specific cartoons (Daffy fighting with the animation cel in “Duck Amok,” Daffy getting weirdly and terrifying sensual in an older 40s cartoon; Daffy with his bill on the other side of his head thanks to Elmer Fudd in “Duck Season”), and one just by a specific version of Daffy (the more manic “woohoo! woohoo!” version from the older 30s cartoons). Apparently Donald Duck is Josh’s favorite duck when it comes to iconography (like getting him on merch), but Daffy is his favorite when it comes to actual entertainment content (like classic Looney Tunes – don’t talk to him about the modern stuff XD). He did some excellent Daffys, and now I am eager to see his take on Donald when he gets there!
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When you evolve dinosaurs for 9,999,999,999 years,” aka Gray plays Monster Catch Run! This was another silly mobile game that consisted of Gray taking a cowboy around a winding path, picking up various upgrades for his gun so he could shoot webs at dinosaurs on pillars of gold and capture them, then bring them to an arena where he could send them to fight to the death against other dinosaurs for money for more gun upgrades. Also you could combine any two dinosaurs of the same type to make a NEW dinosaur – or similar being, as the game not only featured the classics (T-Rex, triceratops, ankylosaurus, etc), but also an itcthyosaur and – in the most powerful form – straight up dragons in My Little Pony bright colors with big eyes that breathed balls of death at their opponents. Gray had a LOT of fun combining dinosaurs and dragons and making them fight until he found the ultimate evolution. XD Just another day in GrayVille!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! Got the final post of the Chill Save update tomorrow finished off and queued all five for Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice, along with throwing in a nice photo set of waistcoats for Thursday and some fun fanart someone did of the X-Sector coasters (including their Smiler) for Friday. And on Valice Multiverse – well, got five ask replies queued, and accidentally posted a thread reply I was trying to queue while experimenting with the “editable reblogs” feature of tumblr’s xkit (which does not seem to be working correctly, shit). Meeh, but at least it’s all sorted! And I answered Moose's messages, w00.
And now I must be off, for it is late and I need sleep. Three more days this week, three more days next week! Slowly but surely working our way toward a long Christmas break. . .
