Crossover Chick

Yeah, I'm sad to say that I spent most of the day in a grumpy, wound-up mood -- I blame having a dream about the world's worst road trip where I was arguing with my Mom about something right before I woke up. And anticipating all the stuff we'll be doing tomorrow and mentally preparing myself for it. Basically I haven't felt like I could relax most of the day, and that did not do good things for the old mental state. *sigh* But I got through it, and even managed to accomplish some stuff:

Work – Very quiet day at work again – there was one call in the morning from a lady updating her credit card on her pledge, and then I spent the rest of the day working on the latest obituaries (and doing a little bit of extra roster maintenance that cropped up as a result), helping get rid of some old fliers and such we didn’t need anymore, and doing a bunch of reversals. *shrug* This has been a very unexciting week, I must say! At least tomorrow will be more interesting, given I’m running around going to the hairdresser and the dentist and mini-golf instead of to work...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night pedaling my way through the adventures of Radian Inu (Andy), Kae’l Crex (Jane), and Galaxa Spacemountain (Liv) as they had adventures as Teens In Space! Today saw me get through:

A) The last eight-odd minutes of “Dad's Gonna be So Mad! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 1!” Kae’l managed to fire some perfect warning shots to warn the guards chasing them off (and embarrass Dad Spacemountain even more), and the trio were able to make it into space and to a “null gate” (essentially a man-made wormhole to other places in known space, you know the drill) – which, fortunately for them, was manned by Kae’l’s cousin! Who, after some initial confusion about what the hell was going on, decided that his cousin stealing a luxury line spaceship was really cool and helped them out with a random jump to the very hot planet of Rez T-75! Which led into…

B) The first half-hour or so of “Now This is Space Racing! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 2!” Featuring our intrepid trio of runaway teens –

I. Finding ways to pass the time they spent actually traveling through space-time to the other side of the null gate – Radian spent a good hour in the holodeck “learning about ancient civilizations” (though he had no proof as the browser history had been mysteriously wiped XD); Kae’l and Galaxa took a look down at the mysterious Restricted area in the lower deck, only to find that V.I.N.N.I.E. had laser cannons at his disposal to stop them going in (a fact that surprised even V.I.N.N.I.E.) – they were unable to charm the AI into going against his programming, but Galaxa had an inkling she could try to reprogram him a bit, if she was very careful about it (it helped that V.I.N.N.I.E. himself was keen on trying to figure out what was behind the door); Galaxa assuming a new tree-person form, complete with falling cherry blossoms (that turned into goo once they got far enough away from her); and everyone going up onto the Observation deck to look at space-time fragmenting beautifully around them – Radian and Kae’l were both overwhelmed by the wonder and majesty of it all, while poor Galaxa was like “emotions? Lock those down like Dad said” and had to pretend she was overwhelmed. She didn’t do a good job of it XD

II. Coming out of the space-time slipstream – only to find that, thanks to null gates being imperfect technology, they’d suffered some interesting side effects from their trip. Specifically, their feet had switched with their hands. XD Fortunately, as per the dice rolls Jasper made everybody do to figure out what the side effects would be, it was an impermanent situation that would only last an hour. Unfortunately, it made it impossible for anyone to hold on when V.I.N.N.I.E. took them down to investigate Rez T-75 and everybody got rather banged up from the bumpy reentry. XD To be fair, though, they could have suffered much WORSE swaps, as Radian and Galaxa noted, so…

III. Deciding, as implied above, to go ahead and take a look at the planet they’d jumped to, because why the hell not, they should get to explore a little while they’re on the run from the space cops! XD V.I.N.N.I.E. gave them the stats on the planet – it’s a very hot desert planet, covered in beautiful blue sand, with all the water underground, meaning most of the lifeforms live beneath the surface (as you would) – and took them down into the atmosphere, and after spotting and assessing a few landing sites, Radian was all for landing in the cave that seemed to lead directly to the underground area where all the locals lived. The ladies were on board with this, as was V.I.N.N.I.E. – though everyone was less on-board with V.I.N.N.I.E.’s suggestion to go in guns blazing. XD Kae’l was like “we will put that on the ‘maybe’ pile” and managed to convince him to go in cloaked instead. I left off with the gang preparing to sneakily land and head out (in special environment suits, of course – hot planet is hot) – we’ll see what happens to them on old Rez T-75 tomorrow!

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – tonight saw Victor attempt to explain more about what happened to him, in particular how he finally got away from Emily and out of the ghost field, but Nell was rather distracted by the reveal that Victor ended up in Silkshore (aka the “red lantern district”) and quickly became convinced that her son had done the local equivalent of sowing his wild oats (I’m still trying to come up with a Duskwall-appropriate phrase). Victor tried to say it wasn’t like that, but he didn’t help his case by admitting Alice and Smiler had taken him to the Mangled Mermaid. ^^; At any rate, Nell eventually told him that if he wanted to make things right, he could go and mingle at the party, try and chat up a new noble girl, and Victor reluctantly entered the ballroom to do just that (or try to, anyway). I left off with him slumped against the door, bemoaning how the day couldn’t get any worse...yeah, you can probably guess a certain “what ghost would marry our Victor” moment is imminent. :p That’s for next week, though – tomorrow, it’s back to “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” for that Alice to continue experiencing a new form of hell!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check, with an actual Subs video and a bonus –

A) First up, from Josh Way, we had “YouTube Doesn’t Understand (or Care) What Riffing Is!” A short update video from Josh letting us know that YouTube has Officially Demonetized his channel (which, incidentally, he’s had pretty much since YouTube LAUNCHED), because, apparently, they think he’s not adding enough “entertainment value” to “other people’s content” with his riffs on public domain educational shorts. Like, seriously. Josh attempted to appeal, but YouTube was firm, and has set impossibly high goals for him to achieve if he wants to appeal again (such as getting ten fucking million YouTube Shorts views in ninety days – Josh doesn’t even DO YouTube Shorts!). So yeah – no more YouTube revenue for Josh. He doesn’t plan to abandon the channel – mostly because he’s enjoying making “Fun With Shorts” again; he already has two more written and ready to go once he finds the time to record – but he is going to be looking for a potential new home for his content (such as Twitch, if he can get back into his account). *shakehead* What a shame… I’m sorry for you, Josh! Twenty years of loyal uploading and this is what you get. :(

B) And second up, as I didn’t have enough time to watch the CaFae Latte video in my Watch Later, I instead went with another short video from Proxy Gate Tactician – “10 Instant Death Cutscenes in Baldur's Gate 3 (Acts 1 and 2 Only)!” As per the title, Proxy showing off all the ways your character, or even your entire party, can die or be defeated in Acts 1 and 2 if you make the wrong decisions (or get unlucky on a die roll, in some cases). Basically, if you don’t want to find yourself either getting an early game over or having to revive a character back at camp:

I. Don’t let the injured mind flayer in the wreckage of the Nautiloid suck all your brains out (obvious)

II. Don’t put on any of the Whispering Masks in Auntie Ethel’s horrible basement (she WILL mind control you through them)

III. Don’t let Lae’zel kill you (and herself) when you start showing signs of turning into a mind flayer (even if you have other party members to revive you, you’ll lose Lae’zel as they’ll have to fight her, and apparently she can’t be revived after they kill her)

IV. Don’t let Astarion drink as much blood from you as he wants, as he WILL essentially suck you dry (though admittedly, you can be revived the next day, and it can result in some amusing dialogue as Astarion tries to downplay murdering you XD)

V. If Gale dies, don’t ignore the warnings of his specially-created projection that he has to be revived in two days (because otherwise that Netherese orb in his chest is going to go off pretty fucking explosively)

VI. Don’t jump down that chasm underneath the blighted village into the Underdark without casting Feather Fall (or Fly, if you have that spell, as per one of his myth-busting videos)

VII. Don’t goad Philomeen into blowing up the barrel of runepowder she has when you confront her, because she is NOT bluffing when she threatens that (and you will go very much boom)

VIII. Don’t mouth off to Vlaakith, “God-Queen” of the githyanki (she’s actually a very powerful magical lich, but nobody mention that in her presence), as she is more than happy to use the spell Wish to insta-kill you (but NOT to insta-kill Orpheus inside the artifact. Interesting)

IX. Don’t steal the Blood of Lathander mace from the monastery the githyanki are using as a base, lest you arm the sunlight-powered super-laser outside – or, if you do, make sure to either find a way to disarm it or fucking RUN as fast as you can in the four turns you get before it goes off (or, if you can’t save everybody, make sure Astarion gets left behind because he has some pretty fucking hilarious dialogue if he dies to that thing and you revive him afterward)

X. And if the Dream Visitor/Emperor warns you that taking a certain course of action would remove the protection he gives you from the Absolute (such as trying to go back to the Mountain Pass of Act 1 once you’ve entered Act 2), FOR FUCK’S SAKE DON’T DO IT UNLESS YOU WANT TO BECOME A MIND FLAYER

So now you know! And knowing is half the battle. (The other half is getting lucky on the initiative die roll. :P)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I finished off my queue over there with a reblog of my old Song Saturday featuring “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr! Because I had to do that one after queuing up the Ghostbusters Mega AU for Thursday. XD (As for the song parody I had in mind – I don’t have enough of it done, and it would take too long to try and wrangle into shape. I’ll have to save it for another time, when inspiration strikes again!)

Other: We did play beanbags when I got home from work, and it was one of those days where Dad absolutely smoked Mom and me, winning all three games while Mom and I traded second place back and forth. Final scores were me 2-3-2; Dad W-W-W; and Mom 3-2-3. *shakehead* I dunno why I’m so freaking off lately with my throwing...though I suppose I should just be grateful I did that little bit better than Mom. We’ll see what happens the next time we play!

So at least that was all okay. And now I have to go to bed, as I can't stay up late -- my appointment at Fantastic Sam's is at 9 AM, so I have to get up normal time. :( And then I have my dentist appointment at 11:45 AM, and then Mom wants to do mini-golf in the afternoon, as per the above...we'll see how it all pans out. Night all!

It, uh, hasn't been quite as nice as Alice and Smiler's birthdays (I mean, for starters, I had to work, plus there was an -- INCIDENT with the toilet when I got home -- I won't go into it, you don't want details), but I am making a distinct effort to try and concentrate on some of the better things that happened today. Such as reading a bunch of Corpse Bride fanfics on my lunch break (a couple of Victor/Victoria/Emily poly fics, and a couple chapters from "In A World Of My Own," the Forgotten Vows Verse "Victor and Alice exploring Victor's Otherland" story I wrote ages ago)! Or having a nice dish of Cookies & Cream ice cream with lots of cookie bits and chocolate sauce! Or listening to some really nice CB-inspired ambience as I caught up on webcomics and such! Or -- and this is the big one --

Getting my new mouse! Yes, it was waiting for me on my desk when I got home today, and I am pleased to report that so far it's working very well! It moves REALLY smoothly over my desk, and oh man, is it SO NICE to be able to click on something and not worry that the mouse is going to think that I double- or triple-clicked! I'm still getting used to the scroll wheel (though it is pleasantly clicky), and I don't think I can make the glowy bits glow any other color than green unless I download some software from the Logitech site, but I am pleased with its performance as of this moment. May it last for at least a BIT longer than the Alienware mouses I had before!

Anyway -- let's do the write-up of the day, and at a DECENT hour for a change:

Work – An okay day to start the week, I’d say – I spent the morning doing the GL and clearing out some exceptions (had to send a check back to a guy because he put two different amounts on it), then the rest of the day was spent working on a QC file for the next thank you to go out, with a couple of breaks to take phone calls (clearing up some issues we had with a parish check, and establishing which of two different pledge amounts a couple wanted (as they’d each sent in a pledge because they go to church different days)). Oh, and learning the new online time card system from the lady in charge of such in the Fiscal department. Nothing particularly exciting, other than having to fight with the printer a bit this morning, but nothing particularly horrible either. *shrug* I’ll take it!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, and another night with Oxventure, as I started “Dad's Gonna be So Mad! | Teens in Space TTRPG | Episode 1!” This is a short miniseries of Jane and Andy playing the Teens In Space RPG with Jasper and Liv of Three Black Halflings! I’m always thrilled to see them come on the channel – they’re such fun people. :) Anyway, the conceit of Teens In Space is that you are, well, teens in space, traveling around on your own spaceship and having teen-media-appropriate adventures across the known galaxy, with the dice rolls working roughly how they do in Deadlands – you get dice with more sides for the stuff that you’re better at, and if you roll the highest result, the die “explodes” and you get to roll it again. The conceit of this particular mini-series of Teens In Space is that Andy, Jane, and Liv are the three alien teenagers Radian Inu (who is basically a giant bipedal Shibu Inu in a denim jacket), Kae’l Crex (a blue three-fingered alien girl with a steely stare and no actual bones), and Galaxa Spacemountain (a purplish girl with tentacles for hair, big eyes, and the ability to melt into goo), who – after a dedication ceremony at their school for the newest luxury-model spaceship, the Galaxa (named after teen Galaxa, as one of the people behind its creation was her father) – decide to sneak over to the drydock where it’s being held and have a snoop around inside. This will of course inevitably lead to them straight-up stealing it and going on fantastic space adventures, but we haven’t gotten to that part yet. XD What we covered in this first half-hour was instead the following:

A) A history lesson on the setting – specifically how this super-advanced race 300 years ago came up with teleporter technology and went around sharing it with all the “lesser” races, only to be nonplussed by the “lesser” races fighting for their favor and leaving, warning said races not to venture out beyond “known” space or try to figure out the teleporter tech on their own, or they’ll come back and “delete” all “unworthy” races – the teens were all very bored as they already knew all this stuff from school

B) The discovery that, in this world, there’s a special enzyme that can be added to punch that automatically makes any alcohol in it evaporate if it detects it’s being poured into underaged mouths; it was later established by Andy that some kids still try to get drunk off the vapor as it comes off the punch

C) The teens, bored at the afterparty, deciding to go and check out the ship because, after all, it’s named after Galaxa, it’s practically hers – spurred on by a friend of theirs showing up and revealing that his brother had been chosen to pilot the ship (upsetting Radian, who considered himself the best pilot in all the simulations) AND he knew where the keys were as a result. Galaxa was able to handily charm the location out of him (in a safe in Galaxa’s dad’s office), while Kae’l’s steely stare made sure that their friend didn’t want to come along with them for the ride (and scored her his wallet as a bonus)

D) Galaxa becoming somehow convinced the ship was actually a late birthday present from her dad and going and hugging him – and then becoming immediately disillusioned when a reporter asked Dad Spacemountain why he’d named the ship Galaxa, and it turned out that he’d actually called his very first spaceship the Galaxa, meaning that his daughter had been named after his ship, and things had just come around full circle with this latest space liner

E) The gang having a run-in with the janitor while on their way to Dad Spacemountain’s office, and managing to get him to leave them alone after he obliquely threatened Radian by pointing out that that was creepy, and openly asking if he was responsible for disappearing kids in the past; the janitor was quite freaked out by these accusations and quickly headed off, with Jasper noting that he was probably going to seek gainful employment elsewhere XD

F) After failing to cut open the lock with a laser (Kae’l) and break the door down (Radian), Galaxa turning into her goo form to slither under Dad Spacemountain’s office door and open it from the other side – Kae’l and Radian were both VERY shocked by this, because Galaxa hadn’t ever done it in front of them, though fortunately Kae’l was able to keep Radian from making any incriminating noises

G) Galaxa stealing all the money, the little phaser, and the two “smart watch” spaceship keys from her dad’s safe after seeing a big old picture of him with his spaceship, with his family tiny in the background XD

H) And the kids having to hastily hide when they heard Dad Spacemountain approaching the office with a reporter for a photo op – Galaxa went into goo form; Kae’l folded herself up so she could fit in the safe (with a little help from Radian), and Radian elected to hop out the window and stand on the ledge, pressing himself up tight against the wall to stay out of site. We’ll see tomorrow if Andy’s roll was enough to make that plan happen, or if poor Radian is potentially going to go splat three stories down before the first episode’s over. XD

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – and yes, we’re starting with the Valicer In The Dark stuff this week, as I wanted to work on the story that’s from Victor’s POV on his birthday. Which I feel is understandable! Anyway, today we got through Victor trying to bring Alice and Smiler into the house with him to meet his parents (mingling with their guests in the main ballroom, as per Barry) and hopefully give them a reward (they protested a bit – Smiler more than Alice, admittedly – but Victor assured them he really wanted to give them something for helping him) –

Only for Barry to be like “uh, no, they’re clearly from the lower classes and will poor up the place, they need to wait at the servants’ entrance.” Victor was quite peeved and tried to argue the point, but Alice and Smiler were both like “no, Victor, it’s okay, this is an unnecessary argument, we’ll go wait there.” Which Victor was still annoyed about, but he recognized that they were probably right and that it was easier not to argue about it (and that putting his mother and Alice in the same room was likely to be a recipe for disaster), and so let them go. I left off with Victor preparing to head inside while Alice and Smiler were brought around to the servants’ entrance by Barry – tomorrow, we meet the local versions of Nell and William Van Dort, and discover just how dickish they really are! (Spoilers: very!)

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got in both videos that I really wanted to watch today, hooray –

A) First up, for my Mandated Watching Of Victor Van Dort-Related Content For His Birthday, we had “Victor Van Dort scenepack 🖤” by ☽skyler-vogel☾! Seven minutes of various short clips of Victor from throughout Corpse Bride. Featuring classic moments as him playing the piano in the Everglots’ front foyer; the candle refusing to light in the disastrous rehearsal; his attempts to flee Emily both in the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead; him getting caught with Victoria by Emily; him making up with Emily via piano duet; him choosing to marry Emily when he thought Victoria had married another; and the fork-vs-sword fight with Barkis. Good stuff, though I do wish a couple of moments had been allowed to play out for longer. The cuts between moments were a little jerky at times. *shrug* Ah well, it was still fun to watch.

B) And second up, we had more C. M. Alongi with “CaFae Latte Season 60 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured the resolution of the “John going into the woods to try and figure out what’s happening to all those missing hikers and campers...only for his walkie-talkie to mysteriously go out” cliffhanger from the previous season, and included:

I. Nicole telling Herla back at the Stoughton Street Coven headquarters that he had to get to the nearby forest by sundown, otherwise there would be death, and Herla thus getting his horse, dogs, and bow ready because he’s not dumb enough to ignore the visions of a witch

II. A bloodied John running through the woods and encountering the ghost of one of the missing people, Jessica Valentine, who led him to the stream and our friend the riddle-and-cat-toy-loving sphynx; it was then revealed that the reason the ghost-detecting charm wasn’t doing John any good before was because the people who were killing all the campers were two very human serial killers, with a device on them that jams walkie-talkie and cell phone signals (though, fortunately, they weren’t straight-up cannibals, as Jessica clarified when the sphynx misunderstood her commenting that they like to “play with their food” – only a small mercy, though, that!)

III. The sphynx and Jessica doing their best to help John escape the killers so he could follow the stream back to civilization – the sphynx distracting one of the brothers, Brady, and clawing out one of his eyes, while Jessica did her best to stop George – unfortunately, he had an anti-ghost charm bracelet meaning she couldn’t do shit to him, AND he proved callous enough to not want to help his brother, so – yeah. Not good!

IV. George catching up with John, and getting ready to start whacking him up with his axe – only to get an arrow through the wrist from Herla, aka our beloved grumpy cavalry (Jessica was VERY happy to see that)

V. And John and Herla talking to the cops afterward to explain what happened – and it being revealed that Herla not only carried John (who’d collapsed right after the danger had passed, both from exhaustion and a concussion) out of the woods in a bridal carry, he’d started tending his wounds before the EMTs arrived and had refused to leave his side. Actions that had convinced the cop they were talking to that they were a couple. XD Herla was quite annoyed by this, and bemoaned the fact that back in his day, men were allowed to be human, while John tried to get him off using words like “sodomites” to describe gay people. XD At any rate, they’re at least closer to being friends (even if Herla refuses to admit it), and the season ended with John delighted that he got to ride Herla’s flying horsey (because, you know, can’t drive with a concussion)

Lovely stuff, as always! I didn’t THINK Chris would kill off John, but it’s nice to see for sure that he’s gonna be okay. And yes, there were plenty of comments declaring that people would LOVE to see Herla and John get together. XD Me, I’d be happy with them as a couple or just grumpy besties – they’ve got a good dynamic either way! :)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitute check – just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and of course the main thing I wanted to get done over there was the plushy celebration picture! Because I couldn’t do them for Alice Dolly and Smileon and not for Victor Plush! Fortunately, I already had an idea in mind, so I was able to set up and take the picture right before my workout, then make the post tonight, while I was writing up the Teens In Space stuff – behold poor Victor Plush having a bit of a hard time riding Us, while Alice Dolly, Smileon, and Dougie offer assistance and moral support. XD To be fair, Victor’s long legs probably make riding the big old intellect devourer a bit more difficult than it is for Alice Dolly or Smileon! :p I’m just glad it came together so well and so quickly – I had the basic poses set up in an instant, and just had to tweak them slightly so Alice’s face was in frame and Smileon was facing the right way before snapping the pics. :) And now those are all set for another year, yay~

*nods* Not bad. And now I am going to get off and get some sleep, as I am VERY tired. As you might expect given how late I got to bed last night. *shakehead* Gotta do something about Sundays...night all!

Welp, the rain finally showed up to wash some of the humidity away -- and by "showed up," I mean "Dad gave me a couple minutes' warning to get the fan out of my window, and then the sky FUCKING OPENED." O.O Like, it rained so fucking hard so fucking fast that the road outside promptly started looking like a shallow river with all the water running down it. Mom's estimate is that we got like three inches in ten minutes, and -- fuck it, I'm prepared to believe that. O.o It did eventually calm down, and I'm glad it DID rain because it is now much drier and cooler than it's been the past couple of nights, but STILL. That was -- something. O.o Very glad I didn't have to go out on it!

As for my day -- it was typical in some respects, a little unusual in others:

Cleaning: Pretty typical Cleaning Saturday, as I feel I say every time – I got started around 10:35 AM; finished the dusting and the Swiffering right before lunch around 1 PM; then finished off with a thorough vacuuming after lunch, finishing everything off around 1:45 PM! *shrug* Nothing particularly special, though I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with washing my blankets or anything – obviously I changed my sheets, but those just went in the communal hamper to be washed with all the other stuff tomorrow. And I got to relisten to an excellent Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark episode, “Into The Deathlands” – featuring the gang stealing a train locomotive by setting up a fake crash out in the titular deathlands! Key highlights been the return of everyone’s favorite murder-children, the Gutcutters, to help with the score; Zillah accidentally getting put to sleep with slumber essence (while they were trying to deal with a rail-riding hobo on the same train they were trying to steal), then smacking Edvard straight out of his shoes with a sleep punch while he was attempting to rouse her with smelling salts; Barnaby refusing to wear goggles for traveling in the harsh gritty winds atop the train because they didn’t go with his ensemble, getting essentially blinded...and then, with the help of a lucky dice roll, managing to argue that he can actually see better in the smoky cabin with his sand-blasted corneas and successfully knocking the stoker over the head with an old whiskey bottle; and the gang having to deal with some deathlands scavengers before they could get the locomotive back to Volisport – who, thanks to the voice Luke ended up choosing for them, I now headcanon as the skeletons from the hammer in the Original Oxventure, having turned to scavenging after the gang finally passed on and magic was forcibly sucked out of the world (don’t ask how they’re okay, the skeletons have always been OP). XD Excellent stuff – very sad I only have three episodes left to go! Though I suppose I can always listen to other Oxventure stuff once I’m done...

Writing: As I was feeling a bit uninspired when it came to video games (like, I wanted to start working on my new Sims 4 save file, but I couldn’t figure out where the heck I wanted to begin), I decided after I finished my cleaning and did the usual rounds online this afternoon to instead just dive straight into another page on “The Van Dort Vacancy!” Having seen yesterday that the his parents seemed to having a party, Victor brought Alice and Smiler up to the front door with him today, hoping to find the Van Dorts’ butler, Barry, there to explain what was going on. Fortunately, Barry was indeed there (instructing a footman on the proper care of Lord Goth’s luggage), and was also only too happy to start giving Victor the “where the hell have you been” speech when he saw him. Victor introduced him to Alice and Smiler (Smiler doing their usual “I’m going to blast happiness and cheer directly in your face and there’s nothing you can do about it” routine XD), and the trio proceeded to learn the following facts from him:

I. That the Van Dorts were having a big old multi-meal party to make up for the wedding not happening on the 30th

II. That while the Van Dorts HAD looked for Victor the Names before the wedding, they hadn’t actually done much searching for him since, too busy trying to fix their own reputations

III. And that hampering the search further, their driver, Mayhew, had died – Victor was horrified, though not surprised to learn it was the cough that had done him in, and somewhat comforted by hearing that his corpse had been picked right up by the Spirit Wardens (no ghost Mayhews for him to worry about!)

So yeah – so far, the Van Dorts are NOT acquitting themselves well when it comes to looking like they actually care about their son! And things are soon to get worse, as Victor’s going to ask to speak to them the next time I work on this story – and learn that he can’t take his friends along with…

Baldur’s Gate III – The Planning: Yup – since I was feeling uninspired when it came to actually playing a game, I figured that I should spend this afternoon trying to get some work done on planning out what my Tav!Smiler should be like (what abilities they should prioritize, what skills they should have proficiency in, what spells they should have, etc) for my eventual restart of BG3. And I’m pleased to report that I actually made some halfway-decent progress! Specifically, I –

A) Went through all the skills available in the game and checked what they actually did and where checks involving them were likely to come up to figure out which ones Smiler should have proficiency in (and thus get bonuses to those checks) – I already knew that they needed proficiency in Persuasion, but looking at what’s on offer, Arcana, Investigation, Nature, Insight, Medicine, Deception, and Performance all feel like good candidates for proficiency as well. (Which puts me in a bit of a pickle when it comes to Smiler’s background, as “Guild Artisan” gives Persuasion and Insight proficiency, but looking at the inspiration triggers, I’m still leaning toward “Entertainer” as more generally Smiler…)

B) And, after doing that, I went back and look at their ability scores and went “...yeah, I need to swap the Dexterity and Wisdom scores, Smiler should definitely have higher Wisdom than Dexterity given the skills I want to specialize in. And I should probably drop Charisma just a TINY bit so I can boost Wisdom up to an even number and get some better modifiers – Cha 16 and Cha 17 give the same modifier, after all!” So yeah, looks like Smiler’s ability scores are gonna be Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Constitution 12, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 14, and Charisma 16 whenever I get back into the character creator!

Not too shabby – considering the last time I tried this I rather stalled out because I was focusing too much on my mod issues, I was very pleased to actually get something done over here. Maybe next time I can figure out some spell stuff! And that damn background issue...

YouTube: Cleared the three videos waiting for me in the Watch Later, which was nice –

A) First up, we had the OXBox list video of the week: “7 Hardest Optional Bosses for Elite Players Only: Commenter Edition!” Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about more horrible ultra-hard optional bosses, as per the comments on their last video on the subject! Are you a Dark Souls III player looking for even more punishment? Shove the giant dragon Darkeater Midir into a pit, then jump down there to give him and his horrible black mouth laser a try! Looking to suffer in Soulcaliber 3’s story mode? Follow a certain path and you can fight Night Terror as the final boss, and learn what it’s like not only to get your shit wrecked, but be unable to win via “Ring Out” because your opponent can, you know, fly! Want to see how weird and hard Super Mario RPG can get? Track down Culex, the one Final Fantasy-esque boss in the game, and be prepared to suffer at the hands of this shirtless 2D monstrosity! Basically, if you think you’re hard enough, you can find an optional boss ready to destroy you in this list. The rest of us will be over here maintaining normal blood pressures, thanks. :P

B) Then, it was over to Petey Plays It for “101 Sims 4 Tips, Tricks And Secrets From 7,000+ Hours Played!” Yes, apparently Petey has played 7,777 hours (and 35 minutes) of The Sims 4, and feeling this made him something an expert on the game, decided he had to share a whole bunch of various tips and tricks with us. Granted, most of these were tips and tricks he’d shared in other videos – such as the Discover University soccer ball and the City Living basketball hoop being the ultimate tools to have your Sims gain fitness, lose weight, and become ripped; honey from the bee box in Seasons granting a moodlet that makes Sims temporarily immune to temperature effects; and how you can buy a special low-maintenance crow with a golden perch from the ghost salesman Waylon in Life & Death – but there were a few new things too! For example, I didn’t know that the “Breeze Through Homework” interaction on homework for children was unlocked by having level 3 in all the child skills (I thought it was related to their grade in school) – nor that it actually made them complete their homework faster (also thought that it was just a textual change). And if you get them up to level 7 in all the child skills, they’ll get the “Dominate Homework” interaction and complete it even FASTER! I also didn’t know that a human Sim who happened to have inherited one of the magical bloodlines from a Spellcaster parent, after asking a Sage to turn them into a spellcaster, wouldn’t have to go through the mote-finding “quest” most Sims have to do – the Sage will just turn them right away because they already have a hidden magical nature! And while I knew that the solar panel roof from Eco Lifestyle gave Sims power, I didn’t know that the living grass roof from that pack actually provided water! So yeah, that was neat. :) Plus there’s a hexagonal wood flooring from that pack that apparently reduces your bills, which I will definitely have to think about using in my next save file for my Teen Valicer trio...maybe in a house renovation? :P Anyway, good stuff as always – and here’s to the next 7,000 hours, Petey!

C) And finally, we visited C. M. Alongi for the next CaFae Latte video I had to catch up on: “CaFae Latte Season 59 - TikTok Compilation!” This season featured:

I. Bob catching two teenagers vandalizing the store (smashing pumpkins and painting random pentagrams and whatnot on the wall), giving them the choice of coming to the cafe at 5 AM to clean up the damage or going to the police, and then taking a bit of their hair to curse them both to be bright pink as insurance to make sure they actually showed up to fix things

II. One of the kids, Logan, showing up the next morning at the appointed time (with his very-grumpy father) and cleaning everything up, which earned him a free coffee, a free scone for breakfast, his skin going back to normal color, and some life advice from Jennifer Charles (namely, get better friends and talk to someone about the anger issues) – and the other, Alex, showing up just before school with his pissed-off mother to bitch about the curse; the mother bitched out Bob for cursing her “baby boy” in the following video, but Bob held firm, saying that his actions had consequences and she’d given him his choice of outs from said curse. And when the mother threatened to sue, revealing that she’d already gotten documentation of all the damage and that she knew the curse caused no actual harm to the kid (other than being kinda humiliating), so no lawyer would take their case. The pair eventually stormed out to talk to a lawyer anyway, and JC was like “I’m usually NOT a fan of blaming the parent for the kid’s behavior, buuuut…”

III. JC bringing Rethu (who’d been out for a few days due to a Jewish holiday, Sakkot) up to speed on what happened with the pranksters (turns out Alex and his mother finally went to the police after Alex’s dad said “we’re rich, we can afford a good lawyer to make sure this doesn’t affect his record too badly,” as per the Drek gossip line – looks like he’ll probably only have to pay a fine, and he did get un-pinked for confessing to the police), and Rethu telling them about the holiday and how there’s some shit going down in the woods with missing hikers, and how they think it’s a ghost – only for the pair to be interrupted by a customer angry that neither of them had come over to refill their drink, instead “unprofessionally” talking about their personal lives. JC and Rethu set them straight on how things worked (namely, that this is a CAFE, not a restaurant, and that they’re allowed to chat to pass the time), causing the customer to declare they’d just lost their business and flounce out. JC was like “you promise?” XD

IV. And Herla showing up with a unicorn corpse at the Stoughton Street Witch coven, to turn it into various charms to reward his lieutenants for their good and loyal service (the coven gets some small fees, a hoof, and the teeth out of the trade), only for Ghost Hunter John to show up a little bit later to buy a ghost-detecting charm from Nicole for his latest job – tracking down whatever’s been spiriting away those unfortunate campers and hikers. The plan was that he’d go out on initial recon, figure out what the problem was, then report back to his HQ –

But when we cut to him actually out in the woods, he didn’t find any evidence of paranormal activity. His keychain charm wasn’t even glowing. But then his cellphone lost signal, and…yeah, that’s where Chris left things. O.o Oh cripes, I am like – 99% certain she wouldn’t actually kill John, but that is still a hell of a cliffhanger! I am REALLY hoping that Herla will have a big damn heroes moment so they can have a heartfelt bitchy friends moment afterward. They have earned it.

Tumblr: Didn’t do MUCH on the tumblrs, but I accomplished some stuff – to the point where doing something on one blog helped me with the other –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Didn’t do any draft stuff, as is usual for a Cleaning Saturday, but I did straight-up reblog two things:

A) A truly awesome video of a steampunk carousel, complete with flying machines and boats and mechanical animals that moved around! :D It was so freaking cool and made me think of Secundus and how they’d DEFINITELY have that somewhere in the city – maybe some sort of event building or park? So yeah, had to put that on the blog!

B) And a photo post featuring two screencapped tweets about the “fell first/fell harder” trope and how it’s not about one of the characters loving the other more – instead, it’s about one character slowly falling and getting used to pining over the second one, sure it’ll never lead to anything...and the second character just being hit by their feelings like a truck one day and deciding they HAVE to be with their beloved. XD Which, when I looked at it, made me realize that dynamic could describe Victor/Alice AND Victor/Smiler very well, so – yeah. Reblogged it, tagged it both “#valice” and “#valicer,” and explained the “Victor falls first but never wants to act on his feelings because he’s sure the others won’t feel the same way/Alice and Smiler fall harder and are just clobbered by their feelings” dynamic in said tags. XD It’s just fun!

Valice Multiverse – And then, since there was nothing happening over here, I went ahead and reblogged the steampunk carousel post off Victor Luvs Alice into this account’s drafts! Because Secundus IS one of my verses over here, and it felt appropriate to feature it on both. :) Hooray!

*nods* Fairly productive overall -- I fully expected to want to play Sims and do some save file stuff, but that just wasn't in the cards today. *shrug* Maybe I need to plan that out a little more too before diving into it...or maybe my brain's like "let's not start anything until the 'weather effects indoors' bug is fixed." XD At any rate, I was happy to make some progress on figuring out Tav!Smiler! One step closer to actually properly playing the game again...

Anyway -- I have to get to bed, as I have once again stayed up too late. Tomorrow, goals include working on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts (gotta get the one for second Polyheart OT3 House update started so I can properly show off the exterior!); either working more on the Tav!Smiler stuff and writing up the first draft of Nebby's gift OR playing Fallout 4, making more progress toward the Mechanist, and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc appropriately; getting in a workout; and keeping up with Jon of Many A True Nerd. Again, hopefully all achievable goals, but we shall see! Personally, I'm just hoping the humidity is okay...night all!

Like, yeah, we got a taste of SUMMER summer today, with temps up in the 90s and heavy humidity. Work wasn't so bad because the AC was on, but at home, we were reduced to shutting all the windows and shades and running as many fans as possible to hide from the heat. Beanbags was NOT happening today, let me tell you! I've gotten it down a not-oppressive temperature with the help of my window and ceiling fans, but I get the feeling sleeping tonight is gonna be a little difficult... Anyway -- let's have the write-up, shall we?

Work – A very quiet day today – after putting on the checks and running the morning reports, I spent most of the day matching scanned cards to ID numbers on our processor’s special scanning site that we use to see the stuff they’ve put on. And looking up a couple of pieces of returned mail. And quietly finishing off a crossword puzzle. XD Yeah, there’s just – there’s just not that much to DO around there right at the moment. It’s getting gradually harder to find ways to keep myself occupied. I’m sure the supervisors will eventually come up with some sort of roster maintenance project for us, but for now, the name of the game is to putter around and look busy. Which should be a little easier for me tomorrow, as I’m doing the GL and looking at failed credit cards again. We’ll see how it goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “D&D But... It's Cluedo | Oxventure!” The “forcing D&D to be the murder mystery game Clue” shenanigans continued tonight, with such highlights as –

A) The group moving from the billiards room to the lounge to check Ms. Scarlet’s (Emily) alibi (since, despite finding a probable murder weapon, they hadn’t been able to pin it on Reverend Green (Luke), and Ms. Scarlet hiding the revolver in there in the couch so well from the menfolk that even Professor Plum (Andy) and Colonel Mustard (Mike) getting nat 20s on investigation rolls couldn’t uncover it (they found letters instead)

B) Colonel Mustard asking if anyone could read his letter, as it was in French...and then, after Mike checked his character sheet, abruptly recalling that he knew French (you expect Mike to read things on his character sheet? XD)

C) The letters being first, a French missive from a friend of Mr. Boddy’s talking about how he’d heckled Professor Plum at one of his recent lectures and how Plum had given him a look that could kill, giving him a pretty strong motive (a babbling Plum claimed that he’d only come here to give Boddy a piece of his mind, maybe rough him up a bit); and second, an unopened letter from Boddy’s doctor, informing him that he was a medical marvel who was so unallergic to rope he could never be harmed by it (Plum promptly threw the unneeded rope out the window)

D) Reverend Green and Ms. Scarlet getting into an argument about if some flowers growing in the greenhouse were petunias or not, as Scarlet said she was studying them during the time of the murder (Green’s high wisdom score proved him right, but Scarlet claimed to just be bad at botany)

E) The group finally learning from Professor Plum that he was in the lounge, going there, and then demanding to know what he was doing; cue Plum failing to convince anyone he was lounging on a particular piece of furniture and then doing increasingly bizarre “lounges” while insisting he was definitely a lounger XD

F) Ms. Scarlet finding a bunch of Colonel Mustard’s books (pristine personally-signed hardback first editions, no less) in a box labeled “to be shredded,” and Colonel Mustard insisting that was a mistake, he was a war hero, fought off Jerry and such – everyone then insisted “how old are you?” and Johnny was forced to pick a year that synced well with rotary dial phones and Plum being a professor of anime (they chose 1957 XD)

G) Professor Plum VERY POORLY trying to swipe a solid-silver ink pot from the writing desk in the room and hurling it across the shop (because not all of Andy’s rolls could be Nat 20s)

H) Reverend Green, seeing this and determining that Plum might be in poor financial straits, deciding to try and find out via spilling unholy water on Plum’s jacket and seeing how he reacts (via a complicated process of using a “Doom of Ill Fortune” spell of some kind); Plum then retaliated with “Tasha’s Caustic Brew,” shooting a stream of acid into Green’s face and burning him – he justified this by saying that chemicals must have gotten into the tweed while he was working in the “anime lab” (developing rare anime filmstrips!), causing Johnny to just get up and walk away for a moment, clearly wondering what the hell was their life XD

I) The group deciding to split up and search some of the other rooms for clues/potential murder weapons because the NPC Acting Constable Beefs kept throwing bricks through the window essentially telling them to “get a move on,” and Johnny having to admit that, in all the weirdness going on, they’d forgotten to check off what rooms they’d actually visited already XD

J) Professor Plum visiting the kitchen, finding a pot of mustard (which he found very suspicious thanks to being around Colonel Mustard) and a lead pipe on the wall – which proved to be a pipe carrying water when he yanked off, resulting in him getting sprayed, his jacket going off again, and all the food becoming inedible

K) Ms. Scarlet visiting the ballroom, finding more papers proving that Mr. Boddy helped destroy her husband’s fortunes through the use of numerous shell companies, stuffing a few important ones in her pocket, and hiding the rest in the covered grand piano, all the while thinking this work was beneath her (“I know musical notation!”)

L) And, when I left off, Reverend Green visiting the dining room, spying a big bowl of fruit on the table, and promptly taking a giant bite out of a wax apple. Johnny made Luke do a funny voice, then promptly regretted it as Luke wouldn’t stop doing it. XD

Yeah, it’s – it’s been a ride. XD Though a very fun one, I admit! Tomorrow, we’ll wrap this up and see if we actually figure out who the heck killed Mr. Boddy!

2. Continue editing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I have officially started Chapter 2, with the trio walking Victor home through the streets of Nightmarket! Chatting all the way, of course, about such things as:

A) What the Van Dort mansion looks like (Victor had to warn Alice and Smiler it was quite fishy – then hastily clarify in LOOKS, not SMELL)

B) How much Victor now loathes eating fish (with him revealing that he didn’t even know chickens were edible until he was ten, thanks to how much fish William made them eat)

C) When the trio’s birthdays are (thanks to Duskwall having weird double-length months, they’re all actually in the same month, Suran – Smiler was all for having a big combined celebration until Alice revealed that her birthday was the 4th… then they just went “ah well, the birthday holiday for all of Duskwall is right before Victor’s birthday, we’ll make do” XD)

D) And what they might like to do for those birthdays (as Smiler is determined to celebrate them – and as it’s come out that Victor’s never been to the Spark Grounds (too bohemian for his mother’s tastes) and Alice never got to go to the opera (her parents died before they could take her), they already know where to take their new friends! They of course want a big old party for their birthday, but they’ve promised Victor and Alice a quiet corner where they can hide XD)

Yeah, they’ve been busy. XD I do like writing them just TALKING, I have to admit – it’s fun to see where they’ll ramble off to! But I’ve got to wrangle them a bit, as they’ll be coming up on the Van Dort mansion soon...and discovering a whole lot of carriages parked around the place for some reason...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to swap C. M. Alongi for Proxy Gate Tactician today, since I wanted to watch a couple more of his videos! And so I headed to his channel and viewed:

A) “Baldur's Gate 3 - Tips and Tricks For The 9 Skills Every Class in The Game Has” – a bunch of tips, tricks, and advice from Proxy about those abilities every character in the game has – Throw, Jump, Hide, Shove, Improvised Weapon (aka pick up anything and try to hit someone with it), Dip (dip your weapon in something for a few turns of extra damage), Disengage (get yourself out of getting wrecked by attacks of opportunity), Dash, and Help (another character who is dying or suffering a status effect). And while this info was over a year old, it was still pretty interesting stuff! For example, did you know it’s often better to try and jump a distance you’re trying to cover, rather than walk it normally, because you may in fact cover more ground without using as much of your movement per turn? And that you can jump out of dangerous surfaces to take the minimum amount of damage from them? How about the fact that ANYONE can pick up ANYTHING as an improvised weapon (though, obviously, what will work best depends on the character’s strength) and thus be able to bludgeon enemies – especially those weak to such damage? Or the fact that, if you build a tower of 100 boxes, throwing anything at anyone, even an old shoe, will crush them under eighty points of damage due to the height? I mean, Proxy doesn’t recommend you do that, but… XD All in all, a very helpful and interesting video – hopefully I can remember some of these tricks going forward! Especially the “Jump” stuff, all of that seemed VERY useful…

B) “3 Mind-Blowing Exploits In Baldur's Gate 3 (These are Now Sadly Patched Out)” – three weird ways to cheese the game back in the early days that Proxy discovered while messing around (plus a very simple and silly bonus one). In order, we had:

I. If you hit F5 (aka the quicksave button) during the death cutscene you get when the entire party is turned into mindflayers by the Absolute (easily accessed by trying to return to the mountain pass three times after meeting the Nightsong in the Shadow-Cursed Lands), you could reload your game and end up with an entire party of four mindflayers instead of your regular characters. Each with a full complement of mindflayer abilities! And all the other NPCs were too polite/afraid to mention the suddenly squidy change in your characters. XD Great if you wanted a taste of extreme power after getting through Act 1 and most of Act 2!

II. If you positioned the “go back to camp for a long rest” window so the “yes” button was above a companion, then spam-clicked, you could activate the long rest while also activating a conversation with your companion – causing the game to allow you to do the long rest in the game world, instead of actually going back to your camp through the loading screens. You couldn’t do any camp dialogues, so you missed out on the story, and the clips he showed seem to suggest that you might only have been able to do partial long rests, but it allowed Proxy to cut his long-resting time in half when he used the glitch (he had long loading screens), so… Guess it was useful for that at least!

III. If you grabbed a weapon that you normally couldn’t equip because it was too big for you (because it came from an orge or a minotaur or similarly-oversized creature), put it in your inventory, then dragged it over your equipped weapon in the inventory grid so they swapped, that would allow you to equip it! And do some SERIOUS damage to enemies, especially if you were a high-Strength character looking for bludgeoning damage to smash up undead and/or their coffins. Plus the visuals of your character carrying around the oversized weapon were pretty amusing. XD Great for those who wanted an OP monster weapon to make life easier!

IV. And, as the small bonus exploit that straight-up annoyed Proxy, if you changed difficulties (from Tactician to Explorer and back) during the game, you could get your characters a free heal. OP but COULD screw up achievements, according to the comments.

Interesting stuff! I mean, I suppose I’m glad they patched out these obvious glitches, but they looked like they were fun while they lasted. Especially the party of mindflayers – I bet a lot of people had a lot of fun with those!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Did two things over here today:

A) I went into my queue this morning to review and tweak the text and tags on my Song Saturday reblog of “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol (just updating some sentences and clarifying why I originally thought this song was originally a Valicer Soulmates AU song in the tags)

B) Then, this evening, I straight-up reblogged a post by “buckysknifecollection” off my friend Squid about how the point of shipping isn’t to see your ship go canon, it’s to grab whatever canon crumbs you can find and scurry away to put the characters in scenarios. Adding that sometimes the point of it is to open a broom closet, find three different characters from three different fandoms kissing, and realize you’re looking at your most abiding fandom obsession for the foreseeable future. XD I was going to write something about taking your favorites from different canons and throwing them in the soup, but then I remembered that, oh, right, my OTP and OT3 all chose each other and I was just along for the ride, and changed my reblog appropriately. :P It’s weird being in this head sometimes. XD

Valice Multiverse – Didn’t have any asks or threads today, so I went back to “rpmemelibrary” and reblogged the “Presents Ask,” encouraging people to ask me about how my muses feel about giving and receiving presents, how they prepare for gift-giving occasions, if they’ve ever returned or regifted a gift, if they’ve ever given something out of spite, etc, etc. *shrug* It’s something to have up, and the “Caffeinated Drinks Ask” got some attention, so maybe this will too!

Other: My stupid mouse is doing the same “treating a single click like multiple clicks” nonsense that the last mouse (same kind) did, so I decided on a frustrated whim to see if switching it from “wired” to “wireless” mode might help. It was a bit fiddly and I had some trouble with my computer not letting me click on the taskbar right afterward, but I got it resolved, and so far –

Well, it’s not FIXED, not by a long shot, but it is BETTER. I have more luck highlighting things I want to highlight, and it seems to multi-click less – probably because, untethered from the cord, I have more luck moving it into and keeping it in the position that allows it to function the best. I will probably still have to think about replacing it, but I’m hoping this has bought me a little extra time! (Ideally, I’d like to replace mouse AND computer – the latter is five years old and starting to show it a bit – but given the state of the world – yeah, probably better to stick with just replacing the mouse once I’ve milked all usable life out of it! ...that being said, I just tried to highlight something and had a fucking hellish time, so maybe this wasn’t the band-aid I was hoping for. >( )

*sigh* Yeah, I don't think I'm going Alienware again if I replace the mouse. The keyboard and the computer itself have been largely fine, but this is the second mouse in five years, and it feels like they should be lasting a BIT longer. I'll find something else glowy for the next one. *shakehead* In the meantime, though, I really should get to bed -- night all!

Yeah, the heat slowly but surely crept up today...everywhere but in the building where I work, as that seems permanently cold. *shakehead* Granted, I'm pretty sure that's partly because the AC is on (the hallways definitely feel AC cold), but it is kind of weird that it's the beginning of June and I still need a sweater in there at least part of the day. Ah well, I have plenty of light sweaters I can bring with me and then stuff in my bag for the ride home... Anyway, here's the write-up of my day --

Work – A slightly-busier day than yesterday, if only because we actually had some credit card calls (a couple of pledge updates and a payment my coworker took because I was in the bathroom at the time), plus we had to fight with the app that allows us to look at the stuff our processors have scanned in because my coworker couldn’t log in (took their IT guy calling us to fix the issue). But once that was all resolved, most of the rest of the day was me finding roster maintenance tasks to do (like going through the obituaries). There’s just not a lot happening right at the moment! Which does lead to some boring days...but as I have said repeatedly, I strongly prefer “boring” to “stressful.” I’ll find ways to fill the time! And maybe tomorrow will be a little busier, we’ll see. (Watch, I’ll suddenly be thrust into a “careful what you wish for” situation and it’ll be SUPER busy for no good reason tomorrow...)

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – got back on the bike again tonight to pedal my way through:

A) The end of “D&D But... Everyone's A Kobold LIVE! | Oxventure!” The final half-hour of the Adventure To Find The Sour Dindle Leaf saw –

I. Andy’s “Velocity The Weird” and Johnny’s “Meg The Bad Influence” get a nat 20 each to convince the villagers (who saw the kobolds and were like “huh, they look kind of like the shit we worship, we should talk to them”) to first cover themselves in glue and smash themselves together into a giant ball (Andy), and then cover their mouths and noses with the glue (Johnny). This resulted in both a giant pile of glued-up villager corpses, and a bunch of dead kobolds, as Meg was so convincing that they accidentally convinced all of their brethren EXCEPT Velocity to also glue their noses and mouth shut (bye bye Ellen’s “Gortash The Quiet,” who lasted longest among the original set!). And then Meg went ahead and snapped Velocity’s neck just to finish the “total party kill” job. XD

II. The kobolds try to get into the apothecary, which smelled of the leaves they needed, which notably featured Ellen’s new kobold “Discharge the Ceaseless” relentlessly whacking away on the lock with a rock; Jane’s new kobold (I don’t recall the name, she didn’t last long) noticing an open window next to the door –

And then Andy’s new “kobold” EGBERT THE CARELESS rocking up and throwing a bomb at the problem before leaving. XD Luke immediately made it a proper Egbert cameo, because how could you not? I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but I headcanon this as one of Egbert’s adventures before he joined up with the Oxventure Guild in episode 2 – although I’m undecided as to if he was trying to help the kobolds get into the building, or noticed the giant pile of glued corpses and thought (semi-correctly) that the kobolds had done that and should probably be put down. XD Either way, he tossed his bomb, door got blown off the hinges, and all the kobolds died for a PROPER TPK. XD “Consequences for everyone but me!” as Andy was VERY keen to say. XD

III. And the next group of kobolds searching the apothecary with the usual amount of kobold care (I.E., none), and – after some misadventures (including one inventive kobold (Andy) rocketing himself into the ceiling on extendo-legs, and another quizzical kobold (Ellen) thinking herself to death trying to read a book) – finding the leaf and running it back to the cave to force it down Gitvis’s gullet! She promptly did a big fart and felt all better. XD Delightful stuff – I’m glad I rewatched it, it was a lot of fun.

B) The entirety of “Baldur's Gate 3 Astarion Reacts to Horny Comments” by IGN! A very short video of Neil Newbon reading people’s comments about the infamous “sex with Halsin in bear form” sex scene and how thirsty they are for his character Astarion, all in the Astarion voice. Very weird and goofy, but not a bad way to fill out the final few minutes of my workout. XD

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice had a little confrontation with the two ghouls in the sitting room where she ended up at the end of yesterday’s segment today, with one attempting to knife her while the other threatened her with a poker. I’d originally had Alice feed on both women during this segment (drinking from the knife-wielder to stop her trying to stab her, and then from the poker-wielder after the woman volunteered some blood to avoid having it taken forcibly), but after writing Alice noting how thin and fragile the one trying to stab her felt in her grip...well, it just felt like having her then drink their blood was a little too mean. So she just talked to them this time – assuring them that she meant no harm (they seemed dubious), asking if they’d seen Grout recently (nope), and letting them know the way outside was clear if they wanted to escape (they were immediately like “no thanks, we’re good here,” to Alice’s grief). And asking their names, which yielded the numbers “6768” (poker) and “6789” (knife). Alice is pretty much set on trying to kill Grout once she finds him now, as you might expect. *nods* I left off with her preparing to listen to another one of Grout’s audiotapes – tomorrow, we hear the tape and see her reaction! I bet you she’s not going to like it!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check plus, as I managed to get in two videos tonight instead of just one –

A) First up, we had “SIMS 4 FAIRIES PACK OFFICIALLY CONFIRMED! (+ New World Details)” by onlyabidoang! Featuring Abi talking about the confirmation of the “fairy” occult coming to Sims 4 as per a teaser showing a fairy house with a party going on inside at the end of their latest livestream; the “Something Is Growing” website EA put up that’s been gradually releasing new info about the pack over the past couple of days (such as the world included being called Innisgreen, which will have three neighborhoods, including an enchanted forest); and his own thoughts about what features the new occult life state might have (he’s pretty sure it’ll feature a proper skill tree, and he HOPES that fairies in this generation of the game will have more of a connection to gardening and less of a tendency to pull annoying pranks, like they did in The Sims 3: Supernatural. And also that the small form gets a proper showing instead of just being a glowing ball of light. And that fairies will have the ability to properly fly instead of just teleport around. ...Abi, you DO remember this is EA, right?) It was an interesting little sum-up of what we know so far, what we think we know, and what he wants out of the new pack – though he was very clear that they should really be fixing some of the base game bugs, like “weather effects inside houses” and “save gave corruption,” first. *nods* Yeah, that WOULD be really nice, wouldn’t it? But again, EA… (Well, that and fixing bugs DOES take time, sadly.)

B) And second up, we had “Fun With Shorts: Farther Faster Safer” by Josh Way! A classic “this is not-so-secretly an ad for a product” short with a narrator talking a mile a minute about new faster and safer ways to go across the country (starting with cross-country trains before moving on to various types of airplanes, including a big old seaplane) and VERY PROMINENT shots of all these amazing vehicles being lubricated with Pennzoil Products. XD Fortunately, Josh was on hand to make the whole experience a little more amusing: comparing Los Angeles City Hall to an architectural LEGO set (and honestly, I HAVE seen LEGO sets that look like the City Hall pictured in the short); constantly declaring that all the planes on display were delayed for some reason; pretending to struggle to get a word in edgewise when the narrator kept going on and on about how awesome the seaplane was; and comparing the airplane lubricator guys at the end to ice cream truck salesmen (the outfits DID give that vibe)! Good stuff – always nice to see another short back on his channel! I’m fine with his movie reviews, but the riffs are why I stay. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do over on Valice Multiverse, but I was able to ALMOST complete my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue! We have:

A) A reblog of a cool screenshot of the Crockery from A:MR for Wednesday

B) A reblog of a gifset of Emily spinning around right before the climatic wedding at the end of Corpse Bride for Thursday

C) A reblog of some old Smiler OC fanart from “shenanigansz” that I liked for Friday

D) And a reblog of one of my old Song Saturday posts, featuring Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars,” for Saturday! This is the one that’s not QUITE done, as I didn’t get a chance to finish talking about how it’s now Valicer, nor the updated tags, but I figure I can do that tomorrow. :p

So yeah – very much ahead of the game there! And I’m thinking next week will be the Mega Ghostbusters AU, once I get some more stuff to go with it. *nods*

Other: Another nice day meant another afternoon playing beanbags after I got home from work – and unfortunately, I did worse today, being unable to win a single game despite finally starting to throw better. :( Dad had a pretty decent day by contrast, while Mom had a bad start but came back strong with back-to-back wins – she’s been throwing REALLY well lately, it’s kind of weird. XD Anyway, final scores were me 2-3-3; Dad W-2-2; and Mom 3-W-W. Hopefully if we play tomorrow (it’s supposed to be humid and possibly smoky from the Canadian wildfires) I’ll be able to claim one of those Ws for myself again!

*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose! And now I have to go to bed before my brain gets too keyed up to sleep, as it is trying to do right now. *shakehead* Night all!

Or maybe I should say a very GROGGY one, as I woke up kinda late (after the usual brief early rising to pee -- you can tell I'm approaching middle age), then spent most of the afternoon trying to focus enough to actually DO shit instead of sit around and daydream/look at various Baldur's Gate III mods and wiki pages. (Which, okay, that was supposed to be research for writing down what spells/abilities/skills I wanted to prioritize for Tav!Smiler, but I didn't really get down much -- just some basics on what I need to pick to make them look right, what their classes are going to be, and what abilities they'll be prioritizing. Nothing that I really didn't have written down in some form or another before!) *shakehead* I don't know why I was so tired/distracted, but it was kind of annoying. Didn't help that it was another kinda-chilly, windy, often-cloudy day outside. I'd ask where the hell the summer weather is, but I know -- it's showing up on Tuesday or Wednesday, when the temps are supposed to hit the 80s. *sigh* Why can't it do that on the weekends, when I'm in a better position to enjoy it? *shakes head* Meeeh...

Anyway -- I might not have gotten THAT much done, but I did get SOME stuff done:

Tumblr: Welp, it was another day where nothing was happening over on Valice Multiverse – but while I got on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) rather late today (around noon), I still managed to get some stuff done over there:

A) I spent most of my time before lunch going through some of the older posts on my dash and having a bit of a reblog spree, putting up –

I. A post by my friend Newt collecting a bunch of facial studies of the Dead Boy Detectives cast together (featuring all the main characters – Edwin, Charles, Crystal, Niko, Esther, Monty, and of course his beloved Cat King; don’t watch the show but figured I should reblog out of solidarity :) )

II. A post by “kieren-fucking-walker,” a friend of Newt’s, asking for any assistance people might be able to give to help their mother and their sister get settled in their new council flat – which, thanks to stupid fucking “we have to tear out everything between tenants” reasons, does not have a FLOOR (like, what the HELL – I sent them 30 pounds via their Ko-Fi in response)

III. A post by “idontmindifuforgetme” about JK Rowling using her massive wealth to create the “J.K. Rowling Women’s Fund,” an organization specifically designed to help deny trans people (specifically trans women, who she believes aren’t really women) their rights in as many places as possible, with a follow-up by “mintedwitcher” about how trans people’s lives matter more than nostalgia so don’t watch that fucking reboot nonsense coming out on HBO or something (seriously, how is she that fucking evil?!)

IV. A post by The Satirical Demon showing off a YouTube video “Freshy Kanal” and friends made of a rap battle between Hercule Poriot and Benoit Blanc...which actually involves a bunch more detectives horning in to accuse all the other ones of being shit – including Colombo, which is the whole reason Satirical posted it, as he’s a fan of the guy. XD It was a very fun video, though, especially the surprise little twist at the end when a certain OG detective and his mate came in to teach ALL the other ones a lesson. Good times!

V. A post by “furiousfinstann” about how some Japanese researchers might have a lead on what causes “long COVID” in some people! Apparently some people end up with leftover viral fragments deep in their nose tissues which causes continued irritation and issues, and by swabbing the affected areas once a week with a Q-Tip dipped in 1% zinc chloride solution, the people in the study saw improvements! It’s only one step on the road – there’s a larger clinical trial being organized to confirm the results – but fucking hell, it’s good to see some GOOD news related to this awful fucking virus! (Especially since, apparently, a new variant is bumming around the States, uuuuugh…)

VI. A post by “hermit-frog” with a video showcasing a scene from the movie Sinners, where the main musician at the “juke joint” where most of the movie takes place, Sammie, plays a blues song so beautifully and intensely that he ends up summoning specters of both the past and the future – represented by a variety of Black musicians and dancers (and a couple of Chinese ones, as while the majority of the cast are Black, there’s a Chinese couple important to the plot there too) performing both traditional and modern music along with him (like, there’s traditional African drummers and dancers mixed in with guys playing electric guitar and spinning records on a DJ booth and women twerking). I haven’t seen the movie, but it’s an amazing scene, especially given the way they blend all the different musical styles together so perfectly. Really fucking impressive, let me tell you!

VII. And a post from “ororium-z” featuring an Instagram video of a guy named Mark Kanemura (apparently he’s a dancer, been on So You Think You Can Dance and Glee and in some music videos) doing a fancy dance in honor of the start of Pride – swanning around in rainbow undies and a half-skirt he uses as a cape, whipping a whole rainbow of wigs off his head, fanning himself with a rainbow fan, and finally yanking off a final long-haired multicolored wig off to release a load of confetti, all to “Cut To The Feeling” by Carly Rae Jepsen! It’s kind of a tradition around tumblr for people to reblog it around the start of Pride, and I figured I might as well join in. It’s a fun video. XD

So yeah – busy morning there, as you might expect. XD

B) Then I moved some stuff in my likes to my drafts for later posting, including –

I. A post by “esamastation” about the dangers of writing “snippets” of your fanfic ideas, because those little shits can grow like motherfuckers XD (I added in my tags that, while I can keep them to just snippets sometimes, they can easily grow into monster fics, like the Londerland Bloodlines series, or into a whole TON of shorter fics, like the Valicer In The Dark series – so I’m screwed either way :P)

II. A post by “dreemurr-skelememer” with a picture of a figure labeled “Insane about own AU” (which is about as me as you can get – I rambled in the tags about how all the Valicer fanfic I’d write if I had the time, and how the image primarily applies to my beloved Valicer In The Dark AU, because oh boy am I obsessed with that)

III. A post by “rookamell” about how it isn’t writing that’s the hobby – it’s being insane about fictional characters, and writing is just the only viable outlet (again, an extremely me post, as I am quite insane about Victor, Alice, and Smiler, and writing is the only way to get it all out)

IV. And a post by “randomgirlyoudontknow” that consists of the sentence “love is stored in the fictional couple i’ve gotten overly invested in” and to which my friend Squid, where I found the post, appended the tag “sometimes it’s a throuple or larger polycule but yes” (the third “me” post in the lost, especially with that tag because currently love for me is stored in the fictional OT3 I’ve gotten overly invested in XD I made sure to tag this post with all the ship names for my favorite ships and polycules as a result)

Not exactly what I intended when I said last night that I wanted to work on my drafts over here, but it still counts!

YouTube: Sunday around these parts is Jon and Fallout: London Day, and so this evening we had “Fallout: London - Part 45 - Queen For A Day!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria as she –

A) Did Johnny Shrapnel’s “Prison Break” mission for the Vagabonds, freeing the prisoners on the HMS Dredge and blowing it the hell up! A process that involved Aria napping in a nearby factory until nightfall to avoid the worst of the guards; Aria attempting to sneakily kill the guards at the very front of the boat, and nearly succeeding – until Mad Jack chose to pick a fight with some mittenlurks nearby, drawing the attention of some other guards on the bridge next to the boat and forcing Aria to kill them as well (which at least got her a level up and the first rank of the “Sneak” perk for her trouble); Aria getting into the boat and taking out the guards within with a combination of the silenced crude sniper and the ultra-fast knife she got off Merlin’s corpse (Jon really wanted to do this proper sneaky-like, but kept getting foiled by guards spotting Aria and shooting at her REALLY QUICKLY – he did pull off ONE nice sneak attack with the knife, though!); Aria finding the Vagabond prisoners and attempting to free them via opening up their cells at the nearby terminal...only to guess wrong on the password (123456? Really, Aria?) and have to sneak up to the captain’s room in the bridge to reset it; Aria managing to get up to the bridge and reset the password without too much trouble, easily knifing all the security that got in her way (took a man’s head straight off at one point); Aria releasing the Vagabond prisoners, then backtracking to the OTHER prisoners she found along the way and – after a quick chat with the “leader,” Agatha (aka the only named one) – releasing them as well and cracking open the armory at the back of the ship so they could arm themselves before escaping (Agatha and company taking a tea break in the canteen as she did this because they hadn’t had a decent cuppa in ages XD); Agatha making her way to the bottom of the boat and finally trading her knife in for her nice solid Instigating shotgun to kill all the security down there, before planting the bombs Johnny gave her and getting out of dodge; and Aria murdering the new guards coming in around the outside of the boat before turning and watching the big old explosion as the bombs went off and the boat went up in flames! She was less impressed with how little it had sunk afterwards, but, well, it was docked in a very shallow canal, so there was only so far down it could go. The important thing was, it was definitely out of commission as a floating prison!

B) Returned to the Swan & Mitre to report on her successes to Gaunt, “Chill” Winston, “Bullettooth” Anthony, and Johnny “Shrapnel!” Winston, Anthony, and Johnny were all very appreciative, praising her good work to the skies and giving her things like stimpacks and cricket ball bombs, while Gaunt was – less than impressed, shall we say. He simply couldn’t stop bitching about how Aria should have sabotaged the Syndicate supply line instead of grabbing the train (Winston was like “if that was so important to you, why didn’t you mention it before?!”), or how she risked much for a pittance of guns while clearing out the warehouse (Aria: “I DID blow the place up afterward, you know”), or how the Syndicate would try to spin her blowing up the Dredge as Vagabond terrorism – though at least there he seemed genuinely upset that the blood of the other prisoners aboard would be on their hands. And thus properly relieved when Aria told him, “Hey, I got everyone else out, and they know that the Vagabonds helped them, so…” The meeting ended with the lieutenants firmly convinced of Aria’s greatness, and Gaunt telling her that he needed a few days to think before proceeding with the next stage of his plan to take out the Syndicate. Aria was happy to give it to him – mostly because she was pretty sure she could turn everyone against him when she came back and get him deposed before there was more unnecessary bloodshed. :p

C) Headed over to the Imperial War Museum to both:

I. Deliver Smythe’s orders to the Tommies stationed there, promoting Colonel Major to General and demoting General Asquith to – whatever rank’s below General, I don’t know and neither did Jon. XD She came in to see Major arguing with Asquith about who they owed their loyalty with (Major being firmly on the “The Gentry will promote stability for the people” side, Asquith being on the “we are loyal to the Queen and her people, not those rich twats” side). Aria delivered her message, but, as expected, Asquith made it clear that they wouldn’t be accepting orders from anyone but Her Majesty herself, meaning that Aria had to find a way to get the Queen’s signature on those papers

II. Finally tell that “Mr. Tommy” who gave her the mission to investigate the mysterious disappearance of some Tommies chasing after a distress signal in an old underground station AGES ago what had happened (as Jon had just realized he’d never turned in the quest): that the Tommies had died to ghouls in the station; that the distress signal was the result of a mechanical failure (ruptured pipes) and that when she’d tried to repair the damage, the whole place had self-destructed; and that she’d returned with this unique shotgun as proof of her words (well, TECHNICALLY – Jon wasn’t sure if she actually had the gun in her inventory or not, but Mr. Tommy was able to examine it regardless). Mr. Tommy was very sad to hear of his fellow soldiers’ deaths, but glad that they now had answers as to what had happened and that the distress signal wouldn’t be bothering the higher-ups anymore, and told her to feel free to keep the shotgun as a reward. Aria was like “thanks, but my Instigating shotgun is SOOO much better, seriously.” XD

D) Headed back to Buckingham Palace to figure out how to get the Queen’s signature on the orders promoting Major and demoting Asquith – which Jon suspected would be difficult, as Aria had sure as hell not seen any queens about the first time she visited the Palace. However, after chatting with a guard outside about the purpose of her visit, she was directed to a wing she hadn’t been in before, with a locked room at the end of it –

And something screaming and thumping around behind the door, making the entire hallway shake. Jon promptly went “okay, the Queen’s a feral,” and a visit with Princess Elizabeth, Dr. Hebertson (from Angel’s secret de-feralization lab), and Smythe’s voice over the telephone confirmed that the poor woman was a mindless monster. Aria was like “so, um, how the hell do I get her to sign these papers without getting my limbs chewed off?” –

And Smythe told her, “ask Dr. Hebertson – you already helped him find the answer, after all.” Yes, it turned out that, after Aria’s good work in helping him create and test his de-feralization serum, Hebertson had come up with an even better version, and was more than willing to let Aria test it on the Queen to see if it would bring back some mental stability. Aria thus collected the serum; got the key to the Queen’s quarters off Princess Elizabeth; and then ventured inside the royal chambers to find the erstwhile monarch. She was briefly distracted by the adorable corgis roaming around (they were so cute!), but soon located the feral Queen Victoria II, and managed to incapacitate her with Mad Jack’s help (with Jon yelling at Jack through the screen the whole time to NOT KILL HER PLEASE). One jab of the experimental serum later, and the Queen regained at least some of her senses (represented by the vicious feral version of Victoria II exploding into the saner ghoul version with nicer clothes – I know that they were probably limited in the animations they could use to represent the change, but that was still VERY funny XD), and was able to sign Aria’s papers. Though Jon did note afterward that, since the Queen is now dependent on Hebertson’s serum to stay even partly sane (Hebertson even lording it over Princess Elizabeth that he would have to keep the Queen in his care to see the long-term effects of the serum – meaning that, no matter what she said, her mother WAS his pet science project, thank you very much), Angel had just basically turned the queen into their puppet figurehead. Very sneaky, Angel – very sneaky indeed.

E) Had a heart-to-heart with Mad Jack on their way back to the Tommies to deliver the now-Queen-approved orders, prompted by Mad Jack deciding he idolized Aria after she stole some ammo. XD Jack told her that he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the horrors of his childhood ever since he told her about them, and how it made him sick to think of the people who did that to him being HAPPY and never getting their just desserts. Aria, a little concerned, told him that he had to get over it sometime, and he said he knew that, it was just hard – but he thought that she could help him with it. Because, you see, he’d gotten a letter from an old cellmate of his shortly before she’d come into his life. A letter that he’d only recently found the courage to open –

And which he’d discovered had the names and last known locations of the people who’d tormented him and turned him into their killer attack dog! Meaning he now has a way to find them all and get revenge for himself and all the other people he tormented. He asked Aria to help him with this, saying that he really did want to forget and move on, but felt like this was the only way he could. Aria cautiously agreed, and Jack thanked her and said that he was going to get some supplies from his old gym, and to meet him over at the Pilgrim once she was ready to go. So yeah – seems like Jack’s companion mission will be all about bringing some justice to the gang that hurt him so. I am all for it.

F) And finally, delivered the orders demanding he step down and promoting Major in his place to General Asquith, who – after some grumbling about his station – finally submitted thanks to the Queen’s signature. The newly promoted General Major proceeded to give a rousing speech about getting out there and making the streets safe again to his men, rallying them to get out there and do their duty (with Jon warning them not to do TOO good a job, because otherwise Smythe wouldn’t be able to enforce marital law) –

And right after, one of the second lieutenants approached Aria and told her she had a call on the new General’s personal line. Unsurprisingly, it was Smythe, who congratulated Aria on her good work with the Tommies but said that there was one more thing that needed to be done before they could officially meet in person – bring down any and all rebellion in London by uniting the people against a common enemy, a fabricated monster that threatened their lives and livelihoods –

Angel! Yes, Smythe had decided to take advantage of the fact that people now knew of the organization’s existence, but not how deep it had gotten its claws into the government, to terrify the people into obedience by saying she was their only hope to stand against it. Basically “pulling a Palpatine,” as Jon called it – controlling both the government and the government’s enemy so they’d both do what she wanted. She thus directed Aria to Land’s End Inn in Peckham to pick up her luggage in Room 5 and prepare to bring Angel to the world stage…

And that is where Jon chose to end things, because who doesn’t like a bit of a cliffhanger! :P Though we’re going to have to hang from the cliff for a while, because next week, Aria’s focusing on completing Mad Jack’s companion quest and seeing if she can get him to resolve things with a minimum of violence (just for his own mental health, mind, not because the people who tormented him don’t deserve a horrible death). And hopefully also checking back in with the Vagabonds and getting Gaunt out of the leader’s seat already. We’ll see what happens next week – I am looking forward to it!

Workout: Back on the bike this week, and back with the Oxventure videos as I hit the next one in the upload order: “D&D But... Everyone's A Kobold LIVE! | Oxventure!” Which – is actually one that I’ve already seen, just not on the official Oxventure channel. This was done at a con – MCM, to be specific – and was originally uploaded on the con organizer’s official YouTube channel, which is where I watched it the first time. However, I recalled it being a very funny adventure, so I decided there was no harm in watching it again and officially marking it off the Oxventure channel! :D As this was uploaded about a year ago, I will quickly bring you up to speed on what’s going on – the premise of this one-shot is that a bunch of kobolds (played by Andy, Johnny, Mike, Jane, and Ellen – Luke is our lovely DM) have been tasked with going to the dangerous lands of The Surface to retrieve a special leaf to help cure their ailing leader, Gitvis (tended by her successor, Era the Vacuous, aka the kobold who survived the longest in the FIRST “D&D But...Everyone’s A Kobold” video). However, since they’re kobolds, and thus only have 5 HP, it is expected that nobody is going to be playing the SAME kobold for very long as they tackle the various dangers along the way. So every time someone’s kobold dies, they get up and get a new one from the “kobold vending machine” – aka a big cardboard box filled with pieces of paper containing suggestions from the audience – and then that kobold catches up with the others and joins the adventure to keep the action going. Each kobold has a name and an identifying trait, and the comedy comes from how the players express that identifying trait, and how ridiculously the kobolds die as they attempt to complete their goal. So far in the first half-hour, we’ve had:

I. Mike showing up a little later than the others in the intro...because he’d bought a dragon onesie with incredibly short shorts and had changed into it right before coming on to do a “so we’re not doing costumes?” gag. XD And those short shorts do not cover a lot, let me tell you – he’s not flashing the audience whenever he stands up to grab a new kobold, but it is a VERY near thing! XD

II. One of the first kobolds being “Izzy The Wizzy,” played by Andy, who rolled a nat 20 on “urinating freely” and ended up basically hovering thanks to the stream, only to then think himself to death trying to remember what he knew about leaves after being assigned their important mission

III. Mike’s first kobold being “Amelia the Furious” who died attempting to fight the sun (her neck snapped when she tipped it back too far)

IV. Johnny getting a little too into their role as “Astor the Smug” and telling poor Jane to not forget Disadvantage on a roll that didn’t actually require it and getting very embarrassed, poor enby

V. And, in terms of the main quest, the kobolds coming across a bear cave on their way out of the darkness of their dungeon with a sleeping mama bear and two playing adolescent cubs that they had to get past! Cue Jane’s first kobold, “Lyrical the Lavish,” dying in a very lavish way to bear claws (blood jetting EVERYWHERE); Andy’s next kobold, “The Unimaginative,” dying because he insisted on not paying attention to what he thought were just big furry rocks (he simply couldn’t imagine dying!); Mike’s next kobold “The Squishy” getting the sleeping mother bear involved by CLIMBING INTO HER MOUTH to try and stab her – and then getting tangled in her uvula; Mike then making up for that by managing to talk Luke into not insta-killing him when the other bears dragged him out by saying his squishiness should protect him (so that kobold’s now just down to 1 HP, yay); Johnny managing to distract the bears from all the other kobolds by pulling a kobold identified “The Kipper” and deciding that meant they were actually a fish that had been raised as a kobold XD; and Andy pulling a kobold called “The Bear Impersonator” of all things – and then flubbing the roll to try and talk the bears out of attacking his friends, because he didn’t know bears don’t speak Common (and also his costume makes him look like a green gummy bear, not an actual bear, because he had no idea what a bear looked like). He at least managed to nonplus the bears a bit?

So it’s been – chaotic, so far. XD And yeah, don’t worry about the kobold’s first names, it’s always the “The [blank]” part that’s important when it comes to identifying these little buggers. XD Anyway, I left off with Mike, Andy, and Johnny’s kobolds “The Kipper” (Johnny), “The Squishy” (Mike), and “The Bear Impersonator” (Andy) still dealing with the bears, having not YET died to their fearsome claws; and Ellen and Jane’s kobolds “The Quiet” (Ellen) and “The Miniature” (Jane) having actually made it out of the cave, yay! Tomorrow, we’ll see who else manages to get past the bears and join them on their quest to find that damn leaf!

So yeah -- maybe not a total loss of a day, but definitely not as productive as I would have liked. *shrug* What can you do. Besides go to bed, because I need to get some sleep. Tomorrow's a workday after all! Hopefully it won't be a bad one...night all!

Like the weather wasn't the greatest -- it was by turns cloudy, windy, and kinda muggy -- and I was rather tired a lot of the day after getting to bed too late last night, but I had a pretty good, fairly productive day overall --

Work – Fairly quiet Friday to end the week – I did the GL; I finished off the roster maintenance that came with the exceptions (along with fixing a few other things I found along the way); I endured going into the kitchen to celebrate Talky Coworker’s birthday (as yes, it was also her birthday today); and I tried not to get too bored with my work or annoyed with her chatter. *sigh* At least now she’s GONE – like, yes, I know she’ll be back for visits, but I don’t have to put up with her every fucking workday. Hoo-fucking-ray! And even better, now it’s the weekend again, yay~ Hopefully it shall be a good one!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through another pair of Proxy Gate Tactician’s videos:

A) “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Without Killing Anything?” – one of Proxy’s first challenge runs, seeing if he could beat the game without having to kill a single person directly (buffing NPCs to kill things for him and setting up traps to allow enemies to kill themselves was allowed, though). And the answer, happily, was yes – though it did take some careful planning, a little bit of cheesing, and working around various bugs and crashes near the end. Basically, the strat involved:

I. Making his player character a duergar (underdark dwarf) sorcerer, statted to have great Strength, Constitution, and Charisma, so they could leap, sneak (duergars get automatic access to the “Invsibility” cantrip at level 5), and talk their way out of trouble, while also being able to take a hit from enemies NOT doing a Technical Pacifist run

II. Making sure to get as much non-combat experience as possible by exploring, passing speech checks, and doing quests where it’s very easy to avoid combat – which, hilariously, meant avoiding the main quest as much as possible, as that involves a lot of murder. He didn’t do anything with the Emerald Grove beyond go shopping, for example! His poor characters were RATHER underleveled by the endgame as a result, but Proxy made it work!

III. Taking full advantage of having NPC allies in fights by buffing the hell out of them so THEY could kill all his problems (notably, giving Aylin “Haste” and throwing invisibility potions at her during the fights with Ketheric Thorm)

IV. Glitching the hell out of Orin to trap her in the form of a child (as she kidnaps your orphan cook Yenna if you don’t have any companions she can kidnap in your camp in Act III), then knocking her out with a tap on the head to claim her Netherstone without killing her

V. Struggling to deal with the fight with Gortash, holder of the third Netherstone, after this (as he was not happy with the group for not KILLING Orin, like they agreed to when they sided with him), as, the FIRST time Proxy tried to finish him off by tricking his own magical turrets into shooting him (via sneakily casting “Sanctuary” on himself before walking close to Gortash), he learned that, at a certain health threshold, Bane (Gortash’s god) empowers the guy with a load of extra hit points and a bunch of damage resistances. Fortunately, during the rematch, Proxy managed to get the turrets to not only damage Gortash, but also one of his Steel Watch guard robots – and said robot self-destructed, taking out its master with it. XD That was a lucky break!

VI. Tricking the Netherbrain into killing itself by setting up a bunch of explosive barrels on the platform it was trying to destroy...only for that to crash the game, so Proxy had to fiddle until he discovered that setting up the explosive trap on the platform NEXT to the one it was trying to destroy did not cause his game to freak out.

And there you have it – a walkthrough of how you beat the game without TECHNICALLY killing anyone. Or, at least, how you did it back on November 13th, 2023 – I imagine subsequent patches may have messed up this strat a little! Still fun to watch, though.

B) “Baldur’s Gate 3 Early Access - Summon Challenge” – Proxy, back in the “Early Access” days of the game, deciding to see if a bunch of summons – including a dire raven named Corvus, a Mage Hand called Master Hand, a trio of pinchy pinchy crabs, an imp from the Hells, and a large burning lava rock called Orby – could defeat the hardest encounter in the game at that time – a Githyanki death squad in the mountains! The answer was “yes, but it required cheesing.” For, you see, while the team did quite well against a group of goblins over in a decaying village, taking them out with a single crab casualty, the Githyanki proved to be a LOT fucking tougher, and a lot better at killing the summons. Fortunately, this is where the cheese came in –

For, you see, since the whole point of this challenge was seeing if only SUMMONS can kill the Githyanki, that meant the ACTUAL CHARACTERS weren’t in the fight. They were in fact hiding in a bush nearby. And since they weren’t in combat, that meant they were free to RESUMMON their various friends over and over again and send them into the fray. So, while Orby was the only summon to survive the entire fight (due to having 50 HP), the endless reinforcements ended up beating the Githyanki in the end. I would say “good to know,” but this was done in the Early Access version of BG3, so I don’t think it’s relevant to my own playthrough. XD Though, on the plus side, as the very first challenge video Proxy ever did, this is basically the video that launched his channel theme, so it’s the reason I have all the OTHER cool videos to watch. :P

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – and I made sure to do this FIRST tonight, to make absolutely sure I could finish a page should things go bad in the old brainpan and make it so every word was a struggle. Fortunately, I did not have to fight against my own brain tonight, and I was able to finish up Chapter 1 of this story with Matt arriving carrying Victor and Alice’s freshly-washed-and-mended clothes (courtesy of “Widow Black,” whose name IS that of a certain Corpse Bride spider’s reversed), and Alice and Victor insisting on helping with getting breakfast ready because they’d be happier if they did (with Carol putting them on powdered sugar (Victor) and jam (Alice) fetching duties – the latter allowing me to work in the trio telling each other their favorite fruits, AND the fact that truly “wild” bananas are absolutely full of seeds with Alice being surprised Smiler likes them so much because of that. Fortunately for Smiler, the Cavendish family (named after the most common commercially-traded banana cultivars, themselves named after the 6th Duke of Devonshire in the real world) spearheaded breeding efforts to make less seedy bananas in the past ten years :p). Chapter ended with Victor getting ready to dust the “eggy toast” with powdered sugar (encouraged by Carol, who said when he told her that he’d probably get it all over himself that that was “part of the fun”). :) Next time, we move onto starting Chapter 2 and the trio walking Victor back to the Van Dort mansion in Nightmarket...only to be surprised by a bunch of carriages outside the house for some reason...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and yes, it was straight onto “CaFae Latte Season 55 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi tonight, to see –

A) JC and Nicole ATTEMPTING to have dinner at JC’s parents’ place – only for JC’s dad to pull out a little light racism (being surprised that Nicole, who is canonically black, is a teacher and not like a lunch lady back in his day), and JC’s mom to object to Nicole’s stimming and TRY TO GRAB HER HAND. JC and Nicole both were like “bail” after that, as you might expect!

B) JC relating this story to Cyrus and Oscar the next day – only for the asshole who got cursed to never get a girlfriend for seven years until he learned to see women as people, not pets, to show back up and start demanding to talk to Bob so he could try and get her to uncurse him. The others were like “that’s not happening,” and Oscar in particular was like “if you’re just going to cause a scene, I’m going to have to ask you to leave” –

And when the guy didn’t go, Oscar NAILED him with a blast of bright light (accidentally sending spots dancing across JC’s vision as well, as they didn’t cover their eyes when Cyrus said). Turns out that, yes, Oscar is an angel – a seraphim, to be precise! I thought he was better lit than the others… :P

C) Oscar giving everyone a lore-dump on himself and his life when Bob came in to see what had happened while she was doing inventory (over the course of two videos), explaining how he passes as human given seraphim are supposed to have HUGE wings (a guy he helped fend off a gang turned out to be a fairy who was able to enchant his cross necklace to turn his wings into tattoos on his back – he brings them out to go flying regularly though); how the light powers he has work (basically the brightness responds to his emotions – joy and rage cause the kind of light that blasted that guy’s eyes; grief and sorrow dampen it); and how he ended up homeless – turns out that the reason he was so annoyed by Ben talking about the angel cult was because his mother pulled much the same shit when she moved them there out of the seraphim realm (which is a horrible place that has a war going on like every other week), and when she finally got caught, he got fired from his job because they believed he was somehow connected to her crimes. And sadly, this happened at a time where he’d had to take out a mortgage on his house to try the pay the medical bills he racked up after getting (and fortunately beating) pancreatic cancer, meaning that suddenly he was unable to pay ANY of his bills, and – yeah. Lost the house, ended up on the streets. Everyone was very sympathetic to his bad draw, and Cyrus was like “does anyone else who works here have decent family relations besides me?” (Yes, Cyrus – Drek, Husniya, and Rethu, aka the person you’re DATING.)

D) Cyrus asking what Husniya was looking up on her break – turned out it was homeschooling options. Rethu was like “why” and Cyrus and Drek reminded them about some of the worst stuff about school – too much homework, awful curriculum, bullies –

And Husniya put in “I also don’t want my girls to get shot.” *wince* Cyrus tried to comfort her by saying that Bob and Nicole would load the kids up with good luck charms, and that those shootings mostly happened in southern states...only for Drek to then reveal HE survived an attempted school shooting. One of his asshole classmates got himself a revolver and tried to kill the teacher and some other kids, but fortunately he had the wrong ammunition and the gun jammed. Kid’s now in jail, but still. ...Rethu pointed out that the Canadian border was only an hour away if you flew after that. :(

E) And Oscar, Cyrus, and JC all sharing “time in jail” stories (since they’ve all been arrested – Oscar for “loitering” (aka being homeless); Cyrus for activism; JC for their drug issues) – Oscar relating how he made a friend of a thief by making the guy crack up when he tried to steal Oscar’s muffin; Cyrus talking about how someone tried to beat him up once, only to be left drooling on the floor – and then apologizing to Cyrus later once it got out the guy was half-troll and trying to hide it from the other inmates (Cyrus DID help him, and Bob got a lovely renovated kitchen in return once they got out and the guy became a handyman); and JC admitting that they originally made friends with drug dealers when they originally went to jail, only to beat them up when they went back while trying to get clean. Ended up with a group of other recovering addicts to hang out with after that, at least…

And then the episode ended with Kelly and Nicole going out shopping, with Kelly helping expand Nicole’s wardrobe as a thank you for her new hair accessory protective charms. :) It’s great to see them getting along so well! And I’m quite looking forward to the next one, as the thumbnail promises eldritch customers – and given my vague Valicer/CaFae Latte crossover AU thoughts, with Smiler being a bit eldritch themselves, I’m very interested to see what kind of customers they are...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitute check and check –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Didn’t have anything over here to put into the queue tonight...but I did get a reblog from The Satirical Demon (author of the Valice Hellworld fic) on my “How To Write Smiler Alton: A Guide” post. With a Spongebob Squarepants gif of Patrick the starfish taking notes, a comment that “This will be very useful for secret future things :)”, and some tags saying something about it being a “very literal interpretation.” O.O I reblogged it with a copy of his tags and “*eyes emoji*” because I am VERY interested to see just what it is he’s got planned!

Valice Multiverse – As for over here, I had two anon asks to stick in the queue:

A) One anon asking if milk added to a bowl of cereal was a beverage, a broth, or a sauce – while Inevitable High School!Alice wondered if the anon was going to try and argue that cereal with milk was a form of soup, and Victor accidentally pictured cereal in soup and got disgusted, Smiler went to Merriam-Webster on their phone to look up some definitions...and concluded that the milk in that case is a sauce, as it fit that definition (“a liquid or semisolid food mixture used especially as a topping or ingredient for adding to or enhancing the flavor of a dish,” as per the site) the best. And thus we have all learned a Cursed Fact.

B) And another anon complaining about how the internet has ruined gross-out humor by doing things like insisting someone making fart jokes has a fetish for farts and shit like that. Cuddlepile!Alice agreed by saying sometimes a fart joke is just a fart joke...in fact, she suspects that MOST of the time it’s just a fart joke, because that’s a pretty specific fetish. :p

Whew! And now I am going to bed. Tomorrow be Smiler's birthday, so my plans include watching something The Smiler-related; listening to The Smiler-related music; either trying to figure out Tav!Smiler once and for all in BG3 or making teen!Smiler in Sims 4 and doing some dress up with them (and Victor and Alice too, of course); doing some Smiler-related writing (either starting the next chapter of "The Van Dort Vacancy" or revising one of my other VITD one-shots -- I have a couple I haven't posted that ARE from their perspective); and maybe even working in some The Smiler fanfic. Oh, and getting a picture of Smileon to post on tumblr in honor of the day. *nods* Hopefully I should be able to accomplish all that -- night all!

It was another nice day weather-wise, and as you will see in the below write-up, I had a reasonably productive day --

Work – Today was mostly “working on credit card stuff” day for me at the office – I caught up with the credit card transaction and deposit total reports for Fiscal; I went through the failed credit card reports to see who had already resolved their issues and who needed an e-mail; I updated someone’s credit card over the phone (and helped another lady figure out her balance on her non-credit-card related pledge, because for some reason my Talky Coworker thought it was a credit card thing); and I e-mailed all the people with failed credit card gifts that came back in the latest batch of exceptions. *nods* Made the day go by – though the day ending an hour earlier also helped in that regard. :p Ah, what I wouldn’t give for seven-hour workdays being the standard...but that’s not happening anytime soon. *sigh* Just gotta enjoy it when it does!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, pedaling my way through:

A) The end of “World Wide Wrestling RPG | Oxventure Plays Pro Wrestling RPG with Daniel J Layton of No Rolls Barred” by Oxventure! The final half-hour of this ridiculous and ridiculously awesome one-shot featured:

I. Chip and Flex commenting on the ad break, with Flex saying that he might give Chessington Stu a call – cue Dan saying how much he wanted them to do a travelogue show together where they go around visiting various apiaries (places where they keep bees) and sausage spots and whatnot XD

II. The big finale “handicap” match, which featured Fabian Fantastic (Andy) having to fight both The Funeral Director (Mike) and Matt Finish (Dan) at once! Should have guessed that it would be a match that would allow all three to fight together. Fabian started in control, and managed to get the crowd riled by hopping outside the ropes (only ducking back in briefly to stop the referee, Brian Chinwag (as Dan dubbed him) from counting him out) and then disappearing under the ring itself; The Funeral Director tried to drag him back out, but a botched roll meant that he got Herringford instead, who punched him out. Fabian, meanwhile, emerged from the other side of the ring and hopped back into put the hurt on Matt, giving him a “backstabber” with his knees before attempting to put him into a submission hold –

But then a combination of a botched roll and Andy planning to cede control of the match to Dan anyway meant that Matt got out of the hold and managed to put some hurt on Fabian instead, flipping him over his head onto the mat! The Funeral Director then used one of his special abilities to turn this into one of his “signature” matches, getting a bunch of extras dressed as pallbearers to bring out a gold casket to put beside the ring. Whoever got shut into that casket was the loser! Matt thus threw Fabian over to FD, who gave him a nasty elbow drop before preparing for the funeral –

Aaand then Andy spent some momentum to yank control back and have Fabian sneakily punch FD in the junk with some brass knuckles. XD (Flex commented that that had happened to him once in his own wrestling days, and that everyone assumes that’s why he sounds like Kermit – no, he just talks like this, and he finds the assumption a bit hurtful, actually. XD) He then made some amazing rolls to wail on the poor Funeral Director for a while, and Johnny, as Creative, decided that – in order to set up an amazing grudge between the two – they were going to “book” Fabian to win the match. Unless anyone had any special abilities that would change things...cue Dan cackling for some reason...anyway, as the booked winner, Fabian was allowed to use his special finishing move, and thus decided to grab Matt (who’d attempted to jump on him to save The Funeral Director, but had unfortunately missed), do a nasty “brainbreaker” move (apparently a vertical headslam – well – shoulder slam) on the concrete, then drop Matt in the casket to end things –

EXCEPT. The reason Dan had cackled was because MATT had a special ability called “Hungry” that allows him to go “fuck Creative telling me I have to lose, I want to win” and try to take the match anyway! Cue Matt dragging Fabian into the casket with him (shocking the announcers), then – after a struggle, and a botched roll that everyone encouraged Dan to spend momentum on so it became a great success (Dan was like “but would it be more entertaining if Matt didn’t pull it off,” but everybody else was like “spend it!”) – Matt got free and SLAMMED the lid down on Fabian, ending the match and taking the win! Granted, he also got a fucked-up shoulder, and the announcers made clear that he probably had made some enemies of Fabian AND Graham Graham, the big boss, but Matt clearly thought it was worth it. Cue the episode ending with The Funeral Director giving Matt a solemn “you have indeed impressed me” handshake, and Matt celebrating by smashing two jars of that honey FD was promoting and dumping it all over himself. XD

III. And, as things wrapped up, me finally learning why Dan was part of this one-shot – turns out a large part of his online presence involves him talking about wrestling stuff. XD I figured he had to watch it as he kept explaining some of the wrestling moves Andy kept describing to Johnny (who was constantly like “ouch, wrestling is mean”), but I didn’t realize he did podcasts on it and such. Neat! XD I’m glad he came by – this was a fun One Shot Wonder! I do enjoy watching this lot play tabletop games – they get so into everything they do, it’s really great.

B) The entirety of “Finding the Hidden Netherstone Fail-safes in Baldur's Gate 3” by Proxy Gate Tactician! A short little video about the various ways the game will attempt to stop you from losing the Netherstones – the three rocks that are kind of key to being able to stop the Absolute from enacting its grand “let’s turn everyone into mind flayers or thralls” plan upon Faerun. Now, the game WILL allow you to take them out of your inventory and drop them various places (and it even has a special “game over” cutscene where you get found by the Absolute and turned into a mind flayer if you ignore your Dream Guardian/The Emperor telling you to pick them back up), but it has a number of failsafes that stop you losing them permanently:

I. Drop Ketheric’s Netherstone in the mind flayer colony after defeating him in his boss fight near the end of Act II? The Dream Guardian won’t let you leave until you retrieve it, or until you turn mind flayer

II. Drop it in the Astral Prism after exposing the Emperor and fighting all the githyanki trying to kill him? The Emperor will scold you for your carelessness once you’re back in the real world and say he send it back to your camp

III. Drop it (and any other Netherstones you may have picked up) in the Iron Throne, a location you can only visit once in Act III because it explodes right after you leave? The Emperor will scold you again and tell you to look by the beach to see if the precious stones can be found. And they can – either as loot on some fishy enemies who always pop up near some specific docks; as part of a trader called Troutman’s merchandise (costing only three gold each) if you’ve killed those enemies beforehand; or in the belly of a fish lying dead on the shore if you’ve taken care of the encounter AND poor Troutman

IV. Drop the stones in the Steel Watch Foundry, ANOTHER Act III location you can visit only once because it blows up after you leave? The Emperor will yell at you some more and tell you to search the rubble, where you will encounter a trio of kobolds (who only appear in this one specific instance) who have looted the Netherstones from the debris. From there, it’s your choice to kill them in the world’s easiest fight to get the stones back, or let them flee and get the “you got turned into a mind flayer” cutscene

V. Drop the stones in the dinosaur-infested Chult Jungle that the djinn who runs the crooked prize wheel in the local circus sends you to if you manage to cheat yourself and actually win his game? ...okay, here you are actually screwed, as I think the devs assumed you’d be more interested in not becoming dino chow over dropping the stones. There’s no voice line from the Emperor scolding you for dropping them, and if you leave the area without picking them up, they are lost forever as you cannot get back to the jungle after you’ve been once. Congratulations, you’ve found the one way you can softlock your game with the Netherstones! XD

But yes – four times out of five, when it comes to the Netherstones, the devs have planned for your chicanery. Good stuff! It is nice to see these videos that emphasize just how much care Larian put into these little edge cases. :) One day I may even get to see them myself! :P

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice made a little more progress through Grout’s bizarre house today, walking down some stairs and encountering the corpse of a heavily-clawed orderly (and wondering if the staff here actually work for pay, or are just more victims of Grout’s madness – her money’s on the latter); turning a corner and finding another sitting room, with a picture of Grout’s wife and a recording of him complaining about how his studies are growing nowhere and how he’s been wasting time wandering the tower walk in a “black depression” (Alice was like “well, at least this one didn’t send me into another murderous rage, but I hope with all my heart a bunch of your test subjects escaped while you were sulking”); and ascending the nearby winding staircase up onto the tower walk itself, taking a moment to look at LA from above and give Venture Tower the traditional English two-finger salute (and sharing a moment with Cheshire about how she hopes LaCroix falls out of a window and goes splat before she has to report back). Nothing too taxing for her today – she can spend the rest of the week enjoying the night air before I make her get a move on next Monday. :P

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – no regular subs, so I went straight to “CaFae Latte Season 53 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! This collection featured:

A) JC introducing Nicole to their younger sister Kelly – a green-haired community college student (theater and marketing double-major, photography minor) who is a “sugar baby,” accepting gifts and cash from rich men to pay the bills. She’d expected Nicole to be judgy, but actually Nicole was just surprised she didn’t do pornos (Kelly: “tried it, but the money is shit and the directors are assholes”). And then, when Kelly started asking about their financial situation and talking about how being a teacher is a pretty poorly-paid job, Nicole was able to hit her with a “you sound just like my dad.” XD Overall, they got along very well (probably helped that Kelly started things off by complimenting Nicole’s art), so that was a good start to Nicole meeting JC’s family!

B) A satyr visiting CaFae Latte and – after he’d left – Drek admitting that he hadn’t thought satyrs were real, because mortal myths don’t always get things right (citing “drakes,” wingless dragons, as evidence). Cyrus confirmed for him that angels, trolls, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and Japanese Oni were all genuine things – but when Drek started talking about making snacks for Bigfoot, said that the Sasquatch was just an urban myth. I am half-hoping one now shows up in the cafe at some point. XD

C) Bob, Cyrus, Rethu, JC, and Drek all having a bit of a bitch session after a busy day at the cafe (with JC asking both Drek and Rethu to stomp on their back to knock out the knots – Rethu eventually offered to go dragon and let everyone use them as a heated mattress after the place got cleaned up), and Bob making the decision that they really did more staff, so it was time to start hiring again, bad memories of Erik be damned. Also featured Bob telling JC (and the viewers at home) that CaFae Latte would be releasing a cookbook, w000! This must have come just after that short I watched about C. M. complaining about how she doesn’t know how to write a cookbook, only for her mom to chime in “well, I do, you want some help?” XD

D) Bob calling Lindsey the next day to get her help with the staffing issues (figuring if she helps someone from the food shelf/homeless shelter Lindsey volunteers at, she’ll scratch the “be altruistic” itch AND get someone who feels like they owe her and are thus less likely to betray her – Lindsey was like “cold but I understand”), with Lindsey saying she’ll talk to a few people who she thinks will fit in at the cafe and get them to apply; meanwhile, in the background, Rethu had to deal with a Starbucks manager criticizing how he served the ER nurse regular, accusing him of not giving it enough of a “personal touch” (Rethu was like “she doesn’t WANT chit-chat, she wants to get her coffee and GO most days,” but the Starbucks manager was persistent – fortunately, Bob noticed by the end of the episode, so it’s very likely they left cursed)

E) And JC introducing Nicole to their older brother John (the other sibling they still have contact with, as their other sister is a TERF), a construction guy with a love of booze and casual fucking! Things were a little more tense between him and JC than they were between JC and Kelly – probably because JC thinks John is an alcoholic, while John insists he can function without booze, he’s just not fun without it – but the group got on well enough, and the episode ended with John devolving into a rambling story about how he and JC used to go fishing up at their grandparents’ place in the summers. XD So yeah, so far, so good when it comes to Nicole meeting JC’s family! We’ll see what happens if and when she meets their parents later...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and after poking through my “#the smiler” tag on my blog for a while, I found something for Smiler’s Birthday Song Saturday – the 2013 Alton Towers fireworks show! Yeah, I originally posted this back in 2022, when I was first getting into The Smiler, and I figured it was the perfect video to bring back for Smiler’s birthday this year. 2013 WAS the year The Smiler opened, after all, and The Smiler’s attempted takeover at the end of the show helped inspire something about my OWN Smiler – namely, their voice! If you’ve ever wondered why I describe my Smiler as having a deep voice, this show and what we hear of The Smiler’s voice in it is the reason why. *nods* So yeah, that finishes off my queue for the week, yay! Now I just have to get a birthday picture of Smileon to post on the day itself. :)

Other: Despite the clouds building up this afternoon, we still got outside for beanbags – and unfortunately, today was a day where I just could not get it together and make any decent throws. The only reason I took second in the third game was because Mom and Dad kind of fell apart too, and Dad’s final throw slid off the board, leaving him one point behind me. *shakehead* Final scores were me 3-3-2; Dad W-W-3; Mom 2-2-W. We’ll see if I can do better the next time we play!

And there we have it! Nothing too special, but I did appreciate the extra hour or so to catch up on computer stuff before beanbags. And now it is time for me to head to bed so I can get through another day. Night all!

Like, the weather finally got nice today -- there were some cloudier moments, but overall it was sunny and warm and everything you'd want out of a Memorial Day! Everything we've been fucking waiting for since Thursday! But you see, since this was the first truly nice day all weekend, and a holiday, that mean that everyone was out and about --

And, apparently, all of them went to our mini-golf place. We drove up there after lunch today, saw the cars parked all around (including down in the field by the nearby pond!) and the massive crowd just waiting in line for ice cream, and didn't even pull into the parking lot. Dad instead found a side street, and we just turned right around and came home. *sigh* So yeah -- five days off, and not one chance to go out and do something fun. Meeeh. I suppose the ride itself was nice, at least, and Mom made homemade sundaes for us tonight with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, but -- still. I was kinda looking forward to putting the old ball around. And, to add onto the disappointment, turns out I was right on the money about my bitchy, jittery mood earlier being PMS, because I got my period today! Right before we left, in fact. Fortunately it was an extremely light start and I caught it before it could ruin any of my clothes, but meeeh. Last thing I needed on my last day off! At least this means it'll be mostly over by the time Smiler's birthday rolls around on Saturday...

Anyway -- despite the disappointment of no mini-golf, I didn't have a horrible day. In fact, I got a fair amount done:

Tumblr: Did a few things over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this morning before lunch and the failed mini-golf trip:

A) First, over on my dash, I reblogged –

I. A cool photoset by “dozydawn” of vintage tiny golden lantern charms with pearls inside (to represent the light within) that popped up courtesy of my friend Newt! Mostly because I looked at them and thought, “Ooh, I bet charms like these would be popular in Duskwall jewelry! Lanterns are supposed to be an important part of everyday life, after all…bet the rich folks have ones that really light up. And oh, hey, maybe the Lampblacks sport charms with black pearls in them? As a way to show membership?” So yeah, now those (with the above musings added in the tags) are on my blog as part of my “#valicer in the dark” tag! Nice! :)

II. My own “Help: How Do Tav!Smiler in BG3???” post one last time to announce the results of the poll – one vote for “Bardlock, Just Do A Lot Of Alchemy, Entertainer Background” and one vote for “Bardlock, Just Do A Lot Of Alchemy, Guild Artisan Background” – and how I guess I’m going to have to study the inspiring events for each background to decide which one fits Smiler better on my own. ...and how I’m not sure I’m going to be able to resist downloading that “Experimental Alchemy As A Feat” mod despite nobody picking one of those options. XD Look, if I’m not triple-classing with an Artificer mod (and I’m fine with not doing that, it sounded complicated), that sounds like a good option to show how good Smiler is at alchemy! We’ll see what I decide once I’m done planning out what specific stuff I want to be part of my Tav!Smiler’s build, and figuring out how I get it.

B) And second, in my drafts –

I. I went quickly through the “How Write Smiler Alton: A Guide” post one final time and fixed up a couple of typos I found, because apparently I can’t leave that post alone to save my life (I promise I’m not touching it again! It’s going in the queue tomorrow!)

II. And I also went through the first post detailing my Mega-Ghostbusters AU “Busting Makes Me Feel Good” and cleaned up/rewrote a few things there! Didn’t make any MAJOR changes – just updated some word choices, reworked some awkward sentences, and made it clearer near the end that Edna Strickland’s problem with the Ghostbusters is that she thinks they’re complete frauds. Despite the preponderance of evidence that ghosts ARE real in this universe. *nods* So hopefully I don’t have to touch that post again either, and can concentrate on getting the second one next time I have some time to spare!

Sims 4: Welp, with mini-golf being a bust again, I decided to pop into my building save once more for a mini-building session (about a half-hour) just to see if I could quickly finish off my “Town Square Terrace” renovation for my upcoming “Starting As Teens Valicer” save file. It proved to be a LITTLE more difficult than I expected, but I accomplished pretty much everything I hoped to accomplish in the end:

A) I made sure all the rooms were properly painted or tiled (using variations on the three different “[color] with white trim” base game wall paints throughout most of the house) – the front foyer stayed its original dark green, and the kitchen its original orangey-red color, but the living room got painted a brighter, more cheerful shade of green; the downstairs hallway got painted a light beige; the upstairs hallway got painted a slightly darker beige; the bedrooms got painted red, blue, and yellow respectively; and both bathrooms were tiled with the “Pixel Perfect” half-tile. Meaning the house now has some color to it while still keeping a lot of the “old and cheap” vibes I’m going for! (Plus, this allowed me to quickly note which bedrooms would be Alice’s, Victor’s, and Smiler’s respectively. Color-coding is fun! :P)

B) I quickly changed the stairs from greenish to white to better match the now-beige hall (consistency!)

C) I turned the 2x2 room behind the downstairs bathroom and off the kitchen into a laundry room, as per my realization last night – though not without having to fight my game a little bit in the process. What happened is, I found a nice 2x2 archway and stuck that in the wall as an entrance to the room from the kitchen, painted the walls with the orange “Sparkling Speckled” tile to kind of match the paint in the kitchen, then went to extend the kitchen’s cheap linoleum floor into the laundry room (since, if it was an offshoot of the kitchen, it felt logical for them to have the same floor) –

Only to find I couldn’t. Whenever I tried to click on the floor tiles in the room, it kept telling me that there was “nothing to change.” It literally would not let me change it from the wood floor I’d originally put down to the linoleum one. Baffled, I tried deleting and rebuilding the floor – nope. I tried pulling the room out and away from the rest of the house, then changing the floor – nope. I tried straight-up deleting the room and rebuilding it – NOPE. I tried looking up the problem on my phone – not much useful information, but someone recommended knocking down and rebuilding walls to sort of “reset” the floor, so I tried that – nope. Frustrated, I finally took out the archway in preparation for knocking down ALL the walls –

And discovered that, for some reason, THAT had been the fucking problem – the archway. I don’t know WHY – I presume it has something to do with its footprint? – but the minute I removed it, I could finally change the damn floor tiles. *facepalm* This game sometimes, I swear…

Anyway – now that I was no longer blocked, I put down the linoleum; rebuilt all the missing walls and repainted them (well, retiled them, technically); placed the stacked washer and dryer combo in the back left corner of the room (recoloring them orange and brown to match the color scheme of the kitchen); THEN readded the archway so the room was, you know, accessible. Fortunately, it went in without complaint, and as the washer and dryer are in the corner just beyond the arch’s footprint, I think they’ll be functional. I hope. *sigh* Once that was in, I dropped the Laundry Day “bucket with paper towels, rag, and laundry detergent bottle” decoration on top of the dryer and the cheapest “Wicker Whims” hamper beside the tower of cleanliness, and that finished things off. Wanted to add an ironing board, just for fun, but there was no room on the wall. *shakehead* All that fuss to make one little laundry nook...but I do like how it looks, so I’m glad I stuck with it.

D) While looking for the washer and dryer, I stumbled across the thermostat and went “oh shit, yeah, better get one of these,” so that’s now in the front foyer, next to the front door. Can’t have the trio getting too cold or too hot! The house is just supposed to be a little uncomfortable, not unlivable.

E) Speaking of which, I made sure that the upstairs bathroom also had some fixtures in it – the same ultra-cheap toilet and sink as the downstairs bathroom, along with the cheapest claw-footed tub-and-shower combo available for the bathing nook (as the upstairs bathroom has a chunk of wall separating the “bathing” area from the “toilet” area). Can’t leave them without adequate places to poop and bathe!

F) And, at the last minute, I added a small boxy window to the end of the hallway downstairs, by the stairs (since that side of the house was SEVERELY lacking in windows), and quickly recolored Victor and Alice’s beds so their comforters at least somewhat matched their wall colors (the bed’s “default” swatch is yellow stripes, so Smiler’s room was already all good).

So yeah – the laundry room situation might have stressed me out, but other than that, the build is looking good! Now, granted, I still would like to do things like add a few more windows to the build, maybe put some carpet down in the bedrooms – but the value of the house as it stands right now is $22,636, and I’m already worried that will be too much for a trio of teens to afford. So I’m thinking that what I need to do now is make my Teen Valicer family, see how many funds they start with, and see if they can afford the house as is. If so – great, I’ve got the trio, and I’ve got a house for them to live in! If not, then we’re gonna have to find some ways to cut costs – probably by finding even worse furniture to put in the house. XD But no matter what, we’re going to make this work! I want to actually PLAY my Sims again, damn it!

Writing: Actually got two writing-related things done today:

A) First, after reblogging that post on lantern charms and writing up all my thoughts about how those would be popular in the Blades In The Dark world above, I decided to canonize the Lampblacks showing membership via wearing lantern pins with black pearls in them for my version of Duskwall! So I added that little tidbit to my master doc for the Valicer In The Dark verse. Dunno when it’s going to be relevant, but it’s a nice little worldbuilding detail to have!

B) And second, after getting through my workout and YouTube and all of that (below), I worked some more on Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland!” I didn’t write quite as much as I’d hoped – just getting through Alice getting up the stairs into the upstairs hallway and having a fight with one of the clawed ghouls that lurks up there (the other ghoul who was hanging around near the trapdoor was, fortunately, not hostile) – but then again, I did edit some of what I’d written before with Alice fighting the ghouls in the stair room below, so – I think it all evens out. *sighs* This is proving to be a tough chapter to get through – for me and Alice. Hopefully it’ll all be worth it in the end...

YouTube: Thanks to getting back to the computer late tonight (lot of dishes after supper tonight) and needing some extra time to sum up the workout video (see below), I only had time for one video tonight, which was the latest from Josh Way – “Fun With Shorts: The Dangerous Stranger!” Josh taking on one of Sid Davis’s first shorts, which was all about teaching kids about stranger danger! Done in a particularly 70s, greasy and creepy, “let’s blame the kids for forgetting their parents’ warnings” way, of course. Of especial yucky note was the bit where a guy followed a girl into a movie theater, sat next to her, and put his arm around her just touching her shoulder, ugh. *shudder* Fortunately, Josh’s riffs helped cut through the unpleasant subject matter – from mocking some of the ridiculous ways kids were lured away from safety, to pointing out when the chase music for the police pursuing a guy who’d kidnapped a girl who’d he’d picked up hitchhiking turned a little tonally inappropriate (waaaay too jaunty), to rightfully pointing out that maybe we shouldn’t be blaming the kids for when they got abducted by strangers acting like friends. You get ‘im, Josh! Though, uh, wouldn’t mind seeing something a little less “ugh” next time, if you don’t mind.

Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight and started the next Oxventure video I had to catch up on: “World Wide Wrestling RPG | Oxventure Plays Pro Wrestling RPG with Daniel J Layton of No Rolls Barred!” Yes, there is indeed a freaking role-playing game all about pro wrestling, apparently. XD From what I’ve seen in this first thirty-five minutes, it’s a very “fiction first” game with lots of description of what you’re doing and minimal rolling – a bit like Blades In The Dark, but with a very different vibe. Each player makes a wrestler – coming up with a name, their role in the ring (whether they’re a beloved “babyface” or a hated “heel” or whatnot), and what kind of moves they do – and then the Creative (aka GM) makes a list of matches, for players and NPCs. Gameplay consists of players acting out/narrating how they handle pre-match interviews, the matches themselves, and post-match commentary, and whenever the Creative tells them to “cut a promo” (usually after they’ve said something particularly interesting in an interview, or done something particularly cool in a match), they have to roll two d6s, add any relevant modifiers (for Body, Looks, or Work, depending on what the roll is for – “Body” seems to be for strength stuff, “Look” for your persona, and “Work” – uh, not 100% sure, but your general set of moves, maybe?), and see how well they do. 1-6 is a botch; 7-9 is a normal success; 10+ is a big success. There’s also tokens called “momentum” that can be earned via big successes or helping progress the match (by politely cedeing control of the narrative to your opponent so they can narrate THEIR cool moves), and spent to increase the results of a dice roll (turning a near-failure into a success, for example), or used to cut into someone else’s description of how a match is going if the player really wants to grab control of the narrative. It’s all about the collaborative storytelling and making something that sounds really cool. :)

Anyway – for this particular episode of Oxventure Wrestling (OXW), Johnny was the Creative, with Mike, Andy, and Dan playing the wrestlers – Mike was The Funeral Director (in a long curly wig and fake muscle arms), a legally-distinct version of The Undertaker who constantly said he was going to kill his opponents, but in a respectful way; Andy was Fabian Fantastic (in fancy shades), a rich and established heel who loved to go on and on about how he was the champ and how wrestlers these days sucked; and Dan was Matt Finish (no special props), a newbie wrestler from Oklahoma who’d just gotten signed to OXW and was just full of heart heart heart. XD Rounding out the cast were the announcers, Chip Spudley and Flex Abslington (the latter of whom ended up sounding rather a lot like Kermit The Frog thanks to an interesting creative decision on Johnny’s part XD), played by Johnny and whoever wasn’t currently participating in a match. So far in the episode, we’ve had:

I. The Funeral Director wrestle Matt Finish in Matt’s debut match (which was made even more interesting by the reveal that The Funeral Director was apparently Matt’s mentor) – there was some lovely pre-match trash talk from the FD about how he was going to respectfully put Matt in the ground; poor Matt initially stammering his way through his reply, before finding his confidence and declaring that their match would be a No Disqualifications match (a stipulation he was allowed to make thanks to a successful roll to cut his promo); and the FD nearly taking out Matt early, only for Matt to get to his feet, get FD on the ropes, and almost get him in an “arm bar” (not sure what that is, but it involved hanging onto FD’s arm), wowing the crowd and making them love this scrappy newbie. Like, FD still won the match – breaking Matt’s arm bar, clotheslining him, and then doing his “Tasteful Memorial Piledriver” to end things – but thanks to his refusal to go down too quickly, Matt has definitely made some fans in the crowd! Nice :)

II. Fabian give his own very disparaging commentary on what he’d just seen in the previous match (particularly ragging on poor Matt – but then again, he is a heel, who is supposed to be hated)

III. And Chip and Flex continuing to provide their own commentary on everything, sounding increasingly goofy in as they did (they are REALLY leaning hard into Flex sounding like Kermit)

Fun times! :) As I’m not a wrestling fan, a lot of the specifics of what’s happening in the matches are lost on me, but everyone is clearly having a good time, and I’m enjoying how everyone is working together to try and make something that could be seen as a fun show to watch. :) When I left off, two NPC wrestlers, Baby Boy and Dude Wipes, were currently having a “grudge match” – we’ll see what happens with that, and with the actual PC wrestlers, tomorrow in the next chunk!

Other: We may not have managed to get in mini-golf, but the nice weather meant that we finally got to play a few rounds of beanbags in the backyard! And let me tell you, Mom had a spectacular day, winning three out of the five games and only coming in last once. Dad and I, meanwhile, were pretty off (me especially – it took me quite a while to get my hand in properly!), but happily we did manage to score a win each, so it wasn’t too bad. Final scores were me 3-3-2-2-W; Dad 2-W-3-3-2; Mom W-2-W-W-3. *nods* You know what, I’ll take that.

Whew! And now I have to wrap things up and go to bed, because I do have work tomorrow. Meeeh. Hopefully it won't be too bad a day -- I mean, I'm expecting it to be kind of chaotic just because I'll have so much to catch up on, but I'm just hoping it doesn't turn into a full-on shitshow. That would be sad. :( Keep your fingers crossed, people! Night all!

Yeah, had some difficulties keeping the old brain focused today -- that, a lot of leg jiggling, and feeling unusually thirsty has got me thinking that the old PMS is coming back around, bleh. >( Stupid hormones...I'm gonna get my period next Saturday on Smiler's birthday, just you watch. My body is evil like that sometimes. And it didn't help that we had a slight health scare this morning -- Dad woke up with a nasty headache and had to lie down for a while, and Mom gave him a COVID test once he got up. Fortunately, it was negative, and he felt a lot better after lying down -- he's of the opinion he just didn't get enough sleep last night, which, I know that feel -- but still. Didn't need to worry about THAT this morning either! Meeeh...

Fortunately, even with those things, I had a pretty decent Saturday overall --

Cleaning & Laundry: Pretty typical Cleaning Saturday, all things considered –

A) I started with the dusting at around 10:04 AM, and I finished up with the Swiffering and vacuuming around 1:04 PM, right before lunch – was hoping it would take less time, but as usual there were a few interruptions that slowed things down (having to stop after getting my bed remade to bring down my laundry, as per the below; overhearing my parents do Dad’s COVID test and getting a little nervous about that – again, very glad it was negative; and of course getting a little too into the Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark episode I was listening to and rewinding occasionally so I wouldn’t miss bits. To be fair, it was the Barnaby and Zillah adventure “The Horrors Of Castle Wisenshire” and featured such things as Zillah hanging from a window ledge by her fingernails while ALSO reading a diary (turning the pages with her mouth); Barnaby attempting to throw Zillah (now stuck with one leg through a dilapidated roof) a rope so she could use it to get back into his room – only, thanks to a pair of 1s, to throw HIMSELF with the rope and crash through the same rooftop she was stuck in; and – on the awesome side of the scale – Zillah taking on Demon Lord Ixis (a horrible blood-wolf thing that Barnaby’s uncle had been sacrificing people to for eternal youth) with a shard of mirror and a large standing candelabra, at full stress thanks to flashbacks and pushing herself repeatedly, and WINNING (albeit partially because she got a boost from the latest sacrifice). You can see why I didn’t want to miss any of it!)

B) And my load of laundry went into the wash around 11:30 AM (at the tail end of the loads Mom was doing), and came out of the dryer a little after 3 PM – though, given that I took it out while in the middle of trying to renovate a house in Sims 4 (see below), I didn’t finishing folding everything until about 4 PM.
*shrug* Nothing special! But at least now it’s all done for another couple of weeks, yay.

Sims 4: Spent some time this afternoon messing around with “Town Square Terrace,” the little house on the edge of Copperdale’s “Prescott Square” neighborhood (the portion of town with the library and the ThrifTea shop), trying to turn it from a one-bedroom starter home into a three-bedroom “boarding house” – specifically, a house where teenager versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler could live while attending Copperdale’s high school! Because that’s my latest idea for a save file – start with the trio as teens so I can actually play with some of the high school stuff High School Years added into the game (instead of just using all the furniture it added); then, once they graduate, move them to Britechester and send them to college (Smiler will be attending Foxbury, and Alice and Victor Ubrite, so they’ll be living in the world, but off-campus); then, after that, send them to live in either Windenburg or Ravenwood and figure out their life paths from there! I think it would be a fun adventure, and less stressful on me personally than some of the other save file ideas I’ve come up with (like, I’d love to do the Tiny Town, but I fear trying to wrangle that many Sims on one lot; similarly, I think it would be fun to do a save file with Victor, Victoria, Emily, Alice, and Smiler all starting as children and aging them up through high school and college, but that would require SO much set-up and require me to make everyone at least one parent or parental figure, and – yikes O.o). So yes, getting the Teen OT3’s home sorted is a good first step in making this save file happen. How’d it go in this initial build session?

*waggles hand* All right, I’d say. The tricky thing about renovating this house is that I have to somehow make it able to fit three Sims, each with their own bedroom, while not making it too expensive for a trio of teenagers to buy (though I suppose I could add an adult who “runs the boarding house” to the family for a little extra cash...who dares me to do this and make it a self-Sim XD). Plus I don’t want to raze the entire original house to the ground – I’d kind of like to keep at least SOME elements of the original design intact! Which is proving a bit tricky, as it’s a small house on a small lot… Still, I made some progress –

A) I got rid of the kind-of-awful paved-over “backyard” area sticking off the first floor and the somewhat-better-but-still-weird upper balcony area off the bedroom on the second floor; expanded the first floor out sideways to fill in the weird “notch” on the side from the kitchen being smaller than the living room (I guess TECHNICALLY it added some visual interest to the build and provided outdoor access to the backyard area, but I didn’t like it – it just looked bizarre to me); made the back of the build somewhat longer; and expanded the second floor and the roof to match. So now the house is more of a basic long rectangular shape (with a chimney on the left side for a fireplace and a tiny front porch on the right that I didn’t mess with), meaning there’s more floor space inside to play around with. Trust me, I need it!

B) I changed the siding from “Simple Siding” to “Clapboard Crush” to better match the siding I could see on the decorative houses behind the lot – on the plus side, this also made the build a much nicer, more vibrant shade of green on the outside

C) I largely gutted the interior – getting rid of walls, half-walls, stairs, and furnishings – so I could more freely play with the layout and try to get things where they should be. Which – yeah, getting this sorted is proving to be the trickiest bit and has involved a fair amount of “put in wall, then delete wall.” The issue is, I want a living room, a combined kitchen/dining room, and a bathroom downstairs, plus three bedrooms (or four if I do add that other adult Sim) and at least one more bathroom upstairs – but I also have to find somewhere to stick the stairs connecting the two floors. And so far, I have NOT found a good spot to stick them! Making the living room a bit bigger and putting them against the wall by the arch into the kitchen there didn’t feel right (even though that’s where the stairs were in the original build); trying to find a spot at the back of the expanded kitchen area didn’t feel right (even though I did like the idea of the stairs at the back of the house); and while putting them in the little “entrance” space beside the living room DID feel right (because there’s plenty of houses with stairs to the second floor there – I’ve lived in a few), they just take up too much space there! *sigh* I’m definitely going to have to keep playing around with this – find a way to build in some hallways and a proper stairwell, I think. (Maybe make the entrance a proper hallway, instead of using half-walls to only partially separate it from the living room, and go from there?)

D) However, even with my internal layout issues, I did at least make some progress furnishing the place! Sticking to a solid theme of “everything in this house is cheap and reused to make sure the lot value doesn’t get too high” –

I. The living room has the cheap “faux” fireplace from the “Holiday pack” (which isn’t really a pack, just a series of free holiday-themed updates – it was the cheapest option, and I figured Alice would prefer a fake fireplace over a real one); the Get To Work “Spacekeeper” wall-mounted TV above said fake fireplace; the “Trash or Treasure” sofa and matching armchair from City Living (normally you can only purchase these at the Flea Market in San Myshuno, but because nobody lives here yet, I can buy all the unlockables freely, yay); and the “Hepcat Coffee Table” from Eco Lifestyle (it’s a huge bulky square, but it was only $50, so yeah, going with that)

II. The kitchen has the City Living-added “used” versions of the cheapest oven, fridge, and counters in the base game, along with the cheapest and blandest base game wastebasket, the “Ate And Salvage Drafting Table” small square dining table, and three “Trash Or Treasure” dining chairs (I didn’t remember there were dining chairs too in that set – they’re kind of cute!)

III. The tiny 2x2 bathroom I built into the corner of the kitchen (just so I’d HAVE it) has the cheapest base game toilet, sink, and mirror in it (as it didn’t need to be big or fancy, it just needed to be functional)

IV. And while I didn’t actually build any bedrooms upstairs (I STARTED, putting down an initial wall, but then I couldn’t divide the space up evenly and started fiddling with the stair placement again, so I deleted it), but I did get beds for the trio – three “Reclaimed Wood Single” beds from Horse Ranch as they were cheap and looked old BUT also weren’t uncomfortable (because you don’t want to cheap out on the beds too much if you don’t have to – the worse a bed, the longer a Sim has to sleep, and the worse mood they get up in!)

So yeah, that all pretty much covers my Sims 4 session today! Probably not my most productive, but I was both still struggling to figure out what I wanted to do with the house AND folding my laundry at the same time, so sue me. :p We’ll whip this build into shape sooner or later! And when we do, perhaps the new save file shenanigans can begin...

Tumblr: Cleaning Saturday always means getting less done around here, but I still accomplished some stuff –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – No working on the drafts today, but I did reblog a few things of importance:

A) A post about how horrific Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” (which just passed the House a few days ago) really is (denying healthcare to transgender people, stopping states from regulating AI, defunding Planned Parenthood, giving tax breaks to billionaires by defunding things like Medicaid and SNAP) and how important it is to call your senators and make it known they should not support this bill (and before you ask – yup, I called the offices of RI’s senators, Whitehouse and Reed, and left some voicemails saying just that. They were probably the world’s most awkward voicemails, because I am NOT good on the phone if I’m not at my job, but I left them, damn it)

B) A post about how LGBTQ+ identities (specifically lesbian, bisexual, and trans identities, since those get the most shit) are NOT “sensitive content” TUMBLR (yeah, unfortunately the CEO and some of the staff are real assholes, and sometimes shit gets marked “Mature” when it’s just talking about being a trans person or a bisexual person or the like *grumbles*)

C) And my “Help: How Do Tav!Smiler In BG3???” post one last time, since we’re down to the last few hours and I figured why the hell not – maybe I might get a last minute vote or two. (Probably not, but one must try!) Happily, I did find out while talking to them tonight that Squid – the person who got me into BG3 in the first place – DID vote in the poll, choosing the “bardlock, just do a lot of alchemy, entertainer background” option. They warned me that triple-classing with artificer was probably not the best idea even with a level 20 mod (which, fair, I DID think it had the potential to be too complicated), and recommended doing like 16 levels of the main class and 4 levels of the secondary one if I wanted to focus on getting all feats, or 17/3 if I wanted high-level spells (though, admittedly, that might apply less for BG3 as I believe max level of spells in that game is 6 unless you mod in stronger spells...but I do have “Mystra’s Spells,” and I don’t know if THAT adds in anything more powerful…). MY initial thought was, if I was just doing Bardlock, to do 12 Warlock and 8 Bard to get the most fun stuff out of each class, but...hmmm. I shall have to think about it!

Valice Multiverse – Got one anon ask tonight – “Has anybody ever looked at Vermont and New Hampshire and wondered if looked like they were 69ing?” Cuddlepile!Alice went “...maybe, but not me,” while Smiler looked up the states on their phone and went “well, you could make a case” –

And I looked up the states in my browser and went “...welp, never unseeing that.” *facepalm* Thanks anon. Exactly how I wanted to end my Saturday. XD

Writing: Got another page done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” tonight – Alice confirmed with Carol that she wanted sweet, not savory “eggy toast” for breakfast (yes, apparently French toast comes in a savory variant – who knew?); Smiler revealed that their missing dad Matt was getting Victor and Alice’s clothes out of the laundry room (since the outfits DESPERATELY needed a wash), and Carol informed them that, if they liked, they could keep the outfits they’d borrowed – Victor awkwardly declined with a “I have enough clothes” (immediately feeling like the world’s most spoiled brat afterward), while Alice dithered for a bit, then said she’d ask the original owner of her current dress, Joytide, if it was all right to keep it before they left; Smiler confirmed their plans for the day – leaving the MOJ before lunch, walking Victor back to his house in Nightmarket, then finally dropping Alice off at Elder Gutknecht’s – and Alice got all annoyed with Victor’s parents again when Victor commented he hoped they didn’t get angry with him for interrupting their midday meal (“they should be happy to see you after you’ve been gone the better part of a week!”); and Alice then immediately admitted that she was going to miss talking with Victor and Smiler after this, aww. I struggled a bit to get this page going (damn what-I-am-pretty-certain-is-PMS), but I got it out in the end! Just gotta remember, this is the rough draft, meaning it’s perfectly okay for it to be rough. *nods* Tomorrow, Smiler reminds Alice that Elder Gutknecht will be there for her to talk to, and they and Victor will visit as much as they can – after all, Victor’s gotta get his Whisper training, right? [significant silence from Victor] ...right??? (Don’t worry, Smiler, he comes around by the end.)

YouTube: Welp, after thinking about it a little more last night, I went ahead and unsubscribed from GrayStillPlays – while I have still enjoyed most of his content up to this point, I think I need a break from him after seeing him do more and more AI-related stuff and that “that art style DEFINITELY looks racist” game the other day. (And, to be honest, the GTA V challenges, while amusing, HAVE started to get a little samey.) We’ll see if I go back to his stuff later or not. In the meantime, I decided to go ahead and clear out the old Watch Later –

A) First up, we had “Worst Hero Wars Ads | We React to the Most Out of Pocket Ads For Hero Wars” by OXBox! Andy making Jane, Mike, and Ellen react to a bunch of extremely bizarre and often rather inappropriate ads for Hero Wars, the game that claims to be this grand adventure full of sexy women but is actually a terrible idle game, courtesy of the archival channel “Hero Wars Ads As Art.” Surprisingly, not all of these ads were of the “big sexy monster woman doing monster things to people, only for Galahad, the main character guy, to escape and have to fight people with smaller numbers than he has” that we all know and – no, let’s just say “know.” XD Instead, we had such things as:

I. A modern-day Galahad getting yanked into the “fight things based on their number compared to yours” fantasy realm via a snake-like dragon in the toilet (Mike: “My worst nightmare”)

II. Galahad revealing he has a thing for horse bum by kissing the backside of a sexy centaur...before realizing it was a centaur (everyone was like “wait, does he have a thing for horses??”)

III. A surprise “realistic CGI” ad featuring Galahad getting eaten by a (male for once) demon (the gang was like “holy shit, the production values on this ad went up for some reason, what happened here?”)

IV. Galahad sitting in the desert, sweat pouring off his back as he stared at a sexy sphinx and eagerly stroked – a genie lamp (everyone was like “!!!! ANDY,” forcing Andy to be like “Don’t have a go at me, it’s Hero Wars doing this!”)

V. Galahad OPENLY TRYING TO KISS A (at least somewhat anthropomorphized, at least) HORSE (that was revealed to be the tongue of a dragon that swallowed him – everyone was disturbed that the “Galahad has a thing for horses” thing was confirmed)

VI. And Galahad’s backstory, where he was saved as a baby from a werewolf by his warrior mother, who got infected, taught to fight by her, then had to chase after her when she, while in werewolf form, abducted the woman he’d just saved by wolves (everyone was just like “we were waiting for this to turn sexy in such a bad way” – fortunately it didn’t).

Just – wow. Hero Wars has had so many more fucked-up ads than OXBoxtra, or I, realized. We should be grateful they decided to settle on the “monster women transforming people” stuff as the standard – they seem to be the tamest of the lot!

B) And second up, we had “CaFae Latte Season 51 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! This compilation was a pretty short one, featuring:

I. Husniya’s husband Asif showing up at the end of her shift to take her out for their anniversary dinner (nine years!), and chatting with Bob and JC about his traditional attire – and about how his asshole coworker Sarah inspired him to start wearing it regularly to the office after insulting Husniya’s hijab when she came to visit him early in his career

II. Cyrus and JC starting an early shift together, and a sleepy Cyrus getting surprised by the appearance of Drek, who he hadn’t registered was going full-time; Drek telling him about his upcoming eighteenth birthday plans and his new part-time job (flailing around cat toys for the river Sphinx and her friends – extra $50 a week); and Cyrus starting to tell Drek about his date with Rethu (they are now banned from the arcade for life for their prize-stealing ways) – only for JC to interrupt by revealing there was a lizard on fire in their kitchen

III. Cyrus, JC, and Drek attempting to handle the “lizard on fire in the kitchen” situation – turned out to be a salamander (here defined as a “flamey non-sapient evolutionary cousin of dragons”) who, after probably sneaking in through their latest shipment of hellfire, had decided the oven was an excellent napping place; unfortunately, their attempts to wrangle it with kitchen tongs and oven mitts resulted in it getting angry, the coffee shop getting very smokey (the only reason it didn’t burn down being Drek’s fast work with the extinguisher), and Cyrus deciding it was time to call in Rethu

IV. Rethu showing up and easily subduing the salamander by scratching it behind the head fins (because, of course, they were immune to its fire), and cooing to it about how they were going to take it to their cousin who lives in a volcano in the Draconic Realms while an annoyed JC demanded they get it out of their kitchen (resulting in the line “I am the queen of this kitchen who owes fealty and taxes to Empress Bob” when the others kept pointing out it’s technically BOB’S kitchen XD); also resulted in Rethu telling Cyrus he owed them another date for calling them in on their day off to handle this, which Cyrus was VERY pleased about

V. Bob making Cyrus replace the smoke detector he threw a knife at (because he didn’t want to go fiddle with it during the salamander incident to make it shut up), and Drek – after a brief argument with Cyrus about his methods of handling said smoke detector – asking about his latest date with Rethu; Cyrus happily showed him and Bob (and us, the viewer) his pictures of them going to the Museum of Illusions at the MoA, which featured loads of cool trippy stuff, to the point where Cyrus actually thought some of them might be genuinely magical! Not a good place to attempt a first kiss, though, as he discovered...but fortunately he got a second chance at that at the coffee shop afterwards. :) Drek was happy for them, but did have to wonder who that weird lady with the glasses was in some of the pictures; Cyrus said “probably some influencer hired to hype the place” as Bob gave the camera a significant look. XD Episode ended with Cyrus finally removing his “Single AF” pin when Drek pointed it out...and being unable to pass it on to the kid because, well, actually a glamoured knife. XD Lovely stuff as always – and the nice thing about taking a break from Gray is that I’ll have more time to watch more of this series, yay~

Yeah, a pretty good day overall! But now I really need to head to bed before it gets too late. Tomorrow, we're HOPING for a post-lunch trip to our usual mini-golf place (Mom WANTED to hit Cape Cod, but we're too worried it'll be mobbed over there since it's Memorial Day weekend), so I don't think I'll be playing any video games. As it stands, my plans are to work on my tumblr drafts (see if I can make some more progress on those Ghostbusters Mega AU posts); keep working on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" get in a workout; and keep up with the latest Fallout: London video from Jon. *nods* All achievable goals, I trust! Night all!