PMSing Is Real Saturday

I'm both more distracted and a lot thirstier than normal, both clear signs that the red curse is on its way. *grumbles* Damn biology, throwing me off my game for a decent chunk of each month... At least today I had an excuse not to be productive -- namely, heading out and about with my parents for the majority of it. We did some very important walking. *nods* Between that and the period distraction, I really only have two things to report on computer-wise:

Writing: I did some more editing on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” this afternoon/evening – a process that consisted of –

A) Watching the entirety of “Percy, Rum, Balloons and Mooning - The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (a compilation of some of the best moments from the Barnaby-and-Kasimir “First Flight Of The Sparrowhawk” score – including Barnaby killing a Red Sash trying to invade their balloon by just casually pushing him off, and Kasimir “casting Moonbeam” by mooning some Lampblacks and having the light from the actual moon reflect off his butt and blind them) and most of “Victor Van Dort scenepack 🖤” by ☽skyler-vogel☾(a compilation of Victor moments from Corpse Bride) to refresh my memory on various character voices! Mostly Barnaby and Kasimir, as I’d felt like they were a little off in the current chapter. (Plus it’s always fun to go back and see them in action again. XD)

B) As per the above, going back through the bits I’d already edited the past two days and tweaking some of Barnaby and Kasimir’s dialogue a bit to make them sound more authentically them! I have no idea if I have any fellow Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark fans reading my stuff, but I want them to be happy with my characterizations if they are! More importantly, I want me to be happy with my characterizations. I love these two and I want to represent them correctly, damn it.

C) And finally, completing another new page’s worth of edits on the story, covering:

I. Mrs. Pemberly – having been thoroughly conned by the group into thinking Victor was just going to show the new servants their quarters before sending them back to help in the kitchen – heading back to said kitchen, and Smiler asking if anyone else felt guilty about the fact that they were about leave her in the lurch, and probably get her into trouble once the robbery was discovered – Barnaby was instantly like “No – fine woman, but she is still the help.” XD He then told Victor that he was surprised he let her speak to him so familiarly – Victor, annoyed, replied that he’d always been friendly with the staff, and that he certainly hadn’t found her rude. Barnaby countered that she should have at least insisted on showing the servants to their quarters herself –

Only for Kasimir to point out that would have slowed the whole score down, because then he, Alice, and Smiler would have had to find a way to ditch her. Though he admitted that he didn’t feel particularly guilty about what they were doing either – after all, he’d thought they might have to clonk Mrs. Pemberly on the head and stuff her in a barrel if she kept asking questions. Smiler allowed that what they were currently doing was better than that.

II. Smiler commenting on how everyone in the kitchen was being run ragged while trying to explain why they felt guilty to Kasimir, and Victor saying he was sure they were, as his mother demands a lot from them during a normal dinner party, and this was a MUCH more elaborate affair with multiple meals in play. Kasimir agreed, then asked if he could ask Victor something –

And when Victor said “yes,” proceeded to rather derail the conversation by asking “why are you putting caviar in shoes?” Because he thought they were putting the fish eggs in real shoes and walking around on them, possibly for some mysterious medical reason. Victor hastily clarified that the “shoes” were tiny wooden clogs made especially for the purpose...only for Alice to point out that that was pretty weird too and ask why they started serving caviar like that in the first place. Cue Victor admitting he had no idea –

And Barnaby going “Oh, it was probably just something someone did for a laugh in Brightstone that then caught on!” before elaborating that his friend Squiffy had started a fad like that once – put his gloves on inside-out for a lark at the club, found they were comfortable, and got people imitating him. And yes, he was very drunk when it happened. Kasimir was sorry he’d asked. XD

III. And Kasimir limping to the front of the group and urging everyone to get going before they got caught by someone else, or before someone could interrupt Victor before he could tell them about the vault and how he was going to get them inside again. :p Victor obligingly informed him that the vault was just a couple of hallways over from the kitchen (and associated changing room), and that the first line of defense they’d have to contend with was the two ex-Bluecoat guards on the door – Steven and Alan. Both “about your age, actually, Mr. Kasimir” – Kasimir immediately told Victor that he didn’t need to use the “Mr.” as he was helping him rob a vault, not introducing him to his parents. XD More seriously, he asked if they had anything else in common with him (tapping his knee brace with his cane as he did) – Victor said he didn’t think so – as far as he knew, they were both perfectly hale and hearty, having only left their previous positions because the Van Dorts offered them more money. *nods* Fair enough.

And that’s where I left it for the day! Tomorrow, we’ll continue with the gang actually reaching the hallway with the vault in it (after a quick stop at the changing room so Alice can get her bag) and figuring out how to deal with Steven and Alan! Kasimir might have just the right potion for the job, if they can trick the pair into drinking it...

YouTube: Decided to watch a video that I saw a couple of weeks ago but never had time to get to before now – “I Played Highguard and I’m Not Surprised It’s Dead” by OXtra! Which was Ellen talking all about the latest live service hero shooter (this one with a vague “medieval fantasy” aesthetic that was promptly ignored whenever it came time to give someone a gun) to arrive on the scene, fail to keep up its numbers in the critical first few months, and die an ignoble death. This one in fact lasted a mere 50 days – launching on 1/26/2026, and shutting down on 3/12/2026. Why did it flame out so quickly? Well, Ellen managed to play a bit of it during the roughly month-and-two-thirds it existed, and listed all the problems she encountered during that time, including:

A) The game’s aesthetic was fairly bland – people just weren’t inspired by characters in generic “fantasy” outfits, and given that, again, everyone was still using futuristic firearms, it just felt like they hadn’t made the most of the whole thing

B) The maps provided were way too large and required a LOT of running around to find necessary gear and suchlike – Ellen said it felt much more like what you’d get in a “battle royale” game rather than a team-based base defending game

C) There was a terrible mining minigame to get crystals to pay the shopkeep for things like wall reinforcement kits – one that combined the worst aspects of a rhythm game and a quick-time event, and was played via clicking in your joystick rather than pressing a button – an act that Ellen, naturally, felt was very unintuitive

D) The game was tuned to cater to the most high-level, competitive players – so more casual newbs like Ellen were left in the dust and turned away from the game in droves

E) The playable characters were mostly generic “hero shooter” archetypes, and it was very hard to get an idea of what their personalities were before you selected them (most of them just did vague poses if you tried browsing them in the “Collection” menu). Ellen noted that there was the occasional flash of brilliance once you DID pick one and got to see their special opening screen (like the fire powers guy being a total douchebag who noted he’d been told that he had a punchable face, but said he didn’t know, as no one had gotten close enough to test the theory – basically acting like a classic wrestling heel), but for the most part, there were no truly interesting or quirky characters for people to fall in love with

F) Additionally, there was no way to properly test out anyone’s special “Ultimate” power without doing so in the middle of a match – which sometimes led to things like Ellen wasting the lightning guy’s special Ultimate because she couldn’t find any enemies to unleash it on, or figure out how it properly worked. Her attempt to test them in the tutorial revealed that you were only allowed to play as ONE of the heroes in said tutorial (the guy with a wall-rending roar that led to Ellen accidentally wrecking her own team’s base when she attempted to use it as an offensive weapon, not realizing that you couldn’t), and while she was allowed to play around with them in the “firing range” mode, she quickly discovered that they took AGES to power up, and any that relied on targeting other players straight up didn’t work because there were no other players. And she couldn’t get the ice guy’s one to work properly because it required you to melee attack someone, but apparently no one got around to letting you attack the mannequins in this mode like that, so – yeah, no dice

G) The game was just hard to play – the different phases that were nicely delineated in the tutorial (gather materials to shore up your base; find the Shieldbreaker sword and use that to break your enemy’s shields; either raid the enemy base to blow up their generators or defend your own base from such a fate) suffered from the presence of a time limit in the game proper, and the fact that there were large chunks of the game where dead players weren’t allowed to respawn meant that Ellen spent a good portion of her playtime just spectating her better teammates

H) And the sound design of the game was awful, mostly on account of everything being way too loud. The designers made loud chunky footstep noises for characters running on sand. A blackflip from the stealthy character of the group sounded like a missile going off according to Ellen! It was all very overwhelming and she did NOT like it.

So yeah – Ellen can totally see why this game failed. I’d say “take note, game designers,” but they’re probably not gonna. *shakehead*

And there you have it. And now I really have to get to bed. Tomorrow I hope to be more productive on the old computer -- goals include writing up all my scenes for my "Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes, Easter Edition" post (gotta have it ready for the end of the week, as Easter is next Sunday); playing some Portal 2 (I have physics puzzles to solve); editing more of Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy" (want to continue making some progress on this before switching back into "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" mode for a while); and -- well, I did a lot of walking today, so we'll see if I get in a workout, but I intend to try and watch the next episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered run no matter what! (Not that he's been uploading in time for me to watch those videos with my workouts, but -- still.) We'll see how well checking them off the old to-do list goes -- night all!