Even More Tired Sunday
Jun. 15th, 2025 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI got to bed later than I should have, and I woke up earlier than I should have -- a couple of times, in fact, as I was sucking down water last night and really needed to pee. The first time wasn't an issue -- I used the bathroom then went back to sleep -- but the SECOND time, I became aware of some water in my ear and got distracted trying to get it out. Which, for some reason, caused my NOSE to run at one point, and at that point I saw it was around 9 AM and I was like "fuck it, I'll get up." Thinking I'd be okay and that maybe I could turn the time to something more productive --
Nope. I ended up feeling groggy and out of it pretty much ALL FREAKING DAY. I ended up skipping my workout because I was so tired! I didn't really feel like I woke up properly until I took my shower, right before supper! Which, as you might guess, is a bit of a problem, because, you know, I SHOULD be feeling tired the closer I get to bedtime, not more awake! Ugh...at least I got a nice chocolate chip pancake for breakfast, because Mom made blueberry pancakes for Dad for Father's Day and had leftover batter. And Dad liked the Father's Day card I got him. And I got chocolate cream pie for dessert because, again, Mom wanted to do something nice for Dad. And I got the following done, even despite being tired:
Tumblr: Not an ideal day over here on the tumbls, but I did get stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Despite my exhaustion, I was able to make some progress on both “Pride-related” posts sitting in my drafts over here pre-lunch:
A) I got the main text sorted on the “Polyheart OT3 House Is Done” post, describing the updates I made both inside and out – though I feel like I’m going to want to go over it again and make sure it’s all up to snuff on a day when I’m feeling more awake
B) And I started adding the BTTF characters (Doc, Marty, Clara, and Jennifer) to the “Mega List of Gender And Sexuality Headcanons” post I made before – though so far all I’ve gotten done is their gender identities (they’re all cis people, so that was easy). I THINK I know what I want to say for all of them, but I need a moment to turn all these headcanons around in my head more, make sure they’re truly what I feel is right for them all
*shrug* Not as much progress as I was hoping, but – it’s something!
Valice Multiverse – And tonight, I had two anon asks to stick in the queue over here:
A) One sending me the very first question on the list of “LBGTQ Asks” I reblogged a little earlier: “Is your Muse LGBTQ?” I answered that OOC, with the short answer being “yes, mostly!” and the long answer going into detail about Alice, Victor, and Smiler, as they’re my primary three on the blog these days – as a refresher, Alice is a cis woman, demipanromantic (no gender preference, but needs an emotional bond), and gray-asexual (mostly uninterested in sex but a few very specific things get the motor running); Victor is a cis man, biromantic, and bisexual (he can be attracted to multiple genders, though he leans a bit toward women partners thanks to his repressed and rigid upbringing); and Smiler is nonbinary, panromantic, and pansexual (their gender is firmly “other,” and they have no explicit gender preferences – they just like what they like). We’ll see if anybody asks me any of the other questions and makes me think a little bit more about what I want to say! XD
B) And one playing Fact Core and saying that the Presidential Seal has ear flaps, so it’s really a sea lion. XD I had Aperture Wage Slave!Victor respond admitting he couldn’t just dismiss that as one of Fact Core’s obviously nonsense “facts” because, well, he knew Aperture had done work with the US Government, and he wouldn’t put it past Cave Johnson to give the President a seal. Or a sea lion thinking it was a seal. XD Haven’t had one of these asks in a while – was fun to answer one again. :)
Superliminal: Yes, Superliminal! Everyone’s favorite weird and slightly-fucked-up perspective puzzle game was my game of choice for today, and here are the reasons why:
I. I’ve been feeling rather uninspired when it comes to my usual Sunday game, Fallout 4 – I do want to finish up the whole Mechanist quest line and get going on all the other quests I have waiting in the wings (including, you know, the MAIN quest), but I just haven’t had much motivation to do so. I think the problem is a combination of “I really want to play these OTHER games” (see below) and “it takes soooo freaking long to play the game, write up a summary of what I did in the game, update the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the fanfic version of what happened in the game, then write up a summary of how THAT differs from my previous summary.” Which wouldn’t be SO much of a problem if I didn’t do it on Sundays, where not only do I have to go to bed at a decent time (theoretically – we know what I’m like) but I have a rather long video that I can only watch late at night that I ALSO need to summarize. (Well – I don’t NEED to, but I think we can all agree at this point that I’m GOING to whether any of us like it or not. ...actually, you know what, tell me if you like it or not, maybe if people are like “why are you doing this,” I can finally get my brain to be a little less of a bastard about it.) I’m thinking that a potential solution, at least for the summer, would be to bring back “Fallout Fridays” once my half-day Fridays start up in July (because, while I’d still have Game Night and, depending on the weather, beanbags to deal with, I’d also have no long videos to watch and the ability to stay up later to get everything done as necessary), but that sure as hell didn’t help my lack of motivation today, so – yeah. No Fallout 4 today!
II. While I do very much want to dive into both my “Teen Valicer” Sims 4 save file AND my “This Is It The Big One The One I’ve Been Waiting For All My Life” hopefully-FULL playthrough of Baldur’s Gate III with my Tav!Smiler, both of THOSE are still in the “planning/preparation” stage of things. Specifically:
a. For the “Teen Valicer” save file, I still need to figure out everybody’s traits, what aspirations I definitely want them to complete, what degrees they’ll be getting in university, what jobs they’ll be getting as adults, where I want them to live after university, if they’ll be getting pets, if they’ll be having kids, etc, etc
b. For the “Final Tav!Smiler” playthrough, I still need to figure out what Smiler’s starting skill proficiencies should be, what their background should be, what spells I think they should specialize in as a Bardlock, etc, etc
c. And for both, I have to figure out what mods I’m using – and in BG3’s case, if I’m using the external fan-made mod manager or the internal official one. Oh, and of course, there’s still the whole “Smiler’s yellow eyes don’t glow anymore and that bugs me” issue in Sims 4 too. Gotta figure out how to fix THAT before anything else.
Yeah, it’s a lot to tackle, and I never seem to have much time to think about any of it! *grumbles* So yeah, both those games were off the table too today.
III. As for “why Superliminal in particular?” – it’s a game I haven’t played for roughly two and a half years (last time I played it was 12/31/2022); it’s a game I remember enjoying, even if parts of it were fairly obtuse; and – most importantly – it’s a game with a bunch of collectibles in it that I’ve never gotten! And I do like to get as close to 100%-ing a game as I can if it’s one I like…
So yeah – new plan is, whenever I’m feeling like I can’t get into any of my “core three” games for whatever reason, I’ll hop into Superliminal and work on getting collectibles! With the help of a guide, because I’d have NO idea where to look otherwise. XD Accordingly, I played through the first level of the game today, retrieving the hidden blue chess piece and blueprint available there! Both of which proved a little tricky:
A) The blue chess piece was available in the room where you have to shrink down a giant cube into a tiny one to open the door to the next chamber – the guide I was using told me it was “on the ledge,” and that I should go through the hidden doorway behind the giant cube, get a soda from the soda machine in the backstage area, make it as big as possible, and then use it and the cube to reach the ledge and retrieve the chess piece – though the author mentioned that you could also use one of the planks nailed up over the doorway to make a ramp if you wanted. I thus grabbed my soda, my planks, and my cube, and began trying to build a pathway up onto what I thought was “the ledge” – a duct above the soda machine. And then, when that proved to be the incorrect spot, up to what LOOKED like a ledge atop the doorway into the backstage area. Which also proved to be incorrect. It wasn’t until, confused as to what the hell I was supposed to do because I simply couldn’t get anywhere building these terrible structures, I watched the video the guide had provided about how to reach the chess piece that I realized –
“The ledge” was in the puzzle room itself. Specifically, it was a ledge atop the little paneled walls in the right-hand corner closest to the exit door. *facepalm* Guide writer, you could have been a LITTLE more specific about what ledge you meant! Anyway, after seeing that, I easily used one of the chunks of wood to make a ramp up to the chess piece I sought so I could grab it. *shakehead* Lot of wasted effort for a collectible that should have been very easy to snag!
B) The blueprint, meanwhile, was in an even trickier location – a “hidden” room at the very end of the level! “Hidden” being in quotation marks because – well. When you come to the end of the first level of Superliminal, you have to knock down the panels that make up the testing room around you with a piece of cheese to access the backstage area, as the proper “exit” door to the room is all bricked up (it makes – SOME sense in context). You then go around the backstage area until you find a corridor with what looks like a room full of blue sky and clouds at the end – this is the room with the blueprint. However, when you try to approach this room, you discover that the patch of deep shadow stretching across the room at about the halfway mark hides a gap, which you fall down until you land in a bed, triggering the next level to start. So the room that you need to access isn’t exactly hidden, it’s more that you can’t get to it in normal gameplay. The guide told me that the trick to getting across the gap was to use your wedge of cheese to create either a ramp so you could jump over the gap, or a bridge to walk over it. I didn’t trust my jumping skills, so I tried to make the cheese big enough to make a bridge –
And let me tell you, that shit’s nearly impossible. It’s VERY hard to get the cheese into the exact right position where it’s big enough to stretch across the entire gap without falling in! I lost my cheese down the gap more than once and had to restart from the nearest checkpoint (which fortunately was at the very beginning of the corridor) to try again. And yes, I did try jumping once – and I was right to distrust my jump, as I fell down the gap and accidentally triggered the second level to load. Forcing me to go to the level select, return to the first level, and do it all over again. >( Fortunately, given this is the tutorial level and I HAVE played this game a few times, once in Challenge Mode, it didn’t take long to get back to where I was and resume my “please make a bridge cheese” adventures. So, how did I finally get across the gap?
Well, by managing to glitch myself into the increasingly giant-cheese and accidentally launch myself briefly out of the top of the level before landing on the other side of the gap! I was like “...you know what, if Bethesda physics-ing myself across is what works…” XD Anyway, with that sorted, I headed into the room, went around the blue-sky-and-clouds backdrop, and found the blueprint taped up behind it. To my puzzlement, it was blank when I first found it – but when I clicked on it, suddenly a rough sketch of the layout of the first level appeared! Neat. :) With that finally collected, I exited the room and hopped down the gap of my own volition, to start level two properly instead of by accident. I then proceeded to spend a bit of time wandering the initial halls, attempting to throw away a soda can “unsuccessfully” to get an achievement (yes, there is an achievement for failing to throw away trash properly in this game, though as you can probably guess I’m not sure how you get it) and reading the text on it (I went for a can of “Baking Soda” just for funsies, and was deeply amused to see the tagline on the can was “what have we done?!” XD) –
Before realizing “uh, okay, the game is actually making me feel a little bit motion-sick” and saving and exiting! Yeah, unfortunately the game is VERY sensitive to the mouse, so it’s easy to get a bit of a “dicky tummy,” so to speak, after playing for too long. Have to remember to see if I can adjust that – and if I can’t, to make sure I don’t play for more than an hour at a time. *nods* Still, it was fun, and I’m glad I was able to get those two collectibles! Next time, we’ll see what I can get in Level 2!
Writing: Well, as I didn’t play Fallout 4 today, I couldn’t update the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc, meaning I had to find another writing project to work on today! Fortunately for me, I already knew what I could do with my writing time – get the second draft of Nebby’s gift fic done! Because her birthday just so happens to be next Sunday, the 22nd, and I figured if I got the fic sorted today, I could just chuck it into the end of my queue when I set it up later this week. So that’s what I did. :) The second and final draft of “Victor, Alice, and Smiler in the ‘Freakshow’ chapter of Nebby’s fic ‘MediEvil II Resurrection” ended up being about half-a-page longer than the first as I rearranged some things, gave some dialogue to different characters (for example, Alice was the one who explained the sword-laden “Pincushion” freak’s whole deal to Victor in the original rough draft; in the edited version, it’s Smiler), and generally cleaned up a bunch of awkward phrasing and unclear sections, but the general gist remained the same – Alice (as a knife-thrower at the carnival), Smiler (as an alchemist who did regular shows on the midway), and Victor (as a guest who lingered after closing time) hiding from all the dangerous magical bullshit going on and spying on main character Dan as he fought the zombified Pincushion. And Alice intervening with her knife-throwing skills when it looked like Dan was going to lose. Because she’s awesome like that. :P I’m pretty happy with the end product – just hope Nebby is too! (Don’t worry, Gigs – your story is coming up next!)
YouTube: I may not have played my own Fallout game this Sunday, but I still made sure to watch Jon play his, getting through “Fallout: London - Part 47 - Black & Blue” this evening! The continuing adventures of Aria and Mad Jack as they worked to bring about Gaunt’s plans of revenge against Black and his lieutenants John Lockheed, Enforcer Sinclair, and Pieter the Fence – well, kind of. Here’s how things actually went down –
A) First, Aria spoke to “Chill” Winston, “Bullettooth” Anthony, and Johnny “Shrapnel” about how to take down Lockheed, Sinclair, and Pieter in turn:
I. Winston informed her that he’d gotten Lockheed’s mistress, Meg, to turn on him by using her addiction to chems against her – and that he wanted her to go to Meg’s apartment, secure the place, and then wait for him to show up and kill the fucker slowly. Gaunt was like “what? No, this is a dangerous job, I don’t want you anywhere near there” but Winston furiously protested that Lockheed had killed his entire family and he wanted his fury, damn it. Leaving Gaunt to put his foot down and tell Winston he’d stay behind if he didn’t want to meet his dead wife again, and Jon to go “...I did not expect that from the guy called ‘Chill,’ getting really worried this entire gang is bad news, not just Gaunt”
II. Anthony told Aria that Sinclair was based in a metalworks factory up north, using slaves to make things (what wasn’t specified), and that he’d gotten one of the workers, Lexi, to turn against her – just enough to let Aria into the factory, anyway. He said that she probably wouldn’t meet too much security, though he warned her that Sinclair had some sort of “big dog” (I immediately went “she’s got a pet womble, doesn’t she,” which was echoed by Jon later), and that if she wanted the best chance of taking her down, she needed to get the drop on her. He then told her to burn the body in one of the furnaces after she killed her –
Causing Gaunt to protest “hang on, I want all these bodies on display. To send a message, remember?” Anthony retorted that Sinclair was a monster and the last thing he wanted was her to be martyred – he wanted her forgotten and erased. Gaunt was unmoved, though, and Aria realized at this point that once again she was being given an opportunity to undermine Gaunt by doing what his lieutenants wanted instead of following his orders! Which she was VERY happy about, as she really didn’t like him and wanted control of the gang already, damn it XD
III. And Johnny let her know that Pieter did a lot of work with the Gentry these days, meeting them in his own private back room in a private club called the Aeneid, and that he’d managed to get her at least temporary admission...so long as she didn’t bring any weapons in with her. Gaunt was like “how the fuck is she going to kill him without weapons?” –
And Johnny admitted that he didn’t want her to kill Pieter at all, just scare him off and steal his ledger so he’d have to retire. Turns out they were mates back in the day, and while he knows Pieter is the enemy, he just – he knows the guy isn’t a killer. Gaunt was like “you weak little shit” and told Aria to get in there however she needed to, murder whoever she needed to, and bring him back that ledger soaked in blood. *raises an eyebrow* Dramatic much, Gaunt? I don’t think that’ll endear you to Aria any further...
B) Second, Aria went around London in her Vagabond cap (completely missing that she had a matching set of clothes to go with it – to be fair, I didn’t realize there was an outfit either, I think Jon cut receiving it out of an earlier episode) fulfilling her various missions –
I. She found Lockheed on the Isle of Dogs in the Brass Nail, the brothel Meg worked out of, as promised – she gave him Gaunt’s regards when he demanded to know who she was, and he immediately started panicking and begging to cut a deal. Winston then showed up, openly defying Gaunt’s orders and demanding his revenge for his family –
And Aria was like “uh, I’m sorry, Winston, but I’m not about the cold-blooded torture, at least not today. Could you please just go so I can put this guy down quietly?” Winston, as you might expect, was furious, calling her “a boot-licking little shit,” but did indeed back down, and Aria took Lockheed out with a single headshot from Scaramanga, her golden gun. As you might imagine, the comments had a lot to say about Aria suddenly being against a guy maybe torturing someone else to get revenge for his murdered family when she’s happily committed full-scale acts of terrorism for Angel – not to mention SLAUGHTERED THE ENTIRETY OF CAMELOT (though, admittedly, that one wasn’t fully her fault, as the game wouldn’t let her kill Arthur in a quieter place thanks to competing quests nonsense). Just, it seems an odd time to have a moral twinge, Aria. Especially after Mad Jack’s Murder Revenge Quest last week!
II. She found Sinclair over at London Smelters & Co, next to Canning Town and just over the water from the Millennium Dome – as promised, Lexi was waiting outside for her, and let her into the factory through some nearby doors before running for it –
Aaand almost the minute Aria stepped into the stairwell, we realized why she was so eager to get away – turns out she’d led Aria straight into a trap. Sinclair quickly revealed she knew Aria was there and said she was now a rat in a maze, and proceeded to throw not just a bunch of goons at her, but also her dog Willie. Who was not, as Jon and I speculated, a tame Womble, but a giant glowing corgi! Jon approved. XD However, Aria was well-prepared to deal with all this, and with her lovely guns and a bit of Hero, she managed to kill all the goons and Willie and make her way to Sinclair, stabbing the woman to death with the super-fast knife she looted off Merlin’s corpse as Sinclair tried to beat her to death with a sledgehammer. Aria then dragged her body off to the nearby furnace and, after a little trouble, dropped it into the lava to appease Anthony. Because if she couldn’t get Winston on her side when it came time to depose Gaunt, she at least wanted him and Johnny to back her up!
III. And she found Pieter at The Aeneid in Westminster, as promised. She proceeded to swipe her way in with her new membership card, no problem; easily bribe the lady at the front desk with 200 tickets so she didn’t have to turn in her weapons (it just made things easier for John so he didn’t have to rebind all his hot keys); pick open a locked door and discover a birthday party in the making (Jon was delighted); then make her way to Pieter’s room to tell him to hand over his ledger and get out of town, or Johnny would be very sad to learn of the death of an old friend. Pieter said he supposed he should be grateful to have the choice and admitted he felt bad about what he did to Johnny, handed over his ledger without a fuss, then told the two Gentry ghouls he was dealing with, Bill and Ben, to go fuck themselves before heading out into retirement. XD To Aria’s surprise, though, the ghouls then asked what she wanted –
And the game gave her an option to turn them into customers for the Vagabonds instead! Presumably hiring them to steal things and kill people they wanted killing. The pair were initially like “why should we side with you little gang,” but fortunately for Aria, she was Respectable thanks to an earlier quest, and said if they signed up with her gang, she’d make sure they dealt only with her, not the riff-raff. This was acceptable to them, and Aria happily went on her way, pleased to have gotten not only the ledger, but also some new “friends” for the gang. :)
C) Third, Aria returned to the Vagabond’s headquarters to let Gaunt know she’d finished all her missions – Gaunt thanked her, then called in Blind Nelson to tell him what the word on the street was. Nelson informed him that Lockheed had been discovered murdered in the Brass Nail, with a man in Vagabond clothes having been seen lurking nearby earlier (Gaunt was pleased, but said that he wasn’t sure how anyone could have mistaken Aria for a man – revealing that, hilariously, Blind Nelson hadn’t realized Aria was a woman XD), but that while Sinclair’s factory was full of bodies, hers wasn’t one of them, and people were assuming her slaves had finally revolted and dumped her in a furnace, and that Pieter had been seen leaving the city with a good chunk of Syndicate cash, still very much alive. Gaunt was quite sour, as you might expect, and gave Aria the business about it all. Though he was glad to hear from Nelson that his true target, Black, would definitely know that it was the Vagabonds who had pulled all that off. Nelson warned him that Black would regroup and try to annihilate the Vagabonds, but Gaunt waved him off, and dismissed both him and Aria, saying he needed time to think. Jon thus assumed that Aria now had to go find something else to do before Gaunt called her back in –
Only for the game to tell him, “Hey, have Aria go talk to Yvette.” Who, when Aria said hello, delivered a note to her from Nelson, before talking about how she felt a metaphorical storm on the wind and was going to check the perimeter for trouble. Aria read the note, which directed her up to Nelson’s room to contact him on a hidden radio. She thus found it and tuned him in, and he told her that he knew Black was getting ready to flee the city via biplane, and thus he needed her to come to Canning Town and intercept Black’s personal subway train before he could get away –
Alone. Aria was instantly suspicious and asked why Gaunt, who very much wanted to kill Black himself, wasn’t involved – Nelson claimed he didn’t want Gaunt to get hurt, as she knew how he got whenever Black’s name was mentioned. Aria conceded the point, but was still suspicious of a set-up and headed downstairs to tell Gaunt about the message. He was furious and demanded to know the details –
And then Yvette burst in to reveal that the perimeter guards had seen lots of Syndicate enforcers coming their way! Gaunt realized it was his job to rally the troops and beat back the invaders, and reluctantly told Aria to go ahead and get Black, giving her some bullets to do the job – Aria was still like “I feel like this is a trap” but headed out. Making sure to kill plenty of the Syndicate Enforcers outside first, of course.
D) Fourth, Aria headed to the Docklands Light Rail Station in Canning Town, where she shot her way past all the Syndicate Dogs and Mercenaries and Enforcers in her way before hopping on the train, which promptly set off. Aria then proceeded to fight her way up to the front of the train, taking down all and sundry with her Instigating Shotgun –
And found Blind Nelson waiting for her. Turns out that this whole thing was indeed a trap – but perhaps not quite the one she’d expected. Nelson explained to her that he’d been an informer for the Syndicate for years, ever since Gaunt’s father Gabriel died, and that he’d used the position to do his best to keep the gang small because that helped keep them alive. However, from the moment Aria had shown up, she’d thrown that fragile equilibrium completely out of whack. So he’d tricked her onto the train to deliver an offer from Black – switch sides and join with the Syndicate, or die slowly with the rest of the Vagabonds. Aria was like “there must be another way – most of the gang is tired all the endless fighting, can’t we have a ceasefire instead? Just stick to our own territories and not bother each other?” Blind Nelson said that he didn’t know how Black would take it, but they could at least present the idea to him –
And so they headed up to see Black, in his office at the top of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf! Black greeted them like a proper supervillain, standing over them on a balcony high above, and gave a big long villain speech about how this place was a temple to money, a place where people lost their souls in the pursuit of value, and how he had taken the lesson that money can be used to own people’s very souls to heart (citing the fact that he paid Nelson to be a traitor, and watched the guilt eat away at him and make him more and more of a puppet). He knew he could never buy off Gaunt, though, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t just buy off Aria (Aria confirmed this by saying she just did what she pleased whenever it pleased her, which – yeah, does pretty much sum up the LP) – but he was willing to extend her a job offer as one of his Syndicate, as he wanted someone like her on HIS side. Aria promptly responded with her counter-proposition regarding the ceasefire, pointing out that wiping the Vagabonds would cost Black dearly even if he won, and that this stupid war was draining both sides while their enemies, the Gentry, profited. Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped fighting, drew firm boundaries, and worked to improve their own stations instead of all this nonsense? Black admitted that she made some good points, and he would be willing to entertain this idea –
But that Gaunt never would. Which meant, if there was going to be any chance for peace, Aria would have to take out Gaunt and take over the Vagabonds. Aria was like “I have been wanting to do that for a WHILE, good sir.” So yes, next week, having gotten Black to agree to an end to hostilities if she takes over the gang, Aria will be heading back to the Vagabonds to confront Gaunt and see who she can sway to her side! She’s pretty certain she’s got Anthony and Johnny’s support – we’ll see about Winston, I suppose! Ooh, this is gonna be tense...
Okay, I stayed up to finish this, which I'm not sure was the right call, but I was so stressed out the last time I had to finish one of these the following morning that -- yeah, it's probably a six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other situation. *sigh* I'm not going to worry about it -- I'm just going to go to bed. Night all!
Nope. I ended up feeling groggy and out of it pretty much ALL FREAKING DAY. I ended up skipping my workout because I was so tired! I didn't really feel like I woke up properly until I took my shower, right before supper! Which, as you might guess, is a bit of a problem, because, you know, I SHOULD be feeling tired the closer I get to bedtime, not more awake! Ugh...at least I got a nice chocolate chip pancake for breakfast, because Mom made blueberry pancakes for Dad for Father's Day and had leftover batter. And Dad liked the Father's Day card I got him. And I got chocolate cream pie for dessert because, again, Mom wanted to do something nice for Dad. And I got the following done, even despite being tired:
Tumblr: Not an ideal day over here on the tumbls, but I did get stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Despite my exhaustion, I was able to make some progress on both “Pride-related” posts sitting in my drafts over here pre-lunch:
A) I got the main text sorted on the “Polyheart OT3 House Is Done” post, describing the updates I made both inside and out – though I feel like I’m going to want to go over it again and make sure it’s all up to snuff on a day when I’m feeling more awake
B) And I started adding the BTTF characters (Doc, Marty, Clara, and Jennifer) to the “Mega List of Gender And Sexuality Headcanons” post I made before – though so far all I’ve gotten done is their gender identities (they’re all cis people, so that was easy). I THINK I know what I want to say for all of them, but I need a moment to turn all these headcanons around in my head more, make sure they’re truly what I feel is right for them all
*shrug* Not as much progress as I was hoping, but – it’s something!
Valice Multiverse – And tonight, I had two anon asks to stick in the queue over here:
A) One sending me the very first question on the list of “LBGTQ Asks” I reblogged a little earlier: “Is your Muse LGBTQ?” I answered that OOC, with the short answer being “yes, mostly!” and the long answer going into detail about Alice, Victor, and Smiler, as they’re my primary three on the blog these days – as a refresher, Alice is a cis woman, demipanromantic (no gender preference, but needs an emotional bond), and gray-asexual (mostly uninterested in sex but a few very specific things get the motor running); Victor is a cis man, biromantic, and bisexual (he can be attracted to multiple genders, though he leans a bit toward women partners thanks to his repressed and rigid upbringing); and Smiler is nonbinary, panromantic, and pansexual (their gender is firmly “other,” and they have no explicit gender preferences – they just like what they like). We’ll see if anybody asks me any of the other questions and makes me think a little bit more about what I want to say! XD
B) And one playing Fact Core and saying that the Presidential Seal has ear flaps, so it’s really a sea lion. XD I had Aperture Wage Slave!Victor respond admitting he couldn’t just dismiss that as one of Fact Core’s obviously nonsense “facts” because, well, he knew Aperture had done work with the US Government, and he wouldn’t put it past Cave Johnson to give the President a seal. Or a sea lion thinking it was a seal. XD Haven’t had one of these asks in a while – was fun to answer one again. :)
Superliminal: Yes, Superliminal! Everyone’s favorite weird and slightly-fucked-up perspective puzzle game was my game of choice for today, and here are the reasons why:
I. I’ve been feeling rather uninspired when it comes to my usual Sunday game, Fallout 4 – I do want to finish up the whole Mechanist quest line and get going on all the other quests I have waiting in the wings (including, you know, the MAIN quest), but I just haven’t had much motivation to do so. I think the problem is a combination of “I really want to play these OTHER games” (see below) and “it takes soooo freaking long to play the game, write up a summary of what I did in the game, update the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the fanfic version of what happened in the game, then write up a summary of how THAT differs from my previous summary.” Which wouldn’t be SO much of a problem if I didn’t do it on Sundays, where not only do I have to go to bed at a decent time (theoretically – we know what I’m like) but I have a rather long video that I can only watch late at night that I ALSO need to summarize. (Well – I don’t NEED to, but I think we can all agree at this point that I’m GOING to whether any of us like it or not. ...actually, you know what, tell me if you like it or not, maybe if people are like “why are you doing this,” I can finally get my brain to be a little less of a bastard about it.) I’m thinking that a potential solution, at least for the summer, would be to bring back “Fallout Fridays” once my half-day Fridays start up in July (because, while I’d still have Game Night and, depending on the weather, beanbags to deal with, I’d also have no long videos to watch and the ability to stay up later to get everything done as necessary), but that sure as hell didn’t help my lack of motivation today, so – yeah. No Fallout 4 today!
II. While I do very much want to dive into both my “Teen Valicer” Sims 4 save file AND my “This Is It The Big One The One I’ve Been Waiting For All My Life” hopefully-FULL playthrough of Baldur’s Gate III with my Tav!Smiler, both of THOSE are still in the “planning/preparation” stage of things. Specifically:
a. For the “Teen Valicer” save file, I still need to figure out everybody’s traits, what aspirations I definitely want them to complete, what degrees they’ll be getting in university, what jobs they’ll be getting as adults, where I want them to live after university, if they’ll be getting pets, if they’ll be having kids, etc, etc
b. For the “Final Tav!Smiler” playthrough, I still need to figure out what Smiler’s starting skill proficiencies should be, what their background should be, what spells I think they should specialize in as a Bardlock, etc, etc
c. And for both, I have to figure out what mods I’m using – and in BG3’s case, if I’m using the external fan-made mod manager or the internal official one. Oh, and of course, there’s still the whole “Smiler’s yellow eyes don’t glow anymore and that bugs me” issue in Sims 4 too. Gotta figure out how to fix THAT before anything else.
Yeah, it’s a lot to tackle, and I never seem to have much time to think about any of it! *grumbles* So yeah, both those games were off the table too today.
III. As for “why Superliminal in particular?” – it’s a game I haven’t played for roughly two and a half years (last time I played it was 12/31/2022); it’s a game I remember enjoying, even if parts of it were fairly obtuse; and – most importantly – it’s a game with a bunch of collectibles in it that I’ve never gotten! And I do like to get as close to 100%-ing a game as I can if it’s one I like…
So yeah – new plan is, whenever I’m feeling like I can’t get into any of my “core three” games for whatever reason, I’ll hop into Superliminal and work on getting collectibles! With the help of a guide, because I’d have NO idea where to look otherwise. XD Accordingly, I played through the first level of the game today, retrieving the hidden blue chess piece and blueprint available there! Both of which proved a little tricky:
A) The blue chess piece was available in the room where you have to shrink down a giant cube into a tiny one to open the door to the next chamber – the guide I was using told me it was “on the ledge,” and that I should go through the hidden doorway behind the giant cube, get a soda from the soda machine in the backstage area, make it as big as possible, and then use it and the cube to reach the ledge and retrieve the chess piece – though the author mentioned that you could also use one of the planks nailed up over the doorway to make a ramp if you wanted. I thus grabbed my soda, my planks, and my cube, and began trying to build a pathway up onto what I thought was “the ledge” – a duct above the soda machine. And then, when that proved to be the incorrect spot, up to what LOOKED like a ledge atop the doorway into the backstage area. Which also proved to be incorrect. It wasn’t until, confused as to what the hell I was supposed to do because I simply couldn’t get anywhere building these terrible structures, I watched the video the guide had provided about how to reach the chess piece that I realized –
“The ledge” was in the puzzle room itself. Specifically, it was a ledge atop the little paneled walls in the right-hand corner closest to the exit door. *facepalm* Guide writer, you could have been a LITTLE more specific about what ledge you meant! Anyway, after seeing that, I easily used one of the chunks of wood to make a ramp up to the chess piece I sought so I could grab it. *shakehead* Lot of wasted effort for a collectible that should have been very easy to snag!
B) The blueprint, meanwhile, was in an even trickier location – a “hidden” room at the very end of the level! “Hidden” being in quotation marks because – well. When you come to the end of the first level of Superliminal, you have to knock down the panels that make up the testing room around you with a piece of cheese to access the backstage area, as the proper “exit” door to the room is all bricked up (it makes – SOME sense in context). You then go around the backstage area until you find a corridor with what looks like a room full of blue sky and clouds at the end – this is the room with the blueprint. However, when you try to approach this room, you discover that the patch of deep shadow stretching across the room at about the halfway mark hides a gap, which you fall down until you land in a bed, triggering the next level to start. So the room that you need to access isn’t exactly hidden, it’s more that you can’t get to it in normal gameplay. The guide told me that the trick to getting across the gap was to use your wedge of cheese to create either a ramp so you could jump over the gap, or a bridge to walk over it. I didn’t trust my jumping skills, so I tried to make the cheese big enough to make a bridge –
And let me tell you, that shit’s nearly impossible. It’s VERY hard to get the cheese into the exact right position where it’s big enough to stretch across the entire gap without falling in! I lost my cheese down the gap more than once and had to restart from the nearest checkpoint (which fortunately was at the very beginning of the corridor) to try again. And yes, I did try jumping once – and I was right to distrust my jump, as I fell down the gap and accidentally triggered the second level to load. Forcing me to go to the level select, return to the first level, and do it all over again. >( Fortunately, given this is the tutorial level and I HAVE played this game a few times, once in Challenge Mode, it didn’t take long to get back to where I was and resume my “please make a bridge cheese” adventures. So, how did I finally get across the gap?
Well, by managing to glitch myself into the increasingly giant-cheese and accidentally launch myself briefly out of the top of the level before landing on the other side of the gap! I was like “...you know what, if Bethesda physics-ing myself across is what works…” XD Anyway, with that sorted, I headed into the room, went around the blue-sky-and-clouds backdrop, and found the blueprint taped up behind it. To my puzzlement, it was blank when I first found it – but when I clicked on it, suddenly a rough sketch of the layout of the first level appeared! Neat. :) With that finally collected, I exited the room and hopped down the gap of my own volition, to start level two properly instead of by accident. I then proceeded to spend a bit of time wandering the initial halls, attempting to throw away a soda can “unsuccessfully” to get an achievement (yes, there is an achievement for failing to throw away trash properly in this game, though as you can probably guess I’m not sure how you get it) and reading the text on it (I went for a can of “Baking Soda” just for funsies, and was deeply amused to see the tagline on the can was “what have we done?!” XD) –
Before realizing “uh, okay, the game is actually making me feel a little bit motion-sick” and saving and exiting! Yeah, unfortunately the game is VERY sensitive to the mouse, so it’s easy to get a bit of a “dicky tummy,” so to speak, after playing for too long. Have to remember to see if I can adjust that – and if I can’t, to make sure I don’t play for more than an hour at a time. *nods* Still, it was fun, and I’m glad I was able to get those two collectibles! Next time, we’ll see what I can get in Level 2!
Writing: Well, as I didn’t play Fallout 4 today, I couldn’t update the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc, meaning I had to find another writing project to work on today! Fortunately for me, I already knew what I could do with my writing time – get the second draft of Nebby’s gift fic done! Because her birthday just so happens to be next Sunday, the 22nd, and I figured if I got the fic sorted today, I could just chuck it into the end of my queue when I set it up later this week. So that’s what I did. :) The second and final draft of “Victor, Alice, and Smiler in the ‘Freakshow’ chapter of Nebby’s fic ‘MediEvil II Resurrection” ended up being about half-a-page longer than the first as I rearranged some things, gave some dialogue to different characters (for example, Alice was the one who explained the sword-laden “Pincushion” freak’s whole deal to Victor in the original rough draft; in the edited version, it’s Smiler), and generally cleaned up a bunch of awkward phrasing and unclear sections, but the general gist remained the same – Alice (as a knife-thrower at the carnival), Smiler (as an alchemist who did regular shows on the midway), and Victor (as a guest who lingered after closing time) hiding from all the dangerous magical bullshit going on and spying on main character Dan as he fought the zombified Pincushion. And Alice intervening with her knife-throwing skills when it looked like Dan was going to lose. Because she’s awesome like that. :P I’m pretty happy with the end product – just hope Nebby is too! (Don’t worry, Gigs – your story is coming up next!)
YouTube: I may not have played my own Fallout game this Sunday, but I still made sure to watch Jon play his, getting through “Fallout: London - Part 47 - Black & Blue” this evening! The continuing adventures of Aria and Mad Jack as they worked to bring about Gaunt’s plans of revenge against Black and his lieutenants John Lockheed, Enforcer Sinclair, and Pieter the Fence – well, kind of. Here’s how things actually went down –
A) First, Aria spoke to “Chill” Winston, “Bullettooth” Anthony, and Johnny “Shrapnel” about how to take down Lockheed, Sinclair, and Pieter in turn:
I. Winston informed her that he’d gotten Lockheed’s mistress, Meg, to turn on him by using her addiction to chems against her – and that he wanted her to go to Meg’s apartment, secure the place, and then wait for him to show up and kill the fucker slowly. Gaunt was like “what? No, this is a dangerous job, I don’t want you anywhere near there” but Winston furiously protested that Lockheed had killed his entire family and he wanted his fury, damn it. Leaving Gaunt to put his foot down and tell Winston he’d stay behind if he didn’t want to meet his dead wife again, and Jon to go “...I did not expect that from the guy called ‘Chill,’ getting really worried this entire gang is bad news, not just Gaunt”
II. Anthony told Aria that Sinclair was based in a metalworks factory up north, using slaves to make things (what wasn’t specified), and that he’d gotten one of the workers, Lexi, to turn against her – just enough to let Aria into the factory, anyway. He said that she probably wouldn’t meet too much security, though he warned her that Sinclair had some sort of “big dog” (I immediately went “she’s got a pet womble, doesn’t she,” which was echoed by Jon later), and that if she wanted the best chance of taking her down, she needed to get the drop on her. He then told her to burn the body in one of the furnaces after she killed her –
Causing Gaunt to protest “hang on, I want all these bodies on display. To send a message, remember?” Anthony retorted that Sinclair was a monster and the last thing he wanted was her to be martyred – he wanted her forgotten and erased. Gaunt was unmoved, though, and Aria realized at this point that once again she was being given an opportunity to undermine Gaunt by doing what his lieutenants wanted instead of following his orders! Which she was VERY happy about, as she really didn’t like him and wanted control of the gang already, damn it XD
III. And Johnny let her know that Pieter did a lot of work with the Gentry these days, meeting them in his own private back room in a private club called the Aeneid, and that he’d managed to get her at least temporary admission...so long as she didn’t bring any weapons in with her. Gaunt was like “how the fuck is she going to kill him without weapons?” –
And Johnny admitted that he didn’t want her to kill Pieter at all, just scare him off and steal his ledger so he’d have to retire. Turns out they were mates back in the day, and while he knows Pieter is the enemy, he just – he knows the guy isn’t a killer. Gaunt was like “you weak little shit” and told Aria to get in there however she needed to, murder whoever she needed to, and bring him back that ledger soaked in blood. *raises an eyebrow* Dramatic much, Gaunt? I don’t think that’ll endear you to Aria any further...
B) Second, Aria went around London in her Vagabond cap (completely missing that she had a matching set of clothes to go with it – to be fair, I didn’t realize there was an outfit either, I think Jon cut receiving it out of an earlier episode) fulfilling her various missions –
I. She found Lockheed on the Isle of Dogs in the Brass Nail, the brothel Meg worked out of, as promised – she gave him Gaunt’s regards when he demanded to know who she was, and he immediately started panicking and begging to cut a deal. Winston then showed up, openly defying Gaunt’s orders and demanding his revenge for his family –
And Aria was like “uh, I’m sorry, Winston, but I’m not about the cold-blooded torture, at least not today. Could you please just go so I can put this guy down quietly?” Winston, as you might expect, was furious, calling her “a boot-licking little shit,” but did indeed back down, and Aria took Lockheed out with a single headshot from Scaramanga, her golden gun. As you might imagine, the comments had a lot to say about Aria suddenly being against a guy maybe torturing someone else to get revenge for his murdered family when she’s happily committed full-scale acts of terrorism for Angel – not to mention SLAUGHTERED THE ENTIRETY OF CAMELOT (though, admittedly, that one wasn’t fully her fault, as the game wouldn’t let her kill Arthur in a quieter place thanks to competing quests nonsense). Just, it seems an odd time to have a moral twinge, Aria. Especially after Mad Jack’s Murder Revenge Quest last week!
II. She found Sinclair over at London Smelters & Co, next to Canning Town and just over the water from the Millennium Dome – as promised, Lexi was waiting outside for her, and let her into the factory through some nearby doors before running for it –
Aaand almost the minute Aria stepped into the stairwell, we realized why she was so eager to get away – turns out she’d led Aria straight into a trap. Sinclair quickly revealed she knew Aria was there and said she was now a rat in a maze, and proceeded to throw not just a bunch of goons at her, but also her dog Willie. Who was not, as Jon and I speculated, a tame Womble, but a giant glowing corgi! Jon approved. XD However, Aria was well-prepared to deal with all this, and with her lovely guns and a bit of Hero, she managed to kill all the goons and Willie and make her way to Sinclair, stabbing the woman to death with the super-fast knife she looted off Merlin’s corpse as Sinclair tried to beat her to death with a sledgehammer. Aria then dragged her body off to the nearby furnace and, after a little trouble, dropped it into the lava to appease Anthony. Because if she couldn’t get Winston on her side when it came time to depose Gaunt, she at least wanted him and Johnny to back her up!
III. And she found Pieter at The Aeneid in Westminster, as promised. She proceeded to swipe her way in with her new membership card, no problem; easily bribe the lady at the front desk with 200 tickets so she didn’t have to turn in her weapons (it just made things easier for John so he didn’t have to rebind all his hot keys); pick open a locked door and discover a birthday party in the making (Jon was delighted); then make her way to Pieter’s room to tell him to hand over his ledger and get out of town, or Johnny would be very sad to learn of the death of an old friend. Pieter said he supposed he should be grateful to have the choice and admitted he felt bad about what he did to Johnny, handed over his ledger without a fuss, then told the two Gentry ghouls he was dealing with, Bill and Ben, to go fuck themselves before heading out into retirement. XD To Aria’s surprise, though, the ghouls then asked what she wanted –
And the game gave her an option to turn them into customers for the Vagabonds instead! Presumably hiring them to steal things and kill people they wanted killing. The pair were initially like “why should we side with you little gang,” but fortunately for Aria, she was Respectable thanks to an earlier quest, and said if they signed up with her gang, she’d make sure they dealt only with her, not the riff-raff. This was acceptable to them, and Aria happily went on her way, pleased to have gotten not only the ledger, but also some new “friends” for the gang. :)
C) Third, Aria returned to the Vagabond’s headquarters to let Gaunt know she’d finished all her missions – Gaunt thanked her, then called in Blind Nelson to tell him what the word on the street was. Nelson informed him that Lockheed had been discovered murdered in the Brass Nail, with a man in Vagabond clothes having been seen lurking nearby earlier (Gaunt was pleased, but said that he wasn’t sure how anyone could have mistaken Aria for a man – revealing that, hilariously, Blind Nelson hadn’t realized Aria was a woman XD), but that while Sinclair’s factory was full of bodies, hers wasn’t one of them, and people were assuming her slaves had finally revolted and dumped her in a furnace, and that Pieter had been seen leaving the city with a good chunk of Syndicate cash, still very much alive. Gaunt was quite sour, as you might expect, and gave Aria the business about it all. Though he was glad to hear from Nelson that his true target, Black, would definitely know that it was the Vagabonds who had pulled all that off. Nelson warned him that Black would regroup and try to annihilate the Vagabonds, but Gaunt waved him off, and dismissed both him and Aria, saying he needed time to think. Jon thus assumed that Aria now had to go find something else to do before Gaunt called her back in –
Only for the game to tell him, “Hey, have Aria go talk to Yvette.” Who, when Aria said hello, delivered a note to her from Nelson, before talking about how she felt a metaphorical storm on the wind and was going to check the perimeter for trouble. Aria read the note, which directed her up to Nelson’s room to contact him on a hidden radio. She thus found it and tuned him in, and he told her that he knew Black was getting ready to flee the city via biplane, and thus he needed her to come to Canning Town and intercept Black’s personal subway train before he could get away –
Alone. Aria was instantly suspicious and asked why Gaunt, who very much wanted to kill Black himself, wasn’t involved – Nelson claimed he didn’t want Gaunt to get hurt, as she knew how he got whenever Black’s name was mentioned. Aria conceded the point, but was still suspicious of a set-up and headed downstairs to tell Gaunt about the message. He was furious and demanded to know the details –
And then Yvette burst in to reveal that the perimeter guards had seen lots of Syndicate enforcers coming their way! Gaunt realized it was his job to rally the troops and beat back the invaders, and reluctantly told Aria to go ahead and get Black, giving her some bullets to do the job – Aria was still like “I feel like this is a trap” but headed out. Making sure to kill plenty of the Syndicate Enforcers outside first, of course.
D) Fourth, Aria headed to the Docklands Light Rail Station in Canning Town, where she shot her way past all the Syndicate Dogs and Mercenaries and Enforcers in her way before hopping on the train, which promptly set off. Aria then proceeded to fight her way up to the front of the train, taking down all and sundry with her Instigating Shotgun –
And found Blind Nelson waiting for her. Turns out that this whole thing was indeed a trap – but perhaps not quite the one she’d expected. Nelson explained to her that he’d been an informer for the Syndicate for years, ever since Gaunt’s father Gabriel died, and that he’d used the position to do his best to keep the gang small because that helped keep them alive. However, from the moment Aria had shown up, she’d thrown that fragile equilibrium completely out of whack. So he’d tricked her onto the train to deliver an offer from Black – switch sides and join with the Syndicate, or die slowly with the rest of the Vagabonds. Aria was like “there must be another way – most of the gang is tired all the endless fighting, can’t we have a ceasefire instead? Just stick to our own territories and not bother each other?” Blind Nelson said that he didn’t know how Black would take it, but they could at least present the idea to him –
And so they headed up to see Black, in his office at the top of One Canada Square in Canary Wharf! Black greeted them like a proper supervillain, standing over them on a balcony high above, and gave a big long villain speech about how this place was a temple to money, a place where people lost their souls in the pursuit of value, and how he had taken the lesson that money can be used to own people’s very souls to heart (citing the fact that he paid Nelson to be a traitor, and watched the guilt eat away at him and make him more and more of a puppet). He knew he could never buy off Gaunt, though, and he was pretty sure he couldn’t just buy off Aria (Aria confirmed this by saying she just did what she pleased whenever it pleased her, which – yeah, does pretty much sum up the LP) – but he was willing to extend her a job offer as one of his Syndicate, as he wanted someone like her on HIS side. Aria promptly responded with her counter-proposition regarding the ceasefire, pointing out that wiping the Vagabonds would cost Black dearly even if he won, and that this stupid war was draining both sides while their enemies, the Gentry, profited. Wouldn’t it be better if they stopped fighting, drew firm boundaries, and worked to improve their own stations instead of all this nonsense? Black admitted that she made some good points, and he would be willing to entertain this idea –
But that Gaunt never would. Which meant, if there was going to be any chance for peace, Aria would have to take out Gaunt and take over the Vagabonds. Aria was like “I have been wanting to do that for a WHILE, good sir.” So yes, next week, having gotten Black to agree to an end to hostilities if she takes over the gang, Aria will be heading back to the Vagabonds to confront Gaunt and see who she can sway to her side! She’s pretty certain she’s got Anthony and Johnny’s support – we’ll see about Winston, I suppose! Ooh, this is gonna be tense...
Okay, I stayed up to finish this, which I'm not sure was the right call, but I was so stressed out the last time I had to finish one of these the following morning that -- yeah, it's probably a six-of-one, half-a-dozen of the other situation. *sigh* I'm not going to worry about it -- I'm just going to go to bed. Night all!
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Date: 2025-06-17 12:19 pm (UTC)Rick Moranis is even coming out of retirement to play Dark Helmet again. I guess if Mel Brooks asks, you don't say no lol.
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Date: 2025-06-18 03:50 am (UTC)O.O Seriously? Okay, my interest in the movie just went up a notch or two. XD