Cold And Icky Thursday
Apr. 2nd, 2026 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickIt was not a nice day weather-wise, that was for damn certain -- it was rainy all morning, cloudy the rest of the day, and the temperatures barely made it into the 40s. Quite the turnaround from the 70-degrees-and-sunny Tuesday we had! >( Fortunately the heat was on at work, and I had my space heater in case I needed a little extra blast, but still. It's April -- you'd expect these kinds of days to be over and done with! Meeeh... At least the rest of my day was pretty decent --
Work – I am pleased to report that it was a decent enough Thursday to end out this short work week:
A) While the commute in was pretty bad thanks to it being miserable and rainy this morning, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and I was only like a minute late
B) The day itself was very quiet – my phone didn’t ring once! O.o I spent the morning doing the GL, answering a few e-mails, and putting on some cash gifts; then the afternoon was spent going through and putting on a bunch of check gifts, attempting (and failing) to figure out who sent in an IRA check we received in the mail (pro tip people – put your name on those damn things!), and doing a couple of last-minute reversals to remove a pledge that was causing trouble (because the donor had a recurring gift and the database system kept insisting the recurring gifts be applied to the pledge, despite the fact that the pledge was fully paid and the donor had elected to keep the recurring gift). Nothing particularly exciting, but it made the day go by!
C) And the commute home was actually pretty quiet and smooth for the most part – helped by the fact that I got out a couple of minutes earlier than normal (nothing major, but it was still nice)
So yeah – I’d say that was a perfectly fine way to end the week. *nods* And now I have four days off, hooray~ Hopefully they’ll be good!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped on the bike again and pedaled my way through the following:
A) “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Using ONLY Shove?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! For I was in the mood for some BG3 content, and what better content than one of his ridiculous challenge runs? As always, the rules were simple in theory, excruciatingly painful in practice – Proxy’s party was not allowed to use their actions, bonus actions, or reactions for anything except Shove, either in or out of combat (with the sole exception being equipping items, like changing a helmet or something). All enemies had to be killed via shoving them off a sufficiently high place (multiple times if necessary); potions and elixirs could only be used if shoved off one of Proxy’s Patented Box Towers and smashed on the floor so the party could run through its contents; and the only reason Gale got pulled out of his portal was because it didn’t cost an action point (though some wags in the comments still complained XD). So, under these restrictions, was Paul The Pusher, a Wood Elf Rogue, and his companions able to traverse the Wilderness, survive the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and take down the Netherbrain before it destroyed Baldur’s Gate?
Technically yes, but Proxy himself was rather dissatisfied with how the run ended thanks to an extremely strange bug in the final boss fight. Let me sum things up in a way that I hope is relatively quick –
I. Tutorial – much more deadly than it had any right to be, because Shove is extremely ineffective against flying imps, and not much more effective against the other enemies in the control room. Paul managed to connect the nerves and start the game proper in the end, but it was a pretty near thing!
II. Act One – the easiest act, as you might expect, simply because the enemies aren’t too hard and there’s plenty of high things to shove them off of. (Though using Shove to get all his companions across a river nearly broke him because it required pixel-perfect precision to get the shove-ee across to the right spot, and Shove is not a precise action.) Proxy had Paul and all his friends become Thief Rogues to get those sweet extra bonus actions; abused ladders during a couple of fights to trick enemies into continually climbing up to them to be shoved back down; had Paul learn how to play musical instruments by helping Alfira with her song in the grove, then used those new skills to lure goblins (and Minthara) to their doom in their own camp (he also learned in the process that if you upset the goblins by playing BADLY, they may throw a rock at you, as poor Wyll found out when he plucked his lyre); visited Grymforge and stole a set of Devilfoil Masks to help boost his party’s Strength to ridiculous levels (while tanking some of their other stats, as nothing is free in this life); and killed the githyanki guards outside the creche for some XP, though avoided massacring the rest of them in the actual building because the ceilings were too low for him to build his iconic box towers (Shadowheart was sorely disappointed). Sure, the party died a few times (once, notably, to some gnolls with ranged weapons and the ability to stop people using their bonus actions), but at this point, the challenge looked manageable.
III. Act Two – not as bad as it could have been, as Proxy managed to skip a lot of the Shadow-Cursed Lands just by going and doing the Gauntlet of Shar as early as possible (AFTER getting pixie Dolly Dolly Dolly’s blessing to avoid dying to the curse), but that didn’t mean that it didn’t cause poor Paul and his party problems! The most notable examples were:
a. Proxy luring a bunch of Justicar Avengers over to the “Death Corner” near the start of the Gauntlet (a nice little ledge where enemies could be easily shoved off) and getting so bored with waiting for the enemies to take their turns (as they kept having to Dash to Paul and his people) that he started examining random foodstuffs in Paul’s inventory – only to then look up and realize “oh fuck, the enemies took out all my friends!” With the help of smashed healing potions and protective barrel walls, he managed to shove them all to their deaths eventually, but it took 49 rounds, so…
b. Proxy trying to cheese the “fight yourself” challenge in the Gauntlet by sending Gale ahead without any clothes on (a tried and true tactic as it makes the clone the Gauntlet generates weaker)...only to discover said clone was immune to shoving. Cue Proxy trying a few different tactics (including trying to lure some local kobolds in to take care of things for him) before resorting to shoving down alchemical fire from a Patented Box Tower to basically coat the area in deadly flame to take out the clones.
c. And Proxy taking on Ketheric and the Avatar Of Myrkul in the mind flayer colony (if you’re wondering, this was a “murder Aylin” run, as the “Help” action to help her out in this phase was forbidden), raining explosives (previously stockpiled via refreshing a merchant’s inventory through multiple long rests) down upon him from the top of Patented Box Towers...only for so many of them to get destroyed by his own bombs that the unthinkable happened – Proxy ran out of boxes. Yes, I KNOW. O.o Fortunately, by sheer luck, one box with an explosive on it remained in position, and Myrkul ended up cleaving it with his scythe and killing himself. Yay!
Yeaaaah – definitely the point at which things started getting rough for Paul and his pals! But on the plus side, they managed to get the final umbral gem from Yurgir just by shoving a bunch of rats down a pit (the justicar they were supposed to fight after killing all the rats spawned in the pit and died immediately, apparently), and Paul actually freed and recruited our favorite brain buddy Us because they’re the only summon in the game that doesn’t require an action to summon! Yay! :D Favorite run just because of that. :p
IV. Act Three – the big finale, where Paul and his party took on the final three targets of Gortash, Orin, and the Netherbrain itself! Gortash proved not to be too much of a challenge – being shoved by the party out of his coronation and onto his balcony, where he was “humpty-dumptied,” as Proxy put it, once all of his various invulnerability buffs wore off. Orin was rather trickier, with Proxy’s first attempt to kill her (which took 35 minutes) ending in failure due to Proxy moving a crate in one of his towers at JUST the wrong time, causing the tower it was part of to collapse and somehow set off an explosion, killing everyone, and the second attempt ending in failure due to Orin being able outheal all the paltry damage inflicted on her. Fortunately, the THIRD attempt (which utilized a combination of a caustic surface to bring everyone’s health below 50% so a special helmet that grants an extra bonus action when at low health could be used by everyone; a bunch of potions of invisibility to get into the arena without being seen and shove Orin to start the fight; a bunch of smokepowder barrels to burn through all of Orin’s “Unstoppable” buffs and make her shove-able again; shoving her off the side of her own arena once she was vulnerable before she could go all Slayer; and then fleeing the fight when the rest of the cultists she was hanging out with proved to be too tough for the party to handle) did the trick, and the party was able to ally with the Emperor, make their way across the city, and utilize more invisibility potions to survive the onslaught of monsters on the Nether Brain and make their way to the final boss arena to fight the manifestation of its will by shoving explosives in its general direction –
Only for Proxy to discover that, for whatever reason, the platforms nearest the “Brain Proxy” (yes, that is what it’s called, Proxy admitted to doing a double take himself when he saw that in the comments)? Shoved items drop right through them. There is no collision detection for items falling after being shoved specifically. And any items that Proxy managed to shove so that they fell directly on the Brain Proxy did absolutely no damage. So, thanks to the world’s weirdest oversights, Proxy couldn’t finish off the Netherbrain with shoved explosives. He could kill it via creating a special explosive box tower with some alchemist fire and using a character’s movement to smash it close to the brain and explode it (which didn’t use any action points and thus was allowed under the rules), but Proxy didn’t really consider that a proper ending to this run. So it was a technical win, but a definite loss for Shovers everywhere. *pats Proxy* You tried, buddy – nobody can say you did not fucking try. XD
B) “New Vegas Non-Unique Unique Weapon #shorts” by N_orte! A short talking about how one of Fallout: New Vegas’s unique weapons is not so unique, as there’s two copies of it in the game, not just one. Or, rather, in the DLC, as the affected unique weapon is Elijah’s Advanced LAER gun from Old World Blues! Turns out that, if you’re looking for it, you can collect it either in the Little Yangtze camp OR from the roof of the Signal Hills Transmitter (which isn’t even that far away). Bit of an oversight from the game developers – though, given that Elijah’s Advanced LAER is a powerful gun with the durability of a wet sheet of paper (as proven by Jon in Useless Steve’s OWB adventures), having an extra copy of it that you can use to repair the damn thing is honestly quite welcome! XD
C) And “Larian bet on a MADMAN healing her #baldursgate3” by SuNStereO! A short showing off a unique line you get if your player character (with Speak With Animals active, of course) chooses to heal the injured owlbear mother in her nest before officially meeting her, then fails the check to try and intimidate her or persuade her to leave you alone – “Thanks to you, I’m healed enough to cut you from belly to snout!” Followed by the owlbear attacking Sun’s PC (slashing at her, naturally), and said PC noting “Healed – but she doesn’t look much happier.” Much as I have become rather disillusioned with Larian thanks to some nasty stories about how the CEO is a dick, I will admit that this was some interesting forward thinking on their part. They did prepare for a lot of scenarios!
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another page sorted tonight, featuring –
A) Alice muttering to herself about how she hoped Victor had had a better night than her (because this one had only been somewhat better than the night before) as she stepped out of the elevator – only to be startled by Victor saying he was sorry to hear this night hadn’t been particularly good either. Turned out he was already waiting for her by the open door to their apartment! Alice let him know that most of the museum bit hadn’t been that bad until the very end, then asked how he’d know she was coming up –
Prompting him to admit that he wasn’t sure, honestly. And to tell her that he seemed to have some sort of weird sixth sense for when she was in a bad mood – not in the sense of sharing her feelings, but in the sense of knowing she needed his help somehow. And that, if she was close enough, he could use it to sort of tell where she was. Alice noted this was very odd –
And then realized that this was probably why Victor practically threw himself out the door the other night. With Victor confirming that it had been like having an alarm in his head telling him to go ease her burdens, but with no way to turn it off until she was right outside the door. Cue Alice picking up some fresh guilt to go with all the other guilt she’s accumulated over the years!
B) Alice apologizing and saying she hadn’t realized this was a thing with ghouls, as neither Knox nor Mercurio had mentioned it – then taking a moment to confirm that Victor knew who the hell Mercurio was, as she couldn’t remember if she’d mentioned him or not. Victor admitted she might have, but they’ve both been through a lot this week, so… XD Alice thus refreshed his memory (emphasizing that Mecurio was much less excitable than Knox – not that that was a high bar to clear), then reiterated that neither ghoul had mentioned this strange ability – and, of course, she hadn’t thought to ask about such things, because she hadn’t expected to have a ghoul living with her. But at least this gave her another excuse to go see Mercurio on the morrow! (...cue “Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” starting with Mercurio learning about Victor’s “your domitor needs you” sense and going “if that’s a ghoul thing, it’s one I ain’t got.” XD)
C) Victor saying he’d appreciate her asking Mercurio about it, as he would like to know more about his condition...then rubbing his throat and getting a strange look in his eyes as he started to ask if she was sure it would be bad if she gave him more blood. Alice shut that thought down immediately, reminding him that, as good as vampire vitae tasted, it would eventually make him a slave, and she would not be complicit in that. Victor managed to come back to himself a bit after hearing that, apologizing – Alice assured him it was all right, she understood, she just wanted him to stay her friend and not her servant. As she liked him how he was. “Vampire kink and all.” XD Cue Victor blushing and asking if she had to bring that up. XD
D) And Alice informing him that yes, she did, because that incident was one of the few things to make her laugh tonight – Victor muttered “Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” then asked if her night had truly been that terrible. Alice replied that, again, it had been better than last night, but not by much, then headed over to the couch and plopped down, patting the cushion next to her and telling him he could quiet the little voice in his head demanding he be useful by listening to her complain about having to kill a Nagaraja.
And that was where I left things off! On page 273 of 275. :D On track to get this round of edits done by the end of the week – fingers crossed I make it!
3. Watch something on YouTube: ...I mean, what do you think? *sigh* I really tried to keep that Workout Video Write-Up short too...though admittedly I was rather sabotaged tonight by my PMS making it hard to word at times. Tough to write things up quickly if you’re not sure how exactly you want to PUT them! Hmph...at least this weekend I should have some more time for video watching!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and substitution check, respectively –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I took a moment this morning to reblog the post I wanted to use for my Song Saturday into my queue – an audio post by kuma-kami with a thumbnail of a smiling Rick Astley and the title “Exactly what you think it is,” urging the viewer to press play, followed by various reblog reactions ranging from “DELETE THIS POST” to “*clicks play in morbid curiosity* *hammers reblog button*” to “Ikrit almost spat out his smoothie XD” In case you’re curious, the song in the original post IS “Never Gonna Give You Up” – it’s just a REMIX of said song in a different style. I don’t know if it’s aping a specific other song or not, but it’s definitely not like the traditional RickRoll! Here, this is where I found it – go take a listen for yourself!
Valice Multiverse – And over here, while I didn’t have anything to put in my queue, I did have a reply on the “octopus threatens cat with eight guns; cat mocks him for being one short” ask I answered the other day (you know, where Alice said it might be crueler to leave the cat with one life and Smiler noted she seemed to be taking the whole thing too seriously) from thesatiricaldemon, noting “Weirdly enough, this is kind of a plot point in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.” I immediately responded “Is it?? I don't know much about that movie, only that there's a wolf who is basically Death in it,” and he explained “Thats why Death is involved, actually. Puss is on his last life, and Death thinks he's been wasteful and frivolous with them and decides to target him personally (in a sort of metaphor for coming to terms with one's mortality).” I replied “Interesting! If extremely stressful for Puss, I'm sure. XD” and he confirmed “It is, on both accounts. Highly recommend watching if you can, its a very dynamic movie with incredible animation work.” To which I said “Hopefully it's available at the local library then!” since that’s where we often get our movies. :) So yeah – that was nice! And perhaps I will see if we can get the movie – we don’t have much to watch these days, and we did enjoy the original Shrek and Shrek 2, so...
*nods* Pretty productive, all things concerned! And now it is time for me to consider heading to bed. Tomorrow's goals -- work on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; continue editing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" Chapter 6; play either Baldur's Gate III or Fallout: New Vegas (leaning toward the former currently, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow); and watch the latest OXBox list video (it's 12 minutes, I HAVE to be able to fit that in somewhere!) Oh, and get in a workout, obviously. We'll see how I do on all these -- night all!
Work – I am pleased to report that it was a decent enough Thursday to end out this short work week:
A) While the commute in was pretty bad thanks to it being miserable and rainy this morning, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, and I was only like a minute late
B) The day itself was very quiet – my phone didn’t ring once! O.o I spent the morning doing the GL, answering a few e-mails, and putting on some cash gifts; then the afternoon was spent going through and putting on a bunch of check gifts, attempting (and failing) to figure out who sent in an IRA check we received in the mail (pro tip people – put your name on those damn things!), and doing a couple of last-minute reversals to remove a pledge that was causing trouble (because the donor had a recurring gift and the database system kept insisting the recurring gifts be applied to the pledge, despite the fact that the pledge was fully paid and the donor had elected to keep the recurring gift). Nothing particularly exciting, but it made the day go by!
C) And the commute home was actually pretty quiet and smooth for the most part – helped by the fact that I got out a couple of minutes earlier than normal (nothing major, but it was still nice)
So yeah – I’d say that was a perfectly fine way to end the week. *nods* And now I have four days off, hooray~ Hopefully they’ll be good!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped on the bike again and pedaled my way through the following:
A) “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Using ONLY Shove?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! For I was in the mood for some BG3 content, and what better content than one of his ridiculous challenge runs? As always, the rules were simple in theory, excruciatingly painful in practice – Proxy’s party was not allowed to use their actions, bonus actions, or reactions for anything except Shove, either in or out of combat (with the sole exception being equipping items, like changing a helmet or something). All enemies had to be killed via shoving them off a sufficiently high place (multiple times if necessary); potions and elixirs could only be used if shoved off one of Proxy’s Patented Box Towers and smashed on the floor so the party could run through its contents; and the only reason Gale got pulled out of his portal was because it didn’t cost an action point (though some wags in the comments still complained XD). So, under these restrictions, was Paul The Pusher, a Wood Elf Rogue, and his companions able to traverse the Wilderness, survive the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and take down the Netherbrain before it destroyed Baldur’s Gate?
Technically yes, but Proxy himself was rather dissatisfied with how the run ended thanks to an extremely strange bug in the final boss fight. Let me sum things up in a way that I hope is relatively quick –
I. Tutorial – much more deadly than it had any right to be, because Shove is extremely ineffective against flying imps, and not much more effective against the other enemies in the control room. Paul managed to connect the nerves and start the game proper in the end, but it was a pretty near thing!
II. Act One – the easiest act, as you might expect, simply because the enemies aren’t too hard and there’s plenty of high things to shove them off of. (Though using Shove to get all his companions across a river nearly broke him because it required pixel-perfect precision to get the shove-ee across to the right spot, and Shove is not a precise action.) Proxy had Paul and all his friends become Thief Rogues to get those sweet extra bonus actions; abused ladders during a couple of fights to trick enemies into continually climbing up to them to be shoved back down; had Paul learn how to play musical instruments by helping Alfira with her song in the grove, then used those new skills to lure goblins (and Minthara) to their doom in their own camp (he also learned in the process that if you upset the goblins by playing BADLY, they may throw a rock at you, as poor Wyll found out when he plucked his lyre); visited Grymforge and stole a set of Devilfoil Masks to help boost his party’s Strength to ridiculous levels (while tanking some of their other stats, as nothing is free in this life); and killed the githyanki guards outside the creche for some XP, though avoided massacring the rest of them in the actual building because the ceilings were too low for him to build his iconic box towers (Shadowheart was sorely disappointed). Sure, the party died a few times (once, notably, to some gnolls with ranged weapons and the ability to stop people using their bonus actions), but at this point, the challenge looked manageable.
III. Act Two – not as bad as it could have been, as Proxy managed to skip a lot of the Shadow-Cursed Lands just by going and doing the Gauntlet of Shar as early as possible (AFTER getting pixie Dolly Dolly Dolly’s blessing to avoid dying to the curse), but that didn’t mean that it didn’t cause poor Paul and his party problems! The most notable examples were:
a. Proxy luring a bunch of Justicar Avengers over to the “Death Corner” near the start of the Gauntlet (a nice little ledge where enemies could be easily shoved off) and getting so bored with waiting for the enemies to take their turns (as they kept having to Dash to Paul and his people) that he started examining random foodstuffs in Paul’s inventory – only to then look up and realize “oh fuck, the enemies took out all my friends!” With the help of smashed healing potions and protective barrel walls, he managed to shove them all to their deaths eventually, but it took 49 rounds, so…
b. Proxy trying to cheese the “fight yourself” challenge in the Gauntlet by sending Gale ahead without any clothes on (a tried and true tactic as it makes the clone the Gauntlet generates weaker)...only to discover said clone was immune to shoving. Cue Proxy trying a few different tactics (including trying to lure some local kobolds in to take care of things for him) before resorting to shoving down alchemical fire from a Patented Box Tower to basically coat the area in deadly flame to take out the clones.
c. And Proxy taking on Ketheric and the Avatar Of Myrkul in the mind flayer colony (if you’re wondering, this was a “murder Aylin” run, as the “Help” action to help her out in this phase was forbidden), raining explosives (previously stockpiled via refreshing a merchant’s inventory through multiple long rests) down upon him from the top of Patented Box Towers...only for so many of them to get destroyed by his own bombs that the unthinkable happened – Proxy ran out of boxes. Yes, I KNOW. O.o Fortunately, by sheer luck, one box with an explosive on it remained in position, and Myrkul ended up cleaving it with his scythe and killing himself. Yay!
Yeaaaah – definitely the point at which things started getting rough for Paul and his pals! But on the plus side, they managed to get the final umbral gem from Yurgir just by shoving a bunch of rats down a pit (the justicar they were supposed to fight after killing all the rats spawned in the pit and died immediately, apparently), and Paul actually freed and recruited our favorite brain buddy Us because they’re the only summon in the game that doesn’t require an action to summon! Yay! :D Favorite run just because of that. :p
IV. Act Three – the big finale, where Paul and his party took on the final three targets of Gortash, Orin, and the Netherbrain itself! Gortash proved not to be too much of a challenge – being shoved by the party out of his coronation and onto his balcony, where he was “humpty-dumptied,” as Proxy put it, once all of his various invulnerability buffs wore off. Orin was rather trickier, with Proxy’s first attempt to kill her (which took 35 minutes) ending in failure due to Proxy moving a crate in one of his towers at JUST the wrong time, causing the tower it was part of to collapse and somehow set off an explosion, killing everyone, and the second attempt ending in failure due to Orin being able outheal all the paltry damage inflicted on her. Fortunately, the THIRD attempt (which utilized a combination of a caustic surface to bring everyone’s health below 50% so a special helmet that grants an extra bonus action when at low health could be used by everyone; a bunch of potions of invisibility to get into the arena without being seen and shove Orin to start the fight; a bunch of smokepowder barrels to burn through all of Orin’s “Unstoppable” buffs and make her shove-able again; shoving her off the side of her own arena once she was vulnerable before she could go all Slayer; and then fleeing the fight when the rest of the cultists she was hanging out with proved to be too tough for the party to handle) did the trick, and the party was able to ally with the Emperor, make their way across the city, and utilize more invisibility potions to survive the onslaught of monsters on the Nether Brain and make their way to the final boss arena to fight the manifestation of its will by shoving explosives in its general direction –
Only for Proxy to discover that, for whatever reason, the platforms nearest the “Brain Proxy” (yes, that is what it’s called, Proxy admitted to doing a double take himself when he saw that in the comments)? Shoved items drop right through them. There is no collision detection for items falling after being shoved specifically. And any items that Proxy managed to shove so that they fell directly on the Brain Proxy did absolutely no damage. So, thanks to the world’s weirdest oversights, Proxy couldn’t finish off the Netherbrain with shoved explosives. He could kill it via creating a special explosive box tower with some alchemist fire and using a character’s movement to smash it close to the brain and explode it (which didn’t use any action points and thus was allowed under the rules), but Proxy didn’t really consider that a proper ending to this run. So it was a technical win, but a definite loss for Shovers everywhere. *pats Proxy* You tried, buddy – nobody can say you did not fucking try. XD
B) “New Vegas Non-Unique Unique Weapon #shorts” by N_orte! A short talking about how one of Fallout: New Vegas’s unique weapons is not so unique, as there’s two copies of it in the game, not just one. Or, rather, in the DLC, as the affected unique weapon is Elijah’s Advanced LAER gun from Old World Blues! Turns out that, if you’re looking for it, you can collect it either in the Little Yangtze camp OR from the roof of the Signal Hills Transmitter (which isn’t even that far away). Bit of an oversight from the game developers – though, given that Elijah’s Advanced LAER is a powerful gun with the durability of a wet sheet of paper (as proven by Jon in Useless Steve’s OWB adventures), having an extra copy of it that you can use to repair the damn thing is honestly quite welcome! XD
C) And “Larian bet on a MADMAN healing her #baldursgate3” by SuNStereO! A short showing off a unique line you get if your player character (with Speak With Animals active, of course) chooses to heal the injured owlbear mother in her nest before officially meeting her, then fails the check to try and intimidate her or persuade her to leave you alone – “Thanks to you, I’m healed enough to cut you from belly to snout!” Followed by the owlbear attacking Sun’s PC (slashing at her, naturally), and said PC noting “Healed – but she doesn’t look much happier.” Much as I have become rather disillusioned with Larian thanks to some nasty stories about how the CEO is a dick, I will admit that this was some interesting forward thinking on their part. They did prepare for a lot of scenarios!
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another page sorted tonight, featuring –
A) Alice muttering to herself about how she hoped Victor had had a better night than her (because this one had only been somewhat better than the night before) as she stepped out of the elevator – only to be startled by Victor saying he was sorry to hear this night hadn’t been particularly good either. Turned out he was already waiting for her by the open door to their apartment! Alice let him know that most of the museum bit hadn’t been that bad until the very end, then asked how he’d know she was coming up –
Prompting him to admit that he wasn’t sure, honestly. And to tell her that he seemed to have some sort of weird sixth sense for when she was in a bad mood – not in the sense of sharing her feelings, but in the sense of knowing she needed his help somehow. And that, if she was close enough, he could use it to sort of tell where she was. Alice noted this was very odd –
And then realized that this was probably why Victor practically threw himself out the door the other night. With Victor confirming that it had been like having an alarm in his head telling him to go ease her burdens, but with no way to turn it off until she was right outside the door. Cue Alice picking up some fresh guilt to go with all the other guilt she’s accumulated over the years!
B) Alice apologizing and saying she hadn’t realized this was a thing with ghouls, as neither Knox nor Mercurio had mentioned it – then taking a moment to confirm that Victor knew who the hell Mercurio was, as she couldn’t remember if she’d mentioned him or not. Victor admitted she might have, but they’ve both been through a lot this week, so… XD Alice thus refreshed his memory (emphasizing that Mecurio was much less excitable than Knox – not that that was a high bar to clear), then reiterated that neither ghoul had mentioned this strange ability – and, of course, she hadn’t thought to ask about such things, because she hadn’t expected to have a ghoul living with her. But at least this gave her another excuse to go see Mercurio on the morrow! (...cue “Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” starting with Mercurio learning about Victor’s “your domitor needs you” sense and going “if that’s a ghoul thing, it’s one I ain’t got.” XD)
C) Victor saying he’d appreciate her asking Mercurio about it, as he would like to know more about his condition...then rubbing his throat and getting a strange look in his eyes as he started to ask if she was sure it would be bad if she gave him more blood. Alice shut that thought down immediately, reminding him that, as good as vampire vitae tasted, it would eventually make him a slave, and she would not be complicit in that. Victor managed to come back to himself a bit after hearing that, apologizing – Alice assured him it was all right, she understood, she just wanted him to stay her friend and not her servant. As she liked him how he was. “Vampire kink and all.” XD Cue Victor blushing and asking if she had to bring that up. XD
D) And Alice informing him that yes, she did, because that incident was one of the few things to make her laugh tonight – Victor muttered “Well, I’m glad you enjoyed it,” then asked if her night had truly been that terrible. Alice replied that, again, it had been better than last night, but not by much, then headed over to the couch and plopped down, patting the cushion next to her and telling him he could quiet the little voice in his head demanding he be useful by listening to her complain about having to kill a Nagaraja.
And that was where I left things off! On page 273 of 275. :D On track to get this round of edits done by the end of the week – fingers crossed I make it!
3. Watch something on YouTube: ...I mean, what do you think? *sigh* I really tried to keep that Workout Video Write-Up short too...though admittedly I was rather sabotaged tonight by my PMS making it hard to word at times. Tough to write things up quickly if you’re not sure how exactly you want to PUT them! Hmph...at least this weekend I should have some more time for video watching!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and substitution check, respectively –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I took a moment this morning to reblog the post I wanted to use for my Song Saturday into my queue – an audio post by kuma-kami with a thumbnail of a smiling Rick Astley and the title “Exactly what you think it is,” urging the viewer to press play, followed by various reblog reactions ranging from “DELETE THIS POST” to “*clicks play in morbid curiosity* *hammers reblog button*” to “Ikrit almost spat out his smoothie XD” In case you’re curious, the song in the original post IS “Never Gonna Give You Up” – it’s just a REMIX of said song in a different style. I don’t know if it’s aping a specific other song or not, but it’s definitely not like the traditional RickRoll! Here, this is where I found it – go take a listen for yourself!
Valice Multiverse – And over here, while I didn’t have anything to put in my queue, I did have a reply on the “octopus threatens cat with eight guns; cat mocks him for being one short” ask I answered the other day (you know, where Alice said it might be crueler to leave the cat with one life and Smiler noted she seemed to be taking the whole thing too seriously) from thesatiricaldemon, noting “Weirdly enough, this is kind of a plot point in Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.” I immediately responded “Is it?? I don't know much about that movie, only that there's a wolf who is basically Death in it,” and he explained “Thats why Death is involved, actually. Puss is on his last life, and Death thinks he's been wasteful and frivolous with them and decides to target him personally (in a sort of metaphor for coming to terms with one's mortality).” I replied “Interesting! If extremely stressful for Puss, I'm sure. XD” and he confirmed “It is, on both accounts. Highly recommend watching if you can, its a very dynamic movie with incredible animation work.” To which I said “Hopefully it's available at the local library then!” since that’s where we often get our movies. :) So yeah – that was nice! And perhaps I will see if we can get the movie – we don’t have much to watch these days, and we did enjoy the original Shrek and Shrek 2, so...
*nods* Pretty productive, all things concerned! And now it is time for me to consider heading to bed. Tomorrow's goals -- work on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; continue editing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" Chapter 6; play either Baldur's Gate III or Fallout: New Vegas (leaning toward the former currently, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow); and watch the latest OXBox list video (it's 12 minutes, I HAVE to be able to fit that in somewhere!) Oh, and get in a workout, obviously. We'll see how I do on all these -- night all!
