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Cold Windy Saturday
Jan. 4th, 2025 11:55 pmThe former I was expecting, the latter not so much -- we had gusts up to 30 MPH today! O.O Which isn't the WORST wind we've had, but it certainly made everything a lot colder. *shivers* Very glad I didn't have to go out in it! Though it's supposed to be pretty damn chilly all this upcoming week, sooo once I have to go back to work on Monday -- bleh. >( At least it's a good excuse to wear my Smiler scarf?
As for what I actually did today, well --
Cleaning/Laundry: Yup, back on this grind after giving myself a week off during the Christmas/New Year’s break! And it was a pretty typical Cleaning Saturday With Laundry: I got started with the dusting (to the tune of the next Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark episode on my “relisten” list, “The Gut-Cutters Bargain” – delightful as always) around 10:30 AM, and finished up with the vacuuming around 1:20 PM, right before lunch (Mom was nice enough to delay us eating until I was done). As for my laundry, that got folded into the tail end of the rest of the washing – first load went in around 11:30 AM, second load came out around 3:30 PM (didn’t QUITE get it when everything was still fresh and warm, but my big purple blanket still had a nice big warm spot in it, so that was nice :) ). So that’s all set for another two weeks again, yay~
Tumblr: Didn’t get anything done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), which isn’t surprising for a cleaning Saturday, but I did have a little activity on Valice Multiverse tonight – toonsisters sent over an ask stating the three roles that fit the Cuddlepile Valicer trio too well – housewife for Victor, girl boss for Alice, and “sassy themfriend” for Smiler. They agreed that these were generally suitable roles, though Alice wasn’t sure just how “sassy” Smiler really was (with Smiler arguing they could be sassy when they wanted). And then toonsisters followed up with “short queen” for Alice, which Victor and Smiler promptly agreed with (with Smiler in fact playfully bowing at Alice, who accused everyone of being silly (with a smile, I assure you)). So that was nice. :)
Gaming: Well, I didn’t play any video games today, but I’ll use this section to shout out my family’s delayed Game Night – mostly because we played Clue, and I won four out of seven games. XD Admittedly the first win was sheer luck, but I’ll take it regardless! Dad won the other three, and poor Mom didn’t get any. *pats her* Sorry Mom – maybe next time!
Writing: Got about another page done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight, after all the YouTubing (see below), with Alice and Victor engaging in a little more banter (with Victor telling Alice that he’s a “natural worrier” and thus won’t stop worrying about her safety when she goes out, and Alice teasing him by asking if he considers her a friend because she saved his life or because she’s giving him a free place to live) before Alice finally headed out the door to deal with those plaguebearers. As she will tell Rabbit shortly, she just likes talking to one of the few people in her life who treat her kindly! Shame the rest of the chapter is going to be pretty gruesome, what with her discovering Milton’s dead body and then spending the rest of the night wiping out the Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle...
YouTube: Definitely got the YouTube videos I set out to watch watched today, hooray –
A) First up, we had the OXBoxtra marathon this afternoon, consisting of –
I. “smurfs.wmv” – the latest release in the new “we release a lightly-edited video of us playing a terrible, weird, or terribly weird game around New Year’s” series that they’ve got going on, this time featuring Jane, Ellen, Mike, and Andy all playing The Smurfs Village Party! Which, let me tell you, was more than a worthy successor to the original video on Garfield Lasagna Party which kicked all this off (made by the same studio, even!):
a. First off, Mike couldn’t even get into the packaging to get AT the game (Andy had to tear it open with brute force)
b. Then the Switch controllers they were using didn’t sync properly with the system when they started (they finally sorted that midway through the video)
c. And then when they booted up the game and installed the latest patch, they found that the “Village Party” mode (which the game was named for, and which was the whole reason they bought it, expecting it to be a terrible Mario Party clone they could make fun of) was in fact locked behind a surprisingly-epic-looking single-player “Adventure Mode” campaign (jokey comparisons to Elden Ring were made the moment they saw the shockingly-expansive map).
Sooo yeah. Not exactly an auspicious start! XD They ended up playing the “Smurf Them All” mode instead, where they had the game give them a random selection of twenty different minigames to go head to head in. Minigames like “Robin Smurf” (an archery game, pretty standard except for the controls being a bit iffy – you see, everything had the same D-Pad cross icon instead of specific buttons to press); “Go To Bed, Azreal!” (a game where you had to let the titular evil cat Azreal sneak up as close as possible to you before dousing him with sleeping potion – everyone struggled a bit with the timing on this one); “Enchanted Choreography” (a “Simon Says” style rhythm game where NOBODY understood how the controls worked – namely, none of them got that you were supposed to do your button presses BEFORE the countdown stopped, not after); and “Clay Whirlwind” (a game where you had to mash the right buttons rapidly to spin your pottery wheel, and which everyone complained absolutely KILLED their hands). In the end, Ellen won, Mike came second, Andy third, and Jane fourth, and everyone was like “we never want to play this stupid, hard-to-understand, crappily-made game again.” And when I say everyone, I mean including the game itself, which immediately disconnected all the controllers once they finished. XD Great stuff! Not a great game, but great stuff!
II. “Oops! 7 Great Games We Forgot to Cover in 2024” – the very last list video of 2024 (released New Year’s Eve, in fact), featuring Mike and Ellen quickly chatting about – well, seven amazing games that they never properly covered on either OXBox or OXtra! Including three that made their GOTY video that I watched earlier in the week – Andy’s Honorable Mention Balatro (the weirdly addictive poker roguelike), and both Ellen’s first Honorable Mention Flock (where you fly around learning whistles to collect various flying creatures to join your, well, flock) and actual Game Of The Year AstroBot (the adorable bot-themed love letter to all Playstation games). The other titles they quickly covered in this last-minute list? Tales of Kenzera: Zau (a Metroidvania-ish game about a young Shaman trying to bring back his father, based on folktales from south and central Africa); Indika (that creepy game about a nun who hears the voice of the Devil, that according to Ellen has some very memeable moments); Animal Well (a pixel-art Metroidvania-ish title where you play a blob that doesn’t actually have any means to fight, and instead must use its power-ups to both avoid and manipulate the animals in the labyrinth it’s trapped in); and Thank Goodness You’re Here (a Yorkshire-inspired slapstick puzzle game where you must help various weird Englishpeople with their various weird English problems). Plus Mike shouted out a new countertop arcade system that can run cartridges containing all sorts of classic games that came out this year, so that was cool. :) OXBoxtra apologizes for not getting to you earlier, games!
III. “7 ‘Health’ Items That Would Be Seriously Bad for Your Health: Commenter Edition” – and the very first list video of 2025, featuring Andy, Jane, and Mike talking about those health-restoring items or actions in video games that seem EXTREMELY counter-intuitive to how healing works in real life. Need to heal a teammate as Roland in Borderlands? Just level up one of his abilities, “Cauterize,” until he can SHOOT PEOPLE WITH HEALING BULLETS. Need two points of health fast in Redneck Rampage? Use the dedicated “quick piss” button to wet yourself, obstinately to get rid of all the booze in your system – it can even bring you back from the dead thanks to bugs! And speaking of bugs, do you desperately need a health top-up in Mad Max? Well, you see those maggots in that corpse over there? ...yeaaaah, that was the very first entry on the list, and I was just like D: through all of it. What the FUCK, Mad Max creators. Seriously, what the FUCK.
B) And second up, we had GrayStillPlays’s latest tonight – “Which bus can climb the highest in GTA 5?” Yes, the poor dude was forced to do a CLIMBING challenge with buses, featuring such climbs as a higgedly-piggedly badge staircase; a giant ice slope with a present landslide coming at his face; a pair of staircases made of soccer balls; Yeet Mountain (a giant slope made of Yeeters that yanked his bus around, which got thinner halfway up to maximize pain); and the Rings of Saturn turned into a staircase (with a meteor rain and a time limit to REALLY maximize pain). And while most of the buses actually did a lot better than Gray expected (for example, the JiffiRent airport bus climbed the ice slope, when Gray was so certain it wouldn’t he said he’d eat a Frisbee if it did), the ultimate winner was the one I’m sure no one expected – THE FUCKING TOUR BUS. You know, the one with a DJ STAND ON THE TOP OF IT. It didn’t do it with any particular style, but it had the sheer determination to get up Yeet Mountain at a half-mile per hour and the suspension to take on the Rings, and that’s all that mattered. XD Love to see a meme vehicle winning, honestly!
So yeah, accomplished everything I wanted to do today, which is a good thing! Though I have, once again, officially stayed up too late, so I'm off to bed. Tomorrow, gonna work on some drafts on Victor Luvs Alice, keep up with the latest from Gray and Jon -- and I'm still deciding if I'm going to clear out my Watch Later, play Fallout 4, or play Baldur's Gate III (leaning toward the latter), so we'll just leave it there for now. But stuff WILL be done! Night all!
As for what I actually did today, well --
Cleaning/Laundry: Yup, back on this grind after giving myself a week off during the Christmas/New Year’s break! And it was a pretty typical Cleaning Saturday With Laundry: I got started with the dusting (to the tune of the next Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark episode on my “relisten” list, “The Gut-Cutters Bargain” – delightful as always) around 10:30 AM, and finished up with the vacuuming around 1:20 PM, right before lunch (Mom was nice enough to delay us eating until I was done). As for my laundry, that got folded into the tail end of the rest of the washing – first load went in around 11:30 AM, second load came out around 3:30 PM (didn’t QUITE get it when everything was still fresh and warm, but my big purple blanket still had a nice big warm spot in it, so that was nice :) ). So that’s all set for another two weeks again, yay~
Tumblr: Didn’t get anything done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), which isn’t surprising for a cleaning Saturday, but I did have a little activity on Valice Multiverse tonight – toonsisters sent over an ask stating the three roles that fit the Cuddlepile Valicer trio too well – housewife for Victor, girl boss for Alice, and “sassy themfriend” for Smiler. They agreed that these were generally suitable roles, though Alice wasn’t sure just how “sassy” Smiler really was (with Smiler arguing they could be sassy when they wanted). And then toonsisters followed up with “short queen” for Alice, which Victor and Smiler promptly agreed with (with Smiler in fact playfully bowing at Alice, who accused everyone of being silly (with a smile, I assure you)). So that was nice. :)
Gaming: Well, I didn’t play any video games today, but I’ll use this section to shout out my family’s delayed Game Night – mostly because we played Clue, and I won four out of seven games. XD Admittedly the first win was sheer luck, but I’ll take it regardless! Dad won the other three, and poor Mom didn’t get any. *pats her* Sorry Mom – maybe next time!
Writing: Got about another page done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight, after all the YouTubing (see below), with Alice and Victor engaging in a little more banter (with Victor telling Alice that he’s a “natural worrier” and thus won’t stop worrying about her safety when she goes out, and Alice teasing him by asking if he considers her a friend because she saved his life or because she’s giving him a free place to live) before Alice finally headed out the door to deal with those plaguebearers. As she will tell Rabbit shortly, she just likes talking to one of the few people in her life who treat her kindly! Shame the rest of the chapter is going to be pretty gruesome, what with her discovering Milton’s dead body and then spending the rest of the night wiping out the Brotherhood of the Ninth Circle...
YouTube: Definitely got the YouTube videos I set out to watch watched today, hooray –
A) First up, we had the OXBoxtra marathon this afternoon, consisting of –
I. “smurfs.wmv” – the latest release in the new “we release a lightly-edited video of us playing a terrible, weird, or terribly weird game around New Year’s” series that they’ve got going on, this time featuring Jane, Ellen, Mike, and Andy all playing The Smurfs Village Party! Which, let me tell you, was more than a worthy successor to the original video on Garfield Lasagna Party which kicked all this off (made by the same studio, even!):
a. First off, Mike couldn’t even get into the packaging to get AT the game (Andy had to tear it open with brute force)
b. Then the Switch controllers they were using didn’t sync properly with the system when they started (they finally sorted that midway through the video)
c. And then when they booted up the game and installed the latest patch, they found that the “Village Party” mode (which the game was named for, and which was the whole reason they bought it, expecting it to be a terrible Mario Party clone they could make fun of) was in fact locked behind a surprisingly-epic-looking single-player “Adventure Mode” campaign (jokey comparisons to Elden Ring were made the moment they saw the shockingly-expansive map).
Sooo yeah. Not exactly an auspicious start! XD They ended up playing the “Smurf Them All” mode instead, where they had the game give them a random selection of twenty different minigames to go head to head in. Minigames like “Robin Smurf” (an archery game, pretty standard except for the controls being a bit iffy – you see, everything had the same D-Pad cross icon instead of specific buttons to press); “Go To Bed, Azreal!” (a game where you had to let the titular evil cat Azreal sneak up as close as possible to you before dousing him with sleeping potion – everyone struggled a bit with the timing on this one); “Enchanted Choreography” (a “Simon Says” style rhythm game where NOBODY understood how the controls worked – namely, none of them got that you were supposed to do your button presses BEFORE the countdown stopped, not after); and “Clay Whirlwind” (a game where you had to mash the right buttons rapidly to spin your pottery wheel, and which everyone complained absolutely KILLED their hands). In the end, Ellen won, Mike came second, Andy third, and Jane fourth, and everyone was like “we never want to play this stupid, hard-to-understand, crappily-made game again.” And when I say everyone, I mean including the game itself, which immediately disconnected all the controllers once they finished. XD Great stuff! Not a great game, but great stuff!
II. “Oops! 7 Great Games We Forgot to Cover in 2024” – the very last list video of 2024 (released New Year’s Eve, in fact), featuring Mike and Ellen quickly chatting about – well, seven amazing games that they never properly covered on either OXBox or OXtra! Including three that made their GOTY video that I watched earlier in the week – Andy’s Honorable Mention Balatro (the weirdly addictive poker roguelike), and both Ellen’s first Honorable Mention Flock (where you fly around learning whistles to collect various flying creatures to join your, well, flock) and actual Game Of The Year AstroBot (the adorable bot-themed love letter to all Playstation games). The other titles they quickly covered in this last-minute list? Tales of Kenzera: Zau (a Metroidvania-ish game about a young Shaman trying to bring back his father, based on folktales from south and central Africa); Indika (that creepy game about a nun who hears the voice of the Devil, that according to Ellen has some very memeable moments); Animal Well (a pixel-art Metroidvania-ish title where you play a blob that doesn’t actually have any means to fight, and instead must use its power-ups to both avoid and manipulate the animals in the labyrinth it’s trapped in); and Thank Goodness You’re Here (a Yorkshire-inspired slapstick puzzle game where you must help various weird Englishpeople with their various weird English problems). Plus Mike shouted out a new countertop arcade system that can run cartridges containing all sorts of classic games that came out this year, so that was cool. :) OXBoxtra apologizes for not getting to you earlier, games!
III. “7 ‘Health’ Items That Would Be Seriously Bad for Your Health: Commenter Edition” – and the very first list video of 2025, featuring Andy, Jane, and Mike talking about those health-restoring items or actions in video games that seem EXTREMELY counter-intuitive to how healing works in real life. Need to heal a teammate as Roland in Borderlands? Just level up one of his abilities, “Cauterize,” until he can SHOOT PEOPLE WITH HEALING BULLETS. Need two points of health fast in Redneck Rampage? Use the dedicated “quick piss” button to wet yourself, obstinately to get rid of all the booze in your system – it can even bring you back from the dead thanks to bugs! And speaking of bugs, do you desperately need a health top-up in Mad Max? Well, you see those maggots in that corpse over there? ...yeaaaah, that was the very first entry on the list, and I was just like D: through all of it. What the FUCK, Mad Max creators. Seriously, what the FUCK.
B) And second up, we had GrayStillPlays’s latest tonight – “Which bus can climb the highest in GTA 5?” Yes, the poor dude was forced to do a CLIMBING challenge with buses, featuring such climbs as a higgedly-piggedly badge staircase; a giant ice slope with a present landslide coming at his face; a pair of staircases made of soccer balls; Yeet Mountain (a giant slope made of Yeeters that yanked his bus around, which got thinner halfway up to maximize pain); and the Rings of Saturn turned into a staircase (with a meteor rain and a time limit to REALLY maximize pain). And while most of the buses actually did a lot better than Gray expected (for example, the JiffiRent airport bus climbed the ice slope, when Gray was so certain it wouldn’t he said he’d eat a Frisbee if it did), the ultimate winner was the one I’m sure no one expected – THE FUCKING TOUR BUS. You know, the one with a DJ STAND ON THE TOP OF IT. It didn’t do it with any particular style, but it had the sheer determination to get up Yeet Mountain at a half-mile per hour and the suspension to take on the Rings, and that’s all that mattered. XD Love to see a meme vehicle winning, honestly!
So yeah, accomplished everything I wanted to do today, which is a good thing! Though I have, once again, officially stayed up too late, so I'm off to bed. Tomorrow, gonna work on some drafts on Victor Luvs Alice, keep up with the latest from Gray and Jon -- and I'm still deciding if I'm going to clear out my Watch Later, play Fallout 4, or play Baldur's Gate III (leaning toward the latter), so we'll just leave it there for now. But stuff WILL be done! Night all!
