Period False Start
May. 24th, 2023 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, my period's done that thing again -- I saw a TINY bit of blood in the middle of the day, but at the moment the flow seems to have stopped. I've got a pad in just in case, though -- I don't trust it not to start up in full during the night, frankly. And I was expecting it around this time, sooo. . . Hopefully it isn't too much of a pain in the ass to deal with this month! Apart from that weirdness, though, it was a pretty decent day --
Work – Another very quiet day at work! I spent pretty much all of it doing my personal little project of merging duplicates from a previous error in uploading “new” people on the old system – it passed the time, anyway! *shrug* I’ll take nothing to report here! And yes, traffic coming home was bad, but a little better than it was yesterday, so I’ll take that.
As for beanbags, we did up playing once I got home (with the old boards as my parents had gone around today doing pretty much everything EXCEPT getting new boards to make a refreshed version of the game). Mom ended up having the best day out of all of us today, with two wins! I also managed a win, and Dad ALMOST got my “came second every time” from yesterday, except he fell at the final hurdle in the final round. So close! But yes, final scores were me 3-W-2; Dad 2-2-3; and Mom W-3-W. I guess that helps balance out all those times she’s lost every game!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, finishing off one Oxventure One-Shot Wonder and starting another –
A) Firstly, we had to finish up “You Awaken In A Strange Place!” I’d left it off with poor Lord Hortingly having burped right in front of his lady love, a move that, unknowingly, had saved her from being exploded by his mind. :p Meanwhile, Queen Beatrice was having a whale of a time, directing her “mech” to attack the one guy on the field who wasn’t a friend of hers or the lady she was trying to set up with a friend of hers (the youth who’d stabbed Gad, as a reminder), attaching swords to her feet and kicking them around randomly. This is when she realized “oh hey, the kid atop me is probably vulnerable to being minced” and gave them the chapstick of invulnerability – Gad, dying from his stab wound (because he’s so plastered his blood is super-thin), asked why they hadn’t thought of using that before, and Beatrice was like “it’s only for the QUEEEEEN!” At that point, even Gad and Hortingly were like “I’m starting to see what the republicists are on about.” XD Anyway, she succeeded on her roll, with the complication that, due to the kid up top still trying to avoid the sword-feet, the “mech” was coming into attack the youth about twice as fast as anyone would like. . .
And then Gad used some contouring to give himself sword arms and Jumped from the pit to impale the youth himself. Which he did admirably, but as a complication, ended up face to face with the kid while said kid was dying, which was both awkward and led to the knife in Gad’s chest being pushed in deeper. The turn then once again passed to Lord Hortingly, who Luke noted was FAR too starched to ever actually express his feelings in words –
But he could do so in a letter. And what better ink than the blood of the Queen? AKA, Luke rolled Exploding People With Your Mind to explode Queen Beatrice and write a love letter on the wall in her viscera. XD Liv was totally cool with this, having decided her character needed to be stopped (“do what you gotta do”), and an excellent roll meant that a surprisingly heartfelt letter to Lady Bella appeared on the wall of the nightclub in the Queen’s remains (the “legs” of the “mech” having been knocked out, and the invulnerable child “head” flung across the room). Bella in fact took this well, dropping her mace and going so far as to embrace Lord Hortingly, weeping tears of joy that he in fact loved her too. . .
But, ah, remember how Luke established that Lord Hortingly didn’t know he could explode people with his mind? Yeah, seeing his desperate thoughts painted on the wall in blood clued him in. It also clued in the dying Gad, who locked eyes with the horrified Hortingly over Bella’s shoulder. Hortingly begged Gad to kill him, as he couldn’t be allowed to live –
Cue Gad rolling Exploding People With Your Mind. It worked, with the complication being – well. Johnny said the complication was Gad dying in the attempt (having finally overtaxed himself with a very significant psychic nosebleed). But I rather think the actual complication was everyone else in the nightclub suddenly becoming aware “holy SHIT, we can EXPLODE people with our MINDS” and that triggering a horrific chain reaction of people randomly/deliberately exploding people with their minds. In the end, the only survivor was the child wearing the invulnerability chapstick, who Inherited the nightclub, and probably the kingdom as well. The end! XD God, what a hilariously chaotic mess of a game, I love it. XD
B) And with that wrapped up in the goriest way possible, it was time to move onto the next Oxventure One-Shot Wonder, “Dragonlance: Shadow Of The Dragon Queen!” This one was a sponsored adventure with Johnny leading Luke, Ellen, and guest stars Jess King, Drak, Josh Strife Hayes, and Val Price through some of the early scenarios in the “Shadow of the Dragon Queen” campaign that came with the new “Dragonlance” sourcebook for 5E. I THOUGHT that Luke and Ellen might be playing their usual Oxventure characters, but no, they’d created new ones for this one-off – Luke played Harold, a human fighter who worked as a bodyguard and was mostly interested in de-escalating violence (everyone was very keen on making fun of his name), and Ellen played Celena, a half-elf lunar sorceress (a new subclass in the sourcebook) just being charismatic as hell at everyone. As for the guests, Jess was Rage the barbarian (I forget if Rage was meant to be human or not) who just likes to hit things until they stop moving; Drak was Anitari the Kendar tinkerer (a new race in the book, small humanoids with pointed ears) who has a mechanical cat he’s working on; Josh was Strife the human bard who spun enormously tall tales and was an extreme charlatan; and Val was Corvus the changeling – I don’t recall what his class is, but he makes a habit of trying to be mysterious anyway, so that’s fine. XD The six were in Volger, a fishing village situated under a crumbling keep and next to a half-completed bridge of incredible craftsmanship from before the “cataclysm,” on the day of its annual Kingfisher festival to commemorate a long-bygone battle. They’d all ended up in the same tavern, The Fish Bowl, drinking (and in Rage’s case, eating baked fish pies) and listening to Strife claim his relatives were response for things such as the bridge outside, the fishing rod, and the concept of living in a “house.” Anitari was eating it up with wide-eyed wonder; Corvus kept calling for more and harder drink; and Harold was like “this guy is going to get himself killed sharpish” and promptly offered his services as a bodyguard. Which, frankly, Strife was happy to accept. XD
Anyway – it was about this time that the elderly man in charge of the tavern tottered up to the table with loads more fish pies (Rage hungy), asking them if they were interested in joining the fishing tournament. There was some general interest, and the fellow said that if they wanted to go, they’d better be quick about it, it was starting soon! After some shenanigans involving Strife quietly bribing Harold to help him out with the fishing (Harold being like “you’re lucky I need the money”), Corvus happily deriding the other pub’s ale in exchange for a free fish pie, and Strife being given a pie the old guy pulled out of his sleeve, trying to put it up his sleeve, and only succeeding in smashing fish pie all over his arm – only to successfully claim it’s an Eastern custom that shows the person is so wealthy they can afford to smash rare fish pies on their arm, prompting the old man to try it himself (only to get “buyer’s remorse” pretty quickly) – Harold was able to talk to the old man and ask the rules of the tournament. They proved to be pretty simple – you get a half-hour to fish from the half-completed bridge, and then you line up your catch in a neat row. Longest line (aka, most fish) is the winner! Strife, having overheard, asked Celena if it would be possible to use the moon’s power to manipulate the tide and thus get bigger fish – Celena was straight up “no.” XD Strife then moved to Plan B – asking where the old man’s ingredient supplies were (“Uh, in the kitchen?”). He also inquired as to the prize (trying to play it off as “I know there’s always a trophy, but have they added money to the pot”) – turns out the prizes include things like kingfisher statues, a blue knit cap, and the Mayor’s cat (why the Mayor herself is ALWAYS eager to compete). XD That’s where I left it for the day – we’ll see how chaotic THIS adventure gets tomorrow! I suspect it won’t hold a candle to YASP, but Ellen has already made some puns that have nearly caused Johnny to burn down the pub they’re all in. . . XD
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – finished off Oblivion’s segment of the escape sequence today, with him chucking Joytide and the other guards into the void via Looney Tunes physics (that is, they didn’t fall until they looked down – also a nod to how the coaster fucking PAUSES for a moment at the top of its vertical drop, the bastard). Kelman is now down to like three Phalanx members who aren’t busy with Nemesis, and none of them are exactly combat-ready. . .good thing Smiler’s bit is actually the one up next!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another day with GrayStillPlays, watching “Which car is best at breaking walls in GTA 5?” Another Alex Torture Board (Scientific Edition), where Gray had to test out all the vehicles best at smashing through walls (like the forklift, the two technicolor cars with a plow and a blender roller on the front respectively, the tractor trailer with the wedge nose, and the motorcycle that’s so speedy it just blasts through things) and take them up against Alex’s course – going from the Human Wall (a bunch of guys in zombies costumes standing in a row), to the Glass Walls (three walls of glass, each with one more pane for Gray to break through), to the Palette Walls (two walls made of wood palettes, one with the palettes stacked sideways, the other with them stacked normally), to the Brick Wall (self-explanatory and one of the biggest pains in the ass for Gray), to the Reinforced Plywood Walls (three walls of breakable plywood, each with one more layered wall than the last), to the Midair Wall Breaking walls (two jumps, one in to a wall of cacti, the other into a wall of shipping containers), to the Rock Wall (a wall of piled rocks that had to be nudged out of the wall without causing them to flip out because physics), to the Machinery Walls (two walls of armored cars stood on their ends, with the second being two stacks thick), to the Michael Bay Wall (a wall of explosive barrels surrounded by explosions), to finally the Water Wall (a cutout of fifteen meters of water in the middle of the roadway – which, to be fair, was in the middle of a river) and the win. Gray actually didn’t have any major losers today (beyond maybe the motorcycle, which had to go AROUND a few of the walls before proving it couldn’t get through the catci), with the forklift making it all the way to the jump, the wedge-nosed tractor trailer making it all the way to the Michael Bay Wall (it just couldn’t survive the explosions), and the blender-roller car making it through the water but stalling out just beyond it. The car that finally made it through was a bright red Insurgent, an armored beast with both sufficient weight and sufficient speed to make it through most of the walls – and when it caught on fire from the Michael Bay Wall wall, Gray was able to drive it quickly enough into the Water Wall to put it out and make the finish line! :D I love when Gray gets clever. :) I mean, I love when he suffers too, obviously, but it is nice to see him think quickly on his feet and get the win as well. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! I actually had a couple of things to get done on Valice Multiverse today (two reblogs, a thread reply and some Not-Incorrect Quotes from Brynlee Marie that I didn’t get a chance to get to yesterday), so I did those this evening, then went back over to Victor Luvs Alice, reset the queue speed back to one, and slapped in my latest set of Not-Incorrect Valicer quotes (this one with a “sleeping-and-sharing-a-bed” theme) and that mod for redoing the fem!Malkavian’s clothes in VTMB for Thursday and Friday respectively! Will have to figure out my Song Saturday tomorrow, though. . .
*nods* Some decent progress on writing and suchlike -- and the Not-Incorrect Quotes collection for tomorrow contains one of my personal favorites, so that's something. :) And now it's time to go to bed and hope the oncoming red wave doesn't knock out my brain completely. I have another three-day weekend shortly and I'd like to, you know, DO some stuff during it. Night all!
Work – Another very quiet day at work! I spent pretty much all of it doing my personal little project of merging duplicates from a previous error in uploading “new” people on the old system – it passed the time, anyway! *shrug* I’ll take nothing to report here! And yes, traffic coming home was bad, but a little better than it was yesterday, so I’ll take that.
As for beanbags, we did up playing once I got home (with the old boards as my parents had gone around today doing pretty much everything EXCEPT getting new boards to make a refreshed version of the game). Mom ended up having the best day out of all of us today, with two wins! I also managed a win, and Dad ALMOST got my “came second every time” from yesterday, except he fell at the final hurdle in the final round. So close! But yes, final scores were me 3-W-2; Dad 2-2-3; and Mom W-3-W. I guess that helps balance out all those times she’s lost every game!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, finishing off one Oxventure One-Shot Wonder and starting another –
A) Firstly, we had to finish up “You Awaken In A Strange Place!” I’d left it off with poor Lord Hortingly having burped right in front of his lady love, a move that, unknowingly, had saved her from being exploded by his mind. :p Meanwhile, Queen Beatrice was having a whale of a time, directing her “mech” to attack the one guy on the field who wasn’t a friend of hers or the lady she was trying to set up with a friend of hers (the youth who’d stabbed Gad, as a reminder), attaching swords to her feet and kicking them around randomly. This is when she realized “oh hey, the kid atop me is probably vulnerable to being minced” and gave them the chapstick of invulnerability – Gad, dying from his stab wound (because he’s so plastered his blood is super-thin), asked why they hadn’t thought of using that before, and Beatrice was like “it’s only for the QUEEEEEN!” At that point, even Gad and Hortingly were like “I’m starting to see what the republicists are on about.” XD Anyway, she succeeded on her roll, with the complication that, due to the kid up top still trying to avoid the sword-feet, the “mech” was coming into attack the youth about twice as fast as anyone would like. . .
And then Gad used some contouring to give himself sword arms and Jumped from the pit to impale the youth himself. Which he did admirably, but as a complication, ended up face to face with the kid while said kid was dying, which was both awkward and led to the knife in Gad’s chest being pushed in deeper. The turn then once again passed to Lord Hortingly, who Luke noted was FAR too starched to ever actually express his feelings in words –
But he could do so in a letter. And what better ink than the blood of the Queen? AKA, Luke rolled Exploding People With Your Mind to explode Queen Beatrice and write a love letter on the wall in her viscera. XD Liv was totally cool with this, having decided her character needed to be stopped (“do what you gotta do”), and an excellent roll meant that a surprisingly heartfelt letter to Lady Bella appeared on the wall of the nightclub in the Queen’s remains (the “legs” of the “mech” having been knocked out, and the invulnerable child “head” flung across the room). Bella in fact took this well, dropping her mace and going so far as to embrace Lord Hortingly, weeping tears of joy that he in fact loved her too. . .
But, ah, remember how Luke established that Lord Hortingly didn’t know he could explode people with his mind? Yeah, seeing his desperate thoughts painted on the wall in blood clued him in. It also clued in the dying Gad, who locked eyes with the horrified Hortingly over Bella’s shoulder. Hortingly begged Gad to kill him, as he couldn’t be allowed to live –
Cue Gad rolling Exploding People With Your Mind. It worked, with the complication being – well. Johnny said the complication was Gad dying in the attempt (having finally overtaxed himself with a very significant psychic nosebleed). But I rather think the actual complication was everyone else in the nightclub suddenly becoming aware “holy SHIT, we can EXPLODE people with our MINDS” and that triggering a horrific chain reaction of people randomly/deliberately exploding people with their minds. In the end, the only survivor was the child wearing the invulnerability chapstick, who Inherited the nightclub, and probably the kingdom as well. The end! XD God, what a hilariously chaotic mess of a game, I love it. XD
B) And with that wrapped up in the goriest way possible, it was time to move onto the next Oxventure One-Shot Wonder, “Dragonlance: Shadow Of The Dragon Queen!” This one was a sponsored adventure with Johnny leading Luke, Ellen, and guest stars Jess King, Drak, Josh Strife Hayes, and Val Price through some of the early scenarios in the “Shadow of the Dragon Queen” campaign that came with the new “Dragonlance” sourcebook for 5E. I THOUGHT that Luke and Ellen might be playing their usual Oxventure characters, but no, they’d created new ones for this one-off – Luke played Harold, a human fighter who worked as a bodyguard and was mostly interested in de-escalating violence (everyone was very keen on making fun of his name), and Ellen played Celena, a half-elf lunar sorceress (a new subclass in the sourcebook) just being charismatic as hell at everyone. As for the guests, Jess was Rage the barbarian (I forget if Rage was meant to be human or not) who just likes to hit things until they stop moving; Drak was Anitari the Kendar tinkerer (a new race in the book, small humanoids with pointed ears) who has a mechanical cat he’s working on; Josh was Strife the human bard who spun enormously tall tales and was an extreme charlatan; and Val was Corvus the changeling – I don’t recall what his class is, but he makes a habit of trying to be mysterious anyway, so that’s fine. XD The six were in Volger, a fishing village situated under a crumbling keep and next to a half-completed bridge of incredible craftsmanship from before the “cataclysm,” on the day of its annual Kingfisher festival to commemorate a long-bygone battle. They’d all ended up in the same tavern, The Fish Bowl, drinking (and in Rage’s case, eating baked fish pies) and listening to Strife claim his relatives were response for things such as the bridge outside, the fishing rod, and the concept of living in a “house.” Anitari was eating it up with wide-eyed wonder; Corvus kept calling for more and harder drink; and Harold was like “this guy is going to get himself killed sharpish” and promptly offered his services as a bodyguard. Which, frankly, Strife was happy to accept. XD
Anyway – it was about this time that the elderly man in charge of the tavern tottered up to the table with loads more fish pies (Rage hungy), asking them if they were interested in joining the fishing tournament. There was some general interest, and the fellow said that if they wanted to go, they’d better be quick about it, it was starting soon! After some shenanigans involving Strife quietly bribing Harold to help him out with the fishing (Harold being like “you’re lucky I need the money”), Corvus happily deriding the other pub’s ale in exchange for a free fish pie, and Strife being given a pie the old guy pulled out of his sleeve, trying to put it up his sleeve, and only succeeding in smashing fish pie all over his arm – only to successfully claim it’s an Eastern custom that shows the person is so wealthy they can afford to smash rare fish pies on their arm, prompting the old man to try it himself (only to get “buyer’s remorse” pretty quickly) – Harold was able to talk to the old man and ask the rules of the tournament. They proved to be pretty simple – you get a half-hour to fish from the half-completed bridge, and then you line up your catch in a neat row. Longest line (aka, most fish) is the winner! Strife, having overheard, asked Celena if it would be possible to use the moon’s power to manipulate the tide and thus get bigger fish – Celena was straight up “no.” XD Strife then moved to Plan B – asking where the old man’s ingredient supplies were (“Uh, in the kitchen?”). He also inquired as to the prize (trying to play it off as “I know there’s always a trophy, but have they added money to the pot”) – turns out the prizes include things like kingfisher statues, a blue knit cap, and the Mayor’s cat (why the Mayor herself is ALWAYS eager to compete). XD That’s where I left it for the day – we’ll see how chaotic THIS adventure gets tomorrow! I suspect it won’t hold a candle to YASP, but Ellen has already made some puns that have nearly caused Johnny to burn down the pub they’re all in. . . XD
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – finished off Oblivion’s segment of the escape sequence today, with him chucking Joytide and the other guards into the void via Looney Tunes physics (that is, they didn’t fall until they looked down – also a nod to how the coaster fucking PAUSES for a moment at the top of its vertical drop, the bastard). Kelman is now down to like three Phalanx members who aren’t busy with Nemesis, and none of them are exactly combat-ready. . .good thing Smiler’s bit is actually the one up next!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another day with GrayStillPlays, watching “Which car is best at breaking walls in GTA 5?” Another Alex Torture Board (Scientific Edition), where Gray had to test out all the vehicles best at smashing through walls (like the forklift, the two technicolor cars with a plow and a blender roller on the front respectively, the tractor trailer with the wedge nose, and the motorcycle that’s so speedy it just blasts through things) and take them up against Alex’s course – going from the Human Wall (a bunch of guys in zombies costumes standing in a row), to the Glass Walls (three walls of glass, each with one more pane for Gray to break through), to the Palette Walls (two walls made of wood palettes, one with the palettes stacked sideways, the other with them stacked normally), to the Brick Wall (self-explanatory and one of the biggest pains in the ass for Gray), to the Reinforced Plywood Walls (three walls of breakable plywood, each with one more layered wall than the last), to the Midair Wall Breaking walls (two jumps, one in to a wall of cacti, the other into a wall of shipping containers), to the Rock Wall (a wall of piled rocks that had to be nudged out of the wall without causing them to flip out because physics), to the Machinery Walls (two walls of armored cars stood on their ends, with the second being two stacks thick), to the Michael Bay Wall (a wall of explosive barrels surrounded by explosions), to finally the Water Wall (a cutout of fifteen meters of water in the middle of the roadway – which, to be fair, was in the middle of a river) and the win. Gray actually didn’t have any major losers today (beyond maybe the motorcycle, which had to go AROUND a few of the walls before proving it couldn’t get through the catci), with the forklift making it all the way to the jump, the wedge-nosed tractor trailer making it all the way to the Michael Bay Wall (it just couldn’t survive the explosions), and the blender-roller car making it through the water but stalling out just beyond it. The car that finally made it through was a bright red Insurgent, an armored beast with both sufficient weight and sufficient speed to make it through most of the walls – and when it caught on fire from the Michael Bay Wall wall, Gray was able to drive it quickly enough into the Water Wall to put it out and make the finish line! :D I love when Gray gets clever. :) I mean, I love when he suffers too, obviously, but it is nice to see him think quickly on his feet and get the win as well. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! I actually had a couple of things to get done on Valice Multiverse today (two reblogs, a thread reply and some Not-Incorrect Quotes from Brynlee Marie that I didn’t get a chance to get to yesterday), so I did those this evening, then went back over to Victor Luvs Alice, reset the queue speed back to one, and slapped in my latest set of Not-Incorrect Valicer quotes (this one with a “sleeping-and-sharing-a-bed” theme) and that mod for redoing the fem!Malkavian’s clothes in VTMB for Thursday and Friday respectively! Will have to figure out my Song Saturday tomorrow, though. . .
*nods* Some decent progress on writing and suchlike -- and the Not-Incorrect Quotes collection for tomorrow contains one of my personal favorites, so that's something. :) And now it's time to go to bed and hope the oncoming red wave doesn't knock out my brain completely. I have another three-day weekend shortly and I'd like to, you know, DO some stuff during it. Night all!
