Ael

I mean, I was fully expecting it to pop up now because the timing of my LAST period means the NEXT period will be falling around Halloween, meeh...but yeah, I have been moodier than usual today, and I strongly suspect it is the hormones at work. Because they gotta be little bastards about a biological process that has happened every month for years, ugh. *shakehead* The human body needs a serious redesign, I swear... Anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – Finished off the work week with another quiet day, I’m glad to say –

A) Both my commute to work and my commute back home were quite reasonable (even the main drag wasn’t completely backed up this afternoon, shock of shocks)

B) My workday consisted of doing the GL; looking at failed credit card and ACH payments (most of which had already been taken care of, though I did have to contact a couple of people about stuff); helping my coworker through a credit card gift she took over the phone (which annoyingly happened on my lunch break, but at least I could still play my water sorting game while I was doing that); and going through some more obituaries – nothing too taxing!

C) And I did not see any sign of fungus gnats, yay~

Yeah, the day ended up dragging by the afternoon (there’s only so much roster maintenance you can do before it gets exceedingly dull), but – as I have said before and will say again – “boring” is better than stressful. *nods* And now I have the weekend to relax! A cleaning weekend, admittedly, but still. Better than nothing!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week was also my final night with my Addams Family DVD! My workout thus consisted of me pedaling through:

A) The end of Addams Family Values! Featuring –

I. Gomez attempting to get the police to intervene and stop Debbie keeping Fester away from the rest of them, only for the police to think he was just a total weirdo (which, well, he IS, but…)

II. Wednesday attempting to refuse to be in Gary’s play about the first Thanksgiving, only for her, Pugsley, and Joel to be sent back to the Harmony Hut and force-fed stuff like The Sound of Music, “The Brady Bunch,” and Annie to break their spirits – cue them eventually emerging and Wednesday agreeing to play Pocahontas, before giving everyone a serial killer smile

III. Pubert reacting to the family disunity by transforming himself AND his nursery into more typical, “cutesy” versions, and Grandmama horrifying Morticia and Gomez by saying the changes could be permanent and the kid could end up President one day

IV. Debbie making one last attempt to murder Fester by giving him a bomb for their three-week anniversary and then heading off to party with some sailors on the pretense of “getting champagne” – only for Fester to once again survive and Debbie to finally reveal her true (pastel) colors to him; cue Thing finally getting something to do in this movie again by stealing Debbie’s car and saving Fester

V. Gary staging “A Turkey Called Brotherhood” for the visiting parents, and everything going perfectly...until Wednesday revealed her earlier “breaking” was a ruse and went off-script to tell Amanda-as-Sarah-Miller that they would NOT be breaking bread with her, but instead scalping her and burning her village to the ground; cue all the kids forced into the “savages” roles happily helping burn down the stage, catapult the pretty popular Pilgrims into the lake, tie Amanda up to be burned at the stake, and generally cause chaos, ending with Gary and Becky being roasted for dinner on a spit

VI. Joel and Wednesday saying their goodbyes through the fence (Joel saying he had to go back for the others...and to watch the place burn), with Joel promising he’d never forget Wednesday (“you’re too weird”) and them sharing a kiss over Amanda’s retainer...before wiping their mouths off XD

VII. The family reuniting, with Fester bursting in to declare himself an Addams before a deathly ill Gomez (though I have to wonder if that scene was awkward to film given that Raul Julia was, uh, kind of actively dying during filming himself), and Wednesday and Pugsley showing up moments later (Wednesday informing Fester that “they made us sing” before giving him a hug anyway) – and then Debbie showing up with a shotgun

VIII. Debbie locking the family into a bunch of electric chairs in the basement (even finding a little one for Thing) and showing them a slideshow of all the people she’d murdered (her parents and at least two husbands) and why (not getting exactly what she wanted when she wanted it) – and showing off the tragedy of her character by completely ignoring the Addamses are all on her side. The woman found her people, and she just could not see it. *tch* Sad

IX. Debbie preparing to electrocute everyone – only for Pubert, who had reverted to his little mustachioed self and broken out of his crib – ending up in the basement thanks to some shenanigans with a cannonball and a roller skate, and connecting two broken wires to electrocute DEBBIE instead; cue her being reduced to a pile of ash, fancy heels, and credit cards

X. And Pubert’s first birthday party, with Fester meeting Margaret and Cousin Itt’s new nanny, Dementia – essentially a female version of himself – and becoming smitten, and Joel asking Wednesday if she’d ever want to get married (“No”) and expressing his sympathies for “sick” Debbie; cue Wednesday saying Debbie was SLOPPY, not sick, and that if she wanted to kill her husband, she’d scare him to death. And cue Joel attempting to be like “No you wouldn’t” and lay flowers on Debbie’s grave –

Only for a hand to burst out of the earth and grab him, leaving him screaming while Wednesday smiled behind him. XD Ah, Addams love…

B) The two theatrical trailers for Addams Family Values! Yeah, I actually had enough time to watch them, color me surprised. I have to say, though, they weren’t very good trailers – the first one focused almost exclusively on the addition of Pubert to the family and barely touched on Debbie at all; while the SECOND was almost entirely spoilers – it OPENED with shots from the big climatic electrocution scene! *shakehead* The marketing department was NOT doing their job with this film, that’s for certain. Ah well, at least it did well when people actually went to see it.

And that is that! And now I have to figure out what is an appropriate Halloween week movie! I suppose there’s always Curse Of The Wererabbit, I do like my Wallace & Gromit...though I’m also tempted to look through my parents’ movie collection and see if we have Young Frankenstein, as that would be ideal. We’ll see what I find this weekend!

2. Work on Valicer Polyship Week 2025 stuff: Half-check – I’d hoped to get some actual writing in, but between Game Night (The Game Of LIFE – Mom won handily with a good career as a doctor and no children, while Dad ended up with SIX kids thanks to both having and adopting twins along with two singles – we had to get another car for him to put the extra children in XD) and me deciding to prioritize the FreeTube tonight (see below), it just wasn’t in the cards. However, I did at least decide on prompts for Days Two, Four, and Eight:

A) For Day Two, after much pondering, I decided to go with “Rain,” because I really wanted to write a Valicer In The Dark story, and that prompt made me think of them getting caught in a rainstorm, leading to Alice and Smiler asking if Victor could clear it up with his Whisper powers and Victor having to admit he doesn’t know the Meta word for “clear skies” yet

B) For Day Four, I picked “Meet The Family” after realizing I could probably do another funny “Running Into The Bullshit” group chat fic featuring Smiler revealing their parents wanted to meet everyone else’s parents/guardian figures, and the various reactions to that (Victor and Victoria being like “I’d rather not inflict my parents on yours,” for example)

C) And for Day Eight, the “free day,” I grabbed the “Games Night” prompt from Day Six – because shortly after playing LIFE, I got to thinking about how the game (at least as I know it) only has blue and pink pegs, and how that might alienate anyone who doesn’t fit the implied gender binary...which led to me picturing Victor painting some of the pegs yellow, Smiler catching him, and him explaining it’s so Smiler can feel represented too. :) Just have to find a good way to add Alice in, and that should make a sweet little Modern AU story!

So that’s good – now I have a plan for each day! Which means, tomorrow, I can start doing some more rough drafts...

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – hopped on FreeTube tonight for an OXtra list video: “7 Times the Computer Was a Cheating Cheater Who Cheated!” Ellen and Andy expressing their rage over games that cheated to make things harder on the poor human player. From inverting your controller input to represent the main character struggling against the mind control of the final boss (Beyond Good And Evil – fortunately, all you have to do to conquer it is turn the controller upside-down), to saying your “Deathproof” armor (meant to defend against nonsense one-hit-kill moves) doesn’t count against certain superbosses (Final Fantasy X – hopefully said superbosses are optional and can be skipped!), to straight up cheating by looking at your cards to make sure the AI always had the best counters in its hand (Yu-Gi-Oh: Forbidden Memories – a card game more rigged than “Find The Lady!). And don’t get any of them STARTED on how much the AI in a fighting game cheats… Bottom line, if anyone asks why you might cheat in video games, show them these examples so they’ll understand it’s the only way to defeat a cheaty AI. (Either that or distract them with the knowledge that the Konami Code is almost 40 years old. Yeah.)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse again, and I didn’t really have anything urgent on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), so yeah. We’ll get VLA(NS) sorted for Halloween week this weekend, though!

Other: Raptorianator, aka thesatiricaldemon, left me a comment on Chapter One of “The Van Dort Vacancy” :) Just nice to see this evening, as I was worried it was going to be totally ignored.

Not too shabby, especially with my brain going into PMS mode. And now it is time for me to head to bed. Tomorrow is a full Cleaning And Laundry Saturday, ick -- but we shall prevail, and hopefully find time for more Baldur's Gate III, more Polyship Week 2025 stories, more OXBoxtra videos, and -- if we're really lucky -- answering Moose's messages, because they're starting to languish. ^^; Apologies, Moose! But for now, night all!

Slipping in quickly here to pick up another 10:04 timestamp for one of my favorite actors. Still love you, Doc Brown! :) Okay, back to watching an OXbox list. :p

Aaaand now I'm back again, having completed everything else I wanted to do tonight. *nods* Here's your daily write-up:

Work – Welp, today proved to be a middling day at work, framed by two horrible commutes – allow me to explain:

A) Morning commute LOOKED like it might be all right for a minute, despite it being very rainy...and then I got near the highway on-ramp and suddenly everything slowed right down a fucking crawl. >( I ended up having to inch my way to work and deal with some worryingly-big puddles because it was bucketing down (though, hilariously, there was blue sky to my right as I was going through the final stretch, taunting me the whole time). Was a bit late again, though nothing major, fortunately. Bleh.

B) Workday itself was pretty simple – I did the morning reports; I tried to track down new addresses for some people whose newspapers were returned (only succeeded with one, thanks to a parish secretary who was able to hunt down an alternate address they had on file); I worked some more on the obituary page I snagged a couple of days ago (long list of dead people); I had another useless call with the credit card people (nothing done, as usual); and I took a not-QUITE-last minute credit card call from a guy who’d only just realized he never updated his credit card with us after it started failing and wanted to pay off the balance. Oh, and I made sure any and all remaining fungus gnats in my area were dead – all two of them. :p So hopefully that problem is solved – Mom repotted the plants today, but she wants to keep ‘em for a bit to make sure there’s no remaining issues. We’ll see what happens over the next couple of days I guess!

C) And then the evening commute turned into a bit of a shitshow because I got stuck behind a guy with an open trailer full of junk covered by a tarp (and no fucking turn signal)...except he hadn’t covered it very well, because shit started falling out of it. Mostly paper stuff, but at one point a plastic bin ended up in the road! Bounced off my bumper as I tried not to run it over! And then the main drag was an absolute trafficky nightmare again...ugh.

So yeah, you can see how I was Not Satisfied with this Wednesday. >( Two more days...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with our favorite creepy and kooky and mysterious and spooky and altogether ooky family! Pedaling my way through:

A) The end of The Addams Family! Featuring –

I. The Addams getting kicked out of their home and having to stay in a motel while they try to get back on their feet – Wednesday and Pugsley starting a lemonade stand (and dealing with a snooty girl scout who they will encounter again in the sequel under different circumstances); Morticia getting a job as a daycare worker (or possibly a teacher – either way, she traumatized some toddlers); Thing becoming a courier for FedEx; and Gomez sitting around rotting watching Sally Jesse Raphael and Gillian’s Island. All while Tully, Abigail, and Gordon try very unsuccessfully to get into the vault, and Gordon starts missing the Addamses more and more...

II. Morticia finally having enough of this and returning to the house to speak to Fester; cue Tully and Abigail attempting to torture the info regarding the vault out of her over Gordon’s objections (not realizing that’s basically foreplay to Morticia), and Thing, who snuck after her, racing back to the motel to alert Gomez

III. Gomez leaping in and sword-fighting Tully to save Morticia, only for Abigail to get the drop on him with a gun and demand he take Gordon to the vault...and then Abigail makes the fatal mistake of berating Gordon one too many times, causing Gordon to grow a spine, grab a book on Hurricane Irene, and distract Tully and Abigail while Gomez freed Morticia and fled with her into the secret passage

IV. Gordon fully opening the book and everyone getting whipped around by the hurricane, resulting in Abigail and Tully landing in pre-arranged coffins in the graveyard and getting buried possibly-alive by the kids (Pugsley: “Are they dead?” Wednesday: “Does it matter?”) and Gordon getting electrocuted by the lightning repeatedly – and regaining his lost memories, realizing he IS the lost Uncle Fester

V. A happy Halloween ending, with Tully’s wife Margaret now happily with Cousin Itt, Fester fully reintegrated into the family, and Morticia letting Gomez know via a three-legged knitted jumper that she’s pregnant :)

B) And the beginning of Addams Family Values! Featuring:

I. The fairly-chaotic birth of Pubert (which is apparently overseen by none other than David Hyde Pierce, aka Niles from fucking Fraiser – I didn’t recognize him behind the mask!)

II. Thing doing skateboard tricks with a roller skate, because this movie was made in 1994 XD

III. Wednesday and Pugsley taking the arrival of their new brother poorly and trying multiple times to off him – except, well, Pubert is an Addams and thus pretty tough stuff (also very lucky in when Gomez pokes his head out windows)

IV. Gomez and Morticia trying to hire a nanny to ease the workload on Morticia – only for the first few to be scared off by Wednesday and Pugsley (mainly Wednesday)

V. The arrival of Debbie Jellinsky, who – despite being a cute blond in a white dress – seems to fit in perfectly with the family (not even thrown by Thing!), and who bewitches Fester from the moment he sees her

VI. And the reveal that Debbie is in fact a black widow killer who’s picked the very rich Fester as her next murder target

Good stuff! :) And very appropriate to watch on Christopher Lloyd’s birthday, I feel. :P

2. Continue final edits on “The Van Dort Vacancy” Chapter One: Check – watched a couple of “scene pack” (aka collections of short clips) videos featuring Victor on FreeTube to prepare, then went into FF.net’s Doc Manager and finished off my edits! Which, as usual, involved a lot of me poking at bits of dialogue, particularly Victor’s, and going “does this sound right?” :p But hey – it’s very important that people not look at your story and go “He Would Not Fucking Say That!” And I’m pretty sure that, with all of these edits, my potential readers will not have that reaction to any of Victor’s dialogue. :) Or Alice’s, or Smiler’s. Anyway, the chapter should now be ready to go – tomorrow, we post this sucker!

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – as previously stated, I watched an OXBox list tonight: “7 Games So Successful They Killed Off the Competition!” Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about those games that became such juggernauts of their genre, they utterly destroyed any game that dared to compete with them! Whether that was a predecessor that laid the groundwork that they then used to build themselves into a conquering giant – like the Medal of Honor series being eclipsed by Call of Duty, or the Driver series being crushed by Grand Theft Auto (the third one specifically, since that’s when the series went 3D) – or a similar game that simply couldn’t compete with the one we all know and love – like multiplayer-online-battlefield-arena hero shooter Battleborn failing to go up against team hero shooter Overwatch, or Pro Evolution Soccer – okay, actually PES was winning the fight against EA’s FIFA series for a while, but then FIFA managed to actually get some decent gameplay and a spin-off highly-addictive collectible card game, and now – in its new EA FC form – it has thoroughly crushed poor PES. A real shame, as we hate to see EA winning. >( But yeah – sometimes, a game just redefines its genre, and destroys all those around it. All hail the games that made it, and a moment of silence for the games that didn’t. Press [F] to pay respects. :p

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – it was a Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only night, and – well, I didn’t have anything to do over there, queue-wise. Plus I was busy with other stuff most of the night, so… *shrug* We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

And there you have it! I rather wish that I'd had a BETTER October 22nd, but there's not much I can do about it, sadly. Just time to head to bed and hope the 23rd is an improvement. We'll see...night all!

Yeah, as will become very obvious when you see my write-up for the day, particularly the work section:

Work – Had an unfortunately-shitty start to the work week, I’m sad to say. :( Annoyances included the following:

A) Waking up with a pain in my neck that triggers every time I try to bend it to the right, and which painkillers have not touched

B) Hitting just enough traffic during my commute to make me slightly late for work (not really noticeably late, but – still)

C) Coming in and IMMEDIATELY having to deal with two people needing to update their credit cards on their pledges...one of whom was an idiot who left the entire number IN A VOICEMAIL after we left on Friday. *shakehead* Fucking hell… I managed to get both updated, but still!

D) Then immediately getting a call from someone I called twice back in September about an overpayment, who apparently only just got the message because of issues with their phone – said just to keep the money

E) Doing the GL and having to carefully match up all the payments – this one wasn’t so bad, as I don’t mind when the GL takes up a lot of time during the slow months, but it is still a pain sometimes, especially when the credit card stuff is broken up over multiple lines on the GL summary (between 2025 stuff and 2026 stuff) and I have to add it all up

F) Having to contact someone else about an overpayment because there are always overpayments – they called back and asked for a refund, so I did the memo for that for Fiscal

G) Only getting one page of the obituaries from Sunday because my coworker took all the others – I don’t know why you wouldn’t take the whole section, but whatever

H) The weather being absolutely miserable most of the day, and the building being really cold as a result – but because it was above 60F at one point, the heat wasn’t on. Had to borrow my coworker’s space heater again

I) Dealing with a gnat infestation in my plants because apparently that’s just a thing that happens now – we ended up setting out vingar traps for them, and Mom’s going to give me some of her special earth that kills bugs to sprinkle over the plants.

Yeaaaah, it – it wasn’t fun. And of course all the phone stuff aggravated my neck, since I automatically tuck it in between my right ear and right shoulder to type… I’m just hoping tomorrow is better. At least I’ll be getting my flu shot at last?

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, with the first movie of the week being The Addams Family! I was going to save this and its sequel for next week, since it’s closer to Halloween, but then I remembered that Christopher Lloyd’s birthday is this Wednesday (the 22nd), and it felt appropriate to watch a movie starring him for the occasion. And as I’m saving the BTTF trilogy for November (so I can have them coincide with November 5th and 12th), and I’ve already watched all the other movies I own starring him, The Addams Family it had to be! I’ll find something else Halloween-appropriate for next week. *nods* Anyway, I got through a little over the first half-hour today, featuring:

A) The Addams preparing to pour boiling oil on carolers (which, given the way some stores are completely ignoring Halloween in favor of Christmas stuff, felt a bit cathartic)

B) Tully attempting to scam Gomez by getting him to fund an off-shore account, but Gomez refusing to invest because it was “new business” and he wasn’t discussing that until next quarter (if only you’d swallowed your pride and asked for a loan, Tully – Gomez probably would have given it to you!)

C) Tully getting jumped by loan shark Abigail Craven and her son Gordon after the meeting with Gomez, and getting roughed up a little by Gordon...before noticing the guy looks like the picture of Fester he saw earlier and proposing Gordon fake being Fester to find the entrance to the Addams Family vault so they can rob it; Abigail and Gordon agree, with the plan being they’ll take the gold and let Tully take the rap

D) The Addams holding a séance to contact Fester’s spirit (attended by Tully and his wife), and Gordon showing up as a recently-rescued-from-the-Bermuda-Triangle Fester, with Abigail playing German psychiatrist Dr. Pindergloss

E) Gordon having a little trouble fitting into the Addams’ household at first – mostly because he keeps expecting them to act like normal humans about things like him having cyanide in his suitcase and attacking Gomez with a knife upon being startled awake, instead of like Addamses XD

F) Gordon getting taken to the vault, learning Fester’s past with Gomez and why he left (Gomez wooing the conjoined twins who were interested in him out of jealous pride), and slipping up in a few small-but-notable ways, making Gomez worried about him

G) The family attending a charity auction, and Gomez and Morticia buying back the very expensive finger trap they donated...while practically having sex on the bidding floor. XD I left off immediately afterwards, with the family heading back to the house in their car, and Gordon revealing he didn’t know how to get the finger trap off when he tried it out – leading Gomez to finally have some proper doubts about whether or not he is ACTUALLY his long-lost brother. Tomorrow, we pick up with Gomez playing with his trains and ranting about how Fester SHOULD know how to get it off, and see how far we get from there! I’m HOPING I can fit both movies into one week, but we’ll see...

2. Start final edits on “The Van Dort Vacancy” Chapter One: Check – I created the doc for the chapter today and uploaded it to FF.net’s document manager to start editing! Though before I did that, I hopped on FreeTube and watched two videos featuring multiple clips of Victor in Corpse Bride to refresh my memory on what he’s like and how he should talk. Subsequently, most of the edits I’ve made to this chapter so far are tweaks to his dialogue to make him sound more like himself – changing up word choice, adjusting where the stutters should be when he’s nervous, things like that. I still feel that I’m a little rusty with his voice (simply because I’ve been writing so much Alice, thanks to the Londerland Bloodlines series AND the first two VITD stories being her POV), but I’m getting better! Regular infusions of actual clips from the movie should help in that regard. *nods* And it’s not like I’m going to OBJECT to watching one of my favorite characters and a key member of my OT3 in action more. XD Anyway, got up to the point where Smiler confirms that they’ll be leaving before lunch to get Victor back to his house in Nightmarket, before dropping Alice off at Elder Guknecht’s – we’ll see how far I get tomorrow! Chapter’s only eight pages, so it should take a LOT less time to edit than your standard Londerland Bloodlines chapter...

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Partial check – I got to editing “The Van Dort Vacancy” a lot later than I wanted (thanks to having to edit yesterday’s entry to finish the F:NV YOLO Remastered episode recap), so I didn’t have a lot of time for FreeTube. I wanted to watch something other than my “Victor research” videos, though, so I went over to OXBox on there and watched one of their Shorts: “why is who wants to be a millionaire so 🇫🇷?” Jane, Mike, and Andy playing the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? game...and discovering it is very, VERY French (presumably because it was made by a French developer). Not only was it asking lots of trivia questions about French things, there was also a question about light pollution right at the start that gendered the light pollution and had answers like “She turns off the stars” – the trio were VERY confused by it all, and kept making fun of it, even after figuring out it was probably badly translated from the original language. XD A fun minute of silliness from my favorite video game list makers! Glad I was able to sneak it in.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – as usual for a Monday, I didn’t have anything pressing regarding my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue, so I didn’t end up doing anything over there queue-wise. I do roughly know what I want to go up this week, though, so hopefully when it does come time to set up the queue tomorrow, I’ll be able to slap everything in there without a problem!

Yeaah -- at least tonight's write-ups took a lot less time than yesterday's! I have either got to SEVERELY shorten my recaps of the F:NV YOLO Remastered videos, or start watching them right after supper so I have the time to recap them at that length without going to bed at like 1 AM on a work night. *shakehead* A problem for next Sunday, I suppose -- this Monday, I gotta get to bed and get some sleep. And hopefully not fuck up my neck more. Night all!

Yeah, it was just a lot of hanging around and relaxing for the most part -- well, as much as I could relax with my calves still so tight. They're starting to loosen up now, though! And I accomplished a fair bit this Sunday even with all that chilling --

Tumblr: Was another “nothing” day over on Valice Multiverse, but I did accomplish something over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – namely, I managed to finish off the latest update to my Halloween-themed collection of Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes with not one, but TWO new scenes! :D Those being:

A) Smiler, Victor, and Alice buying a bunch of candy at the grocery store – the cashier was like “...lot of kids who like to trick-or-treat in your neighborhood?” (I double-checked, and while it isn’t as much of a thing in the UK as it is in the US, it IS a thing), and Smiler admitted cheerily that, while yes, most of the candy was for them, with Alice adding that they and Victor had massive sweet tooths (Victor: “We’re not that bad.” Smiler: “Yes we are”). The cashier was chill and asked who could resist the siren call of chocolate – Smiler immediately pointed to Alice, who then clarified to the surprised cashier that it was less chocolate she was immune to and more candy, as she prefers baked goods and salty snacks (cue Victor putting some Halloween-themed cupcakes and pretzels down). The cashier joked that Alice must have the job of keeping the candy safe from the other two –

And Alice was like “no, nothing keeps candy safe from these two.” XD Victor was like “we will leave some for the children, I promise!” XD

B) And Smiler, Victor, and Alice at the Sunny Brews coffee shop (Smiler behind the counter working, and Alice and Victor hanging out at a nearby table to keep them company) when a customer walked in, scowled at the Halloween decorations, and commented they’d like some “national pride” when Smiler asked what they wanted. Smiler was like “...not on the menu, but I’m willing to mix something up custom if you want.” The customer told them not to get smart and asked why they were celebrating an American holiday – Smiler responded it was fun, and that there was no getting away from American culture no matter how much they tried. The customer allowed that, but insisted everyone should be saving all their treats and mischief and such for Bonfire Night, aka Guy Fawkes Day – Smiler said “nobody’s stopping you, I have plenty of friends who celebrate that – just some people don’t want to.” The customer was like “Ridiculous” and turned to Victor and Alice to ask if they had any reason someone would not want to celebrate Bonfire Night –

Cue Alice telling them sweetly that her entire family died in a fire that very night. The customer was shocked silent and ended up leaving, while Smiler, Victor, and Alice decided to figure out on their own what a “national pride” drink might taste like. XD This was inspired by my researching “is Halloween a thing in the UK” for the previous scene and finding some Grumpy Guses who didn’t like the fact that the Americanized holiday was drawing attention from the much more British Guy Fawkes Day – I thought it would be interesting to have one of them wander in and get a VERY DEFINITIVE reason why someone might not want to celebrate. :p

So yeah, that’s ready to go the week of Halloween! Hopefully people will find the new scenes amusing. Though doing this did make me wonder if it’s about time I started doing masterposts of my Not-Incorrect Quotes, or of each of my Valicer universes that have gotten a significant amount of fanfic...problem is, I’ve written JUST enough Valicer stuff that that is a slightly intimidating prospect...hmmm. We’ll see what happens!

Portal: As I previously said I would, I booted up everyone’s favorite quirky and quotable first-person puzzle shooter (as I swear someone called it once, damned if I can remember who or the exact phrasing) today, to start replaying it after a long absence! Mostly because I felt like this game would be one of the quicker ones to sum up after the fact and thus would be perfect to play on Sundays, where I always have a long video to sum up in the evenings. :p (I mean, I also ENJOY the game and felt like I should play it again, but – still. The “quicker to sum up” thing WAS the most relevant point in its favor for becoming my new Sunday game!) How’d it go? Well, let me tell you:

A) I started things off by taking care of the basics – i.e., making sure I knew what the quicksave and quickload buttons were (F6 and F9, if you were wondering), and fixing the wonky resolution, because for some reason the default was 1154 x 96 or some nonsense like that. I was like “wow, this game looks a lot worse than I remembered” until I tweaked that to match my monitor’s actual size and resolution! XD (Though, to be fair, I had a legit reason to think it would look like crap – the game is nearly 20 years old. Will hit the anniversary in 2027, if you needed a reason to feel like time is slipping away from you!)

B) After taking care of that, I took a moment to note everything on the Start menu now that I could SEE it properly (radio, keyboard for the screen scrolling in the background, the infamous cake, and a red phone – which, uh, concerns me, given red phones are associated with nuclear missile crises and we do NOT want Cave Johnson or GLaDOS anywhere near those), then started the game proper! I messed around in the relaxation vault for a little bit as GLaDOS gave her opening spiel, getting used to the controls by playing with the clipboard, unsuccessfully trying to put the radio in the toilet, and throwing and breaking the coffee cup (along with noting just how creepy the pod Chell comes out of really is – it’s rusty and dirty and hooked up to weird tanks that I HOPE were for oxygen, and just generally doesn’t look very pleasant), then set off and completed Chambers 0 and 1 without any problem. I then headed into Chamber 2, got my single-portal device, and prepared to head out –

C) Only to hear a familiar upbeat tinny tune. And when I turned around, I saw one of the famous Aperture Science radios – the little white ones that look a bit like a flattened snow globe – sitting on a little ledge, atop the little window in the side wall that the portal gun shoots through when you first enter the chamber and see it on its little stand. Now, I’d heard the radio song in the previous test chamber, but I hadn’t been able to find the radio itself and thus had decided not to worry about them. But upon seeing that radio, I recalled a certain something –

Namely, that there was an achievement attached to them – “Transmission Received.” Which requires you to grab each radio as you find it and bring it to a certain spot in the relevant test chamber/map section, making the light at the bottom go from red to green and stopping the music in favor of a Morse-code-like transmission (you can tell if you’re getting close to the correct spot or not if the music starts fading out in favor of static). You can only go for it after you’ve played through the game once (possibly to get people to focus on actually playing the game instead of radio-hunting the first time around), and it was actually a later addition to the game (all the radios being added in a patch on March 1, 2010 – the transmissions can be translated into images if you have the right software, plus they also had secret messages and whatnot buried in them that all hinted at the then-upcoming sequel). As stated, I hadn’t been worrying about it before, but after seeing the radio, I was like “you know what, I want that, let’s go for the achievement. Might as well, right?”

D) And so my replay of Portal became the “Transmission Received Run!” Much like my latest replay of Superliminal was the “collect all the collectibles” run. This saw me grab the radios in Chambers 3 and 4, then – realizing that I’d obviously missed the first two – restarting the game so I could start receiving transmissions properly from the very beginning. And I’m proud to say that I was able to find most of the radios WITHOUT having to consult a guide (though it was useful for locating the one I’d missed before starting the run, along with solving a few other problems along the way). :) Here’s all the radios I found in this initial playsession:

Chamber 0 – It was hard to miss this radio, given you wake up with it playing very loudly next to you on the makeshift table next to the toilet. XD I grabbed it as per the guide and brought it with me to the first simple cube-and-button test, where it started transmitting the code once it was right next to the button. Sadly, I was unable to use it to complete the test itself – it’s just too light to actually weigh down the button! Shame.

Chamber 1 – I heard the darn thing above my head when I first entered this chamber, but couldn’t figure out where the music was coming from – turns out, the radio’s balanced on the camera right next to where you drop down! I carefully scooted along the ledge and grabbed it as per the guide, then trucked it around with me as I went through the various opening and closing portals to get the cube and put it on the button (as best I could, anyway – a portal stole it from me by closing early at one point, trapping me in one room and the radio in another until it reopened. Rude :p). I got the code transmission by taking the radio with me to the exit, just shy of the emancipation grid – and then, after getting the achievement counter to tick up, I fizzled it. Because why wouldn’t you at that point? :P

Chamber 2 – AKA, where the run actually started before I decided to reset. As stated, I spotted the radio sitting on a thin ledge up on the wall with the little portal-shooting window in it – a wall that was far too thin to support a portal being shot above the radio. >( I ended up having to shoot a portal high up on the wall NEXT to the ledge (aka one of the proper walls of the test chamber), then jump out of it and spam “E” to grab the radio on my way back down to the floor. Which, uh, I am NOT good at, so it took me a few tries to grab it! I eventually got a hold of it (after knocking it over onto the other side of the wall and having to portal my way back to the entrance “hall” to get it), and – after a little searching – got the transmission to play by taking it to the very center of the room, where the portal gun was on its little stand before Chell collected it. Fortunately for me, once you collect a radio, even if you start a new game, it stays collected, so I didn’t have to repeat my shenanigans when I restarted – I mean, I tried, but after a few frustrating attempts just knocked the radio further away from me on the ledge, I was like “forget it, let’s go on.” (Though the restart did allow me to see what happened if Chell got a portal shot straight to the face by peering through the little window just as the gun fired – unfortunately it did not actually do anything painful for her, boo. The device is supposed to be super-dangerous – getting in the way of its portal shots should be too!)

Chamber 3 – The other one that I claimed before my restart! The radio here was fairly obvious – sitting on a camera right by the chamberlock – and I easily claimed it by shooting the camera off the wall. Figuring out where to take it, though – THAT proved to be kind of tricky. I kept getting static whenever I took it into the middle of the corner platform, in between the two big old gaps you have to portal over to complete the chamber, but I couldn’t get it to actually receive the transmission. I eventually turned to my guide on my phone –

And discovered that the radio had to be ELEVATED – apparently, the transmission spot was up near the ceiling! Huh! After a few false starts (and another look at the screenshot the guide writer had provided), I finally figured out the correct portal placement high up on the wall (it’s almost but not quite across from the orange portal) and stuck the radio through to get the transmission. Whew! This one I was able to redo when I restarted the game – and, for good measure, I shot down all of GlaDOS’s cameras. Because, again, fun. :P

Chamber 4 – This one had a nice obvious radio – it was in the same pit that the cube you have to retrieve via portal was in! I grabbed it along with the cube, did the puzzle, then found the transmission signal near the entrance to the chamber. And then shot down more of GlaDOS’s cameras for shits and giggles. XD (There’s an achievement tied to shooting those down too, but it doesn’t have a proper counter, so I don’t know if I’m gonna go for it or not. Maybe in the future.)

Chamber 5 – The radio in this one was very obvious – it was sitting on the floor of the next chamber just past the door after I solved the dual-cube-and-button puzzle presented to me. However, when I went to get it, the door locked behind me, preventing me from going back into the previous room with it – and the radio did NOT pick up any signals in the chamber right before the elevator out. Annoyed, I reloaded and tried to sneakily sneak forward and pick it up, only to find that I had to be right next to it to do so – and, of course, going that far forward locked the door behind me. Wondering how the hell I was supposed to get this radio, I looked at the guide again –

Which, uh, reminded me I have a portal gun. Which I can use to transport objects to different places. ^^; It’s been a while, okay – I was NOT thinking with portals! Anyway, I popped a blue portal under it to put it on the raised platform next to the orange wall portal, retrieved it, then walked around the test chamber with it – the transmission proved to be in the pit where I found one of the cubes. *nods* Have to remember getting the radios is a puzzle and thus I’m allowed to use the puzzle-solving device. :p

Chamber 6 – The radio in this one was sneaky, hiding atop the slightly-extended ceiling panel containing the emitter for the high-energy pellet – fortunately, I managed to spot it WITHOUT having to consult my guide, which helped soothe my wounded pride from the previous chamber’s shenanigans. After a bit of clumsy portal work to get it (I fell onto the top panel, then promptly off again – fortunately I knocked the radio off with me), I grabbed it and walked around until I got the transmission right next to the elevator platform that lifts you to the chamber exit. And then I took it with me and fizzled it too. Because I could. :p

Chamber 7 – I could hear the damn thing as I was going down the stairs into the chamber proper, so I suspected it was underneath them – however, my initial look into the tight little maze of hydraulic lifts didn’t reveal any radios. I was certain it was there, though, so after solving the high-energy pellet puzzle, I looked again –

And saw a portable surface behind said stairs. And upon shooting THAT and finding my way through, I found the radio hidden behind one of the hydraulic supports! Hah – got you, you little fucker. :D The transmission itself was on the other side of the room, next to the unstationary platform (you know, the kind that move side-to-side) – not QUITE in the corner under the door, but close. *nods* I felt like I was getting good at this at this point!

Chamber 8 – ...and then I died twice in here trying to get the next radio. XD Now, it wasn’t that the radio was hard to spot – it was on the little supporting apparatus for the unstationary platform in this room, completely visible from the start. It was just hard to GET, given that it was tucked UNDER the platform – and this is the room with the lethal water floor. After a little experimenting, I was able to determine that I had to get on the platform, crouch, then scoot to the very edge before spamming “E” as it started moving along its little lasery path to grab the radio – but from there, staying on the platform proved to be a challenge. I fell off the first trying to get back through the portal so I could find the transmission (as it wasn’t near the exit), then managed to somehow physics myself off the second time grabbing the radio (I think I must have triggered some wonky Bethesda-esque collision detection). Fortunately, third time was the charm, and I was able to get the radio, get it back through the portal, and find the transmission point, right next to the sign for the chamber listing all the hazards. Whew! Tricky little bastard.

...and that wasn’t that much faster to sum up, but at least I wrapped this up right at 5 PM! Which is more than I can say for my last FO4 write-up! AND I don’t have to worry about any Playthrough Progression docs either… Next Sunday, we continue taking on test chambers and finding radios! Hopefully I will not need the guide too much, but we shall see.

Writing: Spent the time I normally would have spent working out (skipped today to let my calves untighten after yesterday’s walking) working on more Polyship Week 2025 stuff, and I’m happy to report I got two things done –

A) First, I ended up writing the rough draft for the Day Three prompt I picked, “Sharing Clothes!” Because I had the clearest idea in mind for it and I figured I might as well get a jump on it (as I was still struggling to figure out what prompts I wanted to pick for days Two, Four, Six, and Eight). The story I came up with featured Smiler noting that it was a little sad that they couldn’t steal each other’s clothes – then explaining to a confused Victor and Alice that stealing a warm snuggly hoodie or sweater from a loved one is supposed to be one of the benefits of a relationship, but their body types were so different they couldn’t pull it off. Before hastily reassuring a now self-conscious Victor that wasn’t a value judgment about his appearance, they LIKED how he looked, they’d just like to be able to steal his jacket and actually put their arms through the sleeves. XD Alice suggested that Smiler MIGHT be able to get away with putting on her red coat, but Smiler was pretty sure it would be a no-go, and didn’t want to ruin it – Alice thanked them for that, then asked if not being able to share really bugged them. Smiler admitted that it would just be nice, as they never got to do it in any previous relationship (they were “whoring it up,” as they put it, as I picture them being more into casual hookups and friends-with-benefits arrangements previously), and they’d just like to be able to keep their loved ones close even if they weren’t there. Alice allowed she could get behind that sentiment and said there had to be something they could share, thinking aloud that she could probably get into one of Smiler’s sweaters, even if Victor couldn’t – Victor confirmed that his clothes all have to be specially tailored, picking at his tie as he started apologizing –

And then realizing – oh. His tie would probably fit Smiler just fine. Cue him taking it off and tossing it Smiler’s way, and Smiler happily putting it around their neck and joking about buying Victor ties they like for the holidays. Story ended with Alice telling them to get some necklaces they like too, while taking off her omega to hand over as well. XD I just thought it was cute – and now I have a headcanon of them sharing ties and necklaces and other such things because it’s pretty much the one thing they CAN share. :D Yay!

B) And while I didn’t pick any new prompts, I did figure out what I want to do for the Day One prompt, “Kidnapping” – rather than going Valicer In The Dark, I’m gonna go Londerland Bloodlines and do a story about Victor thinking about how kidnappings are usually bad things – but his led to Smiler joining the polycule eventually, so he’s glad the Ministry snatched him off the street, all things considered. :) Does mean that I have to figure out another prompt that I can do for VITD (because I’m not leaving my favorite crime trio out of Polyship Week), but I think that’ll make for a good story!

FreeTube/Invidious: Hit Invidious today for my weekly dose of Many A True Nerd, watching “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 14 - Man Vs Machine!” The continuing adventures of our favorite melee-only drunken courier P. D. Shoot as she –

A) Finished off her time in the X-13 facility (having rerun the “Robot Compliance” test a bunch of times between episodes to get herself up to a whole 12 Stealth Boys, nice) by:

I. Going through the Aural Stealth Suit test track without running a test so she could explore freely – and grabbing a holotape from the kitchen that served as a “recipe” to make one Sneak skill book! Because apparently Old World Blues has these “recipes” scattered around certain bits of the Big MT, allowing the player character to make one copy of every skill book in the game. And given reading a skill book gives you a permanent +3 to its relevant skill – well, that’s a lot of skill points you can get if you can find the recipes and turn them into books! And we all know our girl could always use more Sneak. *nods*

II. Heading into the Reception Observation area above the test track, walking down a catwalk to a certain wall above the start of the testing area, then very carefully easing along a very narrow strip of metal molding on said wall to open a grate there to get the recipe for the Lockpicking skill book! (There were also three boxes of Dandy Apples in there for some reason, but P. D. isn’t allowed to eat – that’s healing!) Because while MOST of the “recipes” are in logical places – e.g., the Sneak skill book “recipe” is on the sneaking testing track, and the Repair skill book “recipe” is in the old house of a scientist who specialized in taking apart robots – the Lockpicking skill book “recipe” is for some reason hidden in a place most players will probably never realize they can get to. P. D. actually had to try twice to sneak along that bit of molding before she got it. *shakehead* Game designers sometimes, I swear…

III. Swapping back into her beloved space suit (because while the Aural Stealth Suit did have a few benefits, like extra Perception and Agility, P. D.’s build works better if she’s wearing proper light armor instead of medium armor that has a sneak bonus to offset the natural penalty), then activating a Stealth Boy to sneak past the remaining robo-scorpions infesting the halls of X-13 so she could get outside to safety. Jon was a little worried that the game was going to cheat and have the roboscorpions right outside detect her for no good reason once she stepped through the door, but fortunately New Vegas was feeling nice this episode and didn’t have that happen. Jon was very grateful indeed!

B) Realized she had a LOAD of time left on her Stealth Boy’s timer after slipping out of X-13 and deciding to use it to sneak over to the nearby Big MT West Tunnel to slip in there and grab the Unarmed skill book “recipe!” Though, as it turned out, New Vegas wasn’t feeling that nice, because the minute she went in THERE, the game decided “oh, that Protectron down the tunnel can sort of sense you’re there and will put you into [CAUTION].” Jon had a little bitch session about it, going over how stealthy P. D. is and how a mere regular Protectron should NOT be able to sense her. XD But she managed to unlock the door she needed to unlock, grab the Unarmed “recipe” behind it, and get out all without incident. Whew! Could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure.

C) Used the fact that if you try to pass through the “radar fence” on the edges of the DLC world, you get teleported straight back to The Sink in the middle to get a free ride back to her new living quarters, then checked out her “recipes” at the workbench to see what she needed to make her shiny new skill books. She quickly deduced that she had the minimum number of skill points in each skill (25) and the Wonderglue the books demanded (stashed away in her personal foot locker) – but she very much did NOT have all the blank books the “recipes” demanded (you need 25 each to make ONE skill book! The book economy in this game is in shambles). In fact, she didn’t have any, because the book chute in The Sink – which turns all regular books (destroyed, scorched, pre-War) into blank books – wasn’t powered up yet. So getting that up and running before the end of the episode quickly became a priority!

D) Headed back to the Think-Tank to talk to a few more members and do their quests – specifically:

I. Doctor 0, a robotics expert who hates RobCo and was not happy to see P. D. wearing a Pip-Boy – his little quest revolved around the fact that everyone calls him Doctor O when his name is Doctor 0 – that is, Doctor ZERO. P. D. easily solved his woes by slapping on her Naughty Nightwear to get the speech skill to convince him to confide in her, then – after puzzling out the problem with his name – suggesting he add a slash inside the zero to differentiate it from the letter. He was very keen on this idea and thanked her for letting him unburden himself, earning P. D. another ally in the Think-Tank (and, incidentally, ensuring she had a majority of doctors who would side with her when it came time to initiate the endgame, meaning she could “win” without any confrontations or hard skill checks. Yay)!

II. And Doctor Borous, who was the animal expert and who accused P. D. of being a Communist animal. P. D. got him to open up a bit too, causing him to talk about how many animals he’d laid open on his table and how much he used to love dogs – specifically his own dog, Gabe. (Oh, and how he created cazadors and nightstalkers, but his dog was the important part. :P) Which started the single Think-Tank quest that required P. D. to, you know, do something other than just chat to these weird floating brains in jars and chase down any hints as to what happened to Gabe out in the outside world. No easy XP here – Jon said that Doctor Borous was the most important doctor to talk to in the place, though, so I presume this quest has a good reward for P. D. if she can complete it…

E) Took the long way around to Higgs Village (where the scientists use to live, which was filled with goodies – and also potential signs of what happened to Gabe), heading first to the X-8 Research Center, and then going northeast toward the village, tagging a bunch of other locations along the way. Why? Well, because there was an Ultimate Cheaty Enemy hanging around Higgs – a unique robobrain called Super Ego. Who was immune to any and all attempts to sneak around it – if a player character got anywhere near this thing, it would immediately know and raise the alarm, getting other enemies to fight with it if possible. And the direct route would have brought P. D. straight into the Lombotomites hanging around the village, meaning she could have had to fight them AND Super Ego at the same time. (Granted, it’s hit-or-miss whether any nearby enemies will listen to Super Ego telling them there’s danger, but naturally Jon didn’t want to take that chance!) The route she took, however, brought her near Super Ego while it was alone – and while it did raise the alarm the minute it sensed her, the only enemy in range, a regular robobrain, did not respond by opening hostilities with P. D. Obviously it wasn’t getting paid enough. XD P. D. juggled around on the high ground for about a minute for – some reason (seriously, I have no idea what Jon was attempting), then got in close and hid behind a rock, luring Super Ego toward her so she could wreck it with the power of drugs and a holographic axe. It did get ONE hit off, which sliced another 20 HP off poor P. D.’s total – but she did kill it, and Jon mentioned that Super Ego usually hits WAAAAY harder, soo – yeah. Overall, a win for P. D. and her chances of staying alive!

F) Managed to sneak into Higgs Village behind the lombotomites without burning another Stealth Boy, and took advantage of the fact that the place was completely safe to hit all the scientists’ former houses and raid them thoroughly! Specifically, she visited:

I. House 0, Doctor 0’s residence (natch), which contained a bunch of broken securitrons; some whiskey in the fridge; a picture of House with a bunch of knives sticking out of it (XD); the Repair skill book “recipe;” and a bunch of scorched and burned books P. D. could later feed into the book chute

II. House 101, Dr. Klein’s residence, which contained a whole lotta booze; the personality module to wake up the book chute in The Sink; and his special glove weapon and his scrubs. The latter two items P. D. paired with his glasses to make some Dr. Klein cosplay, which got her a tiny achievement and about 90 XP (which isn’t THAT much in this game) –

And a level up to Level 17! Jon promptly increased Survival up to 75, and was rather disappointed to find that this did not level up P. D.’s booze so it gave her even more Strength and Charisma, damn. Ah well – at least it’s moving in the right direction. The other two skill points went into Repair just so it was a nice solid 35.

III. House 102 – Jon didn’t say who this one belonged to, but they had the Science skill book “recipe” and ALL the freaking mentats, I swear. P. D. will never want for mentats again

IV. House 103, Dr. Borous’s residence – as evidenced by the doghouse out back! P. D. collected Gabe’s bowl from the mat outside the doghouse, and the “recipe” for the Medicine skill book from inside the house itself

...and the rest will have to wait because it is once again Too Late to continue. *sigh* I have GOT to start watching these videos earlier in the day...

EDIT 10/20/2025: As has become usual, unfortunately, here is the rest of the recap of the video:

V. House 104, Dr. Dala’s residence – this one contained the Speech skill book “recipe” holotape...and a whole bunch of weird broken mirrors on the walls and teddy bears EVERYWHERE. On the bed, on stools in the hall, just anywhere they could be stuck, all STARING at you. ...I have no idea why this woman gets the SPEECH skill book “recipe,” but I’m not going to risk angering the teddies by asking.

VI. And House 108, another unnamed residence – Jon was going to have P. D. skip this one as there wasn’t anything particularly important to her inside, but changed his mind and had her go in and get the personality module for The Sink’s jukebox inside. Because you know what, she was in the area, and why the hell not.

G) Activated a Stealth Boy (with Jon forgetting to check the time before doing so so he could get his timings right – he was actually pretty accurate at guessing it, though, saying he was going to assume it was half-four; I was looking at the time when P. D. activated, and it was 4:36 PM, so good job Jon!) and snuck over to the X-2 Transmitter Array next door to get the next big quest item on her list – the X-2 Transmitter Array Antenna! This proved to be pretty damn easy, as the building was very small – she just crept her way over to the front door; grabbed the personality module for Light Switch 1; eased her way past all the Protectrons inside; found the ladder into the dish; grabbed the antenna (transmitting its schematics to the Think-Tank); climbed back down into the upper levels of the building; worked her way around the roboscorpions that Dr. Mobius had sent to stop her (once one of them finally got out of the doorway she needed to go through); exited through the first door outside onto the spiraling catwalk around the exterior; and finally ran for the radar fence to get teleported home! Easy peasy Stealth Boy squeezy. :) She even ended up with a new weapon out of it in the form of the Antenna itself – though unfortunately Jon was quick to point out that, while you THINK it would be superior to that high-tech battleaxe she found before (better damage, same special VATS attack that doubles damage), it’s actually slower and has MISERABLE crit damage. So not well-suited for P. D. at all. Ah well – at least it makes a good trophy of her time her in Big MT? :p (Oh, and fun additional fact: P. D. did all of that sneaking around dressed as Dr. Klein. Because Jon, as usual, forgot to check what outfit she was wearing. Jon was like “WHY DO I KEEP DOING THIS” when he realized. XD Better than sneaking past potential cazadors in a nightie, buddy!)

H) Installed her gathered personality modules into Light Switch 01 (who didn’t sound particularly enthused to be back online), the Jukebox (who sounded extremely enthused to be back online – also, his name is Blind Diode Jefferson, which tickles me XD), and – most importantly – the book chute! Who is officially named “Library Processing Unit 232.7” (someone in the comments pointed out this is the Celsius equivalent of Fahrenheit 451 – you know, that book by Rad Bradbury about firemen who destroy books?), and whose purpose is to take “seditious” books and turn them into lovely blank books! Because those are better for the minds of the average citizen, don’t you know – all the smarty-pants in their lab coats have determined that outside thoughts just muddle people’s minds, while blank books encourage people to just accept what’s put in front of them! P. D. was like “but this is important pre-War literature you’re destroying?” only for LPU 232.7 to respond that that sounded like seditious thoughts to him, and if he had his re-indoctrination module, he’d fix her right up...but that was cut for budget reasons, so she’d have to do it herself. And then told her she’d have to get a cage for her head and a sack of mole rats in a clear 1984 reference. XD Jon loves this delightfully evil censorship chute, and I kind of do too! Jon stop making me want to play this game

Anyway – P. D.’s dialogue with the Censorship Chute notwithstanding, she actually had no moral objections to feeding it all the books she’d stolen from House or found on her various travels – mostly because turning them all into blank books meant she could then process those blank books into skill books for her own use! And make skill books she did, until she had nothing more to drop in the chute – though, sadly, it turned out that her book collection was JUST too small to allow her to make every skill book. She was short exactly four, in fact. P. D. roamed around the Think-Tank looking for additional books to feed to the Censorship Chute, but sadly only found two in the old bedrooms of the scientists. Seems like making that final Medicine skill book will have to wait for another day!

And with that (and Jon quickly fixing up P. D.’s mucked-up HP, as it glitched out a little bit last episode, meaning she was 10 hit points over what she should be), we wrapped up the episode. Next time, P. D. visits the X-8 Research Center to see what’s going on there, and HOPEFULLY finds the parts to get the Sink’s auto-doc working! Because Jon implied that if she could get it up and running, she could get some really good stuff from it...I look forward to finding out what that stuff is!

Other: As the weather was decent, we did play beanbags this evening around 5 PM – and quickly realized we should have gone out earlier as the sun was starting to go down by then and it was rapidly getting rather cold. XD But we got in three rounds – and I’m pleased to say that I was the big winner of the day, taking second in the first game and winning the next two games! :D Mom, by contrast, couldn’t get out of her own way (or perhaps out of her own sweater’s way) and lost every game, sadly. :( Ah well, we all have days like that. Final scores were me 2-W-W; Dad W-2-2; Mom 3-3-3. Hopefully next time we play things will even out a little more!

*shakehead* One of these days I will learn Actual Time Management. As it is, I have to go to bed. Night all!

Not a perfect end to the week, but not a horrible one either --

Work – Happy to report that it was a decent enough Friday at the office today – I ended my work week by:

A) Doing the GL (which wasn’t VERY big but still had enough going on to keep me occupied for about an hour)

B) Going through the failed credit cards and contacting a few people to let them know their payments had failed – and three of them actually got back to me the same day, yay~ Updated two people’s pledges and did a final Capital Campaign payment for the third

C) Going through the people who had overpayments to try and contact a bunch of THEM one last time – so far no responses; I also moved one overpayment to the next Appeal year

D) Finishing my time going through all the people named a particular thing so I could finally finish the obituaries from Tuesday (it was a very common name in our system, and all the duplicates and deceased guys needed cleaning up! That being said, the person who was in the obits wasn’t even in our system in the end – figures XD)

E) ...completing my daily calendar puzzle page and the last few answers of a crossword because it wasn’t THAT busy

So yeah, that was all pretty good. And the traffic going in and coming home was SOMEWHAT better – the main drag was absolutely choked with cars tonight on the ride back, but what can you do. At least now it is the weekend – gonna Halloween the place up during my time off. :)

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike, last night with Who Framed Roger Rabbit! And my final ride of the week saw me get through:

A) The end of the movie, naturally – including:

I. Eddie’s adventures in Toontown (wrecking his car on the gag pile-up; getting abused during an elevator ride by Droopy Dog; thinking he’d found Jessica – only to become the subject of one Lena Hyena’s attentions; nearly falling to his doom after discovering the men’s room he was hiding was no more – and getting screwed over by Tweety Bird AND Bugs Bunny along the way; getting caught by Lena and finally managing to get her to run into a wall; venturing down a dark alley and thinking he was about to get shot by Jessica – only for her to save his life by shooting at Doom, sneaking up behind him with his gun; and the pair of them taking Benny out of Toontown to escape the weasels – only for poor Benny to get his tires dipped by Doom and wreck, allowing Doom to capture both Eddie and Jessica)

II. Doom taking them to the Acme factory and revealing his grand plan to Dip all of Toontown and erase it from the map to make way for a “freeway” (outing himself as the sole shareholder of Cloverleaf and waxing poetic about how beautiful all the terrible highway sprawl will be)

III. Roger getting to the factory with the help of Benny and ALMOST saving the day – only for one of the weasels to drop a ton of bricks on him, allowing Doom to have him and Jessica tied up in front of his awful Dipmobile to get sprayed

IV. Eddie realizing he can get the weasels to laugh themselves to death and doing a very elaborate and awesome comic song-and-dance and pratfall routine; cue the leader getting Dipped after getting kicked into the vat by Eddie, and the others cracking up and passing on

V. Eddie and Doom having their big fight, with Roger and Jessica getting regularly menaced by the Dip cannon – complete with the reveal that Doom was not only a Toon, but the very Toon that killed Eddie’s brother (and giving kids all over the country nightmares with his creepy animated eyes)

VI. Eddie taking out Doom via judicious application of boxing-glove-loaded mallet, dousing him in Dip, and the Dipmobile itself being taken out by a passing train when it crashed through the back wall on the way to Toontown

VII. The reappearance of Marvin Acme’s will, which he’d previously entrusted to Jessica – turns out the gagmeister wrote it in disappearing/reappearing ink, and it reappeared on the paper Roger had used to write Jessica a love letter

VIII. And Roger getting Eddie with a hand buzzer, and Eddie briefly looking like he was ready to turn Roger into soup – before picking him up and kissing him to show he still had a sense of humor XD

And then everyone heading off into the sunset, before Porky Pig and Tinkerbell closed things out. :p Great stuff – this movie is a classic for a reason, after all.

B) The “Before & After” featurette, which showed off what Eddie’s time in Toontown – specifically everything between him crashing into the “Overused Gags” pile-up and finally getting Lena Hyena to run into a wall – looked like before all the actual Toon stuff was edited in! As you might expect, it was mostly a lot of Bob Hoskins acting against a blue screen and emoting at sticks held up to show him where to look. Gotta say, the dude was a real professional – he acted against absolutely nothing really well! I was especially impressed with him miming opening the “Spare” bag Bugs gives him during the fall and pulling out the spare tire – I thought they’d given him a real bag to open that they’d then animate over, but nope! Dude just pretended to open thin air. Nice work, Bob!

C) And the “Toon Stand-Ins” featurette, which was all about how they used rubber puppets to stand in for the Toons while shooting so the animators would get an idea of what the lighting and perspective should be on all the animated characters as they moved around and got dragged about and all that. The footage featured was Roger getting caught by Doom in the bar and nearly getting Dipped – and honestly, I have no idea how the actors kept from ruining take after take by laughing at the puppets wiggling around. (I mean, maybe they did and we just don’t have those outtakes, who knows. :P) Christopher Lloyd pretending to try and force a rubber Roger into a closed barrel of dip would have made ME laugh on set! As would one rubber Roger’s head coming off in the backroom after being manipulated just one too many times. XD It’s fun to see behind the scenes with these kinds of movies!

And that’s another movie in the can! Next week – might be Addams Family, might be something else. We’ll find out!

2. Continue editing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got a good chunk done on Chapter 1 today, covering:

A) Smiler asking again why Victor’s not going to accept Elder Gutknecht’s Whisper training, and Victor thinking to himself about how much he really does want to become a Whisper, and be special and powerful and finally get a handle on that ‘ghost mind’ of his...and then thinking about how his parents would never stand for it, his mother in particular, because it would make him “weird” :(

B) Victor thus claiming that he just wants to leave it all behind and go back to a normal life – and Smiler not buying it, pointing out just how powerful Victor’s ghost sense is, and how they know being accused of murdering a Spirit Warden wasn’t fun, but they were sure they had some good times regardless, and how they saw Victor eyeing those books in Elder Gutknecht’s library… Alice had to firmly remind them that it was Victor’s choice not to pursue the training. And that she couldn’t blame him for wanting to go back to a life of comfort and ease after everything they’d been through – Victor winced at that and explained it was more he had a duty to Van Dort Fish

C) And Smiler very reluctantly accepting this (though still not convinced Victor really didn’t want to become a Whisper) and asking if Victor at least still intended to Victor – and Victor being like “of COURSE” and assuring them and Alice that he’d be by as often as he could. So they could argue more about his parents. XD That broke the tension very well.

So yeah – poor Victor is still a slave to his feeling of familial obligation, you see (plus he doesn’t want to get yelled at by his mother). Fortunately the rest of the fic will focus around curing of him of that affliction! As it stands, though, we only have a page to go on this chapter, so I think I will finish off my edits tomorrow and maybe see if I can get this up for general consumption next week!

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: No check – Game Night ran a little long again (Parcheesi this time – we each won a game, which was nice), and between that and my write-ups, it was either “work on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” or “watch something on Invidious,” and my writing won. As it well should, of course. *shrug* I should have some time tomorrow to continue catching up on all the videos I want to watch! Be nice to get a little further on all the OXBoxtra list videos, at least...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check and regular check, for a change –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Had a little spike of activity over here tonight, consisting of:

A) Going to regicidalheart’s (aka Brynlee Marie) blog to leave a comment on her wedding post, because she messaged me the other day about how she recently got some congrats from another Alice RPer we used to talk to back in the day over on the Instagram version, and I was like “oh shit I missed her saying she got married” O.O Fortunately I was only a day late with my compliments about how pretty her dress was and how I liked the arty black-and-white shot of her playing the piano (and of course I said “congrats” in my reply message too), but still. Gotta keep on top of this stuff better!

B) And reblogging two things I saw over on gaydragonwizard’s (aka Squid) blog that felt important –

I. A post by dduane linking an article about how to turn off AI features in things ranging from Google searches to Windows computers, apparently inspired by Windows 11 forcing some new AI shit on people – I want very much to know how to turn off all the AI bullshit in anything I might use!

II. And a thread started by maeamian about how important the No Kings Rally tomorrow (10/18) is and how you should go if you have the chance, with followups by kereeachan about the importance of keeping it peaceful and staying hydrated, sunscreened, and prepared for the weather; prismatic-bell about how Portland (where a lot of ICE protests are happening) is encouraging people to show up in fun animal costumes to make it harder for the current administration to demonize the protestors, so turn up in an inflatable costume or a onesie if you can – or maybe wear something with the American Flag on it to make sure the assholes don’t take it from us; dancinbutterfly linking a site, Operation Inflation, that’s apparently dedicated to taking donations so they can buy and send inflatable costumes to protestors, saying that if you can’t get to the protest, maybe you could send some money their way; and mikkeneko ending things off on an amusing note with “I admit, that's not entirely what I would expect from a website named Operation Inflation.” XD I’m going to the protest myself, so I wanted to spread the word and maybe convince a few people to join in last-minute. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

*nods* All very important things to do, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I actually had an ask to drop into the queue! From an anon who chose to tell me and my muses all about the “Auld Alliance” (an alliance between Scotland and France that lasted from roughly 1295 to 1560) in 17 seconds! It boiled down to “Scotland asks why they should give a shit about France given the troubles in their own country; France says ‘we will help you kill some of the English;’ Scotland is like ‘now you have our attention.’” XD I had Inevitable High School Smiler and Alice respond – Smiler to praise the anon’s delivery (“Now that is how you teach some history!”), Alice to add that it’s more entertaining, and likely more accurate – than what their actual history teacher teaches them. Remember, they go to the most bizarre and poorly-run high school in the universe (consequence of it being run by Cave Johnson) – this anon’s super-simplistic summary of the alliance probably IS better than what they’d actually learn in school!

Other: My Halloween costume arrived today! :D Well, okay, my parents are pretty sure it arrived yesterday and they didn’t notice it on the porch until this morning, but still. It’s the classic 1984 version of the Ghostbusters jumpsuit – Mom was going to take the orange stripes off the 2016 version that I no longer fit and put them on this one, but I decided that wasn’t necessary – I like both the 80s movies and the 2016 one, so I can rock either. :) We are going to have to make some adjustments, though – this new one is a little big for me, meaning the legs at least are going to have to be hemmed up. Still, I’d rather have a little too big than a little too small! Means I can still go with the costume I really wanted this year.

*nods approvingly* I'd say that's a pretty solid Friday, all things considered! And now it's time for me to head to bed. Tomorrow -- well, obviously most of the day is going to be spent at a certain protest, but I do hope to decorate the house for Halloween (though that may have to wait until Sunday, we'll see), finish the final page of edits on Chapter 1 of "The Van Dort Vacancy," and watch some stuff over on Invidious (more OXBoxtra lists, or perhaps a Proxy Gate Tactician video). We'll see how the day goes! Night all!

Yeah, the weather improved somewhat today -- we got into the 60s for temps, at least -- but there were multiple things that managed to annoy me today, as the write-up below will show:

Work – Welp, I’m sorry to report that today wasn’t the best of days at work – mostly because the ride in was another Commute From Hell. Like, every road was backed up in one way or another, and I have no idea WHY. *grumbles* I got in almost fifteen minutes late, and I was not happy about it, let me tell you! Definitely cast a pall on the rest of the day...though I should say that it was later offset a bit by the revelation that they’d finally turned the damn heat on. Meaning that I should hopefully not freeze tomorrow when the highs drop back into the 50s. *nods* That is a good thing, and I am grateful.

As for the actual WORK part of work, it proved to be a somewhat-busier day than normal, thanks to a fair number of people calling in for one reason or another. Including:

A) A guy who called to let us know both of his parents had died so we could stop their online pledge (he was calling up all the pledges that were taking automatic payments so he could close out the card)

B) A lady checking on her pledge balance, and wanting to know why she apparently still had a payment to go when the latest one should have been her last (turns out we had some trouble rescheduling her pledge back when she first made it due to a glitch on our credit card company’s end, and one of her earlier payments was accidentally skipped – she was nice enough about it, and we just rescheduled her last payment to pull today)

C) A lady who responded to my call about an overpayment to say that she was probably just going to let us keep it – I called her back once I had my lunch, and confirmed she was fine with the overage staying on her record

D) And a guy needing to update his credit card on his Capital Campaign pledge – which was annoying due mostly to the timing of his call (I was JUST about to go on my afternoon break) and the fact that I got a now-familiar error and had to log into the credit card processor’s system directly to update the card, which made the whole process take longer

Made the time go by, I suppose – though I would have appreciated less time going by on that last call! The rest of the day was spent doing obituary-related roster maintenance and talking with our boss about the system we USED to use before he came on as our director and how we had to do so much stuff manually (he was curious because the contract with our current database people is coming up, and he was looking at other systems just to check prices). We’ll see how Thursday goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – and tonight’s stationary bike ride got me through the first half-hour or so of Who Framed Roger Rabbit! Because it’s just short enough that I should be able to fit it into three days, and it felt like a good follow-up to Clue, given it is ALSO a murder mystery that stars Christopher Lloyd. XD Anyway, tonight’s chunklet featured Roger and Baby Herman’s latest cartoon – and Roger screwing it up at the last second by seeing tweety birds instead of stars when the fridge fell on his head; Eddie getting hired by R. K. Maroon to spy on Roger’s wife Jessica down at the Ink & Paint Club and get pictures of her cheating; Eddie visiting the club and – after the famous Donald vs Daffy piano scene – getting rather wowed by Jessica; Eddie getting the pictures of Jessica playing patty-cake with Marvin Acme (literally) and delivering them to Maroon and Roger – only to get told by a rather upset Roger that “he and Jessica were going to be happy again” before he busted through the window; Marvin Acme ending up dead via safe-to-the-head the next day; Eddie meeting Judge Doom when his cop friend took him to the crime scene and witnessing the infamously horrible death of the cartoon shoe in the Dip; Baby Herman visiting Eddie and telling him that Roger was innocent and that someone did Acme in to get at his will – only for Eddie to send him sailing down the hall when Herman offered to hire him because he’s bitter about a Toon killing his brother and thus refuses to work for them; and – when I left off for the night – Eddie seeing the will in Acme’s pocket in the pictures he took and realizing Herman might have been right. Tomorrow we pick up with him finding Roger in his apartment/office, and see how far we get from there!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – today’s writing session saw Alice start to explore the abandoned hospital in search of the “Haunted LA” crew! An endeavor that saw her –

A) Find a waiting room with a surprisingly-comfy-looking couch, a hallway completely blocked off by junk, and a little security office – with a computer monitor displaying footage of one of the crew members trying to run through a doorway, only to be thrown into the camera at very high speed

B) Work her way around the junk wall via a handy partially-collapsed vent in one of the rooms – only to find another junk wall in her way when she exited, and a bunch of wheelchairs piled on the stairs when she entered the stairwell

C) Get the help of the Insane Children to figure out where to go, which led her to a hole in the wall under the stairs, which in turn led to an examination room – with another monitor showing another crew member, this one a young lady, trying to crawl through another hole somewhere in the building, only to be dragged screaming back the way she came

Yeah, it has not been pleasant for Alice – OR the crew of “Haunted LA.” Alice is already trying to figure out if it’s an angry ghost, a nasty vampire, or both picking off these unfortunate people. Next time, she continues to work her way through the wreckage, and see people who had no idea what they were getting into get murdered! Fun? ^^;

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – it was back to OXtra tonight for a video from Ellen that I didn’t watch when she first released it because I was worried about how angry it would make me: “Gaming CEO Pay Will Make You Rage!” And trust me, having now viewed it, the title is accurate. Basically, what happened is Ellen stumbled across an article on Game File about how much EA CEO Andrew Wilson makes compared to the median salary of his humble employees, which contained a ridiculously tall graph comparing the two (part of this article is unfortunately paywalled, but the bit that Ellen saw is free for everyone to see). Ellen found this hilariously depressing, especially given all people EA has laid off in the past few years, then decided to see what she could find out regarding CEO-vs-median-worker-pay in the games industry herself. She was able to get the numbers from the Proxy Statements (which are statements that must be given out annually to shareholders) for EA, Microsoft (which of course owns things like XBox and Bethesda), Take-Two Interactive, and Unity (makers of the Unity engine that powers many games) –

And they were FUCKING HORRIFYING. I won’t give you all the figures, but suffice it to say that Andrew Wilson earning 260 dollars for every one his employees earn? Is on the LOW END of the ratios of CEO pay versus worker pay that Ellen found. Obviously the highest was for Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who earns 408 dollars for every one his employees earn (and it might jump up to 732 to 1 if the numbers she found for what a XBox Games Studio employee specifically makes are accurate), while Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick earns 308 dollars for every one his employees earn (so long as he makes his fiscal year goals, of course), and Unity CEOs James Whitehurt and Matthew Bromberg collectively earned 403 dollars for every one their employees earned (obviously, given Whitehurst was an interim CEO before Bromberg was hired, the individual ratios would have been lower, but that’s not what was on the Proxy Statement). Basically, these CEOs are being paid absolutely fucking RIDICULOUS amounts of money even as they lay off thousands of people and shutter smaller games studios left and right to make their damn stock numbers go up even more. And I know that feels like a Captain Obvious statement, but – fucking hell. I just hate that this is the timeline we live in. (And I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason EA’s going private, having been sold to the PIF fund of Saudi Arabia, the Affinity group run by Jared Kushner (aka Trump’s son-in-law), and Silver Lake (which I don’t know anything about), for $55 billion, with the deal closing in quarter one of the 2027 fiscal year (somewhere in October to December 2026, because fiscal years are weird), is to avoid having to post those numbers and thus get such bad press. ...And yeah, if you’ve noticed that I haven’t been mentioning Sims 4 anywhere anymore, THAT’S THE REASON WHY. Fucking bring on Paralives this Christmas season...)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – it was a Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, and since I completely filled out my queue for this week over there yesterday, there was nothing for me to do on that front. But I did:

A) Answer thesatiricaldemon’s reply on my Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 2 post – he commented that, since Kuo-Toa can genuinely make gods with their fervent belief (he called it “accidental apotheosization”), God!Tav!Smiler might genuinely become a thing, at least lore-wise (he was pretty sure there were no game-mechanical benefits due to balance concerns). And that a “pre-final-glorious-battle orgy is always an excellent way to spend one’s potential last days.” XD I answered that I knew about the Kuo-Toa being able to make their own gods, thanks to the video I watched of the Kuo-Toa cutscenes making it explicit Tav could feel the redcap posing as BOOOAL, god of murder, getting power from the fish people’s faith, so yeah, Tav!Smiler picking up at least a bit of divinity from their new friends was definitely on the table! (And sadly confirmed that there were no game-mechanical benefits beyond being able to get them to build an army, which resulted in some Kuo-Toa showing up for the final battle. Meeh.) And yes, I thought the orgy was a good idea too – as did, obviously, Smiler. XD Fun times! Even if his latest reply has shooketh me a bit by revealing a certain incredibly stupid Kuo-Toa goddess’s name may NOT have come from Johnny of Oxventure’s imagination. O.o

B) Reblog a post from b1rd1e simply asking “What r u guys gonan b for halloween” – I replied in the tags about my plans to be a ghostbuster, admitting that I had to get a new jumpsuit because the old one didn’t fit anymore but that I was still looking forward to it. :) And I am! I always like Halloween, it’s a good time.

So yeah -- some fun stuff, some rage-inducing stuff. So not exactly the best Wednesday. *shakehead* So I'm off to hit the sheets and hope Thursday is better. Night all!

Yeah, the weather was miserable today, but fortunately I didn't need to go anywhere -- hooray for a day off! Instead, I spent most of the day catching up on various things, as the write-up below will show:

Tumblr: Didn’t do much on tumblr today (I spent all of the time I would have normally spent working on tumblr drafts finishing off the write-up on Jon’s latest F:NV YOLO Remasted episode from yesterday – you can go to my previous entry to see the end now), but I did reblog one thing onto Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – my friend Nebby’s post linking the latest chapter of her “MediEvil Resurrection II” fic (finally completed after a seven-month hiatus)! After reading it and leaving a review, mind (which took up another good chunk of my afternoon). Gotta support my friends and their fic endeavors!

Writing: Since I wasn’t able to update the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc last night (apart from one paragraph), I instead updated it this afternoon, adapting the events of yesterday’s playsession to the world where Victor’s traveling around with both Ada and Alice. And there were a fair few changes between the game and the fiction this time around, including:

A) The spotlights in the main “battle arena” room not snapping on until Victor was already in the center of the room – I thought that would be more dramatic and make more sense than the Mechanist just turning them on as the door opened. (On a side note, I also had Alice question why the earth mover was in the room, because – yeah, why IS that down there?? Victor suggested they hoped to expand even further into the earth before the bombs dropped, which is as good an explanation as any I suppose)

B) Alice of course helping during the fight – specifically, battling the duelbot so it could live up to its name and actually duel someone! It definitely came off the worse in the fight, with Alice putting her famous Tal’Mehe’Ra blade through its power cell, but at least it got to fulfill its purpose

C) Victor staying in character when the Mechanist calls him a scourge post-fight-and-power-failure, telling her she was the scourge and demanding she come down and explain why she was casting him as the villain – Alice was the one who got the “we just want to talk” line that convinced the Mechanist to come down for the good of the Commonwealth

D) Conversely, Victor breaking character after the Mechanist unmasked in the final conversation much quicker – he tried to keep up with the persona briefly, but actually seeing Isabel’s face threw him off too much, and he ended up taking off his hat to “unmask” and speak as himself as well

E) Alice being the one to tell Isabel how her robots were misinterpreting orders to “save” people by killing them – and then to point out how it takes a sadistic mind to enslave human brains to her will when Isabel tried justify using the brains for her robot squads. Isabel retorted that it was breakthrough science and asked Alice if she was just supposed to let all those people die – cue Alice saying “YES LET THEM REST IN FUCKING PEACE” and asking if that’s not what SHE would have wanted after over 200 years in a jar...and Isabel crying in response as it truly hit her what an awful thing she’d done, and explaining more about her motivations (mainly, as per the Fallout wiki, that she grew up in a settlement plagued by raiders and super mutants, prompting her to want to make the Commonwealth a safer place for people like her family. I also had her be inspired to take on the Mechanist persona from hearing about the one you can find in the DC wasteland in Fallout 3 – thought it would be a nice nod to that game!)

F) Victor telling Isabel that he understands her intentions were good and that she should seek redemption as the Shroud, like in the game...but then asking Alice and Ada what they thought before they came to a final decision. Cue Alice saying that she was willing to let Isabel go, because while she’d done terrible things, her intentions WERE good, and her wanting to take responsibility counted for a lot –

And Ada having a proper conversation with the woman whose actions resulted in the death of her friends, asking how she couldn’t see the risks of using the robobrains and if she really didn’t know what they were doing. Fortunately, Isabel confirming she stupidly relied on the reports her bots gave her and tearfully saying that she’d become the very thing she hated and would have to live with that guilt forever touched something in Ada, and – having previously determined the woman’s remorse was genuine – she was willing to let her live too, as she was tired of the bloodshed

G) Ada lifting the security alert while Victor was having his VERY NECESSARY bathroom break, and telling Victor when he questioned the robobrains working in the command center that they were given different instructions, and that Isabel had agreed to gradually replace them with non-sapient robots going forward (this is when they all learned Isabel’s name, btw)

H) Isabel offering the Mechanist suit to Alice instead of Victor, as Victor was waaaay too tall for it – Alice was initially like “no thanks” until Victor pointed out she MIGHT be able to use it to walk around in the daylight (as she’d be completely covered). She’s still not THAT keen on putting it on, but she at least took the damn thing

I) And Victor waking up after his post-fight energy drop to find the ladies talking about maybe turning the facility into a robot-run food garden like Greygarden – meaning I now have an idea for what to do with the in-game settlement!

Whew! That was a looot of changes, huh? But I’m happy with them all, at least. :) And at least the next time I play, updating the Playthrough Progression should be easier and faster – much quicker to sum up a simple building episode than the end of a whole quest!

Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with everybody’s favorite board game movie, Clue! Tonight’s pedal session took me through the guests discovering the murder of the cook in the kitchen when she fell on poor Mr. Green; the disappearance of Mr. Boddy from the study, only to reappear, PROPERLY dead this time, in the bathroom, where Mrs. Peacock discovered him trying to powder her nose; the arrival of the stranded motorist and the poor guy being locked in the lounge; everyone splitting up into pairs to search the house and everyone getting paired up with the person least suited to them; the motorist getting murdered and Colonel Mustard and Miss Scarlet discovering his dead body after discovering the secret passage from the conservatory to the lounge; Yvette shooting out the locks on the lounge doors and accidentally nearly killing Colonel Mustard with a falling chandelier; the arrival of the cop looking for the stranded motorist, and HIM getting locked in the library; the cop getting a call on the library phone and getting the others to let him out by saying he’ll have them all arrested, then revealing the call was from J. Edgar Hoover (the movie’s set in 1954); the guests conspiring to make the cop think all the bodies are people just making out with partners/partying too hard; the cop getting locked back into the library and everyone going back to their searching; SOMEONE turning out the lights, and the cop, Yvette, and a singing telegram girl all getting murdered (to make sure every one of the classic weapons was used in a murder); and Wadsworth getting the lights on and everyone tromping around and taking in the new murders with a general air of resignation. I left off RIGHT before the iconic sequence where Tim Curry runs around like a madman and basically recreates the ENTIRE MOVIE up to that point – tomorrow, we SHOULD finish up with that and the three endings. Should be fun!

FreeTube/Invidious: Welp, FreeTube released an update fixing that [BAD_HTTP_STATUS: 403] bug that was preventing people from watching videos on it recently...but when I downloaded it today and tried watching a video, I got stuck in an infinite loading screen. *shakehead* So it was back to Invidious tonight for my evening entertainment, where I chose to watch the OXtra video “CAN YOU GUESS THE GAME FROM THE SCREENSHOT?” This featured Ellen, Jane, Mike, and Andy playing a round of Guess The Game, which is a browser-based game that gives you six tries to guess a video game from random screenshots. Each subsequent screenshot after the first also provides a little more information on the game – such as its metacritic score, the original platforms it was released on, and who made it. It will also let you know if you guess the wrong game, but the right franchise, so you can narrow down your guesses accordingly. The OX gang were reasonably good at guessing the games on offer – often needing more than one try, but usually getting it in the end. Notable moments included:

A) Andy managing to correctly guess Spec Ops: The Line on the third screenshot of someone’s burned back – Jane was like “I would have expected more sand” (turns out it was in the subsequent screenshots)

B) The gang initially thinking one game was Shadow of the Colossus from the first screenshot – but when they were informed “that’s wrong” and moved onto the second, Mike recognized a “ring totem” and correctly realized the game was in fact Sonic Frontiers (the other three were like WTF because no Sonic game should look like Shadow of the Colossus XD)

C) Mike seeing a screenshot of a city skybox and IMMEDIATELY correctly deducing it was Deus Ex (the 90s original) – everyone was very impressed)

D) On the flip side of that, Mike suggesting Nuclear Throne for an early pixel-art game that proved to be something else (Into The Breach) – and then not recognizing the ACTUAL Nuclear Throne when it showed up later (he said he was thrown off by one of the screenshots featuring a medieval-looking brazier)

E) And me managing to guess one game before the OX gang did – a shot of an apartment building that immediately had me think “Oh, that’s probably Silent Hill 4: The Room, I know that takes place in somebody’s apartment!” The OX gang initially thought it was a shot of a building from the Silent Hill 2 remake, but guessed right on the second shot of a rusty horrible-looking kitchen. (I also recognized a shot of Fallout 4 at the very end, but only after one of them said it looked like that game, causing me to be like “wait, yeah, I think that is the Commonwealth…”)

Fun times! :) These sorts of games are always pretty neat – I hope they do another video on it! (Well, okay, a third video on it, as apparently they’d already done one video on this site, sans Mike – perhaps tomorrow I will catch up with the original? We will see...)

So yeah -- hopefully now I am all caught up and ready to go back into the workweek! And now I should really go to bed, as once again I have stayed up too late. *shakehead* Night all!

As the below write-up should make clear --

Cleaning: Welp, it proved to be another Saturday where cleaning my room took up more time than expected (even without having to put my blankets and bathrobe and stuff in the wash) – here’s basically what happened:

A) Got up around 9:30 AM, had my breakfast and played my morning games on my iPad and iPhone, then started changing my sheets and dusting the shelves behind my bed around 10:20 AM

B) Finished the dusting, put the new sheets on, remade my bed, then went to get dressed around 11:20 AM – however, before picking out my outfit for the day, I decided to try on my chosen Halloween costume for the year, my old Ghostbusters: Answer The Call jumpsuit, to make sure it still fit. Figured it was best to check now rather than later –

And that was absolutely the right call, as it did not still fit – I could NOT get it up over my hips. Like, I tried, and it was just too narrow. *sigh* So I went and added my sheets to the communal laundry (throwing them into the washer with Mom’s sheets at her direction), then let Mom know the bad news about my costume. After some discussion (and a look at the jumpsuit), she determined that she couldn’t let it out, sadly –

But she could take the orange stripes off it (meant to be the reflective tape from the actual costumes) and put them on another jumpsuit. So we ended up ordering a new Ghostbuster jumpsuit (one more akin to the original 1984 movie’s style) from an online Halloween shop! :) That’ll be here on the 22nd – hopefully it fits right and works as a costume! I’m willing to go as something else – I have plenty of costumes in my closet – but after rewatching all three of the GB movies I own, I was pretty keen on being a ghostbuster, so…

C) After all that, I picked up with the dusting again around noon, and managed to get that all done (and my clothes from the communal laundry put away) right before lunch, a little after 1 PM

D) And finally, after we’d had lunch and washed and dried all the dishes and such, I completed my cleaning by Swiffering the floors and vacuuming my rug, finishing it all up around 2:12 PM

E) ...and then I played some more games on my phone and didn’t actually get on my computer until about 2:30 PM XD

So yeah – you can see why it ate up a good portion of my day! On the plus side, it didn’t eat up quite as much as some Cleaning & Laundry Saturdays do, and I’m glad we discovered and sorted the issue with my costume now, rather than closer to Halloween. Would have been embarrassing to discover that I no longer fit the old jumpsuit the morning of! Now, hopefully, we should be set. *nods* And I don’t have to worry about cleaning for another two weeks, hooray~

Baldur’s Gate III: Welp, after chatting with my friend Squid about BG3 last night (they have recommended I give Astarion like at least five levels in Gloomstalker Ranger to turn in him into a sneak attack powerhouse, and I am happy to take this advice), I decided I was in the mood today to visit Faerun and send Smiler and company on some further adventures...only to instead play through an entire session that was literally just inventory management. XD To be fair, the inventories did very much need to be managed! Here’s what happened:

A) I started out with the party hanging out in the chapel campsite, fresh off their little looting spree from last time – and in the interest of having to spend less time later reorganizing personal inventories and the camp chest, I decided that Smiler should first explore the camp and check every container they could find to pick up any last-minute goodies to either pass out or put away. They accordingly did a circuit of the main room with the big statue, the ruined library room to the left (where Withers hangs out once you recruit him), and the little worship room with the piano to the right (where the actual “Traveler’s Chest” is). Most of the containers they checked didn’t have anything in them, but they did pick up:

I. A Rufflesome Blaggart Hat in a burlap sack at the base of a column in the main room (right in front of Shadowheart’s little camp)

II. Some rags and a rotten carrot from a burlap sack behind Astarion’s little campsite

III. And two bits of mugwort from Shadowheart and Gale’s camps! Which they combined with a previously-obtained sprig to create some Salts of Mugwort and unlock the recipe to create Antidotes (for curing people of poison). Useful!

*nods* Good to know the camp is clear and there aren’t any surprises waiting in any of the containers!

B) Once that was done – and I’d swapped out the quill in Smiler’s Bewildering Adventurer’s Pack with the quill-and-inkpot combo item I’d found earlier, as I previously said I would – I had Smiler play a little tune on the chapel’s piano, then opened up the Party Inventory screen and the Traveler’s Chest inventory, and set to work organizing! I won’t go into TOO excruciating detail, but here’s what I accomplished:

I. I started by putting away most of the spare weapons, armor, clothing, gems, jewelry, torches (I let Gale keep one, since, again, he’s the human of the group and thus the one without darkvision), and junk items of interest into the camp chest and organizing them so they were all in neat rows. I was hoping that I could stack the various shortswords and such they’d found so they would take up less space in the chest, but no luck – for whatever reason, weapons will NOT share an inventory slot with any duplicates. Bit irritating, that, as they have a LOT of spare shortswords, axes, and daggers! At least I was able to free up a couple of slots by accidentally sticking the two notes that come with the Faerun Colors dye mods back into the main dye container…

II. While doing all this, I looked at what was remaining in Smiler’s inventory and added a few more “personal items” to their Bewildering Adventurer’s Pack – specifically, a clamshell they found on the Ravaged Beach, and a plate and chalice they found in the overgrown ruins’ dining room above. I just figured they WOULD have a plate and cup for eating while on the road – and would probably consider the clamshell a fun little souvenir. :) It’s nice to give them a few items that are “theirs” just for RP purposes!

III. I then swapped over to Shadowheart to have a look at the weapons left in her inventory – specifically, comparing the greatclub she was currently wielding to the morningstar and the flail she’d picked up to see if either of them were better. Turned out the flail had the same damage and “Tenacity” special ability (to inflict 2 bludgeoning damage on a target even if you miss your attack) as the greatclub, but was much lighter and one-handed, meaning Shadowheart could equip her shield again for some extra AC. So I had her switch the club for the flail, then dropped the greatclub, the morningstar, and her old mace in the camp chest. Along with the Bloodsoaked Armwraps, because I couldn’t see holding onto them for the moment – they’re a Barbarian-focused item, meaning they’re not going to be relevant to anyone’s build until we recruit Karlach!

IV. I then swapped over to Astarion and had him equip a second dagger to use in his off hand, should he want to try dual-wielding at some point in the future! ...Only for the game to immediately warn me that this would cause him to always use his bonus action to try and make an off-hand melee attack unless I toggled his dual-wielding off with the “R” key. Hmmm. well, I’m sticking with him having a dagger on each hip for now – it’s a vibe – but I have made sure that he’s currently only using the one in combat for the moment. I need those bonus triangles for cunning actions!

V. With that, it was back over to Smiler, so they could drop the rags and rotting carrot they’d just found in the camp chest. I then realized they should probably put their books in there, then got distracted by trying to remember if there was a stack-of-books or row-of-books container that I could pick up and have them put in the camp chest to store at least some of these books without taking up too much inventory space…

Then got FURTHER distracted as I realized, “Hey, Smiler hasn’t read a couple of these yet!” XD So I had Smiler take a moment to finish reading all the literature in their possession – specifically, the ancient scroll they found in a vase (which was mostly illegible except for the beginning, which talked about an all-important Sealing Ritual the writer did for their god), and the book “The Mortal View: Eyewitness Accounts of the Bhaalspawn Crisis” (which is a collection of people talking about their various encounters with Bhaalspawn – most of which are apparently references to earlier games in the series, as per the wiki! For example, an angry vampire told the interviewer that his mistress was turned to dust fighting Bhaalspawn, and specifically cursed the name of the main antagonist of Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn, Jon Irenicus, for helping set up that situation). Very important to keep up on all this stuff – even if it is pretty much all flavor text. :P

VI. After that, I put aside the “putting away the books” question for a moment to do something a little more important – namely, split up Smiler’s stack of six healing potions and give a few to their other friends! Specifically, they sent two to Astarion and one to Gale, so those two would have three potions each. I would have given a potion to Shadowheart as well, but she’s the one with the best AC AND healing spells, so – I think she’ll be fine with just two. XD You can have the next one we encounter out in the wild, Shadowheart! I also had Smiler split up their stack of nine candles so they could give one each to Astarion and Shadowheart, in case they needed one for anything (apparently putting one out in the world and dipping your weapon in it is a good way to give it burning damage, so…) – Gale didn’t get one as he already has a torch. :p The remaining seven went in the Traveler’s Chest, as Smiler already had a candle of their own in the Bewildering Adventure’s pack. If they need another, they know where to look!

VII. Getting the candles sorted also prompted me to clean up the final bits of clothing in Smiler’s inventory – the Rufflesome Blaggart hat of course went to Astarion (it’s his kind of hat!), while – after trying on the former and deciding Smiler does NOT look good in hats in this game because they completely cover up their hair – the Old Floppy Hat and Casual Sandals got stowed in the Traveler’s Chest. Once I’d done all that, I then swapped back over to Astarion to update his swanky new outfit (because, as you might remember, he’s picked up some lovely sneaky armor and pirate-themed boots during his travels with the party) using the Faerun Colors dye that bears his name. Somehow while doing this, I managed to swap out of Party Inventory mode and just into Astarion’s personal inventory, but I was like “eh, not a big deal” and just ran with it. I was mostly done with needing everybody’s inventories open at the same time anyway!

VIII. With Astarion’s fit all dyed Astarion colors, and his inventory pretty much sorted, I then moved over to Shadowheart to clear out the last random bits and bobs from her inventory! After a moment’s thought, I had her send the Gravetender’s Mark ring over to Gale, as I was pretty sure it would help him more than it would help her – because while they both have a spell that would activate the ring’s effects (Shield of Faith for Shadowheart, Mage Armor for Gale), Shadowheart can also channel Shar’s divinity to make undead flee from her. So – yeah. Probably better Gale gets the ring! XD I also had her try on the leather gloves and fluffy boots still in her inventory – the boots I didn’t like the look of and dropped in the Traveler’s Chest, but the gloves looked nice on her, so I left them on and dyed them in the appropriate Shar-themed colors. *nods* She probably needs some gloves to stop herself getting blisters from her flail anyway!

IX. From there, it was over to Gale, who didn’t really have anything that needed doing in his inventory (as the squishy wizard, he was carrying the least items) – I just wanted to make sure he had the Gravetender’s Mark ring equipped. I then thought, “Hmmm – maybe I should just go ahead and have him cast Mage Armor on himself now, since that’s what activates the ring’s effects...but hang on, is that a ritual spell or not? I thought it was, but – looking at the description, I don’t see the slanted green pentagram that denotes a ritual spell anywhere...you know what, let’s make absolutely sure with the power of quicksave!” So I hit F5, then – after getting the “quicksave successful!” message – had Gale cast the spell –

Aaaand it ate up a spell slot. And given Gale only has two left at the moment – yeah, not 100% sure Mage Armor’s what I want to be using it on. (Though, on the other hand, the party IS going up against skeletons soon…) So I reverted my save to before he cast it. We’ll see what I decide once it comes time to, you know, actually fight the skeletons!

X. And from there, it was back around to Smiler! Who still had a decent amount of shit clogging up their inventory that needed to be taken care of. Ah, the curse of being the main character. :p I started with the magical items they’d picked up – and after pondering what exactly they did for a bit, I had them send the Ring Of The Primal Hunter to Shadowheart (as she’s the one using her crossbow most often right now), but let them go ahead and equip the Circlet of Prismatic Resonance themselves. I don’t know if the Chromatic Orb spell it grants is the MOST Smiler spell in the world, but looking at it on the wiki, the spell does have a poison variant, and I’m willing to say poison is at least somewhat thematically appropriate for them, so… *shrug* We’ll see if I let them keep it or not! For now, it might just be good as an extra offensive option (well, depending on if it eats up Smiler’s precious spell slots or not…).

Anyway – with that sorted, I popped over to Shadowheart briefly to have her equip her new ring, then went back to Smiler to look for more things I could put away in order to reduce the amount of shit they were carrying – they don’t have a lot of carry capacity, after all! They are not that strong! After going over what was still in their grid, I was like “you know, they probably don’t need to be carrying all this food, why don’t I give it to nice hench Shadowheart to hang onto–”

And then I was like, “Vic. They’re camp supplies. Put them in the camp chest.” XD So I did, creating a whole new row for food and getting Smiler’s carried weight down SIGNIFICANTLY. Nice! I then remembered the book problem and head into the library room to check all those book containers – sadly, none of the rows could be picked up, so I ended up just chucking all Smiler’s books and letters and whatnot into the camp chest straight. We’ll see if I can find another container for them later! (Or if I just sell them, since there’s no point keeping them around after they’ve been read…)

C) And with that, the session ended, with me getting everyone out of camp and back into the Dank Crypt so, next time, they can continue exploring and finally acquire themselves a Withers! AKA actually, you know, play the game. XD I leave you on this shot of the quartet getting ready for adventure:



I think they look pretty swanky, don’t you? Though the circlet does look a little weird on Smiler’s forehead – probably the bangs. Ah well. Looking forward to actually DOING things with them next time. XD

FreeTube/Invidious: Welp, FreeTube remains unupdated (come on, guys, it’s been a few weeks now), so it was over to Invidious tonight so I could watch (as per Gigs’s comment to me) the latest video from C. M. Alongi: “CaFae Latte Season 76 - TikTok Compilation!” And oh boy, this one was an interesting one, featuring:

A) Erik calling his mom from jail and telling her how she should like Lindsey and how he hasn’t tried to contact his dad since Father’s Day, because he’s finally realized fuck that side of the family, before getting interrupted by a guard and brought to his parole hearing (chatting with said guard along the way – apparently said guard had a kid who tried to commit suicide, and got suspended for a while after getting into a fight with a fellow officer who said it was a shame the kid – who is queer – didn’t succeed (the bigot, fortunately, got fired)). He then arrived at the hearing –

To see Cyrus, in his lawyer coat, there. And when he expressed his confusion, Cyrus explained it was common practice to let the victim of a crime know when the perpetrator was up for parole so they could come and express their point of view on the situation. As you might imagine, given what Erik was in jail for (conspiring to have Cyrus kidnapped and turned into an immortality potion), he was immediately like, “welp, here comes the rejection...”

B) The parole board hearing! Cyrus went first and explained that he didn’t think it was a good idea to let Erik out just yet because, while he believed Erik’s remorse was genuine and he liked to be optimistic about these things, he didn’t think now was the right time to let him loose. After all, Erik was very good at convincing people, and himself, that he had changed before relapsing – and while normally he only risks himself, the kidnapping incident proved he was more than willing to risk others. The board commissioner asked if they knew about Erik’s record when he was hired (yes, but they were hopeful he could change, like JC had) –

And then brought up the fact that Cyrus had killed all the witches who tried to kidnap him. And rudely shut down Cyrus going “yes, but I’m a 300 year old fairy with combat experience, I am not a typical kidnap victim.” And then his deputy basically asked Erik “did you know what was going to happen to Mr. Johnson” (Erik: “They told me they’d just take blood and bone – I foolishly chose to believe them, even though I should have known better) and “are you sorry” (Erik: “Obviously”) –

And granted parole. Cue Erik and Cyrus staring at each other in baffled shock, and who can blame them.

C) Cyrus discovering Lindsey waiting outside and learning that she was dating Erik (to his annoyed disbelief) – when he asked why she hadn’t told them, she was like “you’re not my keeper” – to which Cyrus replied “I’d LIKE to think I’m your friend – you know what he did to get in here, right?” To which Lindsey replied “Yes, tried to have you kidnapped and turned into an immortality potion – like I was ready to kidnap and torture Bob for fame and fortune.” Cyrus had to give her that. :p Erik showed up shortly after and told her the good news – and while Lindsey was happy, Erik and Cyrus remained completely baffled as to why Erik had been cut loose only a third of a way through his sentence. Erik suggested jail overcrowding, only for Cyrus to point out there were much better candidates to release than him; Cyrus suggested Lindsey having done something, only for Lindsey to say “yeah, I gave him a good luck and protection charm, but the necklace would have broke if the magic ran out, so I don’t THINK it was me?” Erik settled on “the American justice system is shit and maybe I fell through the cracks,” which the others were fine with. Cyrus then took his leave, telling Erik to stay away from CaFae Latte and everyone in it – Erik called out a final apology, with Cyrus pointing out that it wasn’t just him that he needed to apologize to. ...Erik then told Lindsey, “I thought for sure he was going to stab me, so – good day.” XD

D) Cyrus reporting on the parole board hearing to JC, Bob, and Rethu, noting how hostile the board commissioner had been to his testimony and admitting after Bob asked that he did have an idea as to why – namely, he was pretty sure someone had been bribed to let Erik out and the hostility was them fishing for a “legit” reason to grant parole. Bob asked if Erik was capable of making such a bribe – JC was like “he’d have to wipe out his savings, but maybe,” while Cyrus was like “I don’t know, he seemed as confused as I was.” JC pointed out that Erik had seemed like their friend too –

Aaand Rethu promptly offered to kill him and make it look like an accident. XD Cyrus pointed out that they’d all be at the top of the suspect list and Rethu would be locked up in minutes – they said that the sentence would be nothing to an immortal, but Bob shut down the murder talk by saying she’d like to explore other avenues first. Husniya offered to have her husband Asif instead keep track of Erik’s online activity, just in case he started visiting any weird sites – Bob was all for that, and said that they’d supplement it with Nicole’s divination so they could find out if Erik even BREATHED funny. Cyrus THEN dropped the bombshell that Erik was dating Lindsey –

Aaand cut to Lindsey driving Erik home and telling him all about the actually-good Alien prequel series that he had to catch up on. XD Because probably C. M. didn’t want to ruin her voice with all the yelling that probably came out of JC after that revelation. XD

E) Erik arriving at home and introducing Lindsey to his mother Hannah – who did not seem that happy to see her son back, but then again, she’s been dealing with his bullshit for a while. She informed him that the usual deal was in place – he doesn’t pay the bills, he does housework – greeted Lindsey, then asked when his next parole meeting was (next week – and yes, Erik was STILL confused about why he’d been let out early – Lindsey was like “you’ve been so nice and good, maybe they were rewarding you,” prompting Hannah to coldly note that Erik can be charming when he wants to be), and if the fairy he wronged would be knocking on her door. Erik assured her that the fairies weren’t the revenge types...then noted RETHU was but wouldn’t implicate the others if they did something. XD He also said that Nicole was friends with Lindsey –

Prompting her to reveal that Nicole had texted her to let her know to avoid the CaFae for a while too – ESPECIALLY JC, who naturally wasn’t taking the “dating” revelation well. Erik was like “wait, no, they don’t get to be mad at you,” but Lindsey was like “they do a little. If it goes on for too long, I’ll talk it out.” (Might have more luck PUNCHING it out with JC in the boxing ring, girl – worked for Husniya!) Talk then turned to what stuff Erik still had from his old apartment (Hannah saying she boxed up what she could, so he should have clothes, but she sold his old TV to pay for the trouble); Lindsey suggesting tricking Erik’s dad into thinking he still owed child support (Hannah: “Wouldn’t work, he only ever came over if he wanted something”) and Erik declaring “Fuck him,” making Lindsey very proud; and Erik asking if they had any Chunky Monkey ice cream – and offering to grab it when Hannah said no, but she was willing to get some given the occasion. He then hiked down to the grocery store while Lindsey started geeking out over Hannah’s Wade figurines –

And cut to Erik preparing to go home with his ice cream...when a voice asked how his boy was. Poor Erik was like “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

F) And the appearance of Erik’s father, Valefar the half-demon, being all chummy with the kid he abandoned for some bizarre reason. Erik was prepared to just walk away and not even entertain his ass, but then Valefar revealed he’d been the one to get Erik out of prison, and that was enough to lure Erik into his car for a quick ride. Erik remained understandably hostile to the man as he tried to make small talk, though, and demanded to know why he’d shown up now to spring him and be friends –

And cue Valefar revealing that he was in loooads of fucking debt. Both to the Abyssal version of the IRS, and to various demonic mafias. Erik was like “you got wrapped up with THOSE?” – Valefar responded “glass house, throwing stones.” XD Erik pointed out that his was a very broke house too, but Valefar explained that he didn’t want money – instead, he wanted Erik’s help getting the materials he needed to get himself back on his feet (as his mother was refusing to bail him out due to the aforementioned demonic mafias nonsense). Specifically, he wanted Erik to get a number of magical items from the Stoughton Street Coven – either by getting Lindsey to give them to him, or by straight-up stealing them. Erik was like “hell no, stop the car and let me out” – Valefar said “you know, I’d compensate you too.” Erik insisted he didn’t want Valefar’s money as he got out –

And then Valefar said “how about immortality?” :O Turns out there’s a golden apple tree on the family estate, meaning it would be very easy for him to get one for Erik. Erik was like “why didn’t you give me one EARLIER then” – Valefar responded that he hadn’t earned it. And cue the episode ending with Erik just outside the car, looking very thoughtful…

Aaand cue the comments being full of “ERIK NOOOOO.” XD I mean, you can’t blame the people – we all want to see Erik become a better person, right? I am very hopeful, as falling in love with Lindsey seems to have finally gotten some important truths through his head (namely, his father’s side of the family are dicks and he shouldn’t keep seeking their approval/love), but on the other hand, we know what a temptation immortality IS to him...oooh, Season 77 is going to be interesting...

Writing: Welp, I didn’t do nearly as much as I’d like, thanks to the above write-ups taking so long, but I did get a little bit done on the BG3 Master Doc and the playthrough progression within! Mostly editing a few typos I found while rereading it, and completing the sections where Smiler and Shadowheart leveled up for the first time and looted the ravaged beach (copying over the pertinent information from my regular write-ups). *shrug* Something is always better than nothing! Hopefully I can make some more progress on this later...

Tumblr: Welp, I didn’t get anything done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), unsurprisingly, but there was an anon ask waiting for me over on Valice Multiverse tonight – “Do American-Canadian families celebrate thanksgiving twice a year?” Which – that’s a very good question! I had my Cuddlepile!Smiler answer admitting they had no idea...largely because they weren’t sure how Canadians celebrated their Thanksgiving. They’re English, after all! I admitted in the tags that I had no idea what a Canadian Thanksgiving celebration looked like either, then looked it up on Wikipedia – turns out it’s pretty much the same as an American one, complete with a big meal and football. *shrug* The more you know!

...yes, I saw that I'd used "Welp" for two categories while doing the write-up and decided to make it a theme. XD You gotta stay silly! Anyway, that's about it for my Saturday -- time for me to head to bed and hopefully get some decent sleep. Tomorrow's supposed to be stormy and miserable, with high winds and driving rain -- good thing I don't have to go anywhere! Plans so far include working on drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Fallout 4 and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression after; getting in a workout (gotta start Clue!), and watching the latest from Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series. Hopefully these are all achievable goals -- we shall see! Night all!