crossover_chick: gif of Doc gasping (BTTF: EEK)
Crossover Chick ([personal profile] crossover_chick) wrote2025-05-15 11:53 pm

A Late-Running Thursday Too

I thought I'd have a little more time this evening thanks to no beanbags today -- it poured this morning, meaning everything was really wet even after it cleared up a little this afternoon -- but then certain parts of my daily write-up took longer than anticipated, and -- yeah. *shakehead* Story of my life. Anyway, let's get to it --

Work – A mostly-quiet day today – I had two credit card calls at the beginning (one at the very start of the workday, which was kind of annoying), then most of the rest of the day was just roster maintenance, with a few calls made to people to let them know their gifts were/were not here, and a quick post of another batch of Easter gifts. Coworkers were not too annoying either – like, there were a few moments, but not an undue amount. And while the ride home was super-trafficky again, it wasn’t HORRIBLE horrible, so… *shrug* I’ll take it. Hopefully tomorrow is a decent end to the work week!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, pedaling my way through:

A) The end of “Baldur's Gate 3 But it's Only Bad Choices” by OXtra! Which featured Shove Fighter Luke and Newbie Warlock Ellen getting stuck in another temporary time loop because Luke wanted to do something specific and damn the consequences! XD The last twenty-five-odd minutes of the stream thus went like so:

I. Having decided to try and join the fight at the gates of the tiefling refugee camp on the side of the attacking goblins, Luke and Ellen thus did their best to make things difficult for the defenders – hitting them with Eldritch Blasts, shoving them, and – in Luke’s case – throwing spare items of clothing at them. During this, though, Luke began wondering if he could somehow activate the winch that controlled the front gate and let the goblins rush into the camp. After throwing his shoes at the mechanism and Ellen Eldritch Blasting it proved ineffective, he then began trying to “Skyrim” his way up the nearby rocks, throwing his clothes at Zevlor to keep him distracted –

But it was sadly too late, as the remaining defenders (Wyll, Zevlor, and Remira of Aradin’s group) managed to kill the one remaining warg and trigger the “get into the camp” cutscene. Awww. But Luke really wanted to see if he could get up there –

II. So he rewound time back to just before the fight kicked off, planning to avoid combat altogether and just concentrate on getting up those rocks! With Ellen climbing up onto another useful outcrop and providing occasional cover Blasting and pulling what aggro she could. With a combination of careful dashing and jumping, Luke did INDEED manage to get up onto the rocks right beside the winch –

Only for the battle to end again before he could use it, mostly because Ellen had kept Hellish Rebuking all the goblins who kept firing on her, meaning that she actually killed a fair few of them just with her reactions. Combine that with the defenders actually doing a very good job of defending this time (to the point where Luke got inspired because all of them survived), and yeah. Luke was once again denied his opportunity to open the gate for his goblin friends!

III. Which meant now it was PERSONAL and Luke wasn’t stopping until he got to that winch, overrunning their allotted stream time be damned. XD Fortunately, the third try proved to be the charm, mostly because Ellen realized that using Hellish Rebuke in this situation was a BAD thing and thus made sure NOT to react whenever the goblins shot her. Luke thus jumped and dashed his way up the rocks to the winch as Ellen took a bunch of arrows to the face, and managed to get the gate open as she went down –

But, of course, as this is not a thing that is supposed to happen, none of the remaining goblins took the opportunity to run inside. And Zevlor used Dash to run away from Luke before he could be shoved off the rocks to his death. Aw. XD Luke thus decided that caution was the better part of valor and fled combat in favor of heading to camp, while poor Ellen basically bled out on the rocks outside the camp once the remaining defenders finished off the goblins. What a perfect way to end the stream. XD Such a delightful look at some of the stranger and stupider things you can do in this game! I loved it a lot. :)

B) The entirety of “9 Insanely Cool Interactions You Might've Missed in Baldur's Gate 3” by Toyhouze! A list of neat things you can acquire or do in the game that you might have missed out on or not paid enough attention to. Some of these were only available to specific characters (for example, only Origin Gale can receive “Mystra’s Blessing,” which completely negates Fire, Acid, Cold, Force, and Thunder damage under ten points, for destroying the Shadow Weave in any dead Thorm), and some of them were only available under specific circumstances (for example, if you want the extra Cold damage powers of the Mourning Frost quarterstaff, you’re going to need to find and assemble the pieces while exploring in Act II), but others were a lot more generally useful. My favorite two on the list were:

I. Make sure to DIP your weapons in poison rather than COATING them with it – coating a weapon in poison means the poison only lasts ten turns, while throwing the poison on the ground and then DIPPING the weapon in the resultant makes the effect last until your next long rest. AND allows your other party members to also dip THEIR weapons. Now that is definitely something to remember for later!

II. There’s a peculiar lamp in the basement of Sorcerous Sundries in Act III that, if you interact with it, will trap you inside as the djinn within goes free. Fortunately, the lamp is full of scrolls and potions to collect, and if you summon a familiar, the familiar will get trapped and you’ll be free to leave (a “Summon Quasit” scroll is provided just for this purpose). However, if you summon a familiar BEFOREHAND and have it interact with the lamp, it’ll get stuck, and the djinn will pop out and start a conversation. Let him know what you did to free him, and he’ll be pleased with your ingenuity and give you 1,000 gold! So it’s an easy way to get some late-game cash. :)

Good stuff! If I can remember it, of course… XD

2. Continue outlining “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got to this later than I would have liked (recapping the workout vids took longer than expected, because I went back to the “Bad Choices” livestream to check that I’d gotten some of the details right and naturally started rewatching it a bit – to be fair, it WAS very funny to see Shove Fighter Luke’s boots stick to the winch XD), but I made some decent progress nonetheless –

A) I reviewed the pre-actual-score summary in the “Have To Happen Moments” section, tweaking the wording of some bits and adding an extra obstacle to the hallway before the vault for Victor, Alice, Smiler, Kasimir, and Barnaby to face – a Hull with two “Slugger” guns (an innovation from Deep Cuts (which I still have to buy, this was on one of the preview images), guns that fire concussive blasts that can break bones at close range) guarding the door at the very end of the hallway

B) And I actually started the score itself, rolling to see how well the gang got past all the obstacles! So far, Smiler and Barnaby working together successfully drugged the guards in front of the door into the trapped hallway with slumber essence-tainted gin (though it was a success with a complication, so one guard detected the slumber essence and tried yelling for help before he collapsed, causing me to start a “Discovered By The Van Dorts” clock); Victor was able to spot the first tripwire in the hallway (just beyond the door) and get everyone over it without raising any alarm; Smiler was able to spot two out of the three “secretly pressure plates that cause a bad thing to happen” tiles in the hallway with a quick Survey (it was a “success with a complication,” and I thought spotting only two fit – still debating if I should fill in a clock piece too); and Kasimir semi-successfully led a group action to prowl down the hallway past the troublesome tiles (I say “semi” because he actually failed the roll, along with Smiler – that plus the highest result of the group being a five made me decide his leg chose a bad moment to play up, and Smiler trying to help him caused them both to hit the wall and cause some noise, filling in a piece of that “discovered” clock). Pretty successful heist so far, but they still gotta get past that second tripwire and the hull...we’ll see what the dice say about THAT tomorrow!

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Substitution check – there was nothing in the Subs for this Thursday (not even a GSP compilation), and I got to the YouTubes really late, so I contented myself with the next CaFae Latte video I had to watch – “CaFae Latte Season 48 - TikTok Compilation!” This was a very short compilation centering around Erik’s bitchiness about not being immortal, featuring –

A) Erik snapping at Cyrus when he tried to invite them along to a Barnes & Noble splurge session after work, and then tried to find out what was eating Erik – later it was revealed that it was Erik’s birthday and he always gets weird on that date thanks to the “no immortality” thing; JC reminded him that he cut off his awful demon relatives for a reason (they’re ultra-rich assholes who refuse to share anything with him because he’s “not worthy” as a mortal) and that having a shitty backstory is no reason to be a shitty person

B) Bob trying to reach out to Erik while he did dishes in the back, talking about her own (much more willing) exile from her royal family and getting his backstory – turns out he was the product of a one-night stand between his half-demon dad and his human mom, was a total ass about paying child support, and showed up on Erik’s seventh birthday just to call him a disappointment when he realized the kid was mortal. :( Erik’s desperate to get the respect of him and his full-demon grandma, and didn’t seem very open to Bob trying to explain that the kind of conditional “respect” he’d get wasn’t really respect at all…

C) Erik, Cyrus, JC, and Drek all hanging out at the cafe, talking about how Bob taking Sundays off means they can officially call it “Sausage Sunday” – with Drek admitting they thought JC was assigned FEMALE at birth (JC allowed that they’re short, slim, and always clean-shaven – apparently the one time they tried to grow a beard, it did NOT go well); JC and Cyrus getting into an argument over whether or not muffins are just bald cupcakes (JC was VERY FIRM on the fact that cupcakes and muffins are VERY DIFFERENT, while Cyrus was like “I am a fairy, I cannot lie, and I say they’re not”); and Erik coughing near the end of this argument, causing Drek to make a “started Sausage Sunday early” joke (Cyrus sent him to stand in the corner)

D) JC revealing to Bob during another shift that Nicole thought they had some sort of magical problem and that she’d be in shortly to talk to her about it; cue Nicole coming in a bit later and revealing she’d gotten into divination magic and had a distinct bad feeling that danger was coming their way – something to do with a tree made of stone? Bob and Cyrus tried to calm her down, pointing out that divination magic is largely unreliable, with prophecies and portents very easily misread, but promised to take extra precautions. Cue Nicole revealing she had loads of protective charms to hand out XD – but also cue a look at a rival witch coven revealing they had an opportunity to snag a fairy to “harvest” on Saturday...

E) And Cyrus leaving early on Saturday to go to the usual D&D meet-up; JC talking with Bob and Husniya about Nicole’s creepy danger visions; Nicole arriving to pick up JC with drawings of her creepy danger visions – specifically the stone tree she keeps seeing; Bob realizing it looks like an oak tree, causing them to realize that they’re in danger from the Stone Oak Coven (the assholes who tried to steal Rethu’s sister’s egg); and then Bob getting a text from Patrick – revealing Cyrus never made it to D&D. Uh-oh. D: It’s funny – I’m already spoiled on what happens next, thanks to reading the TV Tropes page, but I am STILL not liking this cliffhanger. Hopefully I can find some time to watch Season 49 this weekend and resolve this terrible terrible arc!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing happening on Valice Multiverse tonight, but I was actually pretty busy over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, I reblogged a post from the Pride Knights blog about the “European Citizens Initiative To Ban Conversion ‘Therapy’” – this is a petition (of sorts) that needs one million signatures by Saturday, May 17 to be properly considered by the EU. Naturally, I can’t sign, but I was happy enough to signal boost it in the final stretch to try and make sure that it gets enough signatures! Would be really nice if the EU banned such a horrific practice…

B) Then, I finished off the two posts in my queue that still needed to be completed – adding the final tags onto Squid’s Birthday Fic for Friday (going on about Romero not realizing he was in love because he just assumed EVERYONE felt the way he does about Angeline since she’s so awesome XD), and updating the main text and tags on my reblog of “Make Me Fade” by K.Flay for Saturday (talking about how well the song fits my Londerland Bloodlines version of Victor, Alice, and – to my delight – Smiler as well). So hooray, my queue is OFFICIALLY DONE for this week, w00~

C) And, because I didn’t have time to properly draft them, I quickly liked three posts on my friend Squid’s tumblr that spoke to me –

I. A post about how saying you’re just going to write some “snippets” of a silly fic idea almost inevitably leads to a monster of a fic (or, in my case, leads to a lot of short fics because I keep coming up with ideas I want to do in the verse – hi Valicer In The Dark!)

II. A photo post featuring someone with the label “Insane about own AU” (the mood)

III. And a post about how it isn’t WRITING that’s the hobby, it’s being absolutely mental about your fictional characters – writing is just the only way to let it all out (also the mood)

So hopefully I can get those prepared for my queue or straight-up reblogged sooner rather than later!

Other: While clearing some unwanted widgets from my lock screen (thanks, latest Windows update), I also took the opportunity to update the lock screen itself, swapping out one of my old Valice photo mashups with a Sims 4 picture from the Valicertine’s Day photoshoot I did a little while back (featuring Victor, Alice, and Smiler looking like they’ve just had ideas). I’ve been meaning to make my computer a bit more Valicer. :)

Whew! As you can see, a very busy night. And now I must end it by hitting the sack already. Hopefully tomorrow will be a decent Friday -- keep your fingers crossed! Night all!
gigs_83: (Default)

[personal profile] gigs_83 2025-05-16 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
The "sausage Sunday" bit was based on something that really happed during her time working at an Italian deli.
gigs_83: (Default)

[personal profile] gigs_83 2025-05-17 05:58 pm (UTC)(link)
You'll probably have to open it in a desktop browser https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjayYn6y/

Knowing what we know, my theory is that when Erik was on his phone he was setting up the whole operation.
gigs_83: (Default)

[personal profile] gigs_83 2025-05-21 12:56 am (UTC)(link)
I made a quip on that video that the guy named Tony works in an Italian deli 🤣