Not A Particularly Great Saturday

Dad unfortunately had a pretty rough time of it today (feeling tired and queasy much of the day), meaning it was kind of a "bad vibes" day, especially in the morning. :( But I did manage to do everything that I'd hoped to do today despite that:

Tumblr: I didn’t expect to get anything done on tumblr today, I confess – between waking up later than I’d wanted, dealing with Dad not feeling good, and having to spend most of the morning making a fresh batch of granola to eat with my cereal on my days off, it didn’t seem likely that I’d be able to get into my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts at all. But, fortunately, I was able to sneak in both right before and right after lunch and do a little work on my “VITD” timeline post:

A) Writing up a rough draft of the starting paragraph

B) Adding links to all the posts where I’ve talked about story ideas and to my three posted stories on AO3

C) And adding another story to the “starting line-up” I’ve decided on – the one based on the “When Freedom Calls” quest from Fallout 4, with the gang having to help the local version of Preston Garvey and the Quincy Massacre survivors. Right now, it’s set to happen right after “And There Was Only One Bed,” the story where the trio actually get together as a polycule – we’ll see if I decide if it should go somwhere else later!

Not too shabby, honestly! I’m happy I did get a chance to work on this, even if I didn’t get as much done on it as I’d like – hopefully tomorrow I can accomplish some more!

Baldur’s Gate III: As promised, I returned to Faerûn today to spend some more time with my Tav Smiler and friends, with today’s session consisting of inventory management (everyone’s favorite), an encounter with a devil, everyone talking about the encounter with the devil, and me wrapping up the quest to save Mirkon because the game wouldn’t mark it as done until I talked to Mol again. XD That’s the short version to prove that I can do it – now here’s the long version for your enjoyment –

A) I started out with everyone hanging out at the Wilderness camp, all Longstridered (and in Wyll and Smiler’s case, False Lifed) up and ready to go as per the end of my last session – but before I sent everyone out and about again, I was like, “You know, Smiler has a lot of scrolls in their scroll case that should probably be in GALE’S scroll case so he can scribe them into his spellbook later. And I have to hand out the Oil of Accuracy coatings they have to their friends who are more likely to charge in with melee weapons in the next fight. And maybe give their arrows to Astarion, as he seems to be becoming the archer of the group. Let’s do a bit of inventory management before we leave, shall we?” So I pulled up the “party inventories” screen and did just that! And after going back and forth between all my different party members and splitting item stacks and whatnot, I ended up:

I. Rearranging everyone’s various containers (both vanilla and mod-added “smart” containers) a bit so they were all in the same order: camp supply pack, keyring, alchemy pouch, potion (and elixir) bag, poison (and coatings) satchel, arrow quiver, explosives (and other throwables) box, scroll case, and book backpack. Just makes it easier if everyone has everything in the same order as everyone else!

II. Having Lae’zel hand over the trap disarm toolkit she picked up a little while back to Astarion, since he’s the Rogue and thus our trap disarming expert

III. Having Smiler distribute the three Oil of Accuracy coatings they had in their satchel (they’d picked up one in an earlier stash to go with the two they made at the end of last week’s “replaying a bit to get an extra interaction in the ‘Gale shows Smiler how to channel the Weave’ cutscene” session) between Astarion (for one of his two daggers), Lae’zel (for her greatsword), and Wyll (for his pact-bound rapier), before further giving Astarion the two Basic Poisons they were carrying around (felt most thematically appropriate for the Rogue to have them – maybe he can poison the dagger he doesn’t oil up), along with the Arrow of Ice and two Arrows Of Acid in their quiver (again, he seems to be becoming the archer of the group, so he should have the most special arrows – Lae’zel also has some Arrows of Ice, but I let her keep them for the time being. Never know when someone else will want to pull out a special ranged attack! Plus I think “magic pockets” may make it so Astarion can get at them if he wants during a battle anyway)

IV. Having Smiler then distribute their three scrolls of Burning Hands between Shadowheart (so she didn’t feel left out), Wyll (because it felt thematically appropriate for a Warlock with a Fiend patron), and Gale (because he could take his pick between casting or scribing it), before further giving Gale their scrolls of Ray Of Enfeeblement, Bone Chill, Enlarge, and Colour Spray (again, in case he wanted to scribe any of them), and Astarion their scroll of Grease (because, thanks to Corazon de Ballena from Oxventure, I feel like Rogues and Grease go well together XD)

V. Having Shadowheart hand over her scroll of Detect Thoughts to Smiler, since they’re the party leader and thus shall be used for almost all dialogue, and consequently will get the most use out of it (in fact, I should probably have them cast it on themselves next time I play)

VI. Having Astarion give one of his scrolls of Protection From Evil And Good to Gale, since we have LOADS of these things (four more between Astarion and Smiler if I recall correctly), and thus one could definitely go to Gale for later scribing into his spellbook

VI. Having Smiler then split up their eight regular healing potions and give two to Wyll, one to Lae’zel, and one to Shadowheart so all the companions had three on them (gotta make sure they’re ready to heal if necessary!)

VII. Having Smiler give their THE Amulet Of Lost Voices (aka the vanilla one that you find in Wither’s tomb that only grants Speak With Dead, as opposed to Smiler’s mod-added AN Amulet Of Lost Voices which gives them Speak With Animals too) to Wyll, because he was the only one without a special amulet or ring (plus it’s just good to have two people who can cast Speak With Dead in your party, as corpses often refuse to speak to their killers)

*nods* Took a while, but I’m happy with how things ended up redistributed! Gotta keep the inventories neat, after all.

( And now it’s time for the usual cut )

YouTube: Welp, I said I was going to carve out the time, and I did, heading straight to YouTube after supper and watching the OXtra and OXBox videos I’d missed earlier this week –

A) From OXtra, we had “Forcing Everyone to Play Nintendo Virtual Boy” – Ellen forcing Mike, Jane, and Andy to play games on her new Virtual Boy! Her genuinely new Virtual Boy, in fact – because, as it turns out, Nintendo has re-released this monstrosity as a new accessory of sorts for the Switch and the Switch 2! The Virtual Boy, in case you didn’t know, was a gimmicky console from the 90s that advertised itself as being able to do games in 3-D – it basically looked like a big bulky red headset-thing with two little screens for your eyes permanently mounted on a flimsy frame. You bent over at a painful angle and pressed your face into the headset-thing to see the games, and played with an attached controller. Oh, and everything was in red because they couldn’t do proper color graphics. The new Virtual Boy may require you to slot your Switch into it first, and play using its controllers, but it very faithfully mimics its predecessor otherwise, right down to the horrible angle you have to bend at to see the games. XD So, what did the OXBox trio think of the console? Well –

I. Mike was actually honestly impressed with the 3-D graphics of the time, noting that the game he was playing, WarioWare, was taking full advantage of the depth of field lent by the eyepiece by throwing things constantly at the screen and giving Wario proper 3-D arms and such. He was much less impressed by his posture while playing it, though, noting that it defied everything in nature to be this bent. And he looked like his neck genuinely ached a bit when he sat up again. Ow.

II. Andy seemed to enjoy himself too, and got quite into his Teleroboxer game quite a bit, wiggling in his seat as he jabbed at his opponent (Mike asked “why are you wiggling your butt,” causing him to insist that was part of the experience). He attempted to avoid Mike’s “prawning” (what we would call “shrimping”) by adjusting the angle of the eyepiece, but I’m not sure how well it worked. His main concern was that he wouldn’t want anyone to come into the room and see him playing this – but then, he has similar concerns about modern VR headsets too, so...

III. And Jane got WAY into 3-D Tetris, wiggling around even more than Andy in her attempt to move the big old cube containing the various shapes and being the last to actually sit up and stop playing (with the others making constant jokes about her having “VR psychosis” and having to pull her out and her protesting “no, I can’t live in the real world anymore” XD). She commented that the red screen made her feel like a Terminator, and insisted her back didn’t hurt any more than it normally does when she finally sat up (Andy: “Put that on the box, Nintendo”), so – I guess that’s good? I mean, any lingering back pain certainly didn’t stop her from putting her face back in to play some more 3-D Tetris. Girl was INTO that game. XD

So yeah – apparently this group likes the Virtual Boy! Jane even gave it the world’s most awkward pat to end the video. Me, I don’t know why anyone would want a modern copy of the Neck And Eye Strain Console, but if you do, Nintendo’s selling them. Just maybe put it on some books first so you don’t have to bend over.

B) And from OXBox, we had “7 Game Company Decisions That Backfired Horribly” – Andy, Mike, and Jane talking about those poorly-thought-out decisions from game companies that led to terrible, terrible consequences! Ranging from:

I. EA inserting horrible, predatory pay-to-win lootbox nonsense into Star Wars Battlefront 2 and incensing the fans so much that they petitioned Disney to strip EA’s exclusive license to make Star Wars games and left the game in droves, leading to EA stopping support for Battlefront 2 shortly after finally fixing the progression system because it was too little too late by most people’s standards (and to Disney allowing other game companies to make games two years earlier than the license with EA should have allowed)

II. To SEGA deciding to “stealth launch” the hotly-anticipated SEGA Saturn console in the US back in the 90s by releasing it to a handful of exclusive retailers around the time of the E3 trade show in May instead of on “Saturn Day” (Saturday, September 2nd, 1995) as previously promised, meaning it came out with almost no fanfare and with very few games, leading to it being overtaken in sales by the new Sony Playstation console and to SEGA eventually getting out of the console game entirely (and to Sony starting its tradition of promoting its consoles by looking at the mistakes of its competitors and telling people “we’re not doing that” – specifically, by responding to the Saturn’s $399 price tag by sending the US branch’s president up to the stage at E3 to say “$299” and walk off)

III. To Atari seeing the success of E. T. The Extraterrestrial in theaters in the summer of 1982; lobbying hard to get the license rights for the inevitable video game adaptation; getting those rights for a pretty penny so late in the year that they only had FIVE WEEKS to develop the game so it could be launched in time for Christmas; and leaving it up to one guy to make the game in that short time period, leading to an extremely-poorly-made game that not only basically scuppered Atari with its poor sales, but also nearly did the same to THE ENTIRE VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY by helping kick off the Video Game Crash of 1983 (and to Atari, desperate to get rid of returned product, discarding a bunch of unsold copies in concrete in the New Mexico desert – yes, that turned out not to be a myth)

So yes – the next time YOU make a poorly-thought-out decision? Just be grateful you can’t cause the damage to yourself a video game company can cause to itself. Unless you ARE a video game company, in which case LEARN FROM YOUR PEERS ALREADY.

*nods* Glad I got all that done, at least! But I have stayed up pretty late to tell you all about it, so I'd better get to bed now. Tomorrow, plans include working some more on my "VITD Timeline" post over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); figuring out a gift fic for Newt (who hasn't gotten back to me with any ideas yet) or working on Chapter 6 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" (gotta get that up sometime!); playing a bit of Fallout: New Vegas and seeing if I can discover some new places with Courier Victor; and getting in a workout, hopefully with the next episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series. We'll see if those all work out -- night all!