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Bitchier And More Distracted Wednesday
Jan. 7th, 2026 11:50 pmYeaaaaah, part of me is wondering if that time of the month is working its way toward me, given I've been grumpier than normal and having a harder time concentrating. I mean, it could also just be my shitty sleep habits, sure, but -- eh. We know what my PMS is like, and this feels roughly in the same area. *shakehead* Bleh. Managed to wrangle my concentration enough to get the following done, though:
Work – It was an okay Wednesday at work:
A) I spent the morning finishing up the review of all the people with overpayments and talking to my coworker about it – we’re gonna talk to our supervisor about it tomorrow and get her feedback; updating my document detailing the many failures of the credit card people to indicate they had fixed a few problems; failing to do a large credit card gift because the bank insisted the donor’s card didn’t have the funds; and doing a bit of roster maintenance by going through some obituaries
B) Lunch was spent in one of the conference rooms as we had our delayed Christmas luncheon with the Foundation office (their head was sick before Christmas) – I had a very nice chicken parm sandwich and some lovely fries, and a somewhat-less-nice sea-salt-and-chocolate-chunk cookie
C) And I spent the afternoon working on going through a list of new parishioners for a parish and seeing who was in the system and who wasn’t, while also fielding calls from people wanting to make credit card gifts and update their records with new parishes
Reasonably busy day – the flurry of calls in the afternoon was a bit frustrating, but it could have been worse, I suppose. And I did enjoy my lunch, so that was good. :) We’ll see how tomorrow goes!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s pedaling session took me through:
A) The final chunk of “KIDS ON BIKES – A Twixtmas Disappearance | Oxventure Holiday Special” by Oxventure! The big finale of this delightfully ridiculous Christmas special about a 13-year-old conspiracy theorist (Tori), her mystery-obsessed twin brother (Corey), and their new shy friend who has extremely neglectful marine biologist parents (Keegan) discovering the Yule Cat, Yule Lads, and Gryla the troll-witch from Icelandic folklore are real and trying to eat kids in their neighborhood (notably their friends Christopher “Rollo” Williams-Fiarucci and Sarah Smith) featured:
I. Corey attempting to crawl into Gryla’s kitchen to save the trapped Sarah through the cat flap on the door and getting stuck on a poor roll – fortunately, Keegan ding-dong-ditching Gryla manages to distract her before she can see him (the Yule Lads are WAAAY too busy messing up the place to notice the tween), and a boot on the rear from Tori gets him through – albeit wearing the cat flap as a belt XD
( Cutting to save your dashes, as always )
B) And the entirety of “Top 10 Fourth Wall Breaks in Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream! A fun list of moments in BG3 where the characters indicate that they might have at least some knowledge that they’re in a video game. Including:
I. Dolly Dolly Dolly the pixie (the one who gives you a blessing to deal with the shadow curse in Act 2 if you free her from the lamp she’s imprisoned in, and gives you a bell that you can use to call her and get blessed anew) responding to the character who summoned her telling her “We’re living in a magical theatre show puppeteered by a madman” by going “HEY! You’re not supposed to know that! Eat dirt!” and transforming them into a boar
II. Post the player character signing a contract with Raphael to get a powerful magic item with him to free someone in the end-game (because the alternative is sneaking into his house, stealing it from him, and then having a boss fight against him), Minsc the ranger (a companion from older Baldur’s Gate games you can pick up in Act 3) pointing out this was a bad idea to the PC, as devils bind people by their names...then going “unless you put down a false one!” and trying to guess the fake name – including “something foolish, like...Shadowheart!” (aka the name of one of the FIRST COMPANIONS YOU MEET) and “Tav! No, you’re right Boo. That is a stupid, stupid name” (“Tav” being the placeholder name for any custom character who isn’t a Dark Urge – I believe it comes from the CEO’s dog, Gustav). Basically the game using Minsc to be self-aware about how silly some of its names are
III. The various characters responding to you spam-clicking their portraits by indicating their awareness of being poked so much, including a frustrated Karlach going “Don’t. Poke. The Karlach;” Gale wishing he could cast “Hold Person” on the player; and Jaheira (another returning character from the earlier games who becomes a companion late in Act 2) commenting that “I would poke you back, but I fear that’s what you want,” and complaining how this makes her wish they hadn’t brought her back for this game
IV. And Karlach, trying out some “can look into your eyes and see if you’re telling truth or lies” magic she learned back in Avernus on the player character, suddenly gaining awareness of being in a video game (or, at least, part of some sort of “Grand Design”) and having a chat with the PLAYER, asking if they know how the adventure ends (and getting jealous if they say they’ve had a few adventures under their belt) and, more importantly, if they’re having fun (and cheering if they say yes) – though it should be noted that, according to what I’ve heard, this scene was cut out of the game early on (possibly before it’s official release) and you have to use mods to actually see it. Still, nice to experience it in video form!
Good stuff! I like lists like this, they’re usually a good time. :)
2. Work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 6: Check – Alice finished up her chat with Strauss about Resonance today, which included:
A) Alice joking that, given what she’s heard about what the Kiss feels like for humans, she’s surprised that anyone’s managed to identify a Resonance OTHER than Sanguine (aka the happy, sexy one), and Strauss allowing that it IS one of the most common ones that they see, before pointing out that not every Kindred feeds by seducing their victim – some just grab people and take what they want; others slip into the bedrooms of sleeping mortals and sup on them as they dream; and still others become part of a subculture and exploit their fellows there (all legit “Predator Types” from the V5 edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, by the way)
B) Alice asking what Sanguine Resonance boosts, and getting a little annoyed when Strauss told her that it was best at boosting Thaumaturgy and Presence, two Disciplines she very much does not have – fortunately, Strauss clarified that any Resonance provides a small boost to all Disciplines, it’s just certain ones boost certain Disciplines more. Which is not how it works in V5, if I remember correctly, but this is my fic using the VTMB versions of the old rules, so I think I’m allowed to tweak things if I want. :P
C) Alice then asking what Resonances she should be aiming for to get the most bang for her buck, Discipline-wise, and Strauss informing her that Melancholy Resonances boosted Obfuscate, and Phlegmatic ones Auspex – before admitting that he didn’t know for sure if Phlegmatic also boosted Dementation, as their studies had only proven it boosted Dominate. And while he allowed that Dementation was a very-closely-linked Discipline – perhaps a form of Dominate warped by the Malkavian clan curse – he wasn’t going to go as far as some of his colleagues and claim it should be considered a set of powers under Dominate instead of its own thing. (Which was really just a disguised form of me bitching about V5 doing that exact thing. *rolls eyes*) Alice theorized that, given what she’d personally done with Dementation (distract people by making them laugh or cry, and inflicting her Wonderland on them to distract them in battle), she’d argue that Choleric might be the best Resonance for it – or maybe different Dementation powers synced with different emotions, meaning any Resonance might be good for it. Strauss was quite intrigued by this line of thought, and said if Alice was willing to share any information she learned in the field, he’d be happy to compensate her. (None of this was in the original draft, by the way – I just kind of went off on a ramble on how I thought Dementation should work with Resonance. XD)
D) And finally, Alice promising to let Strauss know what she learned, before declaring she’d better go and take care of Pisha before she ate anyone else, with Strauss reminding her to make all haste to the museum afterward. LaCroix still wants that sarcophagus, after all!
*nods* Good stuff! It was actually kind of fun to go on that Resonance Ramble – I like thinking about that sort of thing. Hopefully my future readers will enjoy it too! Next time, though, Alice heads out – not to deal with Pisha, but to figure out how to handle Simon Milligan. Because THAT loose end definitely needs to be tied up first!
3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – checked out the latest from OXtra this evening: “I Hate Horror: Here's What I Learned Playing Horror Games!” Which was Ellen talking about what she’s learned about horror and horror game design during five years of playing various horror games for the “Fear Academy” streams the channel hosts during October! More specifically, what she learned from playing Poppy Playtime (an indie horror game where you must solve puzzles and avoid evil dolls in an evil doll factory) for some of those streams –
Namely, that if you make a section of your game a tedious slog where the player is likely to die repeatedly, the game is not going to be scary anymore. Basically, the majority of the video was Ellen bitching about how Poppy Playtime’s various chapters are very good at ratcheting up the tension at the beginning of each section, but then piss it all down the drain during the Inevitable Super Long Often Confusing NO CHECKPOINTS Chase Sequence at the end. Being chased by Huggy Wuggy, the large soft blue toy with all the teeth, through a maze of various corridors inside some machinery at the end of Chapter 1 was scary for her the first time – but after repeated failures caused by being unable to tell where the hell she was going, getting stuck on the scenery, and having to start the whole sequence over and over and OVER again every time she died, Ellen’s terror turned to rage and “I just want to be fucking done” stress. And his wasn’t even the worst of the chase sequences – that honor belonged to the fucking maze in Chapter 3 that she had to run from possessed half-a-plush dog Dog Day in, which not only had many confusing, hard-to-navigate sections, but also little smiley insta-kill plushie monsters hiding everywhere! Not to mention, once it led her down the wrong tunnel and then glitched out, showing her a frozen Dog Day reaching at her from outside the skybox before realizing “Oh wait, we need to kill you” and doing so! Poor Jane couldn’t figure out whether Ellen had gone the wrong way or encountered a bug before Ellen told her it was probably both. Ellen couldn’t help but compare the sequences to similar chase sequences in Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village – acknowledging that she was comparing “little apples to big apples” (aka something made by a tiny independent studio to a AAA company), but saying that the truth of “nearly dying is always scarier than ACTUALLY dying – the best chase sequences give you every chance to stay ahead of the monster” still applied. After all, she still enjoyed watching back the footage for the RE stuff and seeing how she managed to avoid getting got no matter what was menacing her – while when she watched back the PP footage, all she saw was how annoyed she was at having to slog through the same sequence over and over. *nods* Preach it, girl – repetition like that RUINS games, no matter what they are. Anyway, she ended the video by offering a bit of free advice to horror game makers –
I. Make your game hard, but not TOO hard
II. Don’t put people in impossible situations in maze sections by not giving them good clues as to where they should go, or by not properly playtesting certain parts (like a swing-and-jump that just DID NOT WORK because the grapple point was just too close to the person trying to grapple)
III. And don’t rely on jump scare death screens for all your scares, because – as previously stated – dying repeatedly isn’t scary, just annoying
*nods* A solid analysis about what makes a horror game work, and what stops it from working, I think! But then again, she’s had to learn a few things over five years of “Fear Academy.” XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I MEANT to get my Song Saturday post into the queue, but I just ran out of time due to having to focus on other stuff. But I have a candidate – I just need to reblog it into the queue. Should be able to do that tomorrow!
Aaaand there's my shitty sleep habits, right on schedule, as I have again stayed up too late. *shakehead* Better haul my ass to bed now. Night all!
Work – It was an okay Wednesday at work:
A) I spent the morning finishing up the review of all the people with overpayments and talking to my coworker about it – we’re gonna talk to our supervisor about it tomorrow and get her feedback; updating my document detailing the many failures of the credit card people to indicate they had fixed a few problems; failing to do a large credit card gift because the bank insisted the donor’s card didn’t have the funds; and doing a bit of roster maintenance by going through some obituaries
B) Lunch was spent in one of the conference rooms as we had our delayed Christmas luncheon with the Foundation office (their head was sick before Christmas) – I had a very nice chicken parm sandwich and some lovely fries, and a somewhat-less-nice sea-salt-and-chocolate-chunk cookie
C) And I spent the afternoon working on going through a list of new parishioners for a parish and seeing who was in the system and who wasn’t, while also fielding calls from people wanting to make credit card gifts and update their records with new parishes
Reasonably busy day – the flurry of calls in the afternoon was a bit frustrating, but it could have been worse, I suppose. And I did enjoy my lunch, so that was good. :) We’ll see how tomorrow goes!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s pedaling session took me through:
A) The final chunk of “KIDS ON BIKES – A Twixtmas Disappearance | Oxventure Holiday Special” by Oxventure! The big finale of this delightfully ridiculous Christmas special about a 13-year-old conspiracy theorist (Tori), her mystery-obsessed twin brother (Corey), and their new shy friend who has extremely neglectful marine biologist parents (Keegan) discovering the Yule Cat, Yule Lads, and Gryla the troll-witch from Icelandic folklore are real and trying to eat kids in their neighborhood (notably their friends Christopher “Rollo” Williams-Fiarucci and Sarah Smith) featured:
I. Corey attempting to crawl into Gryla’s kitchen to save the trapped Sarah through the cat flap on the door and getting stuck on a poor roll – fortunately, Keegan ding-dong-ditching Gryla manages to distract her before she can see him (the Yule Lads are WAAAY too busy messing up the place to notice the tween), and a boot on the rear from Tori gets him through – albeit wearing the cat flap as a belt XD
( Cutting to save your dashes, as always )
B) And the entirety of “Top 10 Fourth Wall Breaks in Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream! A fun list of moments in BG3 where the characters indicate that they might have at least some knowledge that they’re in a video game. Including:
I. Dolly Dolly Dolly the pixie (the one who gives you a blessing to deal with the shadow curse in Act 2 if you free her from the lamp she’s imprisoned in, and gives you a bell that you can use to call her and get blessed anew) responding to the character who summoned her telling her “We’re living in a magical theatre show puppeteered by a madman” by going “HEY! You’re not supposed to know that! Eat dirt!” and transforming them into a boar
II. Post the player character signing a contract with Raphael to get a powerful magic item with him to free someone in the end-game (because the alternative is sneaking into his house, stealing it from him, and then having a boss fight against him), Minsc the ranger (a companion from older Baldur’s Gate games you can pick up in Act 3) pointing out this was a bad idea to the PC, as devils bind people by their names...then going “unless you put down a false one!” and trying to guess the fake name – including “something foolish, like...Shadowheart!” (aka the name of one of the FIRST COMPANIONS YOU MEET) and “Tav! No, you’re right Boo. That is a stupid, stupid name” (“Tav” being the placeholder name for any custom character who isn’t a Dark Urge – I believe it comes from the CEO’s dog, Gustav). Basically the game using Minsc to be self-aware about how silly some of its names are
III. The various characters responding to you spam-clicking their portraits by indicating their awareness of being poked so much, including a frustrated Karlach going “Don’t. Poke. The Karlach;” Gale wishing he could cast “Hold Person” on the player; and Jaheira (another returning character from the earlier games who becomes a companion late in Act 2) commenting that “I would poke you back, but I fear that’s what you want,” and complaining how this makes her wish they hadn’t brought her back for this game
IV. And Karlach, trying out some “can look into your eyes and see if you’re telling truth or lies” magic she learned back in Avernus on the player character, suddenly gaining awareness of being in a video game (or, at least, part of some sort of “Grand Design”) and having a chat with the PLAYER, asking if they know how the adventure ends (and getting jealous if they say they’ve had a few adventures under their belt) and, more importantly, if they’re having fun (and cheering if they say yes) – though it should be noted that, according to what I’ve heard, this scene was cut out of the game early on (possibly before it’s official release) and you have to use mods to actually see it. Still, nice to experience it in video form!
Good stuff! I like lists like this, they’re usually a good time. :)
2. Work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 6: Check – Alice finished up her chat with Strauss about Resonance today, which included:
A) Alice joking that, given what she’s heard about what the Kiss feels like for humans, she’s surprised that anyone’s managed to identify a Resonance OTHER than Sanguine (aka the happy, sexy one), and Strauss allowing that it IS one of the most common ones that they see, before pointing out that not every Kindred feeds by seducing their victim – some just grab people and take what they want; others slip into the bedrooms of sleeping mortals and sup on them as they dream; and still others become part of a subculture and exploit their fellows there (all legit “Predator Types” from the V5 edition of Vampire: The Masquerade, by the way)
B) Alice asking what Sanguine Resonance boosts, and getting a little annoyed when Strauss told her that it was best at boosting Thaumaturgy and Presence, two Disciplines she very much does not have – fortunately, Strauss clarified that any Resonance provides a small boost to all Disciplines, it’s just certain ones boost certain Disciplines more. Which is not how it works in V5, if I remember correctly, but this is my fic using the VTMB versions of the old rules, so I think I’m allowed to tweak things if I want. :P
C) Alice then asking what Resonances she should be aiming for to get the most bang for her buck, Discipline-wise, and Strauss informing her that Melancholy Resonances boosted Obfuscate, and Phlegmatic ones Auspex – before admitting that he didn’t know for sure if Phlegmatic also boosted Dementation, as their studies had only proven it boosted Dominate. And while he allowed that Dementation was a very-closely-linked Discipline – perhaps a form of Dominate warped by the Malkavian clan curse – he wasn’t going to go as far as some of his colleagues and claim it should be considered a set of powers under Dominate instead of its own thing. (Which was really just a disguised form of me bitching about V5 doing that exact thing. *rolls eyes*) Alice theorized that, given what she’d personally done with Dementation (distract people by making them laugh or cry, and inflicting her Wonderland on them to distract them in battle), she’d argue that Choleric might be the best Resonance for it – or maybe different Dementation powers synced with different emotions, meaning any Resonance might be good for it. Strauss was quite intrigued by this line of thought, and said if Alice was willing to share any information she learned in the field, he’d be happy to compensate her. (None of this was in the original draft, by the way – I just kind of went off on a ramble on how I thought Dementation should work with Resonance. XD)
D) And finally, Alice promising to let Strauss know what she learned, before declaring she’d better go and take care of Pisha before she ate anyone else, with Strauss reminding her to make all haste to the museum afterward. LaCroix still wants that sarcophagus, after all!
*nods* Good stuff! It was actually kind of fun to go on that Resonance Ramble – I like thinking about that sort of thing. Hopefully my future readers will enjoy it too! Next time, though, Alice heads out – not to deal with Pisha, but to figure out how to handle Simon Milligan. Because THAT loose end definitely needs to be tied up first!
3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – checked out the latest from OXtra this evening: “I Hate Horror: Here's What I Learned Playing Horror Games!” Which was Ellen talking about what she’s learned about horror and horror game design during five years of playing various horror games for the “Fear Academy” streams the channel hosts during October! More specifically, what she learned from playing Poppy Playtime (an indie horror game where you must solve puzzles and avoid evil dolls in an evil doll factory) for some of those streams –
Namely, that if you make a section of your game a tedious slog where the player is likely to die repeatedly, the game is not going to be scary anymore. Basically, the majority of the video was Ellen bitching about how Poppy Playtime’s various chapters are very good at ratcheting up the tension at the beginning of each section, but then piss it all down the drain during the Inevitable Super Long Often Confusing NO CHECKPOINTS Chase Sequence at the end. Being chased by Huggy Wuggy, the large soft blue toy with all the teeth, through a maze of various corridors inside some machinery at the end of Chapter 1 was scary for her the first time – but after repeated failures caused by being unable to tell where the hell she was going, getting stuck on the scenery, and having to start the whole sequence over and over and OVER again every time she died, Ellen’s terror turned to rage and “I just want to be fucking done” stress. And his wasn’t even the worst of the chase sequences – that honor belonged to the fucking maze in Chapter 3 that she had to run from possessed half-a-plush dog Dog Day in, which not only had many confusing, hard-to-navigate sections, but also little smiley insta-kill plushie monsters hiding everywhere! Not to mention, once it led her down the wrong tunnel and then glitched out, showing her a frozen Dog Day reaching at her from outside the skybox before realizing “Oh wait, we need to kill you” and doing so! Poor Jane couldn’t figure out whether Ellen had gone the wrong way or encountered a bug before Ellen told her it was probably both. Ellen couldn’t help but compare the sequences to similar chase sequences in Resident Evil 7 and Resident Evil Village – acknowledging that she was comparing “little apples to big apples” (aka something made by a tiny independent studio to a AAA company), but saying that the truth of “nearly dying is always scarier than ACTUALLY dying – the best chase sequences give you every chance to stay ahead of the monster” still applied. After all, she still enjoyed watching back the footage for the RE stuff and seeing how she managed to avoid getting got no matter what was menacing her – while when she watched back the PP footage, all she saw was how annoyed she was at having to slog through the same sequence over and over. *nods* Preach it, girl – repetition like that RUINS games, no matter what they are. Anyway, she ended the video by offering a bit of free advice to horror game makers –
I. Make your game hard, but not TOO hard
II. Don’t put people in impossible situations in maze sections by not giving them good clues as to where they should go, or by not properly playtesting certain parts (like a swing-and-jump that just DID NOT WORK because the grapple point was just too close to the person trying to grapple)
III. And don’t rely on jump scare death screens for all your scares, because – as previously stated – dying repeatedly isn’t scary, just annoying
*nods* A solid analysis about what makes a horror game work, and what stops it from working, I think! But then again, she’s had to learn a few things over five years of “Fear Academy.” XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I MEANT to get my Song Saturday post into the queue, but I just ran out of time due to having to focus on other stuff. But I have a candidate – I just need to reblog it into the queue. Should be able to do that tomorrow!
Aaaand there's my shitty sleep habits, right on schedule, as I have again stayed up too late. *shakehead* Better haul my ass to bed now. Night all!
