Ael

It was a cold, icky day today, and the PMS was really PMSing at points -- especially during work. Why? See below:

Work – Kind of a frustrating day at work today – mostly because there was yet more bullshit related to our credit card company and their inability to do anything right. Specifically:
A) While we fortunately only had one person call in today wanting to do a credit card gift, we couldn’t do said gift because every time we tried, we’d get an error message about an unspecified problem with processing the payment. An error message that our processors also got when they tried processing one particular credit card gift, according to the exceptions we received today. I e-mailed the company twice today, but didn’t get a response – which isn’t that surprising, as they do enjoy leaving me hanging.
B) And, during the end of the day wrap-up, I discovered yet more pledges missing their initial payment on their pledge because there seems to be a bug with importing them if they have a payment processed on the same day the pledge is made. So now I have to check a bunch of credit card pledges both we in the office and our main processing company have put on to see which ones are missing payments. *facepalm*
Yeah, that – that was irritating. Especially for someone on her period and thus already permanently irritated. >( The rest of the day went okay – I spent most of the morning doing the GL, as it was pretty big due to all the gifts posted Friday, and the majority of the afternoon going through some of the other exceptions in the bundle and working on overpayments and stuff like that. But it’s just – it NEVER STOPS with this company, I swear. I hate them so much, you don’t even know. Ugh. We’ll see what happens tomorrow, I suppose...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with The Adventures Of Useless Steve as I started the final episode of his first series: “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Grand Finale - How Useless Steve 'Saved' The World!” The first half of the end of Useless Steve’s base game adventures included:
A) Useless Steve investigating the Omertas Family (the gang that runs Gomorrah, the casino and brothel with a secret drugs menu P. D. Shoot Remastered has frequented more than once) for the NCR as part of their final-act questline and solving their problem with the family in a rather – unique way. The quest is supposed to go “you find out that the Omertas are building a bomb to attack the Strip after allying with the Legion, and help their lieutenant Cachino take over Gomorrah and kill them” – but you see, Jon hates Cachino too, because he’s an asshole who abuses the prostitutes and apparently kidnaps the one he “likes” the most, Joanna, once he becomes the owner of Gomorrah (she straight-up disappears from the game when he ascends to the throne, and Jon thinks she ends up in his bedroom and isn’t allowed to leave again). So he didn’t particularly want to put Cachino in charge. So, instead, he had Useless Steve pickpocket Cachino’s personal diary off him, detailing all the ways he’s been screwing over the Omertas gang with his own small-time operations; turn it into the guy at the door to the private part of the club, who sent Steve up to talk to the two men in charge, Big Sal and Nero; give the journal to Nero, who called Cachino into his office for a private “chat” that ended in his death –
Then – having prepared for this earlier by using Fire Act Nectar (which boosts Agility a lot) and a Sneak skill magazine to raise his Sneak to the appropriate level to sneak more “holdout” weapons into the casino – murdered Big Sal with Pew Pew and made a run for it, because this stopped the Omertas from blowing up the Strip (since they were down a boss) without having to put another scumbag in charge of their territory! Yes, it technically failed the quest, and Steve came EXTREMELY close to dying during his escape from the casino even with his power armor thanks to all the guards shooting at him, but he made it out without being followed, and was able to report back to Colonel Moore and straight up lie to her that the Omertas were planning on targeting New Reno, and the NCR didn’t have to worry about them. XD Jon even dipped briefly into an alternate universe where Steve actually worked with Sal to help create the bomb to confirm that Steve would never learn exactly what the bomb was for and thus couldn’t say anything different to Moore if he killed Sal then. *nods* Good information to have for those of us who might feel a little iffy about changing one asshole for another!
B) Useless Steve then taking on the task to destroy the Brotherhood for Colonel Moore, and showing off how easy it was even for a low-to-no skills character like himself – because while the main computer to actually start the self destruct sequence was locked behind a level of hacking Useless Steve would never achieve, the computer that generated passwords to get into the self-destruct computer was NOT. All Steve had to do was pickpocket three keycards from the Head Scribe, Head Paladin, and Elder McNamara (which was easy for him to do because they had no weight and very little value, meaning with the help of a Stealth Boy, he was able to easily snag them all), use them on the password computer to generate the passwords needed to get into the self-destruct computer, then open up the self-destruct computer and trigger the self-destruct. And then run for the exit while the Brotherhood steadfastly refused to evacuate, taking a few hits along the way but getting out safely thanks to the Stealth Boy. The Brotherhood thus blew up, and Steve was able to tell Moore about another successful mission while vowing never to go near Veronica again because she might have, uh, opinions on what he just did.
C) Useless Steve then showing the easiest way to complete the mission to protect the NCR president when he visited the dam to bolster the morale of the troops – basically, trigger an assassination attempt as soon as possible so the president LEFT as soon as possible. XD ...but I’ll have to tell you about the rest of it tomorrow, because it is too late now and I need to go to bed.

2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check – got another page’s worth of edits done today, featuring:
A) Alice dropping out of the ductwork into what she discovered wasn’t an office, but was instead a sort of combination server room and break room, with a couple of big server banks on two of the walls, and a table with a coffee maker and a microwave and a water cooler on the third (she was like “I wouldn’t put water anywhere near the expensive computer equipment, but then I’m not running the place”)
B) Alice searching the room for the key promised to her by the Insane Children’s scribbles...only to come up short; cue Cheshire appearing by the only door in or out of the room, advising her to look farther afield – but to beware that the field had eyes, and to avoid getting them trained on her, lest she ended up like a biscuit being devoured by a Bandersnatch (Alice: “I’ve never seen that, but I will trust you that it is messy and horrible”)
C) Alice taking a moment to listen through the door and hearing a guard inside – then peeking in and realizing it was the security camera room (lit like something out of a horror movie for some reason), being watched over by a man chowing down on a donut. A man who’d conveniently left a key on the console...but inconveniently left it next to him, meaning it was very hard for Alice to get it without being noticed. She was not pleased
D) Alice running down her options, realizing hitting the guy with some distracting Dementation was her best shot, and doing just that – fortunately for her conscience, the effect was to make him start giggling over a joke he’d wanted to tell his friend Caroline, and then get up and leave so he could let her know. Cue Alice happily grabbing the key, getting out of the room, and escaping back into the vents as fast as possible, thanking Victor for being more useful than she’d ever guessed he would be
E) And Alice examining the key and finding a big “B” on the fob – and then remembering that Victor had told her that the sarcophagus was most likely stored in the basement, meaning hopefully this was the exact key she needed to reach it.
*nods* Progress continues to be made, both for Alice and for myself! I left off with her realizing she now had to figure out where to go next – tomorrow, she returns to the T-junction in the ductwork and follows the other path to see where it leads...

3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – managed to catch up on the final C. M. Alongi video in my subs for now: “BookTalk: Monstrous & Paperbacks - TikTok Compilation!” Another collection of skits of her various books/book series (Heart Of Iron, The Witch Who Trades With Death, Citadel, Blackwing, and Monstrous) talking to each other, featuring:
A) The group ringing in the new year, with Citadel noting it had been a crazy 2025 – only for Blackwing to ask, “Crazier than the year you and I came out?” and Citadel to agree that maybe things hadn’t been that wild. Monstrous was naturally curious as to what happened the year they came out – cue Citadel explaining that 2023 started with CM doing the “Accidentally Kidnapped” mini-series on TikTok, which spawned a rough draft of a book that got her a fan base on Patreon, followed by the start of CaFae Latte and the writing of Heart Of Iron, followed by the releases of the first two Blackwing novellas and Citadel, followed by CM leaving her food service job to do TikTok skits and writing full-time. Witch then pointed out that 2024 was the year of Heart of Iron’s Kickstarter, with Citadel adding that it also featured the release of the CaFae Latte cookbook, declaring it a “slow year.” Monstrous was incredulous and Heart Of Iron insulted, but Blackwing pointed out that the cookbook was more CM’s mom’s book than hers, and Witch added that most authors only aim for one book release a year to prevent things getting messy – the main reason she and Heart Of Iron being released in the same year worked was because she came out in March, and Heart Of Iron in October, meaning there was some breathing room between the two. Monstrous, now worried, asked if she was stepping on Heart Of Iron’s toes, but Heart was like “Nah, you’re only on Patreon right now, you’re not published” –
Then paused and confirmed, “You’re not published, right?” To which Monstrous replied, “No, but I am getting Kickstarted in February.” :P Blackwing was stunned (“Already?!”), Witch excited and congratulatory, and Citadel just “And the insanity begins anew.” XD
( Yup, It Got Long )

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d WANTED to try and come up with some more Valentine’s-themed Not Incorrect Quotes for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), but between work and the long write-ups, I just didn’t have the chance. :( Hopefully tomorrow!

And I have to go to bed, so I'll fix the spacing tomorrow too. *shakehead* Remember when I could get these entries done in a single sitting? Ugh...night all.

Like, it wasn't great -- Dad had a nasty coughing fit last night and was still recovering from it for most of the day; Mom went out and got another order of the Chinese food we missed out on last night for lunch today, only for them to forget the sweet-and-sour sauce for the sweet-and-sour chicken and not put a lot of wontons in the wonton soup; and I had a sudden attack of severe grogginess in the afternoon while trying to write up my Portal 2 session today, dragging that out (I'm blaming the PMS) -- but it wasn't as full of "bad vibes" as yesterday was. Which I appreciate. I also got a bit more done overall:

Tumblr: Well, it was another quiet day over on The Valice Multiverse, but I did get something done relating to my upcoming Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue for the week – specifically, after missing my chance to work on them yesterday (why does making my granola have to take so long?!), I managed to make a third Valicertine for this year’s set and finish off the Bonus Image (you know, the one where I made fun of my tendency to take all the in-game pictures of my OT3 while playing their save in The Sims 4 by talking about how one should find a polycule where they can make memories...so many fucking memories XD)! Though it took a little longer than anticipated, mostly because I spent ages trying to figure out what old Chill Valicer Save screenshot I wanted to use for the third Valicertine – I’ve used most of the good ones already! In the end, I combined slices of two screenshots – Smiler doing karaoke duets with Victor and Alice post the Valicer Wedding – and did a Valicertine about how True Love is all about finding someone you don’t mind embarrassing yourself with – especially on your wedding day. :P So at least I’m all set with THOSE for Valentine’s Day on Saturday! Now I just have come up with a couple new Not-Incorrect Quote scenes to add to the Valentine’s Day set I did last year...

Writing: Did another page’s worth of editing on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines” this afternoon, covering:

A) Alice getting across the museum floor after the next guard had passed the dinosaur skeleton by scrambling across on her hands and knees, then ignoring the “Security” door in favor of slipping into the bathroom nearby – unfortunately, someone was in there, but fortunately, he was in a stall, allowing Alice to fake going into a stall herself, then creep as quietly as possible across the floor before slipping unnoticed into the supply closet on the other side

B) Alice discovering the vent Victor had told her about in the closet and – after building a box staircase to reach it and using her lockpicking kit’s torsion wrench to unscrew the grate – climbing inside...only to discover the damn thing immediately doubled back on itself over the bathroom; cue her having to crawl through the ductwork as quietly as possible directly over the very guard having a pee she was trying to avoid earlier (there was a grate over him and everything!). Fortunately he noticed nothing and she was able to get past him without incident

C) Alice coming to a T-Junction and using her Auspex to check for crayon clues as to which way she should go – and said crayon clues showing up a bit faster than usual; Alice put it down to being full of Victor’s Sanguine blood and quietly looked forward to what it might be able to do for her Obfuscate

D) And Alice going right down the T-Junction as per the clues and finding herself above a (fortunately empty) security office, with an easily-opened grate right below her allowing her to drop down should she so wish

Nothing too spectacular, but it’s always good to make progress on this monster of a chapter. I’m tempted to just work on this for the rest of the week, honestly, since I’ve hit a nice little break point in my “The Van Dort Vacancy” edits – we’ll see how I feel as the days go on!

Portal 2: I returned to Aperture Science today for another half-hour of completing tests while GLaDOS insulted me – only got through three chambers today, but the chambers are getting more complex, so that’s only to be expected. Today’s physics-and-portal-based-puzzles included:

Chamber 9 – The first chamber of “Chapter 3: The Return,” and one that involves a faith plate, a laser, and our good friend Wheatley! Yes, this is the chamber where you officially learn he’s alive (though, like me, you may have seen him peeping in on you in tests earlier) – when you first arrive in the chamber (getting past all the floor panels glitching out), you’re presented with a faith plate that launches you straight up toward the ceiling. And when you step on it and get launched, you get catapulted high enough to see Wheatley, back on his management rail over a little catwalk overlooking the chamber, gleefully telling you he’s alive! How did he survive being crushed by GLaDOS, you ask?

...we have no idea because, while he attempts to tell Chell the story, Wheatley being Wheatley, he keeps talking even when she falls back down to the floor and can’t hear him. All we know is that a bird was involved somehow. XD It certainly doesn’t help that there’s a good chunk of time between launches because the faith plate keeps sending a distress signal and GLaDOS keeps having to come in to fix it (she cruelly jokes that it must not be calibrated for someone of Chell’s “generousness,” but now I’m wondering if it was trying to narc on Wheatley to her...I know the faith plates really SHOULDN’T have AI, but given what Aperture is like, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did). Anyway, this went on for three launches, after which GLaDOS decided to fix the situation by lowering the ceiling rather than continue to fiddle with the faith plate, cutting Wheatley off from Chell –

And bringing us to the test proper! Which involved the aforementioned faith plate in the lower half of the room, now launching you into a portal-able bit of ceiling, and a laser in the upper portion of the room, which had to be redirected through a chunk of wall with a redirection cube (to make the laser turn at the right angle) and portals (to get it through the wall) to actually hit the receiver to make the exit door open. As you might imagine, there was a lot of flinging Chell through a portal in the ceiling to where she needed to go in the upper portion! Basically it went like this:

I. Use portals to get Chell up on the upper portion generally and get the lay of the land. Note the laser going into the wall, the little portal-able wall chunklet in front of the receiver, the redirection cube dispenser above the laser on its own little platform, the door above the receiver on its own little platform, and a bunch of tilted panels sticking out from the wall allowing me to send Chell up to where the cube dispensing unit and the door are

II. Use portals to fling Chell up to the redirection cube dispenser via the tilted platform in front of it next to the laser...only to discover that the button used to actually dispense a cube is on the OTHER side of the room, in its own little high nook

III. Use portals to fling Chell up to the cube dispensing button via the other tilted platform on the other side of the laser facing the other direction, and press the button to get a cube

IV. Use portals to fling Chell back over to the cube dispensing area to actually get the cube using the original tilted platform. Drop cube in front of laser, then carefully hop over laser and reposition cube so the laser is firing directly into the center of the wall chunk blocking the receiver

V. Figure out where to put portals so you can direct the laser through the wall chunk into the receiver

VI. Remove those portals so you can set up a fling onto the upper platform with the door using the tilted wall chunk designed for that purpose, and fling Chell up there. Listen to GLaDOS call Chell “like an eagle...piloting a blimp” and giggle because it is a very good line

VII. Re-set up the portals on either side of the wall chunk, adjusting position until the laser is going through them and into the receiver

VIII. Walk through the exit door and into the elevator victorious.

Not too hard, but it did require a bit of thought! As these later chambers will.

( As usual, this got longer than intended )

Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another ride on the bike and evening watch session featuring Jon of Many A True Nerd’s F:NV YOLO Remastered series – specifically, “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 29 - Skill Issue!” The continuing adventures of our beloved Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot as she –

A) Resolved a bit of an issue with her skills – namely, the base values of Science, Speech, and Lockpick all not being high enough because she was used to boosting them to hell and back with her various outfits, magazines, booze, and drugs. A strategy that was currently serving her well in the main game, and had worked in most of the DLCs, but which would not work in “Dead Money” because Father Elijah, prick that he is, steals most of the stuff the Courier’s carrying when he kidnaps them to kick off their horrible adventure in the Sierra Madre. And because she only had two level-ups left thanks to her “Logan’s Loophole” trait locking her levels to 30, she couldn’t rely on those to get her the skill points she needed to boost everything up to where it should be for The DLC Jon Fears Above All Others. So how did she resolve the issue?

By finding some skill books, of course! Two each for Speech, Science, and Lockpick, earning her six free points in each skill. Specifically, she visited:

I. Cerulean Robotics in Freeside (you know, where she found FISTO), where she killed a bunch of the respawned rats and claiming a “Lying, Congressional Style” Speech book from the front office floor

II. Brooks Tumbleweed Ranch (home of the Nightkin selling the “wind-Brahmin” for however many caps the Courier may be holding on them), where she had a giggle at all the tumbleweeds inside just “living life” before getting another “Lying, Congressional Style” from one of the lockers there

III. Y-0 Research Center, just northwest of the Forbidden Zone Dome Entrance in the Big MT, where she grabbed a “Big Book Of Science” Science (natch) book off a skeleton laying outside – though she ended up having to do this twice when her initial attempt to grab the second “Big Book Of Science” from Nipton resulted in a game crash and sent her back to The Sink before she got the first one (she also grabbed some more cazador poison glands from Dr. Borous while she was in the area so she could make some more Turbo later)

IV. Nipton Town Hall in, well, Nipton, where she used her incredible sneaking skills and the power of Turbo plus the Industrial Hand to get past all the dogs inside without incident and grab the second “Big Book Of Science” (along with some Mentats and a Programmer’s Digest magazine) from the mayor’s old desk – though, while she managed to avoid crashing the game this time (by fast-traveling to the town instead of walking there from the drive-in the Big MT teleport gun automatically takes you to when you return to the Mojave), she did briefly suffer a moment of absolute terror when she checked her Pip-Boy and found all her weapons (and almost all her apparel too) missing. Fortunately, bringing up Chance’s Knife via the powers of hotkeys made them all appear again, but damn. New Vegas, P. D. is only preparing for “Dead Money” at this point, she’s not ready to live it!

V. Silver Peak Mine, up in the mountains near the Followers Of The Apocalypse safe house, where she took advantage of the fact that there’s an opening “mine shack” room that you have to pass through in order to enter the mine itself to avoid the Legendary Cazador living in said mine and just grab a copy of “Tumblers Today” Lockpick book from one of the lockers in the actual shack (she also got some turpentine for later Turbo crafting)

VI. And (after waiting until it was night again so she could sneak around more effectively), Bitter Springs Recreation Area, just up the road from Callville Bay (itself accessed by P. D. TRYING to fast-travel to the crashed B-29 that she raised from the waters for the Boomers – obviously, the game can’t actually let you fast travel into the middle of a lake to an object that isn’t there anymore, so it puts you instead near the spot where you have to trigger the ballast to raise the plane), where she managed to successfully sneak past all the cazadores on either side of the road on the way there –

Only to take a minuscule amount of damage from a rat inside the main recreation area shack itself because she managed to sneak attack crit one of its friends right in front of it and it proceeded to surprise her in return when she turned around. Like, she managed to slap her good armor on and do all the drugs while it was leaping at her with the help of the Pip-Boy time stop, meaning the actual damage was so low (like a fraction of a hit point) that it didn’t actually show up in the health calculations once the fight was over, but still. Jon noted that this was typical of the series – the thing he was most worried about went fine, while something he didn’t worry about at all nearly went very badly. XD But at least P. D did get her second “Tumblers Today” book off the desk in the back room for those sweet skill points!

So yeah – after all those trips and the reading of the skillbooks, P. D.’s base Speech went up to 86, base Science went up to 86, and base Lockpick up to 83. All much better base numbers for approaching the final two level-ups and “Dead Money!”

B) And decided on the faction she wanted to back for the final fight at Hoover Dam – the NCR! Which might surprise you, given she’s been making great pals with Caesar’s Legion all this series (to the point where she’s Idolized by them, but considered a Smiling Troublemaker by the NCR). However, Jon decided it would be better for P. D. to join up for the NCR instead for three reasons:

One, while she’d gotten just about everything she wanted out of the Legion, the NCR still had some potential goodies to hand over if she did their missions.

Two, facing off against the NCR with the Legion at the dam meant fighting a lot of people with guns, while facing off against the Legion with the NCR meant fighting more melee-focused people like herself with the people with guns backing her up.

Three, there was apparently a very interesting and weird interaction she could get from a third faction tied into one of the NCR quests from being someone who was leaning very heavily toward the Legion but then swapped to the NCR.

I think we can all agree these are excellent reasons for P. D. to join the New California Republic – especially the third one. We love weird interactions. :p As a result, P. D. spent the rest of the episode completing another quest for them and advancing their questline to confirm her choice – though, uh, it didn’t go as smoothly as Jon would have liked:

I. First, when she went back to Cottonwood Cove one last time to check the reward boxes left there for her for her good work, not only did she not get the random 50 Stealth Boys Jon was hoping for (though she did at least get one), she straight up didn’t get one of the boxes she was owed – the game seemed to have glitched out and forgotten to load it in. Not a huge deal (P. D. doesn’t need Stealth Boys nearly as much with her incredible Sneak, and she already has plenty of money), but still.

II. Then, when she went to visit Ambassador Crocker at the Embassy, she was able to get the mission to deal with the violence against NCR citizens in Freeside by either killing Pacer (the main asshole stirring the pot) or appealing to The King to stop the violence, “Kings’ Gambit,” without a problem – but the moment she left his office, one of the local unnamed NCR Trooper MPs (Military Police guys) ran up to her, snapped off a line about what a coincidence it was to find her outside the Strip (note: the Embassy is actually ON the Strip), then told her that she should have paid her dues and that “nobody fucks with the NCR and lives to brag it about it. You’re dead, punk!” before –

Well, not actually doing anything, because P. D.’s Sneak is so good that he couldn’t actually see her to attack. XD Leaving her awkwardly hiding in the corner staring at her Pip-Boy in [CAUTION] while Jon went “what the COCK is going on???” He could not understand why this one guy was suddenly so anti-P. D., given she still had a mostly-positive reputation with the NCR – and he didn’t dare have P. D. fight him, because THAT was likely to turn the entire NCR hostile, and there were troopers EVERYWHERE. He ended up having her do a dose of Turbo to get past the guy as fast as possible and escape out the front doors without causing a scene – fortunately, nobody outside wanted to start any shit, and she was able to make it back to the other side of the Strip (with the Lucky 38 and whatnot) without any trouble. If still really confused about what had set that guy off. (Interestingly, as per the comments, this is simply an extremely common bug with the NCR MPs (or possibly that particular NCR MP), where for some reason they’ll act like the Courier has wronged the NCR no matter how well-liked they are and try to either attack them or shake them down for caps – and yes, fighting them DOES instantly tank your reputation with the NCR and lock you out of that ending. Jon has just SOMEHOW managed to avoid it before this playthrough.)

III. THEN, after visiting Freeside (and dropping a safety save in the streets just in case completing this mission somehow ended up in her being enemies with both the Legion AND the NCR, meaning she’d have no choice but to do the Forbidden Yes Man Ending) and using her favor with The King to get him to try and calm the violence against NCR citizens there, she took a moment to visit Nellis (to steal turpentine) and the Crimson Caravan Company (to pick their Broc flowers and use their campfire to make more Turbo, juuuust in case she needed it), before returning to the NCR Embassy. Where she very anxiously snuck past all the troopers hanging around outside and the very guy who’d yelled at her before in the hall (who was now completely neutral, go fig) before slipping into Ambassador Crocker’s office and closing the door –

Only to find Ambassador Crocker not there. Which made sense, as she had arrived in the middle of the night – but even after she’d waited in there until 2 in the afternoon, he refused to show up for work! Dude just would not leave his bed. Forcing a terrified P. D. to sneak BACK out into the hall, avoid all the soldiers, and find him lying around in his private room. Fortunately he woke right up when she went to speak with him, but Jon let him have it over some of his subordinates being a little trigger happy and nearly giving him a heart attack! XD But P. D. did manage to turn in the quest, and got herself 600 caps, some NCR fame, and a level-up to Level 29 out of it. She promptly brought her Science skill up to 100, maxing it out, and got Lockpick up to 86, with the plan being to max Lockpick out with the final level-up and put the remaining handful of points wherever she wanted (maxing out Speech was unnecessary, as apparently the highest Speech check in “Dead Money” requires a skill of 85, and she’s at 86).

And so the episode ended with P. D. being told to report to Colonel Moore over at Hoover Dam for more assignments (Jon was only TOO happy to leave the Embassy behind) and then fleeing the building before anyone else could attack her. XD Next week, it’s over to the dam to get Moore’s assignments and do those – including the mission with the third faction that should reacting interestingly to P. D. having done a bunch of Legion stuff before swapping to the NCR (given what I recently saw in Useless Steve’s old playthrough, this MUST be the Khans, who currently have a bit of an alliance with the Legion). I’m looking forward to it – especially if that episode is as buggy as this one was. XD Poor Jon, he suffered so this week, and it was so so funny…

Hey, look at that, I managed to finish the entry all in one go! And slightly earlier than usual too for a Sunday! XD And now it is time for me to go to bed, as I do have work tomorrow. Hopefully it isn't too horrible a day...night all!

The morning was all tense because Dad was having pain and thus was all grumpy (understandably); I ended up spending most of my morning making a fresh batch of granola (since I used up the last of the last batch in my morning bowl of cereal) and changing the sheets on my bed, meaning I had no time to work on my Valicertines or anything else related to Valentine's Day; and Mom attempted to order some Chinese food for our belated game night through DoorDash, only for our Dasher to never show up -- Mom is pretty sure that he straight up delivered the food to the wrong house (who accepted it because "free food!"). Luckily we had plenty of lunch leftovers to eat instead, and DoorDash gave us a refund, but it was still shitty! And making everything worse is the fact that I'm certain I'm PMSing now, so my moods are, well, mooding. *sigh* I really miss when I could look forward to a weekend and it wouldn't betray me.

...and it's past 2 AM here, so I will have to complete this entry tomorrow. Because after a certain point it gets very hard for me to concentrate on what I feel I should be doing. *facepalm* Have the unspaced version of the BG3 and CaFae Tales stuff below -- I'll fix that and fill in the other two things I did later! EDIT 2/8/2026: The BG3 and CaFae Tales sections have been properly spaced out, and I've added the missing Writing and Tumblr sections for your perusal:

Writing: It took a little longer than I anticipated (mainly because I always seem to have more end-of-chapter notes than I anticipate, and I struggled a bit with coming up with a chapter title), but I did indeed post Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” today! AKA the brief POV flip back to Alice so we can see what she and Smiler got up to while they were separated from Victor, and so I could introduce Kasimir, the other Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark character I’m borrowing for this. I quite enjoyed writing this, especially the scenes of chaos in the Van Dort kitchen and Alice and Smiler’s reactions to the Van Dort aquarium greenhouse – I hope you all enjoy it too!

Tumblr: It was another dead quiet day over on Valice Multiverse, but while I didn’t get a chance to work on any Valicertine’s stuff over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did at least make a post promoting the new chapter of “The Van Dort Vacancy” over there! ...though I had to wait until after I’d played BG3 (below), because the formatting for “Link” posts kept breaking. *sigh* Tumblr is a functional web site...but yeah, that went up, and at the very least thesatiricaldemon was nice enough to reblog it, so...something!

Baldur’s Gate III: Today’s return to Faerûn consisted mostly of an afternoon – or, for the characters, an evening – full of cutscenes! With Smiler learning a bit more about their companions and possibly getting hit on by a couple of them. Oh, and they finally progressed one of the main quests too, at the very end. XD Let me tell you all about it:

A) I picked up where I left off at the end of my last session – with the gang all hanging out in the Wilderness camp, having helped Pandirna, offloaded more weapons on Dammon, and had a bit of trouble opening their various containers so Smiler could dye their new cloak. Accordingly, after everything popped back into existence, I had Smiler quickly open the camp chest and some of the various containers in their inventory to confirm everything was kosher with them – fortunately, all the inventory pop-ups appeared without a problem. *whew* Did not need that bug rearing its ugly head again! I then had Smiler do a bit of alchemy, creating an antidote (never know when you might need one of those – sadly, they crit-failed the Medicine check, so they didn’t get a spare) and grinding up some Rogue’s Morsels into salts, before sending them wandering toward the center of camp as I pondered whether or not I wanted to send the gang out again or have them long rest. Which did afford them an excellent opportunity to watch Lae’zel sharpening her sword, at least:



I do like the idle animations some of the characters do in camp – Lae’zel’s in particular seem so her. :p

Anyway, I took a moment and thought hard about what I wanted to do, considering such things like “the gang does still have one short rest left, might be a shame to waste it” and “well, Gale can restore his final Level I spell slot with that Arcane Charge of his, but Shadowheart is looking a little drained of magic” and “Astarion IS missing a few hit points, but, again, have a short rest in hand, so that can be pretty easily fixed” –

And finally going, “Screw it, I got that ‘Camp Events Overhaul’ mod for a reason – let’s have the party long rest and see what cutscenes I get that I might not have gotten otherwise.” I thus clicked the campfire and confirmed that I would like to end the day –

And, almost the moment day transitioned into night, I got a cutscene! One featuring Shadowheart sitting on the ground by the fire with her back to everyone, fiddling with the mysterious artefact that she took from her pod on the ship and muttering, “Damn thing...it has to open, surely. It has to do something.” Smiler noticed this and wandered over for a bit of a look – sadly, they failed the passive Arcana check to figure out what the glyphs on the sides were. They then asked Shadowheart what she had there –

Only for her to instantly hide the box (I’m not sure where, given how skin-tight her casual camp clothes are) and scramble awkwardly to her feet, going, “It’s nothing, trust me. Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” I considered having Smiler allow her to change the subject –

But decided, no, they’d be too curious at this point, and instead had them gently press her with, “Why are you so keen to dodge questions about that thing?” Which got them a guilty look from Shadowheart and an admission that “You deserve honesty more than most…” followed by a “but please, don’t ask.” She looked so sad that Smiler caved and said, “All right, I can respect that. But if you want to talk, I’m here.” Shadowheart admitted that might not be anytime soon, but thanked them, just the same. A nice, surprisingly tender moment between them –

That was, uh, slightly ruined by Gale creeping on the pair in the background. XD See for yourselves:


He was so interested in hearing what they had to say! Sorry, Gale, that’s between Smiler and Shadowheart – and besides, the artefact is one of the magical objects you are very much not allowed to eat.

( More Cutscenes And Screenshots Below )

FreeTube: Welp, finally managed to catch up on the latest “retelling of a fairy tale/myth by the CaFae Latte cast” by C. M. Alongi after Game Night tonight (Trivial Pursuit – Mom won, though it was pretty close) – “CaFae Tales: Eros & Psyche!” AKA “Chris realizes that the perfect way to promote the Kickstarter for her new book, Monstrous, is to have the CaFae Latte crew cover the myth she’s rewriting.” XD Here’s the recap, since I know at least Gigs likes those:

A) JC kicking things off by going to the Sphynx to ask her a riddle – “what the fuck do I get my awesome girlfriend as a present when she’s very particular about her art supplies and already owns loads of books?” (Sphynx: “That is the worst riddle I’ve ever heard.” XD) Bob rapidly sussed out that they were stressing about Valentine’s Day coming up, and JC admitted that while they generally kept things low-key for the holiday, they just like giving Nicole presents.

B) The Sphynx protesting Bob’s suggestion that JC give Nicole a “blind date with a book” subscription focusing on romance books by saying modern romance sucks and that you can’t beat the classics like Eros and Psyche – cue JC going “who?” and then admitting they slept through their English classes, with Bob adding that, even if that hadn’t been the case, did they REALLY have any faith in the American public education system anymore? The Sphynx admitted they didn’t. XD

( Warning: This Does Kinda Get Gross )

Yeah, Dad had another doctor's appointment today to get more pain meds/pain patches, and he was pretty wore out by the whole experience, so the decision was made to delay Game Night to Saturday. *shrug* Fine by me -- gave me a little more time this evening to finish my write-up of the day:

Work – Well, it wasn’t the worst workday to end the work week on:

A) My commute in wasn’t too bad – a little slow in spots, but there were no assholes trying to pull into the side of me, and I was able to park without backing up and driving back in TOO many times, so that was all right

B) I spent a good chunk of the morning doing the GL, then managed to get the credit card people to respond to my “hey, you didn’t turn the thing that you said you were going to turn off, off” e-mail by letting them know we’d gotten another returned card with a “validation failed” error – got a very terse “we’ll shut it off on Monday” reply, but I’ll take it

C) I then worked some on that spreadsheet of people who had balances on last year’s pledges, noting who’d actually paid off their pledge since the report was run, who had never paid anything, who was just one payment down...until running across a guy who had a credit card pledge and discovering that his payment from the first of January, while having successfully gone through, was straight-up not on the database. *heavy sigh* Cue me pivoting to checking out all the payments from the end of December straight through today to see which ones had been missed, because our credit card company is staffed by incompetent idiots

D) After a lunch break, I continued with my investigation, getting interrupted a few times to look up things for my coworker, respond to some more e-mails from the people I’d e-mailed about their overpayments (still all “just keep the money”), and take a couple of credit card calls from people I’d contacted about their failed credit card gifts

E) Then, to end out the day, I did a bunch of reversals to move overpayments onto new pledges, move old one-time gifts onto old pledges, and move one pledge payment onto the CORRECT pledge as it always ends up on the wrong one (two online pledges by the same person – fucking credit card people)

F) And my commute home after that was fine! Yes, the main drag was horribly trafficky again, and it was snowing (lightly, fortunately), but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it was yesterday, and I made it home a little earlier than normal for this week. Yay. :)

So yeah – lot of annoyance with the credit card stuff, but overall a decent enough Friday. We’ll see what happens on Monday, though – I suspect the GL is going to be a MONSTER given all the stuff that was posted by our processors today...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my last ride on the bike this week took me through the rest of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 7 - Taking Out The Trash!” Which included:

A) Useless Steve visiting The Kings (hoping to get them to call a truce with the NCR) and agreeing to look into what’s going on with Orris, and completing it in the most chaotic way possible:

I. First, he hired Orris and watched him do his “let me kill all these fake thugs so you’ll be impressed and keep hiring me” routine...and because he had neither the Intelligence to notice that Orris only fired three shots at four guys, nor the Medicine to figure out that the thugs were playing dead, he thought the guy was totally legit

II. Then, he used his rangefinder to set the ARCHIMEDES II orbital superweapon on the “dead” thugs, causing them to spring up alive (if, uh, horrendously injured – the space laser may be a surprisingly weak weapon, all things considered, but it is not NOTHING either) – he quickly ran for the nearby gate to the Strip and let the Securitrons there handle them

III. Then, after reporting to The King that “Orris seems totally legit” and being told to hire him again because no he’s not, he hired Orris again, as requested, and followed him through the town –

Before watching in baffled horror as Orris just started shooting all the Kings on the street! For – reasons! Jon couldn’t figure it out either, beyond “maybe he somehow blames the Kings for the deaths of his friends?” At any rate, it was a slaughter, as Orris had proper metal armor and a good firearm, and the Kings – didn’t. Sorry Kings – this was not part of Useless Steve’s plan!

IV. Then, finally, Steve followed Orris to a certain spot, where Orris berated him for believing he’d be stupid enough to fall for that again and tried to set up an ambush –

But, uh, because his friends were already very dead, all that happened is that the game teleported the corpses of said friends behind Steve, and Orris was left to face Steve alone. And while Steve doesn’t have smarts, he does have power armor and a decent plasma weapon, so – Orris didn’t last too long. No need to figure out the con if the conman is no longer there, that’s what Steve says!

( Will spare your reading pages tonight )

2. Continue final edits on Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – in fact, I got on a roll and actually finished the final edits! Straight from Alice and Smiler discussing how they didn’t feel great about leaving Victor at the Van Dort mansion to the trio being reunited in the greenhouse and preparing to go to Victor’s room to pack up his things! Took me about an hour, which is longer than I meant to spend on it, but I was enjoying myself, so I kept at it until it was done. :) So this is now ready to post up – tomorrow, we’ll see about getting it on AO3 for the rest of you to enjoy!

3. Watch something on FreeTube: No check – between summing up The Adventures Of Useless Steve (they’re so chaotic and thus take ages!) and the amount of time I spent on finishing final edits on Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” (well worth though), I just didn’t have the time. Catching up on the latest episode of “CaFae Tales” is going to have to wait until tomorrow, after Delayed Game Night!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while I didn’t have anything to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I ended up with two anon asks to chuck into my queue on Valice Multiverse –

A) A sequel to yesterday’s “watch out, Galentine’s Day is on Friday the 13th this year” ask that I answered with the Technicolor Phase versions of Alice, Victoria, and Emily, which explained what Galentine’s Day was (as the Victorian women obviously had no idea). As per the anon, it’s basically a chance for women to go out, leaving their boyfriends and husbands at home, and “come and kick it breakfast style” – “It's like Lilith Fair minus the angst. Plus frittatas.” Technicolor!Alice didn’t know what a “Lilith Fair” or a “frittata” was, but considered the base idea – hanging out with your fellow ladies – sound, while Victoria also liked the sound of it, but noted that it would be harder for them to pull off (because, you know, Emily’s dead and all). Fortunately, Emily suggested that the two living ladies pack a picnic and instead visit her in the Land of the Dead for the occasion, and even added that if they didn’t want to leave Victor Upstairs all by his lonesome, they could bring him along for the initial trip and then leave him to hang out with Bonejangles and the Bone Boys while they did their thing. Alice agreed this was a good plan, and reiterated that she was pretty sure they could take anyone or anything that tried to fuck with them due to the date. :p So I guess the Technicolor Phase ladies are celebrating Galentine’s now! Good for them. :P

B) And a memey ask consisting of: “when a child goes to Build-A-Bear and constructs a teddy from the parts available no one bats an eye, but when I, Victor Frankenstein,” XD The Inevitable High School versions of Alice and Smiler answered this one, with Alice noting that the parts in Build-A-Bear aren’t active rotting or stolen from graveyards...before admitting the ask had her picturing Victor Frankenstein building his creation in Build-A-Bear to the horror of all those around him. Smiler promptly joked that it would take a lot of stuffing to fill up a creature that size. :P Just a bit of light-hearted fun!

*nods* I guess that's not too bad a Friday overall. And now it is time for me to go to bed -- tomorrow is supposed to be a snowy mess, so I will definitely be hanging out inside (apart from possibly having to help Mom shovel). Goals include seeing if I can finish off my Valicertine's stuff for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); posting Chapter 3 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" playing some Baldur's Gate III; and watching the latest CaFae Tales. We'll see if I get anything else done or not. :P Night all!

Which is ironic, because the reason I nearly missed updating is because I was working on the update in a separate doc. XD But yes, before I skip a day in my journaling, here's the write-up of how my day went:

Work – Well, my workday was pretty much just fine – I spent most of the day working on the various spreadsheets we had of people who had overpaid on last year’s Appeal pledges, figuring out who needed to be contacted (shooting off some e-mails and calling some people – all of which so far have said “keep the money,” so yay) and who had money that needed to be moved, with a few interruptions to help with some credit card stuff (one lady making a gift and two credit card updates). Nothing spectacular, but nothing too stressful either, which is good for a Thursday.

...as for my commutes, however – ugh. The morning one consisted of a slow crawl up the highway with someone riding my ass for a good portion of it, then another guy nearly hitting me trying to get into my lane because he was on his phone instead of driving, while the evening one consisted of an okay ride along the highway, but then the world’s slowest fucking crawl down the main drag at home, while also dealing with some nasty sun glare. Extremely frustrating. *sigh* I hate driving, I really do...but I still have one more day to get through, so I must persevere. Hopefully Friday’s commutes won’t be quite as miserable!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – continued pedaling my way through The Adventures Of Useless Steve tonight, covering –

A) The end of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 6 - The House Edge!” AKA “the episode where Useless Steve dies a lot.” XD The last fourteen-odd minutes of which featured:

I. Useless Steve and Arcade Gannon escaping the cave of horrible nightstalker death, bringing the chewed Stealth Boy back to Dr. Henry, convincing local Nightkin Lily (who is another potential companion) to help Dr. Henry with an experiment involving it, talking down another Nightkin who burst in to protest partway through (Steve putting on his finest leopard print pajamas and reading one of his dwindling supplies of “Meeting People” to make the check), and finally encouraging Dr. Henry to continue testing on Lily, because apparently if you can’t make the Science check to help him have a breakthrough, that does give Jacobstown a bit of a better ending. And then, finally, recruiting him for the Enclave Remnants Reunion. Yay!

II. Useless Steve then swinging by Mick & Ralph’s to get himself a new toy – the grenade machinegun (a version of the grenade rifle that is absurdly heavy but shoots grenades very vast) – to go with some pulse grenade ammo of the correct size that he bought earlier, then swinging by the Remnant’s bunker to talk to all the people he gathered and explain that he needed them to help support the NCR in the upcoming battle of Hoover Dam. Most of them were okay with this, but one, Orion Moreno, was not. And he was willing to lock everyone in, kill Steve and Arcade, and then talk his fellow former Enclave soldiers out of the plan. Normally, Jon talks this guy down with his characters’ incredible power of Speech, but he decided in Useless Steve’s run that it would be much more interesting and fun to kill the guy, and had Useless Steve attack.

III. Useless Steve and Arcade then dying SO MANY TIMES because as it turns out, those pulse grenades Steve bought to disable Orion’s power armor were just NOT doing the job (especially since Orion kept healing himself) and Arcade kept getting on the wrong end of Orion’s gatling laser. Seriously, you thought the nightstalker cave was bad? At least there it looked like the boys had a chance! The pain only stopped when Jon had Useless Steve focus on disarming Orion, and then grabbed his gun before he could pick it up. Depriving Orion of his laser seemed to deprive him of his will to live as well, and the pair FINALLY took him down.

IV. And Useless Steve finally receiving his reward for all this nonsense – power armor training from the remaining members of the Remnants (since, you know, they’re big on the stuff too), and the Gannon Family Tesla Power Armor from Arcade! Which had a solid DT of 26 and was Medium armor so it didn’t make Steve’s terrible stealth even more terrible. Useless Steve didn’t put on the associated helmet, though – he much preferred to keep wearing Easy Pete’s terrible hat. Jon was very amused by the armor/hat combo. XD

B) And the beginning of “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 7 - Taking Out The Trash!” AKA “the one where Useless Steve actually starts working toward the endgame.” The first eighteen-odd minutes of which featured:

I. Useless Steve kicking off Act II of the game by agreeing to help the NCR get the Boomers at Nellis on their side, then showing off how to absolutely cheese the quest to make the Boomers like you, “Volare!” by simply giving Jack (the guy with the crush on the Crimson Caravan lady) loads and loads of scrap metal. Some of which can be stolen from the very room he’s sitting in. XD Because what matters isn’t genuinely helping the Boomers with all their side quests – what matters is getting up to “Idolized” reputation with them, and every bit of scrap metal the Courier hands to Jack allows them to pick up some Boomers fame. So Useless Steve taking a moment to hunt down scrap metal in Novac and the nearby REPCONN testing site led to him getting “Idolized” without having to interact with any of the side quests (well, except for the one where you help in the medical tent, but that was just to show off a Low Intelligence interaction), allowing him to progress the quest and get the Boomers on-side despite being an idiot who refused to get involved in their business. :p

II. Useless Steve then taking a moment to show off how this same technique – give something to somebody who will give you fame with their respective faction for each item – works even with the bigger factions by going to McCarran and pickpocketing a few NCR dogtags off the people there (which was able to do since the tags were technically weightless and thus the game gave him the highest chance of getting them successfully, 85%, despite his abysmal Sneak), demonstrating how you can turn those into Quartermaster Mayes at Camp Forlorn Hope for some NCR fame, or Aurelius of Phoenix at The Fort for some Legion fame (Useless Steve actually got Accepted by the Legion for doing so). Though Jon made sure to warn that getting too chummy with the Legion, even by this method, would make Boone and Arcade refuse to work with you, so – don’t be TOO free with the dogtags! (Unless you don’t plan to travel with companions, of course.)

III. Useless Steve then finishing “Volare!” by raising the bomber from Lake Mead for the Boomers – a process that involved:

a. Robbing a couple of citizens back in Goodsprings of their pressure cooker, as Steve definitely did not have the science to get the rebreather off Jack immediately and thus had to get some parts for it (wearing the completed product gives Steve +3% damage resistance but also makes him look like a supervillain XD)

b. Heading to Camp Golf to take the easy way to the wreck by jumping over the pipe and the sandbag wall at the edge of camp and swimming there

c. Attempting to raid the Scavenger’s Platform for another Wasteland Survival Guide, only to get killed a LOT by the lakelurks that had chosen to make it their home; after getting murdered a few times, Steve made the decision to leave the place alone

d. Finding the plane and attaching the ballast, then checking out the cave behind it which contains the mortal remains of a tourist with a suitcase full of money and his car. Jon has NO IDEA how the guy ended up in there, but gladly had Steve take all his pre-War money and whatnot XD

e. Raising the plane from the depths, reporting back to Pearl, getting her and her Boomers to back him at the upcoming battle (Jon found it odd you couldn’t specify what faction they were supposed to help, even though he knows why the developers left it vague – so people could change their minds if they want before the big finale), and leveling up to Level 16! Which saw him bring Speech up to 70 and Sneak up to 32, and take the “Confirmed Bachelor” perk to do +10% damage against male opponents, which would be very useful against all those male Legionnaires he would have to fight at Hoover Dam! So yeah, guess Steve is canonically gay now. All righty then. :p

IV. And Useless Steve then quickly stealing the transfer order from Pearl’s file cabinet that proves the pulse gun (one of the bits of tech Veronica wanted earlier) was in Vault 34, which – he may be doing. Jon hasn’t decided yet whether or not it’s a guaranteed death sentence. We’ll find out soon, I suppose!

Another excellent look at the world of Useless Steve. XD Tomorrow, we should finish off Episode 7 and Steve’s attempt to make friends with The Kings!

2. Start final edits on Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – though I didn’t get as much as I might have liked done, due to getting a little distracted right after supper looking at someone’s Baldur’s Gate III comics (featuring Wyll Ravengard and their tiefling Tav), then having some trouble uploading the Chapter 3 .odt file to FF.net’s Document Manager (took me three tries to make it go through!), then getting interrupted near the end of my editing session by poor Dad having a really bad painful moment. :( But I still managed to cover from Smiler asking Alice if they could move in with her to Smiler and Alice changing into the Van Dort livery to pretend to be new servants, talking about how poorly Victor took Barry’s comments about them earlier. Which, according to the scrollbar, IS about half the chapter, so – go me. *nods* We’ll see how far I manage to get tomorrow – would be nice to get this up this weekend if I could!

3. Watch something on FreeTube: Check – squeezed in some time to watch the latest OXBox list tonight: “7 Easter Eggs You Found By Doing Absolutely Nothing!” Andy, Mike, and Jane discussing – well, to be honest, mostly achievements you get by doing nothing, not Easter eggs. The title’s a bit of a misnomer. (Though given they were pretty sure most of the players of the games they were playing would not sit around doing nothing for any length of time, I guess they sort of count as a kind of Easter Egg. :P) Examples included:

A) The one true actual Easter Egg on the list – if you have Ezio stand motionless looking into the water after pulling the lever in the Assassin Tomb in Assassin’s Creed II for a full minute, a giant squid will swim by, head sack looking like a giant sinister brain! Pull the lever again after seeing it, and it’ll jumpscare you with a tentacle, just for fun. So popular they included another squid in Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, where you can spot one tussling with a sperm whale while lingering by a window in one of the shipwrecks you can free dive into

B) An example of a game company giving you a trophy as a result of taking the piss out of them – if, in Uncharted 4, you have Nathan Drake stand completely motionless, staring at the crowd at the start of the city chase sequence (instead of running after your friend Sully) for thirty seconds, you’ll get awarded the achievement “Stage Fright!” Which is a reference to Nathan apparently getting a case of such when this part of the game was shown off at E3 2015 at the end of Sony’s big showcase – basically, the demo bugged out and Nathan refused to move, forcing them to have to restart it. XD Good to know developer Naughty Dog had a sense of humor about the whole thing!

C) And an achievement that LOOKS like a solemn remembrance but guys I think it’s actually an internet meme – if you send Batman down Crime Alley in Batman: Arkham City and then have him kneel down by the chalk outlines of his long-dead parents that he finds there (don’t ask me if they’re real or just in Batman’s head, that was not specified) for a full minute, you will get a trophy called “Pay Your Respects,” complete with the camera solemnly circling the scene. Which seems like a nice way to reward players for taking a moment to acknowledge the defining moment in Bruce Wayne’s life –

Except. In the gameplay footage provided for this sequence, I saw what key you have to press to trigger the crouch. And it’s fucking F. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, some war game (I’m pretty sure it was an entry in the Call Of Duty franchise) had you attend a buddy’s funeral at one point, and you were prompted to press F to pay your respects. This of course immediately became a meme in some circles of the internet, and I refuse to believe that the people behind Arkham City didn’t know about it and made you press F DELIBERATELY. Meaning this ISN’T a solemn remembrance of the Waynes, this is the game getting you to recreate the meme on its own terms. *shakes head* Shameful. But hey, worth a trophy. XD

So yeah – sometimes, you can earn something fun or see something interesting if you just stay still in a video game for a while! And at the very least, while you’re waiting to see if anything happens, you can get a snack. Always good, snacks.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check, I’m glad to say –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, after some dedicated searching, I finally found the Song Saturday post I was looking for – “People Like Us” by Kelly Clarkson! AKA one of my top tier Valicer In The Dark songs. :) Felt it was appropriate to bring that back in honor of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” getting final edits (especially since I’d never reblogged it before), so into the queue it went!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to toss into my queue, consisting of: “You girls better be careful this Galentine's Day! This year it's on Friday the 13th.” After considering my options, I decided to brush the dust off the Technicolor Phase verse and have the Alice, Victoria, and Emily of that world respond –

With utter confusion, because of course they’ve never heard of this holiday. XD Emily was able to parse that it had something to do with Valentine’s, but other than that… I ended things on Alice declaring that, if anyone did try to cause trouble on that day, the three of them plus Victor should be able to take them. XD Fun stuff!

...and I absolutely HAVE to go to bed, so I'll fix the spacing tomorrow. ^^; Night all! EDIT 2/6/2026: Spacing added, feel free to read the now much more readable entry!

Dad was still having a tough time of it, apparently, but he ate most of his dinner and didn't seem to be in too much pain, so -- that's something? *shrug* And my day went pretty well, all things considered:

Work – A slightly less busy day at work today, though I still had plenty to do –

A) After doing the usual morning reports, I went through some of the roster maintenance stuff in the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and returning a deposit slip someone sent in by mistake

B) Then, having not gotten any answer from the credit card people about the issue I e-mailed them about yesterday, I e-mailed as many of the people who’d had their credit card gifts/pledges returned as I could (the ones who forgot expiration dates or had a regular old card failure or straight up didn’t put an amount to charge) to make them aware of the issue

C) Then I got a call from someone requesting a tax letter, so I made up one of those (though I couldn’t put it in the mail because our director needed to sign it, and she left early today as she wasn’t feeling well)

D) Then, after getting a voicemail during lunch that was literally just “aw, shit” (seriously!), I called that guy back and helped him with his stuff (he just needed to know how much he gave last year for tax purposes)

E) Then, I did a bunch of reversals to move some overpayments on last year’s pledges onto this year’s pledges, as per the requests of the donors

F) Then, I spent most of the rest of the day working on a spreadsheet of people who still have balances on last year’s pledges, to see if doing at least one more pledge billing cycle would be worth it

G) And finally, I took one credit card call from a lady who actually had to stop and call me back partway through because an urgent call came in while she was talking to me, which was slightly amusing

*shrug* Not a horrible day – though I have to admit, parking this morning was tricky. Our parking lot is all stained with salt, so it’s hard to see the actual lines for the spaces, and there’s a big old pile of snow stretching out in front of all of the spaces, meaning you can only pull so far forward. So I had to do a lot of inching forward to make sure my car was in the space but not nose-first in the drift! *shakehead* God, I can’t wait for spring...though, given how much freaking snow there is, that pile might still be there even when the weather warms up. I guess we’ll find out, huh?

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 6 - The House Edge!” The Adventures of Useless Steve continued today, with tonight’s chunklet featuring –

A) Useless Steve attempting to show off another terminal with the Lucky 38 override over in Camp Golf...only to be unable to because it too was locked beyond his ability to hack it (poor guy can’t even get into Easy terminals). He did manage to show off where to find another Lucky 38 VIP card to use to get into House’s secret room, though! One that didn’t involve having to fight your way through Mr. House’s half-brother’s murderous robots and deadly traps!

B) Useless Steve then traveling to New Vegas Steel (a random factory full of crazed robots – Jon was expecting Mr. Gutsys, but the game felt sorry for Useless Steve and only set some Mr. Handys on him) and finally getting to show off the “Lucky 38 Executive Override” on the thankfully-unlocked terminal on there! Followed by Jon explaining how this building (along with H&H Tools from the last chunklet, and the sewers, which also contain a terminal with this override option) only exists because it was designed as part of the quest to bug Mr. House’s network for the Followers (the idea being that you would have to find a terminal to execute the override and make sure the bug actually worked – I presume there’s multiple terminals with this option to accommodate Couriers with varying levels of hacking ability) – after they cut most of the quest, they just left the locations in, presumably because why waste the hard work of designing them? It just livens up the wasteland – especially when crazed Mr. Handys start coming after you (Steve managed to take out most of them with the pulse grenades in his grenade launcher and then fled).

( These are getting long, so I’ll spare your reading pages )

2. Continue editing Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – I in fact finished editing Chapter 3 today! Mostly because I only had like a page and a half to go, so I figured I might as well just get it done. :) Said final page-and-a-half included:

A) Barnaby arriving on the scene in the greenhouse (where Kasimir was trying to figure out who Alice and Smiler were, and what their game was) with Victor in tow, cheerfully telling Kasimir how Victor had agreed to help them rob the place, and not even acknowledging Alice or Smiler until a puzzled Alice asked why – and then, of course, he assumed they were staff and asked why they were listening in to his conversation. XD (To be fair, they ARE in staff uniforms...)

B) Smiler explaining they were friends of Victor and confirming that they were robbing the Van Dorts, with Kasimir reluctantly explaining that Barnaby gave away half the Hobbyhorses’ Coin to a “Master Vreen” who said he was setting up a dog track – only for it to turn out Vreen was a conman who just ran off with the cash (he’s actually straight out of the original Blades In The Dark sourcebook, with his fake racetrack being a point of interest in Nightmarket). The heist was their way of recovering the funds. Barnaby was like “I was just making an investment in the gang’s future! ...or, well, my future. And besides, I was bored and wanted to do some lovely crime again.” XD

C) Kasimir again asking why Victor was helping them rob his own family, and Barnaby breezily saying that Victor was mad at his parents for “some reason” (he hadn’t been paying attention). Cue Alice asking Victor what happened, and Victor telling her and Smiler about his conversation with Nell and William just outside the party, and how they’d made it clear that they hadn’t been worried about him in the slightest, just that he’d ruined his engagement to Victoria Everglot, and how they hadn’t believed his story, because what ghost would want to marry him –

Followed by Victor breaking down into tears. :( Smiler and Alice immediately did their best to comfort him, and once Victor had gotten ahold of himself again, he explained how he’d realized how much he didn’t want to do any of this anymore, so when he came across Barnaby and realized that the guy wanted to rob his parents, he decided to help. Both to ensure that Alice and Smiler got their reward, and to get some money for himself because he certainly wasn’t going to be living in the Van Dort mansion anymore.

D) Victor then asking Alice if it was okay if he stayed with her and Elder Gutknecht for a little bit, at least until he found his feet. Cue Alice feeling the smugness radiating off Smiler. XD She did agree, of course, though she warned Victor that it was going to be a bit cramped since Smiler was moving in too, explaining to her startled friend that they wanted the alchemy bench and to keep her company. And that they hadn’t figured out the bed situation. Smiler cheerfully declared they’d just get two cots from their parents, and maybe they could set up a rotation regarding who got the nice bed what days. XD

E) And Kasimir asking if they were done with all the emotional stuff and if Alice and Smiler were joining the team too, as it would be nice to know how many people were involved in the robbery. XD Alice and Smiler confirmed that they would quite enjoy robbing the Van Dorts, and Victor sent Barnaby and Kasimir to wait in the wine cellar while he, Alice, and Smiler went and got his things (with the pair being very happy to do so). Chapter ended with Victor preparing to lead his friends to his room, with Alice encouraging him to hurry before she decided to hunt down Nell and turn her tongue into dinner’s main course – Victor laughed painfully and admitted he probably wouldn’t even stop her.

*nods* Good stuff, if I do say so myself. :) Tomorrow, we get this in the FF.net document manager and start the final editing pass! Hopefully I can get this up, if not this weekend, then at least by Valicertine’s Day. ;)

3. Watch something on FreeTube: No check – summing up the workout video and editing the final bit of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” just took up too much time. Good thing there wasn’t a list video for me to miss tonight!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d hoped to get this week’s Song Saturday post queued up on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), but I ran out of time to do that too. Though I do know what I want to post – in honor of finishing another “The Van Dort Vacancy” chapter (and, if I’m lucky, posting it this weekend), I want to do “People Like Us” again, as that’s one of my VITD songs. Just gotta find it in the VITD tag so I can reblog it!

*looks at the above* Yeah, I have to find a quicker way to sum up Useless Steve's adventures, this is taking waaaaay too long. I'll see if I can fix that problem tomorrow -- for now, I have to get to bed. Night all!