Yeah, unfortunately the first day of my long weekend was not nearly as good as I'd hoped it would be. Reasons? Well:

-->I woke up WAY earlier than I wanted because I made the mistake of drinking water last night and had to go to the bathroom (though I will say this one was tempered by the fact that I did actually manage to get back to sleep for another few hours, but -- still)

-->I ate the last of my chocolate granola with my cereal this morning, meaning that I had to spend like an hour making a fresh batch right after lunch (after my parents got me the nuts I needed during a grocery trip)

-->The weather today was miserable, with some nasty thunderstorms rolling through in the afternoon (some REALLY bright lightning and loud thunder) -- meaning that after I made my granola, I ended up spending the majority of my time sitting playing on my phone or iPad because I didn't want to have my computer on just in case we lost power or something. Meaning I never got to play Baldur's Gate III. :( I was looking forward to that too!

-->Aaaand I've just learned of a faulty Windows update that affects both Windows 11 and Windows 10 that can screw up your SSD hard drive. Like, it's not a guarantee, but the danger is there, especially if you're installing, moving, or deleting large files (admittedly VERY large, like 50 GB or so -- apparently the problem was first noticed by Cyberpunk 2077 gamers installing large patches) on a drive that's over 60% full. Here's the tumblr post with the details, and links where you can read more about it. So now I gotta find that update and uninstall it, and pause future updates for a while, and hope my computer didn't get fucked over. Doesn't seem like it, but -- guh. Probably gonna do some quick late-night back-ups before I head to bed!

Yeah -- not a great way to spend your day off. >( But even with all that, I did manage to accomplish a few fun things:

Tumblr: It wasn’t my best day on the old tumbls, as you might imagine, but I did get some stuff done –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I spent the time before lunch over here, working on my Tav!Smiler post in my drafts, and ALMOST completing it! I’ve finished off the write-ups for their various spells and their various proficiencies, detailing both what they have and what I’d like for them to get in the future – now I just gotta do a wrap-up paragraph and add the tags! And then consider doing a second post covering the actual backstory I’ve created for them, because this first post is long enough already. XD

Valice Multiverse – And I spent a few minutes over here tonight, putting an anon ask I got into my queue! Said anon ask consisting of “the rapture has already happened and only a singular starfish (most innocent) was sent to heaven in 632 AD” XD I had Londerland Bloodlines!Alice reply saying that, given how freaking weird and terrible the world she lives in is, she could buy that. And expressing her hopes that the starfish was enjoying heaven. XD I mean, we all know the World of Darkness is also clown world, so...

Writing: The combination of having to make a fresh batch of chocolate granola and all those thunderstorms this afternoon may have completely fucked up my gaming plans, but I did get another page on “The Van Dort Vacancy” written before my workout! Which mostly consisted of Barnaby and Kasimir referencing various Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark episodes while Smiler picked the lock on the vault door and Victor and Alice listened, bemused. XD Specifically, we had:

A) Barnaby talking about how Zillah once punched someone at her back alley fight club so hard she put him into a coma, only for Kasimir to counter that the guy actually found it pretty funny – this references Zillah’s attempt at reducing stress at the beginning of “The Lampblack Wedding” by going down to the fight club to punch up her buddy Tommy Punchliker going wrong when a bad roll by Jane caused her to overindulge – he was fine with it, but his family was rather upset by him experiencing yet another minor coma XD

B) Kasimir telling Victor and Alice how their compatriot Lilith is responsible for the horrible eight-legged lizard ghost monster roaming around the unfinished Gaddoc train yard (via capturing and befriending the ghosts who opened the tear that let the damn thing out into the world) – this references the events of “The Gut-Cutter Bargain,” where – thanks to a couple of crits – Lilith did indeed capture two ghosts killed in industrial accidents, who were so happy to be freed from their predicaments they did indeed open a tear in reality and let out the ghost of a basilisk to terrorize the train yard the pair were trying to shut down. Kasimir learned to fear and respect Lilith after that score!

C) Kasimir, after giving Smiler a few tips on how to pick the door lock (directing them to the right pick to use and telling them to listen to the tumblers to tell when they’re tapped in), talking about how he’s a “regular old Spider” – this just references what his playbook is in Oventure BITD

D) Barnaby then pointing out that, the last time Kasimir and Edvard did a score together, Kasimir ended up covered in goat shit – and then, when Kasimir countered that said covering was deliberate and paid off in the end with them revealing what was going on with “poor old Bessie,” asking about the gondolier Kasimir paid to be their getaway “driver” shouting his and Edvard’s names during their escape. Forcing Kasimir to admit that yes, he’d hired an idiot in that case, but he didn’t know the kid was an idiot XD – this references the events of “The Cab Con Caper,” where Kasimir and Edvard were tasked to figure out how this one goat being showcased by a cab company (that I can’t remember the name of, arrrgh) was outpacing the competition. Kasimir did indeed get covered in goat shit after he decided to empty the poo hopper of the treadmill Bessie ran on for her demonstrations, and a poor roll early on to secure a getaway gondola did indeed result in their gondolier openly yelling that he was there looking for Kasimir and Edvard. Kasimir slapped him silly once they were away XD

E) And, while telling Kasimir that they’re all having fun on this heist, Barnaby asking Smiler’s name, and then nodding a way that indicated he’d promptly forgotten it when Smiler told him – this references a moment in the finale, “Magic, Ghosts, Danger And Death,” where Barnaby asks the name of a Red Sash mercenary with an innovention idea for Astor on his way into the secret Deathlands base of the Brighteners society they’ve been fighting against (Morven, amusingly enough), then Mike declaring that Barnaby immediately forgets the name. XD

I don’t know if ALL of these silly references will survive through Draft 2, but they’re fun to have for now! :) I left it off with Barnaby talking about how this is fun heist because he got to go to a party, eat delicious canapes, and listen to the other guests shit-talk the hostess behind her back – next time, Victor and Alice will be demanding to know what was said because they too enjoy hearing people shit-talk Nell. XD And then into the vault to actually rob the place, as intended. XD

Workout: My final night on the bike this week saw me pedaling my way through the following:

A) The last few minutes of “Alien The Roleplaying Game: Evolved Edition | Oxventure One-Shot ft. Natural Six!” The grand finale of the adventures of Singleton (Jane), Hirsch (Doug), MacWhirr (Aoife), and Holroyd (Andy) featured:

I. A very quick shoot-out between MacWhirr and Singleton (the latter of whom, as you may recall, chose to lock Holroyd and Hirsch outside to die horribly while she escaped with the alien-pregnant scientist Komiskey to get a huge payday from Weyland-Yutani – MacWhirr was like “154 people died and I am NOT letting those things off this planet”) – Singleton aimed up a good shot with her revolver, but Jane only getting two successes to Aoife’s four meant that MacWhirr was able to dodge out of the way behind a crypod. Singleton tried to tempt by saying they could go halfsies on the reward, but MacWhirr reiterated that she was not letting any of those aliens off this planet and –

And, with another four successes, shot her four times with the bolt gun, leaving her Incapacitated on the floor. And – just to add insult to injury – Holroyd successfully got the door open just as this was happening, so he and Hirsch weren’t left behind to do a hopeless last stand after all! (Oh, and it was also established that Wes did make it to the transport with the others, and was deeply confused by everything that was happening. And still extremely drunk.)

II. The chestburster inside Komiskey doing its chestbursting thing! I knew those creatures didn’t take long to incubate...fortunately, despite being an observant baby (four base dice for Observation rolls), it got a little caught up in trying to get out of Komiskey’s ribs and thus didn’t immediately clock the humans/smashed-up android around it. Allowing MacWhirr to grab Singleton’s knife and stab it RIGHT in its little head, fucking it up ROYALLY and Incapacitating it. :D Unfortunately, though, the alien got its own back – not only did MacWhirr get splashed a bit by its acid blood, its very last act was to lunge at her throat and give it a good old gnaw, dropping her down to Incapacitated as well. *wince* I think she considered it a good way to potentially go out, though!

III. Holroyd managing to successfully get the shuttle off the ground with a couple of successes on a piloting roll – there was a little early turbulence thanks to Xenomorphs clinging to the outside, but they eventually fell off, hooray! Holroyd also opened the hatch door and began to casually try to roll Singleton (who was just barely hanging onto life) toward the open door – justifying it when Mike went, “hey, that’s against your programming” that he wasn’t putting her OUT the door, he was just putting her NEAR it. If she fell out, he’d try to catch her! Maybe not very well, but… XD Hirsch asked what the hell he was doing, and Holroyd explained to him that he’d seen Singleton was the one who closed the door on them. Singleton weakly said that the dead chestburster was still worth something and that they could all split it –

And Hirsch answered that by kicking her straight out the open hatch. :D And followed up by punting the dead bodies of Komiskey and the chestburster out there too. Hah – that’s what you get, you traitor.

IV. And the whole thing ending on a happy note as Holroyd shut the hatch and climbed back into the pilot’s seat, heading out into space as MacWhirr managed to stabilize herself with a final success on the final death saving roll Mike had Aoife do and Wes confirmed with Hirsch that they were still buds :D I SERIOUSLY did not believe that they would actually manage to survive and escape the base! I mean, it’s the Alien roleplaying game – you expect a total party kill! But nope, only one person went down, and she was a traitor anyway, so fie on her. :P Shouldn’t have been so eager for that payday, Jane!

B) The entirety of “8 Things That Were Cut From Baldur's Gate 3” by Proxy Gate Tactician! A quick list of things from the Early Access version of BG3 that were either removed entirely or reworked until they were something else altogether. Some of these were definitely good changes – making it so not every custom character was a Bhaalspawn with hard-to-resist violent urges, for example (instead splitting them into the Tavs/Durges we know and love today), or reworking the kind-of-weird “dream visitor” character (who always came off as shady) into the more interesting “dream guardian” (who does a better job of pretending they have your best interest at heart). Some of them feel like missed opportunities – like cutting the “outer deck” section of the Nautiloid where you could talk to enthralled cultists and watch as imps and dragons assaulted the ship (come on, that would have added something cool to the tutorial), or removing the three living enthralled fishers who were trying to save the injured mindflayer when you find it in the wreckage on the beach (while the “mindflayer tries to force you to give it your brain” scene is not bad, I think this encounter would have been much more interesting). And one of them is going to be a subject of debate for all eternity, because there are always going to be people who liked the harsher, nastier Early Access Wyll who hated goblins and was willing to torture people to find his lost patron, rather than the completely-rewritten-for-release Prince Charming we got in the final product (and while I’ll agree that Wyll probably got screwed over content-wise due to that rewrite, I am glad that they changed his characterization – EA Wyll was an asshole, damn). A very interesting video – I never got a chance to experience the Early Access of Baldur’s Gate III, so it’s kind of fascinating to get little glimpses into it through videos like this!

C) And the entirety of “American Psycho in Baldur's Gate 3” by eli_handle_b.wav! A very quick video – just a minute and a half – of clips of Patrick Bateman edited into BG3! Naturally, he’s portrayed as a Dark Urge character, using his infamous “Hip To Be Square” axe on poor Alfira and talking about dissecting girls for fun to Saverok (who declares him to be “full of promise”). It was really well done – Eli does a lot of these sorts of videos, and has a talent for making the edited clips look like they fit the video game world. (He did SHREK in Fallout 4 once, and it was honestly incredible.) Nice way to end off the workout!

Other: Made an important discovery today that should help a lot with my attempts to limit how much YouTube is in my life (because, again, I’m pissed off about all the AI bullshit they’re forcing on people) – my old Lenovo DVD/CD drive? The one that came with my old laptop? It works with my current computer! I tried plugging it in on a whim, and after realizing the computer recognized it, I put in my American McGee’s Alice soundtrack CD to see if that would play. And it did – well, after I clicked on one of the files and got it to open up in the old Windows Media Player app. :p But it did indeed play –

And much more importantly, I was able to rip the songs to my computer. Meaning I now have the AMA soundtrack on my computer to listen to whenever I want! :D I promptly spent a good portion of the rest of the day (well, the part that I could actually spend on the computer) ripping a few other CDs to my Music folder on my D drive – namely, the Corpse Bride soundtrack, the Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines soundtrack, and “The Screen Behind The Mirror” by the band Enigma (because most of the songs on there don’t actually have much in the way of lyrics). I was also going to do the CD I have of selected pieces from all three BTTF soundtracks played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra – but while I was listening to that one, I read about the above-mentioned faulty Windows update and was like “fuck, have I been playing with fire this entire time and not known it?” *grumbles* Judging from what I saw about the update, I was probably fine because none of the MP3s I was ripping were particularly large, but – yeah. That one is gonna have to wait until tomorrow, after I’ve uninstalled the update!

So yeah -- at least I got a little further on all my tumblr stuff, and I found a way to get some more background music that doesn't rely on me going to YouTube! Now I just have to find ways to acquire some other music that I really like (such as the A:MR soundtrack, The Smiler's theme, the 2 AM theme from Animal Crossing: New Horizons, "My Chrysalis Highwayman" from Fallout 2), put it all in a big playlist, and I should hopefully be set. :P We'll see what happens!

For now, though -- I should both try to get to bed a little earlier tonight, and see about dumping this faulty update. Tomorrow is a Cleaning Saturday, so that's my morning sorted -- as for the afternoon, we'll see if I go for Fallout 4 and the FO4 Playthrough Progression update, or Baldur's Gate III and another chunk written on "The Van Dort Vacancy." And if I actually try FreeTube or not. And if I can get anything done on my tumblrs or not. Who knows at this point. *shakehead* Night all.

There was an annoying moment or two, as shall be detailed in the below write-ups, but overall I'd say this was an all right day, which is good for midweek --

Work – Not a great day at work, I’m sorry to report. :( The morning was fine, if a little slow – I pulled the usual morning reports; I fixed an error I made in yesterday’s reversals (forgot to change the source code so the new one-time gift went to the right campaign); I looked for potential duplicates among the new donors added during this year’s Appeal; and I took a phone call from the final person I’d called about having an overpayment on their pledge, who confirmed it was fine if we kept the money. Unfortunately, in the afternoon, while I was working on the daily obituaries, I got a call from a donor who’d just gotten a pledge billing and wanted to set up his pledge on automatic payments like he’d originally intended (original card got stolen). I thus opened up his pledge in a batch and went to update his card (after a little confusion about what he wanted to do regarding the installments) –

Aaand the stupid online processor threw up an error when I hit the “Submit” button. And then wouldn’t let me try again. Meaning I had to log into the main online site AGAIN and update the man’s card there. Which led to me discovering that his pledge had been deleted entirely (it should have just been paused). And then it wouldn’t let me set up a new one because his chosen payment schedule went past the end of the calendar year. *sighs heavily* I contacted our online provider to try and get them to set up the pledge, but who knows if they’ll get to it with any urgency. I’m just so sick of shit going wrong with them… At least I did manage to finish the obituaries in the end. And I got a cupcake with my lunch because it was my coworker’s birthday today and the assistant director brought in gluten-free cupcakes for her. Still, very glad that tomorrow is my last day this week! Fingers crossed I come in and find that pledge sorted...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to “Alien The Roleplaying Game: Evolved Edition | Oxventure One-Shot ft. Natural Six!” Singleton (Jane), Hirsch (Doug), MacWhirr (Aoife), and Holroyd (Andy) made it through the end of Act 2 and into Act 3 today, which involved:

A) MacWhirr banging on the glass of the surgery lab as the result of a stress roll (meaning she made a worryingly loud noise in a situation where quiet is key) demanding to see Komiskey’s shuttle keycard to make sure it was undamaged – Komiskey produced it, though she seemed rather put out by MacWhirr’s demands (likely because she just wanted OUT already). Singleton asked how she even got locked in, and Komiskey reiterated that the door just locked when the base went into lockdown. Fortunately, there was a manual override by the door, which Hirsch was able to use to free her. Komiskey was so grateful, she handed over the keycard when MacWhirr demanded it with minimal fuss. She was all for leaving immediately, but MacWhirr decided to check out the surgery first…

And discovered, on the other side of the big table, a dead facehugger. Not that she knew what it was specifically – but she, and the others, knew that when the original infectee, Russ Jordan, was brought in, he apparently had something like this on his face. And when questioned, Komiskey admitted she didn’t actually remember what happened before she woke up in the surgery with the alarms going off… The group, extremely worried, forced Komiskey to get into the medical pod so they could x-ray her and see if there was anything inside her they should know about –

Aaaaand then couldn’t figure out how to operate it, because nobody rolled a success on the roll to figure it out. XD The most they accomplished was Holroyd scoring a line into the side of her arm with a laser by pressing a random button. They attempted to use “he’ll keep pressing random buttons until you tell us how to operate this thing” as a threat, but it didn’t come off, and they reluctantly let her out and agreed to take her with them. I am pretty sure all of our players were thinking “we are going to regret this.” XD

B) The gang thus leaving the surgery room – after Hirsch unwisely stomped the dead facehugger, sending acid blood spraying all over the place, though through sheer LUCK not on his leg – and making their way back to the main Med Lab via the stasis room (which had a bunch of facehuggers in tubes – presumably the “samples” Komiskey and Miranda were sent to collect – which were very much ALIVE, as one demonstrated when MacWhirr got close to its prison)...only to discover the Xenomorph they’d fought before sniffing around, having been attracted by MacWhirr’s loud banging earlier. Fortunately, it had not noticed them, allowing Holroyd to ambush with his pipe and smash it over its stupid head again –

And kill the fucking thing! :D Yes, apparently it was down to its last two hit points from the earlier scrap, and Holroyd’s pipe attack – which was only meant as a distraction to allow the others to get away – took those right off! He even managed to avoid the acid splash with his android reflexes (aka, Andy was able to use a trait of his, “Resilient,” to negate the damage he would have taken via dice roll). Hirsch, who’d been giving Holroyd shit this entire time and refusing to get his name right, actually came up and patted him on the back before telling him “Good job, Holroyd.” Holroyd was thrilled and called Hirsch his best friend – Hirsch told him not to push it. XD Holroyd also FINALLY got his hands on the fire ax he’d been coveting all this time, as his pipe had melted from the all the acid blood, and MacWhirr was like “he’s EARNED it” to Singleton – the paranoid Singleton handed it over with poor grace, but she did hand it over. Yay. :)

C) The gang thus entering Act 3 by exiting the med lab and heading for the casino via the skywalk! Along the way, spotting a Xenomorph clambering over the rooftops outside, which was disheartening. :( Even more disheartening was when they reached the casino doors and opened them –

Only for the bodies of those five colonists they saw on the personal data transmitter tracker terminal earlier to come tumbling out. D: As you might imagine, that added muchly to everyone’s stress! (Except Holroyd, who just took another sip of margarita. XD) Fortunately, they were able to pick their way through the corpses quietly (though Hirsch had to push himself, which just stressed him out more) and into the balcony level of the casino. Peering down onto the main floor revealed that scary shadow that had been there previously on the CCTV footage was gone, which – good news in one way (maybe whatever made it left, as Holroyd suggested), bad news in another (now they had no idea where the thing that made it was). There was a brief discussion about whether or not they should try to save Hirsch’s friend Wes (last seen in one of the supply areas) or just head straight for the landing pad – Holroyd was like “if Wes dies, then Hirsch may have an opening for a best friend,” only to change his tune when Hirsch lifted his gun menacingly. XD Anyway, Hirsch was pretty adamant about saving his poker buddy, and the others quickly realized they had to go downstairs anyway to reach the emergency exit that would put them out near the landing pad, so they could at least look for Wes on the way. Decision made, they started down –

And both MacWhirr and Singleton ended up getting facehuggers on their stress dice while making the Observation roll Mike called for. Leading to Singleton dropping the revolver Hirsch gave her, causing it to skid down the stairs –

And MacWhirr to just straight up trip and tumble down the stairs bodily. XD Cue her losing one health – and as she only has three hit points, that is NOT good. However – as she ALSO got two successes on that Observation roll – after hitting the bottom of the stairs, she happened to look up and see another Xenomorph curled up against the ceiling in a corner. One that had NOT actually noticed them yet. So she did the only thing that she could do –

She rolled onto her front, pulled her bolt gun, and screamed “LIGHT IT UP!” to the others as she fired! She managed to score a couple of hits thanks to pushing herself, but another bad stress roll meant that she managed to clock herself in the jaw with the bolt gun’s recoil in the process. Singleton, next in the order, chose to just run forward, grab her gun, and then get into cover behind a roulette wheel, because like fuck was she going into this fight unarmed –

And when I left off, the alien had climbed down from the ceiling and was preparing to attack the unfortunate MacWhirr! Tomorrow, we see if we have our first player character death as a result! Like I said, the woman only has three hit points, and she’s already lost one...

2. Update my BG3 Smiler Master Doc: Check – took me a little longer to get to than I anticipated (I got distracted by the BG3 Wiki, as you do), but I did get in some writing via adding a section to the Tav Smiler section detailing their backstory! I’m not quite done yet, but I’ve gotten through:

A) Their early years with Kellard Kelman, local physician of the town of X’s Sector, who was tasked by the corrupt mayor to keep the citizens happy and compliant, and did a shitty job of it – also established he performed brain surgery on Smiler’s birth mother (who now has a name – Margaret!) when she showed signs of post-partum depression after having Smiler, turning her into a vegetable (and yes, this IS canon to any other “child of Kelman” Smiler)

B) Their decision to run away at 12, which saw them escape into the wilderness, only to get lost and find themselves running low on supplies...and then get contacted by the eldritch being of happiness known as Mar-Mal, who offered a pact – Smiler agrees to spread happiness in their name and help them become more attuned to this plane of existence, and Mar-Mal agrees to help them and give them magic once they’re attuned enough; Smiler, desperate and feeling no malice from the being, agreed

C) Smiler being discovered by merchants Matt and Carol Alton shortly thereafter (who followed the sound of their hysterical laughter as Mar-Mal poured a bit of their power into them, leaving them with their bright glowing yellow eyes), who took them home with them to the village of Tower’s Garden, and soon after adopted them. :) Also Smiler meeting Matt’s brother Felix E. Lated, a traveling bard, and being inspired by his stage name to name themselves – well, Smiler XD

Not bad, eh? Just need to get to the point where they became a traveling alchemist! And, uh, add some notes on what they’ve done so far in the game. ^^; Nothing major, just keeping track of what they’ve gotten through level-ups and some major events – “Saved Us,” “Saved Shadowheart,” “Recruited Shadowheart,” things like that. Not planning on doing a full-on fanficcy write-up like I am with Fallout 4! I can only have one of those going at a time, and FO4 got dibs.

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – mostly because, out of annoyance out of everything I’ve heard about YouTube’s bullshit lately, I limited my watching to just the Oxventure Alien video during my workout. I – didn’t really miss it that much, I must say. Mostly because I was busy either looking at the BG3 Wiki or answering comments on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5. :P Still, I would like to keep up on stuff like Cafae Latte compilations and Jon of Many A True Nerd’s weekly Fallout videos, so I’m gonna have to figure out a way to watch my stuff that makes it feel less icky. Heard some good stuff about a program called “Freetube,” gonna have to look into it...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today, and I dropped some stuff from my drafts into my queue for the next couple of days:

A) A piece of Alice: Madness Returns fanart by vvevelur featuring a bloodied, smiling Alice in front of a Cheshire grin for Thursday (which was posted on my birthday last year, so it’s about time I got around to properly reblogging it)

B) And a bunch Moist von Lipwig cartoons based around John Mulaney quotes by littlesmartart for Friday (because you can’t go wrong with fun cartoons of Discworld characters)

Still haven’t figured out Song Saturday, but it should probably be Londerland Bloodlines-related again – I’ll have to go through the tag and see what I like!

Other: It was a pretty nice day today – mostly sunny, not too warm, and no humidity – so we did indeed head out and play beanbags after I got home. And while Dad managed to dominate the first two games, I just barely managed to pull myself out of a losing streak to win the third (though it helped that Dad managed to whiff his own final throw on that game!). Mom, meanwhile, stayed solidly second until that last game, where her beanbag game just went off a cliff. *shakehead* It happens! Final scores were me 3-3-W; Dad W-W-2; Mom 2-2-3. We’ll see if things even out more tomorrow!

*nods* Yeah, overall a solid day. But now it is time to head to bed and get some sleep. One last workday to get through -- hopefully it shall not be a shitshow! Night all!

Just -- beyond the usual "I got to bed later than I should have last night," there was also some technological bullshit at work (you'll see in the write-ups), and the usual spate of bad news on the computer/TV, and Mom got upset because dinner stuck to the pan and ruined her nice fajita wraps (they tasted fine, she just had to pry them out with a spatula, which annoyed her), and of course the ants -- after another week-long absence -- showed back up in the pantry again. We really have NO fucking clue what's going on with these things at this point. *heavy sigh* Still think we should call an exterminator, but I know I'll never convince them... Anyway, your write-ups --

Work – A rather quiet day to start the week – which is good, because our technology is betraying us at work. Not only is the application we use to look at the cards and such our processors scan for us still down (it’s coming up on a week!), when I tried to update someone’s credit card this morning in a reversal batch, the site for our online processor “refused to connect.” That’s literally what the error message said. And before you ask, the site itself was not down – I was able to get on it and do the update there directly. I called IT about the issue once I finished updating the card, and the guy there was pretty much as confused as I was about why the payment portal thing would suddenly refuse to connect. He said he was gonna contact their support, but they must not have gotten back to him, because he never got back to me. Good thing the only other credit card call was from someone who wanted to do it himself! Though even then I had to try and explain to my coworker that I was pretty sure you couldn’t actually update a card on the personalized giving page the company set up for us, you had to go into the site itself to do that… *sigh* Just annoying.

Anyway – besides that, it was pretty much roster maintenance as usual – I did the GL (with numerous interruptions to talk to my returned director and take that guy’s credit card and whatnot), then spent the rest of the day with the obituaries. Tomorrow, I will probably do more of the same. *shrug* It’s a living.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Alien The Roleplaying Game: Evolved Edition | Oxventure One-Shot ft. Natural Six!” And tonight I shall actually tell you what’s going on in the Cinematic Campaign that they’re all playing, “Hope’s Last Day,” because now I’m not trying to juggle finishing up four other write-ups of my activities for the day at the same time at like midnight. Let’s take this one step at a time:

( And With The Help Of Cuts To Spare Your Reading Pages )

Whew! And that all brings us to the actual campaign! Sorry guys, but there was a loooot of backstory on this one! Future write-ups should be shorter now that we’ve gotten through all this. Anyway, yesterday and today’s bike rides got me through the first hour of the video, aka Act 1, which featured:

A) Everyone arguing in-character about who was to blame for various things before the game even properly started. XD Like, MacWhirr told Hirsch that it might be his fault that the “parasite” is running around the base, given he and his fellow security guys couldn’t catch it; Singleton angrily implied that Holroyd had done a shitty job of maintaining the tractor; and Holroyd in turn accused Hannah of not taking care of the tractor properly, noting all the chip cans and romance magazines everywhere. Mike was like “loving this, says great things about team unity.” XD Also, yes, a joke was made about the fact that their transport was called a “tractor,” with Holroyd making a comment that tractors aren’t really space-ready vehicles and talking about giving hayrides to children. XD

B) The long walk back to base, which saw continued sniping between the characters and MacWhirr and Singleton getting very hungry off some failed Wits/Survival rolls; Holroyd was fine because, as an android, he didn’t need to eat, and Hirsch was fine because he was scarfing down the last of the chip cans, apparently. XD

C) The gang arriving back at the base by the South Lock (aka the airlock into and out of the base itself) and finding it weirdly deserted, with the garage entrance having been blocked off (which is just not done). Everyone found it very unsettling, with Hirsch complaining about this “godforsaken moon” some more...and then cue Holroyd suggesting that maybe everyone was off celebrating some sort of moon festival. Or maybe planning a surprise party for the team. Cue the others being like “??? We think you need maintenance, Holroyd.”

D) Holroyd also periodically offering the others glasses of milk, which confused and frustrated the humans, because they couldn’t figure out where the fuck he was getting them (Hirsch made a comment early on about him “spitting up” milk, but – I really don’t think that’s a thing androids in the Alien franchise do?? Correct me if I’m wrong, I’ve never seen the movies).

E) The gang entering the South Lock, and MacWhirr combing through one of the storage lockers there (to the annoyance of Hirsch, who insisted it was his job to open doors) – she found a bolt gun (like the riveting gun one might use in Bioshock 2), which she kept for herself (though she did let Holroyd take it for a bit – he seemed oddly eager to have a weapon...), and a fire ax, which she handed to Singleton. Singleton and Hirsch then examined the other storage locker, but found it had already been ransacked, damn it.

F) The gang entering the main corridor of the operations area of the base and seeing signs of a fight – big old scrapes and bullet holes in the wall, and what looked like weird acid splashes on the floor. They also saw signs of movement in the sterile lab nearby thanks to MacWhirr’s motion detector, and MacWhirr insisted they investigate. Cue them entering the Geo Lab and having a look around –

And cue, out of four Wits/Observations rolls, only Singleton getting a success. One single success. Mike ruled that she spotted half a donut lying on one of the desks, which she immediately scarfed down before anyone else, like MacWhirr, could notice it. Though Holroyd did manage to offer her a glass of milk at just the right moment – she slapped it out of his hand. XD Anyway, with that business done, they proceeded into the sterile lab, where they found –

Three lab mice in a cage. MacWhirr was very annoyed that she’d wasted precious battery life tracking mice, while Holroyd was immediately like “no one left behind” and promptly took the mice, naming them Ash, Bishop, and David. (All androids in the Alien franchise, if you were wondering. :p)

G) The gang then proceeding to Al Simpson’s office to see if maybe they could get some answers out of him (MacWhirr kindly letting Hirsch open the door – he made a crack about how, if God hadn’t abandoned him on this moon, he’d offer up a prayer now, which Holroyd found quite cool) – only to find the place deserted except for one person slumped in a chair. Said person proved to be Miranda Reynolds when MacWhirr turned the chair around –

Not that it was easy to tell, thanks to the fact that her face had been caved in. As you might imagine, this stressed everyone out immensely. D: The three humans claimed her lanyard to see if there was anything useful on it – after another roll where Singleton was the only one to get a success (which was interpreted as her being the only one willing to wipe the gore off it), they were able to determine that, along with the ID, her lanyard contained a keycard to the landing yard, and presumably her personal shuttle – unfortunately, it had been destroyed in the attack. No getting out that way! Holroyd, meanwhile, examined the smashed wreckage of Reynolds’s face, and determined that she’d been murdered by some sort of organic creature, not a weapon – he promptly told the others she’d died of “natural causes” and grabbed the body, because he was rescuing everyone, damn it.

H) The gang getting ready to leave the office – only for Singleton, once again the only one observant enough to notice things, to hear what sounded like a cable hit the floor behind her. Except when she turned, what she saw was in fact a long, spindly tail...cue one of the famous Xenomorph drones dropping out of a ceiling vent, all the humans panicking, and a big battle against the creature to end out Act 1! Said battle consisted of:

I. The Xenomorph getting to go first AND getting two turns (because of course the titular Alien has “fuck the players” rules), and lashing out with its tail at poor Singleton – however, she was able to partly block the blow with her fire ax, and thus “only” took a nasty gash across the shoulder and chest

II. Holroyd quoting Ripley on his turn – “get away from her you bitch!” – and throwing Miranda’s corpse at the Xenomorph to distract it before running to the door to help get everyone out

III. MacWhirr yelling for the other two to get out and shooting a couple of bolts into the creature – and Mike being very kind and deciding they were all out of “acid blood splash” range because the tails on Xenomorphs do be long

IV. Hirsch locking the door while going “no man left behind” and then unloading a few shots into the alien with his revolver

V. Singleton, in a paranoid panic, rolling into cover under a desk and curling up in the fetal position

VI. And Holroyd, getting to go first in the next round, quickly unlocking the door (because he was right there) and then ripping a chair out of the floor and beating the Xenomorph’s head in with it (four successes on his strength roll!). The Xenomorph intelligently fled back into the vents.

So that was pretty awesome! Though yeah, real fucking suspicious of Hirsch to lock them in with the creature...MacWhirr herself demanded to know why the fuck he did that, and while he claimed that he didn’t want anyone running off into the hall and into more of those creatures, and that he wanted to trap the one they saw in the room, I don’t buy those explanations. And I don’t think MacWhirr does either. *shakehead* Anyway, I left off with Act 2 starting, and Singleton – who is officially Messed Up thanks to a bad stress resolve roll – rocking under her desk with her ax talking about how they’re all going to die. Which, uh, they probably are, because the base famously only had one survivor when Ripley arrived in Aliens, and none of these folks are named Newt...but we’ll see what happens! Maybe this can be an alternate continuity where somebody else survives, who knows...

2. Continue final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Check – didn’t make quite as much progress as I’d hoped, but I managed to plow my way through Alice listening to the final Grout tape (and being unimpressed with his fear); Alice finding the macabre museum to Grout’s marriage and figuring out how to open the door to his inner sanctum (and being very grossed out by the fact that he’d preserved his wife’s brain and heart separately from the rest of her); Alice discovering Grout’s mortal remains on the bed and getting annoyed someone got to him before she could; Alice feeling the bedroom shake shortly afterward and rushing out to find the place ablaze and Bach shouting at her from the other side of the room –

And Alice having to make her frantic escape from Grout’s burning mansion, all the while tormented by memories of the fire that claimed her parents (and was a little too late to claim Lizzie). :( Yeah, uh, that wasn’t any more fun the second time around. But I got up to – eh, we’ll say 47 out of 54, I’m literally three lines away from that page. Tomorrow, I am going to do my DAMNDEST to wrap this sucker up, editing-wise – dunno if I’ll actually get to posting it, but I want to be done changing all these “Alices” to “shes” at the very least! (Though I will say there’s a lot fewer instances of that issue near the end of the chapter – brain must have finally remembered pronouns exist.)

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – between doing the write-up on Oxventure Alien and editing more of Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” I did NOT have the time. Maybe tomorrow, as I won’t need to spend quite so much time on the workout section...or maybe not, depending on if I decide I want to get the chapter up. We’ll see.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – the usual “it’s a Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, and I don’t actually have anything to put into the queue for tomorrow” Monday business. Plus, again, the first two items on this list took up all of my time tonight, so...

Yeah -- not as productive as I would have liked, but having to sum up two days of workout video instead of one will do that. As will being tired and grouchy about things. *sigh* Well, I can at least try to do better tonight at the whole "getting to bed at a decent hour thing," so let me do that. Fingers crossed Tuesday is at least a slightly better day! Night all!

Meaning I was expecting a relatively quiet Saturday night spent finishing off my write-ups of my daily activities for you all -- but when I went to go chat with my friend Squid around 10:30 PM, as I usually do, it turned out they had a TON of screenshots to share with me about certain shenanigans that happened to them earlier today. Which, as you might expect, took me a while to get through. This led to me struggling to complete my write-ups while still keeping up on my responses to them --

And then I remembered I had an anon ask waiting for me over on Valice Multiverse, and a comment over here from Gigs. And suddenly I had four things I had to keep up with instead of just two. *facepalm* Granted, I knew about the ask on Valice Multiverse and the comment from Gigs earlier, but I thought "oh, I'll have plenty of time to do those tonight!" And then I just kind of forgot about them until the day was almost over. *sigh* Time management -- it remains out of my grasp. ^^; But I got the write-ups done, so here is how the rest of my day went:

Tumblr: Had a somewhat productive day over on the tumblrs –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I spent the time before lunch working on the “Tav!Smiler” update post in my drafts – unfortunately, it took me longer than I wanted to get going on it because I had some unexpected trouble getting the “Class” portion of the post just right. Fortunately, I got past it eventually, and I managed to get through “Class,” “Background,” “Abilities,” and partway through “Spells” before it was time to go and eat. Hoping I can finish this up tomorrow morning – be nice to post it sometime this week!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I did indeed manage to answer that anon ask that was waiting for me this eve – later than I’d intended, granted, but I did answer it! The ask proved to be an anon commenting on how the metaphorical billion monkeys chained to a billion typewriters might in fact produce Hamlet – but any person who would DO such a thing would neither appreciate nor even recognize the play when it finally arrived – I had Cuddlepile!Alice note that this was very true and served as an excellent metaphor for modern capitalism. Maybe not my best work, but I was pretty tired when I wrote it!

Fallout 4: I successfully returned to the Commonwealth today, sending Victor and Ada just a little bit deeper into the Mechanist’s Lair and discovering some more of the horrors of the secret robobrain facility she’s set up shop in! Because it’s not Fallout unless you have The Horrors, preferably tucked away behind a nostalgic 50s aesthetic. *nods* Today’s adventures included:

A) Victor and Ada traversing Holding Block A! Which, when the door from reception was opened, proved to be a long corridor full of prison cells in various states of disrepair, with a couple of brain-in-a-tank-driven gurneys stopped on a rail going down the center of it. Yes, it was just as creepy as it sounds – especially since the first one had a dead feral ghoul still strapped to it. D: (Though said ghoul did have an aluminum can on them, so that was a silver lining.) The cells themselves were also pretty damn grim – with simple beds jutting out from the wall (some without mattresses), what looked like some sort of feeding trough (you know, like for livestock) at the back, and a big old pipe coming out of the wall that bent upward at a 90 degree angle that – might have been used as a toilet. I don’t know – I certainly didn’t see any PROPER plumbing in there! D: Honestly, it all just drove home just how inhumanely these people were treated, criminals or no. *grimace* And the worst part? While most of the cells were either empty or contained just dead bodies (a mix of dead ferals and skeletons) –

Six of them contained still-alive ferals. All of whom were locked in and couldn’t get out. Now, I’m not usually in the business of feeling that sorry for feral ghouls – mostly because they’re too busy trying to claw my face off when I meet them – but I felt genuinely terrible for these six. Because damn, imagine surviving the nuclear apocalypse, only to have to watch your body decay and mutate while your brain deteriorates, all while still trapped in the same tiny little cell the government shoved you into with the intent of harvesting your brain for its stupid robot project. *shudder* Yeah, it’s – it’s not pleasant. So, after Victor and Ada finished going down the corridor, visiting each unoccupied cell (popping open those that were still locked – just Advanced locks, nothing Victor couldn’t handle), gathering what goodies they could (mainly some ammo, caps, Med-X, and bobby pins – which was good, as I broke about one bobby pin per lock *grumble*), and marveling at the one pair of cells that had a giant hole in the wall between them (not sure how THAT happened), I had Victor eat some food (Mirelurk Delight for a temporary boost to Endurance and max AP, and some health tea for increased healing – for some reason, Ada acted like the latter was booze and told Victor that he’d have to drink alone, “ma’am” O.o), then return to the start to open each feral’s cell, sneak in, and mercy-kill them as they stirred and prepared to attack. Happily, one blast from the good old Tactical Tesla took all of them down without issue – even the one Legendary Gangrenous Feral Ghoul, who I expected to be a bit tougher. Then again, in close quarters, very little can stand up to the Electric Death Machine… Anyway, this mission of mercy netted Victor the following:

I. A kickball off the body of the first ghoul (yay, rubber!)

II. Some apple cider vinegar off the body of the second, plus a stash containing dog tags and 45 caps in their room

III. Some industrial-grade Abraxo cleaner and a baseball off the body of the third

IV. A viable blood sample for that one lady in the Brotherhood off the body of the fourth – which was interesting, because Victor actually reduced that guy to ash O.o

V. Some Daddy-O and a shot glass off the body of the fifth, plus some stimpacks and jet in their room – I guess this one was the party ghoul :p

VI. An Auto-Stim Metal Chestpiece (decent legendary effect, terrible armor) and an aluminum can off the body of the sixth (which, as you might guess, was the Legendary)

VII. And – as a result of all that lockpicking and murder – a level-up to Level 49! :D After considering my options for a bit, I decided to just directly boost Agility up to 8 – Victor is an agile boy, and given how often I use VATS to murder things, having more AP at my disposal is always a good thing!

B) Victor and Ada going up the ramp at the end of Holding Block A to the observation hallway above! Which contained some busted-up protectrons (who were not lootable, boo); a bunch of glass windows lining the sides of the corridor floor, allowing the scientists to peer into each cell from above (creepy); a few tables with surgical trays and other goodies on them (Victor picked up another Protectron Model, nice); a busted door to Holding Block B at the far end (guess we’re not going in THAT block – good, honestly); a Stealth Boy on a crate beside said door (yay!); a hole back downstairs if you didn’t feel like going all the way back to the ramp –

And, right in the middle of the corridor, a wall-mounted “Medical Observation” terminal! Which, when opened, had notes on five of the prisoners who were being observed (I guess the others weren’t interesting enough to warrant entries). In order, we had:

I. A22, a serial killer who was said to have high brain function but a weak constitution – the doctors put him on a high protein diet and started using regular electrotherapy on his muscles to make sure that his brain would survive the eventual extraction

II. A53, an arsonist who burned down a courthouse and killed three people, and who could only be approached if sedated – apparently her family had a history of dementia, so she was immediately dismissed as a viable candidate and recommended for termination

III. A57, a woman who killed a waitress – it was noted she was prone to sudden outbursts of violence and was very emotional, so the staff had her on a cocktail of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications, with one “Dr. Astleford” preparing psychiatric sessions to see if they could get her more stable

IV. A72, a guy who killed someone while he was drunk – he was very smart and showed good knowledge of tactics, but also some signs of PTSD, so Dr. Astleford was also evaluating a treatment plan for him

V. And A88, an ex-military woman who was convicted of second-degree manslaughter after she beat up someone so badly they died in the hospital later – she was noted to be highly intelligent and mentally sound, so she was immediately approved for the project! Lucky her. *grimace* And given she was said to be a woman, I wonder if the person she beat up was a superior who – tried to get handsy, let’s say…

Yeah – pretty much exactly the kind of horrible bullshit I expected from this place! Damn…it never really gets any easier to see the shit the Fallout government pulled on people. Especially with our government feeling closer and closer to that one every damn day...

C) Victor and Ada returning to the end of the original corridor and riding the big elevator they found there (which had another brain gurney with a dead feral strapped to it inside) down to the actual research wing! Which prompted a very dramatic music sting that I feel was wasted on Victor and Ada just looking at the big decontamination arches and the lockers at the entrance to the room. XD Victor got some blood packs (one empty, one full) and some Buffout out of the lockers, then – after cautiously passing through the arches (post a quicksave) and finding that, fortunately, they weren’t now spewing out radiation or anything like that – proceeded into the heart of the room –

Which was essentially one big surgical theater. Compete with more brain-gurneys (well, theoretical ones, anyway – there were no brains in jars attached, but there was definitely a spot on them for one), these with EXTREMELY thick metal restraints on them. D: Which was unpleasant enough, until I directed Victor to the back of the room to see what was going on there and found a wall full of filing cabinets and two rooms tucked away on either side – one reading “Brain Extraction” and one reading “Cerebral Reconditioning.” And then I made the mistake of having Victor poke his head into “Brain Extraction” –

Only to find within a giant horrible machine that looked like it literally sucked the brains out of people’s heads. Along with so many fucking brains floating in jars full of glowing green liquid. Like, there were shelves upon SHELVES of these brains on both sides of the room. D: Mechanist, how the FUCK did you not look at all this and go “oh wow, the people working on this project seemed super evil, maybe I shouldn’t be using these robobrains to play hero with.” *shakehead* Fortunately for me, Victor and Ada came across this place near the end of my playsession, so I didn’t have to endure it for long. Instead, I just had Victor:

I. Combine some drugs at the nearby available chemistry bench – he may not partake, but they sell for good money, and combined drugs take up less inventory than separate ones

II. Grab some duct tape and other goodies out of a tool chest on a nearby desk (always gotta have the adhesive! Even if it make me wonder how all these brain jars were secured in the robobrains)

III. Get confused by the fact that the terminal next to the tool chest was labeled “Cerebral Reconditioning” when he was in the “Brain Extraction” room – I sent him across the hall to take a look at “Cerebral Reconditioning” to see if they had a “Brain Extraction” terminal, and they did (along with a scary machine that looked like it could absolutely fry someone’s head with current pointed at a scorched hospital bed). Not sure what’s going on there, other than Bethesda putting the wrong terminals in the wrong rooms for some reason O.o

IV. Bunk down in the main surgery area for the night at 7:30 PM because, well, he was feeling tired, and I figured I might as well end my playsession with him getting some sleep. In the least scary room of the research wing, because like fuck was I having him sleep near all those brains!

And that was pretty much that! I left it with Victor having just gotten up at 3:30 AM the next day, ready to resume his terrible adventures through the horrible government lab. Next time, we finish exploring the Research Wing (including seeing what’s on those two swapped computers), then maybe see if there’s time to take on the Mechanist herself! Because, well, the quest marker on the compass is telling me that she’s not only nearby, but finally on the same floor as me...we’ll see what happens!

Writing: Actually got two bits of writing done today, go me –

A) First, before beanbags (see “Other,” below), I did the FO4 Playthrough Progression write-up of the day’s FO4 playsession! Featuring Victor, Alice, and Ada taking on Holding Block A, the observation hallway above, and the research wing just beyond it! And, as per usual, their adventures weren’t too different from what actually happened in the game – just with a few small changes:

I. Alice was the one to propose my “maybe the pipes are the toilets” theory when the gang went into Holding Block A and saw the horrible cells there – though she allowed that maybe it was used to gas the prisoners in case of emergency or something. And then said that, if it was her in that situation, she’d probably shit in the pipe anyway to annoy the guards. :P

II. After Victor noticed the first living ghoul stuck in a cell while going down the block looking for goodies, and used the VATS feature on his Pip-Boy to find the others, he and Alice worked together to mercy-kill them – Alice opening all the doors (as she’s the better lockpicker in this world) while Victor administered the fatal shocks before the ghouls could even move (with Ada staying nearby to help if things got ugly). Lunch and looting the cells also happened after all the ghouls were killed (and put on their beds to try and lay them to rest in SOME sense), and Alice naturally received the bobby pins for all her hard work. *nods* You did good, Alice! Even if I had you break almost as many bobby pins as I did. XD

III. While reading the Medical Observation terminal upstairs, I had Victor wonder if the serial killer mentioned, A22, was the ghoul who had that auto-stim chestpiece – I mean, given his write-up, it seems logical that they’d give him something like that to help keep him healthy! – and put forth my theory that the ex-military woman, A88, was arrested for assaulting a superior officer who tried to get fresh with her (noting that his female colleagues in the military complained about that all the time). Alice also got understandably upset about none of the people mentioned having NAMES, because, well, guess who it reminded her of. Even Ada was disgusted, and Jackson didn’t even install those emotion modules in her! Just a bad time all around.

IV. In the research wing, Victor gave the blood pack he found in the lockers to Alice (who, as a reminder, is still her Malkavian vampire self from VTMB, just a variant universe where Victor wasn’t her ghoul) – sadly, she could smell it was rancid and thus had to throw it away. Shame! Ada also scanned the decontamination arches and declared them clean so they could pass through without fear.

V. And I used the power of “hey, all of these characters are truly independent entities here” to have Alice check out the “Cerebral Reconditioning” room while Victor checked out “Brain Extraction” (and was nearly sick, poor guy) – she wasn’t very happy with her room either, as you might expect! I left in the terminals being in the wrong rooms, though, which they both found very confusing. Yeah, same here, my dudes.

And there you have it! I left off with Victor, having bunked down in the surgery room just like in the game, waking up at 3:30 AM from a nightmare about having his brain sucked out of his skull (sorry Victor!) – next time, they’ll finish exploring the research lab, then go see if they can find that Mechanist! Because I’m pretty sure they’ll all want to kick someone’s ass once they finish reading all those terminals and whatnot.

B) And second, after supper and my second bit of YouTubery (also below), I actually got a bit more done on editing Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland!” Specifically:

I. I went back to the beginning and quickly skimmed through the first twenty pages again cleaning up more instances where I overused Alice’s name (along with making a few other little tweaks and fixes)

II. And I finished editing Alice’s time in the creepy mannequin house, meaning I’m now on page 38 of 54 in the chapter! Hooray!

Yeah, felt good to make some progress on this when I didn’t expect to. :) Hopefully tomorrow I can get in a good editing session and see if I can make it so I might be able to get this sucker up on Monday...

YouTube: Got in two videos today, which was nice – even if one of them was incredibly short XD –

A) First up, right before Fallout 4, we had “Changes to the Channel” by C. M. Alongi! A quick two-minute video of her making two quick announcements –

I. One, she finally was able to rent a dedicated filming space for the series (instead of having to work in her apartment and deal with all the problems of filming therein), so future episodes will look a little different (and might even feature greenscreen again!)

II. And two, she’s starting a podcast series, Cafae Convos, where she interviews a guest each week! Those should be going up on Wednesdays starting September 3rd. The comments are already hoping her video editor, Nic, is one of the guests. XD

So that’s interesting! I admit, I’m not so interested in the podcast, but I’m very intrigued as to how having a bigger, dedicated filming space will affect the actual series. Maybe we’ll be able to see how the CaFae is actually supposed to look? One hopes…

B) And then, this evening, I finally got around to watching the final video in my Watch Later – “The Sims 4 Just Added a New GAME-BREAKING Feature…” by onlyabidoang! This was his look at the base game update/patch that dropped on 8/19/2025, and it consisted roughly of the following:

I. Abi warning people that they really needed to remove/disable their mods after every Sims 4 update, no matter how small, because any given update could do something in the background that really fucked up mods – and then demonstrating with his own game by showing how enabling his mods post-update led to a fucked-up start screen with no images because he had a main menu replacement mod that wasn’t yet updated. Just common sense, people!

II. Abi showing off a possible mod-related bug where he couldn’t load into any lots in his latest save game with mods enabled (he kept being kicked to the World Select screen), but could once he took them out – however, he stressed that, judging from the comments on the official thread on this bug in the EA help center, some people DO seem to be getting this “can’t load into lots” bug on clean saves, so beware!

III. Abi showing off the new “Pack Selector” feature that came with the patch, which allows you to disable packs to get, for example, a base-game-only save file. Which sounds like it could be an interesting feature (even if Abi and I agree it’s probably been implemented so EA can tell Simmers suffering game performance issues or bugs “well, if you turned off some of your packs...”)...but as Abi demonstrated, if you want to then re-enable packs (either for a new save file or to “upgrade” an existing one), you might find yourself unable to do it as the confirming checkmark button will be inaccessible, giving a “game data is still loading, please wait” message. Fortunately, restarting the game DOES seem to fix the issue, at least somewhat (it allows you to actually click the checkmark button again, anyway), but if you’ve seen reports of Simmers complaining that this feature broke their saves, the inability to re-enable packs might be what they’re talking about. (They might also be complaining about disabling some packs destroying an existing save, but if they are, that’s on them, because the feature does make it VERY CLEAR that you should only be doing this on NEW saves to prevent save data loss/corruption, and even tells you “if you MUST open this older save with all these packs missing, at least let us make a copy of it for you so the original will still be there for you.” Yeah, this feature may be a buggy mess, but they at least covered their asses in THAT area.)

IV. Abi going through all the new skin details – including freckles, stretch marks, wrinkles, and age spots – the patch added to the game, showing them off on both a light-skinned young fem Sim and a dark-skinned older mas Sim so we could see what they looked like on different skin tones, body frames, and ages. They’re mostly pretty good additions, especially for people who want their elderly Sims to look appropriately aged, but I did think that some of the stretch marks didn’t show up very well on the dark-skinned guy. Maybe that’s just me, though.

V. Abi talking about the new toggle to enable/disable the spread of Ailments (the magical diseases that come with Enchanted By Nature) through contagion (aka, Sims passing them on to other Sims through contact), because despite a previous patch lowering the rate of contagion significantly, people were still up in arms about how often their Sims were getting Ailments. As long as the box is unchecked, Sims cannot pass Ailments on by contact, and you can only get them via being very Imbalanced or fairy shenanigans. This honestly feels much more logical to me – they’re magical illnesses! Caused by magical means! Why would they be contagious in the first place? *shakehead* Hopefully the toggle works as it’s meant to, but we’ll see…

VI. Abi briefly noting a change to the hated Cart button in the top UI – instead of popping up a window showing off a pack you don’t have in an attempt to get you to buy it if you click on it, now it just straight-up takes you to the store page. Which – who knows why they changed that, but EA, what we want is for you to TAKE IT OUT ENTIRELY. Ugh.

VII. And Abi briefly going through the bug fixes and performance tweaks in the patch notes, because none of them were really the kind of fixes that could be shown off in a video (mostly making sure some clothes were properly classified).

So yeah – not a stunning review of the latest patch to drop for the game! Sounds like that Patch Selector has been causing some real problems for people...and that “can’t load into a lot” bug is obviously something that needs to be fixed PRONTO. Especially since one of the commenters on the video indicated they’d gotten it –

In an OFFLINE game. That has NOT RECEIVED THE UPDATE. That was EXTREMELY WORRYING to hear tonight, given that my plans for tomorrow included firing up the game in offline mode again to continue working on Smiler’s potion caravan! O.O Cripes, I really hope it loads...keep your fingers crossed, everyone!

Other: While a good portion of the day was hot and a little sticky, it did actually cool down and dry out around 5 PM, so we were able to go out and play some beanbags. And after a painful losing streak the last few time we’ve played, and a first round where she managed to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory, Mom actually came back and end today as the beanbags champ, winning three games out of five! Dad won the other two, and I just kind sucked in general, only getting a couple of seconds. Meeeh. Final scores were me 2-3-3-3-2; Dad W-2-2-W-3; and Mom 3-W-W-2-W. We’ll see if we play tomorrow – Mom’s pretty firm about giving the croquet set a spin instead, but that requires set-up, and I don’t know if she and Dad are going to get to it...we’ll find out, I suppose!

So yeah, not too bad a day -- though as you can probably tell, I did not get to Gigs's comment. Sorry -- I'll answer it tomorrow morning! Just too tired right now...and yeah, in the interest of NOT going to bed again at 2:30 AM, I'd better hit the sack. Tomorrow's plans are -- well, a little up in the air, honestly -- while I know for sure that I want to see if I can finish that Tav!Smiler post on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), my video gaming will depend on both if I can actually load any lots in my game (hopefully) and if we do indeed play croquet tomorrow (and how long it takes). And what I watch with my workout will depend on how long Jon's video tomorrow really is -- because, as he's been entertaining his in-laws this week, he's putting up a "thoughts on the Fallout TV series Season 2" video instead of the next episode of F:NV YOLO Remastered. And if that video is short enough and easier to sum up, I MIGHT take the opportunity to start the super-long Alien RPG episode of Oxventure...we will see. Right now, I just want to brush my teeth and get to bed. Night all!

Like, most of the day was all right, if kinda boring (see the "Work" section for more details), but right around suppertime, things started going downhill:

-->First, because we're back to watching old Last Week Tonight episodes, and while John Oliver can be funny, everything he talks about makes me furious that our world is like this

-->Second, because I ended up spending WAY more time in the kitchen after supper than I'd originally intended because one, I ended up having to cut myself some fresh slices of bread off the loaf Mom baked tonight, after the roll Mom left out for me turned out to be getting moldy; and two, I got the last piece of chicken and the last few carrot sticks out of their respective containers while making my lunch, meaning I then had to WASH said containers, which of course took a while

-->And third, because while I was preparing to start on my nightly write-ups, I heard a crash somewhere in the house and was like "????" Turned out to be the shower curtain rod falling down in the bathroom -- my parents put it back up...only for it to fall down again a couple of minutes later. *grumbles* So now I'm guessing we need a new one of those for some reason. Fun.

So yeah -- not exactly the most relaxing of nights! But at least the nightly write-ups have not taken me forever:

Work – Ended up being a very quiet day at work – I ran the morning reports; I got the refund check out to that one lady who wanted one and did some reversals; I went through the exception batches still sitting in my bucket, figuring out which things still needed fixing and which could be filed already; I called a guy about failed credit card stuff; and then I spent the rest of the day doing obituaries and the related roster maintenance. *shrug* Kind of boring, but better than being stressed out! Even if my coworker annoyed me at the end of the day by asking me questions about the payroll system I didn’t know how to answer because, well, I don’t work in payroll. *rolls eyes* Just five more hours tomorrow!

To-Do List –

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

A) The final ten minutes of “Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork | Oxventure One-Shot | (ft. Dominic Allen)!” Which featured our motley gang of Constable Surly (Dom), Constable Igorina (Jane), Detective Bartholemew (Mike) and Constable Cliff (Johnny) wrapping up their attempt to stop John Johnson, disgruntled architect and most ordinary man in the world, blowing up the Misbegot Bridge over the River Ankh with a bunch of stolen dragons via –

I. Constable Surly snatching the nutritional additives that keep Gunther – the most delicate of the stolen dragons – from popping, and – seeing Gunther nearby and vibrating worringly – running over to the little guy to pour them in his mouth! Fortunately, Gunther loves his additives and happily gulped them down, and the potentially-explosive situation ended with a mere sulfurous burp. Yay!

II. Surly and Constable Cliff then managing to coax the dragons into the goods elevator so they could be safely transported upward, with Cliff putting his experience in writing little jingles to promote the Watch (he is in public relations, after all) to work by singing a little ditty to draw them in. It worked a lot better than anyone was expecting. XD

III. Constable Igorina, meanwhile, pursuing John up the rickety scaffolding around the sides of the bridge! Her attempts to tether herself to the bridge went poorly and ended up in her tying her feet together – fortunately, her attempts to wrestle John (who lunged at her once he saw she’d accidentally bound herself) went much better, and she was able to corral the miscreant (who was ranting on about golems again) and drag him back down to the maintenance walkway. Which is a good thing, as her coworkers were absolutely no help at all – Bartholemew had the legit excuse of literally being in pieces lying on the crust of the river, but when Surly and Cliff saw Igorina and John struggling, all Surly could think was “I have to get a picture.” XD Dude’s a iconograph hound, that’s for damn sure!

IV. And finally, Igorina tying John up; Cliff bonking him on the head to stop him constantly ranting about how blowing up the bridge would solve all his problems (allowing Surly to read him his rights, such as they were); the others gathering up Bartholemew and Igorina stitching him back together; and the gang reopening the Misbegot Bridge (to a flurry of epithets and curses from the waiting carriage drivers), delivering the remaining dragons back to the Sanctuary, and heading back to their Watch House with John in custody. Hooray! :D We love a happy ending – even if it involved quite a comedy of errors to get there. XD Fun times!

B) And the first twenty minutes of “Can I build a house with only 5 packs?” by James Turner! His latest build video, inspired by the new “Pack Selection” feature that EA added to the game in the latest patch (which allows you to decide at the beginning of a new save which packs you actually want enabled) – but not actually using it, because apparently the feature is, you guessed it, buggy as fuck and breaking people’s games. *sigh* Instead, he decided to use his own Pack Disabler tool to disable all but five packs in this game – chosen with his Pack Randomizer tool – then use his Lot Randomizer tool to pick a random non-base-game lot to build something on with those five packs! A spin on the Pack Randomizer gave him Eco Lifestyle, Strangerville, Romantic Garden Stuff, Backyard Stuff, and the Castle Estate kit to play with, while a couple of spins on the Lot Randomizer (because first he got a base game lot, and second he got an apartment, which he felt would make using Romantic Garden and Backyard waaay too difficult) put him on one of the lots in StrangerVille – I forget the exact name. So he disabled the rest of the packs (excepting the free “Holiday” stuff, because he’d forgotten to add that stuff to the disabler – whoops), loaded up the lot, considered his options –

Then looked at the decorative run-down hotel right next to his chosen lot and went “oh, that’s cool, let’s build a smaller version of that.” XD So that’s what he did, with the idea that he’d do themed rooms inside to make sure he used all of the chosen packs. XD So far, he’s build the basic shell, complete with parking spaces (both fully-outdoor and sheltered); done up the outside in old red bricks (as apparently a lot of Australian motels are brick) with green floor trims and fencing on the balconies; assigned each of the rooms a color-coded door; and started figuring out which rooms have which themes and filling them with appropriate items from their packs. I left off with him working on figuring out the layout of the Castle Estate room – looking forward to seeing what the finished product will look like tomorrow!

2. Continue final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Check – I made it up to page 30 tonight, which included Alice traversing the secret weird “electric death castle torture chamber” room behind Grout’s library and solving the puzzle of the Tesla coils (even if she ended up super staticky as a result); Alice pulling a random lever afterward and discovering it opened up another door at the far end of the “stairs” room; Alice descending into the hospital-themed portion of Grout’s house and getting a little concerned by Grout’s latest tape (where he mentioned hearing voices – Cheshire was quick to assure her that that didn’t make her any more like him); Alice being very disturbed by Grout’s little operating rooms – but also being very intrigued by the potent blood he stored in the refrigerated room off the second one (even if she’s not drinking any until she can be SURE it won’t bond her to Grout); and Alice descending even further into the “medical wing” of the house, tripping up a hostile ghoul, and then encountering two others who, when she said she was just looking for Grout, directed her to a curious maze with an upside-down door… Tomorrow, we pick up with Alice preparing to enter the maze, and see how far I get! These edits are taking way longer than I’d hoped, I have to say – though it’s my own fault for overusing Alice’s name so much throughout this chapter. Seriously, in some sections it’s like I’ve forgotten pronouns exist. And that’s not counting all the other little mistakes I keep catching… *grumbles* The chapter will go up eventually, this I swear!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – I got on the computer much later than anticipated tonight (see my earlier complaints about how the night has gone, particularly how much time I had to spend in the kitchen after supper), and after doing the write-up on my workout videos, I quickly realized that I had time to do a proper editing past on the next chunk of LB:DQ Chapter 5, or watch a video, but not both. You can see what won above. *heavy sigh* I was at least hoping I could watch the OXBoxers play a bit of the new Resident Evil coming out...maybe tomorrow.

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

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – While I didn’t have anything to add to this week’s queue over here, I did update one of my drafts for a future queue – specifically, I added a new scene idea to the “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur's Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 2” post I’ve got cooking! Said idea being Gale telling the trio about his need to consume magical items, then clarifying that no, he does not physically eat them – only for Alice to ask “how much for you to take one bite out of a boot?” XD Look, it’s a joke Larian themselves have made – I have to do my take on it!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, with no asks or thread replies waiting for me, I instead turned back to rpmemelibrary’s account for an appropriate meme to queue up – settling on “Send Random and a Muse name for a Random fact about that Muse” as the one I liked the most. *shrug* We’ll see if anyone takes me up on the offer!

So at least I got all the most important stuff done. Just really not liking this trend of me not getting to watch any fun stuff (or do anything else fun, really) because I'm desperately trying to get through these LB:DQ edits. Gonna be a relief when this chapter is up and I can go back to work on "The Van Dort Vacancy," let me tell you!

In the meantime, I really should try to get to bed a little earlier to end out the week. Need to be awake for my final half-day at work...and for whatever video gaming I do afterward. We're either picking invocations for Warlock Tav!Smiler or working on their potion caravan, that's all I know. Night all!

If you're wondering "WTF does that mean," I just ended up really annoyed tonight after supper because I kept having to rewash dishes my parents had already washed because there was food stuck to them. Meaning I was a little late getting back on the computer, meaning I was late getting to my various write-ups, and -- yeah. It's just another example of how I never seem to have enough time for anything anymore because there are always Things I Have To Do, and then my brain at a certain point goes "right, no more Things, I just want to rot" no matter how much stuff I have left. It just -- it really irritated me tonight. I dunno why. Just a bad brain day, I suppose. *sigh* Anyway, the write-up --

Work – An all right day at work – I did the usual morning reports while my coworker did the GL, then called a bunch of people about overpayments (two of whom called me back – one wanted a refund, the other said it would be fine to apply it to next year’s campaign), then spent most of the rest of the day working on obituaries. With some brief breaks to take some credit card update calls (one at the beginning of the day, one at the end), and to discuss the “overpayments” situation with the assistant director going forward (she doesn’t want a small overpayment being moved to the next campaign year to stop big donors from getting a letter, which fair – we’ve decided we’ll wait until the director himself gets back from vacation and talk about it with him). Nothing particularly exciting or horrible, which suits me just fine. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork | Oxventure One-Shot | (ft. Dominic Allen)!” The crime-solving shenanigans with Constable Surly (Dom), Constable Igorina (Jane), Detective Bartholemew (Mike) and Constable Cliff (Johnny) continued tonight, and included:

A) Some confusion between Bartholemew and the hard-of-hearing Rufus, the owner of The Lamp & Needles Tavern, regarding the roles of the squad, after Rufus declared he liked Surly but not Bartholemew – Bartholemew identified himself as the “bad cop,” Cliff as the “large cop,” and Igorina as the “lisping” cop, then tried to go “forget it, it’s fine” when Rufus overheard the last as “wisping cop.” Rufus was like “it’s not five, it’s eleven,” prompting Bartholemew to be “it’s five o’clock somewhere!” Resulting in Rufus pouring him a whiskey. XD Well, that worked out nicely for him!

B) Surly managing to use his infectious personality to get some info out of Rufus about their possible miscreant, John! You know, the weirdly-normal man in the brown suit who is of average height for a human. :p As it turned out, Rufus did know John – he was one of the regulars at the place, and had a tendency to get a little too drunk and start unburdening himself of his woes. And the other night, while in his cups, he’d started going on about how unfair the world was, and how he could fix everything if he had a dragon...yeah, as you might imagine, some worried looks were exchanged around that time between our heroes! He also revealed that the man was rather lacking in money, and had paid for last night’s drinks by leaving a mysterious object behind – a weird cross between a telescope and a pocket watch that Igorina, after some investigation, recognized as a “theoddolite,” a piece of equipment architects use! With this particular one labeled “Stone On Stone.” Surly and Cliff both came to the conclusion that Jon was probably going to blow up a building for money (helped along by Rufus telling them about how John apparently owed his last dollar to Miss Effin – sorry, Miss ETHIN), while Bartholemew suggested that, given the way John was talking, he might be planning an assassination attempt on Vetinari (Surly’s response to that was a snort and a “good luck” XD). Anyway, after finishing up with Rufus (including Bartholemew very unsuccessfully trying to prod the man into indicating which direction John went in when he left, instead just becoming very emotional and warm from the whiskey), the group decided it was time to follow up on their leads. Surly asked if Cliff knew what “Stone On Stone” meant (because, well, troll – Cliff was like “give me a minute to work out if that culturally insensitive” XD), but unfortunately on a poor roll, Cliff did not (and managed to twist his ankle besides!). So instead, prompted by Igorina, we saw –

C) The gang heading to Nobblers & Sons! Fine purveyors of artisanal coal (great snacks for trolls), who were supposed to make a delivery of coal dust (aka dragon treats) to the Sanctuary that morning, but who had never shown up. The group found the shop mysteriously closed when they arrived, but since they had “The law is really more of a guideline” Bartholemew with them, they soon got inside. Poor Cliff immediately froze up because he wanted very much to take some coal, but knew that would be wrong – Bartholemew tried to help by snitching him a bag of coal dust and saying “it’s all right, I stole it, nothing to do with you,” but that just led to Cliff deciding he had to submit the bag as evidence. And then Surly took a picture of the whole thing, causing Cliff to say in horror that he just broke bad. XD

ANYWAY – after all that, the gang started doing some actual police work, starting with seeing that the door to the back courtyard had been roughly jimmied open with a crowbar. They headed out to investigate, and found a set of wheel ruts that matched the type they’d seen at the Sanctuary...and a distinct lack of a carriage to fill them. Hmmmm. Bartholemew then led the way upstairs to see what was going on above the shop, and opened the door onto a modestly-but-pleasantly appointed room –

With a man gagged and tied to a chair in the center of it. Very dead on account of the giant dagger in his chest. Igorina attempted to remove it as evidence, but on a poor roll ended up dragging it across the man’s chest and spraying herself with yet more blood (the woman is a walking gore lasagna, to paraphrase Jane) –

And causing the man to suddenly start shouting against the gag! Seems their murder victim had become a zombie post-mortem – which meant he was available for questioning! So question him they did, causing him to reveal that he’d been murdered by some fellow with a bag over his head, wearing a brown suit and ranting and raving about golems and how they’re taking jobs and whatnot. Hmmm – the plot clumpens! Anyway, the man (Crispin Nobblers, as he eventually introduced himself) was very annoyed at having been murdered – though he perked up a little when Cliff pointed out that he no longer had to worry about “life in-sewer-ants,” noting that he’d had a policy and that it might be a silver lining to the whole mess. No carriage insurance, though, meaning he was pretty well screwed when it came to that theft, poor chap. The group promised Crispin that they were on the case and that, if they found his carriage, they’d put in the impound lot so he could pick up it up. Crispin was appreciative and asked Bartholemew if he had any tips for being a zombie – Bartholemew was like “lavender – it really hides the smell.” XD Anyway, with some new facts learned, poor Crispin freed from the chair, and the dagger bagged up for the rest of forensics to have a look at (because poor Igorina, on ANOTHER bad roll to examine it, ended up picking up the trait “doesn’t know what a dagger is” and thus couldn’t identify it for the life of her), the gang proceeded onward! Which led to –

D) The gang heading to the mysterious “Stone On Stone” – which, as per their questioning of Crispin, was an architectural firm in the area with a golem on staff. This establishment was actually open, and upon letting themselves inside, the group saw all sorts of people sitting at little desks drafting (including the golem), a woman checking all their work, and newspaper clippings on the wall about various buildings the firm had helped create – including their most recent contract to refurbish the Misbegot Bridge over the river Ankh. (Johnny was immediately like :O over that!) They managed to get the attention of the woman in charge, who brought them up to her office – and after a bit of questioning, she confirmed that they had had a John on staff until recently – a John Johnson, to be precise. However, they’d had to let him go because a) his behavior had become increasingly erratic (apparently partly because his landlady, Miss Ethin, had recently raised her rents), and b) they’d hired the golem Plots to help with drafting, and thanks to his ability to draw everything as it would eventually look when finished, they’d simply hadn’t needed John anymore. Cliff quickly realized what was likely going to happen (as quickly as a troll could, anyway), and attempted to charm the woman into revealing if the Misbegot bridge had any particular structural deficiencies that might be vulnerable to an exploding dragon – his diamond-tooth smile proved a little too reflective for her liking, but fortunately Surly was there to jump in with his infectious personality and sway her into giving them the inside scoop. She thus told them in strictest confidence that the supports on the bridge were NOT doing well and desperately needed shoring up – but that information could NOT get out, as the firm NEEDED this contract to go well (as they hadn’t been getting many jobs lately). The gang promised to keep it on the down low, and I ended this particular chunklet with Surly telling her that she’d be able to get her “theoddolite” back by writing to the Watch office after the investigation was over – the woman was a bit grumpy about having to give it back (having been very pleased when Igorina pulled it out, as apparently they’re worth $20 AM, which is a lot), but was mollified when Surly promised her that they’d compensate her if anything happened to it. And then was somewhat UN-mollified when Bartholemew started going on about the “bad old days” and how, if it disappeared during the investigation, it might not be worth her time to try and track it down. XD

And there we have it for now! Tomorrow, it looks like the gang will be heading over to Ethin’s Boarding House (as they got the address off the lady at Stone On Stone), and we’ll see if they’re right about John targeting the Misbegot bridge! There may be a twist or a turn yet to this story...

2. Continue final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Check – it took longer than I thought thanks to some tricky edits early on in the process, but I did just make it to page 20 out of 54 in my edits today, covering Alice tackling the candle puzzle in the library (and picking up the Weekapaug Thistle, of course); fighting the ghouls in the stairwell room (and feeling horribly guilty about it); listening to more of Grout’s terrible tape recorders (hating him more with each one); having a brief quiet moment on the tower walk above the house; and sneaking past yet more ghouls with the power of invisibility (so very useful). I left off with her having met 6768 and 6789 in the fake-mirror room, getting ready to listen to another one of Grout’s tapes – tomorrow, we see if I can get up to page 30 and through yet more of the terrible-awful-no-good-very-bad mansion! Be nice if I could get the new chapter up by Saturday, but we’ll see...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – I simply did not have time tonight. You do not want to know how long it took me to do that write-up on the Oxventure Discworld one-shot up there. *facepalm* I have GOT to learn how to be less wordy in my write-ups...I just always want to share all the good jokes and whatnot with you guys...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing on Valice Multiverse tonight, but I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted to put in my queue for the week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler):

A) For Wednesday, I have some fanart by benmix98 of the two Malkavian fledglings genderswapped – that is, the cheerleading-outfit-wearing fem!Malk was now a man, and the ready-for-the-rave masc!Malk was now a woman – the designs were really neat, so I really wanted to share ‘em. :)

B) For Thursday, I have some more fanart by benmix98, this time of Beckett looking at something while wiping blood from his lips – Beckett is best vampire, so adding that to the queue was a no-brainer. :)

C) And for Friday, some fanart by asylumpixie of a Malkavian OC in fancy Elizabethan clothes pouring blood all over the neck of a dressed-for-the-Napoleonic-Wars LaCroix laying in front of her – this is that incredibly detailed and gorgeous piece I told you all about in a previous entry, and I HAD to throw it in there.

Yeah, kind of foreshadowing the upcoming LB:DQ chapter with all this, I feel! XD Now I just have to find the right Song Saturday...but I can do that tomorrow. If I have the time of course.

Other: Another nice day, another round of beanbags – and this time, Dad absolutely smoked Mom and me. Just straight up wins every time. And poor Mom – well, she tried, especially in the last game, but she was never able to get ahead of me. Final scores were me 2-2-2; Dad W-W-W; and Mom 3-3-3. *shrug* Them’s the breaks, I suppose!

Aaand I have officially stayed up too late. *facepalm* I'd better get to bed before things get any worse -- night all!

I say that because while I had a decent day, there were two things that kept it from being truly good. One was the weather, which was miserably hot and sticky today, meaning we all had to stay in the AC again (which really ticked off Mom, who wanted to keep working on the gnome house she's building on our catalpa tree) --

And the other was the return of the fucking ants in the pantry. >( Six days we went without seeing any of the little buggers after Mom cleaned it out, then cleaned off the shelf on the basement stairs nearby and sealed it off, then tonight like four of them were crawling around the flour container. We just CANNOT figure out where the little bastards are coming from! Mom has cleaned and sprayed pretty much EVERYWHERE! It is a puzzle and not one we're eager to keep banging our heads against! *sigh* And before you ask, yes, I did bring up calling an exterminator, but Mom and Dad are firmly against it because they don't think they'd know either how to get rid of the ants. *heavier sigh* Fucking hell...I was so hoping we were done with them...

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

Tumblr: Decently productive day on the tumblrs, I must say –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Got some good stuff done before lunch over here today –

A) First, I reblogged three things I found on my friend Squid’s (aka gaydragonwizards) blog:

I. A thread by to-the-way and iwonderwh0 about a new bill coming up in the collective governments of the European Union that would have AI scan and monitor everyone’s texts before they’re sent, encrypted or no. It’s SUPPOSEDLY to stop child sexual abuse, but we all know that it’s gonna be used to censor people and create a fun mass surveillance state! And as per screenshots by iwonderwh0, the governments in favor have already made it clear that the people in charge will NOT have their texts snooped on, which – yeah. You’re not supposed to be open about the double standards, guys! *sigh* Most of my online friends on tumblr are American or English, so this doesn’t apply to them, but I figured I should reblog it just for reach – never know who might stumble across it on a random tumblr browse!

II. Some cute art by potoh of two award-winning cats – a white kitty with orange ears and a blue ribbon stating “I have never used ChatGPT and never will,” and a black kitty sporting a pink ribbon stating “No. 1 GenAI hater.” Because I haven’t used ChatGPT and never intend to, no matter how hard writing an e-mail might get. I have heard too much about how generative AI like that steals from other people’s hard work (note all the people on AO3 locking their accounts to prevent bot scraping) and ruins the environment (have this article from MIT from January explaining some of the impacts) to ever want to use it. Also, adorable cartoon kitties. :)

III. And a short thread from maxwith-a-lowercasem, featuring a post with a crude drawing of a wild-eyed person with loads of arrows pointing into their head, labeled things like “headcanons” and “ideas” and “ships” and “fan fics” and “blorbos” and plain old “so many thoughts,” and a follow-up featuring tags from someone called maybenoots noting how all the arrows are pointing INWARD at the person and none are coming OUT and calling this “the nature of the curse.” Gee, I wonder why that might speak to me. XD It’s fucking busy up in this head with all the Valicer AUs jostling for attention!

B) And second, I went into my drafts and started working on a post letting everyone know about my new Tav!Smiler in Baldur’s Gate III! Because I did do that poll two months ago asking everyone what their class makeup should be and how I should handle their love of alchemy, and I thought the residents of tumblr deserved an update. :) So far I’ve just completed the intro and the section on their race and appearance (complete with pictures), with a little bit written on their class and their High Half-Elf cantrip – hopefully I can get this completed next weekend to post the week following! I don’t want to leave it too long, after all – be a lot to catch everyone up on!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to answer, from someone griping about how people who say that all modern music sucks are annoying because they’re clearly doing it just to feel superior, not because it’s necessarily true. I queued up Cuddlepile!Smiler heartily agreeing, talking about “Ordinary” by Alex Warren and “Disease” by Lady Gaga as modern songs they really enjoy – and that I really enjoy, because modern music is NOT a lost cause, thank you very much! ...I mean, it may seem that way when they play “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone or “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter for the fifty-millionth time, but – still.

Sims 4: Well, I managed to tear myself away from Baldur’s Gate III today to continue my offline adventures over here building Smiler’s Potion Caravan! Which, as you probably know by now, is intended to be a Sims 4 representation of the wagon my Tav!Smiler used to travel around Faerun and peddle their potions before the whole “kidnapped by the Nautiloid” thing, so I basically was still spiritually playing BG3. XD Anyway – pleased to report I made some good progress on the build today:

A) First, I conducted a brief experiment in changing the walls from “short” to “medium” height (moving the back wheels off the build temporarily when changing the wall height ended up deleting them – forgot for a second that I’d used “moveobjects on” to get them to slightly overlap the edge of the lot!), in the hopes that it would give me more wall space to play with when it came to my Crypt-O-Club hanging shelves (since I really wanted to get that lower one off the floor already). And it did...at the cost of making the rest of the build look weird. Like, I just really did not like the walls being so much taller than the doors! So I ended up reverting all my changes and keeping the wall height “short.” I will just have to live with that one shelf being really close to the floor, I guess!

B) Then, after taking some time to ponder my bed and lighting options (as I needed just the right bed for the build, and I’m not sold on the chandeliers I’m currently using to light the place), I focused my efforts on rearranging the interior of the wagon’s “alchemy” room to see exactly where I wanted to put stuff! I initially tried moving the door to Smiler’s “living” area all the way over to the left, into the back corner by the windows, to free up some interior wall space so I could hang the two Crypt-O-Club shelves there side-by-side – but that forced me to move the Realm Of Magic decorative magical-ingredients-storage cabinet that was there over to the corner by the big sliding doors (where the shelves originally were) and I quickly decided I much preferred having all the ROM furniture all lined up together against the back wall. Gotta keep things in easy reach for Smiler at their cauldron! So instead I put the door to the “living” area in the middle of the interior wall; moved the cabinet back into its original position; stacked the two hanging shelves atop each other on the wall section next to the living door (since I still preferred them being on that wall to where I had them before – I did experiment with putting a shelf on either side of the door, but unfortunately the cabinet slightly blocked the shelf on the left, so that was a no go. I ended up just using ALT to carefully move the shelf up a little bit so it wasn’t sitting FLAT on the floor) –

And instead put the Cottage Living “Forager’s Delight” bench into the corner by the sliding doors! Because, as per my last update on this build, I did want to use it somewhere. And where better than right next to the dried herbs from Realm of Magic hanging by the front door? :) So yeah, now that bench is where Smiler preps their ingredients before storing them in the fancy cabinets! I am pleased.

C) With that more or less sorted, I turned my attention to figuring out Smiler’s living space! I once again pondered my bed options, and – after a good long think and trying out a couple of beds in the actual room – went with the base game “Soothing Single Sleeper” bed. Because while I felt a bunk bed might be appropriate (especially the Horse Ranch one), the Soothing Single Sleeper actually came in the best color scheme – black frame with yellow-striped bedding – while also not looking too modern. So yeah, it was the only real option. You could fix this by giving us more fucking swatches with halfway-decent yellows, EA! And allowing us to color frames and bedding separately again! Ugh...

Anyway – with the bed sorted, and tucked away at one end of the room, I then turned my attentions to finding Smiler a nice desk where they could do things like write letters and come up with new alchemical formulae and whatnot. After considering a few options from Realm Of Magic, Horse Ranch, and Werewolves, I ultimately decided I like the look of the Horse Ranch “Handcrafted Antique Desk” the best (especially the drop-down writing surface – I seem to have a fondness for things that look like they could folded up to save space in this build) and put that in black at the other side of the room, by the window, paired with the “Bunkhouse Spindle Back Dining” chair in yellow. (I did check to see if the desk had a good yellow swatch, but no go. EAAAAAAAA…) I then tucked the Lovestruck “Mi Amor’s Acoustic Guitar” into the corner next to the desk, and – after checking out all my options – stuck my favorite Moschino Stuff “Modern Muse” rug in the black-and-yellow-stripes swatch on the floor so Smiler would have something soft to walk on in there. Again, on-brand with Smiler’s color scheme while not looking TOO modern. Despite, you know, “modern” being in the name. XD

D) With the living space now looking at least somewhat livable, I proceeded to go around the build to add in a few bits and bobs here and there – namely:

I. I put a couple of plant pots (in yellow and black, of course) on either side of the “front porch” area – figured it would be nice if Smiler had some pots where they could grow some of the plants they needed for their potions!

II. I put a trio of ROM “Science Of Magic Print Series” pictures up on the left-hand chunk of wall next to the “living space” door, since it looked depressingly blank – one of each picture type, all in black frames to match the color scheme. Filled in that space nicely!

III. And, after being unable to fit it in the “alchemy” room, I put the matching long “Spellcaster Scheduler” picture in Smiler’s living area right above their bed – guess it’ll be good for helping them track the phases of the moon? In case that’s relevant to their needs? :P

Just a few finishing touches to help bring the place to life! Though “finishing touches” is probably the wrong word to use, as I wouldn’t consider this place “finished” yet. It’s a lot closer than it used to be, though!

E) And finally, I finished off my time building by cleaning up all the now-unnecessary items on the lot (like the old fridge, stove, toilet, and counter), keeping only:

I. The Jungle Adventures selling table, which instead joined the “campsite” area at the front of the build (because Smiler does need something to actually sell their potions from!)

II. And the extra-fancy Realm Of Magic cauldron, because I’m still not sure if I want to use that one or the “classic” cauldron in the final version of the build (I’m leaning toward the classic one, but there’s an argument to be made for keeping the fancy one as a safer alternative to having a fire pit in the wooden wagon :p).

I also added one thing to the lot – the Vampires “Antique Book Stand” with the fancy book on it! Mostly because I saw it, went “oh cool, we could say that’s Smiler’s recipe book or something” – then discovered I didn’t have anywhere to put it. Because, well, there’s just not a lot of space in this tiny house, and most of the alchemy room’s footprint is taken up with other stuff! So I just left it on the lawn with the fancy cauldron at the back of the lot to see if I could find a spot to jam it into later. It really WOULD be nice to have...we will see!

And there we have it – another productive building session in Sims 4! :) It’s nice to slowly but surely bring this build together. Even if I keep having to go offline to do it so I can be sure it’s safe to use the handful of mods and CC I’ve got in the game currently. *sigh* Anyway, have some pictures of the place:











I feel like it’s coming along quite nicely. :) Maybe this upcoming weekend I can see about finishing it off once and for all! And then, after that, see if I can get the Teen Valicer Save off the ground...

Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another night spent with Jon of Many A True Nerd both on the bike and with my ice cream after supper, watching the latest episode of his latest Fallout series: “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 6 - False Hope!” The continuing adventures of baseball-bat-wielding courier P. D. Shoot as she –

A) Hit up a traveling merchant just leaving Novac to sell some of the loot she’d picked up on last week’s trip to REPCONN – and discovered to her delight that the woman was carrying the nails she needed to turn her GRA baseball bat into an absolute BEAST of a sneak attack weapon! Between this and all the Stealth Boys she managed to pick up while at REPCONN, things are definitely coming up Shoot lately!

B) Visited Ranger Andy in his little cabin to get some of his precious knowledge for herself! And not just in the form of the Medicine skill book she stole off his bed. :P Specifically, she asked him how he’d hurt his legs (apparently, back when he was an active NCR member, he was lured into a Legion trap where they used a starving, terrified child hiding in a closet to drop a grenade at his feet...and then he fell down the stairs of the motel more recently for good measure), then flattered him by saying that while his body may be injured, his mind was still sharp and he shouldn’t think of himself as worthless. Ranger Andy, touched by her kind words, thus taught her a special unarmed move from his NCR days, the “Ranger Takedown” (a simple palm shove or cool leg sweep, depending on which camera mode you were in) –

Which unlocked it for her to use with ALL her unarmed weapons (for example, the Spiked Knuckles currently sitting in her inventory) going forward. Because yes, unlike melee weapons, which each have their own unique special move that you can use so long as you have enough points in the skill, unarmed weapons all share a pool of special moves that you learn from people in the world, and any unarmed move can be used with any unarmed weapon. Which is pretty damn handy, if you’ll excuse the sort-of pun. :P Jon indicated that, once you get the skill high enough, unarmed attacks can be pretty fucking bonkers, so I’m looking forward to seeing how THAT goes once he starts focusing on it more than his melee weapons!

C) Traveled over to Nelson to see what the situation was there – and to start a game of ping-pong loyalties between herself, the NCR, and the Legion. What do I mean by that? Well:

I. First, P. D. Shoot met Ranger Milo at the checkpoint on the road to Nelson, who informed her that everything was shut down until the NCR had figured out how to deal with the Legion holed up in there. P. D. said she was no friend of the Legion and offered to assist, and Milo thus asked her to help him go into the town and kill the three hostages that the Legion had taken to destroy their leverage over the NCR. P. D. was like “shouldn’t we rescue them?” but Milo said that was a dumb idea given how outnumbered they were and the condition of the hostages (who’d been strung up on the crucifixion frames the Legion carry around) – if she wanted to try, he wouldn’t stop her, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to help. P. D. accepted that answer, and they headed over to Nelson –

II. And while Milo killed a bunch of Legionnaires from up on the ridge above the town, P. D. strolled into the house that served as the headquarters of the battalion’s commander, Dead Sea, and asked him, “so, what’s the sitch?” As her reputation with the Legion was neutral, he informed her of his orders to hold Nelson, and mentioned that their enemies to the north had not yet moved against them, so everything was kind of in a holding pattern. P. D. offered to break the stalemate, causing Dead Sea to scoff, “If you’re so eager to see Camp Forlorn Hope fall, why not go attack it all by yourself?” P. D.’s response was “Sounds like fun!” so Dead Sea gave her the quest to kill all four officers in Camp Forlorn Hope and sent her on her way. P. D. thus returned to Novac and carefully made her way to the camp under the cover of night (because apparently going directly to Forlorn Hope from Nelson is a BAD IDEA, loads of nasty enemies in your way), stopping briefly at Helios One (the power station the NCR have captured) along the way to lie to the troops there about being NCR and sneak in to steal another Medicine skill book –

III. Then sought out the commander of Forlorn Hope, Major Polatli and said, “Heard you haven’t moved against the Legion in Nelson yet; what’s the problem and how can I help?” Polatli explained that he had neither the men nor the supplies to risk in a skirmish with the Legion right now, and – seeing her eagerness to assist – sent her over to chat with Quartermaster Mayes about their supply issues. Mayes subsequently revealed that he’d sent some soldiers out to get whatever supplies they could find, but they hadn’t returned, and that he needed P. D. to find out what had happened to them and recover whatever they’d found. P. D. agreed and headed back to Helios One to see if they knew anything about the missing troopers – turns out, they did, informing P. D. they’d put a GPS tracker in the crate for the boys and that she should be able to follow it with her Pip-Boy. P. D. thus tracked the signal over to where the cache was sitting among some dead soldiers –

And not that far from some fire geckos. O.o Now, Jon had been prepared to deal with one of F:NV’s rare “unfair” ambushes (that is, an ambush where the enemies only spawn in once the ambush-inciting event is triggered, rather than them being in the world already and just running in when the event happens) over here – some Legionnaires spawn in the moment your character picks up the supply cache, but they only attack if they think you’re an enemy, and P. D. had a set of Legion Recruit Armor she’d picked up on her travels that she could don before grabbing the supplies, thus fooling the ambushers into thinking she was one of them – but with the added element of fire geckos...yeah, Jon decided that the best thing for P. D. to do was both put on the armor and burn one of her spare Stealth Boys, just in case. So that’s exactly what she did. As it turned out, the fire geckos were just far enough away that they wouldn’t have been a problem (and appeared to be distracted by some unlucky Legionnaires who had spawned in next to them), but while Jon was a little annoyed, he couldn’t consider the Stealth Boy wasted. Better safe than sorry!

IV. Anyway – after getting past all that, shucking off the Legion armor, and delivering the supplies to Mayes, P. D.’s next stop was to see Dr. Richards, the camp medic, and offer her assistance with whatever problems he had! And as it turned out, he had two of them:

a. First, he needed someone to help him treat the various wounded troopers he had in the infirmary, as he was up to his elbows in hurt people and required a second set of hands. And he wasn’t picky – anyone with a Medicine skill above 20 would do. P. D. had one of 36, and thus got to work checking up on the three patients that needed attention. She was able to patch up the one who was suffering from some nasty machete wounds with her own medical knowledge, but the other two – the one with a leg needing amputation, and the one whose chest was tore up with shrapnel from a close-range explosion – both required her to find the right equipment around the tent before attempting any treatment. Fortunately, she saved both of them too – though the guy with the bad leg also needed his gangrenous hand cut off, sadly. It’s tough being a soldier in the Mojave!

b. And second, he needed someone to look into some missing medical supplies – apparently someone was sneaking his doses of Hydra. P. D. took on the job – but as she didn’t have the medical knowledge to recognize the symptoms of Hydra use in any of the locals, she instead resorted to chatting with one Private Sexton to see if he knew anything of use. He told her that he often took walks at night to calm his nerves, and had seen his fellow private, Stone, doing the same thing – though he took way longer walks than him, often staying out past midnight. P. D. filed that information away and went to confront Stone about his long-ass nightly walks –

Only to discover that she was just shy of being able to pass the speech check to make him fess up – she couldn’t boost her Charisma, and thus her Speech skill, quite enough with the power of booze and sexy nighties. Fortunately, she was close to a level-up, and Jon had a couple of quests from the Mojave Outpost that he’d been keeping in-hand to turn in whenever a situation like this arose. So she quickly popped over there to tell a couple of random NCR about the atrocities the Legion had committed at Nipton (completing “Cold, Cold Heart”) and Ranger Ghost specifically what had happened to the town (completing “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize”). This got her up to Level 7, which allowed her to boost her Speech skill up to 46 (and her Melee skill up to 75). At that level of Speech, all she needed was the sexy nightie and one bottle of booze to call Stone out on his “late night walks” and get him to confess to stealing Richards’s supplies. She turned down his attempts at explaining himself and reported him to Richards, and Richards declared he’d have a world with Polatli at the first opportunity. Quest completed and problems solved, yay! P. D. thus went to Major Polatli to tell him the good news (and quietly steal his Big Book Of Science while hiding behind a typewriter in the corner of the command tent) –

V. Before pulling another switcheroo and deciding to kill all the officers at Forlorn Hope after all! Because she’d already gotten all the XP she could out of this group, and she was not eager to take the meager help they could offer her back to Nelson to help liberate it. Especially since Jon knew from experience the troopers would NOT be following her into any buildings and thus would NOT be helping her kill Dead Sea and his two bodyguards. So instead of mustering the troops and storming the town, she instead waited until nightfall when most of her targets would be asleep, then popped a Stealth Boy and proceeded to sneak around the camp and Grand Slam to death Major Polatli, Quartermaster Mayes, Dr. Richards (whose outfit she stole for future Medicine-skill-boosting purposes) –

And one Tech Officer Reyes! Who was the trickiest of the four to kill, because unlike the first three, she never goes to sleep – she just sits at her ham radio 24/7, in the command tent with two other NPCs wandering around. Meaning P. D. had to wait for quite a bit for the two other NCR troopers to be in a position where they’d be unlikely to see their commanding officer get murdered by an invisible nail-bat slamming into her head. Fortunately, they did eventually turn away, and P. D. was able to kill Reyes, get out of the tent, and fast-travel back to Nelson before a single corpse was discovered. She then reported back to Dead Sea, who congratulated her on her glorious victory and rewarded her with his personal blade, the Liberator – a machete with the highest limb damage multiplier in the game. Meaning that it essentially functions as a staggering weapon that’s even better than her 9 Iron. Yeah, given P. D.’s inability to use guns, you can see why she sided with the Legion in the end to get this thing!

VI. That being said, she did consider swapping loyalties one last time to get the XP from freeing the poor NCR hostages strung up on their crosses in the middle of town...but unfortunately for them, her Stealth Boy had run out right before she’d spoken to Dead Sea. And she wasn’t willing to free them without using a Stealth Boy to avoid the Legion turning hostile, and she wasn’t willing to use another one so soon after using two on her previous missions. Sorry boys – seems you’re going to be staying up there for a while yet!

And so the episode ended with P. D. having gotten herself a new weapon and some fame with both the NCR and the Legion, and us having gotten a look at just how flexible Miss Please Don’t Shoot’s morals are. XD Well, it is a YOLO run – anything goes so long as it keeps you alive! And next week, Jon intends to help add to P. D.’s arsenal by getting her up to Level 8 and finally getting her Unarmed skill up to 50. Because, apparently, that’s where the real fun with unarmed weaponry begins. Again, I am very much looking forward to seeing how nuts it gets! :D

Writing: Well, unfortunately I wasn’t able to make any serious progress on editing Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” today, between the Sims 4 stuff and the F:NV YOLO Remastered stuff – but I did make sure to upload the chapter to FF.net’s chapter editor, and I did spend a little time correcting some minor errors near the beginning of the chapter (for some reason, every time I upload a chapter to the FF.net editor, all quotes at the start of an italicized sentence get un-italicized. It’s rather annoying). So at least I’m in a good spot to dive into the edits tomorrow! Fingers crossed I can get a good chunk done!

Aaand I have once again stayed up too late, but that's just a thing that happens now, so I'm not going to worry about it. Instead, I'm just gonna head to bed and get what sleep I can before work tomorrow. Night all.