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At least the weather remains lovely for the time being -- another night cool enough that I won't need my AC on. Though it looks like that might change by the weekend, meeh. . .well, it is still August, so. . . Anyway, I'm on a bit late, so let's just get through the to-do list, shall we?
Work – Busy, but in a reasonably good way – I had the GL, I had quality control files, and I had “putting labels onto and then stuffing envelopes for a mailing” with my coworker. Made the day go by, at least!
Beanbags – Another lovely day out, so yup – and let me tell you, Mom came back STRONG from her no-win streak yesterday to win ALL THREE GAMES. While I had a particularly terrible day and only managed to squeak into second with some good throws in the third game. Final scores were me 3-3-2; Dad 2-2-3; Mom W-W-W. Hopefully we can even this out tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the Oxventure, with the next official stream, “Chart of Darkness!” Having finally gotten sick of Inkwater’s occasionally-kind-of-offensive hero worship (well, FOUR of them got sick of it – as you can imagine, Corazon was still riding the high), the gang were proceeding along the seaside road that lead away from the town, just enjoying the scenery, when they spotted a whale spouting from the nearby sea. A whale that, from this distance, none of them recognized –
But they DID recognize the figure that came flying down from the sky and crumpled hard against the road before them! At least, after it had uncrumpled (and Corazon had thoroughly picked its pockets). Yes, it was Panniers, Corazon’s former first mate and one of his cursed pirate crew, having finally recovered from being turned into a skeleton by acid back in “Exhibition Impossible!” He was now baby-smooth with new flesh and ready to finally get to breaking this curse. Corazon was all for it, citing that they hadn’t done anything “interesting” in a while, prompting Merilwen to start snarking about how her going back to the woods and the whole thing with her naming ceremony and the banshees wasn’t interesting enough and for Dob to admit to Panniers that it’s possible the Oxventurers have been stuck together too long at this point and all the passive aggression is now coming out in front of the dinner guest. XD Prudence explicitly compared it to being stuck inside your house for a year. XD Panniers could sense the awkwardness and tried to hurry the conversation along, saying that now that Corazon had all the cursed coins (using the pirate counting system of “one, two, three, several, enough, all”), they had to get back to the “curse hole” where they’d found the treasure, toss it back in, and yell “Sorry!” XD (And yes, Panniers did confirm that “curse hole” was his and Corazon’s first name for the place, and they couldn’t come up with anything better after six hours and twelve bottles of rum. XD) The trouble was, Corazon had no idea where the hole was (he was letting Peg-Arms Pete navigate at the time, and presumably was in too much of a hurry to get AWAY after the curse started setting in), and Panniers didn’t remember (and couldn’t call on his whale to help – things were a bit tense with Henry/Panniers 2 thanks to Panniers losing his “couples tattoo” in the acid incident). Fortunately, Panniers knew someone who DID know – their old cartographer, X Marks The Spot Dot With A Circle Around It Up The Ladder Down The Ladder One Two Three O’Hara (Corazon IMMEDIATELY said “yeah, I used to call him Wally”). Turns out the guy, having taken care of most of his murderous vendettas, had given up the pirate’s life in favor of running a tourist trap! Not like the ones Panniers and Corazon used to make, though – this one is your typical “hokey place charging money for dumb souvenirs” spot instead of a trap for tourists so you can take their stuff. XD And the place was actually just up on the road on the beach! Everyone was eager to see this particular personal plotline concluded, so off they tromped!
To “Wally’s” Pirate Expedition Emporium! (Actually, the name was MUCH dumber than that, but I can’t recall precisely what it was – fortunately, neither could Johnny, when pressed to repeat it at one point XD) This was what looked like a gift shop in a cave, complete with name magnets and a kitchsy desk made to look like it was salvaged from a shipwreck (explicitly MADE to look that way, mind – no actual salvage here). Egbert tried to find his own name on the magnets, but failed, while Dob found something CLOSE – Dobrovitch – and bought it off Wally before melting the unneeded bits off. Wally, for his part, was fortunately not very observant and didn’t even notice Corazon (doing his best to blend into the shadows) at first, more taken with the fact that he actually had customers for a change! He asked if they could give them the spiel and, upon being told yes, asked if they liked rooms they could escape from. The gang admitted that they’ve spent a fair amount of time escaping from rooms, so Wally offered them a chance at his escape room series, saying that if they completed it, they could win an awesome prize – a map to a place called the “curse hole!” Corazon, disguising his voice, spoke up then to say he’d like to have a go at it too – and despite rolling a five on his performance roll, STILL managed to beat Wally’s two, and thus easily convinced the man he was “Charles O’Razon,” who might die if he ever even LOOKED at the sea. XD Wally said it was three gold pieces apiece, and Dob (who had somehow gotten ahold of the money, to Merilwen’s horror) promptly gave him 25 pieces (which – is actually only four over what they ACTUALLY owed, huh. . .though admittedly, it looked for a moment like Wally would settle for three gold pieces TOTAL, so. . .), which Wally plopped down in a nearby barrel. Corazon, naturally, attempted to steal them back as they headed for the room, grabbing a magnet to try and attract them – only for the others to point out gold isn’t magnetic.
Cue Corazon admitting he always figured the gold pieces weren’t pure gold – and then suddenly realizing JUST HOW MUCH MONEY DOB HAS EITHER OVERPAID PEOPLE OR THROWN INTO A LAKE OVER ALL THESE YEARS. Cue a full twenty-five in-universe minutes of shock for Corazon, during which the concerned Wally wrapped him in a nice blanket and gave him some tea. And then Dob gave him TWO MORE gold pieces for the blanket, which probably didn’t help Corazon’s state of mind. XD
Anyway – escape rooms! The group was ushered into the entrance, which was closed up into pitch darkness – Egbert, thinking the game had already started, promptly tried to look for clues and only came up with “this carpet is really mildewy, ew.” XD Wally ran around to lower a lantern into the room and pretend to be a spirit to introduce the game, then asked everyone to look a particular way – as it turned out, this wasn’t to sneakily remove a wall, like I thought, but instead to get them facing the sketch artist behind the two-way mirror wall that served as “on-ride photographer.” XD The Oxventurers promptly did funny poses, then asked Wally if they could get one with a shark in – Wally got the okay from the artist, and so everyone pretended to be terrified of the shark with varying degrees of enthusiasm. XD I left it off with them proceeding into the first room – let’s see how the Oxventurers do against a locked room puzzle! :D
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Victor’s continuing his story regarding this universe’s version of Corpse Bride, including him and Emily having a proper conversation about what they like and Victor deciding that he liked Emily and felt sorry enough for her to want to take her on a “sorry for getting your hopes up” date. Emily was for this plan, and they got the Ukrainian Haunting Spell from Elder Gutknecht and headed up once night fell (just hanging out together in the meantime, including having their own version of the piano duet), with Victor going to the Everglots’ to explain what was going on to Victoria – only to discover police cars there. Yup, turns out poor Victoria’s been kidnapped! Time to start setting up a Land of the Dead rescue!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – easy two-in, two-out –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin’s latest, “What the feck is American theft?” American Theft, as it turns out, is a game all about being a thief! In America, presumably. Kevin’s first attempt at the opening tutorial using the name “NotGuilty” got him caught and caused the game to crash, so he went with “Shrek” for his actual playthrough. Because you know you can always count on Shrek to get shit done. XD After getting caught in a cutscene and jailed (instead of out of a cutscene and crashing), Kevin embarked on his new life of crime, stealing things for people at the local bar, and selling his spare items for extra cash down at the pawnshop! His success rate was – variable. XD I mean, he perfected the art of managing to ding-dong-ditch his way into the various houses around the town (including managing to sneak in RIGHT BEHIND one particular tenant and somehow not fully alert him), but once he was IN the house. . .well, let’s just say he got caught a lot carrying away microwaves and TVs into the woods. XD Oftentimes not even using his car – hell, he abandoned it at one failed burglary to go steal something else from someone else. Fortunately the AI in this game is pretty dumb (see his success at using ding-dong-ditch to get into homes), and it is EXTREMELY easy to hide from the cops. He was actually quite put out when the game forced him to use actual tactics and disguises (poorly) to infiltrate one house to get a guitar for a local rocker who kept smashing up his. XD And then he managed to get himself stuck half-in the trunk of his car trying to use it as a ramp to get onto someone’s roof. A rather ignoble end to his life of crime, but – this is Kevin. Did we expect nobility here at all? XD
B) And then we had GrayStillPlays and “When you let a kid use a knife” – time for Gray to take on Mom Life Simulator! This is a truly cursed “mom simulator,” featuring uncanny valley creatures poorly raising a child. You have to do a tapping minigame to birth the baby and things just go downhill from there – I mean, the VERY FIRST challenge that you are confronted with is giving your upset baby a pacifier – or A BUTCHER’S CLEAVER, WHICH THEY WILL THEN THROW STRAIGHT INTO YOUR THIGH. XD The remaining levels consist of the baby seeing the parents woohooing (like, genuinely, that blanket was acrobatic) and having to deal with that, the mother having to deal with her mother-in-law putting her down and throwing shit at her (and if you throw it back, she ducks and you hit your baby), and the child catching the mother cheating with the doctor from the first scene and the mother either letting the moppet snitch or bribing the kid with either a pet dog or an entire room full of candy, broken up by occasional sections where you walk a woman through a strange obstacle course picking up new husbands and eating lots of food. And then it all just loops again, allowing you to unlock and power up stuff like “anger” and “anxiety” – Gray ended up replaying the “pacifier or knife” level a bunch of times and getting his anger up to 1920%. Weirdest fuckin’ mobile game on the channel yet. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – yeah, I know, rare for a Monday, but I took a moment to finish off turning the rough draft of my “Piper using Publick Occurrences to try and help synths” post into a finished draft. I didn’t like that I ended up leaving it half-done because of lunch the other day. So that’s sorted for whenever I want to post it! Plus another tumblr friend shared a post of someone’s stop-motion Alice puppet, so THAT went straight into the drafts. :)
Not too shabby, I feel. And now it's time to wrap up and head to bed so I can do it all over again tomorrow. :p Night all!
Work – Busy, but in a reasonably good way – I had the GL, I had quality control files, and I had “putting labels onto and then stuffing envelopes for a mailing” with my coworker. Made the day go by, at least!
Beanbags – Another lovely day out, so yup – and let me tell you, Mom came back STRONG from her no-win streak yesterday to win ALL THREE GAMES. While I had a particularly terrible day and only managed to squeak into second with some good throws in the third game. Final scores were me 3-3-2; Dad 2-2-3; Mom W-W-W. Hopefully we can even this out tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the Oxventure, with the next official stream, “Chart of Darkness!” Having finally gotten sick of Inkwater’s occasionally-kind-of-offensive hero worship (well, FOUR of them got sick of it – as you can imagine, Corazon was still riding the high), the gang were proceeding along the seaside road that lead away from the town, just enjoying the scenery, when they spotted a whale spouting from the nearby sea. A whale that, from this distance, none of them recognized –
But they DID recognize the figure that came flying down from the sky and crumpled hard against the road before them! At least, after it had uncrumpled (and Corazon had thoroughly picked its pockets). Yes, it was Panniers, Corazon’s former first mate and one of his cursed pirate crew, having finally recovered from being turned into a skeleton by acid back in “Exhibition Impossible!” He was now baby-smooth with new flesh and ready to finally get to breaking this curse. Corazon was all for it, citing that they hadn’t done anything “interesting” in a while, prompting Merilwen to start snarking about how her going back to the woods and the whole thing with her naming ceremony and the banshees wasn’t interesting enough and for Dob to admit to Panniers that it’s possible the Oxventurers have been stuck together too long at this point and all the passive aggression is now coming out in front of the dinner guest. XD Prudence explicitly compared it to being stuck inside your house for a year. XD Panniers could sense the awkwardness and tried to hurry the conversation along, saying that now that Corazon had all the cursed coins (using the pirate counting system of “one, two, three, several, enough, all”), they had to get back to the “curse hole” where they’d found the treasure, toss it back in, and yell “Sorry!” XD (And yes, Panniers did confirm that “curse hole” was his and Corazon’s first name for the place, and they couldn’t come up with anything better after six hours and twelve bottles of rum. XD) The trouble was, Corazon had no idea where the hole was (he was letting Peg-Arms Pete navigate at the time, and presumably was in too much of a hurry to get AWAY after the curse started setting in), and Panniers didn’t remember (and couldn’t call on his whale to help – things were a bit tense with Henry/Panniers 2 thanks to Panniers losing his “couples tattoo” in the acid incident). Fortunately, Panniers knew someone who DID know – their old cartographer, X Marks The Spot Dot With A Circle Around It Up The Ladder Down The Ladder One Two Three O’Hara (Corazon IMMEDIATELY said “yeah, I used to call him Wally”). Turns out the guy, having taken care of most of his murderous vendettas, had given up the pirate’s life in favor of running a tourist trap! Not like the ones Panniers and Corazon used to make, though – this one is your typical “hokey place charging money for dumb souvenirs” spot instead of a trap for tourists so you can take their stuff. XD And the place was actually just up on the road on the beach! Everyone was eager to see this particular personal plotline concluded, so off they tromped!
To “Wally’s” Pirate Expedition Emporium! (Actually, the name was MUCH dumber than that, but I can’t recall precisely what it was – fortunately, neither could Johnny, when pressed to repeat it at one point XD) This was what looked like a gift shop in a cave, complete with name magnets and a kitchsy desk made to look like it was salvaged from a shipwreck (explicitly MADE to look that way, mind – no actual salvage here). Egbert tried to find his own name on the magnets, but failed, while Dob found something CLOSE – Dobrovitch – and bought it off Wally before melting the unneeded bits off. Wally, for his part, was fortunately not very observant and didn’t even notice Corazon (doing his best to blend into the shadows) at first, more taken with the fact that he actually had customers for a change! He asked if they could give them the spiel and, upon being told yes, asked if they liked rooms they could escape from. The gang admitted that they’ve spent a fair amount of time escaping from rooms, so Wally offered them a chance at his escape room series, saying that if they completed it, they could win an awesome prize – a map to a place called the “curse hole!” Corazon, disguising his voice, spoke up then to say he’d like to have a go at it too – and despite rolling a five on his performance roll, STILL managed to beat Wally’s two, and thus easily convinced the man he was “Charles O’Razon,” who might die if he ever even LOOKED at the sea. XD Wally said it was three gold pieces apiece, and Dob (who had somehow gotten ahold of the money, to Merilwen’s horror) promptly gave him 25 pieces (which – is actually only four over what they ACTUALLY owed, huh. . .though admittedly, it looked for a moment like Wally would settle for three gold pieces TOTAL, so. . .), which Wally plopped down in a nearby barrel. Corazon, naturally, attempted to steal them back as they headed for the room, grabbing a magnet to try and attract them – only for the others to point out gold isn’t magnetic.
Cue Corazon admitting he always figured the gold pieces weren’t pure gold – and then suddenly realizing JUST HOW MUCH MONEY DOB HAS EITHER OVERPAID PEOPLE OR THROWN INTO A LAKE OVER ALL THESE YEARS. Cue a full twenty-five in-universe minutes of shock for Corazon, during which the concerned Wally wrapped him in a nice blanket and gave him some tea. And then Dob gave him TWO MORE gold pieces for the blanket, which probably didn’t help Corazon’s state of mind. XD
Anyway – escape rooms! The group was ushered into the entrance, which was closed up into pitch darkness – Egbert, thinking the game had already started, promptly tried to look for clues and only came up with “this carpet is really mildewy, ew.” XD Wally ran around to lower a lantern into the room and pretend to be a spirit to introduce the game, then asked everyone to look a particular way – as it turned out, this wasn’t to sneakily remove a wall, like I thought, but instead to get them facing the sketch artist behind the two-way mirror wall that served as “on-ride photographer.” XD The Oxventurers promptly did funny poses, then asked Wally if they could get one with a shark in – Wally got the okay from the artist, and so everyone pretended to be terrified of the shark with varying degrees of enthusiasm. XD I left it off with them proceeding into the first room – let’s see how the Oxventurers do against a locked room puzzle! :D
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Victor’s continuing his story regarding this universe’s version of Corpse Bride, including him and Emily having a proper conversation about what they like and Victor deciding that he liked Emily and felt sorry enough for her to want to take her on a “sorry for getting your hopes up” date. Emily was for this plan, and they got the Ukrainian Haunting Spell from Elder Gutknecht and headed up once night fell (just hanging out together in the meantime, including having their own version of the piano duet), with Victor going to the Everglots’ to explain what was going on to Victoria – only to discover police cars there. Yup, turns out poor Victoria’s been kidnapped! Time to start setting up a Land of the Dead rescue!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – easy two-in, two-out –
A) Started with Call Me Kevin’s latest, “What the feck is American theft?” American Theft, as it turns out, is a game all about being a thief! In America, presumably. Kevin’s first attempt at the opening tutorial using the name “NotGuilty” got him caught and caused the game to crash, so he went with “Shrek” for his actual playthrough. Because you know you can always count on Shrek to get shit done. XD After getting caught in a cutscene and jailed (instead of out of a cutscene and crashing), Kevin embarked on his new life of crime, stealing things for people at the local bar, and selling his spare items for extra cash down at the pawnshop! His success rate was – variable. XD I mean, he perfected the art of managing to ding-dong-ditch his way into the various houses around the town (including managing to sneak in RIGHT BEHIND one particular tenant and somehow not fully alert him), but once he was IN the house. . .well, let’s just say he got caught a lot carrying away microwaves and TVs into the woods. XD Oftentimes not even using his car – hell, he abandoned it at one failed burglary to go steal something else from someone else. Fortunately the AI in this game is pretty dumb (see his success at using ding-dong-ditch to get into homes), and it is EXTREMELY easy to hide from the cops. He was actually quite put out when the game forced him to use actual tactics and disguises (poorly) to infiltrate one house to get a guitar for a local rocker who kept smashing up his. XD And then he managed to get himself stuck half-in the trunk of his car trying to use it as a ramp to get onto someone’s roof. A rather ignoble end to his life of crime, but – this is Kevin. Did we expect nobility here at all? XD
B) And then we had GrayStillPlays and “When you let a kid use a knife” – time for Gray to take on Mom Life Simulator! This is a truly cursed “mom simulator,” featuring uncanny valley creatures poorly raising a child. You have to do a tapping minigame to birth the baby and things just go downhill from there – I mean, the VERY FIRST challenge that you are confronted with is giving your upset baby a pacifier – or A BUTCHER’S CLEAVER, WHICH THEY WILL THEN THROW STRAIGHT INTO YOUR THIGH. XD The remaining levels consist of the baby seeing the parents woohooing (like, genuinely, that blanket was acrobatic) and having to deal with that, the mother having to deal with her mother-in-law putting her down and throwing shit at her (and if you throw it back, she ducks and you hit your baby), and the child catching the mother cheating with the doctor from the first scene and the mother either letting the moppet snitch or bribing the kid with either a pet dog or an entire room full of candy, broken up by occasional sections where you walk a woman through a strange obstacle course picking up new husbands and eating lots of food. And then it all just loops again, allowing you to unlock and power up stuff like “anger” and “anxiety” – Gray ended up replaying the “pacifier or knife” level a bunch of times and getting his anger up to 1920%. Weirdest fuckin’ mobile game on the channel yet. XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – yeah, I know, rare for a Monday, but I took a moment to finish off turning the rough draft of my “Piper using Publick Occurrences to try and help synths” post into a finished draft. I didn’t like that I ended up leaving it half-done because of lunch the other day. So that’s sorted for whenever I want to post it! Plus another tumblr friend shared a post of someone’s stop-motion Alice puppet, so THAT went straight into the drafts. :)
Not too shabby, I feel. And now it's time to wrap up and head to bed so I can do it all over again tomorrow. :p Night all!
