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crossover_chickGotta acknowledge the first of the two Big BTTF Dates with the appropriate timestamp! And then run away and finish what I'm doing so I can tell you all about it later. XD
Aaaand I'm back, with your daily write-up:
Work – Unfortunately, I must report that my Wednesday workday proved to be rather more annoying than my Monday and Tuesday ones. :( While I was able to spend most of the day just working on the latest obituaries (and marking one guy inactive after he sent us a letter stating he was no longer giving due to personal issues and that we were NOT to send him anything else EVER), I also had to deal with the following:
A) One of the people who helps us with posting the credit card gifts when they came in sending me a question about a certain gift that came in one of the latest batches that I wasn’t sure how to answer (it was for a campaign we don’t get a lot of gifts for, so we didn’t have the most up-to-date “source code” for it). So I tried to forward it onto my boss...only for him to never answer the email. *grumbles* I ended up telling the person to just post it using a particular code, and that if we needed to change it afterward, we would, at the end of the day. I know he’s busy, but it gets really frustrating when it feels like I’m being ignored!
B) Having another useless check-in call with the credit card people, because – as usual – nothing had been done to solve any of our outstanding problems. *heavy sigh* I fucking hate that company, I swear...
C) What looked like a bag of exceptions from the processors arriving at the end of the day, with my coworker giving it to me (because that’s what they always do, because the processors always put my name on it) – only to find what looked like sample pledge cards from other dioceses when I cracked it open. And when we looked at the label, it said my boss’s name on it. Whoops! I would have given it to him, but his door was closed for the rest of the afternoon, meaning either he’d left early or was having a private meeting (I thought I heard voices behind it, so it was probably the latter). Put it in my little folder basket thing to give to him later – teach me to double-check these things first!
D) Learning that my coworker will not be going to the stupid “Renewal Day” thing that they’re forcing us to attend tomorrow – she has a good reason (helping her mom with medical stuff), but it just kinda annoys me in general that SHE got out of it, but I can’t. *grumbles*
E) My commute home being pretty shitty, because for some reason the main drag was absolutely CLOGGED with traffic. No idea why, but it was quite frustrating!
So yeah – not the worst day, but definitely a downgrade from the start of the week. *shakehead* And tomorrow I have to go to that stupid “Renewal Day” off site and listen to some dumb presentations about how important the work we do is...at least lunch will be provided. And everything should wrap up by 2:30 PM, meaning I get to come home a little early. Small mercy, that!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with my 25th anniversary edition Back To The Future Blu-Ray! Tonight’s “ride” took me through:
A) The end of the movie, and the June 2002 Bob Gale and Neil Canton commentary track! Which featured such delightful moments as:
I. Bob Gale being very amused by Marty going “everything looks GREAT” in response to seeing the horribly-dilapidated town square of 1985
II. Bob talking about how Photomat did in fact pay them to put their booth in the mall’s parking lot for the Libyans to crash into...over the scene of Marty finding out Doc did in fact read his letter and thus survived being shot thanks to a bulletproof vest. XD Bob, dude, it would have been rather more appropriate to discuss this half a minute earlier!
III. Bob noting that the “RQ” magazines in Marty’s bedroom were in fact copies of “Reference Quarterly,” a trade magazine for reference librarians – the props people just found a few of them lying around and decided to stuff them into Marty’s bedroom, not realizing what they are. Cue the Bobs getting baffled letters from reference librarians wondering why a teenage boy would have those in his bedroom XD
IV. Bob talking about how the outfit we see George in at the end of the movie is the second look for the new-and-improved version of the character, with the first being visible in the photograph on the back of George’s novel (they decided that one didn’t contrast enough with George’s look in the original 1985)...and how convincing Crispin Glover to wear those clothes was one of the hardest things they had to do in the movie
V. Bob saying that, when they previewed the film, the final shot of the DeLorean rising up into the air and flying into the screen wasn’t done yet – it was a rough cut in black and white – but nobody in the audience cared, because they were just so on-board with the DeLorean being able to fly now :)
Good stuff – I’m looking forward to listening to the commentaries for the other two movies!
B) The first chunk of the “Tales From The Future: In The Beginning…” featurette! Featuring such stories as:
I. How BTTF came to be (basically, the Bobs wanted to make a time travel movie, but couldn’t find a hook until Bob visited his parents, found his Dad’s old high school yearbook and learned he was the president of his graduating class, and started wondering if he and his Dad would have been friends if they’d gone to high school together)
II. The troubles the Bobs had shopping it around at first (basically every studio didn’t consider it “raunchy” enough and told them to take it to Disney...and then when they took it to Disney, they were told “excuse you, that scene of Lorraine kissing Marty is INCEST and we are DISNEY;” basically the only guy who believed in it from the start was Steven Spielberg, but because they’d already done three not-so-well-received movies with him, they didn’t want to tie their horse to him again in case this movie ALSO didn’t do well and thus made them “the guys who only got work because they were buddies with Spielberg” – obviously they did end up going with him in the end, but only after Bob Zemeckis managed to direct a successful movie WITHOUT Spielberg’s involvement)
III. The attempt to get Eric Stoltz to work in the role of Marty McFly because they couldn’t get their first choice, only for everyone to realize it wasn’t working out and beg the guy in charge of Family Ties to let them have Michael J. Fox (they stressed that it wasn’t because Eric was a bad actor, he was just a bad fit for the role because his comedic sensibilities were way different from everyone else’s)
IV. How they cast the rest of the McFly family (David McClure and Wendi Jo Sperber (Dave and Linda respectively) were both veterans of The Bobs’ films, having starred in a couple already, while Lea Thompson was, ironically, spotted while she was working with Eric Stoltz on the movie The Wild Life and encouraged to audition; not much was said about how they found Crispin Glover for George, but they did note that his weird mannerisms made him perfect for the role)
V. And how Christopher Lloyd nearly didn’t even look at the script for BTTF – planning to head back to New Haven, Connecticut, to do a play – until a friend convinced him to “leave no stone unturned” (fortunately, after reading the script and meeting with Robert Zemeckis, he decided he’d be in good hands if he did the movie and agreed to be Doc; if I recall from other retellings of this story, the play he was going to be in flopped BAD, so it was a good thing he decided to be in BTTF instead!)
All stuff I’ve heard before, of course, but it’s been ages since I watched these featurettes, so I’m willing to hear it again. :p We’ll finish off this one and start the next tomorrow!
2. Work on Valicer Polyship Week 2025 stuff: Check – edited my story for my chosen Day One prompt, “Kidnapped,” today! Which, as a reminder, is the Londerland Bloodlines one, featuring Victor admitting that he’s actually glad that he got kidnapped by the Ministry of Joy – then explaining to his baffled partners that the reason for that is because it led to so many good things, like the Ministry and Dr. Kelman being exposed and taken down, and Smiler joining the polycule. Smiler was like “don’t thank the Ministry kidnapping you for that, thank Alice for convincing me you all didn’t hate me after said kidnapping,” but Victor said she wouldn’t have had to do that if he hadn’t been kidnapped, so… :p Unfortunately, this was another story that fought me during editing – I don’t know why, but it took me a good long while to find my flow and wrestle the words into a shape I was happy with! Especially the beginning – in fact, I’ve noticed I’ve had a LOT of problems with the beginnings of all these stories so far. It often takes me more than a couple of tries to actually get started with any particular one. *shakehead* Meeh...hopefully tomorrow’s editing session will go smoother!
3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – while I’d hoped to watch the latest OXtra list video, it took me so long to edit “Kidnapped” that by the time I got on FreeTube, I knew I’d never have enough time to tackle it. Fortunately, I was able to come up with a backup plan fairly quickly – my wanderings on the internet earlier had revealed to me that the team behind the upcoming Paralives life sim had released a trailer of sorts showing off their Build/Buy stuff. So I looked up their account on FreeTube, and found a couple of nice, short, interesting videos to quickly pop on and enjoy –
A) First up, we had “Paralives - Decorating a Room” – a showcase of the team furnishing and decorating a small bedroom and attached walk-in closet! Showing off such things as how you can choose from pre-set color swatches, or customize everything with the “Style Creation” palette; how you can stretch and squash multiple items to make bigger or smaller versions (for example, stretching a single bed into a double bed, and extending short curtains into floor-length ones); how you don’t have to place things on a grid if you don’t want to – items can just go wherever, no cheats necessary; and how you can place almost anything on a shelf as long as you can resize it! It was amazing to watch the room come to life, and see everything get adjusted on the fly – really makes me think that building and decorating in this game is gonna be a lot of fun!
B) And second up, we had “Paralives - Creating Characters in the Paramaker” – showing off how Paras are brought to live in this game’s version of CAS! And let me tell you, it is very in-depth – while it relies on sliders rather than the “plush and pull directly on the simulated person” thing Sims 4 had going on, it has a FUCK TON of those sliders, covering every little thing that you could possibly think of! From eye corner tilt to nostril width! Plus there’s plenty of clothing options, and the ability to choose what kind of shirt goes under a jacket, and a ton of piercing and tattoo options, and the same color palette customizer thing for clothes and hair and whatnot that you get with objects, and a simple-but-interesting personality system (where you designate what your Para is good at – like, are they more fitness-focused, or creatively adept? – what their general vibe is, what their social perk is, what they have a special talent for, what their sleeping habits are, etc). It all looks very cool, and I am cautiously hopeful that I might be able to recreate my beloved Valicer trio on the game. Fingers crossed, everyone!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t do anything with Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)’s queue (still need to figure out my Song Saturday), I did at least send out a couple of asks to friends:
A) One to thesatiricaldemon, talking about something I’d realized recently – the Victor and Alice in “Beneath A Broken Sky,” being from the 1870s, are not going to be vaccinated against, well, ANYTHING, because they’re before the advent of most vaccines. O.O Said it was something that his characters might want to fix – if vaccines were even still available after the end of the world, of course! He ended up replying that he hadn’t even thought about mundane cross-contamination before (no worries, dude, I didn’t either until a little while ago); that vaccines WERE available, but harder to get (with your best bet being through the Omega Mart Pharmacy – though given they’re getting THEIR supplies from a truly Awful Hospital, quality may be – variable); and that he’d address the issue in the next chapter (nice).
B) And one to dont-offend-the-bees, wondering what Charles and Edwin of Dead Boy Detectives would make of the Clue movie, given they seem to be fans of the board game – he hasn’t gotten back to me yet. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
Been meaning to send those for a while, so yeah – I feel accomplished now. :P
Aaand I have once again stayed up later than I meant to, so it's time to get to bed. Hopefully the Renewal Day thing tomorrow isn't too annoying -- night all!
Aaaand I'm back, with your daily write-up:
Work – Unfortunately, I must report that my Wednesday workday proved to be rather more annoying than my Monday and Tuesday ones. :( While I was able to spend most of the day just working on the latest obituaries (and marking one guy inactive after he sent us a letter stating he was no longer giving due to personal issues and that we were NOT to send him anything else EVER), I also had to deal with the following:
A) One of the people who helps us with posting the credit card gifts when they came in sending me a question about a certain gift that came in one of the latest batches that I wasn’t sure how to answer (it was for a campaign we don’t get a lot of gifts for, so we didn’t have the most up-to-date “source code” for it). So I tried to forward it onto my boss...only for him to never answer the email. *grumbles* I ended up telling the person to just post it using a particular code, and that if we needed to change it afterward, we would, at the end of the day. I know he’s busy, but it gets really frustrating when it feels like I’m being ignored!
B) Having another useless check-in call with the credit card people, because – as usual – nothing had been done to solve any of our outstanding problems. *heavy sigh* I fucking hate that company, I swear...
C) What looked like a bag of exceptions from the processors arriving at the end of the day, with my coworker giving it to me (because that’s what they always do, because the processors always put my name on it) – only to find what looked like sample pledge cards from other dioceses when I cracked it open. And when we looked at the label, it said my boss’s name on it. Whoops! I would have given it to him, but his door was closed for the rest of the afternoon, meaning either he’d left early or was having a private meeting (I thought I heard voices behind it, so it was probably the latter). Put it in my little folder basket thing to give to him later – teach me to double-check these things first!
D) Learning that my coworker will not be going to the stupid “Renewal Day” thing that they’re forcing us to attend tomorrow – she has a good reason (helping her mom with medical stuff), but it just kinda annoys me in general that SHE got out of it, but I can’t. *grumbles*
E) My commute home being pretty shitty, because for some reason the main drag was absolutely CLOGGED with traffic. No idea why, but it was quite frustrating!
So yeah – not the worst day, but definitely a downgrade from the start of the week. *shakehead* And tomorrow I have to go to that stupid “Renewal Day” off site and listen to some dumb presentations about how important the work we do is...at least lunch will be provided. And everything should wrap up by 2:30 PM, meaning I get to come home a little early. Small mercy, that!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with my 25th anniversary edition Back To The Future Blu-Ray! Tonight’s “ride” took me through:
A) The end of the movie, and the June 2002 Bob Gale and Neil Canton commentary track! Which featured such delightful moments as:
I. Bob Gale being very amused by Marty going “everything looks GREAT” in response to seeing the horribly-dilapidated town square of 1985
II. Bob talking about how Photomat did in fact pay them to put their booth in the mall’s parking lot for the Libyans to crash into...over the scene of Marty finding out Doc did in fact read his letter and thus survived being shot thanks to a bulletproof vest. XD Bob, dude, it would have been rather more appropriate to discuss this half a minute earlier!
III. Bob noting that the “RQ” magazines in Marty’s bedroom were in fact copies of “Reference Quarterly,” a trade magazine for reference librarians – the props people just found a few of them lying around and decided to stuff them into Marty’s bedroom, not realizing what they are. Cue the Bobs getting baffled letters from reference librarians wondering why a teenage boy would have those in his bedroom XD
IV. Bob talking about how the outfit we see George in at the end of the movie is the second look for the new-and-improved version of the character, with the first being visible in the photograph on the back of George’s novel (they decided that one didn’t contrast enough with George’s look in the original 1985)...and how convincing Crispin Glover to wear those clothes was one of the hardest things they had to do in the movie
V. Bob saying that, when they previewed the film, the final shot of the DeLorean rising up into the air and flying into the screen wasn’t done yet – it was a rough cut in black and white – but nobody in the audience cared, because they were just so on-board with the DeLorean being able to fly now :)
Good stuff – I’m looking forward to listening to the commentaries for the other two movies!
B) The first chunk of the “Tales From The Future: In The Beginning…” featurette! Featuring such stories as:
I. How BTTF came to be (basically, the Bobs wanted to make a time travel movie, but couldn’t find a hook until Bob visited his parents, found his Dad’s old high school yearbook and learned he was the president of his graduating class, and started wondering if he and his Dad would have been friends if they’d gone to high school together)
II. The troubles the Bobs had shopping it around at first (basically every studio didn’t consider it “raunchy” enough and told them to take it to Disney...and then when they took it to Disney, they were told “excuse you, that scene of Lorraine kissing Marty is INCEST and we are DISNEY;” basically the only guy who believed in it from the start was Steven Spielberg, but because they’d already done three not-so-well-received movies with him, they didn’t want to tie their horse to him again in case this movie ALSO didn’t do well and thus made them “the guys who only got work because they were buddies with Spielberg” – obviously they did end up going with him in the end, but only after Bob Zemeckis managed to direct a successful movie WITHOUT Spielberg’s involvement)
III. The attempt to get Eric Stoltz to work in the role of Marty McFly because they couldn’t get their first choice, only for everyone to realize it wasn’t working out and beg the guy in charge of Family Ties to let them have Michael J. Fox (they stressed that it wasn’t because Eric was a bad actor, he was just a bad fit for the role because his comedic sensibilities were way different from everyone else’s)
IV. How they cast the rest of the McFly family (David McClure and Wendi Jo Sperber (Dave and Linda respectively) were both veterans of The Bobs’ films, having starred in a couple already, while Lea Thompson was, ironically, spotted while she was working with Eric Stoltz on the movie The Wild Life and encouraged to audition; not much was said about how they found Crispin Glover for George, but they did note that his weird mannerisms made him perfect for the role)
V. And how Christopher Lloyd nearly didn’t even look at the script for BTTF – planning to head back to New Haven, Connecticut, to do a play – until a friend convinced him to “leave no stone unturned” (fortunately, after reading the script and meeting with Robert Zemeckis, he decided he’d be in good hands if he did the movie and agreed to be Doc; if I recall from other retellings of this story, the play he was going to be in flopped BAD, so it was a good thing he decided to be in BTTF instead!)
All stuff I’ve heard before, of course, but it’s been ages since I watched these featurettes, so I’m willing to hear it again. :p We’ll finish off this one and start the next tomorrow!
2. Work on Valicer Polyship Week 2025 stuff: Check – edited my story for my chosen Day One prompt, “Kidnapped,” today! Which, as a reminder, is the Londerland Bloodlines one, featuring Victor admitting that he’s actually glad that he got kidnapped by the Ministry of Joy – then explaining to his baffled partners that the reason for that is because it led to so many good things, like the Ministry and Dr. Kelman being exposed and taken down, and Smiler joining the polycule. Smiler was like “don’t thank the Ministry kidnapping you for that, thank Alice for convincing me you all didn’t hate me after said kidnapping,” but Victor said she wouldn’t have had to do that if he hadn’t been kidnapped, so… :p Unfortunately, this was another story that fought me during editing – I don’t know why, but it took me a good long while to find my flow and wrestle the words into a shape I was happy with! Especially the beginning – in fact, I’ve noticed I’ve had a LOT of problems with the beginnings of all these stories so far. It often takes me more than a couple of tries to actually get started with any particular one. *shakehead* Meeh...hopefully tomorrow’s editing session will go smoother!
3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – while I’d hoped to watch the latest OXtra list video, it took me so long to edit “Kidnapped” that by the time I got on FreeTube, I knew I’d never have enough time to tackle it. Fortunately, I was able to come up with a backup plan fairly quickly – my wanderings on the internet earlier had revealed to me that the team behind the upcoming Paralives life sim had released a trailer of sorts showing off their Build/Buy stuff. So I looked up their account on FreeTube, and found a couple of nice, short, interesting videos to quickly pop on and enjoy –
A) First up, we had “Paralives - Decorating a Room” – a showcase of the team furnishing and decorating a small bedroom and attached walk-in closet! Showing off such things as how you can choose from pre-set color swatches, or customize everything with the “Style Creation” palette; how you can stretch and squash multiple items to make bigger or smaller versions (for example, stretching a single bed into a double bed, and extending short curtains into floor-length ones); how you don’t have to place things on a grid if you don’t want to – items can just go wherever, no cheats necessary; and how you can place almost anything on a shelf as long as you can resize it! It was amazing to watch the room come to life, and see everything get adjusted on the fly – really makes me think that building and decorating in this game is gonna be a lot of fun!
B) And second up, we had “Paralives - Creating Characters in the Paramaker” – showing off how Paras are brought to live in this game’s version of CAS! And let me tell you, it is very in-depth – while it relies on sliders rather than the “plush and pull directly on the simulated person” thing Sims 4 had going on, it has a FUCK TON of those sliders, covering every little thing that you could possibly think of! From eye corner tilt to nostril width! Plus there’s plenty of clothing options, and the ability to choose what kind of shirt goes under a jacket, and a ton of piercing and tattoo options, and the same color palette customizer thing for clothes and hair and whatnot that you get with objects, and a simple-but-interesting personality system (where you designate what your Para is good at – like, are they more fitness-focused, or creatively adept? – what their general vibe is, what their social perk is, what they have a special talent for, what their sleeping habits are, etc). It all looks very cool, and I am cautiously hopeful that I might be able to recreate my beloved Valicer trio on the game. Fingers crossed, everyone!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t do anything with Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)’s queue (still need to figure out my Song Saturday), I did at least send out a couple of asks to friends:
A) One to thesatiricaldemon, talking about something I’d realized recently – the Victor and Alice in “Beneath A Broken Sky,” being from the 1870s, are not going to be vaccinated against, well, ANYTHING, because they’re before the advent of most vaccines. O.O Said it was something that his characters might want to fix – if vaccines were even still available after the end of the world, of course! He ended up replying that he hadn’t even thought about mundane cross-contamination before (no worries, dude, I didn’t either until a little while ago); that vaccines WERE available, but harder to get (with your best bet being through the Omega Mart Pharmacy – though given they’re getting THEIR supplies from a truly Awful Hospital, quality may be – variable); and that he’d address the issue in the next chapter (nice).
B) And one to dont-offend-the-bees, wondering what Charles and Edwin of Dead Boy Detectives would make of the Clue movie, given they seem to be fans of the board game – he hasn’t gotten back to me yet. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
Been meaning to send those for a while, so yeah – I feel accomplished now. :P
Aaand I have once again stayed up later than I meant to, so it's time to get to bed. Hopefully the Renewal Day thing tomorrow isn't too annoying -- night all!
