Not Too Bad A Tuesday
Definitely colder than yesterday, and as usual I dislike RI traffic going into and coming out of work, but it was pretty good overall, honestly. I've had much worse, more stressful Tuesdays -- as all of you well know, I'm sure.
Work – Mostly a quiet day, though the Amazon Web Services outage (something happened at an Amazon HQ, and a bunch of AWS stuff hosted on the East Coast went out for a good chunk of today) meant that I had to tell someone I couldn’t process their credit card gift because our provider is at least partially hosted there. She was very understanding, at least! Pretty much all the rest of the day was doing obituaries or putting up some Christmas decorations – not bad, not bad.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another thirtyish on the bike to finish off the Oxventure “A Fishmas Carol!” As stated, Prudence had just worked out that the temple to BlipBlop was a repurposed Cthulhu temple and thus was all for murdering everyone. The problem came in when Dob insisted on taking to Iron first, and he managed to successfully mime that they found this church years and years ago – generations of fish-people have been living and worshiping here. So it suddenly became an argument between Prudence’s “this belongs to Cthulhu” versus everyone else going “squatter’s rights!” Cthulhu himself got a bit annoyed and did a little rumbling. . .
And then Dob hit upon a plan – convert the fish-people to worshiping Cthulhu instead! Prudence was immediately on-board and started talking up her patron to Iron, who was only too happy to switch sides. Prudence took advantage of the enthusiasm to make him a makeshift bishop (complete with seaweed hat), and the gang sent him out to go talk to his friends – make the conversion look properly grass-roots. Iron managed to get the rest of the fish-people – ten in all – on board, and thus, all that remained was the Chul! Who obviously was not open to be converted (even his worship of BlipBlop was more of a ruse than anything, given – as Prudence pointed out – the main statue outside of the place was of HIM. . .and also he couldn’t remember her name when pressed XD), so lo and behold, there was a boss fight!
. . .the gang treated this essentially as boiling a lobster for dinner. XD. Dob and Merilwen coordinated their spellcasting to put him in a giant cube of water (Merilwen) and then hit him with Thunderwave (Dob). Egbert then boiled him with his flame breath, turning the water to delicious steam! Corazon hid and got the Chul in the thorax with his short bow in a sneak attack, and then Prudence smashed him with an Agonizing Blast. :D The Chul attempted to retaliate against Egbert, but he blocked it with his shield, and then Dob hit the Chul with some lovely Heat Metal on the metal arrow embedded in his “chest.” Merilwen then TRIED to disintegrate him with her terrifying Moonbeam spell, but the Chul JUST managed to dodge! Egbert tried to throw a bomb at him, but JUST missed – but on the plus side, he exploded the altar to the false god, so it was actually a pretty good fail. Corazon used his mage hand spell to try and throw an incense burner on him (full of icky dried plant matter) – it didn’t do much damage, but it made a good show, with ash everywhere! Prudence leapt up on the remains of the altar and hit the Chul with another Agonizing Blast – unfortunately, the Chul got his wits about him long enough to actually capture her in one of its claws, putting a VERY painful squeeze on her. O.O Fortunately, Dob came to the rescue, grabbing Iron and getting him to “demonstrate the power of Cthulhu” while doing a little tune under his breath to continue Heating Metal. Nine damage later, the Chul was down, and it was DELICIOUS. XD Corazon cooked up a nice sauce for it while Dob gave it a subtle flavor of garlic butter, while Egbert managed to (non-Paladinly) get Prudence’s insides back inside as she conferred the blessings of Cthulhu upon the fish-people. Adventure ended with everyone having a lovely, fishy Winter’s Solistice dinner as Cthulhu rearranged the temple back to his liking. XD Delightful!
2. Free Writing Day: Took the day off drafting gift fics, as I’ve got most of them done and I’m just waiting on potential promptage from my FF.net friend. Ended up spending most of my time working on the “Fallout of Darkness” master document, adding in Alice’s section under “Protagonists” and getting her basic bio and SPECIAL, Perks, and Disciplines set up. (And I updated Victor’s section to be “SPECIAL, Perks, and Magic,” as I do intend for him to have some of that later on. . .) Also set up a section for the personality memes I’ve filled out for both of them. It’s coming along, slowly but surely!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: Check – again, the standard two-in, two-out, one bonus of these past few weeks –
A) Started with the latest OXtra list – “7 Bosses You Could Only Run From: The Return!” A sequel to a 2019 list where your “boss battle” is actually more of a “being chased by this boss oh God oh God.” In addition to another showing from the Horrible Fetus Monster of Resident Evil Village, a dash from Darth Vader himself in Jedi: Fallen Order, and the scripted-but-no-less-terrifying escape from Songbird near the start of BioShock Infinite, I’m pleased to report that The Executioner from Alice: Madness Returns also made the list! :D Complete with the Epic Foot Stomp. Yay for one of my favorite games being featured!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and another video with the Randomizer mod in GTA V! XD He did the FIB Heist today – normally this involves having Michael sneak in as a janitor and set a bunch of bombs that you then detonate remotely, then sneak back in disguised as firefighters (with a pre-stolen fire truck) and – well, I’m not sure WHAT actually you’re looking for in the burning building, but it’s obviously important. With a randomizer mod. . .well, first of all, getting a damn fire truck is a lot more difficult when there’s a ton of planes blocking the motorway at any given second, and your primary weapon is exploding Christmas trees. And then Jesus (finally over his griefing day when it comes to Kevin, it seems) had to try and pick up the plans of the FIB building from the architect without getting caught (or, rather, find a way to quickly kill the architect and escape because tailing just does not work in this version of the game), only to find stealing one of these many planes is harder than it looks given their tendency to smash into things (like aliens on bikes) and explode. And then everyone turned into a complete random citizen to invade the building, using explosive mops to bust open doors. Couple this with Michael’s son turning into Cop!Michael randomly at the beginning, all the completely random dialogue spouting from everyone’s lips, and the taxis Michael called pulling the same “drive rapidly away from the passenger” shit Kevin usually pulls on NPCs in this game, and you have a recipe for a very entertaining eleven minutes. XD
C) And then we had GrayStillPlays and Skate 3 – an open-world skateboarding game with a “Hall of Meat” counter where you collect points for mangling your skater in interesting ways. Gray came in with two goals – get his lumpy, misshapen Florida Man as many points as possible, and find a way to launch him into space. And he succeeded at both ADMIRABLY. There are a LOT of places and opportunities to completely wreck one’s shit in this game, and Gray found them all and then some! He bounced himself off of traffic, got tased by a passer-by after punching them too much, and discovered that he could get lots of extra points by flopping around like a particularly enthusiastic fish after landing. From there he proceeded to launch himself repeatedly over a fake shark – and then discovered that, under the right conditions, he could basically fling his character so hard, he’d go across the map, hit a loading screen, and force the area to reload. XD And THEN he discovered falling down a stairway face-first to get like 80,000 Meat points. XD And THEN he found a way to break physics while jumping on his board that could get his guy to just freaking FLY straight across the entire map. XD He ended on the delightful image of the Florida Man being shot off into the wild blue yonder after a particularly physics-busting hop. It was fantastic, and I’m hoping he gets a mod that lets him mess with the game even more, like his LAST skateboarding game. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: VERY check! Four ask replies over on Valice Multiverse, and four posts for the next four days on Victor Luvs Alice! Including a look at some “Fallout of Darkness” fic I’ve been hoarding. May make an extra post on Saturday to reblog some Christmas music, though – I may not have a hell of a lot of Christmas spirit, but I do have SOME, soo. . .
Not bad, VERY not bad. Now, I'm not actually planning on staying up that late tonight, simply because I don't want to screw up my sleep schedule in the middle of the work week (planning on heading to bed by 12:30 at the latest), so I'd better get tomorrow's to-do list up and running and then prepare to head out:
1. Start editing gift fics
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch the Spiffing Brit video on Sims 4 that just uploaded
3. Play Sims 4 (after making backups) and get through at least Harvestfest on the Chill Save
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr drafts
Yes, with my queue sorted for this week, I should probably draft out some stuff for weeks to come. XD Getting up a little earlier might help with that. . .right now, though, I think it's time for some before-bed TV Tropes. :p Night all!
Work – Mostly a quiet day, though the Amazon Web Services outage (something happened at an Amazon HQ, and a bunch of AWS stuff hosted on the East Coast went out for a good chunk of today) meant that I had to tell someone I couldn’t process their credit card gift because our provider is at least partially hosted there. She was very understanding, at least! Pretty much all the rest of the day was doing obituaries or putting up some Christmas decorations – not bad, not bad.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another thirtyish on the bike to finish off the Oxventure “A Fishmas Carol!” As stated, Prudence had just worked out that the temple to BlipBlop was a repurposed Cthulhu temple and thus was all for murdering everyone. The problem came in when Dob insisted on taking to Iron first, and he managed to successfully mime that they found this church years and years ago – generations of fish-people have been living and worshiping here. So it suddenly became an argument between Prudence’s “this belongs to Cthulhu” versus everyone else going “squatter’s rights!” Cthulhu himself got a bit annoyed and did a little rumbling. . .
And then Dob hit upon a plan – convert the fish-people to worshiping Cthulhu instead! Prudence was immediately on-board and started talking up her patron to Iron, who was only too happy to switch sides. Prudence took advantage of the enthusiasm to make him a makeshift bishop (complete with seaweed hat), and the gang sent him out to go talk to his friends – make the conversion look properly grass-roots. Iron managed to get the rest of the fish-people – ten in all – on board, and thus, all that remained was the Chul! Who obviously was not open to be converted (even his worship of BlipBlop was more of a ruse than anything, given – as Prudence pointed out – the main statue outside of the place was of HIM. . .and also he couldn’t remember her name when pressed XD), so lo and behold, there was a boss fight!
. . .the gang treated this essentially as boiling a lobster for dinner. XD. Dob and Merilwen coordinated their spellcasting to put him in a giant cube of water (Merilwen) and then hit him with Thunderwave (Dob). Egbert then boiled him with his flame breath, turning the water to delicious steam! Corazon hid and got the Chul in the thorax with his short bow in a sneak attack, and then Prudence smashed him with an Agonizing Blast. :D The Chul attempted to retaliate against Egbert, but he blocked it with his shield, and then Dob hit the Chul with some lovely Heat Metal on the metal arrow embedded in his “chest.” Merilwen then TRIED to disintegrate him with her terrifying Moonbeam spell, but the Chul JUST managed to dodge! Egbert tried to throw a bomb at him, but JUST missed – but on the plus side, he exploded the altar to the false god, so it was actually a pretty good fail. Corazon used his mage hand spell to try and throw an incense burner on him (full of icky dried plant matter) – it didn’t do much damage, but it made a good show, with ash everywhere! Prudence leapt up on the remains of the altar and hit the Chul with another Agonizing Blast – unfortunately, the Chul got his wits about him long enough to actually capture her in one of its claws, putting a VERY painful squeeze on her. O.O Fortunately, Dob came to the rescue, grabbing Iron and getting him to “demonstrate the power of Cthulhu” while doing a little tune under his breath to continue Heating Metal. Nine damage later, the Chul was down, and it was DELICIOUS. XD Corazon cooked up a nice sauce for it while Dob gave it a subtle flavor of garlic butter, while Egbert managed to (non-Paladinly) get Prudence’s insides back inside as she conferred the blessings of Cthulhu upon the fish-people. Adventure ended with everyone having a lovely, fishy Winter’s Solistice dinner as Cthulhu rearranged the temple back to his liking. XD Delightful!
2. Free Writing Day: Took the day off drafting gift fics, as I’ve got most of them done and I’m just waiting on potential promptage from my FF.net friend. Ended up spending most of my time working on the “Fallout of Darkness” master document, adding in Alice’s section under “Protagonists” and getting her basic bio and SPECIAL, Perks, and Disciplines set up. (And I updated Victor’s section to be “SPECIAL, Perks, and Magic,” as I do intend for him to have some of that later on. . .) Also set up a section for the personality memes I’ve filled out for both of them. It’s coming along, slowly but surely!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subscriptions: Check – again, the standard two-in, two-out, one bonus of these past few weeks –
A) Started with the latest OXtra list – “7 Bosses You Could Only Run From: The Return!” A sequel to a 2019 list where your “boss battle” is actually more of a “being chased by this boss oh God oh God.” In addition to another showing from the Horrible Fetus Monster of Resident Evil Village, a dash from Darth Vader himself in Jedi: Fallen Order, and the scripted-but-no-less-terrifying escape from Songbird near the start of BioShock Infinite, I’m pleased to report that The Executioner from Alice: Madness Returns also made the list! :D Complete with the Epic Foot Stomp. Yay for one of my favorite games being featured!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and another video with the Randomizer mod in GTA V! XD He did the FIB Heist today – normally this involves having Michael sneak in as a janitor and set a bunch of bombs that you then detonate remotely, then sneak back in disguised as firefighters (with a pre-stolen fire truck) and – well, I’m not sure WHAT actually you’re looking for in the burning building, but it’s obviously important. With a randomizer mod. . .well, first of all, getting a damn fire truck is a lot more difficult when there’s a ton of planes blocking the motorway at any given second, and your primary weapon is exploding Christmas trees. And then Jesus (finally over his griefing day when it comes to Kevin, it seems) had to try and pick up the plans of the FIB building from the architect without getting caught (or, rather, find a way to quickly kill the architect and escape because tailing just does not work in this version of the game), only to find stealing one of these many planes is harder than it looks given their tendency to smash into things (like aliens on bikes) and explode. And then everyone turned into a complete random citizen to invade the building, using explosive mops to bust open doors. Couple this with Michael’s son turning into Cop!Michael randomly at the beginning, all the completely random dialogue spouting from everyone’s lips, and the taxis Michael called pulling the same “drive rapidly away from the passenger” shit Kevin usually pulls on NPCs in this game, and you have a recipe for a very entertaining eleven minutes. XD
C) And then we had GrayStillPlays and Skate 3 – an open-world skateboarding game with a “Hall of Meat” counter where you collect points for mangling your skater in interesting ways. Gray came in with two goals – get his lumpy, misshapen Florida Man as many points as possible, and find a way to launch him into space. And he succeeded at both ADMIRABLY. There are a LOT of places and opportunities to completely wreck one’s shit in this game, and Gray found them all and then some! He bounced himself off of traffic, got tased by a passer-by after punching them too much, and discovered that he could get lots of extra points by flopping around like a particularly enthusiastic fish after landing. From there he proceeded to launch himself repeatedly over a fake shark – and then discovered that, under the right conditions, he could basically fling his character so hard, he’d go across the map, hit a loading screen, and force the area to reload. XD And THEN he discovered falling down a stairway face-first to get like 80,000 Meat points. XD And THEN he found a way to break physics while jumping on his board that could get his guy to just freaking FLY straight across the entire map. XD He ended on the delightful image of the Florida Man being shot off into the wild blue yonder after a particularly physics-busting hop. It was fantastic, and I’m hoping he gets a mod that lets him mess with the game even more, like his LAST skateboarding game. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: VERY check! Four ask replies over on Valice Multiverse, and four posts for the next four days on Victor Luvs Alice! Including a look at some “Fallout of Darkness” fic I’ve been hoarding. May make an extra post on Saturday to reblog some Christmas music, though – I may not have a hell of a lot of Christmas spirit, but I do have SOME, soo. . .
Not bad, VERY not bad. Now, I'm not actually planning on staying up that late tonight, simply because I don't want to screw up my sleep schedule in the middle of the work week (planning on heading to bed by 12:30 at the latest), so I'd better get tomorrow's to-do list up and running and then prepare to head out:
1. Start editing gift fics
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch the Spiffing Brit video on Sims 4 that just uploaded
3. Play Sims 4 (after making backups) and get through at least Harvestfest on the Chill Save
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr drafts
Yes, with my queue sorted for this week, I should probably draft out some stuff for weeks to come. XD Getting up a little earlier might help with that. . .right now, though, I think it's time for some before-bed TV Tropes. :p Night all!