So About That Sound On Saturday...
Jun. 1st, 2026 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI think I mentioned in my entry on Saturday that my cleaning was briefly interrupted around 2 PM by a loud sound that none of us could find the source for? With me wondering if it was recycling and garbage bins being knocked over in the wind? Well, while looking up the weather this morning, I noticed a news report on the news website that just so happened to cover the source of the mysterious sound --
And it turned out that it was a FUCKING METEOR essentially EXPLODING 40 miles up in the atmosphere above the coast of Massachusetts. O.O Like, nobody was hurt or anything, it went kaboom WAY up, it's just the force of it coming apart caused a bunch of sonic booms. Hence the weird noise on Saturday. *shakehead* Life just continues to get weirder and weirder as we continue through 2026, folks!
Anyway -- today wasn't weird at all, I must admit --
Work – Was a pretty quiet Monday at work, with my coworker getting all the difficult calls (like a lady needing her ongoing gift shut off and today’s payment refunded, or a lady who’s bill pay checks are all screwed up now) – my tasks for the day included:
A) Doing the GL, which was mostly reversals this time around and thus took a little bit to complete
B) Changing the whiteboard calendar to the new month
C) Helping my coworker with some of those tricky calls (namely, correcting the payment dates on a pledge she’d updated, because it didn’t update properly and pulled a payment today instead of the previous scheduled date – fortunately the donor was okay with that)
D) Going through the returned “failed credit card” pledge cards to see if there had been any updates on any of them (yup, one person redid their gift themselves online, yay)
E) Doing the obituaries in the paper (neither were in our database)
F) Adding a couple of new people as per a call from one of the parishes
G) Taking a call from a guy setting up a gift to come from his IRA and giving him all the info he needed
H) And looking up more obituaries online and doing whatever related roster maintenance I could find from looking up the names
*shrug* Nothing too taxing, I suppose – and at least it all made the day go by. Hopefully Tuesday will be much of the same!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s stationary bike ride saw me pedal my way through –
A) The second half of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 3 - Boom Or Bust!” Which saw Useless Steve (Prequel Edition):
I. Figure out a good plan for dealing with hostile wildlife and other enemies that can’t be mezzed with his new Evil Stun Gun while working his way toward Minefield – namely, toss a grenade at them once they inevitably detect him and start charging his way, and once the grenade has crippled SOMETHING on their body and hopefully knocked them prone, start smacking them with his big old sledgehammer. I mean, it worked against the dog and the mole rat he encountered along the way!
II. Wander into a wrecked house along his chosen path and pick up a skill book to improve his Explosives skill by one point (called “Duck & Cover,” very appropriately), then attempt to sneak around a couple of super mutants on the road – only for SOMETHING (Jon was pretty sure it was a Mad Brahmin) to detect him and try to start trouble; fortunately for Steve, this was another case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the super mutants promptly started fighting the crazed cow, allowing Steve to run away before anything could hurt HIM. Explosives and kiting enemies into fighting each other – THESE are the skills that will keep Steve alive!
III. Arrive at Minefield around the back of owner Arkansas’s ruined house “base” (avoiding the usual road which puts one in the sniper’s line of sight, along him to shoot at you), drop his way down the rocks overlooking said ruined house (injuring himself in the process – RIGHT after using a stimpack, I might add), and slowly make his way into the “back garden” of the place. Which caused Arkansas to detect him and come running at him to shoot him –
Only to get shot himself by Steve’s new Mesmetron. Cue him getting stunned; Steve cheerfully talking him into opening up his own inventory so he could rob him (going so far as to take the clothes off his back); and Steve then popping a slave collar over his head and sending him to Paradise Falls in naught but his underwear. A truly evil act that deserved a bit of karma, don’t you agree? Fallout 3 certainly thought so –
Because the instant Steve tried to get close to one of the nearby landmines to disarm it, he almost immediately exploded. Because, while there’s no actual in-game skill check to disarm mines (it’s essentially a quick-time event), how long the player has to press the button before the mine goes off happens to be tied to their player character’s Explosives skill...and Useless Steve being, well, Useless Steve, his was a nice hearty 6. And the only reason it was that high was because he found that “Duck & Cover.” XD Didn’t immediately think that one through, did you Jon?
IV. Reload the world to try again with enslaving Arkansas and disarming the mines – only to discover that his universe had bugged out slightly and Arkansas was for some reason now in the vicinity of Paradise Falls despite Steve having rewound time to before he hit him with the Mesmetron. (As per the comments, this is apparently a common bug if you use the quickload function in this game or Fallout 4.) Steve resolved to worry about that later and instead focused on boosting his Perception to passively boost his Explosives skill so he could actually have enough time to disarm the mines around him. Swapping his baseball cap (+5 Melee Weapons skill) for the sheriff’s hat (+1 Perception) and doing some mentats (+5 Perception, +5 Intelligence) did the trick, getting his Perception up to a healthy 7 and allowing Jon just enough time to press the button to disarm and collect the landmines. *claps* Hooray for hats and drugs!
V. Loot the mines of Minefield now that he had the ability to actually pick them up without exploding (though there were still a few accidents involving mines Jon didn’t immediately see...plus a few nerve-wracking moments where he went into [CAUTION] because the game just assumed Arkansas was around and going to shoot at him at any moment despite the sniper having been banished into the wilderness)! He’d also hoped to loot the houses for their valuable skill books, but as it turned out, most of them were locked above his incredibly paltry skill level. The only one he could bust into was the Gibson House with its Very Easy lock, allowing him to grab – ironically – a “Tumblers Today” (aka the Lockpicking skill book XD). Better than nothing – especially since the house ALSO had a box of Sugar Bombs in the fridge (another eventual 15 caps for Steve), some lovely pre-War books (that could be sold to a certain BOS member later), some of the bits he would eventually need to built the Rock-It Launcher, and a bed that was available for napping in (though Steve DID have to cuddle up to some skeletons to do so). Honestly, a pretty good haul!
VI. Visit the playground in the middle of town to officially mark “visited Minefield for Moira” off his to-do list, loot all the rest of the mines in the town (which led to a final count of 37 floating around in his inventory), then check on where the heck Arkansas even was because Jon was wondering and worried he wouldn’t be able to do his planned shopping trip in Paradise Falls. As it turned out, since Arkansas wasn’t actually collared yet, the Pip-Boy showed him walking back toward Minefield. Steve thus ran into his little house and waited there for him until he spawned back in –
Then hit him with the Mesmetron again and re-enslaved him. And because he’d already picked up all the mines, this time he wasn’t immediately punished by exploding. Ah well – we all knew Steve was useless, so why wouldn’t his moral compass be as well?
VII. Visit Paradise Falls, getting a “thanks for getting that sniper who kept killing our guys into a collar – tempted to use him for target practice” from Grouse at the front gate (Jon: “It’s entirely possible I didn’t do a good thing here today”), then head into the complex itself to visit some locations of interest! Specifically –
a. He hit up the gun shop to trade a few mines for a couple of frag grenades, a 10mm submachine gun (in terrible condition, but Steve actually had the ammo for it, so…), and a Raider Blastmaster Helmet that added +5 to both his Big Guns skill and his Explosives skill (while also covering his terrible mustache)
b. He snuck into the home of Eulogy Jones to grab the Speech Bobblehead (+10 to the Speech skill) and steal some Nuka-Cola Quantum
c. And he visited the clinic to trade some Nuka-Cola for some Med-X and a couple of doses of Psycho, as drugs are very important to Useless Steve managing to actually function in society!
VIII. Return to Megaton and Moira Brown – but not to turn in the landmine quest, as he didn’t want to turn that in until he’d found a way to adjust his SPECIAL stats so he’d get the right reward from it. Instead, his goal was to get the schematics for the Rock-It Launcher off her – and after downing some whiskey (to raise his Barter skill a bit and thus knock a few caps off the price), he was finally able to purchase them for the price of ten landmines and most of his caps! He then proceeded to –
a. Spend a few more caps buying the last component he actually needed to make it (he’d managed to pick most of them up in Minefield, but lacked a conductor – fortunately Moira was guaranteed to sell all the parts for the weapon she herself had created)
b. Use the power of mentats to boost his Intelligence, and thus his repair skill, so the Rock-It Launcher he created wasn’t in absolutely DREADFUL condition (he got addicted to mentats in the process, but what can you do)
c. Sell Moira all his remaining mines so she could further improve the condition of the newly-created Rock-It Launcher to something that wasn’t “will probably just straight-up break in a few shots” (and hilariously making it so he couldn’t complete the optional objective of the landmine mission – give Moira a mine. Hopefully he can find another one somewhere else!)
And so the episode ended with Steve cheerfully wandering Megaton with a new big gun that shot random junk (like old soda bottles and pre-War money) at enemies for 25 damage a pop! Yeah, that seems appropriate for him. :p Next time, he heads back out into the wastes to test out his new weapon and find ways to start raising his SPECIAL (other than drugs) that might help him actually pass a skill check or two. XD Looking forward to it!
B) And the first thirteen minutes of “My first house build in Paralives!” by James Turner! Which was technically his second house build after the one he built in the first video he made showing off the game, and also his second attempt at building this particular house after the first one glitched out while he was trying to resize a room, but – semantics. :p The very beginning of the video saw James:
I. Show off how Paras can just own multiple lots in this game, and being excited about what that might mean once players were allowed to build things other than residential lots
II. Reveal how, despite the lack of a proper basement tool, you can still do a sort of psuedo-basement by using the terrain tools to put a room into the ground, essentially – unfortunately, that does lead to a glitchy “you’re underneath the map” view if you put down the walls, but if you want to fake a basement, it’s an option!
III. Show how you can use the fact that Paralives both supports houses having LOADS of levels and will let you adjust the wall height of a level at will to fake a house having foundation AND do split-level builds (with doors and windows even properly working when placed on overlapping levels)
IV. And start building a split-level house, stacking multiple half-height levels on each other to create full-height rooms once he removed some floors and ceilings – the idea being that he could then add chunks of floor back to make rooms that had different levels of floors in them. Fun!
*nods* Interesting stuff! I look forward to continuing this tomorrow and seeing how the build goes. :)
2. Continue writing Chapter 1 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – got a pretty good chunk done tonight, covering –
A) Alice getting engrossed in her drawing, scratching away with her pencil and only looking up to either relieve some stiffness in her neck or take another look at Victor for reference purposes – he too proved to be rather caught up in his artwork, though Alice could feel him looking at her from time to time (she looked up in response once, getting a blush and a smile before he went back to his drawing). Leading to her wondering what exactly he was drawing – a realistic scene, like her feeding the fish back in their shared apartment? Or a more fantastical one, like the fish swimming around her Deluded Depths-style? – before admitting to herself that, either way, she was eager to see it, as he was a very talented artist. She just hoped that he liked her piece as well… Fortunately, the Leader of the Insane Children was on hand to reassure her that she wasn’t mad enough to be rejected – just enough to be appreciated. :p
B) Alice stretching a little as she finished her drawing, stiff from sitting in one pose for so long – then, upon learning from the cabbie that they were only ten minutes out from their destination, telling Victor that they were almost there and asking if he was done with his work. Victor quickly finished up a few final lines in response, then declared himself happy with the end product, commenting that he hoped Alice was too – Alice told him she was happy to echo the sentiment back at him. Cue the two trading drawings (Victor telling Alice she should feel free to inform him if she didn’t like it, while Alice joked Victor should pay her all the false compliments on hers) and Victor looking at his –
And briefly being stunned, because as it turned out, what Alice had drawn him was a scene from the Ball & Socket – him sitting at the piano with Emily, watching Paul the Head Waiter skitter about on the bar. He was surprised she’d remembered what he’d told her about it – Alice admitted that her original idea had been to do him sat at a regular grand piano, but then she’d recalled his story about Emily and thought this would be nicer. And while she was sure it wasn’t that accurate, she’d done her best. Victor assured her that it was beautiful and very much appreciated, adding it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever given him. :)
C) And Alice then looking at the drawing he’d given her – and finding a scene of her fighting the Jabberwock from her first trip through Wonderland (with me explaining that she’d told him about it off-screen when he showed her his butterfly-bots). Which wasn’t entirely accurate – Jabberwock and Gryphon were both a little off-model, so to speak – but still was close enough and had enough detail that she could practically smell the lava and the brimstone, and feel the weight of the Jabberwock Eye Staff in her hands as her inked counterpart fired it upon her foe. And she was quite touched by the fact that he’d made her look extremely powerful and heroic, wondering if this was how he saw her with a funny bubbling feeling in her chest… Cue her telling him when he asked that it was absolutely gorgeous and one of the nicest things she’d ever received from someone, and Victor explaining that, after some of the nights she’d had recently, he thought she’d appreciate something that made her look incredible. Which was was. At least to him. Awwww...is it any wonder Alice held his hand after he said that? :D These two~
And that is where I left off, with a little moment of softness for my OTP. :) Tomorrow, we get this show off the road and into Hollywood, where Alice will finally meet Isaac – and be pissed off by him within minutes of saying hello, thanks to Isaac being old school and believing in a little thing called “tribute...”
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – partly because the Workout Video Write-Ups took a while again, and partly because I ended up on TV Tropes for a bit thanks to a tumblr discussion about those ancient point-and-click adventure games that were actively hostile to players with their deliberate softlocks as a result of decisions made ages ago in the game. Sierra and Infocom were MEAN companies, folks. But yeah, no extra video watching tonight – we’ll see what happens tomorrow!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A, thanks to the usual “it’s Monday, I’m only checking on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and I don’t have to actually get my queue sorted until tomorrow night” state of affairs. *shrug* I’ll let you know what I pick for the week tomorrow!
And, as usual, all of that took longer than anticipated, so I have got to get off and get some sleep. *nods* Night all!
And it turned out that it was a FUCKING METEOR essentially EXPLODING 40 miles up in the atmosphere above the coast of Massachusetts. O.O Like, nobody was hurt or anything, it went kaboom WAY up, it's just the force of it coming apart caused a bunch of sonic booms. Hence the weird noise on Saturday. *shakehead* Life just continues to get weirder and weirder as we continue through 2026, folks!
Anyway -- today wasn't weird at all, I must admit --
Work – Was a pretty quiet Monday at work, with my coworker getting all the difficult calls (like a lady needing her ongoing gift shut off and today’s payment refunded, or a lady who’s bill pay checks are all screwed up now) – my tasks for the day included:
A) Doing the GL, which was mostly reversals this time around and thus took a little bit to complete
B) Changing the whiteboard calendar to the new month
C) Helping my coworker with some of those tricky calls (namely, correcting the payment dates on a pledge she’d updated, because it didn’t update properly and pulled a payment today instead of the previous scheduled date – fortunately the donor was okay with that)
D) Going through the returned “failed credit card” pledge cards to see if there had been any updates on any of them (yup, one person redid their gift themselves online, yay)
E) Doing the obituaries in the paper (neither were in our database)
F) Adding a couple of new people as per a call from one of the parishes
G) Taking a call from a guy setting up a gift to come from his IRA and giving him all the info he needed
H) And looking up more obituaries online and doing whatever related roster maintenance I could find from looking up the names
*shrug* Nothing too taxing, I suppose – and at least it all made the day go by. Hopefully Tuesday will be much of the same!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s stationary bike ride saw me pedal my way through –
A) The second half of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 3 - Boom Or Bust!” Which saw Useless Steve (Prequel Edition):
I. Figure out a good plan for dealing with hostile wildlife and other enemies that can’t be mezzed with his new Evil Stun Gun while working his way toward Minefield – namely, toss a grenade at them once they inevitably detect him and start charging his way, and once the grenade has crippled SOMETHING on their body and hopefully knocked them prone, start smacking them with his big old sledgehammer. I mean, it worked against the dog and the mole rat he encountered along the way!
II. Wander into a wrecked house along his chosen path and pick up a skill book to improve his Explosives skill by one point (called “Duck & Cover,” very appropriately), then attempt to sneak around a couple of super mutants on the road – only for SOMETHING (Jon was pretty sure it was a Mad Brahmin) to detect him and try to start trouble; fortunately for Steve, this was another case of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” as the super mutants promptly started fighting the crazed cow, allowing Steve to run away before anything could hurt HIM. Explosives and kiting enemies into fighting each other – THESE are the skills that will keep Steve alive!
III. Arrive at Minefield around the back of owner Arkansas’s ruined house “base” (avoiding the usual road which puts one in the sniper’s line of sight, along him to shoot at you), drop his way down the rocks overlooking said ruined house (injuring himself in the process – RIGHT after using a stimpack, I might add), and slowly make his way into the “back garden” of the place. Which caused Arkansas to detect him and come running at him to shoot him –
Only to get shot himself by Steve’s new Mesmetron. Cue him getting stunned; Steve cheerfully talking him into opening up his own inventory so he could rob him (going so far as to take the clothes off his back); and Steve then popping a slave collar over his head and sending him to Paradise Falls in naught but his underwear. A truly evil act that deserved a bit of karma, don’t you agree? Fallout 3 certainly thought so –
Because the instant Steve tried to get close to one of the nearby landmines to disarm it, he almost immediately exploded. Because, while there’s no actual in-game skill check to disarm mines (it’s essentially a quick-time event), how long the player has to press the button before the mine goes off happens to be tied to their player character’s Explosives skill...and Useless Steve being, well, Useless Steve, his was a nice hearty 6. And the only reason it was that high was because he found that “Duck & Cover.” XD Didn’t immediately think that one through, did you Jon?
IV. Reload the world to try again with enslaving Arkansas and disarming the mines – only to discover that his universe had bugged out slightly and Arkansas was for some reason now in the vicinity of Paradise Falls despite Steve having rewound time to before he hit him with the Mesmetron. (As per the comments, this is apparently a common bug if you use the quickload function in this game or Fallout 4.) Steve resolved to worry about that later and instead focused on boosting his Perception to passively boost his Explosives skill so he could actually have enough time to disarm the mines around him. Swapping his baseball cap (+5 Melee Weapons skill) for the sheriff’s hat (+1 Perception) and doing some mentats (+5 Perception, +5 Intelligence) did the trick, getting his Perception up to a healthy 7 and allowing Jon just enough time to press the button to disarm and collect the landmines. *claps* Hooray for hats and drugs!
V. Loot the mines of Minefield now that he had the ability to actually pick them up without exploding (though there were still a few accidents involving mines Jon didn’t immediately see...plus a few nerve-wracking moments where he went into [CAUTION] because the game just assumed Arkansas was around and going to shoot at him at any moment despite the sniper having been banished into the wilderness)! He’d also hoped to loot the houses for their valuable skill books, but as it turned out, most of them were locked above his incredibly paltry skill level. The only one he could bust into was the Gibson House with its Very Easy lock, allowing him to grab – ironically – a “Tumblers Today” (aka the Lockpicking skill book XD). Better than nothing – especially since the house ALSO had a box of Sugar Bombs in the fridge (another eventual 15 caps for Steve), some lovely pre-War books (that could be sold to a certain BOS member later), some of the bits he would eventually need to built the Rock-It Launcher, and a bed that was available for napping in (though Steve DID have to cuddle up to some skeletons to do so). Honestly, a pretty good haul!
VI. Visit the playground in the middle of town to officially mark “visited Minefield for Moira” off his to-do list, loot all the rest of the mines in the town (which led to a final count of 37 floating around in his inventory), then check on where the heck Arkansas even was because Jon was wondering and worried he wouldn’t be able to do his planned shopping trip in Paradise Falls. As it turned out, since Arkansas wasn’t actually collared yet, the Pip-Boy showed him walking back toward Minefield. Steve thus ran into his little house and waited there for him until he spawned back in –
Then hit him with the Mesmetron again and re-enslaved him. And because he’d already picked up all the mines, this time he wasn’t immediately punished by exploding. Ah well – we all knew Steve was useless, so why wouldn’t his moral compass be as well?
VII. Visit Paradise Falls, getting a “thanks for getting that sniper who kept killing our guys into a collar – tempted to use him for target practice” from Grouse at the front gate (Jon: “It’s entirely possible I didn’t do a good thing here today”), then head into the complex itself to visit some locations of interest! Specifically –
a. He hit up the gun shop to trade a few mines for a couple of frag grenades, a 10mm submachine gun (in terrible condition, but Steve actually had the ammo for it, so…), and a Raider Blastmaster Helmet that added +5 to both his Big Guns skill and his Explosives skill (while also covering his terrible mustache)
b. He snuck into the home of Eulogy Jones to grab the Speech Bobblehead (+10 to the Speech skill) and steal some Nuka-Cola Quantum
c. And he visited the clinic to trade some Nuka-Cola for some Med-X and a couple of doses of Psycho, as drugs are very important to Useless Steve managing to actually function in society!
VIII. Return to Megaton and Moira Brown – but not to turn in the landmine quest, as he didn’t want to turn that in until he’d found a way to adjust his SPECIAL stats so he’d get the right reward from it. Instead, his goal was to get the schematics for the Rock-It Launcher off her – and after downing some whiskey (to raise his Barter skill a bit and thus knock a few caps off the price), he was finally able to purchase them for the price of ten landmines and most of his caps! He then proceeded to –
a. Spend a few more caps buying the last component he actually needed to make it (he’d managed to pick most of them up in Minefield, but lacked a conductor – fortunately Moira was guaranteed to sell all the parts for the weapon she herself had created)
b. Use the power of mentats to boost his Intelligence, and thus his repair skill, so the Rock-It Launcher he created wasn’t in absolutely DREADFUL condition (he got addicted to mentats in the process, but what can you do)
c. Sell Moira all his remaining mines so she could further improve the condition of the newly-created Rock-It Launcher to something that wasn’t “will probably just straight-up break in a few shots” (and hilariously making it so he couldn’t complete the optional objective of the landmine mission – give Moira a mine. Hopefully he can find another one somewhere else!)
And so the episode ended with Steve cheerfully wandering Megaton with a new big gun that shot random junk (like old soda bottles and pre-War money) at enemies for 25 damage a pop! Yeah, that seems appropriate for him. :p Next time, he heads back out into the wastes to test out his new weapon and find ways to start raising his SPECIAL (other than drugs) that might help him actually pass a skill check or two. XD Looking forward to it!
B) And the first thirteen minutes of “My first house build in Paralives!” by James Turner! Which was technically his second house build after the one he built in the first video he made showing off the game, and also his second attempt at building this particular house after the first one glitched out while he was trying to resize a room, but – semantics. :p The very beginning of the video saw James:
I. Show off how Paras can just own multiple lots in this game, and being excited about what that might mean once players were allowed to build things other than residential lots
II. Reveal how, despite the lack of a proper basement tool, you can still do a sort of psuedo-basement by using the terrain tools to put a room into the ground, essentially – unfortunately, that does lead to a glitchy “you’re underneath the map” view if you put down the walls, but if you want to fake a basement, it’s an option!
III. Show how you can use the fact that Paralives both supports houses having LOADS of levels and will let you adjust the wall height of a level at will to fake a house having foundation AND do split-level builds (with doors and windows even properly working when placed on overlapping levels)
IV. And start building a split-level house, stacking multiple half-height levels on each other to create full-height rooms once he removed some floors and ceilings – the idea being that he could then add chunks of floor back to make rooms that had different levels of floors in them. Fun!
*nods* Interesting stuff! I look forward to continuing this tomorrow and seeing how the build goes. :)
2. Continue writing Chapter 1 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – got a pretty good chunk done tonight, covering –
A) Alice getting engrossed in her drawing, scratching away with her pencil and only looking up to either relieve some stiffness in her neck or take another look at Victor for reference purposes – he too proved to be rather caught up in his artwork, though Alice could feel him looking at her from time to time (she looked up in response once, getting a blush and a smile before he went back to his drawing). Leading to her wondering what exactly he was drawing – a realistic scene, like her feeding the fish back in their shared apartment? Or a more fantastical one, like the fish swimming around her Deluded Depths-style? – before admitting to herself that, either way, she was eager to see it, as he was a very talented artist. She just hoped that he liked her piece as well… Fortunately, the Leader of the Insane Children was on hand to reassure her that she wasn’t mad enough to be rejected – just enough to be appreciated. :p
B) Alice stretching a little as she finished her drawing, stiff from sitting in one pose for so long – then, upon learning from the cabbie that they were only ten minutes out from their destination, telling Victor that they were almost there and asking if he was done with his work. Victor quickly finished up a few final lines in response, then declared himself happy with the end product, commenting that he hoped Alice was too – Alice told him she was happy to echo the sentiment back at him. Cue the two trading drawings (Victor telling Alice she should feel free to inform him if she didn’t like it, while Alice joked Victor should pay her all the false compliments on hers) and Victor looking at his –
And briefly being stunned, because as it turned out, what Alice had drawn him was a scene from the Ball & Socket – him sitting at the piano with Emily, watching Paul the Head Waiter skitter about on the bar. He was surprised she’d remembered what he’d told her about it – Alice admitted that her original idea had been to do him sat at a regular grand piano, but then she’d recalled his story about Emily and thought this would be nicer. And while she was sure it wasn’t that accurate, she’d done her best. Victor assured her that it was beautiful and very much appreciated, adding it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever given him. :)
C) And Alice then looking at the drawing he’d given her – and finding a scene of her fighting the Jabberwock from her first trip through Wonderland (with me explaining that she’d told him about it off-screen when he showed her his butterfly-bots). Which wasn’t entirely accurate – Jabberwock and Gryphon were both a little off-model, so to speak – but still was close enough and had enough detail that she could practically smell the lava and the brimstone, and feel the weight of the Jabberwock Eye Staff in her hands as her inked counterpart fired it upon her foe. And she was quite touched by the fact that he’d made her look extremely powerful and heroic, wondering if this was how he saw her with a funny bubbling feeling in her chest… Cue her telling him when he asked that it was absolutely gorgeous and one of the nicest things she’d ever received from someone, and Victor explaining that, after some of the nights she’d had recently, he thought she’d appreciate something that made her look incredible. Which was was. At least to him. Awwww...is it any wonder Alice held his hand after he said that? :D These two~
And that is where I left off, with a little moment of softness for my OTP. :) Tomorrow, we get this show off the road and into Hollywood, where Alice will finally meet Isaac – and be pissed off by him within minutes of saying hello, thanks to Isaac being old school and believing in a little thing called “tribute...”
3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – partly because the Workout Video Write-Ups took a while again, and partly because I ended up on TV Tropes for a bit thanks to a tumblr discussion about those ancient point-and-click adventure games that were actively hostile to players with their deliberate softlocks as a result of decisions made ages ago in the game. Sierra and Infocom were MEAN companies, folks. But yeah, no extra video watching tonight – we’ll see what happens tomorrow!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A, thanks to the usual “it’s Monday, I’m only checking on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and I don’t have to actually get my queue sorted until tomorrow night” state of affairs. *shrug* I’ll let you know what I pick for the week tomorrow!
And, as usual, all of that took longer than anticipated, so I have got to get off and get some sleep. *nods* Night all!
