![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Managed To Avoid The Snow And Wind Friday
Feb. 21st, 2025 11:49 pmYes, despite the weatherpeople predicting a possible coating of snow falling overnight (nothing major, just enough to be annoying) and the wind picking up today, from what I could see, we didn't get either. Like, it was cold, but it wasn't bitterly, horribly cold like it was on Monday. And next week we can expect to see temperatures in the 40s apparently! Now wouldn't THAT be nice... Anyway, here's the write-up on my day:
Work – A so-so Friday to end out the week – while it wasn’t wickedly busy, I did have a lot to do on account of having a long GL (which took up almost the entire morning due to me having to run two versions of one report) and a bunch of credit card stuff to look into (failed payments and repeated pledges and the like). Sent a bunch of e-mails, took some calls, plowed through my spreadsheets, and got out of the door at exactly the right time, yay. We’ll see what next week brings, now!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check, with my last night on the bike this week spent watching more Blades In The Dark-related videos! Specifically –
A) “Blades in the Dark stole my heart.” by Tabletop Sandbox! A video where he explains why the BITD sourcebook is such a great resource for GMs – basically, it gives you JUST ENOUGH detail in small, easily-digested, and easy-to-look-up chunks to get a good idea of the sense of the setting and the people who live in it, then lets you flesh it out as you and your players choose. Yes, you don’t get the dense lore that some other RPGs may provide, but you do get enough to go on, and the game encourages you to collaborate with your other players to make the world your own. Add in that the lore works well with the actual game mechanics (often giving “actionable information,” as TS put it), and – yeah. He really loves this game and its design! I do too, TS. :)
B) And “How To: Blades in the Dark” by The Flickering Torch! A video where TFT explains how action rolls work in the game, using an example of a character trying to get into a lockbox to illustrate stuff like position, effect, and the results of rolls. And mentioning during the quick section on “Devil’s Bargains” about how one of the characters in the livestream of BITD TFT was doing recently had to set up a maritime legal office because they kept invoking maritime law to get out of trouble. Like, what the fuck were you guys DOING over there? XD A nice, simple, easy-to-understand primer on the Action Roll! We love to see it.
2. Continue working on Multiamory March Prompts: Check – managed to squeeze in a story for the Day Six prompt, “Always Room For One More!” (Well, the alternate prompt I chose for Day Six because that was originally “team as polycule” and I already did that relatively recently in Polyship Week 2024.) Decided to do a far-future glimpse of the Londerland Bloodlines timeline, with Alice and Smiler looking at the police raiding The Sanctuary in the wake of them murdering Dr. Kelman – and Smiler going “well, now that this is done, I should probably say my goodbyes to everyone and leave.” Causing Alice to be like “???” before realizing, “oh, Smiler doesn’t think any of us forgave them for the Ministry kidnapping Victor – better fix that!” Fortunately, she was able to reassure them that nobody in the group hates them for what happened (in fact, she personally feels a kinship because Smiler too was kept in the dark by older, more powerful vampires)...and that she’s fine with the fact that they like Victor, and he likes them back. :) It’s pretty rough, but it’s a first draft – I can clean it up and make it pretty later!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half check – Game Night being Game Night (The 80s Game tonight, which is sort of like Trivial Pursuit but specifically for 80s stuff – I actually managed to win this particular game, which is rare because none of us are up on our 80s trivia and thus generally have to call the game before we spend all night playing it), I only had time for one of the two videos in the Subs. And, as usual, I prioritized the longer GrayStillPlays video – “When you remove just one planet from the solar system,” aka Gray plays Universe Sandbox 2! The experiment this time was “let’s move all the planets in closer and closer to the sun (and each other), and see what happens!” Which, yes, has nothing to do with the title of the video, but Gray is weird like that. XD Anyway, what happened was –
I. The inner planets of course started suffering, with Mercury heating up WORRYINGLY hot at times and Earth becoming a barren wasteland very quickly – though Mars actually got to have a little vacation in the Goldilocks zone, developing first a belt of water before getting actual clouds and a proper life likelihood! It didn’t last, not when Gray started scooting everyone in real close, but it did happen!
II. Despite warming up a fair amount, Jupiter resolutely refused to develop a life likelihood. Gray was annoyed. XD
III. PLUTO became the star of the show for a while when it developed cloud cover, then – upon being brought in – started looking like a pseudo-Earth of all things! Seriously, it had the same types of clouds and everything! Gray became invested and kept easing it in until it developed life likelihood, renaming it “Charisma Score 20” because it had so charmed him. Congrats Pluto!
IV. And, bizarrely enough, the planets somehow managed to avoid crashing into each other until the very freaking end, despite Gray pushing a lot of them into each other’s orbits – something about the way they were all positioned meant that they kept having near misses instead of actual crashes. Gray had to basically squash them all in REAL tight before they finally started murdering each other – and even at the very end, Mars and Uranus refused to fight and orbited the sun pretty peacefully until Gray put them both close enough to get swallowed up by it. Or, well, he THOUGHT he had – the very end of the video revealed that Uranus had survived. Feels appropriate that the planet with the goofiest name would make it through!
So yeah – I guess what this video teaches us is that, if we want a planet that could double as a new Earth for us, we should stop looking at Mars and instead send some ships to tow Pluto closer to the Sun. Who wants to volunteer for that mission?
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check tonight, surprisingly –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Added an idea I had earlier this afternoon to my draft of my Mega Ghostbusters AU that should hopefully resolve a problem I accidentally created trying to mash the plots of the 1984 and 2016 movies together. You see, while writing up the post, I decided the best way to introduce Clara would be to give her Dana Barrett’s role in the original 1984 Ghostbusters – put her in a building built to attract the attention of a world-destroying God; have her discover the terrordog Zuul in her fridge one day; and then have her call the nascent Ghostbusters for help dealing with said terrordog (immediately becoming smitten with Doc in the process). However – not only was the plan for Clara to officially join the Ghostbusters at some point (as she was an important member of the team in my previous 2016 movie AU, AND a potential “Winston” for the original 1984 movie AU), I’d already decided that Bumby opening up a ghost vortex a la the 2016 movie was what summoned Gozer in this universe, not the whole “two people possessed by terrordogs have sex and then open the way” thing from the 1984 film. So I had to figure out a reason why Clara didn’t get possessed in this verse, and what happened to Zuul to prevent that.
And then the solution hit me while I was in the shower tonight – have Clara trap the sucker! If she’s an official Ghostbuster, she’d have access to the Ghostbuster kit – and the whole reason she agreed to join is so she’d have the tools to deal with whatever the fuck was hiding in her fridge! So I added in a paragraph to the draft explaining that Clara sets up a trap in front of her fridge as things get more and more supernaturally intense in Hill Valley – and when Zuul tries to grab her, activates it and grabs Zuul instead. The capture of the terrordog makes the ‘Busters think that they’ve managed to stop Gozer’s arrival in their world (as they’ve been doing their research on eldritch gods) – but unfortunately, Bumby then does his “ghost vortex” thing, and THAT provides enough energy for Gozer to force their way through even without the gate being opened by the dogs… Basically, it’s a good thing that I’ve essentially got two teams of Ghostbusters in one place in this verse – they’re gonna need all the personnel they can get for the climax!
Valice Multiverse – Had one reblog to stick in the queue tonight – The Coven Wars expanding on their latest ask with Venus the amnesiac seven-year-old in the Forgotten Vows Verse by having her and her friend head out into the town and (almost literally) bump into Victor after the Alice hug. Venus was very struck by Victor’s height. XD Victor, for his part, took it in stride and introduced himself, crouching down a bit so he didn’t tower over the kid – we’ll see if he gets a dose of the feels himself tomorrow!
Not too shabby -- though I would have liked to have done more writing, or get both of my Subs videos watched. But you can only do what you can do! As it stands, I should get to bed. Tomorrow is a non-Cleaning Saturday, but given it's the last weekend of February, I have plans to do my taxes instead. Which means there's a good chance I'll be skipping any video-gaming in favor of getting those done and then catching up on my YouTubery. Also going to work more on the Multiamory March prompts, and my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts -- gotta get that post about the accidental Severance AU looks done at least! So yeah, lot planned, so I should really hit the sack. Night all!
Work – A so-so Friday to end out the week – while it wasn’t wickedly busy, I did have a lot to do on account of having a long GL (which took up almost the entire morning due to me having to run two versions of one report) and a bunch of credit card stuff to look into (failed payments and repeated pledges and the like). Sent a bunch of e-mails, took some calls, plowed through my spreadsheets, and got out of the door at exactly the right time, yay. We’ll see what next week brings, now!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check, with my last night on the bike this week spent watching more Blades In The Dark-related videos! Specifically –
A) “Blades in the Dark stole my heart.” by Tabletop Sandbox! A video where he explains why the BITD sourcebook is such a great resource for GMs – basically, it gives you JUST ENOUGH detail in small, easily-digested, and easy-to-look-up chunks to get a good idea of the sense of the setting and the people who live in it, then lets you flesh it out as you and your players choose. Yes, you don’t get the dense lore that some other RPGs may provide, but you do get enough to go on, and the game encourages you to collaborate with your other players to make the world your own. Add in that the lore works well with the actual game mechanics (often giving “actionable information,” as TS put it), and – yeah. He really loves this game and its design! I do too, TS. :)
B) And “How To: Blades in the Dark” by The Flickering Torch! A video where TFT explains how action rolls work in the game, using an example of a character trying to get into a lockbox to illustrate stuff like position, effect, and the results of rolls. And mentioning during the quick section on “Devil’s Bargains” about how one of the characters in the livestream of BITD TFT was doing recently had to set up a maritime legal office because they kept invoking maritime law to get out of trouble. Like, what the fuck were you guys DOING over there? XD A nice, simple, easy-to-understand primer on the Action Roll! We love to see it.
2. Continue working on Multiamory March Prompts: Check – managed to squeeze in a story for the Day Six prompt, “Always Room For One More!” (Well, the alternate prompt I chose for Day Six because that was originally “team as polycule” and I already did that relatively recently in Polyship Week 2024.) Decided to do a far-future glimpse of the Londerland Bloodlines timeline, with Alice and Smiler looking at the police raiding The Sanctuary in the wake of them murdering Dr. Kelman – and Smiler going “well, now that this is done, I should probably say my goodbyes to everyone and leave.” Causing Alice to be like “???” before realizing, “oh, Smiler doesn’t think any of us forgave them for the Ministry kidnapping Victor – better fix that!” Fortunately, she was able to reassure them that nobody in the group hates them for what happened (in fact, she personally feels a kinship because Smiler too was kept in the dark by older, more powerful vampires)...and that she’s fine with the fact that they like Victor, and he likes them back. :) It’s pretty rough, but it’s a first draft – I can clean it up and make it pretty later!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half check – Game Night being Game Night (The 80s Game tonight, which is sort of like Trivial Pursuit but specifically for 80s stuff – I actually managed to win this particular game, which is rare because none of us are up on our 80s trivia and thus generally have to call the game before we spend all night playing it), I only had time for one of the two videos in the Subs. And, as usual, I prioritized the longer GrayStillPlays video – “When you remove just one planet from the solar system,” aka Gray plays Universe Sandbox 2! The experiment this time was “let’s move all the planets in closer and closer to the sun (and each other), and see what happens!” Which, yes, has nothing to do with the title of the video, but Gray is weird like that. XD Anyway, what happened was –
I. The inner planets of course started suffering, with Mercury heating up WORRYINGLY hot at times and Earth becoming a barren wasteland very quickly – though Mars actually got to have a little vacation in the Goldilocks zone, developing first a belt of water before getting actual clouds and a proper life likelihood! It didn’t last, not when Gray started scooting everyone in real close, but it did happen!
II. Despite warming up a fair amount, Jupiter resolutely refused to develop a life likelihood. Gray was annoyed. XD
III. PLUTO became the star of the show for a while when it developed cloud cover, then – upon being brought in – started looking like a pseudo-Earth of all things! Seriously, it had the same types of clouds and everything! Gray became invested and kept easing it in until it developed life likelihood, renaming it “Charisma Score 20” because it had so charmed him. Congrats Pluto!
IV. And, bizarrely enough, the planets somehow managed to avoid crashing into each other until the very freaking end, despite Gray pushing a lot of them into each other’s orbits – something about the way they were all positioned meant that they kept having near misses instead of actual crashes. Gray had to basically squash them all in REAL tight before they finally started murdering each other – and even at the very end, Mars and Uranus refused to fight and orbited the sun pretty peacefully until Gray put them both close enough to get swallowed up by it. Or, well, he THOUGHT he had – the very end of the video revealed that Uranus had survived. Feels appropriate that the planet with the goofiest name would make it through!
So yeah – I guess what this video teaches us is that, if we want a planet that could double as a new Earth for us, we should stop looking at Mars and instead send some ships to tow Pluto closer to the Sun. Who wants to volunteer for that mission?
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check tonight, surprisingly –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Added an idea I had earlier this afternoon to my draft of my Mega Ghostbusters AU that should hopefully resolve a problem I accidentally created trying to mash the plots of the 1984 and 2016 movies together. You see, while writing up the post, I decided the best way to introduce Clara would be to give her Dana Barrett’s role in the original 1984 Ghostbusters – put her in a building built to attract the attention of a world-destroying God; have her discover the terrordog Zuul in her fridge one day; and then have her call the nascent Ghostbusters for help dealing with said terrordog (immediately becoming smitten with Doc in the process). However – not only was the plan for Clara to officially join the Ghostbusters at some point (as she was an important member of the team in my previous 2016 movie AU, AND a potential “Winston” for the original 1984 movie AU), I’d already decided that Bumby opening up a ghost vortex a la the 2016 movie was what summoned Gozer in this universe, not the whole “two people possessed by terrordogs have sex and then open the way” thing from the 1984 film. So I had to figure out a reason why Clara didn’t get possessed in this verse, and what happened to Zuul to prevent that.
And then the solution hit me while I was in the shower tonight – have Clara trap the sucker! If she’s an official Ghostbuster, she’d have access to the Ghostbuster kit – and the whole reason she agreed to join is so she’d have the tools to deal with whatever the fuck was hiding in her fridge! So I added in a paragraph to the draft explaining that Clara sets up a trap in front of her fridge as things get more and more supernaturally intense in Hill Valley – and when Zuul tries to grab her, activates it and grabs Zuul instead. The capture of the terrordog makes the ‘Busters think that they’ve managed to stop Gozer’s arrival in their world (as they’ve been doing their research on eldritch gods) – but unfortunately, Bumby then does his “ghost vortex” thing, and THAT provides enough energy for Gozer to force their way through even without the gate being opened by the dogs… Basically, it’s a good thing that I’ve essentially got two teams of Ghostbusters in one place in this verse – they’re gonna need all the personnel they can get for the climax!
Valice Multiverse – Had one reblog to stick in the queue tonight – The Coven Wars expanding on their latest ask with Venus the amnesiac seven-year-old in the Forgotten Vows Verse by having her and her friend head out into the town and (almost literally) bump into Victor after the Alice hug. Venus was very struck by Victor’s height. XD Victor, for his part, took it in stride and introduced himself, crouching down a bit so he didn’t tower over the kid – we’ll see if he gets a dose of the feels himself tomorrow!
Not too shabby -- though I would have liked to have done more writing, or get both of my Subs videos watched. But you can only do what you can do! As it stands, I should get to bed. Tomorrow is a non-Cleaning Saturday, but given it's the last weekend of February, I have plans to do my taxes instead. Which means there's a good chance I'll be skipping any video-gaming in favor of getting those done and then catching up on my YouTubery. Also going to work more on the Multiamory March prompts, and my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts -- gotta get that post about the accidental Severance AU looks done at least! So yeah, lot planned, so I should really hit the sack. Night all!
