Ael

Busy catching up on stuff and talking to my friend Squid -- but I am here now and shall present to you the daily write-up:

Work – Welp, today ended up being one of the most quiet and boring days to end the workweek that I could get:

A) The GL wasn’t particularly complicated, so that didn’t take a lot of time to do

B) My coworker grabbed most of the obituaries, so I killed a few minutes looking at the two she’d missed (one not in our system, one MAYBE in our system but I couldn’t be sure if it was the person or just someone with the same name)

C) The newspaper office sent down a handful more people who had their papers returned due to bad addresses – I took two and found one already had an alternate address on his record, and the other just needed the apartment number updated (it was missing a one). Granted, that last one took a BIT to confirm, but still

D) I took one phone call the entire day, from a guy calling to let us know that his bank had screwed up and sent out a check he hadn’t expected to go out – he was fine with us cashing it, he just wanted to make sure it would go to next year’s Appeal (I assured him that would have been the case anyway, since the Appeals follow our fiscal year and thus end in June and start in July)

E) And I spent the rest of my time finishing cleaning up a number of donors with the same last name (including doing more merges and marking more people deceased)...and doing a crossword puzzle because I genuinely had nothing else to do

*shrug* Not very exciting, but at least it wasn’t a complete stressful mess! And now it is the weekend, which hopefully will also not be a stressful mess. You never know with me and my video games. :p

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, and my final night with Back To The Future Part III with the June 2002 commentary by Bob Gale and Neil Canton! Pedaled my way up to the grand finale with the awesome Jules Verne train, absorbing these last bits of trivia from Bob and Neil as I did –

A) The barbed wire salesman who notes that Doc is clearly distraught over a woman when our favorite scientist walks into the saloon looking forget Clara is played by Richard Dysart, who was at the time famous for his role on the TV show L. A. Law – though he’d also played the villain in the Western Pale Rider, which Bob is pretty sure what made them think of him for the part. It was another one where they were worried the actor was going to say no, only for the guy to reveal he was a fan of the films and agree to the bit role. :)

B) They apparently came up with Chester’s line (regarding Doc never actually drinking his whiskey until Marty shows up) “He just likes to hold it” the day of filming the scene. Though I don’t recall who they said came up with it – might have been the actor himself, honestly.

C) The whole thing with Doc taking one shot of whiskey and then immediately passing out was because the Bobs didn’t think people would want to see Doc properly drunk. So instead they went for something that genuinely makes no sense, but you just kinda accept it. XD

D) Clara’s iconic end-of-movie purple dress was apparently a huge pain in the ass for the ILM people, as it had JUST enough blue in it to be a pain when it came to bluescreen shots. But Joanna Johnston was ADAMANT that was the right color purple (having spent ages researching it), so they just had to work around it. I mean, they did a very good job with the scenes where she’s hanging upside-down from the train, so...

E) During the scene where Marty, fleeing Tannen’s goons, runs into the building next door and crashes into the wood stove there, knocking off its door, Bob Zemeckis was apparently quite concerned about whether or not they needed to include another shot of Marty looking at the door to establish it better as his eventual “bulletproof vest” for the duel. Because he wanted to make sure people got it, but at the same time, he didn’t want to telegraph it too much – it was supposed to trigger an “of COURSE” moment after the reveal. Fortunately, when they previewed the movie with the scene as-is, everybody immediately understood what Marty had done, so no extra shot of him looking at it was necessary.

F) Clara’s description of Doc as having “big brown puppy dog eyes and long silvery flowing hair” to the barbed wire salesman on the train was suggested by Bob Gale’s wife – Bob originally wrote her as saying he had “wild eyes and unkempt hair,” but his wife was like “she’s in love with him, she wouldn’t describe him like that!” XD Thanks Mrs. Gale!

G) Apparently one of the hardest things to get the horses to do during the final train chase sequence was actually ride between the rails on the railroad tracks – they really didn’t like that for some reason! Also, every time you see a horse riding beside the train, with one of the actual actors on it, there’s another horse directly in front of it being ridden by a stuntman showing them where to go.

H) In the final sequence, whenever you see the DeLorean being pushed by the train, the scene was shot backwards (meaning the train was pulling the DeLorean backwards and Michael was doing everything in reverse) to keep the insurance companies happy and Michael J. Fox safe. They also had a small rail car push the DeLorean in those shots where you can only see the car and Marty, not the train, AND rigged the DeLorean with a device that, if it showed ANY signs of derailing, would immediately get the car off the tracks entirely so the train didn’t wreck it. ...part of me wonders if some of this was inspired by the accident in Part II that nearly killed that one stuntwoman.

I) And the Jules Verne train itself was a full-scale prop that the prop guys had to build a garage around to keep it hidden from the general public until it was time to shoot – though I could have told you that, as I saw the darn thing in person during one of our trips to Universal Studios Florida as a kid. :D (Obviously, when it flies away at the very end, it’s a miniature, but every other shot, real fucking train.)

And that is that for my BTTF rewatch with commentary! :) Now I get to figure out what I’m watching next week...I think Mom set up Netflix down there, so I could watch something on that...we’ll see what happens!

2. Work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – today’s editing session saw Alice finally creep into the morgue and meet Pisha face to face! Once everyone’s favorite Nagaraja was done tearing out the throat of her latest victim, anyway! The conversation consisted of:

A) Pisha going on about how the fear of death is the fear of the unknown, and how she is not the unknown to Alice, and is in fact closer kin to her than the human she just murdered – Alice was like, “I don’t think so – what black widow eats the WHOLE fly?” Causing Pisha to retort that a Malkavian should know about debilitating bloodlines (Alice privately thought that the Nosferatu probably knew more), and that she was more akin to a preying mantis. And yes, maybe that made her more like a zombie than a vampire, but the condition was passed on like vampirism, and other vampires considered her one of them, so…

B) The pair exchanging names, and Alice asking if Pisha had lived in the hospital long – Pisha informed her that she hadn’t, and that her stay here was temporary, as she was only in the area to look for a couple of particular occult artifacts. And that she was willing to trade other powerful artifacts for them...but before they could get into that, Alice would have to send “Mr. Haunted LA” (as Alice is currently calling him, as Simon didn’t tell her his name) down to her to be killed. Alice informed her that the guy had already skedaddled and probably wouldn’t ever be setting foot in the hospital again – Pisha insisted she find him and trick him into coming back by saying his friends were playing a joke, saying that if he talked, that was it for the Masquerade. Which, Alice was pretty sure that he would be seen as a lunatic first and foremost, but...yeah. Can’t deny the small-but-not-zero chance someone would take him seriously!

C) Pisha having to admit to Alice that Simon escaped because she was hunting one of the others at the time, and he proved better at climbing than she thought, using her own shortcut to get out of her lair (and explaining how the hell HE got past all the obstacles in the hallways). She let him go mainly because she wanted to make sure the other members of the crew didn’t find a way out as well. Which is smart, if also quite dark… Anyway, she admitted she made a mistake, but what was done was done, and he needed to be dealt with. And that the artifacts she had were well worth the trouble. Alice told her that they could talk payment after she’d found Mr. Haunted LA.

And so the page ended with Pisha going back to her corpses, getting ready to prepare her next meals, and Alice heading for the shortcut out of there, eager to put as much distance between herself and that as possible. *nods* Can’t blame her! Next time, she heads back to the lobby and finds a certain business card a certain public access show host left behind – and realizes, once again, what a convenient universe she lives in...

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – it was a shorter-than-usual Game Night tonight (Great Blizzard Game – we all got all the location cards we needed, but then really struggled to actually get back home; I eventually won due to a lucky card draw sending me there), so I was able to do my writing a bit earlier, which left me just enough time to watch the OXBox list of the week: “7 Tiny Annoyances That Made Us RAGE!” Andy, Mike, and Jane talking about those little things in games that really, really, REALLY tick them off. Like not knowing if the Start button on the controller will pause the cutscene or skip the cutscene! Or dealing with weapon degradation in games (especially when it’s ridiculously quick)! Or having to stand stock-still to listen to an audio log! ...which, hilariously, it something I do voluntarily because if I move around too much I’ll get distracted and miss stuff. XD Point is, there’s all sorts of stuff like this in video games that can really get on their last nerves, because the smaller the irritation, the bigger the rage. *nods* I can relate – though I think my major video game pet peeve, not being able to save manually, is a bit bigger than a tiny annoyance...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I had nothing to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight, but I did have one anon ask to toss into the queue over on The Valice Multiverse – someone telling “This App” that you shouldn’t name your exorcist something “normal or pretty,” but instead what ADAM would name them. ...I’ve mentioned before my anons are weird, right? XD Anyway, I had my Cuddlepile!Valicer trio respond with a request for clarification as to who “ADAM” was? The first man from the Bible, as Alice guessed? The kid from Good Omens, as Victor hypothesized? Or that stuff from the Bioshock series that turns people into Splicers, as Smiler put forth? I mean, perhaps the sea slugs from which it is harvested have strong opinions on exorcist names – I don’t know! :P

And there you have it! As you always do. And now I should try to get myself to bed. Tomorrow's plans include getting more posts drafted for Valicer+ Polyship Week 2025 on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing either Fallout 4 and updating the Mechanist's factory into a new settlement, or Baldur's Gate III and exploring the grove a bit; updating either the FO4 Playthrough Progression, "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" Chapter 6 some more, or something else if the mood doth strike me; and -- well, we'll see what gets uploaded tomorrow, but if I could, it would be nice to watch another Proxy Gate Tactician video. *shrug* We'll see what happens! Night all!

Not horrible, not great -- you know how it is. *shrug* Let's get straight to the write-up:

Work – It was a pretty boring day at the office today, all told – I spent most of my time working through the obituaries from the paper, with just a few little interruptions here and there:

A) I grabbed a returned pledge billing to check the donor’s account and see if the address needed to be updated – turned out we already had a new address on file for the guy, so I printed out some labels, updated the billing, and sent it back out in the mail bucket

B) I looked up a gift online for my supervisor, who got an e-mail from someone who’d made a gift on the behalf of his Knights of Columbus council, wanting to make sure the gift had been received – I found it on the online system, but confirmed it hadn’t been uploaded to our main database system yet (which was a good thing, because it allowed me to link the council’s ID number to the gift and make sure the group as a whole would be credited)

C) I helped out the Fiscal department when they called a few times, including telling them when I’d learned that a certain donor’s account had been hacked (because one of their payments had gotten rejected but apparently wasn’t showing up correctly on the bank statement), and explaining why one credit card deposit wasn’t showing up right (some fees that were charged in error had to be refunded, and apparently THAT wasn’t showing up right either *rolls eyes* Fucking hell, I hate credit card stuff...)

D) And I got some replies back from the people I’d contacted about their overpayments, all of whom said “keep the money and put it toward next year,” and a message from our processors about someone reducing their pledge (as it had been put on wrong when first processed), so I did a batch of reversals to update all of those items accordingly

*shrug* Nothing particularly special! Most exciting thing was me somehow getting pizza on my pants during lunch. >.< We’ll see if Friday is a decent end to the week or not!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Back To The Future Part III with the June 2002 commentary by Bob Gale and Neil Canton! I pedaled my way through Doc derisively dismissing the idea of love at first sight (especially for him) to Doc getting slapped when he tried to tell Clara the truth about going back to the future (because she thought he was lying, understandably), listening to Bob and Neil talk about the following:

A) The reasons why, when presented with the DeLorean being out of gas, Doc didn’t go and get the gas out of the version of the DeLorean buried in Delgado Mine – first, Doc would have already drained (and, presumably disposed of/used) the gas out of the car before storing it, and second, he wouldn’t have dared tamper with the car for fear of breaking something and causing a paradox. They also mentioned that Doc would have already known that pulling the DeLorean with horses wouldn’t have worked, but they absolutely had to do the shot because it was like the essence of Part III. XD It is an iconic shot! (And to be fair, they had to get the DeLorean back to the blacksmith shop SOMEHOW – Marty probably insisted on checking the speedometer, and Doc let him so he could see it wouldn’t work.)

B) The fact that the entire town was constructed so Bob Zemeckis could do all sorts of cool long shots (like zooming in on Doc standing in front of the window looking out at the train tracks in the distance) without having to worry about the sun or anything like that – he apparently got a little TOO used to that and in a future movie had poor production designer Rick Carter go out with a GPS to figure out where the sun would be so it wouldn’t ruin his shots. XD (Also, that shot of Doc realizing the train was their answer took QUITE a while to film, as they had to get the timing JUST right)

C) The fact that you can see both Clara and the clock for the clock tower behind Doc and Marty on the train platform, which is just neat

D) The different timelines in play during Doc’s dramatic rescue of Clara – specifically, that she died by falling into the ravine in the original timeline, before Doc or Marty came back to 1885; that she survived in the timeline where it was just Doc in 1885 because he did pick her up from the station, and they felt that instant zing there; and that the ending timeline we see in the movie with Doc and Marty is a bit of an amalgamation of the first two, because Doc never picks her up, but he IS there to save her from falling into the ravine! Just trying to keep the order of temporal events straight for everyone!

E) The fact that they never considered anyone but Mary Steenburgen for the role of Clara, and were absolutely terrified that she’d say no because they had NO back-up plan; fortunately for everyone, her kids were fans of the movies and were so excited over her being offered a part, she said there was no way she could have turned them down (Bob was like “we are indebted to you, Mary Steenburgen’s children!” XD)

F) The reveal that they’d actually had a big party right before filming where everyone got to ride the big steam train that the rail company was lending them and have a nice barbecue; Bob and Neil recalled it being a blast

G) Similarly, the reveal Bob’s favorite bit of shooting was doing the Hill Valley Festival scene, as the weather was perfect and ZZ Top would jam with the local musicians between takes! :) (It probably wasn’t Mary Steenburgen’s favorite bit of shooting, admittedly, because she managed to sprain her ankle practicing her dance moves, but the show had to go on!)

H) The fact that Doc and Clara’s kiss was Christopher Lloyd’s first ever onscreen kiss...which transitioned into a funny story about them trying to get some sort of big press piece down to hype up the release of Part III, and their publicist managing to get a New York Times reporter to do the first-ever interview of Chris Lloyd. Unfortunately, Chris is very shy in real life, and the reporter called Bob afterward saying that he’d said basically nothing in the actual interview. So she ended up interviewing everyone ELSE involved with the movie to get an idea of who the hell Chris was instead. XD Still got their hype piece, though!

I) And the fact that Bob read a lot of period works, plus the Bible, to make sure how the people in 1885, particularly the educated Clara, talked was accurate – that’s why Clara uses both the word “mendacities” and the word “whopper” in her furious speech to Doc when she thinks he’s lying to her.

Interesting stuff, as always – and I like Bob taking the time to answer some questions that he KNEW the audience would have, probably because he’d already been asked them a bunch of times and seen them online and such. XD Tomorrow we’ll pick up with Doc stumbling into the saloon, and see if I can finish this sucker off!

2. Work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – edited a little over a page of hospital horrors today, with Alice:

A) Being startled off the two “balance beams” she was using to get down into the hospital basement by some sudden screams of terror, landing hard on a broken cabinet (ow)

B) Yelling back to the screamer that she was there to help them and getting directed to the lowest level of the basement – cue her following the cries into a hallway full of rusty gurneys, around into an autopsy room with a hole in the floor and a disturbingly-fresh bloodstain on the drainage table, under the floor into ANOTHER autopsy room with ANOTHER bloodstained drainage table, through a door into a U-shaped room, and finally to the door the guy was pounding on…

C) Arriving just in time to see the guy’s head go CRUNCH and the window get covered in blood. D: The Queen of Hearts promptly complained about Alice being on the wrong side of the door, and Alice yelled at her to “shut up, you heartless bitch”

D) Following Caterpillar over to where she needed to go to finally find the creature murdering everyone (complaining about the hospital being worse than the Fortress of Doors as she did), and finding a hole in the wall overlooking the morgue, and someone walking around inside it; cue her pulling her knife and preparing to go invisible –

Only for Cheshire to counsel that she save her blood, as her presence has been noted, and the “mantis” within wants to chat instead of fight. Alice thus stayed visible, but kept her knife in hand, just in case. *nods* I left off with her creeping through the hole into Pisha’s lair – tomorrow, she meets the woman herself, and has a very interesting chat with a very curious vampire...

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – had just enough time this evening to watch the OXtra list video of the week – “7 NPCs With Unexpectedly Tragic Backstories!” Ellen and Jane talking about those NPCs that you wouldn’t expect to have tragedy and sorrow lurking in their pasts, only for their games to whip the rug out from under you! Think Sable Able of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is just a reticent seamstress hedgehog, happy to let her little sister Mabel chat with the customers in their clothing shop? WRONG – she’s actually the oldest of three, and had to step up and take care of her two little sisters after their parents died! One of whom, Label, ran off to become a famous designer and was estranged from her for a while! And she works super hard day and night to make sure they always have enough money so Label can follow her dream! Think GLaDOS of Portal fame is nothing more than an evil snarky supercomputer? WRONG – she’s actually what remains of Caroline, Cave Johnson’s personal assistant! Who he demanded be shoved into a computer in his place if he died before his brain could be uploaded! Think Goro Majima from the Yakuza series is just goofy comic relief designed to torment (and occasionally help) protagonist Kiryu? WRONG – he’s actually someone who lost his oath brother (and his left eye) thanks to being set up to fail an assassination; was put into a secret prison and tortured for who knows how long; and after being released, fell in love with a kind woman, only to realize his yakuza lifestyle would put her at risk and step out of her life in favor of her other suitor. Basically, you can never truly tell when if an NPC is in possession of a terrible, heartwrenching backstory!

...well, unless you’re playing a Hideo Kojima game. Because in that case they all do. Seriously, guys, why was Laughing Octopus from Metal Gear Solid 4 on this list, NOBODY doubted for a SECOND she had problems...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check and proper check –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Still didn’t have anything to do queue-wise over here, so instead I just straight-up reblogged something again – this time, a poll from polyshipweek! Letting everyone know that Polyship Week 2025 was one week away (starting on the 19th), and asking how everyone was feeling. Potential responses ranged from “totally ready to share my stuff!” to “wait it's NEXT WEEK ALREADY???” to “fuck it we'll do it live.” XD I picked “totally ready to share my stuff!” and happily bragged in the tags about how all my stories are written and half are in my tumblr drafts, but at the time of this writing the option actually winning the poll is “wait it's NEXT WEEK ALREADY???” XD I mean, I must confess, I know the feel – hence why I planned so far ahead for this one!

Valice Multiverse – Over here, meanwhile, I had two anon asks to drop into my queue for tomorrow:

A) That damn “anon discusses the weaknesses of American democracy with the founding fathers, while George Washington eats fruit snacks and points out that they were trying to put government into the hands of the people and Thomas Jefferson reads a yaoi novel and wonders where he can purchase a twink” ask that’s been giving me trouble for the past five days – I FINALLY came up with an answer to it tonight, with Londerland!Bloodlines Alice noting that Jefferson asking where he can purchase a twink highlights some issues with the founding fathers themselves, explaining why their system might not work as well as intended, before admitting she wishes the American people would do as George Washington says they should and remove the corrupt assholes in power. ...and then wondering where the hell the founding fathers came from. XD (I threw a panicking Doc, having noticed the time circuits in the train read 1776, into the tags to explain THAT mystery! Along with an apology for my reply taking so long.)

B) And a new ask that just showed up tonight, simply reading “A bee girl would probably say ‘in my bumble opinion’” – I had Inevitable High School!Smiler agree, saying they wouldn’t be able to resist the pun if they were a bee person! Not in the least because very little rhymes with “humble.” XD Hooray for the nice easy ones!

*nods* Yeah -- nothing particularly exciting, nothing particularly horrible. Though it WAS nice to get that damn ask out of Valice Multiverse's inbox. *nods* And now I should really head off to bed -- night all!

Granted, it hasn't been an especially happy one for ME -- yesterday's grumpiness has lingered, exacerbated by such things as lousy commutes and my Dad temporarily losing his keys (only to find them in his pocket) -- but I'd be absolutely remiss in my lingering Backie-ism if I didn't get the 10:04 timestamp TODAY of all days. So here it is! And now I have to finish my writing -- back later!

And now it is later, and I have returned with the daily write-up:

Work – A fairly dull, “meh” day back at the office this Wednesday, with four things of note happening:

A) Me spending the morning sending e-mails to people letting them know that either they’d overpaid on their pledge or that they had a credit card failure – got one response back at the end of the day saying yeah, they’d overpaid deliberately, apparently to cover all the postage from our mailings. *shrug* Fair enough!

B) Me spending most of the afternoon fooling around with some obituaries and going down little “roster maintenance” rabbit holes to clean up duplicates and deceased people and whatnot

C) Someone calling in to do a credit card payment on their pledge IMMEDIATELY after I washed my lunch container and was trying to dry it – fortunately my coworker was available to do the gift, and managed to get through it without any problems, though I WAS looking over her shoulder during all of it

D) And my supervisor calling me into his office at the very end of the day to inform me that he’d taken a different position in a different office and that the assistant supervisor would soon be the main supervisor. Which, fine, you do what you gotta do (I presume the paycheck was larger), but you couldn’t have told us that sooner than RIGHT BEFORE we were getting ready to go home? *rolls eyes* (And then my commute was filled with assholes, of course…)

So yeah – pretty boring day for the most part, with only that last bit of news causing any excitement. I guess we’ll see what, if anything, changes about my job going forward!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – got back on the bike tonight, this time with Back To The Future Part III with the June 2002 commentary by Bob Gale and Neil Canton! Because I think I can fit everything but the credits into the next three days, and the pair never talk over the ending credits, so...might as well try it and see what happens! Tonight’s pedal session took me through the beginning with the clock tower sequence I so wanted to watch today (borrowed from Part I, of course) to Marty meeting Doc back in the Old West and Doc learning who the “Clara” on his tombstone is when the mayor stopped by to give him the details on the new schoolteacher he’d volunteered to pick up, with Bob and Neil providing the following bits of trivia (among others):

A) Part III’s release also served as the debut of Universal’s fancy new 75th anniversary logo – the Bobs were initially a little undecided on this, thinking that it might be better to have the old logo that was used in the first two movies to keep things consistent, but the suits were quite insistent on using the new one, so they let it go under the logic “it’s just a logo.”

B) Part III was released on May 25th, 1990 – which was not only Memorial Day Weekend, but also Bob Gale’s birthday! So that was cool. :D (Neil’s birthday is May 30th, if you were wondering.)

C) The scene where Doc wakes up back in his own house after Marty takes him home post-faint and starts recording about what happened the previous night was actually one of the last scenes ever filmed, and definitely the last Christopher Lloyd himself filmed, which is kind of amusing. They also had to re-create his living room as a set because the house they filmed in during the first movie, the Blacker House, had been utterly gutted by its new owner – ironically, the owners of the house that served as the exterior of Doc’s mansion, the Gamble House, actually offered to let the Bobs film inside as well because they were so pleased with the attention from the original movie. The Bobs were initially excited, as they would have been the first film crew to ever work inside the house –

And then they went around the gorgeous period architecture inside and were like “oh no – we will DESTROY this place if we film in here.” So they sadly turned the owners down. Probably for the best!

D) Like with Einstein, Doc’s little 1955 terrier, Copernicus, was played by a different dog in the sequel – UNLIKE with Einstein (at least, they never mentioned doing this to Freddie), they actually had to lighten the poor dog’s fur with dye as he wasn’t QUITE the right color to match the original dog we saw so briefly in Part I! *shrug* I guess we gotta give ‘em props for being thorough!

E) The interior of the old Delgado mine was another set built on Stage 12 – Bob commented that the stage was basically their home away from home for much of filming, and was designated for their particular use (Neil commenting that he’d heard people calling it the “Back To The Future stage” back during the filming). The only time they had to clear out was when Universal/MCA decided to use it for Lew Wasserman’s big “50 years in the business” party, and as the Bobs already knew not to mess with Lew… XD

F) The Native Americans Marty has to flee from after arriving back in 1885 were mostly local Navajos (as they filmed much of the Western stuff in Monument Valley, which is their Nation), while the cavalry were made up of historical reenactors who traveled around doing cavalry charges and living out of tents and whatnot – the crew TRIED to put them up in a hotel, but they said no thanks. XD And of course the bear was a real bear – except when they had to film behind it, and then it was a guy in a bear suit. XD

G) Buford’s gang consisted of one “real” actor and two stunt guys, as the main requirement to be one of his posse was the ability to ride a horse – the stunt guys were accomplished riders, while the actor, Christopher Wynne (the blond one who talks the most), was pretty good as he’d grown up around horses. This mean that, hilariously, their leader was the most inexperienced on a horse, as Tom Wilson had only ever ridden trail horses meant for tourists. Fortunately he threw himself into learning how to ride and rope and all that, and judging by what we see in the movie, I think it paid off.

H) Oh, and speaking of the horses, their wrangler got about 90 of them for the shoot – and because they needed to be exercised even when filming wasn’t going on, the crew would take their kids down to see the horses on the weekends and let them have rides. Apparently Neil Canton’s daughter couldn’t get enough of it, while Bob Gale’s daughter was only a year-and-a-half old at the time and thus had no idea what was going on. XD

Good stuff, as always! Tomorrow we’ll pick up with Marty telling Doc about the DeLorean’s torn gas line, and see how far I get! And what I learn along the way!

2. Work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I returned to the adventures of Malkavian!Alice tonight after finishing off the missing bits of yesterday’s Daily Write-Up (go back to the 11/11/2025 post if you want to see it), and managed to fill a page with:

A) Alice making her way into the room full of dirty beds and the camera pointed at the big hole in the wall, and being unpleasantly reminded of Rutledge’s main ward, poor girl :(

B) Hatter and Carpenter getting into an argument after Alice mentioned the room “screams ‘angry ghosts’,” with Hatter taking her words literally and Carpenter knocking off his hat and telling him (in his usual mangled way) that it was a metaphor – Alice had to tell them to cut it out before things got ugly, and grumbled that she’d REALLY appreciate a night off from all her hangers-on. Cue Hatter and Carpenter both telling her that they have things they’d like to do other than follow her about too – Hatter has new teapots to invent, and Carpenter new plays to stage! Alice shot back that she was pretty sure the rest of Wonderland wasn’t feeling the lack...then paused and allowed that maybe March and Dormy would want the teapots. :p

C) Alice finding the hole in the wall past the video camera and slowly descending down through a couple of wrecked halls into the cellar, complaining all the while about having to investigate a potentially-haunted hospital that gives her “bad asylum memories” of Rutledge right after the mess that was Grout’s mansion last night, and wondering how Fish and Grout would have gotten on – which led her to the horrifying realization that there was a non-zero chance that Grout was Fish’s sire. O.O Which she would very much like NOT to be true, thanks! (Don’t worry, Alice, I’ve never pictured them as being vampirically related.)

Not bad for my first day back after a long break! I ended the writing session with Alice getting startled out of her thoughts by a scream for help – tomorrow, we’ll continue the trip through the rotting hospital and see if we can get her to meet Pisha!

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – I knew I didn’t have time for anything long, given how late I got to my writing, but I wanted to watch SOMETHING. So I decided to try and find a short video about the clock tower sequence from BTTF, in honor of the day. And that led me to “Back to the future clock tower comparison” by afhjkdgf! A two-and-a-half-minute video comparing the clock tower sequences from all three movies, showing off where they synced up (lightning bolt hitting the clock tower itself, and Doc connecting the cables JUST in time), and where they did not (Doc did the famous wire-slide down from the clock to the ground at very different times in each version of the sequence, with the BTTF II Doc lagging the furthest behind). Gotta say, it was a fun little look at how the sequence was re-edited for each movie (for example, there are no shots of BTTF Marty in the BTTF II version to avoid confusion about which Marty is which)! Though I am a little confused as to why the BTTF clips were crystal clear, while the BTTF II and III ones looked kinda fuzzy...maybe he wasn’t able to get good rips of those movies. I dunno. *shrug* Still good!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Substitution check – as my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue is sorted, I instead just straight-up reblogged a couple of things tonight:

A) thesatiricaldemon’s reply to my question about what the pins he was wearing as part of his Halloween costume were – as I said in my updated write-up for yesterday, one was an Archeopteryx skull he got at his local museum’s Dino Fest, the second was of the Hatbox Ghost from Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride (acquired from Disneyland, natch), and the third was a Beetlejuice pin with a “Never Trust The Living” gravestone and a sandworm that he got from a vendor at his college. I let him know they were cool and that I especially liked the Archeopteryx one, and the fact that it was apparently to-scale with real fossils. :) Cool pins must be recognized!

B) And a thread where someone talking about how they accidentally shook their toddler’s entire worldview by telling her that some birds are capable of talking led to someone else sharing that ravens can also mimic human speech – and are better at it than parrots, being able to PERFECTLY mimic human voices. And can even speak in simple sentences! Apparently an ex-pet raven named Darlene that the raven poster worked with for a bit was capable of asking for grapes. I stumbled upon this looking at some tumblr blogs at lunchtime and thought it was really neat –

And then thought “Oh, I should do a Valicer In The Dark Not-Incorrect Quotes scene with Victor and Alice getting very confused by hearing Smiler’s voice from the kitchen, but finding them in another room of the house – and then discovering that Sooty’s learned to mimic them.” XD So I reblogged the post tonight with tags stating exactly that. XD Maybe I can work on that when I’m done getting all my Valicer+ Polyship Week 2025 posts sorted!

*nods* Much less of a pain in the ass than last night's write-up, that's for sure! And now it is time for me to head to bed. Night all!

Yeah, unfortunately today proved to be one of those days where I was annoyed quite a lot by a number of things -- ranging from having to be the one to get the second load of laundry out of the dryer after lunch when my parents forgot about it (AGAIN) to getting screwed over while editing a tumblr draft by the autosaves tumblr implemented after I accidentally deleted a whole paragraph out of the beginning while trying to add a few words to it (I promptly started looking for a way to turn the autosaves off, and was deeply frustrated when I couldn't). I'd call it PMS, except that it's way too early in the month still... I don't know. I guess I was just having a bad day. Even though it was actually pretty productive, all things considered --

Aaand, to add to my annoyances, there is NO WAY I'm going to finish the write-up in a reasonable amount of time. There's just too many bits I left unfinished, thinking I could get to them later (I could not). So, if you can bear with me for a bit, here is the incomplete version of the write-up -- I will edit it and clean it up/finish it off tomorrow. EDIT 11/12/2025: Welcome to tomorrow, and the completed/cleaned up version of the write-up of my Tuesday off. Thank you for bearing with me -- on with the show:

Tumblr: It was another day where nothing happened on Valice Multiverse (not only am I still struggling to figure out how to answer the ask in my inbox, I just straight-up didn’t have the time to do much over there), but at least I was pretty productive on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) I started things off by reblogging two posts from The Satirical Demon:

I. One featuring some pictures of his Halloween costume – he went as an SCP researcher again, this time accompanied by his SCP 106 (creepy zombie-like old man) plushie and his “snake from The Nightmare Before Christmas” handpuppet (also by his brother, sister-in-law, and their kids, who went with a Jurassic Park theme – Dad was Alan Grant, Mom was Ellie Sattler, kids were dinos. Sadly no pictures of them!). I said I liked the pictures, but I was curious about some of the pins he was wearing, as I couldn’t quite make them out – he later replied in his own reblog that one was an Archeopteryx skull pin, which he got during a “dino fest” as his local museum (apparently it’s to scale with the real fossil skulls), and the others were a Hatbox Ghost (of Haunted Mansion fame) pin (acquired during his last trip to Disneyland, natch), and the other was a Beetlejuice-themed pin featuring a sandworm and a tombstone reading “Never Trust The Living” (picked that one up from a vendor at his college). Neat! :)

II. And the other doing a little “photo comic” of sorts showing off latest plushie acquisition (supposedly called in by his Serial Designation J J plush to help manage his finances) – Spamton G. Spamton of Deltarune! Who comes with “doomed yaoi” (aka a card of his television-headed ex who features in a later chapter of the game), and has the ability to speak (Satirical showed off a little video of him saying “Now’s your chance to be a bigshot!” in response to a head squeeze). I don’t know much about Deltarune, but I felt like I knew enough to say that I didn’t think Spamton was going to help with the financial situation much. XD

B) Then I moved onto my drafts, where – after having to rewrite the very beginning of my very first Valicer+ Polyship Week 2025 post because of the aforementioned “accidentally deleted the first paragraph trying to edit it to add a couple more words, only for tumblr to promptly autosave the draft right afterward so I couldn’t undo the change” incident (seriously, I was SO pissed off) – I managed to completely draft out the Day Two and Day Three posts, and mostly draft out the one for Day Four! That one just needs me to double-check the intro and finish off the tags. So I’m in a very good position to have all my posts ready to go by the time Polyship Week 2025 officially starts next Wednesday. :) Hooray!

C) And finally, I checked on Nattie’s gift fic once it was posted, and was pleased to see that she loved it and did a little ramble in the tags of her reblog about how I captured everybody perfectly. :) I do try, even if I’m not always familiar with the fandom!

So that was all good – well, except for the “deleting a paragraph” thing, of course. Going to have to be a LOT more careful about that in the future!

Baldur’s Gate III: Well, folks – after many trials and tribulations, I am finally back to the point in the game that I reached before Patch 8 and Smiler’s class change from Bard/Artificer to Bard/Warlock! XD Let me tell you how I got there:

A) I started off in the Wilderness Camp, with everyone hanging out post-Lae’zel officially joining the party – only to immediately realize, “oh hey – Lae’zel doesn’t have the Longstrider buff! I’d better fix that before doing anything else.” So I briefly switched control from Smiler to Gale and had him cast it on her so she could keep up with the rest of the party. *nods* Gotta make sure all members of the squad are benefiting from the power of the movement-increase spell! Never know when being able to run those few extra feet is gonna come in handy, after all…

With that sorted, I swapped control back to Smiler, then had them do the rounds of the camp, chatting with Astarion, Gale, and Shadowheart to see what they had to say about the newest member to join the party. Astarion was thrilled with her addition, calling her delightful – “in a very ‘look at me twice and I’ll dismember you’ kind of way, of course.” XD Gale was also positive, remarking that he didn’t anticipate a githyanki collaboration, but that it was welcome nonetheless, while Shadowheart was naturally less thrilled, commenting that Lae’zel had a “dangerous look in her eyes” and hoping that she “reserves those impulses for any common foes.” (Ironically, when the two actually get to the point of trying to kill each other, it’s Shadowheart who strikes first, soooo…) Having thus determined that two out of three companions were happy with Lae’zel joining the team (a majority, yay), Smiler went to chat with Lae’zel herself, covering:

I. If she knew much about mind flayers – Lae’zel claimed to know much beyond Smiler’s comprehension, before emphasizing that the important part was that she knew of a cure for their condition and that they needed to get to a creche, ending with “You’d do well to observe more and question less.” *shakehead* She so bitchy.

II. If she knew what would happen if they didn’t find a cure – she did, and described it to Smiler in disgusting detail. Highlights included hair falling out, bleeding from every orifice, jaw splitting to make space for the tentacles, and all skin turning to gore to reveal new flesh beneath. Fun! Smiler stood firm against the horrors she was describing, though, stating that they would find a cure and avoid that fate – Lae’zel was pleased, commenting that their words were “forged in steel,” and hoping their actions were the same. She then reiterated how they had to find her people and get rid of the parasite –

Before admitting that the first symptoms – fever and memory loss – should have started by now, and she found the fact they hadn’t puzzling. Smiler was like “isn’t us not changing good news?” to which Lae’zel said derisively, “Yes. If you give it no further thought,” and pointed out that anomalies like that often led to bad surprises. And even if it was a delayed change, it could still happen. (Only if you fuck up and lose your plot armor, girl! But then you wouldn’t know that yet. XD)

III. How unusual she looked, and how githyanki were rare in Faerun – Lae’zel said, rather proudly, that she expected she was Smiler’s first, and Smiler confirmed it, saying that they’d heard of githyanki before but had never met one. Lae’zel was like “of course not, you’d be dead if they had – cut from navel to neck,” then admitted that people like Smiler were as alien to her as she was to them – she knew of humans and elves and all those other races, but she rarely encountered them.

And then promptly insulted Smiler’s “large, fleshy” nose, stating it looked like a mistake. XD (Githyanki, for reference, have tiny upturned noses, barely there at all.) Smiler, ever the jokester, said “Really? Thanks for noticing!” prompting an unamused Lae’zel to say, “It was an observation. Not a compliment” before allowing it didn’t matter, she didn’t intend to stay long here anyway. XD Oh Lae’zel – you’d better get used to Smiler responding to your bitchiness like that. It’s what they do best! :p

( Here, A New Cut To Save Your Reading Pages )

Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight to watch some more of Back To The Future Part II with the June 2002 commentary by Bob Gale and Neil Canton – and I regret to tell you that my calculations were not correct when it came to how long I thought it would take me to watch the movie. Because I’d misremembered how long Part II actually was (I thought it was the longer of the two sequels – nope, it’s the shorter), and thus ended up finishing it today. Meaning that my hopes of watching the finale, with the replay of the clock tower sequence from the original tomorrow, November 12th, were dashed. :( Darn it. Now I have to decide if I just rewatch the end sequence tomorrow before starting on the special features, or start Part III – which, of course, ALSO includes the clock tower sequence, because that’s the one bit that’s in all three movies – and see if I can squeeze it into the remaining three days I’ll be working out this week. I THINK I can do it, but – I’ll figure it out tomorrow! In the meantime, have these final bits of trivia from Bob Gale and Neil Canton for Part II:

A) Doc’s wobbly riding when he shows up on his bicycle to try and bust Marty out of Biff’s garage, only to find it wide open and the kid not there, was an affectation by Christopher Lloyd – the dude is an accomplished cyclist and often took cross-country rides back then! Which was very annoying for Bob and Neil, because he kept doing that when they needed him for post-production line looping. XD

B) The very first scene Christopher Lloyd ever shot in the movie was the scene where 1985!Doc accidentally ends up interacting with his 1955 self! (Because they had to do all the 1955 stuff first before wrecking the back lot to build Hell Valley.) Apparently, he was very nervous about matching the energy he had playing his 1955 self in the first film! Don’t worry, Christopher – I agree with Bob that you nailed it.

C) Setting up the Enchantment Under The Sea dance in the church gymnasium again made Bob and the rest of the crew feel like they’d gone back in time, as they were able to get it so spot-on – Neil commented even the catering truck parked in the same spot! XD Helped that they had most of the crew from the original movie back again, able to remember where things went and set up the lighting so it was the same and everything.

D) Most of the scene in Strickland’s office (with Marty trying to get the Almanac away from him and being forced to hide under his desk until he finally left) was filmed on a set, but for the part where Marty looked out the window and see George struggling with Biff, they brought a couple of the set’s walls down to Whittier High School so Michael could look out into the actual parking lot. They even built a little platform for him to stand on so he could look down properly!

E) Conversely, while a good chunk of the redone “Johnny B. Goode” sequence was actually filmed in the gym (when they didn’t sneak in some clips from the original movie), they had to rebuild the stage on a set to put in the catwalk/lighting rig that Part II Marty climbs across to knock out Biff’s goons with the sandbag, because it didn’t exist on the actual stage.

F) Bob called the moment where Part I Marty accidentally smacks Part II Marty in the face with the door when Part II Marty is telling Biff “nobody...calls me...chick–” a “masterpiece of timing,” and it really is. Pretty much the best gag in the film. XD

G) The iconic “Marty vs Biff in the tunnel” ending sequence, with Marty trying desperately to get the Almanac out of Biff’s car, then trying even more desperately not to get run over? Not in the original shooting script! Originally Marty was just going to get the Almanac away from Biff at the high school, and Doc would be struck by lightning while above the gym roof. But the Bobs realized that probably wasn’t exciting enough, and prevented them from giving Biff his comeuppance via manure truck, so they rewrote the ending to include it near the beginning of shooting (Bob couldn’t remember if they’d actually started working on the film or not).

H) And neither Bob actually went and ASKED Western Union if they’d actually keep a letter for 70 years – they just went ahead with it and assumed they’d appreciate being seen as so reliable. XD

And there you have it! Fun stuff as always~ We’ll see tomorrow if it’s Special Features o’clock or Start Part III o’clock!

Writing: Well, editing it was a bit of a fight – I blame my angry brain being so angry and thus lacking in concentration – but I’m pleased to say I successfully revised the fic for Day Seven of Valicer+ Polyship Week 2025, “Compersion.” Which, as a reminder, is a Valicer Soulmates AU fic featuring Alice getting the warm fuzzies both over seeing Smiler and Victor together on the couch (looking at some of Victor’s latest sketches); chatting with Wonderland about how it’s not just the fact that they’re so cute together making her feel all mushy inside, but the fact that they’re comfortable enough around her to actually let her see them together (instead of pretending they’re just friends, like they do to the rest of the world) –

And then getting a little embarrassed when Victor and Smiler turned her way because they’d realized not all the happiness they were feeling was their own. XD Fortunately Smiler was quick to reassure her that it wasn’t a problem – and that they felt the same way when they saw her with Victor. Leading to a seat swap so Alice could get her turn next to their mutual boyfriend. XD Very sweet fic, and I’m glad I managed to wrestle into shape. Now the whole lot is ready for Polyship Week 2025, yay!

FreeTube/Invidious: As previously hoped, I finally returned to Proxy Gate Tactician’s channel tonight, to watch one of his ridiculous challenge videos with my Us plushie – specifically, “Can You Collect Every Legendary In Baldur's Gate 3 At Level One?” Because Proxy is both a guy who loves to collect shit, and who loves making problems for himself in YouTube videos, he decided to set himself the challenge of traversing Faerun as everyone’s favorite magic-items-eating wizard Gale, never leveling up (though occasionally changing classes, which I thought would have FORCED a level up but what do I know) and gathering up all twenty-five legendary items (weapons, armor, shields, books, and paintings) available in the game! Given the majority of these items are in Act 3 (aka Baldur’s Gate itself), and Gale and company would be stuck at their level one abilities and hit point totals throughout their travels, this seemed to be a very tricky proposition. So, given that luck was not on his side, did Proxy succeed in his quest?

Yes – and no. Because while he proved that getting all the legendaries was possible even if you never leveled up (mostly via the cheesiest of methods), he revealed that it was impossible to get them all in a single playthrough. Reason being, there are two pairs of legendaries which are mutually exclusive with each other, and you can only get one of each depending on your choices in the game. So Proxy got as many as he could in one go, then reverted to an earlier save to show how to get the other two! Because he’s nice like that, and couldn’t let his collection go uncompleted, even if two bits were in an alternate universe. XD Highlights of the video included:

A) Proxy using INCREDIBLY cheesy methods to get the Silver Sword Of The Astral Plane off Voss early (namely, gathering a bunch of items for Gale to use to increase the chance that his spells would hit, then having Astarion invisibly sneak up to Voss with a special sword that, when it’s “shriek” ability is activated, reduces enemies’ saving rolls, before drinking a potion that makes him hostile to everyone in the area to make sure Voss was affected by the shriek before having Gale and the others nail him with “Command: Drop” spells) and the Helldusk Armor off Raphael early (basically kidnapping all the scribes from Withers’s tomb and taking them back to camp, moving onto the Mountain Pass to force Raphael to come to camp, aggroing the scribes in such a way to get them to cast Silence in a spot where the bubble would hit Raphael, then having Lae’zel simply wail on him until he was knocked out and his armor could be looted), thus turning Level One Lae’zel into an almost unstoppable powerhouse (seriously, no levels up were no problem with her wearing that stuff – NOTHING seemed able to touch her).

B) Proxy revealing that one legendary can only be obtained via the mystical powers of “having pre-ordered the game” or “being willing to buy the Digital Deluxe edition” – The Mask Of The Shapeshifter! And then showing off that the face on the front of the big old helmet actually changes to match the disguise you choose, which is neat.

C) Proxy kiting the necromancer Balthazar into doing the Gauntlet of Shar, since the asshole always sends the party to do it and Proxy wanted to see if he could complete it himself. The answer was no, as he fell off the invisible path that everyone hates at the end. Though he did well up to that point, honestly – even kindly cleared all the Sharrans out of the library so Shadowheart could get her spear for future Nightsong-killing purposes. Thanks Balthy!

D) Proxy using even cheesier methods to murder the Avatar of Myrkul when he showed up in the Act 2-ending boss fight – namely, building an absolutely GIANT crate tower and then just raining random junk, including shoes and other items of clothing, down on his head to get the maximum amount of bludgeoning damage possible. Took a bit (and Gale accidentally destroyed his bit of the tower and fell off to his temporary death), but Proxy got him down via murder-rain and was very happy.

E) Proxy pulling out the Ultimate Cheese to defeat Raphael in the House of Hope (to get the legendary reward for saving Hope) – namely, kidnapping EVERY FRIENDLY NPC HE COULD FIND IN BALDUR’S GATE AND BRINGING THEM TO HELL FOR THE BOSS FIGHT. Which included every Sharran in the city (as in this timeline Shadowheart had killed Lady Aylin and taken over the cult) and some grease mephits in the sewers, for a total of 26 friends! Many of them died in the boss fight once Raphael transformed into full devil mode and started taking things seriously, but nine ended up surviving to the end, and one of them actually was the one to take out Raphael with a perfectly-timed Bone Chill. *nods* In fact, this method worked so well that, when it came time to kill Orin for her TWO legendary weapons, after discovering tossing her off a cliff turned her into a useless unlootable pile of gore, Proxy instead had his Mage Hand buddy kidnap her and bring her to Hell so the remaining Sharrans could help bring her down! Which worked out great and got him both her special daggers! :D It’s useful having a cult full of people dedicated to pain and loss at your side!

F) And Proxy complaining mightily about Oscar the painter having BOTH most useless legendary items in the game! And, of course, they’re one pair of the mutually exclusive ones, so the poor guy had to interact with him TWICE:

I. In one timeline, having never saved him from the criminal organization keeping him captive, Gale fortunately just had to buy the “Fake Portrait Of A Noble Before His Death” off him after finding him in the city sewers, which is a legendary painting that can be sold for 1,000 gold. And which looks like absolute SHIT in the game for some reason – Proxy showed it off, and it’s a blurred, pixelly mess! What the hell happened THERE, Larian?? O.o You’re supposed to be better than that!

II. In the other, having bought and freed him, Gale unfortunately had to complete Oscar’s quest (which is apparently one of the worst in the game), freeing him from possession and burning the painting of his lost love before talking her ghost into taking a hike, to get the other legendary painting – a “Personal Portrait!” Because if you help him, Oscar will paint a picture of your character that is worth quite a lot of money. And which actually looks like you, at least as of Patch 8 (apparently it didn’t in previous patches)! AND you can get multiple of them, as Oscar will happily paint one of each party member. So, given that, I’d actually recommend freeing him and doing his terrible quest – you get more XP, more paintings to sell, AND the paintings actually look good too. (Oh, and if you’re curious, the other pair of mutually-exclusive legendaries is Shar’s Spear Of Evening – which Shar gives Shadowheart if she kills Aylin – and Selune’s Spear Of Night – which Aylin gives Shadowheart in camp after Ketheric is finally defeated if she’s spared. Much bigger decision, that!)

Good stuff, as always! I do enjoy watching Proxy play through these goofy self-inflicted challenges. Hopefully I’ll have time for more now that I’m more-or-less caught up on OXBox and OXtra!

...Granted, I'm pretty sure watching Proxy is what screwed me over here, as it took me longer to watch his video than anticipated, meaning I had less time to finish the write-up...nothing for it now, though. I'm off to bed -- night all!

Like, parts of it weren't that great, but overall it was pretty solid, I would say -- let's see what the daily write-up thinks:

Work – Well, it was a bit of a frustrating Monday at work, not gonna lie –

A) The GL was really short today, but ended up taking longer than expected because my coworker (whose turn it was to deposit the checks for it) spent ages talking to the assistant director

B) We kept getting calls from Fiscal investigating discrepancies between the credit card reports we send regularly and what’s actually in the bank

C) I found my OWN credit card discrepancies while checking out the most recent failed transactions and preparing to send e-mails to people – namely, three transactions that hadn’t been uploaded (all from people who had needed to update their card, then chose to do a transaction that same day, as my coworker noted). Fortunately, one terse e-mail to the credit card people later, those were actually posted, yay

D) I was a little late getting to my lunch because one of the e-mails I was trying to send to let someone know “hey, your credit card expired” kept getting rejected as spam

E) I called the person with the expired credit card later that afternoon (after finishing up a QC file for the next Appeal billings the database people created), left a message, then went to wash my lunch dishes – only for not only that person to call back, but one of the people I e-mailed about a credit card card failure as well, all while I was trying to dry my container -.- I knew I shouldn’t have gotten up! (I did call them both back and resolve their issues, the timing was just annoying)

F) And the weather was just absolutely miserable all day, which didn’t help matters – though I WILL say that the traffic was better than I expected for such a day. Like, it wasn’t GREAT, but I wasn’t going at a snail’s pace either

So yeah – not an auspicious start to the work week. At least I have gone from that into an immediate day off...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike tonight, pedaling my way through more of Back To The Future Part II, with the June 2002 commentary by Bob Gale and Neil Canton! Tonight’s workout saw me watch from Future!Marty being tricked by Needles into doing something illegal and getting fired to Marty getting trapped in Biff’s garage after hiding out in the back of his car and watching Old Biff hand over the almanac, and listen to the following bits of trivia:

A) Flea (from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) was chosen to play Needles mostly because he had a very good smarmy, up-to-no-good look that made him memorable – and given that Needles wasn’t going to show up again until the end of Part III, the Bobs and Neil wanted him to be memorable! Bob Gale credited the “Alfred E. Neuman” gap between his front teeth with doing a lot of the work :P

B) Future!Marty’s boss, Mr. Fujitsu, has an absolutely nonsensical last name thanks to Bob Gale thinking the Fujitsu company was named after a person – as it turns out, it’s just a brand name (a shortening of the company’s full name, in fact), with Bob comparing using it as a name to naming someone “Mr. General Motors” over here in the States. *shakehead* I think you need to apologize to Rick Carter for his misspelled Japanese sign, Bob!

C) Bob Gale really likes the gag where Doc and Marty are scared by the plane flying over their heads while wondering if they’re back in 1985 proper after fleeing 2015 – which pleases me, as it’s one of my favorite gags in the trilogy as well. XD Michael and Christopher just have such great reactions!

D) In order to make sure they didn’t have to come back to the location at a later date, the crew filmed Jennifer getting dropped off on her porch swing, and Marty coming back at the end of Part III to check on her and wake her up, on the same day. It’s the only bit of Part III that got filmed while they were making Part II

E) 1985-A!Lorraine’s look was inspired by Tammy Fae Baker, the disgraced televangelist, while the painting that hides 1985-A!Biff’s safe where he keeps the Almanac is based on one of Donald Trump (unsurprising, as 1985-A!Biff does have a very similar look)

F) Bob was very annoyed that the suits at Universal decided to market Part II as its own, self-contained movie when it very much was not (HE very much wanted to be honest and let people know the movie had a cliffhanger ending), and credits that decision with why the numbers for the film went down very fast after its stellar Thanksgiving weekend opening

G) The famous shot of Old Biff handing 1955!Biff the Almanac was achieved by putting the Almanac on an armature that moved with the camera – I always thought that they built a fake Tom Wilson hand around it, but nope, that is just Tom making damn sure to move his hand with the mechanical arm to properly execute the hand-off. Neat!

Interesting stuff, as always. :) Tomorrow we pick up with Marty being accidentally taken to the Enchantment Under The Sea dance by 1955!Biff, and see what Bob and Neil have to say about all of that!

2. Work on Valicer Polyship Week 2025 stuff: Check – edited the fic for Day Six, “Recovery,” tonight – which is the sweet Valicer Severance AU story where the Innies wake up in the woods near Doug Rattmann’s isolated cabin post-Aperture breakout, and – after just enjoying getting to be outside – discover that their Outies left them a picnic. Because the Innies got together when Victor made a fake picnic for Alice and Smiler in the Macrodata Refinement cafeteria – and the Outies thought they deserved a real one. :) It’s just – it’s full of feels and gives me all sorts of warm fuzzies. :D And I’m happy to say that it didn’t give me too much trouble during editing, unlike some of the others – wasn’t as smooth sailing as the VITD story (I still had to spend a little time getting the beginning just right), but it sure as hell didn’t straight-up fight me either. I guess my brain really didn’t want to deny the Innies their picnic! :) Just one more to go now – then I’ll work on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” for a bit before seriously starting Christmas gift fics.

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: Check – and as I wasn’t on a time limit tonight, I decided to go ahead and indulge myself by heading back to Many A True Nerd and watching a video I saw there the other night while loading up the next F:NV YOLO Remastered episode – “60 Minutes To Extinction - Only Jon's Perception Can Save The World!” An escape room game where, as per Jon’s own description, “the only thing that can prevent total human extinction is Jon being perceptive, and not panicking in the face of a ticking clock.

“We're doomed.” XD Yeah, you see why I wanted to watch this? Anyway, the premise of the game is that you are an engineer going down to Facility 47-B to shut down an overloading reactor that’s threatening to blow and wipe out life, if not on ALL of planet Earth, then a good portion of it. The gimmick is, the moment you solve the puzzle to open the door into the main reactor area, the release of all the containment gases inside (currently kept under control by automated systems) triggers an hour-long countdown timer to the reactor going critical. And this is a REAL TIME countdown, by the way – this game has absolutely NO way to save, and I suspect no pause button either. You do this all in one shot or not at all! So yeah, this is a VERY tense game, where you have to be quick on your feet and figure out the puzzles as fast as possible. And, well, as per the description, Jon doesn’t always see the obvious, and he gets nervous when dealing with a time limit. So, given all that, did he manage to solve all the ridiculous puzzles and save the world?

( Spoilers, Obviously )

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I took advantage of the fact that I have tomorrow off to get my entire queue done for the rest of the week! :D In order, we have:

A) Tumblr friend Nattie’s birthday gift fic (featuring Victor meeting Milo Thatch and bonding with him as their girls play together...before said girls spill the secrets about Atlantis and the Land of the Dead) for Tuesday

B) A thread all about the conflicting desire to see your favorite character broken and bruised and needing care versus your favorite character being a total badass (and how all the best writers slam both buttons, letting the fave be badass before letting them collapse and be cared for) for Wednesday

C) A post about how annoying/upsetting it is that daydreaming a story doesn’t automatically make it write itself (which would save so much time, at least in the rough draft stage) for Thursday

D) A gifset of Pisha, everyone’s favorite corpse-eating creepy vampire, standing over a victim in the abandoned hospital she calls home, for Friday (because we’re coming up on Alice meeting her in LB:DQ soon)

E) And a reblog of a music post with attached poll by doyoulikethis-videogame-song, asking people if they liked Mystery Videogame Song #2074 (and if they actually recognized it, as you could like or dislike it without knowing where it was from – I picked “I like it and it sounds familiar” because I couldn’t place if I’d heard it before or not. Given that looking at the comments and reblogs made me realize that the music was from Undertale, a game I’ve never had that much interest in, probably not!) for (Song) Saturday!

So that’s all sorted now, yay. :D Nice to have that out of the way! Means I can spend more time preparing for NEXT week’s queue. XD

*looks at all that* So the workday wasn't all that great, but the afternoon/evening was productive and fun. Yeah, I think that averages out to "reasonably good." :P And now I should probably try to get to bed, as I'm trying NOT to completely wreck my sleep schedule tonight. Ah, the joys of a midweek day off...plans for tomorrow include drafting more posts for the upcoming Valicer+ Polyship Week 2025 on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Baldur's Gate III, chatting to everyone about Lae'zel joining, and finding a damn shovel; editing the final Polyship Week fic that needs it; getting in a workout and more BTTF II; and hopefully watching one of Proxy Gate Tactician's videos, as I haven't watched any of his in a while and I miss them. *nods* Hopefully all achievable goals! Night all!

Yes, I managed to accomplish a few more things today than I did yesterday, happily (including getting up a bit earlier -- 9:30 AM instead of 10 AM) -- allow me to give you the breakdown as I always do:

Tumblr: Had a slightly more productive day over here – while I still didn’t do anything on Valice Multiverse (I have an ask featuring an anon talking to the founding fathers about democracy (and twinks), but I can’t think up a good answer for it), I was able to accomplish one thing of note over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) despite it being kind of a lazy morning – mainly, drafting out the first post for the upcoming Valicer+ Polyship Week 2025! So named because I did write three stories featuring the Valicer trio as part of larger polycules for the week this year. *nods* Basically, I had no other ideas for posts to add to my drafts, so I figured it would be smart to get a jump on getting all the Polyship Week 2025 posts sorted – sure, there’s ten days to go, but it’s better to get them done sooner rather than later, right? I certainly thought so! And now I have my post for Day One, “Kidnapped,” all sorted. :) With any luck, I can get all the remaining posts drafted out before Polyship Week 2025 even starts and thus just set up my queue for it in one nice, easy shot – fingers crossed, folks!

Portal: I am pleased to report that, after last week’s session of agony, I had a nice, productive hour-and-a-bit in Aperture Science today, solving tests and collecting radios for my “Transmission Received” run. :D Here’s how that went –

A) First things first – remember the problems I was having getting the second radio out of Chamber 15? The one that’s next to the High-Energy Pellet Receiver in that big elevated box in the last room, which can only be opened by using portals to press two standing buttons at opposite ends of the room at roughly the same time? Well, before booting up the game, I made sure to hit FreeTube to look up how the fuck I was going to get that stupid thing, because flinging myself at the box just was NOT working –

And discovered, thanks to the lovely Chuck Yu and his video “(spoiler alert) Portal: Transmission Received, Test Chamber 15,” that I was making the same mistake I was making back in Chamber 14 while trying to get that radio – namely, I wasn’t supposed to fling myself, I was supposed to bounce myself. That is, put a portal on the floor in front of the box and then jump down from one of the two standing button rooms into another portal so I bounced up in front of the open doorway! Re-energized by this knowledge, I started up the game, used the power of portals to open the box, then used the power of portals to bounce myself inside and grab the radio –

Aaaand promptly got killed by one of the closing doors because I wasn’t quite fast enough getting out. Whoops. ^^; It then took me about another – eight tries? Maybe ten? I wasn’t counting – to actually get into the box, grab the radio, and then exit the box WITH said radio (as while most of my tries were stymied by timing issues, in one instance I got inside the box and grabbed the radio, only to drop it while exiting just before the doors closed again. That one was frustrating). Sure, I got hurt by one of the doors again on the way out, but who fucking cares – radio FUCKING GOT. I thus took it with me onto the rising platform that brings you to the elevator out and got the transmission waiting for me right at the top –

Then gleefully fizzled the stupid thing. XD Look, the emancipation field was RIGHT THERE and getting that radio was the biggest pain in the ass yet – what did you EXPECT me to do?

B) From there, it was onto Chamber 16 – everyone’s favorite “live fire course designed for military androids!” Fortunately getting past all the turrets wasn’t TOO hard – poor Chell did get tagged a few times while trying to use Weighted Storage Cubes as shields, and I died once right at the end by falling through a portal in front of a turret I was trying to knock over/get behind; on the plus side I did manage to get one of the turrets to shoot one of its buddies a couple of times while setting up a cube drop, then used its corpse to finally knock the other one over XD – and finding the radio was downright simple! Mostly because it was out in plain sight, sitting with some tools and a coffee cup atop the stack of cubes in the room next to the big floor button protected by three turrets. And, appropriately, as it was implied Rattmann left it there for you with the cubes he got by sabotaging the dispenser, the transmission point was right at the entrance to his little “ratt hole” midway through the level, beside his deliciously memetic “the cake is a lie” scribblings. *nods* Easy peasy! So let’s pad this section out with some additional observations:

I. This “ratt hole” is clearly the one Rattmann was using as a home base, as it contains, along with his scribblings, a few cans of beans, a carton of milk, a big old jug of what I presume was water, a hot plate with a saucepan, a bucket in the corner (which, uh, I knocked over, so I’m glad he emptied it before I got there), and a little bed made out of flattened bits of cardboard (awww). I also noticed this time around that he wrote “help” on the floor next to the two cubes he used to prop open the entrance – but that’s not him asking for help from Chell. No, when you pair that with the fact that he somehow managed to paint X’s above a bunch of the turrets, and left another big old pile of cubes for her in another room, you realize he’s saying “hey, here’s some cubes to help get rid of the turrets trying to kill you.” Thanks Doug – much appreciated! :)

II. The Weighted Storage Cubes show damage when they’re shot – the ones I was using to shield Chell so I could get an idea of where to put my portals ended up absolutely RIDDLED with bullet holes, poor things. XD Just thought it was a neat little touch!

C) And the final chamber of the day was Chamber 17, aka the Companion Cube course! Where your new buddy serves as step, shield, and loving friend who will never threaten to stab you and in fact cannot speak. XD Finding the radio proved to be fairly simple again – once I heard the music in the central chamber, I just followed it to discover the radio trapped underneath the third platform you have to raise up to get to the big button and complete the level – but getting it was a little trickier:

I. First, I had to activate all the High-Energy Pellet Receivers in order to raise all the platforms. The first two weren’t too bad – I directed one of the pellets that had tried to kill me in the previous corridors into the first by bouncing it off the ceiling with the power of portals (well, after realizing I’d initially put the “exit” portal in the wrong spot), and managed to perfectly bank a pellet into the second using my trusty Companion Cube in the all-metal room off to the side (first try too!) – but the third was tricky. Mostly because it involved directing the pellet not only into a different room via portal, but through two doors opened by buttons. The issue was, the button to open the FIRST door was directly in front of it – and when I experimented with putting the Companion Cube on it, it proved to be SLIGHTLY too tall and bounced the incoming pellet all over the shop. Fortunately, a little further experimentation revealed that Chell could crouch down far enough on the button to avoid immediate death by energy pellet – and while I stood up a little too quickly on the first attempt and got her, presumably, disintegrated, the second attempt (where I not only crouched but stood off to the side a little) went smoothly, allowing the pellet to go into the receiver and raising up the third platform. Hooray!

II. Then, I had to get the radio to the transmission point. I used the power of portals to take it back to the start of the level (now that there weren’t any more killer pellets to avoid), and discovered that it fuzzed up quite a lot in the first corridor, especially near the floor. Figuring that the transmission point was thus probably under the corridor, in the room with the big floor button, I brought it back to the main room with me to take it to the end of the level –

And discovered that jumping across all the raised platforms, ESPECIALLY while carrying stuff, was a LOT trickier than I’d anticipated. I kept mistiming my jumps and falling to the floor again! >( I eventually got both the radio and the Companion Cube across them and to the button room, but it took a lot of attempts and a fair amount of quicksaving! Yeesh… *shakehead* Fortunately, I was more-or-less correct in my assumption about where the transmission point was – it was just past the big button, directly next to the incinerator. XD I thus attempted to use the radio to trick GLaDOS into thinking I’d incinerated the poor Companion Cube by tossing it in there after opening it, but GLaDOS was too smart for me and didn’t open the door to the elevator. *shakehead* Sorry Cubey – I tried!

And that’s where I left it! Having found 19 out of 26 radios, and incidentally taken down 19 out of 33 cameras for the “Camera Shy” achievement. :p Because why not kill as many of GLaDOS’s cameras along the way as possible? Next Sunday, we’ll take on Chambers 18 and 19, and start the grand escape from Aperture! We’ll see how often I’ll need to consult my guide once I’m out of the testing track proper.

Writing: I edited my tumblr friend Nattie’s birthday gift fic today – you know, the one about Victor meeting Milo Thatch (from Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire) while her OC kids for the pair (Lily for Victor, Izzy for Milo) played together, bonding with him over raising daughters to be less repressed than they were and being teased by their loved ones, and then discovering that they have something else in common – namely, wacky impossible adventures – when Lily comes up to him and reveals that Izzy told her that she lives in Atlantis, and she’s gonna tell Izzy about Emily and the Land of the Dead. XD Fortunately, this one didn’t fight me as much as some of my Polyship Week 2025 prompt fics have – yeah, I had a little trouble getting the beginning just right (with Victor trying to explain how he and Victoria have always encouraged their daughter to do what she wants, even if it’s not necessarily ladylike), but it came together in the end, and I think the final product is quite nice, honestly. Hopefully Nattie will like it – we’ll see when the fic goes up on Tuesday!

Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight and started up the next movie in my “queue” – Back To The Future Part II, with the June 2002 commentary by Bob Gale and Neil Canton! Tonight’s pedaling session saw me tackle most of the actual “future” section of the movie – stopping at Jennifer spying on Future!Marty about to take a phone call from Needles – and learn the following from our two illustrious producers:

A) When they made a deal with Universal to do the two sequels, the Bobs did not get the extra pay raise for doing Part III that Chris and Michael did – they were told that they would be getting the same amount of money that they got for Part II and that they would like it. Naturally, they were not pleased by this news. Their agent tried to help get them a better deal by telling Bob Zemeckis to stop working until things could be renegotiated –

Only for Bob Zemeckis to get a call from one of the higher-ups at MCA, Lew Wasserman – who was known to have gotten his start working with the mob. Bob Zemeckis was gently informed that he’d better get back to work, and he fucking got back to work, as you might imagine, taking the pay offered. Bob Gale said that the moral of that story was “don’t mess with Lew Wasserman.” XD

B) The shots of Doc, Marty, and Jennifer in the DeLorean in the skyway at the beginning were made using “poor man’s bluescreen” – basically, the actors were in half a DeLorean mounted on a device that rocked them about, and there were people outside making lights pass by on the regular and pelting the windshield with fake rain to make it look like they were flying down a road in the sky during a heavy rainstorm. Relatively low-tech, but very effective!

C) The trash in the alley that Doc and Marty originally land in (and leave poor Jennifer in) includes laser discs and silicone breast implants – Bob said that the former was just the result of a bad prediction of the future (namely, that we’d still be using laser discs), and asked that we don’t ask about the latter. XD

D) HOVERBOARDS ARE NOT REAL – and Bob Zemeckis’s ill-thought-out joke got them in rather a lot of trouble with Mattel, who did not appreciate all the letters they were getting from kids asking for hoverboards! (Granted, the Bobs got their fair share of those letters too, so...)

E) Apparently the production design guy, Rick Carter was a TERRIBLE speller – whenever he made signage for the movie, it was a guarantee that Bob would find at least a couple of spelling mistakes that Rick hadn’t noticed. This extended to the signs that were written in Japanese – Bob asked about them, and Rick SWORE had been checked over...only for a visiting tourist to point out one that didn’t make any sense. Bob gave Rick a very hard time for that one!

F) Michael J. Fox was VERY embarrassed the first day he had to act in drag as Marlene and insisted nobody be on set that didn’t HAVE to be there, poor guy. Apparently he got over it as filming went on, though. (We all think she’s a trans icon now, Michael!)

G) And Ken Ralston, one of the wizards behind all the shots of actors acting against themselves (remember, this is before proper CGI – they had to invent a whole new type of camera, the Vista Glide, so they could shoot each bit separately and then stitch them together in editing!), was rather horrified when he learned that the Bobs had severely cut down his magnum opus of “the future McFly family – played entirely by Michael J. Fox – at the dinner table.” Unfortunately, the scene was just slowing down the movie, and so it had to be trimmed down. *shrug* Pacing sucks sometimes, man! At least the full version is included in the special features.

Very good stuff, as always! It’s nice to relisten to these commentaries – I’ve totally forgotten what was in them, so it’s all brand new and interesting. Even if the commentary itself is over 20 years old now. XD We’ll pick up with the end of the 2015 segment tomorrow!

FreeTube/Invidious: It’s Sunday, and you know what that means – our weekly episode of the F:NV YOLO Remastered run by Jon of Many A True Nerd! AKA the series that is likely going to convince me to buy New Vegas at some point. *facepalm* Anyway, tonight’s video was “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 17 - Plane Sailing” and featured our favorite drunken melee courier, P. D. Shoot –

A) Traversing the Mojave to acquire the ingredients to make more doses of her precious Turbo! Because she burned up her last three in the Big MT, and – as per Jon – that drug is her “get out of jail free card” (he’s pretty sure she would not have survived that ambush near Elijah’s camp without it). Fortunately, acquiring more of her favorite super-speed drug proved not to be too difficult:

I. Goodsprings, where she started, had a gas station overlooking the town that contained a can of the turpentine she needed to make it

II. Novac didn’t have any turpentine in its garage, sadly (though it did have some scrap metal for P. D. to steal for later) – but it did have the lovely traveling Dr. Ada Straus, who had two doses of Turbo to sell! P. D., who is swimming in money, snapped those up right quick

III. Old Lady Gibson’s garage had two “set dressing” turpentine cans that she could steal, and fifteen for sale in the actual shop (along with 17 scrap metal at 1 cap a scrap, which was a steal)

IV. And the Crimson Caravan Company headquarters had the broc flowers that P. D. needed as the final ingredient growing all over the place (apparently for some reason they grow a LOT of the plants you need for crafting) – plus a trader who was selling yet more turpentine! P. D. is SWIMMING in the stuff now

End result? P. D. walked away from Crimson Caravan with seven doses of Turbo in her pocket (two from Ada, five from crafting). Girl is now much better prepared for any bullshit the game might throw at her going forward!

B) Swinging by the New Vegas Medical Clinic to get her final two implants, now that she had the cash from trading with the Sink in the Big MT – the Agility-boosting one and the Strength-boosting one! (She’s not allowed the “regenerating health” one for obvious reasons, and Jon just doesn’t want to bother with the Charisma one as he has better ways to raise her Speech skill.) She is now as strong, perceptive, enduring, intelligent, agile, and lucky as she could possibly be – AND has sub-dermal armor to boot. *nods* P. D. – the most modified courier in all the Mojave! :p

C) Heading to the NCR Embassy at the back of the Strip to finally speak to Ambassador Crocker about doing some work for the NCR! (After a quick stop at Gomorrah to see what was in stock – two more doses of Turbo, hooray!) As it turned out, the reason Crocker wanted to see her badly enough to offer her amnesty for all past crimes against his people was because he needed her help contacting one of the tribes in the area and getting them to ally with the NCR – the Boomers, who live at Nellis Air Force Base. Said Boomers were sitting on a munitions stockpile that could be VITAL to winning any future battles (say, at the Hoover Dam), but were really hostile to outsiders. Crocker was pretty sure they’d be more tolerant of a courier native to the area than his own people, and thus offered P. D. the job of bringing them on-sides. P. D. happily took it, eager for more XP and other goodies, and thus kicked off Act 2 of the game! ...Without ever really finishing Act 1, because New Vegas is a little weird like that. XD (Basically, as Jon explained it, you finish Act 1 by getting revenge on Benny via your preferred method and retrieving the platinum chip he stole from you...but as the NCR doesn’t give a damn about the chip, unlike Mr. House or the Legion (don’t ask me why THEY want it), they’re happy to immediately recruit you to do Act 2 stuff, instead of waiting for you to murder Benny. *shrug* It’s logically consistent, and means we get more fun missions quicker, so I have no problem with it!)

D) Making her way over to the Boomers at Nellis (which involved heading back to the medical clinic, carefully sneaking around the ruins at the edge of town toward the road leading to the base, then taking a couple of huffs of Turbo and just booking it across the field toward the fence to avoid the bombs the guards attempted to rain down on her) and meeting with their leader Pearl! Who was, honestly, quite happy to see P. D., as apparently she’d been waiting five years for an outsider to show up and help out around the place. :p P. D. was thus tasked with assisting the various Boomers around the camp with whatever they might need to earn their trust and thus their firepower in any upcoming fights – aka, do enough nice things for them that her reputation with the little faction went up to “Idolized.” P. D. was up for that, and promptly started scurrying around, visiting:

I. The Medical Center, where she threw on her Follower’s Labcoat and read a skill-boosting magazine to get her Medicine skill up to the point where she could successfully treat three patients who’d been grievously wounded fighting giant ants at the generator building – clearing out a nasty infection in the first, identifying and treating an allergic reaction to the ant venom in the second, and saving the mangled leg of the third with some new and better stitchwork. The local doctor was extremely grateful, admitting that they apparently had some stuff to learn from the “savages” when it came to medicine, and P. D. immediately gained “Accepted” status with the tribe!

II. The Hangar, where she spoke to mechanic Loyal and agreed to look at the solar arrays on top of the generator building for him (as you might imagine, some were wrecked by the giant ants), then chatted with mechanic Jack and learned that not only did he need scrap metal, but (with the help of a speech check) that he was infatuated with a lovely red-haired outsider he’d seen near the base. P. D. promised him she’d track down his lady love and see if she could arrange a meeting, which he was VERY grateful for – apparently he’s a bit better around machines than people, meaning the idea of speaking to her himself was making him queasy, poor guy.

III. The solar array atop the generator, where she found five broken solar panels (damn ants!). They were unfortunately beyond P. D.’s meager Repair skills, but lucky she knew exactly where to find some spare parts to shore them up – Helios One! She thus traveled over there and located five unusable panels that she could salvage into parts, then trucked them all over back to the Boomer’s array and used them to repair the busted panels there. AND, because she has such high Science thanks to her time in the Big MT, she was even able to fix some wiring issues in the panels as she did and improve their efficiency by 50%! Which lead to more Boomer fame AND more XP – something P. D. was very happy about.

IV. The Crimson Caravan Company to find Jack’s love interest, Janet – and, as it turned out, she had noticed him as well, and thought he was cute too! And found his naivete rather sweet when P. D. told her about him and his crush. As a result, she was more than willing to meet, if the Boomers would let her visit – P. D. said she’d get Pearl to make an exception for her, then scurried over to Pearl’s bunker and did just that, convincing her that Jack deserved a chance to find love. Pearl thus allowed Janet to visit (though she did warn that Jack would be responsible for her actions), and P. D. headed back to the Crimson Caravan company to deliver the good news and a Boomer jacket to Janet –

Only to discover Janet had a second favor to ask of her – talk to Alice McLafferty, her boss, and see if the woman would be willing to part with Janet’s owed wages despite the fact that Janet was breaking her work contract with them. P. D. said sure and scurried over to Alice’s office – and while the big boss of the CCC was initially like “she knew the risk – if she walks away, she gets no pay,” with the power of the Naughty Nightwear and some Party-Time Mentats, P. D. was able to convince her to be sentimental just this once and give Janet her money. A delighted and grateful Janet thus started for Nellis, and P. D. was officially advanced to “Liked” status with the group. :D

V. Loyal’s house to let him know about the solar array – he was thrilled, as was the game, who told P. D. that she could go back to Pearl now if she wanted to wrap things up with the final task (Jon was honestly surprised). P. D. decided she wanted to finish helping everyone she’d already talked to first, though.

VI. The Hangar again, where she arrived just in time to see Jack and Janet meet – their conversation essentially consisted of “you are even hotter up close;” “so are you, I definitely want to stay and get to know you better;” “no problem, I’ll find you someplace to stay in the women’s barracks.” XD As Jon said, it was at least a start! And it made Jack very happy and got P. D. a load of XP. P. D. then proceeded to hand over all 41 pieces of scrap metal she was carrying to Jack, who was extremely grateful (though not to the point of paying her, unfortunately) and boosted her reputation with the group up to “Idolized.” (Jon wondered if he’d could have completed the mission just by giving Jack all that scrap first thing, given apparently all P. D. needed was to be “Liked.” XD)

VII. The local museum to take the Nellis snowglobe to add to the collection at the Lucky 38 later (after what could have been a VERY UNFORTUNATE misstep into the very wibbly Biodiesel Refinery)

VIII. And the workshop, to steal a skill magazine and the “Howitzer Firing Mechanism” for later (I suspect this may be P. D. preparing to work with the Brotherhood of Steel in the future – that sounds like a kind of thing they’d need)

E) Heading back to Pearl to see if she was officially Liked Enough to become an official Friend Of The Boomers – and learning from her that she had one more task to complete: talk to Loyal about the tribe’s greatest dream. P. D. did so, and learned that, as a young man, Loyal had learned through a magazine article of a nearly-perfect B-29 bomber plane that had crashed and sunk to the bottom of Lake Mead before the Great War. His greatest dream, and the dream of all his fellow Boomers, was to find a way to raise that plane and use the parts from another B-29 to make her fly. P. D. was more than willing to help make that dream come true, and thus set about:

I. Getting a rebreather from Jack so she could actually swim to the bottom of the lake without, you know, drowning – Jack said that he needed a pressure cooker to help make a perfect hermetic seal, but P. D. knew enough science stuff that she was able to suggest an alternative made of corn silk, rubber hoses, and adhesive. Jack told her she was brilliant and – after doing his thing – handed over the rebreather

II. Traveling to Camp Golf and – after waiting until it was dark to avoid detection from the various bits of mutated wildlife around – hopping into the waters of the far end of the wake and swimming down to the wreckage. Fortunately, the darkness helped shield her from the lakelurks and the cazadores hanging around, and she was able to attach the inflatable ballast bags to the wings, get back to shore, and use Loyal’s detonator to inflate them, bringing the plane to the surface! (Yes, another instance when she had to use what was technically a gun, but as Jon said, no way to avoid it!)

III. Traveling back to Nellis to give Loyal and Pearl the good news – Loyal was thrilled and said that he’d get their robots to head over and pack the plane up for transport back to Nellis (Jon said that you unfortunately never see this in the game, aw), while Pearl was touched and thanked P. D. profusely for helping them achieve their “greatest dream outside these walls,” declaring she was a most trusted friend and that the Boomers were at her disposal. P. D. promptly got them to agree to help her out during the eventual Hoover Dam fight, and left with her spoils, including her own Boomer jacket. :)

F) Returning to Crocker to let him know that the Boomers will help “us” (put in scare quotes because the Boomers are P. D.’s friends, and she doesn’t know yet if she’s backing the NCR in the final battle) – fortunately, he didn’t see the scare quotes and thanked her for all her hard work, rewarding her with caps –

And more importantly, enough XP to get her to Level 20! Jon promptly put her Medicine up to 60 and her Unarmed up to 96, then spent the last few minutes of the episode deciding if he wanted the “Ninja” perk (for its increased crit chance with melee and unarmed attacks, and 25% sneak attack damage), or the “Chemist” perk (which makes all chems last twice as long, meaning Turbo would start lasting for RIDICULOUS amounts of time). He ended up going with “Ninja,” unable to resist the increase to crit chance (even if it wasn’t calculated quite the same way as the description indicated – it’s not a flat +15% chance, it instead adds 15% of your modified score – working out to about 3% for P. D.), but indicated he’d almost certainly take “Chemist” on a future level-up. You’d better, Jon – P. D. needs to be ever drunker and more drugged up! XD

And so the episode ended with Jon stating that he was once again thinking about what P. D.’s next DLC adventure should be – popping into Lonesome Road? Maybe checking out Honest Hearts? He wasn’t sure yet. I guess we’ll find out what he decides next week! I am looking forward to it!

*nods* And there we have it! A tiny bit earlier than I've been wrapping things up the past few Sundays, no less. And now it's time for me to get to bed so I can get some sleep for my one day of work before Veteran's Day. *shakes head* Night all!

As in, I went to bed a little after 2 AM, woke up briefly at 7 AM to use the bathroom, then didn't wake up again until my parents left the house to go see if they could drop off some food to help those going hungry in our state (none of the points had any people at them, so they'll be taking it all to the food bank on Monday) -- which was right before 10 AM. *facepalm* I confess I needed the sleep, but getting up that late kinda threw off my plans for the day, as you shall see below:

Cleaning: Welp – I don’t know if the cleaning actually took up any more time than usual, but it certainly felt like it did because of the whole “waking up at 10 AM” thing. A late start means a late finish, after all! *sigh* Here’s how it broke down:

A) Started dusting around 11 AM, with a brief break after stripping my sheets to go downstairs and add them to the general laundry

B) Got called to lunch right after 1 PM, just as I reached my desk – so I didn’t quite finish my dusting before lunch, but I came close

C) Came back to finish the dusting at 1:45 PM-ish, then continued with the Swiffering and the vacuuming, which I finished up just before 2:30 PM

D) ...and then I realized my parents had probably forgotten the laundry again and went downstairs to grab it, which tacked on another ten minutes to the end of the cleaning session

So yeah – definitely took up more of my day than I wanted it to! I swear I used to be able to do this faster...eh. At least it’s done for another couple of weeks!

Writing: Edited the fic for the Day Five prompt, “Jewelry,” this afternoon after finishing my cleaning and catching up on everything online – this one was the Multiplayer Wonderland one, with everyone getting their new “marriage bracelets” and talking about how nice it was to have them (Emily saying she felt like she was part of a secret club, which Smiler pointed out they kinda were in), but also how they’d have to make sure neither the Everglots nor the Van Dorts ever saw them (the former because they’d sniff and call them ‘lower class;’ the latter because they’d know which bracelets they were replacing and Victor really did NOT feel like having another row with his mother about that). Sadly, I must report that this fic proved to be another one that was kind of difficult to edit – but at least this time, I can also say that it’s my own fault. Because partway through writing the opening scene, I realized “hang on, why do I have only Victor and Alice responsible for making the bracelets? That should have been a group project.” Meaning I had to rewrite the fic’s beginning to reflect my new idea that they all made a bracelet and then exchanged them at random (as per the fic, Emily’s wearing the one Victor made, Victoria the one Smiler made, and Alice the one Victoria made – I’m thinking Victor’s got the one Alice made, and Smiler the one Emily made). Once I was past that bit, it went a little smoother, though there was still a fair bit of stopping and pondering word choice. All worked out in the end, though!

FreeTube/Invidious: Welp, after finishing my cleaning so late, I felt like I didn’t have enough time to play either Fallout 4 or Baldur’s Gate III – especially given how much time it takes me to sum up the playsessions afterward – so I ended up pivoting to instead clear out my FreeTube subscriptions and watch everything that I’ve been wanting to watch! And I’m happy to report that I succeeded –

A) First, I caught up on my OXBoxtra videos, going through:

I. “Building the DEADLIEST PARK EVER in Jurassic World Evolution 3!” Andy, Ellen, and Mike playing the latest park-building game in the Jurassic World Evolution series, with Mike on the controls and Andy and Ellen offering suggestions and horrified asides as they sought to design the world’s worst Jurassic Park. Highlights of the video included:

a. The gang showing off some clips of an event they went to promoting the new game, with the four of them dressed up as various characters from the film series (Mike was Dr. Ian Malcolm, and he DID find himself a couch that he could lounge on to re-create the famous sexy pose from the original Jurassic Park XD)

b. The gang making absolutely sure that their dinosaurs were intelligent, uncomfortable, and prone to attacking guests at all times in the settings

c. The gang deciding to put their park on the “Jurassic coast” – in the United Kingdom. Because if you’re making the worst dinosaur park ever, you might as well subject the guests to British weather while you’re at it! XD

d. Andy IMMEDIATELY going “Margaritaville” when Mike asked what he should build first – and Mike obliging with the closest thing the game has, a “Sodaville” XD

e. Mike regularly plopping down buildings wherever and then building the world’s shittiest paths to connect them to everything else – Andy in particular could barely watch as Mike did a horrible pentagram-like path monstrosity around the innovation center XD

f. The gang breeding some Dilophosauruses to start (the ones with the frills on either side of their necks that can spit poison), and the dinos IMMEDIATELY escaping their enclosures and going to hunt the humans – which involved running them down and knocking them over so they ragdolled all over the shop; one Dilo actually knocked down a whole bunch of humans at once like a bowling ball (Mike explicitly compared the humans to nine-pins)

g. One of the dinos killing a politician, and the politician’s rival thinking it was a deliberate hit and giving them $2.5 million for it – Mike eagerly took the money (despite having unlimited funds already) while Andy was like “one of your dinosaurs committed a political assassination!” XD

h. Mike buying more dinos through the marketplace and just setting them free wherever in the park, leading to MULTIPLE fights and many dinos getting poisoned/murdered by the Dilos – which I guess meant fewer dinosaurs to attack the guests, at least XD

i. Mike taking a contract to build many toilets in his park, then completely forgetting about it until the game reminded him he didn’t have ANY toilets (then building just one)

j. Mike making sure to set up some extremely shitty rides for people to go on, including a jeep tour that didn’t go through any of the parts with dinosaurs in it (instead doing a loop through some barren fields just to the right of the main park), and the world’s shortest zipline right above the Compsognathus enclosure (which he deconstructed so he could put the zipline in)

k. Mike buying a random meat-eater from the dino marketplace and getting four Moros Intrepiduses – which were ABSOLUTELY TINY, to the point where Mike accused them of being a joke dinosaur and Andy said the biggest danger was from inhaling them XD

l. The gang buying ONE set of herbivores near the end of the video – a family of Muttaburrasauruses – simply because Mike wanted to buy the dino with the stupidest name XD

Yeah, you can probably tell that things were – chaotic. XD But they at least achieved the goal that they stated in the title of the video – if this isn’t the deadliest park ever in the Jurassic Park franchise, I will be VERY surprised. XD

II. “7 Villains Who Had a Point When You Think About It!” Ellen and Andy talking about those villains who, while still very villainous, actually had a good reason for going down the villain’s path! Or, at the very least, good intentions that proved to be quite misguided. Why is Chris Walker, horrifying musclebound noseless monster, hunting the protagonist in Mount Massive Asylum in Outlast? Because there’s an even MORE terrifying nanomachine ghost monster, the Wallrider, lurking around the place, and Chris has enough humanity left in him to try and prevent it from escaping – even if it means tearing off your head. Why is Seifer Almasy, dickhead rules bully, helping out the big bad sorceress in Final Fantasy VIII? Because he doesn’t REALIZE she’s the big bad – he’s just trying to live out his dream of being a brave and noble sorceress’s knight, helping her help the people! He’s simply an idiot who backed the wrong horse, and that’s why you have to fight him (well, that and his awful personality). Why is Joseph Seed, megalomaniac cult leader, whipping people into a frenzy about the upcoming apocalypse in Far Cry 5? Because there WAS an imminent nuclear strike on the horizon – one that hits at the very end of the game and forces you to flee to a bunker with him in the final minutes. ...Granted, one of the comments on the video indicates that it was Seed’s own followers that caused the explosion – getting their hands on some stolen nukes – soooo...maybe not such a good reason after all. And at any rate, he’s so smug at the end you don’t even give a shit that he’s right. :p

III. And “6 Times You Broke the Game by Being Too Good!” Jane and Andy talking about those (generally older) games that could straight-up break if you were too skilled at them and tripped over a bug. Did you manage to play through 255 levels of Pac-Man or 99 levels of Duck Hunt? Well, you’ve just caused an “integer overflow” error in the background thanks to how these games are coded, and will be presented with either a maze whose right half is entirely garbage code (Pac-Man) or a hunt consisting mostly of glitchy constantly-teleporting ducks (Duck Hunt). Did you manage to hit the button to resist the electrical torture by Ocelot in Metal Gear Solid super fast? Sorry – the game is going to interpret your impressive reflexes as using the autofire function and thus cheating, and kill Snake in response. Did you get an early lead in the final Canary Mary race in Banjo-Tooie? I’m afraid to tell you that bitch has the world’s worst rubber band AI and will soon shoot ahead of you, not to be overtaken. Games – sometimes, it pays to be not so good at them!

B) And second, I caught up on the latest from C. M. Alongi – “BookTalk: Monstrous!” A set of Tik-Toks featuring her books chatting about her (then-current, now-resolved) financial woes and the introduction of her next stand-alone self-published novel, Monstrous (currently being revised and posted to her Patreon chapter by chapter), to the group! In order, we had:

I. Heart Of Iron (HOI) telling the others about how Tik-Tok was slashing pay-outs to creators (with an interrupt from Future C. M. to let everyone know “actually, this has been resolved, they’re going back to the normal pay scale! But I will still be posting Monstrous chapters on my Patreon because why not”) – The Witch Who Trades With Death (TWWTWD) was quite disturbed and asked if there was anything they could do. Citadel (C) sadly informed her that, even if book sales increased overnight, C. M. wouldn’t be seeing the royalties for a while (especially from C and TWWTWD, as they were traditionally published and thus needed to cover her advance first). HOI complained about how this was putting a damper on their release (which was apparently really good – 3,000 physical copies in the first two weeks!), which prompted TWWTWD to ask about their book tour – HOI said that it was still going on, thanks to patrons on Patreon, but it was likely it would have to be shortened in some way. C added that it was likely this would have a major impact on C. M.’s ability to produce and release content if something wasn’t done –

And that’s when Blackwing (B) chimed in, asking HOI, “hey, your first draft was released chapter by chapter on Patreon, right? Like when she did Accidentally Kidnapped?” (Cue her future series Kingdom of Starlight poking its head in, only to be told “Sorry, no, you’re still on hiatus until one of the other series is done.” XD) TWWTWD saw what B was putting down and said that if C. M. had another stand-alone novel, she could start posting chapters from THAT to attract people! HOI was like “a good plan, but that requires her to have something already in the works that she could put up, so she wouldn’t have to take time away from the sequels she’s writing for me and C and B” –

And cue Monstrous stepping in and introducing herself! HOI was very surprised, while C was just like “C. M. ALWAYS has something in the works.” XD

II. TWWTWD squeeing over another stand-alone novel joining the family and eagerly introducing herself to a bemused Monstrous (M, who was not expecting such an enthusiastic handshake XD), followed by Monstrous introducing herself to the others, explaining she was a “young adult Ancient Greek myth retelling.” HOI was like “huh, for teenagers?” – M was like “eh” and explained that her main character ages from 17 to 19 over the course of the book, prompting C to be like “prepare yourself for some interesting marketing.” :p B then confirmed that M was a re-telling, not an epic fantasy just inspired by Greeks and Romans (like themselves) – M said that she’d best be classified as “historical fantasy,” as it took place on Earth in Ancient Greece, just with all the gods and monsters and legends real. HOI, who has a similar vibe, was like “we are gonna be besties.” XD TWWTWD then asked what myth M was, with everyone guessing things like “Hades & Persephone” and “The Odyssey” –

Cue M revealing that those were all overdone, and that she was a retelling of Eros and Psyche. Prompting a very confused B to be like “you’re a gods-damned romance?” XD

III. HOI wondering who Eros and Psyche even are, and M giving them the rundown of the myth (with TWWTWD picking it up at the end) – Eros (the personification of erotic desire and/or the son of Aphrodite) being instructed by Aphrodite to make Psyche (a beautiful mortal princess) fall in love with something horrible because she was so gorgeous people were worshiping her instead of Aphrodite; Eros instead falling in love with Psyche himself; and Aphrodite putting Psyche through four trials to tear them apart, only for Psyche to best them all and become a goddess herself so she and Eros could be together forever! TWWTWD considered it all very romantic –

Aaaand then C interjected some unfortunate realities by pointing out Psyche was at most fourteen, depressed and suicidal, and didn’t beat the trials so much as act so pitiful that everyone around her intervened to help and do the trials for her. As C put it, she was an early mix of “Disney princess and white girl tears.” M quickly said that C. M. had made some changes, which, good. *grimace* HOI, meanwhile, was much more interested in learning that Aphrodite was actually a villain in this book – along with Apollo. They were certain that that was going to piss people off, but M was unmoved, saying such people could bite her. XD

IV. B asking M about her title, noting that C. M. isn’t great at titles (TWWTWD noting that she was pretty sure her editor came up with hers), but figuring there had to be a reason for it, and M explaining that it was inspired by how, when you read the ACTUAL Ancient Greek myths, not just the child-friendly versions, you find that all of the deities are absolute freaking monsters. Add in Eros being called a monster by the other gods for the “Daphne situation” with Apollo (if I remember correctly, he turned Daphne into a tree to spare her Apollo’s attentions when she asked to be saved from the god, who she did NOT want to be with), despite them doing much worse things to mortals (C noting with disdain that it was always the people who question power and authority who are called the villains), and Eros and Psyche realizing that, despite their self-loathing (Eros) and attempts to be a good girl (Psyche), the only way to survive in this world that vilifies them is to become at least a bit monstrous, and...yeah. HOI got it totally, noting their characters are often horrifying to their enemies but sweethearts to their loved ones – M agreed, saying she too was going for that “tasty gray morality.” TWWTWD squeed that was great for a romance –

Prompting M to be like “eh, I’m not REALLY a romance – I have a romantic subplot, but it’s paced differently and the people involved get together at the halfway point. And there’s only off-page spice, to answer your next question.” TWWTWD was disappointed, while HOI was like “twinsies!” XD

V. And finally, B asking M why she was being self-published when she seemed like traditional publishing catnip – M explained that she’d originally been written for a traditional publisher, only for said publisher to ghost C. M. halfway through the rough draft. And when C. M. shopped her around to other publishers, all of them were like “the market’s over-saturated with Greek myth retellings” and rejected her. C was quite snide about this, going “so you’re going self-published because you couldn’t hack it in trad publishing?” but M shut that down real quick, saying it was because the trad publishers didn’t think they could make any money off her – which she considered very stupid, given how Greek myth retellings never go out of style. And then reminding C that the whole “financial woes from Tik-Tok” thing meant that it only made sense for her to be switched to a self-published book. HOI agreed and asked when her publication date was – M admitted she had no idea, as she was currently being rewritten, though her chapters would be going up on the Patreon for $2 patrons. HOI was like “$2?! I was available to the $1 tier,” but M explained that she was being polished into her SECOND draft, instead of going up as the initial rough draft like HOI, so it only made sense to put her chapters at a higher tier. And then said that, once she was ready for an editor and cover art, that there would probably be a Kickstarter to pay for it, before thanking HOI for making all the rookie mistakes and making her life easier. (HOI, through gritted teeth: “I’m so happy for you.” XD) B ended up guessing “late 2026, early 2027” for M to finally come out officially, with C pointing out that it might depend on when THEIR sequel, Demon’s Nest comes out – apparently the latest revision is due to the editor around Thanksgiving, meaning it’s likely to come out sometime next year. TWWTWD excitedly pointed out that that would be followed by the next Blackwing novellas, then HOI’s sequel Heart of Silver –

And HOI adding “and then we’ll get to deal with some other financial crisis!” Causing B to shush them, pointing out it was best not to think about that. XD

Lovely stuff as always! C. M. always makes fun videos, and I rather like these ones of the books/series talking to each other. They all have such distinct, fun personalities – and costumes! I love Citadel’s fancy vest, and The Witch Who Trades With Death’s poison dart frog shirt in particular – both items I’d wear if I could get my hands on ‘em! Ah well...wishing you luck with all the next books, C. M.!

Aaand I very much did not learn my lesson from this morning, as it's nearly 2 AM and I am not in bed. *shakehead* At least tomorrow there will be no clesaning to deal with...instead, my goals include doing some kind of drafting (or at least some reblogging) on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Portal and seeing if I can get that damned second radio in Chamber 15; doing the second draft of the gift fic due on Tuesday; getting in a workout and starting BTTF Part II with commentary; and watching the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode from Jon. Hopefully all achievable goals, even if I do end up waking up late again. Night all!

Hasn't been the best day for concentrating, but I have done my best and accomplished some stuff, as the daily write-up proves:

Work – I was back in the office for the final day of the workweek, and it was – well, kinda frustrating, not gonna lie:

A) I ended up spending most of the day working on the GL for 11/5/2025 because, one, there was a lot of credit card stuff that was posted on Wednesday that had to be matched up on the bank reconciliation report and the campaign summary, and two, there was some money moved from the 2025 Appeal’s one-time gifts into the payments on pledges – and I couldn’t figure out what it was so I could let our Fiscal department know. Because neither myself nor my coworker did any reversals on that day. O.o I tried to get the help of the database people, but that didn’t work out very well – they found one overpayment of the right amount that I determined was probably NOT the problem, then didn’t respond to me for the rest of the day. I ended up just writing a note saying “we’re looking into why that money was moved from one-time gifts into paycash” on the GL before scanning it and e-mailing it to Fiscal around 3 PM. *shakehead* I suspect the database people are just having some trouble figuring out what might have happened on THEIR end, but – eh. It was just annoying!

B) I also ended up “trading problems” with some of the people downstairs in the social services offices – one of them e-mailed me about a woman who’d called them saying she needed to update her credit card on her Appeal gift (I called her back and got that updated mid-morning, after realizing the GL would take longer than anticipated), and I e-mailed them back with a voicemail I’d gotten from a guy asking about heating oil assistance (after confirming with my coworker that WAS what he was asking about – he was a little hard to understand). And so the balance of the chancery is maintained. :P

C) I was surprised during lunch by someone from another office dropping off a check for us – like, would it kill you to knock on the door frame so I have some inkling someone’s coming in? *grumbles*

D) And my supervisor called me to ask me to get a file for him off the file-sharing site our database people use to send us reports AGAIN – I did it, but I swear, one of these days I am going to snap and ask why he can’t fucking do it himself. Like, is there genuinely a problem with his password or what??

So yeah – I was in a bit of a mood most of my workday thanks to all that. Though I should admit that most of the day wasn’t all that bad – in addition to the GL and that one credit card update, I also managed to fit in going over the latest overpayments with my coworker and futzing around with the obituaries I got from Wednesday’s paper, so at least I was somewhat productive. And the commutes in and back weren’t terrible – they weren’t GREAT, mind, but I’ve had much worse, so… Just glad it’s the weekend! Even if it is a cleaning weekend, meeeh.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, meaning it was my final night with my 25th Anniversary Back To The Future Blu-Ray special features! Tonight’s workout saw me pedal my way through:

A) The “Tales From The Future: Keeping Time” featurette, which was all about the music of the trilogy! Specifically, it covered Alan Silvestri and Bob Zemeckis coming up with the iconic score on the original film (deliberately going old school orchestra over anything rock-and-roll or synthesized); Huey Lewis being brought on board to both provide some songs for the film and do a cameo in Part I (he apparently really enjoyed playing the uptight judge); and ZZ Top being brought in to play part of the band at the festival in Part III (they apparently were really chill and enjoyed jamming with the other musicians between takes). Nice little featurette – if SURPRISINGLY short. I expected it to take up WAY more of my workout. O.o

B) “Back To The Future Night” in the “archived featurettes” – this was a special showing of BTTF on NBC in 1989, which featured some wrap-around segments with Leslie Nielsen introducing the movie and hosting a short documentary afterwards about the making of both the original movie and the-as-yet-to-be-released-at-that-time Part II. Yes, Leslie Nielsen – he admitted in the opening that it was weird for him to be hosting this given he had nothing to do with the movie, but insisted he was a “time travel aficionado” and that should be good enough. :p Even with the odd choice of host, though, it was interesting enough, featuring things like:

I. Various “sneak peeks” of Part II, including Hell Valley and the 2015 version of the town square (both in the movie and behind-the-scenes as Leslie wandered the set)

II. Bob Zemeckis’s infamous joke about hoverboards being real, just suppressed by parent groups (which actual parents took seriously, leading to Zemeckis getting calls about where they could buy the boards)

III. A fairly in-depth discussion of the make-up process the actors had to go through to become the older versions of their characters (it’s extremely long, but Michael J. Fox said it was worth it for the fun you could have with the character afterward, and Lea Thompson got to prank her mom with her original 47-year-old Lorraine makeup once :P)

IV. A discussion of how they transformed the back lot into Hill Valley’s town square (shooting all the 1955 stuff first, then wrecking it all for the 1985 stuff) – and how they then had to recreate all the 1955 stuff for the sequel (because doing a Part II where the characters interact with all the stuff from Part I sounds interesting, and it is, but it is also a lot of work!)

V. The special “for television” version of the original movie’s ending, where Marty asks if he and Jennifer became “jerks” instead of “assholes” (I don’t even know if they need that alternate shot anymore, given how times have changed :P)

Fun stuff! I imagine this was all extremely exciting for fans in 1989 looking forward to the sequel. :)

C) And – just to round things out – a couple of deleted scenes with commentary by Bob Gale! Specifically:

I. “Peanut Brittle,” where – after Biff leaves post-wrecking the McFly family car in the original 1985 – Marty attempts to get his dad to say “no” to someone for once in his life, only for a neighbor to show up with his kid selling peanut brittle and George to weakly agree to buy a case (Bob said that they decided they didn’t need the scene because George looked like enough of a total loser without it – though at least it explains where that peanut brittle he was eating during supper came from)

II. “Doc’s Personal Belongings,” where Doc rifles through his future self’s suitcase while Marty hooks the video camera up to his TV in the garage and is largely unimpressed with the stuff he finds – like a hairdryer and cotton underpants – until he hits the Playboy 1985 Doc packed (Bob said that they lost it because, while the gags were funny, it screwed up the pacing – and while it explained the hairdryer you can see tucked into Marty’s belt during the “Darth Vader From Planet Vulcan” sequence, they found that if the hairdryer didn’t show up here, most people didn’t notice it in that part, and given they cut the bit where Marty threatened George with it...yeah, no need to keep this scene!)

*nods* And there we have it! Next week, as previously stated, we start BTTF Part II! And if my calculations are correct, I should be able to swing it that I get to watch the redux of the clock tower scene at the end on November 12th. :) Fingers crossed!

2. Work on Valicer Polyship Week 2025 stuff: Check – edited the fic for Day Four’s prompt, “Meet The Family,” tonight! Which, as a refresher, is a Running Headlong Into The Bullshit (featuring the mega nine-person polycule) group chat fic, with Smiler telling the others (Victor, Alice, Victoria, Emily, Richard, Christopher, Preston, and Piper) about how their parents want to meet everyone else’s parents, and everyone’s reactions to said news. Ranging from “I AM NOT INFLICTING MY PARENTS ON YOURS” from Victor and Victoria, to “My actual parents are dead/missing but this parental figure would likely be fine with meeting them” from Alice and Piper, to “am I the only one with normal loving alive parents in this group” from poor Preston. XD (Fortunately Chris and Richard were able to reassure him that their parents were both decent and alive too.) Happily, this one did not fight me much in editing – though it is worth noting that this particular fic is a script fic of sorts (being set in a group chat, there’s no actions or anything – just usernames and what the people attached to them type), so it was also just easier to edit in general. Just had to tweak some of the wording and make sure I was getting everyone’s usernames right! But it’s good to have it in the can anyway. We’ll see if the remaining three prompts give me any trouble or not!

3. Watch something on FreeTube/Invidious: No check – it being Friday, it was Game Night tonight (BTTF-themed Yahtzee – I got two yahtzees and won three out of four games :D), meaning I got back on the computer after my workout too late to fit in a video – at least, if I wanted to do any writing. And writing/editing always takes priority! We’ll see what I’ll find to watch tomorrow.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – didn’t have anything to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and it was quiet over on Valice Multiverse again. Though I did give some belated congratulations on her wedding to my mutual poesdaughter on VLA(NS) when she posted about it. Counts for something, I suppose!

And now my distraction had made me stay up until about 2 AM again, so I'd better get to bed. Tomorrow is a Cleaning Saturday (though I don't have to wash my blankets or anything this time), so that'll take up my morning -- then, in the afternoon, I'll decide if I'm playing Fallout 4 and updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression, or Baldur's Gate III and updating another Polyship Week fic. And then find something to watch on FreeTube, as I do. *nods* We'll see what happens -- night all!