Ael

The weather was pretty good -- mostly sunny and in the 60s; Dad got a good report from the doctors today when he got his immunotherapy (the tumors have shrunk a lot...though he's got some shit going on with his neck that nobody can figure out, to everyone's frustration); and -- despite my period attempting to fuck with my brain -- I accomplished pretty much everything I wanted to get done:

Tumblr: Well, I technically had something going on on both my tumblrs today, but I wasn’t able to get to the ask over on Valice Multiverse in time – it’s just going to have to wait until tomorrow. However, over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I got some stuff done – specifically, I spent the time before lunch working on the “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 3” post in my drafts! Because, well, I’d like to finish it sometime this century. XD Today’s edits consisted of:

A) Revising the “Smiler tells Shadowheart never to tell Alice about Sharrans willingly giving up their memories in worship of their goddess” scene! Because when I watched a video showing off Shadowheart telling a Tav about Shar worship (mentioned way down below in the “YouTube” section), I discovered that Shadowheart never actually mentions Sharrans giving up their memories as worship, as I had her say in the original scene. The new version instead has Smiler spot the line about a Sharran Cleric willingly giving up her memories in the book “The Unclaimed” (which details how that same cleric was never actually claimed by Shar to join her in the afterlife when she died), ask Shadowheart about it – and, when she confirmed that some Sharrans do indeed wipe their minds as a sign of devotion, then telling her that Alice can never learn that or she’d try to kill Shar. :p (Honestly, I think we should let Alice have a crack at the goddess – badass as she is, she’d probably WIN.)

B) Writing up a scene where the Valicer trio smell something roasting in the tiefling camp, which Wyll confirms is rat – and getting super excited because they’ve missed a good rat skewer (with Alice admitting she’d started to think of Mr. Dibbler’s fare fondly). Cue an astonished Astarion being like “you ENJOY eating rat??” –

And Smiler telling him that rat is a pretty staple part of the Duskwallian diet, because “we don’t have these ‘cows’ you have, remember?” Astarion admitted he’d forgotten how weird their world was for a moment, and Alice told him, “If you think eating rat is weird, remind us to tell you about surprise loaf sometime.” XD I REALLY wanted to do a scene with the gang weirding at least one of the native BG3ers out with their love of eating rat, and this was the best way I could think of to do it! (Especially since I’m pretty sure Astarion in particular would associate having to eat – or, in his case, drink – rats with being at a low point in your life…)

C) Revising the scene where Victor ends up saving not only Mirkon, but Alice and Smiler (and the rest of the struggling party) from the Harpies’ song by unleashing his own Leviathan-summoning song on them – this one didn’t see any major changes, I just tweaked things to flow better and added in a few more lines to really sell that poor Victor was the only one who was fully unaffected by the Harpy’s magic music...and to emphasize how ANGRY he was when he decided to show the Harpies how it felt to have someone sing a deadly song at you. Because this is DEFINITELY set after he nearly got lured off a dock by a leviathan in my head. The scene ends on a funny note (with Gale asking Wyll if that was Hadar, and Wyll emphatically replying “NO IT WAS NOT”), but I can assure you Victor has a breakdown immediately afterward!

D) And making one small change to the “Smiler asks Wyll about false eye care” after confirming I’d gotten the one canonical Wyll line I slipped in wrong – he welcomes Tavs who got an eye surgery to the “League of the Lone Eye,” not the “League of the One Eye” like I originally wrote. Gotta keep things accurate!
So that was good! Still gotta write up the scene where Smiler discovers their Volo-granted false eye can see invisible creatures, and revise the one where Smiler tells the Emperor “we don’t need you to channel the power of the Netherstones – we have Us,” but some solid progress was made today, hooray.

...and I'm sorry, the rest of it is going to have to be posted tomorrow, because it is 1:45 AM here and I am tired. *shakehead* It's frustrating, sometimes, how long it takes to write everything up... Though I'm almost done with both the BG3 session (short version: Karlach recruited, but my poor sense of direction meant no Paladin fight) and the writing session (short version: Slugs taken care of, gang looking for final tripwire). Just didn't have time to finish them because I was trying to juggle other things too! At least my goals for tomorrow are simple -- clean my room and catch up on some videos I want to watch (including the OXBox list, that bartender making Nuka-Cola, and -- if it's up -- the next CaFae Latte compilation). Night all!

Yup, I haven't even started my long weekend yet and already I'm screwing up what day it is. XD It just feels like it should be a Friday, given I'm now off for the next four days! And I'm sure the period brain isn't helping in that regard... Anyway, yes, I have been struggling with the usual "extra grumpy" and "lack of concentration" that always comes with the red curse today, I'm sad to say -- my brain is just determined to be tired and annoyed and sad. But even with that, I have managed to accomplish some stuff:

Work – My final day at work this week was mostly centered around fixing stuff, with my main accomplishments of the day being:

A) Taking a phone call from one of the people I e-mailed about a credit card gift not going through and setting up her pledge with her on her new card (old one got hacked)

B) Matching up some more IDs to scans of pledge cards and in-pew forms and the like on the scanning app...which led to me finding a check stub from a parish with a listing of donors on it. And realizing what our processors had put on the parish record as a single anonymous one-time gift was in fact intended to cover gifts from multiple donors (presumably they had all given cash to the parish). *facepalm* To be fair, a portion of the gift was anonymous, two of the donors didn’t exist on our system, and one was under a different address and parish affiliation, but – still!

C) Informing my supervisor about both the above issue with the parish check and the issue I found the other day where the processors changed the name of the husband on a couple’s record because their son’s in-pew form got the wrong ID sticker put on it (this is the record that ALSO has a couple of online gifts from the original couple’s two kids applied to it thanks to all the online gifts using the same e-mail address, causing them all to be matched to the same ID number) – she thanked me for catching it all, which was nice, but I would have appreciated her saying she’d talk to our processors about it a bit more

D) Getting the check from Fiscal to send to the lady whose gift to the RI Food Bank was accidentally processed by us as a payment on her pledge and writing up a “hey, here’s what happened, we’re sorry, please accept this refund” letter go to with it...followed shortly thereafter by confirming to my coworker that we didn’t have anything to do with “Catholic Relief Services” as she discovered ANOTHER check made out to a different cause that our processors had put on as a CCA gift. *grumbles* We’re going to have to tell them “hey, please only process checks that are EXPLICITLY MADE OUT TO THE CCA,” aren’t we?

E) And doing a massive reversal batch to take the RI Food Bank gift off that lady’s record, split the parish check between all the donors mentioned on the check stub (after putting on the two that weren’t already on the system and updating the one that was at a different address and parish), and – having corrected the name of the husband on that record that got changed by our processors and set up proper records for the kids – moving all the gifts that didn’t belong to that original couple to their kids’ records so everyone got the proper credit. Yay!

*nods* I guess that was reasonably productive – especially given the whole “being on the red curse” thing. Still, glad I don’t have to put up any of it for the next four days!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: RACCOON CITY! GIANT SPIDER! FAMILIAR JERKASS? Episode 5!” Today’s chunklet contained –

A) Grace running around the lower level of the water treatment plant, trying to turn on the two remaining power distributors without getting got by The Girl! Which was much more difficult than it sounded, as the lower level was a very cramped space and The Girl was pretty much always where Grace needed to go. Didn’t help that when she got close to the second distributor, the game insisted on letting The Girl grab her by the head and toss her away in a cutscene! At least Jane was no longer scared of Grace getting got by The Girl thanks to Andy having gotten chomped by said Girl three times in the first six minutes of the episode. XD But with some careful hiding, some luck, and Andy breaking out the faux-David Attenborough voice during some of the sneaking (“Here we see The Girl in its native habitat, biting Grace on the head” [nearly walks into The Girl] “oh no!”), Grace was eventually able to maneuver around The Girl, turn on the other two power distributors (after getting the necessary extra handle for the third), and then get upstairs and open the roof hatch to the sunlight above, causing The Girl to melt into a pitiful pile of burned flesh. Now that should be the last of that particular stalker enemy! (Though you should never bet on that in a Resident Evil game – anyone else remember how many times it took to kill Jack Baker from RE7?)

( Sad child death stuff and horrifying spider stuff below – be warned! )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got over a page of edits done today, I’m happy to say. :) Today’s session covered:

A) The group reacting to the appearance of Slugs the Hull (so named because it was armed with a pair of slugger rifles), with Kasimir noting to Victor that he would have appreciated him leading with “oh, my parents have a Hull with a pair of slugger rifles down here” when he asked him about traps – Victor retorted that he’d been planning to tell Kasimir about it once they were past the pressure plates, like he’d asked. After all, he hadn’t know Kasimir would fall – he’d honestly been hoping they could just sneak past it! Alice, however, was on Kasimir’s side, saying she would have appreciated a warning about the Hull ready and willing to kill intruders earlier – Smiler quickly corrected her, explaining that slugger rifles were non-lethal, shooting compressed air instead of bullets. Kasimir confirmed that they were handy if you wanted to bring someone down without getting the Spirit Wardens involved – but that they could break bones if you were in range, and Slugs was going to be in range soon, so…

B) Barnaby telling the others it was fine, he’d just order Slugs to stand down – the Hull would never shoot him, he was too rich! Fortunately for his bones, Smiler grabbed his arm and towed him back, stating that he believed Barnaby was on the right track, but had the wrong person – after all, Slugs would be much more likely to listen to a command from a member of the family that owned it, right? Victor anxiously revealed that he’d never actually given Slugs a command before – the Hull had never been awake during his previous visits – but Alice pointed out he was still a Van Dort, and so it was worth a shot. Cue poor Victor nearly strangling himself with his tie and asking Alice not to put it like that. XD She quickly apologized and told him to speak to Slugs like she’d spoken to Abigail when telling her not to immediately rat on them to Bumby at Houndsditch – Victor noted that Abigail had still ratted them out to Bumby, but Alice countered that they’d still bought themselves some time, and after all, Slugs wasn’t a snotty little girl – she hoped, anyway. Victor confirmed that Slugs was almost certainly a condemned prisoner, like most other Hulls...then anxiously noted that the ghost inside felt weirdly flat – he could tell it was there and that was about it. Which, after so much time spent around other, more animate ghosts, really gave him the willies. (As it should, really.) Alice and Smiler said they could discuss the ethics of Hulls later – right, now, they really needed this one not to shoot them.

C) And Victor going up to Slugs, telling it that he was one of the owners of the vault and that the others were his guests, and ordering it to go back to its cupboard and leave them alone! Please. There was a tense moment where Slugs just stared at him –

And then it indicated it understood and turned to clomp back into its hidey-hole. Cue a relieved Victor slumping against the wall, while Smiler gave him a cheery “knew you could do it!” and Barnaby noted he hadn’t been quite forceful enough, but they’d get him used to ordering around the servants yet! Victor just said “thank you” because everything else going through his head was too rude. XD

Ahhh, good stuff. I do love writing my Valicer In The Dark stories – they’re so fun! Tomorrow, the gang goes to take on the final trap between them and the vault door – another nearly-invisible tripwire! Perhaps not as exciting as a Hull armed with compressed-air guns, but still. :p

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, if only because WeirdKev on tumblr shared the link to a YouTube Short with me to get my opinion on it: “The "Apocalypse" of 1910 | Weird Days in History” by Extra History! A one-minute video talking about how, in May of 1910, there was a bit of a panic when Earth passed through the tail of Haley’s Comet thanks to Camille Flammarion, a popular French science writer at the time. You see, Flammarion wrote a couple of articles musing about what might happen when Earth passed through the tail of the comet in late 1909 and early 1910 – and while most of his predictions were of the sober “this won’t be a big deal” sort, he did throw in a couple of wild speculations about the comet triggering a “chemical exchange” that would destroy Earth’s oxygen, or – when the comet was discovered to have cyanogen gas (“a cousin of cyanide,” as the narrator put it) – poisoning all life on earth. Unfortunately for him, the press naturally decided to spread around the wild speculations without actually noting that they were intended to be the worst case scenarios and unlikely to happen, leading to a not-insignificant number of people boarding up their houses to avoid the gas, defaulting on loans and refusing to plant crops because what was the point, and even in one case hiding in a cave. We even had the usual assholes taking advantage of the panic to sell useless “comet pills” to protect you from the gas and helmets to save you from falling objects. Naturally, nothing actually happened, and presumably everyone felt very silly afterward. Just a good object lesson in how, if you’re a famous figure a lot of people listen to, maybe temper your wild predictions about stuff like this just a tad! Or at least make sure the press doesn’t get a hold of them.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – there was nothing to do on Valice Multiverse again, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did manage to find a couple of things to fill out my queue for the week:

A) That text post by callagoo going “anyone else think the corpse bride should have ended with victor and victoria and emily as a poly couple” (and my tags saying “yup me”) for Friday

B) And a reblog of “Fan.tasia” (that incredible music video of mashed-up Disney movies to a song that itself was a mash-up of multiple other songs – if you haven’t seen it yet, treat yourself) from the depths of my “#song saturday” tag for Saturday!

So that was good. :)

Yeah, not bad -- though it all took longer than I wanted thanks to the damn period. *grumbles* Well, that's just gonna happen during this time of the month, I suppose...anyway, now that I've finally wrapped up all of these write-ups, it's time to consider going to bed. Tomorrow, main goals are to work a little more on at least one of my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; work some more on Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" play some Baldur's Gate III and finally freaking recruit Karlach; and get in a workout and finish that RE9 LP episode from OXBox! We'll see how I do -- night all!

Fortunately I was prepared for it when it showed up this afternoon -- having already put a pad in earlier because I kept getting warning signals from my body re: period. So no clothes ruining, yay. But the hormones did make me feel quite bitchy today, which was not fun. >( As for the day itself:

Work – It was a relatively quiet day in the office – which was good, given I was in the grips of the worst of my PMS and thus easily irritated by things. My personal workload consisted of the following:

A) Running the usual morning reports (along with taking a call from Fiscal about weirdness on one of them – which I didn’t know how to fix – and helping my coworker get the GL sorted)

B) Matching more ID numbers to scans of pledge cards so we could more easily look stuff up on the scanning app, and researching any weirdness I found along the way

C) Merging a duplicate I found and cleaning up some other records while I looked up stuff related to the record that had its name changed the other day (looks like the gifts for a whole family have been going on this one record, which is rather annoying)

D) Doing a few reversals at the end of the day – mostly applying gifts to pledges

Nothing too taxing! Though it was annoying to research some of this stuff, I must admit. And it looks like solving that issue of all the family’s gifts going on one account might have to involve making some new accounts and moving the gifts over there, which will be a pain...I’ll have to talk to my supervisor about it tomorrow. *sigh* One more day!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with the OXBox RE9 LP, as I work(out)ed my way through –

A) The second half of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: SHORTEST HELICOPTER RIDE! BURNING CHURCH! BLOOD GLOBE! Episode 4!” Which featured:

I. Grace exploring what actually turned out to be a quite nice house (I guess it was Dr. Gideon’s personal home on the grounds?) and stumbling across a living room with multiple objects to pick up and fiddle with while hunting for the helicopter key – notably, she was able to free an hourglass from its casing, which resulted in the gang waiting for a surprising amount of time to see if all the sand would fall through the little gap, and if there would be any secrets or achievements revealed as a result. No achievement, but there WAS a secret – “U = 380,000” on the inside of the top chamber! Jane obligingly wrote it down at Andy’s request. There was also a report from some mysterious entity telling Dr. Gideon “We’re happy that your experiment has reached Phase 4, but also your evil Care Center has been open a while and we’d like some results, especially regarding Elpis, so could you get a move on? We’ve managed to extend the deadline until 2040, but seriously” (I mean, it didn’t say it quite like that, but that was the gist :p) and a weird console/old-timey radio thing that, when fiddled with, revealed a metal sculpture of a strand of DNA with a chunk missing out of the middle! Andy attempted to fill it with the hourglass, but it just didn’t fit. Shame.

( As usual, quite a lot happened in the workout video )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got through another page today, which covered –

A) Kasimir falling on his bad knee after hooking his foot in one of the tiny cracks between the mosaic tiles, much like Victor did earlier – Smiler hurried forward to try and catch him, but unfortunately just got dragged down with him. Ouch. :( Victor and Smiler did their best to help him up afterward, at least, while Kasimir complained that Victor’s parents didn’t need all these traps in the hallway – they just needed to wait for potential thieves to trip and then tackle them. XD Victor had to admit, there was something to that. :p

B) Victor asking Kasimir if he was all right, and Kasimir stating that landing on his knee had hurt and that he was going to need a minute (while sitting down and stretching it) – cue Barnaby declaring that what Kasimir needed was a drink and offering him the gin, saying that it always made him feel better after a spill. Alice noted that was at least somewhat ironic, given that she was certain alcohol was responsible for most of Barnaby’s spills – Barnaby quipped that they did say the best remedy for that was “the hair of the dog,” causing Alice to go “that’s for hangovers, not falling over” –

And causing Barnaby to reveal he didn’t know what a hangover was. Smiler explained to him that it was a headache caused by stopping drinking, and Barnaby laughed and said that he never stopped drinking. Alice noted that he had to sleep at some point, but Barnaby cheerfully told her that he’d woken up at his personal bar plenty of times, having sleepwalked there and made himself a drink. Apparently he can mix a fine martini while unconscious! XD I want to stress that none of the hangover stuff was in the original draft – it just sort of happened. XD

C) And Victor telling the others that they might want to keep it down – Barnaby and Kasimir noted that the guards weren’t waking up anytime soon, and no one had discovered them yet, but Victor explained he wasn’t worried about the guards –

Just in time for a panel on the wall to slide away, revealing a Hull by the name of Slugs. So dubbed because he had two slugger rifles welded into his fists. Intended for use on intruders. Which he had just detected. Whoops. Tomorrow, the gang deals with the ghost-driven robot now ready to shoot them for their crimes! Exciting!

3. Watch something on YouTube: I suppose technical check, as I did watch some “research” stuff to keep character voices consistent in “The Van Dort Vacancy” – some clips of Barnaby and Kasimir from “The First Flight of The Sparrowhawk” that CaitlinRC had kindly compiled, and a clip of Victor practicing his vows in the woods. But nothing beyond that – certainly nothing just for fun! Meeeh...at least with a long weekend coming up I should have a BIT more time for that!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d intended to see if I could fill out the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue, but then I ran into some weird difficulties talking to my friend Squid on Discord (apparently there was some sort of behind-the-scenes refresh and NoScript started blocking something the page needed to function – took me a while to figure it out!) and that kind of took over the rest of my night. *sigh* Well, I’m good for tomorrow, at least – I’ll see if I can figure out Friday and Saturday later!

...yeah, not my best showing, but between the period and the weirdness with Discord... Meh. I'm heading to bed. Night all!

Yeah, like, it wasn't HORRIBLE -- traffic in particular was pretty damn good on my commutes, which I appreciated -- but my hormones acting up made me definitely bitchier than I normally would be. Waking up early because I was cold and couldn't find my pajama pants (I'd kicked them off because I was hot before, and they'd slid down past the end of my bed to get caught in my sheets -- took me ages to find them, with me being like "what the fuck, did they MELT or something?!" the whole time) didn't help either. So it's probably in my best interest to get to bed earlier tonight -- so let's get right into the write-up:

Work – Well, my first day back at work today ended up being, annoyingly, just busy enough that I couldn’t get to everything that I wanted to get to. Mostly because my coworker took the day off and thus I couldn’t get her help on anything (and my supervisor left early too!). My accomplishments for the day included:

A) Doing the GL – which ended up taking most of the morning as there was a LOT of credit card stuff uploaded on Friday, and also a check that had to be split between the Appeal and the Capital Campaign, which led to some weirdness about what paperwork needed to go in what pile *grumbles*

B) Putting on as many of the checks that came in the mail as possible – there were a couple of checks that needed my coworker to sign into a particular site or interpret a particular report that I had to set aside, plus one that just came in too late for me to process it

C) Putting on the latest batch of Easter Collection gifts, which also took a while as there were twenty-three of them and I had to get ID numbers for all the parishes and whatnot

D) Both taking and returning a few phone calls, leading to two credit card gifts, one parish update, one telling a lady what her balance on her Capital Campaign pledge was, and two returned calls that WOULD have been credit card gifts except one lady decided to fill out her pledge card instead and mail it in, and the other was in her car at the time I called her back and said she’d call back tomorrow. *shrug*

Yeah, it was the phone calls that were the problem – they kept coming in JUST often enough to break up my momentum on a couple of the bigger tasks, and prevent me from getting to the other thing I got today – a QC file for the next thank-you. Had to tell our processors I’ll get to it tomorrow. *shrug* Well, I guess I know what I’m doing Tuesday, then!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: LEON KICKS BUTT! ARTIFICIAL ORGANS! ZOMBIE MEATGRINDER? Episode 3!” The second half-hour of Part 3 of the OXBox RE9 LP featured –

A) Leon clearing out the bar and lounge no problem (the singing zombie there never even got the chance to scream at him), discovering the gun that Grace could have claimed just sitting on the bar (Andy was rather annoyed that he’d missed it, because he’d assumed it was in the safe), dismissing an antique coin on the piano as useless to him (to be fair, he sure as shit didn’t need to buy the drug to make his shooting better), then continuing his roaming through the halls of the Care Center, clearing out zombies and cracking open every warped cupboard door Andy could find for goodies and notes (including one about the pantry key on the chef – the gang was like “we did that already!”)

B) Leon, heading upstairs to try and find Dr. Gideon’s office, encountering a zombie who’d made a fucking giant bomb out of what looked to be some sort of gas container – Leon managed to explode him without being blown to smithereens himself, though it was rather a close call! Everyone was appropriately stunned and horrified by this turn of events...though the gang then discussing if that particular zombie had been a bomb technician and was just trying to do what he did in life did lighten the mood a bit. XD

( Insert the ‘It always gets long’ song here )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got in another page’s worth of edits today, featuring –

A) Kasimir being huffy about Victor not remembering where the pressure plate tiles were in the mosaic in the trap hallways, but Smiler insisting that there had to be a way to guess where they were, and getting down low for a look while asking Victor if he remembered at least where the tiles were supposed to be generally. Victor wracked his brain and said he recalled William telling him they alternated from the left side of the hall to the right and back, and that they were spaced far apart to lull thieves into a false sense of security – Smiler thus scooted over to the left side of the hall –

And spotted a white tile sticking up just a little further than the others! Alice came over to confirm that it was indeed slightly-out-of-place, and said that it was either their pressure plate or the result of a poor laying job. And as Victor confirmed his mother would have never tolerated the latter...well! Obvious answer was obvious.

B) Smiler heading to the other side of the hall and just managing to spot a green tile sticking up farther down – but being unable to spot the third tile, as it was just too far away. Kasimir noted they at least now knew what the problem tiles looked like, and how to avoid them, and said they should take this bit of floor low and slow so they could spot the third tile in time –

Before asking if they were ready to follow “an old professional at this sort of thing.” Alice agreed that, as a rank amateur, she was more than ready, adding that she knew she wouldn’t be able to rely on Rabbit to get her to the end – he’d be more concerned with getting there as quickly as possible. And then scolding Rabbit for giving her a look while Kasimir raised an eyebrow and Barnaby stepped back – Smiler quickly assured them that, yes, she hallucinates, but she knows they’re not real, so it’s fine. :p

C) The others in the group agreeing to follow Kasimir’s lead without a fight (Barnaby noting that he followed his servants around his mansion all the time, so…) and Kasimir loosening up his knee brace so he could lead the group Prowl action! He threw everyone a quick bit of advice (with Victor telling him to call him “Victor” instead of “Master Van Dort” during it, as he’s calling Kasimir by HIS first name and he doesn’t feel much like a Van Dort anymore), then set off, with Victor following in his wake, Smiler behind him, and Alice and Barnaby bringing up the rear. Cue Victor finding the silence rather unnerving, as it just reminded him of how careful and quiet they had to be not to bring the guards or anyone else running –

And then, after they passed the first pressure plate, cue his toe getting caught in a crack and nearly sending him toppling. Fortunately Smiler was close enough to grab him and haul him back – well, something close to upright, anyway. :p I left off there – tomorrow, they make it around the remaining two pressure plates – but not without poor Kasimir taking a bit of a spill, as he himself did not actually roll that well on the Prowl roll...good thing it was a group action and we take the highest result!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – I was hoping I’d have time for at least a Short, but alas, the Workout Write-Up bested me again. *grumbles* We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Monday, Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)-only day, no queue to worry about yet. At least I have a few ideas on what I can chuck in there tomorrow!

*nods* And there we have it -- all the most important parts of my day. And now I should wrap up and hit the sheets. At least I've only got three more days this week, then a long weekend! Night all!

The weather was a lot better -- sunny, and warmer than they said it was going to be (Mom claimed it got up into the low 70s!); Mom made cupcakes with cream inside (like Hostess cupcakes) for dessert; and I got pretty much everything that I was hoping to get done, done:

Tumblr: In a shocking twist, I actually got something done on BOTH my tumblrs today –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I had a slow start over here this morning (that will happen when you stay up nearly til 3 AM), but I still managed to accomplish two things of note:

A) I went back through my dash and added the following post by groovyfan-png to my drafts for later reblogging: “‘Do you insert yourself as the top/bottom of your favorite ship?’ No, I’m the cameraman” XD As I elaborated on in my tags, when I write saucier, more explicit stuff, I may like to write from a particular POV (for example, Victor’s as he’s having his brain melted by his loves), but I’m not inserting myself anywhere or into anyone’s position. I’m just there to watch and record and metaphorically quietly eat popcorn. :p

B) And I went back into my drafts and finished off my “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume VI” post! Lightly tweaking the scene I wrote yesterday – with Victor finding a ritual spell to enchant a bell to sound like the Spirit Bell that rings whenever someone dies in the city, inspired by the name of the D&D/BG3 cantrip “Toll The Dead” (with the actual name of the spell now revealed to be “Toll of the Dead,” as I thought that made a little more sense given what I established it does), and worrying over the fact that it’s supposed to paralyze all who hear it with dread – and finishing off the tags explaining what inspired all of the scenes. So that’s actually ready to be slotted into this week’s queue, if I so choose! Yay!

Valice Multiverse – And when I checked in on this tumblr tonight, after all my write-ups and such, I found an anon ask to slap into the queue for tomorrow! One noting “Kuei-Jin makes no sense unless you speak Chinese and Japanese. It's like naming a supernatural creature from South America, Diablo-Pessoa” Kuei-Jin being the name of the “vampires of the East” (which were a pretty racist mismash of various mythologies, as I understand it – they’ve been quietly deleted from the WoD as of V5) that were in the World of Darkness back when Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines was a thing, I naturally had my Londerland Bloodlines!Alice respond that she was aware that the Kuei-Jin didn’t actually like to be called that by Westerners (or even called vampires in general, as they considered themselves much different creatures with just a few superficial similarities to Western vampires), and theorized that whichever Kindred first met one of them just threw a couple of words that they thought described them well together, without even considering if they came from the same language or not. Because, of course, Asia is a monolith and verifying what country they came from would have been too much work. *sigh* Yeah, writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Chinatown’s Mysterious East” is gonna be interesting...

Portal 2: Played another half-hour of this today, which saw Chell and Wheatley make their way through the Aperture Science Daycare facility, look at a bunch of potato batteries, make their way to the neurotoxin generator, disable it with the power of portals, and finally go on a ride through the pneumatic tube system that carries everything through the facility before getting separated thanks to the power of “cubes going in another direction through an intersection.” :p More details and a surprising amount of screenshots below –

A) I picked up where I left off the last time I played, preparing to make my way to the neurotoxin generator through the daycare under Wheatley’s guidance. Having exhausted his dialogue at the end of the last session, I was prepared to get a move on, and so began walking down the hallway I found myself –

Only to notice that Wheatley wasn’t rushing off to stay ahead of me, or even trying to follow me – just staring at me. Puzzled, I came back and confirmed there was no way to go in the other direction (nope – hallway ended at a railing that looked onto complete and utter darkness), then went back and forth a bit, even jumping a few times to elicit a response. Nothing – he just stayed where he was, watching Chell expectantly. Slightly concerned that my game might have bugged out, I decided to try going all the way to the end of the hallway and around the corner –

And found another dead end leading into a wall. Now rather more confused, I was like, “hang on a second – where am I supposed to go? Isn’t Wheatley supposed to be leading me through this bit like he always does? Okay, let’s try stepping into this office, because it really is the only place I can go–”

“...ah. Now he’s moved.”

Yup, sure enough, this turned out to just be another total brain fart moment on my part – I’d thought that I’d be following Wheatley, but as it turned out, for this section HE had to follow CHELL. Apparently his management rail just plain doesn’t go through the day care area! All right, fair enough, that one was all me. Again, I haven’t played this game in years – cut me a bit of slack. :P

( Don’t worry, I’m much more competent in the rest of the description )

Writing: I was indeed able to sneak in some editing time on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” right before my workout today! Got through another page, which featured –

A) Barnaby stepping over the tripwire Victor found at the end of the last editing session (hitching up his coat as suggested, since his coat is one of the things he does care about) and urging Kasimir to hurry up, as he was the one in such a rush to get to the vault; Kasimir coolly reminded him that getting over the wire was a bit more difficult for him, with a significant tap on his brace with his cane. Smiler offered Kasimir a hand, but Kasimir assured them he had it, and indeed made it over without assistance (though Victor and Smiler were prepared to grab him if he fell). His knee brace did creak alarmingly loudly, though – he noted that he’d have to oil it, then gave Barnaby a look as he added he could have done it earlier if they’d had the money. Barnaby responded that Kasimir needed to learn to be less uptight. :p

B) Alice coolly informing Barnaby that poor people had a lot more to be “uptight” about, as they couldn’t throw money about like his lot – Barnaby actually gave that to her, admitting that all that hard work they do would make them cranky. And reiterating his position that the world of work is not for him from “The Ironhook Bounty.” Alice was like “at least you’re willing to admit it,” then asked if they were going to do anything about the guards – Kasimir told her no, since there was no easy way to hide them. Better to just get into the vault and get the goods. Smiler agreed, noting that if anyone did find the passed-out Steven and Alan, they would still need a few minutes to then locate someone to tell (the Van Dorts, the guards, even Mrs. Pemberly), which worked in their favor – then, because they ARE an Advocate, they quickly adjusted Steven and Alan’s positions so they’d be a little more comfortable on the floor. XD Gotta maximize happiness in any way possible!

C) Kasimir telling Smiler that he’d be a lot happier if Victor, Alice, and Smiler stepped over that tripwire into the hallway already – and if Victor told him what the next trap was. Victor explained that they were actually facing the next three traps and directed everyone’s attention to the fancy mosaic on the floor, explaining that it wasn’t just for show – three of the tiles in it were actually pressure plates. Two of which caused darts tipped with slumber essence to shoot out of the wall, and one of which dropped a load of flashbang grenades from the ceiling. Smiler was like “surely one flashbang would do the job?” – Victor reminded them that his mother was prone to excess. XD Alice noted it was lucky they hadn’t tripped any of the traps yet and asked Victor what the tiles looked like –

Aaand Victor had to admit he didn’t remember. As it had been a while since he’d been down here last. ^^; That’s where I left things – tomorrow, the group tries to find the tricky tiles – and thanks to Smiler’s keen eyes, locates the first two. The third, well, they’ll just have to hope they see that one before someone steps on it...

Workout: Back on the bike this week – but NOT back with Jon of Many A True Nerd’s F:NV YOLO Remastered series! Instead, I ended up pedaling my way through the following –

A) “Fallout New Vegas - Must Be Some Frontal Lobe Damage” by Jon! A very short video with Jon explaining why there’s no YOLO Remastered video this week over some footage of the Courier from F:NV waking up in Doc Mitchell’s house. Simply put, our favorite Fallout guy is sick – bad cold that he’s having trouble shaking – resulting in his voice going out periodically and massive coughing fits and whatnot. And while that didn’t prevent him from releasing more episodes of his ongoing Baldur’s Gate III LP (because all of those videos are recorded weeks in advance so Jon can avoid the specter of Spoiler Comments) or his two one-shot videos (as he deliberately picked stuff where, if necessary, he could pause the game to cough and then remove said coughing in editing) earlier this week, it did stop him from doing the YOLO Remastered video tonight. Because, well, he can’t use the same editing tricks in the YOLO Remastered episode as he could in his one-shot videos. Simply put, he didn’t want to ruin a tense moment by having to pause and cough. So yeah – no P. D. Shoot this week. Shame, but we want Jon to be on his A Game when he takes on the final few episodes anyway, so better that he takes this week off than not. *nods* Feel better soon, Jon!

B) And the first-half hour of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: LEON KICKS BUTT! ARTIFICIAL ORGANS! ZOMBIE MEATGRINDER? Episode 3” by OXBox! Yeah, since F:NV YOLO Remastered wasn’t on the menu tonight, I figured I’d continue with the OXBox RE9 LP instead! And things remained fairly chaotic in the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center, let me tell you, with tonight’s chunklet featuring:

I. Grace slotting her newly-acquired Sun Quartz into the door in the lobby that only opens if you stick three quartz cubes in it (because Resident Evil), then – after a quick trip to the West Wing to buy the Drug That Makes You Shoot Better from the gambling room – heading back to that “organless corpse” (which Mike commented would be a great name for a metal band) in the East Wing and – after murdering a bunch of zombies in there (including one that had learned how to play dead, which is concerning) – slotting the artificial heart and lungs into its chest! It immediately came back to life and started thrashing around trying to kill her (and attracting one of the nearby zombie maids to come in and do the same), making Jane wonder why the hell they’d even done that. Turns out it was to acquire a Level II wristband, allowing them to finally get into the Isolation Ward! And, uh, nowhere else. Which was a little odd – you think they would have provided one Level II goodies cupboard.

II. After a quick run back to the main lobby to regroup (because it was getting worryingly noisy in the East Wing – which Mike found funny because the entrance area had a sign declaring the space a “quiet zone”), Grace working her way around both regular zombies and the Giant Zombie Baby Man wandering the East Wing to find her way into the Isolation Ward! Which consisted mainly of a lot of ominous red lighting, a report from a nurse on her time monitoring Subject 171 (a strange emotionless child who kind of creeped her out, and who the security manager once badgered about blood for some reason), and the Security Manager’s office! Which in turn contained one very dead security manager, wearing a Level III wristband, and another one of those slot machine safe things, this one containing the last precious Star Quartz cube Grace needed. However, Grace’s attempt to get this last quartz so she could get through the Quartz Door and maybe leave this place was stymied by the fact that the buttons on the machine were so worn and scratched she couldn’t see which symbol was which. However, the braille on the buttons was still visible – and that, combined with finding a photo of two girls that looked just like the creepy monochrome blind child she’d met in the Magneto Prison downstairs on the security manager’s desk, made Grace realize that her only chance to get the quartz was to get said creepy monochrome blind child and see if she could read the braille. (Mike attempted to tell her to Google it, but then they all remembered that for some reason Grace does not seem to own a smartphone. :P I mean, granted, even if she had had one at the beginning of the game, she wouldn’t have it NOW as Gideon’s prisoner, but still.)

III. Grace taking the security manager’s wristband and – after working her way past some zombies (and getting chomped by one thanks to Andy making an ill-advised dash past it) – going back to the Magneto Prison to get the creepy monochrome blind child to read the buttons on the slot machine safe for her! Said creepy monochrome blind child proved to be named Emily, and was willing to help out Grace, even if she did clearly find this new lady to be very weird. (Grace being a stammering mess barely willing to explain anything to her didn’t help, I think.) After realizing that Emily could hurt herself on the steps leading out of her prison, Grace ended up carrying her to their destination –

Which turned out to be a real pain in the ass for poor Andy, as carrying Emily meant that poor Grace could hold neither a weapon nor her flashlight. And the local zombies were only too happy to take advantage of that fact! Fortunately, Grace was able to get away from the two in the “organless corpse” room that started turning into Blisterheads and only took one nasty chomp to the back before making it back to the isolation ward and putting Emily to work solving the puzzle in the security manager’s room.

IV. Grace then defending the office from the various zombies that wandered into the Isolation Ward so Emily could solve the puzzle! Including the security manager himself, who inconveniently turned into a Blisterhead at one point, forcing Andy to run around the ward in circles trying to avoid him. Fortunately, it wasn’t long after this that Emily yelled to Grace that she’d done it – and upon returning to the office, she discovered that Emily had indeed gotten her the Star Quartz she needed for the door!

...Naturally, this was immediately followed by the office’s back wall exploding. And Emily, still clutching the quartz cube, being snatched up by none other than the Bug-Eyed Lady who’d been pursuing Grace back in Episode 1! Jane knew she wasn’t dead! The Bug-Eyed Lady then dragged Emily off (with all the OXBoxers yelling after her to “leave the crystal!”), and Grace –

Well, okay, Grace first went back into the Isolation Ward because Andy hadn’t smashed all the goodie boxes in there yet. But then she followed the monster through the hole in the wall over to a big old hole in the floor, where – after deciding this was all her fault (“don’t give yourself too much credit, Grace – it’s at least partially your boss’s fault,” said Jane) and that she couldn’t just leave her – Grace went ahead and jumped into the horror hole. Meaning her next level will probably be the inevitable Sewer Level, euch. Poor Grace.

V. The game answering Jane’s prayers by swapping back over to Leon, who was tied up in the attic of the Care Center preparing to undergo an interrogation by Dr. Gideon! (I don’t like calling him “Victor,” that’s my blorbo’s name.) Leon stayed mostly quiet throughout Dr. Gideon’s attempts to make him talk, throwing out the occasional quip (making the OXBoxers cheer every time) and generally remaining stoic as Dr. Gideon creepily played with his hair and lightly scratched his throat with a scalpel (with Jane openly wondering if they told the doctor’s voice actor – Antony Byrne – that he was going to look like the most disturbing man alive, as he was playing things REALLY suave; I think that’s supposed to be A Deliberate Contrast, Jane) –

And then, after Dr. Gideon made the mistake of turning away from him to start rambling on about human evolution, Leon cut his bonds with a tiny knife hidden in his belt and roundhouse-kicked the guy a few times, forcing him to flee. Everyone was beyond thrilled to see it. :D Unfortunately, Dr. Gideon did get away thanks to a combination of Leon pausing to grab his gun from a side table and struggling a bit from the pain from his neck wound, but, well, it wouldn’t be an RE game if the protagonist, even Leon, could kill the main baddie right away. :p

VI. Leon then exploring the attic, looking for a way out so he could get to Dr. Gideon’s office – and coming across the twin of the Giant Zombie Baby Man! Because, as it turns out, the Giant Zombie Baby Men were a pair of brothers (Thomas and Timothy Jackson, “Tweedle-Tom and Tweedle-Tim” as per Mike) who had the “satiety centers” of their brains suppressed, meaning they like to constantly eat. And unfortunately for Leon, he was stuck with the one who had a particular desire for chomping on human flesh. Fortunately, the game did give Leon a nice shotgun when he first encountered Tweedle-Tim (who was nomming on the former owner at the time), and Leon being Leon, he kicked butt with both that and an axe he happened to have on him, slamming Tweedle-Tim in the head three times with the latter (once with a cool leap from a high platform – the OXBox team was VERY impressed) to finally kill him. Mike, Jane, and Andy were all like, “You see, Grace? You see how easy that was for Leon?” XD Oh man, they are so mean to the new girl...but on the other hand, it IS very hard to measure up to Leon. :p

Good stuff! I left it with Leon claiming some goodies from a cupboard (prying it open with his little hatchet and his beautiful, beautiful biceps), then heading down into Moon Quartz suite (otherwise known as the chairman’s office...I THINK, I don’t actually remember. ^^;), and Andy preparing to use the Power of Leon to finally clear out the bar and lounge. Tomorrow, we’ll see how Leon handles all these zombie menaces (including the second screechy zombie singer) and where his path through the Care Center will take him! At least we know he’ll have the skills to take out any zombies that threaten him – Blisterheads, look out!

YouTube: Had time for one quick YouTube Short after finishing up the Workout Write-Up above – “The Best Caravan Tutorial for Fallout New Vegas #fallout” by TheFalloutFamily! A quick look at how one plays the Caravan minigame in Fallout: New Vegas, which is a card game where you and your opponent each have three stacks of cards, and the goal is to get the value of said stacks between 21 and 26 (inclusive). Whoever has at least two out of three stacks in the correct value range without tying the other player with any of them wins. I’ve only played this once in my own game, with good old Ringo back in Goodsprings, and failed horribly because I didn’t quite understand what I was supposed to do. This tutorial explained things pretty simply and clearly, though. The three main takeaways were as follows –

A) You have to build all of your stacks sequentially, so you always want to start a stack with either your lowest-value number card (so you can build up) or your highest-value one (so you can build down)

B) When it comes to the face cards, remember that Kings double the value of the card you place it on (so, in the first example round, putting a King on an 8 made it a 16, bringing the value of the stack it was on straight up to 22); Jokers remove every card of the same value as the one they’re placed on from the board except the one they’re physically on (so placing it on an 8 in one of his stacks in the second example round made his opponent have to discard the two 8s he had on HIS side); and Jacks remove any card that they’re placed on (kind of the opposite of the Joker – and if you put it on a card at the beginning of a stack, the ENTIRE STACK has to go)

C) The big one – YOU CAN PLAY FACE CARDS ON YOUR OPPONENT’S STACKS. Yeah, apparently this is entirely legal for you to do! The reason Fallout Family won the second round was because they were able to use a Jack to remove one of their opponent’s stacks from the board (by putting it on the very first card in his stack, forcing him to discard the whole thing), then a King to increase another stack past the 26-point limit, breaking a tie between the middle two columns! I did not realize that you could manipulate your opponent’s stacks that way! That changes everything! O.O

So yeah – I don’t know when the next opportunity Victor will have to play Caravan will be, but once I stumble across one, I might actually try it out again, now that I know more about what I’m doing. Maybe Victor could actually WIN a game for once. :p

Not too shabby at all, honestly! And it's not even that late right now, so I'm gonna head out and head to bed and see if I can get a tiny bit more sleep than usual. *nods* Night all!

Yeah, it was a touch on the cold side today -- I think temps were in the mid-50s for a high. Definitely hoodie-and-wrapping-up-in-a-blanket weather, at least for me! But I managed to stay warm and have a decently-productive day, doing all the things I most wanted to do:

Tumblr: Valice Multiverse was dead again (who is surprised), but I did manage to get a couple of things done over in the drafts of Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) before lunch –

A) First, I added a couple of ideas for more scenes to my draft of “Valicer In The Dark Meets Baldur’s Gate III Not-Incorrect Quotes/Shitpost Collection Volume 3” after counting the number of scenes in my previous two sets, and realizing that I had nine and eight scenes in Volumes 1 & 2 respectively, but only six in the current draft of Volume 3. Fortunately, I already had two ideas for new scenes ready to go on a scrap of paper on my desk (I’d thought I’d be saving them for another volume, but apparently not):

I. One where my Valicer trio discover someone selling fried rat skewers and end up really excited, because finally, a taste of home! With the regular BG3 cast being a little ??? because okay, fine, rat is edible, but you shouldn’t be THAT excited about it

II. And one where the gang are preparing for a fight, and Smiler points out an enemy...only to realize no one else can see it; cue them discovering they can see invisible creatures thanks to their Ersatz Eye from Volo, and Alice disapproving of Smiler getting a BENEFIT from letting Volo poke their eye out. XD

*nods* Fun ideas, right? Honestly, I would have written them all out, but unfortunately I ended up spending way too much time trying to figure out where the gang might encounter an enemy that’s invisible that wasn’t in Act 3 (Ethel apparently goes invisible during your fights against her, but I don’t know if they’d fight her after the surgery...though I guess it’s not impossible…), or where they might find rat skewers (apparently they just randomly show up in trader inventories and in the world – I’ll probably have it happen during a visit to the Goblin Camp, they seem like they’d eat rat on the regular). Maybe tomorrow, we’ll see… Oh, and I did update the scene where Wyll gives Smiler false eye care tips in the wake of the Volo surgery with his “welcome to the League of the Lost Eye” line, because it’s a fun line and deserved to be included. :)

B) And second, I wrote up a new scene for the “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume VI” post! Inspired by a thought I had the other night – namely, that “Toll The Dead”, a necromancy cantrip from Baldur’s Gate III that causes necrotic damage to foes (doing more damage if they’re already wounded), sounds like the name of a ritual spell you’d find in Blades In The Dark. Cue the creation of a scene where Alice and Smiler go up to the tower library to summon Victor for lunch, only to find him studying a scroll. Victor explains that it’s a ritual he found in the collection that enchants an ordinary bell to sound like the spirit bell that rings when someone dies – ringing it is supposed to paralyze all that hear it with dread. Alice admits it sounds like it would be good for helping prevent fights, but worries that it might attract the attention of the deathseeker crows – Victor agrees, then confesses he’s more concerned by the fact that the spell apparently affects ALL who hear it. Smiler insists that “surely at least the CASTER would be immune” but Victor is adamant that if he gives it a go, he’s making sure everyone carries earplugs. :P So that was fun – and I might just try to turn that into a proper ritual at some point for Victor to actually use in the stories! We’ll see...

Fallout: New Vegas: I did indeed return to the Mojave for about an hour today – and while it wasn’t via the route I expected, I did manage to get Victor into Primm without having to brave the NCR’s bomb bridge! :D Though he then proceeded to have a BIT of a tough time with the, uh, new “locals” hanging around the place – let me tell you all about it –

A) I naturally picked up where I left off last time, with Victor lurking under a honey mesquite tree not far from the fence around Primm, thinking that he’d found a good way to get into the town without having to worry about any mines – namely, up and over what looked like some sort of natural ramp next to the fence nearby! Destination thus in mind, I had him start creeping forward, toward a couple of rocks looming out of the landscape before him, VATS-scanning for trouble all the while –

Which proved to be a smart move because, as Victor got closer to the rocks, VATS picked up on an escaped convict patrolling the bit of rollercoaster track that looped around closest to the fence! Fortunately, said convict was too far away to detect Victor in turn. Victor quickly hid behind the rocks to make sure there would be no line of sight, then carefully and slooooowly crept around the side and up to the edge of the fence as the convict continued his patrol around the loop of the track and back toward the Bison Steve. Once he was there, I took note of three important things:

I. There was a big valley in the ground running roughly perpendicular to the fence, which would be inconvenient to fall in but perhaps useful for escaping any convicts lurking around that happened to notice him

II. One of the fence sections (which mostly consisted of tall metal spikes separated here and there by big old brick pillars) was bent a little at the top, probably by time and weather – unfortunately, there were no gaps that Victor to squeeze through

III. ...And I could no longer see the “ramp” up and over the fence that I’d seen before. Because while the landscape near the fence did consist of a lot of dips and hills and such (see the aforementioned valley), none of the hills were actually pressed up against the fence. Apparently what I’d seen last time was just a trick of perspective. *grumbles* Figures, right? I was so certain I’d found a side entrance…

( Cutting here because we know these get long )

YouTube: Well – in a curious twist, despite C. M. Alongi now being off her CaFae Latte hiatus, she did not upload a compilation of the latest shorts today! Looks like another video from one of her other series, Cafae Talks, took priority. *shrug* So instead I turned to the OXBoxtra gang for my nightly entertainment, watching –

A) “7 Best Games for Pranking NPCs” by OXBox! Jane and Mike going through those games that allow you to be amusingly cruel to the non-player characters living in the simulation. Just want to fire banana skins at everyone and watch them slip over? Pick up The Last Story, get the “prank banana” ammunition for the hero’s crossbow, and start slapping everyone in the body part of your choice! Wish to make NPCs kiss with the power of grappling hook tethers, or fly with the power of rocket booster mines? Grab Just Cause 3 and reveal in your ability to forcibly create both relationships and human birds! Want to give the NPCs in Hitman World of Assassination games a scare while discovering which of them actually enjoy it when you choke them out? Have 47 slip an arm under their chins, then refuse to tap (X) to subdue to hear what they have to say as they struggle! And wondering if you can combine pranks with tactical espionage in Metal Gear 3: Snake Eater? You sure can – tranq a snake, box it up, then fling it at a guard to cause both distraction and hilarity! And death, if it happened to be a venomous snake. :p Basically, if you’re looking for laughs at an NPC’s expense, these games are the way to go! Let us hope they never find a way to pay us back… (Well, okay, the guy telling 47 that he was enjoying being choked probably did get him back, judging by the look on 47’s face when he heard that tidbit.) XD

B) And “HARD MODE Who's That Pokemon?” by OXtra! Ellen putting Jane and Mike to the test to see if they could identify any Pokémon that weren’t the original 150 from the now over a THOUSAND out there! The pair were given first the standard “Who’s That Pokémon?” silhouette, then the image of the Pokémon itself as Ellen gave them its number in the Pokédex and some pertinent facts. The scoring system was supposed to be “two points if you can identify it by the silhouette, one if you can identify it after seeing it and hearing the facts,” but it rapidly turned into “however many points you can weedle out of Ellen for getting anywhere near right.” XD There were ten Pokémon to identify – how did they do?

Not bad – mostly because Ellen WAS pretty generous with the points. :p In order, we had:

I. A squid-like Pokémon with two long tentacles with rounded balls on the end, who was very curious but often investigated things by punching them – Mike guessed it was “Boxtopus,” while Jane went with “Squidoo.” They eventually gave up and decided to let this one be the practice round, causing Ellen to reveal the Pokémon was “Clobbopus.” No points, and Mike insisted his name was better (which, frankly, it was).

( Ten Pokémon is a lot in this case, so let’s have a cut )

*nods* I'm pretty satisfied with that, yeah. And now it is time for me to go to bed, as I have stayed up entirely too late reading stuff on TV Tropes again. XD Tomorrow, I hope to work some more on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; play some Portal 2 (gotta get the neurotoxin disabled); continue working on Chapter 5 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and watch the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode from Jon (who HOPEFULLY will have it up in time for my workout -- fingers crossed). Night all!

Though I suspect that's partly because I think the PMS is starting to come on me again -- I AM expecting my period to show up sometime next week, so... I was definitely bitchier and more wound up today, that's for sure! *sigh* I hate my hormones, I really do...anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – Well, it started as a fairly quiet and boring Friday – with me doing a rather short GL and that memo to the lady who needs a refund for her Food Bank check, followed by more checking on people’s 2025 Appeal pledges and more matching ID numbers to pledge scans, along with a couple of credit card calls – but then my coworker started asking for my help in looking up certain gifts, and it quickly became a stressful “oh great the credit card company keeps fucking up” kind of day. Long story short, there were three gifts that had been assigned to the wrong person – two because said person shared an e-mail address with the actual donor (it looked like in both cases a child helping a parent make a gift), one for mysterious reasons we’re not sure of (I e-mailed the credit card company about that one – they said they’d get back to us quickly, but yeah, I don’t believe that). For a minute, it looked like there was a fourth, but fortunately that one turned out be one person with two different records. *grumbles* God, I hate our credit card company, I really do… Anyway, between that, someone calling incessantly at the very end of my lunch break (and then not even leaving a message!), and the hormones I mentioned above, it wasn’t a very pleasant day at work in the end. Not HORRIBLE, but – not great. And nearly getting sideswiped by a tractor trailer on the way home didn’t help (started merging into a lane at the same time I did, forcing me to jerk back into my original one). *sigh* At least it’s the weekend now – and a non-cleaning one at that, yay~ I will take it.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through –

A) The second half of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: ZOMBIE CHEF! ZOMBIE SINGER! ZOMBIE BABY? | Episode 2!” Which featured more of Grace navigating the horrible horrible corridors of Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center! And I really don’t want to spend as long as I did yesterday summing up what happened in the LP, so let me see if I can keep it a bit snappier this time around by focusing on what Grace found in this portion of the video –

I. Grace found a blood lab! Complete with a blood collector that could gather infected blood and turn it into crafting materials (Jane was dubious, saying it looked more like a vape), a big old bucket of blood to collect blood from (Jane was grossed out, asking if that’s why there were buckets of blood all over the place and noting it was “chunky blood,” like orange juice with the pulp in), and an analyzer for analyzing blood samples and turning them into crafting recipes (once you played a strange atom-based mini-game – Jane: “are you analyzing blood on the ATOMIC level?” Andy: “everyone stop asking difficult questions about Resident Evil”). There were also doctors wandering around the nearby hallways with big old bonesaws for some reason – Jane was baffled as to why they had those in the clinic, asking if anyone’s chronic condition was “having too many limbs.” XD

( This will probably get long anyway, so let’s put in a cut )

B) And, to fill out the final minute-and-a-half of my workout (though it ended up being longer than that, ironically), “A Hidden Weapon that Fallout New Vegas Players are Missing! #falloutnewvegas #fnv” by The Fallout Family! A YouTube Short talking about a unique weapon in Fallout: New Vegas that they’re pretty sure everyone misses – mostly because it’s hidden deep in the sewers (accessible via the manhole just outside McCarran). Basically, you have to:

I. Go north, then east from your starting point, fighting your way through giant rats and ghouls to find the corpse of Sweet Jill the prospector

II. Grab the “Luke’s Find” key off her body (and kill the Unnaturally Large Sized Rodents in the next room over if you’re so inclined)

III. Retrace your steps back to where you started and take the west tunnel, fighting off a bunch of Fiends along the way

IV. Go left in a certain room after the Fiends before heading south into another room and climb the staircase to the top, opening the door at the end with Luke’s Find

V. Kill the worryingly-large amount of ghouls in the room at the end of the Sealed Sewers area (which will include at least one Glowing One and one Reaver)

VI. Find the dead prospector in that room and claim your prize from his corpse – the Humble Cudgel! A lead pipe that does four extra points of damage, uses three points less of AP when in VATS, and is 50% hardier than your average pipe. XD Oh, and if you think “that was a FUCKING lot of work for a PIPE,” there is also a set of Reinforced Combat Armor (clothes AND helmet) in a duffel bag in the room. So maybe it is worth it! XD

Fun stuff! I would have never thought there was a unique “lead pipe” weapon in the sewers! Dunno if it’ll really be Victor’s thing, but it might be worth going down there just to clear out the enemies for XP. Once Victor actually GETS there, of course...

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – did another page right after Game Night (Sequence – Dad SMOKED me and Mom with four wins to Mom’s two and my one! At least we all won one game) and my ice cream. Tonight’s chunk covered –

A) Barnaby attempting to bluff to Steven (who’d noticed the flavor of slumber essence in his glass) that the gin wasn’t drugged, it was just good – the sleepy feeling was totally normal! Steven didn’t buy it, however, and started yelling for help as Alan attempted to stumble off – fortunately, Smiler managed to slap a hand over his mouth and quiet him until the slumber essence did its job, and Alan didn’t get very far before keeling over himself. Barnaby’s glasses didn’t even get chipped, which is what he was most worried about. :p

B) Kasimir admitting that he probably should have put a few more drops in the gin before saying he hoped they hadn’t gotten anyone’s attention – Alice said that the hallway seemed pretty secluded, and Victor confirmed (after shaking off Alan’s comment about how his mother would have only been happy to see him in a Bellweather Crematorium vase) that any servants that might be down this way would probably be at the party attending the guests. Smiler noted that was a lucky break, then asked Victor if he wanted a hug, given what had just been said about him and his mother’s relationship. Victor decided he’d take one later, as right now he just wanted to get into that damn vault and prove to his parents it WASN’T a fortress.

C) Kasimir seconding leaving the touchy-feely stuff for later, as they needed to get into and out of the vault before anyone came along and found the guards sleeping on the job, prompting Barnaby to go “well SOMEONE should hide them then” with a significant look at Alice and Smiler – Alice promptly asked “where?” pointing out there were no other doors down this end of the hall, meaning their only real option was to drag the guards into the vault and lock them in –

Prompting Victor to tell her that they couldn’t really do that, as they were only at the entrance to the entrance to the vault. Clarifying at her request that the big doors Steven and Alan were guarding led to a hallway full of traps that led to the actual entrance to the vault. Barnaby was like “well, they’re your traps, just turn them off,” but Victor said he didn’t know how, as he’d always been down here with one of his parents, and THEY always had the traps turned off beforehand. (And honestly, he wasn’t sure either Nell or William remembered to turn off the traps either – that was the servants’ job.) Fortunately, William had run him through what all of the traps were, so he could point them out as necessary.

D) And Victor opening the doors and – after a lot of hard squinting – finding the first trap: a nearly-invisible tripwire right past the entrance, which would trigger a loud alarm if tripped. I left it with Victor pointing out the barely-visible gleam of the wire in the flickering sconce-light of the hallway, and warning Barnaby that he’d have to lift his coat – next time, the gang will get past Trap #1, and start moving onto Traps #2, #3, and #4...

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but then that’s not surprising given the combination of Game Night and Long Workout Video Write-Up. *shakehead* Well, we’ll see what happens tomorrow.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) is all set for the moment, and – as usual – there was nothing happening on Valice Multiverse. At least that meant it was one less thing for me to worry about while getting the Long Workout Video Write-Up done!

And there we have it! And I should really try to drag myself to bed sooner rather than later. Tomorrow's goals include working on some of my drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing some Fallout: New Vegas and getting Courier Victor into Primm; and hopefully watching both whatever CaFae Latte compilation may pop up AND the latest OXBox list video. If I have time, I'll also work some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy," but we'll see what happens. *nods* Night all!

Bit of a boring day at work, I'm afraid, and not much happening at home either -- other than the Workout Video Write-Up, which you will see below. At least the weather was nicer today -- mid 60s and sunny. :) I will take it, especially after the chill we've been suffering the past few days! Anyway, let's get straight into it:

Work – As I stated above, it was a pretty damn quiet Thursday at work – I spent most of the day just matching up pledge card scans to donor ID numbers to make it easier to look them up later! There just wasn’t much else to do! But I did accomplish a handful of other things –

A) Calling a parish to try and get an updated address for a donor to resend some returned mail...only to discover they too were having trouble with returned mail and had to get the updated address themselves. *shrug* At least I know it’s not just us?

B) Taking a credit card call from one of the people I e-mailed about forgetting their expiration date when they first submitted their gift (good to see those e-mails ARE working)

C) Calling back a lady who left a message asking if we’d gotten her check and leaving her a message saying I didn’t see it yet (as it’s the time of year where things get Delayed), but I’d keep an eye out for it for her

D) Putting on some more Easter Collection gifts after lunch

E) And puttering around in a spreadsheet of 2025 Appeal gifts that still have balances (that is now very much out of date, and which I haven’t touched since February because of everything ELSE going on) and seeing which ones had since been paid off...which led to me discovering a check to the food bank that had been posted to someone’s record as an Appeal gift in error. Whoops. Gotta fix that tomorrow!

So yeah – nothing terribly exciting! Except maybe that last bit, but we’ll send the donor a check for the money so she can put it toward the CORRECT charity. We’ll see how Friday goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with The Adventures Of Grace And Leon In The Terrible Care Center, as I pedaled my way through –

A) The very end of “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: GRACE'S BOSS IS THE WORST | Episode 1!” The last five minutes of which featured:

I. Leon, having chainsawed his way through a bolted door (and broken his chainsaw in the process; everyone was very sad), going upstairs and coming across Grace escaping from the Bug-Eyed Giant Monster that had been chasing her – Leon proceeded to watch as Grace was grabbed by the monster and dragged back into the spooky dark hallways beyond because we already saw this bit with Grace and knew he didn’t immediately intervene, while Andy made another joke about him needing like eight business days to respond to these threats. (My question is, how the fuck did Grace not see Leon, given he was RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER?)

II. Leon eventually using his big fancy hand cannon (taken from RE4 and now named, appropriately, Requiem) to kill the bug-eyed monster, allowing Grace to escape onto the balcony into the light; Leon introduced himself as from the DSO (don’t know what that is, but Grace eventually recognized it as a counter-bioterrorism organization), Grace introduced herself as from the FBI and said she’d been kidnapped, and Leon said they needed to get out of here –

Prompting Victor Gideon, who was lurking at the end of the darkened hall, to activate a lockdown, bringing the original screen crashing down between them again and lowering a big old metal shutter to completely cut them off from each other. Whoops! Not getting out of the Standard RE Mansion that easily!

III. Leon attempting to learn from Grace why Victor grabbed her – but after it became obvious that she had no idea and was basically just panicking, he chose to instead hand over Requiem so she’d have something to protect herself with before they were separated (aw)

IV. Leon preparing to confront Victor G as he approached from the end of the hallway, stating they should have a little chat – unfortunately, his attempt to pull some of his sick moves on the guy was cut short by Victor’s signature move of “grabbing his opponent around the throat and choking them out because he’s a hulking monster man.” Though before he rendered Leon unconscious, he noted some worrying dark patches on his throat and said that Leon was apparently “showing symptoms too” of the same “Raccoon City Syndrome” that was killing the other survivors… D: Not good! Come on, games, Leon already went through this shit with Las Plagas in RE4!

V. And the episode ending with Andy getting control of Grace again, preparing to explore the mansion and engage in more RE7/RE8-style first-person horror antics!

Yeah, uh, they packed a lot into those five minutes. XD

( And here feels like a good place to stick a cut )

2. Continue edits on Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got another page sorted tonight, covering:

A) Steven and Alan the guards being initially startled by Barnaby’s appearance, before Alan realized he was one of the toffs from the party – Barnaby claimed he just needed to get out of that stuffy ballroom and see the other wonders of the mansion, and stated he’d heard the vault was down here somewhere and it really was a sight to see, especially given the Van Dorts are in trade. Steven snorted and assured him it was, but he wasn’t getting in to see it without Mr. or Mrs. Van Dort present, as it was their duty to guard the place; Alan agreed, adding that they got paid a pretty penny slug for it

B) Barnaby praising their efforts and stating that Nell told him her security staff was the cream of the crop – Steven just took the compliment, but Alan ended up a little confused, stating “Mrs. Van Dort said that?” Barnaby quickly bluffed that she just put on the tough, never-satisfied act in front of them, then had Smiler offer them the gin as a reward for “standing around and looking tough,” saying she’d approved it – Steven and Alan were a little hesitant at first, but fortunately decided that maybe Nell was in a better mood because she was getting to show off how rich she was to all the nobs at her party

C) Barnaby adding “Victor having reappeared” as a reason for Nell to be happy – only for the guards to scoff and say that if Victor showed up NOW, Nell would be furious because of him screwing up his wedding. Steven commented that if Victor had any sense, he’d risk a train ride to another city rather than come back and get a bollocking from his mam (excuse his language), while Alan said that the only way Nell would be happy to see Victor would be if he was being delivered by the Spirit Wardens as ashes in a vase :( Yeah, uh, as you might imagine, Victor will be feeling A Way about that…

D) Smiler and Barnaby, upon hearing that, encouraging the guards to drink up before Nell went on the warpath again, and the guards taking the bait and downing their gins (in one long swig – Barnaby couldn’t help a wince). However, most unfortunately for our heroes, it seems like Steven at least knows what slumber essence tastes like…

And I left off with Steven accusing Barnaby and Smiler of drugging the glasses. Tomorrow, he tries calling for help, the guards go down, and Victor gets to explain to everyone that they’re at the entrance to the entrance to the vault. If that makes any sense. :p

3. Watch something on YouTube: Check, surprisingly – mostly because I watched it before I went down to work out. :p “It” being “Coyote vs. ACME | Official Trailer” by Coyote vs. Acme and Ketchup Entertainment! The first trailer for a new mixed animation/live action Looney Tunes film coming out, which featured both:

A) A look at the plot – namely, Wile E. Coyote deciding to sue ACME with the help of a human lawyer (who apparently specializes in getting settlements for toons hurt by ACME products), only for the pair and their friends to stumble upon some sort of bigger conspiracy (possibly headed up by, of all toons, Foghorn Leghorn – and of all people, John Cena, what is this movie)

B) Ketchup Entertainment busting Warner Bros’s chops about this being one of the films they made and then immediately shelved for tax write-off purposes...until Ketchup got its hands on the movie and decided to release it, with Foghorn EXPLICITLY CLAIMING at the end that they were releasing it purely for accounting purposes XD

So yeah, that was fun. :P Movie itself apparently comes out at the end of August – we’ll see how it does in theaters!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing happening over on Valice Multiverse again, but I did get my queue for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) all sorted, I’m pleased to say –

A) First, this morning, I tossed in that cute Emily fanart from nuri4ever that I got from Sunday’s tag crawl for today, and “The Devil’s Wheel” by creepyclothdoll (the story about a woman, the Devil, a carnival wheel, a deal of three million in exchange for a man dying, and an awesome twist) for Friday

B) Then, tonight, I tossed in a reblog of my Song Saturday post for “Boom Boom Clap” by Charlie XCX! Because I listened to the song this morning, remembered how much I liked it and its Valicer vibes, and decided it needed to be featured again. :) I mean, the last time I reblogged it WAS two years ago, so…

So that’s all good, hooray! Now I just have to figure out next week’s queue...

...yes, I understand that was a very long entry for a rather boring day, but -- again, too much detail about the RE9 video. One day I will learn to rein it in again. As it stands, though, I gotta hit the sheets. Night all!