Surrounding Bad Vibes Tuesday
May. 12th, 2026 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickLike, my day personally wasn't so bad, but my parents clearly had a tough time of it (Dad especially, who is still having a lot of problems with his neck), and my friend Squid did not have a good night (family stuff), so -- yeah. As you might expect, that affected my mood quite a bit. *sigh* I don't like it when the people close to me are not doing well. But there's nothing I can do about it right now, so here's the write-up of my day, as per usual:
Work – Twas a quiet Tuesday at work for the most part, with my accomplishments for the day including:
A) The usual scanning in of checks and running of morning reports from the credit card site
B) Messing around with a handful of obituaries and going off into a couple of rabbit holes of roster maintenance as a result
C) Reviewing a QC file for the next thank-you file to go out (which was big enough that I only finished it right before we were due to leave)
D) Marking a person as deceased as per a phone call from their parish (had to figure out their widow’s name myself though)
E) And rerunning some reports for Fiscal because of Reasons (they didn’t say why they wanted them), and getting reminded that the credit card company STILL has not posted a certain Capital Campaign payment (will have to remind them AGAIN tomorrow)
So yeah – not a lot going on, but I certainly had enough to do to keep me busy! Though I wish I’d gotten that QC file a bit earlier – I don’t like going right down to the wire like that. Meh. *shrug* It’s done, and that’s what matters! We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the OXBox RE9 LP, with me pedaling my way through –
A) The end of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: It's a Licker Reunion! | Episode 8!” The final seventeen-or-so minutes of which featured:
I. Grace and Leon riding the platform Leon dropped them onto at the end of yesterday’s chunk through a tube and into what looked like some sort of garbage compactor area, where they jumped off...and Leon promptly fainted, having pushed himself a bit beyond his limits with all his running and jumping and rappelling to the center of the earth and murdering giant plants. The gang were very upset because he ended up face down in the sludge and now his hair would smell horrible. Mike then wondered if this would presage a new Grace section –
Which was followed by the game cutting to a few hours later, and Grace just sitting by Leon’s side. Many jokes were made about her passively sitting down and waiting for death or an appropriately forceful personality to show up. XD Leon eventually woke up, but unfortunately while he was unconscious, his T-virus infection had spread up his arms and his face, meaning there was no more hiding it under gloves and a very tight shirt. Grace asked if he was so sick, why had he come here – after a very long pause (Mike joked that this was Leon wondering why the hell he had come here), he told her about how Raccoon City was where everything started for him, and how he hadn’t been able to make any difference then – so he was here now, doing what he could. Grace claimed that they couldn’t stop Zeno – Leon then asked her what he’d meant about the password earlier, and she admitted she didn’t know. (Meaning, as Jane pointed out, they HAD kind of effectively stopped Zeno, at least for the moment.) Leon then prepared to go back and destroy Elpis –
Only for Grace to insist that she was coming with. Because she didn’t want any more regrets, damn it. Leon was initially reluctant, but eventually caved after making her promise to end this if anything happened to him...all while the OXBoxers worried about his eyes looking a little red (though they allowed it could have just been from pollen while fighting the monster plant)...
II. Mike turning out to have been right as Grace became the viewpoint character again, exploring the dump with Leon looking for a way out. She quickly spotted a door in a nearby wall – unfortunately, the path there was completely blocked by a big heavy crane. Fortunately, there was a ventilation gap in another wall that Leon was able to boost Grace up into, and she crawled along that until she was able to kick out a grate and get back into the lab (the OXBoxers joking about her encountering Zeno up there and immediately switching sides again). From there, she found her way up to a console that could restore power and move the crane, but – due to the system lockdown – could only be activated with an override key and went looking for that, while Jane commented that she wanted the licker they’d freed to show up again already, and Andy mused about if this was going to turn into a “thorn in the lion’s paw” situation where the lickers wouldn’t attack Grace because she’d been kind to them (never mind it was LEON who freed the first one). I don’t think that’s how lickers work, Andy!
III. Grace finding an item box and rearranging her inventory to get necessary goodies and maybe make some molotovs with all the empty bottles she had on hand – Andy trying to figure out how much blood he had for crafting purposes prompting a discussion of how much blood was in the human body (about eight pints, as per Jane), how quickly one recovered from donating blood (Andy, who’d given blood recently, was pretty sure that you rebuilt your supply of red blood cells and such in just about a day or so), and why you had to wait so long between blood draws if you recovered that fast (just straight-up caution on the doctors’ parts, though Andy was pretty sure Americans didn’t have to wait so long between blood draws as UK folks, which was interesting).
IV. Grace proceeding through into another dark-and-spooky part of the lab on her quest to find the override key while an automated voice told her about critical containment failures and Threat Level Orange – cue her stumbling into an office and being spooked by a licker (not THE licker, as Jane insisted) skittering along the viewing window! She then of course had to venture into the lab where the damn thing and its buddies were all crawling around – fortunately, the game was kind enough to show her that lickers are blind and respond to sound, allowing her to toss a bottle to distract the one by the entrance and creep past it. Jane took the opportunity to talk about how she loved the licker design because it was clearly humanoid, but had a really inhuman posture (“and, obviously, no skin”); Mike concurred, saying that he’d found those things terrifying even back in the original Resident Evil 2 with its terrible Playstation graphics, while Andy noted that the prehensile tongue was particularly unnerving.
V. Grace continuing her skulk around the labs (Andy noting they were back in “sneaking mode,” and Mike noting that he’d take that over “shoot a bunch of heavily-armed guys” mode), and finding her way into a side lab with a bunch of tubes, more lickers crawling around (including one on the ceiling), and a lovely well-lit side room that contained a white humanoid zombie with functioning eyes she had to slip around; a bottle of acid (with a tooltip noting they were very effective against lickers, presumably due to the lack of skin) –
And the override key she needed! Unfortunately, taking the key plunged the lab into darkness AND brought the white zombie straight to her (Jane noting that it snuck up on her, the sneaker) – luckily, she was pretty much able to immediately shove it off and sneakily retreat without upsetting the lickers (though Andy was very sad to discover via the map that he’d left another bottle of acid behind in that side room).
VI. Grace escaping zombie notice (as the lickers were genuinely crawling around everywhere now – Jane tried to tell Andy that “they’re more afraid of you then you are of them,” which Andy did not think could be true) and – after a brief moment trying out the override key on one of the doors because Andy had forgotten where it went, and Mike commenting that he hoped that the “dump control room” wasn’t a euphemism for the bathroom (Andy: “MIKE” XD) – returning to the dump console and inserting the key, restoring power and moving that crane out of the way so Leon could get through the door and join her in the labs! She then grabbed the magnetic key to open the doors out of its little cubby and headed back to start figuring out a way into the central refining system, starting with opening the door she’d passed earlier –
And discovering a weird white room with red stripes on the floor like a children’s hospital! (...tumblr joke centering around a post featuring a picture of a children’s hospital where they redecorated in such a way that it looked like there were big blood smears on the floor.) This had a big red door that needed two mysterious orbs to open, so – after a little side trip into a room filled with old CRT-monitor computers (Mike joked that the staff were retro gaming enthusiasts who preferred the warm glow of such a computer) and a recipe teaching her how to make her own acid bottles – she continued on to find the orbs, passing through another waiting room and down some stairs while listening to lickers growl (and the OXBoxers replace certain words in song lyrics with the word “licky” – for example, Jane going “Up all night to get licky” XD). This eventually led her into a room full of containers that she could open for goodies –
Along with a bunch of lickers and their friends the white zombies wandering around. Andy initially managed to do a halfway-decent job of avoiding anyone’s notice while simultaneously opening the containers and getting the goodies within (while Jane noted that, as super soldiers went, the licker was pretty crap given its brain was on the outside, it had no skin, and it couldn’t see – cue Mike pointing out the hip mobility on it, and that it was only 14 million compared to some of the other super soldiers on offer)...but as he looted the second container, the licker chose to come into it for a listen around. Cue Andy throwing a bottle of acid on it, shooting its white zombie friend when it came to investigate, and then going “well, we’re going loud” and having Grace run around the remaining monsters and up into a little side office. Where she discovered one of the orbs she needed!
The Knobless Orb! XD Okay, it was the “Noblesse” Orb, but the gang pronounced it “Knobless.” XD Andy was very happy to leave that episode there, as you might expect.
B) And the beginning of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: FINAL EPISODE | Episode 9!” The first fifteen minutes of which featured:
I. Grace, having acquired the Knobless Orb, having a little trouble getting back out of the room so she could go put it in the correct slot to open the big red scary door into the administrative area. She could get out of the side office where the orb had been easily enough – just had to vault out of a window onto a catwalk – but getting past the lickers crawling around up there proved, uh, difficult. Andy initially managed to curb his loot goblin tendencies and NOT smash any boxes as he tried to sneak around the lickers – but then he got to the end of the catwalk and discovered that what he’d thought was an open space he could hop through was in fact a window, AND the licker he’d been carefully following turned around once it hit a dead end. Fortunately, Mike was able to point out a spot where Grace could drop down onto the containers below –
Unfortunately, when Grace dropped from the boxes onto the floor, she was then chomped on by the same white zombie twice (as she took a bit longer than Andy would have liked to recover from dropping three feet), and in his haste to get away and avoid more trouble, Andy ended up directing her back up the stairs into the very office she’d just left. XD Cue Andy deciding it was time to go loud again, vaulting out the window and directly ONTO a licker (Mike claiming Grace had just Mario-headstomped it and later stating that he loved that Andy had done that), getting one of the goodie boxes, hopping back onto the top of the container and shooting one of the white zombies, then hopping down again and promptly being unable to find his way through the maze of containers to the actual exit while being chewed on some more. :p He eventually found his way back out, but it took a while! But then again, it is very hard to concentrate when you are being pursued by lickers.
II. Grace fleeing back through the waiting area (as lickers threw themselves through the windows at her – the gang protested “we were supposed to be friends! We were supposed to have pulled the thorn from your paw!”), and managing to get back to the children’s hospital room (which was too well-lit for zombies), where she plopped the Knobless Orb in its slot. She then headed toward the “bioweapon repository” from before (where all the lickers were hanging out after escaping containment) to use her magnetic key to open up the door to the clean room in there – this involved throwing an acid bottle at a licker and its white zombie friend in the doorway, then escaping another licker which came along and protested its friends dying to acid (Andy was STUNNED that it was allowed in the well-lit area with the item box and the saving typewriter – that’s against the rules), then returning to the repository to gather crotch blood from the white zombie corpse while the dead licker gently gyrated next to it. ...this game is weird sometimes, if the whole “Leon rides a motorcycle up a skyscraper” bit didn’t clue you in.
III. Grace taking advantage of the opportunity to go back into the side room (“chemical storage” if you were wondering), kill some zombies, and grab the bottle of acid she missed before (Andy was very pleased), before opening up the clean room (which the gang noted was anything BUT, given all the blood around) and successfully obtaining the red Animus Orb! (What, is it from Assassin’s Creed?) Of course, this prompted another mass breakout of white zombies – fortunately, Grace was able to molotov them (well, most of them, Andy was slightly put out one guy didn’t end up on fire), kite around the remaining zombie, then head back to the orb door and place the Assassin’s Creed orb in the slot to finally open the door (as Andy noted that their goal appeared to be “get back to the place where we were before Leon shot down that big arm and forced Grace to ride it down with him”). Said door opened onto a room with a huge console covered in various screens (comparisons were made to the room in GTA Online where you kick off your various missions – Mike asked if they could call down an orbital strike on Zeno) –
Screens with Grace on them. (And a newspaper article talking about how she went to the hotel, making them go “well SOMEONE must be looking for her” – they ain’t looking very hard, it feels!) And when she interacted with the console, she found a zip disc reader with a zip disc inside – which made her remember the one she found from her mom that was stashed behind the painting. She promptly inserted it into the console and found a bunch of files on it. One of which was labeled “the creator” and showed a brief clip of her mother Alyssa interviewing a wheelchair-ridden Spencer at the end of his life (with him acknowledging that “what you sow, you reap” regarding his life choices) –
And one of which was labeled “Grace.” Oooooh… The OXBoxers promptly wondered if “Grace” was the password – I saw the odds are low, but not zero. (Personally, given the central refinement unit is called Pandora and Elpis means “hope” in Greek...you see where I’m going with this, right?)
IV. A perspective switch back to Leon, entering the facility through the door Grace unblocked (after nearly collapsing again, and telling Sherry not to worry about him when she contacted him over the earpiece – the gang noted he had EXCELLENT reception for being so deep underground, with Andy wondering if he got on the local wifi when he came down), raiding a side office for goodies (while the gang noted that THIS one had flatscreens, joking that the guys from the other office Grace found would hate it – as per Mike, “where’s our warm scanlines?”), and then heading down a hall and getting a glimpse of his and Grace’s ultimate destination – which, yes, was exactly where they were before he shot down a big old mechanical arm and forced Grace to ride it down to the “minecart” with him. XD Whoops. He then continued on, taking out some more white zombies in his way –
Before coughing and getting blue, blurred vision as the T-virus wracked his system. Poor Andy was forced to wait out the effects before he could get Leon to throw a makeshift spear at the next zombie to menace him. *grimace* Poor Leon...I swear, if they kill him at the end of this game…
V. Leon finding his way into a safe room with a Merchant Box and spending his kill credits on repairing his body arm and upgrading the Requiem – Mike joked that this would all be very useful when Andy inevitably doesn’t use the gun. XD Andy promised that he would use it on the final boss, causing Mike to go “but what if the final boss isn’t openly telegraphed as the final boss?” Andy: “Then I’ll be hanging on in case there’s a secret extra boss.” XD
VI. And Leon making his way over to ANOTHER console in another zombie storage room (full of explosive canisters, uh-oh) that needed another override key, then proceeding out the other side and picking a fight with a room full of lickers – a fight that he almost lost, both because there were more lickers than he’d originally guessed AND because he had an ill-timed T-virus wobbly-blue-filter moment midway through. Fortunately, his shotgun carried him through – even if he did get licked once. Andy did NOT approve!
Whew! That was – a lot more than I expected when it came to summing things up. @.@ But we are in the home stretch now – tomorrow, we’ll see Leon find that override key, and if he and Grace can get back to where they were and destroy Elpis! And if Leon survives doing so...he’d better, that’s all I’m saying.
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – tonight’s page of The Adventures Of Alice In Santa Monica (Yet Again) covered –
A) Alice leaving Mercurio’s apartment and commenting that Mercurio being unable to answer her question about Victor was unexpected – Hatter noted that she should be used to people not giving her answers by now, and she explained that she was used to it from the Wonderlanders and most of her fellow vampires. Mercurio, however, had always been extremely helpful in the past, so she’d just assumed he’d be extremely helpful here too. She hadn’t even considered the idea that Victor’s ‘Alice needs me’ sense might be unique to him! Cue Cheshire showing up and being a little pedantic, pointing out that few things were unique to one person – more often, they were just rarely held by others. Which Alice allowed, as it just being a rare ghoul thing made sense too.
B) Alice wondering if she should try to seek out Knox and figure out what he knew or just head to Hollywood – on the one hand, she didn’t like the idea of telling Victor that she couldn’t get any answers about why he knows when she’s in trouble; on the other, she also didn’t want to put off going to Hollywood for too long, if only because she’d have a lot to do there (including securing lodgings and whatnot). Caterpillar told her that it wasn’t too late yet and that seeking out “the golden ghoul” and learning what he knew would do both her and Victor good...but that it might be a good idea to stop at her transport first and drop off her gun because the Voermans probably WOULDN’T appreciate her bringing a Jaegerspas into their establishment, even if she had no intentions of using it. Alice concurred. XD
C) And Alice heading over to the taxi, dropping off her “purchase,” and letting Victor know that Mercurio had had no answers regarding his “condition” as he didn’t share it (which flummoxed Victor for a moment), but he’d suggested talking to Knox, so she was going to head over to the Asylum and look for Knox there. If she found him, great; if she didn’t, she’d try to seek him out another night because she didn’t want to linger TOO long. Victor, who’d been drawing anyway, assured her that he was fine with waiting – as did the cabbie, who was enjoying a bit of fruit juice. (At least, it looked like fruit juice…) Alice joked that the cabbie obviously enjoyed waiting with the meter running, then assured both him and Victor that she wouldn’t be too long before closing the door and heading out.
Not too shabby! Slowly starting to get into the rhythm of writing this, I think. Next time, we send Alice to The Asylum and see what Knox knows!
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – you do NOT want to know how long the Workout Write-Up took tonight. (Though, admittedly, part of that is because I took a break while talking with Squid...still, it was kind of embarrassingly long. Too much detail, Vic, too much detail!)
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing for me to do on Valice Multiverse, I was able to get my queue on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) sorted for the next three days with the help of a deep dive into the “#corpse bride” tag! So I’ve got –
A) A post by pixiecola comparing a young actor by the name of Jack Wolfe to Victor Van Dort and going “hear me out” about Jack being able to play a live-action Victor for Wednesday! Because while normally I’m not much for fancasting, I gotta say, at least in the picture pixiecola chose, this Jack Wolfe really DID look rather like Victor. Specifically, he had the correct face shape with a pretty pointy chin, which I almost NEVER see in these fancasts. The hair was entirely too wild, but perhaps if you slicked it back...so yeah, reblogged that into my queue for tomorrow
B) A post by twisted-cat2476 showing off their new The Smiler pin (the smiley-face logo with “CORRECTED” dangling beneath it) for Thursday! Because I like people showing off their Smiler merch
C) And a post by gerdark showing off their A:MR Alice fanart (one picture of London Alice and one of Wonderland Alice) for Friday! Because it’s cool-looking fanart
So that’s nice! Still gotta figure out Song Saturday, but I can do that later in the week.
And I have officially stayed up too late to complete this entry, which is more bad vibes. *facepalm* I'm off to bed. Night all.
Work – Twas a quiet Tuesday at work for the most part, with my accomplishments for the day including:
A) The usual scanning in of checks and running of morning reports from the credit card site
B) Messing around with a handful of obituaries and going off into a couple of rabbit holes of roster maintenance as a result
C) Reviewing a QC file for the next thank-you file to go out (which was big enough that I only finished it right before we were due to leave)
D) Marking a person as deceased as per a phone call from their parish (had to figure out their widow’s name myself though)
E) And rerunning some reports for Fiscal because of Reasons (they didn’t say why they wanted them), and getting reminded that the credit card company STILL has not posted a certain Capital Campaign payment (will have to remind them AGAIN tomorrow)
So yeah – not a lot going on, but I certainly had enough to do to keep me busy! Though I wish I’d gotten that QC file a bit earlier – I don’t like going right down to the wire like that. Meh. *shrug* It’s done, and that’s what matters! We’ll see what happens tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the OXBox RE9 LP, with me pedaling my way through –
A) The end of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: It's a Licker Reunion! | Episode 8!” The final seventeen-or-so minutes of which featured:
I. Grace and Leon riding the platform Leon dropped them onto at the end of yesterday’s chunk through a tube and into what looked like some sort of garbage compactor area, where they jumped off...and Leon promptly fainted, having pushed himself a bit beyond his limits with all his running and jumping and rappelling to the center of the earth and murdering giant plants. The gang were very upset because he ended up face down in the sludge and now his hair would smell horrible. Mike then wondered if this would presage a new Grace section –
Which was followed by the game cutting to a few hours later, and Grace just sitting by Leon’s side. Many jokes were made about her passively sitting down and waiting for death or an appropriately forceful personality to show up. XD Leon eventually woke up, but unfortunately while he was unconscious, his T-virus infection had spread up his arms and his face, meaning there was no more hiding it under gloves and a very tight shirt. Grace asked if he was so sick, why had he come here – after a very long pause (Mike joked that this was Leon wondering why the hell he had come here), he told her about how Raccoon City was where everything started for him, and how he hadn’t been able to make any difference then – so he was here now, doing what he could. Grace claimed that they couldn’t stop Zeno – Leon then asked her what he’d meant about the password earlier, and she admitted she didn’t know. (Meaning, as Jane pointed out, they HAD kind of effectively stopped Zeno, at least for the moment.) Leon then prepared to go back and destroy Elpis –
Only for Grace to insist that she was coming with. Because she didn’t want any more regrets, damn it. Leon was initially reluctant, but eventually caved after making her promise to end this if anything happened to him...all while the OXBoxers worried about his eyes looking a little red (though they allowed it could have just been from pollen while fighting the monster plant)...
II. Mike turning out to have been right as Grace became the viewpoint character again, exploring the dump with Leon looking for a way out. She quickly spotted a door in a nearby wall – unfortunately, the path there was completely blocked by a big heavy crane. Fortunately, there was a ventilation gap in another wall that Leon was able to boost Grace up into, and she crawled along that until she was able to kick out a grate and get back into the lab (the OXBoxers joking about her encountering Zeno up there and immediately switching sides again). From there, she found her way up to a console that could restore power and move the crane, but – due to the system lockdown – could only be activated with an override key and went looking for that, while Jane commented that she wanted the licker they’d freed to show up again already, and Andy mused about if this was going to turn into a “thorn in the lion’s paw” situation where the lickers wouldn’t attack Grace because she’d been kind to them (never mind it was LEON who freed the first one). I don’t think that’s how lickers work, Andy!
III. Grace finding an item box and rearranging her inventory to get necessary goodies and maybe make some molotovs with all the empty bottles she had on hand – Andy trying to figure out how much blood he had for crafting purposes prompting a discussion of how much blood was in the human body (about eight pints, as per Jane), how quickly one recovered from donating blood (Andy, who’d given blood recently, was pretty sure that you rebuilt your supply of red blood cells and such in just about a day or so), and why you had to wait so long between blood draws if you recovered that fast (just straight-up caution on the doctors’ parts, though Andy was pretty sure Americans didn’t have to wait so long between blood draws as UK folks, which was interesting).
IV. Grace proceeding through into another dark-and-spooky part of the lab on her quest to find the override key while an automated voice told her about critical containment failures and Threat Level Orange – cue her stumbling into an office and being spooked by a licker (not THE licker, as Jane insisted) skittering along the viewing window! She then of course had to venture into the lab where the damn thing and its buddies were all crawling around – fortunately, the game was kind enough to show her that lickers are blind and respond to sound, allowing her to toss a bottle to distract the one by the entrance and creep past it. Jane took the opportunity to talk about how she loved the licker design because it was clearly humanoid, but had a really inhuman posture (“and, obviously, no skin”); Mike concurred, saying that he’d found those things terrifying even back in the original Resident Evil 2 with its terrible Playstation graphics, while Andy noted that the prehensile tongue was particularly unnerving.
V. Grace continuing her skulk around the labs (Andy noting they were back in “sneaking mode,” and Mike noting that he’d take that over “shoot a bunch of heavily-armed guys” mode), and finding her way into a side lab with a bunch of tubes, more lickers crawling around (including one on the ceiling), and a lovely well-lit side room that contained a white humanoid zombie with functioning eyes she had to slip around; a bottle of acid (with a tooltip noting they were very effective against lickers, presumably due to the lack of skin) –
And the override key she needed! Unfortunately, taking the key plunged the lab into darkness AND brought the white zombie straight to her (Jane noting that it snuck up on her, the sneaker) – luckily, she was pretty much able to immediately shove it off and sneakily retreat without upsetting the lickers (though Andy was very sad to discover via the map that he’d left another bottle of acid behind in that side room).
VI. Grace escaping zombie notice (as the lickers were genuinely crawling around everywhere now – Jane tried to tell Andy that “they’re more afraid of you then you are of them,” which Andy did not think could be true) and – after a brief moment trying out the override key on one of the doors because Andy had forgotten where it went, and Mike commenting that he hoped that the “dump control room” wasn’t a euphemism for the bathroom (Andy: “MIKE” XD) – returning to the dump console and inserting the key, restoring power and moving that crane out of the way so Leon could get through the door and join her in the labs! She then grabbed the magnetic key to open the doors out of its little cubby and headed back to start figuring out a way into the central refining system, starting with opening the door she’d passed earlier –
And discovering a weird white room with red stripes on the floor like a children’s hospital! (...tumblr joke centering around a post featuring a picture of a children’s hospital where they redecorated in such a way that it looked like there were big blood smears on the floor.) This had a big red door that needed two mysterious orbs to open, so – after a little side trip into a room filled with old CRT-monitor computers (Mike joked that the staff were retro gaming enthusiasts who preferred the warm glow of such a computer) and a recipe teaching her how to make her own acid bottles – she continued on to find the orbs, passing through another waiting room and down some stairs while listening to lickers growl (and the OXBoxers replace certain words in song lyrics with the word “licky” – for example, Jane going “Up all night to get licky” XD). This eventually led her into a room full of containers that she could open for goodies –
Along with a bunch of lickers and their friends the white zombies wandering around. Andy initially managed to do a halfway-decent job of avoiding anyone’s notice while simultaneously opening the containers and getting the goodies within (while Jane noted that, as super soldiers went, the licker was pretty crap given its brain was on the outside, it had no skin, and it couldn’t see – cue Mike pointing out the hip mobility on it, and that it was only 14 million compared to some of the other super soldiers on offer)...but as he looted the second container, the licker chose to come into it for a listen around. Cue Andy throwing a bottle of acid on it, shooting its white zombie friend when it came to investigate, and then going “well, we’re going loud” and having Grace run around the remaining monsters and up into a little side office. Where she discovered one of the orbs she needed!
The Knobless Orb! XD Okay, it was the “Noblesse” Orb, but the gang pronounced it “Knobless.” XD Andy was very happy to leave that episode there, as you might expect.
B) And the beginning of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: FINAL EPISODE | Episode 9!” The first fifteen minutes of which featured:
I. Grace, having acquired the Knobless Orb, having a little trouble getting back out of the room so she could go put it in the correct slot to open the big red scary door into the administrative area. She could get out of the side office where the orb had been easily enough – just had to vault out of a window onto a catwalk – but getting past the lickers crawling around up there proved, uh, difficult. Andy initially managed to curb his loot goblin tendencies and NOT smash any boxes as he tried to sneak around the lickers – but then he got to the end of the catwalk and discovered that what he’d thought was an open space he could hop through was in fact a window, AND the licker he’d been carefully following turned around once it hit a dead end. Fortunately, Mike was able to point out a spot where Grace could drop down onto the containers below –
Unfortunately, when Grace dropped from the boxes onto the floor, she was then chomped on by the same white zombie twice (as she took a bit longer than Andy would have liked to recover from dropping three feet), and in his haste to get away and avoid more trouble, Andy ended up directing her back up the stairs into the very office she’d just left. XD Cue Andy deciding it was time to go loud again, vaulting out the window and directly ONTO a licker (Mike claiming Grace had just Mario-headstomped it and later stating that he loved that Andy had done that), getting one of the goodie boxes, hopping back onto the top of the container and shooting one of the white zombies, then hopping down again and promptly being unable to find his way through the maze of containers to the actual exit while being chewed on some more. :p He eventually found his way back out, but it took a while! But then again, it is very hard to concentrate when you are being pursued by lickers.
II. Grace fleeing back through the waiting area (as lickers threw themselves through the windows at her – the gang protested “we were supposed to be friends! We were supposed to have pulled the thorn from your paw!”), and managing to get back to the children’s hospital room (which was too well-lit for zombies), where she plopped the Knobless Orb in its slot. She then headed toward the “bioweapon repository” from before (where all the lickers were hanging out after escaping containment) to use her magnetic key to open up the door to the clean room in there – this involved throwing an acid bottle at a licker and its white zombie friend in the doorway, then escaping another licker which came along and protested its friends dying to acid (Andy was STUNNED that it was allowed in the well-lit area with the item box and the saving typewriter – that’s against the rules), then returning to the repository to gather crotch blood from the white zombie corpse while the dead licker gently gyrated next to it. ...this game is weird sometimes, if the whole “Leon rides a motorcycle up a skyscraper” bit didn’t clue you in.
III. Grace taking advantage of the opportunity to go back into the side room (“chemical storage” if you were wondering), kill some zombies, and grab the bottle of acid she missed before (Andy was very pleased), before opening up the clean room (which the gang noted was anything BUT, given all the blood around) and successfully obtaining the red Animus Orb! (What, is it from Assassin’s Creed?) Of course, this prompted another mass breakout of white zombies – fortunately, Grace was able to molotov them (well, most of them, Andy was slightly put out one guy didn’t end up on fire), kite around the remaining zombie, then head back to the orb door and place the Assassin’s Creed orb in the slot to finally open the door (as Andy noted that their goal appeared to be “get back to the place where we were before Leon shot down that big arm and forced Grace to ride it down with him”). Said door opened onto a room with a huge console covered in various screens (comparisons were made to the room in GTA Online where you kick off your various missions – Mike asked if they could call down an orbital strike on Zeno) –
Screens with Grace on them. (And a newspaper article talking about how she went to the hotel, making them go “well SOMEONE must be looking for her” – they ain’t looking very hard, it feels!) And when she interacted with the console, she found a zip disc reader with a zip disc inside – which made her remember the one she found from her mom that was stashed behind the painting. She promptly inserted it into the console and found a bunch of files on it. One of which was labeled “the creator” and showed a brief clip of her mother Alyssa interviewing a wheelchair-ridden Spencer at the end of his life (with him acknowledging that “what you sow, you reap” regarding his life choices) –
And one of which was labeled “Grace.” Oooooh… The OXBoxers promptly wondered if “Grace” was the password – I saw the odds are low, but not zero. (Personally, given the central refinement unit is called Pandora and Elpis means “hope” in Greek...you see where I’m going with this, right?)
IV. A perspective switch back to Leon, entering the facility through the door Grace unblocked (after nearly collapsing again, and telling Sherry not to worry about him when she contacted him over the earpiece – the gang noted he had EXCELLENT reception for being so deep underground, with Andy wondering if he got on the local wifi when he came down), raiding a side office for goodies (while the gang noted that THIS one had flatscreens, joking that the guys from the other office Grace found would hate it – as per Mike, “where’s our warm scanlines?”), and then heading down a hall and getting a glimpse of his and Grace’s ultimate destination – which, yes, was exactly where they were before he shot down a big old mechanical arm and forced Grace to ride it down to the “minecart” with him. XD Whoops. He then continued on, taking out some more white zombies in his way –
Before coughing and getting blue, blurred vision as the T-virus wracked his system. Poor Andy was forced to wait out the effects before he could get Leon to throw a makeshift spear at the next zombie to menace him. *grimace* Poor Leon...I swear, if they kill him at the end of this game…
V. Leon finding his way into a safe room with a Merchant Box and spending his kill credits on repairing his body arm and upgrading the Requiem – Mike joked that this would all be very useful when Andy inevitably doesn’t use the gun. XD Andy promised that he would use it on the final boss, causing Mike to go “but what if the final boss isn’t openly telegraphed as the final boss?” Andy: “Then I’ll be hanging on in case there’s a secret extra boss.” XD
VI. And Leon making his way over to ANOTHER console in another zombie storage room (full of explosive canisters, uh-oh) that needed another override key, then proceeding out the other side and picking a fight with a room full of lickers – a fight that he almost lost, both because there were more lickers than he’d originally guessed AND because he had an ill-timed T-virus wobbly-blue-filter moment midway through. Fortunately, his shotgun carried him through – even if he did get licked once. Andy did NOT approve!
Whew! That was – a lot more than I expected when it came to summing things up. @.@ But we are in the home stretch now – tomorrow, we’ll see Leon find that override key, and if he and Grace can get back to where they were and destroy Elpis! And if Leon survives doing so...he’d better, that’s all I’m saying.
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – tonight’s page of The Adventures Of Alice In Santa Monica (Yet Again) covered –
A) Alice leaving Mercurio’s apartment and commenting that Mercurio being unable to answer her question about Victor was unexpected – Hatter noted that she should be used to people not giving her answers by now, and she explained that she was used to it from the Wonderlanders and most of her fellow vampires. Mercurio, however, had always been extremely helpful in the past, so she’d just assumed he’d be extremely helpful here too. She hadn’t even considered the idea that Victor’s ‘Alice needs me’ sense might be unique to him! Cue Cheshire showing up and being a little pedantic, pointing out that few things were unique to one person – more often, they were just rarely held by others. Which Alice allowed, as it just being a rare ghoul thing made sense too.
B) Alice wondering if she should try to seek out Knox and figure out what he knew or just head to Hollywood – on the one hand, she didn’t like the idea of telling Victor that she couldn’t get any answers about why he knows when she’s in trouble; on the other, she also didn’t want to put off going to Hollywood for too long, if only because she’d have a lot to do there (including securing lodgings and whatnot). Caterpillar told her that it wasn’t too late yet and that seeking out “the golden ghoul” and learning what he knew would do both her and Victor good...but that it might be a good idea to stop at her transport first and drop off her gun because the Voermans probably WOULDN’T appreciate her bringing a Jaegerspas into their establishment, even if she had no intentions of using it. Alice concurred. XD
C) And Alice heading over to the taxi, dropping off her “purchase,” and letting Victor know that Mercurio had had no answers regarding his “condition” as he didn’t share it (which flummoxed Victor for a moment), but he’d suggested talking to Knox, so she was going to head over to the Asylum and look for Knox there. If she found him, great; if she didn’t, she’d try to seek him out another night because she didn’t want to linger TOO long. Victor, who’d been drawing anyway, assured her that he was fine with waiting – as did the cabbie, who was enjoying a bit of fruit juice. (At least, it looked like fruit juice…) Alice joked that the cabbie obviously enjoyed waiting with the meter running, then assured both him and Victor that she wouldn’t be too long before closing the door and heading out.
Not too shabby! Slowly starting to get into the rhythm of writing this, I think. Next time, we send Alice to The Asylum and see what Knox knows!
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – you do NOT want to know how long the Workout Write-Up took tonight. (Though, admittedly, part of that is because I took a break while talking with Squid...still, it was kind of embarrassingly long. Too much detail, Vic, too much detail!)
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing for me to do on Valice Multiverse, I was able to get my queue on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) sorted for the next three days with the help of a deep dive into the “#corpse bride” tag! So I’ve got –
A) A post by pixiecola comparing a young actor by the name of Jack Wolfe to Victor Van Dort and going “hear me out” about Jack being able to play a live-action Victor for Wednesday! Because while normally I’m not much for fancasting, I gotta say, at least in the picture pixiecola chose, this Jack Wolfe really DID look rather like Victor. Specifically, he had the correct face shape with a pretty pointy chin, which I almost NEVER see in these fancasts. The hair was entirely too wild, but perhaps if you slicked it back...so yeah, reblogged that into my queue for tomorrow
B) A post by twisted-cat2476 showing off their new The Smiler pin (the smiley-face logo with “CORRECTED” dangling beneath it) for Thursday! Because I like people showing off their Smiler merch
C) And a post by gerdark showing off their A:MR Alice fanart (one picture of London Alice and one of Wonderland Alice) for Friday! Because it’s cool-looking fanart
So that’s nice! Still gotta figure out Song Saturday, but I can do that later in the week.
And I have officially stayed up too late to complete this entry, which is more bad vibes. *facepalm* I'm off to bed. Night all.
