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White Christmas Eve
Dec. 24th, 2021 11:51 pmYes, imagine my surprise this morning when I woke up, wandered into the bathroom, and saw it was snowing through the window! Okay, yes, a white Christmas is not unknown in New England, but I had no idea it was SUPPOSED to snow -- I thought we were getting the "wintry mix" stuff -- you know, snow mixed with rain and all that. But nope, a little light snow this morning, about half an inch, meaning it's at least half a White Christmas this year. Okay then!
As for the rest of my day -- uh, gotta be honest -- kinda fell down on the whole "getting some stuff done early because of movie-watching" thing. I blame foolishly thinking I could go on TV Tropes BRIEFLY after looking up some stuff. . .here, the list explains better than I can:
1. Free Writing Day! Work on whatever I want: Okay, I didn’t end up doing anything on my OWN projects thanks to the early-morning distractions, but I did do some of that story that me and my friend Squid have been working on, so I’ll count that as like a quarter-check. *shrug* It’s Christmas, I’ll allow myself a bit of time off to refresh the brain pan.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXmas Christmas Challenges, and AT4W Christmas episodes in the Watch Later: Check! As stated, I had a more distracted time of it than I initially thought I would, but I did get through everything I wanted to check on in the end –
A) Okay, I MEANT to do AT4W in the MORNING, but instead I got distracted by 1) looking up clips of Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York featuring the iconic “Setting the Traps” theme (for some reason I’ve had a LOT of nostalgia regarding those movies this year); and 2) looking up the trailer to Spider-Man: No Way Home for funsies. . .
( For Spoilers )
B) Finally did get to AT4W in the afternoon, though, after we’d watched a bit of Hogfather and my parents went to drop off some presents at my aunt and uncle’s –
I. “The Adventures of Chrissie Claus #1” – a strange little comic from Heroic Publishing about the adventures of Santa’s granddaughter Chrissie! Story one had her take on foreman duties for a bit while Santa retreated into his personal workshop to make his wife a present and the actual foreman was hurt in an accident involving two of the other workers goofing off. The joke was Chrissie overreacted to the complaints and fighting between the three departments (construction, design, and maintenance) by netting everyone up when they started fighting and then making them each work each other’s jobs to teach them to appreciate their own roles, but Linkara rightfully pointed out in his jokes Chrissie was the only one who seemed to CARE about everyone’s complaints and try to make things better. Santa Workers Union! Story two was sweeter, with Chrissie sneakily delivering gifts to naughty children, getting caught by two of them, and learning that while they’re brats, what’s really going on is that they really miss their dad, who’s away a lot on business. So she let them talk to him in his dreams and encouraged them to do better so Santa would personally give them gifts. . .only for the reveal to be that Santa NEVER misses out on a kid, naughty or nice, because – well, they’re KIDS. He personally hasn’t met one yet that was irredeemable. :) Awww. So that was sweet, at least.
II. “Christmas Quickies #1” – Linkara’s scheduled comic, “Sleigher, The Heavy Metal Santa,” proved to be not the kind of comic Linkara wanted on his channel (it’s one of those EDGY comics, and the opening of the first issue had something nasty in it, apparently), so instead he turned to a recently-reprinted treasury of Christmas stories from Golden Age comics to fill the gap, and maybe even start a new tradition! We had a ten-page super-compressed adaptation of A Christmas Carol (hit all the key points, excepting Scrooge’s late sister, but lost a lot of the atmosphere and whatnot in doing so); a story about Lil’ Tomboy, a very destructive little girl, and how her parents attempting to encourage some Christmas spirit in her (so she’d stop climbing their Christmas tree and throwing footballs through wreaths) ended up with her father getting a knock on the head – but also with Tomboy knocking out a robber on the prowl, sooo. . . (amusing enough, though if we’re doing "bratty kid trying to protect their house from a robber," I’d definitely go Home Alone); and a take on the famous “T’was the Night Before Christmas” poem with old funny animal superhero Atomic Mouse beating up a cat villain “Count Gatto” for stealing Santa’s sleigh and reindeer (prompting Linkara to once again do at least a portion of one of his reviews in rhyme). Fun stuff, and I wouldn’t mind this being an annual thing at all. :)
C) Then, after supper, we moved onto GrayStillPlays and Room Smash – yes, with a fresh set of “hax” for him to play with. Like figuring out how to urinate ultra-powerful grenades all over a subway. Or turning a rocket launcher into basically a laser to destroy a grocery store – or, conversely, make it the slowest rocket in the world. How about working out that in order to burst a watermelon, you had to adjust a bullet’s speed above everything else – and then figuring out how to use that to turn the handgun into a ricochet machine capable of destroying entire dance clubs and bars? And the minigun – almost literally RAINING BULLETS with that vertical spread. Oh dear – what have we learned today, children? NOT TO LET GRAY NEAR THE ROOKIE NUMBERS.
D) From there it was back to Christmas-themed things, with Call Me Kevin introducing us to some terrible free Christmas movies he found on the “Plex” service! Like Santa’s Boot Camp, where Santa ends up kidnapping random children to help him when his elves go on strike, and most of the movie is the kids trying to escape this admittedly-terrible situation! Until they’re browbeaten into being Christmassy by a) being shown themselves on the Naughty Cams and b) Santa canceling Christmas and going on vacation because how dare the kidnapped children want to go home, and how dare his elves actually ask for better working conditions and more workers to accommodate kids of other faiths? Yeah, Kevin was totally on the side of the elves in this movie, and was not happy that the “happy ending” was them bowing to Santa’s demands. XD There was a bit of Red Christmas, which was a found-footage-style horror flick with a woman kidnapping two men and torturing them in Christmassy ways; and a bit of A Meowy Christmas, which is basically cheap knock-off Home Alone only with a talking cat. … Kevin, I beg of you to do more videos with you watching free “Plex” movies. XD
E) And, finally, to conclude our Christmas Eve YouTubery, the final episodes of the OXmas Christmas Challenges –
I. Day Twelve of the OXBox Xmas Challenges, featuring Jane and the “Far Cry 6 Here We Come A Vaasialing” Challenge! Jane had to take on the persona of Far Cry 3’s main villain Vaas in FC6’s “Insanity” DLC (which is all about him and his madness) and complete “Citra’s Survival Trial” (defeating a couple of waves of enemies in a ring-shaped arena periodically flooded with poison gas) armed only with a pistol (and the melee knife). After explaining the pun to anyone not familiar with “Wassailing” (it involves mulled wine, not stealing people’s credit cards, in case you’re only familiar with it from MST3K), Jane hopped into the game, to see if she could tie Andy and force a Christmas showdown!
SHE COULD! Oh, it was tight there for a while – she had to do a lot of running and sliding to avoid the gas, got shot a LOT, and actually damn near DIED to one persistent NPC with a big gun. But she soldiered on, got the health regen she needed, and managed to kill all the enemies and win her Christmas point! So it’s 3-3 Andy-Jane this year – seems like we’ll have a Boxing Day tiebreak to truly decide this year’s Xmas Champion on this channel! :)
II. Day Seven of the OXtra Xmas Challenges, and while Ellen has already claimed her Christmas Queen crown, Santa had one more challenge for her and Luke to see how MUCH she beat Luke by. And, as is tradition, it was to draw a Pikachu. Specifically, it was the “PowerWash Pikachu Art Challenge” – the pair had to each draw a Pikachu on the dirty van in the first level of PowerWash Simulator, with Andy judging which one he liked better. After some banter about how Santa is actually a bit creepy and how he should only be able to see you while you’re sleeping (followed up by Santa “hacking” Luke’s computer), and how they consistently fail to remember what the hell Pikachu looks like during these challenges, it was time to hop into the game! Luke drew his Pikachu on the roof, with large “D” anime eyes, a cat mouth, the tail dangling off the side, and “Pika!!” on the other side in a spiky word balloon to help sell it. Ellen also did hers on the roof, creating a sort of “wise old man” Pikachu with a moustache-like mouth and ^ ^ eyes – and then upped the ante by doing another Pikachu face on the side, a simple Pikachu form on the windshield (driving the truck), and giving the truck a Pikachu tail! But who impressed Andy the most?
Ellen! He liked her Pikachu set better, even though he felt like her paws looked more like Pikabosoms. XD So Ellen fully trounced poor Luke this year – though, as she put it, she was just making up for losing two years in a row. All hail the OXtra Christmas Queen! :D
3. Play Fallout 4 and work some more on Sanctuary: Check – though I had a small problem at first when I needed to update my “Appletree Bakery and Creamery” mod, and found that for some reason the plugin didn’t automatically reenable. *grumbles* Quick fix, though, and then I was off with my Sole Survivor Victor for some adventures! Namely:
A) Hitting up the apple and pear orchard created by the “Appletree Bakery and Creamery” mod to gather a ton of fruit, and kill a bear with the help of Codsworth and the Mr. Handy who lives there.
B) Heading back to Sanctuary to try and plant some more crops behind the “hammering house,” only to find I needed more fertilizer for the trees – planted some gourds and a carrot Victor had picked up instead, before having to retreat inside because of a giant thunderstorm that became a dust storm that became a RAD storm. Sheesh!
C) Finally getting outside again and leveling up to Level 6 after building a couple of outhouses and a shower stall for Victor and the Sanctuary denizens; Victor also took a shower, which took quite a long time! Selected “Moving Target” as his new perk.
D) Heading to bed after that and waking up early on 10/29/2287 to go wandering around, scrapping more things and picking up more supplies – checked Red Rocket to see if there was any fertilizer there, but no luck; also couldn’t build the backpack workbench I wanted because I was short on aluminum. And when I ran back to Sanctuary, I discovered that I was short on ADHESIVE to build it there, darn it. *grumbles* And then I had to retreat inside AGAIN because of ANOTHER radstorm!
E) Deciding the thing to do was explore the upper corner of the map and started wandering around with Codsworth in tow. Killed some wild dogs and a raider with a little camp on the other side of the river; found a big old herd of brahmin just hanging around; a shack near the end of the world with a whole BUNCH of makeshift batteries beside it, plus some books inside; another little raider camp with some raiders – Codsworth and Victor took them out and raided their supplies; found a little shack by the orchard with some Wonderglue and other goodies behind the locked door; then followed the old electrical towers for a while, raiding little camps and such. Ended it shortly after Victor found the Ranger Cabin with the skeleton of the runaway girl and Wasteland Survival Guide #8, Self-Defense Secrets (5% less damage from melee attacks, not too bad) and a little camper just – south, I guess, of the Abernathy Farm. I was gonna hold off on talking to them for a couple more days (until I got Sanctuary settled), but in the interest of maybe trading with someone to get some fertilizer. . .next time!
4. Get in a workout: No check – I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get to this one or not, honestly, and the combination of watching the Hogfather adaptation in three distinct chunks over the day and playing for quite a while in FO4 means I never got downstairs. *shrugs* Them’s the breaks!
5. Keep up on tumblr queues: Check-in-progress at this time – I’m ALMOST done queuing up the seven fics that will be posting on Victor Luvs Alice, and I have two ask replies to queue up on Valice Multiverse.
Additionally:
-->Opened my Christmas Eve present – went for something thin and found a cool Mr. Fusion decal for my car! :D To go with my license plate frame. Mom’s hoping we can put it over the gas flap, though I think it’ll have to go NEXT to it. XD Still, very nice!
Yeaaaah, it's -- look, it's the holidays, I'm gonna get wrapped up in stuff to do that's just relaxing instead of productive. Not gonna beat myself up too much over it -- just gonna try to get done what I can get done. And, as tomorrow's Christmas, not gonna set myself a to-do list either. I do WANT to play Sims 4 Chill Save and keep up with YouTube Subs, of course, but beyond that. . .we'll see how things go! Night all!
As for the rest of my day -- uh, gotta be honest -- kinda fell down on the whole "getting some stuff done early because of movie-watching" thing. I blame foolishly thinking I could go on TV Tropes BRIEFLY after looking up some stuff. . .here, the list explains better than I can:
1. Free Writing Day! Work on whatever I want: Okay, I didn’t end up doing anything on my OWN projects thanks to the early-morning distractions, but I did do some of that story that me and my friend Squid have been working on, so I’ll count that as like a quarter-check. *shrug* It’s Christmas, I’ll allow myself a bit of time off to refresh the brain pan.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXmas Christmas Challenges, and AT4W Christmas episodes in the Watch Later: Check! As stated, I had a more distracted time of it than I initially thought I would, but I did get through everything I wanted to check on in the end –
A) Okay, I MEANT to do AT4W in the MORNING, but instead I got distracted by 1) looking up clips of Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost In New York featuring the iconic “Setting the Traps” theme (for some reason I’ve had a LOT of nostalgia regarding those movies this year); and 2) looking up the trailer to Spider-Man: No Way Home for funsies. . .
( For Spoilers )
B) Finally did get to AT4W in the afternoon, though, after we’d watched a bit of Hogfather and my parents went to drop off some presents at my aunt and uncle’s –
I. “The Adventures of Chrissie Claus #1” – a strange little comic from Heroic Publishing about the adventures of Santa’s granddaughter Chrissie! Story one had her take on foreman duties for a bit while Santa retreated into his personal workshop to make his wife a present and the actual foreman was hurt in an accident involving two of the other workers goofing off. The joke was Chrissie overreacted to the complaints and fighting between the three departments (construction, design, and maintenance) by netting everyone up when they started fighting and then making them each work each other’s jobs to teach them to appreciate their own roles, but Linkara rightfully pointed out in his jokes Chrissie was the only one who seemed to CARE about everyone’s complaints and try to make things better. Santa Workers Union! Story two was sweeter, with Chrissie sneakily delivering gifts to naughty children, getting caught by two of them, and learning that while they’re brats, what’s really going on is that they really miss their dad, who’s away a lot on business. So she let them talk to him in his dreams and encouraged them to do better so Santa would personally give them gifts. . .only for the reveal to be that Santa NEVER misses out on a kid, naughty or nice, because – well, they’re KIDS. He personally hasn’t met one yet that was irredeemable. :) Awww. So that was sweet, at least.
II. “Christmas Quickies #1” – Linkara’s scheduled comic, “Sleigher, The Heavy Metal Santa,” proved to be not the kind of comic Linkara wanted on his channel (it’s one of those EDGY comics, and the opening of the first issue had something nasty in it, apparently), so instead he turned to a recently-reprinted treasury of Christmas stories from Golden Age comics to fill the gap, and maybe even start a new tradition! We had a ten-page super-compressed adaptation of A Christmas Carol (hit all the key points, excepting Scrooge’s late sister, but lost a lot of the atmosphere and whatnot in doing so); a story about Lil’ Tomboy, a very destructive little girl, and how her parents attempting to encourage some Christmas spirit in her (so she’d stop climbing their Christmas tree and throwing footballs through wreaths) ended up with her father getting a knock on the head – but also with Tomboy knocking out a robber on the prowl, sooo. . . (amusing enough, though if we’re doing "bratty kid trying to protect their house from a robber," I’d definitely go Home Alone); and a take on the famous “T’was the Night Before Christmas” poem with old funny animal superhero Atomic Mouse beating up a cat villain “Count Gatto” for stealing Santa’s sleigh and reindeer (prompting Linkara to once again do at least a portion of one of his reviews in rhyme). Fun stuff, and I wouldn’t mind this being an annual thing at all. :)
C) Then, after supper, we moved onto GrayStillPlays and Room Smash – yes, with a fresh set of “hax” for him to play with. Like figuring out how to urinate ultra-powerful grenades all over a subway. Or turning a rocket launcher into basically a laser to destroy a grocery store – or, conversely, make it the slowest rocket in the world. How about working out that in order to burst a watermelon, you had to adjust a bullet’s speed above everything else – and then figuring out how to use that to turn the handgun into a ricochet machine capable of destroying entire dance clubs and bars? And the minigun – almost literally RAINING BULLETS with that vertical spread. Oh dear – what have we learned today, children? NOT TO LET GRAY NEAR THE ROOKIE NUMBERS.
D) From there it was back to Christmas-themed things, with Call Me Kevin introducing us to some terrible free Christmas movies he found on the “Plex” service! Like Santa’s Boot Camp, where Santa ends up kidnapping random children to help him when his elves go on strike, and most of the movie is the kids trying to escape this admittedly-terrible situation! Until they’re browbeaten into being Christmassy by a) being shown themselves on the Naughty Cams and b) Santa canceling Christmas and going on vacation because how dare the kidnapped children want to go home, and how dare his elves actually ask for better working conditions and more workers to accommodate kids of other faiths? Yeah, Kevin was totally on the side of the elves in this movie, and was not happy that the “happy ending” was them bowing to Santa’s demands. XD There was a bit of Red Christmas, which was a found-footage-style horror flick with a woman kidnapping two men and torturing them in Christmassy ways; and a bit of A Meowy Christmas, which is basically cheap knock-off Home Alone only with a talking cat. … Kevin, I beg of you to do more videos with you watching free “Plex” movies. XD
E) And, finally, to conclude our Christmas Eve YouTubery, the final episodes of the OXmas Christmas Challenges –
I. Day Twelve of the OXBox Xmas Challenges, featuring Jane and the “Far Cry 6 Here We Come A Vaasialing” Challenge! Jane had to take on the persona of Far Cry 3’s main villain Vaas in FC6’s “Insanity” DLC (which is all about him and his madness) and complete “Citra’s Survival Trial” (defeating a couple of waves of enemies in a ring-shaped arena periodically flooded with poison gas) armed only with a pistol (and the melee knife). After explaining the pun to anyone not familiar with “Wassailing” (it involves mulled wine, not stealing people’s credit cards, in case you’re only familiar with it from MST3K), Jane hopped into the game, to see if she could tie Andy and force a Christmas showdown!
SHE COULD! Oh, it was tight there for a while – she had to do a lot of running and sliding to avoid the gas, got shot a LOT, and actually damn near DIED to one persistent NPC with a big gun. But she soldiered on, got the health regen she needed, and managed to kill all the enemies and win her Christmas point! So it’s 3-3 Andy-Jane this year – seems like we’ll have a Boxing Day tiebreak to truly decide this year’s Xmas Champion on this channel! :)
II. Day Seven of the OXtra Xmas Challenges, and while Ellen has already claimed her Christmas Queen crown, Santa had one more challenge for her and Luke to see how MUCH she beat Luke by. And, as is tradition, it was to draw a Pikachu. Specifically, it was the “PowerWash Pikachu Art Challenge” – the pair had to each draw a Pikachu on the dirty van in the first level of PowerWash Simulator, with Andy judging which one he liked better. After some banter about how Santa is actually a bit creepy and how he should only be able to see you while you’re sleeping (followed up by Santa “hacking” Luke’s computer), and how they consistently fail to remember what the hell Pikachu looks like during these challenges, it was time to hop into the game! Luke drew his Pikachu on the roof, with large “D” anime eyes, a cat mouth, the tail dangling off the side, and “Pika!!” on the other side in a spiky word balloon to help sell it. Ellen also did hers on the roof, creating a sort of “wise old man” Pikachu with a moustache-like mouth and ^ ^ eyes – and then upped the ante by doing another Pikachu face on the side, a simple Pikachu form on the windshield (driving the truck), and giving the truck a Pikachu tail! But who impressed Andy the most?
Ellen! He liked her Pikachu set better, even though he felt like her paws looked more like Pikabosoms. XD So Ellen fully trounced poor Luke this year – though, as she put it, she was just making up for losing two years in a row. All hail the OXtra Christmas Queen! :D
3. Play Fallout 4 and work some more on Sanctuary: Check – though I had a small problem at first when I needed to update my “Appletree Bakery and Creamery” mod, and found that for some reason the plugin didn’t automatically reenable. *grumbles* Quick fix, though, and then I was off with my Sole Survivor Victor for some adventures! Namely:
A) Hitting up the apple and pear orchard created by the “Appletree Bakery and Creamery” mod to gather a ton of fruit, and kill a bear with the help of Codsworth and the Mr. Handy who lives there.
B) Heading back to Sanctuary to try and plant some more crops behind the “hammering house,” only to find I needed more fertilizer for the trees – planted some gourds and a carrot Victor had picked up instead, before having to retreat inside because of a giant thunderstorm that became a dust storm that became a RAD storm. Sheesh!
C) Finally getting outside again and leveling up to Level 6 after building a couple of outhouses and a shower stall for Victor and the Sanctuary denizens; Victor also took a shower, which took quite a long time! Selected “Moving Target” as his new perk.
D) Heading to bed after that and waking up early on 10/29/2287 to go wandering around, scrapping more things and picking up more supplies – checked Red Rocket to see if there was any fertilizer there, but no luck; also couldn’t build the backpack workbench I wanted because I was short on aluminum. And when I ran back to Sanctuary, I discovered that I was short on ADHESIVE to build it there, darn it. *grumbles* And then I had to retreat inside AGAIN because of ANOTHER radstorm!
E) Deciding the thing to do was explore the upper corner of the map and started wandering around with Codsworth in tow. Killed some wild dogs and a raider with a little camp on the other side of the river; found a big old herd of brahmin just hanging around; a shack near the end of the world with a whole BUNCH of makeshift batteries beside it, plus some books inside; another little raider camp with some raiders – Codsworth and Victor took them out and raided their supplies; found a little shack by the orchard with some Wonderglue and other goodies behind the locked door; then followed the old electrical towers for a while, raiding little camps and such. Ended it shortly after Victor found the Ranger Cabin with the skeleton of the runaway girl and Wasteland Survival Guide #8, Self-Defense Secrets (5% less damage from melee attacks, not too bad) and a little camper just – south, I guess, of the Abernathy Farm. I was gonna hold off on talking to them for a couple more days (until I got Sanctuary settled), but in the interest of maybe trading with someone to get some fertilizer. . .next time!
4. Get in a workout: No check – I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get to this one or not, honestly, and the combination of watching the Hogfather adaptation in three distinct chunks over the day and playing for quite a while in FO4 means I never got downstairs. *shrugs* Them’s the breaks!
5. Keep up on tumblr queues: Check-in-progress at this time – I’m ALMOST done queuing up the seven fics that will be posting on Victor Luvs Alice, and I have two ask replies to queue up on Valice Multiverse.
Additionally:
-->Opened my Christmas Eve present – went for something thin and found a cool Mr. Fusion decal for my car! :D To go with my license plate frame. Mom’s hoping we can put it over the gas flap, though I think it’ll have to go NEXT to it. XD Still, very nice!
Yeaaaah, it's -- look, it's the holidays, I'm gonna get wrapped up in stuff to do that's just relaxing instead of productive. Not gonna beat myself up too much over it -- just gonna try to get done what I can get done. And, as tomorrow's Christmas, not gonna set myself a to-do list either. I do WANT to play Sims 4 Chill Save and keep up with YouTube Subs, of course, but beyond that. . .we'll see how things go! Night all!
