*timestamps* Happy October 26th!

AKA the day when all the time travel shenanigans REALLY kick off. XD Fortunately I started watching GrayStillPlays early enough this evening that I didn't miss this. . .okay, back later with the rest of the update!

[An hour and a half later. . .]

Aaand we're back, now that I'm almost entirely caught up on stuff. Let's get the to-dos out of the way so I can finish catching up on stuff --

Work – Quiet day work-wise, with just one phone call regarding where to send a check and then duplicate-hunting the rest of the time – but my talky coworker was in FINE FORM today and would NOT SHUT THE FUCK UP. *huffs* I was about ready to sew her lips shut by the time the day was done – not helped by the fact that I went to the bathroom this morning and was greeted suddenly by my damn period. I knew it was coming, but I thought I still had a day or two to go. . .ugh. Not fun.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike to finish off Oxventure Orbpocalypse Episode 11, “Dine Hard!” Having been dismissed from Dining Room #1 (Dob-Vocatus and Liliana), Egbert went to go play Lurch in Dining Room #2 (Vocatus and Prudence-Liliana), trying to edge around the wall to prevent more people from seeing his butt. This protected Prudence, but as Corazon was pretending to be a PAINTING on the WALL. . .well, he had some confusing feelings but decided to deal with them later. Egbert opened the capers, to Vocatus’s disappointment, and Vocatus was bullied into eating one after Prudence said he shouldn’t be rude to the help. XD Prudence then reiterated the whole “I still don’t know why I should team up with you” spiel, and Vocatus apologized for being rude, saying that he was just trying to offer her a token of friendship – here, why doesn’t she have a drink? Cue a goblet full of magical wine. Prudence tried to bluff that in her neck of the woods, new friends sharing a drink for the first time drink from each other’s glass, and she wasn’t very thirsty, and was all of his magic wine-based, but Vocatus wasn’t having any of it, being quite insistent she drink the wine because if she did, she’d see exactly how far his powers extended. So Prudence faked drinking the wine by throwing it over her shoulder Corazon-and-Egbert-style –

And with a good roll, managed to pull it off! Believing her under his thrall, Vocatus took the opportunity to go into a rant about how he didn’t want to resort to the magic wine, but she pushed him to it, and soon she’d just want to keep drinking wine constantly and open another bottle of capers for him so he could steal her magic –

And in the middle of all that, Corazon decided to pick up the already-refilled goblet of wine using Mage Hand and throw it in Vocatus’s open mouth.

Yeah, remember how the orb said that by his appetites Vocatus would be undone? Turns out what that means is THE IDIOT’S NOT IMMUNE TO HIS OWN MAGIC. He was utterly horrified to find himself with a mouthful of his own wine and tried to get Prudence to open the capers so he could steal her magic – Prudence did open the jar, but only to knock back all the capers and call him out on his shenanigans. XD A terrified Vocatus tried to retort, but then he found himself lifting a goblet to his lips, and – well. Soon enough he was just sitting there, constantly refilling his own wine glass as he glugged the stuff down. XD Hah!

Meanwhile, back in Dining Room #1, Liliana was happy to hear Dob out about wanting just one island, and admitted that killing people with dagger clouds was a lot of hard work (with Dob trying to sweeten the deal by saying her enemies that she brought under her thrall would be screaming internally), but she was still leery of catches, and determined to look a gift horse in its gift mouth. Cue Dob pulling out a fife (because he’s a bard, he just has a fife on him at all times) and Liliana’s hair –

And doing the world’s most BRILLIANT bluff work by claiming that the fife was the “Fife of Chauncey” (Liliana was like “that’s REALLY a god’s name?”) and could enthrall – or KILL if you had an artifact of the victim’s. It was enough to get her to stop advancing on him, anyway. Dob decided that if he was going in, he was going ALL in, used Prestidigitation to burn up the hair as an act of trust, and gave her the first half of the “enthralling song.” And then he went to the window and opened it to show off the mountain nearby (the one from “Peak Performance”) and told her that, if she just wanted to get all of Geth under her command at once, she could go up there and use the amplifying horn he TOTALLY has up to get it so everyone could hear her (because it’s PROBABLY the tallest point in Geth). Liliana decided a post-dinner stroll sounded nice, and Dob said he’d meet her up there and pretended to teleport by turning invisible.

Causing Liliana to ACTUALLY teleport herself up there, and her little Egbert army to start obediently following her. Merilwen was horrified and impressed, with Dob admitting that he’d had no idea she could teleport, he was trying to buy them even more time with her having to walk up the mountain.

The mountain which, I shall remind you, HAS A GIANT SLEEPING DRAGON ON IT THAT HATES NOISE. Yeah – talk about playing poker with no fuckin’ cards! That being said, Dob at least was convinced that Liliana would make short work of the dragon, so it was probably important that they move –

And that brought us into Episode 12, which is just known as “The Finale!” With Liliana temporarily out of the way, most of the gang was in favor of cheesing it, but Egbert brought up a point – as Vocatus was literally basically frozen drinking his own wine, why didn’t they leave him in Dining Room #1 so Liliana takes all of her rage out on him? Dob thought this was an excellent plan, and the gang carried the very confused Vocatus into the right dining room, with Dob giving him the fife and Corazon writing an insulting note calling Liliana a stupid bitch who got tricked and stuffing it in his pocket. XD Prudence was reluctant to leave without knowing if her magic was coming back or not, though, so she and Dob attempted to pull a “we’re Vocatus and Liliana from the future” double-act on Vocatus to confirm that if he died, her magic would be freed – I’m not sure if Vocatus bought it (Corazon sure didn’t XD), but he did confirm that she’d get her magic back if he died. Good. The gang then prepared to leave, either to just cheese it or find a nice place to watch the fireworks (accepting that Necropolis-On-Sea was probably going to be wrecked, but both Merilwen and Corazon were of the opinion it would be just fine, the house had survived worse and was probably haunted enough to rebuild itself) –

And then Dob reminded everyone of the “Fulton return” system they’d rigged up in the fireplace, and they all figured it would be a shame not to use it. (Johnny was just like “why are these my players.” XD) So the Oxventurers got Bismuth (still cradling her cauldron of bisque) and Katy and all went up on the roof, while Dob hid in the fireplace upside-down (and the fireplace consented not to eat him). Katy was not happy about all of this and told Dob he’d better not be eating honeyed bread at their wedding like he was scarfing it down earlier – Dob told her not to change him and that they’d have to have a conversation later, and she stalked off in search of hellebore (a potent poison, as established in an earlier episode). There was a worrying light show on the top of the nearby mountain, and then Merilwen managed to spot the Egbert army slowly coming back down from it, meaning Liliana had indeed won the fight. She got Bismuth to silence her “bisque-muth” puns just in time –

And I left it on Liliana re-entering Dining Room #1, ready to confront Vocatus for his apparent treachery. *bites nails* We’ll see how that goes tomorrow!

2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check, even with the red curse making life difficult. Though it helped that today was a lot of copying down game dialogue – Alice has managed to reach the deal, and discovered that both sides are planning on double-crossing the other. Namely, the Operators (the local gang) has a briefcase stuffed full of newspaper instead of money, and the Tong are planning on trading a dummy briefcase instead of the real one. Alice has made it to the actual briefcase, but as she can’t pick it up without turning visible, she has to wait until things kick off with the trade so everyone is nice and distracted. . .

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Another half-check, as Call Me Kevin uploaded an almost-hour-long video, and given that I keep starting my writing late (between watching old Halloween Wars with dinner – the episodes are about 45 minutes long – and doing the sum-up of the Orbpocalypse stuff for the workout section), I simply had no time to watch it. GrayStillPlays was nice and did a twenty-minute long video, though, so I watched that – “Jumping MOON RAMP With Cursed CAR in GTA 5!” Yes, as per the usual, it was more Alex board torture, this time with horrible ramps that Gray had to make it down in cursed cars. In order, we had:

I. The Jump Ramp, where Gray had to take a technicolor apocalypse deer car down a ramp where he had to use the car’s jump feature first to jump onto succeeding platforms – first two normal, then thin ones n the left and right respectively (with wind turbines, of course), then to make it down an increasingly-thin path, shooting out breakable walls, dodging gaps, and trying to keep both properly centered AND on his tires because it was VERY easy for him to hit something and go tumbling. And then there was a final jump onto a road atop a pool (through a wind turbine), then ANOTHER jump onto the bit with the actual checkpoint teleporter (with more wind turbines). Gray ended up shooting the car in a rage once he was done. XD

II. The Cutout Tube Ramp, where Gray had to take a homemade apocalypse zombie-powered car (seriously, Alex had stuck horribly twisted humans to either side to work the wheels) through a tube of pain, where each section was rotating in a different direction and had different obstacles cut out. And occasionally there were obstacles, like rotating discs with slices cut out. Gray spent a lot of time flying out of the gaps on the sides – and getting near-saves, only to have victory snatched away again by falling out of a DIFFERENT gap. XD And then at the end there was a big turn upward with a bunch of boosts to help him fly to the area he had to land on – once again protected by a wind turbine. Gray didn’t end up shooting the car this time, but you got the feeling he really wanted to.

III. The Moon Ramp (as Gray himself called it), where Gray had to share a weird UFO-wheeled car with Satan and drive it down the world’s worst ramp from the moon. This one had an opening section with a bunch of wind turbines spinning on their poles; then the Rainbow Spiral of Pain; then straight into a WALL RIDE (with another turbine pressed up against it), which had a ramp at the top to shoot you through a hole, down another platform, through another thumbnail hole, under a small ramp, and over to an archway; which then led to the ALTERNATING ROAD SECTIONS part, with triangles placed in the exact middle path where they overlapped as to launch the unwary; which led into a bit alternating ramp section; which shot Gray through a boost and had him fly his way into a big old gap in the building under construction to get the win. It took quite a few tries, and Gray NEARLY missed the win at the end, but thanks to the boost, he was able to crawl up the wall and get it. :D Alex and Gray BOTH bringing their A+ games today!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! To my relief, I was able to get the rest of this week’s Victor Luvs Alice posts into the queue after Gray – an update on my current writing projects for Thursday (showing where I’m at with “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” and the “As Long As You Love Me” holistic!verse stuff); a bunch Halloween-related Valicer headcanons for Friday; and my yearly reblog of the Flyleaf cover of “What’s This?” from The Nightmare Before Christmas for Saturday. w00!

*nods* Getting my period earlier sucked, but getting all that sorted really did help my mood, yes. :) So now it's off to finish off everything else and head to bed! Two more days to go. . .night all!