crossover_chick: gif with Doc and Marty trying to get out of being written into twisted AUs (Default)
Yeah, the humidity let up some today, after yesterday was downright soupy -- I guess the thunderstorm that chased me off the computer last night cleared some of it out! Not enough, though -- it was still sticky enough that it was more pleasant to hide in the AC. *sigh* We're supposed to get some better weather this weekend -- I'm hoping! Would be nice to be able to open my window again if I want.

Anyway -- enough bitching about the weather. Here's the daily write-up:

Work – Well, the morning was a little bit hectic – with me looking up various bits of weirdness that we’d spotted (like someone with a duplicate pledge that needed to be taken off, or someone else with two pledges, and the payments on one were going on the other for some reason), splitting someone’s capital campaign pledge because they were now at a new parish, putting on a late Easter gift, and telling a donor I couldn’t do a credit card payment because we were preparing for the end-of-fiscal-year wrap-up (she said she’d send in a check instead) – but the afternoon was much quieter, with me just marking some people deceased, going through a QC file for the latest pledge billing, and sending a check back to a donor because it was an overpayment on their pledge. *shrug* So I guess it all evened out into a pretty average day by the end. :p We’ll see what Thursday is like!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Today’s chunklet saw James finish off Scarlett’s section and complete Krystoff’s final tasks – both of which were more difficult than he’d anticipated:

A) First off, when trying to complete Scarlett’s wedding day, not only did James find that Patchy had left the lot, he also found that he could NOT get the actual wedding event to complete – ending it early did nothing, letting it run out on its own did nothing – it was just stuck there, preventing him from accessing the map screen and thus being able to switch Sims! Fortunately, using MC Command Center to send Scarlett to CAS and back finally made the game realize “oh, yeah, wedding’s over,” and gameplay could continue as normal. James hit “Save As” after that, as you might imagine!

B) Then, once it was no longer wedding time, James used cheats to teleport Patchy to Scarlett and add him to the family so, you know, the married couple could actually be together – then attempted to make them have a baby because apparently everybody without a pet needs a child. (Except Pablo, who has both!) Patchy proved unable to “try for baby” in the traditional sense, and Scarlett couldn’t pick him as an option to have a science baby with – fortunately, Patchy could pick HER when he tried it from his phone, and the two ran off for a bit before coming back with a baby boy James named Scott! (Because it was as close as he could get to smushing together “scarecrow” and “Scarlett.” XD) Scott got shoved into a corner of the bedroom, much like Sighlas, though James did make sure that both his parents gave him one good cuddle before their section of the episode ended. Bit sad that Scott will never get to grow up, but then again, given he was made with the genetic material of a scarecrow (who was a decently-attractive Sim under the hood, admittedly – James checked in CAS) who was never supposed to be a permanent family member...yeah, I think aging him up might break this already-glitchy save once and for all. :p Best not to risk it!

C) With all that done, James then proceeded to finish off Scarlett’s section with a couple of upgrades to her house – putting out the green axolotl she found somewhere in Cuidad Enamorada, along with her marriage certificate to Patchy and Scott’s first handprints; scattering fireflies around the lot to make the tree house even more magical; and adding a wishing well! Scarlett’s last act in the save was to wish at said well for money –

And promptly lose $250 before being stung by bees. XD The well must have looked at her and said “you’re the FUCKING MILLIONAIRE, Scarlett – no.”

D) Satisfied with Scarlet, James moved onto Krystoff, who had the important task of finishing off the gallery in the basement of the community center by painting everyone’s partners and pets! James chose to start with the pets (mostly because Krystoff and Raoul have their own dog who needed a portrait) –

Aaand immediately regretted this decision, as he quickly realized that most of the pets would need to be up on a platform of some description if he wanted to get a good picture of them. Cue him spending a LOT of time fucking around with poor Krystoff’s painting studio, creating both raised platforms for the pets to sit on and sunken bits for Krystoff to paint in so everything was at the right angle; using MC Command Center to add the various pets to Krystoff’s family temporarily to make it easier to paint them; and breaking out the “selectable pets” cheat via mods to make the pets sit or stand where he wanted them to (uh, sort of – getting them in the EXACT right position often proved tricky!). It was quite the process, as you might imagine! But happily worth it in the end, as Krystoff did paint some nice (if slightly goofy) pictures of all the pets in Tiny Town – even Pablo’s horse Pecan got a nice portrait! :) Great to see the animals of the town getting some love~

E) With the pet portraits sorted (and all pets returned to their original owners), it was time to paint the remaining spouses and one-non-newborn child (because James had already decided he wasn’t bothering with the babies) in the town! Getting Judith Ward and Kyra to stand for their portraits didn’t prove too difficult – however, James had to use cheats to teleport Patchy to Krystoff for the painting session...and ended up getting THE WRONG PATCHY. Yes, there was a wrong Patchy for him to get! How, I’m not sure – though I do think Scarlett does have a “normal” Patchy SOMEWHERE on her lot, so maybe the game just assumed James meant THAT NPC when he was going through the list of NPCs to teleport. James was like “...screw it, he looks the same as Scarlett’s Patchy,” temporarily added him to the family, and had Krystoff paint him anyway. XD Once that was done (and Patchy had been added to a new household and sent away), James then wrangled Silas M. and got Krystoff to paint him, then temporarily saved and closed the game to get the mod that removes the “painterly” filter from “Paint From Reference” paintings –

Aaand when he loaded up the game again, Silas M.’s portrait had turned blank. For no reason at all. Fortunately, none of the other portraits were affected, so Krystoff only had to do that one over again, but given how annoying it had been to get Silas M. to cooperate the FIRST time, James was very annoyed.

F) And once all the portraits were painted, James wrapped things up officially with Krystoff by painting an unpainted section of his chimney, and fixing a window that was too high up on the front of his house. Just little things, but James was a touch embarrassed by how long everything might have been like that! :P

So yes – very glitchy and difficult, but James got everything to cooperate in the end, more or less! I ended with him preparing to put all the portraits up in the “Hall of Spares” room around the entrance to the vault (and wondering how he was going to fit them all) – tomorrow, we finish things off with the final bit of community center reno, and the big farewell party James wants to throw! :)

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another good page done on this, featuring:

A) Alice channeling the cowgirl spirit of the regular Fem!Malkavian Fledgling and her terrible stripper outfit, turning the strap of her bag into a lasso that she then used to snag the lever in the deadly beam of light and yank it up without injury to herself – took her four tries, admittedly, but she did it! Wonderland was dutifully impressed

B) Alice then retracing her steps to try and figure out what the lever did, and finding a door to a courtyard area with a “guest house” of sorts – complete with double doors that had clearly been barred before

C) And Alice entering the house (if not as dramatically as Carpenter wanted) and taking a look around – only to realize that, uh, there are a LOT of mannequins in here. XD Yeah, uh, welcome to the creepiest part of the whole fucking game, Alice – the Mannequin House! Aren’t you glad that I play with the Unofficial Patch + and thus can make you experience things like this? :P At least the true horrors don’t start until tomorrow...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to concentrate on getting some of the stuff out of my Watch Later tonight and thus watched last week’s OXtra list: “7 Villains That Let You Live and Regretted It!” Ellen, Mike, AND Andy going through those villains who either –

I. Decided to let the hero live for no good reason (Pagan Min, who squanders two opportunities to off Far Cry 4 protagonist Ajay before the kid dismantles his dictatorship because he has such fond memories of Ajay’s mom, damn it)

II. Did try to kill the hero but didn’t think to confirm they were dead (Cesare Borgia, Templar and megalomaniac, who gets his Renaissance snipers to shoot Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood protagonist Ezio Auditore off a rooftop while executing Ezio’s uncle – but then just assumes Ezio didn’t survive the fall, which allows the assassin to recover, stop all his evil plans, and eventually shove HIM off a roof, much more fatally)

III. Or actively helped the hero stay alive while doing things to piss said hero off, apparently never guessing the hero would come after them (Lionel Starkweather, who actively guides Manhunt protagonist James Earl Cash through his snuff film set death maze to kill all the other people in it...and also kidnaps Cash’s family and kills them, apparently not realizing this would lead to Cash deciding it would be nice to end the game by murdering him with a chainsaw)

Yeesh. Bottom line – if you have the hero at your mercy, just kill them already! It will dramatically increase your lifespan, and your minions will probably thank you.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I decided to use this week’s queue to get some random stuff sitting in my drafts out and about, plus give an old Song Saturday another chance at love:

A) For Thursday, I queued up a photoset of pretty purple iridescent butterflies from “ur-daily-inspiration” (because who doesn’t love shimmery purple butterflies? :D)

B) For Friday, I queued up a set of Severance fanart featuring some of Helly R.’s best moments – like waking up on the conference room table after being freshly severed, and writing “LET ME OUT” across her forearms (because I still very much want to properly watch that show, but until I figure out a way to do so, I shall reblog fanart :P)

C) And for Saturday, I reblogged my old Song Saturday post featuring The Cure’s “Lovesong,” talking about how, yes, I think I’ve figured out how to put a Valicer spin on it (because I was going through the depths of the “#song saturday” tag and realized this particular post never got a note, so I figured I might as well bring it back)

So that’s that sorted for the rest of the week, yay~

Not bad, not bad. And now, even though it is NOT thunderstorming (yet, anyway), I am going to make a concerted effort to get off the computer and go to bed. Night all!
crossover_chick: picture of Alice (Wonderland) in front of the swirling purple Wonderland tunnel (AMA: Alice down the rabbit hole)
Yeah, one of the hazards of a long weekend -- you kind of forget what day it is when you go back to work. :p But it is indeed Tuesday, and I did indeed get back to the grind, as my write-up shall attest:

Work – A fairly busy first day back at the office – there wasn’t too much to catch up on in regards to e-mails and such, but there was a QC file for the latest thank-you going out that I spent most of the day completing, plus a fair number of phone calls to answer (including one donor trying to sneak in a last-minute pledge online – not happening, sorry – and one donor who needed me to shut down an ongoing gift they’d accidentally made). And a few things to look up for my coworker, who spent most of her day going through all the last-minute checks that had to go on. *shrug* It all made the day go by, that’s for sure! And it wasn’t busy to the point where I left late or felt absurdly stressed, so that was all right too. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! James continued the loop around Tiny Town’s residents in today’s chunklet, visiting –

A) Vivienne so he could slap some solar panels on top of her shipping container house (as he’d said he was going to do for ages now – though in order to afford it, he had to have Vivienne grab some cash from the vault, which meant he had to switch to Scarlett briefly so she could OPEN the vault for Vivienne, which ended up in him being unwillingly pulled into an “electrical failure” event on Scarlett’s lot – he eventually got it sorted, though XD); redo her bedroom a little so her bed was better centered with the window on the opposite wall as the commenters wished (which led to him changing the wallpaper in there too when he didn’t like how it looked with the new layout – the lights were in the wrong place on the pattern); and – most importantly – make her Camillo’s mentor so she could help him max out his Writing skill, and thus finally have someone who could record her epic saga in a Book Of Life! Because, as James has complained (rightfully) about in the past, Sims like her with the “Poetic” trait can’t write Books Of Life for themselves – only other people. Bit of an oversight there, Maxis – I think authors would like to be properly immortal too, please! :P

B) Camillo, so he could get the guy to max out the Writing skill and be granted the power of the “Poetic” trait via the magic of cheats, allowing him to bind Scarlet’s life to a book! (James did briefly consider having Camillo complete the Bestselling Author aspiration to get the trait legitimately, but rapidly decided it would take too long). This involved both Vivienne mentoring him at both her house and his, and Camillo briefly getting back into the world of crystal-cutting to make himself a topaz gem to help him learn creative skills faster and avoid burnout to go with the needs-boosting crystal James gave him to keep his needs topped off. The combination of the two gems and Vivienne’s expertise meant that he maxed out his Writing skill (which was already at level 7 when he started) pretty quickly – and once that was done, James gave him the trait, gave him the blank book from Vivienne’s pedestal, and had Camillo bind his half-sister’s life to it! So now everyone has a book that can be used to bring them back to life should the worst happen, yay. :) Granted, Vivienne’s book nearly ended up in a storage bin as Camillo felt the urge to put it away after completing the binding, but James was able to retrieve it without issue. If with a lot of annoyed shouts of “what are you doing?!” XD

C) And Scarlett, so he could finally get her married to Patchy! Which was a bit of a tricky affair – first, James discovered that something had broken in his game so he couldn’t do a “proper” My Wedding Stories wedding (hooray!). Then, Scarlett had to spend the night before the nuptials visiting her various siblings with kids and partners to meet said kids and partners so she could properly invite them to the wedding, after trying to plan a base game affair on her phone and discovering she didn’t know most of them. Then, when she invited everyone to the shindig to celebrate, James discovered that Patchy had never showed up and had to use teleport cheats to get him in Tiny Town in time for his own wedding. THEN, James discovered that Scarlett could only “fantasize about weddings” when he clicked on the wedding arch, so she and Patchy had to get married elopement-style – which they did midway down the aisle, with Scarlett’s various relations gathered around the benches, watching on and cheering. XD And finally, James discovered that Scarlett couldn’t really fulfill any of her wedding goals, as the game refused to properly recognize her marriage to Patchy (they’re listed as “spouses” in the relationship panel, but Patchy didn’t move in when they got married, and the “get married!” goal for the wedding didn’t get checked off), so he had to end the wedding early, at mere bronze level. Sheesh – it’s like the game doesn’t particularly want players marrying their Sims to characters that aren’t real NPCs. XD

So yeah – another set of goals, fulfilled! I left it off with everyone hanging out in the aftermath of the “failed” wedding, with James confirming that guest Domenic was indeed Scarlett’s dad and she was right to invite him – tomorrow, we finish off things with Scarlett and move onto the only resident remaining – Krystoff! Who has a rather important job to do before this series can be marked as “completed…”

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check plus, as I did a little extra editing today on the series –

A) First, in response to a comment from “LizzieAddamsTookAnAxe” on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears,” informing me that newspaper article Bertram Tung finds on the Van Dorts at the end, listing them as the fourth-richest family in the world with 500 million in assets, was BADLY off, as the actual fourth-richest person in the world in 2004 was a Saudi prince who had 25 BILLION in assets, I edited said article to give the Van Dorts a net worth of just over 20 billion instead – and bump them down to seventh place on the list, since that’s where the stats I looked up regarding the richest people in the world in 2004 would put them (among the Walton family). Should have looked that up before, honestly – I keep forgetting that while 500 million is absurdly rich to ME, it’s not rich to the actual ultra rich. Well, it’s fixed now!

B) And second, I edited another page of Alice’s adventures in Grout’s hellmaze in “Downtown Queensland” Featuring Alice finding a pile of ash that used to be a vampire in that beam of killer light coming down from the ceiling; managing to retrieve what was left of the pile of ash’s jacket to check its wallet – and discover it used to be, of all people, Kent Alan Ryan (aka Patty’s missing domitor); discovering that the reason he got ashed was because he was trying to pull a lever that was smack-dab in the middle of the light, which Alice guessed was necessary for escaping; and searching the room to see if she could find anything that would help her pull the lever at a distance, only to come up short. I left it with her preparing to see if she could maybe shoot the lever to activate it – tomorrow, she realizes that the specific type of bag she brought with her actually gives her another option...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – popped back onto C. M. Alongi’s channel to watch another one of her older TikTok compilations: “The Witch Who Trades with Death - New C. M. Alongi Novel!” This was a series of TikToks she did to promote the latest novel coming down the pipeline – a stand-alone book featuring a witch who, escaping sexual assault and domestic violence, runs off to another land and starts recovering with the help of a found family...only to find her awful ex is the evil emperor looking to conquer the land she now calls home. (Don’t worry – he apparently gets his.) The TikToks featured C. M. and her books (Blackwing, Citadel, the in-progress at the time Heart Of Iron, and Witch) all chatting with each other, and covered:

A) Witch’s introduction to the group (right after Blackwing and Citadel were complaining about when their sequels were coming out, and Heart of Iron had needled Citadel for not winning the Minnesota Book Award), startling all the other books (and causing Blackwing to bitch she was never going to get any sequels)

B) C. M. explaining why she wrote Witch (she was bored and had some free time in between waiting for edits on Blackwing to be done and Citadel), and the other books learning that Witch was an epic dark fantasy (Citadel was incredulous, given that Witch was wearing a very fun shirt with poison dart frogs piled on an ice cream cone – something Smiler would definitely wear, by the way) about a woman escaping domestic violence, healing with the help of a new community, and then beating the shit out of her abuser, only with more witchcraft and evil empires...and, apparently, “spicy”

C) The other books being shocked that Witch is openly spicy, as on-screen sex scenes are not a thing with C. M. – however, given the HELL that C. M. puts Witch’s main character through, she felt it only right to let the poor woman get laid. Plus the scene is apparently plot-important. The other books were “eh” about this (especially since the main pairing is cishet, and most of them are more queer), but they were pleased to hear Witch got a happy ending where the main character gets sweet, sweet revenge on her abuser. :D Blackwing even told Citadel (which apparently doesn’t end on a very good note) to take notes, causing Citadel to protest that their ending CLEARLY left the door open for a sequel, “you self-published swine” and leading into...

D) C. M. and the other books lecturing Citadel for being a trad-pub snob, with Blackwing and Heart Of Iron saying that being self-published did NOT make a book lesser and that trad-publishing came with all sorts of bad stuff – from the danger of an author/publisher power struggle, to the fact that publishers pay only pennies, to the systemic racism and sexism in the industry. Witch (a trad-pub book in the middle of edits at the time) was VERY nervous about them talking shit like this while she was being edited, but C. M. said that publisher Angry Robot knew what they signed up for XD

E) The books talking about why they were written: Citadel to emphasize the importance of talking to each other and not dehumanizing people; Blackwing to build an audience for Citadel before taking on a life of her own; Heart Of Iron to capitalize on the success of the CaFae Latte series; and Witch because, again, C. M. had some free time and was bored XD

F) Blackwing wondering if all the books have the “strong female character” trope, with Citadel saying that they have properly-fleshed-out female characters if that’s what she means; cue Witch worriedly wondering if the fact that her main female character having sexual assault and domestic violence in her past means she falls down on the wrong side of the trope. Fortunately, the others assured her they had some overused tropes themselves, and were able to ascertain that the assault and violence weren’t just there for shock value, weren’t actually portrayed on screen, and that the victim manages to REALLY get her abuser back at the end, so they were like “yeah, you’ll be fine”

G) Witch wondering if her book has to include social justice themes, because she doesn’t think she has any – the other books were like “hold on, your character goes through sexual assault and domestic violence,” with Witch countering, “Yeah, but that’s just HER experience, I don’t talk much about rape culture or anything like that.” Citadel, in a rare nice moment, said that it was okay if the themes weren’t explicit on the page, it was enough that they were acknowledged in SOME way and got people talking about them…

And then Witch started talking about how the main character bonds with her MALE best friend over their shared experience, and how the best friend’s abuser was exposed but avoided punishment thanks to being rich, and how him being the child of immigrants did NOT help, as the town was rather xenophobic. Heart Of Iron was immediately like “you have social justice issues out the wazoo, girl.” Witch was thrilled. XD

H) And Blackwing asking Witch about her magic system, as she was curious – turns out that witches in that world can suck the life force out of people to power their magic, and make trades with the personification of death (hence the full title of the book), sacrificing bits of their soul for more powers or more life force. It was quite dark, but Blackwing got kind of stuck on the fact that the life drain sounded like vampirism, and that it gave the witches a colorful glowing aura...meaning the book had sparkly vampires. XD Welp, given that Witch replied that “they sparkle with the souls of their murder victims!” I think C. M. trusts she did it better than Twilight!

Fun stuff – and good preparation for me watching the compilation of TikToks C. M. did to help promote the book when it came out in March! :) Hopefully I can get to that tomorrow...

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

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Dropped a pair of posts in the queue for Wednesday tonight – that “Dead Boys Detective Agency as text posts” post I liked earlier, followed by my own “Valicer as text posts” post that was inspired by it. Felt only polite to reblog the original before posting my version! Dunno what I’m going to do for the rest of the week yet, but I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

Valice Multiverse – Ended up with a pair of posts to queue up over here too:

A) An anon ask talking about how they think Therese Voerman is the “the finest thing in Santa Monica since sliced bread” and how no one cares about that fact...or the fact that the fledgling blew up a warehouse – Londerland Bloodlines!Alice, said fledgling, agreed with them that shit was crazy and admitted she was surprised to find someone who preferred Therese – she thought most people liked the more sociable Jeannette more (some people just want ladies who will step on them, Alice!)

B) And a surprise response to my oft-forgot thread with The Coven Wars, with their character Seth asking for help finding his brother Richard after he wandered off in a daze – Forgotten Vows!Alice and Victor are on the case, getting out of Seth that they were near the square when it happened and saying that that’s where they should start. Perhaps this kid will get found after all!

Aaaand now it's thundering outside, meaning those thunderstorms that were supposed to show up earlier (they were TWO MILES away from us this afternoon -- I heard the thunder, but every time I looked outside, it was sunny) have finally arrived, so I'd better get off the computer. Night all!
crossover_chick: a picture of Sims 4 versions of Victor Van Dort and Alice Liddell standing with OC Smiler Alton (Caucausian, black hair, bright yellow eyes) in wedding clothes (OT3: Wedding Valicer Trio)
And hey, this year I have the perfect icon for this entry! :D Go me and my premium account. Anyway, it was a decent Valicer Anniversary this year -- not perfect, but I managed to hit every goal I set for myself at the end of yesterday's entry in one form or another. Let me give you the write-up:

Tumblr: Only Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about this Valicer Wedding Anniversary, and I had a fairly productive day over there, happily:

A) First, I finished drafting out my “Valicer as text posts” post, explaining how it came to be and thanking the creator of the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post for inspiration (along with the creators of the original text posts). So hopefully I can throw that into this week’s queue!

B) Then, I did some more work on the “Teen Valicer Save” post, writing up the section explaining what I want each individual member of my OT3 to do over the course of the save – like part-time jobs and after-school activities I’d like them to join while in high school, what occults I’d like them to become (or, in Smiler’s case, start out as), and what their ultimate adult career would be. I’m still not quite done – have to finish off the lists for Victor and Alice – but I made some good progress, and I’m that much closer to getting this darn thing posted!

C) And finally, I reblogged my Valicer Wedding Masterpost (a collection of posts I’ve made documenting all the Valice and Valicer wedding stuff I’ve done over the years – includes links to the wedding chapters of “Secundus” and “Fixing You,” along with other wedding-related fic I’ve written in each verse; links to the Newcrest Adventures Valice wedding, and the Chill Save Valice and Valicer weddings; and a selection of pictures from the Chill Save Valice and Valicer weddings, because why not) again, adding links to some of the fics I’ve written so far this year that at least mention weddings (including, yes, the collection of Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes I queued up for last Friday about them moving in together – it did mention at the end Victor not wanting to get married until he could marry BOTH Alice and Smiler), and the pictures I took of the trio in their new potential wedding outfits today in Sims 4! Got it up a bit later than I intended, but it went up, and that’s all that matters. :) Yay~

Sims 4: So – as per the above, I did get to do my desired “new formal wedding outfits” dress-up session in CAS with my Valicer trio this afternoon. And it was fun, and you’ll get to see the results below. It’s just...there was some rather annoying weirdness/glitchiness on the way there that made this all take longer than I wanted. Let me take you through what happened:
Behind A Cut 'Cause Shit Get Long )

Writing: Got to the writing a bit late tonight, thanks to needing a bit of extra time to finish off both the above write-up on the Sims 4 nonsense AND the latest reblog on my Valicer Wedding Masterpost...but I am very pleased to say that, when I did get to it, I wrote almost two pages and finished Chapter 3! :D Mostly because I really, really wanted to reunite Alice and Smiler with Victor today, given it is the Valicer Anniversary. :p Anyway, the final bit of Chapter 3 consisted of –

A) Kasimir genially confronting Alice and Smiler and asking what their deal was, and them replying “kind of depends on what YOUR deal is, and if it’s going to hurt our friend”

B) The confrontation being interrupted by Barnaby and Victor, with the former cheerfully informing Kasimir that Victor had agreed to help them rob the Van Dort’s vault – both Alice and Smiler were a little ??? over this, as you might expect

C) Kasimir explaining that the reason they’re robbing the Van Dorts is that Barnaby gave half the gang’s Coin to a conman claiming to be setting up a dog-racing track in the city (this is something that’s genuinely in the book – I believe mentioned in the write-up of important things of note in Nightmarket, in fact, but don’t quote me on that), and this was the best way they could think of to get their money back (with Barnaby going on about how the gang needed to be committing more “lovely crimes” anyway :P); and Victor explaining to Alice and Smiler about how his mother didn’t care about his well-being and didn’t believe a ghost would want to marry him anyway before breaking down. :( Alice and Smiler both comforted him, and Victor asked Alice if he could stay with her at least temporarily, since he did not want to live in the Van Dort mansion anymore; Alice agreed, despite the smug coming off Smiler XD

D) And Alice and Smiler confirming to Kasimir that they’re all for helping rob the Van Dorts, and Victor sending Kasimir and Barnaby to wait in the wine cellar while he, Alice, and Smiler went up to his room to get his things (Kasimir and especially Barnaby were very happy to wait down there XD)

So yeah, that’s another chapter in the books, yay! :D Now it’s back to “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” for a few days, and then next weekend, we start Chapter 4!

YouTube: Not a great day for the old YouTubes, given I spent most of the day either working on my tumblr, playing Sims 4, or working on these write-ups. But I got in a few videos, including the clips of Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler that I wanted to watch –

A) First up, as per the “Sims 4” section above, I watched “This New Update BREAKS The Sims 4…” by onlyabidoang right before my playsession this afternoon! Because yeah, uh, looks like the July 1st patch was a lot buggier than anyone thought, prompting Abi taking to the YouTubes to warn his audience not to update their game if they could help it, and to show off as many of the bugs he could in his own game to let everyone know what they might be dealing with. Among the bugs noted were:

I. Being unable to drag dirty dishes into sinks, trash into trash bins, laundry into laundry hampers, and certain collectibles into their display cases

II. Being unable to direct Sims to take a pregnancy test if you had your sims “try for baby” in a bed – and the pregnancy state itself being somewhat broken, with some pregnant Sims not showing their bellies or not being able to progress in their pregnancies

III. Sims and objects disappearing behind curved glass walls (Abi noted that curved walls are buggy as hell anyway, so maybe this should have been expected), and Sims being in rooms with glass walls getting the “Poorly Decorated” moodlet for some reason

IV. Sims coming home from work or school early if another Sim left on the home lot decides to travel

V. Sims with the “Entrepreneurial” reward trait (Abi had some trouble pronouncing that, poor guy) not getting promotions in their careers after a certain point, only raises

VI. And Sims with custom tattoos and pets with custom coats made in paint mode ending up with pitch black skin or fur (I – think I’ve actually seen this in my own game BEFORE this patch, with the Dogmeat who lives with my Valicer trio in the Building Save I use the most often sometimes showing up black in CAS! But apparently the problem’s gotten a lot worse with this patch)

Soooo – yeah. Lot of fun bugs with this particular patch, eh? And everyone was so excited because it finally fixed the “indoor weather” bug… When’s Paralives coming out again??

B) And then, tonight, right after I’d finished talking to my friend Squid, I took a few minutes to watch the following:

I. “Alice: Madness Returns - Launch Trailer” by Electronic Arts (exactly what it says on the tin, the trailer that went out when the game officially hit shelves)

II. “Tim Burton's Corpse Bride – Trailer” by YouTube Movies (the longer of Corpse Bride’s two trailers, with the poem narration)

III. “The Smiler Alton Towers AR Points” by matmi (a look at all the AR points around the park and in newspapers and whatnot that you could scan with your camera to see neat things and unlock goodies in The Smiler Game)

IV. “What Smiler Sounds Like” by docette2015 (aka me – one of two video clips I have of my Chill Valicer Save trio hanging out together (in this case, in Chestnut Ridge to celebrate SimCity Founding), which I recorded specifically so people would know what Smiler’s voice sounds like)

So yeah, I think I got all of my Valicer clips in there. :) Would have liked to have watched more or longer ones, but you have to work with the time you have!

Workout: Hopped back on the bike for another half-hour today, pedaling my way through the beginning of “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Yeah, I know I only just started the Wyrdwood series over on Oxventure, and I am eager to watch the rest of it, but I was also eager to see Tiny Town finally wrapped up after so long. So I decided we’d dedicate this week to the big finale of this series, then continue catching up on all things Oxventure after that. *nods* None of it’s going anywhere, after all!
Anyway – this final episode of Tiny Town is all about finishing unfinished business, making sure everyone is in a good place in their lives, and ensuring the town is in the best state it can be in. James went through the comments on previous videos, made a list of what people wanted to see for each resident, and planned to visit each one in turn to wrap things up for them – starting with the people who had the least “wrapping up” to do, of course. So far, in this first half-hour, he has:

A) Gone by Sonny’s and built a proper nursery for his and Judith’s baby boy, Blue, with some nice plants and a ceiling fan and cute artwork that the baby could definitely not have drawn, but he’ll get there, he’ll get there XD (also, he accidentally built it in “infinite money” build mode because he popped into that mode to fix the roofs and forgot to pop back out again, but James quickly decided he wasn’t going to worry about it because it was the final episode – and besides, Sonny and Judith have their own private vault with half a million in it, so it’s not like it would have been that much of a hit to the finances anyway…)

B) Visited Reuben’s and used the power of “Modify In CAS” to give him a dog, Ruby, because romantic relationships weren’t really his thing but nobody wanted to see him all alone in his house/cafe (the dog is a Vizsla as they are a very orange-furred breed, and she is Active, Playful, and a Hunter – she and Reuben went out on a very long walk as their final act of the episode, during which she somehow learned how to improve a family recipe with a special disease-curing touch. …the Sims 4, everyone)

C) Swung by Pablo’s and widened the “backyard” room in his vault slightly so he could give the guy a swingset (as everyone noticed Pablo loved swinging on Scarlett’s all the time); put a hopscotch board in the hallway for Kyra to play on (so she had something to do in the vault); and stuck Scarlett’s dead cowplant in the desert surrounding the entrance to the bunker (as it was very much more Pablo’s aesthetic than Scarlett’s XD)

D) Hit Silas R.’s with the intent of improving his relationship with his husband Silas M. by forcing them to have a science baby together – only to run into the roadblocks of “they don’t have enough money to have a science baby” and “the game randomly made them kind of hate each other while they were working on breaking into the Community Center vault to get the money for the science baby.” XD I mean, their relationship has always been pretty rocky, but the game had just fixed their compatibility issues by making Silas R. like hardworking Sims like his husband, and Silas M. like lovable rascals like his husband, before suddenly making them fight and tanking their friendship. A very frustrated James thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time forcing them to like each other again (via the means of “going into CAS and getting rid of all of Silas M.’s dislikes so Silas R. couldn’t keep annoying him” and “Silas R. spamming Silas M. with friendly messages over Social Bunny to quickly get up their friendship”) so, you know, they’d want to do the science baby thing together. Happily, he succeeded after not too long, and after FINALLY successfully breaking into the vault and scooping up some cash, the two Silas’s went off to the clinic and came back with their own baby boy – Sighlas. Who does not get his own baby room – he just gets shoved into a nook in the couple’s bedroom. XD Their chunk ended with James forcing them to cuddle their new baby while they were both filthy from slipping in the muddle puddles outside (and in Silas M.’s case, dazed from being hit by lightning), and James saying that Silas R. would not be taking pictures of the completed houses in-game because it was a pain in the ass to set up with the tripod – easier for him to just do it himself.

And there we have it – the first four residents of Tiny Town all taken care of! Tomorrow, we move onto Vivienne, Camillo, and Scarlett and see about getting THEIR lives sorted!

Aaand, as usual, doing all that means I've stayed up too late again. Good thing I'm getting used to that? *strained smile* Anyway, I'm hitting the sack as I do have work tomorrow -- night all!
crossover_chick: Doc snoozing on his couch (BTTF: exhausted)
Though at least it was a very chill one -- er, in every way BUT weather-wise. Weather-wise it was quite hot. XD But I didn't have to deal with that, as we all hid in the air conditioning all day. I dealt with all the following stuff instead:

Tumblr: Pleased to report I had a good time on the tumbls this Sunday –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I managed a pretty productive roughly hour-and-a-half before lunch over here –

A) First up, I went back through my dash and my “tracked blogs” (aka the ones I tend to read separately because it’s easier to keep up with their posts that way) and reblogged three things:

I. A post by “thememedaddy” featuring a screenshot of a post by “CG Drews” (I believe from Twitter/X) being incredulous that some people go to bed and just sleep without doing things like coming up with epic stories in their heads, or bathing in existential dread, or getting a play-by-play of all their mistakes, with a follow-up reblog by “kingkit7734” going “This. Just This.” As I am too one of those who cannot just Go To Sleep unless I am absolutely beyond exhausted, I considered this a Mood and thus had to reblog it

II. A post by “izel-scribbles” consisting of: “first rule of being a rare pair shipper is find a freak or three who can be convinced to enjoy the rare pair as much as you do. second rule is feed each other's insanity” XD As a rare pair shipper myself, this was also a Mood and had to be on my blog – though I did ramble on in the tags about how the freaks more found me in my case, as I never really sought out fellow freaks – I just did my thing, and ended up pleasantly shocked that other people liked it. I even specifically cited how I wasn’t even the one who named the Victor/Alice ship “Valice” – if memory serves me right, that was artist DanyDarkly, who was briefly into it as much as I was and provided some lovely fan art of the ship (one piece of which is STILL my desktop wallpaper – even if I do switch to something more Valicer in the near future, I’ll probably have it cycle between whatever I chose and that piece). Haven’t found as many freaks who like Valicer, but given some friends have asked for it in their gift fics, I know it has some fans. :)

III. And a post by “prokopetz” talking about the history of pinball! Specifically, about how the earliest forms of the game (made in France in the mid 1700s) were strictly games of chance, having the mechanism to launch the balls and all the bumpers and such, but no flippers to allow players to manipulate the ball afterwards, because all the mechanical flippers people tried to add were simply too weak to propel the ball all the way back up the table. They didn’t come into their own until the 1940s, when people started giving the flippers a boost by attaching electric motors to them. However, Prokopetz noted that the technology to boost the flippers was available in the 1880s, and the only reason that it wasn’t attempted was because it was economically impractical (how, he did not specify)...meaning, if you were willing to go a bit alternate history on things, you could have a story where Count Dracula owned a pinball machine (as the book was published in 1897). Cue some follow-up posts where Prokopetz responded to “winduppup” and their tags rambling on about how they want to know more about the eccentric tinkerer who was obsessed with electricity and old-fashioned pinball games and decided to make a pinball machine for Count Dracula by noting that, if you go by the Universal Studios Horror canon, there’s a certain scientist who’s notably obsessed with electricity and apparently hangs out with Dracula a fair bit (aka Dr. Frankenstein); and “do-not-fold-spindle-or-mutilate” running with that by positing a scenario where Dracula is trying to gently turn down another one of Frankenstein’s weird-ass electrical inventions, and Frankenstein (unaware that this looks like flirting) is utterly convinced Dracula will love “the philosophical implications of turning pinball into a game of skill.” XD I found this all very amusing, as you might expect –

But the reason I reblogged it was because my first thought upon seeing the post was “Holy crap, does this mean I could have someone invent pinball in my Valicer In The Dark verse?” And then realizing that, given this is a Blades In The Dark-based world, that probably any pinball machine would be somehow ghost powered...meaning that, if I really wanted, I might be able to have my trio fight a haunted pinball machine. XD Probably have to be a one-off comedy story, but still. As per my tags on the post, I am keeping it in mind! XD

B) Then (with her kind permission), I went ahead and posted Gig’s birthday gift fic (featuring Secundus!Victor meeting the local version of Smiler and helping them avoid getting shut down by the local police for selling their Joy Serum on the street without a permit (learning along the way that he shouldn’t have assumed Smiler was a ‘he,’ but making up for it by letting them know he has a friend, Richard, who doesn’t feel like a man either, proving Smiler’s not alone in feeling like they don’t have a ‘normal’ gender)), along with the author’s notes explaining what this Smiler’s deal is, to my blog as a surprise Secundus Sunday post! ...which involved fixing a few misspellings I somehow managed to miss when I originally posted the fic (also fixed them over here on DW, Gigs!). ^^; But yeah, I just really wanted to share the “Smiler in Secundus” shenanigans over on my main tumblr too – especially since it contains one of my favorite lines for explaining what it’s like dealing with Smiler in full salesperson mode, as per Victor’s thoughts upon first meeting them: Goodness – it’s like being hit in the face by a very cheery sack of bricks. XD Love it.

C) And finally, I did work a tiny bit on one of my drafts over here, cleaning up the text for my “Valicer as text posts” photo set post a little bit and adding a proper link to the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post that inspired me (and provided the actual text posts I used). It’s still not anywhere near DONE, but I DID make progress on it. *serious nod*

Valice Multiverse – And over here – well, it was another quiet night, so I just reblogged the “Smiler in Secundus” fic into my queue and called it a day. :P Nothing too exciting! Though I should mention that I forgot to tell you all about an anon ask I got yesterday, making a joke about how LaCroix said, upon opening the sarcophagus, “I don’t see an Antediluvian, I see four!” Took me a moment to get the joke, but when I did, both me and Londerland Bloodlines!Alice had a good chuckle over it. XD (If you don’t get it – sarcophagus is in fact a giant bomb, wired with C4.)

Baldur’s Gate III Planning: Yeah, this is the bit that I wasn’t very productive on, despite blocking out a pretty decent chunk of the afternoon to work on it. I was hoping to at LEAST figure out my modlist for my next playthrough, even getting a start on what I considered “required” mods (a few cosmetic mods to make sure Smiler looks right, plus one giant bugfix mod that could be considered the games “Unofficial Patch”) –

But, well, every time I start looking at mods for this game – either on the official modding page on Larian’s website, mods.io, or NexusMods – I get caught up in how cool some of the mods are, and think about how I should install them! ...And then I start wondering if I want to go back to the BG3 Mod Manager over just using the in-game mod manager for some of the more complicated stuff. And if some of these mods are even compatible with the mod manager. And if some of them are functional with patch 8. And if Unlock Level Curve is truly fixed – the issues with it SEEM to stem from a problem with the patch to make it compatible with 5e Spells, and I’m happy enough to use Mystra’s Spells instead, but I really don’t want to get caught out by this mod not working and not letting me do my Bardlock build the way I hope! And what’s this about PixellByte’s Adjustable Party Limit causing crashes in Act 2? I was hoping to use that! And should I get the difficulty enhancing mod that goes with it? I honestly think this game will be hard enough for me, the D&D turn-based-game newbie –

Aaand yeah, I think you see the problem. No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself overthinking the mod situation. *grumbles* And going full vanilla isn’t possible just because I need some mods to make Smiler look right...I dunno. I just want to get this sorted so I can just install all the mods at the beginning of my playthrough and hopefully not have to worry about them again. And then get to figuring out how the hell I’m going to make sure Smiler gets Persuasion as one of their first proficient skills… Maybe I can make some more progress next weekend.

Writing: Very good day for the Valicer In The Dark universe writing-wise, I must say –

A) As per the tumblr write-up above, I did in fact add a note about doing a comedy story about the gang having to deal with a haunted pinball machine after an initial attempt to turn it from a chance-driven game into a skill-driven one by adding a ghost to move the flippers goes horribly wrong to my list of score and story ideas in the Valicer In The Dark master doc – because I don’t want to forget it, after all, that’s too good XD

B) And I wrote nearly two pages on “The Van Dort Vacancy” before my workout, featuring Alice and Smiler:

I. Managing to sneak out of the kitchen to chase their mystery man (after Alice had finished slicing her tomatoes and Smiler preparing their cream sauce, of course) on the pretext of getting more vegetables

II. Heading down to the greenhouse, with Alice admitting she felt a little bad leaving all those clearly-overworked people to their cooking (Smiler agreed, but said they’d at least helped in a small way), and Smiler admiring the luxury of the back hallway (which had fish-scale-pattern wallpaper in pale green and silver chandeliers shaped to look like splashing water – gotta stay on-theme)

III. And reacting to the greenhouse when they found it, with Alice initially believing that she’d started hallucinating the Deluded Depths, because why else would she see what looked like a big old slice of the ocean right next to her like that –

Only for Carpenter to set her straight, and Smiler to reveal that, yes, they see it too. Because as it turns out, the Van Dort greenhouse is in fact encased in what is essentially a giant aquarium. With walls and ceiling made of glass and filled with ocean water and a ton of various bizarre fish. Why? Because most of those fish are infused with electroplasm and thus emit “radiant energy,” which allows the plants inside to grow! It’s a concept taken straight from some of the fluff text in the book! Both Smiler and Alice were completely gobsmacked, because they’ve never seen anything like it before (well, sort of – Alice has seen a greenhouse with aquarium walls before, when she was little and her father was visiting a rich patron of the university he worked at, but that one only had two walls worth of fish and wasn’t nearly this big). Though Alice couldn’t help noting that, beautiful as it was, if any of the glass cracked, the Van Dorts were in serious trouble –

Aaaand I left it on a mysterious voice agreeing that the rich never think these things through. Tomorrow, Alice and Smiler officially meet Kasimir, and then Barnaby shows up with Victor in tow to explain “oh hey, we’re robbing the vault!” XD Should be fun! :D

Workout/YouTube: We’re combining these two categories today because I watched the same thing for both my workout and my nightly YouTubery – “Fallout: London - Grand Finale - London Falling” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! Yes, Jon did indeed upload the big almost-hour-long final episode of his Fallout: London adventure tonight – and, luckily for me, did so 32 seconds before I had to choose a video to watch with my workout. So I was able to watch the first half while burning some calories on the bike, and the second half while digesting some calories at my computer after supper! :D Yay~ So allow me to tell you one final time about the adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they –

A) Went to report back to Smythe after the broadcast they helped set up last week – establishing a fake Angel run by a Russian Frenchman as the “real threat” to London and allowing Smythe to tighten martial law even further – went out! She thanked them for their good work via telephone, as usual, then revealed that there was one last situation that she needed Aria to take care of before their promised face-to-face meeting: a dual assault on Westminster by the remains of Camelot and the Fifth Column! It seemed that, with their leaders dead and Angel now fully in control of Westminster, they’d decided to put aside old differences and join forces to destroy their mutual enemy and wrest back control of London in one last glorious stand. Smythe informed Aria that Camelot had set up a trebuchet by Westminster Bridge to launch an attack (literally) over the river, while the Fifth Column were busy invading Waterloo Station to sneak into “Westminster’s soft underbelly” via the Underground tunnels, and told her that she needed to take out one of these threats so they weren’t fighting a war on two fronts – though Smythe wasn’t picky about which one she handled.

Aria was immediately like “TREBUCHET, PLEASE.” XD Yeah, Jon had been extremely excited to see that thing get built during the brief period of time where he was working with Camelot, and he was NOT going to turn down a chance to see it in person! Even if he was sending Aria there to destroy it before it actually did anything cool. :p Smythe told her that she had a week to finish off any other business before the two sides were ready to begin their assault, wished her luck, then ended the call by letting her know that she should come to the Palace at Westminster once the threat was dealt with, as she had some friends who were just “dying” to meet her. Aria was immediately like “yeah, that’s a trap,” but figured it was still her best shot of getting to her creator, killing her, and then taking over Angel and reforming it into a NICE mad-science-based despotic government. Gotta make sure all the horrors she’s committed could be justified as for “the greater good” after all! XD

B) Waited a week in the chair in the room next to Smythe’s office (because Aria didn’t really have any major sidequests hanging over her head anymore, and Jon was eager to get to the action), then headed over to Westminster Bridge to take out Camelot’s trebuchet! Most of the trip was pretty quiet, with Aria easily making her way through Eastminster and Trafalgar Square, past Waterloo Station (where she was a little concerned to see a bunch of dead Tommies by the entrance – she’d hoped to have their help in the upcoming fights), and through the remains of the London Eye settlement, before finally coming across a shit-ton of Camelot knights on the bridge, guarding the trebuchet on the bank of the river nearby. Aria and Jack cleared out the force, then Aria took a moment to admire the glorious machine before heading down to the riverside, slaughtering the remaining few knights protecting it, and setting it on fire with the help of a nearby sconce. :( Oh Jon...if you’d just gone ahead and kept working with Arthur, you could have probably actually USED that thing instead of just destroying it...

C) Made their way into Waterloo Station to clear out the Fifth Column still lingering there and use the tunnels to get into Westminster proper to join the fight against the insurgents who made it inside the borough! Which, uh, proved to be quite easy, as not only where all the Fifth Column enemies low level and this often taken out in a single shot by Aria’s guns, some proper Angel troops joined them for the slaughter near the end. Jon was a little puzzled as to why these guys were so much easier than the Camelot troops Aria and Jack had fought outside, but ended up just shrugging it off, killing them all, and concentrating on avoiding the water in the tunnels as much as possible to not get super irradiated. :P

D) Made it back into Westminster and joined the fight to take control of Parliament Square! It was a fierce battle, with Angel troops and Tommies fighting side-by-side to fend off the furious Fifth Column and Camelot warriors – but with Aria sniping off people from the back with the lovely Queen’s Gambit sniper rifle she got from Tenpenny, and Mad Jack rushing into the fray with his axe and tanking a LOT of damage from the various enemies, the interlopers were soon defeated. Chalk up another win for the forces of evil – that is, “the greater good.” XD

E) Got a message from a courier (who was VERY upset by the fact that he’d had a BOMB strapped to his chest to force him to wade into the warzone to deliver this message – he quit right after saying his piece, and promptly exploded as he tried to run away) that the remaining insurgents had taken control of 10 Downing Street, Admiralty Arch, and the Broadcasting House (aka the BBM), and headed out to take them back! Which proved to be not very difficult at all, because –

I. Most of the enemies that were spawning were low-level generic scrubs, who Aria could easily take out with her array of high-powered weaponry

II. As she cleared out the locations, more and more Tommies and Angel soldiers joined up with her, until by the time she marched on the Broadcasting House, she was leading her own veritable army! Meaning that she could more or less sit back and let them down most of the hard work of taking down the interlopers, occasionally blasting someone with her sniper rifle or getting in close to build up her crits with Scaramanga. Aria was very happy with this state of affairs. :p

So yeah – with the help of her extremely powerful guns and vast array of minions, Aria easily reclaimed all three locations, taking down the flags of the enemy and ensuring that Angel would truly reign supreme. All for the greater good!

F) Headed over to the Palace at Westminster – specifically, the House of Commons – after a time-skipping fade-to-black for that long-anticipated meeting with Smythe...only to find a lot more Smythe than they bargained for. Because, well, it turned out that Aria wasn’t the only Smythe clone on the block – the entire House was FILLED with clones of the mysterious leader of Angel! All identical to Aria, right down to the scars on her face (though not down to the clothes – which is good, as our Lady Aria probably would have opened fire on anyone else wearing a crown XD). And as it turns out, they were having a meeting about our beloved protagonist, directing her to the dispatch box –

To face off against Opposition Leader Smythe, who promptly declared that she hoped to start a motion to officially confirm Lady Aria as an inferior Smythe! Why? Well, apparently Aria once ended up sacrificing a bunch of one Dr. North’s experiments to “play hero” at some point, apparently with Camelot (I, uh, genuinely don’t recall what this is referring to – it’s been a long series!) –

And she also let a certain giant sapient mittenlurk with a human brain named Reggie escape into the Thames while blowing up the secret Angel lab in the aquarium. Whoops – turns out that action actually had consequences! XD Aria couldn’t defend herself regarding Reggie, not having the SPECIAL stats needed (though she was given the option to start the chant “CRABS ARE PEOPLE!” XD), but fortunately her high Luck allowed her to mount a defense regarding the mess with Dr. North – a defense that consisted of, essentially, “I’ve been in loads of firefights that should have killed me and always walked away without a scratch – why change my strategy?” XD And hilariously enough, that rebuttal, combined with the fact that Aria was basically responsible for them having control over Westminster, and soon the entirety of London, was enough to convince the Opposition Leader Smythe to instead start a motion to have her declared a superior Smythe! The motion carried, and Aria was thus allowed through to meet “the creator” as all the various Smythes sang “For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow” in creepy unison. Jon was quite put off. XD

(Also, bonus fun facts while we’re here – one of the Smythes was wearing a robe and a bucket on her head to represent everyone’s favorite joke politican Lord Buckethead – now Count Binhead due to some sort of copyright concern – and the one non-Smythe member of the House, the robot speaker, was voiced by John Bercow – actual former Speaker of the House of Commons! Sheesh – dunno how the mod creators managed THAT.)

G) Climbed Elizabeth Tower (the tower that houses the clock we all know as Big Ben) to finally meet with Smythe! Aria was unfortunately forced to dump all of her lovely powerful weapons in a big bin before she ascended, but was able to use her final two ever level-ups to boost her Charisma up to 10 in preparation for any last-minute speech checks – and, right before meeting her creator, was able to find a silenced hardened 9mm in a safe (in what looked like Smythe’s personal bedroom, no less) and a pipe wrench lying around on a table. Both kind of shitty weapons, but better than nothing! Not to mention the game just gave her a poison-tipped umbrella right before she confronted Smythe, as if it knew she’d need SOMETHING going forward…

Anyway – Aria met Smythe right behind the clock face for Big Ben, where her erstwhile creator (who also looked just like Aria, down to the scars – Jon, amused, decided that the star-shaped scar must be genetic) finally explained everything. Namely, that she, and Aria, and all the other Smythes were the latest of a long line of clones of the original Ms. Smythe – a pre-War Ministry of Information worker who saw the War coming; attempted to warn various people in government; was ignored and eventually imprisoned for unspecified “activities” (as she admitted to having already gotten the MoI under her thumb, using it to start the organization that would eventually become known as Angel, I think it was that – or perhaps illegal use of cloning technology, as Jon suggested); escaped the day the world burned to the Pindar under the Angel underground station; and started building her empire in the ruins. Most Smythes, or at least the line that runs everything and orders around all the other Smythes, are specially conditioned in their cloning tubes so they have all the original’s memories, plus the knowledge of their predecessors – however, thanks to the Vagabonds, Aria was busted out of her tube before the process was completed, leaving her a blank slate. A shame, because she was supposed to be the replacement for THIS Smythe once she passed on. Aria promptly asked if that was still on the table, and Ms. Smythe told her no – a new replacement had already been conditioned and put into stasis. She in fact expected Aria to simply leave and make her own life, now that her job as an Angel operative was done.

...Aria being Aria, she promptly responded to that with “There can be only one Smythe!” (Literally, that was the dialogue option. XD) Smythe was like “so be it,” and the pair began to duel to the death! Aria quickly learned that Smythe was really fucking tough (even her crits did very little damage!), but fortunately Aria was even tougher, and had her stimpacks so she could heal. The pair thus battled through the tower (with Aria getting in a few shots with her stolen gun and a few whacks with her pipe wrench before switching to using her umbrella), and Aria managed to chip away at Smythe’s health until the woman was ready to be downed in her own bedroom –

Aaaand cue the game teleporting Smythe back up to the room behind the clock face so Aria had to run up there and fight her AGAIN. -.- However, the game had a good reason for doing this, as the SECOND time Aria got her down to no health, Smythe ended up falling off the platform they were fighting on, snagging the (for some reason on the interior) clock hand of Big Ben in a desperate attempt to save herself from the drop! The game then presented Aria with the choice to save her or let her fall –

And Aria being Aria, happily said bye-bye to Ms. Smythe as she plummeted to her death. All for the Greater Good! XD

H) Settled in to watch the ending slides to see what would become of everyone now that they’d taken control of Angel! In short:

I. The remains of the Fifth Column and Camelot were quietly disposed of by Angel troops once their invasion of Westminster was repelled

II. Aria did indeed take control of Angel, and even willingly submitted to the conditioning to get all of her predecessors’ memories

III. The Tommies became the friendly face of the despotic regime under the new leadership

IV. The Pistols of Camden furiously kicked Aria out of their group, and remained independent against the forces of Angel as long as they could

V. Miller’s Men began falling to infighting as they kept to the little chunk of London they called home

VI. The Normans (aka the French ghouls) ended up blowing THEMSELVES up when trying to attack Westminster during the big battle

VII. The Croydonians largely ignored the bridge built into their territory and continued keeping themselves to themselves

VIII. The Briktonians, by contrast, were brought into line with the rest of London by a combination of Tommy and Angel forces after Aria remanned the nearby garrison, ending their dream of being an independent settlement

IX. The Gentry joyously celebrated the defeat of the enemy forces, unaware that they would soon be nothing more but pawns of Angel

X. The Globe Theater ended up closed to all but Aria, who often visited to see the troupe perform the various plays she’d collected for them

XI. The Vagabonds and the Syndicate managed to keep their uneasy peace, with the days of constant warfare soon becoming just a bad memory neither gang wanted to see repeated

XII. The Thamesfolk still had to deal with the occasional disappearance, and continued hiding out from the rest of the world in their own private enclaves

XIII. Archie, having never truly found a place to call home in London, ended up traveling what was left of the world, always chasing that new horizon (what you get for not completing his companion quest!)

XIV. Kiera also ended up leaving London after a few more treasure hunts, deciding to travel and make a name for herself as the most famed adventurer in the world (you go Kiera)

XV. Mad Jack returned to his gym and turned it into a haven for those like himself, the forgotten and left behind of London, teaching them both how to defend themselves and the virtues he learned from Aria (me: Oh no)

XVI. And Arthur managed to hang onto his sanity for a while longer thanks to the experiments of Dr. Herbertson, making up for lost time and helping as many as he could, before finally asking Aria to end his life once his struggle with feralisation finally failed

Yeah, uh, mostly a very dark ending, with a few bright spots (like Arthur getting a good life and Mad Jack turning his gym into a home for others like him). Jon, for his part, was very annoyed Aria got kicked out of the Pistols, as he’d liked them a lot; delighted that the French blew themselves up; very happy Arthur managed to get some extra time thanks to Angels’ terrible experiments; and admitted that securing his own personal theater and Shakespeare troupe IS something he’d do if you gave him absolute power. XD Good to know, I guess. XD

And that was the end of our time with Fallout: London! Jon happily declared it the single best mod he’s ever played, praising the voice actors, the map creators, and everyone else involved highly. Though he also called out the creators for claiming the mod was merely “DLC sized,” stating that was pretty sure what they’d created was bigger than the whole of Fallout 3! I can believe it. This was a hell of a project, and the Fallout: London team should be very proud of themselves. Next week, though, we’re returning to the Mojave and Fallout: New Vegas for something mysterious and special. Hopefully it’s something I can sum up faster than these Fallout: London episodes!

And, as you might expect, it's later than I intended to stay up, so I have to go to bed. Good thing I have tomorrow off, huh? :p Anyway, tomorrow is the Valicer Anniversary (aka the date I generally use for Victor and Alice's wedding, and which will be used for any polyamorous weddings they have with Smiler in AUs that allow for that) -- plans for celebration include watching some Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler-related clips on YouTube; reblogging the Valicer Wedding Round-Up post (and maybe adding a link to the latest Not-Incorrect Quote collection for the Modern AU Valicer trio -- it was technically just about moving in together, but marriage WAS mentioned in the last one!) on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Sims 4 and doing a bit of dress-up with one of my Valicer trio (I'm thinking some new formalwear outfits, since it is a wedding anniversary :P); and of course working on "The Van Dort Vacancy," a Valicer fanfic. I also hope to maybe get some work done on my other drafts on VLA(NS) (or maybe go through some of my tracked tags again), get in a workout, and see about getting something else out of my Watch Later on YouTube. We will see. Night all!
crossover_chick: picture of Alice (Wonderland) in front of the swirling purple Wonderland tunnel (AMA: Alice down the rabbit hole)
While yesterday was a perfectly pleasant temperature (to the point where I had my window open for a little while), today was definitely on the hotter side -- and you could feel the humidity starting to creep up as the day went on. And tomorrow the heat index is supposed to be in the 90s, so I may be hiding in my room with the AC on. ...Which isn't really much different from any other given Sunday in summer, but still. :p Despite the growing heat, though, I still had a pretty decent Saturday:

Cleaning: Cleaning went pretty well today, I’m happy to say – I started dusting around 10:25 AM, and managed to wrap everything up with the vacuuming at 1:15 PM, right before lunch! Still took a touch longer than I really wanted, but at least I didn’t have to worry about doing my laundry on top of it all this time around. And I got through not only the entirety of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark “Foundry #12” (the penultimate episode, with Zillah, Kasimir, and Edvard having to avoid being murdered in the titular foundry by Lord Strangford and his Red Sash mercenaries – Edvard really carried this one with a lot of lucky sixes, leading to him successfully getting Strangford and his goons to stand down via threatening them with a LIVE FRAG GRENADE – and then palming it into Strangford’s hand so he and his friends could get away at the end), but the first 40-odd minutes of the big finale, “Magic, Ghosts, Danger & Death” (where the entire gang went to finally take down the Barricade preventing ghosts from moving on and magic from coming in – I got up to the point where Edvard had dumped his latest Wonderful Mechanical Man down a vent venting all sorts of poisonous gasses out of the facility where The Barricade was located to scout ahead and see if it could get them in while he kept tabs on what it saw through a new spark-craft tablet he’d worked up...only to discover at the other end a room full of WMMs with the Astor logo. He was NOT HAPPY, as you might expect!). Good stuff! :) Even as it highlights that I’m almost to the end of the series… At least the final episode is over two hours long, so I’ll still have plenty to listen to next Cleaning Saturday!

Superliminal: Yup, this game again! While I’d intended to play some more Sims 4 and do some more work on the “Smiler’s Potion-Selling Caravan” build I started last week (or maybe even start working on getting the Teen Valicer Save off the ground), the following two things made me change my mind and return to the weird-ass puzzle game:

1. Between all my cleaning this morning, lunch being a little late, and us having cake right after lunch to celebrate Dad’s birthday (happy birthday Dad!), I didn’t get on my computer until 2:20 PM – and given my Sims 4 sessions ALWAYS run longer than anticipated, I didn’t think it a smart idea to start one of those after 2 PM (especially since I still had to catch up on all my online stuff). Contrariwise, Superliminal levels usually go pretty fast if you know what you’re doing – I can finish most in less than an hour

2. I abruptly remembered right before firing up the computer that, oh yeah, there was a big old patch for Sims 4 on July 1st...and my latest build uses at least one item of custom content. Meaning that I wasn’t in a great position to work on that build anyway! Meanwhile, Superliminal is in a completed state and I don’t have any mods for it at all, meaning I can always just play it.

So yeah – Sims 4 building session rejected in favor of another Superliminal Collectible Run! Today’s level was “Clone,” where clicking on things creates clones of them instead of allowing you to pick them up (though you can still resize the clones and stack them to create staircases and things like that). Interestingly, this level doesn’t have that much in the way of collectibles – two chess pieces, one constellation room, and no blueprints at all! Dunno why they decided that this level didn’t deserve any blueprints, but… *shrug* Anyway, the items I picked up today while running around cloning things were:
Long Update Is Long, So We'll Stick This Under A Cut )

And there we have it – that is “Clone” officially cleared! Well, for collectibles, anyway – I will have to come back to it via the power of level select at some point to get an achievement I missed there (to clone an object too many times – apparently it’s triggered by cloning one specific exit door a lot). Next time, we find the goodies in the “Dollhouse” level – and let me tell you, just from my initial poke-around, I’ve already found a surprise extra room I’ve never seen before in the hallway to Reception, and a corkboard with miniature versions of all the blueprints I’ve found so far stuck to it! So yeah, looking like there’ll be some neat stuff to report on after my next Collectibles Run. :D

Writing: Got back to “The Van Dort Vacancy” today after supper, writing more about Alice and Smiler’s undercover adventures in the Van Dort kitchen! Today’s chunklet featured:

A) Mrs. Pemberly, impressed with Smiler’s soup-fixing skills, instructing them to make a cream sauce for a chicken dish, then coming over to Alice’s chopping station and being impressed with her potato-chopping – to the point where she actually apologized for misjudging her and “Simon” (even as she admitted it still felt weird to her that Mrs. Van Dort hadn’t told her about the new hires, as Nell is generally pretty good about that...if only because she has to hire people so often)

B) Alice quickly catching up with Smiler at the sink as she washed her knife in preparation for slicing tomatoes and Smiler rinsed out a bottle, letting them know that Mrs. Pemberly was now feeling more kindly to them and admitting she would have never thought of putting honey in the soup – Smiler explained that the sweetness helps balance out the acid flavor of the tomatoes, saying that adding milk, cream, or baking soda would have done the job too (guess who’s been researching “how to fix an acidic soup” :p)

C) And Alice getting to slicing up those tomatoes for frying...only to overhear someone behind her complaining that she’d run out of berries for her tarts – and a familiar voice say that he could go to the greenhouse to get some more. Cue Alice turning around just in time to see the mystery man she and Smiler were tracking, aka Kasimir Jones, being given a basket and directions to the greenhouse, before disappearing through a door at the back of the kitchen.

Good stuff! :D I’m really enjoying writing this one – it’s so much fun to put my crime trio into situations. Tomorrow, Smiler and Alice slip out of the kitchen and after Kasimir – and hopefully, I’ll be able to show off the Van Dort greenhouse. Because let me tell you, it’s a hell of a sight.

YouTube: Well, I was hoping to get to the two OXBox list videos in my Watch Later today, but thanks to a combination of getting to YouTube late and Gigs telling me about a certain other video that just uploaded today, I ended up going with a different pair of videos for my nightly watching –

A) First, we had “The Sims 4: GLASS WALLS, GARDENING IMPROVEMENTS, & MORE! (July 2025 Patch Update)” by onlyabidoang! One of his many videos going over what’s new after a big Sims 4 patch, this time focusing on the July 1st patch that stopped me from Simming today! Among the new stuff we got in this patch was:

I. Glass walls to match our glass roofs – great for creating greenhouses, but they’re a little glitchy right at the moment (the sunlight coming through them doesn’t properly light up Sims, and Sims and objects will mysteriously vanish if you view a glass-walled room from certain angles)

II. The ability to place certain plants on roofs – most of the ones available are now listed as part of the “roof sculptures” category in Build/Buy, but some are only listed in the “outdoor plants” section with the new “roof compatible” tag – and Abi found one that didn’t even have that. So yeah – if you want to place a plant on a roof, might be easiest to just grab it and see if the game lets you

III. UI updates and improvements to Household Collections, Sim inventories, and Sim notebooks (the latter now looks like a proper notebook, and even has a space where you can write a brief bio for your Sim)

IV. Occult physical features – like the special eyes vampires, aliens, and mermaids get for their alternate forms, pointy ears, and the Vampires-specific facial features like heavy brows and facial scars – being unlocked for ALL Sims in CAS (though apparently they’ve been excluded from the pool of stuff that can be used to generate random townies, hooray). I knew about this from Sims Community, but I wasn’t sure if it was an INTENDED new feature or a mistake made while prepping the game for Enchanted By Nature and its new occult, and Abi feels the same way as per his commentary. Me, I just want proof the glowing vampire eyes are glowing again…

V. Some improvements to gardening, such as the ability to “evolve all” and “fertilize all” plants, and a plant’s “water” and “fertilizer” status being added to the tooltips (Simmer gardeners all over rejoiced)

VI. The “snow and rain effects” indoor bug FINALLY getting fixed, yay

VII. Aaaand some fun new bugs, like custom tattoos causing Sims to turn pitch black, and the inability to drag dirty dishes to the sink or garbage to the garbage can (Sims bemoaned having to do all by themselves now)

He also briefly covered the Nature’s Calling event and the rewards you get (with the help of an unlocker mod to show off all said rewards, as we’re only in week 2 and not all of them have dropped yet) and the little patches that came before this one (including the Pride SDX drop). It was all very thorough and very informative – I love how he takes the time to show off all the stuff that’s changed or been fixed if he can. Why he’s one of my favorite Sim video creators! :)

B) And second up, we had the video Gigs told me about – “CaFae Latte Season 70 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! The latest season is now up on YouTube, and includes:

I. JC, Rethu, Husniya, and Lindsey discussing Father’s Day (including Lindsey revealing she spent hers with a mysterious new friend, and Rethu admitting dragons don’t really get it because, well, they’re mostly genderfluid); Husniya revealing JC’s still kind of mad at her for the “hiding I was with the CIA” thing; Rethu revealing their mother’s 800th birthday was coming up and that they were in charge of decorations (and of course they were going pirate-themed); and Kelly calling JC to tell them how badly Father’s Day went with the folks (their dad was calling for Trump to enact martial law, criticizing her career choices again, and cheated on their mother again)

II. The reveal that Lindsey’s new friend is – you guessed it – Erik, and them talking about their relationship with their shitty fathers before Lindsey distracted Erik with a women’s basketball game on her phone; and Husniya learning from Nicole (after calling her because they couldn’t find JC’s latest batch of cookie dough, and they weren’t picking up their phone) that JC was spending the day at a rage room run by a local fairy, and correctly guessing that part of what they were mad about was the CIA thing – she promptly headed over, and after a short argument, convinced JC to box her to punch out their problems. Annoyed the owner (“I’m not running a gym!”), but got them back on good terms, so yay

III. A trio of plus-sized customers coming in and ordering a bunch of brownies in honor of a one-year anniversary – only to be shamed by a skinny customer complaining that Bob should have never sold them snacks when they’re obviously so “unhealthy;” cue one revealing they have medical issues (and are actually UNDER the weight she pegged them as), the second revealing she’s 240 pounds of muscle and the local heavyweight champion, and the third revealing she had an eating disorder and thus has seen the issue from both sides of the scale – the anniversary they’re celebrating is her being one year out of the hospital. The skinny customer, stupidly, decided to double down on fat being unhealthy after hearing all that, and got bodily tossed out of the cafe by the weightlifter. Which caused Cyrus to ask how much she could lift (315 as of that day – the other thing they were celebrating) –

Which led to a viral video of her lifting him that JC and Nicole watched. And JC admitting to Nicole that, if they were stupidly in love with her, they’d be asking Cyrus for that lady’s number, because damn. XD

IV. Cyrus showing up at the cafe to ask Bob for as much caffeine as she could pour into a cup as he worked his latest cases...and then Nicole showing up to ask for Bob’s help with a spell to improve the mental health of her students, as one of the kids at her school, Emily, had just killed herself. :( Cue Bob and Cyrus doing their best to comfort her, and saying that they were sure the coven would help, only for Nicole to say she wanted them to focus on the public schools that didn’t have the resources her private academy did…

And Drek revealing why they should by saying that they’d had two suicides at his school in his senior year. And that nobody really did anything significant about it, despite going on about how things need to change and mental health needed to be prioritized. Bob was appropriately shocked, and the episode ended with various crisis line numbers across the world being put up on the screen :(

V. Rethu, Bob, and Oscar dealing with a customer trying to scam a “VIP discount” on a muffin by claiming they knew the owner – they bailed the minute Bob revealed she was the owner XD

VI. Husniya serving a jerkass dude who tried to flirt with her, then reacted to her saying “I’m married” by asking why she came on to him – he did not take it well when she said “I DIDN’T, I was being polite to a customer,” though fortunately he merely said “fuck you” and left once he had his food instead of doing anything dangerous (always a risk with these sorts)

VII. Bob being asked for help by a teenager with rheumatoid arthritis – only for another customer to come in and say that no teenager could have arthritis, just stop cracking your knuckles or – well, Bob silenced her before she could say either “masturbating” or “jerking people off,” but one of them was implied, eewwww. >( Fortunately a quick “mirror curse” forcing her to feeling the poor girl’s symptoms for as long as she was in the cafe set the second customer straight, and Bob ended up recommending the girl go to the Stoughton St coven because, unlike Bob, they were more willing to give away a “good luck and good health” charm, or at least sell it at a steep discount (Bob, being a fairy, always needs payment). The second customer confirmed that the curse wasn’t going to activate EVERY time they stepped into the cafe, then asked where the other fairy and the dragon that were supposed to work there were –

Cut to Rethu’s mom’s 800th birthday party, with Cyrus marveling over the cake Amyth’s spouse made; Rethu introducing Rabbi Rabbit to their mom, explaining the connection to one of her old shipmates; and Rethu giving Cyrus tips to get in good with their “godfather” the kraken, otherwise known as Uncle Dave. XD Yeah, hell of a birthday party, that!

VIII. And Rethu catching JC and Oscar up on what happened at the party – only for the seraph priest of a new church in town, Gabriel, to show up handing out pamphlets and talking about how seraphs are God’s chosen. JC and Rethu were immediately turned off, but Oscar tried to give him a chance –

Only for Gabriel to start going on about how “God helps those who help themselves” and how you can’t do things like food shelves, otherwise people start leeching off you. Which, as you might imagine, rather upset the previously homeless Oscar. The two shared some rather pointed words about how one should follow the word of God before Gabriel left, and Oscar lamented how Caroline (Yarn Granny) had been going to cook some apple crisp for the opening of this guy’s church, but once she heard about this… Cue Rethu and JC going “oh, she can still make the apple crisp, we’ll be happy to take it off her hands.” XD

So yeah, that was fun! A little heavy in spots, because you know, C. M. never shies away from including current events in these things, but still. At least we know the main cast is working toward making a better world. And we got some fun simple “dealing with Karens” videos in the middle too, which helped – sometimes, it’s just nice to see the cast take down an asshole customer. We’ll see when the next one comes out!

Other:

-->Forgot to mention this yesterday in my write-up on my Fallout 4 playsession – I got a new achievement over there too! “All The Toys,” for building ten robot mods – obviously triggered during my end-of-session upgrade of Ada. Happy to get it, though, I would have sworn I’d built more than ten robot mods before that upgrade spree...then again, I’ve been trying to make sure that Ada still looks like ADA during this quest line, so I haven’t done any mods that change her appearance too drastically; I haven’t built any other robots beyond Jezebel’s new body; I have been using a lot of pre-built robot bits I’ve scavenged off the ones I’ve killed; and the game likely does NOT count the plot-necessary mods you stick on Ada during the questline. So yeah, maybe it is possible it took me this long to properly build ten robot mods. *shrug* Either way, I have the achievement now, and that makes me happy. Yay achievements!

-->We played another round of beanbags today, as it was hot but not overly humid this afternoon – and I’m pleased to say we all had a decent time of it, with each of us winning a game! Though Dad won three, which only feels right and fair since it was his birthday today. XD But yeah, even Mom did well enough to score a win today, which was nice. :) Final scores were me 3-2-2-W-2; Dad 2-W-W-3-W; and Mom W-3-3-2-3. Dunno if we’ll be playing tomorrow or not (supposed to get a lot hotter and much more humid) – if we don’t, at least that’s a halfway-decent note to leave things on until we can play again!

Yeah, didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (mostly because my brain had another "I have to get the wording JUST RIGHT" moment with the "Cleaning" and "Superliminal" sections this afternoon, so I spent more time on those write-ups than I'd planned), but overall, a pretty good day. :) And now I need to get to bed and try and get some sleep. Plans for tomorrow include working some more on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; writing some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" getting in a workout; keeping up with Jon's latest Fallout: London episode if at all possible (depends on length and/or if it's uploaded before I go downstairs to work out) -- and I'd like to do SOMETHING with Baldur's Gate III, though whether that'll just be curating a list of mods I'd like to use or actually playing the game remains to be seen. We'll figure it out tomorrow. Night all!
crossover_chick: Victor on the ground with one hand up with the text "Nooo! Anything but the fangirls!" (CB: save Victor from the fangirls!)
At least when compared to last year, when it was HORRIFICALLY loud most of the night because the people across the street insisted on setting off loads of fireworks -- this year, the worst of it all seems to be happening down the street, and at the time of writing it seems to have mostly tapered off. Like, there's still some booms, but nothing HUGE. Very glad of that -- I didn't need another 4th of July where I spent most of the night terrified that something on our property was going to get set on fire or exploded! *shakehead* Sheesh...why can't fireworks be confined to Sims 4 and Alton Towers end-of-season shows?

Anyway -- there's nothing we can do about the fireworks, so here's my daily write-up. And I'm pleased to report that I actually had a pretty good day:

Tumblr: Well, I didn’t end up doing anything on Valice Multiverse tonight – there was no new activity, and I ended up deleting the ask I told you about yesterday because I couldn’t come up with a good answer for it. But, by contrast, I had a very productive morning over in the drafts for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)! I spent the time before lunch –

A) Making my own “[characters] as text posts” picture set with Victor, Alice, and Smiler! What the hell does that mean, I hear you ask? Well, “[characters/fandom] as text posts” is kind of a meme format over on tumblr, where you pair screenshots of your favorite characters from a certain fandom with text posts made by other tumblr users or twitter folks – usually by pasting a screenshot of the post onto the screenshot of the character. That Dead Boys Detectives post I liked a few days ago was one of these, with pictures of the Cat King, Monty the crow-turned-teenager, and Edwin the Dead Boy Detective paired with text posts creator “artemisadore” thought suited them. The thing is, the text posts they used made me think of my Valicer OT3...meaning, today, I spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time saving the pictures they made, snipping the “text post” bits out of them, and pasting said text posts onto appropriate screenshots of my OT3! In order, we had:

I. A tumblr text post about a doctor putting “dresses oddly” next to the poster’s list of psychotic symptoms (with the poster going “Hey, fuck you too”), pasted onto a Sims 4 screenshot of Smiler in one of their more unique outfits XD

II. A tumblr text post about liking a character, then wanting to see him shot five times in a parking lot, pasted onto a Corpse Bride screenshot of Victor having to hold off Barkis’s sword with his barbecue fork in the ending fight

III. And a Twitter text post about how depression becomes annoying instead of sad when you live with it long enough, pasted onto a Alice: Madness Returns screenshot of Alice complaining to Bumby about how her memories make her vomit (though I cropped as much of Bumby himself as I could out)

I’m very proud of the end results. XD Anyway, once I had the pictures done, I threw them into a draft post with some starter text and image alt text – hopefully later this weekend I can polish everything up and get it ready for posting!

B) Working a bit more on the “Teen Valicer Save File” explanatory post – tweaking some wording here and there, and fleshing out my general “outline” for how the save file should go a bit more! Including adding my mental backstory about how the trio are all teens running away from bad living situations in this world, hoping to hide out in a previously-abandoned house in Copperdale just long enough to make it to graduation and adulthood. ...what, you expected me NOT to come up with a new Valicer AU for this game? XD I still need to finish off the section where I go over specific goals for each of the three (like Smiler becoming a Barista in high school/college, then pursuing a life as a traveling potion peddler; Victor becoming a Paranormal Investigator after honing his Medium skill, and perhaps even a Grimtern; and Alice becoming both a famous painter AND author – unless I find something more interesting for her), but everything is coming along nicely so far! Again, hoping I can finish it up sometime this weekend.

So that’s good, at least. :)

Fallout 4: FINALLY got back into this game today (after re-authenticating my Nexus Mods account with Vortex, which was apparently mad at me for not playing for ages – sorry Vortex!) to continue Victor and Ada’s adventures through the Mechanist’s lair! And while I admittedly didn’t get very far into the lair itself in today’s playsession, I did make some major improvements to one member of our party...let me tell you all about it:

A) I kicked things off with Victor and Ada waiting patiently in the big room underneath one of the ceiling-mounted assembly lines, having recently (from their perspective) killed a bunch of robots, checked out a couple of terminals, and – in Victor’s case – eaten some radscorpion chowder for lunch (om nom). With nothing else to do in the immediate area, I had them continue forth: down a short hallway at the end of the room past some of the junkbots they defeated during my last playsession (both of which had lovely ammo on them); around a corner with another little computer workstation on a platform (which provided Victor with a fresh melon from a lunch pail); down to the end of the hall to another shadowed workstation platform (which had a Nuka-Quantum on it, lovely); and finally hanging a right into the Quality Control room for this Evil Secret Robobrain Facility! This place mostly consisted of knocked-over filing cabinets scattered all around the shop (none of which had anything good in them, rude), but there were a few other things of interest:

I. A bunch of duct tape scattered around, which I happily collected – always need that adhesive!

II. A robot workbench shoved in amongst a bunch of computer equipment, which I guess they used to test and modify the robots for QC purposes

III. A skeleton still somehow determinedly clutching a bottle of Nuka-Cola slumped in a desk chair in front of a terminal next to the workbench – Victor relieved them of it, because it sure as hell wasn’t going to do them any good any longer

IV. The terminal itself, which belonged to Lead Engineer Thomas Harkin and contained four reports on maintenance issues – three of them were just fluff about various problems they’d had getting the robobrains to work (such as one’s brain deteriorating very rapidly after sulfuric acid run-off from the dome polishing compound they were using to keep the domes shiny ended up in the bio-gel supporting said brain; another robobrain coming off the assembly line speaking in reverse – Harkin couldn’t find a reason why and thought that the boys upstairs had pulled a prank on him; and some general notes about how, while they’d HOPED to preserve the spinal column along with the brain for these things, they simply couldn’t get the column to hook up to the neural network – hence why all the robobrains are brain-in-jar bots), but one, made after the first batch came back from a field test in very hard shape, noted that the testers had reporter that the robobrains were deliberately misinterpreting instructions – pretending to overthink them and then “rewrite” them for “efficiency.” Which pretty much always resulted in property damage, and sometimes even civilian casualties. Harkin said he couldn’t find anything wrong and would kick the problem back to research. Harkin, I think I can explain the problem very well, actually – THEY’RE ANGRY CRIMINALS YOU FORCED INTO ROBOTIC BODIES TO BE YOUR ROBOT SLAVES. OF COURSE THEY’RE DELIBERATELY FUCKING THINGS UP. *facepalm* Oh, Fallout 4 pre-War America… (Then again, looking at our America, who the fuck am I to judge?)

V. And a holotape from Harkin next to said terminal, talking about how they were on schedule to hit the next robobrain milestone, with one of the scientists saying that the active period between memory wipes for the brains was getting longer; how he’d been informed that the latest modifications to the assembly line had been finished early – and how he hoped that they’d still done their due diligence and that the whole thing wasn’t about to break down again; and how he was a little worried about the “test subjects” (aka the people they were ripping the brains out of) – not about their well-being, mind, but the fact that, while they had plenty right now, eventually the supply would dwindle, and “it’s not like these things grow on trees.” ...Nice guy, Harkin. >( Though, really, the holotape is mostly important because he states his job title and name at the beginning of the tape, and I’ll need that if I want to skip a certain fight…

B) With all the goodies snagged from that room, Victor and Ada thus headed up the stairs at the far end to the second floor of QC, encountering a few more cramped-looking desks (one of which had some Daytripper on it – Victor doesn’t partake, but he can sell it later); some more computer equipment; and some lockers for people to store their stuff. Victor paused a moment by the lockers to answer the call of nature, then continued onward to find another workstation with some chemistry equipment and other bits and bobs (including an aluminum oil can – nice, two things I always need in one convenient package :D), and a tiny balcony area overlooking the assembly line room below –

Riiiight next to a turret. Fortunately it didn’t immediately spot Victor, and I was able to shoot it with the Tesla gun – unfortunately, it took two shots to kill, and Victor shot it from WAAAY too close range and ended up getting his arm and leg broken by the subsequent explosion. *grimace* Ouch. Now, I could have sucked it up and just used one of my many stimpacks to fix him up –

But I’d actually LITERALLY just quicksaved (after Victor had his poop in his bucket), so I just reloaded that, regrabbed the stuff I wanted from the nearby workstation, then made sure to carefully sneak up on the turret, charge up a shot with the Tactical Tesla, and zap the turret to death from a distance with a sneak attack. That worked out MUCH better for Victor’s overall health, and I rewarded myself with a real save right after. :) I had Victor loot the remaining bits of turret for goodies (noting in the process that his carry weight situation was getting a bit dire thanks to my insistence on wearing the Silver Shroud outfit for this mission), then descend into the assembly line room to see what the deal was –

C) Then, after noting all the half-completed integrated swarmbots being trucked around by the ceiling-mounted portion of the line, and stealing some Wonderglue out of a toolbox, I was like “hang on. We’re probably going to get in another fight if we go much further into this room. And I have loads of junk on me, and Ada has loads of junk on her, and we JUST passed a robot workbench. Why not go back and see if there’s anything more I can do to upgrade Ada before we continue?” So I promptly backtracked around to said robot workbench, had Ada stand in the center of it, and checked out what upgrades I could give her –

And well, it turns out there were PLENTY – as long as I had the right materials on me, of course. So, with a few breaks to raid Ada’s inventory for the materials I needed, I kitted her up with:

I. A Head Hydraulic Frame (the best head armor)

II. A Front Voltaic Frame and a Rear Voltaic Frame (the second best front and rear armor – the BEST dropped her carry capacity a little bit, and given my hoarding tendencies, I really needed that to stay at 580)

III. A Left Arm Hydraulic Frame and a Left Hand Hydraulic Frame (the best armor for that arm, which did not affect her carry capacity, yay)

IV. A Right Hand Lightning Gun (because I couldn’t upgrade the armor on that arm any further, and the lightning gun did slightly better damage than her lasers – we’re now Tesla Twinsies!)

V. And a Resistance Field for her torso (which will increase Victor’s damage resistance when she’s near him – it was either that or the stealth field, and I decided that I wanted Victor to have more damage protection over being stealthier)

So now her damage resistance is up to 193 for regular damage, and 169 for energy damage, and her damage output is up to 48 for regular damage, and 30 for energy damage. :D Meaning that she should be a lot more useful in any upcoming fights, and be able to stay in them for longer! Yay!

D) However – after all that tinkering, poor Victor was hungry, thirsty, and UTTERLY exhausted. Unsurprising, since it was 9:19 PM! So once I’d given Ada a bunch of her junk back to make sure Victor could move around normally again, I had him chow down on some crispy squirrel bits and purified water, then set up his tent right in front of the workbench and hit the sack! He woke up at 5:19 AM refreshed and ready to go –

Aaand with the game telling him Abernathy Farm was under attack and he should go help. *shakehead* Game, I’m on the other side of the map – the Abernathys will have to take care of themselves this time! Anyway, he packed up the tent and headed back to the assembly line room, the newly-upgraded Ada at this side –

And THAT is where I left it! Because yes, it had been an hour at that point. :) Maybe not my most EXCITING playsession of FO4, but it was satisfying – felt good to get back into the game. Especially back to crafting stuff – I do enjoy upgrading guns and armor and robots in this game. :D And Ada in particular looks really cool now with all her glowing electric bits from the various Voltatic frames she’s got attached to her. Like, she’s still recognizably ADA, but she’s definitely had a glow-up. :) Next Friday, we proceed across the assembly line room and see if I’m right about there being a fight waiting for us somewhere in there. :P

Writing: Another day playing Fallout 4, another day updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression – and today’s update was quite different from the write-up above, not in what was done, but in what order and who did them. Simply put:

A) Upon arriving in Quality Control, after getting all of his duct tape, Victor asked Ada if she wanted to get upgraded on the robot workbench – and when she said “yes, absolutely,” proceeded to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening upgrading her (with Alice sorted through all their junk to get the materials they needed)

B) And then, while Victor slept, Alice and Ada scouted the area (at his request, since he wasn’t keen on leaving the area unexplored) and ended up being the ones to read through Harkin’s terminal (with Alice noting that his notes on how the robobrains were deliberately misinterpreting orders makes it a lot more likely the Mechanist is an accidental villain), listen to his holotape (Alice wanted to smash it after he referred to the “test subjects” as “things,” but refrained because she knew the tape might be useful for unlocking that elevator back in the security room), and explore the upstairs area (with Ada being the one to kill the turret lurking in that little alcove next to the balcony). They didn’t go any further into the assembly room, though, figuring that if there was a turret there, there might be robots waiting for them too. And they didn’t want to fight them without Victor and his electric shotgun. Victor was like “yes, smart.” XD

So yeah – just another case of me rearranging events to put them in a more logical order for the fanfic-verse! And taking advantage of the fact that Alice and Ada are fully realized people in the fanfic version and thus can do things on their own, instead of Ada being an AI controlled companion who leaves everything to Victor unless otherwise commanded. :P Poor Victor does not have to read every terminal himself in that version of reality! We’ll see if something similar happens with next week’s update, or if that one hews a little closer to the game.

YouTube: Surprisingly enough, doing the write-up of my workout video, below, did not take up my entire evening after we completed Game Night (Life this week – Dad absolutely CRUSHED Mom and me in the first game by getting extremely lucky, and still managed to edge me out in the second by having a slightly more successful career as an accountant than I had as a police officer/teacher). So I had time for one video tonight: “Fantasy Writing Prompt: Dark Lord - The Accidentally Kidnapped TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! An early series of hers inspired by a writing prompt where a “dark lord” with a strict moral code takes in an abused girl...only to discover he’s been accused of kidnapping a neighboring kingdom’s princess. Whoops. This compilation video featured –

A) The initial meeting between the Princess (age 17) and the Dark Lord, where she revealed that she’d been sent by her parents to kill him! And that she’d gotten past his various minions and goons by sending them to the break room with cupcakes. The Dark Lord was absolutely baffled as to how she’d done that...and THEN learned that the reason she was on this mission was because her parents were annoyed at her not being the “warrior son” they wanted, so they’d sent her off to either do something “worthwhile” for them or die and stop being such a burden. And that she considered herself annoying because they were constantly putting her down. Cue the Dark Lord taking her in, and a time skip to some months later, when a Knight appeared to accuse the Dark Lord of kidnapping the Princess...happily baking in the kitchen

B) The Dark Lord and the Princess explaining the situation to the Knight – basically, that the Princess was here of her own free will, and that the “Dark Lord” who used necromancy to make monsters out of the dead was actually just doing so to protect his borders so that his people (“minions!”) could live in peace and safety. The Knight was initially contemptuous, accusing the Princess of having been brainwashed and saying that her parents were very worried about her –

Cue the princess shutting that shit down by talking about how her parents were always disappointed in her for not being the child they wanted and how they basically sent her here to die to get her out of their hair, and how now they’re just worried about their reputation because she’s still alive and living with the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord looked very pleased with her. :) Unfortunately, this is when the Knight said that, if they didn’t come back with her, there would be war between the two kingdoms…

C) The Dark Lord and the Princess arguing over whether or not the Princess would be going back to her horrible emotionally abusive parents (with the Knight fleeing the room to avoid the tension once the Dark Lord dismissed them), with the back and forth boiling down to:

Princess: “There would be war!”

Dark Lord: “Which I would win.”

Princess: “You don’t know that, and my people would still suffer, so I have to go back”

Dark Lord: “You were absolutely convinced you were useless and annoying thanks to them when you came here, and it took us months to assure you we liked you for you – and you want me to send you BACK to those assholes? No.”

Princess: “You don’t get to make that decision for me – besides, I’d like to say some stuff to their face. And I can always come back if things get really bad again”

Dark Lord: “But you wouldn’t, because that would allow them to say I kidnapped you again and start the war.”

Princess: “...yeah…”

The whole thing finally ended with the Dark Lord letting the Princess go, but saying that if he learned of her getting hurt again, he would bring his wrath down heavily upon her parents; the Princess assuring him that she didn’t think that would be a problem – and a timeskip to the next day, to one of the Dark Lord’s minions discovering that, hey, some of the poisons were missing…

D) The Minion going to report to the Dark Lord about the missing poisons – the strongest and most undetectable ones they have – saying that they haven’t been able to find them for a week. The Dark Lord noted that that meant they’d been missing ever since the Princess left –

Cue the Knight showing up to invite the Dark Lord to the Princess’s coronation as Queen. Because her parents mysteriously died after she returned. Of strange, unexplained simultaneous heart attacks. An hour after eating some of the Princess’s famous cupcakes. XD The people were already calling her an “evil queen” or “dark lady,” which the Knight thought was a little unfair – wait until she killed someone who didn’t deserve it! The Dark Lord, meanwhile, had a good cry about how they grow up so fast. XD

E) And a final note from C. M. Alongi to the people asking if there was going to be any more to the series, revealing that while she felt like she’d wrapped things up nicely on TikTok, she was more than willing to turn this prompt into a written story. Because she’s an author, ya know! So yeah, she said that’d she’d be posting chapters of “Accidentally Kidnapped” on her Patreon whenever she found time in her schedule (this was back when she was still working at a deli along with writing), and once she was done, she’d try to see if she could turn it into an actual book of some description. I’m not sure if that ever happened or not – I certainly see nothing about it on her website – but hey, I’m sure her Patreon fans of two years ago enjoyed the chapters they got!

So that was fun. :) I’ve been meaning to watch some of her other TikTok compilations now that I’m caught up on CaFae Latte! Maybe next I’ll see about watching the little series she made to promote “The Witch Who Trades With Dead...”

Workout: I got on the bike a little later than planned today (beanbags, see below), but I did get in my final workout of the week tonight! And – in keeping with it being Fallout Friday – I did indeed watch the Many A True Nerd Fallout: London video I didn’t have time to watch on Sunday: “Fallout: London - Part 49 - Breaking News!” The continuing adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they –

A) Headed back to Peckham after their little detour helping the leader of a French ghoul militia plan to blow up Buckingham Palace (Jon was like “as a British person, I feel dirty”) to visit the Land’s End Inn and pick up the “luggage” Smythe had left for her little Wayfarer there! The place proved to be an actual inn, to Jon’s surprise (he was fully expecting a ruin), run by the pleasant Mrs. Fitzwilliam and her helper Henry, who were only too happy to direct Aria to her reserved room. Aria was nice and polite to them in return – even tipping Henry twenty tickets for carrying in her suitcase – then headed into her room, closed the door, and opened the suitcase to see what Angel had for her! She found inside an Angel flag, neatly folded; a briefcase of falsified documents; a letter with instructions for her next mission –

And a flamethrower. Because said mission was to go to a nearby settlement and burn it to the ground. Leaving absolutely no survivors. She then was to hoist the Angel flag above it and given the briefcase to the Tommies to prove to them that the new boogeyman on the block had murdered all those people and give Smythe an excuse to tighten her hold on the country.

...Jon was thrilled about this because he was like, “Great – after helping those French assholes last week, I can now frame them for this atrocity!” XD Aria thus grabbed all the stuff, equipped the flamethrower, and headed straight out of the inn –

Then paused at the entrance, realizing, “oh shit. I just walked past Henry and Mrs. Fitzwilliam while wearing the flamethrower’s fuel backpack. And Smythe informed me there were to be no witnesses.” Cue her turning BACK into the building and using the flamethrower on poor Mrs. Fitzwilliam and Henry. D: Henry died horribly, while Mrs. Fitzwilliam proved to be marked essential and got instead to burn alive TWICE as Aria tried to kill her, with Aria saying she’d be back to do it again if she blabbed to anyone. ...Yeah, I think we can officially say that Aria is not a good person.

B) Headed to the Peckham settlement and, as requested, set it and everyone in it alight! With extreme prejudice! It was a painful massacre – not helped by Jon going “I’m sorry, everyone, but this is for the greater good! Once I take over Angel there will be no more town burnings! ...unless a town annoys me. Or I think it’s funny. ...There will be less town burnings!” XD Oh Jon...anyway, Aria made sure to sweep the town a few times, then – once the last survivor had been killed – raised the Angel flag high above the settlement. The Tommies showed up then, and Aria quickly spun them a sob story about Angel destroying the town to get at a double agent and how she’d fired upon one man, getting him to drop this suitcase full of documents. She needed a little help from drugs to get the Charisma necessary to make sure the Tommies bought the story, granted, but she got there in the end, and the Tommies accepted the fake documents and offered to take her someplace safe to recover. Aria politely refused, and she and Jack walked off content in a job well done! (While all the commenters on the video wondered why Jon didn’t sing a flamethrower song while he was committing all his murder, as he apparently did at one point during a The Last Of Us playthrough.)

C) Headed back to Smythe’s office to check in and get their next mission! Smythe was very pleased with their work, but wanted to make sure everyone in the city learned about Peckham and the boogeyman version of Angel that slaughtered them. So – after assuring Aria that she’d penciled in a date for their actual physical meeting (Jon did not buy it) – she sent her new apprentice over to the big BBM broadcasting studio (where Aria had previously helped that struggling musician finally get his music on the air) to help set up a fake “live” news report telling everyone about Peckham and blaming the fake version of Angel that she’d created to inspire terror in the hearts of the citizenry. This, however, proved to be a bit more difficult than Aria had anticipated, involving:

I. Aria and Jack having to kill a ton of Roundheads who’d dug in around and in the base of the studio, hoping to try and make a difference by stopping Angel’s evil plans – unfortunately for them, they were no match for Aria’s powerful guns and Mad Jack’s flowery axe

II. Aria meeting with a stubborn director who absolutely refused to put Smythe’s propaganda on the air – Aria ATTEMPTED to bribe him, but he stood firm, leading him to be killed by one of Smythe’s other underlings, the main Broadcast Technician

III. Aria being sent out by the Broadcast Technician to retrieve one of the actors needed for the news report – Dickie Anderson, an impressionist playing the part of fake Angel leader “Fyodor Francois” (yes, seriously) in the script Angel had provided – because they couldn’t find him at his house; Aria tracked him down to the nearby Oxford Circus underground station, where he revealed that he was sick of watching London fall apart around him and thus he was getting out while the getting was good. Aria once again did drugs to get her Endurance up a bit so she could convince him that he shouldn’t abandon the city, it needed him, then sent him along to the BBM (he was very smug when he learned they’d finally come crawling to him after rejecting him so many times)

IV. Aria having to deal with the OTHER actor, the newsreader Robert Maxwell-Jones, demanding payment before he played his part – he wanted 1,000 tickets, but Aria was able to use her decent strength to intimidate him into taking 500

V. Aria being sent out again by the Broadcast Technician while they recorded the fake news bulletin to get a replacement Telescreen Transmitted Circuit (the Roundheads having managed to smash up the previous one) so they could actually BROADCAST it – this involved Aria having to travel to the LT Tower, which Jon was very excited about as it was the Fallout: London equivalent of the BT Tower and he really hoped that he could go all the way up to the top and admire the view. Sadly, he was not allowed up the fake lift, and instead had to content himself with killing a bunch of Fifth Columnists with Scaramanga and getting the necessary circuit

VI. And Aria finally returning, replacing the circuit at the Broadcast Technician’s direction, then heading into the local private theater to watch the broadcast, which featured Roger doing a fine job as a stern newsreader telling people that, in light of recent events, all gatherings even for the purposes of entertainment were banned, and Dickie doing a hilariously atrocious French-Russian accent (Jon was slightly surprised to realize that they really were blaming the French!)

And with that, Smythe and Angel tightened their hold on the unfortunate British public even further! Though Jon doesn’t think that they’ve fully thought this through, because the kind of restrictions they’re putting in place ARE going to cause pushback – not to mention, probably inspire a lot of people to try and fight Angel. We’ll see if he’s right or not later...in the meantime, the episode ended with the Broadcast Technician telling Aria that she had better hurry back to Smythe’s office, as she had an urgent message for the Wayfarer. Sunday, we see if this is the fabled face-to-face meeting between Smythe and Aria, and if we’re in for betrayals, hostile takeovers, and a grand finale! :D

Other: We did play beanbags today, thanks to the weather actually being NICE for a change – and while I wasn’t the full-on champ like I was last time, I still had a good day, winning two rounds out of five. Dad claimed the rest, and Mom...blamed her poor throwing on her arm being sore from lifting weights. XD Final scores were me W-W-3-2-2; Dad 2-2-W-W-W; and Mom 3-3-2-3-3. We’ll see if we get in another round tomorrow – don’t think it’s supposed to get hot AND humid until Sunday!

Yeah, pretty solid Friday, honestly! I got everything I wanted to get done, done, and then some. :D But now it's time for me to head to bed -- tomorrow is a Cleaning Saturday AND Dad's birthday, so it's not really in my best interest to sleep too late. I'm not sure if Dad's gonna want to do anything special or not, but I'm hoping that I can at least get another chunk on "The Van Dort Vacancy" written; another video out of my Watch Later; and some playtime on one of my games (more work on the Smiler Caravan in Sims 4, perhaps?). We'll see what happens! Night all!
crossover_chick: gif with Doc and Marty trying to get out of being written into twisted AUs (Default)
Yes, it was 40 years today that the original Back To The Future was released in theaters! So naturally I had to make sure I got the 10:04 timestamp for this entry. :) I may not be much of a Backie anymore, but I am enough of one to want to acknowledge the anniversary still!

And now it is much later, and it is time for me to paste in the daily write-up and then head to bed:

Work – A very quiet day in the office to wrap up this short week – we didn’t get a single phone call or visitor or anything! Which meant I didn’t have much to do there, unfortunately – I deposited the checks from yesterday; I ran the usual morning reports; I went through the obituaries (all four of them); and – just to fill the time – I went through every instance of a particular common name on our system from those obituaries and updated them with birthdates and middle initials and whether they were active (or even alive) or not. Oh, and I looked up a bit of returned mail for my coworker after lunch and agreed with her that it was time to write the donor’s pledge off, as we’d already tried and failed to find a new address for him. *shrug* Nothing particularly exciting! Fortunately for my continued sanity, they did let us out early – I was out and on the road at 2 PM, yay. :) Even better, the traffic was really good, so I was home by 2:13 PM, double yay! :D Which meant, after washing my face and changing out of my work clothes and all that good stuff...

Superliminal – I had enough time this afternoon to go collectible-hunting in our favorite weird-ass puzzle game! Today I ran through “Blackout,” the horror-themed level (where everything is scary but nothing is actually trying to hurt you, because this is just a puzzle game that loves to fuck with you), which contained:

A) Another beautiful constellation room hidden within one of the filing cabinets in the reception area at the start – and yes, within the filing cabinet; you access it by walking into the shadowed side of the right-hand bank of three. The constellation this time was a cheese wheel (complete with a slice taken out of the side – probably for all those cheese ramps we were going up and down before) – proud to say it did not take me long to line up the stars to get it to form. :) I do like these rooms – they’re just so magical with all the stars around.

B) A blue pawn hidden atop the many boxes that make up the creepy box maze you have to navigate by the spooky red light of an exit sign you pull out of another part of the level – you have to turn around right when you get to the door out of the room and figure out a way to climb up to its secret little hidden notch at the top of the box wall. Which I found to be very fiddly, because – well. The video included with the guide I’m using to find all this stuff indicated that you needed to make your exit sign absolutely HUGE so you could use it as a ramp to climb up there. However, despite my best efforts, I could not get the exit sign big enough to climb up to the top, and half the time couldn’t even get it to fall the right way to FORM a ramp. It didn’t help that the few times that I did manage to climb up onto the first level of boxes (there were a couple of levels, with the pawn at the top of the second one), I ended up falling straight down back into the final bend of the maze because there was a gap I couldn’t see, on account of it being fucking dark up there! I actually thought the boxes didn’t have proper tops for a minute! Finally, though, I managed to climb up there and STAY up there, then thought to grab my sign to provide proper illumination so I could see where to walk. And then, after putting said sign on another box and resizing it so I could use it as an extra platform, I was finally able to climb up and grab the damn blue pawn. Sheesh! *shakehead* Some of these chess pieces, man…

C) Another blue pawn hiding behind a window in the storage room where you find the “IDEA” (rather than “IKEA”) generator – this space starts as a really dark and creepy hallway, but once you start the generator and turn the lights back on, you discover that it’s basically a giant pantry room for a pair of small kitchens, attached to the dining room where you find out all those red splatters you keep seeing everywhere were just red paint from a remodel. And this pantry room has windows, and through one of them (left-hand side if you’re facing the generator), you can see a blue pawn peeking in at you! The guide kept talking about using “wooden planks” to climb up and over the shelves to get at the window (I think they were referring to the planks holding up the fake entrance to the dining room, where the generator is actually situated?), but I just grabbed a can of lovely beans from one of the kitchens through its “serving window” and used it as a platform to vault the shelves and climb up onto the window sill, before poking my head through the window and grabbing that pawn. Was a little tricky to get the can just the right size to jump on, but nowhere NEAR as complicated as the damn exit sign ramp I was trying to make before!

D) And a blueprint lying on the floor of that same storage room, among the shelves on the opposite side (right-hand if you’re facing the generator) – again, I just grabbed myself another can of beans (I had to get a new one because I accidentally left my old one behind after getting the second blue pawn and returning to the central aisle) and hopped over the top of those shelves before making my way over to the blueprint and clicking on it to spawn the actual sketch (made by a “Washington ‘Licensed’ Dream Architect” XD). Now that one was easy-peasy, and I am THANKFUL.

Whew! Some tricky stuff to get in this one, but I managed to snag it all, yay. :) And, in keeping with my mission to tell you all the interesting little bits and bobs I’ve noticed while playing through this game again, here is today’s collection of Fun Facts:

I. I am pleased to report that the computer screen in the reception area of each level DOES update to reflect which chess pieces you’ve snagged in the previous levels, as the pink king and queen I got in “Cubism” were present on the screen when I checked! :D What a nice little touch – and a good way to keep track of your chess pieces. :)

II. The boomboxes that Dr. Glen Pierce talks to you through are made by “Loagiesonics” – not entirely sure what brand name that’s riffing on, but it’s an amusing name nonetheless. (I actually thought it was “Loogiesonics” at first – you know, like spitting? :P)

III. The Quest To Read All The Soda “Tag Lines” was successfully completed today with me ordering and then reading a can of Water Soda – and it turns out that the Water Soda has some good advice for us all: “Don’t be a fool – hydrate!” *nods* I will endeavor to drink more water this weekend, Water Soda.

IV. Speaking of soda, when I encountered the piled boxes of Diet Soda in the level proper (piled behind a doorway that means you initially only see the “Die” part of the name), I noticed that the boxes had the “Smooooooooth!” tagline that is on the cans, and not the “Made with REAL avocados!” tagline from the vending machine. I’m starting to think they came up with “real avocados” line early in production, put it on the vending machine, then decided to change it to “Smoooooooooth!” and just never bothered to update the machine because who was going to take the time to read all the buttons on there? *holds up hand* Me. I took the time. The “real avocados” line is funnier and you should have stuck with it. However, I will say that I did like that when you look at the Diet Soda boxes from the top, you still get the cans telling you to “die” through one of the little gaps for carrying the cases. XD Very appropriate for this level!

V. When you’re walking through the really dark “loading dock” hallway to the door that takes you into the actual level proper, if you go to the door directly opposite it (under the red light illuminating the door you need to enter) and look in its little window, you’ll see a distorted “reflection” of the door you need to go through. And I’ve put “reflection” in quotation marks because, looking at it, I think that “reflection” was actually supposed to look like a scene the dream creators painted either in the window or on a wall on the other side of the door – it had that same sort of “optical illusion” feel as some of the other “you thought it was real? PAINTING” moments I’ve seen in other parts of the game. Amusing!

VI. While most of the boxes in the level are either Diet Soda boxes or otherwise fairly generic cardboard boxes (though, judging by the imagery on one, I think it specifically was for wine glasses – certainly seemed to have SOMETHING fragile inside!), the boxes in the Creepy Box Maze are from RySAN Shipping, with “Rice Cakes and Assorted Candies” written on them. Oh, and the ones that you pass by while going into the big corridor in the second stack of boxes have a skull and crossbones on them with “Don’t Turn Around” written on them. Yeah, thanks game, this level wasn’t creepy enough? (Though I do say, I DID turn around, and I was rather disappointed to not find anything behind me. They should have put an oversized pawn or something behind you if you do turn around in that section.)

VII. The cans of beans you can get from the kitchens once you end the level are SURPRISINGLY well-detailed – they’re specifically Fieth’s Beans, and have a bunch of flowery copy on them about how they strive for “that squeal of joy you see in a child when they eat a delicious bean” and that “[w]e only pick the freshest, highest quality beans only picked from the fields of Spain” and that their beans are “[f]illed with delicious preservatives and saturated fats now and forever, despite the findings of all those health ‘studies.’” XD To be fair, they’re not kidding about that last bit – the nutritional information informs the player character that there’s 1,200 calories per serving (five wads), and that 1,175 of those calories are from fat. And that total fat is 201g, 574% of your Daily Value of fat. XD Here, I even have screenshots of a giant can of beans so you can see for yourself!

A screenshot of a giant can of beans from Superliminal, showing the cursive copy on the side, promising high-quality beans from Spain and delicious preservatives and saturated fats

A screenshot of a giant can of beans from Superliminal, showing the Nutrition Facts, including that each serving has 574% of your daily allowance of fat

I love how much care the developers put into something many players might not even notice – it’s not immediately obvious you can pick these cans up, after all! XD

VIII. And finally, I did check for fire alarms I hadn’t pulled or fire extinguishers I hadn’t emptied during my travels through the level – and while I didn’t find any in the storage room (where I expected one to be hiding), I did find an alarm I hadn’t pulled next to the door leading to the exit elevator! So that’s been yanked, and I am one step closer to having pulled them all, yay. :P

And that is “Blackout” cleared! Genuinely – I checked in the level select screen, and I have gotten everything in it. :) Next time, we find the secrets in “Clone,” and I see what other fun stuff I can find in there! :)

To-Do List

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

A) The entirety of “We played with the 2024 PHB | Character Creation Discussion | Oxventure Wyrdwood” by, well, Oxventure! A sponsored video where the Oxventure team talked about their experience creating characters with the 2024 Player’s Handbook for D&D 5E, and gave some more insight into why they created the characters they did! For example:

I. Mike wanted to do a character who was very connected to the titular Wyrdwood forest, but didn’t want to do a trad Ranger, so decided to combine the “Guide” background with the Barbarian class to create something more unique

II. Luke, by contrast, was all for creating a trad Ranger, as it was a nice simple class that he could use as a base for his luck-obsessed weirdo that was inspired by a book he was reading at the time (The Black-Tongued Thief, I believe he said – apparently there’s a character in it who has the power of knowing if they’re going to have a lucky day or not)

III. And Jane, Andy, and Ellen were all like “we just wanted to do someone very different from our original Oxventure characters.” XD (Okay, to be somewhat more specific: Jane decided to lean into the “healer” role she usually plays in multiplayer video games; Andy decided to lean into the “horror” side of the “folk horror” setting with his “one character possessing another” idea; and Ellen – actually, Ellen’s thing pretty much was just “opposite of Merilwen.” XD)

It was a nice look into how Lug, Happen, Willowfine, Robin/Morven, and Cressida all came to be! And yes, as you might imagine, they spent a decent amount of time praising the 2024 Player’s Handbook – highlighting the new and better backgrounds that let you mix-and-match concepts more (Mike brought up the idea of a half-orc Barbarian librarian – a barlibrarian if you will); the new fun stuff some characters get (apparently the “Sorcerous Burst” Morven cast in Episode 1 is the new Sorcerer equivalent of “Eldritch Blast,” meaning we’re probably going to see it a LOT from her); and the redesign of the character sheets to be generally more functional (they can see everything they need to know at a glance!) Good stuff overall – it’s nice to see how far they’ve come from the early days of the original Oxventure! :)

B) And about half of “Back to the Future (1985) - Back to the Future Scene | Movieclips” by, well, Moveclips! I would have watched the whole thing, but I had to end my workout a bit early because we had thunderstorms rolling into the area and I had to get my shower in before the lightning started. Ironically, the scene I was watching was the famous “race to the lightning” bit from the first movie. XD Don’t worry, though – I made sure to get to the point of the lightning strike and Marty getting sent back to the future before I headed upstairs. It’s the 40th anniversary, after all – I HAD to make sure to watch the most famous scene in all three movies!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice managed to make it through more of Grout’s terrible maze today: finding her way out of the almost-the-same-as-the-starting-room room via the one unlocked door (wondering if Grout was following her invisibly and locking/unlocking doors to mess with her); using Obfuscate to sneak past a ghoul in a room that started out right-side up but then turned upside-down as you went down the stairs inside (she had to turn visible again to get through the door at the bottom, but she made it out before the ghoul really noticed her – though she overheard something worrying about there being “fucking mannequins” about…); navigating an upside-down hallway (complete with a little trough in the floor to represent the point of the upside-down roof); and then proceeding through a rather bland-looking room into a gorgeous blue marble room with plinths and statues and fancy golden images of mythological creatures all over the shop (Alice was like “...maybe Grout’s hiding from his creditors after having this built” XD). I left off with Cheshire warning her about getting too close to the strange, mystical beam of light hitting a big block of stone in the center of the room – he has a very good reason to warn her away from it, too, as Alice will see next time I work on this story...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to get some of the videos out of my Watch Later with an onlyabidoang double feature:

A) “The Sims 4: 50 FASCINATING FACTS You Might Not Know!” – Abi going through a bunch of interesting stuff – including various Easter Eggs, references, and secret gameplay stuff – that he’s found in The Sims 4! Some of the best facts included:

I. Vegetarian werewolves, when directed to hunt for food, will come back with mushrooms instead of meat

II. If you use the SimRay from Get To Work’s Scientist career to transform objects with Cottage Living and/or Horse Ranch installed, there is a small chance that the object will turn into a chicken, rabbit, mini-goat, or mini-sheep, as they’re all technically classified as “objects” by the game (this also means you can resize them in Build/Buy if you want to make giant versions to terrorize your neighborhoods)

III. There’s a curse you can get from one of the Jungle Adventures idols that makes your Sim constantly hallucinate not only stacks of pancakes, but also the face of one Bob Pancakes from Willow Creek! You cure it by eating some pancakes, with the game explicitly telling you in a pop-up that “cannabilism” [sic] is not possible, so you can’t cure it by eating Bob (the only time that any mention of that comes up in the game anywhere! So figures they’d misspell it)

IV. The heart-shaped gemstone you can cut in Crystal Creations has a description that references one of the songs in the Steven Universe movie (allowing Abi to show off his beautiful singing voice again as he sang the lyrics)

V. And the list of South Asian names that NPCs can have in Tomorang in For Rent includes Abi’s own first name! He actually switched over to speaking his native Indonesian for that fact :D

Good stuff – I like when he points out fun facts like these! Proves there’s always something new to learn about the game. :)

B) “EVERY NEW FEATURE coming to Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature!” – Abi going over all the new stuff – such as the world of Innisgreen, the “Natural Living” and “Apothecary” skills, the living houseplants you have to care for, the “Luck” and “Balance” mechanics, the “Naturopath” career, the upgraded PlantSims, and of course the Fairy occult – coming with the latest pack, set to release next week! It was a very solid overview of what we knew about each new feature...and how some of them seemed a bit – lacking. Or like combinations of things we already have. For example, PlantSims ARE getting an upgrade, with some new powers and interactions...but they’re not becoming the permanent occult lifestate with a proper skill tree people want. And while the elixirs and cures you can craft with the Apothecary skill look interesting, Abi noted they did seem a bit like just another variation on the potions you can craft as a Spellcaster with Realm of Magic, or the concoctions you can brew up with the Herbalism skill with Outdoor Retreat. (Or, as I just thought now, the serums you can make as a Scientist in Get To Work!) Though, admittedly, I don’t know how much overlap there actually is between all of these… Bottom line, there’s some interesting stuff here (especially for Fairies, who have a really robust skill tree AND loads of fun CAS stuff), but Abi wasn’t shy about calling out the devs for apparently recycling ideas from older packs in a slightly new form. *shrug* I’m still on the fence – we’ll see if I tip one way or the other once the pack is out and we know more about it!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Um – half a substitute check, if that makes any sense. :p Let me explain –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I didn’t do anything actually queue-related (didn’t need to), but I did make sure to reblog a BTTF gifset made by “cineshemp” from one of the BTTF-obsessed people I follow to celebrate the 40th anniversary! Unfortunately, I got to it just after 10:04, but eh – I got the timestamp over here, and that’s what matters. :)

Valice Multiverse – And over there, I have one anon ask waiting in my inbox – someone complaining that the lyrics of the song “Colors Of The Wind” (from Disney’s Pocahontas) sounds like the sort of things a smelly hippie in a drum circle would tell people. I’m not sure how to answer it, if I want to answer it at all, so I’m gonna wait on it and decide tomorrow what I’m gonna do. *shrug*

And there we are! And I really need to get to bed. Tomorrow, plans include working on some of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; playing Fallout 4 and continuing the trek through the Mechanist's lair; updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; getting in a workout (probably to the Fallout: London episode I missed last Sunday); and maybe getting something else out of the old Watch Later -- we'll see. Night all!
crossover_chick: gif of Doc gasping (BTTF: EEK)
Yes, thanks to the videos we watched with dinner running longer than I anticipated; me once again taking WAAAY too much time to sum up what I watched with my workout in the daily write-up (below); me getting distracted during that process by my tumblr friend Weird Kev informing me of his desires for his birthday fic in the form of a shared Google Doc (which, okay, kudos for telling me what you want early sir, but could you have just done it in the form of a DM on tumblr itself?); and me struggling a bit with my writing today (also below), I was once again rushing to get everything done so I had a chance in hell of going to bed at a reasonable hour. Didn't really work, but -- eh. Here's how my day went for your perusal:

Work – Very quiet day at work overall – we had two calls to update credit cards on pledges (well, one to update a card, and one to ADD a card) early in the day; I left a message with some donors to clarify what gift type they wanted after my coworker got a note from their parish saying they’d made a pledge, but the gift we found online was an ongoing gift (which is different in that it’s a perpetual series of one-time gifts, instead of a fixed series of payments on a specified amount – more than one donor’s got them confused) nearer lunch; I had the Useless Check-In Call with the credit card people (which, naturally, provided no updates on any of the open issues) in the afternoon; and that was pretty much it. The rest of my time was spent trying to find maintenance stuff to do (mostly related to the obituaries) and working on a crossword puzzle (which I solved worryingly fast). *sigh* Still, as I keep reminding myself, bored is better than stressed… Hopefully tomorrow will be a short day, though!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike for midweek, pedaling my way through:

A) The end of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 1: Folkmoot!” With this final chunk of the first episode mostly focusing on our heroes having to fight a monstrous abomination created from the flesh of an unfortunate fellow traveler and folkmoot attendee who didn’t see any harm in abusing magic to light his fingers on fire – at least, until his wrist snapped back and his body twisted horribly and all his organs ripped out of his insides to form a new head growing out of his chest. *grimace* Anyway, at the end of yesterday’s chunklet, Lug (Mike) had FINALLY managed to actually hit something with his hammer...for a whole nine damage – today, we saw:

I. The rest of the fight between our heroes and the abomination, which involved:

a. Happen (Luke), deprived of eye sockets to fire arrows into as the creature they were facing had no proper face, instead firing one into one of the creature’s legs (helped by his sprites, as he once again broke out the Luck Goddess “5 nat 20s, 5 crit 1s” die and got a nat 20) – didn’t do much damage, but it did very neatly separate a couple of muscles in the thigh (the description of which made Jane cringe)

b. The monster attacking Lug and inflicting 30 points of bludgeoning damage by smashing him over the head – EXCEPT, because Lug was passive-aggressively raging, he had resistance to the damage, so he only took 15 points. Like, that’s still “ow,” but it’s not “nearly dead” ow. Everyone cheered. :P

c. Willowfine (Jane), seeing this, hitting the monster with some Guiding Bolt, cast from the tip of her staff – didn’t do MUCH damage, but it was more than she managed against the bandits! And it gave the next person to attack Advantage, so, nice

d. Cressida (Ellen) not arriving this round because she was in her private quarters and had to shove the pallet blocking the door out of the way and take the cucumbers off her eyes and all that XD

e. Robin (Andy) choosing smartly to call for help from the order that looks after the city – and then less-smartly choosing to fling his soft bread at the creature (sailed right over its head and hit someone else on the other side)

f. Lug attacking again and getting a chance to take advantage of that Advantage – which is good, because he got another crit 1 on one of his rolls. *facepalm* Mike, you either have to get rid of that D20, because it’s cursed, or stop sitting next to Luke, because apparently the universe thinks his “luck pervert” thing regarding nat 20s and crit 1s is funny enough to ruin your rolls. XD Anyway, he whiffed the first swing because even with Advantage he couldn’t beat the monster’s armor class, but managed to bonk it again with his second attack, yay~

g. Happen breaking out the arrows again, and Luke rolling the Luck Goddess die one more time...and getting a crit 1. (“Praise Cadence!”) Johnny rolled their own die and had poor Robin take the arrow in the leg, and given that, as a commoner, he only has 4 hit points, he quickly went down…

Only to get back up again and start acting – different. Standing differently, glaring at everyone, asking who they all were, getting into a combat stance when Happen revealed that he’d shot him – and responding to their “Robin?” with “It’s Morven.” Hmmmmm…

h. The monster rudely interrupting this “wtf” moment for everyone by attacking Lug again – fortunately, he was still raging, so he was once again able to cut the damage down from “you are about to go unconscious/die” to “you are hurt but able to keep your feet.” Barbarians are hench, yo

i. Cressida finally entering the fray to find a horrible flesh-beast trying to kill her new acquaintances, and one of the new acquaintances looking like he wants to kill one of the other ones! She managed to tamp down on the urge to walk straight back out of the dormitory and instead fired three Scorching Rays at the monster –

And MISSED WITH EVERY ONE, instead shooting a hole in the wall and a hole in the ceiling. Ellen said she was so mad at being woken from her beauty sleep that she’d forgotten to take off both cucumber slices and thus had a depth perception issue. XD You know, given what little characterization Cressida’s got so far, I’d believe that

j. And Morven taking her turn (yes, “her” – according to the little stat write-ups that flashed up for every character, she goes by “she/her”) – and absolutely WRECKING the monster with a purple Sorcerous Blast flamethrower of psychic damage (proving sorcerers are ALSO hench). Johnny ruled that, because they knew that everyone else wanted to know what the hell was going on with Robin/Morven, and because that was so cool, the NPC cavalry showed up right afterward to take the thing down once and for all and turn it into a flaming pillar of ichor. Yay!

II. Post-fight, Lug, Happen, and Willowfine learning what Robin/Morven’s full deal was (Cressida, upon realizing the plebs now needed a new place to sleep, ran off to try and barricade her dorm) – turns out that the reason for Robin’s “sleepwalking” is that he’s been possessed by the spirit of Morven Hellwain, an aberrant sorcerer who was killed on trumped-up charges of witchcraft – only to find herself in Robin’s body. The two switch off whenever one goes unconscious, so Robin being knocked out from the pain of being shot brought her out into the fight. (Though Morven revealed that she had SOME vague idea of what was going on when she wasn’t in control of the body – it’s yet to be revealed if Robin gets the same.) Anyway, she’s naturally not happy about the state of affairs, considering Robin to be “the village idiot” and looking for a way to take control of the body full-time. Fortunately, this meant she was willing to travel with the others when Happen told her about the teams and Robin agreeing to travel with them to figure out what was wrong with magic, as she hoped to find answers for herself while on the search. Oh, and that laughing guy Robin didn’t quite recognize before? That was someone connected to Morven’s death, and who she thinks might know something about what’s going on with their whole situation, if they can get to him…

III. And finally, after everyone but Morven (who, wanting to keep control for a while, elected instead to just constantly eat soup all night XD) got a good night’s sleep (once they got into Cressida’s dorm, anyway), the team joining the other seven teams in the morning to receive their “copestones” (magical rocks that would allow them to communicate with two of their fellow teams and the central Folkmoot meeting area) and a direction to go in. Our heroes were assigned Northwest, which Happen happily noted was homeward for him –

Which confused our folkmoot elder Agnes, as the area Happen lives in, Balewood, is supposed to be devoid of all common folk. Because the people there once tried to invade another one of the regions, only to be cut down by their own wild folk for disrepecting the boundaries between regions. (And if you’re wondering “hey, wait a minute, didn’t you mention raiders before?” I did, and everyone is confused and concerned as to how they can actually raid people, given the wild folk are supposed to stop that sort of thing.) But she didn’t press the issue, and the episode ended with the group preparing to set off! Oh, and with the big 100-sided die being nice to everyone and not giving them any “fun” side effects to look forward to the next time they use magic. But Johnny said that it was only a matter of time, as the magic “debt” they racked up with every spell was cumulative… (Though they did say that, upon receiving an envelope, a person’s debt would be halved, so it wasn’t ALL bad. Just MOSTLY bad.) Looking forward to seeing what horrors shall arise in future episodes – but first, tomorrow, we have a short bonus video going over the crew making their new characters for this series…

B) And the entirety of “Buy One Feat Get Half Free Baldur's Gate 3 Bug” by Casual Veteran Gamer! A short video I stumbled upon while looking for something to help fill out my session talking all about an interesting bug with the “Magic Initiate: Cleric” feat from Baldur’s Gate III. Basically, there’s a number of “Magic Initiate” feats in the game, which allow you to learn two cantrips and one first-level spells from the spell lists for various magic users (Bard, Wizard, Sorcerer, etc). However, the Cleric one ALSO, for unknown reasons, gives those who take it one of the bonuses from the “Medium Armor Master” feat – allowing the Dexterity modifier applied to a character’s armor class to be increased from +2 to +3 (if applicable) when they’re wearing medium armor! If you don’t have this feat or the “Medium Armor Master” one, wearing medium armor caps the bonus at +2. CVG isn’t sure why this is, and notes that it only gives you half the feat (“Medium Armor Master” also removes Disadvantage on Stealth Checks while wearing medium armor), but that it’s still a nifty little bonus. Even if it is a bug. XD

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – though, as I implied above, tonight’s page was a bit of a struggle, as I had to go searching out some Let’s Plays to make sure I was describing Grout’s bizarre maze right. More of the rooms are sideways than I originally thought… *shakehead* Anyway – I managed to get through Alice traversing a good chunk of the maze tonight, complaining about Grout “reusing assets” and how this isn’t even HALF as weird as some of the stuff she’s seen in Wonderland and how annoying it was to keep having to traverse the same sort of room over and over again – and then getting punished for focusing on complaining instead of where she was going by falling through a door in the floor and landing hard in the room below. The Queen of Hearts was very amused. :P Anyway, I left off with her in a near-identical copy of the room she started in – only to find that the door she was hoping to try is locked. Tomorrow, she works her way deeper into the maze, and hopefully I can get back into the writing groove here!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Half check – thanks to getting to my writing way later than I expected, I only had time for a quick video I started watching during the end of my workout, but had to stop and save for after supper because it was unexpectedly longer than I thought it would be: “This Build is Completely Broken in Baldur's Gate 3 Eldritch Blast Sorlock Sorcerer Warlock #bg3 #b” by Toyhouze! I was intrigued by the title and intro, which promised to show off a build where one combined the Sorcerer and Warlock classes to get some insane damage bonuses on Eldritch Blast –

Aaaand then the rest of the video was just him talking about how to get the most out of a starting Warlock if you were looking for pure damage – like taking “The Fiend” subclass to get temporary hit points upon downing enemies to help keep yourself alive in the early stages; adding the Eldritch Invocations “Agonizing Blast” and “Repelling Blast” to Eldritch Blast to make it more powerful and shove enemies away; recommendations on spells to take and at what levels; and what Pact Boon you should go for (Pact of the Chain, apparently, which gives you the ability to summon an imp that can go invisible pretty much whenever it wants and thus surprise enemies before combat). Given the way it ended, I suspect this was a clip of a much longer video, but a lot of people in the comments were unimpressed by the fact that he never actually got to the multiclassed “broken build” he promised in this video. And that he kept picking all “concentration” spells that he couldn’t use together (like “Hunger of Hadar” and “Cloud of Daggers”). It was pretty “meh” in the end – good thing I was only looking for entertainment and not tips on how to do my Bardlock Smiler!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – only Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, thankfully – and even better, I knew exactly what I wanted my Song Saturday to be: “Lights Down Low” by MAX! Because that’s the Valicer Wedding Song, and Saturday IS just two days before the Valicer Wedding Anniversary. :) So I just found the most recent reblog and stuck it back in the queue from there. *nods* Easy-peasy, yay~

*looks at the above* Yeah, I went into WAY too much detail in the fight scene there. I have to go to learn how to curb that impulse. *shakehead* Anyway, that's it for me -- I'm off to bed. Night all!

More Chill Tuesday

Jul. 1st, 2025 11:52 pm[personal profile] crossover_chick
crossover_chick: Doc in goggles and holding a big old plug with the words "feeling sparky..." (BTTF: feeling sparky/creative)
To a degree -- it certainly wasn't any colder outside, as the thunderstorms we were supposed to get today didn't show up until late tonight. Meaning it was downright soupy out there, bleeeh. >( And there were still a few annoying moments today (mostly at work, see below), but overall it was less stressful than yesterday, which I appreciate. (Probably because I wasn't fighting with my brain over author's notes on a birthday fic. :P) Anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – An – okay day at work. It was pretty quiet for the most part, with the one call I got being just someone who wanted to know how many payments they had left on their capital campaign pledge...but, while looking up the failed credit card payments through the end of June, I discovered another payment posted to the wrong place. Meaning I spent a good portion of my morning writing up a big long e-mail to our credit card people and database people, talking about the problem and what seemed to be common across the affected donors and asking them to look into it. *sigh* Not that I think I’ll get an answer anytime soon...just so annoying to find this shit and go “did NO ONE notice this problem before me?!” Meeeeh… We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 1: Folkmoot!” Today’s chunklet saw our band of merry adventurers:

A) Wrap up their conversation about Robin’s (Andy) whole deal, with Happen (Luke) asking Willowfine (Jane) if maybe she could cure whatever ails Robin – she was like “well, it’s my calling, so I’ll give it a go” and asked Robin what ailed him, and he told her about the sleepwalking. Namely, about an incident where he went to sleep in bed and woke up in the forest, surrounded by exploded wolves. O.o Willowfine was appropriately baffled but tried running a healing hand over his head to see if there was anything TO heal...and came up short. She told Robin that, as far as she could tell, he was fine – apart from his feet, but after the previous conversation, she wasn’t touching those. XD But still, very curious...

B) Head to the folkmoot once it was called, settling themselves in the large natural bowl “amphitheater” in the center of town to discuss the issue of magic becoming unstable. As you might imagine, it was a chaotic affair, starting off wrong with an unfortunate acolyte getting badly hurt trying to cast a spell to keep the rain off, and quickly devolving into everyone shouting about how their communities were near-ruin (and, in Robin’s case, how a dog stole his job), with one creepy fellow (that Robin just didn’t recognize) laughing at it all, because there’s always one. Fortunately, a dwarf named Cedric managed to restore order and suggest a plan – namely, that those who were willing form teams to scour the land and figure out what was going on, because they weren’t going to get anywhere without a deeper understanding of the problem. And since the people here were the ones brave enough to risk the roads and use magic, well, who better? The folkmoot generally agreed on this plan, with the lone voice of dissent – an asshole religious zealot who said that they should be putting the “bad apples” to the sword and pyre to fix the problem – rapidly shouted down (starting with Robin, who knew his order and that he didn’t like them), and Agnes ended the meeting by encouraging anyone who wanted to be part of a team to come to the dining hall to sign up.

C) Naturally, head to the dining hall to sign up to be on a team – or, rather, to just straight up be a team, as they all quickly agreed that they should travel together after their meeting on the road. (Well, mostly – Cressida (Ellen) was WILLING, simply because she had an idea of their flaws already, but she did quietly ask the acolyte signing everyone up that, if they could stick her with a better caliber of person… XD) The rest of the evening was spent working on getting Robin a bit of proper kit (he thought he could go out there with just some stale bread, but the others were like “no, proper weapons,” and one of the acolytes obligingly measured him for armor); having some more watery soup and simple bread (Robin was thrilled, Cressida was “ugh”) and asking Lug (Mike) about what he was (as none of them had ever seen a firbolg before) and his whole deal (he kept it simple, explaining that his kind was rare and that he just lived in the forest and occasionally guided people through it); and – in Willowfine’s case – going out to eavesdrop on some raiders from the island of Weregild off the coast of Heorth proper to see what their reasons for coming here were (a relatively poor Stealth check meant she got spotted quickly, though she did at least overhear that they were using the opportunity of being on a team to scout out which regions were weakest).

D) And finally prepare to turn in for the night (Cressida heading to her private bunk while the others went to the main dormitory to bed down)...only for a loudmouth on a nearby pallet to start going on about how everybody was just scared and magic wasn’t that dangerous, and to start lighting his fingers on fire to prove he wasn’t frightened. Which went well for a minute or two –

And then resulted in his magic twisting him around, ripping his body open, and making a new head out of his internal organs, before sending him skittering to attack the four in the dormitory. Meaning it was battle time again! I left off with Lug, despite calling upon his barbarian rage (which was, hilariously, PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE rage that made him shout sarcastic comments at the monster), ONCE AGAIN whiffing his first swing with his hammer thanks to a crit 1 – fortunately, his second attack roll went a little better, and he actually managed to inflict nine points of damage on the damn thing. Which, yes, wasn’t MUCH, but was still better than nothing! Tomorrow we wrap this up with how our five handle the monster (because Cressida did roll for initiative as well – presumably she will overhear the ruckus and join in the fight just so she can get her beauty sleep)! Looking forward to it – I’m already loving the new world Johnny’s created, it’s very cool. :D

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – back to the adventures of Malkavian!Alice today, as she continued to brave the horrors of Grout’s mansion! Specifically, the “fun” maze he built to subject his test subjects to “the weirdest environments” while he observed them invisibly with Obfuscate. Alice wasn’t keen on another doctor keeping tabs on her without her knowledge or consent, as you might expect. But she needed to find Grout, and so she headed inside. So far, though, all she’s found is a hallway; a room with the corpse of one of his ghouls in it (who apparently committed suicide rather than wander the maze any longer – Alice was not happy about that); a couple of sideways rooms; and one mysteriously-locked door. I left off with her going right, since she’d heard somewhere that’s what you’re supposed to do in mazes – tomorrow, we’ll see how that strategy pays off for her!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and tonight was all about officially catching up once and for all with CaFae Latte, as I watched the last compilation currently uploaded to C. M. Alongi’s YouTube channel: “CaFae Latte Season 69 - TikTok Compilation!” This one dealt mostly with the aftermath of JC’s kidnapping, as you might imagine, and featured:

A) JC assuring Kelly they were okay and asking Nicole (cuddling her new llama) what they missed while they were gone, with Nicole telling them that she went and asked Erik about where they could have gone, and that she’d be letting him know that they came home safe and sound and did NOT fall off the wagon (JC was smug about that) – oh, and that they learned Husniya was ex-CIA, which JC was like “what?!” about

B) Rethu asking Bob why they didn’t go after the Silver King for the bullshit he pulled, and Bob letting them know that it wouldn’t work out well for them – sure, she and her chosen allies could do a LOT of damage, probably set the kingdom up for ruin, but they’d be sealing their doom if they attacked now. She would have risked it if JC had been harmed or killed, but as they were safe and sound, better to let things go and make peace with the fact that the villains sometimes don’t get punished. ...and then Cyrus’s phone rung, and he informed Bob that she’d better learn to make peace with JC, as they were pissed about Husniya. XD

C) JC and Nicole going to Husniya’s house to talk to her and Asif about the whole “ex-CIA” thing, as JC was quite grumpy about having been lied to (Nicole calling in Cyrus for verification purposes); fortunately, Husniya, Asif, and Cyrus managed to get them to calm down a bit, with Husniya assuring JC that she never reported on them or Nicole to their superiors, and Cyrus letting them know that he and Bob are used to the CIA spying on them – it’s like a game at this point. And that they actually argued for two weeks about whether or not JC was a spy when they first met. And that Husniya and Asif burned through all the contacts to try and find them when they were taken, no questions asked. JC thus let their anger go – though they remained annoyed with Asif for making a better cup of tea then they could. XD

D) Patrick showing up at the Cafe to ask how JC was doing – Cyrus said they seemed to be fine, but Patrick wasn’t so sure, as taking a life is a pretty big deal, and JC isn’t exactly the most emotionally-vulnerable person. They thus decided to check in after shift, seeing how they felt and then casually bringing up how they handled their very first kills (Patrick vomited on Cyrus’s shoes; Cyrus went mute for three days and then had a total breakdown) –

Prompting JC to go “Uh, I ran with gangs when I was a kid, that fairy was NOT my first kill.” Patrick and Cyrus were like “oh, okay then – just making sure we didn’t have to drop-kick you into therapy,” and JC replied “well, you do, but not for that.” XD Delightful exchange, that.

E) Nicole bringing Mike and Lindsey at the coven up to speed on what happened while scribbling on a piece of paper – Lindsey thought she was making a new drawing, but it turned out she was actually writing a letter to Erik in prison to let him know the details of JC’s return. Lindsey asked what he’d done, and Nicole revealed how he’d sold Cyrus out to the Stone Oak Coven for immortality…

And then remembered, oh yes, Lindsey tried to kidnap Bob for fame and fortune once and apologized. Lindsey assured her it was fine and asked if she could add her OWN letter – cue a cut to Erik going “she tried to kidnap BOB?! Give me a pen and paper, I need DETAILS.” XD You know, everybody in the comments of earlier videos was talking about him talking to someone with immortality (like maybe King Herla) and learning the downsides, but I don’t think any of us thought about getting him to talk to Lindsey! Maybe that’s the good influence in his life he needs – someone who fucked up, but then decided to grab redemption with both hands. Guess we’ll see if this goes anywhere in future episodes!

F) Drek heading off to the forest after his shift to “train” the Sphinx with the laser pointer, and – after she was like “I’ve caught the dot three times, what gives” – revealing that he was feeling pretty useless after the whole fiasco with JC getting Faenapped, because he hadn’t really been able to help. Everybody else had been doing something to help save them, and they were just – standing there with a phone, occasionally texting Rethu. It made them feel like the weakest link. :( Fortunately, the Sphinx was only too happy to remind them “you’re the youngest one there, of course you’re not going to have the life experiences or contacts necessary in a situation like that!” and that not everybody gets to be a badass. Some people are just the ones in the background, helping make the things the badasses fight for. And that Bob doesn’t tolerate incompetence, and even if he’s just cleaning the dishes, that’s still an important job. And that if he wanted to try and be a badass, he could, but he should make sure he was doing it for him and not to impress others. :) I like Drek and the Sphinx – they’re good buddies.

G) Oscar getting dropped off for his shift by Vet Grampa, aka Andy, and Yarn Granny, aka Caroline, complete with cute banter and Vet Grampa taking all the scones for the firehouse lot (saying when Oscar accused him of acting like Caroline doesn’t feed him that he can be “poly-breakfast” XD). JC noted that things seemed to be going well, though Oscar insisted it was still mostly friendship and that he wasn’t going to be using words like “boyfriend” or “love” – mostly because he’d already let them know that burying one spouse was hard enough, and with him likely to outlive them too… Fair. And then Oscar asking where Cyrus was and JC revealing he went part-time, and a glimpse of Cyrus doing his lawyer thing with a client (complete with buttons on his suit jacket, because Cyrus).

H) And Rethu trying to figure out why one of the customers looked familiar while on shift with Husniya, only to be interrupted by a food blogger coming in and trying to get free food – turns out said customer was a food blogger himself, “Rabbi Rabbit,” who reviewed Jewish-food-friendly establishments! And he was not pleased with his fellow blogger’s behavior, pointing out that you were supposed to keep your identity secret for a more honest review. The rude blogger fortunately went away in a huff when Husniya said that she could use the Neighbor’s Account to get some free food if she REALLY wanted, while Rethu got a selfie with the rabbi because it would make her sister freak out (apparently Amyth is a huge fan). And THEN they got on the reason why he calls himself “Rabbi Rabbit” (turns out his last name, Coelho, means “rabbit” in Portuguese, so it became a nickname even before his blogging days), which led to the reveal that his ancestors were actually in the Caribbean around the same time as Rethu’s mom was doing the pirate thing...and that one served on her ship… Small world after all, eh? XD

And there we have it! I am Officially Caught Up on CaFae Latte! Now it’s time to start watching the bloopers, I suppose – oh, and there was a second “Hot Takes” video, I should watch that too...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Technically a half-check, but it was another night with nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, so instead I focused on getting the first bit of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue done! Which included:

A) Reblogging my “Help Plz: I Want Smiler’s Glowing Eyes Back” post with a quick “hey, uh, anyone know if this was fixed in the July 1st patch? When they apparently unlocked occult eyes for all Sims?” addition for Wednesday – don’t think anyone will respond, but might as well throw it out there!

B) Reblogging that “if i'm not supposed to be attracted to the rollercoaster then why'd you make it so attractive huh.” post from “smilerkisser” for Thursday, because I talked in the tags about how this is the “Victor deciding he wants to include the roller coaster in his and Alice’s relationship and I have to deal with that” mood and it felt like a good thing to reblog leading up to the Valicer Anniversary on the 7th

C) And getting my latest set of “Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes” about the trio moving in together in for Friday, because I really wanted to get THAT posted before the Valicer Anniversary too :)

Oh, and while I was very much NOT able to finish it for this week’s queue, I did work a little on the “Teen Valicer Save File” post I have in my drafts, adding some of my ideas for what I want the trio to do into it so I can refine them later. :) So that’s nice too!

And there we have it -- another Tuesday in the books. And now I should hit the sheets so I don't get to bed as late as I have been getting lately. Night all!

Slightly Grumpy Monday

Jun. 30th, 2025 11:50 pm[personal profile] crossover_chick
crossover_chick: Doc looking very sarcastically over his shoulder (BTTF: in a sarcastic mood)
Yeah, it wasn't a day with the best vibes, I'm sad to say -- I woke up in a bit of a grumpy mood after odd dreams (something about stealing something from Buckingham Palace and getting caught? I guess my brain was in a Fallout: London mood even despite me not getting to watch the latest episode); I had to pin together the front of my blouse to make sure it didn't gap open in embarrassing ways (stupid oversized boobs); there were a few annoying moments at work (as will be explained below); there were some bad vibes during and after dinner (the show we watched wasn't very good, and I think Mom and Dad were annoyed at each other for some stuff); and it took WAY longer than I wanted to write up Gig's birthday post (I just couldn't get the wording on my author's notes right!). Meeeh -- not the greatest way to end June. I'm at least glad you did like the story, Gigs. :) Anyway, here's the daily write-up (which also took longer than anticipated):

Work – As I said, there were a few annoying things that happened at work today – like coming in to find someone having e-mailed us in a tizzy about having accidentally made an ongoing gift for $500 when they were trying to do a pledge of $500 at $50 a month (fortunately, the way they’d scheduled it, they hadn’t been charged anything yet, so I was able to shut down the ongoing gift and set up the right pledge); trying to figure out when we should shut down the previous year’s campaign and having no luck finding out when we pulled the trigger on the 2023 stuff (all this while also trying to get back to someone about whether or not they’d submitted a gift yet); and having to deal with a telemarketer asking about my old supervisor, who hasn’t worked there in years (update your employee lists over there!). *sigh* But on the plus side, it wasn’t too busy either – most of the calls we got about last-minute gifts were easily answered, and there weren’t too many of them. I spent most of my time doing the GL and working my way through the Saturday paper obituaries. *shrug* Nothing particularly exciting! We’ll see how tomorrow goes!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 1: Folkmoot!” I picked up with our new cast of five chaotic characters dealing with two burly farmers fighting them after Happen (Luke) Webbed up their fellows for trying to kill Lug (Mike) because they wrongly thought he was responsible for magic breaking – here’s how things went from there:

A) With the two burly farmers having had their go in the fight (successfully having injured poor Happen with some thrown sickles and exposed Willowfine’s (Jane) hidden chainmail), it was time for the characters to try their hand at combat – in order, we had:

I. Lug totally whiffing his attempts to smash the sickle-throwing guy’s head in with his big old hammer because the dice were unkind (to be fair, he used his bonus action to gauge if Happen was into being gouged by that thrown sickle or not, which he was a bit because it was a very lucky throw, so maybe he was distracted by Happen being – as Jane later put it – a “luck pervert”)

II. Willowfine unleashing a blast of celestial light upon her enemies from her staff...to the tune of 3 points of radiant damage (she justified the poor dice roll as a “warning shot”)

III. Happen pulling out his bow and nailing the guy who threw the sickles at him in BOTH EYES with a pair of Nat 20 arrows (one rolled normally, the other rolled on a special die that has five 20s and five 1s on it to represent Happen’s sprite friends intervening to turn his luck one way or the other) – everyone was very suitably horrified, and the fight immediately went out of the attackers, as you might expect

IV. Cressida managing NOT to throw up after seeing that and instead blasting the farmers with a cone of Fear, making the injured one crawl away as fast as possible and the ones stuck in Happen’s web tangle themselves up further in it

V. And Robin, seeing the horrifically injured sickle-throwing guy, bopping him on the head with a stale baguette to try and knock him out (and not even succeeding) XD

As you might imagine, the farmers didn’t want to fight any more after that. XD Happen was all for killing the one he’d shot in the eyes, saying it would be cruel to leave him alive, but Willowfine was like “no” and went and healed the guy, ripping the arrows out of his sockets before blasting him with a pretty hefty “Cure Wounds” (as it was revealed all the characters get to start at level 5 in this campaign, good for them), healing him for 24 “healing damage” as per Jane. XD It did restore the guy’s eyes, at least? And allowed him to run away with his fellows? Yay? :p

B) With the battle over, everyone introduced themselves to the others, which featured Happen declaring to Lug that Lug was the unluckiest creature that he’d met on his travels and that he must be fated to follow him (Lug: “greaaaaat”); Happen asking if Cressida was looking for better shoes for walking in the wilds (Cressida was like “I shall dress how I please,” to which Happen replied “fair enough”) and Robin innocently pointing out the ram’s horns she was trying so desperately to keep hidden (she was rather annoyed); Cressida being even more annoyed that no one knew her name, only for Lug to point out that he lives in a forest and doesn’t get much news from the outside world; and then Robin asking if Cressida was named after cress, as in the salad, causing Willowfine to just start marching in the direction of the Folkmoot, because SOMEBODY had to get this show on the road XD

C) Inspired by Willow’s example, the gang proceeded onto Folkmoot, where they found large stone buildings serving as dormitories, the local religious order/Folkmoot staff wandering around handing out watery soup and bread heels, and about 200 other people from across Heorth – the four country bumpkins of Robin, Happen, Lug, and Willowfine were amazed by seeing so many people in one place and by the free soup (with carrots in, no less), while worldly Cressida from the port city took one look at the meager crowd and vittles and was like “this is bad

D) While getting their free soup and bread, the gang met Agnes, leader of the order that looks after the meeting area in between folkmoots, who thanked them for coming, explained to Happen when he asked if she knew what had happened to magic that that was the very subject they were there to discuss, and took them to one of the dormitories so they could claim their pallets and rest up before the meeting – again, the country bumpkins were amazed by the idea of them each having a pallet to themselves (Robin especially), while snob Cressida was horrified by the idea of sharing her sleeping quarters with others – fortunately for her, due to the low turnout, Agnes was able to give her a dormitory all to herself. Cressida promptly barred the door with a pallet and turned a bunch of others into a king-sized bed for herself XD

E) While Cressida made herself comfortable, the others picked their bunks and discussed why they were here and the poor turnout at the folkmoot, with Willowfine initially being heartened by Happen saying that he’d seen such amazing luck on the way here and he was certain there would be more at the meeting – only to move her pack to a different bunk when Lug pointed out that they could experience extreme BAD luck instead and Happen was like “let’s not get our hopes up :D” And then she ended up moving her stuff even FURTHER away when the subject of how hard travel was now with the magic infrastructure failing came up, Robin revealed that he’d just been walking everywhere, and Happen/Luke made the tactical error of asking if he could look at Robin’s feet, prompting all the foot fetish jokes. XD I left off with Robin explaining his deal to the others (which included how he lost his job as a spit-turner at the lord’s house to a dog – but he wasn’t even mad, this dog is REALLY good at spit-turning) – tomorrow, we’ll see how the conversation continues, and perhaps even the official folkmoot! I really want to see what happens once the Wild Folk start turning up looking to renew their bargains...

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – finished up the five-day writing streak on this story with:

I. Smiler responding to Alice saying that she didn’t like leaving Victor with his horrible parents either, but she wasn’t sure what they could do about it, by commenting that they know Elder Gutknecht’s house technically fits three, and that Gutknecht was saying earlier he’d happily take on Victor as an apprentice...cue Alice reminding Smiler they had to respect Victor’s choice not to pursue Whisperhood, and Smiler going “yes but he was happy learning about magic and it pains me as an Advocate to leave him here” (Alice reminded them that Victor still wants to be FRIENDS, so they’d be able to alleviate his unhappiness that way)

II. And the pair re-entering the kitchen afterward to lend a hand as part of their cover – Alice immediately got put on potato-chopping duty, which she executed quite well, while Smiler ended up helping fix a too-acidic soup by getting them to drop a spoonful of honey into it (a real thing you can do to fix too-acidic soups, by the way!) Mrs. Pemberly was quite surprised and impressed by their knowledge. :) We’ll return to this next Saturday, with her also being impressed by Alice’s chopping skills – and the pair spotting a familiar heavily-bearded face being sent to the greenhouse for more veg...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and there was nothing else it could be tonight except “CaFae Latte Season 68 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi! Because I had to resolve that damn cliffhanger from Saturday already! As a reminder, the LAST compilation revolved around JC disappearing under mysterious circumstances on Nicole’s birthday, ending on the reveal that they were in the Fae Realm, handcuffed and about to have an audience with the king – this follow-up season featured:

A) Nicole gathering with Bob, Cyrus, Drek, and Husniya over a map of the Fae Realm to try and divine where JC was and what was happening to them with the help of some runes – which revealed they were a prisoner – and a wand – which revealed they were in Ivae, aka Bob and Cyrus’s home country. Bob was not happy about this, as you might expect. *grimace* On the plus side, Oscar and Patrick managed to find Nicole’s car, at a gas station near a forest, with a fairly fresh scent trail for JC nearby – Bob quickly told Oscar to NOT FOLLOW IT and to get Patrick, Rethu, and Amyth holding position nearby, so she didn’t have to rescue anyone ELSE from the Fae Realm

B) A flashback to how JC actually ended up in the Fae Realm – basically, they were tricked into following what they thought was a lost human kid into the woods, only to guess that they’d been had when they realized the trail they’d been following was gone. The kid thus revealed they were a fairy adult and that they’d caught JC to be their servant, silencing them when they tried to protest and letting them know they’d be serving them and their family for the rest of their lives, and that they were just their dad’s type –

And then promptly getting a bullet in the head because JC of course had their gun, of course had anti-fairy bullets, and of course wasn’t putting up with that bullshit. *nods* Good for JC.

C) JC’s audience with the Silver King and the Crimson Princess, where (after being relieved of their silence curse) they explained that they’d acted in self-defense against a fairy threatening them with eternal servitude and sexual assault and that they just wanted to go the hell home. However, despite knowing that they were telling the truth (thanks to an enchanted rug), the Silver King and the Crimson Princess were all “mortals don’t have the right of self-defense in this realm” and began thinking up punishments – sending them to serve the family of the deceased anyway; straight-up killing them (offered by the Captain of the Guard who captured them), training them as a captive soldier, etc. JC, annoyed by some of the hypocrisy on display (mainly, “fairies don’t kill, but we can totally tell our mortal soldiers and executioners to do so on our behalf”), said they weren’t surprised Bob left –

Prompting the Silver King to go “You have a fairy master?” JC said yes, they worked for a fairy, and they’d like to get back to her, and the Silver King admitted that they should at least have her at the proceedings. He thus asked who she was so he could contact her, and JC explained that people nowadays called her “Bob,” but she’d also gone by “Violet” and “Lavender,” and – when she was mad – “The Iron Witch” –

And cue the Crimson Princess immediately putting murder back on the table because YUP BOB’S ESTRANGED FAMILY WHO’S SURPRISED.

D) The Silver King taking murder back OFF the table because he didn’t want to face the wrath of his granddaughter should he kill someone she was endeared to (with JC confirming that they’d worked for her for two years and ran her entire kitchen, which they were still astonished that she let them do), and deciding instead to try and ransom JC; cue him calling Bob, who naturally was not happy to hear from her grandfather

E) Bob confirming JC was okay (uncursed, uninjured, hadn’t eaten any fairy food), then the Silver King asking what JC’s life was worth to her, trying to get some sort of oath or favor out of her (as per the Captain of the Guard) as punishment for the time that she inspired a mortal uprising, which ended up creating a human kingdom in the realm that was Ivae’s greatest rival –

And Bob happily informing her grandfather that JC was worth utterly wrecking his kingdom. Like, she acknowledged that she probably couldn’t win a war against him, but she could weaken his realm to the point where any victory against her would be utterly hollow, as he’d be utterly unprepared for any future disasters. And that she had a lot of friends – mortal, fae, dragon, and otherwise – who would be prepared to happily leap into the fray to save JC as well. ...The Silver King smartly agreed to bring JC back through the forest portal by the end of the day, and Bob ended the phone call merely with shaking hands, instead of straight-up vomiting like she’d apparently done the last time.

F) And finally JC being escorted by a guard fifty strong back to the portal to meet up with Bob, Cyrus, and the dragons (with all their other friends hidden in the trees), where Bob asked JC what the first food they made for them was, clarifying that they meant the first baked good for the cafe when JC went “huh?” to ascertain they weren’t a glamoured spy –

And JC promptly went on a small rant about how those two questions were two COMPLETELY different things, as the first FOOD they made for them was brigadeiros, which are not BAKED, but heated up on the stovetop, while the first BAKED GOOD was probably chocolate chip cookies, thus handily proving their identity. XD The Captain of the Guard backed them up (revealing they were a lieutenant in the LAST war against Bob, and surviving her bumped up their rank), and the episode ended with JC demanding their stuffed llama for Nicole back and realizing “oh shit, I missed brunch and the movie,” with Cyrus joking “yup, Nicole’s pissed.” XD

And that was that! Whew – some heavy stuff this time around, what with Bob having to deal with her horrible family and their horrible kingdom again, and JC almost ending up a slave or dead. I mean, we even had Cyrus call Bob “Violet” (the closest we have to her “real name”) while telling her her hand was shaking post-call. Cyrus has never called her anything but “Boss,” so – yeah. But at least JC’s safe and sound, and judging by the thumbnail of the next (and currently final) compilation, will be able to give Nicole her llama. Looking forward to it. :)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – between how long it took me to write the birthday post and get all this other stuff summed up, I simply did not have the time to work on anything in my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts. *sigh* We’ll see if I can get to that post I was working on about the Teen Valicer Save tomorrow, or if I’ll be posting something else for Wednesday’s queue...

*whew* And that is that. And now I have to go to bed so I can actually get some sleep before work tomorrow. Night all!

Happy Birthday Gigs!

Jun. 30th, 2025 08:38 pm[personal profile] crossover_chick
crossover_chick: Doc in goggles and holding a big old plug with the words "feeling sparky..." (BTTF: feeling sparky/creative)
[personal profile] gigs_83, I'm posting your birthday story a bit early to make sure you can actually see it on your birthday. XD Anyway, you asked for Smiler showing up in my Secundus verse, and I have provided:

--
And there we are – at least that was a quick trip to the store. Now to get this home so Alice can make her bread...and then straight back in the lab so I can figure out just where I’m going wrong with this latest project! You’d think that making a butterfly that can change colors wouldn’t be very difficult at all, given they’re naturally inclined toward camouflage...maybe I’m tweaking the wing scales too much...

“Hello there! You look like you could use some help smiling! Might I interest you in a syringe of my excellent Joy Serum?”

Victor blinked, shaken abruptly out of his thoughts. He looked over to see a man about his age grinning at him from over the top of a briefcase-turned-salesman’s stand. The case was spread open before him, displaying a collection of gleaming glass-and-brass syringes, each filled with a mysterious substance glowing the same brilliant yellow as the seller’s eyes. “Your – what?” he said, trying to catch up with the conversation he hadn’t expected to be having.

“Joy Serum!” the seller repeated, tone as sunny as the liquid he was hawking. “Made personally by yours truly!” He stuck out a hand. “Smiler Alton – pleasure to meet you!”

“Ah – n-nice to meet you as well,” Victor said slowly, accepting the hand. Goodness – it’s like being hit in the face by a very cheery sack of bricks. “Victor Van Dort.”

Smiler tilted his head. “Van Dort? Like Van Dort Fish?”

Victor swallowed, memories of returned letters and judging looks and his mother declaring that they could send him somewhere to have him “fixed” dancing around his head. “Ah – no,” he murmured, pushing them away. “N-not anymore.”

“Oh – sorry,” Smiler said, withdrawing his hand with genuine contrition in his voice. “Didn’t mean to bring up bad memories...but trust me, you won’t be feeling sad once you try some of this!” he added, brightening back up as he waved said hand over his wares. “Guaranteed to make you as happy as you’ve ever been for a good three hours, with minimal side effects! Just fifteen pence a syringe! Want to give it a go?”

“Ah – I’m – I’m fine,” Victor said, eyeing the liquid with trepidation. “Um – look, Mr. Alton–”

Smiler winced – subtly, but – still noticeable. “Just Smiler, please,” he said, smile suddenly looking a bit strained. “It’s – it’s not ‘Mister.’”

Victor blinked, then looked the – person – up and down again. Black pants, white shirt, yellow waistcoat with light purple checks, purple pocket square, black flat cap – all things he generally associated with men...but then again, Lady Heterodyne was fairly famous for wearing trousers, and this was the ‘Enlightened Era,’ so... “Miss Alton?” he tried.

Smiler shook their head. “Not that either. It’s – well, it’s more nebulous than that.”

More nebul – wait. “Are you – are you like my friend Richard, then?” Victor asked, running his fingers through his hair. “We, ah, got on the topic of men and women recently, and he mentioned that he didn’t actually feel like a man – he didn’t feel like anything at all, in fact. Is that you?”

Smiler’s eyes went wide – and then the most genuine grin of the day split their face. “Yes! I mean, it’s not exactly like that for me – I’m something, I’ve just never been able to define what it is!” they said excitedly. “But it’s not man or woman, so...ah, for the record, I prefer ‘they’ if you’re speaking about me to other people,” they added, resettling their cap on their head.

“They?”

Smiler shrugged. “Only other option we’ve got, right? Unless someone comes up with new pronouns.”

Victor chuckled. “Well, around here, they just might...anyway, what I was going to ask was, do you have a permit to sell these?”

“Oh – no,” Smiler admitted, glancing at their case and back again. “I wasn’t aware I needed one – I only arrived in town this morning.” They smiled in a bit of a tired way. “Haven’t really had a chance to get settled yet.”

“Fair enough, but the police around here are rather strict when it comes to street sellers – I fell afoul of them myself when I tried selling honey from my beehives a while back,” Victor said, recalling the embarrassment of having his little venture aborted before it could take flight. “Nobody here wants any unethical Touched going around selling anything deliberately tainted to cause chaos.” He paused and thought about where he lived. “Well – n-not without it being clearly labeled, anyway.”

“Very logical,” Smiler agreed, shutting their case and giving the legs underneath a kick – they folded up like an accordion into the bottom. “All right then – mind telling me where I can get a permit?”

“The town hall – I can walk you there, if you like,” Victor offered. “It’s not far, and I’m sure Alice – my wife – will understand if I’m a little late getting back.”

“Excellent – after you,” Smiler said, gesturing before them. “Married, then? Mind telling me more about her?” They fiddled with the handle of their case. “And – Richard too?”

Victor smiled. “I’d be happy to.”
--

Can't go wrong with a "first meeting" story, right? :) Though I confess I wasn't fond of having to misgender Smiler for the first half of it...like, yes, it made sense for Victor to assume they're a "he," as he's only just learned about the concept of people being something other than men and women (thanks, Richard! Happy to work in my headcanon that you're agender!). And the story is basically about him accidentally bonding with Smiler when he learns he's wrong about them and mentions Richard's deal (thus proving to Smiler they're not alone)! So it had to be done! But -- meeeh. I just feel bad whenever I have to do it.

Anyway -- facts about this Smiler! As you might be able to tell, I basically borrowed this Smiler's general look and deal from their "Valicer In The Dark" self -- I figured the outfit fit the steampunky world of Secundus as much as the dark vaguely Victorian-esque urban fantasy one of Duskwall, and I just like the idea of them as a traveling salesperson, hawking their Joy Serum and related drugs/potions/what-have-you to the masses. Not to mention, them selling their Joy Serum on the streets of Secundus provided the perfect opening for them to get to know Victor -- not just because they could hail him as a potential customer, but because the very first idea I came up with for this story was Victor seeing Smiler on the street and warning them that they need a permit to be a street seller (as he himself discovered when he tried to sell his homemade honey). It seemed an excellent way to get them to chat and bond! :)

As for their backstory -- as you might expect, in this world they're a chemistry-focused Touched! If it can be mixed together to create a new thing, they can make it better. They're also the kid of one Dr. Kelman, asshole extraordinaire, though good luck getting them to admit it. I've got it in my head that Dr. Kelman got himself killed by an angry mob a little while ago for kidnapping too many people and doing horrible brain experiments on them, and Smiler just escaped the chaos and has been traveling ever since. And while I haven't QUITE decided if Mar-Mal is a thing in this verse or not yet, I'm leaving the door open for them to exist and have contacted Smiler -- if Girl Genius can start leaning into the main characters interacting with beings from other planes of reality, I can too, damn it. :P Gotta explain the yellow eyes somehow!

...aaand that was more author's notes than I expected for this piece. ^^; What can I say, I really like adapting Smiler to new situations. Dunno if I'm gonna do anymore specifically with THIS Smiler anytime soon, but I like having them at the table. Thanks for inspiring me to stick them in this verse, Gigs! :) See you in a few hours for the daily round-up!

Non-Fallout Sunday

Jun. 29th, 2025 11:50 pm[personal profile] crossover_chick
crossover_chick: gif of Doc gasping (BTTF: EEK)
Yes, in a possibly-shocking turn of events, I ended up NOT watching Jon's latest Fallout: London video tonight, even though it was actually pretty short (only 32 minutes). Reason? Well, it took me longer than anticipated to do some of my write-ups and answer Moose's messages (as you will see below) -- and while I was showering after my workout, it suddenly hit me that I also still hadn't written anything on "The Van Dort Vacancy." So after supper, I looked at what I still had to do, and quickly realized that working on my story and watching Jon's latest FO:L episode were mutually exclusive. And when it came down to it --

I wanted to write more on "The Van Dort Vacancy" more. So the FO:L video went into my Watch Later, and there was no YouTube at all tonight. *sigh* What I should have done was make the FO:L video my workout video, as it was actually uploaded in time for that once...but hindsight is twenty-twenty. At least this upcoming week is a short week, and I'll have some extra time over my long weekend to catch up! Maybe I can make it my workout video on Friday, in fact, it's short enough to fit into a bike session...we'll see!

In the meantime, here's what I did accomplish today:

Tumblr: Welp, nothing happened on Valice Multiverse today – which is absolutely fine, as I was busy enough over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)! I had an extremely productive couple of hours over there before lunch, in fact (partially helped by the fact that lunch was late today, admittedly, but still):

A) First, I reblogged some stuff I’d seen on my dash that I’d been meaning to get to, including:

I. TheSatiricalDemon doing a silly post where Victor and Gef The Talking Moongoose (a goofy cryptid important to “Beneath A Broken Sky,” his eldritch hellworld Valice story) shared some dialogue from Deltarune, the episodic sequel to smash hit Undertale, with Victor being surprised to hear from Gef while in the Dark World, and Gef assuring him he (Gef) had some time before he “dissipated.” I’m not familiar with Deltarune at all, so I have no idea what this is all about, but I like Satirical and his stuff, so I felt I ought to reblog just because of that :) Solidarity!

II. A comic by “heyitsjaki” featuring Gale of Baldur’s Gate III setting up a (literally) magical moment in what I believe was supposed to be the Shadow-Cursed Lands so he could finally tell Jaki’s Tav how he felt about her – only to be left hanging because Jaki ended up getting distracted flirting with the projection of himself Gale sent to fetch her. As the caption said, Gale somehow managed to roll both a Nat 1 AND a Nat 20 on “impressing his crush.” XD Really beautiful artwork, and a lot of fun!

III. A post by “greelin” simply saying “to bite. fondly” and its follow-up about how “love is stored in the throat offered willingly AND in the teeth sinking in. Or something.” This just spoke to me as a Valice/Valicer mood when I saw it on my dash – specifically, a “Londerland Bloodlines”-related one, given how happily Victor allows Alice to drink from him (and will allow Smiler to do the same later, if I ever get to that installment in the series). There’s just something about Victor so willingly offering himself up to his loves, even when he knows Alice or Smiler could really hurt him if the wanted… Though I admitted in the tags that it’s quite possible I just feel this way because I gave Victor a thing for having his neck nibbled. XD Still good!

IV. And a poll by “writerpolls” about what boon you would pick from the magical tree that gives writers magical bonuses ranging from “never having writer’s block again” to “being paid five cents for every word of sincere creative writing you write!” I unfortunately found it too late to vote, but I reblogged it anyway to rant in the tags about how I would have chosen the first option, “Time pauses when you get in the writing flow for as long as you’re in the flow” in a HEARTBEAT. Because my problem, always, is that I never have enough time to do everything I want to do, especially when it comes to my writing. If I could have time just pause every time I was really in the groove – hooo boy, you’d have already seen a lot more Valicer In The Dark from me, that’s for sure! Plus proper longform stories for a bunch of the other ideas in my head. *sigh* Why is this tree not real?

B) I also liked one post for later – a set of Dead Boy Detectives screenshots with tumblr text posts pasted onto them (a common meme format over there). Reason? I looked at the text posts included, and thought, “You know, if I clipped those out, I think I could do something with my Valicer trio with them…” So yeah, perhaps that’s a project for the long weekend. :P

C) I then decided that, since I actually had a spare moment, I should make a post that I’ve been meaning to make for a while – specifically, pleading with the larger tumblr community for help in figuring out what’s going on with my Sims 4 Smiler’s suddenly-non-glowing yellow eyes and how to fix it! Because every time I try to find a fix, or some CC yellow glowing eyes, I come up short. I’ve talked about the issue before on here, but if you want a refresh, complete with visual aids, the post is here for your perusal. I don’t know if I’m going to get any response at all (remember how happy I was to get two whole votes on my poll regarding what I should do class-and-background-wise for my Tav!Smiler in BG3?), but it’s out there now, so I can at least say I tried. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that either someone DOES give me some advice, or that the July 1st patch fixes this issue!

D) And finally, right before we ate, I started working on another post I’ve been meaning to write up for a while in my drafts – one explaining my ideas for my hopeful Teen Valicer Save file! Covering how I think this file is going to be exactly the right level of complex for me not to get overwhelmed (unlike some of my past challenge ideas – I did love throwing overly-complicated rules into those), and some of what I want to do with my beloved OT3 as they brave high school, college, and whatever lies beyond! I got up to talking a bit about what I want to do with Smiler specifically before lunch happened – hopefully tomorrow I can work on it some more so I can use it as my post for this Wednesday’s queue!
Whew – lot going on over here today! But it felt good to make progress on some stuff that’s been sitting around in the back of my head for ages!

Superliminal: I played through the “Cubism” level today in my search for collectibles – in fact, I played through it twice, because the guide I was using to collect all said collectibles for some reason didn’t have them listed in order of where they were in the level (instead grouping them via category), so I had to use the level select to go through it again and get the chess pieces I missed the first time. *grumbles* Guide creator, you let me down here! But I did get everything in the end, including:

A) The constellation room – which was hidden in the darkness beside the entrance to the backstage area that leads to the level proper (it’s just past the reception area, with a sign in it warning you of upcoming dice); you have to turn around and go to the left of the doorway into the shadows, and that leads you down a dark hallway into the star-filled room! The constellation this time was a coffee cup – took me a minute to get the stars lined up properly, but it wasn’t very hard to do. :) I like these rooms – all the stars everywhere are so pretty!

B) The pink king chess piece – stuck in the vent in the room where, when you try to pick up the die to form a stair up to the exit up on the ledge, you find it’s in two pieces. The best way to get at it, as per my guide, is to bring the die you used to get up onto the ledge in the previous puzzle room into the two-piece die room, then use that and the two die halves to form a big stairway up to the vent so you can peek in and click on it. The guide said you have to get really close, but I found that as long as you’re close enough to see it, you should be able to click it.

C) The pink queen chess piece – hidden atop another rectangular vent piece in the backstage room past the bit where you have to drop through a hole in the floor to proceed (because picking up the die in the hallway picks up a chunk of floor with it, and if you try to continue through the art gallery, you come to a taped-off doorway you can’t go through), just next to the soda vending machine. The guide recommended that you bring the grate from the vent you have to slip through to access the room to form a ramp up to the piece – I managed to get my grate the right size, but couldn’t get it at QUITE the right angle, so I had to jump up and down atop the grate a few times before I managed to successfully click on the piece and collect it. At least I know that’s a viable strategy for some of the harder stuff to get!

D) The first blueprint of the level – hidden in the room with all the dice that, when you try to pick them up, prove to be instead the tips of big hunks of wood that you can slide either up and down or left and right (with the way you get out of the room being to slide one die into the floor, then slide another one across the room over it to form a platform you can jump off of to reach the ledge where the exit is). The blueprint is stored atop a vent high up on the wall that, when you click on it, proves to be another wood chunk you can slide in and out – the guide said that the best way to reach was to get out of the room, grab the rubber duck out of the bucket in the backstage area just past it (where it’s floating around on the water the bucket’s collected under a drip), then take it back into the room and make it big before getting it to fall in a position where you can climb up it and onto the extended vent to see the blueprint. Which is a task and a half, let me tell you, because not only does the rubber duck squeak adorably whenever you pick it up, it also bounces around much less adorably whenever you let it go! It took a bit of doing for me to get it both big enough AND to land in a position where I could climb it! But I succeeded after a few tries and a bunch of duck bouncing, and I collected the blueprint –

Aaaand I just realized that there’s probably a way easier way to do this – get atop the die that you need to slide into the floor to escape the room, and pull it up underneath you until you reach the vent. Because I’m pretty positive the game will happily let you manipulate things you’re standing on. *facepalm* Well, nothing to do about it now!

E) And the second blueprint of the level – hidden atop the big ledge in the final room of the level, which normally you can’t get up onto because there’s nothing you can use to climb up there (no dice or pieces of same that you’re allowed to pick up). As per the guide, I beat this restriction by grabbing one of the cubes that the first big die in the previous room breaks into when you try to use it to climb up another ledge and taking it with me as I made my way into the second big die and down the drop into the final room that it hides (again, weird game) to use as a stair. And to my delight, once I got atop that ledge, I not only found the blueprint around the corner, but also a fire extinguisher to empty! :D Because I’m still trying to get the achievement for emptying all of THOSE too. So yes, nice bonus, that!

So yay, another level cleared! Totally cleared, in fact, as – as per the level select screen – I’d gotten everything in there except the chess pieces when I had to do my second run. Still missing a fire extinguisher somewhere in “Optical,” though...and a bunch of stuff in future levels, but we’ll worry about THOSE when we get to them. Anyway, here is my list of Other Fun Stuff I found in the level while going around solving puzzles and trying to get goodies:

I. I noticed last time that the computer in the reception area you go through while on your way to the levels proper shows a chess game between a handful of pink and blue pieces, with a bunch of other “invisible” pieces shown only via outline; however, when I looked at it this time, I realized that I think it updates to show what pieces you have collected/can collect in previous levels! Because the chess game on the computer screen this featured a blue pawn, a blue knight, and a pink rook, and – okay, my guide says that the pieces you can get from the previous level are a blue pawn, a blue knight, and a pink pawn, but it’s possible whoever made it didn’t get a good look at the rook chess piece. (In fact, thinking about it, I’m not sure if that “king” I picked up really was a king, or a bishop…) The point is, I think the computer keeps track of your chess collectibles! I’ll have to check again when I pass through reception on my way into the “Blackout” level next time – would be neat if the image DOES update to show what pieces you’ve collected!

II. I advanced my ongoing quest to learn all the “tag lines” of the various sodas dispensed by the vending machines you find in reception and the backstage areas by purchasing and reading the cans for “Random Soda” (whose tag line is, appropriately, just a bunch of question marks – “???????????????”) and “Mini Soda” (“The North Star Drink,” apparently – and yes, when it gets vended, it is EXTREMELY tiny). Just gotta do “Water Soda” now!

III. However, while getting my initial soda, I also learned that you can read at least some of the tag lines on the buttons for the various sodas on the vending machine itself, if you get up REALLY close to it – and that the one for “Diet Soda” is different on its button! The can just reads “Smooooooooooth!” but the button reads “Made with real avocados!” Referencing the fact that it’s in a light green can, I guess. I wonder why they changed it on the can itself? Mystery for the ages…

IV. There’s an interesting-looking wiring diagram by a “Dr. K” in the side office where you find the first cube in the first room of the level proper...along with a gap in the wall that really SEEMS like it should lead to a secret, but does not. I would have stuck something fun in there myself!

V. And in the floor crawlspace area you have to walk through, there’s three things you can pick up and take with you into the next room if you so choose – the grate over the vent you need to crawl though; a big golden chess piece, lurking in the darkness; and the light illuminating the vent! I knew about the grate and the chess piece, but I don’t think I ever really realized you could take the light with you too. I wonder if it would have been easier to climb up THAT to the queen chess piece…

And there you have it – another level of the Superliminal Collectibles Run completed! Next time, we take on the horror-themed level “Blackout,” and I read through the entire section in my guide BEFORE starting to play so I can get everything in one run. :P

Writing: I may have got to this late, but I got to it, typing up another page on “The Van Dort Vacancy!” This chunk featured Alice changing into the servant’s dress Smiler grabbed for her at the end of the last page, commenting on how this wasn’t how she expected to spend her day, and how she’d love to keep the dress if she could, given how nice it was (Cheshire let her know that if she did her job well, she’d be rewarded – though she shouldn’t assume the “job” was the one in front of her – an annoyed Alice was like “enjoying confusing me again, I see”); Alice seeing Smiler in their Van Dort livery and being like “it is very weird to see you in anything other than yellow or black” (a sentiment Smiler themselves agreed with); and the pair getting their aprons on while Alice prepared to stow her bag with their clothes in an empty cubby, talking about how Victor would probably help them get the bag back later, and how angry he seemed about Barry the butler calling them “not the same caliber” as the guests...which led to them admitting to each other that they weren’t exactly keen on leaving him here, given his parents decided to throw a party for the upper crust rather than dedicating all their resources to finding their son. Alice isn’t sure what they can do about it, though...meaning tomorrow, Smiler shall remind her that Elder Gutknecht’s house can TECHNICALLY fit three...

Workout: Back on the bike tonight, and back with the Oxventure channel as I finally started “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 1: Folkmoot!” The first episode of the first season of their new Oxventure D&D series (now that the original “Oxventurers’ Guild” characters have been largely retired apart from the occasional live show), featuring a whole new setting and a whole new set of weirdos to cause chaos within it. And judging by what Johnny told us about the world and the special homebrew mechanics they’re using, there’s going to be a loooot of chaos… The first half-hour or so that I pedaled through today featured:

A) Johnny introducing everyone to the world of Heorth, a land rich in magic that was once ruled by giants; then colonized by the Wild Folk once they went away; then found by the “common folk,” who – after a some initial troubles – found a way to live in peace with the Wild Folk in the eleven regions that made up the land (Wyrdwood, pronounced “weirdwood,” being the central one). Things were great for centuries, with the common folk living in harmony with their fey neighbors thanks to various bargains and treaties they’d worked out, and using magic to do things like make their horses run supernaturally fast for long periods of time without injury, or speed the growth and yield of crops –

Aaand then some sort of mysterious sonic boom seemed to split the sky, and after that, magic became incredibly unstable, prone to causing weird and random side effects when cast. The infrastructure of Heorth promptly collapsed, so reliant was it on magic, and the titular “folkmoot” was called in Wyrdwood so people could come and discuss the problem and how to fix it. Because it needs very badly to be fixed – both to save the roads and crops and whatnot, but ALSO because the various bargains they’ve struck with the Wild Folk require magic to be renewed…

B) Everyone introducing their new characters, who found themselves on the road to the folkmoot for one reason or another:

I. Luke is Happen, a human Swarmkeeper Ranger (constantly surrounded by little sprites with very big eyes and LOTS of teeth) who lives in the Balewood, another part of Heorth, and is part of a religious order that venerates the goddess of luck and thus rejoices in the extremes of good luck AND bad luck – he was on the road (or in a hedge beside it, technically) because, well, order in his order was breaking down, with arguments breaking out in the aftermath of magic breaking, and he wanted to venture out and find a way to fix things and restore peace

II. Jane is Willowfine, an aasimar (aka a partial angel, with soft feathers growing from her shoulders and star-shaped freckles) cleric from the village of Langtree in Fenfold – she was on the road because she’d been sent by the Great Mother of her village to see what had happened to magic and how to fix it, because without it, her village would be ruined

III. Andy is Robin Oatcake, a human commoner (aka someone with NO special skills at all) from Wenlock, a village in the east – he was on the road because weird shit had been happening to him lately (like waking up in strange places, or people straight-up disappearing around him), and when he went to the local apothecary and had his sickness drawn out and put into a goat, the goat somehow ended up taking over his house. As in, it took over the lease and everything. XD So Robin decided to set off and see the world, and hopefully figure out what was happening to him along the way! Also, worth noting that he has interesting two-toned hair – one side blond, one side black. I wonder if that will be important in any way…

IV. Ellen is Cressida Blackwater, a human-elf hybrid wizard from the port town of Metan-Sei – she was on the road because she was fleeing the town after the failure of magic caused the spells on the money in the bank she and her family managed to fail, leading to a lot of townsfolk suddenly losing a lot of cash. Which, um, as you might expect, they were not happy about. In fact, one was unhappy enough that he cursed Cressida – and because of the instability of magic, that caused her to grow a pair of ram’s horns. She pretty much hopped the first carriage out of there after that!

V. And Mike is Lug, a firbolg (according to dnd5e.wikidot.com, these are “distant cousins of giants” – oooh – who have a strong connection to nature; looks-wise he’s a blue-gray humanoid with long ears, as per his character art) barbarian who lived in the Wyrdwood itself and helped guide people through it for a small fee – he was on the road because...well, he was being chased by ten angry farmers with various farming implements, who thought he was responsible for the breaking of magic and wanted to kill him as a result. Uh-oh.

C) Everyone meeting via the medium of seeing Lug being chased by the farmers, which resulted in –

I. Lug getting pulled into the hedges by Happen, who proceeded to get very up close and personal with the unnerved barbarian because he wanted to bask in his aura of bad luck; Lug ALSO did not like Happen’s little sprite friends with all the teeth

II. Robin attempting to send the farmers off in the wrong direction, only to roll poorly on the Charisma check to convince them; fortunately the farmers rolled poorly on their attack roll, meaning Robin only got a light clout around the ear for saying that maybe the guy went up into the sky XD

III. Cressida attempting to cast the “Friends” cantrip to make the farmers more agreeable while talking to them, only for the NPC she was talking to to roll a nat 20 on resisting her magic (though he at least did still talk with her, explaining about why they wanted to kill the firbolg for apparently helping break magic). This at least allowed Johnny to explain the “magic debt” system they were using for this campaign, where every spell someone casts increases their “debt” to magic, and then at the end of each session everyone who has a magical debt has to roll the terrifyingly big D100. If they roll their number or under, Johnny will present them with an envelope, and the next time they do magic, they must open the envelope to discover what the consequences will be. Johnny said that SOME of the consequences might be good, or at least a mix of good and bad, but my money’s on most of them being bad…

IV. Robin attempting to pretend to search the hedge that Lug and Happen were hiding in to give them time to escape – only for Happen to yank HIM into the hedge too XD

V. Willowfine desperately trying to distract the farmers with a long rambling story about firbolgs and how they couldn’t possibly be responsible for the breaking of magic – and actually rolling well enough on the Charisma check to keep their attention despite them angrily demanding moments earlier that everyone either help them search or get out of their way XD

VI. And Happen, realizing the men weren’t going away anytime soon, popping out of his hedge and casting Web upon them, snaring all but the two strongest and starting combat! So far, Happen’s taken a sickle to the shoulder (thrown, causing a nasty gash by his collarbone), while Willowfine has avoided injury, but had the chainmail under her robes revealed, causing the farmers to think she’s a brigand and this was some sort of ambush. I left it off with the turn order turning to Lug – we’ll see how he handles these men, and where the story goes from here, tomorrow!

Other:

-->Despite the hot weather, we did get out for beanbags (it wasn’t oppressively humid and there was a bit of a breeze, plus we play in the shade of the house, so it wasn’t horrible out there) – and I ended up having a really good day this time winning three out of five games, yay! :D One in three throws no less! Dad won the other too, and Mom...well, poor Mom did her best. XD Final scores were me 2-W-W-3-W; Dad W-2-2-W-2; Mom 3-3-3-2-3. I’ll take that, especially after how shitty I did on Friday! Though hopefully if we play tomorrow, Mom will get a win – it’s more fun if everybody wins a round.

-->And despite getting to it a bit later than I wanted and getting interrupted midway through working on the second message because of the above beanbags, I did answer all of Moose’s messages, hooray! Didn’t want to leave them sitting around any longer – ball’s in your court, Moose!

Whew! You see why I didn't have the time to watch any videos. Hell, I'm STILL going to bed later than I should just because it took me that long to finish up all that! Yeah, delaying the further adventures of Lady Aria was definitely the right idea...anyway, yes, I need to go get some sleep, since I DO have work in the morning! Night all!

Busyish Saturday

Jun. 28th, 2025 11:48 pm[personal profile] crossover_chick
crossover_chick: picture of Alice (Wonderland) in front of the swirling purple Wonderland tunnel (AMA: Alice down the rabbit hole)
At the very least, I had a very busy night, completing the write-up of the day AND keeping up with conversations with two people, so...yeah. But I got it all done, and am ready to share with you my accomplishments:

Tumblr: Had a pretty productive day on both tumblrs, I’m happy to report –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I spent the time before lunch (and a bit of the time afterward, mostly because lunch was earlier than I expected today) in the drafts over here, writing up a new Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes collection for the Modern Valicer AU, featuring a bunch of scenes revolving around the trio deciding to move in together! Specifically, it featured:

I. Victor bringing up the idea of moving in together while the trio were hanging out at his apartment, and Smiler and Alice agreeing they were ready too – and then Victor saying he had the perfect place for them to live picked out already and showing them a listing for a cottage in rural Lithuania on his phone (referencing an earlier set of scenes where he was charmed by Matt’s pictures of a vacation the Altons took there, and Smiler told their dad not to sell him too much on it as they wanted them all to live in a place with decent internet), causing Alice to crack up and Smiler to thwap him with a pillow

II. The gang actually searching for places to live on Victor’s computer, with Smiler and Alice discussing price points and how they were probably not going to be able to afford anywhere too expensive...and then Victor going “EXCUSE ME” and reminding them that he’s a member of one of the richest families in the country and that he could buy them EACH a house if he wanted XD

III. The gang shopping for stuff for their new house at HomeSense (the European version of the Home Goods store), and Smiler discovering a horrible hand chair covered with mirrors and summoning Victor and Alice to behold the horrors via text (this is actually one I’ve had lurking in my docs for a while, inspired by my mom telling me about seeing such a monstrosity at a Home Goods months ago – just wish I could have found a picture to link to!)

IV. The gang shopping for groceries for the new place, and Smiler coming across a box of Hostess Meltamors and showing it to Alice and Victor, with both of them being amused by the name but Alice sure they could make their own, better lava cakes (another prewritten one, inspired by the FIRST post I reblogged about that snack (the one I ended up deleting after the original blogger deleted their original post after my reblog, making me feel weird about keeping it up) – I thought this particular scene would have to remain a private thing for me, but when I spotted that NEW post about the snack on PolyamorousMood’s blog (the one I reblogged earlier this week), I realized I could both reblog THAT without fear of it going walkabout AND finally post this bit :D)

V. And the gang settling in on their couch after a long day of moving into their new place, with Smiler commenting to Victor that marriage must be the next step, only for Victor to admit he doesn’t want to marry either unless he can marry both – cue Alice and Smiler reassuring him that “hey, if you choose to marry one of us, we will not take it as you deciding you love that person more, we’re secure in our feelings here” –

And Victor responding, “that’s very sweet of you, but I’m actually worried about my parents being able to cut whichever one of you isn’t my spouse out of our lives should something happen to me.” Which they had to agree was logical. :( At least an unofficial group wedding is still on the table!

So yeah, that was fun. :D Hoping to post that sucker up maybe Thursday or Friday, so I can link to it when I reblog a certain “weddings masterpost” next Monday...

Valice Multiverse – And then, tonight, while juggling my convos and write-ups and all that, I got an anon ask over here asking if they cut a Kindred’s hair or nail, could it grow back on its own, or would the Kindred have to spend blood to “heal” it. As I got to it pretty late, I ended up throwing it in the queue with an answer from Londerland Bloodlines!Alice saying, in essence, “I have no idea if we could heal such an ‘injury’ with blood, as I’ve never tried, but I do know that our bodies always revert back to the form we were Embraced in when we enter daysleep, so I guess it would grow back on its own, but not before then.” That’s the lore as I (and she) understand it, anyway – we’ll see if I get any corrections later!

Sims 4: I popped back into my current Building Save for about an hour or so today to work on a new project that’s been flitting around my head for the past couple of weeks – designing a tiny caravan home for a traveling potion-selling Smiler, like my Tav!Smiler from Baldur’s Gate III! Because I’ve been thinking a lot about that Smiler lately, and other Smilers like them, and I really wanted to get a handle on what I think their mobile home and selling station would actually look like. The build’s still in the early stages yet, but I made some decent progress bringing the idea to life:

A) I started off by heading over to Newcrest in the save and picking one of the tiny 20x15 lots to build on – might as well use a tiny lot for a tiny house, right? I then changed the lot type from a regular residential to a Tiny House Residential because – well, again, building a tiny house here. Might as well see how small I could reasonably make it and how many bonuses I could get for Smiler on this lot! XD

B) With that sorted, I made a list of things that Smiler definitely needed in the build – namely, a space to sell their various potions and elixirs from; a space to actually live in; and enough room in one of those areas to fit the big Realm Of Magic cauldron (kind of necessary for any alchemists in this game). I thus bought the fancier of the two cauldrons (mostly because it had the right yellow-and-black color scheme, but also why SHOULDN’T Smiler get a fancy cauldron) and the food selling table from Home Chef Hustle (I probably could have gotten any selling table, but I really like that one in particular – went with the “rainbow” color swatch, as I did back in the Chill Valicer Save), then built a big old rectangle –

And quickly realized, “yeah, a micro home isn’t happening here.” XD Smiler needed the space of a Tier 2 “Tiny Home” in order to fit both the selling table and the cauldron! I decided that was fine (you still get some good bonuses with a “Tiny Home,” including lower bills and faster skill gain) and made a decently-sized rectangle, rotating it so the long end faced the street and bringing it up on some foundation…

C) And then went “Hmmm – should I put curved walls on either end to soften the edges? Or is that going to fuck things up with the foundation, given I know these things are prone to glitches?” I thus got a small curved-wall room and tried raising it up on the foundation to see what would happen –

And to my relief, no, there seemed to be no glitches, visual or otherwise! I thus attached two curved rooms to each end of my rectangle, turning it into a sort of a pill shape, and removed the interior walls they brought along with them so I could decide on my own layout later. Once that was done, I considered the shape for a moment, trying to decide if I really liked it or not…

D) Then went “eh, I’ll figure it out in a minute” and moved on to trying to find a good stilt foundation (because I wanted something that looked like it could potentially have wheels attached to it). XD Because figuring out shapes is hard than it seems, damn it! Anyway, I settled on a base game foundation with round posts (thought that looked better than the square-post ones – there’s way too many posts under the house, admittedly, but it gets the idea across), then grabbed the black-and-yellow spiral door from the Crypt-O-Club “Creepy Creations” CC I currently have in my game to use as an entrance (because what other door COULD I possibly use for Smiler?), before attempting to figure out both the internal layout (where I wanted the cauldron, the selling table, and any other items of interest) and which of the wooden slatted stair options I wanted to attach to the side of the caravan. After considering the three on offer, I again went “I will figure this out in a moment” and headed up to the top of the caravan to try and roof it and get that out of the way, at least –

And realized – oh fuck. If I have curved wall sections in my build, I have to roof them. D: And a flat roof, like I did on the main Polyheart OT3 house, would NOT work for this build. I spent roughly three seconds trying to see if I could get a round roof to work on the ends of the build –

E) And then went “nope, I wasn’t 100% sold on the shape anyway, let’s go back to a rectangle!” XD So I moved the food stall and the cauldron back to the back of the lot, added a bit of wall so I could stick the front door on there, then deleted my pill-shaped caravan and redid it as a 55-tile rectangle instead. I then proceeded to raise it up and redo my stilt foundation – this time in a kicky black, as it occurred to me to check the color options this time around –

Then began looking at how best to open up a chunk of the side of the caravan to create the selling area! Because the caravan in my head had a big old window on the side with a counter, from which Smiler sold their wares (...kind of like an ice cream truck, now that I’m thinking about it), so the Sims 4 version needed a section open to the outside so I could put the selling table in there. I initially played around with some of the big arches near the bottom of the “doors and doorways” section, but quickly realized that none of them would be big enough to show off the whole food stand and allow Sims proper access to it. So instead I turned to columns and spandrels, grabbing a couple of Life & Death old weathered columns in black and sticking them on the side of the caravan on either side of where I wanted the selling area to be, then grabbing the matching spandrel –

Aaand then discovered that, when I tried to place the spandrel, the game replaced the entire wall with spandrels, instead of just one section. O.o Uh, game, Smiler does need SOME actual walls on that side… Fortunately, I quickly realized that the issue was probably because I needed to divide the caravan into distinct rooms to make the spandrel only take out a specific chunk of the side, so I put some walls behind the columns, and voila! Only the space between the two columns was cut out by the spandrel! :D I ended up going with the fancy Realm Of Magic spandrel over the Life & Death spandrel in the end, because it again had the right color scheme – but I’m not entirely sure it matches the rest of the build, honestly. I’m keeping it for now as a placeholder, but I do intend to try out other spandrels to see what they look like and if I prefer any of them.

F) With THAT section done, I turned my attention to figuring out what I wanted the exterior of the caravan to look like. I plopped a nice simple hipped roof on the top of the rectangle (puffing it out slightly so it formed a nice curve over the top), then sorted the “paneling” and “siding” options by yellow and black swatches to see what I liked for a nice wood exterior. Ended up deciding that the worn bright yellow “Walk The Plank” siding from Island Living was the right vibe and painted all the remaining exterior walls with that, then applied the same color filters to my roof options to see what might look nice. There weren’t a lot of good options, I admit – most things looked too modern, especially all the metal roofs – but the Werewolves “Pig #2’s Mossy Wood Shingles” in black actually looked quite cute as a roof texture! So naturally I went with that. :) It really needed a roof trim to bring the whole thing together, though, so I went into that section and considered my options for a while –

And, surprisingly enough, settled on the really big and chonky “beveled” roof trim, because it genuinely looked the best to me. All the other ones seemed too thin for this particular build! Who woulda thunk… Anyway, I applied that to the sides of the roof, made the roof itself a little higher to better fit with the trim –

G) And with that, it was time to adjust the position of the house on the lot (I wanted it a little further back on the grass) and figure out the damn stair situation! Because I knew what kind of stairs I wanted – wooden slatted ones, since those to me looked the most like the kind of stairs that might fold up into a caravan (as opposed to, you know, a bunch of stone ones), but I couldn’t pick between the Seasons, base game, or Island Living ones on offer. I thus sorted them by color (no good yellow swatches, but fortunately they all had good black ones), then put an example of each on the side of the caravan. After looking at them all, I decided that the Seasons “Simple Slatted Stairway” looked the most like fold-up caravan stairs to me, and put one set in front of the door and a trio of three on the side of the selling area so Sims could climb up and actually buy things from the stand. *nods* Everything was coming together at last!

H) ...And then I remembered that Smiler actually has to live in this caravan too and went “damn, do I have enough room for them to do so?” I thus went over the essentials in my head – place to sleep, place to cook food, place to do alchemy, place to use the toilet – and started checking out my options (of course starting with the stuff that actually came with the Tiny Living pack, because why wouldn’t I? :P) I ended up buying the “Burst of Pride” single bed for them to sleep in (non-binary swatch, of course – might be too modern for this particular build, but I like it); the Realm of Magic fridge and matching stove and one of the Snowy Escape counters (the ones with all the shelves underneath, as I figured that would maximize storage space) for the kitchen area; the Cottage Living short ceiling lantern (the one that has a description that’s a story by “Bagatha Cripstea”) to light the interiors so I could see what I was doing; and the Realm Of Magic “Portal Potty” toilet for the bathroom (because when you’re in a mobile home, having a toilet that flushes your waste straight into another dimension would be fucking useful). I was easily able to stick the toilet in the really small and thin room on the right side of the selling area, and set up the kitchen stuff and Smiler’s bed in the little square room on the left side, next to the front door –

But then I ran into a problem – namely, that there was no room anywhere to stick Smiler’s alchemy cauldron. Mainly because this thing be fucking BIG, yo. The footprint is a nine-by-nine square, and that means it’s hard to shove it into a small space! I did temporarily think of just replacing the kitchen stuff with the cauldron – after all, Sims can cook in it – but decided against it, because Smiler is a professional when it comes to their alchemy and wouldn’t want to use their potion-making cauldron to make food. (Besides, you can literally only make chili or mac-and-cheese in it if I remember right.) I also tried to make the caravan a little wider – but that brought it over the 64-tile-limit for “Tiny” houses and made a “Small” house, which I didn’t really want. And so I was left feeling rather stuck…

I) And then I noticed just how loud my poor computer’s fan was getting and decided “okay, that’s probably enough Simming for today anyway.” XD Yeah, the poor thing’s been running a little hot whenever I play this game lately (probably because I’ve added a bunch more packs since I got the computer, and also the computer is almost five years old at this point), and I didn’t want to overstress it. So I saved my progress and closed the game. My ORIGINAL intention with that was to let my computer calm down and cool off a bit, then pop back into the game really quickly to get a screenshot (to reference and maybe share with all of you) –

But when I went to open up the game again, I was startled to see that it told me that there was an update required! When had that happened? Well, as it turns out, June 17th – there was a small bugfix patch released on that date. I’m not sure why the game didn’t prompt me to patch when I first loaded in – but then again, when I started up the EA App today, IT had to update too, so maybe it didn’t immediately realize that the game had to update as well. (Hell, maybe that’s why my computer’s fan started to whine like it did – the game suddenly realizing “hey, there’s a patch waiting” and trying to download it/get my attention.) *shrug* Either way, I didn’t feel like taking my CC out to do the update – not with another, much bigger update coming on Tuesday – so I decide I could leave things as they were and get pictures of the build later. There’s not really much to see yet anyway.

And there you have it! Start of a new build! Dunno how long I’m going to be working on it, I admit – I do really want to start my Teen Valicer Save file already – but it’s there whenever I want to poke at it. Just be nice to be able to make something that I could use as a reference for any Smilers I write who might need that kind of caravan! Plus it should be a fun build – making a tiny home is always a challenge for me, and I’m eager to see if I can keep this one under 64 tiles! Maybe if I make it a little wider but also a little shorter...hmmm...

Writing: Got another good chunk done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” today, with Smiler and Alice discovering the chaotic kitchen of the Van Dort mansion! Run by head chef Mrs. Pemberly – call her “ma’am.” XD She spotted the pair pretty quickly and rushed over to demand who they were and say if they were guests they had to get out – Smiler promptly turned on the charm and told her that they were new hires, sent down by Mrs. Van Dort to assist!

...Mrs. Pemberly was promptly like “hang on, if you’re new kitchen staff, I would have had a hand in hiring you, and I don’t recognize either of you at all.” Smiler quickly claimed that they were just general dogsbodies, not specifically kitchen staff, but Mrs. Pemberly remained suspicious –

And then one of the actual kitchen staff knocked over another person’s cheese tray, and she was like “oh fuck it, we need the help, we’ll discuss if you’re actual staff or not later, go throw on some uniforms.” XD I left off with Alice and Smiler heading over to the staff changing room across the hall, preparing to put on the Van Dort livery – tomorrow, they head back into the kitchen freshly changed and ready to help, if only to keep their cover!

YouTube: Didn’t get to everything I hoped to watch today, but I got the three longest videos out of the Watch Later tonight, so that was good –

A) First up, we had the OXBoxtra lists of the week:

I. “7 Times GTA Annoyed People More than the GTA 6 Delay” – Ellen and Jane talking about the various controversies the GTA franchise has weathered during its lifetime, in honor of GTA VI being delayed until May 2026 and people being furious about it! This list of course included the infamous “Hot Coffee” debacle (where a modder revealing that GTA San Andreas had unused playable sex scenes in it caused the media blow-up of the decade and got Hilary Clinton to investigate the company) and Jack Thompson’s repeated rages against the series (to the point where he apparently sent a letter to the mother of one of the publisher’s top executives, berating her for her son releasing “pornography and violence” on other mother’s sons), but it also included GTA V releasing an expansion that essentially allowed people to gamble with real money in a virtual casino (as you could pay for the chips with real cash), which gave fans the ick; GTA IV allowing the protagonist to drive drunk, which Mothers Against Drunk Driving found despicable (to be fair, though, the protagonist himself says you shouldn’t do it, and the cops WILL chase you down for doing it); and the infamous torture scene from GTA V, which was long, graphic, and horrified pretty much everyone who wasn’t Rockstar (with some fans saying that they wouldn’t have bought the game if they’d known about the scene’s inclusion). Basically, the GTA VI delay is probably the least controversial brouhaha that Rockstar’s stirred up in its time making the franchise! Enjoy it while it lasts, because I’m sure something worse will pop up once the game is actually released!

II. “7 Side Quests That Let You Be an Evil B*stard” – Mike, Andy, and Jane talking about those side quests in games that let you indulge your most evil impulses, should you be so inclined! From framing an innocent party for the capture of Boone’s pregnant wife Carla by Caesar’s Legion and tricking Boone into blowing their head off in Fallout: New Vegas (and then, if you’re so inclined and think you can beat him in a fight, telling him what you did), to setting up a lovely date for your mechanic Parvati and her crush in The Outer Worlds – only to kill the crush in the middle of said date because the game doesn’t stop you from pulling your weapon (and THEN intimidating poor Parvati into continuing to work on your ship for extra evil points), to dumping plague-infected rat viscera into a still designed to create a cure for the disease it’s spreading to please the horrible bitch Granny Rags in Dishonored (and then – nothing, because how do you get more fucked up), these sidequests really let you show off just how much of a bastard you can be! Jack Thompson would be appalled. :P

B) And then it was back over to C. M. Alongi to watch “CaFae Latte Season 67 - TikTok Compilation!” This entry in the series featured:

I. JC and Cyrus catching poor Drek up on all the horrible things in the world after he had to take a month off to help his aunt after she had surgery for cancer – when he asked if there was any GOOD news, though, they were at least able to tell him that Husniya was now working full-time, which he was very pleased about (also Cyrus found his missing pins, JC had date night with Nicole to look forward to, and Bob did a little fourth-wall break to let the audience know that new chibi merch was in the store)

II. Cyrus showing up at the cafe to pick up some Palestinian shawls for Rethu, Amyth, and little Xaytha to give to the dragons at the Beltane festival he was attending with Bob at the coven – the ER nurse regular there was somewhat puzzled, given Rethu is Jewish, and asked if that wasn’t inappropriate in some way, but Cryus said it was not, as Rethu (and many other Jewish folks) did not approve of Israel’s bullshit and were firmly pro-Palestine. And when the nurse brought up Hamas, pointed out that THEY didn’t speak for all of Palestine – after all, it’s not like MAGA speaks for all of America. The nurse was like “...guh, good point, go enjoy your holiday.”

III. Related to the above, another customer coming in on a day when Cyrus and Rethu were manning the counter with JC (and cuddling so Cyrus could beat the cold), seeing Rethu’s Star of David and Palestinian shawl, and informing him (it was an “Uncle” day as per the pin) that wearing the shawl was cultural appropriation – Cyrus quickly corrected her, saying it was only that if you took the symbol without learning anything about it, while Palestinians were encouraging allies to wear the shawl; the customer was like “even Israelis?” forcing Rethu to explain that he’s not Israeli, his family is actually from the Spanish Peninsula – and that his mother actually became a pirate attacking Spanish slaver ships and making friends with the local kraken after the Inquisition kicked them out. The customer was like “…” while Cyrus asked if Rethu’s kraken godfather could visit through the Great Lakes next Beltane. XD

IV. JC asking for next Wednesday off for both a dental appointment and Nicole’s birthday, sharing the cute stuffed llama they got Nicole with Bob and Husniya and talking about their plans (brunch and a trip to see Sinners with Nicole and her parents, as her dad has a birthday around the same time, and then JC cooking them a nice private dinner) – then a mother and her kid, Jamie, showing up to get snacks since Jamie aced a quiz. Jamie got a brownie and the gladiator dates, asking what gladiators were – and then, when JC explained “it’s like wrestlers with swords,” spotted their pin and called them “non-berry.” XD Turns out the kid’s teacher, Mrs. Rivers, has a kid who’s non-binary and thus has the flag up in her room. Jamie happily told them that Mrs. Rivers had said that “non-berry” people were not men or women, that they had the special flag, and they all believe in ghosts...or ARE ghosts? Nobody was sure what that meant until Husniya realized “deadnames” XD

V. JC calling Nicole at a gas station between their dentist and her parents’ house to let her know that they’d be there in about half an hour – cut to the cafe, where Bob and Cyrus had to deal with a vegan personally insulted that Cyrus happens to eat meat (granted, most fairies are also vegan, or at least vegetarian, themselves, but as Bob pointed out, that’s a cultural thing, not biological, and there are always exceptions). Bob ended up cursing the annoyance with silence until she learned not to force her moral code on others, while Cyrus gave a free cookie to a different, more sensible vegan who was like “that idiot does NOT speak for all of us, I swear” – and then Bob answered her phone and learned from Nicole that JC never showed up to brunch…

VI. Bob getting the facts out of Nicole – divination hasn’t turned up anything; she hasn’t heard from them in three hours; phone location share is not working; they don’t know where they were when they last spoke but she can at least give them where their dentist office is and where her parents’ house is so they can search the area – then summoning the troops, getting Husniya to call Rethu and Drek to call Oscar for aerial reconnaissance and Cyrus to call Patrick for tracking any scents on the ground while Nicole called Kelly (JC’s sister), John (JC’s brother), and Pamela (JC’s friend) and learned they didn’t know what had happened to them either. Drek brought up the idea that JC might have crashed and broken their phone, but Bob dismissed that on the basis of they would have been taken to the hospital by now, and their emergency contacts notified; Cyrus then brought up the idea that JC might have been snatched by ICE for being non-binary – Drek and Husniya pointed out that they weren’t an immigrant and were white, respectively, but Cyrus was like “do you REALLY think that would matter?” Causing him to call some of his own contacts – and Husniya to call some of hers, revealing to the others that she was former CIA. Drek was shocked, Cyrus was like “fuck, I could have sworn you were FBI” XD

VII. The search for JC not going well – Cyrus didn’t get any new info on JC (though he did get three new clients as a lawyer, causing him to decide to transition to part-time work at the cafe after this was resolved); Husniya was able to confirm that neither the CIA or Homeland Security had JC (and that she’d happily take Cyrus’s hours); Drek reported Rethu hadn’t seen anything on the route they took, and that Oscar and Patrick were still scouring their path. The group theorized about who could have done this – the Stone Oaks seemed more likely to go after Cyrus in Bob’s opinion, and horrible Bob ex-boyfriend Vlad would have been much less subtle. Cyrus pointed out it could be a horrible ex of JC’s, or even a rando who just wanted to pick a fight with a non-binary person, but Bob thought that if THAT were the case, they would have heard something through official channels, like the hospital or the police, by now. Drek asked if Nicole had seen anything from the future, and Bob said that she’d ask after Nicole’s meeting –

VIII. Cue scene switch to Nicole visiting the prison...and Erik. Who, upon hearing about JC’s disappearance, immediately assumed the worst and that JC had fallen off the wagon again and disappeared to get high. Nicole refused to believe this, insisting that JC had managed to change, even when Erik pointed out “yeah, you guys thought the same thing of me,” but Erik held firm, and offered to give her a list of their old hideouts and dealers. And THEN said that he wouldn’t be surprised if JC had fled to another Realm altogether to avoid Bob’s wrath. Causing Nicole to have a revelation –

And the scene to cut to the Fae Realm, where the Captain of the Guard did indeed have JC in handcuffs –awaiting an audience with the king. Meeeep.

...cue Patreon roll, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! Oh cripes, C. M., really?! Well, looks like I’m going to have to watch Season 68 sooner rather than later – hopefully tomorrow, Monday at the latest! Eeeeeep...

So yeah -- as you might imagine, that last bit was what took the longest. Damn cliffhangers! And long video write-ups...anyway, I really gotta get to bed. Tomorrow, goals include working more on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; finding more collectibles in the next level of Superliminal; answering Moose's messages; working some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and keeping up with the latest from Jon's Fallout: London playthrough. And, as stated, seeing if I can sneak in the next compilation video of CaFae Latte, because damn. O.o We'll see what I manage -- night all!

Decent Friday

Jun. 27th, 2025 11:52 pm[personal profile] crossover_chick
crossover_chick: Victor leaning over to look at a blue butterfly in a glass jar (CB: i has a happy thing)
And we're all very pleased about that. :P Seriously, the weather was pretty nice -- not too hot and with actual SUNSHINE, gasp -- and my day went pretty well, all things considered:

Work – Very quiet Friday to end the week – we had a couple of credit card calls early in the day (an expiration date update and a payment on a pledge), then the rest of the day was just the usual “trying to figure out what to do with myself” routine. I ended up cleaning out a bunch of old paper from my various folders and tossing it in the shredder in the basement to pass the time. Also put on some Easter collection gifts when they arrived in my e-mail inbox and finished off one of the newspaper crosswords I was working on. :p Ended with me and my coworker cutting out about five minutes early because both supervisors were gone already and there was just – nothing happening. *shrug* Could have been worse! We’ll see what Monday is like!

To-Do List

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

A) The second half of James Turner’s “Full renovation of Tiny Town! - Part 29!” Which featured him:

I. Finishing off all the paths around Tiny Town and loading them up with pretty plants along their edges (plus one awkward bench looking at Sonny’s place because James wanted to do a “beach view” XD)

II. Actually removing the path that went around the front of Reuben’s house and instead just shoving more plants in there because the gravel just wasn’t working for him (probably because it sort of highlighted the hard edge of the lot too much, while he could get one or two of the plants to come over the edge)

III. Stressing over how to renovate the interior of the town hall, because he didn’t want to rebuild the whole thing but also he really wasn’t happy with the “hallway” areas or the pool (admitting that he wasn’t sure building a BTTF-style clock tower as the town hall was the smartest move, given it was classic small-town Americana and didn’t fit with the rest of the town...James, NOTHING in Tiny Town fits with anything else, that’s the POINT XD) – he ended up leaving the pool alone, because it would have been too much trouble to renovate it (though he did at least change the tiles in the bathrooms so they better matched the pool area), but ended up completely changing the hallways: swapping out the tiles for carpet, putting up new wood paneling on the wall, changing the fences and stair railings to match the fence he’d used outside and actually removing most of the upstairs hallway because the bit in the middle didn’t actually LEAD anywhere and he thought it looked much better open

IV. Turning the “banquet hall” room into quite a nice “wedding banquet” room for Scarlet and Patchy’s eventual nuptials, complete with the pipe organ that was in there (thanks to Sonny, I’m sure) being given its own special nook and special tables for the champagne and eventual cake :)

V. Making the roof look a bit nicer by clearing off most of the random crap and hiding the weather machine behind the clock better

VI. And revamping the town hall basement by hiding Pablo’s secret vault entrance/exit behind a second wall with a normal door (instead of just having a big old Batuu door between the stairs); turning the “storage room” into a new, better, larger gym; removing the old tiny gym room and sticking a couch and some plants there for people to sit; and reminding himself that he had to have Krystoff paint some more portraits of all the “spares” in Tiny Town, and that he had some photos he had to decide if he wanted to keep or not next to the hallway of Tiny Towners XD

So yeah – Tiny Town is now Officially Renovated! Only thing left now is for James to actually go around and wrap up everyone’s loose ends in gameplay – getting Scarlett and Patchy married; making sure Vivienne gets her Book of Life (as she still lacks one due to being unable to write one for herself); having Krystoff paint all those extra portraits; etc. Which he is determined to do BEFORE Enchanted By Nature comes out and he once again gets distracted. XD We’ll see if he manages it! I would like to see the series wrapped up properly, I admit – it was a lot of fun, and the kids deserve a proper send-off.

B) The entirety of “Baldur’s Gate 3: 9 Tips and Tricks I Wish I Knew Before I Started Playing (No Spoilers)” by Proxy Gate Tactician! One of his earliest videos (looks like it was made while the game was still in Early Access, in fact), this went over all the tips and tricks he thought it very important for a new player to know when they started up Baldur’s Gate III! Which ended up being more than nine, because he included a bunch of “bonus tips” at the very end. XD Anyway, the video included things like:

I. Informing the viewer that the fact that you can pick up locked chests and crates and send them to your camp from your inventory allows you to amass a pile of containers at your camp and smash them open for the goodies within at your leisure

II. A list of the hotkeys that all players should know (in addition to “Alt” for finding goodies in the nearby area, you can also press “C” to hide/crouch (and “Shift+C” to make everyone hide), “Spacebar” to quick-loot containers, and “Z” to jump

III. Explaining how you shouldn’t always go for the spell with the highest damage – other spells with utility effects might be more useful (for example, comparing how “Firebolt” does more damage to a target, but “Ray Of Frost” can freeze blood and water on the ground to create icy surfaces to slip up enemies, and “Sacred Flame” doesn’t need you to fire a projectile, so it has a higher chance to hit if you’re awkwardly positioned)

IV. Telling the viewer that examining enemies to figure out what they’re all about (including, significantly, what they’re weak to and strong against) and using “T” to “inspect” things (like spells and items) to see what bonuses and/or detriments they have is very useful indeed and both abilities should be used liberally

V. And you can always equip a torch in your off-hand to light up rooms and use as a simple melee bludgeoning weapon, because it doesn’t require proficiency to wield correctly – plus it gives wizards and warlocks an emergency melee option if they need it

*nods* All solid stuff! Even if I don’t believe for a second I’m going to remember all the hotkeys. XD I mean, I know “Alt,” I’ve been using that, but – maybe I should write some of these down. XD

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – today’s chunklet featured Alice and Smiler being surprised mid-conversation by the servants’ entrance by a fellow in the Van Dort livery, using a cane and carrying a box! Smiler apologized for being in his way, offered to help with the box, then opened the door for the man when he said he had the box handled because they wanted to do SOMETHING to help. He hobbled in, and Smiler remarked to Alice that the poor guy shouldn’t be lugging around boxes when he had a bad knee –

Causing Alice to go, “well, the Van Dorts do seem the type to make him do that, from what we’ve heard from Victor...but are they the type to hire someone with a bad knee at all?” Making Smiler realize that the guy’s outfit didn’t quite fit, and causing the pair of them to decide to follow him inside and see what he was up to. Just in case whatever he was planning might hurt Victor (they of course gave no shits about Nell or William). He was already gone when they entered the house, but Cheshire indicated that Alice should try a couple of double doors nearby if she wanted to find him… I left off with Alice opening said doors onto chaos – tomorrow, the pair brave the Van Dort kitchen in full “the mistress is having a party” mode! Should be fun. :P

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and I actually did keep up with my Subs tonight, as the video of the evening was “Fun With Shorts: The Dingbat Story” by Josh Way! A surprisingly-long short (seventeen minutes!) first extolling the virtues of the titles on a motion picture and how they allow the viewer to adjust into “movie-watching” mode and give you an idea of what kind of movie you’re about to watch...and then transitioning into an art department being given the task of remaking some simple titles that had a mistake in the final print (the “i” in “The Dingbat Story” being upside-down, which – is something I would have actually EXPECTED for the titles of something called “The Dingbat Story”) and going ENTIRELY OVERBOARD. In a way that allowed the viewers to see how movie titles are made, of course (complete with segments on animation, live action footage, and how they combine that all with the actual text). The actual title sequence at the end may have been extremely overdone and tonally confusing (featuring spliced-in footage of cheerleaders in a stadium full of people in a bat logo, a cartoon bat flapping around the place, and a gratuitous woman in a bikini holding a beach ball to make the “i” in “Dingbat” at one point), but Josh’s riffs were pretty much perfect, highlighting what a goofy mess this all was (and how creepy the men leering at the bikini woman while her stuff was shot really was). And I have to give the film credit, they put in a fun joke at the end (with “THE END” being rendered “TNE EHD” XD). Very enjoyable – I’ve missed him doing these longer shorts in one go, instead of chopping them up to get two or three videos out of them! ...though it occurs to me that this might be a side effect of his channel being officially demonetized...meh. Still gonna enjoy the longer shorts.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – I didn’t have anything pressing to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – nothing I can’t do tomorrow morning, anyway – and there was no activity on Valice Multiverse either. *shrug* Well, nothing wrong with having a quiet night, I suppose. :P

Other: Being the first and only truly nice day this week, we were able to get out and play beanbags today...aaaand I’m back to throwing like absolute garbage, I am sad to report. Mom and Dad were throwing like they’d never stopped playing at all, while I struggled in the last game to get into the double digits, score-wise. *wince* Yes, I got second place once, but trust me, it was sheer luck. Final scores were me 3-2-3; Dad W-3-W; and Mom 2-W-2. We’ll see if I do better the next time we play!

*nods* I'm pretty satisfied with that! And now it's time to start wrapping things up so I can hit the sheets. Tomorrow, plans include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts, getting some posts ready for next week and the upcoming Valicer Anniversary weekend (July 7th is the big date, after all); playing some Sims 4 and working a bit on a new build idea I had while I wait for the July 1st patch that's supposed to fix a bunch of bugs ("Vampires eyes not glowing anymore" was NOT mentioned, but I live in hope); writing more of "The Van Dort Vacancy" (Alice and Smiler braving the Van Dort kitchen!); and hopefully getting a couple of videos out of my Watch Later (if nothing else, I want to watch the next compilation of CaFae Latte I need to catch up on). Fingers crossed these are all achievable goals -- night all!
crossover_chick: Doc in goggles and holding a big old plug with the words "feeling sparky..." (BTTF: feeling sparky/creative)
Yes, I am happy to report that today was not only MUCH cooler (seriously, the temperature just went off the side of a fucking cliff, it was like 70 for a high -- if also rainy, so you couldn't enjoy it THAT much), it was also much calmer, as my write-up should attest to --

Work – Happy to report that today was a much less stressful day than yesterday! The issue with that one anonymous donor’s check was resolved this morning after a talk with my supervisor (and he even called the lady who’s been calling us to explain what happened), and I spent most of the rest of the day working on the obituaries and the related roster maintenance tasks those always bring, broken up by updating a few people’s credit cards on their pledges/ongoing gifts and posting a gift that came in as a direct ACH deposit into our bank account (as per Fiscal). And also we had a little birthday celebration for the assistant director, meaning I got a cupcake to have with my lunch (though I didn’t like it as much as I thought I might – it tasted fine, but it was REALLY soft, meaning it was kind of hard to pick up and eat. I prefer my baked goods to have a touch more structural integrity!). And while there was yet another recital happening in the auditorium, the parking lot wasn’t swarming with dance moms and their kids this time, meaning I was able to get out normally. Whew. Let’s hope Friday is more of the same!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with James Turner because he uploaded a surprising video a couple of days ago: “Full renovation of Tiny Town! - Part 29!” Yes, after five months, James apparently suddenly remembered he’d never actually renovated the common areas of Tiny Town, like he’d promised, and actually got on that! I sincerely thought he’d gotten distracted by all the other stuff he was doing (the Black Widower challenge, updating the empty base game houses after the EAxis refresh of the occupied ones, doing his LPs of The Sims and The Sims 2 when the Legacy editions released, and of course diving into Businesses & Hobbies with another generation of Bigwallets) and that the series was just going to end with Silas’s final episode. But no, it seems he is determined to wrap this thing up properly. Hooray! :D Here’s what happened in the first half of the episode:

A) James reintroducing us viewers to Tiny Town and showing off all of the houses, because, well, it had been a while (to the point where he himself had to occasionally look up whose house was whose XD)

B) James being immediately stymied in his ambitions to renovate the lot because he’d left Tiny Town at the tail end of autumn, meaning there were leaves everywhere obscuring the paths he hoped to repaint. Figures, right? XD He initially considered just playing through the end of autumn and all of winter to get to spring and hopefully nicer weather, but then remembered “oh hey, I got the gang a weather machine to stop it raining constantly” and ended up having Pablo get the necessary Handiness (via making friendship bracelets) to upgrade it to skip the season ahead straight to summer! So all was well – even if James then had to come back to actually do the renovations the next day in real life (represented by a change in hoodie) because he’d used up all his playtime on the set-up. XD

C) James redoing the front of Pablo’s lot so it didn’t stick out into the path so much, using debug Horse Ranch items to give him a nice apocalyptic fence to help delineate better where the common spaces ended and his space began (and thus where the orange sands surrounding his bunker should extend to)

D) James using columns and spandrels, plus some shrunken-down street lamps merged into the columns, to create proper “entrances” to Tiny Town on either side of Reuben’s house

E) James also trimming down the size of the “patio” around Reuben’s house so it didn’t stick out so much, giving him more room for the painted-in path (and not making it look like there was an “alternate path” along the side of Reuben’s house – didn’t quite get that, but it’s James’s build, so what he says goes)

F) James repainting the paths leading into Tiny Town, going around Reuben’s house and into the town square, making them look muddier and dirtier so they matched the vibe of the world better (it IS located in the pastoral landscape of Henford-On-Bagley after all) and surrounding them with lots of pretty flowers, along with a couple of outdoor lanterns and benches

G) James taking the fun bird sculpture out of the big fountain in the middle of the square (aw); putting a fancy ironwork awning thing (which MIGHT be from the bistro-themed kit? Not entirely sure) over the picnic area (he actually did this mostly by accident – he was storing it there to see if he wanted to use it as an entrance thing, only to go “hey :D” when he saw it over the picnic table); and setting up a little temporary wedding area near Scarlett’s house with a nice arch and a bunch of benches and flowers (because he’s HOPING he can get her married to Patchy in the Grand Finale where he goes around and finishes off everyone’s business once and for all)

H) And James jazzing up the exterior of the town hall a bit with some extra trees, columns, and flowering shrubs, because it really did need it

*nods* Not bad, not bad at all! It is nice to see Tiny Town slowly but surely assuming its final form. :) I left off with him adding plants around the path that goes around the back of the town hall by Sunny’s private island (well, peninsula) – tomorrow, we’ll see how he wraps everything up! Probably with a makeover of the interior of the town hall, he was saying he wanted to move the basement gym at least...

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I started Chapter 3 today, which is a temporary swap to Alice’s POV as she and Smiler wait by the servants’ entrance for Victor (or a duly-appointed representative) to show up with their reward! And Smiler, as it turned out, had a question for her while they were waiting – which was not “can I have the Fox-Lloyd alchemy bench,” as she had assumed. No, the question was instead “can I move in with you?” Alice was surprised, but Smiler pointed out that it would be easier to move them to the alchemy bench than the alchemy bench to them, and that, while they knew she’d have Elder Gutknecht and the ravens to keep her company, they felt like she could use someone around the place that wasn’t a bird, a ghost, or the fevered imaginings of her own brain. They quickly stressed that it had nothing to do with them thinking she couldn’t take care of herself, though!

...cue Alice going, “actually, given some of the nonsense I’ve wandered into while hallucinating over the past month or so, I might NOT be able to take care of myself.” XD At any rate, she was perfectly happy to let Smiler move in with her, both to get some extra hands to help renovate the place and to keep getting Smiler’s tea in the mornings. XD They were just starting to discuss the logistics of the move (specifically, figuring out the bed situation) when someone went “Oi, pardon me” nearby – tomorrow, Kasimir Jones finally makes his appearance in this story, and Alice finds herself very suspicious of his presence...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got in two videos tonight, go me –

A) First up, we had “The Sims 4 Enchanted by Nature Expansion Pack | Official Gameplay Trailer” by The Sims! Six and a half minutes of Mother Nature talking about all the new gameplay that comes with the pack – like taking care of the new not-just-decorative houseplants (or enchanting them with fairy dust so they can care for themselves); becoming a fairy and exploring what looks like a surprisingly complex tree of special abilities (not only do they have good, neutral, and evil paths, there’s also a whole tree just dedicated to customization!); living off the land as a Nature Nomad and leveling up your “Natural Living” skill; dealing with Luck and keeping yourself balanced – or suffering Ailments like “Gnome Lure” if you don’t; and becoming a Naturopath and healing people by learning the apothecary skill and brewing/compounding all sorts of interesting stuff. *nods* I have to say, this trailer made the pack look rather more interesting to me – like, I’m not SOLD sold, but I am intrigued by how many abilities fairies seem to have, and by all the stuff one can make on the apothecary bench. Plus it looks like there’s at least three new aspirations, which is nice, along with new traits and lots of cute CAS and Build/Buy stuff. I am now cautiously into this! Though, frankly, I’m mostly amused by the fact that the comments under the video are almost nothing but “justice for mermaids! And aliens and plantsims too, when we remember them.” XD EA, come on, just give us the refresh already – the community is NOT going to shut up about it.

B) And second up, we had “How Quickly Can You Become a Millionaire in Baldur's Gate 3?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! Which, as you might expect, was all about how long it took playtime-wise to earn one million gold in the game – WITHOUT using glitches, mods, or exploits, and on fucking Honor Mode, the hardest difficulty setting in the game! So, how long did it take Proxy to get his million with his high Strength high Charisma high-jumping Storm Sorcerer Dark Urge Mr. Monopoly and the few friends he picked up along the way?

Six hours and 42 minutes! Er, not counting all the prep and testing Proxy did beforehand. Including multiple saves where he died horribly. XD And how did he get all that money so quickly? Well, the strat boiled down to essentially:

I. Proxy speedrunning Acts I and II of the game, using his incredible jumping ability, a bunch of tricks he picked up from various speedrunning videos, his companions to do the more dangerous stuff (like actually fighting enemies), and the power of being a total jerk to NPCs to skip as much content as possible, only doing what was necessary to advance the story and his own goals (such as freeing Wulbren to get a particular vendor to spawn later, and picking up various Items Of Interest along the way)

II. Proxy making damn sure to recruit Minsc once he became available in Act III (he also attempted to murder the NPCs who had Minsc under their control, as they’d just done a bank heist and had 10,000 gold on them – unfortunately, the character CARRYING the gold proved to be immune to the deadly fireworks Mr. Monopoly and friends dropped on her head, thanks to the special ability “Evasion” (that totally negates all damage on a successful Dexterity save), and got away with the money, to Proxy’s annoyance)

III. Proxy then respeccing Minsc, who joins the party at level 12 no matter what (max level in the vanilla game) from a barbarian into a combination Thief Rogue/Trickery Domain Cleric (11 levels of the former, one of the latter) to gain access to “Reliable Talent,” a completely overpowered passive Rogues get at level 11 that makes the lowest roll they can get when using a skill they’re proficient in a ten – and then layering on all sorts of OTHER bonuses (from all the various items he picked up over the course of his speedy adventures, plus some class features) to make it so that, when pickpocketing, Minsc (when shapeshifted into a gnome, anyway, using the “Disguise Self” spell Trickery Domain Clerics get) cannot get less than a 30 – coincidentally, the highest DC check you can get when pickpocketing people

IV. Proxy then sending Minsc to rob three specific rich vendors in Baldur’s Gate over and over again, long-resting in between each attempt to reset their inventories, until Minsc got the million

Yeah – basically, while Proxy didn’t use any exploits to get the money itself, you could probably argue that he used some exploits to get TO the money. XD Though he wasn’t completely breaking physics either like some speedrunners, so… Either way, it was a very fun video, and I was frankly amazed at how he put together the “Minsc, The Best Pickpocket Ever” build. Proxy fucking knows his stuff when it comes to playing – and cheesing – Baldur’s Gate III!

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

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I finished off my latest reblog of “Love Will Come To You” by Poets Of The Fall for Song Saturday (a song I have not featured on my blog for six years! Shameful), talking about how I still very much enjoyed this song, and how I’ve come up with a Valicer spin on it (with Smiler singing the first set of lyrics and chorus to Victor and Alice to cheer them up after a bad time, then Alice and Victor returning the favor to Smiler with the second set of lyrics). In fact, given the music video in my head, I seem to have come up with a specifically Valicer In The Dark spin on it...we’ll see if this song gets added to a certain YouTube playlist as a result later. :P

Valice Multiverse – And over here, since there was nothing else going on, I went ahead and just reblogged my post from Wednesday about what Victor, Alice, and Smiler would get if they encountered an ice cream truck into the queue. *shrug* I mean, they’re valid headcanons for the Inevitable High School AU and Cuddlepile AU versions of the trio, anyway!

*nods* Not too shabby -- though it took me longer than I would have liked to both watch and sum up Proxy's video. What can I say -- he talks fast in his videos, so it can be hard to keep up with him sometimes, and we all know my tendency toward wordiness in these write-ups! XD Ah well, it's all sorted now, and I should go hit the sheets to try and get some sleep. Just one more day to go! Night all!
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