Okay Enough Monday
Jan. 9th, 2023 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI mean, it was Monday, so it couldn't be truly GREAT, but it wasn't terrible. I think the overall mood was summed up by the weather this morning -- the lightest dusting of snow, that was already mostly melting while I was pulling out of the driveway. It looked more annoying than it actually was. *nods* But I did have a reasonably productive day, at least --
Work – Bit of a rough start with a slow commute in, but it was all right overall, fortunately. I did the GL, gave the credit card company some of the info they needed to fix some of their mistakes, started working on some duplicates, and processed some checks at the end of the day. Not too shabby, even with one of my coworkers out! We’ll see how the rest of the week is. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and onto the next Oxventure – the 2021 Holiday Special, “Hog Wild!” Because I want to get all the Christmassy stuff out of the way before it gets too late into January. :p We picked up with the Oxventurers on their way to a fancy chalet they’d rented for the Winter Solstice (post burning down a distillery as their opening joke; apparently Corazon was upset by a lack of free rum, and Merilwen was just keeping an eye on Dob, who was very high on the fumes), where Corazon had scored them invites (in his own Corazony way) to some fancy parties and whatnot – except that a horrible snowstorm had blown up and forced them to make camp with a whole bunch of traveling tradesmen and suchlike. Corazon was all for ditching the group and trying to make it to the chalet, as their intended Solstice party sounded too “rustic” for him, but the leader of the traders, Cesuira, claimed that “rustic” was the theme of the season, and that they were planning a fantastic hog roast! Only, uh, they didn’t have a hog, so if some keen adventurers would like to help them out. . . Egbert argued that they, or at least he, had been thinking they’d get a vacation this time of year, but Cesuira tempted them with time-and-a-half payment for the quest, plus seats of honor at the table and their pick of the choicest cuts. The gang came around –
And Corazon immediately pointed out Merilwen could probably shapeshift into a hog. XD Merilwen was understandably horrified, and remained horrified as Dob pointed out the flaw in that plan was that a dead Merilwen would revert back to being a wood elf – Corazon was insistent that, if they seasoned her right, it wouldn’t matter, and then talk turned to “can we cut off bits of you that you only have as a hog? Would that be all right?” (Merilwen was like “I’VE NEVER TRIED??”) Fortunately Cesuira stepped in and said they had a hog already in mind – a giant creature that roams the nearby forest of Anghara. Dob immediately started worrying that this hog was some sort of forest spirit that would bring about an age of darkness if they killed it and started looking around for roots and berries, turning them into a paste pig. Everyone decided they’d rather have nice real meat in the Age of Darkness instead of the paste pig, and Dob sulked about how it’s hard for vegetarians around Solstice. XD
Anyway – hog hunt time! Upon being confronted with the forest and its heavy undergrowth, Corazon asked Merilwen to do her thing and Speak With Plants – Merilwen spoke with a vine on a nearby tree, who had no idea about the pig, but said that as long as they respected the forest (leave only footsteps, take only memories, all that), they’d be fine. Naturally, Corazon promptly got impatient as she tried to explain this and started whacking performatively at whatever undergrowth he could find with a machete he had on him, cutting down the vine in the process (Merilwen hastily jammed it in her pocket and put one end in a little vial of water to try and save it). Dob decided that an aerial view would be better for surveying and climbed a tree; Corazon spotted him doing so and decided this was a good idea and also climbed up, both of them doing well on their rolls and getting to the top without problems. Egbert decided he also wanted to climb and ascended Corazon’s tree, over Corazon’s protests –
Nat 20. Dude just went straight over Corazon no problem. :p The boys studied the canopy – Egbert and Corazon for signs of pig, Dob to determine if trying to make it through the canopy branches would somehow be easier than going overland, so to speak. A crit 20 let him know that, no, going by foot on the ground would be safer, if not as dramatic. XD Corazon and Egbert rolled well enough on their investigation checks to spot that the trees kind of grew in a spiral pattern, with two things interrupting that spiral – a cut across the landscape that suggested some sort of waterway, and a big clearing possibly centerish, which Corazon felt was the best place to start looking for the pig.
Meanwhile, while Prudence watched her friends’ nonsense, three other adventurers wandered up! The leader, a tortoise-man named Argyle (Luke was immediately like “okay, time to kill Dob and stat up my own tortoise-man”), introduced himself and his friends Dirk and Ricky, and asked if they were the ones on the hog-hunting quest they’d overheard being talked about just now. Prudence tried to play it cool (very badly), but Corazon was being very loud about his find, so she ended up just admitting that yes, they were. Argyle and company, it transpired, were interested in a team-up! Dob checked over the contract Cesuira had drawn up with them, and it turned out subcontracting out the quest was allowed, if they were so inclined. Corazon toyed with the idea of just letting the trio do all the work while they got all the credit (and meat), then floated around that it would be good to bring them along just in case the hog had a horrible instant-kill attack. Also if it tried to eat Argyle, it would struggle with the shell and thus be distracted! Egbert and Prudence decided these were good points and welcomed the trio aboard. XD
And then cue a discussion of how best to get through the woods and find this pig, which resulted in Merilwen trying to talk to her vine patient (who kept complaining of being cold, and Merilwen trying to warm its little bottle with Create Flame), Dob getting very distracted by the idea of a wise old owl in the woods when the vine mentioned one (I’m pretty sure it was meant to be the classic Tootsie Pop owl?), and the gang trying to get Egbert to summon a pygmy goat steed and Egbert getting confused as to why – as it’s a mount, he assumed that they all wanted to ride it, but Corazon wanted to use it to clear the underbrush. XD Argyle and the gang, already annoyed by the Oxventurers’ previous muttering about using them as bait and such, decided the Oxventurers were incompetent, and Corazon, incensed, grabbed the pygmy goat and ran off into the underbrush, holding it like a wheelbarrow. Dirk, the sleeveless human, then tried to go off coolly by using a smoke bomb, but it didn’t go off, and he and his friends had to dart off into the woods after Egbert politely handed it back to him. XD
And so the race is on! After some talk about whether or not to split the party (Dob still wanted to find that owl!), the gang all decided to follow the natural spiral of the woods, especially since Corazon had discovered in his initial plunge into the forest that the trees don’t seem to want them going straight anyway (they keep angling themselves to push him a certain way). Dob’s thinking that their hog quarry is either an important forest spirit and will curse them if they kill it, or a metaphorical thorn in the forest’s metaphorical paw and they will earn the forest’s gratitude if they kill it. So place your bets now! XD We’ll see what happens as the week goes on. . .I mean, Johnny’s ALREADY facepalming, so. . . XD
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen:” Check – after some initial “do you really want to come” from Alice to Victoria and Emily, and some “do you want us to come” from Emily and Victoria to Alice, the ladies have made up their minds, and Wonderland has put its stamp of approval on them coming with Alice to find Victor. And so the new trio is off, leaving the terrible bloody murder of a mugger behind them. XD I think this should close out Chapter 2 – though before going on to Chapter 3, I might go back and try to revise Victor meeting the Coasters a bit, especially the power reveals. I know it’s a first draft and the idea is to keep powering on, but it’s REALLY bugging me. . .we’ll see!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – and even got to fit in a little bit of bonus stuff too!
A) Started with a few clips from The Menu on YouTube, as that hasn’t worked its way out of my system yet – a couple of official things from Searchlight Pictures (a clip from the beginning showing off how fancy-pants the restaurant is and a little featurette about the characters), and one spoiler-iffic clip I won’t share here (it’s easy enough to find just by searching the name of the movie). Good, intense stuff – I don’t think I could ever watch the WHOLE movie, I suspect there’s a little too much gore, but it’s fun to poke at occasionally (and think up Valicer AUs for).
B) Then it was over to the actual Subs for the latest from Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Roger Rabbit!” Exactly what it says on the tin, Josh drawing the famous rabbit and talking about how good the movie was, especially as a movie that blended live action and animation. :) Also how weird it is that no one has hired him to draw fanart yet, and how while he likes the work he does get (mostly portraits of loved ones and pets), he wouldn’t MIND doing people’s favorite characters. (Someone in the comments already pointed out “we just don’t want you to get SUED, buddy.” Though I think fanart and fanfiction are a bit different in that respect. . .)
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “Which ramp gives you the highest jump in GTA 5?” Yes, it was time for more GTA V Pain From Alex, this time in the form of ramps leading to terrible challenges for Gray to complete on his quest to erase himself from existence with a super-ramp. XD We had in order, the little orange ramp that shot him into a wall ride made of fruit stands, complete with wall ribbons formed by rotating which part of the stand Gray had to drive on, and a loop-de-loop at the end (Gray ATTEMPTED to cheat it a couple of times, only to find both checkpoints were suspended in the air and that he HAD to do the wall ride properly to launch himself through them); the green ramp, which had Gray in one of those racing cars that can stick to the road even when its upside-down doing an UPSIDE-DOWN TOP-DOWN-VIEW obstacle course on a clear road, where he had to dodge various walls, the blades of wind turbines, and upside-down ramps while making it through thumbnail holes of various kinds to reach the end (Gray ended up rebinding his controls to deal with the whole “upside-down and reversed” thing, but it was still a HELL of a challenge and took him quite a few tries to work his way through all the various little tricks); the pink ramp, which sent Gray to the rings of Saturn (some meteorites and other various space debris, complete with occasional exploding bits) and forced him to use a gliding bike and its boost to navigate them until he found the meteorite with the black hole in it to teleport him off the board (again, so many tries, most of them revolving around trying and failing to refresh his boost); and the black ramp, which basically launched him into the void as his reward (I’m not sure WHAT was going on there, but he definitely left the map!). Man, I don’t know how Alex keeps finding all these new ways to torture Gray, but I am here for it.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, or at least enough of one – did the next two posts in the six-part Harvestfest Chill Save update before my workout, yay! That just leaves two that need the full text done, which I figure I can do tomorrow before slapping it all in the queue. Getting there slowly but surely!
Not too shabby -- and now it's time to head to bed and hopefully not get kicked in the ass by PMS-related insomnia too much. *sigh* Stupid hormones. . .night all!
Work – Bit of a rough start with a slow commute in, but it was all right overall, fortunately. I did the GL, gave the credit card company some of the info they needed to fix some of their mistakes, started working on some duplicates, and processed some checks at the end of the day. Not too shabby, even with one of my coworkers out! We’ll see how the rest of the week is. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and onto the next Oxventure – the 2021 Holiday Special, “Hog Wild!” Because I want to get all the Christmassy stuff out of the way before it gets too late into January. :p We picked up with the Oxventurers on their way to a fancy chalet they’d rented for the Winter Solstice (post burning down a distillery as their opening joke; apparently Corazon was upset by a lack of free rum, and Merilwen was just keeping an eye on Dob, who was very high on the fumes), where Corazon had scored them invites (in his own Corazony way) to some fancy parties and whatnot – except that a horrible snowstorm had blown up and forced them to make camp with a whole bunch of traveling tradesmen and suchlike. Corazon was all for ditching the group and trying to make it to the chalet, as their intended Solstice party sounded too “rustic” for him, but the leader of the traders, Cesuira, claimed that “rustic” was the theme of the season, and that they were planning a fantastic hog roast! Only, uh, they didn’t have a hog, so if some keen adventurers would like to help them out. . . Egbert argued that they, or at least he, had been thinking they’d get a vacation this time of year, but Cesuira tempted them with time-and-a-half payment for the quest, plus seats of honor at the table and their pick of the choicest cuts. The gang came around –
And Corazon immediately pointed out Merilwen could probably shapeshift into a hog. XD Merilwen was understandably horrified, and remained horrified as Dob pointed out the flaw in that plan was that a dead Merilwen would revert back to being a wood elf – Corazon was insistent that, if they seasoned her right, it wouldn’t matter, and then talk turned to “can we cut off bits of you that you only have as a hog? Would that be all right?” (Merilwen was like “I’VE NEVER TRIED??”) Fortunately Cesuira stepped in and said they had a hog already in mind – a giant creature that roams the nearby forest of Anghara. Dob immediately started worrying that this hog was some sort of forest spirit that would bring about an age of darkness if they killed it and started looking around for roots and berries, turning them into a paste pig. Everyone decided they’d rather have nice real meat in the Age of Darkness instead of the paste pig, and Dob sulked about how it’s hard for vegetarians around Solstice. XD
Anyway – hog hunt time! Upon being confronted with the forest and its heavy undergrowth, Corazon asked Merilwen to do her thing and Speak With Plants – Merilwen spoke with a vine on a nearby tree, who had no idea about the pig, but said that as long as they respected the forest (leave only footsteps, take only memories, all that), they’d be fine. Naturally, Corazon promptly got impatient as she tried to explain this and started whacking performatively at whatever undergrowth he could find with a machete he had on him, cutting down the vine in the process (Merilwen hastily jammed it in her pocket and put one end in a little vial of water to try and save it). Dob decided that an aerial view would be better for surveying and climbed a tree; Corazon spotted him doing so and decided this was a good idea and also climbed up, both of them doing well on their rolls and getting to the top without problems. Egbert decided he also wanted to climb and ascended Corazon’s tree, over Corazon’s protests –
Nat 20. Dude just went straight over Corazon no problem. :p The boys studied the canopy – Egbert and Corazon for signs of pig, Dob to determine if trying to make it through the canopy branches would somehow be easier than going overland, so to speak. A crit 20 let him know that, no, going by foot on the ground would be safer, if not as dramatic. XD Corazon and Egbert rolled well enough on their investigation checks to spot that the trees kind of grew in a spiral pattern, with two things interrupting that spiral – a cut across the landscape that suggested some sort of waterway, and a big clearing possibly centerish, which Corazon felt was the best place to start looking for the pig.
Meanwhile, while Prudence watched her friends’ nonsense, three other adventurers wandered up! The leader, a tortoise-man named Argyle (Luke was immediately like “okay, time to kill Dob and stat up my own tortoise-man”), introduced himself and his friends Dirk and Ricky, and asked if they were the ones on the hog-hunting quest they’d overheard being talked about just now. Prudence tried to play it cool (very badly), but Corazon was being very loud about his find, so she ended up just admitting that yes, they were. Argyle and company, it transpired, were interested in a team-up! Dob checked over the contract Cesuira had drawn up with them, and it turned out subcontracting out the quest was allowed, if they were so inclined. Corazon toyed with the idea of just letting the trio do all the work while they got all the credit (and meat), then floated around that it would be good to bring them along just in case the hog had a horrible instant-kill attack. Also if it tried to eat Argyle, it would struggle with the shell and thus be distracted! Egbert and Prudence decided these were good points and welcomed the trio aboard. XD
And then cue a discussion of how best to get through the woods and find this pig, which resulted in Merilwen trying to talk to her vine patient (who kept complaining of being cold, and Merilwen trying to warm its little bottle with Create Flame), Dob getting very distracted by the idea of a wise old owl in the woods when the vine mentioned one (I’m pretty sure it was meant to be the classic Tootsie Pop owl?), and the gang trying to get Egbert to summon a pygmy goat steed and Egbert getting confused as to why – as it’s a mount, he assumed that they all wanted to ride it, but Corazon wanted to use it to clear the underbrush. XD Argyle and the gang, already annoyed by the Oxventurers’ previous muttering about using them as bait and such, decided the Oxventurers were incompetent, and Corazon, incensed, grabbed the pygmy goat and ran off into the underbrush, holding it like a wheelbarrow. Dirk, the sleeveless human, then tried to go off coolly by using a smoke bomb, but it didn’t go off, and he and his friends had to dart off into the woods after Egbert politely handed it back to him. XD
And so the race is on! After some talk about whether or not to split the party (Dob still wanted to find that owl!), the gang all decided to follow the natural spiral of the woods, especially since Corazon had discovered in his initial plunge into the forest that the trees don’t seem to want them going straight anyway (they keep angling themselves to push him a certain way). Dob’s thinking that their hog quarry is either an important forest spirit and will curse them if they kill it, or a metaphorical thorn in the forest’s metaphorical paw and they will earn the forest’s gratitude if they kill it. So place your bets now! XD We’ll see what happens as the week goes on. . .I mean, Johnny’s ALREADY facepalming, so. . . XD
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen:” Check – after some initial “do you really want to come” from Alice to Victoria and Emily, and some “do you want us to come” from Emily and Victoria to Alice, the ladies have made up their minds, and Wonderland has put its stamp of approval on them coming with Alice to find Victor. And so the new trio is off, leaving the terrible bloody murder of a mugger behind them. XD I think this should close out Chapter 2 – though before going on to Chapter 3, I might go back and try to revise Victor meeting the Coasters a bit, especially the power reveals. I know it’s a first draft and the idea is to keep powering on, but it’s REALLY bugging me. . .we’ll see!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – and even got to fit in a little bit of bonus stuff too!
A) Started with a few clips from The Menu on YouTube, as that hasn’t worked its way out of my system yet – a couple of official things from Searchlight Pictures (a clip from the beginning showing off how fancy-pants the restaurant is and a little featurette about the characters), and one spoiler-iffic clip I won’t share here (it’s easy enough to find just by searching the name of the movie). Good, intense stuff – I don’t think I could ever watch the WHOLE movie, I suspect there’s a little too much gore, but it’s fun to poke at occasionally (and think up Valicer AUs for).
B) Then it was over to the actual Subs for the latest from Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Roger Rabbit!” Exactly what it says on the tin, Josh drawing the famous rabbit and talking about how good the movie was, especially as a movie that blended live action and animation. :) Also how weird it is that no one has hired him to draw fanart yet, and how while he likes the work he does get (mostly portraits of loved ones and pets), he wouldn’t MIND doing people’s favorite characters. (Someone in the comments already pointed out “we just don’t want you to get SUED, buddy.” Though I think fanart and fanfiction are a bit different in that respect. . .)
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “Which ramp gives you the highest jump in GTA 5?” Yes, it was time for more GTA V Pain From Alex, this time in the form of ramps leading to terrible challenges for Gray to complete on his quest to erase himself from existence with a super-ramp. XD We had in order, the little orange ramp that shot him into a wall ride made of fruit stands, complete with wall ribbons formed by rotating which part of the stand Gray had to drive on, and a loop-de-loop at the end (Gray ATTEMPTED to cheat it a couple of times, only to find both checkpoints were suspended in the air and that he HAD to do the wall ride properly to launch himself through them); the green ramp, which had Gray in one of those racing cars that can stick to the road even when its upside-down doing an UPSIDE-DOWN TOP-DOWN-VIEW obstacle course on a clear road, where he had to dodge various walls, the blades of wind turbines, and upside-down ramps while making it through thumbnail holes of various kinds to reach the end (Gray ended up rebinding his controls to deal with the whole “upside-down and reversed” thing, but it was still a HELL of a challenge and took him quite a few tries to work his way through all the various little tricks); the pink ramp, which sent Gray to the rings of Saturn (some meteorites and other various space debris, complete with occasional exploding bits) and forced him to use a gliding bike and its boost to navigate them until he found the meteorite with the black hole in it to teleport him off the board (again, so many tries, most of them revolving around trying and failing to refresh his boost); and the black ramp, which basically launched him into the void as his reward (I’m not sure WHAT was going on there, but he definitely left the map!). Man, I don’t know how Alex keeps finding all these new ways to torture Gray, but I am here for it.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, or at least enough of one – did the next two posts in the six-part Harvestfest Chill Save update before my workout, yay! That just leaves two that need the full text done, which I figure I can do tomorrow before slapping it all in the queue. Getting there slowly but surely!
Not too shabby -- and now it's time to head to bed and hopefully not get kicked in the ass by PMS-related insomnia too much. *sigh* Stupid hormones. . .night all!
