Happy Birthday Moose!

Doing this early so I don't have to cram it into my "always-later-than-I-think-it'll-be" regular update -- though I'm still pretty sure I'm posting this while you're asleep due to, you know, timezones. XD But anyway, here is your birthday fic, anonymoose_au, which is a follow-up to the Christmas one:

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“...what the hell.”

“Hey, that’s what I said!”

Doc snorted and lowered his bow, turning to look at his latest visitor. “Hello, George – what brings you by?”

“I wanted to ask you if you’d mind checking this new invention I thought up for for my next book for accuracy – but now I want to know what’s going on here,” George McFly said, looking from Doc, to the target, to Marty and Verne standing in front of it.

“Dad’s giving us archery lessons!” Verne told him, beaming and bouncing on the soles of his feet. “Before I go to wilderness camp in July!”

“Wilderness camp? You’re willingly going to one of those?”

“It was his idea,” Doc said, raising an eyebrow. “Well, after hearing me go on about my own boyhood summers spent in one or another...I take it your experiences with them have been less pleasant?”

“My parents forced me to go to one when I was eleven, and it was the worst summer of my life,” George said with feeling, pulling a face. “The very first night, it rained so hard that my tent got soaked all the way through and refused to dry out. And when I tried starting a fire, I could not get the wood to catch – the counselor had to do it for me in the end. And then I fell off the pier when we were practicing lifesaving and nearly actually drowned. And that was just the first three days!”

“Wow,” Verne said, eyes wide. “You didn’t mention anything like that happening to you, Dad.”

“Well, I’ve never fallen off a pier, and while it took me a while to start my first fire, I did manage it,” Doc told him – then, figuring honesty was the best policy, he added, “But I have had my fair share of unpleasantly rainy days in the woods. Don’t worry, though – I’ve already procured for you the most waterproof tent I can find.”

“Give him a life jacket too – just in case,” George suggested, before turning his attention back to the target. “So, guessing you signed him up for the archery classes.”

“I did indeed – mostly because I mentioned participating in them myself when I was younger, and Verne immediately decided he had to as well.”

“I gotta beat your record,” Verne said, giving him a big grin.

“Oh, that’ll be easy – I don’t remember what it was,” Doc grinned back, using his free hand to ruffle the fur on Verne’s favorite coonskin cap. He groaned and took it off to smooth it. “Do you have any horror stories about that class?”

“No – only because Mom thought, rightly, that it wasn’t a good idea to make me shoot anything sharp through the air,” George replied, deadpan. “I could be a bit of a klutz before Lorraine straightened me out...so that explains Verne, but – why are you doing this, Marty?” he added in the direction of his son. “You’re a bit old to be attending the camp.”

“Just looked like fun when I saw Doc brushing up,” Marty shrugged. “Granted, aiming’s turning out to be kind of a pain in the – butt,” he hastily corrected himself, looking over at Verne.”

“I know what an ass is,” Verne said blandly.

“You’re also a bit young to be using that terminology for the body part it refers to,” Doc scolded. “No swearing, if only for your mother’s sake.”

“Okay, okay – but yeah, it is pretty hard,” Verne admitted, gesturing to his latest attempt, stuck in the outer ring of the target. “You think it’s all lined up, and then BAM! Off to the side.”

“Yeah, exactly – I’ve been trying to close one eye, and that seems to help a little, but...” Marty shrugged. “It’s tough going.”

“Well, I’m sure you’ll get it eventually,” George said, tone encouraging if still slightly confused. “With enough practice.”

“And it’s not like anyone here needs to be perfect – I may as well leave the instructors at the camp something to do,” Doc added. He looked at his bow, then at George with a little grin. “While you’re here, though – care to give it a go?”

“Do you want one of us to end up in the hospital?”

“Come on, Dad,” Marty wheedled, offering his bow and quiver. “I’ve been doing this a while – worst that happens is the arrow just falls to the ground.”

“...all right, but just one shot,” George caved, heading over and accepting the bow and an arrow. “So – how do you do this?”

“All right – you line the arrow up like this,” Doc told him, helping him manuever it into position. “You don’t want it directly on the bow string, just resting against it...and then you hold the bow up like so...draw it taught – you want the bow to flex, not the string...now you line the fletching up with your cheekbone – yup like that...get a sense of your target...and – release!”

twaaang! The arrow flew straight and true, and with a THUNK! buried itself right into the bullseye. The four stared for a long moment. “...you should have taken the archery classes,” Marty finally said.

“...yeah, maybe I should have,” George admitted, blinking. He shook his head. “Anyway – book stuff?”

---

I came up with this pretty much immediately after doing the original archery fic for Christmas -- I thought it would be a fun follow-up, and I was eager to get George involved somehow since I know he's your favorite character. Thus why he gets a beginner's luck bullseye at the end there. Which hopefully makes up for all the torment I put him through at wilderness camp. XD Sorry, George -- I think I had the horrible trips from Calvin & Hobbes in mind while writing that bit -- along with the horrible summer camp Wednesday and Pugsley ended up attending in Addams Family Values. :p Anyway, hope you enjoy, Moose!

Slightly Less Cold And Windy Friday

It touched 40F today, imagine that! Fucking balmy after the weather we've been having. Though it's not predicted to last -- after a brief dalliance with above-freezing temps this weekend, next week it starts getting cold again. Blah. >( Hate this time of year, seriously. At least I have nowhere I need to go this weekend!

Anyway -- here is the write-up for this Friday:

Work – A final quiet, boring day to end out the week – one of my coworkers was away at doctor appointments most of the day, so there wasn’t a lot of chatter behind me, fortunately. I did the GL; I looked at the failed credit cards; and I spent pretty much all of the rest of the day finishing off my latest page of parish updates. *shrug* Could have been worse!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through the following:

A) The end of “The last Sim in the Tiny Town Challenge! - Part 13” by James Turner! Featuring James finishing up Silas’s “starter home” with all the essentials – while taking periodic breaks to make Silas take loads of random pictures of his siblings and the electronic backdrop he bought and the town itself from the roof of the town hall. Because he needed Silas to skill up to get better gigs, and he needed the money from the photographs to make sure Silas had important things like a railing on his staircase! And his very own indoor bathroom! (Which for some reason he built as a weird long room sticking into the kitchen area instead of doing what I would have done, which was MOVE THE STAIRS AND PUT IT AT THE BACK BEHIND THE KITCHEN. *shakehead* Oh James – sometimes I do wonder about your design choices.) But he did get all the essentials in place so Silas would be comfortable while he played his siblings, AND he learned that, if you take pictures using the tripod on the roof of the town hall, you can get some pretty damn EPIC shots thanks to the rotation. Seriously, he was able to take a picture of the town hall FROM ATOP THE TOWN HALL. Cheap and easy flight, just add tripod. :P But that finally means that all of the Sims have had their first episode – next week, we get to see one of the residents have their third and last one! Should be fun. :)

B) The entirety of “7 Best Upcoming New Games We Can't Wait To Play in 2025” by OXBox! Their first list video of the year, with Mike and Andy talking about those games coming out in the first half of 2025 that the gang is eagerly anticipating! Including Civilization 7 (which has you controlling three civilizations, one for each distinct era of history, instead of the traditional one), Like A Dragon Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (a spin-off of Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth that sees noted-and-beloved series weirdo Goro Majima wake up amnesiac on a beach and promptly become a classic pirate captain despite this series being set in the modern day), and Two Point Museum (the latest in the “build this institution and keep it running” series, with you getting to build a variety of museums as experts discover new finds and pick up fun curses in the background). Hopefully they’re all good – we need some good stuff to happen here in 2025!

C) And the song “Jolene, but she's an H. P. Lovecraft monster” by Laura Currie to round out the session! This song being one my friend WeirdKev shared with me on tumblr a couple of days ago, which is technically a cover of the Dolly Parton song but with the lyrics changed to suggest Jolene is a Cthulhu-creature. It’s oddly beautiful – Laura’s a good singer. And ukulele player. :p

2. Continue working on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: No check – while I technically had the time after Game Night (The Great Blizzard Game – Dad won the first round, I won the second), I just didn’t have the inclination. Mostly because I didn’t really want to continue with the LB stuff… Gonna have to find something else to work on tomorrow! Probably more Valicer In The Dark worldbuilding, that’s always a good go-to in situations like this...

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just GrayStillPlays tonight, with “I was paid to lie in court,” aka Gray plays Sketchy Individuals! This is a game where you play as a police sketch artist, interviewing people and sketching the criminals who have wronged them via picking the correct option from the choices the game gives you (face shape, skin color, eye style, eye color, hairstyle, hair color, etc etc). Once you have gotten all the details, you then move to a line-up of various criminals that at least vaguely fit the description, and you have to pick which one is the guilty party, with the goal being to arrest as few innocent people as possible. Now, you think that this is a game that Gray would happily deliberately lose, right?

WRONG. Gray was determined to get a high score because he didn’t have to screw anything up – the game was going to screw it up for him. For you see, the people he was interviewing weren’t always the most accurate or attentive. Like, some people gave good descriptions – the grandma who had her purse stolen, or the police officer who was distracted by donuts. But THEN you had people like the motorcyclist who only saw the person who jacked their bike briefly, mostly from behind; the small child tattling on their babysitter for using up all the green ink in the printer (printing fake money) who was more interested in talking about dinosaurs; and the colorblind man who saw someone streaking when he didn’t have his glasses on. Gray was very annoyed at how unhelpful they were. XD But he did his best, picking whatever option felt the most right to him, and in the end, he got six out of ten actual criminals! Which he noted was a “D” by the American grading system, but hey – at least he didn’t fail? XD

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – didn’t really have anything to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse. *shrug* I was already being pulled toward the old TV Tropes anyway, so this suited me fine.

Yeah, kind of an anticlimatic end to the week, but -- eh, I'm tired, and I wanted the time to chill. I can try being productive again tomorrow! Speaking of which, my goals for Saturday include working on some drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); working some more on the Polyheart House in Sims 4; doing some form of writing (like I said, might be some VITD worldbuilding); and keeping up with the YouTube Subs and maybe getting the latest Petey Plays It video out of my Watch Later. We'll see how it all shakes out! Night all!