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The Heat Is ON
Jul. 20th, 2022 11:44 pmI don't know what the OFFICIAL high was, but according to our little temperature thingy at home, it hit 100F in direct sunlight at one point, so -- yeah, heatwave times are officially here, ugh. Lots of hiding out in the AC this week. At least I've continued to do well on the old to-do list --
Work – Another quiet day – my coworker and one of the supervisors spent some time doing a thank-you mailing, while I took a credit card call that I’d been waiting for (I’d actually just been wondering if I should call them instead about their new card) and worked on obits, duplicates, and returned mail. Not much to the day, really, but that’s fine by me. Too hot for stress!
Beanbags – Nope – as expected, the heatwave-induced pause is still in full effect. I mean, it was 97F when I was driving home – who wants to be out in that? No thank you.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike this evening, and back with the Oxventure Stream “Court In The Act!” Allie’s fatalistic recitation of how the two top crime bosses in this town always find a couple of patsies to take the fall for them, and she loses all her cases to defend the innocent people who die in their place, inspired the Oxventurers to try and come up with their best plans to either present an incredible case or – more likely – help Dob and Corazon escape!
Unfortunately, these are the Oxventurers, so their best plans included Corazon suggesting that he and Dob order “live horses” for their last meal so they can escape on them, and Dob admitting that he thought the plan was for them to take SO LONG eating them that they’d have to be let go or something. XD Merilwen, popping out of cat form, suggested the rather-better plan of “how about we find a way to sabotage the ropes on the gallows – as you’re going to be tried right on them – and then go from there?” Dob and Corazon were for this, and promptly started suggesting digging tunnels beneath them so they could drop onto the live horses they’d ordered for dinner in the sewers. XD And when Merilwen reminded them that she could turn into a bear and carry them away easily, the plan became them ordering noodles (originally spaghetti until Egbert suggested they order something less obviously Italian Mafia food, then it became more Asian-style cuisine (pretty sure Japanese, don’t know for certain)) and braiding them into nooses that they could swap out with the real ones. XD It really says something about this group that this is pretty much legit their best plan.
Of course, all of this depended on what the hell the gallows and the courtroom they were in even looked like, so Allie went off and got them access to the place under the guise of “the defense has the right to give their clients a tour of the courtroom so they’re used to it and don’t automatically wet themselves with fear or anything.” XD Dob and Corazon, as the prisoners, were heavily manacled, and everyone proceeded inside the courtroom (Merilwen asking all the time whether they were near any walls that led to the outside so she could use Stoneshape as a shortcut – nope!). It was pretty standard, apart from the gallows standing in for the defense box – Prudence asked about the hangman, but apparently the whole thing is triggered by the judge pressing a lever in his box, so no bribing the hangman! Corazon also look a look at the nooses and asked if it was feasible he could substitute noodle-nooses – noodlooses? – for them. Johnny rolled – and had to admit he totally could. XD Egbert took the opportunity to examine the nooses as well, then make a big stink about them not being “up to code” – the guards were like “what do you CARE, shouldn’t you be arguing that they shouldn’t be hung at all” but Egbert was like “I refuse to work in a courtroom where everything is not up to code” and Merilwen added that “if the worst happens, we don’t want them to suffer.” Egbert’s fussiness plus a Charisma check that managed to pass Johnny’s despite a low roll meant that the guards agreed to have new ones made by the flaxsmith overnight and deliver them to the cells in the morning. Merilwen pulled Dob and Corazo aside and asked if they could just, you know, cut the nooses normally and then have Dob use Major Illusion to hide the damage –
Cue a long pause as Luke tried to look up just how Major Illusion works and what Dob needs to cast it. XD Johnny promptly blamed themselves and their GM training for making Luke care about such things as spell requirements. XD They eventually found the write-up, and it was determined that Dob would not be able to use Major Illusion, as his hands would be bound, and he needs to use them to cast. On the plus side, Prudence got an extra Inspiration point for correctly guessing the spell was “somatic.” Small victories? :P
So! With the tour done (and Corazon roughed up a bit for making a “no noose is good noose” pun XD), Dob and Corazon were returned to their cell, past the very angry guard who’d gotten their “last meal” order and was now making noodles. Prudence, Egbert, and Merilwen all choose to sneak into the sewers overnight to see what could be done there – though not before Egbert tried to steal some noodles because HIS plan was to make the noose and I guess substitute it for the flaxsmith’s stuff before it arrived? Corazon was pretty intent on knitting his own, though, and Johnny said that it was all gonna be fitted in the cell itself, so Egbert gave up on that. Prudence did just steal some noodles to eat on the way, though, further upsetting the guard. XD
So yes, Prudence, Egbert, and Merilwen dropped into the sewers! A bad roll on Egbert’s part had him charge straight into the poopiest part, while a good roll on Prudence’s and a decent one on Merilwen’s got them into the nicer tunnels the mafia around here uses for crime disposal. Merilwen here tried to make a The Great Mouse Detective reference, but it just flew RIGHT over Johnny’s head. XD Fortunately Dob was appreciative, even if he wasn’t technically there. (It was around this time that Corazon started complaining about how much being in prison sucked, and Johnny revealed that only DOB was supposed to have been arrested in the first place – if Corazon had managed to resist the siren call of the spotlight for one episode, he would have been able to participate in fun sewer adventures instead of making Johnny change their plans.) XD Anyway, they spent a bit of time searching the sewers, and found a grate that lead to the toilet in the judge’s antechamber in the courthouse – right behind his seat in the courtroom! Merilwen was promptly like “I can use this,” cast Pass Without Trace on herself on her companions, then got Egbert’s help in crawling up the pipe through the toilet and FINALLY getting to use Stoneshape to make some small cutouts for Dob and Corazon to crawl through when their ropes snapped and they were able to get free. So the plan is in motion! We will see if Dob and Corazon are able to make their noodle-nooses and put them to good use tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I have finished the rewrite of the snippet of Victor dealing with his unknowing ghouldom by getting out on the town and hitting The Asylum, with him being discovered by one Knox Harrington, who is only too eager to tell Victor EXACTLY what’s up. XD Next time, though, we cut to Alice arriving at LaCroix’s tower, ready to hand in another quest. But it won’t be long before Victor rejoins the party now. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another single upload day with Gray, so I took the opportunity to get something out of the WL as well –
A) First up, the latest AT4W since I had a little time to watch it – “X-Men Green,” aka “X-Men Infinity,” aka “X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic” #5-#12. Linkara’s pre-titles rant was largely about how confusing these titles were. XD The post-titles review was how stupid the storyline was – it’s focused around Nature Girl, a mutant with an empathetic connection to animals, snapping after encountering a sea turtle dying thanks to consuming a plastic bag on the beach of the living island that the X-Men are currently staying on (Krakatoa – wait, hang on, isn’t that the island that FAMOUSLY BLEW ITSELF TO PIECES?? Guess THAT bit of history went differently in this verse) and going on a rampage, killing the owner of the store that the plastic bag came from, then attacking the workers of an oil refinery in the process of being built, killing one directly before blowing the place up. All the while being egged by on by Curse (a girl who can just curse people), hunted by Wolverine, and having her place in the spotlight stolen by Sauron, a dinosaur geneticist who doesn’t want to cure cancer, he wants to turn people into dinosaurs, but the new oil pipeline is leaking into his lab and now he’s pissed. Also he and Black Mamba (hired by the refinery to protect them) may have a thing. The tone is all over the place, with Nature Girl painted as being out of control but also in the right, and with some really out-of-place bits of comedy (such as Sauron and Black Mamba having a thing), and it ends with the living island helping her escape her prison after she’s judged by the other mutants so she can continue her rampage despite the fact she’s just making life harder for everyone and causing more environmental disasters. It’s just – it’s an awful environmental message, it’s terribly paced, it basically assassinates Nature Girl’s character (who is supposed to be a docile and gentle soul, like a deer), and – ugh. No wonder Linkara didn’t like it. But on the plus side, we got “30s gangster voice Pyro,” so that’s a thing. XD
B) And second up, GrayStillPlays and “GTA 5 but chaos happens every 60 seconds” – OMG HE’S USING THE CHAOS MOD. I was WONDERING why this one took so long to appear on the channel. XD Anyway, yes, this was a SPECIAL video showing off Gray having to run across the ENTIRE GTA V map, reaching the five various checkpoints Alex and Danny set up for him, all while having the infamous Chaos Mod (of Call Me Kevin fame) in play. But not just ANY version of the Chaos Mod – the special Alex and Danny version of the Chaos Mod, where Alex edited it so the chaos got worse with each checkpoint Gray reached, and Danny edited it so certain effects are GUARANTEED to happen as Gray gets close to each checkpoint. Like, the very first checkpoint – Gray managed to glide his way across a canyon through a low-gravity meteor storm toward the dock it was on, only to suffer a teleporter malfunction and end up in a completely different location. And then when he tried to get in a boat, gravity first inverted, then went sideways, then went super strong. XD I mean – this thing was ABSOLUTE NONSENSE from the first minute to the last. Gray had to deal with things like black holes (both random and not random), spinning props all over the place, trying to drive a car in “binoculars” mode (which zooms you in so you can see like 18 inches to either side of you) or in portrait mode (YouTube Shorts has taken over!), flying a plane while drunk (which, honestly, was just another day in GTA V to him), getting shoved into a car with Jesus while trying to climb an extremely high ladder, being swarmed with fans of both the cat and human varieties, having deadly aim (good for the cops!), and – oh man, it was just SO MUCH. Gray managed to hit each checkpoint in the end, but this was one of his longer videos for a REASON. ...I really hope they do another one. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the queue speed to one on Victor Luvs Alice, then added the Friday gift fic for SlyCooperAndCarlosFox (the tumblr friend who asked for the Ventrue version of their Ducktales OC confronting Therese Voerman over her fake charity) and the Saturday post of the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast episode, Raising Steam (as they never put it on their own blog, and with the “footnote” poll up for The Shepherd’s Crown, I wanted to post it before that one went up).
Nice! Yeah, the YouTube stuff overran slightly, but SO worth it for Gray versus the Chaos Mod. XD And now it's time to hit the hay to prepare for my final full day of work. Night all!
Work – Another quiet day – my coworker and one of the supervisors spent some time doing a thank-you mailing, while I took a credit card call that I’d been waiting for (I’d actually just been wondering if I should call them instead about their new card) and worked on obits, duplicates, and returned mail. Not much to the day, really, but that’s fine by me. Too hot for stress!
Beanbags – Nope – as expected, the heatwave-induced pause is still in full effect. I mean, it was 97F when I was driving home – who wants to be out in that? No thank you.
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike this evening, and back with the Oxventure Stream “Court In The Act!” Allie’s fatalistic recitation of how the two top crime bosses in this town always find a couple of patsies to take the fall for them, and she loses all her cases to defend the innocent people who die in their place, inspired the Oxventurers to try and come up with their best plans to either present an incredible case or – more likely – help Dob and Corazon escape!
Unfortunately, these are the Oxventurers, so their best plans included Corazon suggesting that he and Dob order “live horses” for their last meal so they can escape on them, and Dob admitting that he thought the plan was for them to take SO LONG eating them that they’d have to be let go or something. XD Merilwen, popping out of cat form, suggested the rather-better plan of “how about we find a way to sabotage the ropes on the gallows – as you’re going to be tried right on them – and then go from there?” Dob and Corazon were for this, and promptly started suggesting digging tunnels beneath them so they could drop onto the live horses they’d ordered for dinner in the sewers. XD And when Merilwen reminded them that she could turn into a bear and carry them away easily, the plan became them ordering noodles (originally spaghetti until Egbert suggested they order something less obviously Italian Mafia food, then it became more Asian-style cuisine (pretty sure Japanese, don’t know for certain)) and braiding them into nooses that they could swap out with the real ones. XD It really says something about this group that this is pretty much legit their best plan.
Of course, all of this depended on what the hell the gallows and the courtroom they were in even looked like, so Allie went off and got them access to the place under the guise of “the defense has the right to give their clients a tour of the courtroom so they’re used to it and don’t automatically wet themselves with fear or anything.” XD Dob and Corazon, as the prisoners, were heavily manacled, and everyone proceeded inside the courtroom (Merilwen asking all the time whether they were near any walls that led to the outside so she could use Stoneshape as a shortcut – nope!). It was pretty standard, apart from the gallows standing in for the defense box – Prudence asked about the hangman, but apparently the whole thing is triggered by the judge pressing a lever in his box, so no bribing the hangman! Corazon also look a look at the nooses and asked if it was feasible he could substitute noodle-nooses – noodlooses? – for them. Johnny rolled – and had to admit he totally could. XD Egbert took the opportunity to examine the nooses as well, then make a big stink about them not being “up to code” – the guards were like “what do you CARE, shouldn’t you be arguing that they shouldn’t be hung at all” but Egbert was like “I refuse to work in a courtroom where everything is not up to code” and Merilwen added that “if the worst happens, we don’t want them to suffer.” Egbert’s fussiness plus a Charisma check that managed to pass Johnny’s despite a low roll meant that the guards agreed to have new ones made by the flaxsmith overnight and deliver them to the cells in the morning. Merilwen pulled Dob and Corazo aside and asked if they could just, you know, cut the nooses normally and then have Dob use Major Illusion to hide the damage –
Cue a long pause as Luke tried to look up just how Major Illusion works and what Dob needs to cast it. XD Johnny promptly blamed themselves and their GM training for making Luke care about such things as spell requirements. XD They eventually found the write-up, and it was determined that Dob would not be able to use Major Illusion, as his hands would be bound, and he needs to use them to cast. On the plus side, Prudence got an extra Inspiration point for correctly guessing the spell was “somatic.” Small victories? :P
So! With the tour done (and Corazon roughed up a bit for making a “no noose is good noose” pun XD), Dob and Corazon were returned to their cell, past the very angry guard who’d gotten their “last meal” order and was now making noodles. Prudence, Egbert, and Merilwen all choose to sneak into the sewers overnight to see what could be done there – though not before Egbert tried to steal some noodles because HIS plan was to make the noose and I guess substitute it for the flaxsmith’s stuff before it arrived? Corazon was pretty intent on knitting his own, though, and Johnny said that it was all gonna be fitted in the cell itself, so Egbert gave up on that. Prudence did just steal some noodles to eat on the way, though, further upsetting the guard. XD
So yes, Prudence, Egbert, and Merilwen dropped into the sewers! A bad roll on Egbert’s part had him charge straight into the poopiest part, while a good roll on Prudence’s and a decent one on Merilwen’s got them into the nicer tunnels the mafia around here uses for crime disposal. Merilwen here tried to make a The Great Mouse Detective reference, but it just flew RIGHT over Johnny’s head. XD Fortunately Dob was appreciative, even if he wasn’t technically there. (It was around this time that Corazon started complaining about how much being in prison sucked, and Johnny revealed that only DOB was supposed to have been arrested in the first place – if Corazon had managed to resist the siren call of the spotlight for one episode, he would have been able to participate in fun sewer adventures instead of making Johnny change their plans.) XD Anyway, they spent a bit of time searching the sewers, and found a grate that lead to the toilet in the judge’s antechamber in the courthouse – right behind his seat in the courtroom! Merilwen was promptly like “I can use this,” cast Pass Without Trace on herself on her companions, then got Egbert’s help in crawling up the pipe through the toilet and FINALLY getting to use Stoneshape to make some small cutouts for Dob and Corazon to crawl through when their ropes snapped and they were able to get free. So the plan is in motion! We will see if Dob and Corazon are able to make their noodle-nooses and put them to good use tomorrow!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I have finished the rewrite of the snippet of Victor dealing with his unknowing ghouldom by getting out on the town and hitting The Asylum, with him being discovered by one Knox Harrington, who is only too eager to tell Victor EXACTLY what’s up. XD Next time, though, we cut to Alice arriving at LaCroix’s tower, ready to hand in another quest. But it won’t be long before Victor rejoins the party now. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – another single upload day with Gray, so I took the opportunity to get something out of the WL as well –
A) First up, the latest AT4W since I had a little time to watch it – “X-Men Green,” aka “X-Men Infinity,” aka “X-Men Unlimited Infinity Comic” #5-#12. Linkara’s pre-titles rant was largely about how confusing these titles were. XD The post-titles review was how stupid the storyline was – it’s focused around Nature Girl, a mutant with an empathetic connection to animals, snapping after encountering a sea turtle dying thanks to consuming a plastic bag on the beach of the living island that the X-Men are currently staying on (Krakatoa – wait, hang on, isn’t that the island that FAMOUSLY BLEW ITSELF TO PIECES?? Guess THAT bit of history went differently in this verse) and going on a rampage, killing the owner of the store that the plastic bag came from, then attacking the workers of an oil refinery in the process of being built, killing one directly before blowing the place up. All the while being egged by on by Curse (a girl who can just curse people), hunted by Wolverine, and having her place in the spotlight stolen by Sauron, a dinosaur geneticist who doesn’t want to cure cancer, he wants to turn people into dinosaurs, but the new oil pipeline is leaking into his lab and now he’s pissed. Also he and Black Mamba (hired by the refinery to protect them) may have a thing. The tone is all over the place, with Nature Girl painted as being out of control but also in the right, and with some really out-of-place bits of comedy (such as Sauron and Black Mamba having a thing), and it ends with the living island helping her escape her prison after she’s judged by the other mutants so she can continue her rampage despite the fact she’s just making life harder for everyone and causing more environmental disasters. It’s just – it’s an awful environmental message, it’s terribly paced, it basically assassinates Nature Girl’s character (who is supposed to be a docile and gentle soul, like a deer), and – ugh. No wonder Linkara didn’t like it. But on the plus side, we got “30s gangster voice Pyro,” so that’s a thing. XD
B) And second up, GrayStillPlays and “GTA 5 but chaos happens every 60 seconds” – OMG HE’S USING THE CHAOS MOD. I was WONDERING why this one took so long to appear on the channel. XD Anyway, yes, this was a SPECIAL video showing off Gray having to run across the ENTIRE GTA V map, reaching the five various checkpoints Alex and Danny set up for him, all while having the infamous Chaos Mod (of Call Me Kevin fame) in play. But not just ANY version of the Chaos Mod – the special Alex and Danny version of the Chaos Mod, where Alex edited it so the chaos got worse with each checkpoint Gray reached, and Danny edited it so certain effects are GUARANTEED to happen as Gray gets close to each checkpoint. Like, the very first checkpoint – Gray managed to glide his way across a canyon through a low-gravity meteor storm toward the dock it was on, only to suffer a teleporter malfunction and end up in a completely different location. And then when he tried to get in a boat, gravity first inverted, then went sideways, then went super strong. XD I mean – this thing was ABSOLUTE NONSENSE from the first minute to the last. Gray had to deal with things like black holes (both random and not random), spinning props all over the place, trying to drive a car in “binoculars” mode (which zooms you in so you can see like 18 inches to either side of you) or in portrait mode (YouTube Shorts has taken over!), flying a plane while drunk (which, honestly, was just another day in GTA V to him), getting shoved into a car with Jesus while trying to climb an extremely high ladder, being swarmed with fans of both the cat and human varieties, having deadly aim (good for the cops!), and – oh man, it was just SO MUCH. Gray managed to hit each checkpoint in the end, but this was one of his longer videos for a REASON. ...I really hope they do another one. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – reset the queue speed to one on Victor Luvs Alice, then added the Friday gift fic for SlyCooperAndCarlosFox (the tumblr friend who asked for the Ventrue version of their Ducktales OC confronting Therese Voerman over her fake charity) and the Saturday post of the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast episode, Raising Steam (as they never put it on their own blog, and with the “footnote” poll up for The Shepherd’s Crown, I wanted to post it before that one went up).
Nice! Yeah, the YouTube stuff overran slightly, but SO worth it for Gray versus the Chaos Mod. XD And now it's time to hit the hay to prepare for my final full day of work. Night all!
