The Heat Is On Wednesday
Jul. 12th, 2023 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickHit 90F today, and the humidity made everything icky and sticky, bleeeh. >( Fortunately I was able to stay in the AC for most of the day, barring walks to and from my car in the parking lot, and I was able to park said car in a nice shady spot so it wasn't TOO hot when I headed home this afternoon. Tomorrow's supposed to be a bit cooler, but still sticky, and then more scattered showers and thunderstorms for Friday. *grumbles* Like, come on, cut us a break here!
Anyway, how'd I do on the old to-do list?
Work – An even quieter day – while my supervisor was back, my coworkers were not, and we’re now in the middle of a processing freeze, so I can’t put on any new gifts that may come in (not that there’s much coming in right now anyway). Spent pretty much the entire day doing roster maintenance stuff, with one QC file coming in late in the afternoon for me to review. *shrug* It could be worse!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike for another nice meaty chunk of Oxventure Presents: Blades In the Dark – “The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh!” We picked up right after Kasimir’s delightful performance as “Barrel Bertie,” with the singer playing Shattershield ad-libbing his way back into the song proper and ending Act Two by enacting his dastardly plan to send Chauncey down the river in a barrel so he could marry Lady Fyengeh. This prompted the interval –
And also prompted Barnaby to go out in search of Emmeline/“Emily” for their little rendezvous! A middling roll had him find a door to the backstage area – attended to by a security guard. Who was very keen on finding out why Barnaby wanted to go backstage. Barnaby tried to argue his way through, saying that Emmeline was expecting him and that he was very very rich and that if he didn’t let him through he was going to complain to this guard’s manager and get him fired, using all three dots of his lovely Sway skill!
He – rolled very poorly, and got cuffed and dragged off to a secret security room, where he was plopped in front of the chief, who in fact happened to be the best friend of the guard who’d collared him. Fortunately, when Barnaby told him about Emmeline and how he’d come to the theater to support her because that’s what you do for friends, you see their boring stupid operas, it turned out that he’d been in am-dram (amateur drama) himself, and had gotten Bill to come and see some of HIS productions. That and Barnaby playing completely dumb about the ruby got the chief to send Bill to actually check on Emmeline, and Bill to reluctantly report back that yes, she was waiting for Barnaby. So Barnaby made it to Emmeline’s dressing room, albeit with very little time to speak with her and with guards all around – specifically, two in the dressing room itself, keeping an eye on that ruby. He buttered her up with compliments about how she was outshining her own necklace, and she in turn informed him that she had a secret spot that she often slipped away to near the beginning of Act Three (which features a very long Chauncey musical number revolving around him escaping from the barrel and getting the villagers nearby to help him get back to Mistmire), a disused cupboard near the bathrooms where she smokes to pass the time. She does have to hand over the ruby to one of her security guards, but that’s not a big deal, is it, Barnaby? Barnaby assured her he was all up for getting to know her better in her secret spot, and agreed to just hang around backstage so he could get to it more easily once the Chauncey number started. Emmeline headed back out onto the stage in a flurry of blown kisses, and Barnaby decided to use the time before the tryst to try and find his compatriots.
Right on cue, Lilith had to scramble out with her fellow black-suited shadow performers to help provide some special effects for the scene where Chauncey floats down the river in the barrel. And then, rather than try and stay in sync with the group providing beautiful rushing waves for the river, she ended up going to the front with the barrel-hoisting group and crab-walking in front of them, pretending to provide extra splashes of water. XD She JUST pulled it off, but two more segments were filled in on the “Lilith Rumbled” clock. Barnaby yanked her offstage once she was close enough and filled her in on what was happening between himself and “Emily” and where the ruby was going to be during it (Zillah and Kasimir drifting over when they noticed Barnaby to listen in, and – thanks to a flashback – Kasimir communicating all this to Edvard via light-based Morse code XD). Lilith’s immediate thought was to go Mission: Impossible and have Zillah and Kasimir lower her down on a rope to sneak the gem out of the guard’s pocket; Edvard argued over the lights that someone should instead try to replace Emmeline by disguising themselves in her costume and just get the ruby HANDED to them (Kasimir was immediately “not me”); Lilith then started thinking about using a snare trap to yank the guard off his feet, knock him out, and get the gem that way. In the end, they decided that Plan A would be the Lilith rope drop, and Plan B would be the Emmeline disguise, and while Barnaby headed over to Emmeline’s cupboard and started having a raunchy good time, Lilith, Zillah, and Kasimir all headed up into the catwalks (poor Kasimir taking some stress thanks to his dickey leg), found a good view of the “make-out spot,” and – after some discussion of whether or not this was going to be a group action and who would lead it – rolled four dice, three from Lilith and one from Zillah (Kasimir using his new “Foresight” ability to help for zero stress, nice).
HIGHEST RESULT FROM BOTH OF THEM WAS A THREE. Lilith took two stress, but, as Luke explained, that was only the BEGINNING of her troubles. XD Namely, Zillah kept referring to the initial lowering down of Lilith as a “launch” – and a launch it was, with Lilith flying wildly back and forth over her target for a moment before her rope snapped and sent her crashing down onto “Chauncey,” smashing them both up pretty good. She managed to get her feet and scramble-limp her way offstage, though –
Mostly because Edvard, seeing this happen, IMMEDIATELY sent the stage into blackout and put the biggest, brightest spotlight on the snoozing Squiffy in Barnaby’s box. Squiffy woke up, and finding the light on him, began to do a little jig and recite a deeply obscene limerick until he was dragged away by the horrified security. XD Edvard’s baffled fellow techs demanded to know what the hell he was doing, but Edvard JUST managed to pass it off as “Squiffy promised to patronize a whole two seasons if we let him do his horrible limericks on his birthday!” I mean, they were like “what?” but they BOUGHT it, and that was the main thing. XD The big problem for the gang now is that all this commotion has sent the security guards into high alert, and there’s a whole bunch more in front of the make-out spot, arguing with the original guy who doesn’t want to ADMIT that “oh, I took the ruby from the leading lady because she wanted to fuck a guy in the closet here.” XD Fortunately, when I left it, Zillah was already starting to wonder if now was the time for all those ball bearings... We’ll see how this wraps up for everyone tomorrow! :D
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – after getting a promise from Miles in writing that he will indeed let them loose (on pain of them doing horrible things to him), the Coaster Crew has agreed to help with the recapture of Nemesis. And while everyone seemed to be leaning toward using one of Oblivion’s void holes to do the job (with Oblivion demonstrating for Miles that yes, he CAN retrieve the things/people he dumps in there by releasing Joytide and her guards – fortunately they didn’t try anything), Smiler brought up that they’d JUST learned that Victor can nullify powers if necessary. And, once told that Smiler and Alice were getting positive signals from the universe for this plan, he’s willing to give it a try. :) Puts me in a good position to break for gift fic writing on Friday!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Two-thirds check, with me managing to get all my writing and recaps and stuff done to catch up with GrayStillPlays! :D So I present to you yesterday’s and today’s episodes, in order –
A) “They made Skibidi Toilet 1000x more dangerous,” aka Gray plays more Happy Wheels! This episode was a mix of “oof that was legit” stuff and “huh that was actually pretty easy” stuff – Gray started with a recycling-themed bottle throw (in which you could recycle yourself with the right throw – and Gray ended up using that to make sure to get a bottle into the very-hard-to-reach win area), then moved on to a simple green rope swing (probably someone’s first effort), a Canadian-themed pogo fight (though, trust me, the themeing was VERY loose, and apart from getting a battle axe up his groin at one point, Gray had no trouble with it), a colorful neon rope swing with some absurdly-fast conveyors and some careful sliding (Gray accidentally went in the cannon the wrong way at the end, but still managed to win), a 99.9% impossible board that – well, lived up to the name (started with a rope swing into a TILTED SPIKE FALL, which then brought Gray to a ball throw, which THEN brought him to a sword throw – and when Gray couldn’t get the final drop to trigger, he CRAWLED OUT of his little sword-throwing area himself), to a harpoon run with the harpoons firing from behind you on a set of stairs (Gray won pretty easily by simply bouncing up and over most of the harpoons), a glass break with spinning stabby glass, cubes of glass, and more solid cubes of stabby glass (Gray NEARLY got speared in the head, but managed to make it through), a reasonably epic “don’t move” board (with Pogo Man being shot and flung through soooo many spikes), a very tough “outrun the meteor” board (with a LOT of stuff to get stuck in or caught on – Gray ended up winning the board as basically just a mangled torso), and finally the Dylan Snider board, with Gray versus the Skibidi Toilets of the title (this is some sort of elongated man’s head sticking out of a toilet – the ones in this level could both wield battleaxes and fall from great heights to try and smash Gray’s head to protect their king). Just a very weird but very awesome look at all the different kinds of levels you can get in this bizarre game!
B) “Cars vs HUGE Water Potholes in GTA 5” – another Alex Torture Board, this time combining potholes with water for a double dose of Gray agony! Gray had to find just the right vehicle to make it across the “Waterfall” Wet Pothole (basically a giant pit right at the start of the board where he had to get over a small waterfall and across the partially-submerged roadway behind it before his engine flooded), the “Florida” Wet Potholes (one with some barriers indicating road construction in front of it, one with a bunch of lifeguards by the side of it – and a coffin XD), the “Danny BMX” Wet Potholes (Danny returns to force Gray to jump a series of potholes that were basically BMX “bowls” (you know, like the kind you find at official skate/bike parks) – one set normally, one set longways, two set normally, two set longways, with bikers on either side to prevent cheating), the “Waterspouts” Wet Pothole (a large pit with some very legit waterspouts inside to propel the unwary up to heaven), the “Half-invisible” Wet Pothole (a pit where part of it was covered with an invisible roadway, meaning Gray couldn’t tell where the beginning of the actual pothole was unless he marked it with sticky bombs – also teleporters on either side of the gap in case Gray felt like cheating), the “Intersection” Wet Pothole (a giant pit full of water in the middle of an Alex-made intersection, with cars falling into it from all sides – Gray actually had to ramp one of the cars coming from the other direction to make it over the hole himself), and, after a checkpoint, the “Boss” Wet Pothole (basically just a giant lake in the middle of a broken bridge, with an overturned boat in the middle that Gray had to ramp off of just right to make it to the other side). As you might imagine, this took some doing – the first Jeep-like vehicle managed to cheat the waterfall by going around on the rocks on the side, but couldn’t do anything else; the dune buggy and the Wastelander both couldn’t quite make the jump across the waterspouts; and the aqua-truck (a truck with floating barrels and a motorboat prop on the back) was able to get punted back onto the board by the waterspouts (due to not being able to drown, because, half-boat), but just couldn’t make it through the half-invisible pothole. The ultimate winner?
A car Gray initially dismissed as a meme car, a race car with a spoiler, an incredible amount of speed, and, most importantly, the inability to drown! It took a few tries, mostly because the damn thing was SO fast it was easy for Gray to mess up the jumps by clipping something, but eventually Gray managed to get it across all the potholes, including the boss, and jump a boat through the winning circle! Dude sounded SO proud of himself when he actually made it over. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check. . .but it proved to be more of a process than I expected. Mainly because my brain got hung up on two things:
A) I wanted to do something specific revolving around Valicer and food for Friday, because there’s another one of those tumblr “polyam shipping days” on that date with “food” as a theme
B) I had NO IDEA what I wanted to do for Thursday
Cue me spending most of the night desperately searching my dash and liked blogs for something that felt right. . .to the point where I realized I’d forgotten to reblog the announcement of the next chapter of “Beneath A Broken Sky” from the author, which I’d meant to do earlier. So THAT became my Thursday post. I don’t think Satirical Demon will mind! And I do have a draft going for Friday of food-related Not-Incorrect Quotes...I’ve got two completed, a third drafted, and I want to think of at least two more. We’ll see if any flashes of inspiration come tomorrow!
And with that, I must be off, because that damn tumblr brain hang-up means that I'm updating this later than I actually wanted, and I do have a day and a half still to go at work! So yeah, night all!
Anyway, how'd I do on the old to-do list?
Work – An even quieter day – while my supervisor was back, my coworkers were not, and we’re now in the middle of a processing freeze, so I can’t put on any new gifts that may come in (not that there’s much coming in right now anyway). Spent pretty much the entire day doing roster maintenance stuff, with one QC file coming in late in the afternoon for me to review. *shrug* It could be worse!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike for another nice meaty chunk of Oxventure Presents: Blades In the Dark – “The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh!” We picked up right after Kasimir’s delightful performance as “Barrel Bertie,” with the singer playing Shattershield ad-libbing his way back into the song proper and ending Act Two by enacting his dastardly plan to send Chauncey down the river in a barrel so he could marry Lady Fyengeh. This prompted the interval –
And also prompted Barnaby to go out in search of Emmeline/“Emily” for their little rendezvous! A middling roll had him find a door to the backstage area – attended to by a security guard. Who was very keen on finding out why Barnaby wanted to go backstage. Barnaby tried to argue his way through, saying that Emmeline was expecting him and that he was very very rich and that if he didn’t let him through he was going to complain to this guard’s manager and get him fired, using all three dots of his lovely Sway skill!
He – rolled very poorly, and got cuffed and dragged off to a secret security room, where he was plopped in front of the chief, who in fact happened to be the best friend of the guard who’d collared him. Fortunately, when Barnaby told him about Emmeline and how he’d come to the theater to support her because that’s what you do for friends, you see their boring stupid operas, it turned out that he’d been in am-dram (amateur drama) himself, and had gotten Bill to come and see some of HIS productions. That and Barnaby playing completely dumb about the ruby got the chief to send Bill to actually check on Emmeline, and Bill to reluctantly report back that yes, she was waiting for Barnaby. So Barnaby made it to Emmeline’s dressing room, albeit with very little time to speak with her and with guards all around – specifically, two in the dressing room itself, keeping an eye on that ruby. He buttered her up with compliments about how she was outshining her own necklace, and she in turn informed him that she had a secret spot that she often slipped away to near the beginning of Act Three (which features a very long Chauncey musical number revolving around him escaping from the barrel and getting the villagers nearby to help him get back to Mistmire), a disused cupboard near the bathrooms where she smokes to pass the time. She does have to hand over the ruby to one of her security guards, but that’s not a big deal, is it, Barnaby? Barnaby assured her he was all up for getting to know her better in her secret spot, and agreed to just hang around backstage so he could get to it more easily once the Chauncey number started. Emmeline headed back out onto the stage in a flurry of blown kisses, and Barnaby decided to use the time before the tryst to try and find his compatriots.
Right on cue, Lilith had to scramble out with her fellow black-suited shadow performers to help provide some special effects for the scene where Chauncey floats down the river in the barrel. And then, rather than try and stay in sync with the group providing beautiful rushing waves for the river, she ended up going to the front with the barrel-hoisting group and crab-walking in front of them, pretending to provide extra splashes of water. XD She JUST pulled it off, but two more segments were filled in on the “Lilith Rumbled” clock. Barnaby yanked her offstage once she was close enough and filled her in on what was happening between himself and “Emily” and where the ruby was going to be during it (Zillah and Kasimir drifting over when they noticed Barnaby to listen in, and – thanks to a flashback – Kasimir communicating all this to Edvard via light-based Morse code XD). Lilith’s immediate thought was to go Mission: Impossible and have Zillah and Kasimir lower her down on a rope to sneak the gem out of the guard’s pocket; Edvard argued over the lights that someone should instead try to replace Emmeline by disguising themselves in her costume and just get the ruby HANDED to them (Kasimir was immediately “not me”); Lilith then started thinking about using a snare trap to yank the guard off his feet, knock him out, and get the gem that way. In the end, they decided that Plan A would be the Lilith rope drop, and Plan B would be the Emmeline disguise, and while Barnaby headed over to Emmeline’s cupboard and started having a raunchy good time, Lilith, Zillah, and Kasimir all headed up into the catwalks (poor Kasimir taking some stress thanks to his dickey leg), found a good view of the “make-out spot,” and – after some discussion of whether or not this was going to be a group action and who would lead it – rolled four dice, three from Lilith and one from Zillah (Kasimir using his new “Foresight” ability to help for zero stress, nice).
HIGHEST RESULT FROM BOTH OF THEM WAS A THREE. Lilith took two stress, but, as Luke explained, that was only the BEGINNING of her troubles. XD Namely, Zillah kept referring to the initial lowering down of Lilith as a “launch” – and a launch it was, with Lilith flying wildly back and forth over her target for a moment before her rope snapped and sent her crashing down onto “Chauncey,” smashing them both up pretty good. She managed to get her feet and scramble-limp her way offstage, though –
Mostly because Edvard, seeing this happen, IMMEDIATELY sent the stage into blackout and put the biggest, brightest spotlight on the snoozing Squiffy in Barnaby’s box. Squiffy woke up, and finding the light on him, began to do a little jig and recite a deeply obscene limerick until he was dragged away by the horrified security. XD Edvard’s baffled fellow techs demanded to know what the hell he was doing, but Edvard JUST managed to pass it off as “Squiffy promised to patronize a whole two seasons if we let him do his horrible limericks on his birthday!” I mean, they were like “what?” but they BOUGHT it, and that was the main thing. XD The big problem for the gang now is that all this commotion has sent the security guards into high alert, and there’s a whole bunch more in front of the make-out spot, arguing with the original guy who doesn’t want to ADMIT that “oh, I took the ruby from the leading lady because she wanted to fuck a guy in the closet here.” XD Fortunately, when I left it, Zillah was already starting to wonder if now was the time for all those ball bearings... We’ll see how this wraps up for everyone tomorrow! :D
2. Continue writing “The Joker And The Queen”: Check – after getting a promise from Miles in writing that he will indeed let them loose (on pain of them doing horrible things to him), the Coaster Crew has agreed to help with the recapture of Nemesis. And while everyone seemed to be leaning toward using one of Oblivion’s void holes to do the job (with Oblivion demonstrating for Miles that yes, he CAN retrieve the things/people he dumps in there by releasing Joytide and her guards – fortunately they didn’t try anything), Smiler brought up that they’d JUST learned that Victor can nullify powers if necessary. And, once told that Smiler and Alice were getting positive signals from the universe for this plan, he’s willing to give it a try. :) Puts me in a good position to break for gift fic writing on Friday!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Two-thirds check, with me managing to get all my writing and recaps and stuff done to catch up with GrayStillPlays! :D So I present to you yesterday’s and today’s episodes, in order –
A) “They made Skibidi Toilet 1000x more dangerous,” aka Gray plays more Happy Wheels! This episode was a mix of “oof that was legit” stuff and “huh that was actually pretty easy” stuff – Gray started with a recycling-themed bottle throw (in which you could recycle yourself with the right throw – and Gray ended up using that to make sure to get a bottle into the very-hard-to-reach win area), then moved on to a simple green rope swing (probably someone’s first effort), a Canadian-themed pogo fight (though, trust me, the themeing was VERY loose, and apart from getting a battle axe up his groin at one point, Gray had no trouble with it), a colorful neon rope swing with some absurdly-fast conveyors and some careful sliding (Gray accidentally went in the cannon the wrong way at the end, but still managed to win), a 99.9% impossible board that – well, lived up to the name (started with a rope swing into a TILTED SPIKE FALL, which then brought Gray to a ball throw, which THEN brought him to a sword throw – and when Gray couldn’t get the final drop to trigger, he CRAWLED OUT of his little sword-throwing area himself), to a harpoon run with the harpoons firing from behind you on a set of stairs (Gray won pretty easily by simply bouncing up and over most of the harpoons), a glass break with spinning stabby glass, cubes of glass, and more solid cubes of stabby glass (Gray NEARLY got speared in the head, but managed to make it through), a reasonably epic “don’t move” board (with Pogo Man being shot and flung through soooo many spikes), a very tough “outrun the meteor” board (with a LOT of stuff to get stuck in or caught on – Gray ended up winning the board as basically just a mangled torso), and finally the Dylan Snider board, with Gray versus the Skibidi Toilets of the title (this is some sort of elongated man’s head sticking out of a toilet – the ones in this level could both wield battleaxes and fall from great heights to try and smash Gray’s head to protect their king). Just a very weird but very awesome look at all the different kinds of levels you can get in this bizarre game!
B) “Cars vs HUGE Water Potholes in GTA 5” – another Alex Torture Board, this time combining potholes with water for a double dose of Gray agony! Gray had to find just the right vehicle to make it across the “Waterfall” Wet Pothole (basically a giant pit right at the start of the board where he had to get over a small waterfall and across the partially-submerged roadway behind it before his engine flooded), the “Florida” Wet Potholes (one with some barriers indicating road construction in front of it, one with a bunch of lifeguards by the side of it – and a coffin XD), the “Danny BMX” Wet Potholes (Danny returns to force Gray to jump a series of potholes that were basically BMX “bowls” (you know, like the kind you find at official skate/bike parks) – one set normally, one set longways, two set normally, two set longways, with bikers on either side to prevent cheating), the “Waterspouts” Wet Pothole (a large pit with some very legit waterspouts inside to propel the unwary up to heaven), the “Half-invisible” Wet Pothole (a pit where part of it was covered with an invisible roadway, meaning Gray couldn’t tell where the beginning of the actual pothole was unless he marked it with sticky bombs – also teleporters on either side of the gap in case Gray felt like cheating), the “Intersection” Wet Pothole (a giant pit full of water in the middle of an Alex-made intersection, with cars falling into it from all sides – Gray actually had to ramp one of the cars coming from the other direction to make it over the hole himself), and, after a checkpoint, the “Boss” Wet Pothole (basically just a giant lake in the middle of a broken bridge, with an overturned boat in the middle that Gray had to ramp off of just right to make it to the other side). As you might imagine, this took some doing – the first Jeep-like vehicle managed to cheat the waterfall by going around on the rocks on the side, but couldn’t do anything else; the dune buggy and the Wastelander both couldn’t quite make the jump across the waterspouts; and the aqua-truck (a truck with floating barrels and a motorboat prop on the back) was able to get punted back onto the board by the waterspouts (due to not being able to drown, because, half-boat), but just couldn’t make it through the half-invisible pothole. The ultimate winner?
A car Gray initially dismissed as a meme car, a race car with a spoiler, an incredible amount of speed, and, most importantly, the inability to drown! It took a few tries, mostly because the damn thing was SO fast it was easy for Gray to mess up the jumps by clipping something, but eventually Gray managed to get it across all the potholes, including the boss, and jump a boat through the winning circle! Dude sounded SO proud of himself when he actually made it over. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check. . .but it proved to be more of a process than I expected. Mainly because my brain got hung up on two things:
A) I wanted to do something specific revolving around Valicer and food for Friday, because there’s another one of those tumblr “polyam shipping days” on that date with “food” as a theme
B) I had NO IDEA what I wanted to do for Thursday
Cue me spending most of the night desperately searching my dash and liked blogs for something that felt right. . .to the point where I realized I’d forgotten to reblog the announcement of the next chapter of “Beneath A Broken Sky” from the author, which I’d meant to do earlier. So THAT became my Thursday post. I don’t think Satirical Demon will mind! And I do have a draft going for Friday of food-related Not-Incorrect Quotes...I’ve got two completed, a third drafted, and I want to think of at least two more. We’ll see if any flashes of inspiration come tomorrow!
And with that, I must be off, because that damn tumblr brain hang-up means that I'm updating this later than I actually wanted, and I do have a day and a half still to go at work! So yeah, night all!
