crossover_chick: gif of Doc gasping (BTTF: EEK)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
Welp, the rain finally showed up to wash some of the humidity away -- and by "showed up," I mean "Dad gave me a couple minutes' warning to get the fan out of my window, and then the sky FUCKING OPENED." O.O Like, it rained so fucking hard so fucking fast that the road outside promptly started looking like a shallow river with all the water running down it. Mom's estimate is that we got like three inches in ten minutes, and -- fuck it, I'm prepared to believe that. O.o It did eventually calm down, and I'm glad it DID rain because it is now much drier and cooler than it's been the past couple of nights, but STILL. That was -- something. O.o Very glad I didn't have to go out on it!

As for my day -- it was typical in some respects, a little unusual in others:

Cleaning: Pretty typical Cleaning Saturday, as I feel I say every time – I got started around 10:35 AM; finished the dusting and the Swiffering right before lunch around 1 PM; then finished off with a thorough vacuuming after lunch, finishing everything off around 1:45 PM! *shrug* Nothing particularly special, though I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with washing my blankets or anything – obviously I changed my sheets, but those just went in the communal hamper to be washed with all the other stuff tomorrow. And I got to relisten to an excellent Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark episode, “Into The Deathlands” – featuring the gang stealing a train locomotive by setting up a fake crash out in the titular deathlands! Key highlights been the return of everyone’s favorite murder-children, the Gutcutters, to help with the score; Zillah accidentally getting put to sleep with slumber essence (while they were trying to deal with a rail-riding hobo on the same train they were trying to steal), then smacking Edvard straight out of his shoes with a sleep punch while he was attempting to rouse her with smelling salts; Barnaby refusing to wear goggles for traveling in the harsh gritty winds atop the train because they didn’t go with his ensemble, getting essentially blinded...and then, with the help of a lucky dice roll, managing to argue that he can actually see better in the smoky cabin with his sand-blasted corneas and successfully knocking the stoker over the head with an old whiskey bottle; and the gang having to deal with some deathlands scavengers before they could get the locomotive back to Volisport – who, thanks to the voice Luke ended up choosing for them, I now headcanon as the skeletons from the hammer in the Original Oxventure, having turned to scavenging after the gang finally passed on and magic was forcibly sucked out of the world (don’t ask how they’re okay, the skeletons have always been OP). XD Excellent stuff – very sad I only have three episodes left to go! Though I suppose I can always listen to other Oxventure stuff once I’m done...

Writing: As I was feeling a bit uninspired when it came to video games (like, I wanted to start working on my new Sims 4 save file, but I couldn’t figure out where the heck I wanted to begin), I decided after I finished my cleaning and did the usual rounds online this afternoon to instead just dive straight into another page on “The Van Dort Vacancy!” Having seen yesterday that the his parents seemed to having a party, Victor brought Alice and Smiler up to the front door with him today, hoping to find the Van Dorts’ butler, Barry, there to explain what was going on. Fortunately, Barry was indeed there (instructing a footman on the proper care of Lord Goth’s luggage), and was also only too happy to start giving Victor the “where the hell have you been” speech when he saw him. Victor introduced him to Alice and Smiler (Smiler doing their usual “I’m going to blast happiness and cheer directly in your face and there’s nothing you can do about it” routine XD), and the trio proceeded to learn the following facts from him:

I. That the Van Dorts were having a big old multi-meal party to make up for the wedding not happening on the 30th

II. That while the Van Dorts HAD looked for Victor the Names before the wedding, they hadn’t actually done much searching for him since, too busy trying to fix their own reputations

III. And that hampering the search further, their driver, Mayhew, had died – Victor was horrified, though not surprised to learn it was the cough that had done him in, and somewhat comforted by hearing that his corpse had been picked right up by the Spirit Wardens (no ghost Mayhews for him to worry about!)

So yeah – so far, the Van Dorts are NOT acquitting themselves well when it comes to looking like they actually care about their son! And things are soon to get worse, as Victor’s going to ask to speak to them the next time I work on this story – and learn that he can’t take his friends along with…

Baldur’s Gate III – The Planning: Yup – since I was feeling uninspired when it came to actually playing a game, I figured that I should spend this afternoon trying to get some work done on planning out what my Tav!Smiler should be like (what abilities they should prioritize, what skills they should have proficiency in, what spells they should have, etc) for my eventual restart of BG3. And I’m pleased to report that I actually made some halfway-decent progress! Specifically, I –

A) Went through all the skills available in the game and checked what they actually did and where checks involving them were likely to come up to figure out which ones Smiler should have proficiency in (and thus get bonuses to those checks) – I already knew that they needed proficiency in Persuasion, but looking at what’s on offer, Arcana, Investigation, Nature, Insight, Medicine, Deception, and Performance all feel like good candidates for proficiency as well. (Which puts me in a bit of a pickle when it comes to Smiler’s background, as “Guild Artisan” gives Persuasion and Insight proficiency, but looking at the inspiration triggers, I’m still leaning toward “Entertainer” as more generally Smiler…)

B) And, after doing that, I went back and look at their ability scores and went “...yeah, I need to swap the Dexterity and Wisdom scores, Smiler should definitely have higher Wisdom than Dexterity given the skills I want to specialize in. And I should probably drop Charisma just a TINY bit so I can boost Wisdom up to an even number and get some better modifiers – Cha 16 and Cha 17 give the same modifier, after all!” So yeah, looks like Smiler’s ability scores are gonna be Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Constitution 12, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 14, and Charisma 16 whenever I get back into the character creator!

Not too shabby – considering the last time I tried this I rather stalled out because I was focusing too much on my mod issues, I was very pleased to actually get something done over here. Maybe next time I can figure out some spell stuff! And that damn background issue...

YouTube: Cleared the three videos waiting for me in the Watch Later, which was nice –

A) First up, we had the OXBox list video of the week: “7 Hardest Optional Bosses for Elite Players Only: Commenter Edition!” Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about more horrible ultra-hard optional bosses, as per the comments on their last video on the subject! Are you a Dark Souls III player looking for even more punishment? Shove the giant dragon Darkeater Midir into a pit, then jump down there to give him and his horrible black mouth laser a try! Looking to suffer in Soulcaliber 3’s story mode? Follow a certain path and you can fight Night Terror as the final boss, and learn what it’s like not only to get your shit wrecked, but be unable to win via “Ring Out” because your opponent can, you know, fly! Want to see how weird and hard Super Mario RPG can get? Track down Culex, the one Final Fantasy-esque boss in the game, and be prepared to suffer at the hands of this shirtless 2D monstrosity! Basically, if you think you’re hard enough, you can find an optional boss ready to destroy you in this list. The rest of us will be over here maintaining normal blood pressures, thanks. :P

B) Then, it was over to Petey Plays It for “101 Sims 4 Tips, Tricks And Secrets From 7,000+ Hours Played!” Yes, apparently Petey has played 7,777 hours (and 35 minutes) of The Sims 4, and feeling this made him something an expert on the game, decided he had to share a whole bunch of various tips and tricks with us. Granted, most of these were tips and tricks he’d shared in other videos – such as the Discover University soccer ball and the City Living basketball hoop being the ultimate tools to have your Sims gain fitness, lose weight, and become ripped; honey from the bee box in Seasons granting a moodlet that makes Sims temporarily immune to temperature effects; and how you can buy a special low-maintenance crow with a golden perch from the ghost salesman Waylon in Life & Death – but there were a few new things too! For example, I didn’t know that the “Breeze Through Homework” interaction on homework for children was unlocked by having level 3 in all the child skills (I thought it was related to their grade in school) – nor that it actually made them complete their homework faster (also thought that it was just a textual change). And if you get them up to level 7 in all the child skills, they’ll get the “Dominate Homework” interaction and complete it even FASTER! I also didn’t know that a human Sim who happened to have inherited one of the magical bloodlines from a Spellcaster parent, after asking a Sage to turn them into a spellcaster, wouldn’t have to go through the mote-finding “quest” most Sims have to do – the Sage will just turn them right away because they already have a hidden magical nature! And while I knew that the solar panel roof from Eco Lifestyle gave Sims power, I didn’t know that the living grass roof from that pack actually provided water! So yeah, that was neat. :) Plus there’s a hexagonal wood flooring from that pack that apparently reduces your bills, which I will definitely have to think about using in my next save file for my Teen Valicer trio...maybe in a house renovation? :P Anyway, good stuff as always – and here’s to the next 7,000 hours, Petey!

C) And finally, we visited C. M. Alongi for the next CaFae Latte video I had to catch up on: “CaFae Latte Season 59 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured:

I. Bob catching two teenagers vandalizing the store (smashing pumpkins and painting random pentagrams and whatnot on the wall), giving them the choice of coming to the cafe at 5 AM to clean up the damage or going to the police, and then taking a bit of their hair to curse them both to be bright pink as insurance to make sure they actually showed up to fix things

II. One of the kids, Logan, showing up the next morning at the appointed time (with his very-grumpy father) and cleaning everything up, which earned him a free coffee, a free scone for breakfast, his skin going back to normal color, and some life advice from Jennifer Charles (namely, get better friends and talk to someone about the anger issues) – and the other, Alex, showing up just before school with his pissed-off mother to bitch about the curse; the mother bitched out Bob for cursing her “baby boy” in the following video, but Bob held firm, saying that his actions had consequences and she’d given him his choice of outs from said curse. And when the mother threatened to sue, revealing that she’d already gotten documentation of all the damage and that she knew the curse caused no actual harm to the kid (other than being kinda humiliating), so no lawyer would take their case. The pair eventually stormed out to talk to a lawyer anyway, and JC was like “I’m usually NOT a fan of blaming the parent for the kid’s behavior, buuuut…”

III. JC bringing Rethu (who’d been out for a few days due to a Jewish holiday, Sakkot) up to speed on what happened with the pranksters (turns out Alex and his mother finally went to the police after Alex’s dad said “we’re rich, we can afford a good lawyer to make sure this doesn’t affect his record too badly,” as per the Drek gossip line – looks like he’ll probably only have to pay a fine, and he did get un-pinked for confessing to the police), and Rethu telling them about the holiday and how there’s some shit going down in the woods with missing hikers, and how they think it’s a ghost – only for the pair to be interrupted by a customer angry that neither of them had come over to refill their drink, instead “unprofessionally” talking about their personal lives. JC and Rethu set them straight on how things worked (namely, that this is a CAFE, not a restaurant, and that they’re allowed to chat to pass the time), causing the customer to declare they’d just lost their business and flounce out. JC was like “you promise?” XD

IV. And Herla showing up with a unicorn corpse at the Stoughton Street Witch coven, to turn it into various charms to reward his lieutenants for their good and loyal service (the coven gets some small fees, a hoof, and the teeth out of the trade), only for Ghost Hunter John to show up a little bit later to buy a ghost-detecting charm from Nicole for his latest job – tracking down whatever’s been spiriting away those unfortunate campers and hikers. The plan was that he’d go out on initial recon, figure out what the problem was, then report back to his HQ –

But when we cut to him actually out in the woods, he didn’t find any evidence of paranormal activity. His keychain charm wasn’t even glowing. But then his cellphone lost signal, and…yeah, that’s where Chris left things. O.o Oh cripes, I am like – 99% certain she wouldn’t actually kill John, but that is still a hell of a cliffhanger! I am REALLY hoping that Herla will have a big damn heroes moment so they can have a heartfelt bitchy friends moment afterward. They have earned it.

Tumblr: Didn’t do MUCH on the tumblrs, but I accomplished some stuff – to the point where doing something on one blog helped me with the other –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Didn’t do any draft stuff, as is usual for a Cleaning Saturday, but I did straight-up reblog two things:

A) A truly awesome video of a steampunk carousel, complete with flying machines and boats and mechanical animals that moved around! :D It was so freaking cool and made me think of Secundus and how they’d DEFINITELY have that somewhere in the city – maybe some sort of event building or park? So yeah, had to put that on the blog!

B) And a photo post featuring two screencapped tweets about the “fell first/fell harder” trope and how it’s not about one of the characters loving the other more – instead, it’s about one character slowly falling and getting used to pining over the second one, sure it’ll never lead to anything...and the second character just being hit by their feelings like a truck one day and deciding they HAVE to be with their beloved. XD Which, when I looked at it, made me realize that dynamic could describe Victor/Alice AND Victor/Smiler very well, so – yeah. Reblogged it, tagged it both “#valice” and “#valicer,” and explained the “Victor falls first but never wants to act on his feelings because he’s sure the others won’t feel the same way/Alice and Smiler fall harder and are just clobbered by their feelings” dynamic in said tags. XD It’s just fun!

Valice Multiverse – And then, since there was nothing happening over here, I went ahead and reblogged the steampunk carousel post off Victor Luvs Alice into this account’s drafts! Because Secundus IS one of my verses over here, and it felt appropriate to feature it on both. :) Hooray!

*nods* Fairly productive overall -- I fully expected to want to play Sims and do some save file stuff, but that just wasn't in the cards today. *shrug* Maybe I need to plan that out a little more too before diving into it...or maybe my brain's like "let's not start anything until the 'weather effects indoors' bug is fixed." XD At any rate, I was happy to make some progress on figuring out Tav!Smiler! One step closer to actually properly playing the game again...

Anyway -- I have to get to bed, as I have once again stayed up too late. Tomorrow, goals include working on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts (gotta get the one for second Polyheart OT3 House update started so I can properly show off the exterior!); either working more on the Tav!Smiler stuff and writing up the first draft of Nebby's gift OR playing Fallout 4, making more progress toward the Mechanist, and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc appropriately; getting in a workout; and keeping up with Jon of Many A True Nerd. Again, hopefully all achievable goals, but we shall see! Personally, I'm just hoping the humidity is okay...night all!

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