Database maintenance

Oct. 25th, 2025 08:42 am
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Good morning, afternoon, and evening!

We're doing some database and other light server maintenance this weekend (upgrading the version of MySQL we use in particular, but also probably doing some CDN work.)

I expect all of this to be pretty invisible except for some small "couple of minute" blips as we switch between machines, but there's a chance you will notice something untoward. I'll keep an eye on comments as per usual.

Ta for now!

October is Inventory Time

Oct. 25th, 2025 11:43 pm
anonymoose_au: (Feelin' Futurey!)
[personal profile] anonymoose_au
11:03pm: I've been wanting to make an entry with this title on it for the longest time (I might have done so already, but I'm not gonna check it) and this is the perfect time to do it because not only is it the 25th October but tomorrow Mum and I are going to see Back to the Future: The Musical! I've had this booked for months now and it's finally come! My one regret is that I don't have an appropriate t-shirt to wear! 20 years ago (!) I had a BTTF t-shirt printed up for the the 20th Anniversary of the movie. It had a collage on it that I created with screenshots from the movie. I still have it, but firstly it's probably way too small for me and secondly the picture has darkened so much you can't actually see the collage anymore.

I did buy another BTTF shirt that was in sale in Target, but for some reason - I assume it was the last one - I got an extra small and it's a bit tight.

I do actually have the perfect picture to put on a t-shirt - the new one in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the film. I have the T-shirt transfer paper and can print it out, but alas I don't have shirt to put it on! I can try and buy one tomorrow - we're going to the matinee so there's time, but I'm not sure how well the transfer will stay if I wear the t-shirt out right away. I used the same sort of transfer for a Pusheenimals themed shirt and it didn't last so well...

I'll probably still try it anyway :OP

Anywho, it's getting late so I need to head for bed, although I'm currently watching the Men's Free Program at the Grand Prix Cup of China. It's getting to the pointy end and very exciting with the big jumps and big risks. Although the fellow I'm watching right now is dressed like a Cardinal (the Catholic kind) which seems like an odd choice, but OK. He's doing really well though!


But yes, I better wrap this up, if I'm going to do the t-shirt I need to get up early tomorrow! Oh but before I go I'm happy to report I had a great time at archery today - it was a Handicap event with prizes and not only did I get a Personal Best I won one of the prizes - a USB stick, it's cute! It has the name of the archery club written on it, no logo though. I haven't used it yet so I don't know how much space is on it.

Right on that note, I shall be off!

Goodnight all!

Hunger

Comfort

Hygiene

Energy

Fun

Social

Bladder

Room

Anticipation

Reach for the laser with Antic's Sims-ulator!

PMS Suspected Friday

Oct. 24th, 2025 11:49 pm
crossover_chick: Doc snoozing on his couch (BTTF: exhausted)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

Happy Fallout Day!

Oct. 23rd, 2025 11:46 pm
crossover_chick: a picture of Sims 4 versions of Victor Van Dort and Alice Liddell standing with OC Smiler Alton (Caucausian, black hair, bright yellow eyes) (OT3: Valicer Trio)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
Yup, the BTTF Days have temporarily given way to the Fallout series, given that October 23rd (2077) is the date that the Great War happened and good chunks of the USA got wiped out by nukes. I didn't do much to celebrate apart from wearing one of my Fallout 4 t-shirts for my workout and listening to the Fallout 4 score all evening, but I wanted to acknowledge it nonetheless! I do enjoy the series, after all, even if I've only played Fallout 4 and am deeply tempted to play Fallout: New Vegas.

Anyway! Despite being the "anniversary" of a nuclear war in one fandom I enjoy, today was actually a pretty good day overall:

Work – In sharp contrast to how the rest of the week has gone, today was actually pretty chill when it came to work-related stuff:

A) Both my commute in and my commute out were pretty easy, with not a lot of traffic (okay, granted, the main drag was once again all clogged up when I came home, but before that it was okay)

B) My actual workday consisted of running the morning reports, fiddling around with the obituaries I still had left to do (and falling down a rabbit hole of cleaning up a bunch of people with the same name again), and taking one credit card call (doing a final payment on a pledge)

C) I didn’t see any more fungus gnats in my area, so I think those little fuckers may be fully gone

D) And the heat was back on today, so I didn’t freeze in my seat, yay

*shrug* Yeah, just – complete opposite to the stressful messes the past three days have been. Trust me, I’ll take it! Just have to get through Friday now...fingers crossed it follows today’s lead and not, say, Monday’s.

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Addams Family Values! Tonight’s chunklet covered:

A) Debbie going through Fester’s portfolio while looking after Pubert, and slowly realizing that the older two children are onto her – cue her tricking Morticia and Gomez into sending them to summer camp

B) Wednesday and Pugsley getting introduced to Camp Chippewa and some of the people they’ll have to deal with, including snooty fellow camper Amanda Buckman (aka the Girl Scout from the first movie), overly-cheerful counselors Gary Granger and Becky Martin-Granger (the former played by Peter MacNicol, aka Janosz, Vigo’s minion, from Ghostbusters II and Renfield from Dracula: Dead And Loving It! I didn’t really grok that it was him before)...and the extremely allergic Joel Glicker, who takes one look at Wednesday and is struck dumb (fun fact – Barry Sonnenfeld plays his dad in a cameo role)

C) Debbie, Fester, Gomez, and Morticia going on a double date, featuring Morticia covering Fester offering Debbie half-eaten bread by saying it’s a French custom; Gomez ATTEMPTING to teach Fester how to be suave, with little result (and clearly wondering how this guy ever pulled the Amor twins XD); and Gomez and Morticia literally setting the dance floor alight with a sultry tango while Fester stuck breadsticks up his nose to amuse his date XD

D) Debbie successfully seducing Fester into proposing – and getting Mother Addams’s ring from her grave to seal the deal (I’ve never understood why Gomez and Morticia seemed shocked by that – surely Debbie’s willingness to dig up a dead family member should just endear her to them more?)

E) Wednesday and Pugsley having a terrible time at camp and being banished to the Harmony Hut for their bad attitudes, along with Joel; cue them befriending him, and Wednesday inviting him to Debbie and Fester’s wedding

F) Aforementioned wedding, with Debbie the only one in the traditional white dress; Cousin Itt officiating; Fester pouring his heart out to Debbie in frankly very romantic vows, and Debbie, taken aback, going “Ditto;” and the pair leaving for their honeymoon in the Addams car, dragging tin cans, shoes, and a dead body

G) Fester and Debbie’s honeymoon in Hawaii, with Debbie ATTEMPTING to electrocute Fester, only to discover to her horror that he’s rather harder to kill than she expected; cue her using the promise of sex to separate him from his family so at least she doesn’t have to deal with the lot of them while she figures out a new plan

H) Fester and Debbie coming home and Debbie forcing Fester to wear bright pastel clothes, get a hair transplant, and move into a big fancy mansion full of all the fanciest stuff – and to give her $20 to get a kiss

I) Wednesday and Pugsley talking about if Debbie could be the “Black Widow” from Joel’s set of serial killer trading cards, all while Gary and Becky talk about the play that will end everyone’s time at Chippewa – Gary’s take on the first Thanksgiving, with Amanda as the pilgrim Sarah...and Wednesday as Pocahontas, to her horror

J) And the rest of the Addams clan trying to visit Fester in his new home, only for Debbie to drive them off by getting Fester to claim he doesn’t want to see them (interestingly, at the end of the scene, Grandmama curses Debbie, specifically mentioning “bone and burn” – and while Debbie doesn’t actually BURN to death, she does get reduced to ash by electricity in the end, so – close enough, Grandmama!)

And that’s where I left off! Tomorrow, we finish this sucker off, and I decide what I’m watching the week of Halloween!

2. Post “The Van Dort Vacancy” Chapter One: Check – it took me most of the night (mostly due to figuring out tags and coming up with a story summary and getting all the notes sorted on the chapter), but Chapter One of “The Van Dort Vacancy” is officially up! :D Very glad I managed to get at least one part of this story up before Polyship Week and Gift Fic season took over my writing time. XD I hope people enjoy it! Worked hard on it after all.

As a bonus, I also figured out which prompt I wanted to for Day Six of Polyship Week 2025 – “Recovery!” Because it occurred to me today that I could use that prompt to write a Valicer Severance AU story about the Innies getting a real picnic post-escape from Aperture courtesy of their Outies, as part of their recovery. :) I think it’ll be cute (even as it reminds me that I really have to find a way to watch at least the first season of Severance…). Still have to figure out Days Two, Four, and Eight, though – hopefully inspiration shall strike soon!

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: One-ninth of a check – as stated above, posting the first chapter of “The Van Dort Vacancy” took quite a while – and then creating the tumblr post advertising it (covered below) took even more. So I really didn’t have any chance to watch anything. But I was determined to watch SOMETHING, so I booted up FreeTube and looked in the “Shorts” section for all my “subscriptions.” Which led to me finding “The real reason we moved studios last year…” by OXtra. Which proved to be nine seconds of Ellen approaching the old chair they used to sit in back when everything was filmed in The White Void, going to pick it up, pulling off one of the arms, looking at the displaced arm in horror, then dropping it and fleeing. XD The comments were full of “the old ‘change buildings’ trick to disguise the fact you broke something” and accusing LUKE of actually breaking it and claiming that’s why he left. XD May have only been nine seconds, but it was a funny nine seconds, so I’m glad I watched it.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – as per the above, tonight’s tumblring revolved around making a post advertising the start of my latest VITD fic on AO3! The process went like so:

A) Making and posting the original post on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), shortly after posting the chapter itself (complete with a couple of tags asking people to please comment on AO3 if they liked it because no comments make me sad)

B) Then reblogging that post into the queue of The Valice Multiverse, as I usually do with my fanfic stuff

C) THEN reblogging it into my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for tomorrow (adjusting the queue speed accordingly) because, well, I did post the original version of the post around 10:30 PM, so it doesn’t feel like a lot of people are gonna see it tonight

So yeah – I feel like that is enough advertising, at least for the moment! We’ll see what happens tomorrow...

*nods* Not bad, not bad. And now it is time to head to bed and try and get some sleep -- still got one more day of work tomorrow! And then a Cleaning Saturday, meh... Night all!

Happy Birthday Christopher Lloyd!

Oct. 22nd, 2025 10:04 pm
crossover_chick: Doc in his mind-reading helmet with the text "so cute!" (BTTF: feeling flirty)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

Happy Future Day!

Oct. 21st, 2025 10:04 pm
crossover_chick: Doc in goggles and holding a big old plug with the words "feeling sparky..." (BTTF: feeling sparky/creative)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
Yes, today is the date when Doc, Marty, and (nominally, given she was knocked out for most of the trip) Jennifer traveled to the far-off date of October 21st, 2015! Which is now ten years in the past. ...nothing like a classic 80s time travel movie to make you feel old, huh? *shakehead* Ah well, it's still fun to acknowledge the date with the classic timestamp.

As for the rest of my day...

Work – Well, it was a better day at the office today than it was yesterday, but not by that much, I’m sorry to say:

A) I woke up with my neck not hurting quite so much if I bent it to the right, and didn’t feel so much like I HAD to keep it perfectly upright – though it does still hurt, sadly. Hopefully the damn muscle relaxes properly soon!

B) The office was LESS cold than it was yesterday, but it did end up pretty chilly by the afternoon (which is weird, as it was decently warm outside). Just hoping they turn on the heat when the temps drop back into the 50s by the end of the week!

C) The “bugs on my plants” situation at work unfortunately got WORSE, with the assistant supervisor telling me that she and the supervisor had found bugs in their offices, and that I needed to get rid of them or take the plants home – fortunately, Mom had sent me in with some of that special earth that kills bugs in the dirt (apparently by slicing up their exoskeletons), so between that and washing the pots and the windowsill I was able to take care of a bunch of the little fuckers (fungus gnats, apparently – running theory is I must have overwatered my plants at some point). I still took the plants home at the end of the day, though, just to be on the safe side. They’re currently waiting on our patio table for Mom to give them a good wash to get rid of any fungus and put them in some fresh soil. Fingers crossed that works!

D) We had a very weird rambling message on our phones this morning from a guy who was claiming some PROTESTANT church was doing weird cult shit. O.o Not our jurisdiction, dude!

E) While I had plenty of things to do (morning reports, credit card updates/payments, updating somebody’s parish, doing another QC file for the next Capital Campaign billing) to make the day go by, one of the projects is turning out to be a bit frustrating – namely, looking up addresses for donors whose newspapers got returned (the newspaper office asks us to do this because, well, we do a lot of mailings and thus do a lot of address updates, and donors who give a certain amount get the paper for free, sooo…). The issue is, the addresses that are apparently “bad” are the ONLY addresses we can find for these people. Which is weird and annoying, because why was the paper returned then? *grumbles* Ah well – puzzling through it should fill my Wednesday pretty well!

F) And I got my flu shot at the yearly clinic today, which – yay for getting the flu vaccine and thus feeling better protected; boo for having to deal with needles and resultant slight soreness in my arm.

So yeah – just kind of another “meh” day. At least it wasn’t as frustrating as yesterday! Definitely arrived home in a better mood, even with the buggy plants. Hopefully Wednesday continues the trend upward!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the weirdness of The Addams Family! Tonight I got through:

A) Gomez playing with his trains and ranting to himself about how much “Fester” doesn’t know about his own life, while the rest of the family listens in and Gordon attempts unsuccessfully to get into the vault (fun fact I learned while reading the Wikipedia article on the movie the other day: the passenger we briefly see on one of the trains before Gomez makes them crash is director Barry Sonnefeld!)

B) Morticia meeting Gordon when he’s spit out the chute and walking him through the graveyard, letting him know just how much Fester means to this family...and the family motto: “We gladly feast on those who would subdue us”

C) Gordon getting his mother in to play Dr. Pindergloss again and convince Gomez that he only thinks Fester is a fake because he’s still dealing with the guilt of driving him away – only to start bonding with Wednesday and Pugsley over maiming people and blowing shit up, which Mother Abigail Dearest does not approve of

D) Gordon initially ditching Wednesday and Pugsley’s school play to try and help his mother break into the vault...only to succumb to his growing fondness for the family and attend anyway; cue Wednesday and Pugsley drenching the front row in fake blood with their Shakespeare routine, and Abigail getting got by one of Morticia’s plants trying to get into the house

E) The Addams deciding to throw a grand party in Fester’s honor when he insists he must go...leading to Wednesday finding out Gordon’s a fake when she goes upstairs to get him and catches Abigail shaving his head and Gordon referring to her as “Mother,” and Tully finding out that Fester’s actually the true owner of the Addams house thanks to being the older brother from Flora and Fauna (the conjoined Amor twins) while entertaining them for Gomez; cue Wednesday running into the graveyard to hide and Tully to get the help of the judge who lives next door to the Addams family in a new back-up scheme

F) The famous Mamushka dance scene, which is loads of fun :D

G) And the Addamses realizing Wednesday is missing and eventually finding her in a crypt – only to find themselves barred from their own house via restraining order thanks to Tully and the judge’s machinations; cue Gomez attempting to use the courts to overturn it, only for the judge to happily award everything to Fester – except for all of the golf balls Gomez has hit into his house over the years

*nods* Not bad! We’ll wrap up the movie tomorrow, then figure out if I have enough time to watch the next one or not! Fingers crossed, folks!

2. Continue final edits on “The Van Dort Vacancy” Chapter One: Check – I first watched a couple more “research” clips of Victor (meeting Victoria and reciting his vows in the woods), then dove back into the chapter – updating my word choices here and there; rewriting a few sentences that I felt were a bit clunky, or at least could be phrased in a more interesting way; and squinting at Victor’s dialogue and wondering “should he stammer more here or not?” (Which is kind of the eternal question when it comes to writing Victor, honestly. XD For the record, the answer is: “Depends on how nervous he is, and/or if he’s talking to someone else.”) Not a lot of significant edits here – just a lot of very small tweaks to polish the chapter to a fine sheen before sharing. Which I’m grateful for. :) Hopefully I can wrap up the final edits tomorrow so I can get the story up for general consumption before the end of the week!

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – I got to the FreeTubes a bit later than I wanted, meaning I needed to find something quick to watch so I could pop over here and get the all-important 10:04 timestamp in time. Fortunately, one Josh Way had my back with a new seven-and-a-half-minute video: “Fun With Shorts: Wolfmaster!” Another delightfully terrible Lone Ranger cartoon short, this one featuring Tonto against a guy who, with the help of his dog whistle, was commanding a pack of wolves to attack a bunch of men trying to cut down trees (to get lumber for a nearby settlement) on Wolfhead Mountain. We had the usual reused animation, the usual ridiculous (and for Tonto, rather racist) dialogue, and the usual “Taka the eagle does all the real work if it’s a Tonto-focused episode” nonsense. XD Oh, and the usual excellent Josh riffs, with Josh saying the title sounded like something he’d wishlist on Steam; accusing Tonto (and later Taka) of using sage to “smudge” the wolves away from them/the lumberjacks; and quoting the infamous “Somehow, Palpatine returned” line in response to Tonto saying he would find a way to stop the Wolfmaster “somehow.” XD Oh, I do love the terrible and wacky Lone Ranger cartoons – they’re always so bad they’re amazing. XD

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse again, but – just like last Tuesday – I was able to get the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue sorted for the rest of the week all in one go! Featuring:

A) Some beautiful art of Alice as she might have looked in Alice: Asylum (with the spiky “Chaos” necklace instead of her usual omega) by a sadly-deactivated user, la-figlia-del-dia, for Wednesday (glad I got it before they went away!)

B) Some very interesting art by shenanigansz of their Smiler OC, showing them slipping off their coat while sucking on a lollipop – at least, in the version where their face hadn’t glitched out, and a speedpaint of the whole thing for Thursday (we love a slightly-creepy Smiler as we move toward Halloween)

C) A set of Corpse Bride storyboards found by theshadowsofevil, featuring such things as Barkis looking surprised by a suddenly-maggoty piece of cake and Victor apparently stuck in a bell jar, for Friday (that Victor one is still giving me all the Wonderland vibes)

D) And the yearly reblog of Flyleaf’s cover of “What’s This” from The Nightmare Before Christmas for Song Saturday (because I absolutely love the song and love sharing it every year :) )

Hooray for being ahead of the curve again! Now I just hope I can turn the extra free time into something productive...

Other: Reread “He Ain’t Heavy. He’s My Brother” by TaraTheMeerkat – a fic about Marlene and Marty Jr, and how Marlene loves her brother no matter how different they are (also features trans!Marlene, which is cool) – in honor of it being Future Day, and then tracked down one of my old favorite Addams Family fics, “The Bridal Path” by Vyola – about Wednesday and Joel’s relationship post-Addams Family Values, and all the weirdness it contains – and added it to my AO3 bookmarks. :) Yay for fanfic!

Yeah, I guess it wasn't a bad day overall -- would have appreciated a nicer workday, but -- well, it's work. There's only so nice it can be. *shrug* But now it's time to head to bed and hopefully get some half-decent sleep -- night all!

Fairly Crappy Monday

Oct. 20th, 2025 11:48 pm
crossover_chick: Doc looking very sarcastically over his shoulder (BTTF: in a sarcastic mood)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

AWS outage

Oct. 20th, 2025 10:11 am
alierak: (Default)
[personal profile] alierak in [site community profile] dw_maintenance
DW is seeing some issues due to today's Amazon outage. For right now it looks like the site is loading, but it may be slow. Some of our processes like notifications and journal search don't appear to be running and can't be started due to rate limiting or capacity issues. DW could go down later if Amazon isn't able to improve things soon, but our services should return to normal when Amazon has cleared up the outage.

Edit: all services are running as of 16:12 CDT, but there is definitely still a backlog of notifications to get through.

Edit 2: and at 18:20 CDT everything's been running normally for about the last hour.

Nice Chill Sunday

Oct. 19th, 2025 11:48 pm
crossover_chick: Doc in goggles and holding a big old plug with the words "feeling sparky..." (BTTF: feeling sparky/creative)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

Tiring Saturday

Oct. 18th, 2025 11:54 pm
crossover_chick: Doc snoozing on his couch (BTTF: exhausted)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
As you might expect, as it was a very busy day -- let's just say that I spent a lot of time walking around a very crowded Providence. :P But it was good and satisfying, even if my calves are all tight now. I gotta walk on the treadmill more to avoid that sort of thing...anyway, here's how the rest of my day went --

Writing: Had a very solid afternoon/evening on the writing front, I’m happy to say:

A) First, I finished editing the first chapter of “The Van Dort Vacancy!” The final page of which featured:

I. Matt (Smiler’s dad) showing up and delivering Victor and Alice’s freshly-cleaned-and-mended laundry to them – the repairs were done by one “Widow Black,” the best seamstress they have, at least when it comes to quick repairs (and a sneaky Corpse Bride reference – swap the words in her name around and you’ll see :P). Victor and Alice were very grateful and passed along their thanks. :)

II. Carol announcing breakfast would be ready soon, once she got Matt’s toast all fried up, and Alice and Victor asking if they could help – Carol was like “oh, you don’t have to, you’re our guests,” but Victor and Alice insisted it would make them happier to assist, so she tasked Alice with getting Matt’s red sauce and jam for everyone else, and Victor the powdered sugar. Cue a discussion about what kind of fruits everyone likes (including me canonizing “snapberries” as a thing – dunno what exactly they are, but they’re snappy), and Alice learning that Dagger Isles bananas have been improved during her time in Rutledge to be a lot less seedy (if rather more expensive). (And yes, wild bananas have lots of big hard seeds in them, at least as per Wikipedia – the kind we eat have been very specially cultivated to be seedless, with the Cavendish cultivar being the most common kind exported. I thought it would be interesting to have the Shattered Isles be in the middle of the process of making seedless bananas – plus, I didn’t want to deprive Smiler of their favorite fruit!)

III. And the chapter ending with Carol asking Victor if he wanted to dust all the sweet toast slices with sugar; Victor hedging that he’s likely to get more sugar on himself than the toast; and Carol going “isn’t that part of the fun?” And Victor once again being struck by how different the Altons are to his own parents...and deciding to enjoy it before he goes back to his old life full of rules and regulations. :)

So that’s that! Next week, we’ll see about doing the final editing pass and getting this chapter up on AO3!

B) And second, I opened up the “Valicer Polyship Week Prompts” doc and started a section for Polyship Week 2025! Because that is looming on the horizon now (as per the tumblr section below), and I wanted to go through the prompts and decide which ones I wanted to do, and for which universes. Need to start them soon if I want to get them done in time, after all! So far I’ve decided on:

I. The “Kidnapping” prompt for Day One (as I’ve done both other prompts, “Only One Bed” and “Metamours,” in previous weeks) – not sure what universe it will be yet, though I’m vaguely leaning toward Valicer In The Dark

II. The “Sharing Clothes” prompt for Day Three – that one will be a Modern!AU story, with Smiler noting that one of the few sad parts of being in a polycule with Victor and Alice is that they can’t share clothes (they’re all such different body types, after all! Maybe Alice can steal one of Smiler’s hoodies, but that’s basically it)

III. The “Jewelry” prompt for Day Five – that one made me think of Multiplayer Wonderland, and doing a follow-up to this story from Multiamory Month, with someone noticing the new bracelet with beads for all five members of the ‘cule on one of the group’s wrist, and them having to try and explain it without letting on that they’re all together

IV. And the “Compersion” (the warm fuzzy feelings one may get seeing their partner interact romantically with someone else in a poly situation) prompt for Day Seven – while thinking about which universes I wanted to include for sure, I realized this would be a nice one to do as a story in the Soulmates AU verse, with either Alice or Smiler getting the warm fuzzies from seeing the other with Victor – and then Victor and the other noticing those warm fuzzies, as emotions get shared between soulmates in that verse. I’ve decided if it’s Alice, she’ll be slightly embarrassed in a “didn’t want to interrupt” way; if it’s Smiler, they are just like “you’re cute, how did you expect me to react?” XD

Not a bad start! Hopefully I can figure out what I want to do for the remaining days tomorrow, then start writing the stories themselves sometime next week! Maybe after I’m done getting “The Van Dort Vacancy’s” first chapter up?

FreeTube/Invidious: Welp, FreeTube had another update waiting for me when I checked it today – and wonder of wonders, this one actually fixed the problems with the videos not loading! Can you believe it? So yeah, went on there to watch my videos of the night, which included –

A) “Fun With Shorts: Working Dollars [Patreon Exclusive!]” by Josh Way! Another short that was previously only available to his patrons, now made available to all. And what do we all get? A fairly poorly preserved cartoon about a guy named Finchley getting a raise and being persuaded to put his money to work by investing it in the New York Stock Exchange by his TV, with a brief, simplified explanation on how the whole buying and selling of stock business works thrown in for good measure. Basically one of those “see how capitalism is so great” shorts, with an emphasis on how you could invest as little as $40 a month on a Monthly Installment Plan! And how buying and selling stocks is a great way to use your money! Much better than burying it in a tin can outside, or spending it on fun evenings out with the wife! *shakehead* Yeah, Josh was not impressed with this short, and happily eviscerated it, with comments on how none of these business paid their taxes and how the president could tank the whole market with a tweet at any minute. XD Fun stuff – sometimes I think I like him taking on the cartoon shorts best, since they tend to be the silliest ones. :D

B) And two videos by C. M. Alongi:

I. “TikTok's New Monetization Policy Pays Pennies,” a very sad video where C. M. explained that she’s in deep doo-doo finances-wise thanks to the changes Oracle and Silver Lake (the companies now in charge of the American side of Tik-Tok’s operations) have made to Tik-Tok’s monetization policy. Specifically, the company is now paying WAAY less for the same amount of views, and based on the data she’s seen for the first couple of weeks of October, she expects her monthly paycheck to go down from $3,000 to MAYBE $700. Which, yeah, is a MASSIVE paycut. And she can’t even do anything about it, because everything they’ve done is apparently legal! >( She’s hoping to boost what she gets from YouTube by making more videos to post on that platform (specifically, adding something to post on Mondays), but she won’t be able to PROPERLY set that in motion until 2026, since good content takes time. So, in order to avoid things like having to get a “real” job (which could result in less or even no new CaFae Latte content) or cancel her book tour, she made a video listing ways her viewers could help – joining her Patreon, contributing to her Ko-Fi, buying her merch, and/or just watching loads of her YouTube content to increase her views and improve her spot in the algorithm. (Oh, and buying her books, but that helps out more long-term than short-term, given she doesn’t get that money particularly quickly.) She didn’t want to have to make a video like this, but – girl’s gotta eat, you know? Fucking capitalism… *sigh*

II. “CaFae Latte Season 77 - TikTok Compilation,” the latest round-up of her CaFae Latte videos! Which is even more important to watch given the above. You may remember that last season ended on Erik being tempted into stealing from the Stoughton Street coven by his deadbeat dad, Valefar, offering him immortality via golden apple tree – this season thus featured:

Tis A Long Recap )

Another excellent compilation as always – and I’m VERY glad that Erik did not go down the path of betrayal again. That being said, I am very worried about JC and their inability to let go of a grudge – I know they very much do not need to forgive Erik, but I hope they learn to let go of the anger. And not take it out on Lindsey. We’ll see what happens.

Tumblr: While I naturally didn’t have a lot of time for tumblr stuff today, I did get a few things done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this evening –

A) First, I reblogged a trio of posts:

I. polyshipweek’s response to my ask regarding why Polyship Week 2025 started and ended on Wednesdays this year (running from November 19th to 26th) – they replied that they hadn’t been sure whether they wanted to start or end on Polyamory Day, November 23rd, so they chose instead to split the difference. And then, inspired by my ask, they proceeded to make two polls asking people both what the best day to start a week-long event on was, and what the weirdest day was. XD I replied thanking them for the reply and going “fair enough” about their reasoning – and admitting I was actually pleased with the timing, because that meant the week ended right before Thanksgiving, and I now have a tradition of gushing about Valicer on that holiday, sooo… :p I also let them know how I voted in the polls – went with Sunday as the Best Day, as it’s what I’m used to and felt the most natural, and Saturday as the Weirdest Day, because that is the End Of The Week everyone, why would you start something THEN? (As for overall votes, currently Sunday and Monday are tied in the Best Day poll, while Thursday is winning the Weirdest day poll, which – fair, that is weird.)

II. fangs-4-fags’s “you and your dreadful little polycule haven't seen the last of me” shitpost, which always makes me picture Lord Rowan yelling that at the VITD trio XD – I’d actually already reblogged this before, but I wanted to bring it back to complement the third reblog –

III. destroyingangelneveragod’s “my polycule is your worst nightmare” shitpost! Which I stumbled across randomly browsing the web and realized I’d meant to reblog it ages ago as a follow-up to fangs-4-fags’s post, as I pictured Alice yelling it back to Lord Rowan XD So now the two are on my blog together, as they should be.

B) And second, I made sure to reply to regicidalheart’s reply to my initial comment on her wedding post, telling me the dress was her Mom’s and that she loved the black-and-white photo of herself at the piano too. I said “awww, family heirloom dress, we love it” and praised the picture for being great again. *nods* Very important, that!

Other: We did indeed decorate the house for Halloween this morning – putting up the various creepy signs and tombstones around the path to the front door; hanging the cheesecloth spiderweb and black “creepy cloth” from the porch, along with all our little ghosts, ghost witches, and bats; putting the two big ghosts on a “shepherd’s hook” by the steps; and putting one skeleton on the mailbox and one on the side of the porch. *nods* We are now Sufficiently Creepy for the time of year, yay. :)

*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose! But I am VERY tired now, and I really need to get to bed. *yawn* Tomorrow, I plan to work on figuring out at least one more "Not-Incorrect Quotes" scene to add to the collection of Halloween Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes (need to post it before Halloween, after all!); start replaying the original Portal (as I haven't played it in ages and need an easy-to-sum-up game for Sundays); work some more on the Polyship Week 2025 prompts; and watch Jon's latest F:NV YOLO episode. ...probably WON'T get in a workout, given how much walking I did today. ^^; Night all!

A Reasonable Friday

Oct. 17th, 2025 11:50 pm
crossover_chick: Victor leaning over to look at a blue butterfly in a glass jar (CB: i has a happy thing)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

Windy Thursday

Oct. 16th, 2025 11:51 pm
crossover_chick: picture of Alice (Wonderland) in front of the swirling purple Wonderland tunnel (AMA: Alice down the rabbit hole)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
Yeah, it was quite breezy today -- and chilly, being another day where it didn't get out of the 50s. Again, very glad the heat's now on in my office! *nods* Anyway, not much to report, so let's get straight to the write-up:

Work – Well, the ride into work wasn’t a horrible mess of traffic today (just the usual mess of traffic), so things definitely started off better than they did yesterday! And the day itself wasn’t bad – not particularly GOOD either, mind you, but not a total pain in the ass. I spent most of it working on cleaning up entries of a particular common name in our system – merging together duplicates and marking anyone who’d passed on as “Deceased.” Along the way we had a couple of phone calls, though only one of them was actually for us

A) One guy was directed to our office by mistake when he should have been sent to Fiscal (I transferred him to the correct department)

B) Another guy called asking if a dead friend’s wife could have him cremated and scatter the ashes (I gave him the number for the front desk so he could be directed appropriately)

C) And a third lady called about a reception my bosses are giving this weekend for big donors, saying she’d RSVPed yes but something had come up and she could no longer attend (my coworker took care of that one)

So yeah. That, the duplicates/deceased, and a crossword kept me occupied for the day. And then I got out and discovered that, today, the commute home was going to be the shit one, as both the highway and the main drag were all backed up to hell. *shakehead* I mean, it didn’t take me TOO much longer to make it to my house, but it was still pretty annoying. Ah well – just gotta get through Friday now!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Who Framed Roger Rabbit! Tonight’s pedal-session got me through:

A) Eddie finding Roger in his office/apartment, and Roger explaining that he didn’t kill Marvin Acme – his response to the pictures was to go to Jessica’s dressing room at the club and write her a love letter

B) Roger handcuffing himself to Eddie – just in time for the weasels to show up, forcing Eddie to hide him in the sink as he pretended to do his laundry

C) Eddie taking Roger to the bar his love interest Dolores works at to hide him – and getting extremely annoyed when Roger proved he could take his arm out of the handcuff whenever he wanted (or, at least, when it was funny)

D) Jessica coming to see Eddie to try and get his help finding Roger and explaining that he’d been set up to take the pictures of her “cheating,” as Maroon was looking to blackmail Acme for some reason

E) Dolores catching them together and getting snippy, before explaining to Eddie that the person looking to buy Toontown isn’t Maroon like he thought, but Cloverleaf

F) The pair discovering Roger entertaining the bar’s patrons, and Eddie dragging him into the back shortly before the arrival of Judge Doom

G) Roger getting vindicated in his belief that making people laugh makes them your friends when the bar’s patrons don’t give him up – only to end up getting drawn out anyway by Doom knocking the beat for “shave and a haircut” out around the bar

H) Eddie saving Roger from the dip by exploiting his somewhat-explosive reaction to drinking alcohol

I) Eddie and Roger escaping Doom’s weasels after springing Roger’s cab friend Benny from the back of their car

J) Eddie and Roger hiding out in the movie theater and Eddie telling Roger about the death of his brother

K) Eddie seeing the news clip about Maroon selling his studio to Cloverleaf and heading over there to confront him, leaving Roger to watch the car – only for Jessica to knock Roger unconscious

L) Eddie and Maroon getting into a brief scuffle, and Maroon explaining that Cloverleaf would only buy his studio if they got Toontown, but Acme wouldn’t sell – hence blackmailing him with the pictures of Jessica, and that he was trying to prevent the toons from getting destroyed

M) Maroon getting shot, and Eddie seeing Jessica running through the parking lot and – when he got down there – driving away in a yellow car; cue him pursuing her to the tunnel to Toontown

N) And Eddie arriving at the tunnel and finally getting the gumption to go back through, pulling out the old cartoon gun and bullets he got from Yosemite Sam and pouring out his bottle of booze before shooting it with the Native American bullet

*whew* Quite a bit of movie! And I’ve still got plenty more to go – I left off with Eddie accidentally wrecking his car in Toontown, and thinking he sees Jessica in a window of a nearby building. Tomorrow, we should be able to wrap this movie up with the grand climax!

2. Continue editing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – it was back to my beloved Valicer In The Dark universe today to work some more on the first chapter of the third story in the series – specifically, editing the second flashback sequence, with Victor remembering the trio adding themselves to Elder Gutknecht’s warding ritual back in his library a few days ago! Which involved:

A) Elder Guknecht reassuring a nervous Victor that they’d only have to give up a tiny bit of blood to add themselves to the wards – just enough to trace the sigils at each point of the triangle inked on the floor – before having to admit to Alice that the ritual would only hide them from prying mortal eyes, as he learned it from a devil whose price was immunity to the wards for him and his. Fortunately the devil was the kind that mainly sought knowledge, and so far just knowing where Elder Gutknecht’s house is has been enough for him, so he has yet to visit. Gutknecht promised to warn the trio should that ever change!

B) Alice pricking her finger with her knife and tracing the first sigil with her blood (as she still wanted to be hidden from the very mortal eyes of the law) – and Victor getting a little shock as he felt the magic thrum through the air in response (with Alice similarly being like “well that felt odd”)

C) Gutknecht asking Victor if he was all right as Alice went on to the next sigil; Victor saying he just wasn’t expecting that and asking if all magic felt like that; Gutknecht replying that it wasn’t always exactly like that, but you can always feel it when the magic takes, yes...and then offering to show Victor some of the other rituals he’s collected over the years, and tell him how they feel to cast. And Victor feeling the thrum of the ritual again as Alice completed another sigil...and deciding that yes, yes he would.

Fun, huh? :) Just more proof that Victor truly does want to become a Whisper! A shame that, tomorrow, he’s going to once again insist he doesn’t...and we’ll get into why he thinks he can’t. Familial obligation is a heavy burden...

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – I got on Invidious fairly late, but I still had time to watch a short OXtra video from a month ago, happily – “7 Games DELAYED to Avoid Silksong!” Because when Silksong dropped its release date trailer announcing it would be out on September 4th, a lot of other indie games releasing in the same time period looked at that and went “oh HELL no.” XD Some settled for releasing a week or two later (Baby Steps, delayed to September 23rd; Cloverpit, delayed to September 26th; and Little Witch In The Woods, delayed to September 15th (the bravest of them all!)); another decided to wait a few months (Demonschool, delayed to November 19th – though the developers did point out this allowed them to properly develop some content they were planning to cut); one decided to wait until next freaking year (Aeterna Lucis, delayed to an unknown point in 2026 – the developers intend to take advantage of the wait to make sure they can release on every platform possible, including the Switch 2); and two haven’t yet announced their new release dates (Stomp And The Sword of Miracles, which was supposed to release a demo AND launch a Kickstarter, poor thing; and Faeland, which may at least still have its Early Access form available, as the release date was for the Official version). Baby Steps wins by having the best “hey, we’re delaying the game” announcement, though – a new release date trailer featuring their main character toddling along the needle of a giant Hornet statue in a desert before falling off, followed by “Baby Steps Now September 23.” XD Lot more fun than the standard “white text on black background” text-based jpeg most video game companies settle for!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – still nothing going on over on Valice Multiverse, and – as previously stated – I had no queue stuff to work on over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler). So instead I just continued my conversation with thesatiricaldemon in the replies of my “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III post about the Kuo-Toa and their ability to make their gods real through the strength of their belief! The “silliest part of their lore,” according to Satirical. XD Tonight’s exchange of messages consisted of:

A) Him telling me their patron goddess, Blibdoolpoolp was likely the result of the Kuo-Toa slapping some crustacean arms on a human statue and then worshiping it until it gained real divinity; that, if he recalled correctly, BOOOAL was their name for Bhaal, the actual god of murder; and that even if you didn’t become a god, having fish people at your beck-and-call would be handy – just look at the Deep Ones from Lovecraft XD

B) Me being gobsmacked that Blibdoolpoolp was NOT something Johnny made up for Oxventure back in the day (when the original Guild was tasked by Cthulhu, Prudence’s patron, to stop some Kuo-Toa worshiping her in one of his old temples); misinterpreting what he meant about BOOOAL and going “wait, that wasn’t made up for BG3? Damn, I am not up on my Kuo-Toa lore;” declaring that I liked the silly “worship a thing until it’s really a god” lore because it was fun; and agreeing that having fish people to help you out would be a good thing, noting that Tav!Smiler is going to need all the allies they can get for the final boss fight

C) Him letting me know that the “BOOOAL” thing WAS made up for BG3, but that they’ve called other gods/related entities ridiculous names in the past (the Demogorgon gets to be “Leemooggoogoon” XD), so yeah; and that good old Blibdoolpoolp has been around since the 90s

D) And me going “oh, okay, I misunderstood the bit about BOOOAL – and you were right when you said it was their name for Bhaal, one of the dialogue options when you first meet them allows you to correct them;” getting amused with the ridiculous names they come up with for their gods (and noting that “Tav gets off light with Mahkloompah!” XD); and just still being stunned over Blibdoolpoolp being a fucking real goddess outside Oxventure. Who would have thunk? XD

Fun times~

Not too shabby! And now I should head to bed, as I do have one more day of work tomorrow. Night all!

Warmer But More Annoying Wednesday

Oct. 15th, 2025 11:51 pm
crossover_chick: Doc looking very sarcastically over his shoulder (BTTF: in a sarcastic mood)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

Middling But Productive Tuesday

Oct. 14th, 2025 11:48 pm
crossover_chick: gif with Doc and Marty trying to get out of being written into twisted AUs (Default)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
Yeah, the weather was far from great, but I did get a good chunk of stuff done, at least -- as the daily write-up shall show:

Work – Well, it wasn’t a great day in the office – not because it was busy, but because it was COLD. The high today was 58F, and I swear it was colder in the building. And they haven’t yet turned the heat on in said building, so – yeah. I spent most of the day freezing until my coworker lent me her little space heater for a couple of hours in the afternoon. *grumbles* I wish they’d just turn the heat on at the beginning of October and let us decide if we need it or not – if it’s a warm day, we can just not run it! But I don’t know how the heating system in the building works, so…

Anyway – apart from being freezing, it was also a pretty quiet day:

A) I caught up on my e-mail, deposited the checks for the GL, and did the usual morning reports

B) I took a couple of phone calls – one in the morning from someone checking on her pledge balance, and one in the afternoon from someone making a payment on his pledge with his bank account

C) I wrote off a bunch of Capital Campaign pledges from people who had passed on (our old assistant supervisor insisted we keep the pledges open in case the families paid them or something – never happened)

D) And the rest of the time I was working on the latest set of obituaries and doing the roster maintenance that results from looking up those names

*shrug* As you can see, nothing too exciting! And I don’t expect it to get any more exciting anytime soon – though hopefully it will at least get WARMER. Fingers crossed!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – and tonight’s ride on the stationary bike saw me finish off my time with my Clue DVD! Which involved:

A) Me watching the end of the movie itself – or, rather, the ends, as Clue rather famously has three of them. XD I picked up right before Wadsworth’s famous summation/recreation of the entire film (up to the point where the singing telegram girl gets murdered, anyway) – and to my relief, when you start the movie from any point after the beginning using Scene Select, it automatically shunts you into the “home video” version of the film, where all three endings – “Miss Scarlet and Yvette killed them all – before Miss Scarlet killed Yvette,” “Mrs. Peacock killed everybody,” and “everybody ended up killing somebody” – play one after the other. So I didn’t have to worry about missing out on any! (The DVD has the option to watch the film with a randomized ending, like how it was shown in theaters, so I was a little worried I’d have to select each ending individually. But no, there’s only the three-stitched-together ending in the Scene Select menu. ...that being said, there probably should be scene selects for each ending, in case you DON’T want to watch all three at once. Ah well!)

B) Me watching the theatrical trailer after the credits finished rolling, which interestingly has some bits that aren’t in the film (such as Professor Plum openly leering at Yvette’s breasts, and Colonel Mustard slapping Mr. Green to stop HIM screaming at one point)

C) And – because I had some time to kill, no other special features to watch, and was curious – me rewatching the scenes where everyone goes to investigate Yvette’s screaming after the initial “murder” of Mr. Boddy, and later goes to the kitchen to find the murdered cook. Why? To see if the accusations leveled in the various endings of the film – namely, that Mrs. Peacock wasn’t present when they went to investigate Yvette, and Professor Plum wasn’t present when they found the dead cook – were accurate. And I’m pleased to say they were – Mrs. Peacock genuinely is NOT present when the gang finds Yvette screaming in the billiard room, having been at the back of the crowd and wandered off while they were trying to get into the room! And while Professor Plum DOES enter the kitchen with the others, he lingers by the door while the others proceed in – and once the cook falls out of the ice box and onto Mr. Green, he disappears! As do Mrs. Peacock and Yvette! I know that this isn’t intended to be a film you can actually SOLVE, given the whole “multiple endings” schtick, but it is nice to see that they made sure to make all three endings plausible!

So yeah, that was fun. :) Though now I have to figure out what I’m watching for the next three days, hmmm...I kinda wanna save my Addams Family double feature for next week, so we’ll have to see what else will fit...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I picked things back up in Chapter 6 with poor Alice nearly getting bowled over by a terrified Simon Milligan as he fled the abandoned hospital – not that she knows that’s his name yet. He was rather too busy screaming at her for help and telling her that “it” was coming for him to introduce himself. XD Alice managed to get him to calm down a little – just enough to tell her that he was part of the (bullshit) paranormal-hunting show “Haunted LA,” and that he and his crew had been filming an episode about a nurse ghost in the hospital when weird shit started happening and his crew started disappearing, and that he’d gone looking for them, only to encounter these eyes that made him flee the premises – but he kept jumping at every little sound, and ended up fleeing in a total panic when Alice said she’d go inside and try to find his friends. Which, uh, Alice was of two minds about, because on the one hand she didn’t want him to get got by whatever got his crew –

And on the other, she’d already clocked him as a serious Masquerade risk, and she didn’t need him telling everyone about whatever he’d found and getting her in trouble with LaCroix. *grimace* As there were people in danger, though, she elected to go into the hospital and hunt the mysterious Milligan down later (with Cheshire assuring her that his “scent” lingers in the building) – tomorrow, we start her crawl through this creepy dungeon, with yet more murders to traumatize her! Yay! :D

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – went back to Invidious tonight to – as I hinted I might yesterday – track down the original video OXtra made on the Guess The Game screenshot-guessing game! Which, as you might expect, was called “Guess the Game!” XD The original was posted in July 2024 (can’t believe it took them a year to make a follow up), and featured Ellen, Jane, and Andy going through the first 25 entries, trying to figure out games from their screenshots. With such iconic moments as:

A) Everyone, in particular Jane, taking a look at the first screenshot of the first game and going “oh, this is easy, it’s Mass Effect 2” – and then discovering that, while they’d gotten the franchise right, they’d gotten the installment wrong – took them three tries to realize it was Mass Effect 3 instead. XD Jane was like “My hubris!” XD

B) Andy absolutely nailing The Secret of Monkey Island from the very first screenshot – he actually did very well overall guessing the games, figuring out a lot of them for the team

C) The gang managing to recognize one screenshot as a Forza game, but struggling to pin down which one – Jane openly bemoaned the lack of Mike, who probably could have identified it in a heartbeat (and then, of course, the minute they get him in for the follow-up, suddenly there’s no games with cars in them at all)

D) The gang struggling with a few games, but only outright failing to identify two – one an indie game called Furi (which is apparently a combination of a hack-and-slash and a bullet hell?), and – Persona 5. Which I fucking recognized, despite having never played a Persona game. I will allow that it took me until the last screenshot with the protagonist in it to nail it down, but I’m surprised that they didn’t get it! (I think it was the release date of 2016 that threw them – they seemed convinced Persona 5 hadn’t come out THAT long ago. Get wrecked by the passage of time, OX!)

E) And the gang ending on a nice win by getting Super Mario 64 from its first screenshot, which was very impressive given it was just a green ring, more or less. XD

Fun times! And having seen both videos now, I do hope they make a third one at one point. It’s a fun game, and it’s fun to watch them puzzle things out!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing happening on Valice Multiverse once again, but I was able to completely fill out my queue for the rest of the week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)! We have:

A) The “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur's Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 2” post for Wednesday (I finished it, and I want to POST it, damn it)

B) Some fanart of regular synth Nick Valentine and someone’s ghoul version of the original human Nick from Fallout 4 by badlydrawnfallout (which is actually drawn quite well, and is a VERY interesting concept, given synth!Nick’s canonical identity issues) for Thursday

C) Some fanart of the Voerman sisters from VTMB, their images stitched together, by feyspeaker for Friday (it’s a gorgeous piece and perfect for the growing Halloween mood)

D) And an Instagram video, posted by rvllybllply2014, featuring “thesugarcoatedsisters” singing a parody of “Ra Ra Rasputin” (you know, “ra ra Rasputin, lover of the Russian queen”) focusing on an Irish witch named Alice who was sentenced to be burned at the stake after people thought she’d poisoned her husbands, only to disappear the night before her execution, for Song Saturday (it’s a fun song that perfectly fits the chosen tune – you can tell they worked hard to make sure the lyrics scanned – AND features some excellent dancing from the sisters! Plus it’s just perfect Halloween vibes :D)

So I’m all set queue-wise for the rest of this week, yay~ Good to have that out of the way!

*nods* You know what, I'll take that for a Tuesday after a long weekend. Though, again, I REALLY hope it does warm up as the week goes on...either that or they finally turn the damn heat on. Fingers crossed, folks! Night all!

Rainy Catch-Up Monday

Oct. 13th, 2025 11:52 pm
crossover_chick: Doc in goggles and holding a big old plug with the words "feeling sparky..." (BTTF: feeling sparky/creative)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
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!

Overextended Myself Sunday

Oct. 12th, 2025 11:52 pm
crossover_chick: Doc snoozing on his couch (BTTF: exhausted)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
What the hell does that mean? Well, it means that, since the weather was shit today, and I have tomorrow off and thus can stay up later, I thought I could do a full Fallout Sunday today -- that is, play Fallout 4, update the FO4 Playthrough Progression, and watch and recap Jon's latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode for you all...only for the write-up of my Fallout 4 playsession to take WAAAY longer than anticipated (partly because I ended up consulting a couple of different videos to make sure I was summarizing the dialogue in the Mechanist fight accurately for you all). Which means I got to the F:NV YOLO episode later than I wanted, and -- yeah. Have to remember I cannot combine FO4 and Jon's Fallout Sunday videos anymore because I am just too fucking wordy in my write-ups. *sigh* Anyway, here's what I got done:

Tumblr: Well, it was another nothing day over on Valice Multiverse, but I’m glad to say I had a decently productive morning over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) First, I went back through my dash (and over to a tumblr blog I enjoy but read separately...I should really just properly FOLLOW some of these people already) to straight-up reblog a few things:

I. A post by flamingbluepanda praising the ridiculousness that is the show Taskmaster, talking about things like Greg and Alex’s weird “psychosocial bdsm dynamic” and how everyone there “embarrasses themselves and has a great time doing it” and how – very importantly – it’s all up for free on YouTube! They even have a cow! (A fake one, yes, but still – her name is Linda. :D) As a noted Taskmaster enjoyer, I had to reblog it – and add a bunch of tags agreeing that it’s great and encouraging people to watch it and enjoy things like Romesh Ranganathan obliterating a watermelon and James Acaster hula-hooping. XD (Seriously, please give the show a try, you will probably enjoy it.)

II. A post by isabela-merceds (with a follow-up reblog by the-bar-sinister) talking about how it’s okay to want people to engage with your fanfic – because yes, while fanfic authors do and should write for themselves, and it’s important to emphasize that, they also write to see how people will react to said writing! To get comments and kudos and messages! No one likes screaming into the void, especially when it comes to fan stuff! Fandom is community! And if you think I reblogged this so I could add a bunch of tags about how writing and posting the Valicer In The Dark stories has been permanently tainted a bit for me by the experience of putting up the first few chapters of the first story and getting NO comments until I more or less begged my friend Nebby to comment on Chapter 3, and how sometimes if I’m in a bad mood I STILL think about taking the series down – well, you’d be right. Because I’m sorry – I’m bitter. (I mean, I did qualify it by admitting I’m shit at promoting myself and I know it’s a weird crossover, but – still bitter.)

III. And a gifset by heavensenthale of moments from a few different TV shows showing three people sharing one bed, with the title “#and there was only one bed (polyamory edition)” and a list of the shows and characters featured. And as sharing a bed is a prime Valicer mood (and one of the gifs was one from “The Bastard Son And The Devil Himself,” showing the three leads in bed together, that looked very close to the one that inspired one of my earliest Valicer stories, Polyship Week 2023 Day Three: Bed Sharing), this absolutely had to go on my blog. Complete with tags talking about how I love my trio sharing a bed so much that I made a set of Not-Incorrect Quotes all about it, AND have a Valicer In The Dark story coming up titled “And There Was Only One Bed,” where the trio finally gets together romantically. And starts sharing the one bed in their lair. XD Yeah – bed-sharing is a big thing with my OT3, it appears!

B) And second, I went into my drafts and finally finished off that “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur's Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 2” post that I’ve been working on since August! Just needed to:

I. Put a link to my Tav!Smiler stuff on the blog in the opening paragraph (in the part where I said how the VITD crew still consider BG3 “free real estate” despite me now having a Tav!Smiler – felt appropriate to link their tag)

II. Slap in a read-more after the first couple of scenes (since this post got very long and I didn’t want to overwhelm people)

III. And sort out the tags (which was mostly me talking about how I can’t stop coming up with these scenes and how much fun I had writing some of them, especially the “Smiler trying to get the Kuo-Toa fish people to worship Mar-Mal” one XD)

So that is FINALLY ready to throw into the queue whenever I feel it’s time to send it out into the world! Whew – glad to have it done! ...now I just have to fight off the thoughts trying to convince me I should make a Volume 3...

Fallout 4: As I said above, a rainy three-day weekend meant I felt I could do a proper Fallout Sunday again – and while it didn’t go QUITE according to plan, I will say that I had a solid time in the game this afternoon. Mostly because today’s FO4 playsession saw Victor and Ada finally defeat The Mechanist! How did that go? Pretty well, apart from a few glitches here and there – let me tell you about it:

Behind a cut because it does get long )

Writing: Remember how I said that I overextended myself in the title of this entry? Yeah, this is one of the areas where I suffered because of that – thanks to the actual game write-up taking ages, I only got a paragraph written on the FO4 Playthrough Progression, covering the trio realizing that the robobrain they were so worried about activating didn’t actually have a head and wasn’t a threat (no matter what VATS said). I mean, something is always better than nothing, so I’m glad I got that much written, but – bleh. What I get for trying to do multiple things that take ages in one day!

Workout: Hopped back on the bike this evening for another week’s workout, and started the next movie on my list – Clue! That comedy classic based on the board game with fifty million quotable lines. :) I got through roughly the first half-hour, with all the guests arriving at the house (and wondering if they stepped in dog poo thanks to Wadsworth having done so on HIS arrival, meaning the smell was clinging to his shoes XD); the awkward dinner where it was revealed that they all work for the government or live in a government town (where Mrs. Peacock babbled her head off as she hated silence); the grand reveal that they were all being blackmailed, and that Mr. Boddy was the one blackmailing them; Mr. Boddy handing out the iconic weapons and encouraging them to kill Wadsworth so that their dirty secrets wouldn’t end up in the papers – only for that to backfire when one of them killed him when the lights went out; everyone wondering how he died, and Professor Plum suggesting poison RIGHT as Mrs. Peacock had a drink – cue her screaming her head off until Mr. Green slapped her; Yvette screaming in the library and claiming it was because she was scared herself after overhearing everything and realizing she drunk the cognac too; and Wadsworth taking everyone back to the study and revealing HE was the one who invited them all here, hoping to free them by convincing them it was better to be exposed then continue paying the blackmail. I left off with him explaining that his wife was a victim of Mr. Boddy as well, due to her having Socialist friends – tomorrow, we pick up from there and see where the nonsense takes us! XD

FreeTube/Invidious: As you might reasonably expect, another Sunday meant another episode of Jon’s latest Fallout series: “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 13 - A Bad Case of the Old World Blues!” Featuring the continuing adventures of our girl P. D. Shoot, the perpetually-drunk melee-focused courier, as she:

A) Prepared to enter the Big Empty of Old World Blues! Because Jon was not letting himself chicken out of doing the DLC, damn it. XD This process involved:

I. Hitting a bunch of NCR camps (like Golf and McCarran and the Hoover Dam) and Westside to steal a few Locksmith Readers (temporary lockpick-boosting skill magazines) to make sure she had enough to pop open all the most important Hard-locked doors – very important to get all the goodies she wanted while on her trip!

II. Hitting the Lucky 38 on the Strip (sadly burning her faction reputation reset with the NCR – now if she has any major crimes to commit, she has to make sure to commit them against the Legion as she hasn’t used up their reset yet) to raid the cashier’s office for goodies; pick up the Golden Gloves from the VIP lounge as a potentially useful “unarmed” weapon (while they don’t do a lot of ACTUAL damage, they do a fair amount of “fatigue damage” and thus are good for knocking people out so you can then wail on them with something more lethal); and sell all her collected snow globes to Jane the Securitron for, as Jon put it, “eight cocking grand.” Oh, and to say hello to Mr. House, because might as well make some progress on the main quests. XD Though talking to Mr. House also got her “comped” to the High Roller’s Suite as per Victor, which opened up more of the Lucky 38 for her to explore and got her her own room in the place! Allowing her to visit the cocktail lounge and get another snow globe (the “Test Site” one, for some reason) to sell to Jane (for another two grand), along with a bunch of valuable C-4 out of a hard-locked briefcase in there. Some of which she then sold via the Presidential Suite’s terminal to buy a weapon trunk for her new room, so she could dump a bunch of unneeded weapons, armor, and clothes in there to get herself some more carry capacity (which was then boosted further by her drinking yet more of her booze collection) –

So she could steal all of House’s pre-War books to take into the DLC with her. ...Jon insisted this was part of a plan and not the work of a madman, but we will see. XD

III. Hitting Gommorah to see if they had any more Turbo in stock (they did not, unfortunately), then the Atomic Wrangler in Freeside to try and buy some Perception-boosting absinthe – only to have to steal it from the shelves in the back instead because the game had bugged out and hadn’t put it in the vendor’s inventory (it does this sometimes, sadly)

IV. Hitting the New Vegas clinic to get another implant, this time to boost her Perception (as Jon insisted she needed Perception 6 before she hit Level 16, and he was pretty damn sure that would happen during her time in the DLC)

V. And hitting REPCONN Headquarters and breaking through that Hard-locked door she couldn’t get through before to get a Big Book of Science skill book to permanently boost her Science by 3 points and get it up to 70 for the trip! Because Science is important in the science-based DLC, you know. :P

B) Headed over to the Mojave Drive-In to examine the mysterious satellite there and get transported to the DLC world once she had everything! …which, uh, took longer than anticipated, because as it turns out, you can only use the satellite to get teleported to the Big Empty between midnight and 3 AM – and she arrived at 3:02. *facepalm* PLUS there were Jackals floating around for no good reason she could see, which did not do good things for Jon’s blood pressure. Fortunately, she was able to hide from the wandering gang members behind some wreckage, and from there just waited 21 hours to get to midnight of the next day so she could go poke that satellite. Yes, there was gunfire nearby when she did so, but she very rapidly decided that was not her problem. XD Oh, nothing is simple in this game…

C) After getting through the intro cinematic for the DLC (which Jon says is his favorite, as he loves the speech), found herself in the Big Empty’s main dome! With her spine, brain, and heart all removed and replaced with cybernetic versions, which was acceptable (as they gave her fun bonuses, like making it impossible to cripple her torso and head, and making her immune to poison) –

And her blood cleaned of all alcohol, which was not. She needs to be perpetually drunk to boost her strength up so she can carry everything, doctors! Fortunately, she still had a few bottles of vodka on her that she’d missed during her last bender, so she quickly downed those and put things to rights. XD She then wandered her new home, the Sink, learning what was where and collecting a bunch of Mentats (because of course the Intelligence-boosting drug is everywhere in this DLC), before going into the Think-Tank and saying hi to the doctors there. Which Jon skipped recording because apparently it takes them ages to get to the point of explaining what they did to you and what you have to do to get them to let you go. XD Fine when you’re playing for yourself – maybe not so great when you’re playing for an audience!

D) Wandered the main room of the dome to grab Dr. Klein’s and Dr. Mobius’s glasses for their Intelligence-boosting powers (even if it meant she had to take off the all-purpose science suit to wear them – though that did mean she got to put on her cool beret again, sooo), along with more mentats – and to do a couple of little missions for the various “we put our brains into robots to transcend humanity and continue our work” doctors to earn a bunch of quick XP to get herself up to Level 15! Said missions being:

I. Chatting with Doctor 8 and – after struggling to understand the weird sounds he was putting out – realizing with the help of her labcoat’s Science-boosting that he was broadcasting RobCo termlink protocol. She pointed out that this meant he could be hacked, then reassured him that she would never do such a thing, gaining his trust and a nice chunk of XP. (Time will tell if she had her fingers crossed behind her when she said this – we all know what P. D. is like. XD)

II. Chatting with Doctor Dala and – after learning she was fascinated by the human body – doing some various stretches and grunts and whatnot to torment her. XD She then reassured the woman that it was fine to look, the human body was interesting, and thus gained her trust and another nice chunk of XP.

III. Chatting with Doctor Dala again and asking if any other couriers had come this way – and learning that yes, some guy came through who seemed to be looking for a very specific courier… This guy had asked them all a lot of questions, including one that they’d had to drop from their memory banks because it was so perplexing and upsetting. She directed the courier to Dr. Klein to learn more (though she advised P. D. to curtail her curiosity, as she was sure Dr. Klein didn’t remember the visit fondly) – P. D. thus went over to Klein, and discovered that the courier who visited had been a melancholy fellow, who chatted with the doctors about history. Klein knew their conversation had gotten interrupted twice – once by a train derailment, and once by – well, he couldn’t remember! Mostly because Mobius kept annoying him. :p He did remember that they didn’t brain-scrub the guy before he left, meaning he might have exited the Big Empty with forbidden knowledge – but Klein was sure it was fine, as he didn’t REALLY make mistakes that often. XD Yeah, if you’re wondering, these are all references to Lonesome Road, another one of the DLCs – who knew that Ulysses ended up in the Big Empty once? I’m sure P. D.’s going to wish he’d stayed in the Big Empty when it comes time to do his DLC properly, poor thing. XD

D) Leveled up to Level 15 (bringing melee up to 94 so it would be maxed out with her booze boosts, and sneak up to 74); flogged a bunch of stuff to the central AI in her quarters, known as the Sink, to get a healthy 10K in caps; then popped a Stealth Boy and made her way over to the X-13 research facility to recover the Aural stealth suit and send its schematics over to the Think-Tankers! How did that go for her? Well, it proved to be quite a mixed bag…

Which you will hear about tomorrow as I am TIRED and I’m trying NOT to stay up until 2:30 AM tonight. *flops* Though given it's 2 AM now and I still have to brush my teeth and stuff, I don't think I'm going to succeed. *sigh* At least I don't have work in the morning... Anyway. Going to bed now, not sure exactly what my plans will be tomorrow -- might play games, might concentrate on updating more playthrough progression docs, might do something else. We shall see. Night all.

EDIT 10/13/2025: Okay, it’s the next day and I am back to give you the last part of the F:NV YOLO Remastered episode recap. So, how did P. D.’s adventures in testing a surprisingly-talkative stealth suit so the Think-Tank could get its schematics go? Well –

I. Getting over to the facility was no issue – as previously stated, she popped a Stealth Boy to get her sneakiness up to maximum, and stayed well away from all the various cybernetic dogs and walking trauma suits and whatnot that might cheat and detect her despite her being invisible. P. D. knows a thing or two about getting around enemies these days!

II. Gathering the parts to the stealth suit – gloves, boots, and chest piece – was also easy, as they were all in labs that were very close to one another. All P. D. had to do was pop from one room to another, and just like that she had herself a new sneaky armor friend! Though Jon was less pleased about P. D. getting her hands on this bit of kit than you might think – because sure, it provides a bonus to sneaking, and has the ability to auto-inject its wearer with Med-X and stimpacks when needed (the latter isn’t useful to P. D., but former might be) – but it’s MEDIUM armor, not light. And when it comes to sneaking, medium armor actually slows you down and makes it harder. And doesn’t activate any bonuses you might have picked up that require you to be wearing light armor. ...that does feel like an oversight, yes – though whether it’s on the part of the developers, or the part of the in-game scientists who designed the thing is up for debate (as a commenter made a good argument that the suit being medium armor and thus not as good as it could be might be deliberate, to reflect the scientists stuffing too much fancy high-tech stuff into it and thus forgetting it’s meant to be a STEALTH suit). Either way, Jon was very firm on the fact that he was going to be taking this damn thing off the moment it was no longer necessary for P. D. to be wearing it!

III. Exploring the facility to get a weapon that was infinitely more valuable to P. D. than a not-so-stealthy stealth suit? Easy as pie with the help of a Locksmith Reader to help her get through the Hard-locked door that it was hidden behind! And what was so important that Jon was willing to sacrifice one of P. D.’s skill magazine to get it? Why, none other than the Protonic Inversal Axe! A large two-handed battle axe with a humming holographic blade, found in a room that looked like something out of TRON, that has the same basic “double your damage” special VATS attack as the baseball bat (under a different name of course) – coupled with a much higher base damage since, you know, it’s a fucking AXE. AND, being a two-handed weapon, it has a chance to knock people down 33% of the time – AND, being a fun science axe, it ALSO has an EMP effect that does extra damage against robots and power armor. Basically, this thing is the weapon for someone who relies a lot on sneak attack criticals to defeat her foes, and is probably going to be P. D.’s weapon of choice going forward. (Or, at least, until Jon finds another fun toy to show off to us. :P)

IV. Finding the stealth suit testing track and completing the basic infiltration mission to update the stealth suit and make sure the Think Tank got their schematics? The easiest thing in the world – mostly because the game lets you straight up cheat if you want. Basically, rather than doing the course, all you have to do is make sure to hack the terminal that controls one of the doors on the upper observation balconies; start the test; then use the terminal to open that door and creep along the catwalk above the fake office you’re supposed to be infiltrating until you reach the room you’re supposed to slip into. Then you just carefully drop down into said room, open the safe, and get the fake document you’re supposed to retrieve, which completes the test, upgrades the suit’s firmware, and sends the schematics off to the doctors! (It’s even easier if you can crack open another door on the upper level that leads to the final office via a shorter route, but unfortunately P. D.’s Locksmith Reader boost wore off before she could do that.) In fact, it was so freaking easy to do –

That P. D. completed it without wearing the stealth suit. Yeah, what happened was, P. D. swapped into her Follower’s Labcoat to get the Science skill necessary to hack that Hard-locked terminal that controlled the door upstairs – and because Jon is Jon, and never remembers to change P. D.’s clothes, she never took it off. And while the game is SUPPOSED to be like “hey, put your damn stealth suit on for the stealth suit test,” it just – never bothered in this case. Jon was DEEPLY confused when he realized what had happened. Fortunately, it looks like the quest and the test completed as they should, leading to Dr. Mobius (the “boss” of the DLC) attacking the facility with his roboscorpions, right on schedule, but – yeah. At least New Vegas bugging out worked in Jon’s favor this time!

V. Murdering all the roboscorpions in the facility to make sure they weren’t in the way and trying to kill her as she did the subsequent tests? THAT didn’t go so well. Mainly because – well. P. D.’s whole thing is that she is a “sneak attack crit” build – her preferred way of fighting is to sneak up on enemies and hit them with the most powerful thing in her arsenal from behind, using special attacks to increase her damage and thus the possibility that they will die in one hit. As you might imagine, this is a great way to take out almost anything that might be a threat to her!

...it is not a great way to take out enemies that explode when they die. P. D. ended up basically wasting a Stealth Boy trying to sneak attack crit a couple of the roboscorpions, which led to her taking a minor hit from the first one she killed, and a MAJOR hit from the second one she killed after she spent way too long trying to figure out how to get it into a good position for a sneak attack. After that, she ended up switching tactics to “do a Rad-X to reduce the amount of rads I take from an Atomic Cocktail; do an Atomic Cocktail to increase my energy resistance; do some Turbo to speed up my axe swings majorly; slap on the Riot Gear so I have some actual armor on; RUN AROUND AND JUST WAIL ON THESE THINGS UNTIL THEY’RE DEAD.” This strategy worked a lot better, even if it resulted in Jon flailing around in a panic for a while. *shakehead* Lesson learned – some enemies are NOT suited for sneak attacks! Every so often, you just gotta do the drugs and face ‘em head on.

VI. Doing the other infiltration tests for extra rewards once all the radscorpions were cleared? Back to easy-peasy times, fortunately for Jon’s blood pressure. XD For the “Advanced” and “Expert” tests to steal the document from the safe can be cheated as easily as the original Basic test – and while the fourth test, “Robot Compliance,” cannot be cheesed (as it requires you to find and turn off the robobrains roaming the testing track’s halls without being spotted or caught by a trap), it is also not actually that difficult; completely safe as none of the hazards can actually HURT you (stepping on a landmine or passing through an active laser just fails the test, without causing damage); and an excellent source of XP from disarming all the traps! P. D. was in fact able to get enough experience from running through it once to get up to Level 16 – which allowed her to up her Science skill to 77 (for future Science checks) and her Survival skill to 60 (to improve the boosts from her Atomic Cocktails), and to pick up the “Better Criticals” perk (because Jon was like “that perk is a MUST” XD). Plus, the first time you complete it, you get a Chinese Spec. Ops manual – aka a book that adds +3 to your Sneak skill permanently –

And every other time you complete it? You get a Stealth Boy. And did I mention that, once you disarm the fake traps in the course, they stay disarmed for every subsequent run? Yeah, basically the reason Jon wasn’t annoyed at wasting a Stealth Boy trying to kill those roboscorpions was because he could now get as many as he wanted just from constantly rerunning this test. Meaning the episode ended with him preparing to run the test over and over again offscreen to build up P. D.’s supply of Stealth Boys as high as he could. XD You know what, I think he and P. D. have both earned that, given some of the shit they put up with in this episode. :p Next time, we see how she handles tackling the other facilities that the Think Tank want her to go to – and how Jon handles those enemies that can perceive poor P. D. no matter how sneaky she’s being...

And now I'm finally done, hooray. *sigh* I am DEFINITELY only playing games that don't require huge write-ups on Sundays from now on!
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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:

A BG3 screenshot of Smiler, Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion in the Dank Crypt - Smiler has a new circlet; Shadowheart black and purple leather gloves, and Astarion a dark red floppy hat, black and dark red padded armor, and dark red boots

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!
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