Kinda Stressful Friday

Mostly because Dad finally had the biopsy done this morning, but then proceeded to have a very bad day having to deal with people who apparently didn't have a clue what was going on with him. Which stressed out Mom, who was there with him, and me, who heard about it via various texts and Mom's ranting when she got home tonight. Add in us not being able to get a hold of Dad immediately when we tried to FaceTime him tonight (fortunately he called us back later), and me mistaking Mom having to yell into her phone during a later call with him to make sure he could hear her as her calling for ME for some reason, and the wind absolutely HOWLING outside my window earlier, and -- yeah. Not exactly the most relaxing day! Or at least the most relaxing evening... *sigh* At least tomorrow he should finally get to come home! Which will probably bring its own stresses, but still. Better to have him here than not! Especially since there's a pretty big snowstorm looming on the horizon for Sunday...

Anyway -- despite all the stressful stuff, I was still able to get some stuff done, the details of which are noted below:

Tumblr: Today was another day where I actually managed to accomplish things on both tumblrs, shock of shocks –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Got THREE things done today over here, go me –

A) First, I picked my Song Saturday song for the week and added it to the queue – a reblog of “This Year” by The Mountain Goats, which is famous for the line “I’m gonna make it through this year if it kills me.” I last reblogged it at the beginning of 2024, but given the way both the USA and my personal life have been going to shit all throughout January, it felt MORE than appropriate to bring it back around for 2026. *shakes head* I am going to be so happy when the 2020s are over...

B) Second, I revised more of “The Miseries Of Margaret Kelman (AKA What Happened To Smiler’s Birth Mother?)” since I was on a roll with that post yesterday – adding another reference link to the intro (to one of the times I reblogged my post featuring the “Smiler Shop TV” video so people know who Matt and Carol Alton are), adding “oh hey, her maiden name was Margaret Wallace” to the list of facts about her (and admitting I’d gotten that from my Shaun The Sheep Wallace & Gromit pin that currently lives on my desk XD), and writing up her situation in the Modern AU universe and the Londerland Bloodlines universe, as those are the only two universes so far where she actually has a chance of getting away from Kelman alive and unmolested (in the Modern AU, she successfully divorces his ass when he goes down for running a cult, surrenders Smiler when she realizes she doesn’t want to be a mother, and starts over fresh in another part of the country; in the Londerland Bloodlines AU, she runs when he’s attacked by the patient who will become his Sire, thinking he’s going to die (which, he kind of does), surrenders Smiler when she doesn’t want to be a mother, and starts off fresh in another part of the country – with the caveat that Kelman MIGHT try to track her down to ghoul or Embrace her, in which case she kills herself rather than be under his control again). *nods* Making good progress here – just gotta do the outro, give it another once-over, and do the tags, and it’ll be ready to pop into the queue at some point!

C) And third, I added a quick idea for a not-incorrect quote to the upcoming Volume VI of Valicer In The Dark Not-Incorrect quotes – Smiler introducing the Three Pillars to someone, and said someone recognizing Victor as the son of canned fish magnate William Van Dort, Alice as the woman from Rutledge the Doskvol Illustrated kept writing about, and Smiler as the creator and seller of that new hot drug on the market, Joy Serum...and asking how they get away with any crime (Alice: “We’re very good.”) XD I came up with it last night, remembered it after lunch, and decided I had to write it down before I forgot it!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I put another anon ask into my queue for tomorrow – a long ramble by Fact Core about how in 1927, Hebert Hoover declared war on Cuba; bread was sold for a nickel per gallon; and two men, Jeremiah Phillips and an unnamed associate, became millionaires from starting a new dance craze called the “You summabitch” (inspired by the unnamed associate kicking two children when Phillips met him) and poured all their money into constructing the Empire State Building over the next seven years...only for an Ice Age to set in and slowly kill all of humanity. I had Aperture Wage Slave!Victor respond by pinching his nose and noting that was a lot of nonsense, even for Fact Core, and ask if anyone had taken a look at his code lately. XD You know, feels appropriate to get a Portal-themed ask shortly after I started replaying Portal 2! Thanks anon! :)

Writing: Once again, got another chunk of edits done on Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” before heading into video game territory – today’s chunklet featured:

A) Alice and Smiler re-entering the busy kitchen, and Alice getting a bunch of potatoes dumped in her arms and told to chop them up into thumb-sized chunks; Smiler, meanwhile, ran over to help one of the other maids, Cecily, with a shadefruit (aka tomato – they’re in the nightshade family, hence the Duskwallian name) soup that didn’t taste right – they figured out it was too acidic and suggested honey to cut the sting

...and the rest of it is going to have to wait until tomorrow, because I'd actually forgotten I hadn't finished this section and it's 2:20 AM in the morning right now. *facepalm* Okay, time for bed -- I'll finish this and fix the spacing on the stuff before tomorrow! EDIT 1/24/2026: Spacing fixed and cuts added below -- here's the rest of the writing-sum up:

B) Smiler shocking Cecily and Mrs. Pemberly with the reveal that they’d been right on the money to suggest honey to reduce the acidity of the soup, leading to them getting assigned to making a cream sauce for some chicken, and Mrs. Pemberly being further impressed by Alice’s chopping skills; Alice couldn’t help but brag a little about being speedy with a knife, and in Wonderland the Duchess agreed and said that the only reason she fared so well when Alice fought her way back when was because she was just as speedy with her pepper, before declaring that the moral of the little anecdote was “Haste makes waste, but it also keeps you alive,” which Alice was happy enough to agree with

C) And Mrs. Pemberly, now properly convinced “Allison” and “Simon” actually had experience working in a kitchen, apologizing to Alice about doubting them, even if she still thought it was odd Nell hadn’t told her about the new hires, as she was usually pretty good at keeping on top of that; Alice suggested that she’d been too busy planning the party, and Mrs. Pemberly agreed, saying that if she’d put a tenth of the effort she’d put into arranging the event into trying to find her son...then stopping because now was NOT the time for gossip (shame, because I’m sure we all would have loved to hear it!)

So yeah, pretty productive page! I left off with Alice going to wash her knife in preparation for getting some shadefruit to slice up – next time, she’ll have a quick meet-up with Smiler at the sink, then get back to her temporary kitchen duties – at least, until she hears a familiar voice behind her...

Baldur’s Gate III: Got to this a bit later than I wanted, but I did get to it – and today’s trip to Faerûn to continue the adventures of Tav!Smiler and friends focused pretty much entirely on goblins and death! What do I mean by that? Let me explain:

A) I picked up where I left off on Tuesday, with Smiler and company hanging out in the Makeshift Prison at the back of the tiefling camp, having just convinced Arka the tiefling to spare the goblin prisoner Sazza instead of murdering her in a futile attempt to avenge her brother Kanon’s death at the gates. Reason? Well, as Smiler said last time, Sazza still had a story to tell, and they wanted to hear it – especially the bits about this “Absolute” who kept coming up… I thus briefly swapped control to Wyll to have him close the door into the prison (wouldn’t do for any of the tieflings to peek in and see the group apparently colluding with the enemy – Smiler will be resolving this situation in your favor, guys, I promise!), then went back to Smiler to quickly check the containers around the prison for anything interesting (nothing in the “Equipment” or “Evidence” chests, which I presume contains your stuff and any ill-gotten gains if you get sent to prison, and the barrels only had one carrot and one chicken – guess we know what the prisoners eat now!) before returning to the cage to chat with Sazza. She greeted them with “Ain’t sure why ya protected me. Don’t care, neither,” before cheerfully warning them that “It’s too late to make friends, worgmeat. My tribe’s comin’. They’re gonna burn this pretty place for the glory of the Absolute and ‘ang ya by yer guts.” *grimaces* Pleasant. Smiler, though, saw their opportunity and seized it, asking, “Who is this Absolute you’re so fond of? Your god?” An annoyed Sazza corrected them with “Goddess,” before declaring worshipfully that “We’re burnin’ Her name across the face o’ the world, we are. The Absolute is gold from the sky, She is. The blessin’ in the storm an’ the storm itself.” Smiler, quite intrigued, admitted that Sazza had caught their interest and asked if she might have any holy literature on her. Sazza responded that her tribe could fill them in –

Then revealed, “Absolute blessed one of our own – Priestess Gut. Got a whole lab set up. Cooks up potions that fix our lads no matter how much of a beatin’ they take. Could probably stick yer head back on if someone woz to chop it off. Mighty booyahg.” (Gale cut in here to clarify that “booyahg” was the goblin word for “magic,” adding “Primitive to a fault, but not entirely without merit.” ...that feels vaguely species-ist, Gale. But then again, that’s kind of a baked-in flaw of D&D…) Smiler told Sazza that they were very keen on meeting Gut if that was the case, and Sazza offered them a deal – if they got her out of the grove, she’d tell them where to find her. Smiler accepted her terms (to the disapproval of Lae’zel and Wyll), and Sazza urged them to hurry up and let her loose – “My tribe ain’t as friendly as I am.” Yeah, I suspect they are not, Sazza! Anyway, that wrapped up the conversation between Smiler and Sazza –

( The usual cut to be kind to reading pages )

Workout: My final night on the bike this week saw me switch gears from Fallout: New Vegas content to Baldur’s Gate III content for my Friday ride, as I watched “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Using Only Pink Actions?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! This challenge run saw Proxy’s pink dragonborn Dark Urge Bard Barney and his party of misfits limited to only using actions that have a pink icon – no jumping, no normal weapon actions, no drinking healing potions, and nothing that Proxy decided shaded too far toward purple, like Thunderwave. It was all pink, all the time – Proxy even downloaded an unlimited pink dye mod to make sure everyone’s armor was as pink as their actions. XD As usual, the quest was to reach the end of the game and secure whatever ending best suited the Pink Panthers (which is NOT what Proxy called them, but what he SHOULD have called them). Did they succeed?

Yes – but it was a ROYAL pain in the ass for poor Proxy, who apparently spent fifty-six hours on this particular run. O.O Highlights of this cavalcade of pink pain for our favorite BG3 challenge runner included:

( Let’s cut this too for good measure )

EDIT 1/24/2026: ...okay, what I think I really need to do is just not double-up on games and videos that I KNOW will take me a long time to sum up. No more Proxy if I've played BG3, for example. Sad, but has to be done! Though I don't think it'll be much of a problem after this week, given I will have less free time to play video games...we'll see.