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Somewhat More Chill Monday
May. 23rd, 2022 11:39 pmLiterally -- the weather cooled off and dried out a lot today, plus my mom realized that my ceiling fan was rotating in the wrong direction. Apparently, if it's going clockwise, it's pushing the hot air DOWN, which -- really did not help my room situation last night. ^^; So now it's going counterclockwise and everything feels a lot better. Hoping to get some proper sleep tonight! But first, updates:
Work – Well, my previously-out-with-COVID coworker was back today, wearing a mask and still feeling rather tired – she ended up leaving two hours early in the end. But it was good to have someone else to occasionally take a phone call and take care of some of the checks and whatnot. My focus today ended up being on calling people back regarding credit card stuff – finally got in contact with some people and was able to update pledges and things, which was satisfying. Granted, I ALSO had to contact the credit card people regarding another damn mistake they made, but. . .well. That’s just the credit card people. One day down, two to go!
Beanbags – A lovely day to contrast the heat of yesterday, so of course we went out and played – in fact, we played an extra round in honor of it being Victoria Day. XD And Victoria ended up doing quite well – final scores were me W-2-2-W; Dad 2-3-W-3; Mom 3-W-3-2. So everyone won once, but I was overall champ. Nice.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, to start the latest Oxventure Stream – “Tower Rangers!” We rejoined the Oxventurers down a member, having just seen Egbert be kidnapped through a portal by Liliana (Mike wasn’t even on the screen!). Things – got pretty quickly derailed, honestly. XD First Johnny mentioned “addressing the elephant in the room” and Andy promptly wanted to roll initiative to ride it around the room, while Luke wanted to charm it; then, in character, Corazon was all about doing commemorative memorial stuff for their lost Egbert (t-shirts, plates (as suggested by Dob), a rocking song) while Prudence – PRUDENCE! – tried to get him to engage properly with his feelings. And then Dob said that, even if Egbert was dead, they should go get his corpse so it could be buried in accordance with the rules of the church of La Vache Mauve (you know, the sun cow) – Johnny couldn’t help putting in that the rules of Sun Cow Church said that Egbert would have to lie in state for 21 days to “age properly” (since, you know, cheese jokes), and everything IMMEDIATELY devolved into a series of terrible cannibalism jokes revolving around the lying-in-state being a way to “cure” Egbert (rubbing salt crystals into his crust, etc).
EVENTUALLY the gang decided that they should try to rescue Egbert, hopefully still alive. The gang decided to once again search for clues in the crypt (Ethelfrit and the skeletons having made themselves scarce in the meantime) – and amazingly, both Corazon and Dob rolled natural 20s! :D Prudence had to make do with a “dirty 20” (18 + 2), while poor Merilwen only got a five. XD Johnny ruled that Merilwen stubbed her toe looking for clues; Prudence found a matchbook from a tavern called “The Salty Heifer” located in Redcastle (the location of the All Crim’s Night adventure, as Corazon rightly recalled); Corazon found a dragonborn scale with a purplish tinge, indicating it was from one of the “Otherberts” as Johnny termed them; and Dob found two more of Liliana’s hairs, to go with the one he stole from her cult’s viewing pool. He elected to keep them on the down-low and instead picked up a hissing cockroach and asked if it was a clue. Corazon and Prudence immediately bullied Merilwen into using Speak With Animals on it. XD The cockroach proved to have no useful information (it couldn’t even really tell which one was Egbert because of a lack of proper color vision and wonky perspective ands whatnot), and – apparently out of annoyance at being disturbed – decided to move into Merilwen’s cloak (despite her warnings about her friends). Cockroach is also named “Noah,” for posterity’s sake, off it saying “No” when asked its name (didn’t really have one). Merilwen tried to suggest “Colin,” but Noah refused because alliterative names sound so twee. XD
With all that sorted, Corazon decided the matchbook was the most pertinent clue so far and decided that the thing to do was to get to Redcastle. Only one problem – Redcastle was on an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LANDMASS than they were (as it was pre-the trip to Necropolis-on-Sea with the Lads). Prudence had no useful spells, Corazon admitted his ship was unlikely to get them there with any speed, and so it was that Johnny had to remind them that Dob had already pinpointed the solution last time – the wizard Binbag. Corazon was so opposed to this plan that he actually tried to cancel out Dob yelling for Binbag with his own voice pitched to exactly counter Dob’s – and thanks to a good performance roll, actually SUCCEEDED. So Dob tried again, covering his mouth and making his voice waver in a very Bob Dylan-esque way. Binbag popped into the crypt wanting to see the owner of such lovely vocal cords, and Dob was like “teleport us to Redcastle, you have three seconds to comply” without even saying hello. XD Fortunately, it was extremely easy to convince Binbag to just send them there on the basis of “doing so will REALLY annoy Corazon,” and he opened up a portal. And he attempted to pants Corazon as he went through, but couldn’t get past Corazon’s armor class, so he ended up settling for some obscene gestures before closing it behind them. XD
And so the gang made it to Redcastle via plot convenience! Right in front of the manor, in fact – and the dent in the cobbles caused by Egbert riding his shield over the wall via explosion. XD Prudence once again tried to get Corazon to feel his feelings (while also claiming that she was just in it for revenge against Liliana – and being actually a bit hurt when everyone took her at her word), but the reminiscing and therapy session was cut short by a turnip seller showing up looking for buyers. He gave them the word on All Crim’s Night (not for another nine months, was almost canceled but everyone missed it and the tourism dollars it brought in, a little less violent these days after an incident with a spellbook in some stew – hey, you guys look familiar. . .), then – after some jokes about the turnips fluctuating in price and when the best time to buy them was (aka “it’s lockdown and everyone is playing way too much Animal Crossing: New Horizons and playing the turnip’s ‘stalk market’”), directed them to the Salty Heifer tavern. The gang strode in to find it was one of those kinda bourgeoisie taverns, with nice décor and prices to match. Corazon went to the bar and ordered one too many beers and may have felt his feelings a little bit. :( And then he took two beers and just drunk them both before falling on the floor. XD And THEN this was followed by a truly awful “it’s karaoke night – the logs to carry are piled up over there” bit from Johnny that got some major groans from Merilwen and actually took a good minute to land with Prudence (and me – once I listened to it again, though. . .), leading to everyone having a bad case of the giggles. XD I left it on Dob trying to pretend to the bartender they had something he wanted in exchange for any information he might have on Liliana or related – we’ll see how that goes tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has made it to The Last Round and been greeted by Skelter who – did not endear himself to her by calling her the prince’s “little bitch.” Fortunately Smilin’ Jack has come over to defuse the situation by asking her about Santa Monica. Honestly, with this kind of chapter, I think it takes longer to find my reference videos than it does to actually WRITE – tracking down all the right dialogue in the right order is a pain in the butt! But I want at least some accuracy to how they talk in the game, so. . .it’ll get done when it gets done!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – knew my limits this time and just covered the two videos in my Subs –
A) First up, the Call Me Kevin video from yesterday I had to give a miss because time management: “I ruined Skyrim by creating the weirdest mod ever!” The weirdest mod ever being a mod that allows Kevin to recruit children as followers and turn them into his little murder machines – complete with lines he voiced himself. XD Kevin first picked up beggar girl Lucia on the streets and tried to get her to help with his initiation into the Dark Brotherhood (as he’d previously killed the terrible proprietor of the local orphanage), but she quickly lost her head (literally – it disappeared when he tried to kit her out with an executioner’s hood), and when Kevin went back to the orphanage to check out the new management and adopt a new child, her place in Kevin’s heart and line-up was quickly supplanted by Francois! Don’t be fooled by his baby face and cute blue shirt – this kid had the heart and soul of a killer, eagerly grabbing an ax early on to slaughter people with as Kevin both took regular Dark Brotherhood contracts and just committed random murders around towns. XD And, because the mod included the child follower growing with each kill, and shrinking with each knock-out, it wasn’t long before Francois was a literal giant, one-hit killing people with a swing of his mighty hammer! There were of course difficult moments along the way – Kevin accidentally loaded in under the world for one of his contracts, then had some real difficulty actually COMPLETING said contract, as it was murdering the bride at a wedding and the guards took REAL offense to that (he eventually managed it with a stealth kill using a loose gargoyle); Francois ended up having some trouble fitting into buildings by the end of the video, he was so huge; and Kevin’s attempt to make his kid look even more badass via having him fight the literal giants in the game went – uh – poorly. But at least they were able to clear out the town of Whiterun all for themselves! It’s the little things in life – like watching your giant child slaughter multiple guards for you as you just sit back and chill. XD
B) And second, the GrayStillPlays video from today: “When you move at 1,800 mph,” aka Gray plays Infinite Dismount! It’s another “stick figures riding vehicles into situations where they will be crushed, smashed, and exploded, and the goal is to break as many bones as inhumanly possible” game, and it was even more loony than most of its ilk. Not only could you unlock vehicles like a giant firework and a “toilet truck” (a toilet with a missile attached), you could also buy the ability to draw a line of flame to set your sticks on fire, and a black hole to just SMASH them against any saw blade, bouncy ball, or thruster that you pleased. And trust me, Gray took FULL advantage of both of those abilities on his quest for infinite points. Found some really good tricks too – such as activating the black hole while having the fire effect going would result in a “possessed” stick that wouldn’t stop twitching. Or doing it while the stick was still riding their vehicle would get the points up SUPER quick because the game would interpret the vehicle as somehow doing damage to them as well. He even found different sticks had different strengths – like getting the “strong stick” (an extra-bulky stick figure) stuck between two saw blades was a great “infinite points” technique, as that stick can’t be dismembered. Granted, all the boards timed out after a while, but Gray easily ended up with scores over three million once he cracked a few codes and used his black hole enough times. XD Always nice to see him enjoying inflicting the torture for a change!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – at least Wednesday is already taken care of, but I’d hoped to draft out a Thursday post based on the new idea I had for Alice’s spot in the state house. Just no time, though – summarizing Oxventurers and writing “Downtown Queensland” takes up a LOT of my evening, let me tell you. At least soon I’ll have a few extra days off to try and get more stuff drafted out!
And with that, I must be off to bed, which is much less hot tonight. Just gotta make it through two more days. . .night all!
Work – Well, my previously-out-with-COVID coworker was back today, wearing a mask and still feeling rather tired – she ended up leaving two hours early in the end. But it was good to have someone else to occasionally take a phone call and take care of some of the checks and whatnot. My focus today ended up being on calling people back regarding credit card stuff – finally got in contact with some people and was able to update pledges and things, which was satisfying. Granted, I ALSO had to contact the credit card people regarding another damn mistake they made, but. . .well. That’s just the credit card people. One day down, two to go!
Beanbags – A lovely day to contrast the heat of yesterday, so of course we went out and played – in fact, we played an extra round in honor of it being Victoria Day. XD And Victoria ended up doing quite well – final scores were me W-2-2-W; Dad 2-3-W-3; Mom 3-W-3-2. So everyone won once, but I was overall champ. Nice.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, to start the latest Oxventure Stream – “Tower Rangers!” We rejoined the Oxventurers down a member, having just seen Egbert be kidnapped through a portal by Liliana (Mike wasn’t even on the screen!). Things – got pretty quickly derailed, honestly. XD First Johnny mentioned “addressing the elephant in the room” and Andy promptly wanted to roll initiative to ride it around the room, while Luke wanted to charm it; then, in character, Corazon was all about doing commemorative memorial stuff for their lost Egbert (t-shirts, plates (as suggested by Dob), a rocking song) while Prudence – PRUDENCE! – tried to get him to engage properly with his feelings. And then Dob said that, even if Egbert was dead, they should go get his corpse so it could be buried in accordance with the rules of the church of La Vache Mauve (you know, the sun cow) – Johnny couldn’t help putting in that the rules of Sun Cow Church said that Egbert would have to lie in state for 21 days to “age properly” (since, you know, cheese jokes), and everything IMMEDIATELY devolved into a series of terrible cannibalism jokes revolving around the lying-in-state being a way to “cure” Egbert (rubbing salt crystals into his crust, etc).
EVENTUALLY the gang decided that they should try to rescue Egbert, hopefully still alive. The gang decided to once again search for clues in the crypt (Ethelfrit and the skeletons having made themselves scarce in the meantime) – and amazingly, both Corazon and Dob rolled natural 20s! :D Prudence had to make do with a “dirty 20” (18 + 2), while poor Merilwen only got a five. XD Johnny ruled that Merilwen stubbed her toe looking for clues; Prudence found a matchbook from a tavern called “The Salty Heifer” located in Redcastle (the location of the All Crim’s Night adventure, as Corazon rightly recalled); Corazon found a dragonborn scale with a purplish tinge, indicating it was from one of the “Otherberts” as Johnny termed them; and Dob found two more of Liliana’s hairs, to go with the one he stole from her cult’s viewing pool. He elected to keep them on the down-low and instead picked up a hissing cockroach and asked if it was a clue. Corazon and Prudence immediately bullied Merilwen into using Speak With Animals on it. XD The cockroach proved to have no useful information (it couldn’t even really tell which one was Egbert because of a lack of proper color vision and wonky perspective ands whatnot), and – apparently out of annoyance at being disturbed – decided to move into Merilwen’s cloak (despite her warnings about her friends). Cockroach is also named “Noah,” for posterity’s sake, off it saying “No” when asked its name (didn’t really have one). Merilwen tried to suggest “Colin,” but Noah refused because alliterative names sound so twee. XD
With all that sorted, Corazon decided the matchbook was the most pertinent clue so far and decided that the thing to do was to get to Redcastle. Only one problem – Redcastle was on an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT LANDMASS than they were (as it was pre-the trip to Necropolis-on-Sea with the Lads). Prudence had no useful spells, Corazon admitted his ship was unlikely to get them there with any speed, and so it was that Johnny had to remind them that Dob had already pinpointed the solution last time – the wizard Binbag. Corazon was so opposed to this plan that he actually tried to cancel out Dob yelling for Binbag with his own voice pitched to exactly counter Dob’s – and thanks to a good performance roll, actually SUCCEEDED. So Dob tried again, covering his mouth and making his voice waver in a very Bob Dylan-esque way. Binbag popped into the crypt wanting to see the owner of such lovely vocal cords, and Dob was like “teleport us to Redcastle, you have three seconds to comply” without even saying hello. XD Fortunately, it was extremely easy to convince Binbag to just send them there on the basis of “doing so will REALLY annoy Corazon,” and he opened up a portal. And he attempted to pants Corazon as he went through, but couldn’t get past Corazon’s armor class, so he ended up settling for some obscene gestures before closing it behind them. XD
And so the gang made it to Redcastle via plot convenience! Right in front of the manor, in fact – and the dent in the cobbles caused by Egbert riding his shield over the wall via explosion. XD Prudence once again tried to get Corazon to feel his feelings (while also claiming that she was just in it for revenge against Liliana – and being actually a bit hurt when everyone took her at her word), but the reminiscing and therapy session was cut short by a turnip seller showing up looking for buyers. He gave them the word on All Crim’s Night (not for another nine months, was almost canceled but everyone missed it and the tourism dollars it brought in, a little less violent these days after an incident with a spellbook in some stew – hey, you guys look familiar. . .), then – after some jokes about the turnips fluctuating in price and when the best time to buy them was (aka “it’s lockdown and everyone is playing way too much Animal Crossing: New Horizons and playing the turnip’s ‘stalk market’”), directed them to the Salty Heifer tavern. The gang strode in to find it was one of those kinda bourgeoisie taverns, with nice décor and prices to match. Corazon went to the bar and ordered one too many beers and may have felt his feelings a little bit. :( And then he took two beers and just drunk them both before falling on the floor. XD And THEN this was followed by a truly awful “it’s karaoke night – the logs to carry are piled up over there” bit from Johnny that got some major groans from Merilwen and actually took a good minute to land with Prudence (and me – once I listened to it again, though. . .), leading to everyone having a bad case of the giggles. XD I left it on Dob trying to pretend to the bartender they had something he wanted in exchange for any information he might have on Liliana or related – we’ll see how that goes tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice has made it to The Last Round and been greeted by Skelter who – did not endear himself to her by calling her the prince’s “little bitch.” Fortunately Smilin’ Jack has come over to defuse the situation by asking her about Santa Monica. Honestly, with this kind of chapter, I think it takes longer to find my reference videos than it does to actually WRITE – tracking down all the right dialogue in the right order is a pain in the butt! But I want at least some accuracy to how they talk in the game, so. . .it’ll get done when it gets done!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – knew my limits this time and just covered the two videos in my Subs –
A) First up, the Call Me Kevin video from yesterday I had to give a miss because time management: “I ruined Skyrim by creating the weirdest mod ever!” The weirdest mod ever being a mod that allows Kevin to recruit children as followers and turn them into his little murder machines – complete with lines he voiced himself. XD Kevin first picked up beggar girl Lucia on the streets and tried to get her to help with his initiation into the Dark Brotherhood (as he’d previously killed the terrible proprietor of the local orphanage), but she quickly lost her head (literally – it disappeared when he tried to kit her out with an executioner’s hood), and when Kevin went back to the orphanage to check out the new management and adopt a new child, her place in Kevin’s heart and line-up was quickly supplanted by Francois! Don’t be fooled by his baby face and cute blue shirt – this kid had the heart and soul of a killer, eagerly grabbing an ax early on to slaughter people with as Kevin both took regular Dark Brotherhood contracts and just committed random murders around towns. XD And, because the mod included the child follower growing with each kill, and shrinking with each knock-out, it wasn’t long before Francois was a literal giant, one-hit killing people with a swing of his mighty hammer! There were of course difficult moments along the way – Kevin accidentally loaded in under the world for one of his contracts, then had some real difficulty actually COMPLETING said contract, as it was murdering the bride at a wedding and the guards took REAL offense to that (he eventually managed it with a stealth kill using a loose gargoyle); Francois ended up having some trouble fitting into buildings by the end of the video, he was so huge; and Kevin’s attempt to make his kid look even more badass via having him fight the literal giants in the game went – uh – poorly. But at least they were able to clear out the town of Whiterun all for themselves! It’s the little things in life – like watching your giant child slaughter multiple guards for you as you just sit back and chill. XD
B) And second, the GrayStillPlays video from today: “When you move at 1,800 mph,” aka Gray plays Infinite Dismount! It’s another “stick figures riding vehicles into situations where they will be crushed, smashed, and exploded, and the goal is to break as many bones as inhumanly possible” game, and it was even more loony than most of its ilk. Not only could you unlock vehicles like a giant firework and a “toilet truck” (a toilet with a missile attached), you could also buy the ability to draw a line of flame to set your sticks on fire, and a black hole to just SMASH them against any saw blade, bouncy ball, or thruster that you pleased. And trust me, Gray took FULL advantage of both of those abilities on his quest for infinite points. Found some really good tricks too – such as activating the black hole while having the fire effect going would result in a “possessed” stick that wouldn’t stop twitching. Or doing it while the stick was still riding their vehicle would get the points up SUPER quick because the game would interpret the vehicle as somehow doing damage to them as well. He even found different sticks had different strengths – like getting the “strong stick” (an extra-bulky stick figure) stuck between two saw blades was a great “infinite points” technique, as that stick can’t be dismembered. Granted, all the boards timed out after a while, but Gray easily ended up with scores over three million once he cracked a few codes and used his black hole enough times. XD Always nice to see him enjoying inflicting the torture for a change!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – at least Wednesday is already taken care of, but I’d hoped to draft out a Thursday post based on the new idea I had for Alice’s spot in the state house. Just no time, though – summarizing Oxventurers and writing “Downtown Queensland” takes up a LOT of my evening, let me tell you. At least soon I’ll have a few extra days off to try and get more stuff drafted out!
And with that, I must be off to bed, which is much less hot tonight. Just gotta make it through two more days. . .night all!
