Somewhat Bad Vibes Tuesday
May. 5th, 2026 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNot so much at work, which was pretty quiet (see below), but at home -- Mom and Dad apparently had tough days (Dad overexerting himself and having to take a painkiller for his neck; Mom struggling to get all her plants set up outside) and Mom in particular was in a nasty mood when I came home. She eventually calmed down, but it really did not make coming back from work particularly pleasant. *sigh* I'm getting really sick of how there's no such thing as a truly good day for any of us anymore...
Anyway. Here's the daily write-up:
Work – Was a surprisingly-quiet return to work for me today – apparently not a heck of a lot happened while I was out on my long weekend. *shrug* Fine by me – I have enough bullshit to deal with. My day in the office was spent thusly:
A) Catching up on all my e-mail, depositing the checks for the GL, and doing the morning reports from the credit card site (not necessarily in that order)
B) Updating my spreadsheets tracking how many calls we get concerning credit card stuff and which parishes have sent in Easter Collection to reflect the stuff my coworker processed while I was out
C) Posting another batch of Easter Collection that came in late yesterday afternoon
D) Doing a payment on a pledge for a guy over the phone...which was interrupted by my mouse dying and me having to put the guy on hold while I got new batteries (bit embarrassing, that)
E) Managing to catch up with a priest who dropped off a cash gift to ask him which parish the gift was for (as it didn’t say anywhere on the envelope)
F) Matching a lot of ID numbers to pledge card scans so they could be more easily looked-up in future
G) And moving a payment that had somehow never properly connected to a pledge after a reversal to make it autopay (not sure how it happened, but at least now the pledge shows the right balance!)
*shrug* Nothing particularly exciting, but honestly, I’m fine with that. We’ll see how tomorrow goes!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the OXBox RE9 LP with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: MOTORCYCLES and CHAINSAWS! Episode 6!” I pedaled my way through the first 34 minutes tonight, which included –
A) Leon wandering the streets of Raccoon City – encountering some graffiti that read “Graffiti,” throwing a makeshift spear at a zombie’s butt only to not get to him in time to properly hatchet his head off (Andy: “this could have gone better”), and finding a gas station where he could finally get some gas for that generator he found on the roof of the first “detonator parts” building, only to have to find a way to go around and drop into it from above because he wasn’t about to reach through the bars to try and get the gas can sitting right next to the fence, Mike. :p Mike ended up advancing the theory that Capcom saw Silent Hill and went “we want our OWN gray town full of holes for our protagonist to slink through!” which – given the state of Raccoon City, doesn’t feel like a bad guess… (Also, someone HAS done a Resident Evil/Silent Hill crossover, I presume – and now I’m picturing Leon roundhouse-kicking Pyramid Head. XD)
B) Leon, during his wanderings, coming across a BSAA container that inconveniently had a couple of zombies inside – fortunately, there was also an explosive canister nearby he could throw at them and pop to get rid of them quickly. However, immediately afterward, the action had to be put on pause because it was reported that a corner of Jane’s background was visible, rather than being properly green-screened. She got it fixed in a fast-forward section, and Leon was allowed to claim a VERY nice marksman rifle, which he promptly put to use sniping far-away zombies while the OXBoxers answered a question from a commenter about whether “Raccoon City” was “Tanuki City” in Japan (general consensus was no, it was always “Raccoon City” even before localization – besides, “Tanuki City” was way too cute a name for a Resident Evil location).
C) Leon finding a ladder he could shoot down and climbing up onto a makeshift path of old metal scraps and containers and whatnot to get into the gas station while the OXBoxers discussed the stableness of C4 – Andy revealed that apparently some military idiots used to CHEW small bits of it to get a high, prompting a joke from Mike that Ozempic, the weight-loss drug, is actually C4 – and running to investigate the little mini-mart part of the station because, as per Andy, what if there were good snacks in there? Unfortunately, there were no good snacks – just a zombie playing dead who lunged at him and chomped his thigh, ow.
D) Leon looting the gas station for what goodies there were in there (mostly stuff that he could use to craft more bullets and whatnot) while Jane revealed the shocking fact that Leon has apparently canonically never met Wesker – Andy brought up that he was pretty certain that Leon had at least seen a picture of Wesker in the STARS office back in the RPD building in RE2, then allowed (as per another comment) that Leon had seen that picture over twenty years ago during the worst time of his life (up to that point, of course, given what Leon’s life has been like after RE2), so it’s honestly not THAT surprising that he wouldn’t recognize Zeno as a potential Wesker.
E) Leon grabbing the gas can, finding that it was empty (so reaching through the bars to grab it wouldn’t have even worked, Mike), and going to find somewhere to fill it – only to be interrupted by another zombie wielding a chainsaw bursting through a wall (“Let me guess, you must be the town lumberjack”)! Cue Leon shooting the guy in the groin and claiming his chainsaw before rushing outside to deal with the inevitable wave of zombies emerging from the cars there –
Only for the very first one to lob an explosive canister at him. Leon managed to shrug that off and take out a few zombies with his chainsaw, but then it got stuck in one’s chest, and when he kicked the zombie over to get it out – well, it started going for his ankles again, whirling in circles and preventing him from picking it up. And his desperate attempts to grab it WITHOUT being sawed ended up leaving him vulnerable to zombie attack from behind – cue Leon going down to being chawed on the shoulder because Andy was so intent on the chainsaw that he forgot to tap (A) fast enough to save Leon. Triggering a reload screen with a puzzling tip: “Fight a chainsaw with a chainsaw...”
F) Leon having to redo the gas station from the beginning, and Andy doing his best to speed run and not repeat the mistakes of the past – he successfully took out the thigh-biter before it could strike, got the chainsaw away from the initial chainsaw zombie, used his gun to explode the explosive canister zombie before it could lob said canister (though it did lead to him getting briefly jumped by a different zombie – the OXBoxers, meanwhile, tried to figure out what it was explosive canister zombie did before being zombified, with Andy suggesting he was a propane salesman, while Jane said he just threw the canisters around everywhere – prompting Mike to joke that was the zombie equivalent of HIM then XD), and took out the zombies outside with his chainsaw without getting ankle bit –
Only for ANOTHER zombie wielding a chainsaw to pop out from behind a wrecked van! Sparking a chainsaw duel which saw Leon get disarmed. Running from his chainsaw Chainy to avoid getting his ankles sawed, Leon then tried to take down the chainsaw zombie with his guns –
Only to discover the guy was rather immune to any weapon that wasn’t a chainsaw. Leading to Leon getting very violently chainsawed in half, and then chainsawed some more – they blurred it in the video, but the horrified looks on everyone’s face and what little you could see through the blurring revealed it was a pretty fucking bad death! Jane made Andy promise not to let it happen again once Leon finally died. D:
G) Leon starting the gas station section for a third time, and through the power of editing making it through relatively unscathed to the battle against the second chainsaw zombie – THIS time, he managed to successfully take the guy down (turns out there is one gun’s bullets he cannot shrug off, and that’s Requiem’s), though he did get set on fire slightly during the process – and did NOT get to saw the guy properly in half, like what was done to him. Worse yet, Chainy broke immediately after the fight, its blade snapping in half – Jane forced Andy to observe a proper moment of silence in honor of the chainsaw’s death.
H) Leon finally getting to fill up the gas can he’d acquired from a tank near the side of the station (hopefully AWAY from all the burning cars) while Mike brought up the “Leon doesn’t know Wesker” thing again, pointing out that Leon SHOULD know at least who the guy is as the world’s premiere zombie kicker. Jane added that Chris really should have told Leon about the man who hates him so much in the break room at work or something (though I’m pretty sure Chris and Leon work for different agencies), which led to Mike theorizing that Leon and Wesker might be mutuals on LinkedIn or some similar site due to an eager Leon friending everyone who worked for Raccoon City PD when he was preparing to join the force there. :p Jane said that Wesker probably had a little “available for work” tag on his page, as he was in-between evil corporations at the moment. :p
I) Leon escaping the gas station, opening up the back of a truck for goodies, and using his new rifle to kill a couple of Blisterheads on the street while Jane talked about the multiverse theory in regards to video games (namely, the idea that every “game over/you are dead” screen is an alternate timeline where the hero failed, so Andy had to avoid getting cut in half with a chainsaw again so we didn’t get any more of those) and how the way the Blisterheads juddered around really was very Silent Hill (again, if there are no crossovers, I will be very surprised).
J) Leon entering the Cedarbrooks Apartment building to try and get to the next part of the detonator he needed, and having to fight the military zombies within (aka all the dead BSAA members in their body armor and whatnot) while the gang talked about when the new Resident Evil movie would be coming out (this fall, apparently) and how the director’s other film, Weapons, did well at the Oscars (Jane was very happy to see horror get some recognition there, but when Mike and Andy started talking about how it was an important part of the opening skit later on, had to admit that she had not actually watched the Oscars). And got very startled when Leon pulled off a shotgun execution against one of the zombies attacking him – Andy claimed it was totally skill and not luck when Jane asked him how he’d done it. XD
K) Leon finding the crank he needed to proceed, making his way through another stairwell (blowing up another zombie along the way – as per Mike, “You gotta treat yourself”) and up onto the roof, where he encounter not only more zombies, but zombie manning mortar cannons, meaning he was now under fire from those! Cue the OXBoxers learning that Leon could survive having a mortar shell fired at his feet (he fell over comically, and his health didn’t look great afterward, but he DID survive – Andy attributed it to him being made of sterner stuff than most people); Leon getting out his Uzi and disabling/killing two zombies via leg shots, apparently like Mike’s grandmother (...no, I’m not sure where that came from, I must have missed the video with THAT story); Leon having to deal with not only the mortar shells, but zombies with machine guns “spraying and praying,” as Andy put it; and eventually Leon getting up to one of the mortar cannons and – after killing the zombies next to it – taking control of it and mortaring his foes! Gaining all those sweet sweet kill credits in the process, yay. :p
L) Leon, having bested the zombies, making his way up to the tippy-top of the building to collect his detonator part, while Mike wondered if they could then just zipline over to the other building with the final bit – Jane was like “if only, Mike, if only,” while Andy suggested that if they were playing as Ada Wong, they could. Anyway, up in the BSAA camp, Leon found a note indicating that the part they were after, the signal receiver, had gotten broken in transit and needed to be repaired, leading to much groaning all around –
And then Leon actually collected the part, and it was revealed that Andy had actually already picked up the repair kit they needed while looting earlier. Hooray picking up everything that you can stuff in your attache case! :D Andy is one step ahead of you RE9!
M) Leon repairing and combining the two detonator parts he’d already gotten, then – after returning to his mortar cannon to kill a few more zombies he accidentally stirred up – heading back to street level, leaping down from heights and accidentally headbutting stair railings while updating Sherry on his situation – Sherry in turn updated him on some info she’d found about the Pentagon butting heads with the BSAA, with the North American branch operating on its own. Leon admitted he’d heard they’d had some sort of internal dispute, but Sherry couldn’t tell him if it was related or not. This was followed by Leon swinging by the original BSAA camp to upgrade his shotgun’s ammo capacity (as that came with a free refill of shells, as per Andy) and to stick a cute little Claire Redfield charm on his everyday “Alligator Snapper” gun (Jane LOVED that charm was also shooting a gun, and Mike joked that Claire had a tiny charm of LEON shooting a gun on her gun, and so on and so forth).
N) Leon eventually finding his way back to the original generator on top of the building by the original BSAA camp, powering it up with gas, and getting through the door next to it, to find some goodies – and, shock of shocks, a ZIPLINE! To the next building he needed to visit! Mike was thrilled, and everyone enjoyed Leon taking the short ride over the gap. Andy noted there weren’t a lot of opportunities to do any ziplining as an adult, with Jane noting it was really only the purview of team building exercises and holidays. And then adding that she’d never ziplined into a pool, and was that really a thing? According to Andy, yes, at any decent water park, anyway. :p
O) And Leon traversing the building he’d ziplined into to find the final piece of the detonator he needed – which included shooting any boards with yellow paint on them to open the doors underneath (the gang joking about what life would look like if reality worked like video games and important items, like the coffee maker, were splattered with yellow paint); working his way past various still-intact vending machines for cold drinks (Mike was like “what are they MAKING these things out of?” while Jane suggested that you needed to climb into one of them instead of the memeable fridge to survive a nuclear explosion – Andy pointed out that you got snacks too when you did that); doing an extremely careful “balance beam” walk over a narrow beam over a large pit when the architecture started to go sideways (Andy was very eager to see the random bit of debris they put on there fall into the pit below, but unfortunately Leon managed to successfully nudge it to the other side with him); leaping into an old elevator shaft and – well, getting smashed by one of the elevators falling in an actually fairly funny death scene (no gore, just the elevator continuing on its merry way after flattening him – hilariously, Andy KNEW one of the elevators was bound to fall, but couldn’t get out of the way in time when it let go); and having to navigate a grid of windows where he had to be careful about walking on the fragile glass surfaces...but could also shoot out the glass from underneath zombies and send them toppling to their dooms (which Andy did with glee – though he was nearly screwed over once by Leon needing to reload just as he’d managed to lure two zombies onto a cracked pane). I left off with Leon making a ramp further up into the wreckage by shooting the glass out from under a couch holding up some old bits of metal – tomorrow, we’ll conclude Leon’s adventures in getting a detonator and see him plow through the city on a motorcycle! Should be fun. :D
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – got through another page tonight, featuring:
A) Alice telling Mercurio that she was indeed very tempted by that McLusky .50 cal pistol he mentioned and to shoot her an e-mail when he had one so she could swing by and take a look, before saying that she would indeed take the Jaegerspas XV; Mercurio quoted her a price of $500 on it, since they were friends, and even offered to let her put half down now and pay him the rest later. Alice, however, was good for the money – though, interestingly, not because of Victor, but because of Venus. Turns out she’d swung by Confession before heading to Santa Monica and picked up her first “silent partner” payment – hey, Venus offered to pay her, so she was going to take advantage of that!
B) Mercurio commenting that he couldn’t believe that Alice actually took out a member of the Russian mob, and Alice telling him the whole story of how she tricked Boris by pretending to take him up on his offer to kill Venus instead when she first met him, going to Venus and getting her help in faking her death, and then returning to Boris and shanking him after feigning interest in fucking him; Mercurio promptly burst out laughing and told Alice that she had balls, if she’d excuse his language. Alice told him no excuse was necessary – she had enough male Wonderlanders in her head to give her more than one set. :p
C) Alice paying Mercurio for the gun and giving him an extra $100 for ammo, then – as he prepared to stuff everything in a very large brown paper bag so she didn’t immediately freak out everyone on the street – asking if she could ask him a question about being a ghoul; at Cheshire’s go-ahead, she revealed to him that she’d managed to acquire one by feeding a dying man in the clinic her blood (because she didn’t know at the time it only took one drink to make a ghoul – Mercurio was a little embarrassed, but admitted that when he was talking to her about being a ghoul before, he was more concerned with making sure his ribs weren’t escaping his flesh) and that they were navigating the vampire/ghoul bond, so she’d like his opinion on that. Mercurio said that he’d tell her what he could, though he warned that his and LaCroix’s relationship was pretty hands-off – he reported in for his monthly blood donation, LaCroix sent him the occasional e-mail, and other than that, they didn’t really see much of each other. Alice allowed that LaCroix didn’t seem to ever want to spend much time with his lackies, then asked how he handled it when LaCroix was in a bad mood – Mercurio said “by staying the fuck away from him” –
And I left off on Alice clarifying, “But how do you handle the feeling that you have to go and help him?” Next time, Mercurio shall be like “…? The hell are you talking about?” Leading to all sorts of other confusion… Tomorrow, though, I have to whip up a gift fic for my friend Squid, as their birthday is the Saturday after next. We’ll see how that goes then!
3. Watch something on YouTube:No check, but I don’t think anyone is surprised at this point – the Workout Video Write-Ups take ages and there’s no getting around it. Meh. Actually, wait a minute, I did end up watching something as part of chucking stuff in my queue below! I guess my brain figured it didn’t “count” because it was part of the “get my tumblr queues sorted” category. :p More details below!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there wasn’t anything happening over on Valice Multiverse, but I did drop a few things into the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue tonight –
A) A post by rickmakessomeart showing off some designs for BITD NPCs they whipped up for a game they’re going to be DMing soon, including a world-weary demon/ghost insurance salesman, a ghost pugilist (squaring off against the ghost next to him), and a temperance crusader with a banner claiming the ghosts of drunks are worse than the ghosts of sober people – they were all absolutely delightful and I had to have them on my blog :D
B) And a post by yesistolethisurl showing off the video “Discovering Joy in Baldur's Gate 3 | Deleted Scene” by HyperspaceTowel, which in turn showed off an Early Access encounter (or perhaps Hyperspace’s recreation of such, it wasn’t clear) between Shadowheart and a big old “resonance stone” on the Nautiloid! The completed game has a smaller version of the stone in the Act 2 mind flayer colony, which makes people happy but also more vulnerable to psychic damage, with Tav/Durge and companions making in-world comments about it – this Early Access bigger version had a full cutscene attached to it, with the narrator talking about how it inflicts teeth-aching joy and requiring dice rolls to properly study – and pull away from… I took one look at that and was like “well THAT is The Smiler-coded” and dropped it into the queue with some tag notes about how my Tav!Smiler would have had REAL issues pulling themselves away from the thing.
So that was nice!
And I have officially stayed up too late, so I'll add in proper spacing tomorrow morning, plus a bit more detail on my tumblr queue items if I have time. Night all! EDIT 5/6/2026: Spacing and proper queue item descriptions now available!
Anyway. Here's the daily write-up:
Work – Was a surprisingly-quiet return to work for me today – apparently not a heck of a lot happened while I was out on my long weekend. *shrug* Fine by me – I have enough bullshit to deal with. My day in the office was spent thusly:
A) Catching up on all my e-mail, depositing the checks for the GL, and doing the morning reports from the credit card site (not necessarily in that order)
B) Updating my spreadsheets tracking how many calls we get concerning credit card stuff and which parishes have sent in Easter Collection to reflect the stuff my coworker processed while I was out
C) Posting another batch of Easter Collection that came in late yesterday afternoon
D) Doing a payment on a pledge for a guy over the phone...which was interrupted by my mouse dying and me having to put the guy on hold while I got new batteries (bit embarrassing, that)
E) Managing to catch up with a priest who dropped off a cash gift to ask him which parish the gift was for (as it didn’t say anywhere on the envelope)
F) Matching a lot of ID numbers to pledge card scans so they could be more easily looked-up in future
G) And moving a payment that had somehow never properly connected to a pledge after a reversal to make it autopay (not sure how it happened, but at least now the pledge shows the right balance!)
*shrug* Nothing particularly exciting, but honestly, I’m fine with that. We’ll see how tomorrow goes!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the OXBox RE9 LP with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: MOTORCYCLES and CHAINSAWS! Episode 6!” I pedaled my way through the first 34 minutes tonight, which included –
A) Leon wandering the streets of Raccoon City – encountering some graffiti that read “Graffiti,” throwing a makeshift spear at a zombie’s butt only to not get to him in time to properly hatchet his head off (Andy: “this could have gone better”), and finding a gas station where he could finally get some gas for that generator he found on the roof of the first “detonator parts” building, only to have to find a way to go around and drop into it from above because he wasn’t about to reach through the bars to try and get the gas can sitting right next to the fence, Mike. :p Mike ended up advancing the theory that Capcom saw Silent Hill and went “we want our OWN gray town full of holes for our protagonist to slink through!” which – given the state of Raccoon City, doesn’t feel like a bad guess… (Also, someone HAS done a Resident Evil/Silent Hill crossover, I presume – and now I’m picturing Leon roundhouse-kicking Pyramid Head. XD)
B) Leon, during his wanderings, coming across a BSAA container that inconveniently had a couple of zombies inside – fortunately, there was also an explosive canister nearby he could throw at them and pop to get rid of them quickly. However, immediately afterward, the action had to be put on pause because it was reported that a corner of Jane’s background was visible, rather than being properly green-screened. She got it fixed in a fast-forward section, and Leon was allowed to claim a VERY nice marksman rifle, which he promptly put to use sniping far-away zombies while the OXBoxers answered a question from a commenter about whether “Raccoon City” was “Tanuki City” in Japan (general consensus was no, it was always “Raccoon City” even before localization – besides, “Tanuki City” was way too cute a name for a Resident Evil location).
C) Leon finding a ladder he could shoot down and climbing up onto a makeshift path of old metal scraps and containers and whatnot to get into the gas station while the OXBoxers discussed the stableness of C4 – Andy revealed that apparently some military idiots used to CHEW small bits of it to get a high, prompting a joke from Mike that Ozempic, the weight-loss drug, is actually C4 – and running to investigate the little mini-mart part of the station because, as per Andy, what if there were good snacks in there? Unfortunately, there were no good snacks – just a zombie playing dead who lunged at him and chomped his thigh, ow.
D) Leon looting the gas station for what goodies there were in there (mostly stuff that he could use to craft more bullets and whatnot) while Jane revealed the shocking fact that Leon has apparently canonically never met Wesker – Andy brought up that he was pretty certain that Leon had at least seen a picture of Wesker in the STARS office back in the RPD building in RE2, then allowed (as per another comment) that Leon had seen that picture over twenty years ago during the worst time of his life (up to that point, of course, given what Leon’s life has been like after RE2), so it’s honestly not THAT surprising that he wouldn’t recognize Zeno as a potential Wesker.
E) Leon grabbing the gas can, finding that it was empty (so reaching through the bars to grab it wouldn’t have even worked, Mike), and going to find somewhere to fill it – only to be interrupted by another zombie wielding a chainsaw bursting through a wall (“Let me guess, you must be the town lumberjack”)! Cue Leon shooting the guy in the groin and claiming his chainsaw before rushing outside to deal with the inevitable wave of zombies emerging from the cars there –
Only for the very first one to lob an explosive canister at him. Leon managed to shrug that off and take out a few zombies with his chainsaw, but then it got stuck in one’s chest, and when he kicked the zombie over to get it out – well, it started going for his ankles again, whirling in circles and preventing him from picking it up. And his desperate attempts to grab it WITHOUT being sawed ended up leaving him vulnerable to zombie attack from behind – cue Leon going down to being chawed on the shoulder because Andy was so intent on the chainsaw that he forgot to tap (A) fast enough to save Leon. Triggering a reload screen with a puzzling tip: “Fight a chainsaw with a chainsaw...”
F) Leon having to redo the gas station from the beginning, and Andy doing his best to speed run and not repeat the mistakes of the past – he successfully took out the thigh-biter before it could strike, got the chainsaw away from the initial chainsaw zombie, used his gun to explode the explosive canister zombie before it could lob said canister (though it did lead to him getting briefly jumped by a different zombie – the OXBoxers, meanwhile, tried to figure out what it was explosive canister zombie did before being zombified, with Andy suggesting he was a propane salesman, while Jane said he just threw the canisters around everywhere – prompting Mike to joke that was the zombie equivalent of HIM then XD), and took out the zombies outside with his chainsaw without getting ankle bit –
Only for ANOTHER zombie wielding a chainsaw to pop out from behind a wrecked van! Sparking a chainsaw duel which saw Leon get disarmed. Running from his chainsaw Chainy to avoid getting his ankles sawed, Leon then tried to take down the chainsaw zombie with his guns –
Only to discover the guy was rather immune to any weapon that wasn’t a chainsaw. Leading to Leon getting very violently chainsawed in half, and then chainsawed some more – they blurred it in the video, but the horrified looks on everyone’s face and what little you could see through the blurring revealed it was a pretty fucking bad death! Jane made Andy promise not to let it happen again once Leon finally died. D:
G) Leon starting the gas station section for a third time, and through the power of editing making it through relatively unscathed to the battle against the second chainsaw zombie – THIS time, he managed to successfully take the guy down (turns out there is one gun’s bullets he cannot shrug off, and that’s Requiem’s), though he did get set on fire slightly during the process – and did NOT get to saw the guy properly in half, like what was done to him. Worse yet, Chainy broke immediately after the fight, its blade snapping in half – Jane forced Andy to observe a proper moment of silence in honor of the chainsaw’s death.
H) Leon finally getting to fill up the gas can he’d acquired from a tank near the side of the station (hopefully AWAY from all the burning cars) while Mike brought up the “Leon doesn’t know Wesker” thing again, pointing out that Leon SHOULD know at least who the guy is as the world’s premiere zombie kicker. Jane added that Chris really should have told Leon about the man who hates him so much in the break room at work or something (though I’m pretty sure Chris and Leon work for different agencies), which led to Mike theorizing that Leon and Wesker might be mutuals on LinkedIn or some similar site due to an eager Leon friending everyone who worked for Raccoon City PD when he was preparing to join the force there. :p Jane said that Wesker probably had a little “available for work” tag on his page, as he was in-between evil corporations at the moment. :p
I) Leon escaping the gas station, opening up the back of a truck for goodies, and using his new rifle to kill a couple of Blisterheads on the street while Jane talked about the multiverse theory in regards to video games (namely, the idea that every “game over/you are dead” screen is an alternate timeline where the hero failed, so Andy had to avoid getting cut in half with a chainsaw again so we didn’t get any more of those) and how the way the Blisterheads juddered around really was very Silent Hill (again, if there are no crossovers, I will be very surprised).
J) Leon entering the Cedarbrooks Apartment building to try and get to the next part of the detonator he needed, and having to fight the military zombies within (aka all the dead BSAA members in their body armor and whatnot) while the gang talked about when the new Resident Evil movie would be coming out (this fall, apparently) and how the director’s other film, Weapons, did well at the Oscars (Jane was very happy to see horror get some recognition there, but when Mike and Andy started talking about how it was an important part of the opening skit later on, had to admit that she had not actually watched the Oscars). And got very startled when Leon pulled off a shotgun execution against one of the zombies attacking him – Andy claimed it was totally skill and not luck when Jane asked him how he’d done it. XD
K) Leon finding the crank he needed to proceed, making his way through another stairwell (blowing up another zombie along the way – as per Mike, “You gotta treat yourself”) and up onto the roof, where he encounter not only more zombies, but zombie manning mortar cannons, meaning he was now under fire from those! Cue the OXBoxers learning that Leon could survive having a mortar shell fired at his feet (he fell over comically, and his health didn’t look great afterward, but he DID survive – Andy attributed it to him being made of sterner stuff than most people); Leon getting out his Uzi and disabling/killing two zombies via leg shots, apparently like Mike’s grandmother (...no, I’m not sure where that came from, I must have missed the video with THAT story); Leon having to deal with not only the mortar shells, but zombies with machine guns “spraying and praying,” as Andy put it; and eventually Leon getting up to one of the mortar cannons and – after killing the zombies next to it – taking control of it and mortaring his foes! Gaining all those sweet sweet kill credits in the process, yay. :p
L) Leon, having bested the zombies, making his way up to the tippy-top of the building to collect his detonator part, while Mike wondered if they could then just zipline over to the other building with the final bit – Jane was like “if only, Mike, if only,” while Andy suggested that if they were playing as Ada Wong, they could. Anyway, up in the BSAA camp, Leon found a note indicating that the part they were after, the signal receiver, had gotten broken in transit and needed to be repaired, leading to much groaning all around –
And then Leon actually collected the part, and it was revealed that Andy had actually already picked up the repair kit they needed while looting earlier. Hooray picking up everything that you can stuff in your attache case! :D Andy is one step ahead of you RE9!
M) Leon repairing and combining the two detonator parts he’d already gotten, then – after returning to his mortar cannon to kill a few more zombies he accidentally stirred up – heading back to street level, leaping down from heights and accidentally headbutting stair railings while updating Sherry on his situation – Sherry in turn updated him on some info she’d found about the Pentagon butting heads with the BSAA, with the North American branch operating on its own. Leon admitted he’d heard they’d had some sort of internal dispute, but Sherry couldn’t tell him if it was related or not. This was followed by Leon swinging by the original BSAA camp to upgrade his shotgun’s ammo capacity (as that came with a free refill of shells, as per Andy) and to stick a cute little Claire Redfield charm on his everyday “Alligator Snapper” gun (Jane LOVED that charm was also shooting a gun, and Mike joked that Claire had a tiny charm of LEON shooting a gun on her gun, and so on and so forth).
N) Leon eventually finding his way back to the original generator on top of the building by the original BSAA camp, powering it up with gas, and getting through the door next to it, to find some goodies – and, shock of shocks, a ZIPLINE! To the next building he needed to visit! Mike was thrilled, and everyone enjoyed Leon taking the short ride over the gap. Andy noted there weren’t a lot of opportunities to do any ziplining as an adult, with Jane noting it was really only the purview of team building exercises and holidays. And then adding that she’d never ziplined into a pool, and was that really a thing? According to Andy, yes, at any decent water park, anyway. :p
O) And Leon traversing the building he’d ziplined into to find the final piece of the detonator he needed – which included shooting any boards with yellow paint on them to open the doors underneath (the gang joking about what life would look like if reality worked like video games and important items, like the coffee maker, were splattered with yellow paint); working his way past various still-intact vending machines for cold drinks (Mike was like “what are they MAKING these things out of?” while Jane suggested that you needed to climb into one of them instead of the memeable fridge to survive a nuclear explosion – Andy pointed out that you got snacks too when you did that); doing an extremely careful “balance beam” walk over a narrow beam over a large pit when the architecture started to go sideways (Andy was very eager to see the random bit of debris they put on there fall into the pit below, but unfortunately Leon managed to successfully nudge it to the other side with him); leaping into an old elevator shaft and – well, getting smashed by one of the elevators falling in an actually fairly funny death scene (no gore, just the elevator continuing on its merry way after flattening him – hilariously, Andy KNEW one of the elevators was bound to fall, but couldn’t get out of the way in time when it let go); and having to navigate a grid of windows where he had to be careful about walking on the fragile glass surfaces...but could also shoot out the glass from underneath zombies and send them toppling to their dooms (which Andy did with glee – though he was nearly screwed over once by Leon needing to reload just as he’d managed to lure two zombies onto a cracked pane). I left off with Leon making a ramp further up into the wreckage by shooting the glass out from under a couch holding up some old bits of metal – tomorrow, we’ll conclude Leon’s adventures in getting a detonator and see him plow through the city on a motorcycle! Should be fun. :D
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – got through another page tonight, featuring:
A) Alice telling Mercurio that she was indeed very tempted by that McLusky .50 cal pistol he mentioned and to shoot her an e-mail when he had one so she could swing by and take a look, before saying that she would indeed take the Jaegerspas XV; Mercurio quoted her a price of $500 on it, since they were friends, and even offered to let her put half down now and pay him the rest later. Alice, however, was good for the money – though, interestingly, not because of Victor, but because of Venus. Turns out she’d swung by Confession before heading to Santa Monica and picked up her first “silent partner” payment – hey, Venus offered to pay her, so she was going to take advantage of that!
B) Mercurio commenting that he couldn’t believe that Alice actually took out a member of the Russian mob, and Alice telling him the whole story of how she tricked Boris by pretending to take him up on his offer to kill Venus instead when she first met him, going to Venus and getting her help in faking her death, and then returning to Boris and shanking him after feigning interest in fucking him; Mercurio promptly burst out laughing and told Alice that she had balls, if she’d excuse his language. Alice told him no excuse was necessary – she had enough male Wonderlanders in her head to give her more than one set. :p
C) Alice paying Mercurio for the gun and giving him an extra $100 for ammo, then – as he prepared to stuff everything in a very large brown paper bag so she didn’t immediately freak out everyone on the street – asking if she could ask him a question about being a ghoul; at Cheshire’s go-ahead, she revealed to him that she’d managed to acquire one by feeding a dying man in the clinic her blood (because she didn’t know at the time it only took one drink to make a ghoul – Mercurio was a little embarrassed, but admitted that when he was talking to her about being a ghoul before, he was more concerned with making sure his ribs weren’t escaping his flesh) and that they were navigating the vampire/ghoul bond, so she’d like his opinion on that. Mercurio said that he’d tell her what he could, though he warned that his and LaCroix’s relationship was pretty hands-off – he reported in for his monthly blood donation, LaCroix sent him the occasional e-mail, and other than that, they didn’t really see much of each other. Alice allowed that LaCroix didn’t seem to ever want to spend much time with his lackies, then asked how he handled it when LaCroix was in a bad mood – Mercurio said “by staying the fuck away from him” –
And I left off on Alice clarifying, “But how do you handle the feeling that you have to go and help him?” Next time, Mercurio shall be like “…? The hell are you talking about?” Leading to all sorts of other confusion… Tomorrow, though, I have to whip up a gift fic for my friend Squid, as their birthday is the Saturday after next. We’ll see how that goes then!
3. Watch something on YouTube:
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there wasn’t anything happening over on Valice Multiverse, but I did drop a few things into the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue tonight –
A) A post by rickmakessomeart showing off some designs for BITD NPCs they whipped up for a game they’re going to be DMing soon, including a world-weary demon/ghost insurance salesman, a ghost pugilist (squaring off against the ghost next to him), and a temperance crusader with a banner claiming the ghosts of drunks are worse than the ghosts of sober people – they were all absolutely delightful and I had to have them on my blog :D
B) And a post by yesistolethisurl showing off the video “Discovering Joy in Baldur's Gate 3 | Deleted Scene” by HyperspaceTowel, which in turn showed off an Early Access encounter (or perhaps Hyperspace’s recreation of such, it wasn’t clear) between Shadowheart and a big old “resonance stone” on the Nautiloid! The completed game has a smaller version of the stone in the Act 2 mind flayer colony, which makes people happy but also more vulnerable to psychic damage, with Tav/Durge and companions making in-world comments about it – this Early Access bigger version had a full cutscene attached to it, with the narrator talking about how it inflicts teeth-aching joy and requiring dice rolls to properly study – and pull away from… I took one look at that and was like “well THAT is The Smiler-coded” and dropped it into the queue with some tag notes about how my Tav!Smiler would have had REAL issues pulling themselves away from the thing.
So that was nice!
And I have officially stayed up too late, so I'll add in proper spacing tomorrow morning, plus a bit more detail on my tumblr queue items if I have time. Night all! EDIT 5/6/2026: Spacing and proper queue item descriptions now available!
