Crossover Chick

Somewhat Bad Vibes Tuesday

Wed, 06 May 2026 04:25:50 GMT

Not so much at work, which was pretty quiet (see below), but at home -- Mom and Dad apparently had tough days (Dad overexerting himself and having to take a painkiller for his neck; Mom struggling to get all her plants set up outside) and Mom in particular was in a nasty mood when I came home. She eventually calmed down, but it really did not make coming back from work particularly pleasant. *sigh* I'm getting really sick of how there's no such thing as a truly good day for any of us anymore...

Anyway. Here's the daily write-up:

Work – Was a surprisingly-quiet return to work for me today – apparently not a heck of a lot happened while I was out on my long weekend. *shrug* Fine by me – I have enough bullshit to deal with. My day in the office was spent thusly:

A) Catching up on all my e-mail, depositing the checks for the GL, and doing the morning reports from the credit card site (not necessarily in that order)

B) Updating my spreadsheets tracking how many calls we get concerning credit card stuff and which parishes have sent in Easter Collection to reflect the stuff my coworker processed while I was out

C) Posting another batch of Easter Collection that came in late yesterday afternoon

D) Doing a payment on a pledge for a guy over the phone...which was interrupted by my mouse dying and me having to put the guy on hold while I got new batteries (bit embarrassing, that)

E) Managing to catch up with a priest who dropped off a cash gift to ask him which parish the gift was for (as it didn’t say anywhere on the envelope)

F) Matching a lot of ID numbers to pledge card scans so they could be more easily looked-up in future

G) And moving a payment that had somehow never properly connected to a pledge after a reversal to make it autopay (not sure how it happened, but at least now the pledge shows the right balance!)

*shrug* Nothing particularly exciting, but honestly, I’m fine with that. We’ll see how tomorrow goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to the OXBox RE9 LP with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: MOTORCYCLES and CHAINSAWS! Episode 6!” I pedaled my way through the first 34 minutes tonight, which included –

A) Leon wandering the streets of Raccoon City – encountering some graffiti that read “Graffiti,” throwing a makeshift spear at a zombie’s butt only to not get to him in time to properly hatchet his head off (Andy: “this could have gone better”), and finding a gas station where he could finally get some gas for that generator he found on the roof of the first “detonator parts” building, only to have to find a way to go around and drop into it from above because he wasn’t about to reach through the bars to try and get the gas can sitting right next to the fence, Mike. :p Mike ended up advancing the theory that Capcom saw Silent Hill and went “we want our OWN gray town full of holes for our protagonist to slink through!” which – given the state of Raccoon City, doesn’t feel like a bad guess… (Also, someone HAS done a Resident Evil/Silent Hill crossover, I presume – and now I’m picturing Leon roundhouse-kicking Pyramid Head. XD)

B) Leon, during his wanderings, coming across a BSAA container that inconveniently had a couple of zombies inside – fortunately, there was also an explosive canister nearby he could throw at them and pop to get rid of them quickly. However, immediately afterward, the action had to be put on pause because it was reported that a corner of Jane’s background was visible, rather than being properly green-screened. She got it fixed in a fast-forward section, and Leon was allowed to claim a VERY nice marksman rifle, which he promptly put to use sniping far-away zombies while the OXBoxers answered a question from a commenter about whether “Raccoon City” was “Tanuki City” in Japan (general consensus was no, it was always “Raccoon City” even before localization – besides, “Tanuki City” was way too cute a name for a Resident Evil location).

( Let’s cut it here before it starts getting really long...and really gory, honestly )

2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – got through another page tonight, featuring:

A) Alice telling Mercurio that she was indeed very tempted by that McLusky .50 cal pistol he mentioned and to shoot her an e-mail when he had one so she could swing by and take a look, before saying that she would indeed take the Jaegerspas XV; Mercurio quoted her a price of $500 on it, since they were friends, and even offered to let her put half down now and pay him the rest later. Alice, however, was good for the money – though, interestingly, not because of Victor, but because of Venus. Turns out she’d swung by Confession before heading to Santa Monica and picked up her first “silent partner” payment – hey, Venus offered to pay her, so she was going to take advantage of that!

B) Mercurio commenting that he couldn’t believe that Alice actually took out a member of the Russian mob, and Alice telling him the whole story of how she tricked Boris by pretending to take him up on his offer to kill Venus instead when she first met him, going to Venus and getting her help in faking her death, and then returning to Boris and shanking him after feigning interest in fucking him; Mercurio promptly burst out laughing and told Alice that she had balls, if she’d excuse his language. Alice told him no excuse was necessary – she had enough male Wonderlanders in her head to give her more than one set. :p

C) Alice paying Mercurio for the gun and giving him an extra $100 for ammo, then – as he prepared to stuff everything in a very large brown paper bag so she didn’t immediately freak out everyone on the street – asking if she could ask him a question about being a ghoul; at Cheshire’s go-ahead, she revealed to him that she’d managed to acquire one by feeding a dying man in the clinic her blood (because she didn’t know at the time it only took one drink to make a ghoul – Mercurio was a little embarrassed, but admitted that when he was talking to her about being a ghoul before, he was more concerned with making sure his ribs weren’t escaping his flesh) and that they were navigating the vampire/ghoul bond, so she’d like his opinion on that. Mercurio said that he’d tell her what he could, though he warned that his and LaCroix’s relationship was pretty hands-off – he reported in for his monthly blood donation, LaCroix sent him the occasional e-mail, and other than that, they didn’t really see much of each other. Alice allowed that LaCroix didn’t seem to ever want to spend much time with his lackies, then asked how he handled it when LaCroix was in a bad mood – Mercurio said “by staying the fuck away from him” –

And I left off on Alice clarifying, “But how do you handle the feeling that you have to go and help him?” Next time, Mercurio shall be like “…? The hell are you talking about?” Leading to all sorts of other confusion… Tomorrow, though, I have to whip up a gift fic for my friend Squid, as their birthday is the Saturday after next. We’ll see how that goes then!

3. Watch something on YouTube: ~~No check, but I don’t think anyone is surprised at this point – the Workout Video Write-Ups take ages and there’s no getting around it. Meh.~~ Actually, wait a minute, I did end up watching something as part of chucking stuff in my queue below! I guess my brain figured it didn’t “count” because it was part of the “get my tumblr queues sorted” category. :p More details below!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there wasn’t anything happening over on Valice Multiverse, but I did drop a few things into the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue tonight –

A) A post by rickmakessomeart showing off some designs for BITD NPCs they whipped up for a game they’re going to be DMing soon, including a world-weary demon/ghost insurance salesman, a ghost pugilist (squaring off against the ghost next to him), and a temperance crusader with a banner claiming the ghosts of drunks are worse than the ghosts of sober people – they were all absolutely delightful and I had to have them on my blog :D

B) And a post by yesistolethisurl showing off the video “Discovering Joy in Baldur's Gate 3 | Deleted Scene” by HyperspaceTowel, which in turn showed off an Early Access encounter (or perhaps Hyperspace’s recreation of such, it wasn’t clear) between Shadowheart and a big old “resonance stone” on the Nautiloid! The completed game has a smaller version of the stone in the Act 2 mind flayer colony, which makes people happy but also more vulnerable to psychic damage, with Tav/Durge and companions making in-world comments about it – this Early Access bigger version had a full cutscene attached to it, with the narrator talking about how it inflicts teeth-aching joy and requiring dice rolls to properly study – and pull away from… I took one look at that and was like “well THAT is The Smiler-coded” and dropped it into the queue with some tag notes about how my Tav!Smiler would have had REAL issues pulling themselves away from the thing.

So that was nice!

And I have officially stayed up too late, so I'll add in proper spacing tomorrow morning, plus a bit more detail on my tumblr queue items if I have time. Night all! EDIT 5/6/2026: Spacing and proper queue item descriptions now available!

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Happy Birthday Alice!

Tue, 05 May 2026 04:16:25 GMT

Though it wasn't as good of an Alice birthday as I could have asked for -- I got up a little later than expected; Mom surprised me by bringing in a whole LOAD of groceries after she and Dad went to Wal-Mart and she decided to just stock up on food (rather than getting the few things she actually came for), meaning I lost a good chunk of my morning to having to help her put stuff away (since Dad wasn't really up for it); Dad had a bit of a bad pain day with his neck; and I spent a good portion of the day feeling wound up for no good reason. *sigh* At least the weather was nice and my period finally wrapped up this afternoon... And at least I got pretty much everything I wanted to get done, done:

Tumblr: Just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and I’m pleased to say that I got two things done over there –

A) Before lunch, I managed to make a little progress on my “Valicer Eats God” post (where I’m turning Victor, Alice, and Smiler into muppety PCs from the TTRPG Eat God) – specifically, I organized Alice’s section of the draft to make sure I had a category for everything that you have to decide on during character creation: Traits, Trait Expressions, Appearance, Facets, Creed, Rebellious Art, and Quirk. I also did better write-ups of her “Fluttering Flight,” “Hearty Humors,” and “Menacing Missiles” traits while I was at it. *nods* The post is starting to come together – very slowly, but it’s coming!

B) And, after taking the picture this afternoon, after dinner I made my annual Happy Birthday Alice plushy photo post! Because the traditions must be observed. :p It’s a pretty simple picture, just showing Alice Dolly surrounded by some of the other plushies (including Smileon and Victor Plush, of course) with some millionaire shortbread chunks on her lap (on a napkin, of course) – but I had fun taking it, and I had fun making the post. :) Now I just gotta figure out what I’ll be doing for Smileon’s birthday at the end of the month...hopefully Mom will bake another good treat I can use!

Alice: Madness Returns: I did indeed play through the Cardbridge level of this today, as I indicated I might last night – though it took me a bit to actually get to Cardbridge, as first I had to log into the EA App again (as it had been a while since I touched it), and then I had some issues actually getting the game to start (as my first attempt to launch it saw the game start running but never actually show up on my screen – I had to kill it with the Task Manager and then launch it again to get it to, you know, work). But I got there in the end, and was able to take Alice on a lovely journey through the flying cards of my favorite level in the game – collecting all the teeth, bottles, and memories I could find; peppering every invisible pig snout; and slicing or smashing every paper balloon for its bounty. :) Had a little trouble with That One Door in the second card castle (I’d forgotten that the first time you stand on the platform that opens the door, it plays a little cutscene, which threw off my timing and meant Alice didn’t get over there before the door closed again), and missed a jump here and there, but overall it was a very chill and pleasant time, running around and enjoying the beautiful blue sky and the fun castles and the cards soaring through the air. :) Ahhhh. I would have taken a screenshot for you all, as is my wont lately, but unfortunately the EA App has no dedicated “screenshot” button like Steam, and the two other methods I looked up for trying to take a screenshot didn’t work (hitting the “Print Screen” key just knocked me out of the game for a second, and ALT+F1 did nada). Meh. At least images from this game aren’t hard to find online, I suppose!

Writing: I am happy to state that, as of this afternoon, “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” is officially off the ground! Wrote up the first page today, which featured:

A) Mercurio welcoming Alice back to “the worst place in L.A.” as she swung by his place to see what he had available weapons-wise before going to Hollywood – Alice reminded him that he didn’t have to tell her how much he hated Santa Monica, as he’d already done so last night. He retorted that it bore repeating. XD He then bitched about how much he’d rather work Downtown, but that LaCroix was insistent that he stay here to “keep an eye on things,” mentioning that he was pretty sure LaCroix just didn’t want to look at him – Alice declared that “his loss,” but said that probably the Prince was interested in knowing what was going on with Therese and Jeannette. Mercurio allowed that was a possibility, but then admitted there actually wasn’t much going on between them lately, despite the fact that he’d heard the Anarchs were happy to acknowledge Jeannette as a Baron in opposition to Therese getting named Prince of the city – he thought they would have been tearing into each other already, but apparently not. Alice commented that maybe they were seeing who was loyal to who first and consolidating power, while making a mental note to maybe swing by the Asylum and tell the ladies to be a little more openly hostile to each other in the hopes that it would keep her on their good side. Might be useful in the future! (And indeed, I’m already having thoughts about the reason Alice’s haven in Santa Monica is still safe in the final act of the game, despite a Blood Hunt being called on her ass, is because Therese and Jeannette declared it to be so…)

B) Mercurio telling her about some of the goodies he had on offer, including a Jaegerspas VX (a semi-automatic shotgun that fires a bit like an assault rifle) and a Dragon’s Breath shotgun (fires white phosphorous rounds, which does make it the War Crimes gun but also very effective against vampires) while taking her into his bedroom and showing her the secret gun closet he had in there with his stock (you gotta make do when you don’t have a video game character’s inventory!). Alice was not interested in the Dragon’s Breath, having had enough experiences with things burning around her lately, but was vaguely interested in the Spas VX – and very impressed with Mercurio’s inventory, comparing it to how much stuff Fat Larry had managed to cram into his van. Mercurio had a laugh about that, admitting that he’d traded with the guy a couple of times in the past and found him weird, but fun – Alice agreed with that assessment, adding that he was a little too eager to get into the middle of gang warfare (remembering her run to get that briefcase from the Tong/Operator handoff a few nights ago). Mercurio told her conspiratorially that was nothing, he’d heard that Larry’s girlfriend had had a sugar daddy in the Russian mob operating out of the Empire Arms, until an assassin named The Ghost or something used her to get close to him and kill him, leaving the second-in-command in charge and wanting nothing to do with her –

Cue Alice going, “Oh, that’s good, actually – I was worried that the group was going to take revenge for Boris’s death on poor Venus, even after I bullshitted I was an assassin. The Specter, not The Ghost, by the way.” XD Poor Mercurio was very “wtf” for a moment, as you might imagine!

C) Mercurio hearing the story of how Alice became Boris’s assassin (essentially “Venus hired me to kill the guy she was forced to fuck on the regular to keep her club, and would probably knock your block off if she heard you calling him her ‘sugar daddy’”) and pushing the Spas XV on her as a necessary bit of kit if she’s going to be doing shit like that, telling her all the gun’s stats and good points ~~as adapted from its description in the game/on the VTMB wiki~~. Alice admitted that, given her current shotgun was the one she took off Bishop Vick, she probably could use an upgrade – but it was rather big, making it harder to carry around. Mercurio informed her that you needed to go big if you wanted a powerful gun – but then said that, if she wanted a good pistol, he could get her a nice McLusky .50 Caliber if she gave him a bit of time…

And that’s where I left off for the day. Tomorrow, we’ll write a bit more on this, with Alice deciding whether or not she wants the Spas XV, then asking Mercurio how he copes with feeling like he’s got to go help LaCroix when his domitor is in a mood...only for Mercurio to be like “???” as he does NOT have that particular ghoul merit, unlike a certain Victor Van Dort...

Workout: As you might have expected, today’s workout was Alice-themed, with me pedaling my way through –

A) “Alice Madness Returns: The Story Explained” by SuperHorrorBro! A summary of the plot of Alice: Madness Returns (along with all the relevant bits of the original American McGee’s Alice to explain who exactly Alice was and how she’d ended up in the situation she was in at the beginning of A:MR), with our SuperHorrorBro, Mike, taking things level by level and really highlighting how much of the game was just Alice being shunted from one Wonderlander to the next in her search for answers about what the fuck was going on. :p He also:

I. Highlighted all the most important characters (and even some of the less-important ones, like Nurse Witless) and their relationship to Alice (like how the Cheshire Cat is her guide of sorts) to make sure everybody understood who was who

II. Showed off how Wonderland, as part of Alice’s psyche, often mirrored what she’d just experienced in the real world in some way (like the Deluded Depths taking inspiration from The Mangled Mermaid)

III. Made sure to show each Liddell Door memory (aka the five that you have to get to progress the game) and how they slowly revealed more and more about what actually happened during the night of the fire (which previous summaries I’ve watched don’t always do – hell, one skipped over the Deluded Depths level ENTIRELY if I recall correctly)

IV. Pointed out things like how, once you realize what a monster Bumby is, the way you fight the Dollgirls – breaking their defenses, tearing off their clothes, then smashing open their hearts – is probably symbolic of what Bumby’s been doing to the children in the real world (using hypnosis to destroy their resistance, prostituting them, and destroying their innocence)

V. And explained the ending as ultimately hopeful – because while Alice may never be fully free from her madness (as evidenced by Wonderland and London blending together into Londerland in the final minute or so when she emerges from Moorgate Station), she’s managed to discover the truth about her past, avenge her family and the children Bumby abused, and generally grow up from a scared child to a woman who can take control of her life again. She may always suffer from hallucinations and never be truly “normal,” but she’s still on a better path than she was. :)

*nods* It was a good video! Fairly short and to-the-point (no getting bogged down in detail, like I often do), but dedicated to helping the watcher understand just what was going on during the game. I quite enjoyed it! Thanks Mike. :)

B) And both “Alice: Madness Returns - Launch Trailer (PC, PS3, Xbox 360)” by Gamespot and “American McGee's Alice - Trailer [HQ]” by Alice Liddell! Because I had some time to kill after finish the above video and watching both trailers for both games filled that time nicely. Plus they’re both excellent trailers – the AMA one in particular is always going to be one of my favorites for how atmospheric and weird it is. :)

YouTube: Because my Workout Video Write-Up actually didn’t take most of the night tonight, I was free to watch something that’s been sitting in my Subs for a few days now – “Fun With Shorts: So You're Going to High School” by Josh Way! Part 1 of a short from the 1950s featuring a kid with a pretty damn thick New York accent (not sure of the specific neighborhood) talking about visiting the different specialized high schools kids could choose to attend back then to learn more about them in his class! Including ones with specialized programs for carpentry and all the other trades related to house-building; ones with four-year music programs; ones for future automotive experts; and even ones with programs in graphic design. And because it was set in the 50s, we got stuff like men in three-piece suits in shop classes, watching molten metal be poured into a mold; the kid pronouncing “pies” in the weirdest way possible while talking about how excited the boys were to see the results of the girls’ home ec classes; and the kid being absolutely STUNNED at the idea that, in one high school, BOYS were being taught to SEW. Though, thankfully, only the girls took the interpretive dance class, so all was still right with the world gender roles wise. :p As you might imagine, Josh had some fun with this one, noting that the main reason the kid thought watching molten metal cool in a mold was the best thing was because it WAS the 50s; sarcastically noting that it was okay for a girl to be into electronics and “betray her gender” because she never tried to show off; and being like “did you just ‘and the rest’ Math and English?” when the kid talked about how their other general education classes were supposed to be important too, putting those two classes last in the list. It was amusing stuff, and I’m looking forward to the second half, whenever it may pop up!

Other: I did indeed read some Alice fic before the day ended –

I. The very short “Don’t Leave” by Skullsz, a new fic on AO3 featuring Alice having a bad day and Nan Sharpe taking care of her (a little clunky, but damn if the opening line “Alice is reminded constantly that she is a burden.” and closing line “Alice shuddered, wishing her family was alive, wishing she was dead, wishing, wishing…for it all to stop.” didn’t hit me RIGHT in the damn feels)

II. And the longer “A Distant Epilogue” by atree, an old fic in my FF.net favorites featuring Alice visiting Wonderland one last time at the very end of her life, and running off to explore it forever as she dies in the real world (it’s a very sweet fic that is indeed a fitting epilogue to Alice’s story).

So that was nice. :) Really wanted to make sure I got to that!

*nods* Yeah -- glad I was able to check everything off my "celebrating Alice's birthday" list if nothing else. :) And now it's time for me to head to bed, as I do have work tomorrow morning. Meh. We'll see what's happened at the office since I've been gone -- night all!

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Fallouty Sunday

Mon, 04 May 2026 05:25:28 GMT

Also a rather chilly and icky one -- another day in the 50s under partially cloudy skies. It's not been a particularly nice start to May this weekend, I gotta say! At least tomorrow is supposed to be nicer weather...but anyway, yes, today proved to be a proper Fallout Sunday, with plenty of New Vegas goodness -- though a little Baldur's Gate III got mixed in there too:

Tumblr: Didn’t have anything going on over on Valice Multiverse today, but I did accomplish exactly what I was hoping to accomplish over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this morning – namely, I finished writing up my “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 3” post! Specifically –

A) I wrote up the scene where Smiler figures out that their new false eye can see invisible enemies! As Auntie Ethel turned out to be the earliest-appearing enemy who is almost guaranteed to go invisible that I could find, the scene became about the beginning of the fight with her, with Ethel drinking an invisibility potion and trying to sneak off to her underground tunnel while the party was busy dealing with redcaps in her teahouse. Alice asked where she’d gone while Victor noted he could still sense her presence (“Ghost Mind” technically senses more than just ghosts) but he couldn’t pinpoint where she was –

And then Smiler pointed at her and was like “she’s right there?” Ethel froze while Alice and Victor were both like “??? We don’t see anything…” leaving Smiler quite confused until they thought to close their right eye. Cue them laughing as they realized why Volo called their new false eye a “superior relic,” Victor going “wait, you can see invisible things with that?!” and Alice declaring that she did NOT approve of Smiler getting a benefit after letting Volo stab out their old eye with an ice pick. XD Sorry, Alice, but them’s the breaks!

B) After finding some videos with the dialogue I needed, I revised the scene where the Emperor tells the group that the only way to dominate the Netherbrain now would be to either give him the Netherstones or become mind flayers themselves...only to have Smiler go “but we already have an illithid ally” and hold up Us. XD Basically I just adapted as much of the Emperor’s canonical end speech as possible to the scene and cut out some extraneous fluff that didn’t need to be there. Good times!

C) I added links to all the videos that I referenced for dialogue purposes, because sharing your sources is only polite~

D) And I finished off the tags, talking about how certain scenes were inspired by moments I’d recently experienced in my own game (specifically the encounter with Timber the squirrel and saving Mirkon from the Harpies) and how I believe a mod letting Us use the Netherstones so you didn’t have to turn anyone else into a mind flayer would be an excellent joke mod. XD

So now that post is ready to get tossed into a queue! :D Hooray for making progress on some of these suckers!

Fallout: New Vegas: My return to the Mojave today saw Courier Victor successfully get into both the Mojave Express office and the Vikki & Vance casino – but, unfortunately, he was unsuccessful at getting himself a new friend because his skills aren’t quite up to snuff yet. Boo. :( Here are the details –

A) I picked up where I’d left off last time, with Victor hanging out behind the Vikki & Vance, having just wasted some convicts...rather at the expense of his current hat and armor, both of which were in rough shape. Not wanting Victor to be without protection, I thus had him poke around the corpses/ash piles of the fallen, to see what they were wearing and if any of it would be any good for him. As it turned out, all three men had been dressed in Merc Veteran Outfits, which offered 4 DT (or possibly DR, I don’t remember), +10 to the Unarmed skill, and +5 to the Survival skill – and two had been dressed in Hockey Masks (as you may remember from my last report), which offered an addition 1 DT and +5 to the Unarmed skill. Now, Unarmed is not Victor’s thing, and technically his leather armor had better DT (or DR) than the Merc Veteran outfit...but with three outfits on offer, I knew I could use two to repair the third and get a better-quality set of clothes for Victor to wear, at least for the moment. I also had a vague hope that maybe the hockey masks could be used to repair his hat, as they were both technically classed as headwear. I thus collected all of the outfits and masks; combined them together to get one Merc Veteran outfit and one Hockey Mask of the highest quality I could currently manage; determined that no, the mask could NOT be used to repair Victor’s Suave Gambler’s hat (booo – I shall have to find another hat); and slapped both the Merc Veteran outfit and hockey mask on for the DT. And the end result –

...uh, does not look good. XD Like, yes, he’s got decent protection, and a set of clothes that isn’t going to fall to pieces if it takes a few shots now, but DAMN do I not like the look of this stuff on him. Especially the hockey mask – maybe it’s just the angle of the shot, but it makes his head look bizarrely thin. O.o We’ll say he’s trying to disguise himself as a fellow convict for now and get him out of this stuff once we can find some more decent armor! And a hat to repair his ~~Indy fedora~~ Suave Gambler’s Hat.

( The further adventures of ridiculously-dressed Courier Victor below )

Workout: In a surprise twist this weekend, not only did Jon of Many A True Nerd upload the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode early enough for me to watch it with my workout, it was short enough that I was able to watch the entire thing during my workout! Did not expect that, gotta say. :p But yes, my return to the bike this week saw me pedaling my way through “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 40 - End of the Road!” The penultimate episode of this series saw our favorite Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot –

A) Grab a holotape for Veronica from Father Elijah’s terminal in his bunker (along with showing off how he’d hacked the Sierra Madre’s systems to regularly send him 100 worth of Sierra Madre Chips in a dropbox there, which can be used in the vending machine he set up to purchase such goodies like weapon repair kits, doctor’s bags, and stimpacks) and bring it to her at Trading Post 188 so she could unlock it! Which involved a VERY fiddly process of exhausting everyone one of her potential dialogue options regarding Father Elijah before P. D. could actually tell her that she’d found Elijah in the Sierra Madre, that she’d had to lock him in a pre-War vault because he was an asshole, and that she had a holotape from him that needed unlocking. Because New Vegas is an amazing game, but it has its quirks. Anyway, Veronica was happy enough to unlock it, and asked if she could read it afterwards –

And P. D. went, “nope, he entrusted it to me.” Despite the fact that it was clearly labeled “For Veronica” and P. D. had opened the whole “unlocking” conversation with “I have something to pass onto you.” An annoyed Veronica was like “fine, keep it, I won’t ask again,” and P. D. happily read the holotape herself and got the “Elijah’s Ramblings” perk! A special perk that for some reason boosts the critical hit damage of specifically melee weapons (despite Elijah himself being a guns and explosives kind of guy) by 50% (the game claims it’s 150%, but Jon said that was just bad phrasing). Jon is pretty sure that the main reason this perk exists is to make melee weapons more viable compared to unarmed weapons, which tend to have all sorts of crazy bonuses – it didn’t QUITE work, because when he compared the Protonic Inversal Axe’s ludicrous critical damage with the perk to the Ballistic Fist’s ludicrous critical damage without it, the Ballistic Fist still won out just because it cost less AP to use and thus could be used more often in a single VATS round, but it was still a nice bonus for P. D. to have! Especially since Jon knew she’d need to use that axe against one robot in the gauntlet to come… (Oh, and if you DO let Veronica read the holotape, SHE gets her own version of the perk and ends up a much stronger companion. But as P. D. doesn’t do companions unless she has to...sorry Veronica! I’ll let you have it in my playthrough.)

B) Go looking for Turbo out in the wasteland to help bolster her supplies of Implant GRX (since she only got five doses a day and all)...and then, when she couldn’t find any at any of her usual vendors, pop back to Big MT to grab some Cazador poison glands from Dr. Borous, grab some turpentine from the locker in Elijah’s bunker where she left a bunch of extra stuff that was weighing her down once she got all her things back, and pick some Broc flowers growing in the Crimson Caravan headquarters before heading to her usual campfire in Red Rock Canyon to brew up three more doses for herself! Bringing her total of regular Turbo up to five. Yay!

C) Visit her penthouse in the Lucky 38 to drop off some unneeded kit (like the Bear Trap Fist+ that got her through “Dead Money”) and pick up a very important item – Dr. Mobius’s glasses. Why did she need these? Well, because they boosted her Explosives skill by 10, in addition to the usual Intelligence-boosting effect. Why did she need to boost her Explosives skill?

Because the final stretch of “Lonesome Road’s” actual, well, road that she needed to complete had a few nasty little satchel charges on it! What are those? Well, Jon described the humble satchel charge as “a frag mine on steroids,” explaining that they did much more damage and went off a lot faster than your standard frag mine. And because Jon never had P. D. take the “Light Step” perk (which, yes, he did regret rather a bit at this point), she was going to either have to sprint past them or disarm them when she came across them. Meaning she needed every extra little bit of Explosives skill that she could get. *shakehead* We TOLD you to take “Light Step,” Jon! You did this to yourself!

D) Having gathered everything she needed (including the Sierra Madre Armor, Reinforced, since it was the best light armor in the game for straight up DT) and gotten all the bonuses she could possibly get, travel to the California Sunset Drive-In and sneak up to the entrance to the Divide from there! Which, for once, did not include encountering any pesky coyotes along the way – the mum and pups that have so plagued her existence in this part of the world didn’t show up this time. They must have known it was close to the finale. :P Anyway, after slipping into the Divide through the Canyon Wreckage, P. D. got her health back to where it should be (as Jon didn’t want to fiddle with it until he was back in the DLC so he wouldn’t get auto-healed again), waited near the entrance until it started to get dark, then slapped on a Stealth Boy and fast-traveled back to the Third Street Municipal Building to take on the final stretch between her and Ulysses’s Temple. Said stretch involved:

I. Going due north to the Cave of the Abbadon, sneaking past a bunch of Marked Men with the help of her Stealth Boy, braving some rads with the help of some Rad-X, and finally blowing up another warhead in her path (probably quietly relieved that enemies cannot hear the laser detonator, nor see the beam it gives off)

II. Sneaking past all the tunnelers in the cave with the help of her Stealth Boy – fortunately it wasn’t a large group, though one did make Jon very nervous by coming straight at P. D. for a bit before turning around and finally going the other way

III. Entering the buried buildings, using another Stealth Boy just to make sure she stayed invisible long enough to get into the temple, then climbing the stairs and traversing the ruined apartments – with a brief interruption from LR’s ED-E, who popped up to play some relevant-to-his-personal-history audio logs of watching a show about a brave little eyebot named RALPHIE; P. D. encouragingly told him that they needed to “fly far and fly fast” like in the show if they wanted to reach the end of the Divide, which prompted some determined beeping from ED-E and allowed them to continue on together :)

IV. Leaving the buried buildings – and promptly learning from Ulysses that this whole thing had actually just been a ruse so she’d bring ED-E close enough to his temple for him to use some override codes to force the poor eyebot to come to him so he could use it to do a massive nuke launch at the NCR (it’s payback for the Courier destroying the Divide, however unknowingly – we’ll probably get into it in the finale); ED-E was thus forced to fly off, leaving P. D. alone once more (good thing she likes it that way)

V. Slapping on some Med-X and drinking an Atomic Cocktail in preparation for dealing with Blade – the last named Marked Man between her and Ulysses, and one of the few enemies who plays by “the game really wants us to fight so I get to at least sort of detect you no matter how stealthy you are” rules...and who also has plasma grenades to go along with the big old blade that gives him his name – then sneaking across the ruined landscape past some deathclaws; blowing up another warhead in her way and sprinting through the rads because she’d just gone into [CAUTION] and she wanted to keep moving; circling her way around a big lake made by a broken pipe and into a nearby destroyed building; blowing up the final warhead in her way (which also took out a nearby satchel charge, yay) from said building; heading out and up the nearby incline, then doing three doses of Implant GRX to help her sprint past everything else in her way; disarming a satchel charge in her path; sprinting past Blade himself, who was hanging out on some of the rubble and somehow had NOT managed to detect her; running down a bunch of stairs in a ruined building and then hastily taking out TWO satchel charges right next to each other; traversing one final chunk of ruined architecture; and finally leaping and running past a final Marked Man camp to get into the temple

Whew – tense stuff! Especially when it looked like P. D. wouldn’t get one of those final satchel charges...good thing she had the time-slowing powers of Turbo on her side, seriously!

E) Enter Ulysses’s Temple, sneak past another Marked Man in the entrance, then head through the hallways into the side room overlooking the Eyebot Maintenance Area to kill the sentry bot inside with her newly-powered-up Protonic Inversal Axe! Which – was SLIGHTLY harder than it looked, as the sentry bot actually did not immediately die from the critical hit she inflicted on it – it took a couple more hits to actually take it down. Jon was very “?! How the FLIP did you survive that?!” about it, as you might expect. :P But it did die, leaving P. D. free to access the maintenance terminal it was guarding and open the door into the main corridor –

And NOT the door into the Eyebot Maintenance Area. Because, unfortunately, one of the rules of YOLO is “no companions unless you absolutely HAVE to have them” – and you don’t NEED the LR ED-E to face off against Ulysses. You can’t get the best ending if you do (because you need ED-E to make sure the nukes don’t get fired at all, instead of just choosing where they’re going to hit), but ED-E’s presence is not necessary. So P. D. straight-up abandoned him. :(

...and then she took the elevator up to Ulysses and got the “Lonesome Road” perk for leaving ED-E behind. Which gives her 10% more accuracy in VATS and makes all her attacks inflict 10% more damage so long as she has no companions. Meaning she was basically rewarded for abandoning ED-E. >( Which – okay, I KNEW this was a thing, and I KNEW Jon was going to do it because it was part of the rules and also why wouldn’t he want that perk, but still. It feels wrong! You should always want to save ED-E!

And so the episode ended with P. D. in the final room of the DLC, ready to face Ulysses and the final attack by his Marked Men! Which will be terrifying because this fight is NOT built for a melee-only character, even if she can talk down Ulysses himself. So yeah, next week – Grand Finale, where P. D. either proves herself the superior Courier and ends the run in triumph, or falls to the might of the Marked Men. I can’t wait. :D

*nods* Yes, very Fallout-y indeed. Now I should probably consider going to bed -- tomorrow, the day shall be Alice-y, as it's her birthday! :) So my goals tomorrow are to get the usual Plushie Birthday pic done and up on tumblr; start "Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood's Deluded Depths" as that's an Alice-focused fic (she'll be hitting up Mercurio for good guns, as one does); maybe see about playing some Alice: Madness Returns (Cardbridge level sounds nice and chill); read an Alice-centric fic; and watch an Alice-centric video (possibly with my workout). Hopefully these are all achievable goals -- we shall see. Night all!

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Cleaning & Videos Saturday

Sun, 03 May 2026 06:21:35 GMT

Yeah, this was not my most productive day -- but then again, I didn't plan for it to be, so I cannot be annoyed by that fact. In fact, I technically accomplished MORE than I set out to do:

Cleaning: ‘Twas a pretty typical Cleaning Saturday (though, happily, Mom finished all the laundry while I was still dusting, so I was able to just dump my sheets and PJs in the hamper this morn) – started around 10:40 AM or so; completed all my dusting and about half of the Swiffering before lunch at a little after 1:20 PM (parents were out this morning buying more tea for Mom at Job Lot), then finishing up the Swiffering and the vacuuming between 2 and 2:25 PM. ...I then sat around watching the second half of Jon of Many a True Nerd’s “Fallout 4 Is Better Than You Think” video essay (ironically the half covering the game’s many problems) on my phone because I really wanted to finish it after listening to the rest while I cleaned, but – well. I said today was primarily going to be a video catch-up day, so… :P

YouTube: I didn’t get to ALL the videos I wanted to watch today, thanks to spending the afternoon working on finishing off yesterday’s entry, but I did get to the ones I most wanted to watch –

A) First up was a YouTube Short that I spotted in my Recommendeds and decided I was sufficiently intrigued by to watch – “More people finished honor mode than got this #baldursgate3” by good old SuNStereO! A very short clip of someone’s Tav (or possibly Durge, it wasn’t specified) playing their lute in what appeared to be Baldur’s Gate, drawing a crowd, then ending the performance and receiving general applause and a bunch of thrown gold from the NPCs. And, as a result, earning what is apparently rarest achievement in BG3 – “Busker: Earn a hundred gold from playing sweet, sweet music in a single playthrough.” Which, at the time that clip was recorded, was an achievement only 2.6% of players had. Given only Bards start with musical instrument proficiency, and it’s pretty damn hard for the other classes to get (you either have to help Alfira finish her song a specific way or take the “Performer” feat), I’m not surprised this is a pretty rare achievement! ...that being said, earning it sounds like Smiler’s jam, so I’ll have to see if I can pick it up during my own playthrough. :D

B) Then it was over to OXBox for the latest list video: “7 Most DISAPPOINTING Plot Twists: Commenter Edition!” Jane and Mike going through another set of video games that were unable to pull off their plot twists, as suggested by comments on the last game. Oh, Batman: Arkham Knight revealed the titular Knight to be none other than Jason Todd, aka the Robin who died, aka Red Hood? Yeah, half the fanbase already guessed that because it seemed obvious, and the other half didn’t know Jason’s comic history enough to care, so... Oh, Sea Of Thieves revealed at the end of Season 6 that the killer of DeMarco Sing, son of the Pirate Lord, was the Siren Queen – a Season 3 villain who the players ALREADY KILLED? Yeah, okay, nobody guessed that one, but everyone was like “wait, how did she come back to life?” and “What the hell, we spent all the time following the clues for this?” and “WAIT A MINUTE, THE PIRATE LORD IS GOING TO KILL HER SO WE DON’T EVEN GET A BOSS FIGHT?!” (Yeah, she does genuinely get killed again in a cutscene by that guy, not the player. Boo!) And oh, Star Ocean: Until The End Of Time revealed that the protagonist’s whole universe was a giant video game, and the reason it was in trouble was because it wasn’t making enough money and the server was shutting down? ...okay, this one is a little more “your mileage may vary,” because while some might think making everything virtual cheapens everything that came before, I think that’s actually a pretty decent twist. Though maybe less suited to a JRPG (which has all the characters survive in the end despite their universe being deleted for unclear “managed to grow beyond being 1s and 0s” reasons) and more suited to a horror game. Or a Black Mirror episode.

C) And finally, it was over to C. M. Alongi’s channel to watch “CaFae Latte Season 85 - TikTok Compilation” – because, yes, the hiatus is officially over and the compilations are officially back, baby! And this one covered:

I. Oscar coming back from his brief stint in jail – revealing that the seraph agent who was chasing him before got caught up in Bob’s mass curse and fired for embezzling before he could press any charges – and getting caught up on the current situation; Bob told him things had calmed down some around the cafe but that poor Cyrus was still swamped. JC asked about the Hotel Jacaranda situation and if Cyrus had been needed there after all – turns out partially, as Bob explained that, after Herla left one of his witches there to replace the one snatched up by ICE, Cyrus managed to get the original witch freed. She also threw in that the hotel was serving as a refuge and helping fundraise for Havenwatch, a real-life charity helping those affected by the current crisis (letting us fourth-wall viewers know they need gas, gift cards, and just plain old cash, GoFundMe’s in the description). And then Cyrus walked in...and revealed that he was handing in his two-week notice. Cue general shock. :O

( We all know the CaFae Latte write-ups are some of the longest )

Tumblr: To my own surprise, I actually put something up on both of my tumblrs this night –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I reblogged a post by silicon65 of Gef the Talking Moongoose, going on about how he wasn’t evil (but he could be, if he wanted to, and could kill all the listeners, but he wouldn’t) – Gef being a character in the eldritch horror Valice fanfic “Beneath A Broken Sky” by thesatiricaldemon (sort of Victor’s necromantic familiar, in fact), I reblogged it pretty much just to add the tag “#look Satirical it's ya boi (and BABS Victor's boy too)” XD Because that is what friends do, dang it. :p

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I answered the ask I couldn’t get to last night – from one thecovenwars, stating that “sometimes writing is just watching characters do something phenomenally stupid and then writing up the incident report.” XD I decided that one deserved a meta answer and had Cuddlepile!Victor express the hope that that wasn’t how I saw writing my Valice and Valicer stories – his Alice commented that it probably depended on which universe and which particular story I was writing, with the matching Smiler adding that if any verse was going to be hit by this, it would be Valicer In The Dark, whose stories were partly the product of dice rolls. Cue VITD!Smiler yelling over that I had promised them that they’d always successfully complete the score, at least. XD I thought it was funny!

And I have stayed up a bit later than I intended to get this done, so I really need to go to bed now. Goals for tomorrow include working more on my tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (hopefully finishing up the VITD Meets BG3 Volume 3 post); playing some Fallout: New Vegas and seeing if I can get Victor a friend in ED-E by visiting the Mojave Express office; and keeping up with the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode -- if there is one this week. Depends on how Jon's feeling, I suppose! If I can get anything else done, that'll be a bonus. *nods* Night all!

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Rather Nice May Day

Sat, 02 May 2026 05:48:13 GMT

The weather was pretty good -- mostly sunny and in the 60s; Dad got a good report from the doctors today when he got his immunotherapy (the tumors have shrunk a lot...though he's got some shit going on with his neck that nobody can figure out, to everyone's frustration); and -- despite my period attempting to fuck with my brain -- I accomplished pretty much everything I wanted to get done:

Tumblr: Well, I technically had something going on on both my tumblrs today, but I wasn’t able to get to the ask over on Valice Multiverse in time – it’s just going to have to wait until tomorrow. However, over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I got some stuff done – specifically, I spent the time before lunch working on the “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 3” post in my drafts! Because, well, I’d like to finish it sometime this century. XD Today’s edits consisted of:

A) Revising the “Smiler tells Shadowheart never to tell Alice about Sharrans willingly giving up their memories in worship of their goddess” scene! Because when I watched a video showing off Shadowheart telling a Tav about Shar worship (mentioned way down below in the “YouTube” section), I discovered that Shadowheart never actually mentions Sharrans giving up their memories as worship, as I had her say in the original scene. The new version instead has Smiler spot the line about a Sharran Cleric willingly giving up her memories in the book “The Unclaimed” (which details how that same cleric was never actually claimed by Shar to join her in the afterlife when she died), ask Shadowheart about it – and, when she confirmed that some Sharrans do indeed wipe their minds as a sign of devotion, then telling her that Alice can never learn that or she’d try to kill Shar. :p (Honestly, I think we should let Alice have a crack at the goddess – badass as she is, she’d probably WIN.)

B) Writing up a scene where the Valicer trio smell something roasting in the tiefling camp, which Wyll confirms is rat – and getting super excited because they’ve missed a good rat skewer (with Alice admitting she’d started to think of Mr. Dibbler’s fare fondly). Cue an astonished Astarion being like “you ENJOY eating rat??” –

And Smiler telling him that rat is a pretty staple part of the Duskwallian diet, because “we don’t have these ‘cows’ you have, remember?” Astarion admitted he’d forgotten how weird their world was for a moment, and Alice told him, “If you think eating rat is weird, remind us to tell you about surprise loaf sometime.” XD I REALLY wanted to do a scene with the gang weirding at least one of the native BG3ers out with their love of eating rat, and this was the best way I could think of to do it! (Especially since I’m pretty sure Astarion in particular would associate having to eat – or, in his case, drink – rats with being at a low point in your life…)

C) Revising the scene where Victor ends up saving not only Mirkon, but Alice and Smiler (and the rest of the struggling party) from the Harpies’ song by unleashing his own Leviathan-summoning song on them – this one didn’t see any major changes, I just tweaked things to flow better and added in a few more lines to really sell that poor Victor was the only one who was fully unaffected by the Harpy’s magic music...and to emphasize how ANGRY he was when he decided to show the Harpies how it felt to have someone sing a deadly song at you. Because this is DEFINITELY set after he nearly got lured off a dock by a leviathan in my head. The scene ends on a funny note (with Gale asking Wyll if that was Hadar, and Wyll emphatically replying “NO IT WAS NOT”), but I can assure you Victor has a breakdown immediately afterward!

D) And making one small change to the “Smiler asks Wyll about false eye care” after confirming I’d gotten the one canonical Wyll line I slipped in wrong – he welcomes Tavs who got an eye surgery to the “League of the Lone Eye,” not the “League of the One Eye” like I originally wrote. Gotta keep things accurate!

So that was good! Still gotta write up the scene where Smiler discovers their Volo-granted false eye can see invisible creatures, and revise the one where Smiler tells the Emperor “we don’t need you to channel the power of the Netherstones – we have Us,” but some solid progress was made today, hooray.

...and I'm sorry, the rest of it is going to have to be posted tomorrow, because it is 1:45 AM here and I am tired. *shakehead* It's frustrating, sometimes, how long it takes to write everything up... Though I'm almost done with both the BG3 session (short version: Karlach recruited, but my poor sense of direction meant no Paladin fight) and the writing session (short version: Slugs taken care of, gang looking for final tripwire). Just didn't have time to finish them because I was trying to juggle other things too! At least my goals for tomorrow are simple -- clean my room and catch up on some videos I want to watch (including the OXBox list, that bartender making Nuka-Cola, and -- if it's up -- the next CaFae Latte compilation). Night all! EDIT 5/2/2026: Okay, I'm rested and ready to finish this thing off -- here's the rest of what I did yesterday:

Writing: Did another page of edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” after lunch, as I indicated I would – today’s editing session featured –

A) Kasimir thanking Victor for getting Slugs to back down, then asking him if there were any more clockwork men they had to worry about, because if so he really wanted to know now rather than later – Victor assured him there weren’t, then apologized for not saying anything sooner, stating simply that it’s been – such a day. Kasimir allowed that he had asked Victor to hold off until they were past the mosaic, and that he hadn’t expected to fall either, as he was normally better at prowling (a nod to the fact that, despite having the best Prowl dice and leading the group action, he actually was one of the two people who failed the roll – the other being Smiler, hence why Smiler got dragged down with him when he fell) – Smiler kindly reminded him that he was working under unusual circumstances with a bum leg, so they could forgive him for having an accident.

B) Smiler then asking Victor what was the next trap they had to avoid, and Victor explaining that it was another tripwire – which, happily, was the last trap they needed to get past, but, unhappily, was as hard to spot as the first one AND was in a different place to trip up thieves who thought they had the measure of the place. An annoyed Kasimir asked if he could find it without setting it off, prompting Victor to get down on his hands and knees to try – though he admitted he’d need a minute, as he wasn’t 100% sure where it was (with Alice noting that it being darker down this end of the hallway couldn’t help in that regard, and asking if the dim light was a deliberate measure to trip up thieves or just his parents being cheap when it came to the lights – Victor’s answer was “yes”). Which then inspired him to ask how long they’d been in the hallway, as he didn’t know how long slumber essence lasts and didn’t want the guards outside waking up mid-search. Fortunately, Smiler, resident alchemist, was able to assure him that the guards wouldn’t be waking up for a WHILE, as slumber essence is strong stuff and only gets stronger when mixed with other intoxicants –

And, being a helpful sort, was also only too happy to get down on their hands and knees too to help him find the damn wire. Alice also joined them in their crawl, while Kasimir and Barnaby demurred, as they were both done with crouching for the moment – Kasimir on account of his knee, and Barnaby because he’d already ruined the pleats in his trousers. XD Alice told Barnaby to keep an eye out for trouble instead, then, causing him to be like “you’re ordering me around? I could make your life very hard if I wanted to, you know!” –

And then Alice called his bluff by asking if he ACTUALLY wanted to do that, and he admitted he actually didn’t care that much, because he was too rich for what the lower classes thought of him to matter. Alice very reluctantly allowed that was probably true. XD Oh Barnaby, you’re such a dick…

C) And Alice asking what would happen if someone did spot them down there, and Kasimir revealing he actually had something for that eventuality – a smoke bomb that Edvard had worked up for him! A simple gray sphere covered in holes that, when smashed on the ground, filled the area with smoke. Barnaby instantly objected to Kasimir using this anywhere near him on the basis that it would smell absolutely awful, while Alice pointed out the more relevant problem of “if the hallway ends up full of smoke, we won’t be able to see the traps we need to avoid.” Victor agreed with her and asked Kasimir to hold onto that for an emergency, which Kasimir slightly reluctantly did.

Nice – feels good to keep making progress on this! Next time, we’ll get the gang over the tripwire and to the door into the actual vault...which will have one final surprise for them that really shouldn’t be a surprise…

Baldur’s Gate III: I returned to the Risen Road of Faerûn today, as I said I would last night – and I am pleased to state that Smiler did indeed recruit themselves a Karlach! :D Though I was unable to face off against the fake Paladins of Tyr pursuing her, as I’d also hoped to do, because I was once again betrayed by my utter lack of a sense of direction and inability to properly read map markers. ^^; Ah well – got a lot of good dialogue out of the party, at least! Here, let me tell you all about it –

A) I picked up right where I’d left off last time, with the gang finally within sight of Karlach, huddling on her little patch of rock down, down, down by the river. :p Naturally, Priority Number One was finally adding her to the party, so I had Smiler and company proceed down the little hill and around to the log bridge leading to her tiny island ledge – stopping briefly along the way to pick up some mergrass growing by the river bank, 3 gold out of a pile of bones next to a blood puddle at the bottom of the hill, and some more mergrass and belladonna growing by the bridge itself. Because collecting goodies is always Priority Naught-Point-Five. :p Anyway, once their new plants were safely stored away in their alchemy pouch, Smiler then headed across the bridge to Karlach to trigger her recruitment cutscene –

( And to trigger this cut, as the initial recruitment dialogue with Karlach is pretty damn long )

Workout: My final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through –

A) The end of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: RACCOON CITY! GIANT SPIDER! FAMILIAR JERKASS? Episode 5” by OXBox! Which continued Leon’s adventures in the burnt-out wreckage of Raccoon City and featured:

I. Leon fighting off a lot of “Harryhausen skeleton” zombies (as the OXBoxers called them) in the warehouse and taking a lot of solid hits while doing so because, despite the zombies being extremely emaciated, they all hit like trucks. Fortunately his new shotgun did the job in keeping him from getting TOO injured. Jane eventually noted that it was pretty sad that all the warehouse workers became zombies, which led to jokes about it being an Amazon warehouse, then an Amazon BOOK warehouse because back in 1998 Amazon would have been exclusively a bookseller (true fact!), then an Umbrella warehouse during the brief period where they changed their name to Amazon and tried to diversify into selling books. Zeno is now Jeff Beszos before he lost his hair (or possibly with a hair transplant/toupee). XD

( We all know this is going to get longer than I intended it to be )

B) “This Seemingly USELESS Amulet Has a Hilarious Hidden Interaction in #bg3 #baldursgate #baldursgate3” by Toyhouze! A YouTube Short showing off a funny way to use the Amulet of Selûne’s Chosen (found near the back of the goblin camp) to rob traders blind! You see, the Amulet of Selûne’s Chosen grants the wearer the cantrip Selûne’s Dream – a healing spell that heals any ally the wearer touches for 1D8 hitpoints, but also has a chance of making them fall asleep. How does this help you rob people? Well, the thing is, if you get a trader’s Attitude toward you up to 100 – meaning they like you as much as they can do – the game considers them one of your allies. Meaning you can use the spell on them. So, the strat is to give the trader a bunch of stuff to increase their approval of you to the point where they’re considered an ally; use the spell on them until they fall asleep from being healed; then, while they’re asleep, take all your stuff back and all their stuff as well. Robbery made easy! (Oh, and if you’re not planning on putting traders to sleep with it, you can always just make sure to use the spell only on those with Fey Ancestry – AKA elves, half-elves, and drow. None of those races can be put to sleep by magical means, so they can never get hit by the drawback.)

C) And “Dead Money Secret Endings | Fallout Talk” by N_orte! A YouTube Short discussing the two Non-Standard Game Over endings you can get at the end of the “Dead Money” DLC, once you reach Sinclair’s fabled vault – one that screws over the Courier, and one that screws over everyone else in the game:

I. First, if your Courier chooses to go poking around in Sinclair’s personal files on the terminal in the vault (either because they didn’t read the note to Vera warning her not to do that or did but decided they absolutely had to see the note), they’ll find the “hi, enjoy being locked in here” letter he left Dean and discover that they’re now trapped in the Vault. This naturally leads to the Courier dying in there as they’re unable to get out, and the casino’s holographic recorders adding their hologram to all the others wandering the Sierra Madre. Grim!

II. And second, if your Courier is a truly evil bastard who think Father Elijah’s got the right idea when he talks about wiping the wasteland clean, rather than fighting the guy at the end, if they choose the right dialogue options in the final chat with him, they can JOIN him and aid him in wreaking havoc on the Mojave. This leads to New Vegas and the surrounding environs getting covered in toxic Cloud and all their people being eradicated. D: Extra grim! As per the comments on the short, though, you can only get the right dialogue options if you’ve already talked to Veronica about Elijah AND you’re vilified by the NCR, so your evil Courier’s gotta do their homework first if they want to get this ending!

YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to watch the weekly OXBox list or anything like that, but – as stated at the top of this surprisingly-long post – I did watch one video in full this morning while doing research for my “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 3” post – “Shadowheart reveals her secret about Mysterious Artifact & Shar Worship Baldur's Gate 3” by ZaFrostPet! Which I put on to learn a bit more about what Shadowheart says when a Tav asks her about her Shar worship (with a side of “what does she say if you ask her about the mysterious artefact after it protects you upon reaching the goblin camp” – that can be summed up as “I don’t really remember much because I surrendered my memories for the mission, but we were sent by our cloister to get this githyanki artefact at all costs; I was the only survivor of the mission; and, as you know, I ended up caught by the mind flayers before I could get away with it.”) She’s initially a bit reluctant to say anything, but if you can persuade her (with a pretty easy check), she goes on about how Shar teaches them to get beyond fear and loss and to act in darkness that reflects other people’s fears, and to shed the heavy cloaks of hope and pain and “the promise of better days” holding them back. And how the Sharrans tear down corrupt institutions and destroy false idols and work to counter the lies people live with. Her zeal was admirable, and she made it sound not so bad –

Well, until she admitted that there was often death involved in converting people, as a lot of people “break” before accepting Shar’s truths. ZaFrostPet’s character couldn’t help but note that it sounded kind of evil, and Shadowheart mockingly told them to get a bailiff to arrest her in this wilderness, before saying that they were stuck together right now, but she’d happy go it alone with her faith. *shakehead* Very good thing you can get her out of this cult dedicated to forgetting and loss if you try hard enough!

...yeah, I guess that was lot to sum up in one day -- especially with it also having been Game Night (Sorry -- Mom won the first game, I won the other two). At least today's entry should be a lot easier!

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Periody Fri -- THURSDAY

Fri, 01 May 2026 05:09:15 GMT

Yup, I haven't even started my long weekend yet and already I'm screwing up what day it is. XD It just feels like it should be a Friday, given I'm now off for the next four days! And I'm sure the period brain isn't helping in that regard... Anyway, yes, I have been struggling with the usual "extra grumpy" and "lack of concentration" that always comes with the red curse today, I'm sad to say -- my brain is just determined to be tired and annoyed and sad. But even with that, I have managed to accomplish some stuff:

Work – My final day at work this week was mostly centered around fixing stuff, with my main accomplishments of the day being:

A) Taking a phone call from one of the people I e-mailed about a credit card gift not going through and setting up her pledge with her on her new card (old one got hacked)

B) Matching up some more IDs to scans of pledge cards and in-pew forms and the like on the scanning app...which led to me finding a check stub from a parish with a listing of donors on it. And realizing what our processors had put on the parish record as a single anonymous one-time gift was in fact intended to cover gifts from multiple donors (presumably they had all given cash to the parish). *facepalm* To be fair, a portion of the gift was anonymous, two of the donors didn’t exist on our system, and one was under a different address and parish affiliation, but – still!

C) Informing my supervisor about both the above issue with the parish check and the issue I found the other day where the processors changed the name of the husband on a couple’s record because their son’s in-pew form got the wrong ID sticker put on it (this is the record that ALSO has a couple of online gifts from the original couple’s two kids applied to it thanks to all the online gifts using the same e-mail address, causing them all to be matched to the same ID number) – she thanked me for catching it all, which was nice, but I would have appreciated her saying she’d talk to our processors about it a bit more

D) Getting the check from Fiscal to send to the lady whose gift to the RI Food Bank was accidentally processed by us as a payment on her pledge and writing up a “hey, here’s what happened, we’re sorry, please accept this refund” letter go to with it...followed shortly thereafter by confirming to my coworker that we didn’t have anything to do with “Catholic Relief Services” as she discovered ANOTHER check made out to a different cause that our processors had put on as a CCA gift. *grumbles* We’re going to have to tell them “hey, please only process checks that are EXPLICITLY MADE OUT TO THE CCA,” aren’t we?

E) And doing a massive reversal batch to take the RI Food Bank gift off that lady’s record, split the parish check between all the donors mentioned on the check stub (after putting on the two that weren’t already on the system and updating the one that was at a different address and parish), and – having corrected the name of the husband on that record that got changed by our processors and set up proper records for the kids – moving all the gifts that didn’t belong to that original couple to their kids’ records so everyone got the proper credit. Yay!

*nods* I guess that was reasonably productive – especially given the whole “being on the red curse” thing. Still, glad I don’t have to put up any of it for the next four days!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: RACCOON CITY! GIANT SPIDER! FAMILIAR JERKASS? Episode 5!” Today’s chunklet contained –

A) Grace running around the lower level of the water treatment plant, trying to turn on the two remaining power distributors without getting got by The Girl! Which was much more difficult than it sounded, as the lower level was a very cramped space and The Girl was pretty much always where Grace needed to go. Didn’t help that when she got close to the second distributor, the game insisted on letting The Girl grab her by the head and toss her away in a cutscene! At least Jane was no longer scared of Grace getting got by The Girl thanks to Andy having gotten chomped by said Girl three times in the first six minutes of the episode. XD But with some careful hiding, some luck, and Andy breaking out the faux-David Attenborough voice during some of the sneaking (“Here we see The Girl in its native habitat, biting Grace on the head” [nearly walks into The Girl] “oh no!”), Grace was eventually able to maneuver around The Girl, turn on the other two power distributors (after getting the necessary extra handle for the third), and then get upstairs and open the roof hatch to the sunlight above, causing The Girl to melt into a pitiful pile of burned flesh. Now that should be the last of that particular stalker enemy! (Though you should never bet on that in a Resident Evil game – anyone else remember how many times it took to kill Jack Baker from RE7?)

( Sad child death stuff and horrifying spider stuff below – be warned! )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got over a page of edits done today, I’m happy to say. :) Today’s session covered:

A) The group reacting to the appearance of Slugs the Hull (so named because it was armed with a pair of slugger rifles), with Kasimir noting to Victor that he would have appreciated him leading with “oh, my parents have a Hull with a pair of slugger rifles down here” when he asked him about traps – Victor retorted that he’d been planning to tell Kasimir about it once they were past the pressure plates, like he’d asked. After all, he hadn’t know Kasimir would fall – he’d honestly been hoping they could just sneak past it! Alice, however, was on Kasimir’s side, saying she would have appreciated a warning about the Hull ready and willing to kill intruders earlier – Smiler quickly corrected her, explaining that slugger rifles were non-lethal, shooting compressed air instead of bullets. Kasimir confirmed that they were handy if you wanted to bring someone down without getting the Spirit Wardens involved – but that they could break bones if you were in range, and Slugs was going to be in range soon, so…

B) Barnaby telling the others it was fine, he’d just order Slugs to stand down – the Hull would never shoot him, he was too rich! Fortunately for his bones, Smiler grabbed his arm and towed him back, stating that he believed Barnaby was on the right track, but had the wrong person – after all, Slugs would be much more likely to listen to a command from a member of the family that owned it, right? Victor anxiously revealed that he’d never actually given Slugs a command before – the Hull had never been awake during his previous visits – but Alice pointed out he was still a Van Dort, and so it was worth a shot. Cue poor Victor nearly strangling himself with his tie and asking Alice not to put it like that. XD She quickly apologized and told him to speak to Slugs like she’d spoken to Abigail when telling her not to immediately rat on them to Bumby at Houndsditch – Victor noted that Abigail had still ratted them out to Bumby, but Alice countered that they’d still bought themselves some time, and after all, Slugs wasn’t a snotty little girl – she hoped, anyway. Victor confirmed that Slugs was almost certainly a condemned prisoner, like most other Hulls...then anxiously noted that the ghost inside felt weirdly flat – he could tell it was there and that was about it. Which, after so much time spent around other, more animate ghosts, really gave him the willies. (As it should, really.) Alice and Smiler said they could discuss the ethics of Hulls later – right, now, they really needed this one not to shoot them.

C) And Victor going up to Slugs, telling it that he was one of the owners of the vault and that the others were his guests, and ordering it to go back to its cupboard and leave them alone! Please. There was a tense moment where Slugs just stared at him –

And then it indicated it understood and turned to clomp back into its hidey-hole. Cue a relieved Victor slumping against the wall, while Smiler gave him a cheery “knew you could do it!” and Barnaby noted he hadn’t been quite forceful enough, but they’d get him used to ordering around the servants yet! Victor just said “thank you” because everything else going through his head was too rude. XD

Ahhh, good stuff. I do love writing my Valicer In The Dark stories – they’re so fun! Tomorrow, the gang goes to take on the final trap between them and the vault door – another nearly-invisible tripwire! Perhaps not as exciting as a Hull armed with compressed-air guns, but still. :p

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, if only because WeirdKev on tumblr shared the link to a YouTube Short with me to get my opinion on it: “The "Apocalypse" of 1910 | Weird Days in History” by Extra History! A one-minute video talking about how, in May of 1910, there was a bit of a panic when Earth passed through the tail of Haley’s Comet thanks to Camille Flammarion, a popular French science writer at the time. You see, Flammarion wrote a couple of articles musing about what might happen when Earth passed through the tail of the comet in late 1909 and early 1910 – and while most of his predictions were of the sober “this won’t be a big deal” sort, he did throw in a couple of wild speculations about the comet triggering a “chemical exchange” that would destroy Earth’s oxygen, or – when the comet was discovered to have cyanogen gas (“a cousin of cyanide,” as the narrator put it) – poisoning all life on earth. Unfortunately for him, the press naturally decided to spread around the wild speculations without actually noting that they were intended to be the worst case scenarios and unlikely to happen, leading to a not-insignificant number of people boarding up their houses to avoid the gas, defaulting on loans and refusing to plant crops because what was the point, and even in one case hiding in a cave. We even had the usual assholes taking advantage of the panic to sell useless “comet pills” to protect you from the gas and helmets to save you from falling objects. Naturally, nothing actually happened, and presumably everyone felt very silly afterward. Just a good object lesson in how, if you’re a famous figure a lot of people listen to, maybe temper your wild predictions about stuff like this just a tad! Or at least make sure the press doesn’t get a hold of them.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do on Valice Multiverse again, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did manage to find a couple of things to fill out my queue for the week:

A) That text post by callagoo going “anyone else think the corpse bride should have ended with victor and victoria and emily as a poly couple” (and my tags saying “yup me”) for Friday

B) And a reblog of “Fan.tasia” (that incredible music video of mashed-up Disney movies to a song that itself was a mash-up of multiple other songs – if you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself) from the depths of my “#song saturday” tag for Saturday!

So that was good. :)

Yeah, not bad -- though it all took longer than I wanted thanks to the damn period. *grumbles* Well, that's just gonna happen during this time of the month, I suppose...anyway, now that I've finally wrapped up all of these write-ups, it's time to consider going to bed. Tomorrow, main goals are to work a little more on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; work some more on Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" play some Baldur's Gate III and finally freaking recruit Karlach; and get in a workout and finish that RE9 LP episode from OXBox! We'll see how I do -- night all!

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Red Curse (Unfortunately) Get

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 04:25:56 GMT

Fortunately I was prepared for it when it showed up this afternoon -- having already put a pad in earlier because I kept getting warning signals from my body re: period. So no clothes ruining, yay. But the hormones did make me feel quite bitchy today, which was not fun. >( As for the day itself:

Work – It was a relatively quiet day in the office – which was good, given I was in the grips of the worst of my PMS and thus easily irritated by things. My personal workload consisted of the following:

A) Running the usual morning reports (along with taking a call from Fiscal about weirdness on one of them – which I didn’t know how to fix – and helping my coworker get the GL sorted)

B) Matching more ID numbers to scans of pledge cards so we could more easily look stuff up on the scanning app, and researching any weirdness I found along the way

C) Merging a duplicate I found and cleaning up some other records while I looked up stuff related to the record that had its name changed the other day (looks like the gifts for a whole family have been going on this one record, which is rather annoying)

D) Doing a few reversals at the end of the day – mostly applying gifts to pledges

Nothing too taxing! Though it was annoying to research some of this stuff, I must admit. And it looks like solving that issue of all the family’s gifts going on one account might have to involve making some new accounts and moving the gifts over there, which will be a pain...I’ll have to talk to my supervisor about it tomorrow. *sigh* One more day!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the OXBox RE9 LP, as I work(out)ed my way through –

A) The second half of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: SHORTEST HELICOPTER RIDE! BURNING CHURCH! BLOOD GLOBE! Episode 4!” Which featured:

I. Grace exploring what actually turned out to be a quite nice house (I guess it was Dr. Gideon’s personal home on the grounds?) and stumbling across a living room with multiple objects to pick up and fiddle with while hunting for the helicopter key – notably, she was able to free an hourglass from its casing, which resulted in the gang waiting for a surprising amount of time to see if all the sand would fall through the little gap, and if there would be any secrets or achievements revealed as a result. No achievement, but there WAS a secret – “U = 380,000” on the inside of the top chamber! Jane obligingly wrote it down at Andy’s request. There was also a report from some mysterious entity telling Dr. Gideon “We’re happy that your experiment has reached Phase 4, but also your evil Care Center has been open a while and we’d like some results, especially regarding Elpis, so could you get a move on? We’ve managed to extend the deadline until 2040, but seriously” (I mean, it didn’t say it quite like that, but that was the gist :p) and a weird console/old-timey radio thing that, when fiddled with, revealed a metal sculpture of a strand of DNA with a chunk missing out of the middle! Andy attempted to fill it with the hourglass, but it just didn’t fit. Shame.

( As usual, quite a lot happened in the workout video )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got through another page today, which covered –

A) Kasimir falling on his bad knee after hooking his foot in one of the tiny cracks between the mosaic tiles, much like Victor did earlier – Smiler hurried forward to try and catch him, but unfortunately just got dragged down with him. Ouch. :( Victor and Smiler did their best to help him up afterward, at least, while Kasimir complained that Victor’s parents didn’t need all these traps in the hallway – they just needed to wait for potential thieves to trip and then tackle them. XD Victor had to admit, there was something to that. :p

B) Victor asking Kasimir if he was all right, and Kasimir stating that landing on his knee had hurt and that he was going to need a minute (while sitting down and stretching it) – cue Barnaby declaring that what Kasimir needed was a drink and offering him the gin, saying that it always made him feel better after a spill. Alice noted that was at least somewhat ironic, given that she was certain alcohol was responsible for most of Barnaby’s spills – Barnaby quipped that they did say the best remedy for that was “the hair of the dog,” causing Alice to go “that’s for hangovers, not falling over” –

And causing Barnaby to reveal he didn’t know what a hangover was. Smiler explained to him that it was a headache caused by stopping drinking, and Barnaby laughed and said that he never stopped drinking. Alice noted that he had to sleep at some point, but Barnaby cheerfully told her that he’d woken up at his personal bar plenty of times, having sleepwalked there and made himself a drink. Apparently he can mix a fine martini while unconscious! XD I want to stress that none of the hangover stuff was in the original draft – it just sort of happened. XD

C) And Victor telling the others that they might want to keep it down – Barnaby and Kasimir noted that the guards weren’t waking up anytime soon, and no one had discovered them yet, but Victor explained he wasn’t worried about the guards –

Just in time for a panel on the wall to slide away, revealing a Hull by the name of Slugs. So dubbed because he had two slugger rifles welded into his fists. Intended for use on intruders. Which he had just detected. Whoops. Tomorrow, the gang deals with the ghost-driven robot now ready to shoot them for their crimes! Exciting!

3. Watch something on YouTube: I suppose technical check, as I did watch some “research” stuff to keep character voices consistent in “The Van Dort Vacancy” – some clips of Barnaby and Kasimir from “The First Flight of The Sparrowhawk” that CaitlinRC had kindly compiled, and a clip of Victor practicing his vows in the woods. But nothing beyond that – certainly nothing just for fun! Meeeh...at least with a long weekend coming up I should have a BIT more time for that!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d intended to see if I could fill out the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue, but then I ran into some weird difficulties talking to my friend Squid on Discord (apparently there was some sort of behind-the-scenes refresh and NoScript started blocking something the page needed to function – took me a while to figure it out!) and that kind of took over the rest of my night. *sigh* Well, I’m good for tomorrow, at least – I’ll see if I can figure out Friday and Saturday later!

...yeah, not my best showing, but between the period and the weirdness with Discord... Meh. I'm heading to bed. Night all!

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PMSy Tuesday

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 04:10:21 GMT

Yes, it was one of those days where it was very easy to annoy me, I'm afraid -- the hormones are definitely ramping up this week! I fully expect my upcoming four-day weekend to be as period-y as my last one. Which annoys me. As you might expect. *shakehead* Anyway -- let's get the write-up done so I can hit the sack:

Work – My workday consisted almost entirely of one thing today – working my way through the QC file for the next round of thank-yous that arrived in my e-mail yesterday, but which I wasn’t able to get to because I was always busy with something else. Fortunately, the distractions were fewer today (and my coworker was back in, which helped a lot), and I was able to get it done and sent back out with my notes and corrections by mid-afternoon –

Unfortunately, I found a few interesting fuck-ups along the way, including a whole set of gifts from a certain family that seem to have ended up on one member’s account...an account whose name was wrongly changed by one of the new people on the processing team… *sigh* Something I’ll have to poke at tomorrow! I also ended up taking some last-minute exceptions, which included ANOTHER instance of a parish sending one check to cover two gifts...except the two gifts were for two different things (the Appeal and the Capital Campaign, which have separate bank accounts), so now we have to do ANOTHER memo to Fiscal to have money moved. *grrr* Just – annoying. I guess we’ll see how Wednesday goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – twas another night pedaling through the OXBox RE9 LP (somewhat interrupted by both my parents coming down into the basement to look for a book they were having trouble finding), with tonight’s ride featuring –

A) The very end of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: LEON KICKS BUTT! ARTIFICIAL ORGANS! ZOMBIE MEATGRINDER? Episode 3!” The final seven minutes or so covered:

I. Grace making her way to the Inspection Room (getting jumpscared twice by The Girl along the way – the first time, Andy made sure to have Grace grab the scrap right in front of the jumpscare for later crafting purposes; the second, he finally answered all of Jane and Mike’s hopes and prayers by actually using the Requiem handcannon on her – she did not like it and retreated back into the ceiling) with the help of her joint plugs powering up some doors...to discover it contained a horrible corpse carousel hanging from the ceiling, stocked with bagged bodies and the occasional upside-down live zombie who chewed on her when she got too close. Cue Grace having to manipulate the direction of the carousel with a lever and maneuver around it so she could clear a path to the next room while getting chomped on as little as possible, while Mike noted that the whole thing had “Halloween Horror Nights” vibes and Andy commented that it had plenty of SIF – “stuff in face” in the horror biz. :p

II. And Grace, having created a path, finding herself on the other side of the big blood channel room, next to the wheel to turn to drain it! She thus did exactly that (with Mike congratulating RE9 for not having the wheel break off in her hand AGAIN), revealing a big old pit with lots of dead zombies at the bottom –

And the titular zombie meatgrinder at one end. A meat grinder that WHIRRED TO LIFE once Grace ventured into the drained pit to collect goodies and cross back over to the other side, because it was now processing time! Cue the floor becoming a terrifying conveyor belt of death, and Grace having to stay away from the whirling grinders of doom while ALSO fending off the still-living zombies getting up and trying to attack her! Fortunately, she just had to stick it out until the game was satisfied enough zombies had been processed, then the belt stopped and she was allowed to get back out of the pit. Andy thus had her do just that so he could save at the nearby typewriter, quit, and go have a lie-down (with Jane saying she was going to have one too, and she hadn’t even been playing). XD Seemed legit to me!

( More RE9 shenanigans below the cut )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – completed another page after I finally got out of the kitchen after supper, covering:

A) Smiler, having just saved Victor from a small-but-potentially-dangerous tumble on the mosaic, asking Victor if he saw any other tricky tiles – Victor took a look around, but had to admit he couldn’t. Though, as he noted, not being able to find them easily was the whole point of the mosaic, so… He told Smiler he was very impressed they had been able to find any, and Smiler confessed to having concentrated very hard on finding even the slightest differences between tiles so the group wouldn’t have to worry about darts flying out of the wall or flashbangs tumbling from the ceiling (with the latter bits being mimed). Victor assured them he appreciated it.

B) Victor checking in with Barnaby and Alice – Barnaby had a little bitch about how all this crouching was terrible on his thighs and how he’d have to get a massage from his private masseuse later, while Alice informed him that she was fine, and that Cheshire was making a game out of stepping only on the fish in the scene below them. Smiler asked how he was doing, and Alice said quite well – after all, he could cheat by turning himself into a pair of eyes and a smile to float over big gaps. XD Victor commented that he could use such a power at the moment – which led into –

C) Victor, turning back around to follow Kasimir, spotting a black tile that looked a little bit off to him not too far away. He got Smiler’s attention and had them look at it, and they agreed that it appeared to be sticking out the way the others had before getting Kasimir’s attention so Victor could point out potential pressure plate #3 to him. Victor was a little puzzled by the fact that the tricky tile was actually in the middle portion of the mosaic, when he was sure his father had told him that they alternated left side-right side-left side – Smiler tried to argue that it was a little to the left, while Kasimir was of the opinion that William might have given him deliberately-bad information to make sure anyone who took him wouldn’t know how to defeat every trap. It’s what he would do if he had a very kidnappable son! Victor was like “...I don’t think I’m that kidnappable” – Alice, not without sympathy, pointed out that the Van Dorts’ reaction to him disappearing was to start hobnobbing even harder with the nobility, so yeah, maybe he was. Aw.

D) Kasimir continuing to lead the group on their Prowl, confirming with Victor that the tile he’d just seen should be the last pressure plate – Victor said yes and then assured him that they’d be out of the mosaic and thus past the danger soon anyway. Well, the danger from this set of traps, anyway, as there were two more to go. Kasimir said they could worry about those when they weren’t risking getting darted or flash-banged...well, unless the next trap was another tripwire right at the edge of the mosaic. Victor told him there wasn’t – the next tripwire was in front of the actual door into the vault. Kasimir wasn’t thrilled to hear that, but admitted that they’d managed to find all the other tiny near-invisible shit in the hall so far –

Aaand I left it with him yelling “fuck!” as his toe caught in one of the cracks between tiles and he toppled over. And, unfortunately, Smiler isn’t going to be able to catch HIM in time, thanks to the dice rolls I made previously. :P We’ll deal with that, and the next trap, tomorrow!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – unless you count rewatching the “elevator escape” sequence of the workout video because damn that was tense and I wanted to reexperience it. Partly because I didn’t feel like I got to experience it properly during my workout because that’s when Dad was down there looking for the book. *sigh* But yeah, nothing new – though WeirdKev over on Tumblr did introduce me to a video where a guy made a couple versions of Nuka-Cola from the Fallout franchise. Didn’t have time to watch it, but I will have to keep it in mind for when I have a spare moment!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – on both accounts, surprisingly enough –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I tossed a couple of things from my drafts into the queue:

A) The “‘Do you insert yourself as the top/bottom of your favorite ship?’ No, I’m the cameraman” post by groovyfran-png for Wednesday

B) And my completed “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume VI” post for Thursday!

So that’s all right – still have to figure out Friday and Saturday, but we’ll see if I can make any progress on that tomorrow.

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to toss into the queue: “The horrors persist but so do libraries, books, iced coffee, sunsets, trees, the word 'fuck', the moon and the sea.” I had Cuddlepile!Smiler reply approvingly and offer the anon a high-five, saying those persist too. :p It seemed like the kind of sentiment they would agree with!

*nods* All right, that's more productive than I first thought it would be. I'm glad of that, at least. But now it is time for me to hit the sack -- night all!

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PMSly, Lightly Stressful Monday

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 04:00:14 GMT

Yeah, like, it wasn't HORRIBLE -- traffic in particular was pretty damn good on my commutes, which I appreciated -- but my hormones acting up made me definitely bitchier than I normally would be. Waking up early because I was cold and couldn't find my pajama pants (I'd kicked them off because I was hot before, and they'd slid down past the end of my bed to get caught in my sheets -- took me ages to find them, with me being like "what the fuck, did they MELT or something?!" the whole time) didn't help either. So it's probably in my best interest to get to bed earlier tonight -- so let's get right into the write-up:

Work – Well, my first day back at work today ended up being, annoyingly, just busy enough that I couldn’t get to everything that I wanted to get to. Mostly because my coworker took the day off and thus I couldn’t get her help on anything (and my supervisor left early too!). My accomplishments for the day included:

A) Doing the GL – which ended up taking most of the morning as there was a LOT of credit card stuff uploaded on Friday, and also a check that had to be split between the Appeal and the Capital Campaign, which led to some weirdness about what paperwork needed to go in what pile *grumbles*

B) Putting on as many of the checks that came in the mail as possible – there were a couple of checks that needed my coworker to sign into a particular site or interpret a particular report that I had to set aside, plus one that just came in too late for me to process it

C) Putting on the latest batch of Easter Collection gifts, which also took a while as there were twenty-three of them and I had to get ID numbers for all the parishes and whatnot

D) Both taking and returning a few phone calls, leading to two credit card gifts, one parish update, one telling a lady what her balance on her Capital Campaign pledge was, and two returned calls that WOULD have been credit card gifts except one lady decided to fill out her pledge card instead and mail it in, and the other was in her car at the time I called her back and said she’d call back tomorrow. *shrug*

Yeah, it was the phone calls that were the problem – they kept coming in JUST often enough to break up my momentum on a couple of the bigger tasks, and prevent me from getting to the other thing I got today – a QC file for the next thank-you. Had to tell our processors I’ll get to it tomorrow. *shrug* Well, I guess I know what I’m doing Tuesday, then!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: LEON KICKS BUTT! ARTIFICIAL ORGANS! ZOMBIE MEATGRINDER? Episode 3!” The second half-hour of Part 3 of the OXBox RE9 LP featured –

A) Leon clearing out the bar and lounge no problem (the singing zombie there never even got the chance to scream at him), discovering the gun that Grace could have claimed just sitting on the bar (Andy was rather annoyed that he’d missed it, because he’d assumed it was in the safe), dismissing an antique coin on the piano as useless to him (to be fair, he sure as shit didn’t need to buy the drug to make his shooting better), then continuing his roaming through the halls of the Care Center, clearing out zombies and cracking open every warped cupboard door Andy could find for goodies and notes (including one about the pantry key on the chef – the gang was like “we did that already!”)

B) Leon, heading upstairs to try and find Dr. Gideon’s office, encountering a zombie who’d made a fucking giant bomb out of what looked to be some sort of gas container – Leon managed to explode him without being blown to smithereens himself, though it was rather a close call! Everyone was appropriately stunned and horrified by this turn of events...though the gang then discussing if that particular zombie had been a bomb technician and was just trying to do what he did in life did lighten the mood a bit. XD

( Insert the ‘It always gets long’ song here )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got in another page’s worth of edits today, featuring –

A) Kasimir being huffy about Victor not remembering where the pressure plate tiles were in the mosaic in the trap hallways, but Smiler insisting that there had to be a way to guess where they were, and getting down low for a look while asking Victor if he remembered at least where the tiles were supposed to be generally. Victor wracked his brain and said he recalled William telling him they alternated from the left side of the hall to the right and back, and that they were spaced far apart to lull thieves into a false sense of security – Smiler thus scooted over to the left side of the hall –

And spotted a white tile sticking up just a little further than the others! Alice came over to confirm that it was indeed slightly-out-of-place, and said that it was either their pressure plate or the result of a poor laying job. And as Victor confirmed his mother would have never tolerated the latter...well! Obvious answer was obvious.

B) Smiler heading to the other side of the hall and just managing to spot a green tile sticking up farther down – but being unable to spot the third tile, as it was just too far away. Kasimir noted they at least now knew what the problem tiles looked like, and how to avoid them, and said they should take this bit of floor low and slow so they could spot the third tile in time –

Before asking if they were ready to follow “an old professional at this sort of thing.” Alice agreed that, as a rank amateur, she was more than ready, adding that she knew she wouldn’t be able to rely on Rabbit to get her to the end – he’d be more concerned with getting there as quickly as possible. And then scolding Rabbit for giving her a look while Kasimir raised an eyebrow and Barnaby stepped back – Smiler quickly assured them that, yes, she hallucinates, but she knows they’re not real, so it’s fine. :p

C) The others in the group agreeing to follow Kasimir’s lead without a fight (Barnaby noting that he followed his servants around his mansion all the time, so…) and Kasimir loosening up his knee brace so he could lead the group Prowl action! He threw everyone a quick bit of advice (with Victor telling him to call him “Victor” instead of “Master Van Dort” during it, as he’s calling Kasimir by HIS first name and he doesn’t feel much like a Van Dort anymore), then set off, with Victor following in his wake, Smiler behind him, and Alice and Barnaby bringing up the rear. Cue Victor finding the silence rather unnerving, as it just reminded him of how careful and quiet they had to be not to bring the guards or anyone else running –

And then, after they passed the first pressure plate, cue his toe getting caught in a crack and nearly sending him toppling. Fortunately Smiler was close enough to grab him and haul him back – well, something close to upright, anyway. :p I left off there – tomorrow, they make it around the remaining two pressure plates – but not without poor Kasimir taking a bit of a spill, as he himself did not actually roll that well on the Prowl roll...good thing it was a group action and we take the highest result!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – I was hoping I’d have time for at least a Short, but alas, the Workout Write-Up bested me again. *grumbles* We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Monday, Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, no queue to worry about yet. At least I have a few ideas on what I can chuck in there tomorrow!

*nods* And there we have it -- all the most important parts of my day. And now I should wrap up and hit the sheets. At least I've only got three more days this week, then a long weekend! Night all!

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Reasonably Nice Sunday

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 04:13:56 GMT

The weather was a lot better -- sunny, and warmer than they said it was going to be (Mom claimed it got up into the low 70s!); Mom made cupcakes with cream inside (like Hostess cupcakes) for dessert; and I got pretty much everything that I was hoping to get done, done:

Tumblr: In a shocking twist, I actually got something done on BOTH my tumblrs today –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I had a slow start over here this morning (that will happen when you stay up nearly til 3 AM), but I still managed to accomplish two things of note:

A) I went back through my dash and added the following post by groovyfan-png to my drafts for later reblogging: “‘Do you insert yourself as the top/bottom of your favorite ship?’ No, I’m the cameraman” XD As I elaborated on in my tags, when I write saucier, more explicit stuff, I may like to write from a particular POV (for example, Victor’s as he’s having his brain melted by his loves), but I’m not inserting myself anywhere or into anyone’s position. I’m just there to watch and record and metaphorically quietly eat popcorn. :p

B) And I went back into my drafts and finished off my “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume VI” post! Lightly tweaking the scene I wrote yesterday – with Victor finding a ritual spell to enchant a bell to sound like the Spirit Bell that rings whenever someone dies in the city, inspired by the name of the D&D/BG3 cantrip “Toll The Dead” (with the actual name of the spell now revealed to be “Toll of the Dead,” as I thought that made a little more sense given what I established it does), and worrying over the fact that it’s supposed to paralyze all who hear it with dread – and finishing off the tags explaining what inspired all of the scenes. So that’s actually ready to be slotted into this week’s queue, if I so choose! Yay!

Valice Multiverse – And when I checked in on this tumblr tonight, after all my write-ups and such, I found an anon ask to slap into the queue for tomorrow! One noting “Kuei-Jin makes no sense unless you speak Chinese and Japanese. It's like naming a supernatural creature from South America, Diablo-Pessoa” Kuei-Jin being the name of the “vampires of the East” (which were a pretty racist mismash of various mythologies, as I understand it – they’ve been quietly deleted from the WoD as of V5) that were in the World of Darkness back when Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines was a thing, I naturally had my Londerland Bloodlines!Alice respond that she was aware that the Kuei-Jin didn’t actually like to be called that by Westerners (or even called vampires in general, as they considered themselves much different creatures with just a few superficial similarities to Western vampires), and theorized that whichever Kindred first met one of them just threw a couple of words that they thought described them well together, without even considering if they came from the same language or not. Because, of course, Asia is a monolith and verifying what country they came from would have been too much work. *sigh* Yeah, writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Chinatown’s Mysterious East” is gonna be interesting...

Portal 2: Played another half-hour of this today, which saw Chell and Wheatley make their way through the Aperture Science Daycare facility, look at a bunch of potato batteries, make their way to the neurotoxin generator, disable it with the power of portals, and finally go on a ride through the pneumatic tube system that carries everything through the facility before getting separated thanks to the power of “cubes going in another direction through an intersection.” :p More details and a surprising amount of screenshots below –

A) I picked up where I left off the last time I played, preparing to make my way to the neurotoxin generator through the daycare under Wheatley’s guidance. Having exhausted his dialogue at the end of the last session, I was prepared to get a move on, and so began walking down the hallway I found myself –

Only to notice that Wheatley wasn’t rushing off to stay ahead of me, or even trying to follow me – just staring at me. Puzzled, I came back and confirmed there was no way to go in the other direction (nope – hallway ended at a railing that looked onto complete and utter darkness), then went back and forth a bit, even jumping a few times to elicit a response. Nothing – he just stayed where he was, watching Chell expectantly. Slightly concerned that my game might have bugged out, I decided to try going all the way to the end of the hallway and around the corner –

And found another dead end leading into a wall. Now rather more confused, I was like, “hang on a second – where am I supposed to go? Isn’t Wheatley supposed to be leading me through this bit like he always does? Okay, let’s try stepping into this office, because it really is the only place I can go–”

“...ah. Now he’s moved.”

Yup, sure enough, this turned out to just be another total brain fart moment on my part – I’d thought that I’d be following Wheatley, but as it turned out, for this section HE had to follow CHELL. Apparently his management rail just plain doesn’t go through the day care area! All right, fair enough, that one was all me. Again, I haven’t played this game in years – cut me a bit of slack. :P

( Don’t worry, I’m much more competent in the rest of the description )

Writing: I was indeed able to sneak in some editing time on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” right before my workout today! Got through another page, which featured –

A) Barnaby stepping over the tripwire Victor found at the end of the last editing session (hitching up his coat as suggested, since his coat is one of the things he does care about) and urging Kasimir to hurry up, as he was the one in such a rush to get to the vault; Kasimir coolly reminded him that getting over the wire was a bit more difficult for him, with a significant tap on his brace with his cane. Smiler offered Kasimir a hand, but Kasimir assured them he had it, and indeed made it over without assistance (though Victor and Smiler were prepared to grab him if he fell). His knee brace did creak alarmingly loudly, though – he noted that he’d have to oil it, then gave Barnaby a look as he added he could have done it earlier if they’d had the money. Barnaby responded that Kasimir needed to learn to be less uptight. :p

B) Alice coolly informing Barnaby that poor people had a lot more to be “uptight” about, as they couldn’t throw money about like his lot – Barnaby actually gave that to her, admitting that all that hard work they do would make them cranky. And reiterating his position that the world of work is not for him from “The Ironhook Bounty.” Alice was like “at least you’re willing to admit it,” then asked if they were going to do anything about the guards – Kasimir told her no, since there was no easy way to hide them. Better to just get into the vault and get the goods. Smiler agreed, noting that if anyone did find the passed-out Steven and Alan, they would still need a few minutes to then locate someone to tell (the Van Dorts, the guards, even Mrs. Pemberly), which worked in their favor – then, because they ARE an Advocate, they quickly adjusted Steven and Alan’s positions so they’d be a little more comfortable on the floor. XD Gotta maximize happiness in any way possible!

C) Kasimir telling Smiler that he’d be a lot happier if Victor, Alice, and Smiler stepped over that tripwire into the hallway already – and if Victor told him what the next trap was. Victor explained that they were actually facing the next three traps and directed everyone’s attention to the fancy mosaic on the floor, explaining that it wasn’t just for show – three of the tiles in it were actually pressure plates. Two of which caused darts tipped with slumber essence to shoot out of the wall, and one of which dropped a load of flashbang grenades from the ceiling. Smiler was like “surely one flashbang would do the job?” – Victor reminded them that his mother was prone to excess. XD Alice noted it was lucky they hadn’t tripped any of the traps yet and asked Victor what the tiles looked like –

Aaand Victor had to admit he didn’t remember. As it had been a while since he’d been down here last. ^^; That’s where I left things – tomorrow, the group tries to find the tricky tiles – and thanks to Smiler’s keen eyes, locates the first two. The third, well, they’ll just have to hope they see that one before someone steps on it...

Workout: Back on the bike this week – but NOT back with Jon of Many A True Nerd’s F:NV YOLO Remastered series! Instead, I ended up pedaling my way through the following –

A) “Fallout New Vegas - Must Be Some Frontal Lobe Damage” by Jon! A very short video with Jon explaining why there’s no YOLO Remastered video this week over some footage of the Courier from F:NV waking up in Doc Mitchell’s house. Simply put, our favorite Fallout guy is sick – bad cold that he’s having trouble shaking – resulting in his voice going out periodically and massive coughing fits and whatnot. And while that didn’t prevent him from releasing more episodes of his ongoing Baldur’s Gate III LP (because all of those videos are recorded weeks in advance so Jon can avoid the specter of Spoiler Comments) or his two one-shot videos (as he deliberately picked stuff where, if necessary, he could pause the game to cough and then remove said coughing in editing) earlier this week, it did stop him from doing the YOLO Remastered video tonight. Because, well, he can’t use the same editing tricks in the YOLO Remastered episode as he could in his one-shot videos. Simply put, he didn’t want to ruin a tense moment by having to pause and cough. So yeah – no P. D. Shoot this week. Shame, but we want Jon to be on his A Game when he takes on the final few episodes anyway, so better that he takes this week off than not. *nods* Feel better soon, Jon!

B) And the first-half hour of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: LEON KICKS BUTT! ARTIFICIAL ORGANS! ZOMBIE MEATGRINDER? Episode 3” by OXBox! Yeah, since F:NV YOLO Remastered wasn’t on the menu tonight, I figured I’d continue with the OXBox RE9 LP instead! And things remained fairly chaotic in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, let me tell you, with tonight’s chunklet featuring:

I. Grace slotting her newly-acquired Sun Quartz into the door in the lobby that only opens if you stick three quartz cubes in it (because Resident Evil), then – after a quick trip to the West Wing to buy the Drug That Makes You Shoot Better from the gambling room – heading back to that “organless corpse” (which Mike commented would be a great name for a metal band) in the East Wing and – after murdering a bunch of zombies in there (including one that had learned how to play dead, which is concerning) – slotting the artificial heart and lungs into its chest! It immediately came back to life and started thrashing around trying to kill her (and attracting one of the nearby zombie maids to come in and do the same), making Jane wonder why the hell they’d even done that. Turns out it was to acquire a Level II wristband, allowing them to finally get into the Isolation Ward! And, uh, nowhere else. Which was a little odd – you think they would have provided one Level II goodies cupboard.

II. After a quick run back to the main lobby to regroup (because it was getting worryingly noisy in the East Wing – which Mike found funny because the entrance area had a sign declaring the space a “quiet zone”), Grace working her way around both regular zombies and the Giant Zombie Baby Man wandering the East Wing to find her way into the Isolation Ward! Which consisted mainly of a lot of ominous red lighting, a report from a nurse on her time monitoring Subject 171 (a strange emotionless child who kind of creeped her out, and who the security manager once badgered about blood for some reason), and the Security Manager’s office! Which in turn contained one very dead security manager, wearing a Level III wristband, and another one of those slot machine safe things, this one containing the last precious Star Quartz cube Grace needed. However, Grace’s attempt to get this last quartz so she could get through the Quartz Door and maybe leave this place was stymied by the fact that the buttons on the machine were so worn and scratched she couldn’t see which symbol was which. However, the braille on the buttons was still visible – and that, combined with finding a photo of two girls that looked just like the creepy monochrome blind child she’d met in the Magneto Prison downstairs on the security manager’s desk, made Grace realize that her only chance to get the quartz was to get said creepy monochrome blind child and see if she could read the braille. (Mike attempted to tell her to Google it, but then they all remembered that for some reason Grace does not seem to own a smartphone. :P I mean, granted, even if she had had one at the beginning of the game, she wouldn’t have it NOW as Gideon’s prisoner, but still.)

III. Grace taking the security manager’s wristband and – after working her way past some zombies (and getting chomped by one thanks to Andy making an ill-advised dash past it) – going back to the Magneto Prison to get the creepy monochrome blind child to read the buttons on the slot machine safe for her! Said creepy monochrome blind child proved to be named Emily, and was willing to help out Grace, even if she did clearly find this new lady to be very weird. (Grace being a stammering mess barely willing to explain anything to her didn’t help, I think.) After realizing that Emily could hurt herself on the steps leading out of her prison, Grace ended up carrying her to their destination –

Which turned out to be a real pain in the ass for poor Andy, as carrying Emily meant that poor Grace could hold neither a weapon nor her flashlight. And the local zombies were only too happy to take advantage of that fact! Fortunately, Grace was able to get away from the two in the “organless corpse” room that started turning into Blisterheads and only took one nasty chomp to the back before making it back to the isolation ward and putting Emily to work solving the puzzle in the security manager’s room.

IV. Grace then defending the office from the various zombies that wandered into the Isolation Ward so Emily could solve the puzzle! Including the security manager himself, who inconveniently turned into a Blisterhead at one point, forcing Andy to run around the ward in circles trying to avoid him. Fortunately, it wasn’t long after this that Emily yelled to Grace that she’d done it – and upon returning to the office, she discovered that Emily had indeed gotten her the Star Quartz she needed for the door!

...Naturally, this was immediately followed by the office’s back wall exploding. And Emily, still clutching the quartz cube, being snatched up by none other than the Bug-Eyed Lady who’d been pursuing Grace back in Episode 1! Jane knew she wasn’t dead! The Bug-Eyed Lady then dragged Emily off (with all the OXBoxers yelling after her to “leave the crystal!”), and Grace –

Well, okay, Grace first went back into the Isolation Ward because Andy hadn’t smashed all the goodie boxes in there yet. But then she followed the monster through the hole in the wall over to a big old hole in the floor, where – after deciding this was all her fault (“don’t give yourself too much credit, Grace – it’s at least partially your boss’s fault,” said Jane) and that she couldn’t just leave her – Grace went ahead and jumped into the horror hole. Meaning her next level will probably be the inevitable Sewer Level, euch. Poor Grace.

V. The game answering Jane’s prayers by swapping back over to Leon, who was tied up in the attic of the Care Center preparing to undergo an interrogation by Dr. Gideon! (I don’t like calling him “Victor,” that’s my blorbo’s name.) Leon stayed mostly quiet throughout Dr. Gideon’s attempts to make him talk, throwing out the occasional quip (making the OXBoxers cheer every time) and generally remaining stoic as Dr. Gideon creepily played with his hair and lightly scratched his throat with a scalpel (with Jane openly wondering if they told the doctor’s voice actor – Antony Byrne – that he was going to look like the most disturbing man alive, as he was playing things REALLY suave; I think that’s supposed to be A Deliberate Contrast, Jane) –

And then, after Dr. Gideon made the mistake of turning away from him to start rambling on about human evolution, Leon cut his bonds with a tiny knife hidden in his belt and roundhouse-kicked the guy a few times, forcing him to flee. Everyone was beyond thrilled to see it. :D Unfortunately, Dr. Gideon did get away thanks to a combination of Leon pausing to grab his gun from a side table and struggling a bit from the pain from his neck wound, but, well, it wouldn’t be an RE game if the protagonist, even Leon, could kill the main baddie right away. :p

VI. Leon then exploring the attic, looking for a way out so he could get to Dr. Gideon’s office – and coming across the twin of the Giant Zombie Baby Man! Because, as it turns out, the Giant Zombie Baby Men were a pair of brothers (Thomas and Timothy Jackson, “Tweedle-Tom and Tweedle-Tim” as per Mike) who had the “satiety centers” of their brains suppressed, meaning they like to constantly eat. And unfortunately for Leon, he was stuck with the one who had a particular desire for chomping on human flesh. Fortunately, the game did give Leon a nice shotgun when he first encountered Tweedle-Tim (who was nomming on the former owner at the time), and Leon being Leon, he kicked butt with both that and an axe he happened to have on him, slamming Tweedle-Tim in the head three times with the latter (once with a cool leap from a high platform – the OXBox team was VERY impressed) to finally kill him. Mike, Jane, and Andy were all like, “You see, Grace? You see how easy that was for Leon?” XD Oh man, they are so mean to the new girl...but on the other hand, it IS very hard to measure up to Leon. :p

Good stuff! I left it with Leon claiming some goodies from a cupboard (prying it open with his little hatchet and his beautiful, beautiful biceps), then heading down into Moon Quartz suite (otherwise known as the chairman’s office...I THINK, I don’t actually remember. ^^;), and Andy preparing to use the Power of Leon to finally clear out the bar and lounge. Tomorrow, we’ll see how Leon handles all these zombie menaces (including the second screechy zombie singer) and where his path through the Care Center will take him! At least we know he’ll have the skills to take out any zombies that threaten him – Blisterheads, look out!

YouTube: Had time for one quick YouTube Short after finishing up the Workout Write-Up above – “The Best Caravan Tutorial for Fallout New Vegas #fallout” by TheFalloutFamily! A quick look at how one plays the Caravan minigame in Fallout: New Vegas, which is a card game where you and your opponent each have three stacks of cards, and the goal is to get the value of said stacks between 21 and 26 (inclusive). Whoever has at least two out of three stacks in the correct value range without tying the other player with any of them wins. I’ve only played this once in my own game, with good old Ringo back in Goodsprings, and failed horribly because I didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do. This tutorial explained things pretty simply and clearly, though. The three main takeaways were as follows –

A) You have to build all of your stacks sequentially, so you always want to start a stack with either your lowest-value number card (so you can build up) or your highest-value one (so you can build down)

B) When it comes to the face cards, remember that Kings double the value of the card you place it on (so, in the first example round, putting a King on an 8 made it a 16, bringing the value of the stack it was on straight up to 22); Jokers remove every card of the same value as the one they’re placed on from the board except the one they’re physically on (so placing it on an 8 in one of his stacks in the second example round made his opponent have to discard the two 8s he had on HIS side); and Jacks remove any card that they’re placed on (kind of the opposite of the Joker – and if you put it on a card at the beginning of a stack, the ENTIRE STACK has to go)

C) The big one – YOU CAN PLAY FACE CARDS ON YOUR OPPONENT’S STACKS. Yeah, apparently this is entirely legal for you to do! The reason Fallout Family won the second round was because they were able to use a Jack to remove one of their opponent’s stacks from the board (by putting it on the very first card in his stack, forcing him to discard the whole thing), then a King to increase another stack past the 26-point limit, breaking a tie between the middle two columns! I did not realize that you could manipulate your opponent’s stacks that way! That changes everything! O.O

So yeah – I don’t know when the next opportunity Victor will have to play Caravan will be, but once I stumble across one, I might actually try it out again, now that I know more about what I’m doing. Maybe Victor could actually WIN a game for once. :p

Not too shabby at all, honestly! And it's not even that late right now, so I'm gonna head out and head to bed and see if I can get a tiny bit more sleep than usual. *nods* Night all!

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Decent, If Slightly Chilly, Saturday

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 06:30:14 GMT

Yeah, it was a touch on the cold side today -- I think temps were in the mid-50s for a high. Definitely hoodie-and-wrapping-up-in-a-blanket weather, at least for me! But I managed to stay warm and have a decently-productive day, doing all the things I most wanted to do:

Tumblr: Valice Multiverse was dead again (who is surprised), but I did manage to get a couple of things done over in the drafts of Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) before lunch –

A) First, I added a couple of ideas for more scenes to my draft of “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 3” after counting the number of scenes in my previous two sets, and realizing that I had nine and eight scenes in Volumes 1 & 2 respectively, but only six in the current draft of Volume 3. Fortunately, I already had two ideas for new scenes ready to go on a scrap of paper on my desk (I’d thought I’d be saving them for another volume, but apparently not):

I. One where my Valicer trio discover someone selling fried rat skewers and end up really excited, because finally, a taste of home! With the regular BG3 cast being a little ??? because okay, fine, rat is edible, but you shouldn’t be THAT excited about it

II. And one where the gang are preparing for a fight, and Smiler points out an enemy...only to realize no one else can see it; cue them discovering they can see invisible creatures thanks to their Ersatz Eye from Volo, and Alice disapproving of Smiler getting a BENEFIT from letting Volo poke their eye out. XD

*nods* Fun ideas, right? Honestly, I would have written them all out, but unfortunately I ended up spending way too much time trying to figure out where the gang might encounter an enemy that’s invisible that wasn’t in Act 3 (Ethel apparently goes invisible during your fights against her, but I don’t know if they’d fight her after the surgery...though I guess it’s not impossible…), or where they might find rat skewers (apparently they just randomly show up in trader inventories and in the world – I’ll probably have it happen during a visit to the Goblin Camp, they seem like they’d eat rat on the regular). Maybe tomorrow, we’ll see… Oh, and I did update the scene where Wyll gives Smiler false eye care tips in the wake of the Volo surgery with his “welcome to the League of the Lost Eye” line, because it’s a fun line and deserved to be included. :)

B) And second, I wrote up a new scene for the “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume VI” post! Inspired by a thought I had the other night – namely, that “Toll The Dead”, a necromancy cantrip from Baldur’s Gate III that causes necrotic damage to foes (doing more damage if they’re already wounded), sounds like the name of a ritual spell you’d find in Blades In The Dark. Cue the creation of a scene where Alice and Smiler go up to the tower library to summon Victor for lunch, only to find him studying a scroll. Victor explains that it’s a ritual he found in the collection that enchants an ordinary bell to sound like the spirit bell that rings when someone dies – ringing it is supposed to paralyze all that hear it with dread. Alice admits it sounds like it would be good for helping prevent fights, but worries that it might attract the attention of the deathseeker crows – Victor agrees, then confesses he’s more concerned by the fact that the spell apparently affects ALL who hear it. Smiler insists that “surely at least the CASTER would be immune” but Victor is adamant that if he gives it a go, he’s making sure everyone carries earplugs. :P So that was fun – and I might just try to turn that into a proper ritual at some point for Victor to actually use in the stories! We’ll see...

Fallout: New Vegas: I did indeed return to the Mojave for about an hour today – and while it wasn’t via the route I expected, I did manage to get Victor into Primm without having to brave the NCR’s bomb bridge! :D Though he then proceeded to have a BIT of a tough time with the, uh, new “locals” hanging around the place – let me tell you all about it –

A) I naturally picked up where I left off last time, with Victor lurking under a honey mesquite tree not far from the fence around Primm, thinking that he’d found a good way to get into the town without having to worry about any mines – namely, up and over what looked like some sort of natural ramp next to the fence nearby! Destination thus in mind, I had him start creeping forward, toward a couple of rocks looming out of the landscape before him, VATS-scanning for trouble all the while –

Which proved to be a smart move because, as Victor got closer to the rocks, VATS picked up on an escaped convict patrolling the bit of rollercoaster track that looped around closest to the fence! Fortunately, said convict was too far away to detect Victor in turn. Victor quickly hid behind the rocks to make sure there would be no line of sight, then carefully and slooooowly crept around the side and up to the edge of the fence as the convict continued his patrol around the loop of the track and back toward the Bison Steve. Once he was there, I took note of three important things:

I. There was a big valley in the ground running roughly perpendicular to the fence, which would be inconvenient to fall in but perhaps useful for escaping any convicts lurking around that happened to notice him

II. One of the fence sections (which mostly consisted of tall metal spikes separated here and there by big old brick pillars) was bent a little at the top, probably by time and weather – unfortunately, there were no gaps that Victor to squeeze through

III. ...And I could no longer see the “ramp” up and over the fence that I’d seen before. Because while the landscape near the fence did consist of a lot of dips and hills and such (see the aforementioned valley), none of the hills were actually pressed up against the fence. Apparently what I’d seen last time was just a trick of perspective. *grumbles* Figures, right? I was so certain I’d found a side entrance…

( Cutting here because we know these get long )

YouTube: Well – in a curious twist, despite C. M. Alongi now being off her CaFae Latte hiatus, she did not upload a compilation of the latest shorts today! Looks like another video from one of her other series, Cafae Talks, took priority. *shrug* So instead I turned to the OXBoxtra gang for my nightly entertainment, watching –

A) “7 Best Games for Pranking NPCs” by OXBox! Jane and Mike going through those games that allow you to be amusingly cruel to the non-player characters living in the simulation. Just want to fire banana skins at everyone and watch them slip over? Pick up The Last Story, get the “prank banana” ammunition for the hero’s crossbow, and start slapping everyone in the body part of your choice! Wish to make NPCs kiss with the power of grappling hook tethers, or fly with the power of rocket booster mines? Grab Just Cause 3 and reveal in your ability to forcibly create both relationships and human birds! Want to give the NPCs in Hitman World of Assassination games a scare while discovering which of them actually enjoy it when you choke them out? Have 47 slip an arm under their chins, then refuse to tap (X) to subdue to hear what they have to say as they struggle! And wondering if you can combine pranks with tactical espionage in Metal Gear 3: Snake Eater? You sure can – tranq a snake, box it up, then fling it at a guard to cause both distraction and hilarity! And death, if it happened to be a venomous snake. :p Basically, if you’re looking for laughs at an NPC’s expense, these games are the way to go! Let us hope they never find a way to pay us back… (Well, okay, the guy telling 47 that he was enjoying being choked probably did get him back, judging by the look on 47’s face when he heard that tidbit.) XD

B) And “HARD MODE Who's That Pokemon?” by OXtra! Ellen putting Jane and Mike to the test to see if they could identify any Pokémon that weren’t the original 150 from the now over a THOUSAND out there! The pair were given first the standard “Who’s That Pokémon?” silhouette, then the image of the Pokémon itself as Ellen gave them its number in the Pokédex and some pertinent facts. The scoring system was supposed to be “two points if you can identify it by the silhouette, one if you can identify it after seeing it and hearing the facts,” but it rapidly turned into “however many points you can weedle out of Ellen for getting anywhere near right.” XD There were ten Pokémon to identify – how did they do?

Not bad – mostly because Ellen WAS pretty generous with the points. :p In order, we had:

I. A squid-like Pokémon with two long tentacles with rounded balls on the end, who was very curious but often investigated things by punching them – Mike guessed it was “Boxtopus,” while Jane went with “Squidoo.” They eventually gave up and decided to let this one be the practice round, causing Ellen to reveal the Pokémon was “Clobbopus.” No points, and Mike insisted his name was better (which, frankly, it was).

( Ten Pokémon is a lot in this case, so let’s have a cut )

*nods* I'm pretty satisfied with that, yeah. And now it is time for me to go to bed, as I have stayed up entirely too late reading stuff on TV Tropes again. XD Tomorrow, I hope to work some more on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; play some Portal 2 (gotta get the neurotoxin disabled); continue working on Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and watch the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode from Jon (who HOPEFULLY will have it up in time for my workout -- fingers crossed). Night all!

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Somewhat Stressful Friday

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 05:34:57 GMT

Though I suspect that's partly because I think the PMS is starting to come on me again -- I AM expecting my period to show up sometime next week, so... I was definitely bitchier and more wound up today, that's for sure! *sigh* I hate my hormones, I really do...anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – Well, it started as a fairly quiet and boring Friday – with me doing a rather short GL and that memo to the lady who needs a refund for her Food Bank check, followed by more checking on people’s 2025 Appeal pledges and more matching ID numbers to pledge scans, along with a couple of credit card calls – but then my coworker started asking for my help in looking up certain gifts, and it quickly became a stressful “oh great the credit card company keeps fucking up” kind of day. Long story short, there were three gifts that had been assigned to the wrong person – two because said person shared an e-mail address with the actual donor (it looked like in both cases a child helping a parent make a gift), one for mysterious reasons we’re not sure of (I e-mailed the credit card company about that one – they said they’d get back to us quickly, but yeah, I don’t believe that). For a minute, it looked like there was a fourth, but fortunately that one turned out be one person with two different records. *grumbles* God, I hate our credit card company, I really do… Anyway, between that, someone calling incessantly at the very end of my lunch break (and then not even leaving a message!), and the hormones I mentioned above, it wasn’t a very pleasant day at work in the end. Not HORRIBLE, but – not great. And nearly getting sideswiped by a tractor trailer on the way home didn’t help (started merging into a lane at the same time I did, forcing me to jerk back into my original one). *sigh* At least it’s the weekend now – and a non-cleaning one at that, yay~ I will take it.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through –

A) The second half of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: ZOMBIE CHEF! ZOMBIE SINGER! ZOMBIE BABY? | Episode 2!” Which featured more of Grace navigating the horrible horrible corridors of Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center! And I really don’t want to spend as long as I did yesterday summing up what happened in the LP, so let me see if I can keep it a bit snappier this time around by focusing on what Grace found in this portion of the video –

I. Grace found a blood lab! Complete with a blood collector that could gather infected blood and turn it into crafting materials (Jane was dubious, saying it looked more like a vape), a big old bucket of blood to collect blood from (Jane was grossed out, asking if that’s why there were buckets of blood all over the place and noting it was “chunky blood,” like orange juice with the pulp in), and an analyzer for analyzing blood samples and turning them into crafting recipes (once you played a strange atom-based mini-game – Jane: “are you analyzing blood on the ATOMIC level?” Andy: “everyone stop asking difficult questions about Resident Evil”). There were also doctors wandering around the nearby hallways with big old bonesaws for some reason – Jane was baffled as to why they had those in the clinic, asking if anyone’s chronic condition was “having too many limbs.” XD

( This will probably get long anyway, so let’s put in a cut )

B) And, to fill out the final minute-and-a-half of my workout (though it ended up being longer than that, ironically), “A Hidden Weapon that Fallout New Vegas Players are Missing! #falloutnewvegas #fnv” by The Fallout Family! A YouTube Short talking about a unique weapon in Fallout: New Vegas that they’re pretty sure everyone misses – mostly because it’s hidden deep in the sewers (accessible via the manhole just outside McCarran). Basically, you have to:

I. Go north, then east from your starting point, fighting your way through giant rats and ghouls to find the corpse of Sweet Jill the prospector

II. Grab the “Luke’s Find” key off her body (and kill the Unnaturally Large Sized Rodents in the next room over if you’re so inclined)

III. Retrace your steps back to where you started and take the west tunnel, fighting off a bunch of Fiends along the way

IV. Go left in a certain room after the Fiends before heading south into another room and climb the staircase to the top, opening the door at the end with Luke’s Find

V. Kill the worryingly-large amount of ghouls in the room at the end of the Sealed Sewers area (which will include at least one Glowing One and one Reaver)

VI. Find the dead prospector in that room and claim your prize from his corpse – the Humble Cudgel! A lead pipe that does four extra points of damage, uses three points less of AP when in VATS, and is 50% hardier than your average pipe. XD Oh, and if you think “that was a FUCKING lot of work for a PIPE,” there is also a set of Reinforced Combat Armor (clothes AND helmet) in a duffel bag in the room. So maybe it is worth it! XD

Fun stuff! I would have never thought there was a unique “lead pipe” weapon in the sewers! Dunno if it’ll really be Victor’s thing, but it might be worth going down there just to clear out the enemies for XP. Once Victor actually GETS there, of course...

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – did another page right after Game Night (Sequence – Dad SMOKED me and Mom with four wins to Mom’s two and my one! At least we all won one game) and my ice cream. Tonight’s chunk covered –

A) Barnaby attempting to bluff to Steven (who’d noticed the flavor of slumber essence in his glass) that the gin wasn’t drugged, it was just good – the sleepy feeling was totally normal! Steven didn’t buy it, however, and started yelling for help as Alan attempted to stumble off – fortunately, Smiler managed to slap a hand over his mouth and quiet him until the slumber essence did its job, and Alan didn’t get very far before keeling over himself. Barnaby’s glasses didn’t even get chipped, which is what he was most worried about. :p

B) Kasimir admitting that he probably should have put a few more drops in the gin before saying he hoped they hadn’t gotten anyone’s attention – Alice said that the hallway seemed pretty secluded, and Victor confirmed (after shaking off Alan’s comment about how his mother would have only been happy to see him in a Bellweather Crematorium vase) that any servants that might be down this way would probably be at the party attending the guests. Smiler noted that was a lucky break, then asked Victor if he wanted a hug, given what had just been said about him and his mother’s relationship. Victor decided he’d take one later, as right now he just wanted to get into that damn vault and prove to his parents it WASN’T a fortress.

C) Kasimir seconding leaving the touchy-feely stuff for later, as they needed to get into and out of the vault before anyone came along and found the guards sleeping on the job, prompting Barnaby to go “well SOMEONE should hide them then” with a significant look at Alice and Smiler – Alice promptly asked “where?” pointing out there were no other doors down this end of the hall, meaning their only real option was to drag the guards into the vault and lock them in –

Prompting Victor to tell her that they couldn’t really do that, as they were only at the entrance to the entrance to the vault. Clarifying at her request that the big doors Steven and Alan were guarding led to a hallway full of traps that led to the actual entrance to the vault. Barnaby was like “well, they’re your traps, just turn them off,” but Victor said he didn’t know how, as he’d always been down here with one of his parents, and THEY always had the traps turned off beforehand. (And honestly, he wasn’t sure either Nell or William remembered to turn off the traps either – that was the servants’ job.) Fortunately, William had run him through what all of the traps were, so he could point them out as necessary.

D) And Victor opening the doors and – after a lot of hard squinting – finding the first trap: a nearly-invisible tripwire right past the entrance, which would trigger a loud alarm if tripped. I left it with Victor pointing out the barely-visible gleam of the wire in the flickering sconce-light of the hallway, and warning Barnaby that he’d have to lift his coat – next time, the gang will get past Trap #1, and start moving onto Traps #2, #3, and #4...

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but then that’s not surprising given the combination of Game Night and Long Workout Video Write-Up. *shakehead* Well, we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) is all set for the moment, and – as usual – there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse. At least that meant it was one less thing for me to worry about while getting the Long Workout Video Write-Up done!

And there we have it! And I should really try to drag myself to bed sooner rather than later. Tomorrow's goals include working on some of my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing some Fallout: New Vegas and getting Courier Victor into Primm; and hopefully watching both whatever CaFae Latte compilation may pop up AND the latest OXBox list video. If I have time, I'll also work some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy," but we'll see what happens. *nods* Night all!

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Kinda Long Thursday

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 04:16:29 GMT

Bit of a boring day at work, I'm afraid, and not much happening at home either -- other than the Workout Video Write-Up, which you will see below. At least the weather was nicer today -- mid 60s and sunny. :) I will take it, especially after the chill we've been suffering the past few days! Anyway, let's get straight into it:

Work – As I stated above, it was a pretty damn quiet Thursday at work – I spent most of the day just matching up pledge card scans to donor ID numbers to make it easier to look them up later! There just wasn’t much else to do! But I did accomplish a handful of other things –

A) Calling a parish to try and get an updated address for a donor to resend some returned mail...only to discover they too were having trouble with returned mail and had to get the updated address themselves. *shrug* At least I know it’s not just us?

B) Taking a credit card call from one of the people I e-mailed about forgetting their expiration date when they first submitted their gift (good to see those e-mails ARE working)

C) Calling back a lady who left a message asking if we’d gotten her check and leaving her a message saying I didn’t see it yet (as it’s the time of year where things get Delayed), but I’d keep an eye out for it for her

D) Putting on some more Easter Collection gifts after lunch

E) And puttering around in a spreadsheet of 2025 Appeal gifts that still have balances (that is now very much out of date, and which I haven’t touched since February because of everything ELSE going on) and seeing which ones had since been paid off...which led to me discovering a check to the food bank that had been posted to someone’s record as an Appeal gift in error. Whoops. Gotta fix that tomorrow!

So yeah – nothing terribly exciting! Except maybe that last bit, but we’ll send the donor a check for the money so she can put it toward the CORRECT charity. We’ll see how Friday goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with The Adventures Of Grace And Leon In The Terrible Care Center, as I pedaled my way through –

A) The very end of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: GRACE'S BOSS IS THE WORST | Episode 1!” The last five minutes of which featured:

I. Leon, having chainsawed his way through a bolted door (and broken his chainsaw in the process; everyone was very sad), going upstairs and coming across Grace escaping from the Bug-Eyed Giant Monster that had been chasing her – Leon proceeded to watch as Grace was grabbed by the monster and dragged back into the spooky dark hallways beyond because we already saw this bit with Grace and knew he didn’t immediately intervene, while Andy made another joke about him needing like eight business days to respond to these threats. (My question is, how the fuck did Grace not see Leon, given he was RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER?)

II. Leon eventually using his big fancy hand cannon (taken from RE4 and now named, appropriately, Requiem) to kill the bug-eyed monster, allowing Grace to escape onto the balcony into the light; Leon introduced himself as from the DSO (don’t know what that is, but Grace eventually recognized it as a counter-bioterrorism organization), Grace introduced herself as from the FBI and said she’d been kidnapped, and Leon said they needed to get out of here –

Prompting Victor Gideon, who was lurking at the end of the darkened hall, to activate a lockdown, bringing the original screen crashing down between them again and lowering a big old metal shutter to completely cut them off from each other. Whoops! Not getting out of the Standard RE Mansion that easily!

III. Leon attempting to learn from Grace why Victor grabbed her – but after it became obvious that she had no idea and was basically just panicking, he chose to instead hand over Requiem so she’d have something to protect herself with before they were separated (aw)

IV. Leon preparing to confront Victor G as he approached from the end of the hallway, stating they should have a little chat – unfortunately, his attempt to pull some of his sick moves on the guy was cut short by Victor’s signature move of “grabbing his opponent around the throat and choking them out because he’s a hulking monster man.” Though before he rendered Leon unconscious, he noted some worrying dark patches on his throat and said that Leon was apparently “showing symptoms too” of the same “Raccoon City Syndrome” that was killing the other survivors… D: Not good! Come on, games, Leon already went through this shit with Las Plagas in RE4!

V. And the episode ending with Andy getting control of Grace again, preparing to explore the mansion and engage in more RE7/RE8-style first-person horror antics!

Yeah, uh, they packed a lot into those five minutes. XD

( And here feels like a good place to stick a cut )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got another page sorted tonight, covering:

A) Steven and Alan the guards being initially startled by Barnaby’s appearance, before Alan realized he was one of the toffs from the party – Barnaby claimed he just needed to get out of that stuffy ballroom and see the other wonders of the mansion, and stated he’d heard the vault was down here somewhere and it really was a sight to see, especially given the Van Dorts are in trade. Steven snorted and assured him it was, but he wasn’t getting in to see it without Mr. or Mrs. Van Dort present, as it was their duty to guard the place; Alan agreed, adding that they got paid a pretty ~~penny~~ slug for it

B) Barnaby praising their efforts and stating that Nell told him her security staff was the cream of the crop – Steven just took the compliment, but Alan ended up a little confused, stating “Mrs. Van Dort said that?” Barnaby quickly bluffed that she just put on the tough, never-satisfied act in front of them, then had Smiler offer them the gin as a reward for “standing around and looking tough,” saying she’d approved it – Steven and Alan were a little hesitant at first, but fortunately decided that maybe Nell was in a better mood because she was getting to show off how rich she was to all the nobs at her party

C) Barnaby adding “Victor having reappeared” as a reason for Nell to be happy – only for the guards to scoff and say that if Victor showed up NOW, Nell would be furious because of him screwing up his wedding. Steven commented that if Victor had any sense, he’d risk a train ride to another city rather than come back and get a bollocking from his mam (excuse his language), while Alan said that the only way Nell would be happy to see Victor would be if he was being delivered by the Spirit Wardens as ashes in a vase :( Yeah, uh, as you might imagine, Victor will be feeling A Way about that…

D) Smiler and Barnaby, upon hearing that, encouraging the guards to drink up before Nell went on the warpath again, and the guards taking the bait and downing their gins (in one long swig – Barnaby couldn’t help a wince). However, most unfortunately for our heroes, it seems like Steven at least knows what slumber essence tastes like…

And I left off with Steven accusing Barnaby and Smiler of drugging the glasses. Tomorrow, he tries calling for help, the guards go down, and Victor gets to explain to everyone that they’re at the entrance to the entrance to the vault. If that makes any sense. :p

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, surprisingly – mostly because I watched it before I went down to work out. :p “It” being “Coyote vs. ACME | Official Trailer” by Coyote vs. Acme and Ketchup Entertainment! The first trailer for a new mixed animation/live action Looney Tunes film coming out, which featured both:

A) A look at the plot – namely, Wile E. Coyote deciding to sue ACME with the help of a human lawyer (who apparently specializes in getting settlements for toons hurt by ACME products), only for the pair and their friends to stumble upon some sort of bigger conspiracy (possibly headed up by, of all toons, Foghorn Leghorn – and of all people, John Cena, what is this movie)

B) Ketchup Entertainment busting Warner Bros’s chops about this being one of the films they made and then immediately shelved for tax write-off purposes...until Ketchup got its hands on the movie and decided to release it, with Foghorn EXPLICITLY CLAIMING at the end that they were releasing it purely for accounting purposes XD

So yeah, that was fun. :P Movie itself apparently comes out at the end of August – we’ll see how it does in theaters!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse again, but I did get my queue for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) all sorted, I’m pleased to say –

A) First, this morning, I tossed in that cute Emily fanart from nuri4ever that I got from Sunday’s tag crawl for today, and “The Devil’s Wheel” by creepyclothdoll (the story about a woman, the Devil, a carnival wheel, a deal of three million in exchange for a man dying, and an awesome twist) for Friday

B) Then, tonight, I tossed in a reblog of my Song Saturday post for “Boom Boom Clap” by Charlie XCX! Because I listened to the song this morning, remembered how much I liked it and its Valicer vibes, and decided it needed to be featured again. :) I mean, the last time I reblogged it WAS two years ago, so…

So that’s all good, hooray! Now I just have to figure out next week’s queue...

...yes, I understand that was a very long entry for a rather boring day, but -- again, too much detail about the RE9 video. One day I will learn to rein it in again. As it stands, though, I gotta hit the sheets. Night all!

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Weird Schedule Wednesday

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 04:22:10 GMT

Yeah, thanks to my parents needing the car so Dad could go get CAT scanned this morning (we haven't gotten the results back yet, but we're hoping for good news), I had to wake up a bit earlier, forgo any computer time this morning, and let them take me to work WAY earlier than usual. We ended up sitting in the parking lot until 8 AM because traffic was so light (it's school vacation week here) that we got there earlier than even Mom expected. And then I had to sit around some more in the office because, well, work doesn't start until 8:30... At least I was able to make some progress reading Future Boy, the book by Michael J. Fox about his experience filming the first Back To The Future movie -- did you know the Nikes he wears in the film were Mike's personal shoes at the time? I didn't! :) So that was a silver lining to the whole situation.

As for the rest of my day --

Work – It was a pretty boring Wednesday at work, if I am totally honest – my main accomplishments for the day were:

A) Calling one of the parishes to tell the secretary there about two people from said parish who had sent in credit card gifts without their expiration dates (seriously, this has happened SO OFTEN this year) and who I was pretty sure didn’t speak English to ask if she could contact them on my behalf and let them know what happened – she took names and phone numbers and promised to do the best she could, which was nice of her

B) Researching a few bits of returned mail and getting a couple sent out again (including one that my coworker had intended to send out again before getting distracted) – the other two I might just have to scan the letters onto their records (as my coworker suggested) and just leave things at that!

C) Matching up scans of pledge cards to people’s ID numbers on our processor’s scanning app, so we can more easily look up stuff in the future

D) Having another totally useless check-in call with the credit card company – I swear, it’s amazing ANYTHING gets fixed by those people

E) Putting on a couple more Easter Collection gifts

F) Taking one credit card call from another guy I’d e-mailed in the past about a failed gift and getting that sorted (yay)

G) And refunding somebody’s overpayment on their Capital Campaign pledge

Nothing particularly exciting, as you can see! Though, as it was Administrative Professionals Day today, my supervisor got me and my coworker each a nice card, a $15 Dunkin e-gift card (it’s basically a piece of paper with a QR code on it), and a little plastic water bottle with daisies painted all over it and a daisy cap for the straw (currently sitting on my nightstand as I’m not sure what to do with it – I already HAVE a water bottle). So that was sweet of her. :) Nice to feel appreciated!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: GRACE'S BOSS IS THE WORST | Episode 1!” The second half of the first episode of OXBox’s RE9 LP featured –

A) Grace finally freeing herself from the damn luggage cart that she had gotten trapped on, and doing her best to fend off the zombified cop, thinking she’d succeeded when she put a long poker thing through his eye (a horrified Jane: “Now that’s in my brain!” Andy: “And his!”) – only for the cop to rally and chew on her arm. D: She managed to get away and flee through the fire exit door (now openable thanks to the key he’d dropped), then – when he cornered her by a broken window in the hallway beyond it (Jane was like “but didn’t we go through the fire exit?” – Andy joked that that didn’t mean they’d left the building – “the fire exit door leads to many other doors, each more locked than the last”) – jab a piece of broken glass in his neck and throw him out said window – but yeah. Girl was NOT doing good after all that.

B) Grace finding a staircase leading up and investigating, eventually finding a room where the main villain of the game, one Victor Gideon – a man with a pale face cracked with cuts and veins and an eye mask covered in various lenses – was sitting in wait for her; Mike promptly accused him of sounding like The Brain from Pinky And The Brain the moment he started going on about how Grace had been the one he was looking for all this time. XD And you know, what he wasn’t wrong… Though I have double-checked, and the guy providing Victor’s voice was named Antony Byrne, aka very much NOT the guy behind The Brain. XD

( Insert interesting cut text here )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – after a little bit of prepwork (watching some more of a video highlighting the best moments from “The Marriage of Lady Fyengeh” and collection of Victor moments from Corpse Bride), I dove back into Victor, Alice, Smiler, Kasimir, and Barnaby preparing to rob the Van Dort vault, getting through –

A) Victor leading the others to the hallway where the entrance to the vault was, and – from safely behind a corner – pointing out the two guards, Steven and Alan, to them; cue Kasimir getting Barnaby to pour the glasses of gin (with Barnaby having a little gripe about how the guards weren’t even going to taste any of the booze, given what they were doing), Kasimir doctoring them up with slumber essence – and then shoving them at Victor, expecting him to go and do the dirty work

B) Victor anxiously going “you expect ME to deliver those?” – and then, in response to Kasimir’s groan about how HE couldn’t consider himself too good to do it, pointing out that he didn’t talk to them much and that he was worried he’d give the game away with his nerves (specifically drawing attention to his nervous stammer); cue Barnaby telling Victor that they’re servants, which means they’re dumb, and that if he just told them the glasses were for a job well done, they’d surely swallow anything

C) Alice responding to that by telling Barnaby he should go deliver the glasses then, since he was well-suited to playing the part of the wandering drunken guest; Barnaby huffed a little but agreed...but then refused to take the glasses of gin BACK, because he’d already given them to Kasimir and why should he carry his own stuff? Fortunately Smiler saved the day by offering to carry the glasses, which Victor thought was a better plan than Kasimir carrying them because he didn’t think his mother would ever hire someone with a knee brace (Alice admitting the same thought had driven them to follow Kasimir back when they first saw him)

D) And Smiler taking the glasses from Kasimir (sparing the guy more walking) and telling Barnaby “ready when you are, sir” – prompting Barnaby to pat them on the head for knowing their place, then stride into the hall, greeting the guards with his biggest, most insincere smile :p

Not bad! Feels good to get back to work on this – especially as it gives me an excuse to watch bits of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark on the regular. :D Tomorrow, Barnaby mostly-successfully drugs the guards, and Victor gets to tell everyone how the hallway beyond the fancy doors they’re guarding is full of fun traps! Yay!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – as stated above, I’d intended to finish off the last five minutes of Episode 1 of the OXBox RE9 LP, but between getting the write-up of what I’d watched during my work-out done and carving out time to do my writing and talk to some tumblr friends and whatnot...yeah, there just wasn’t enough time. *sigh* One day my time management skills will come back from the war...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check, despite it being a Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day – blame my issues with time management as detailed above. *grimace* Which means I currently don’t have anything prepared for tomorrow’s queue...I’ll have to see what strikes my fancy in the morning!

And speaking of time management, I really do need to get to bed now. At least tomorrow is back to a normal morning schedule, apart from Mom taking me into work as the truck doesn't go in to get fixed until Friday. *shrug* Hopefully THIS time it's fixed correctly and we can get a little more use out of it until Mom can find a car of her own! Fingers crossed, folks -- and for now, good night!

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Another Chilly Day

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 04:13:41 GMT

Though I think this one ended up a bit warmer than they originally predicted -- maybe mid 50s instead of low 50s. I could go outside without a hat in the afternoon, I know that much! And having the sun out all day helped too. *nods* Tomorrow's supposed to be a lot rainier and more miserable, sadly...meh. I really hope they're right about the end of the week being at least a bit nicer!

Anyway -- proper workday write-up of what I did today follows:

Work – My Tuesday in the office started out kind of busy, but quickly got quieter as the day went on (hooray). Main accomplishments of the day were:

A) Getting the morning credit card reports done and the checks scanned, as per usual – also ran a second set of Appeal reports for a day last week for Fiscal, since they wanted to double-check some charges

B) Helping the guy who came to fix our printer by printing some stuff as he fiddled with the settings (some of our reports and such have been coming out REALLY smudged lately) – seems like the problem was the printer was set to print on a mix of different types of paper. Not sure how that happened, but okay

C) Listening to a voicemail from a lady who said she’d gotten a thank-you letter for a one-time gift but had thought she’d made a pledge; determining that she’d forgotten to indicate on her card that she wanted to set up a pledge; and calling her back and setting up the pledge she wanted for her

D) Getting a credit card call from a woman who asked why her payments hadn’t been coming out for her pledge – turned out SHE hadn’t indicated she wanted automatic payments and thus I had to set that up for her

E) Finally getting in contact with two of the four people who had recurring gifts and pledges, explaining the situation, and learning they wanted to keep the recurring gifts, along with determining the third had meant to set up a pledge and had picked the wrong option, and doing a bunch of reversals to fix this

F) Doing some other reversals to fix some other stuff

G) And looking at some returned mail and discovering one lady whose tax letter was returned had passed, so obviously she wasn’t going to need it

Nothing particularly exciting, but I’m glad to have those recurring gift/pledge people mostly cleared up now! We’ll see how it is tomorrow – especially since my coworker today had to leave early as she didn’t feel good, so there’s a non-zero chance I’ll be on my own in the office...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – I returned to the OXBox channel for today’s pedal session to start something I’ve been meaning to watch for a while: “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: GRACE'S BOSS IS THE WORST | Episode 1!” AKA the first part of the Official OXBox LP of Resident Evil Requiem! Mostly because I saw they uploaded the FINAL episode today and was like “oh yeah, I wanted to watch that!” So now I can watch it all in one go. :) Managed to pedal my way through the first half-hour of Andy, Mike, and Jane’s adventures in RE9, which featured –

A) Andy being startled by the “FBI Midwest Field Office” text dramatically splashing itself across the image of an office building, then welcoming everyone back to the very first episode of the LP – Mike allowed that it was at the very least a “welcome back” to Resident Evil in general

B) Andy geeking out over Oswald Spencer (one of the founders of the Umbrella Corporation and thus The Guy Responsible For All This Shit) being featured in one of the newspapers Grace Ashcroft, one of our two protagonists, was looking at in her introduction

C) Jane wondering what the hell the FBI actually INVESTIGATES because, being English, she’s only familiar with it from stuff like The X-Files and The Silence Of The Lambs; Mike and Andy hypothesized that, being a federal agency, they mostly did murders over state lines, and Jane welcomed any FBI agents in the chat to explain things further. XD Oh, and this was all done over the scene where Grace’s boss coerces her into going and investigating the Wrenwood Hotel as they found another mysterious body matching the MO of four others they were investigating there, essentially saying “I know that’s where your mother was murdered, but do it for me, please?” – Jane and the others had to clarify that yes, they knew that Grace was being sent to the Trauma Hotel and that they did consider her boss a dick because of it

( Long sum-up is long, who is surprised )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Partial check – thanks to the above write-up taking so long, me needing to answer all the reviews left on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” and me wanting to take a moment to get back into the flow of things, I spent today’s writing time going over the beginning of Chapter 5 and making just a couple of tweaks here and there. Not many, but I was able to correct a typo or two and reword a couple of awkward sentences. Tomorrow, hopefully, I will be able to pick up where I left off before taking The Long Break To Edit Chapter 6 Of LB:DQ! We’ll see!

3. Watch something on YouTube: Well, WeirdKev did link me to a YouTube Short this evening, so I guess that counts… Said short was by PunkeyDoodles8, with audio by _videojames_, didn’t have a proper name, and was I presume an animated version of a tumblr shitpost, where someone talked about how, if they had a time machine, they’d go forward in time to dig up their own bones. With an onlooker being like “...why?” and the original poster just going “They’re mine.” XD Very odd, as you might agree! WeirdKev wanted to know what I thought Doc would think of that – I said he and Marty would be like “...well, it doesn’t cause a paradox, but it is disturbing.” Which is a legit way to feel, I think.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing over on Valice Multiverse apart from WeirdKev’s direct message, but I managed to get something into the queue over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – the traditional “here’s a link to the start of the story now that I’ve posted the last chapter so you can read it over from the beginning if you want” post for “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland.” Just a nice way to wrap things up for that story, I feel.

Not too shabby -- though I once again despair over my inability to keep the damn workout video write-ups short. There's always just too much I want to talk about there! *sigh* I gotta figure out something...as it stands, though, I gotta get to bed, as my parents need my car tomorrow to get to one of Dad's appointments (the truck died on them today while they were out and about), and because of the timing, we have to leave way earlier than I usually do and drop me off at work earlier. Which sucks, but... So yeah, gotta get to bed now. Night all!

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Very Distracted Monday

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 04:19:27 GMT

Or at least Monday evening...I dunno what it was -- the cold weather with occasional showers, watching Jon Oliver with supper and getting a look at another piece of shit ruining people's lives in the modern era (predictive markets, if you were wondering), feeling a little bit overwhelmed by all the e-mails in my inbox, reading some interesting but sometimes-slightly-upsetting stories on tumblr during my lunch break -- but I just had absolutely no get-up-and-go this evening. To the point where I'm not going to do my usual workday to-do list -- I'm just gonna list out what I did get done today:

Work – It was a fairly decent Monday at the office, I must admit – my main tasks of the day were:

A) Doing the GL – which was actually didn’t take as long as you might expect, as not that much was put up on Friday

B) Taking a couple of credit card calls (my coworker took the other two), along with some “looking things up/updating records” calls

C) Going through a new set of exceptions that came back from our processors, contacting people about failed credit cards and updating parishes and such

D) Putting on another batch of Easter Collection gifts from parishes

E) Helping my coworker with some gifts

F) And looking up some people who had overpayments on last year’s gifts and preparing to move said overpayments to their new pledges

Nothing particularly taxing, as you can see! Though I do need to contact some people again about having two gifts running at once...that’ll be a project for tomorrow, I guess!

workout: Check – hopped back on the bike this evening to try and finish off “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 39 - Let Go!” Having gotten through P. D. finding Christine in the Executive Suites yesterday, today I covered –

A) P. D. venturing back out of the Executive Suites to the Lobby to thread together all those “Starlet Hologram Snippets” she’d been collecting to figure out the passphrase to the elevator down to the vault from the songs included on them! Which was a journey fraught with much danger thanks to the fact that – because she didn’t kill ALL of them on her trip over to the Suites – the Lobby was swarming with Ghost People. Too many for her to sneak up on and kill them all. Fortunately, P. D. had a plan, and she executed it flawlessly –

I. She did a dose of Implant GRX before taking the elevator back down, allowing her to run past all the Ghost People before they could do more than go “!” at her presence and get to the terminal on the lobby desk

II. She used that terminal to thread together the snippets and get the necessary songs that revealed the passphrase, and to turn on a security hologram to fight the Ghost People on her behalf

III. She then leapt back over the desk, booked it into the restaurant area and hid behind a little corner counter, grabbing some booze while she listened to the hologram take on the Ghost People

IV. ~~Profit~~ And once the noises stopped, she cautiously crept back into the lobby to find just a bunch of ash piles (seven to be exact)

Whew! A stressful turn of events to be sure, but at least P. D. got what she needed without losing any more precious, precious health. Yay!

( I already know this is gonna get long )

Tumblr: I actually slapped one of the stories I read into my drafts for later – “The Devil's Wheel,” about a newlywed woman who tries to figure out the catch when the Devil offers her three million dollars for spinning a wheel and taking a man's life. It's really good, and one of those things you need to read multiple times to truly get – give it a spin yourself, pun fully intended. :p

Yeah, uh, not my most productive night, to be sure! And now I have to go to bed -- here's hoping I get a decent night's sleep so I can reset and take care of some of the stuff I didn't get to today. *nods* Night all!

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Chill And Chilly Sunday

Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:11:44 GMT

Yeah, it was pretty damn cold and miserable today -- it barely got into the 50s temperature-wise, and most of the day was wet and/or windy. Felt more like the end of autumn than the beginning of spring! *grimace* I am very happy that I didn't need to go anywhere, that's for sure! But while the weather was pretty terrible, the day itself was not, as I ended up being pretty damn productive for someone who spent most of her time sitting at her desk wrapped up in her favorite purple blanket --

Dreamwidth DMs: Answered all of Moose’s messages this morning, hooray – only took me like a week and a half this time. :p Ball’s in your court now, Moose! (Or arrow’s in your target?)

Writing: As I expected, it took a pretty solid chunk of the afternoon (because doing the end-of-chapter notes regarding Easter eggs and references and stuff ALWAYS takes a while), but I did indeed get Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” posted! As I have warned, Alice’s adventures on her twelfth night as a vampire are long as fuck, so you’ll either want to read this in sections or set aside a solid chunk of time to peruse it. However you do it, I hope you enjoy! Especially since it’ll be the last bit of “Londerland Bloodlines” fic for a while – I mean, I’ll be starting the next entry, “Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” in a little while, but you probably won’t be seeing it for a couple of years at LEAST. Long fics remain fucking long, folks.

Tumblr: Was another quiet day over on Valice Multiverse – but oh man, did I get a LOT done over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, after getting Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” up on AO3 as per the above, I made a post announcing its release! Which had to be a regular “text” post instead of a proper “link” post because the latter aren’t working again, but whatever. So the tumblr peeps now know about the new chapter!

B) Then, I decided to straight-up reblog a couple of things that had caught my attention:

I. A post by dinolich featuring some fanart of the initial SAW movie...and Taskmaster, in the form of a pic of one of the protagonists of the first movie informing his fellow captive that Jigsaw doesn’t want them to saw through their chains, but their feet – followed by a pic of Greg Davies lying dead on the floor of the bathroom next to a task (it’s implied he shot himself) and Alex Horne sitting on the toilet dressed up as the famous puppet, going, “All the information is on the task.” XD I found this on my friend Newt’s tumblr, and as someone who wrote him the crossover fic “Tasksaw” a couple of Christmases ago, it appealed to me. Even if I’m not a fan of the SAW franchise at all. XD

II. An adorable video posted by the-big-mood showing a couple of otters at the Toba aquarium helping the handlers clean up the pool by fetching cones and toys and stuff that had fallen into the water, and being rewarded with ice cubes – reblogger chryza said “literally in tears at this video....such good helpers...…” and I had to agree. :D I think you will too!

III. A big long thread of people talking about how annoying it is when people say “you can’t have a purple bedroom or a hot bubblegum pink loveseat or a lime green office or a doughnut wedding cake, you’re an ADULT” and showing off both their own lovely whimsical homes (including marlynnofmany’s dungeon door leading to her garage, spuffybot’s coffin-shaped coffee table, and dykepuff’s lime green office wall covered in signs) and historical homes that were highly decorated and colorful to prove that the “everything must be white and minimalist” trend is a very modern invention (including marizpanandminutiae showing off a gorgeous Art Deco jewelry shop from 1901 Paris, and beatrice-otter showing off intricately-carved-and-painted traditional Norwegian farmhouses), culminating in atopfourthwall (yes, the actual Linkara from that web series) talking about how he and Viga were forced to paint everything a nasty shade of brown when they moved into their original rental back in 2016 because the owning company wanted the house in their “corporate” colors, and how they made damn sure to make their CURRENT house as colorful as possible (the living room is yellow, orange, and blue!) – as someone who has a purple bedroom with loads of posters and collectibles, and who made the Chill Valicer Save farmhouse as colorful as possible, the thread just spoke to me. :) Take a gander for yourself, the pictures are really nice!

IV. And a video by teamhawkeye of her Chow-Chow Boswell (a rescue pup she adopted recently) wearing his fuzzy “glow collar” – an electronic collar cycling through multiple colors – at night so he’s prepared for his night walk – my friend Squid reblogged this, and I saw it and was like “awww” :D Look, he’s so cute!

C) And finally, I decided I might as well go through my tracked tags and see if there was anything I wanted to drop into my drafts for later – proved to be slim pickings today, but I did save:

I. A post by gerdark showing off some Alice: Madness Returns fanart – a picture of London!Alice looking pensive, and a picture of Wonderland!Alice (with added fingerless mesh gloves and a choker) holding up a clock and pointing at it as if she’s stealing Rabbit’s job XD

II. And a post by nuri4ever showing off some Corpse Bride fanart – a picture of Emily looking at something off to the side vaguely wistfully while holding her (rather scraggly-looking) bouquet

I just liked the style of both of them. :)

So yeah – LOT done over there. I am pleased. :D

Workout: Welp, Jon once again uploaded the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered video late, so I had to turn to another one of his videos to keep me entertained while I pedaled away on the bike – “Fallout: New Vegas - Where Do They Go?” A video he did about five years ago where he decided to see where exactly all the “wandering NPCs” in the game went after you met them and they said their piece to you. Turns out the answer was generally “to a designated despawn point” or “into a bunch of monsters so they’ll quickly die and you can loot their stuff.” In order, we had:

A) Oliver Swanick, the guy who won the “lottery” at Nipton and thus was allowed to run away alive when the Legion sacked it – Jon discovered that he pretty much immediately beelines straight into the radscorpion nest in the middle of a nearby dry lake bed, and if you kill the radscorpions threatening him (which Jon could because he’d given himself a Gatling Laser for exactly that purpose), he picks a certain rock near the entrance to their burrow and just stands there forever. Okay then! Weird way to celebrate getting to live, but okay!

B) Malcolm Holmes, the guy who spawns in when you find your first Sunset Sarsaparilla Star Bottle Cap and then finds you to let you know about the associated quest – Jon triggered his event over in Goodneighbor, then followed him past Primm and along a rather dangerous ridge over to the Mojave Outpost, where he discovered that Malcolm officially despawns right outside the door to the bar there. The only way he’ll ever actually go IN the bar is if you get your first Star Bottle Cap in there and then wait for him to arrive – and even then, he’ll immediately go back out and despawn in his usual spot, because those are the rules

( Long list is long, who is surprised )

YouTube: As stated, Jon uploaded the latest episode of his F:NV YOLO Remastered series late tonight – meaning I couldn’t watch it as my workout video, meaning I had to watch something else, meaning I ended up spending most of my evening summing up that video (as seen above). Which didn’t leave me enough time to watch the entirety of the new YOLO Remastered episode. But I wanted to watch some of it, at least – so, once, I was done with the workout write-up above, I went ahead and watched roughly the first 13 minutes of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 39 - Let Go!” Which featured –

A) Our favorite Drunken Melee Courier, P. D. Shoot, braving the first hallway of the Executive Suites (where Christine was locked up)! This involved her heading left (avoiding a little patch of Cloud to the side) and following the hallway down to some doors near the end – where she could hear a hologram of Vera Keyes in a couple of the rooms beyond begging Sinclair to come and let her out because she didn’t want to die here. :( P. D.’s goal was to get through a hole in the wall of the bedroom the hologram was occupying, which she could have done by unlocking the first door on the right, waiting until the hologram wandered into the other room, then darting through with her super-speed –

But instead, she decided she wanted to get the hologram out of the way entirely so she didn’t have to worry about it. Cue her instead going through the door on the left into another wrecked portion of the suite, waiting behind some rubble near a hole in the wall until the hologram went back into the bedroom, then darting through and into the nearby bathroom, which contained the hologram emitter. One Repair 75 check later, and that particular Vera hologram was no more! ...honestly, given what she was saying, felt kind of like a mercy kill.

B) P. D. then heading through the hole in the bedroom wall, which led to another hallway where she could access a storage room with lots of shelves of stuff, laundry machines, and a workbench! She switched off the deadly radio on the washing machines (gotta keep the head from exploding), then grabbed the Suite Maintenance keys from a desk by the other door into and out of the room before using the Emergency Network Terminal on it to unseal all the emergency doors in the area, allowing her access to more spaces. She then moved onto to the Maintenance Network Terminal on the desk next to it, and – after a bit of hacking – used it to turn off all the hallway speakers before downloading another “Starlet Hologram Code Snippet” for later –

And a recipe for the Super-Heated Cosmic Knife. Because, despite the DLC being nearly over, the game still wanted to give her one more new weapon (or, well, one more new variant on an old weapon). P. D. went ahead and made one, since she had all the materials to do so, but while it looks cool, Jon admitted that it’s not really that great – it actually does one point less regular damage than the Clean Cosmic Knife! And while it has much better DPS thanks to also doing fire damage to enemies (because, well, it’s a super-hot knife – the guy who wrote down how to make one revealed it melted the damn table he put it on), there’s no enemies in Dead Money who are weak to fire damage, so...yeah, P. D. is going to stick with her Bear Trap Fist + when it comes to fighting Ghost People, thanks!

C) P. D. then using the maintenance key to unlock the door next to the Emergency Network Terminal to get back to the start of the area, before going through the now-unlocked emergency door to the right and avoiding all the Cloud patches and doors with potentially-dangerous holograms behind them to get into a room near the end. This room was very important because it contained the Security Terminal – which not only allowed P. D. to unlock the security closet in the room (though the only thing of value in there to her was another set of Reinforced Sierra Madre armor, which she used to get her own up to perfect condition) –

But also allowed her to “Recalibrate Hologram IFF.” Which essentially made all the holograms of Vera wandering around the place recognize her as a member of the security team and thus prevented them from going hostile! Meaning P. D. didn’t have to spend all her time sneaking around them and finding ways to turn off their emitters! Hooray!

D) P. D. then leaving and cutting through all the various wrecked hotel rooms with the Vera holograms (talking about how the other guests were begging to be let out too – it looks like they were all sealed in when the bombs fell thanks to the security system D: ) to get to the end and turn off another potentially-deadly radio! Because, again, don’t want the head to go pop. She then exited back into the hallways, before finding her way to another recently-unsealed emergency door into what I believe was the kitchen to open up another shortcut. This involved turning off another radio (seriously, all these damn radios), then fixing a gas leak in the room – though, curiously, THIS gas leak didn’t cause damage, unlike the ones in the restaurant kitchen. O.o I mean, obviously that was GOOD, P. D. doesn’t have that much health to spare anymore, but still – odd. Anyway, turning off the gas opened up another door on the far wall, and going through THAT (while dodging some Cloud nearby) put her right back next to the door she’d used to enter the storage room. Easy way to get right back to the elevator out of here – sorted!

E) P. D. venturing back into the hallways and grabbing the Suites Security Pass (and a spare helmet in case she needed to repair hers) off a skeleton of a guy at one of the junctions (one who clearly killed himself when he discovered he was trapped D: ), before entering the big double doors leading to Vera Keyes’s old suite! Where, after verifying the room on the right was locked, she went right to Vera’s bedroom and met back up with the newly-revoiced Christine! Christine was glad to see her (as, you know, P. D. had been nice to her), and informed her that she’d been hunting Elijah for a long time, stressing that the man could not leave the Sierra Madre alive because of all the things he’s done. (And she wasn’t just talking about the shit he’d pulled AT the Sierra Madre, nor what he’d done to her personally back in Big MT – as per Jon, Elijah was also the Elder in charge when the Brotherhood of Steel got massacred over at HELIOS One by the NCR, because he refused to give the damn place up.) P. D. skipped most of her conversation options (or, at the very least, Jon didn’t show them), but did ask her about the Auto-Doc in the room and if it still worked – Christine confirmed that the basic functions did, but that there was a lot of garbage data on it. P. D. asked if she could pull anything off it, and with a little hacking, Christine did – specifically a medical report. For Vera Keyes. Revealing that she’d had a terminal illness and was basically being given all the Med-X to handle it. Christine commented that, based on the report, it didn’t look like she even really knew what was going on – she would have just been numb for the most part due to all the drugs. Yeah, basically, between that and Dean blackmailing her into seducing Sinclair for his stupid plan, the end of Vera’s life was an absolute shitshow. :( I want to give this woman all the hugs, but she’s dead and her holograms would likely try to kill me, so…

F) P. D. then telling Christine that she should sit tight in the suite while she dealt with Elijah! Christine warned her that he wasn’t an easy opponent (as she would know) and promised to help if she could by using the computer systems, then gave her Vera’s key. Which did not open the locked door on the other side of the suite, funnily enough – P. D. had to use the nearby terminal to crack that one! (According to the Independent Fallout Wiki, it actually opens the dresser in her bedroom – how weird.) P. D. then raided the safe on the other side of the door, grabbing a copy of Vera’s outfit…

Before going back to Vera’s bedroom and stripping her dress off her skeleton. Because yes, there are two copies of her outfit in close proximity to each other for some reason. Jon was quite confused – then reasoned, “Well, she was a famous celebrity, it’s not a surprise she’d have two sets of clothes.” XD Anyway, after getting her goodies, P. D. went back into the unlocked room and found the elevator actually heading down to the Vault, and the intercom that could be used to unlock it –

But, despite Elijah demanding that she find a way to open it, she couldn’t do anything but examine it yet. Because while they had the right voice to get the elevator moving – Vera’s, courtesy of Dean Domino’s horrific torture of Christine – they didn’t have the right password – what Vera/Christine had to actually say. The only way to figure that out was to piece together all the Starlet Hologram Snippets P. D. had been collecting...and to do that, P. D. needed to go back downstairs, which was apparently a lot more dangerous now...

And that is where I left things off! I plan to watch the rest tomorrow with my workout – we’ll see what’s so scary about the downstairs and if P. D. can figure out the password and pull off the heist then!

*nods* I'm pretty happy with all that! Yeah, it would have been nicer if I'd been able to fit in some Portal 2, or gotten to watch the full YOLO Remastered episode -- but I enjoyed the "Where Do They Go?" video, at least. And I'm pleased as PUNCH to be done with "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland." Dunno when I'm gonna start "Hollywood's Deluded Depths," but I think I've earned at least a week with just my beloved Valicer In The Dark to worry about!

And with that, I shall be heading to bed, as it is a work night and it's actually not that late for a change. Gotta take the little wins. *nods* Night all!

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Low Key And Chilly Saturday

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 06:19:17 GMT

Yeah, it was a generally kind of quiet and mildly gloomy day, with cloudy skies and falling temperatures. The warmer "late winter/early spring" pajamas are back on, folks. *sigh* But I must say, I hit all of my goals for today --

Cleaning & Laundry: Yup, it was another one of those Saturdays, meaning most of my day was spent dusting my room, Swiffering my floor, vacuuming my rug, and putting sheets, blankets, pjs, and bathrobe through the wash. Started the whole process around 10:40 AM; broke for lunch about 1:10 PM; returned to it all around 1:50 PM; finished off the cleaning and the first load of laundry by 2:50 PM; and took the second load of laundry out of the dryer around 3:50 PM. *nods* Pretty typical Cleaning Saturday schedule these days, I think you’ll agree. At least I had some good entertainment while getting everything clean – “Fallout 3 Is Better Than You Think” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! His essay about why he thinks Fallout 3 is unfairly criticized (pointing out that a lot of the complaints people threw at it didn’t actually have that much merit because they were contradicted by, you know, actually playing the game) and why in some respects it’s the best of the Fallout games (for example, he’s always loved the Capital Wasteland for feeling the most desolate and empty and dangerous of all the various wastelands we encounter through the series). Interesting stuff – though, I admit, what stuck with me the most was him complaining about Legate Lanius, the guy you have to face off with at the end of Fallout: New Vegas and can just Speech check into leaving you alone, again (in the context of comparing him to Colonel Autumn, the guy you have to face off against at the end of Fallout 3 and can just Speech check into leaving you alone, and saying Autumn is better because at least he actually APPEARED EARLIER IN THE GAME AND PERSONALLY WRONGED YOU instead of just showing up as the “final boss” like Lanius) Mostly because, during his rant, he mentioned that Lanius has two contradictory backstories, and that Ulysses from Lonesome Road points out that it might not be the same man under the mask because no one has ever actually seen his face. Which NOW has me wondering if Legate Lanius was ever a real person, or just a myth made up by the Legion to scare outsiders...and that the guy you face at the end IS just some dude in the iconic mask, thrown at you in a last-ditch effort to scare you into surrendering or dying. And that’s why it’s possible to Speech check him – the guy under the mask may not actually want to fight the genuinely-badass Courier, after all! XD I’m sure I’m not the first to think of this twist, but I love it all the same!

Writing: It took me a little bit longer than I expected (there were more fiddly little edits to make than I originally anticipated), but I did indeed finish my final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” today! :D Covering –

A) Alice arriving back at the Skyeline and learning from Larry that Simon had indeed been taken away by the men in white coats – she said that she hoped the doctors could help him, and Larry said he hoped so too...because he needed everyone in the building to pay their rent so he could get paid

B) Alice heading back up to her apartment, only to be met by Victor waiting for her at the door – cue him revealing that he can just sort of tell when she’s in a bad mood, in the form of a feeling of “I have to find and help my domitor,” which – when she’s close enough – translates into having a rough idea of where she is; Alice confirmed that this is why he practically threw himself out the door yesterday (apparently the feeling was so bad it was like an alarm going off on his head), and apologized for not warning him, as she herself didn’t know about it. She told him that she’d ask Mercurio about it when she saw him tomorrow, which Victor said he’d appreciate...before starting to ask if it would really be so bad if he had some more blood from her. Alice shut that line of thought down right quick!

C) Alice bringing Victor over to the couch and telling him about her night – starting with discovering Pisha’s hospital of horrors and having to fight her (Victor was very sympathetic about poor Alice having to deal with an enemy threatening her with fire yet again), then moving onto her trip through the museum (Victor was surprised to hear the night watch at the museum was so lacking...and pleased to know that his blood had been so useful to keeping her hidden from both humans and cameras alike), then moving onto finding the sarcophagus missing and having to return to LaCroix empty-handed (Victor winced and was like “oh no, that must have been fun”), before ending with explaining that she’d been tasked with going to Hollywood and making Gary, Nosferatu primogen, talk regarding the sarcophagus’s whereabouts (because LaCroix is certain he had something to do with its disappearance). And then adding that she didn’t expect a warm welcome from the Anarchs of Hollywood because she’d foolishly mentioned seeing him coming out of Grout’s house the other night, and LaCroix had used that as a springboard to claim Nines had killed Grout and order a blood hunt on him. And that while she’d managed to convince the Anarchs of Downtown she’d been a mere patsy, they were still upset with her, and – yeah. Not a fun night!

D) Victor asking if she wanted him to accompany her to Hollywood, and Alice saying she would, as she enjoyed his company, and it would be useful to have someone around who could operate during the day...before adding mostly-jokingly that it would also be rude of her to insist he stay behind and stick him with the rent, should it come due, because she was the one with sources of income. Cue Victor staring at her for a bit before realizing that no, she genuinely didn’t know about his family situation, and asking her to look up the Van Dorts –

And Alice doing so and being like “your family is worth how much?!” XD And asking why Victor was in a crappy hotel in Santa Monica rather than in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills – Victor explained that it was because he’d left his home in a snit and he was trying to use as little of his parents’ money as possible to fund his trip, lest they try to control what he did by pulling the purse strings. *nods* Smart.

E) Alice then jokingly asking if Victor couldn’t use his riches to buy Hollywood out from under Isaac, and Victor laughingly telling her that he was pretty sure that would take longer than LaCroix would like...prompting Cheshire to tell Alice that such big purchase were a bad idea anyway and remind her that “eyes on you shouldn’t translate to eyes on him – not if you do value his freedom.” Which led to Alice remembering that Victor already vaguely knew the name “LaCroix” and thus might be at least a little bit on his radar, which in turn made her realize that yes, he could very well be in danger of the Prince taking him as his ghoul. Victor was a little confused when she first told him this, as she used the euphemism “buy you off me” to explain LaCroix suborning him – prompting him to assure her there was no amount of money LaCroix could offer him to make him work for the guy – but then Alice properly explained that she meant that LaCroix could force him to drink his vitae, switch sides, and maybe empty his parents’ bank accounts, and he was like “Oh – yes, let’s avoid that.” (While Alice worried about the fact that Tung in Santa Monica already knew about her ghoul situation, and wondered what it might take to convince him – and the other Nosferatu – to keep their mouths shut...)

F) And Victor telling Alice that he wanted to buy her something to thank her for all that she’d done for him – and Alice, after initially demurring, being told by Caterpillar “let him do this, it’s how he’s learned to express his appreciation,” remembering her clothing situation, and telling Victor that he could splurge on a new wardrobe for her if he wanted. Leading to them leaving the apartment arm in arm to do some shopping. :)

Whew! Hooray for that being done. Tomorrow, we post this sucker and FINALLY close the book on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland!”

YouTube: Well, there was no CaFae Latte compilation this week (I double-checked – Chris must still be busy with other stuff), so I was able to spend the night catching up on a pair of videos from the OXBoxtra team –

A) “I Played Pokopia on Painkillers for a Week and It Was Exactly What I Needed” by OXtra! Which was Ellen telling us all about how Pokémon Pokopia on the Switch 2 was a balm for her during a recent week that she had to take off due to her chronic cystinuria – a kidney disease that means she produces a LOT of kidney stones and gets a LOT of kidney pain. :( Pokémon Pokopia, in case you don’t remember, is the new cozy game from Nintendo where you play as a Ditto imitating its former trainer to revitalize a post-apocalyptic world – helping out various Pokémon, making habitats and eventually houses for them, and generally just fixing up the landscape and the infrastructure the humans left behind. There’s a lot of Animal Crossing vibes, as you might expect – in fact, it looks like a decent number of assets and animations were, if not straight-up taken from New Horizons, at least modeled on its stuff. Ellen adores it, though, and said it was the perfect game for a week spent on strong painkillers. Why? Well:

I. It’s just very nice to look at – all the Pokémon are rendered and animated adorably in this game, to the point where Ellen found herself gaining a new appreciation for Pokémon she didn’t actually care much for before (like Swablu, a bird Pokémon with cotton-swab-ball wings, who hops about like a little budgie). They really feel like they’re ALIVE in a way that they sometimes don’t in the mainline games

II. It’s got a lovely core gameplay loop of improving the environment, getting new Pokémon and new life into the area, then getting their help in improving things even further – and unlike in some games, the Pokémon actually do help you, as they are the ones that build all the structures around the place (yes, you the player have to get the plans, pick the plot, and provide the materials, but at least you’re not doing EVERYTHING). They also give you gifts from time to time, which can range from “aw, useless but sweet” to “oh damn, I actually needed this, thanks Pokémon”

III. The tasks in it are all pretty easy (grow plants, harvest food, figure out where to place buildings, ask Pokemon what they need to be happy, etc) and can be handled at your own pace – perfect for someone who is feeling loopy and knows she needs to rest, but also does not want to be bored (though Ellen admitted she might have fallen victim to the whole “toxic productivity” thing by recording her gameplay footage for this video – whoops!)

IV. It’s an extremely chill game with no lasting consequences for mucking things up – accidentally steal an item from a Pokémon’s house? Just put it back and they will be happy as clams! Accidentally destroy a Pokémon’s habitat while cleaning up the environment? Just restore it to how it was (or better) and they’ll cheerfully move right back in! Perfect for when you KNOW you’re going to make mistakes and don’t want them to become a big deal

V. It makes building things and improving the environment fun without encouraging everything to be PERFECT – a minecart track will be useful and run well no matter how “optimized” or “pretty” it is, for example. As someone who suffers from perfectionism, Ellen really appreciated that the game’s calm vibes combined with powerful drugs meant that she could just do the main quest in each area and leave coming back and making everything “perfect” until later. (Plus, the sheer care put into all the post-apocalyptic environments made her want to take her time exploring them before trying to tidy them up)

VI. And it made her laugh during a time where she was generally feeling miserable and sad, thanks to a combination of excellent writing (and localization) when it came to the dialogue of the various Pokémon, and various simply-ridiculous moments such as a Pokémon pulling a minecart out of the ether to take a ride. :p

So yeah – if you have a Switch 2 and aren’t feeling well, this might be a good game for you to pick up and play for a little while! I mean, this is a game that gives you an option to build a house and then ask an Eevee to be your roommate – how can you NOT love that? :p

B) And “7 Horror Games They Banned for No Good Reason” by OXBox! This week’s list video saw Andy and Jane talking about those horror games that got banned, or at least delisted, in various markets for reasons that maybe weren’t the best. Examples included:

I. Rule Of Rose not getting a release in Australia, New Zealand, or the UK because it was accused of having “obscene cruelty and brutality” and “in-game sadomasochism,” among other things – except it straight-up doesn’t have any of that. It’s instead a survival horror game about a nineteen-year-old girl named Jennifer being menaced by creepy tweens in a dark world with no proper adults, which simply had the bad luck of, one, having a trailer with some unsettling moments in it that maybe implied there was some of the above stuff in the game, and two, being released in 2006, which was one of the prime years for Video Game Moral Panic

II. Devotion, a game about exploring a creepy-mannequin filled Taiwanese apartment in the 1980s made by a Taiwan studio, getting taken off Steam because some players found an Easter Egg (or, as the devs claimed, a placeholder asset that accidentally made it into the final release) of a tao charm comparing China’s leader to Winnie The Pooh as per a popular meme in 2019, got mad, and review-bombed it until Steam bowed to the pressure and delisted it

III. And Night Trap, the world’s most famous FMV game featuring terrible trashbag-covered vampires menacing “teenage” girls in a trap-filled mansion, eventually getting pulled off shelves after being the subject of a congressional hearing where senators looked at grainy footage of women being ever-so-slightly menaced by goofy monsters and decided that this game ENCOURAGED you to trap and kill women, and furthermore “promoted violence and sexual aggression.” Apparently the controversy surrounding it was so bad that it “prevented constructive dialogue about an industry-wide rating system,” which is why SEGA pulled it in 1994.

Yeah – basically, if you’re a horror game, watch out! There is a very good chance bullshit banning will be coming your way.

*nods* A short list, perhaps, but it was nice to check every bit off, that's for sure. :) And now it is time for me to head to bed -- tomorrow is Post Chapter Six Of LB:DQ day, along with "watch the next episode of F:NV YOLO Remastered from Jon" day and "answer Moose's messages" day. And maybe play some Portal 2, depending on how long some of the other stuff takes. We'll see. Night all!

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Fairly Decent Friday

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 06:25:46 GMT

The weather wasn't the greatest -- kinda cloudy and blah most of the day, and definitely cooler than it has been (I'm back in long PJ pants for the moment) -- but I had a pretty good, productive day. And Mom and Dad got some good news at the doctor's -- apparently the main physician is hopeful that Dad's tumors will have shrunk enough that he can be considered to be in remission for the time being. We'll see for sure at the CAT scan next week, but -- fingers crossed! Be good if he was, means we'll get that much more time with him.

Anyway -- here's the write-up of my day:

Work – Had a very quiet Friday to end the work week (in stark contrast to last Friday) – my activities consisted pretty much solely of:

A) Doing the GL, which wasn’t TOO complicated today (mostly because not a lot of credit card stuff went on yesterday)

B) Sending out an e-mail about some errors that are still showing up when we try to process certain credit cards to our credit card company (I doubt we’ll hear back)

C) Reviewing my various batches of exceptions and sending out some e-mails/calling some people about failed credit card gifts – got one lady on the line and did her gift with her over the phone, which was nice

D) And doing a bit of roster maintenance (merging a duplicate record I found and looking at some returned mail to figure out someone’s proper address)

Yeah – nothing to write home about, that’s for sure! In fact, it was so quiet, my supervisor let me go home a half-hour early (my coworker had already left earlier to take care of some family medical stuff). So that was nice – I always appreciate getting to start my weekend a touch earlier. :) We’ll see what happens when I go back on Monday!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through –

A) “Hitman 3 Seven Deadly Sins WRATH | The Final Deadly Sin!” by OXBox! Yes, roughly a month after they failed to complete “The Wrath Termination” – the final challenge in the “Seven Deadly Sins” set of missions, where 47 was tasked with protecting his own unconscious body from waves of enemies and killing the “Inhibitors” that would cause him harm with the use of melee weapons and traps – on their Hitmanniversary livestream, the OXBox team returned to the dream version of Dartmoor Manor the whole shebang was set in to see if they could finally defeat it! Specifically, Mike returned to the mansion to see if he could get the strategy he tried at the end of the livestream – going out and murdering as many of the Inhibitors and their goons as he could before they even got inside the mansion – to work, while Andy and Jane sat on the sidelines and offered moral support. Or, well, Jane offered moral support – Andy mostly complained about Mike refusing to use any traps or do normal melee kills over throwing his weapons. XD So, did Mike actually manage to pull this off, murder all the Inhibitors, and finally complete the Seven Deadly Sins?

( Spoilers and overly-elaborate descriptions below )

B) “Project Hail Mary | Creating Rocky” by Amazon MGM Studios! A quick one-minute teaser about how the team behind the movie created its iconic five-legged rock alien Rocky and how important it was to get him right, since the friendship between Ryland Grace and Rocky is the heart of the film. Basically, they had a fully-animatronic Rocky and a puppet Rocky (no CGI – they wanted a real thing to make him feel more real), and used each for different scenes. There was also a clip of James Ortiz – Rocky’s puppeteer and voice, who has amazing hair – talking about how they asked if he was “comfortable improvising with a five-legged puppet” – and how he immediately said “yeah!” XD Good stuff – lot of love went into this movie, that’s for sure!

C) And the Project Hail Mary “Roommates” clip again, since Rocky eagerly hamsterballing his way around Grace’s ship was the perfect way to fill the final few seconds of the ride. XD

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – and I made excellent progress tonight, getting all the way to the beginning of page 62 out of 67! :D Though I suspect most of this momentum is simply because we’ve hit the part of the story that I edited most recently...still, I will take it! Tonight’s final pass for typos and awkward phrasing covered –

A) Alice asking Van, Terrence, and Mercurio what they could tell her about Gary and his Nosferatu – Van admitted that he and Terrence hadn’t been down to Hollywood since the Camarilla’s arrival, since it was unfriendly territory, but let her know that nobody messed with the Nosferatu because they knew everything about everybody, with Terrence adding that they were a tight-knit clan and messing with one meant messing with all of them (unless they were a plague-bearer asshole, that is, as he quickly assured her when he saw her looking nervous about Brother Kanker). Terrence said that the best advice he could give her was to be polite, as Gary especially loved fucking with rude people – Cheshire then told her it was sound, but that Gary’s sense of what was “rude” might be a little skewed from the norm, so she’d better keep that in mind as well.

B) Alice asking if any of the men had any idea where to start looking for Gary, and the trio admitting they didn’t – though Mercurio told her that if she wanted some new kit, she ought to swing by his place in Santa Monica. Prompting Alice to ask how things were in the Lady By The Sea, and learning that Therese Voerman had just petitioned LaCroix to become Prince of Santa Monica...and that Jeannette had loudly proclaimed that she was officially going Anarch in response, and asking Nines if she could be a Baron. Terrence grumbled about the city evening out to neutral territory just because those two couldn’t stop fighting, and Alice noted that the sisters’ plan to see who their enemies were by playing up their rivalry was working perfectly.

C) Alice taking her leave from the trio by saying she needed to pack and fill back up on blood – then, upon leaving Venture Tower, racing after Rabbit back to The Last Round in a desperate attempt to alert Nines about the blood hunt before it was too late; however, she ended up being confronted by Skelter and Damsel instead, who were naturally quite heated about her apparently saying that Nines killed a primogen. Alice screamed back that all she’d said was that Nines was at Grout’s manor (and that if LaCroix had said differently, he was a fucking liar); that she’d run here as fast as she could to try and warn him; that she hadn’t been able to come earlier because she’d been Dominated not to speak about it; and that, if Nines really had killed Grout, she wanted to shake his hand because she herself had wanted to off the monster. Cue Skelter asking a trio of vampires in a nearby booth if she was telling the truth, and me shoehorning in a reference to one of my favorite British comedy game shows by making said vampires the main cast of Would I Lie To You? XD

D) Skelter confirming that Alice had spoken true and begrudgingly admitting he could believe she’d been a patsy, but that he’d be watching her from now on, which Alice agreed was fair, followed by Damsel asking what Alice had done for them lately – and Alice telling her about killing Pisha in the hospital. Shocking her out of her perpetual bad mood for three seconds while she processed that – Alice was very pleased with herself for getting one over on her. Skelter asked how she kept finding this shit, and Alice told him “Rabbit keeps running off and forcing me to chase him.” XD

E) Alice telling Damsel and Skelter about her mission to Hollywood when Damsel demanded the latest on LaCroix, and the pair confirming that nobody fucks with Gary (Damsel complaining about Gary siding with the Tower, while Skelter admitted he was pretty sure Gary didn’t side with anyone but other Nosferatu), followed by Alice shocking Skelter with the reveal that she knew Beckett when he asked about the missing sarcophagus. She delighted in telling him that Beckett thought his belief that the elders could control them even in their sleep was full of shit. Skelter was not happy. ;p

F) Alice preparing to leave and actually do her packing – only to be called over by Smilin’ Jack for a chat, where he assured her that he knew that she was just the messenger, and informed her that he believed it was all a set-up – LaCroix, having learned that Grout was dead, sending a vampire he knew with the ability to look like someone else to go pose as Nines so Alice would be sure to see him at the mansion. (So very close, Jack!) He advised Alice to keep things “business as usual” for the moment, then confirmed that the sarcophagus was missing...before bringing up the concept of diablerie, and younger vampires being able to get the powers of elder by draining them of both blood and soul. Cue Alice nearly having a panic attack over how much more powerful LaCroix would be in that case. *grimacing* To her surprise, though, Jack actually counseled her to do as LaCroix said and get the sarcophagus back for him, since at least in that case they’d know where it was – and besides, getting the sarcophagus and getting into it were two very different things…

G) Jack giving Alice some advice with dealing with the Hollywood Nosferatu (basically, “respect that it’s their domain, their rules” and “just be yourself with Gary and don’t try to fuck him over and you’ll be fine”) – then, right before she left, also letting her know that Dominate can be loopholed and that she might have been able to get around the compulsion by writing a note. Alice thanked him for letting her know, left the bar, and found an unoccupied alley –

And then went full Hysteria Mode on her usual Wonderlander entourage, demanding to know why they hadn’t told her that she could have rules-lawyered LaCroix’s command. The answer turned out to be a combination of “we genuinely didn’t know because YOU didn’t know” (which Alice didn’t accept) and “you were in no shape to write a coherent note of warning last night, you barely made it through the meeting with LaCroix” (which she reluctantly did). She eventually calmed down and decided just to be grateful that she knew NOW she could find ways around Dominate compulsions – though she still rather wanted to go live under a rock for the rest of her existence.

*nods* Pretty solid stuff, I think. :D Tomorrow we’ll wrap this sucker up with the final five or so pages, then I’m thinking Sunday we post (as posting a fic chapter is always a bit of a process with me).

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check – thanks to getting home a half-hour early today, I was able to watch the latest video from Josh Way before my workout: “Fun With Shorts: Coney Island!” A promotional video for the famous theme park back in the – 40s, I’m guessing? 40s or 50s, it wasn’t made clear. Anyway, it was ten minutes of the announcer going on and on about how awesome the park was, highlighting the awesome beaches (packed to the brim with folks enjoying the Atlantic breeze), the boardwalk, the freak show (see disabled and really fat people for a mere dime!), the various rides, the delicious food available (apparently Coney Island was famous not only for hot dogs, but also corn on the cob), the parade of women vying to be Miss Coney Island, the shows featuring man versus tigers (which unfortunately did not include said man getting mauled), and the lights that lit up the sky once dusk arrived –

And ten minutes of Josh snarking about how this place was a breeding ground for viruses and other disease, how the various rides all seemed designed to either make you puke or injure you (with especial contempt for a ride where you ended up pulled out of the middle onto the spinning edges of a big old bowl and the famous wooden coaster), how the hot dog was probably made “when a rat fell into a meat grinder,” how “Me Too” needed to be a thing with that beauty contest, and how “this deranged milkman deserves whatever happens to him” tiger-wise (referencing the tiger tamer’s unusual costume). Guys, I don’t think Josh likes theme parks much. XD I mean, it was all very funny, don’t get me wrong, but as someone who very much likes theme parks, it was funny in a “cripes, what did Coney Island do to you” kind of way. (Well, except when it came to the obvious racist/sexist/ableist stuff, of course.) Still, always good to see another short from him!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do over on Valice Multiverse, but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I figured out my Song Saturday for this week – a reblog of my post featuring “Taste Of You” by REZZ and Dove Cameron. I stumbled across it while searching my “#londerland bloodlines” tag for likely song candidates, and realized it would be the perfect song to help usher in Chapter 6 because I associate the song with Ghoul!Victor and Malkavian!Alice obsessing over the taste of each other’s blood – and Chapter 6 is the chapter where Alice first feeds on Victor and discovers how delicious he is. So into the queue it went! :) Hooray, I kept to my theme all week, go me.

Aaaaand I have officially stayed up later than I meant to again completing this. *shakehead* Went into way too much detail on the OXBox video, I think...gotta work on that. As it stands, I gotta get to bed -- tomorrow, my primary goals are to get my room clean, and to finish my final edits on Chapter 6 of "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland." If I can get in any Fallout: New Vegas or YouTube videos, I will, but those are the priorities. *nods* Night all!

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Official Burst Of Summer

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:27:51 GMT

It got hot enough today that I turned on the AC in my car coming home! O.o Not expecting to have to do THAT in April! But yeah, according to the dashboard, it was 88F when I got out of work, so -- kind of had to be done! Fortunately, my window fan is doing the work in keeping my room cool tonight, which is good. And tomorrow the cooling trend begins, with temperatures only expected to get up to about 75F. We'll see if that happens or not -- it sure as hell wasn't supposed to get up until near 90F today, after all!

Anyway -- here's how the rest of my day went:

Work – Was another pretty quiet day at work today, with my main accomplishments being:

A) Posting two more batches of Easter Collection money – one in the morning, and one in the afternoon

B) Writing up a memo to Fiscal about how I found more newspaper office gifts and how they needed to issue a check to said newspaper office for the amount of said gifts, then taking said gifts off our system (since they weren’t meant for us)

C) Helping a guy update his card on his recurring gift (previous one was compromised)

D) Pestering our credit card company to PLEASE upload a missing Capital Campaign payment, and our main database contact to PLEASE finish validating and posting a batch of credit card gifts

E) And going through the returned pledge cards with credit card information from our processors to see which ones had been redone already, which donors I needed to contact, and which ones had special errors that I had to tell our credit card company about

Nothing particularly special, but it was nice to FINALLY get all those newspaper office gifts off the system! Like, seriously, I’ve been meaning to do that all week. We’ll see what comes my way on Friday, and what I’m able to accomplish as a result!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped back on the bike again this evening and managed to pedal my way through –

A) The rest of “CaFae Legends: Fairies - Part 1” by C. M. Alongi! The final twenty-odd minutes (since I didn’t watch the Patreon backers “credits crawl”) of Chris’s video on the depiction of fairies and fairy-adjacent creatures in the folklore and mythology of the Medieval British Isles included:

I. A bit more discussion on what the supernatural beings in all these stories were called before “fairy” became their common name (instead of just a descriptor of what the looked like, or the name of their home realm) – a lot of communities apparently didn’t have specific names for them, because they simply didn’t care that much about categorizing the mysterious magical folk (they had other things to worry about, and besides, with communities being more isolated, it wasn’t like their names for things would necessarily be accepted in the next town over), but when they did decide to name them, they were called either demons, dwarves, or elves

II. A discussion about where the word “elf” came from – Old Norse – and the elves and giants of Norse mythology, with the latter being intelligent and crafty supernatural beings who were good at using illusion magic to cause mischief and play tricks on people (Chris cited a story where one giant used such magic to mess with Thor for the lolz, like making the ocean look like a horn of mead), and the former being divided into the gorgeous “light elves” who live near the sun and the “dark elves” who live underground (presumably with all the other fairy beings previously discussed) – Chris was of the opinion that the light and dark elves ended up smooshed together in the British Isles folklore to create just one race of elves...until D&D came along and made “dark elves,” aka drow, a thing again :p

( It got long, who is surprised )

B) And the entirety of “PROJECT HAIL MARY All Movie Clips (2026) Ryan Gosling” by Entertainment Access! A whole bunch of clips of the movie...which I will have to tell you about tomorrow, because it is late and I have to go to bed. Just be assured there were lots of cute Rocky moments. EDIT 4/17/2026: Okay, it’s the next morning, let’s do a quick sum-up of the clips in this little collection:

I. One of Ryland Grace and Rocky’s first meetings, before Grace managed to find a way to translate Rocky’s chitters, with Rocky putting on a little puppet show for Grace to indicate “I would like you to go back in your ship for the moment, please” – Grace was like “aw, but I just got here” but reluctantly left

II. The clip of Rocky arriving on Grace’s ship in his hamster ball and running around all excited to see what it was like

III. The clip of Rocky grossing Grace out with his eating and proving that he could hear Grace no matter how softly he whispered (aka the “personal space is at a premium” “who Grace talking to question” clip XD)

IV. Grace and Rocky picking Rocky’s computer voice from a variety of options, rejecting such things as a spooky deep voice, a worryingly-breathy female voice, and a snooty British voice before settling on – well, Rocky’s puppeteer’s voice :p

V. Ryan Gosling talking about his character Grace in the movie (how he’s an ordinary guy who ends up in space with amnesia, and slowly recalls that the reason he’s up there is because the sun is dying and this is a “hail mary” mission to try and save it, and then goes on to make friends with an alien who’s on the same mission for HIS planet) and the directors and producers talking about how Ryan carries the film with his endearing personality, and how it’s a film about feeling like you can do anything and how it has a lot of spectacle but also a lot of heart

VI. And a trailer for the film showing Rocky and Grace’s first meeting – including Grace, upon realizing Rocky is imitating his movements in an attempt not to get clobbered with a wrench, making Rocky dance and dab – and their growing friendship and attempt to save both their suns, which includes some of the action sequences and Rocky declaring he wasn’t going to let Grace die (because, well, rock alien has some trauma from watching his own crew die and being unable to help)

Good stuff – I’m going to have to actually watch the film at some point, I think. XD

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I had a bit of a slow start tonight, I admit, but in the end I made it onto page 54 of 67, covering:

A) Alice talking about the Antediluvians, Caine, and signs of Gehenna with Beckett, agreeing with him that the unpleasantness against thin-bloods was unwarranted (especially if they HAD invented some kind of “thin-blood alchemy,” since treating them like shit just encouraged them to keep their secrets for themselves) and that a Kindred-driven end of the world was much more likely than a Caine-driven one

B) Beckett asking Alice her thoughts on the purpose of vampires, and Alice jokingly responding that “we’re here because the jellyfish will it so” before more seriously pondering the idea of vampires just being natural predators of humans, here to keep them on their toes and thin their herds – Beckett said that he’d heard that theory before, but it didn’t have a lot of evidence backing it up (as vampires hid from humans and mostly did their best not to kill them)...though he still preferred it to “vampires are the result of a divine punishment for manslaughter” (Alice: “not murder?” Beckett: “if I remember correctly, Caine didn’t actually MEAN to kill Abel, so…”)

C) Alice and Beckett sharing a nice moment over their shared inability to believe in higher powers (Beckett because he has trouble accepting things without evidence, Alice because she finds it hard to believe in anything but herself), then parting ways because, well, there’s no sarcophagus, so there’s no reason for either of them to stick around – though Alice had to ask Beckett how he got down there, since she didn’t see him on her route; cue Beckett revealing he can turn into a mist and Alice being like “damn, I thought super speed was going to be the Discipline I most coveted”

D) Alice leaving the workshop space with the help of a few directions from Beckett before he misted away again and heading back toward the surface via the parking garage – where she met Van, Terrence, and Mercurio waiting for her with a big old van, ready to help her move the sarcophagus; cue her having to tell the boys there had been a bit of a change of plans…

E) Alice and the boys arriving at LaCroix’s office and – after nobody wanted to be the one to open the door and tell LaCroix the bad news – being ushered in by the Sheriff; cue Alice having to listen to LaCroix pontificate on the burdens of leadership while the boys hung back, and learning that the blood hunt would be called on Nines (which at least removed his Dominated compulsion from her tongue)

F) And Alice reluctantly telling LaCroix that the sarcophagus had been already stolen before she arrived, and LaCroix flying into a brief but frightening rage...before realizing that the likely culprit was Gary, the Nosferatu primogen, and tasking Alice with going to Hollywood and making contact with the Anarch Baron there, Isaac, so she could then find Gary and ask him where the hell the sarcophagus was – and not to come back until she had it in her possession

Whew – pretty good chunk of story, I think you’ll agree... But I’ve still got plenty to go – we’ll see how far I get tomorrow evening!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – again, didn’t have time with everything else I was trying to get done. *shakehead* Story of my life...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while there was nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, a scan of the VTMB tag did get me something that I could put into the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for tomorrow – a bit of Beckett fanart by vitasine, showing off his anatomy (specifically, showing half his regular face, with the over half being split into a depiction of his brain and other eyeball, and his skull’s jaw). I know that sounds kind of gross, but it’s a pretty striking and interesting piece, and I thought it would go well with the other VTMB stuff I reblogged this week. :) Still gotta sort out Song Saturday, but that can wait until tomorrow!

What can also wait until tomorrow -- spacing. I mean, I have to edit this thing anyway to add in a few notes on the Project Hail Mary video, so...yeah. See you then -- night all! EDIT 4/17/2026: All sorted, enjoy!

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Even More Summery Wednesday

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 04:30:40 GMT

The hot weather continued through today -- I have in fact stuck my window fan in my side window to help cool my room down for sleeping purposes (though, sadly, the threat of showers after midnight means I'll have to take it out before I go to bed). It's funny to have it be this warm in April...though it's not going to last, as next week drops back into the 50s. Meh. Ah well -- I'm just doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts!

I'm also doing my best to get this write-up done by a decent time:

Work – Was a fairly quiet Wednesday in the office – I spent the day:

A) Getting through the various bits of roster maintenance sent back in yesterday’s exceptions – marking some people deceased, taking others off the mailing list, and merging a handful of people who had duplicates

B) Taking a phone call from one of the parishes and helping a lady set up an online pledge (with the parish secretary acting as an intermediary as the woman didn’t speak English)

C) Helping my coworker count up a fuckton of cash that came in from one of the parishes (seriously, it was a LOT)

D) And gathering up scans of all the envelopes for the people who sent in gifts to the newspaper that were wrongly classified as Appeal gifts, because I’m trying to get THAT off my plate
Nothing too exciting, but at least the day went by! Hopefully tomorrow I can sort out those newspaper gifts once and for all...we shall see!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – tonight’s stationary bike ride saw me pedal my way through –

A) The end of “Bonjour, Cream Inside - Valentine's Day Special - The Worst Game I Have Ever Played” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! The final fourteen-odd minutes of Wesley Green’s Adventures In A Sex And/Or Baking Game That Is Kind Of Light On Both featured:

I. Our first and only look at Wesley’s father, the famous pastry chef More (or Moret, if you prefer the spelling from his first mention), which revealed he is literally The World’s Most Stereotypical French Pastry Chef (Jon was quite amused)

II. Madame Beaumont coming onto Wesley via the medium of telling him about their baking classes and how some of the clients just want to submit, which culminated in her taking all her clothes off and apparently masturbating to Wesley talking about how to make pastry behind the Censor Hedgehogs (Jon was quite confused, trying to figure out if this all meant that Beaumont wanted Wesley to seduce More’s agent Angela or not – also the game kept opening little windows showing the scene from slightly different angles, forcing Jon to put up more Censor Hedgehogs to cover them)

( The developers finally remembered this is supposed to be a naughty game )

B) And the beginning of “CaFae Legends: Fairies - Part 1” by C. M. Alongi! The first of her videos talking about the actual folklore and such behind the various creatures that appear in her CaFae Latte series – starting of course with the fairies, because they’re kind of core to the whole concept. :P Specifically, she focused on the fairy folklore of the British Isles (England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales) because I presume that’s what Chris is most familiar with and most informed her take on the CaFae Latte/Heart Of Iron fairies. And because focusing on that is probably what helped her keep this bit to just two parts and not a full-on miniseries. XD Anyway, in the first eighteen minutes of this part, she covered:

I. What the generally-accepted “canon” for fairies in the modern day is (vulnerable to iron, use “glamor” magic (aka illusions), will pull the worst shit if you give them your full name, can’t lie, value politeness, etc) – before telling the audience to throw all that out the window, because folklore has no canon

II. The story of King Pwyll in The Mabinogion (a collection of Welsh stories written sometime in the 12th or 13th century), who accidentally wanders into Annwn, an otherworldly realm, where he claims a stag that the king of the realm, Arawn, had been hunting. Arawn was naturally upset by this, but then admitted he had bigger problems, as he had a rival, Hafgan, who sought to destroy him and become king of Annwn – so, to make up for his transgression, Pwyll agreed to a switcheroo, with Pwyll being magically disguised as Arawn to tend his kingdom and take care of Hafgan, and Arawn being magically disguised as Pwyll to tend HIS kingdom. Interestingly, this went off perfectly fine, and the two ended up becoming great friends. Chris highlighted this one because of its use of disguising illusion magic that could be called “glamor,” thus making using such magic one of the first defining features of fairies in folklore

III. How fairies may have resulted, at least in part, from the pagan Celtic gods having to be “downgraded” to more human-like beings with extra magic or technology that regular humans didn’t have, in order for the local storytellers to be able to preserve the characters in a time period where the Church had a bee in its bonnet about pagan religions and was trying to destroy any literature featuring them – examples she cited included Rhiannon, Pwyll’s eventual wife, who scholars theorize is a version of the horse god Epona thanks to all the horse imagery around her, and Gwydion, who had the ability to glamour items to look like other items (thus possibly being a source for the whole “fairy pays for something in gold, only for it to turn to leaves and bark the next day” thing – though apparently some stories of the Wild Hunt had the opposite, with someone who helped the hunters getting paid in something that looked useless, only for it to turn to gold the next day) and apparently lived in the sky and named the Milky Way after himself according to Charlotte Guest’s translation (sounded pretty godlike to Chris!)

IV. The use of druidic wands to transform people into animals or create other magical effects in Celtic Lore, with Chris noting that while she didn’t use them in CaFae Latte, they did show up in her “upcoming” book Heart of Iron...cue an insert from a grumpy Future Chris complaining about how editing the video took longer than editing the book XD

V. A discussion of two of the stories from The Book Of Invasions (which talks about all the times that Ireland was invaded by people, with the actual Irish coming last), which feature the Tuatha De Danann (again, potential gods that got downgraded into fairies) and their fight to try and prevent the Irish from settling their land (which involved tricking the Irish into sailing away from the shore after a long battle, then summoning a magical storm to wreck their shit – unfortunately for them, the land itself was on the Irish people’s side and stopped the storm when one of their druids asked it politely to let them settle there, driving the Tuatha De Danann underground, thus starting the idea of fairies living underground) and the Fir Bolg (who more or less personify dangerously powerful natural forces, are either superhumanly ugly or darkly beautiful, and who HATE the Tuatha De Danann, meaning there was a lot of fighting between them)

VI. A discussion of some of the fae-like people in early Arthurian legend – namely Merlin and Morgan, though Chris noted that it wouldn’t be until Thomas Mallory’s retelling that Morgan would get the “surname” Le Fay and change from a human sorceress to a fairy

VII. And a discussion of why none of these creatures were actually CALLED “fairies” – basically, the word hadn’t been invented yet – and where the word came from – either the Latin word “Fatum,” meaning “to enchant,” or the Persian word “Peri” to refer to supernatural beings who either had wings or could turn into birds, which changed into “Feri” when Arabic became the dominant tongue/written language due to the introduction of Islam

Whew – lot of information! And there’s still more to come...we’ll see what else is in the pipeline tomorrow!

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – and I’m pleased to say that I made some very solid progress today, getting all the way to page 48 out of 67! :) Tonight’s edits covered –

A) Alice sneaking around the museum basement, encountering a restoration room with a big old saber-toothed cat skull inside, before fleeing to a corner to wait invisibly for a guard to pass; amusingly, said corner turned out to be the home of the very door she needed to get through when Cheshire urged her to turn around

B) Alice getting a riddle from Cheshire to figure out the code to the keypad next to the door, then being told that, despite her desires, she would have to open an extra door, because the restoration room had something in it that she needed; cue her grumbling, but managing to slip over there and get inside without being seen by the security cameras when her Obfuscate turned off

C) Alice working through the riddle Cheshire gave her, and managing to solve it with only a little trouble (Cheshire needing to remind her of one final hint he gave right at the end) – Cheshire rewarded her by telling her where the object she needed in the restoration room was, resulting in her snagging a keycard that would grant her access to the workshop in the back

D) Alice managing to escape the restoration room and get through the keypad door without getting caught by the security camera – she had two near misses, granted, but no alarms were set off, fortunately

E) Alice creeping through the hallways past the keypad door (reveling in her boosted invisibility as she passed another camera, and regretting that she wouldn’t have it anymore after that night...though she didn’t want to drain poor Victor every day to get it, so she decided she’d deal) and past another security room, where she got a brief fright when she saw a guard within with his gun drawn; fortunately for all involved, he was just messing around on the clock pretending to be an action hero and had no idea she was there

F) Alice successfully slipping into the next hallway, and dealing with the array of lasers there by smashing the control panel at Hatter’s suggestion; this led to her having to carefully make her way through a bunch of flickering lasers, granted, but it was still better than having to deal with the fully-active grid

G) Alice sneaking into the actual workshop area and – after noting how dusty some of the boxes in storage were – finally reaching the workroom where the sarcophagus was supposed to be...only to find it very much missing in action

H) Alice being jumpscared by Beckett appearing behind her, prompting a discussion on why he was there (to examine the sarcophagus and prove there was nothing more than a mummified Mesopotamian king inside), and who he thought might have taken the thing (he suggested everyone from supernatural thieves to magicians; Caterpillar was pretty certain it was a fellow vampire, while Alice suggested it might be a human thief, as some of the local cops were definitely in a tizzy about it)

I) Beckett sarcastically noting Alice finally acting like a proper Malkavian when she started talking to nothing (he was getting worried!) and Alice telling him about her hallucinations, before stating he should be grateful she doesn’t talk solely in riddles...or act like Alistair Grout; Beckett allowed that he’d had some nasty run-ins with mad Malkavian doctors and said he was just noting Alice’s madness seemed much more subtle than most – Alice suggested maybe that was because she’d had a lot more time to deal with it

J) And Alice asking Beckett if he would have stolen the thing, and him saying he wouldn’t – in fact, he would have preferred the damn thing stay where it was so he could prove to everyone it was just an old relic and not a sign of Gehenna

*nods* I’m very pleased with that. :) Hopefully tomorrow I can get through another good chunk – dunno if I’ll have this thing done in time for the end of the week, but maybe the beginning of the next one? We’ll see what happens...

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – just didn’t have the time for anything tonight, even a short. We’ll see if that changes tomorrow!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I was hoping to bulk up my queue for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) a little more, but I never really got around to it, and I’m still not sure what I want to put in there anyway. Maybe I should carve out a moment to go through the VTMB tag on tumblr again tomorrow...

Aaand I cannot say I really succeeded in doing this in time -- spacing will once again have to wait until tomorrow, folks, I have to get to bed. Night all! EDIT 4/16/2026: Spacing sorted!

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Summery Tuesday

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 04:18:18 GMT

The temperature soared into the high 70s/low 80s today -- though, hilariously, the Chancery was cold enough inside that I kept the sweater I started the day in on for quite a while. And ended up opening my window a crack not only to get fresh air, but to let in some warmth. :P I'm currently sitting here in no bathrobe and a set of light pajamas with the ceiling fan going because it's still so warm in my room. I'd put in my window fan as well, but unfortunately we've already had some rain tonight, and may get more as the night goes on, so I can't risk it. Meeh. :( I guess we'll see what happens tomorrow -- supposed to stay warm right through Friday, after all!

As for my actual day, that went decently well:

Work – Twas mostly a day of catching up on things this Tuesday at the office:

A) I went through the Easter Collection report that we got yesterday afternoon and posted each parish’s amount to its record; I also finally figured out where the envelope containing the actual cards the parishes send back with their checks went (turns out it was still in the Fiscal office – never actually made it into internal mail like the processor down there said)

B) I finished off some obituaries that have been sitting on my desk since February (I always had something else more pressing to do! Most of the people turned out not to be in our system anyway)

C) I checked out some potential duplicate records I was made aware of last week and cleaned those up (turns out a guy was marked deceased in error because he happened to share a name with someone else who lived on the same road who had died some years ago – and I don’t think they were even related, shockingly enough. Usually this shit is the result of a father dying and the same-name son being mistaken for him!)

D) And, after lunch, I pulled some scans of pledge cards and such and did a bunch of reversals to correct some errors I found last Friday (gifts posted to the wrong record because they got the wrong sticker put on them, or payment being applied to late-arriving pledges – and in one case, both)

Throw in a handful of credit card calls from people making payments or one-time gifts, and you have my day! *shrug* Nothing too strenuous, happily. Though I still have plenty of catching up to do tomorrow...especially since we got another bunch of returns from our processing company this afternoon. *shakehead* It never ends...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, this time to watch a video from Jon of Many A True Nerd that I saw back in February but never had time for: “Bonjour, Cream Inside - Valentine's Day Special - The Worst Game I Have Ever Played!” As you might guess from the title, Bonjour, Cream Inside is a, ahem, naughty game – not straight-up porn, but there is sex, and it is depicted in such a way that Jon has had to break out the Censor Hedgehogs a couple of times (I’m not 100% sure why he uses hedgehogs to censor sex, but I suspect it may have something to do with a certain “hedgehog song” from the works of Sir Terry Pratchett :P). The nominal plot of the game is that you are Wesley Green, a talented young baker who, after winning a contest, moves to Paris, takes a room in the apartment of an old friend of his mom’s, and gets a job at a famous delicatessen making baked goods while simultaneously finding himself surrounded by various hot women, many of which run around with their boobs mostly exposed or in Gothic Lolita outfits – and the reason Jon decided to give it a go is because the game’s Steam page claimed that you could focus either on Wesley’s baking or on bedding as many of these women as possible, so he decided to see what happened when you focused on the baking. XD So far, Wesley’s adventures have included –

A) Arriving in an Extremely English Paris (Jon spotted a red double-decker bus of the kind you might find in London, and grabbed his French Girlfriend Claire to confirm that no, those things do NOT appear in her home country) and misidentifying his contact “Madame Tarfel” as “Madame Truffle,” causing both Jon and, apparently, his own mother to call him an idiot XD

B) Meeting Madame Tarfel, aka Polet (or “Pollet,” depending on if you believed the name written above the dialogue box or in it – Jon ended up just calling her “Madame Chicken” because he couldn’t stop wanting to call her “pullet” XD), revealing that his father was a famous pastry chef, Moret, during their conversation (Jon immediately decided Wesley was genetically superior at making cakes as a result), and then – after asking what the fuck she was burning, his head was spinning – learning that Chicken thought her apartment was haunted because of all the stuff that kept breaking and thus she was burning incense (Jon was like “...gonna be honest, didn’t expect to deal with a haunted apartment in the sex and/or baking game”)

( There’s much less sex and much less baking than you might think under here )

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got a decent-sized chunk of edits done today, getting all the way to the bottom of page 41 in my LibreOffice doc and covering –

A) Alice exploring the other side of the T-junction in the vent, and discovering it goes over the security room she was just in...and then nearly falling into said security room when the grate over the desk suddenly gave way. She managed to catch herself in time, but she was extremely glad that she’d gone the other way first and thus avoided nearly tumbling straight onto the guard that was in this room before!

B) Alice going to the far end of the vent and spying on the camera guard and his friend Caroline, who were having a good giggle over the joke the camera guard told – Caroline then started sharing the latest gossip about Harry and Sally, a pair of toxic lovebirds, and Alice realized that she was probably not getting in this room anytime soon

C) Alice returning to the bathroom – and nearly getting caught by a guard coming in for a pee; fortunately she was able to duck into a stall before he saw her, and fake being just another employee having a late-night whazz (plus she was able to wash her hands after all that crawling around in the ductwork

D) Alice successfully exiting the bathroom, then making her way to the other side of the room looking for the office that Stanley’s key opened; cue her making her way inside and discovering another dirty hallway, making her gripe that they needed better janitoral services in this museum. And then wonder if maybe she should go for a job like that once she was freed from LaCroix’s service, as she had experience with cleaning up after the kids in Houndsditch; the Queen of Hearts complained that she thought Alice was going to be a bounty hunter, but Alice said it was only smart to have another job she could do while getting her license, and in-between hunts

E) Alice entering the cube farm that was the office, and discovering calendars with pictures of mountains, some drawings decorating the walls of a proud parent, and someone’s medication left out beside their keyboard – the Queen tried to get her to steal that last, but Alice refused because far be it for her to deprive someone of their necessary meds, and instead stashed it in their desk for them

F) Alice locating the door to the basement (and confirming that it was the door she needed with a check of Victor’s map – cue her commenting that LaCroix would probably kill for a ghoul as useful as him, and Cheshire and Caterpillar being like “Yup, he would, so make sure he never learns about him”), heading downstairs, and then hiding behind said stairs to check the map again and see what was what...and noting with concern just how many security cameras were about; fortunately for her, Cheshire was able to confirm that, with the help of Victor’s blood and her own diligent training of Obfuscate (plus a touch of natural talent), she would be able to fool the mechanical eyes as well as the biological ones tonight

G) Alice thus activating her Obfuscate (feeling it wrap around her gossamer-light this night, thanks to Victor’s loving blood) and starting her creep through the halls of the basement – Cheshire briefly tempted her to try and get into the CCTV office to claim a skill book in there, but Alice decided to pass because there was a camera pointed right at the door, and her Obfuscate still isn’t QUITE good enough to let her open doors without breaking invisibility. Shame, but she doesn’t really need the skill it confers!

*nods* Yeah, that’s not too shabby at all. We’ll see how much I can get through tomorrow – hoping to at least get within sniffing distance of page 50!

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check! Actually got in a trio of YouTube Shorts tonight after doing my editing – specifically –

A) “Project Hail Mary's alien wasn't CGI” by IGN! A Short that – well, okay, was less about the fact that Rocky the alien was a practical puppet, not a CGI creation, and more about how Rocky’s voice came to be. Basically, as per an interview with Ryan Gosling (the actor who plays the lead human character, Dr. Ryland Grace), he and Rocky’s lead puppeteer, James Ortiz, started riffing off each other during the long hours getting the puppet to work, and Ryan quickly discovered that James was so connected to his puppet that he immediately knew what Rocky would say or do in response to whatever Ryan threw at him. Basically, they found Rocky’s voice through James at the same time that Rocky was finding his voice in the actual movie – leading to James becoming Rocky’s official voice! :) So that’s very cool. I always think it’s great when something like this happens – like, famous voices are great and all, but you can’t beat the enthusiasm of a storyboard artist who just somehow became one of the characters or something like that. :D

B) “Permanent Power Up for Warlocks and Eldritch Knights in #bg3 #baldursgate3 #baldursgate” by Toyhouze! A Short that showed off a fun little trick that Warlocks with the Hexblade subclass or Pact Of The Blade pact boon or Fighters with the Eldritch Knight subclass could do with the Charge-Bound Warhammer. Basically, the Charge-Bound Warhammer is a big fuck-off hammer that has a special ability Galvanic Currents, that allows it to deal 1 to 6 points of lightning damage along with its normal bludgeoning damage if and only if it is bound to an Eldritch Knight or a Hexblade/Pact Of The Blade Warlock using their “Bind Weapon” features. HOWEVER, once the hammer is bound, it STAYS bound, meaning even if the Eldritch Knight or Hexblade/Pact Of The Blade Warlock binds a DIFFERENT weapon as their new favorite, the bonus damage says on the hammer. Meaning all an Eldritch Knight or Hexblade/Pact Of The Blade Warlock has to do is bind the Charge-Bound Warhammer, toss it aside, bind a new weapon, then give the permanently-powered-up warhammer to a friend to wreck fools with! Just a nice little exploit to get yourself a more powerful weapon there – though I have no idea how long ago this short was made, so it’s possible this was patched out. Perhaps I can test it out myself once I find this warhammer – Wyll’s a Pact Of The Blade Warlock, after all, and Karlach would probably appreciate a big fuck-off warhammer…

C) And “Aliens at Hoover Dam in Fallout New Vegas” by CosmicOctober! A Short talking about, not aliens appearing at Hoover Dam like I originally thought, but a couple of references to the film Aliens you can hear if you take the Wild Wasteland trait during character creation, then tune into the NCR Emergency Radio signal during the final fight at Hoover Dam. Specifically, you can hear the lines “They’re coming out of the walls, man, they’re coming out of the damn walls!” and “Game over, man, game over!” which are both quotes from the film. It’s a cute little Easter Egg that you’re likely to miss if you don’t have the trait or don’t have your radio on during the final fight! (And you do actually get an alien encounter if you have Wild Wasteland on – I just don’t know where or when. Looking forward to it regardless!)

So that was nice, at least. :)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse again, but I got a couple of things queued up over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) for the next two days –

A) A gifset by claudiawolf of the Ocean House Hotel from Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines (featuring various ghostly happenings) for Wednesday

B) And a photoset by gamerism of Chinatown from VTMB (featuring all the important buildings and some gorgeous coloring) for Thursday!

Yeah, given I’m working very hard on getting Chapter 6 of LB:DQ up as soon as possible, it felt right to do some VTMB stuff this week. :) Don’t know what I’m gonna do for Friday or Saturday yet, but we’ll figure that out tomorrow!

Honestly quite productive, I must admit! :) But now it is time for me to head to bed and hopefully get some decent sleep -- we'll see, as it IS rather warm in here. Fingers crossed, folks! Night all!

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Monday The 13th

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 04:13:22 GMT

Which I personally feel is worse than a Friday the 13th, because now you're starting off the week unlucky. Fortunately, my day wasn't too bad overall:

Work – It wasn’t as bad a Monday The 13th at work as I feared it might be, though I was very busy all day:

A) I spent pretty much the entire morning doing the GL, since a LOT of stuff got posted on Friday (and I had to e-mail our processors to get them to deposit a check they missed), with just one break to take a phone call that I subsequently had to redirect downstairs because the person was asking about scheduling Masses, and that is very much not my department

B) Then, after lunch, I researched why a particular person had an overpayment on their Capital Campaign pledge (turns out I accidentally scheduled them for an extra payment, whoops) and sent them an e-mail letting them know and offering a refund

C) Then I did a bit of roster maintenance, looking up some information on two people with the same first and last name to get their middle initials so we could differentiate them more (they’re father and son, so you want to make sure that the son doesn’t get the father’s gift or vice-versa – which, uh, actually already happened as the son didn’t have a record on our system previously ^^; My coworker fixed that, fortunately)

D) I also took a call from a lady who set up her pledge for the wrong amount, and then set up a SEPARATE pledge for the right amount trying to correct it – shut down the pledge for the wrong amount, made a note to adjust her payments accordingly once the right-amount pledge comes over

E) And I ended the day with getting the first Easter Collection report and noting down all the ID numbers for the parishes so I can post that tomorrow

Whew! And the rest of the week promises to be just as busy, as I have reversals to do and images to capture and all that good stuff. Hopefully it isn’t too stressful (aka, hopefully the phone doesn’t start ringing off the hook). We shall see!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – I have decided that this week’s workouts are going to be dedicated to “stuff that I want to watch but have trouble finding the time for,” and accordingly spent tonight pedaling my way through –

A) “This Thomas the Tank Engine Game is NOT For Kids” by OXBox! Featuring Mike and Andy playing Thomas & Friends: Wonders of Sodor, which is not an indie horror game featuring Thomas like I first assumed, but rather an officially-licensed Thomas the Tank Engine game –
Made by the people who made Train Sim World and other realistic rail simulators. Meaning that the reason it wasn’t for kids was because it was in fact rather tedious and boring. And because Mike and Andy kept finding innuendo in it, but I think we can all agree that was just them. XD They played three missions over the course of the half-hour video –

I. The tutorial, where one learns how to drive Thomas – featuring Andy being stunned to learn the “Fat Controller” has been renamed “Sir Topham Hatt” (Mike pointed out the original name was rather size-ist, but Andy was like “but he asked people to call him that!”); Andy wondering if Thomas “feels the levers when we pull them?” and Mike going “I don’t think we want to know the answer to that;” Mike getting very annoyed by the game forcing him to get out of Thomas and go switch the switch track manually himself (especially when it then told him that he could just do that automatically from the map screen); Mike revealing his driver to be the most middle-aged and balding man he could find in the character selector (to make sure any children playing were aware of the specter of mortality over them); Mike not slowing down in time when it came to coupling with Thomas’s carriages and smacking straight into them (they did not look particularly happy about it, but then they didn’t look particularly happy about anything); Mike following the tutorial to activate Free Cam mode and ending up in a bush (“pervert cam,” Mike called it); and Mike way overshooting a stop at one of the stations, getting annoyed when the passengers wouldn’t get off anyway, and backing up without closing the train car doors (Andy warned him Topham Hatt wouldn’t be pleased, and Mike replied, “Well, he can shove it up his…” XD)

II. The “Thomas and Gordon” scenario, which was a replay of a bit from the show where Thomas whistles Gordon awake from a nap, and to get him back Gordon drags him along on an express train ride – featuring Mike pointing out just what awful people the trains were and how they spent all their time being selfish and proud and bitching each other out (which – you know what, fair); the boys accusing Thomas of having gotten stoned the night before when he had trouble waking up one morning due to his fire having gone out (“Thomas was ‘tired’ because he was up all night ‘steaming,’” as Andy put it); Mike and Andy complaining about how boring just going back and forth all the time was in this game (noting that cars were better because of their lateral movement capabilities); Mike slamming the coaches that Thomas was bringing to Gordon right into his rear, and then being like “oh, he LIKED that” when the camera showed Gordon’s scheming face right afterward (it WAS a very unfortunate face); the pair noticing that Gordon didn’t actually have a driver during the bit where he drags Thomas along with his coaches on an express train journey and immediately declaring that Gordon had gone rogue (with Andy being shocked that “Gordon goes mad and tries to kill Thomas” is the first story mission in the game); Mike managing to get control of his driver in Thomas again and attempting to have him leap from the cab – only for him to somehow end up stuck in the luggage rack of one of the express coaches XD (he eventually wiggled the guy free, but was unable to get him off the coach, so he just had him sit down and accept his fate); and Mike briefly failing the scenario by being unable to slow Gordon down in time when they got near his station, which resulted in him derailing – AND GLITCH-FLYING BETHESDA-STYLE INTO THE SKY (Mike and Andy both found this VERY funny, as you might expect)

III. And the “Thomas Goes Fishing” scenario, which I assume was a replay of a bit from the show where Thomas’s driver filled him up with river water when the usual water pipe was out of commission, resulting in Thomas getting a boiler full of fish – featuring Mike accusing the scenario at the start of “combining the two most boring activities in the world, trainspotting and fishing” (mean XD); the boys having a good giggle over the shitty animation of the driver getting river water to refill Thomas’s tank (which featured the bucket moving on its own as he stood staring straight ahead, stock-still, on the bridge); Mike getting annoyed at how many times he had to go back and forth refilling the bucket, then refilling Thomas (granted, it was quite tedious to watch, so I can only imagine how tedious it was to play); neither Mike nor Andy approving of Thomas going “That’s good, that’s good!” and puffing happily in response to his water tank being refilled (innuendo everywhere); Mike and Andy calling Producer Jon out for getting bored and watching a different video (not even an OXBox video!) while they recorded this one while taking Thomas to the station to pick up passengers; Mike and Andy wondering if Thomas really would blow up when he started complaining about a pain in his boiler after getting his passengers and if they could force the issue by making him go max speed (Mike in particular seemed VERY KEEN on blowing him up); the boys getting more interested in a “mad cows vs pigs football game” over to the side of the tracks rather than whatever was going on with Thomas (to be fair, I too was wondering what was going on with the animals on the soccer field); the boys noting that any fish found in Thomas’s boiler should be dead given they were in, you know, a BOILER (and then wondering if they’d be good to eat); and Andy angrily pointing out that the game forced them to put river water into Thomas when Topham Hatt asked if he’d learned something from this experience (though he and Mike did have a good giggle over the Inspector and the Driver literally fishing the fish out of Thomas’s boiler). Oh, and the boys then ending the video by going into free play mode and derailing Gordon again. XD

Fun stuff! I love these weird one-off videos they do, they’re always a good time.

B) “BG3 Warlock: The Easiest Yet Most Powerful Spellcaster” by DeltiasGaming! A YouTube Short talking about how, if you want to play a powerful spellcaster but don’t want too much difficulty in playing them, being a Fiend Warlock with Pact Of The Blade is the way to go (appropriately, featuring many clips of Wyll in action under the chatter). Mostly because Warlocks get access to Eldritch Blast (the world’s best cantrip) and also have proficiency with Light Armor (meaning they have more protection options than, say, a Wizard, who has no armor proficiency at all); Fiend Warlocks in particular get a passive that grants them temporary hit points for killing enemies (keeping them in fights longer); and Warlocks with the Pact Of The Blade can summon a magical weapon (giving them a handy-dandy powerful melee option if it came down to it). Deltias acknowledged that Warlocks did have the disadvantage of having VERY few spell slots and not a lot of spell variety (they’re kind of a mid-tier Jack-Of-All-Trades when it comes to spells), but pointed out immediately afterward that, if you wanted to fix that, all you had to do was multiclass with Sorcerer, which also got you metamagic to apply new effects to your spells. (Or, if you’re like me, you can go Bard/Warlock and pick up a modded feat to let you learn a bit of metamagic even WITHOUT being a sorcerer…though I won’t be picking that up for a while, as it feels like something Smiler should get as a high-level feat.)

C) And “Project Hail Mary – Rockyisms” by SonyPicturesSG! Another YouTube Short consisting of a collection of clips of Rocky from Project Hail Mary, including:

I. What looked like Grace and Rocky’s first meeting, with Grace teaching Rocky to wave and both of them giggling together pre-translation

II. Rocky revealing he watched Grace sleep, and Grace going “that’s a little weird”

III. Rocky asking where his bedroom was while exploring Grace’s ship in his ball

IV. Rocky’s eating habits, like in the “Personal Space” clip XD

V. Rocky telling Grace to “use planet gravity to move with line,” Grace responding, “I didn’t think of that!” and Rocky going “I did” XD

VI. And Grace pretending to surf with Rocky in the projector room, with Rocky gamely hanging ten despite not being able to perceive any of the projections

Just more fun stuff featuring our favorite rock alien! I’m always down for that. :)

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I didn’t get QUITE as far as I might have liked today thanks to a lot of fiddly little edits slowing me down, but I did at least get through:

A) Alice searching the upstairs back corridors, discovering Stanley’s little chill-out hidey-hole, and stealing his office keys out of there

B) Alice discovering the door into the museum proper past the dinosaur, and taking a moment to study Victor’s maps of the area while waiting for a guard to pass by...which alerted her to the fact that her best way down to the ground floor was to take a set of stairs with a motion-activated roaring T Rex head on it

C) Alice tailing the guard while admiring the exhibits around the “Extinction Wing,” then – after the guard inconveniently didn’t go down the stairs and trigger the head for her – running down the stairs and hiding beneath them after triggering the head; luckily the guard that came to investigate blamed the roaring on a fly and didn’t notice her at all

D) Alice studying her maps again, then heading across the room into the bathroom, then into the supply closet in said bathroom (after making sure to sound like she was going into a stall to fool the guy already having a wee in there), and then into the vent in said supply closet in said bathroom

E) Alice crawling through the vents, getting a faster-than-usual clue of where to go from Auspex (and realizing she should have checked earlier if she went invisible faster or not while using Obfuscate – don’t worry, Alice, another opportunity to check that is coming up), and ending up in a server room/break room in search of a key the Insane Children insisted she’d find useful

F) Alice discovering that her desired key was actually in the security camera monitoring room the next room over, right next to a guard eating donuts – with no other options, she zapped him with a bit of Dementation, which caused him to start giggling as he remembered a joke he wanted to tell a coworker and head into the next room to relay it, allowing Alice to get the key and escape back into the vents

Not too shabby – only got me to page 36 out of 67, but I suppose that’s still past the halfway point. Still, hoping I can get a bit farther tomorrow! Fingers crossed for less fiddly edits, people...

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but a lack of checks here is why I’m watching the stuff I would normally put in this section with my workouts. Work smarter not harder!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – while I didn’t do anything with my drafts or queue over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight, I did just straight-up reblog something – a short thread featuring a post by centaurself celebrating a tumblr icon – a hairless rat named Neil who, according to an iconic photograph of him with a little toy keyboard, banged out the tunes on April 13th, 2006 – by sharing all four known photos of Neil and the website they came from, followed by a post from starberry-cupcake wishing everyone a “Happy 20th Neil Banging Out The Tunes.” :p It was just something fun to put on the old blog!

So yeah -- not too shabby, I suppose! Though it would have been nicer if I hadn't come home to hear that Dad had been feeling sick all day. :( Hopefully he feels better tomorrow! And now I need to get to bed so I can try to get a decent amount of sleep. Fingers crossed for an okay Tuesday -- night all!

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Mostly Tired Sunday

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 04:36:11 GMT

Yeah, uh, note to self: You really CANNOT stay up past 2 AM anymore -- especially not to nearly 3 AM -- because if you do, you're gonna spend the rest of the next day feeling groggy as shit. Especially if you have to get up at one point and use the bathroom because you drank a lot of water as well. *shakehead* Ah, the perils of looking at 40... Anyway, yeah, spent a good portion of the day feeling kind of out of it -- but despite that, I still managed to get a good amount of shit done:

Tumblr: Another day with nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse – but I did manage to do a little more work on the “Valicer Eats God” post sitting in my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)! Specifically –

A) I considered another potential trait for Victor – “Vague Visage,” inspired by the fact that he was pretty much completely ignored by both sets of parents when he arrived at the Everglots for his own wedding rehearsal. I mean, the whole reason we got the piano solo scene at the beginning was because nobody bothered to make sure he was following them down to the west drawing room! However, I’m not sure that it’s the BEST third trait for him, as most of the time when someone can’t find him, it’s because he’s actively running away from them (which is covered by the “Fast Feet” trait). Still probably gonna go with “Lanky Limbs” if I can’t think of anything better!

B) I picked some potential Rebellious Arts for Alice – The Art Of Alteration, which allows a God-Eater to transform into any object between the size of a thimble and the size of an ox-cart that they can describe in seven words or less and stay that way until someone accuses them of not being the thing (inspired by AMA Alice briefly transforming into chess pieces in the Looking-Glass Land section of the game), and The Art Of Transition, which allows a God-Eater to vanish from one spot and reappear in another while unobserved, or change where a door opens up to, as long as the new destination is within Far distance of the original (inspired by AMA Alice using portal doors to travel to all the different locations of Wonderland, and A:MR Alice ending up in various random places in London between Wonderland chapters, along with her butterfly dodge). Given I have more “evidence” for The Art Of Transition being appropriate, I’ll probably make that one her official Art.

C) And I assigned the trio’s “Facets,” which indicate how they deal with the world – with “Ethos” covering “skillful action” and making yourself look trustworthy and dignified; “Pathos” covering “passionate action” and getting people to do what you want via inspiration, intimidation, and appealing to baser instincts; and “Logos” covering “cunning action” and using clever arguments and misdirection to get your way. After considering their personalities, I decided that Victor would have 4 Ethos, 4 Pathos, and 7 Logos (based on him manipulating Emily to bring him back Upstairs by claiming he wanted her to meet his parents); Alice 3 Ethos, 6 Pathos, and 6 Logos (as she’s both very capable of passionate fighting and solving riddles, but has a terrible reputation thanks to the fire and subsequent stay in Rutledge); and Smiler 4 Ethos, 7 Pathos, and 4 Logos (as their whole deal is encouraging people to do what makes them happy). None of this is set in stone, but I feel like it’s a good starting point!

So that was good! Maybe one day I’ll actually FINISH this post – wouldn’t THAT be something? :P

Portal 2: Took a short-but-sweet trip through the bowels of Aperture Science today, culminating in helping Wheatley take out one of GLaDOS’s primary weapons in her fight against a rogue test subject and a rogue personality core – let me give you the deets –

A) I started off the session standing outside the office that overlooks the turret redemption lines, ready to once again attempt to get across the two conveyor belts feeding busted turrets into an incinerator (after failing at said activity twice at the end of last week’s session). However, upon entering the office, I promptly became distracted by a fun little detail that I don’t recall ever noticing before: namely, the three coffee cups on the two computer desks in the office are novelty cups with writing on them! One reading “I hate Mondays,” another reading “No Coffee No Work,” and the third reading “Who Farted?” XD Excellent choices for cup slogans, Valve. And, to my delight, I could pick up the coffee cups and move them around without automatically breaking them (unlike in the first game), so I was able to bring them all over to the same desk and get them situated so I could show them all off in one screenshot for you:

Yes, okay, the “No Coffee, No Work” one ended up on its side in the chair because I dropped it at one point and couldn’t get it to stand up again, but I still think it’s readable enough. :p Just wanted to share this amusing Easter Egg with you all – it’s great when game developers put in tiny details like this! Makes replaying a game so much more fun. :)

( Also I would not mind a ‘Who Farted’ mug for myself )

Writing: I carved out some time to continue final edits on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” before my workout tonight – gave myself roughly fifty minutes, during which I accomplished the following –

A) First, I went back into the section I edited on Friday to make a few final tweaks – namely, adding in a few lines here and there to acknowledge that Simon leaving his crew to die at the hands of Pisha was pretty shitty of him, but that Alice feels like she can’t really judge because of how long it took her to recognize what Bumby was doing to the children of Houndsditch, and how she too has put her own pain in front of other’s in the past. Because I felt like the section as-written was a little TOO sympathetic to him, and wanted to make it clear that Alice knew he’d done a bad thing – she just also didn’t feel like he deserved to full-on lose his mind over it. Or be eaten by Pisha, because that’s a hell of a death.

B) And second, I returned to where I left off on Friday and edited the first bit of Alice’s trip through the museum – arriving at the corner just below the parking lot courtesy of her stalker cabbie; sneaking in the front doors and checking out the admission office; and heading upstairs and getting jumpscared by the Velociraptor in the hallway, before seeing the note nearby and realizing there might be keys to be had if she could find them. Got me up to page 32 out of 67, at least!

Not too bad, I feel! Still hope I can make some more meaty progress tomorrow, though – would be nice if I could get this sucker posted by the end of this week!

Workout/YouTube: I’m pleased to say that Jon once again uploaded the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode before I went downstairs to go ride the bike, so I was able to pedal my way through most of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 38 - Cooking With Gas” before watching the final ten minutes after finishing my Portal 2 write-up above. Today’s installment of The Adventures Of Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot (Dead Money Edition) saw P. D. braving the horrors of the Sierra Madre Casino itself, and featured –

A) P. D. taking a nice long 21-hour nap right at the start to refresh her supply of Implant GRX (because the one GOOD thing about finally being in the casino is that she can now wait wherever so long as there are no enemies nearby, meaning it’s a lot easier to keep that topped up), then heading onto the main casino floor to turn the power supply back on and thus complete the game’s “tutorial” for dealing with the holographic security that will keep popping up around the place! This involved:

I. Listening to Father Elijah rant about how he worked hard to get to the Sierra Madre, and how it will give him what he needs before he goes, and will always welcome him back (shaddup you genocidal techbro, we have enough of you in the real world)

II. Using a terminal to change the patrol pattern of the hologram guarding the stairs up to the bar area, then heading up to said bar area, jumping over the railing on the side, and turning off its emitter on the top of the column below with her lovely high Repair skill, permanently getting rid of that guard

III. Heading back upstairs and going behind the bar into the backstage area, zipping through the deadly radio zones and past a hologram to get to a security office on the second floor – where she used the easily-hacked terminal there to change the patrol route of the guard she’d passed to make him go and guarded a different door with his back to her. Allowing her to get down the hallway he was guarding earlier and shut off HIS emitter

IV. Briefly running back to the actual bar area to grab the password for the next terminal she needed to hack (because there was no point to her actually hacking it, as she no longer earns XP from anything), then braving the radios again to get back to the terminal and use it to change the patrol route of the final guard, getting him away from the electrical closet she needed to get into to turn the power back on (along with unlocking said closet’s door, which was, you know, important)

V. Picking up the Reinforced Sierra Madre Armor and Helmet from that security room and the one next door and using her old armor and helmet to repair them, getting a healthy 18 DT from the armor and 5 DT from the helmet – Jon indicated this might make them the best light armor set in the entire game, which, I can believe it, those are some VERY high numbers

VI. And finally running back downstairs and past the final holographic guard toward the electrical closet, turning and turning off his emitter tucked into the corner of the archway he was guarding, and then popping into the closet and restoring the power, which activated all the nice customer service holograms and gave her a way to trade Sierra Madre Chips for Pre-War Money and vice-versa if she really needed them. And the opportunity to gamble if she really really wanted (she did not).

Not too difficult, even for someone not allowed to use guns on the speakers on the walls to stop them trying to blow up her head! But Jon made it clear that dealing with holograms was never going to be so easy again…

( Father Elijah demands a cut )

*looks up* Proper spacing is gonna have to wait until tomorrow, I'm afraid -- I gotta get to bed. Night all! EDIT 4/13/2026: Enjoy proper spacing!

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Slow Start Saturday

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 06:20:09 GMT

I mean, not that I really ever have a fast start on weekends unless I have an appointment or something, but this felt slower than normal -- not only did I get up a little later than I maybe should have, a combination of having to change my sheets and help my mom put away groceries meant that I didn't get dressed until noon. ^^; It happens sometimes, I suppose! But I still accomplished the things I was most hoping to accomplish on my to-do list, including:

Tumblr: Welp, there was nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse today – and thanks to my slow start (coupled with having to help Mom with the laundry a bit today – doing her sheets and mine), I didn’t get much done with my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) either. But I did manage to update my “Valicer Eats God” post draft (where I try to turn my OT3 into player characters from the Eat God TTRPG) a little bit before lunch – specifically, I added which “Rebellious Arts” (which allow the PCs to do Looney Tunes shit) I thought would best suit Victor and Smiler! Victor got “The Art of Realisation,” which would allow him to interact with artistic depictions of things as if they were the real thing (think of any cartoon where someone draws a tunnel on a wall and then runs through it) – given Victor’s canonically very artistic, it felt appropriate! Smiler, meanwhile, got two options – “The Art of Guising,” which would allow them to pretend to be someone in a particular “social role” and have everyone treat them appropriately as long as they sustained the Art and acted appropriately, and “The Art of Revelation,” which would allow them to make a statement (max seven words long) that everyone who heard or perceived it (as signs are allowed) would instantly believe is false, being unable to be persuaded otherwise while Smiler sustained the Art. Both felt right for someone who is supposed to be really good at talking people into things! I unfortunately haven’t figured out which Art would be best suited for Alice yet – maybe that can be a project for tomorrow...

Baldur’s Gate III: Once again, it took me longer than I wanted to actually return to Faerûn (had to make myself a fresh batch of chocolate granola after lunch – didn’t have all the ingredients for it this morning!), but once I did, Tav Smiler and friends ended up having a pretty productive – and quite chatty – day! With lots of goodies acquired, and a potential new friend made – not Karlach, but someone else everyone would agree is also very important to the happiness of the camp. Let me tell you all about it –

A) I picked up where I left off last Friday, with Smiler and the gang hanging out by the corpse of one Edowin, the True Soul who was recently killed by an owlbear – and whose tadpole attempted to force Smiler to consume it against their will when Smiler tried to loot his body. Fortunately, Smiler was able to resist its demands, and it instead burst out of Edowin’s body to escape and find a more pliable victim. Accordingly, when I loaded into the game today, my first act (after waiting for all the textures to pop in) was to go into turn-based mode (which you can do at any time outside of combat by hitting a special button) and see if I could track down the little monster and squish it for an extra 10 XP. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate it by looking around the area, even when I turned on character outlines with the ~ key – and when I did some quick research on my phone, I found that apparently, in order to catch and kill it, you have to go into turn-based mode pretty much immediately after ending the dialogue – otherwise, it just slips away into the forest. Ah well – I would have appreciated the extra XP, but I’m sure I will find other ways to level Smiler and the rest of the party up. :p

B) With that particular opportunity denied me, I decided to instead pursue another one – namely, use the Speak With Dead spell granted by Smiler’s Amulet Of Lost Voices to question Edowin’s corpse and see if he had any interesting information for them! Because I had yet to try out the spell and wanted to give it a go. So, after taking a moment to quickly check to make sure there was a slot open in the party for Karlach once we found her (so I didn’t run into another “oh whoops, can’t recruit new party member right away” situation like I did with Lae’zel so long ago – fortunately, the current max party limit was set at seven members, and Smiler and friends totaled six, so we should be good) – I had Smiler activate the spell via playing a very dramatic chord on their lute:

I really like how extra casting spells is in this game, especially as a bard. XD Anyway, upon successfully casting the spell, Edowin’s body started floating at their command, eyes and mouth aglow with green light, and they were permitted to ask him five questions. They went with:

I. “Who are you?” – Edowin naturally replied, “Edowin...a True Soul...a Chosen…”

II. “Who ‘chose’ you?” – Edowin informed them, “The Absolute...the almighty goddess…”

III. “What can you tell me about the Absolute?” – Edowin went with a warning this time: “Do not...fight her. Power...such power…” Makes me wonder if he resisted the cult briefly before they managed to infect and brainwash him. Poor guy if so – he and his siblings deserved better!

IV. “What were you doing here?” – I’d expected him to reiterate what Andrick and Brynna had said, but Edowin actually revealed that he’d had a purpose beyond looking for survivors of the crash: “Looking...for Her weapon...the Absolute…”

V. “What do you know about this weapon?” – Edowin relayed, “Crashed...from the sky...taken...by infidels…” Interesting...I thought he was talking about the spear whose shaft he was carrying, but now, thinking about it – he’s probably actually referring to the Artefact that Shadowheart’s carrying, isn’t he? It’s not a traditional weapon, but it IS the reason Smiler and company still have free will despite being infected with True Soul tadpoles, so...seems like everyone is after that thing! Though I guess that’s not surprising, given it’s the most story-important object in the game… :P Anyway, with that final question, the spell waned, leaving Edowin’s corpse to drop back to the earth, inert once more –

And leaving Gale feeling quite inspired! Apparently his Sage background means that getting some interesting information off a corpse with Speak With Dead makes him feel energized – and grants him a bonus 25 XP. *sigh* I’m happy for Gale, really, but seeing that pop up was an annoying reminder that poor Smiler hasn’t earned a SINGLE inspiration point yet. Damn Guild Artisan background...but I thought it made more sense for them than Entertainer, so…

( Cut, Wonderful Cut )

YouTube: Pleased to say that I got in a pretty good amount of YouTubing today, which really made up for how little I was able to watch the rest of the week –

A) First, this morning, I watched a couple of clips from the movie Project Hail Mary uploaded by Amazon MGM Studios – reason being, I’ve seen some gifsets of it on tumblr, and found the characters in them sufficiently intriguing that I wanted to know more. I won’t go into the full synopsis of the movie here (you can read it on good old Wikipedia if you want and don’t mind spoilers) – instead, all you need to know to have the proper context for the clips is that the main character, Ryland Grace, is a scientist and former schoolteacher who has been forced onto a spaceship on a desperate mission to save Earth from star-eating organisms called “astrophages” – and while out there, he meets and befriends an alien engineer from Erid, a planet in another system also being menaced by the astrophages, who is the sole survivor of his planet’s expedition to find a way to stop the creatures. Said alien is a rock-like five-legged alien who uses echolocation to see – Grace dubs him “Rocky” and uses crude machine translation to decipher his musical chitters. *nods* Got that? Good, here’s what I watched this morning:

I. “Project Hail Mary | “Roommates” – Official Clip” – Rocky arrives on Grace’s spaceship in a custom-made hamster ball (because Rocky can’t survive in Grace’s atmosphere and vice-versa) and proceeds to run wild around the place, cheerfully babbling on about them doing “big science” together and wanting to see human technology...before stumbling across Grace’s very dirty room and being like “why so MESSY? Question,” with Grace responding, “Well, I wasn’t expecting company, was I?!” XD It’s only just over half a minute, but it was very amusing. XD

II. “Project Hail Mary | “Personal Space” – Official Clip” – Grace does some vlogs about living with Rocky – talking about his eating habits being, er, “exotic” (with an appropriate clip showing Rocky being disgusted by Grace eating ramen and claiming that when he eats, it is “beautiful” – cue him demonstrating for Grace and Grace being very grossed out by Rocky shoving some metals rather deep into the center of his body) and how, since he has excellent hearing and can use his echolocation to see through walls, “personal space is at a premium.” Cue Rocky demonstrating at how much of a premium by asking the whispering Grace who he’s talking to. XD Followed by him confirming that he can hear Grace’s softest whispers, prompting an annoyed Grace to show the camera exactly how far away Rocky is, and Rocky to greet it with “hi Grace’s friend” and a little leg wave. XD Again, short, but very funny – I already love Rocky to bits.

So that was fun – might watch some more later. :)

B) Then, this evening, I decided to do a Josh Way double feature – rewatching “Fun With Shorts: Education in America - 17th and 18the Centuries (Part 1)” before watching the newly-released “Fun With Shorts: Education In America - 17th and 18 Centuries (Part 2)!” ...I’m starting to wonder if the typos in the titles are deliberate, given the material. XD Anyway, these two shorts covered education during colonial times in America, with most of the focus given to the compulsory education system set up by the Puritans in New England (where children could be sent to dame schools run by women who taught the children in between doing household chores (the only school that accepted girls), reading and writing schools to learn the basics of those two skills along with arithmetic and ciphering (all with a strong religious focus, of course), and Latin Grammar schools to learn Latin and Greek (so they could attend the local colleges for a liberal arts education)) – though the second short also covered what was going on in the “middle colonies” (basically lots of different “denominational” schools run by the local churches, since there were a lot of different flavors of Christianity settled there, and the founding of “academies” as a precursor to high schools) and the “southern colonies” (which focused largely on private education on the plantations, with poor children going to “pauper’s schools” in the local churches and getting stuck with potentially-abusive apprenticeships if they wanted to learn a trade). And how growing thoughts of revolution and independence even invaded things like the famous New England Primer (changing its rhyme on kings from how they were inherently good to how they SHOULD be good). It was dully, brownly educational like most Coronet shorts – and, of course, Josh had a number of excellent riffs in both, including:

I. Calling Harvard “a factory for Simpsons writers”

II. Having a good laugh at the name of the law that provided teachers and schools for children – the “Old Deluder Satan” law (“totally normal name for a law”)

III. Getting mockingly overly excited about how Seventh-Day Baptists taught the children to write in the iconic Gothic font of their church

IV. Noting that the indenture contract that forced a boy to obey their master in an apprenticeship until they were 21 years old was “not creepy” (/heavy sarcasm) and declaring that “thus, The Man was born” in response to the narrator noting that oftentimes a master was much more interested in his apprentice’s services than his education

V. And saying that he was going to have to challenge the narrator of the short on their claim that plantations provided equally for their owners, their tenants, and their slaves (and generally going on a lot about the whole “slavery” thing happening on those)

Good times – it was nice to watch the shorts back-to-back! Given how he splits them up, it can be easy to forget what happened in the first half by the time he uploads the second.

C) And finally, I wrapped things up with the OXBox list of the week – “7 Worst Classes You MUST NEVER Choose!” Andy and Mike talking about those classes in certain video games that you need to avoid at all costs! (And one – Diablo IV’s Sorcerer – that’s apparently better after eleven “seasons” of updates, but is still only mid-tier at best.) Looking for a good time in Dragon’s Dogma 2? Don’t try out the “Trickster” class then, or you’ll be spending all your time running around spinning a big old censer trying to trick enemies into running onto illusory platforms at the edges of cliffs instead of, you know, just killing people yourself. Want to lead the best team in Yakuza: Like A Dragon? Don’t pick the “Bodyguard” job for yourself, or you’ll be spending your time dealing out attacks that injure YOU as well as your opponent and desperately trying to stay inches from death to maximize your damage. Eager to have the most exciting experience in Borderlands 2? Don’t choose Axton the Soldier (or, as the comments corrected, “Commando”), or otherwise you’ll be stuck with a character whose abilities only enhance the worst guns in the game, assault rifles, and whose other core power is “throwing out a turret to kill people for him.” A turret whose damage does NOT scale with difficulty, mind. *shakehead* Yeah, give me the psychic lady or the “gunzerker” any day. Or a BG3 Warlock, who we have previously established are cool. :P

Not bad, I suppose -- though, as you might imagine, that BG3 write-up took a while. ^^; And now I should really try and get some sleep -- tomorrow, goals include working some more on that "Valicer Eats God" post in my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; doing another round of final edits on Chapter 6 of "LB:DQ" and moving that forward; playing some Portal 2 and maybe sabotaging the turrets if I can get over there; and getting in a workout, preferably with the next episode of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series. *nods* We'll see what happens -- night all!

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