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Slightly Wound Up Monday
Jun. 8th, 2026 11:50 pmYes, I spent both a decent part of the morning and a decent part of the evening feeling annoyingly wound up today --
I. I was wound up this morning because of my dentist appointment -- even though I take good care of my teeth, I always get a little nervous before every appointment just in case I get a nasty surprise. And I'd already been forewarned that this appointment included taking a fresh full set of x-rays (apparently I was due), meaning I was fully expecting to have to deal with my horrible gag reflex ruining things when they gave me the sensor thing to bite down on (trust me, it's been a problem before!). Fortunately, though, the hygienist I got this time around was super nice and patient -- AND, upon seeing that I had a rather small mouth, decided to use a smaller sensor than normal rather than try to get the big one in there. Which meant I got through the whole process with almost no gagging at all, yay~ :) And yes, my teeth were all fine again, so hooray there too.
II. And I was wound up this evening because, just before 8:30 PM, we suffered a mysterious brief power failure! Fortunately, I was just reading somebody's tumblr at the time and not working on anything important, and I didn't lose anything from the LibreOffice docs I had open, but it still really threw me off! I don't like being surprised like that!
Meeeh. Well, at least the weather was pretty nice -- mid-70s and not humid, with no rain (meaning hooray, fan in window, room cool enough to sleep). And I got most of what I wanted to get done, done --
Tumblr: Today being Monday, I only had to worry about my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) blog when it came to doing stuff on tumblr – however, unlike most Mondays, I actually accomplished a couple of things over there this morning –
A) First, I reblogged two posts that I’d seen in my wanderings into my drafts so I could add them to a later queue:
I. One by allthingswhumpyandangsty featuring a screenshot of a tweet urging people to “never stop promoting your underrated ship because I promise you can convert people into it,” with Whumpy commenting that while this was true, you should also never stop talking about your underrated ship “because if it’s what makes you happy then you can and should talk about it for yourself and your own enjoyment too.” Because that’s the thing about fandom – it’s supposed to be about what YOU find fun first and foremost. Nothing wrong with getting people to ship what you ship, but it should always be about what YOU enjoy first. *nods* Which is something I sometimes feel I need to be reminded of (especially when I start getting bitter about Valicer In The Dark again), so into the drafts it went!
II. And one by sometiktoksarevalid, showing off a video by justinjmooremusic (who does a lot of videos where he sings songs by a particular band in the style of other musicians) where he commented on how someone told his wife how his content was great and “it’s awesome that he knows how to use AI like that” before giving a rather annoyed look to the camera and showing off his very much NOT AI vocal chops by imitating everyone from James Blunt to Ed Sheeran to Trent Reznor to Owl City to a GROAN TUBE singing “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls (shouting during the “groan tube” section “can AI do that?!” XD). A follow-up reblog by lostsometime revealed that he also does videos showing off how he imitates all these different singers (for example, when imitating Ed Sheeran, he apparently brings his voice “forward” in the mouth – not sure what that means, but he fucking NAILED the impersonation, so it’s working!) Dropped this one in the drafts both because I was impressed with his ability to copy all those other singers using just his own mouth and vocal cords –
And because he actually sung the last couple of lines in his own voice, and honestly he sounds pretty fucking good all on his own! Like, dude, I hope you do your own songs in addition to all this impersonation work! Here, here’s the post on the blog where I found it – check it out, it’s worth it!
B) And second, I did a little bit more work on the “Valicer Eats God” post before heading out to the dentist:
I. Fixing a few typos and adjusting some awkward phrasing
II. Adding that Alice’s “Fluttering Flight” ability is the result of her both having a natural “skirt” that catches the air when she jumps and a double jump to give her the height she needs to float a good distance
III. And taking a stab at defining Alice’s Facets – currently, I’ve gone with 5 Ethos (as she is a very skillful fighter and platformer, even if she doesn’t have the best reputation), 4 Pathos (as while she certainly has her passionate moments, she’s not very good at inspiring or intimidating people into doing what she wants – indeed, the games consist of her basically being pushed around by everyone in Wonderland), and 6 Logos (she’s quick-witted, erudite, and able to put up with and solve all the puzzles Wonderland throws at her – and while it might take her a while to pierce deceptions like Bumby’s “philanthropist” guise, she does eventually do so). We’ll see if I keep these, but they’ll certainly do for now! Slowly but surely inching my way into getting this into a postable state...
Paralives: Yes, I popped back into everyone’s favorite Early Access life sim today, with this trip to Melino focusing on trying to get to grips with the Build Mode tools? How did I do? Let me tell you about it –
A) First things first – since you can’t just select a lot and build on it in this game (which I strongly feel is something they should change), upon loading into my current save file, I hit the Paramaker to grab a Para to buy the lot I wanted to build on. I went with the first Para the game provided me, a young woman in a sweater vest and skirt, and randomized a name (Lilliana Cubber) and personality (3 Physique, 2 Mind, 1 Creativity, 1 Charisma; “Jester” Vibe; “Good At Romantic Relationships” Social Perk; “Fitness” Talent; Sloppy vegetarian with a normal sleep schedule) for her so I could get out of there and to building quicker. Though I did take a moment to check out all her random outfits and change up the formalwear option when I discovered the game had given her overalls for that category (she instead got a nice long dress in green) –
And to adjust her height, because hallelujah, the patch that introduced all the Unpacking collab stuff also fixed some bugs – including Imperial height units displaying as decimals! We have feet and inches again people! :D Accordingly, I checked out how tall and short Paras can actually be in those units (smallest is 4’11” while tallest is 6’5”), checked out what she looked like at all my OT3’s heights (5’5” for Alice, 5’10” for Smiler, and 6’3” for Victor), then set her final height at 5’8”. *nods* Very happy that was fixed! I would have converted if I had to, of course, but I’m glad I don’t.
( Out Of Paramaker And Into Build Mode! )
Workout: Back on the bike tonight, and back to James Turner’s Early Early Access Paralives videos with “I accidentally burned down my house in Paralives!” James’s exploration of the pre-release build of Paralives with the short king version of his self-Para Semaj Renrut continued, with the first half of this video featuring –
A) James taking a moment to reveal he’d learned how to activate the cheat console and show off how he could use that to find the cheat that would let him put Semaj back in the Paramaker and adjust his height closer to James’s actual height...before saying that he didn’t plan to do that because Semaj was who he was, you know? XD Plus he finds seeing his extremely tiny Para-self walking around and interacting with all the other, more normal-sized Paras extremely funny. XD He also adjusted Semaj’s work schedule to be more friendly toward his Night Owl sleeping schedule (making it so he worked from 10 AM to 5 PM instead of 9 to 4), spent a few personality upgrade points improving his stats (increasing Mind to 4 and Creativity to 3), and demonstrated how the hell you actually move items, like the gaming chair he bought to donate to the community center, into your inventory (you have to do it through Build Mode and click the three-dots button on the little descriptive toolbar that pops up when you select the item (the one where you can change the color swatches), then select the “add to inventory” option – he said that the developers had promised to make this easier in the future). *nods* All important information!
B) James sending Semaj on a little early-evening shopping spree in town so he could complete the “buy 15 items from local stores” subgoal of his “Town Contributor” goal – first hitting up the local plant store to buy as many potted plants as he could, then swinging by the antique place to get some lamps and other furniture (including a really nice table that proved to be a lot more expensive that he’d originally guessed). Once he’d procured all of that, he swung by the community center to donate the gaming chair toward the “gaming bundle” in the “technology donations” book (James had thought he’d get a reward for donating just the one item, but no); went looking for mushrooms to donate toward one of the bundles in the “food donations” book, only for said book to bug out temporarily when he tried to interact with it; encountered Jason, the attractive black Para that all the other Simmers-turned-Paralives players were dating in their LPs (at the very least, Deli had gotten him to move in with HER Para, despite him having a fiancee); finally managed to check the “food donations” book...only to find that none of the mushrooms he’d harvested were part of the bundle he was trying to make; and finally head home to fulfill his flagging needs and put his newly-acquired plants out around the place (James wasn’t sure what to do with the other stuff and ended up selling it directly from the inventory later).
( Semaj explores the town and is mostly unsuccessful at getting closer to Bianca )
Writing: The brief power cut throwing off my groove for the night meant that I didn’t actually get to splitting Chapter 5 into two chapters so I could start working on final posting edits for both – however, I did at least put Chapter 5 into a separate doc so I could see how long it is. Turns out it’s just over 27 pages, meaning it’s only a little bit longer than the final chapter of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of.” So I don’t necessarily have to split it if I don’t want. I still kind of feel like the escape should be a separate chapter from the assault on the vault though, so...we’ll see what happens tomorrow!
Aaaand now I have ended up staying up way later than I anticipated again, because I made the mistake of wandering onto TV Tropes for a while. *shakehead* All right, I'm off to bed -- tomorrow is Victor's birthday, so my goals are to do the Plushy Celebration Photo; read a Victor-related fanfic; work on getting the next chapter(s) of "The Van Dort Vacancy" ready for posting; play a bit of Fallout: New Vegas (as that is my "Victor game" of the moment); and watch something Victor-related on YouTube. All achievable goals, I hope. *nods* Night all!
I. I was wound up this morning because of my dentist appointment -- even though I take good care of my teeth, I always get a little nervous before every appointment just in case I get a nasty surprise. And I'd already been forewarned that this appointment included taking a fresh full set of x-rays (apparently I was due), meaning I was fully expecting to have to deal with my horrible gag reflex ruining things when they gave me the sensor thing to bite down on (trust me, it's been a problem before!). Fortunately, though, the hygienist I got this time around was super nice and patient -- AND, upon seeing that I had a rather small mouth, decided to use a smaller sensor than normal rather than try to get the big one in there. Which meant I got through the whole process with almost no gagging at all, yay~ :) And yes, my teeth were all fine again, so hooray there too.
II. And I was wound up this evening because, just before 8:30 PM, we suffered a mysterious brief power failure! Fortunately, I was just reading somebody's tumblr at the time and not working on anything important, and I didn't lose anything from the LibreOffice docs I had open, but it still really threw me off! I don't like being surprised like that!
Meeeh. Well, at least the weather was pretty nice -- mid-70s and not humid, with no rain (meaning hooray, fan in window, room cool enough to sleep). And I got most of what I wanted to get done, done --
Tumblr: Today being Monday, I only had to worry about my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) blog when it came to doing stuff on tumblr – however, unlike most Mondays, I actually accomplished a couple of things over there this morning –
A) First, I reblogged two posts that I’d seen in my wanderings into my drafts so I could add them to a later queue:
I. One by allthingswhumpyandangsty featuring a screenshot of a tweet urging people to “never stop promoting your underrated ship because I promise you can convert people into it,” with Whumpy commenting that while this was true, you should also never stop talking about your underrated ship “because if it’s what makes you happy then you can and should talk about it for yourself and your own enjoyment too.” Because that’s the thing about fandom – it’s supposed to be about what YOU find fun first and foremost. Nothing wrong with getting people to ship what you ship, but it should always be about what YOU enjoy first. *nods* Which is something I sometimes feel I need to be reminded of (especially when I start getting bitter about Valicer In The Dark again), so into the drafts it went!
II. And one by sometiktoksarevalid, showing off a video by justinjmooremusic (who does a lot of videos where he sings songs by a particular band in the style of other musicians) where he commented on how someone told his wife how his content was great and “it’s awesome that he knows how to use AI like that” before giving a rather annoyed look to the camera and showing off his very much NOT AI vocal chops by imitating everyone from James Blunt to Ed Sheeran to Trent Reznor to Owl City to a GROAN TUBE singing “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls (shouting during the “groan tube” section “can AI do that?!” XD). A follow-up reblog by lostsometime revealed that he also does videos showing off how he imitates all these different singers (for example, when imitating Ed Sheeran, he apparently brings his voice “forward” in the mouth – not sure what that means, but he fucking NAILED the impersonation, so it’s working!) Dropped this one in the drafts both because I was impressed with his ability to copy all those other singers using just his own mouth and vocal cords –
And because he actually sung the last couple of lines in his own voice, and honestly he sounds pretty fucking good all on his own! Like, dude, I hope you do your own songs in addition to all this impersonation work! Here, here’s the post on the blog where I found it – check it out, it’s worth it!
B) And second, I did a little bit more work on the “Valicer Eats God” post before heading out to the dentist:
I. Fixing a few typos and adjusting some awkward phrasing
II. Adding that Alice’s “Fluttering Flight” ability is the result of her both having a natural “skirt” that catches the air when she jumps and a double jump to give her the height she needs to float a good distance
III. And taking a stab at defining Alice’s Facets – currently, I’ve gone with 5 Ethos (as she is a very skillful fighter and platformer, even if she doesn’t have the best reputation), 4 Pathos (as while she certainly has her passionate moments, she’s not very good at inspiring or intimidating people into doing what she wants – indeed, the games consist of her basically being pushed around by everyone in Wonderland), and 6 Logos (she’s quick-witted, erudite, and able to put up with and solve all the puzzles Wonderland throws at her – and while it might take her a while to pierce deceptions like Bumby’s “philanthropist” guise, she does eventually do so). We’ll see if I keep these, but they’ll certainly do for now! Slowly but surely inching my way into getting this into a postable state...
Paralives: Yes, I popped back into everyone’s favorite Early Access life sim today, with this trip to Melino focusing on trying to get to grips with the Build Mode tools? How did I do? Let me tell you about it –
A) First things first – since you can’t just select a lot and build on it in this game (which I strongly feel is something they should change), upon loading into my current save file, I hit the Paramaker to grab a Para to buy the lot I wanted to build on. I went with the first Para the game provided me, a young woman in a sweater vest and skirt, and randomized a name (Lilliana Cubber) and personality (3 Physique, 2 Mind, 1 Creativity, 1 Charisma; “Jester” Vibe; “Good At Romantic Relationships” Social Perk; “Fitness” Talent; Sloppy vegetarian with a normal sleep schedule) for her so I could get out of there and to building quicker. Though I did take a moment to check out all her random outfits and change up the formalwear option when I discovered the game had given her overalls for that category (she instead got a nice long dress in green) –
And to adjust her height, because hallelujah, the patch that introduced all the Unpacking collab stuff also fixed some bugs – including Imperial height units displaying as decimals! We have feet and inches again people! :D Accordingly, I checked out how tall and short Paras can actually be in those units (smallest is 4’11” while tallest is 6’5”), checked out what she looked like at all my OT3’s heights (5’5” for Alice, 5’10” for Smiler, and 6’3” for Victor), then set her final height at 5’8”. *nods* Very happy that was fixed! I would have converted if I had to, of course, but I’m glad I don’t.
( Out Of Paramaker And Into Build Mode! )
Workout: Back on the bike tonight, and back to James Turner’s Early Early Access Paralives videos with “I accidentally burned down my house in Paralives!” James’s exploration of the pre-release build of Paralives with the short king version of his self-Para Semaj Renrut continued, with the first half of this video featuring –
A) James taking a moment to reveal he’d learned how to activate the cheat console and show off how he could use that to find the cheat that would let him put Semaj back in the Paramaker and adjust his height closer to James’s actual height...before saying that he didn’t plan to do that because Semaj was who he was, you know? XD Plus he finds seeing his extremely tiny Para-self walking around and interacting with all the other, more normal-sized Paras extremely funny. XD He also adjusted Semaj’s work schedule to be more friendly toward his Night Owl sleeping schedule (making it so he worked from 10 AM to 5 PM instead of 9 to 4), spent a few personality upgrade points improving his stats (increasing Mind to 4 and Creativity to 3), and demonstrated how the hell you actually move items, like the gaming chair he bought to donate to the community center, into your inventory (you have to do it through Build Mode and click the three-dots button on the little descriptive toolbar that pops up when you select the item (the one where you can change the color swatches), then select the “add to inventory” option – he said that the developers had promised to make this easier in the future). *nods* All important information!
B) James sending Semaj on a little early-evening shopping spree in town so he could complete the “buy 15 items from local stores” subgoal of his “Town Contributor” goal – first hitting up the local plant store to buy as many potted plants as he could, then swinging by the antique place to get some lamps and other furniture (including a really nice table that proved to be a lot more expensive that he’d originally guessed). Once he’d procured all of that, he swung by the community center to donate the gaming chair toward the “gaming bundle” in the “technology donations” book (James had thought he’d get a reward for donating just the one item, but no); went looking for mushrooms to donate toward one of the bundles in the “food donations” book, only for said book to bug out temporarily when he tried to interact with it; encountered Jason, the attractive black Para that all the other Simmers-turned-Paralives players were dating in their LPs (at the very least, Deli had gotten him to move in with HER Para, despite him having a fiancee); finally managed to check the “food donations” book...only to find that none of the mushrooms he’d harvested were part of the bundle he was trying to make; and finally head home to fulfill his flagging needs and put his newly-acquired plants out around the place (James wasn’t sure what to do with the other stuff and ended up selling it directly from the inventory later).
( Semaj explores the town and is mostly unsuccessful at getting closer to Bianca )
Writing: The brief power cut throwing off my groove for the night meant that I didn’t actually get to splitting Chapter 5 into two chapters so I could start working on final posting edits for both – however, I did at least put Chapter 5 into a separate doc so I could see how long it is. Turns out it’s just over 27 pages, meaning it’s only a little bit longer than the final chapter of “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of.” So I don’t necessarily have to split it if I don’t want. I still kind of feel like the escape should be a separate chapter from the assault on the vault though, so...we’ll see what happens tomorrow!
Aaaand now I have ended up staying up way later than I anticipated again, because I made the mistake of wandering onto TV Tropes for a while. *shakehead* All right, I'm off to bed -- tomorrow is Victor's birthday, so my goals are to do the Plushy Celebration Photo; read a Victor-related fanfic; work on getting the next chapter(s) of "The Van Dort Vacancy" ready for posting; play a bit of Fallout: New Vegas (as that is my "Victor game" of the moment); and watch something Victor-related on YouTube. All achievable goals, I hope. *nods* Night all!
