A Late Memorial Day Update
May. 29th, 2023 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickBut I had a nicer, more productive day, which is good --
Tumblr: Had a better day on the tumblrs today, as I made a point of getting as much done drafting-wise as I could over the course of the day –
Valice Multiverse – hit this up for a little while before lunch just to do my two owed thread replies from yesterday – I WAS going to queue them last night, but by the time I got to them, I was so freaking tired I could barely think straight. So that’s all taken care of until tomorrow afternoon!
Victor Luvs Alice – did the initial draft of all seven posts making up this week’s Chill Valicer Save update (the trip to the gym to try and complete Alice’s resolution, and the trip to the Oversized Crops Finchwick Fair to try and win Victor a ribbon) before lunch; finished up the full text and tags of the first post after lunch; did the text-and-tags of the second and half of the third after YouTube; then finished up the third and did the fourth after getting in my writing! So I have four posts of the update completed, and three in initial draft state. Should be able to wrap those final posts up tomorrow and get them queued up without issue! Fingers crossed, anyway. . .
Sims 4: Had a pretty solid day with my Valicer trio in Sims 4, I must say –
A) Started with the trio all up in the middle of the night, because sleep is something that happens to other people – Victor ordered his and Alice’s marriage certificate, which I hung up in their room by the desk (haven’t gotten a good picture of it yet, though), chatted briefly with Guidry to keep him occupied and not using the power, then headed into the barn to experiment with his cauldron a while, as I really do need to have him start working on potions as well as spells! Smiler, meanwhile, fixed the busted water collector from last time, then added a lightning rod to another of their wind turbines before heading upstairs to respond to comments on their videos; and Alice went out hunting and came back and chatted with Guidry herself while she chowed down before curling up for a wolf nap in the middle of the hallway rug. XD You know, just typical early-morning shenanigans around here!
B) Once Victor was done experimenting, I had him turn his attentions to the woodworking bench, directing him to make a couple of planters for his newly-expanded greenhouse. Alice woke from her wolf nap with some worryingly-high Fury, so I had her let out a somber howl before going to run it off with some Zoomies, while Smiler fed the chickens, cleaned both the coop and the cow shed, told Moory a joke before milking her, then scared off a threatening fox before chatting with the chickens to make sure they had enough attention too. Though it occurs to me that they never collected the eggs. . .I really gotta keep on top of that better! Always so much to do in this house. . .
C) Victor finished up his planters, and I sent him to gather all the currently-ready produce in the greenhouse before I did some rearranging of the plants – Smiler followed them in there to finish off the pack of PlasmaFizz in the shared fridges before coming over to talk to Victor through a tree. XD I put them in the corner while I decided what I wanted to do with all the stuff I wanted Victor to plant – in order to not spend fifty million years trying to reorganize the greenhouse this session, I ended up buying five new plots of earth for trees to complete his “orchard,” put the remaining fruits and veggies in the spare planters, then – when the cowplant wouldn’t germinate in the middle of the second “orchard” row while Victor was planting – put that out front in one of the new planters so it would have plenty of space to grow. (And yes, he’s growing a cowplant, even though I hate them for trying to eat my Newcrest Adventures Victor – it’s required by the Freelance Botanist aspiration. Does NOT say I have to keep it alive for long, though. . .)
D) I also took the opportunity around this time to set up a Weenie Roast for Smiler to host on Summer Tuesday at 3PM at the house! Yes, I’m trying THAT again too – if you’ve been here long enough, you know this is a party type I have had some REAL problems with, but I feel like Smiler needs to have a party preparing for SimCity Founding, and so – we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed nothing burns down, nobody is abducted, and weenies can be roasted! (And yes, I’m aware that its weird for them to keep hosting food-based parties when they can’t eat, but Weenie Roast IS the most summery of the lot!)
E) Anyway – with the greenhouse at least nominally sorted (and Elmer set loose to take care of the plants as Victor quickly replanted all his oversized crops), Smiler’s latest social event planned (just have to remember to get a campfire before in-game tomorrow), and Alice back from zoomies (having lowered her Fury, taken a day off work, turned back to human, and made good friends with Kelly), it was off to the store to do more work there! With me quickly realizing that, uh, since the shelves in front were already mostly full of flower arrangements, there wasn’t that much for Smiler to do (beyond make one arrangement to fill in a hole on one shelf). I ended up sending them out to check out a protest nearby, which led to them reconnecting with one of the people they met at the pub at the Oversized Crop Fair in Finchwick, Jameson – they had a nice conversation, and Smiler was able to get a drink off them, no problem. :) Victor and Alice, meanwhile, put themselves to the making of food – Victor using the bulk processor to create more specialty breads, while Alice whipped up a chocolate pie and a sugar-free coconut carob cake to fill out the bakery shelves. Learned during this process that there is a distinct DOWNSIDE to toilets now having slots atop them – namely, Sims will try to put their newly-made bread on top of the toilets in the restroom because the top of the tank now counts as a shelf. *facepalm* Victor, please. . .
F) Well, on the plus side, discovered that, while Victor can’t use the Copypasto spell on any of the mod-added bulk food from the processor (like the cans of green beans and such), he CAN use it very effectively on the Cottage Living preserve and syrup jars! I had him Copypasto stuff like apple jam and tomato sauce to create extras to fill out the shelves while Alice made some more canned green peas and some big bags of fruit-based sugar – I also discovered that yes, you can Copypasto milk, so he made a few extra bottles of that to play around with later!
G) Around that time, I also realized, “Hey, wasn’t I planning to sell herbalism stuff in this store too now? Maybe that’s what I can have Smiler too – here, let me put out a couple of grills and picnic tables around the back, then have Victor give them all his chamomile and fireleaf. . .aaaand Smiler doesn’t have the rest of the ingredients they need to make anything. Yeah, go ahead and play some chess, keep yourself busy.” XD I tried! The main problem, I think, is that only one Sim at a time can use the bulk processor for making bulk food, and I’m EXTREMELY RELUCTANT to keep making the store bigger. . .hmmm. . .
H) Anyway – everybody got something to do eventually! Alice made some mushroom conserve and some blackberry jam to start filling up the shelves, while Victor got some grape juice fizzing and made more big bags of sugar and flour to sell. Smiler took their turn on the bulk processor too to make some flavored milks (which they of course tried to put in the bathroom *sigh*) and some vegetarian MREs while Alice fixed a busted stove (nothing like having a broken gas jet spraying flame in your face!) and Victor upgraded the infuser on the juice-fizzing machine to make the resultant products better. They have actually made a little bit of progress filling up the shelves! I’m still gonna have to add some food-related clutter objects, I’m sure, but it’s looking healthier than it was, that’s for sure. :)
I) At that point, though, Victor was hungry and exhausted, Alice was hungry and Furious, and Smiler just needed stuff to do, so I sent everybody home. Smiler promptly got put on “turbine-fixing duty” when I noticed a whole bunch of them were broken AGAIN – though when I checked how that was affecting the electrical surplus, I was astonished to see that they were suddenly up from 3 to 73! Well then – that’s good. O.o I let them start working on robotics stuff again afterward while Victor went inside to grab a BLT for supper and then hit the sheets, and Alice went out for another hunt before succumbing to the Fury for a rampage –
J) Just as Temperance showed up! To my delight, the evil ghost woman was indeed terrified by the sight of a rampaging werewolf and fled off-lot for a bit. XD She soon regained her nerve, though, and headed into the house – I thought she was chasing Guidry at first to give him a piece of her mind, but instead she went into the séance room and started doing a ritual!
Next thing I knew, we had those nasty fire-breathing specters floating around in there. >( I yanked the bizarre idol off the shelf next to her to chase her away and sent Smiler to make drinks to present them as offerings. Hopefully that will work to appease them and chase them away before they do any damage! I left it there with Victor back in bed, Alice having regained control of herself (after digging up a nice bit of quartz), and Smiler getting ready to head over the séance room! We’ll see how that mess clears up – well, probably not this weekend, as I suspect a patch is coming this week, but maybe next weekend! Hopefully by then I’ll also have a new notebook to record all of this in – I just hit the end of this one! O.o Have to see if I have any lying around in the shelves under my bed with free space in them. . .
Writing: Back to work on “The Joker And The Queen” and the escape sequence today – wrote up Dr. Kelman seeing Joytide getting flung into the Oblivion pit, learning from the head of Phalanx Mabillard that he has no more personnel to send to try and stop Victor and the Coaster Crew from escaping (as they’re all trying to stop or being savaged by Nemesis), and finally press-ganging his beleaguered assistant Miles Cedars, Agent Norris (who long ago guessed they got the wrong person when they took Victor), Agent Bagshaw (the common room guard who rarely gives a shit) and poor Technician Cundey (the one who’s been tracking the group’s escape on the basement CCTV and now feels like he’s being punished for just showing Kelman what’s been going on) into going downstairs and stopping the escape – on pain of Kelman throwing them to Nemesis himself. Yeaaah, not a fun time for the employees of Sanctuary right now. Which means on Wednesday I get to finally start Smiler’s section of the escape! Perfectly timed with the tenth anniversary of the coaster too, w000! :D
YouTube: Well, I wanted to get some OXBox RE4 Remake content in, but what with everything else I had to get through today, I ended up keeping it simple with GrayStillPlays and “Testing which car has the best suspension in GTA 5!” Though let’s be honest, Alex’s Torture Boards are anything but simple – especially when he gets his friend Petey involved. XD As indicated by the title of the video, this board was all about testing the suspension of various GTA V vehicles – starting with forcing them to drive over increasingly-spaced-out platforms; then over a variety of bumps (increasingly high regular bumps in the road, increasingly high upscaled soda cans, and increasingly high yellow caution rectangles – the caution bacon, as Gray called it); through a bunch of gaps filled with literal sleeping policemen; through increasingly-small arches (or, if they couldn’t get through a couple, ledges were provided for them to climb over, with the final small arch serving as its own ledge); over an off-road course that they had to complete in 20 seconds or be teleported back to the beginning; over an uneven tightrope where whenever one side went up, the other went down; along a moving chunk of road while taking on the various “speed bumps” it went through (fallen logs, piles of wood, busted cars, poppers, and various weird shapes); through the violently moving onion ring things and spinning windmills; up the uneven stairs; and finally over the increasingly-high train tracks while avoiding the oncoming train. Gray tried many vehicles – a busted bug, a four-wheeled bike, various military vehicles, pick-up and monster trucks, and a weird wide-wheeled colorful car that almost went the distance by cheating the off-road course (getting up onto the walls that enclosed it to avoid the teleporters), but do you know what ended up winning the day for Gray?
THE WASTELANDER! Yes, my favorite rustbucket truck with the perfect combination of a high nose, a good suspension, and enough weight to deal with obstacles like the poppers trying to throw it off is the one that made it all the way to finish line. This makes me probably happier than it really should. XD But hey, come on, how can you not love this thing, it’s post-apocalyptically awesome. :p
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with the Live Oxventure “Snow Escape!” Having discovered that the sorceress whose abandoned house they were intending to rob is in fact trapped in the snow globe, the gang made their way over to her house (after giving the guy they were talking to a bit of an existential crisis about how long it’s been outside versus how long it’s been inside). Thanks to the accelerated time inside the globe, the foursome (plus the twins Millie and Ori) found that Khobess was now a very old woman, essentially confined to her bed and looked after by Kimberly, one of the other thieves who got trapped. She greeted them kindly (raising an eyebrow at Corazon’s attempts to claim they came there to RESCUE her, not rob her, but not commenting on it), told them the story of how she got cursed when Egbert expressed curiosity, (basically, while sliding the snow globe out of the bag onto the shelf, she touched it just long enough to get sucked inside), and said that she’d spent ages trying to figure out how to break it, only to come up short. Corazon asked if she knew how far it was to the actual globe part so they could try to bust their way out, and she explained that – while she agreed that probably at this point the only way to break the curse was to physically break the snow globe – the distance to the perimeter was the sole remaining question mark in her studies, as everyone who’d made for the edge had never come back. With a mysterious tremor shaking the village as she told them this. . . Still, Corazon decided that dying in an attempt to escape was better than spending an accelerated lifetime in the village and looked out the window to see what he could discern about the distance to the globe. A middling roll on Wisdom/Perception meant that he only got a GENERAL idea about how far away it was (not helped by Merilwen jumpscaring him through his spyglass) –
But he did get the feeling that he’d be able to get a better look up on the roof. Everyone clambered onto the roof (Prudence deciding NOT to use Spider Climb to preserve those spell slots) – or at least attempted to, as poor Egbert getting a two on the roll meant that he slipped and fell on the iciest bit. On the other hand, he only took two points of damage from it! The others gathered on the roof, and Corazon took another look, using what he could see of the room through the glass to determine that the best path was through the mountains surrounding the village toward the door they’d initially come in. Path set, everyone jumped off the roof onto Egbert at Prudence’s suggestion (he was slightly sick in his mouth, but took no further damage) and headed off into the mountains! First obstacle – the ever-falling snow, while trodden down in the village, soon got up to knee height on Corazon once they left. Solution?
Turn Egbert into a snow-blower by having Corazon hold his legs and him use his flame breath on a “low-heat, long broil” setting. Egbert was like “this is totally demeaning, let’s do it.” XD This worked for a good chunk of the way into the mountain, but then Egbert discovered the second obstacle –
AVALANCHE! Corazon ignored Egbert’s initial warnings regarding the little pebbles of snow looking kind of shaky, but then Ori (or Millie, they’re hard to tell apart) pointed out the ADVANCING WALL OF SNOWY DOOM coming toward them to Prudence, and yeah. After initially wondering if she could use Control Water to create a snow tunnel for them to shelter in (after reading the description of the spell, Luke vetoed this on the basis of Control Water seems to be solely for LIQUID water), Merilwen instead went with encasing everyone inside of a Wind Wall, shaping the wall like a teardrop to cut through the oncoming snow and blast it to either side instead of over the top of them. She rolled really well to keep her footing and thus looked super cool in doing it, and she managed to keep herself, Corazon, Egbert, and Millie safe!
Prudence and Ori on the other hand. . .yeah, Prudence didn’t roll well to stay inside the Wind Wall and decided what had happened is she’d grabbed Ori to use as a human shield, only for the both of them to get swept away and buried. Fortunately, a good Constitution saving throw (the initial roll EXACTLY equaling the seventeen Luke set to match or beat) meant that she was still in one piece, and still holding onto Ori’s hand. . .but she WAS buried in snow, and it WAS getting hard to breathe. . . Cue her starting to eat snow desperately as Luke set a real world timer of three minutes to find her before she suffocated! Fortunately Egbert was on the case, as he had his Locate Object spell handy –
And a hankering for that big bag of breakfast that Prudence was still carrying around! He managed to zero in on her location without much trouble (though he then proceeded to start digging in the wrong spot thanks to a poor “digging” roll), Merilwen used Create Flame to help melt the snow above her, and Corazon just smashed his “digging” roll to tunnel down, find her horns, and basically yank both her and Ori out by said horns. XD Fortunately she beat that Constitution roll too, and her horns remained stuck to her head. Ori too survived, though barely, with every orifice filled with snow. Merilwen promptly made an “Ori-fice” pun, and Luke asked the rules-lawyers in the audience if he could take away inspiration. XD
Anyway – with everyone still alive and in okay shape, the question became how to continue onward. That question was answered by the reveal that the avalanche had stirred up a lot of frozen corpses that had been previously buried – some cut in half by mysterious means, others frozen solid with their hands stretched out toward the glass horizon. Corazon promptly asked if he could lash a few of those together to make a corpse sled. XD Prudence was VERY approving. Luke allowed it (though Corazon had to make a Dex roll to determine the quality), and the group took their new horrible dead body sled to the top of the hill. From there, it was a downhill run to the edge of the globe – still far away, but definitely closer than before!
And good thing too, because looking through the glass, who should they see but Dob, entering the room in ultra-slow-motion! Worried about their friend getting sucked in as well, plans were made to ride the corpse sled (Corazon, Egbert, Prudence, Millie, and Ori), or fly as a giant eagle (Merilwen – there were jokes made about her finishing the adventure solo and flying out through a hitherto-unknown hole) to the edge! Though first things first – Prudence DEFINITELY wanted a look at those cut-in-half corpses to see what caused that. . .and we will find that out tomorrow!
Other:
-->Made sure to take some time around lunch to answer all the fic comments that were piling up in my e-mail inbox – I wasn’t sure how to respond to the first one for a while (I couldn’t tell the tone of what LOOKED to be a joke), but getting one recently where a reader completely misread the last chapter of “Triskaidekaphobia” (thinking that Victor’s dream with Alice was a real thing that happened) spurred me to action! So that’s all set, yay.
-->Naturally had another round of beanbags this afternoon between Sims 4 and my workout, with the new beanbags Mom made today – Mom and I continue to struggle while Dad basically dominated every game except the fourth, where he fell apart and allowed me to sneak in a win. Final scores were me 3-2-2-W-3; Dad W-W-W-3-W; Mom 2-3-3-2-2. Look, we’re all doing our best to deal with the fact that these boards are a lot more slippery than the other ones (and the new beanbags are not helping in that regard), and some of us are doing it better than others!
Yeah, not a bad day, overall -- though I do wish I could have gotten more done over the course of the entire weekend. Meeh. . .maybe the next time I have some time off, I won't also be on my period and thus will be able to focus more. As it stands, I gotta head to bed and get ready for my four days at work. Night all!
Tumblr: Had a better day on the tumblrs today, as I made a point of getting as much done drafting-wise as I could over the course of the day –
Valice Multiverse – hit this up for a little while before lunch just to do my two owed thread replies from yesterday – I WAS going to queue them last night, but by the time I got to them, I was so freaking tired I could barely think straight. So that’s all taken care of until tomorrow afternoon!
Victor Luvs Alice – did the initial draft of all seven posts making up this week’s Chill Valicer Save update (the trip to the gym to try and complete Alice’s resolution, and the trip to the Oversized Crops Finchwick Fair to try and win Victor a ribbon) before lunch; finished up the full text and tags of the first post after lunch; did the text-and-tags of the second and half of the third after YouTube; then finished up the third and did the fourth after getting in my writing! So I have four posts of the update completed, and three in initial draft state. Should be able to wrap those final posts up tomorrow and get them queued up without issue! Fingers crossed, anyway. . .
Sims 4: Had a pretty solid day with my Valicer trio in Sims 4, I must say –
A) Started with the trio all up in the middle of the night, because sleep is something that happens to other people – Victor ordered his and Alice’s marriage certificate, which I hung up in their room by the desk (haven’t gotten a good picture of it yet, though), chatted briefly with Guidry to keep him occupied and not using the power, then headed into the barn to experiment with his cauldron a while, as I really do need to have him start working on potions as well as spells! Smiler, meanwhile, fixed the busted water collector from last time, then added a lightning rod to another of their wind turbines before heading upstairs to respond to comments on their videos; and Alice went out hunting and came back and chatted with Guidry herself while she chowed down before curling up for a wolf nap in the middle of the hallway rug. XD You know, just typical early-morning shenanigans around here!
B) Once Victor was done experimenting, I had him turn his attentions to the woodworking bench, directing him to make a couple of planters for his newly-expanded greenhouse. Alice woke from her wolf nap with some worryingly-high Fury, so I had her let out a somber howl before going to run it off with some Zoomies, while Smiler fed the chickens, cleaned both the coop and the cow shed, told Moory a joke before milking her, then scared off a threatening fox before chatting with the chickens to make sure they had enough attention too. Though it occurs to me that they never collected the eggs. . .I really gotta keep on top of that better! Always so much to do in this house. . .
C) Victor finished up his planters, and I sent him to gather all the currently-ready produce in the greenhouse before I did some rearranging of the plants – Smiler followed them in there to finish off the pack of PlasmaFizz in the shared fridges before coming over to talk to Victor through a tree. XD I put them in the corner while I decided what I wanted to do with all the stuff I wanted Victor to plant – in order to not spend fifty million years trying to reorganize the greenhouse this session, I ended up buying five new plots of earth for trees to complete his “orchard,” put the remaining fruits and veggies in the spare planters, then – when the cowplant wouldn’t germinate in the middle of the second “orchard” row while Victor was planting – put that out front in one of the new planters so it would have plenty of space to grow. (And yes, he’s growing a cowplant, even though I hate them for trying to eat my Newcrest Adventures Victor – it’s required by the Freelance Botanist aspiration. Does NOT say I have to keep it alive for long, though. . .)
D) I also took the opportunity around this time to set up a Weenie Roast for Smiler to host on Summer Tuesday at 3PM at the house! Yes, I’m trying THAT again too – if you’ve been here long enough, you know this is a party type I have had some REAL problems with, but I feel like Smiler needs to have a party preparing for SimCity Founding, and so – we’ll just have to keep our fingers crossed nothing burns down, nobody is abducted, and weenies can be roasted! (And yes, I’m aware that its weird for them to keep hosting food-based parties when they can’t eat, but Weenie Roast IS the most summery of the lot!)
E) Anyway – with the greenhouse at least nominally sorted (and Elmer set loose to take care of the plants as Victor quickly replanted all his oversized crops), Smiler’s latest social event planned (just have to remember to get a campfire before in-game tomorrow), and Alice back from zoomies (having lowered her Fury, taken a day off work, turned back to human, and made good friends with Kelly), it was off to the store to do more work there! With me quickly realizing that, uh, since the shelves in front were already mostly full of flower arrangements, there wasn’t that much for Smiler to do (beyond make one arrangement to fill in a hole on one shelf). I ended up sending them out to check out a protest nearby, which led to them reconnecting with one of the people they met at the pub at the Oversized Crop Fair in Finchwick, Jameson – they had a nice conversation, and Smiler was able to get a drink off them, no problem. :) Victor and Alice, meanwhile, put themselves to the making of food – Victor using the bulk processor to create more specialty breads, while Alice whipped up a chocolate pie and a sugar-free coconut carob cake to fill out the bakery shelves. Learned during this process that there is a distinct DOWNSIDE to toilets now having slots atop them – namely, Sims will try to put their newly-made bread on top of the toilets in the restroom because the top of the tank now counts as a shelf. *facepalm* Victor, please. . .
F) Well, on the plus side, discovered that, while Victor can’t use the Copypasto spell on any of the mod-added bulk food from the processor (like the cans of green beans and such), he CAN use it very effectively on the Cottage Living preserve and syrup jars! I had him Copypasto stuff like apple jam and tomato sauce to create extras to fill out the shelves while Alice made some more canned green peas and some big bags of fruit-based sugar – I also discovered that yes, you can Copypasto milk, so he made a few extra bottles of that to play around with later!
G) Around that time, I also realized, “Hey, wasn’t I planning to sell herbalism stuff in this store too now? Maybe that’s what I can have Smiler too – here, let me put out a couple of grills and picnic tables around the back, then have Victor give them all his chamomile and fireleaf. . .aaaand Smiler doesn’t have the rest of the ingredients they need to make anything. Yeah, go ahead and play some chess, keep yourself busy.” XD I tried! The main problem, I think, is that only one Sim at a time can use the bulk processor for making bulk food, and I’m EXTREMELY RELUCTANT to keep making the store bigger. . .hmmm. . .
H) Anyway – everybody got something to do eventually! Alice made some mushroom conserve and some blackberry jam to start filling up the shelves, while Victor got some grape juice fizzing and made more big bags of sugar and flour to sell. Smiler took their turn on the bulk processor too to make some flavored milks (which they of course tried to put in the bathroom *sigh*) and some vegetarian MREs while Alice fixed a busted stove (nothing like having a broken gas jet spraying flame in your face!) and Victor upgraded the infuser on the juice-fizzing machine to make the resultant products better. They have actually made a little bit of progress filling up the shelves! I’m still gonna have to add some food-related clutter objects, I’m sure, but it’s looking healthier than it was, that’s for sure. :)
I) At that point, though, Victor was hungry and exhausted, Alice was hungry and Furious, and Smiler just needed stuff to do, so I sent everybody home. Smiler promptly got put on “turbine-fixing duty” when I noticed a whole bunch of them were broken AGAIN – though when I checked how that was affecting the electrical surplus, I was astonished to see that they were suddenly up from 3 to 73! Well then – that’s good. O.o I let them start working on robotics stuff again afterward while Victor went inside to grab a BLT for supper and then hit the sheets, and Alice went out for another hunt before succumbing to the Fury for a rampage –
J) Just as Temperance showed up! To my delight, the evil ghost woman was indeed terrified by the sight of a rampaging werewolf and fled off-lot for a bit. XD She soon regained her nerve, though, and headed into the house – I thought she was chasing Guidry at first to give him a piece of her mind, but instead she went into the séance room and started doing a ritual!
Next thing I knew, we had those nasty fire-breathing specters floating around in there. >( I yanked the bizarre idol off the shelf next to her to chase her away and sent Smiler to make drinks to present them as offerings. Hopefully that will work to appease them and chase them away before they do any damage! I left it there with Victor back in bed, Alice having regained control of herself (after digging up a nice bit of quartz), and Smiler getting ready to head over the séance room! We’ll see how that mess clears up – well, probably not this weekend, as I suspect a patch is coming this week, but maybe next weekend! Hopefully by then I’ll also have a new notebook to record all of this in – I just hit the end of this one! O.o Have to see if I have any lying around in the shelves under my bed with free space in them. . .
Writing: Back to work on “The Joker And The Queen” and the escape sequence today – wrote up Dr. Kelman seeing Joytide getting flung into the Oblivion pit, learning from the head of Phalanx Mabillard that he has no more personnel to send to try and stop Victor and the Coaster Crew from escaping (as they’re all trying to stop or being savaged by Nemesis), and finally press-ganging his beleaguered assistant Miles Cedars, Agent Norris (who long ago guessed they got the wrong person when they took Victor), Agent Bagshaw (the common room guard who rarely gives a shit) and poor Technician Cundey (the one who’s been tracking the group’s escape on the basement CCTV and now feels like he’s being punished for just showing Kelman what’s been going on) into going downstairs and stopping the escape – on pain of Kelman throwing them to Nemesis himself. Yeaaah, not a fun time for the employees of Sanctuary right now. Which means on Wednesday I get to finally start Smiler’s section of the escape! Perfectly timed with the tenth anniversary of the coaster too, w000! :D
YouTube: Well, I wanted to get some OXBox RE4 Remake content in, but what with everything else I had to get through today, I ended up keeping it simple with GrayStillPlays and “Testing which car has the best suspension in GTA 5!” Though let’s be honest, Alex’s Torture Boards are anything but simple – especially when he gets his friend Petey involved. XD As indicated by the title of the video, this board was all about testing the suspension of various GTA V vehicles – starting with forcing them to drive over increasingly-spaced-out platforms; then over a variety of bumps (increasingly high regular bumps in the road, increasingly high upscaled soda cans, and increasingly high yellow caution rectangles – the caution bacon, as Gray called it); through a bunch of gaps filled with literal sleeping policemen; through increasingly-small arches (or, if they couldn’t get through a couple, ledges were provided for them to climb over, with the final small arch serving as its own ledge); over an off-road course that they had to complete in 20 seconds or be teleported back to the beginning; over an uneven tightrope where whenever one side went up, the other went down; along a moving chunk of road while taking on the various “speed bumps” it went through (fallen logs, piles of wood, busted cars, poppers, and various weird shapes); through the violently moving onion ring things and spinning windmills; up the uneven stairs; and finally over the increasingly-high train tracks while avoiding the oncoming train. Gray tried many vehicles – a busted bug, a four-wheeled bike, various military vehicles, pick-up and monster trucks, and a weird wide-wheeled colorful car that almost went the distance by cheating the off-road course (getting up onto the walls that enclosed it to avoid the teleporters), but do you know what ended up winning the day for Gray?
THE WASTELANDER! Yes, my favorite rustbucket truck with the perfect combination of a high nose, a good suspension, and enough weight to deal with obstacles like the poppers trying to throw it off is the one that made it all the way to finish line. This makes me probably happier than it really should. XD But hey, come on, how can you not love this thing, it’s post-apocalyptically awesome. :p
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with the Live Oxventure “Snow Escape!” Having discovered that the sorceress whose abandoned house they were intending to rob is in fact trapped in the snow globe, the gang made their way over to her house (after giving the guy they were talking to a bit of an existential crisis about how long it’s been outside versus how long it’s been inside). Thanks to the accelerated time inside the globe, the foursome (plus the twins Millie and Ori) found that Khobess was now a very old woman, essentially confined to her bed and looked after by Kimberly, one of the other thieves who got trapped. She greeted them kindly (raising an eyebrow at Corazon’s attempts to claim they came there to RESCUE her, not rob her, but not commenting on it), told them the story of how she got cursed when Egbert expressed curiosity, (basically, while sliding the snow globe out of the bag onto the shelf, she touched it just long enough to get sucked inside), and said that she’d spent ages trying to figure out how to break it, only to come up short. Corazon asked if she knew how far it was to the actual globe part so they could try to bust their way out, and she explained that – while she agreed that probably at this point the only way to break the curse was to physically break the snow globe – the distance to the perimeter was the sole remaining question mark in her studies, as everyone who’d made for the edge had never come back. With a mysterious tremor shaking the village as she told them this. . . Still, Corazon decided that dying in an attempt to escape was better than spending an accelerated lifetime in the village and looked out the window to see what he could discern about the distance to the globe. A middling roll on Wisdom/Perception meant that he only got a GENERAL idea about how far away it was (not helped by Merilwen jumpscaring him through his spyglass) –
But he did get the feeling that he’d be able to get a better look up on the roof. Everyone clambered onto the roof (Prudence deciding NOT to use Spider Climb to preserve those spell slots) – or at least attempted to, as poor Egbert getting a two on the roll meant that he slipped and fell on the iciest bit. On the other hand, he only took two points of damage from it! The others gathered on the roof, and Corazon took another look, using what he could see of the room through the glass to determine that the best path was through the mountains surrounding the village toward the door they’d initially come in. Path set, everyone jumped off the roof onto Egbert at Prudence’s suggestion (he was slightly sick in his mouth, but took no further damage) and headed off into the mountains! First obstacle – the ever-falling snow, while trodden down in the village, soon got up to knee height on Corazon once they left. Solution?
Turn Egbert into a snow-blower by having Corazon hold his legs and him use his flame breath on a “low-heat, long broil” setting. Egbert was like “this is totally demeaning, let’s do it.” XD This worked for a good chunk of the way into the mountain, but then Egbert discovered the second obstacle –
AVALANCHE! Corazon ignored Egbert’s initial warnings regarding the little pebbles of snow looking kind of shaky, but then Ori (or Millie, they’re hard to tell apart) pointed out the ADVANCING WALL OF SNOWY DOOM coming toward them to Prudence, and yeah. After initially wondering if she could use Control Water to create a snow tunnel for them to shelter in (after reading the description of the spell, Luke vetoed this on the basis of Control Water seems to be solely for LIQUID water), Merilwen instead went with encasing everyone inside of a Wind Wall, shaping the wall like a teardrop to cut through the oncoming snow and blast it to either side instead of over the top of them. She rolled really well to keep her footing and thus looked super cool in doing it, and she managed to keep herself, Corazon, Egbert, and Millie safe!
Prudence and Ori on the other hand. . .yeah, Prudence didn’t roll well to stay inside the Wind Wall and decided what had happened is she’d grabbed Ori to use as a human shield, only for the both of them to get swept away and buried. Fortunately, a good Constitution saving throw (the initial roll EXACTLY equaling the seventeen Luke set to match or beat) meant that she was still in one piece, and still holding onto Ori’s hand. . .but she WAS buried in snow, and it WAS getting hard to breathe. . . Cue her starting to eat snow desperately as Luke set a real world timer of three minutes to find her before she suffocated! Fortunately Egbert was on the case, as he had his Locate Object spell handy –
And a hankering for that big bag of breakfast that Prudence was still carrying around! He managed to zero in on her location without much trouble (though he then proceeded to start digging in the wrong spot thanks to a poor “digging” roll), Merilwen used Create Flame to help melt the snow above her, and Corazon just smashed his “digging” roll to tunnel down, find her horns, and basically yank both her and Ori out by said horns. XD Fortunately she beat that Constitution roll too, and her horns remained stuck to her head. Ori too survived, though barely, with every orifice filled with snow. Merilwen promptly made an “Ori-fice” pun, and Luke asked the rules-lawyers in the audience if he could take away inspiration. XD
Anyway – with everyone still alive and in okay shape, the question became how to continue onward. That question was answered by the reveal that the avalanche had stirred up a lot of frozen corpses that had been previously buried – some cut in half by mysterious means, others frozen solid with their hands stretched out toward the glass horizon. Corazon promptly asked if he could lash a few of those together to make a corpse sled. XD Prudence was VERY approving. Luke allowed it (though Corazon had to make a Dex roll to determine the quality), and the group took their new horrible dead body sled to the top of the hill. From there, it was a downhill run to the edge of the globe – still far away, but definitely closer than before!
And good thing too, because looking through the glass, who should they see but Dob, entering the room in ultra-slow-motion! Worried about their friend getting sucked in as well, plans were made to ride the corpse sled (Corazon, Egbert, Prudence, Millie, and Ori), or fly as a giant eagle (Merilwen – there were jokes made about her finishing the adventure solo and flying out through a hitherto-unknown hole) to the edge! Though first things first – Prudence DEFINITELY wanted a look at those cut-in-half corpses to see what caused that. . .and we will find that out tomorrow!
Other:
-->Made sure to take some time around lunch to answer all the fic comments that were piling up in my e-mail inbox – I wasn’t sure how to respond to the first one for a while (I couldn’t tell the tone of what LOOKED to be a joke), but getting one recently where a reader completely misread the last chapter of “Triskaidekaphobia” (thinking that Victor’s dream with Alice was a real thing that happened) spurred me to action! So that’s all set, yay.
-->Naturally had another round of beanbags this afternoon between Sims 4 and my workout, with the new beanbags Mom made today – Mom and I continue to struggle while Dad basically dominated every game except the fourth, where he fell apart and allowed me to sneak in a win. Final scores were me 3-2-2-W-3; Dad W-W-W-3-W; Mom 2-3-3-2-2. Look, we’re all doing our best to deal with the fact that these boards are a lot more slippery than the other ones (and the new beanbags are not helping in that regard), and some of us are doing it better than others!
Yeah, not a bad day, overall -- though I do wish I could have gotten more done over the course of the entire weekend. Meeh. . .maybe the next time I have some time off, I won't also be on my period and thus will be able to focus more. As it stands, I gotta head to bed and get ready for my four days at work. Night all!
