Crossover Chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crossover_chick) wrote2023-08-29 11:54 pm
crossover_chick) wrote2023-08-29 11:54 pm
Later Than I Wanted Update
And so I shall just throw up the to-do list -- the last entry explains why I'm updating so late anyway --
Work – Another mostly-quiet day of duplicates and taking a couple of credit card calls and the like. . .which ended with me checking up on some credit card gifts our processors had put on and discovering a certain fucking source code issue is back. *heavy sigh* I swear, this is getting so stupid it makes my brain hurt. I e-mailed the credit card company about it before I left – we’ll see what they have to say when I get in tomorrow morning! Grrrr. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “Foundry No. 12!” With Zillah serving as a VERY good distraction, and Edvard safely away sneaking through the machinery, Kasimir was able to pop up from behind their big-old-foundry-pot cover and headshot a couple of Red Sashes easy-peasy (thinking about how WEIRD it was to kill someone and not hear the bell toll). However, as Johnny rolled a five, that success came with a complication, and that complication was those Red Sashes that DIDN’T have crossbows rappelling down from the gantry to start trying to get into hand-to-hand (well, hand-to-sword) combat with their targets. Zillah decided this was a perfect time to try and use Edvard’s flashbang and attempted to Finesse it up onto the gantry –
Three and a two, meaning her attempt was coolly deflected by a Red Sash and SHE ended up getting flashbung right in the face. She was reduced to stumbling around blindly while the Red Sashes still on the gantry started lining up fresh shots. Kasimir was wondering just how he was going to help her –
When CRASH! In through a window came a gigantic goat in fine fettle, ready to assist! Kasimir promptly slapped on a flat cap and started going “come by,” trying to get the goat to head over to Zillah, lightly bop her in the knees so she’d fall over its back, and then get her to safety. Johnny rolled Consort, since the goat was Kasimir’s friend –
Three and a two. Due to the noise in the factory, the goat heard “come die” and promptly decided that Kasimir intended it to ATTACK Zillah, leading it to ram her at full speed. This DID at least knock her into the chains that she was headed for before, and thus back into cover, but it also gave her Level 2 Harm, “Goat Smashed.” XD Kasimir welcomed her to the club of having one less die on all your rolls. XD
However! All of this was EXTREMELY fucking distracting, as you might imagine, and that plus a six from Edvard on a “Finessing my way through the machinery” roll got him to the control panel for the lights without any issue. And even better, when Luke asked how he intended to rig up the controls to the gantry to turn it into an electric death trap, Edvard pulled out his old line-thrower grappling hook, which they’d used in the very FIRST episode of the first season (for getting onto the roof of the house they intended to rob). Luke was so happy about the sublime callback that he didn’t make Edvard roll for his jury-rigged wiring, and thus Edvard was able to switch off the lights, quickly attach his makeshift electric death cable to the line-thrower, fire it up onto the gantry, and switch the lights back on, screaming “IT’S ALIVE” because Luke told him that it was noisy enough that he DIDN’T have to do it just in his mind. XD The plan worked a treat, electrocuting all the crossbow-using Red Sashes on the gantry – it didn’t KILL them, as they got lucky on Luke’s fortune roll, but it did knock them very much out of commission. So that was all the ranged weapon users sorted!
However, right afterward, the lights popped, plunging the factory into darkness – at least, until the remaining Red Sashes on the factory floor whipped out their lanterns and started searching for their targets. Zillah, having recovered from her flashbunging, wrapped some chain around her fists and started stalking a Red Sash, intending to garrote the mercenary, while Kasimir, trying to figure out what he could do, decided that his best bet was to get his new ghostly bird companion on-sides. However, he had a problem in that department – doing so required him to Attune to the bird, and he had no dots in Attune. And even if he pushed himself, that only got him one extra die, which would be immediately removed by his “Cursed” Level 2 Harm. So Johnny politely asked Luke for a Devil’s Bargain, and Luke generously allowed them to roll TWO dice, with the knowledge that, when Kasimir attuned to the bird, he would link it to him for life. Johnny considered this a fair trade and rolled –
And got a pair of threes. The result was that poor Kasimir attuned to his new avian companion. . .to discover it was the ghost of a seagull. A very noisy, easily started seagull who promptly started screeching and squawking at the top of its lungs, drawing the attention of some of the searching Sashes. Oooh boy. . . Zillah, wanting to help, managed to garrote the Red Sash she was stalking, choking them out, hiding them, and then managing to successfully “sound off” when the leader called for everyone to start calling out their numbers (1, 2, 3, etc). She then snuck up on two more Red Sashes, walking back to back, and pushed herself to show she was Not To Be Trifled with, turning her chain into a horrible whip weapon by spinning it above her head and trying to smash them in the faces. She got the first Sash with no problem, reducing their face to a pulp and killing them – the second Sash, she only managed to whip in the shoulder, dislocating it. The Sash fell to their knees, then looked up at her –
And recognized her. Turns out, after doing the heist at the cage fight with Zillah and Barnaby, Marlane the pugilist ran off and joined the Red Sashes! A stunned Zillah was like “this is awkward” and Marlane agreed. . .but, as neither had any better ideas on how to handle the situation (beyond Marlane trying to get Zillah to join the Sashes, which, they’re currently trying to kill her and her other friends), they squared off for a potentially deadly fight, Marlane getting her sword out in front while Zillah wrapped chain protectively around her arm for blocking purposes. This did, of course, mean that Kasimir was left on his own when it came to dealing with the Sashes stalking him –
But, as it turns out, he didn’t need the help, because he managed to come up with a brilliant plan of his own. Namely, he used his spiritbane charm to trap his new ghost seagull companion on the floor temporarily, prowled around the pot away from the lantern light and into fresh cover, and lined up some shots to take out the Sashes. A six meant that he did this beautifully, getting to safety and winging them all without issue. They’re not DEAD, but they’re certainly not happy!
Oh, but what was Edvard doing during all of this? Well, HIS thought was to try and get up to the weird glass cube room thing Lord Strangford and Bakaros were in and see what he could do about them directly. A good Study roll allowed him to spot that the room did indeed have a door in it, and that there was another door nearby that might lead up to it. Edvard successfully snuck over and slid through that door, ascending the stairs to find the door into the cube (heavy, imposing, and – naturally – locked) –
But before he could do anything about that, Luke informed everyone that the one Red Sash unaccounted for could see just how badly this was actually going and decided to try and get to his employers to get them into a fallback position. Meaning, while Edvard was contemplating the door, that Red Sash came in through the door to the stairs and started coming up. Edvard desperately began searching for something to knock the guy out – but a weak success in a four meant that all he found was a super-heavy engine-block-type thing. That, when he tried to move it, caused a fuzzy something to spill out of his pocket. Yes, as it turns out, the Legally-Distinct-From-Gizmo-The-Mogwai creature had stowed away in Edvard’s pocket, attracted by the raspberries he had in there for a snack. And I don’t know what time it is in-game right now, but I suspect tomorrow we’re going to find out that it’s after midnight. . .or Luke is going to argue that all times are after midnight, so. . . XD We’ll see how this chaos wraps up then!
2. Continue writing Valicer In The Dark, “Home Sweet Lair”: Check – the gang is continuing to explore the house, with Smiler reporting that the bathroom has a proper indoor toilet and a busted-up bath, though they’re pretty sure they could fix that given some time. Alice was like “uh, we’re not LIVING here,” with Smiler counterpointing that they were on the run and thus needed a suitably grimy lair to stay in. XD The conversation was derailed by Victor going to investigate the manhole in the back courtyard and being horrified by the smell coming out of it – Alice told him it was probably no worse than any other poor neighborhood’s sewer, which kind of horrified Victor and led Smiler to explain how the Advocates are trying to get better sanitation set up throughout the city. Because they actually do a lot of good civic and charity work, they just also sell drugs and hypnotize people and suchlike. XD Smiler explained it as “yeah, I’m willing to sell people my Joy Serum for a short-term high, but our goal IS to increase happiness overall, since Mar-Mal says that’s a human’s natural state.” Which, tomorrow, will prompt Victor to ask about Mar-Mal and Smiler to happily natter on about their god. XD It’s good wordbuilding!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – two in, two out –
A) First up, from Josh Way, “I Got Scammed and Hired by a FAKE Job!” Yup, Josh had a tale for us about how he ALMOST got taken in by some shitty scammers while looking for a new day job – they managed to string him along through multiple chat interviews and an actual pretend hiring before he finally realized “wait, something’s not right here” after mobile-depositing a janky check they sent him so he could “buy the equipment he needed.” Poor Josh managed to nip it in the bud by calling his bank and the FTC early enough that nothing happened, but he was rather embarrassed that he was taken in (especially since he realized after the fact he’d never even applied to the job offered – dude’s been sending out so many online applications he just completely lost track of what he had and hadn’t applied to), and he wanted to offer up his story as a teachable moment to his YouTube audience. Good on him for trying to turn such a shitty situation into a positive, and I hope he does find something soon!
B) And second up, from GrayStillPlays, “When you infiltrate area 51” – AKA the weekly Happy Wheels video! (Seriously – every Tuesday, which I appreciate.) We started with the standard bottle flip board, with Gray taking on the constipation colon and the “feetus” (and bottle flipping a bottle not only onto his own section, but also the harpoon waiting to kill him), then moved through a horse race where Pogo Guy ended up riding the world’s derpiest zebra (after being trampled by it on Gray’s first attempt – the second attempt saw the zebra trampling everyone else); “Pogo Pro 72” (which had in-game adverts and consisted mainly of getting Pogo Guy past a very inconveniently-placed wrecking ball); a very hard run over vans, toilets, and glass (which Gray ended up winning by flipping himself over most of the obstacles); a rope swing with lots of figuring out what the correct tunnel to slide down was and ending with a killer table race (Gray had lost his arms by that point but somehow managed to stay on the table and land on the win); “Pogo Fight Antarctica” (which featured Pogo Guy fighting a bunch of enemies in Santa hats, defeating and briefly gaining the yeeting powers of a demonic little girl, then winning the board by fighting and defeating Santa himself); Bike Dad and Tom Hardy trying to return home from a trip to an Ohioan grocery store (which for some reason featured multiple land mines, hobos with swords, a wrecking ball, rockets, homing mines, and a cube of harpoon death – Gray basically won by getting SUPER lucky); a trip through the jungle with Bike Dad and Tom Hardy (where they had to avoid many spikes and land mines while being forced to touch grass); a “Don’t Move” board with much leg-removal and back-breaking (Gray was like “it’s fine, it’s laundry day for my legs and spine”); “try to win this,” a DEEPLY unfair challenge board with mines and wrecking balls and basically everything deadly possible around Bike Dad – which Gray proceeded to win FIRST TRY in SECONDS (Gray himself couldn’t stop laughing in disbelief at how lucky he’d gotten); and the Dylan Snider board of the week which gave the episode its title, which saw Bike Dad and Tom Hardy infiltrating Area 51 to learn its dangerous secrets (avoiding being abducted and probed by Reginald and blown up by the various defenses around all of the various aliens – well, BIKE DAD avoided that, Tom had to make a sacrifice. . .and then Bike Dad ended up dead anyway when he came too close to learning about the existence of “East Virginia” XD). Delightful stuff, as always – I do love it when the Happy Wheels folks bring their A game!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: We’ll say two-thirds check, based on what I managed to get through –
Victor Luvs Alice – Finished the alt text and tags on my remaining three Chill Valicer Save update posts, yay! So those are all in the queue for tomorrow.
Valice Multiverse – Okay, when I first logged on, I THOUGHT I was just going to have two ask replies to do – but then Marie got on and answered four threads really late while sending me messages about the Valicer In The Dark AU. I ATTEMPTED to try and answer them all, but I only got two into the queue and most of the way through a third before having to give up because I was going to stay up too late. *sigh* I’ll – see what I can finish up in the morning.
And now, I have to run off to bed, because I HAVE stayed up too late and I really DO need my sleep since it's still the middle of the workweek. Night all.
Work – Another mostly-quiet day of duplicates and taking a couple of credit card calls and the like. . .which ended with me checking up on some credit card gifts our processors had put on and discovering a certain fucking source code issue is back. *heavy sigh* I swear, this is getting so stupid it makes my brain hurt. I e-mailed the credit card company about it before I left – we’ll see what they have to say when I get in tomorrow morning! Grrrr. . .
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark – “Foundry No. 12!” With Zillah serving as a VERY good distraction, and Edvard safely away sneaking through the machinery, Kasimir was able to pop up from behind their big-old-foundry-pot cover and headshot a couple of Red Sashes easy-peasy (thinking about how WEIRD it was to kill someone and not hear the bell toll). However, as Johnny rolled a five, that success came with a complication, and that complication was those Red Sashes that DIDN’T have crossbows rappelling down from the gantry to start trying to get into hand-to-hand (well, hand-to-sword) combat with their targets. Zillah decided this was a perfect time to try and use Edvard’s flashbang and attempted to Finesse it up onto the gantry –
Three and a two, meaning her attempt was coolly deflected by a Red Sash and SHE ended up getting flashbung right in the face. She was reduced to stumbling around blindly while the Red Sashes still on the gantry started lining up fresh shots. Kasimir was wondering just how he was going to help her –
When CRASH! In through a window came a gigantic goat in fine fettle, ready to assist! Kasimir promptly slapped on a flat cap and started going “come by,” trying to get the goat to head over to Zillah, lightly bop her in the knees so she’d fall over its back, and then get her to safety. Johnny rolled Consort, since the goat was Kasimir’s friend –
Three and a two. Due to the noise in the factory, the goat heard “come die” and promptly decided that Kasimir intended it to ATTACK Zillah, leading it to ram her at full speed. This DID at least knock her into the chains that she was headed for before, and thus back into cover, but it also gave her Level 2 Harm, “Goat Smashed.” XD Kasimir welcomed her to the club of having one less die on all your rolls. XD
However! All of this was EXTREMELY fucking distracting, as you might imagine, and that plus a six from Edvard on a “Finessing my way through the machinery” roll got him to the control panel for the lights without any issue. And even better, when Luke asked how he intended to rig up the controls to the gantry to turn it into an electric death trap, Edvard pulled out his old line-thrower grappling hook, which they’d used in the very FIRST episode of the first season (for getting onto the roof of the house they intended to rob). Luke was so happy about the sublime callback that he didn’t make Edvard roll for his jury-rigged wiring, and thus Edvard was able to switch off the lights, quickly attach his makeshift electric death cable to the line-thrower, fire it up onto the gantry, and switch the lights back on, screaming “IT’S ALIVE” because Luke told him that it was noisy enough that he DIDN’T have to do it just in his mind. XD The plan worked a treat, electrocuting all the crossbow-using Red Sashes on the gantry – it didn’t KILL them, as they got lucky on Luke’s fortune roll, but it did knock them very much out of commission. So that was all the ranged weapon users sorted!
However, right afterward, the lights popped, plunging the factory into darkness – at least, until the remaining Red Sashes on the factory floor whipped out their lanterns and started searching for their targets. Zillah, having recovered from her flashbunging, wrapped some chain around her fists and started stalking a Red Sash, intending to garrote the mercenary, while Kasimir, trying to figure out what he could do, decided that his best bet was to get his new ghostly bird companion on-sides. However, he had a problem in that department – doing so required him to Attune to the bird, and he had no dots in Attune. And even if he pushed himself, that only got him one extra die, which would be immediately removed by his “Cursed” Level 2 Harm. So Johnny politely asked Luke for a Devil’s Bargain, and Luke generously allowed them to roll TWO dice, with the knowledge that, when Kasimir attuned to the bird, he would link it to him for life. Johnny considered this a fair trade and rolled –
And got a pair of threes. The result was that poor Kasimir attuned to his new avian companion. . .to discover it was the ghost of a seagull. A very noisy, easily started seagull who promptly started screeching and squawking at the top of its lungs, drawing the attention of some of the searching Sashes. Oooh boy. . . Zillah, wanting to help, managed to garrote the Red Sash she was stalking, choking them out, hiding them, and then managing to successfully “sound off” when the leader called for everyone to start calling out their numbers (1, 2, 3, etc). She then snuck up on two more Red Sashes, walking back to back, and pushed herself to show she was Not To Be Trifled with, turning her chain into a horrible whip weapon by spinning it above her head and trying to smash them in the faces. She got the first Sash with no problem, reducing their face to a pulp and killing them – the second Sash, she only managed to whip in the shoulder, dislocating it. The Sash fell to their knees, then looked up at her –
And recognized her. Turns out, after doing the heist at the cage fight with Zillah and Barnaby, Marlane the pugilist ran off and joined the Red Sashes! A stunned Zillah was like “this is awkward” and Marlane agreed. . .but, as neither had any better ideas on how to handle the situation (beyond Marlane trying to get Zillah to join the Sashes, which, they’re currently trying to kill her and her other friends), they squared off for a potentially deadly fight, Marlane getting her sword out in front while Zillah wrapped chain protectively around her arm for blocking purposes. This did, of course, mean that Kasimir was left on his own when it came to dealing with the Sashes stalking him –
But, as it turns out, he didn’t need the help, because he managed to come up with a brilliant plan of his own. Namely, he used his spiritbane charm to trap his new ghost seagull companion on the floor temporarily, prowled around the pot away from the lantern light and into fresh cover, and lined up some shots to take out the Sashes. A six meant that he did this beautifully, getting to safety and winging them all without issue. They’re not DEAD, but they’re certainly not happy!
Oh, but what was Edvard doing during all of this? Well, HIS thought was to try and get up to the weird glass cube room thing Lord Strangford and Bakaros were in and see what he could do about them directly. A good Study roll allowed him to spot that the room did indeed have a door in it, and that there was another door nearby that might lead up to it. Edvard successfully snuck over and slid through that door, ascending the stairs to find the door into the cube (heavy, imposing, and – naturally – locked) –
But before he could do anything about that, Luke informed everyone that the one Red Sash unaccounted for could see just how badly this was actually going and decided to try and get to his employers to get them into a fallback position. Meaning, while Edvard was contemplating the door, that Red Sash came in through the door to the stairs and started coming up. Edvard desperately began searching for something to knock the guy out – but a weak success in a four meant that all he found was a super-heavy engine-block-type thing. That, when he tried to move it, caused a fuzzy something to spill out of his pocket. Yes, as it turns out, the Legally-Distinct-From-Gizmo-The-Mogwai creature had stowed away in Edvard’s pocket, attracted by the raspberries he had in there for a snack. And I don’t know what time it is in-game right now, but I suspect tomorrow we’re going to find out that it’s after midnight. . .or Luke is going to argue that all times are after midnight, so. . . XD We’ll see how this chaos wraps up then!
2. Continue writing Valicer In The Dark, “Home Sweet Lair”: Check – the gang is continuing to explore the house, with Smiler reporting that the bathroom has a proper indoor toilet and a busted-up bath, though they’re pretty sure they could fix that given some time. Alice was like “uh, we’re not LIVING here,” with Smiler counterpointing that they were on the run and thus needed a suitably grimy lair to stay in. XD The conversation was derailed by Victor going to investigate the manhole in the back courtyard and being horrified by the smell coming out of it – Alice told him it was probably no worse than any other poor neighborhood’s sewer, which kind of horrified Victor and led Smiler to explain how the Advocates are trying to get better sanitation set up throughout the city. Because they actually do a lot of good civic and charity work, they just also sell drugs and hypnotize people and suchlike. XD Smiler explained it as “yeah, I’m willing to sell people my Joy Serum for a short-term high, but our goal IS to increase happiness overall, since Mar-Mal says that’s a human’s natural state.” Which, tomorrow, will prompt Victor to ask about Mar-Mal and Smiler to happily natter on about their god. XD It’s good wordbuilding!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – two in, two out –
A) First up, from Josh Way, “I Got Scammed and Hired by a FAKE Job!” Yup, Josh had a tale for us about how he ALMOST got taken in by some shitty scammers while looking for a new day job – they managed to string him along through multiple chat interviews and an actual pretend hiring before he finally realized “wait, something’s not right here” after mobile-depositing a janky check they sent him so he could “buy the equipment he needed.” Poor Josh managed to nip it in the bud by calling his bank and the FTC early enough that nothing happened, but he was rather embarrassed that he was taken in (especially since he realized after the fact he’d never even applied to the job offered – dude’s been sending out so many online applications he just completely lost track of what he had and hadn’t applied to), and he wanted to offer up his story as a teachable moment to his YouTube audience. Good on him for trying to turn such a shitty situation into a positive, and I hope he does find something soon!
B) And second up, from GrayStillPlays, “When you infiltrate area 51” – AKA the weekly Happy Wheels video! (Seriously – every Tuesday, which I appreciate.) We started with the standard bottle flip board, with Gray taking on the constipation colon and the “feetus” (and bottle flipping a bottle not only onto his own section, but also the harpoon waiting to kill him), then moved through a horse race where Pogo Guy ended up riding the world’s derpiest zebra (after being trampled by it on Gray’s first attempt – the second attempt saw the zebra trampling everyone else); “Pogo Pro 72” (which had in-game adverts and consisted mainly of getting Pogo Guy past a very inconveniently-placed wrecking ball); a very hard run over vans, toilets, and glass (which Gray ended up winning by flipping himself over most of the obstacles); a rope swing with lots of figuring out what the correct tunnel to slide down was and ending with a killer table race (Gray had lost his arms by that point but somehow managed to stay on the table and land on the win); “Pogo Fight Antarctica” (which featured Pogo Guy fighting a bunch of enemies in Santa hats, defeating and briefly gaining the yeeting powers of a demonic little girl, then winning the board by fighting and defeating Santa himself); Bike Dad and Tom Hardy trying to return home from a trip to an Ohioan grocery store (which for some reason featured multiple land mines, hobos with swords, a wrecking ball, rockets, homing mines, and a cube of harpoon death – Gray basically won by getting SUPER lucky); a trip through the jungle with Bike Dad and Tom Hardy (where they had to avoid many spikes and land mines while being forced to touch grass); a “Don’t Move” board with much leg-removal and back-breaking (Gray was like “it’s fine, it’s laundry day for my legs and spine”); “try to win this,” a DEEPLY unfair challenge board with mines and wrecking balls and basically everything deadly possible around Bike Dad – which Gray proceeded to win FIRST TRY in SECONDS (Gray himself couldn’t stop laughing in disbelief at how lucky he’d gotten); and the Dylan Snider board of the week which gave the episode its title, which saw Bike Dad and Tom Hardy infiltrating Area 51 to learn its dangerous secrets (avoiding being abducted and probed by Reginald and blown up by the various defenses around all of the various aliens – well, BIKE DAD avoided that, Tom had to make a sacrifice. . .and then Bike Dad ended up dead anyway when he came too close to learning about the existence of “East Virginia” XD). Delightful stuff, as always – I do love it when the Happy Wheels folks bring their A game!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: We’ll say two-thirds check, based on what I managed to get through –
Victor Luvs Alice – Finished the alt text and tags on my remaining three Chill Valicer Save update posts, yay! So those are all in the queue for tomorrow.
Valice Multiverse – Okay, when I first logged on, I THOUGHT I was just going to have two ask replies to do – but then Marie got on and answered four threads really late while sending me messages about the Valicer In The Dark AU. I ATTEMPTED to try and answer them all, but I only got two into the queue and most of the way through a third before having to give up because I was going to stay up too late. *sigh* I’ll – see what I can finish up in the morning.
And now, I have to run off to bed, because I HAVE stayed up too late and I really DO need my sleep since it's still the middle of the workweek. Night all.