Shitty Saturday

The morning was all tense because Dad was having pain and thus was all grumpy (understandably); I ended up spending most of my morning making a fresh batch of granola (since I used up the last of the last batch in my morning bowl of cereal) and changing the sheets on my bed, meaning I had no time to work on my Valicertines or anything else related to Valentine's Day; and Mom attempted to order some Chinese food for our belated game night through DoorDash, only for our Dasher to never show up -- Mom is pretty sure that he straight up delivered the food to the wrong house (who accepted it because "free food!"). Luckily we had plenty of lunch leftovers to eat instead, and DoorDash gave us a refund, but it was still shitty! And making everything worse is the fact that I'm certain I'm PMSing now, so my moods are, well, mooding. *sigh* I really miss when I could look forward to a weekend and it wouldn't betray me.

...and it's past 2 AM here, so I will have to complete this entry tomorrow. Because after a certain point it gets very hard for me to concentrate on what I feel I should be doing. *facepalm* Have the unspaced version of the BG3 and CaFae Tales stuff below -- I'll fix that and fill in the other two things I did later! EDIT 2/8/2026: The BG3 and CaFae Tales sections have been properly spaced out, and I've added the missing Writing and Tumblr sections for your perusal:

Writing: It took a little longer than I anticipated (mainly because I always seem to have more end-of-chapter notes than I anticipate, and I struggled a bit with coming up with a chapter title), but I did indeed post Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” today! AKA the brief POV flip back to Alice so we can see what she and Smiler got up to while they were separated from Victor, and so I could introduce Kasimir, the other Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark character I’m borrowing for this. I quite enjoyed writing this, especially the scenes of chaos in the Van Dort kitchen and Alice and Smiler’s reactions to the Van Dort aquarium greenhouse – I hope you all enjoy it too!

Tumblr: It was another dead quiet day over on Valice Multiverse, but while I didn’t get a chance to work on any Valicertine’s stuff over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did at least make a post promoting the new chapter of “The Van Dort Vacancy” over there! ...though I had to wait until after I’d played BG3 (below), because the formatting for “Link” posts kept breaking. *sigh* Tumblr is a functional web site...but yeah, that went up, and at the very least thesatiricaldemon was nice enough to reblog it, so...something!

Baldur’s Gate III: Today’s return to Faerûn consisted mostly of an afternoon – or, for the characters, an evening – full of cutscenes! With Smiler learning a bit more about their companions and possibly getting hit on by a couple of them. Oh, and they finally progressed one of the main quests too, at the very end. XD Let me tell you all about it:

A) I picked up where I left off at the end of my last session – with the gang all hanging out in the Wilderness camp, having helped Pandirna, offloaded more weapons on Dammon, and had a bit of trouble opening their various containers so Smiler could dye their new cloak. Accordingly, after everything popped back into existence, I had Smiler quickly open the camp chest and some of the various containers in their inventory to confirm everything was kosher with them – fortunately, all the inventory pop-ups appeared without a problem. *whew* Did not need that bug rearing its ugly head again! I then had Smiler do a bit of alchemy, creating an antidote (never know when you might need one of those – sadly, they crit-failed the Medicine check, so they didn’t get a spare) and grinding up some Rogue’s Morsels into salts, before sending them wandering toward the center of camp as I pondered whether or not I wanted to send the gang out again or have them long rest. Which did afford them an excellent opportunity to watch Lae’zel sharpening her sword, at least:



I do like the idle animations some of the characters do in camp – Lae’zel’s in particular seem so her. :p

Anyway, I took a moment and thought hard about what I wanted to do, considering such things like “the gang does still have one short rest left, might be a shame to waste it” and “well, Gale can restore his final Level I spell slot with that Arcane Charge of his, but Shadowheart is looking a little drained of magic” and “Astarion IS missing a few hit points, but, again, have a short rest in hand, so that can be pretty easily fixed” –

And finally going, “Screw it, I got that ‘Camp Events Overhaul’ mod for a reason – let’s have the party long rest and see what cutscenes I get that I might not have gotten otherwise.” I thus clicked the campfire and confirmed that I would like to end the day –

And, almost the moment day transitioned into night, I got a cutscene! One featuring Shadowheart sitting on the ground by the fire with her back to everyone, fiddling with the mysterious artefact that she took from her pod on the ship and muttering, “Damn thing...it has to open, surely. It has to do something.” Smiler noticed this and wandered over for a bit of a look – sadly, they failed the passive Arcana check to figure out what the glyphs on the sides were. They then asked Shadowheart what she had there –

Only for her to instantly hide the box (I’m not sure where, given how skin-tight her casual camp clothes are) and scramble awkwardly to her feet, going, “It’s nothing, trust me. Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” I considered having Smiler allow her to change the subject –

But decided, no, they’d be too curious at this point, and instead had them gently press her with, “Why are you so keen to dodge questions about that thing?” Which got them a guilty look from Shadowheart and an admission that “You deserve honesty more than most…” followed by a “but please, don’t ask.” She looked so sad that Smiler caved and said, “All right, I can respect that. But if you want to talk, I’m here.” Shadowheart admitted that might not be anytime soon, but thanked them, just the same. A nice, surprisingly tender moment between them –

That was, uh, slightly ruined by Gale creeping on the pair in the background. XD See for yourselves:


He was so interested in hearing what they had to say! Sorry, Gale, that’s between Smiler and Shadowheart – and besides, the artefact is one of the magical objects you are very much not allowed to eat.

( More Cutscenes And Screenshots Below )

FreeTube: Welp, finally managed to catch up on the latest “retelling of a fairy tale/myth by the CaFae Latte cast” by C. M. Alongi after Game Night tonight (Trivial Pursuit – Mom won, though it was pretty close) – “CaFae Tales: Eros & Psyche!” AKA “Chris realizes that the perfect way to promote the Kickstarter for her new book, Monstrous, is to have the CaFae Latte crew cover the myth she’s rewriting.” XD Here’s the recap, since I know at least Gigs likes those:

A) JC kicking things off by going to the Sphynx to ask her a riddle – “what the fuck do I get my awesome girlfriend as a present when she’s very particular about her art supplies and already owns loads of books?” (Sphynx: “That is the worst riddle I’ve ever heard.” XD) Bob rapidly sussed out that they were stressing about Valentine’s Day coming up, and JC admitted that while they generally kept things low-key for the holiday, they just like giving Nicole presents.

B) The Sphynx protesting Bob’s suggestion that JC give Nicole a “blind date with a book” subscription focusing on romance books by saying modern romance sucks and that you can’t beat the classics like Eros and Psyche – cue JC going “who?” and then admitting they slept through their English classes, with Bob adding that, even if that hadn’t been the case, did they REALLY have any faith in the American public education system anymore? The Sphynx admitted they didn’t. XD

( Warning: This Does Kinda Get Gross )