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Late Late Tuesday
Nov. 29th, 2022 11:54 pmThough at least it is a productive late -- let's get right to it, shall we?
Work – Okay, today was less irritating than yesterday – at least in terms of not finding my lunch floating in a puddle of water – but it was also rather boring, with me doing duplicates all day after an initial “need to update my expiration date” phone call. Also I’m already fairly sick of the Christmas music in the office. *wince* We’ll see how the rest of the week goes!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “High Rollin’ Oxventure: When Worlds Collide!” After Dob just DEVOURED the snacks that Rosemeadow (the centaur – I suspect I may have been calling her “Rosemary” in error) offered him and Corazon (getting three temporary hitpoints in the bargain, as she has the ability to make magic food thanks to her Chef Feat – on the other hand, as Johnny made it clear that Dob ate the snacks bag and all, there was some speculation that he immediately lost the hitpoints due to having to deal with the bag in his intestinal tract), the gang left the “changing pool” and were let into the main work area by a woman in a smart Astro-Barn pantsuit, welcoming them to the “family” and saying that she’d get them introduced to their floor manager and all that. Nova and Dob both asked if there were tasks other than heavy lifting they could do (Corazon, who’d previously said he’d rather spend four hours escaping rather than two hours working, jumped in with “I’m very lazy”), and Nova added that, if they’ve taken her on as an employee, then surely she has some sort of contract, and she’d like to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. The woman said that they hadn’t gotten a fine-tooth comb in their order, but they’d be fine, they’d just have to work the two hours! She summoned the floor manager – Employee #200 – and left, not even pretending to consider the gang’s requests. #200 showed them the work area – basically there were a bunch of giant tubes spitting out scrolls at one end; employees clustered around magic wells gathering items and crating them up in the middle; and then taking those crates and kicking them through a giant portal at the other end. Apparently the kicking was very important to making the whole process work. He also showed them the work clock so they could track their time, and Johnny called for Wisdom/Perception rolls. Dob and Corazon looked up and said “yup, that’s a clock” –
Nova and Rosemeadow looked up and went “that is a clock that is moving INFINITESIMALLY SLOWLY.” And so the trap of Fantasy Amazon (I’m dropping the “Evil” – it’s Amazon, it’s IMPLIED) closed around them, as this facility has some sort of weird time-slow effect on it! Two hours for them in the warehouse could be who knows how long in their home realms! Add in Dob attempting to ask about “breaks” and being quickly shushed by #200 (who, by the way, was later revealed to have only been working there fifteen minutes) as the shadowy “upper management” gazed down disapprovingly, and yeah, the gang was very keen to get out of there. Dob’s initial plan was “we should probably at least PRETEND to do the work,” but Corazon pointed out that there was some sort of portal out RIGHT THERE. Though how it worked was a mystery. . . Dob promptly offered to be kicked through at the end of a rope so he could see where it went, but Rosemeadow said she could summon up a fae creature and brought into existence a lemur. Dob attached a rope to it, and Sentry gave it the boot (apologizing all the while because it kept turning to look at her) –
It flew through, but with an unpleasant buzzing noise (Corazon interpreted this as meaning the lemur was mechanical) – and when Dob tugged on the rope, he found that a) based on how the tug felt and what he could hear, the lemur was in fact right below them, one floor down and b) something was tugging back! Corazon, Nova, and Sentry all lined up to help while Rosemeadow panicked, and a couple of good rolls – including a nat 20 from Sentry – meant they were able to yank their lemur through – along with the goblinoid trying to grab it!
A crit 1 from Nova (who in fact had a -2 modifier to the strength roll needed, meaning she in fact got negative one) meant that goblinoid got smashed RIGHT into her face. Corazon managed to tackle it, and the guy revealed that he worked on the floor below and took care of packages and suchlike that weren’t correctly labeled (and thus couldn’t be sent to their local castles to be delivered by the Van Wagon family) – anything that didn’t have a proper scroll label affixed to it got sent to him to be incinerated. Like the poor lemur. The gang managed to explain it was their first day, and bullshitted that the lemur was in fact an escaped product who’d gotten “accidentally” kicked in, with Corazon straight up adopting it and calling it “Corazon Jr” in the process. XD The goblinoid wasn’t exactly buying it, but just wanted to get back to his job, fortunately. Corazon ended up drop-kicking him through the portal after the guy insulted his parenting skills. XD Didn’t quite stick the landing, sadly, but it’s the thought that counted.
But yes – clearly getting themselves just kicked through the portal wasn’t going to work. Dob located a whiteboard and workshopped some plans – one, just fulfill their work contract and deal with the fact that when they got back, all their loved ones would be dead. Two, try to bring down the whole edifice from the inside. Three, find a way to contact their respective parties back in their homeworlds and have them place orders so they could hide inside crates and be kicked/posted back to their realms. Everyone seemed most keen on Three, with Corazon pointing out that if they could find a way up to the place that created the scrolls, they could create their OWN label without having to worry about getting in touch with the others. And upon finding out that the pipes spitting out the scrolls were MASSIVE, he started Greasing up everyone to help them slide in!
Cue Nova revealing she can cast Fly on at least a couple of them. XD Too late, though, most everyone was Greased, including an enthusiastic Sentry and a “this is gonna be awkward” Rosemeadow (who had to bend at strange and humiliating angles to get inside the pipe). They began attempting to climb through the waves of scrolls, only to find it quite difficult as the pipes go straight UP. Dob also realized that they could probably use a distraction, so asked Nova – the only one still outside – to do something. Corazon threw up some Dancing Lights, and Nova supplemented that with a Major Illusion of a mechanical lemur/fantasy Furby destroying loads of stock. Corazon promptly got a bad case of spell envy. XD I left it with the group trying some running leaps into the pipe to try and slide their way up with their greased bodies, and Johnny trying to figure out what kind of roll that even is. XD Strength or Dexterity/Athletics, I’d think!
2. Continue writing gift fics: Check – did the first draft of Squid’s today (my tumblr friend that I do VTMB-related stuff with)! They asked for something with archaeologist vampire extraordinaire Beckett from VTM along with their Caitiff turned-as-a-young-teen vampire Melody (adopted kiddo of Nines Rodriguez and their other character Arianna) – and as we’ve talked about some of the adventures Beckett and Melody are going to have together in the future, and how Melody might want to draw some of it, I did something based on that. Specifically, Beckett discovering Melody drawing in a quiet moment on his plane and appreciating that they want something physical to remember the trip by. . .but maybe take that picture of a Tzimisce flesh-crafted hell-creation out, because your mother will FLIP. XD Should get a chuckle!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Another two-thirds check on the Subs – didn’t get to Josh’s video today because I wanted to focus on other stuff. But he’ll be easy to catch up on tomorrow (I hope; kind of depends on what Kevin uploads). In the meantime –
A) First up, a quick jaunt to the Watch Later for an OXtra list – “7 Cruel Achievements That Made You Die Repeatedly!” A bunch of games that make you die a lot to pop achievements. Like Alien Isolation forcing you to die 100 times to the alien for its “100 Times Too Many” achievement! 7 Days To Die forcing you to die 500 times to the zombies and cacti for its “Meet Your Maker” achievement! And Hotline Miami forcing you to die 1,000 times for its “Karma” achievement! Hilariously, given the nature of the game, that last one is probably the easiest to get. Also, bonus points to Parallax for naming its multi-death achievement (a mere 20) after Sean Bean and his death scenes. XD
B) Then it was over to the Subs for my double dose of GrayStillPlays –
I. “I turned children's toys into nukes” – from yesterday, Gray plays Gun Run! A mobile game where you are a person who has a gun for a head, and you must shoot various power-ups in both distance, firing speed, number of people with guns for heads, and guns themselves to get enough firepower to blast your way through the evil money jellos to the missile at the end of the stage. Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. Gray loved it, especially the nuclear bomb, the missile launcher, and the upgraded sniper rifle (you get fire rate up on that and it is a BEAST). He loved it even more when he got his friend to hack it and was able to screw with the numbers however he wanted. XD Though admittedly he did find that max bullet speed was a bad idea, as the bullets were going too fast to hit things. 50 speed with fully-upgraded snipers did the trick, though! Ah, good times. Good, weird times.
II. “GTA but there's a natural disaster every 60 seconds” – from today, Gray – well, look at the title. XD Yes, Alex made Gray a new GTA V parkour challenge, this one themed around all sorts of natural disasters! And unnatural ones too, given “zombie apocalypse” appeared very early. XD Gray basically had to make it across the map, starting in the ocean and working his way to Mt. Chillead, pulling off incredible moves and avoiding being murdered by nature and supernature. First up was a wall ride in the ocean with the “sea wind turbines,” driving along various wall “ribbons” and doing all sorts of jumps while a tsunami and falling meteors made life that much more difficult (Gray made ALL the fun noises in that section!); then he had to get across town in his chosen vehicle to the Maze Bank while dodging exploding zombies and more meteors (he ended up switching cars after his first one got exploded and made it all the way to the stairs in a station wagon before just BARELY stumbling his way to the teleporter through an earthquake); then had to jump a hoverbike across the city to a platform containing a helicopter he could use in the next section (figured out how to use a nearby building and its road to launch himself at the correct height and angle, fortunately); then he ATTEMPTED to fly the chopper through a hurricane, failed, and had to take a car overland to the next checkpoint (which proved to be VERY hard to get because meteors kept falling in front of and on top of it); tried to sail across the river to the next checkpoint, but had to change over to a car when the Global Warming hit (and he lost most of the car to the dried-out riverbed); then had to take another car up some very windy and icy roads in a blizzard (dodging more meteors, zombies, and wind turbines as he Tokyo-drifted all over the place); and then finally had to dodge an avalanche of trucks and cars and other debris as he worked his way up the ramp to the top of Mt. Chillead, where he finally won and was given a plane to escape to Florida! Right before Alex opened up a black hole. XD Oh Alex, you always manage to top yourself, I swear.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – got the Wednesday Chill Save update, and some A:MR and CB reblogs queued up for Thursday and Friday, all in the queue on Victor Luvs Alice. Nothing was happening thread-or-ask-wise on Valice Multiverse, so I eventually hunted down some A:MR and CB stuff to reblog over there for tomorrow too. And, as a bonus action, I left a review on Chapter 3 of “Beneath A Broken Sky,” so yay, all set there for a bit!
*nods* All good! I'm happy with that for an evening. And now it's time to head to bed so I can see how productive my Wednesday is. :p Night all!
Work – Okay, today was less irritating than yesterday – at least in terms of not finding my lunch floating in a puddle of water – but it was also rather boring, with me doing duplicates all day after an initial “need to update my expiration date” phone call. Also I’m already fairly sick of the Christmas music in the office. *wince* We’ll see how the rest of the week goes!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “High Rollin’ Oxventure: When Worlds Collide!” After Dob just DEVOURED the snacks that Rosemeadow (the centaur – I suspect I may have been calling her “Rosemary” in error) offered him and Corazon (getting three temporary hitpoints in the bargain, as she has the ability to make magic food thanks to her Chef Feat – on the other hand, as Johnny made it clear that Dob ate the snacks bag and all, there was some speculation that he immediately lost the hitpoints due to having to deal with the bag in his intestinal tract), the gang left the “changing pool” and were let into the main work area by a woman in a smart Astro-Barn pantsuit, welcoming them to the “family” and saying that she’d get them introduced to their floor manager and all that. Nova and Dob both asked if there were tasks other than heavy lifting they could do (Corazon, who’d previously said he’d rather spend four hours escaping rather than two hours working, jumped in with “I’m very lazy”), and Nova added that, if they’ve taken her on as an employee, then surely she has some sort of contract, and she’d like to go over it with a fine-tooth comb. The woman said that they hadn’t gotten a fine-tooth comb in their order, but they’d be fine, they’d just have to work the two hours! She summoned the floor manager – Employee #200 – and left, not even pretending to consider the gang’s requests. #200 showed them the work area – basically there were a bunch of giant tubes spitting out scrolls at one end; employees clustered around magic wells gathering items and crating them up in the middle; and then taking those crates and kicking them through a giant portal at the other end. Apparently the kicking was very important to making the whole process work. He also showed them the work clock so they could track their time, and Johnny called for Wisdom/Perception rolls. Dob and Corazon looked up and said “yup, that’s a clock” –
Nova and Rosemeadow looked up and went “that is a clock that is moving INFINITESIMALLY SLOWLY.” And so the trap of Fantasy Amazon (I’m dropping the “Evil” – it’s Amazon, it’s IMPLIED) closed around them, as this facility has some sort of weird time-slow effect on it! Two hours for them in the warehouse could be who knows how long in their home realms! Add in Dob attempting to ask about “breaks” and being quickly shushed by #200 (who, by the way, was later revealed to have only been working there fifteen minutes) as the shadowy “upper management” gazed down disapprovingly, and yeah, the gang was very keen to get out of there. Dob’s initial plan was “we should probably at least PRETEND to do the work,” but Corazon pointed out that there was some sort of portal out RIGHT THERE. Though how it worked was a mystery. . . Dob promptly offered to be kicked through at the end of a rope so he could see where it went, but Rosemeadow said she could summon up a fae creature and brought into existence a lemur. Dob attached a rope to it, and Sentry gave it the boot (apologizing all the while because it kept turning to look at her) –
It flew through, but with an unpleasant buzzing noise (Corazon interpreted this as meaning the lemur was mechanical) – and when Dob tugged on the rope, he found that a) based on how the tug felt and what he could hear, the lemur was in fact right below them, one floor down and b) something was tugging back! Corazon, Nova, and Sentry all lined up to help while Rosemeadow panicked, and a couple of good rolls – including a nat 20 from Sentry – meant they were able to yank their lemur through – along with the goblinoid trying to grab it!
A crit 1 from Nova (who in fact had a -2 modifier to the strength roll needed, meaning she in fact got negative one) meant that goblinoid got smashed RIGHT into her face. Corazon managed to tackle it, and the guy revealed that he worked on the floor below and took care of packages and suchlike that weren’t correctly labeled (and thus couldn’t be sent to their local castles to be delivered by the Van Wagon family) – anything that didn’t have a proper scroll label affixed to it got sent to him to be incinerated. Like the poor lemur. The gang managed to explain it was their first day, and bullshitted that the lemur was in fact an escaped product who’d gotten “accidentally” kicked in, with Corazon straight up adopting it and calling it “Corazon Jr” in the process. XD The goblinoid wasn’t exactly buying it, but just wanted to get back to his job, fortunately. Corazon ended up drop-kicking him through the portal after the guy insulted his parenting skills. XD Didn’t quite stick the landing, sadly, but it’s the thought that counted.
But yes – clearly getting themselves just kicked through the portal wasn’t going to work. Dob located a whiteboard and workshopped some plans – one, just fulfill their work contract and deal with the fact that when they got back, all their loved ones would be dead. Two, try to bring down the whole edifice from the inside. Three, find a way to contact their respective parties back in their homeworlds and have them place orders so they could hide inside crates and be kicked/posted back to their realms. Everyone seemed most keen on Three, with Corazon pointing out that if they could find a way up to the place that created the scrolls, they could create their OWN label without having to worry about getting in touch with the others. And upon finding out that the pipes spitting out the scrolls were MASSIVE, he started Greasing up everyone to help them slide in!
Cue Nova revealing she can cast Fly on at least a couple of them. XD Too late, though, most everyone was Greased, including an enthusiastic Sentry and a “this is gonna be awkward” Rosemeadow (who had to bend at strange and humiliating angles to get inside the pipe). They began attempting to climb through the waves of scrolls, only to find it quite difficult as the pipes go straight UP. Dob also realized that they could probably use a distraction, so asked Nova – the only one still outside – to do something. Corazon threw up some Dancing Lights, and Nova supplemented that with a Major Illusion of a mechanical lemur/fantasy Furby destroying loads of stock. Corazon promptly got a bad case of spell envy. XD I left it with the group trying some running leaps into the pipe to try and slide their way up with their greased bodies, and Johnny trying to figure out what kind of roll that even is. XD Strength or Dexterity/Athletics, I’d think!
2. Continue writing gift fics: Check – did the first draft of Squid’s today (my tumblr friend that I do VTMB-related stuff with)! They asked for something with archaeologist vampire extraordinaire Beckett from VTM along with their Caitiff turned-as-a-young-teen vampire Melody (adopted kiddo of Nines Rodriguez and their other character Arianna) – and as we’ve talked about some of the adventures Beckett and Melody are going to have together in the future, and how Melody might want to draw some of it, I did something based on that. Specifically, Beckett discovering Melody drawing in a quiet moment on his plane and appreciating that they want something physical to remember the trip by. . .but maybe take that picture of a Tzimisce flesh-crafted hell-creation out, because your mother will FLIP. XD Should get a chuckle!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Another two-thirds check on the Subs – didn’t get to Josh’s video today because I wanted to focus on other stuff. But he’ll be easy to catch up on tomorrow (I hope; kind of depends on what Kevin uploads). In the meantime –
A) First up, a quick jaunt to the Watch Later for an OXtra list – “7 Cruel Achievements That Made You Die Repeatedly!” A bunch of games that make you die a lot to pop achievements. Like Alien Isolation forcing you to die 100 times to the alien for its “100 Times Too Many” achievement! 7 Days To Die forcing you to die 500 times to the zombies and cacti for its “Meet Your Maker” achievement! And Hotline Miami forcing you to die 1,000 times for its “Karma” achievement! Hilariously, given the nature of the game, that last one is probably the easiest to get. Also, bonus points to Parallax for naming its multi-death achievement (a mere 20) after Sean Bean and his death scenes. XD
B) Then it was over to the Subs for my double dose of GrayStillPlays –
I. “I turned children's toys into nukes” – from yesterday, Gray plays Gun Run! A mobile game where you are a person who has a gun for a head, and you must shoot various power-ups in both distance, firing speed, number of people with guns for heads, and guns themselves to get enough firepower to blast your way through the evil money jellos to the missile at the end of the stage. Yes, it’s as weird as it sounds. Gray loved it, especially the nuclear bomb, the missile launcher, and the upgraded sniper rifle (you get fire rate up on that and it is a BEAST). He loved it even more when he got his friend to hack it and was able to screw with the numbers however he wanted. XD Though admittedly he did find that max bullet speed was a bad idea, as the bullets were going too fast to hit things. 50 speed with fully-upgraded snipers did the trick, though! Ah, good times. Good, weird times.
II. “GTA but there's a natural disaster every 60 seconds” – from today, Gray – well, look at the title. XD Yes, Alex made Gray a new GTA V parkour challenge, this one themed around all sorts of natural disasters! And unnatural ones too, given “zombie apocalypse” appeared very early. XD Gray basically had to make it across the map, starting in the ocean and working his way to Mt. Chillead, pulling off incredible moves and avoiding being murdered by nature and supernature. First up was a wall ride in the ocean with the “sea wind turbines,” driving along various wall “ribbons” and doing all sorts of jumps while a tsunami and falling meteors made life that much more difficult (Gray made ALL the fun noises in that section!); then he had to get across town in his chosen vehicle to the Maze Bank while dodging exploding zombies and more meteors (he ended up switching cars after his first one got exploded and made it all the way to the stairs in a station wagon before just BARELY stumbling his way to the teleporter through an earthquake); then had to jump a hoverbike across the city to a platform containing a helicopter he could use in the next section (figured out how to use a nearby building and its road to launch himself at the correct height and angle, fortunately); then he ATTEMPTED to fly the chopper through a hurricane, failed, and had to take a car overland to the next checkpoint (which proved to be VERY hard to get because meteors kept falling in front of and on top of it); tried to sail across the river to the next checkpoint, but had to change over to a car when the Global Warming hit (and he lost most of the car to the dried-out riverbed); then had to take another car up some very windy and icy roads in a blizzard (dodging more meteors, zombies, and wind turbines as he Tokyo-drifted all over the place); and then finally had to dodge an avalanche of trucks and cars and other debris as he worked his way up the ramp to the top of Mt. Chillead, where he finally won and was given a plane to escape to Florida! Right before Alex opened up a black hole. XD Oh Alex, you always manage to top yourself, I swear.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – got the Wednesday Chill Save update, and some A:MR and CB reblogs queued up for Thursday and Friday, all in the queue on Victor Luvs Alice. Nothing was happening thread-or-ask-wise on Valice Multiverse, so I eventually hunted down some A:MR and CB stuff to reblog over there for tomorrow too. And, as a bonus action, I left a review on Chapter 3 of “Beneath A Broken Sky,” so yay, all set there for a bit!
*nods* All good! I'm happy with that for an evening. And now it's time to head to bed so I can see how productive my Wednesday is. :p Night all!
