Alien Lisa

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!

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!