Ael

If you're wondering "WTF does that mean," I just ended up really annoyed tonight after supper because I kept having to rewash dishes my parents had already washed because there was food stuck to them. Meaning I was a little late getting back on the computer, meaning I was late getting to my various write-ups, and -- yeah. It's just another example of how I never seem to have enough time for anything anymore because there are always Things I Have To Do, and then my brain at a certain point goes "right, no more Things, I just want to rot" no matter how much stuff I have left. It just -- it really irritated me tonight. I dunno why. Just a bad brain day, I suppose. *sigh* Anyway, the write-up --

Work – An all right day at work – I did the usual morning reports while my coworker did the GL, then called a bunch of people about overpayments (two of whom called me back – one wanted a refund, the other said it would be fine to apply it to next year’s campaign), then spent most of the rest of the day working on obituaries. With some brief breaks to take some credit card update calls (one at the beginning of the day, one at the end), and to discuss the “overpayments” situation with the assistant director going forward (she doesn’t want a small overpayment being moved to the next campaign year to stop big donors from getting a letter, which fair – we’ve decided we’ll wait until the director himself gets back from vacation and talk about it with him). Nothing particularly exciting or horrible, which suits me just fine. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Discworld: Adventures in Ankh-Morpork | Oxventure One-Shot | (ft. Dominic Allen)!” The crime-solving shenanigans with Constable Surly (Dom), Constable Igorina (Jane), Detective Bartholemew (Mike) and Constable Cliff (Johnny) continued tonight, and included:

A) Some confusion between Bartholemew and the hard-of-hearing Rufus, the owner of The Lamp & Needles Tavern, regarding the roles of the squad, after Rufus declared he liked Surly but not Bartholemew – Bartholemew identified himself as the “bad cop,” Cliff as the “large cop,” and Igorina as the “lisping” cop, then tried to go “forget it, it’s fine” when Rufus overheard the last as “wisping cop.” Rufus was like “it’s not five, it’s eleven,” prompting Bartholemew to be “it’s five o’clock somewhere!” Resulting in Rufus pouring him a whiskey. XD Well, that worked out nicely for him!

B) Surly managing to use his infectious personality to get some info out of Rufus about their possible miscreant, John! You know, the weirdly-normal man in the brown suit who is of average height for a human. :p As it turned out, Rufus did know John – he was one of the regulars at the place, and had a tendency to get a little too drunk and start unburdening himself of his woes. And the other night, while in his cups, he’d started going on about how unfair the world was, and how he could fix everything if he had a dragon...yeah, as you might imagine, some worried looks were exchanged around that time between our heroes! He also revealed that the man was rather lacking in money, and had paid for last night’s drinks by leaving a mysterious object behind – a weird cross between a telescope and a pocket watch that Igorina, after some investigation, recognized as a “theoddolite,” a piece of equipment architects use! With this particular one labeled “Stone On Stone.” Surly and Cliff both came to the conclusion that Jon was probably going to blow up a building for money (helped along by Rufus telling them about how John apparently owed his last dollar to Miss Effin – sorry, Miss ETHIN), while Bartholemew suggested that, given the way John was talking, he might be planning an assassination attempt on Vetinari (Surly’s response to that was a snort and a “good luck” XD). Anyway, after finishing up with Rufus (including Bartholemew very unsuccessfully trying to prod the man into indicating which direction John went in when he left, instead just becoming very emotional and warm from the whiskey), the group decided it was time to follow up on their leads. Surly asked if Cliff knew what “Stone On Stone” meant (because, well, troll – Cliff was like “give me a minute to work out if that culturally insensitive” XD), but unfortunately on a poor roll, Cliff did not (and managed to twist his ankle besides!). So instead, prompted by Igorina, we saw –

C) The gang heading to Nobblers & Sons! Fine purveyors of artisanal coal (great snacks for trolls), who were supposed to make a delivery of coal dust (aka dragon treats) to the Sanctuary that morning, but who had never shown up. The group found the shop mysteriously closed when they arrived, but since they had “The law is really more of a guideline” Bartholemew with them, they soon got inside. Poor Cliff immediately froze up because he wanted very much to take some coal, but knew that would be wrong – Bartholemew tried to help by snitching him a bag of coal dust and saying “it’s all right, I stole it, nothing to do with you,” but that just led to Cliff deciding he had to submit the bag as evidence. And then Surly took a picture of the whole thing, causing Cliff to say in horror that he just broke bad. XD

ANYWAY – after all that, the gang started doing some actual police work, starting with seeing that the door to the back courtyard had been roughly jimmied open with a crowbar. They headed out to investigate, and found a set of wheel ruts that matched the type they’d seen at the Sanctuary...and a distinct lack of a carriage to fill them. Hmmmm. Bartholemew then led the way upstairs to see what was going on above the shop, and opened the door onto a modestly-but-pleasantly appointed room –

With a man gagged and tied to a chair in the center of it. Very dead on account of the giant dagger in his chest. Igorina attempted to remove it as evidence, but on a poor roll ended up dragging it across the man’s chest and spraying herself with yet more blood (the woman is a walking gore lasagna, to paraphrase Jane) –

And causing the man to suddenly start shouting against the gag! Seems their murder victim had become a zombie post-mortem – which meant he was available for questioning! So question him they did, causing him to reveal that he’d been murdered by some fellow with a bag over his head, wearing a brown suit and ranting and raving about golems and how they’re taking jobs and whatnot. Hmmm – the plot clumpens! Anyway, the man (Crispin Nobblers, as he eventually introduced himself) was very annoyed at having been murdered – though he perked up a little when Cliff pointed out that he no longer had to worry about “life in-sewer-ants,” noting that he’d had a policy and that it might be a silver lining to the whole mess. No carriage insurance, though, meaning he was pretty well screwed when it came to that theft, poor chap. The group promised Crispin that they were on the case and that, if they found his carriage, they’d put in the impound lot so he could pick up it up. Crispin was appreciative and asked Bartholemew if he had any tips for being a zombie – Bartholemew was like “lavender – it really hides the smell.” XD Anyway, with some new facts learned, poor Crispin freed from the chair, and the dagger bagged up for the rest of forensics to have a look at (because poor Igorina, on ANOTHER bad roll to examine it, ended up picking up the trait “doesn’t know what a dagger is” and thus couldn’t identify it for the life of her), the gang proceeded onward! Which led to –

D) The gang heading to the mysterious “Stone On Stone” – which, as per their questioning of Crispin, was an architectural firm in the area with a golem on staff. This establishment was actually open, and upon letting themselves inside, the group saw all sorts of people sitting at little desks drafting (including the golem), a woman checking all their work, and newspaper clippings on the wall about various buildings the firm had helped create – including their most recent contract to refurbish the Misbegot Bridge over the river Ankh. (Johnny was immediately like :O over that!) They managed to get the attention of the woman in charge, who brought them up to her office – and after a bit of questioning, she confirmed that they had had a John on staff until recently – a John Johnson, to be precise. However, they’d had to let him go because a) his behavior had become increasingly erratic (apparently partly because his landlady, Miss Ethin, had recently raised her rents), and b) they’d hired the golem Plots to help with drafting, and thanks to his ability to draw everything as it would eventually look when finished, they’d simply hadn’t needed John anymore. Cliff quickly realized what was likely going to happen (as quickly as a troll could, anyway), and attempted to charm the woman into revealing if the Misbegot bridge had any particular structural deficiencies that might be vulnerable to an exploding dragon – his diamond-tooth smile proved a little too reflective for her liking, but fortunately Surly was there to jump in with his infectious personality and sway her into giving them the inside scoop. She thus told them in strictest confidence that the supports on the bridge were NOT doing well and desperately needed shoring up – but that information could NOT get out, as the firm NEEDED this contract to go well (as they hadn’t been getting many jobs lately). The gang promised to keep it on the down low, and I ended this particular chunklet with Surly telling her that she’d be able to get her “theoddolite” back by writing to the Watch office after the investigation was over – the woman was a bit grumpy about having to give it back (having been very pleased when Igorina pulled it out, as apparently they’re worth $20 AM, which is a lot), but was mollified when Surly promised her that they’d compensate her if anything happened to it. And then was somewhat UN-mollified when Bartholemew started going on about the “bad old days” and how, if it disappeared during the investigation, it might not be worth her time to try and track it down. XD

And there we have it for now! Tomorrow, it looks like the gang will be heading over to Ethin’s Boarding House (as they got the address off the lady at Stone On Stone), and we’ll see if they’re right about John targeting the Misbegot bridge! There may be a twist or a turn yet to this story...

2. Continue final edits on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” Chapter 5: Check – it took longer than I thought thanks to some tricky edits early on in the process, but I did just make it to page 20 out of 54 in my edits today, covering Alice tackling the candle puzzle in the library (and picking up the Weekapaug Thistle, of course); fighting the ghouls in the stairwell room (and feeling horribly guilty about it); listening to more of Grout’s terrible tape recorders (hating him more with each one); having a brief quiet moment on the tower walk above the house; and sneaking past yet more ghouls with the power of invisibility (so very useful). I left off with her having met 6768 and 6789 in the fake-mirror room, getting ready to listen to another one of Grout’s tapes – tomorrow, we see if I can get up to page 30 and through yet more of the terrible-awful-no-good-very-bad mansion! Be nice if I could get the new chapter up by Saturday, but we’ll see...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – I simply did not have time tonight. You do not want to know how long it took me to do that write-up on the Oxventure Discworld one-shot up there. *facepalm* I have GOT to learn how to be less wordy in my write-ups...I just always want to share all the good jokes and whatnot with you guys...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing on Valice Multiverse tonight, but I knew pretty much exactly what I wanted to put in my queue for the week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler):

A) For Wednesday, I have some fanart by benmix98 of the two Malkavian fledglings genderswapped – that is, the cheerleading-outfit-wearing fem!Malk was now a man, and the ready-for-the-rave masc!Malk was now a woman – the designs were really neat, so I really wanted to share ‘em. :)

B) For Thursday, I have some more fanart by benmix98, this time of Beckett looking at something while wiping blood from his lips – Beckett is best vampire, so adding that to the queue was a no-brainer. :)

C) And for Friday, some fanart by asylumpixie of a Malkavian OC in fancy Elizabethan clothes pouring blood all over the neck of a dressed-for-the-Napoleonic-Wars LaCroix laying in front of her – this is that incredibly detailed and gorgeous piece I told you all about in a previous entry, and I HAD to throw it in there.

Yeah, kind of foreshadowing the upcoming LB:DQ chapter with all this, I feel! XD Now I just have to find the right Song Saturday...but I can do that tomorrow. If I have the time of course.

Other: Another nice day, another round of beanbags – and this time, Dad absolutely smoked Mom and me. Just straight up wins every time. And poor Mom – well, she tried, especially in the last game, but she was never able to get ahead of me. Final scores were me 2-2-2; Dad W-W-W; and Mom 3-3-3. *shrug* Them’s the breaks, I suppose!

Aaand I have officially stayed up too late. *facepalm* I'd better get to bed before things get any worse -- night all!

I say that because while I had a decent day, there were two things that kept it from being truly good. One was the weather, which was miserably hot and sticky today, meaning we all had to stay in the AC again (which really ticked off Mom, who wanted to keep working on the gnome house she's building on our catalpa tree) --

And the other was the return of the fucking ants in the pantry. >( Six days we went without seeing any of the little buggers after Mom cleaned it out, then cleaned off the shelf on the basement stairs nearby and sealed it off, then tonight like four of them were crawling around the flour container. We just CANNOT figure out where the little bastards are coming from! Mom has cleaned and sprayed pretty much EVERYWHERE! It is a puzzle and not one we're eager to keep banging our heads against! *sigh* And before you ask, yes, I did bring up calling an exterminator, but Mom and Dad are firmly against it because they don't think they'd know either how to get rid of the ants. *heavier sigh* Fucking hell...I was so hoping we were done with them...

Anyway -- here's the write-up of the better part of my day:

Tumblr: Decently productive day on the tumblrs, I must say –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Got some good stuff done before lunch over here today –

A) First, I reblogged three things I found on my friend Squid’s (aka gaydragonwizards) blog:

I. A thread by to-the-way and iwonderwh0 about a new bill coming up in the collective governments of the European Union that would have AI scan and monitor everyone’s texts before they’re sent, encrypted or no. It’s SUPPOSEDLY to stop child sexual abuse, but we all know that it’s gonna be used to censor people and create a fun mass surveillance state! And as per screenshots by iwonderwh0, the governments in favor have already made it clear that the people in charge will NOT have their texts snooped on, which – yeah. You’re not supposed to be open about the double standards, guys! *sigh* Most of my online friends on tumblr are American or English, so this doesn’t apply to them, but I figured I should reblog it just for reach – never know who might stumble across it on a random tumblr browse!

II. Some cute art by potoh of two award-winning cats – a white kitty with orange ears and a blue ribbon stating “I have never used ChatGPT and never will,” and a black kitty sporting a pink ribbon stating “No. 1 GenAI hater.” Because I haven’t used ChatGPT and never intend to, no matter how hard writing an e-mail might get. I have heard too much about how generative AI like that steals from other people’s hard work (note all the people on AO3 locking their accounts to prevent bot scraping) and ruins the environment (have this article from MIT from January explaining some of the impacts) to ever want to use it. Also, adorable cartoon kitties. :)

III. And a short thread from maxwith-a-lowercasem, featuring a post with a crude drawing of a wild-eyed person with loads of arrows pointing into their head, labeled things like “headcanons” and “ideas” and “ships” and “fan fics” and “blorbos” and plain old “so many thoughts,” and a follow-up featuring tags from someone called maybenoots noting how all the arrows are pointing INWARD at the person and none are coming OUT and calling this “the nature of the curse.” Gee, I wonder why that might speak to me. XD It’s fucking busy up in this head with all the Valicer AUs jostling for attention!

B) And second, I went into my drafts and started working on a post letting everyone know about my new Tav!Smiler in Baldur’s Gate III! Because I did do that poll two months ago asking everyone what their class makeup should be and how I should handle their love of alchemy, and I thought the residents of tumblr deserved an update. :) So far I’ve just completed the intro and the section on their race and appearance (complete with pictures), with a little bit written on their class and their High Half-Elf cantrip – hopefully I can get this completed next weekend to post the week following! I don’t want to leave it too long, after all – be a lot to catch everyone up on!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to answer, from someone griping about how people who say that all modern music sucks are annoying because they’re clearly doing it just to feel superior, not because it’s necessarily true. I queued up Cuddlepile!Smiler heartily agreeing, talking about “Ordinary” by Alex Warren and “Disease” by Lady Gaga as modern songs they really enjoy – and that I really enjoy, because modern music is NOT a lost cause, thank you very much! ...I mean, it may seem that way when they play “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone or “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter for the fifty-millionth time, but – still.

Sims 4: Well, I managed to tear myself away from Baldur’s Gate III today to continue my offline adventures over here building Smiler’s Potion Caravan! Which, as you probably know by now, is intended to be a Sims 4 representation of the wagon my Tav!Smiler used to travel around Faerun and peddle their potions before the whole “kidnapped by the Nautiloid” thing, so I basically was still spiritually playing BG3. XD Anyway – pleased to report I made some good progress on the build today:

A) First, I conducted a brief experiment in changing the walls from “short” to “medium” height (moving the back wheels off the build temporarily when changing the wall height ended up deleting them – forgot for a second that I’d used “moveobjects on” to get them to slightly overlap the edge of the lot!), in the hopes that it would give me more wall space to play with when it came to my Crypt-O-Club hanging shelves (since I really wanted to get that lower one off the floor already). And it did...at the cost of making the rest of the build look weird. Like, I just really did not like the walls being so much taller than the doors! So I ended up reverting all my changes and keeping the wall height “short.” I will just have to live with that one shelf being really close to the floor, I guess!

B) Then, after taking some time to ponder my bed and lighting options (as I needed just the right bed for the build, and I’m not sold on the chandeliers I’m currently using to light the place), I focused my efforts on rearranging the interior of the wagon’s “alchemy” room to see exactly where I wanted to put stuff! I initially tried moving the door to Smiler’s “living” area all the way over to the left, into the back corner by the windows, to free up some interior wall space so I could hang the two Crypt-O-Club shelves there side-by-side – but that forced me to move the Realm Of Magic decorative magical-ingredients-storage cabinet that was there over to the corner by the big sliding doors (where the shelves originally were) and I quickly decided I much preferred having all the ROM furniture all lined up together against the back wall. Gotta keep things in easy reach for Smiler at their cauldron! So instead I put the door to the “living” area in the middle of the interior wall; moved the cabinet back into its original position; stacked the two hanging shelves atop each other on the wall section next to the living door (since I still preferred them being on that wall to where I had them before – I did experiment with putting a shelf on either side of the door, but unfortunately the cabinet slightly blocked the shelf on the left, so that was a no go. I ended up just using ALT to carefully move the shelf up a little bit so it wasn’t sitting FLAT on the floor) –

And instead put the Cottage Living “Forager’s Delight” bench into the corner by the sliding doors! Because, as per my last update on this build, I did want to use it somewhere. And where better than right next to the dried herbs from Realm of Magic hanging by the front door? :) So yeah, now that bench is where Smiler preps their ingredients before storing them in the fancy cabinets! I am pleased.

C) With that more or less sorted, I turned my attention to figuring out Smiler’s living space! I once again pondered my bed options, and – after a good long think and trying out a couple of beds in the actual room – went with the base game “Soothing Single Sleeper” bed. Because while I felt a bunk bed might be appropriate (especially the Horse Ranch one), the Soothing Single Sleeper actually came in the best color scheme – black frame with yellow-striped bedding – while also not looking too modern. So yeah, it was the only real option. You could fix this by giving us more fucking swatches with halfway-decent yellows, EA! And allowing us to color frames and bedding separately again! Ugh...

Anyway – with the bed sorted, and tucked away at one end of the room, I then turned my attentions to finding Smiler a nice desk where they could do things like write letters and come up with new alchemical formulae and whatnot. After considering a few options from Realm Of Magic, Horse Ranch, and Werewolves, I ultimately decided I like the look of the Horse Ranch “Handcrafted Antique Desk” the best (especially the drop-down writing surface – I seem to have a fondness for things that look like they could folded up to save space in this build) and put that in black at the other side of the room, by the window, paired with the “Bunkhouse Spindle Back Dining” chair in yellow. (I did check to see if the desk had a good yellow swatch, but no go. EAAAAAAAA…) I then tucked the Lovestruck “Mi Amor’s Acoustic Guitar” into the corner next to the desk, and – after checking out all my options – stuck my favorite Moschino Stuff “Modern Muse” rug in the black-and-yellow-stripes swatch on the floor so Smiler would have something soft to walk on in there. Again, on-brand with Smiler’s color scheme while not looking TOO modern. Despite, you know, “modern” being in the name. XD

D) With the living space now looking at least somewhat livable, I proceeded to go around the build to add in a few bits and bobs here and there – namely:

I. I put a couple of plant pots (in yellow and black, of course) on either side of the “front porch” area – figured it would be nice if Smiler had some pots where they could grow some of the plants they needed for their potions!

II. I put a trio of ROM “Science Of Magic Print Series” pictures up on the left-hand chunk of wall next to the “living space” door, since it looked depressingly blank – one of each picture type, all in black frames to match the color scheme. Filled in that space nicely!

III. And, after being unable to fit it in the “alchemy” room, I put the matching long “Spellcaster Scheduler” picture in Smiler’s living area right above their bed – guess it’ll be good for helping them track the phases of the moon? In case that’s relevant to their needs? :P

Just a few finishing touches to help bring the place to life! Though “finishing touches” is probably the wrong word to use, as I wouldn’t consider this place “finished” yet. It’s a lot closer than it used to be, though!

E) And finally, I finished off my time building by cleaning up all the now-unnecessary items on the lot (like the old fridge, stove, toilet, and counter), keeping only:

I. The Jungle Adventures selling table, which instead joined the “campsite” area at the front of the build (because Smiler does need something to actually sell their potions from!)

II. And the extra-fancy Realm Of Magic cauldron, because I’m still not sure if I want to use that one or the “classic” cauldron in the final version of the build (I’m leaning toward the classic one, but there’s an argument to be made for keeping the fancy one as a safer alternative to having a fire pit in the wooden wagon :p).

I also added one thing to the lot – the Vampires “Antique Book Stand” with the fancy book on it! Mostly because I saw it, went “oh cool, we could say that’s Smiler’s recipe book or something” – then discovered I didn’t have anywhere to put it. Because, well, there’s just not a lot of space in this tiny house, and most of the alchemy room’s footprint is taken up with other stuff! So I just left it on the lawn with the fancy cauldron at the back of the lot to see if I could find a spot to jam it into later. It really WOULD be nice to have...we will see!

And there we have it – another productive building session in Sims 4! :) It’s nice to slowly but surely bring this build together. Even if I keep having to go offline to do it so I can be sure it’s safe to use the handful of mods and CC I’ve got in the game currently. *sigh* Anyway, have some pictures of the place:











I feel like it’s coming along quite nicely. :) Maybe this upcoming weekend I can see about finishing it off once and for all! And then, after that, see if I can get the Teen Valicer Save off the ground...

Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another night spent with Jon of Many A True Nerd both on the bike and with my ice cream after supper, watching the latest episode of his latest Fallout series: “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 6 - False Hope!” The continuing adventures of baseball-bat-wielding courier P. D. Shoot as she –

A) Hit up a traveling merchant just leaving Novac to sell some of the loot she’d picked up on last week’s trip to REPCONN – and discovered to her delight that the woman was carrying the nails she needed to turn her GRA baseball bat into an absolute BEAST of a sneak attack weapon! Between this and all the Stealth Boys she managed to pick up while at REPCONN, things are definitely coming up Shoot lately!

B) Visited Ranger Andy in his little cabin to get some of his precious knowledge for herself! And not just in the form of the Medicine skill book she stole off his bed. :P Specifically, she asked him how he’d hurt his legs (apparently, back when he was an active NCR member, he was lured into a Legion trap where they used a starving, terrified child hiding in a closet to drop a grenade at his feet...and then he fell down the stairs of the motel more recently for good measure), then flattered him by saying that while his body may be injured, his mind was still sharp and he shouldn’t think of himself as worthless. Ranger Andy, touched by her kind words, thus taught her a special unarmed move from his NCR days, the “Ranger Takedown” (a simple palm shove or cool leg sweep, depending on which camera mode you were in) –

Which unlocked it for her to use with ALL her unarmed weapons (for example, the Spiked Knuckles currently sitting in her inventory) going forward. Because yes, unlike melee weapons, which each have their own unique special move that you can use so long as you have enough points in the skill, unarmed weapons all share a pool of special moves that you learn from people in the world, and any unarmed move can be used with any unarmed weapon. Which is pretty damn handy, if you’ll excuse the sort-of pun. :P Jon indicated that, once you get the skill high enough, unarmed attacks can be pretty fucking bonkers, so I’m looking forward to seeing how THAT goes once he starts focusing on it more than his melee weapons!

C) Traveled over to Nelson to see what the situation was there – and to start a game of ping-pong loyalties between herself, the NCR, and the Legion. What do I mean by that? Well:

I. First, P. D. Shoot met Ranger Milo at the checkpoint on the road to Nelson, who informed her that everything was shut down until the NCR had figured out how to deal with the Legion holed up in there. P. D. said she was no friend of the Legion and offered to assist, and Milo thus asked her to help him go into the town and kill the three hostages that the Legion had taken to destroy their leverage over the NCR. P. D. was like “shouldn’t we rescue them?” but Milo said that was a dumb idea given how outnumbered they were and the condition of the hostages (who’d been strung up on the crucifixion frames the Legion carry around) – if she wanted to try, he wouldn’t stop her, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to help. P. D. accepted that answer, and they headed over to Nelson –

II. And while Milo killed a bunch of Legionnaires from up on the ridge above the town, P. D. strolled into the house that served as the headquarters of the battalion’s commander, Dead Sea, and asked him, “so, what’s the sitch?” As her reputation with the Legion was neutral, he informed her of his orders to hold Nelson, and mentioned that their enemies to the north had not yet moved against them, so everything was kind of in a holding pattern. P. D. offered to break the stalemate, causing Dead Sea to scoff, “If you’re so eager to see Camp Forlorn Hope fall, why not go attack it all by yourself?” P. D.’s response was “Sounds like fun!” so Dead Sea gave her the quest to kill all four officers in Camp Forlorn Hope and sent her on her way. P. D. thus returned to Novac and carefully made her way to the camp under the cover of night (because apparently going directly to Forlorn Hope from Nelson is a BAD IDEA, loads of nasty enemies in your way), stopping briefly at Helios One (the power station the NCR have captured) along the way to lie to the troops there about being NCR and sneak in to steal another Medicine skill book –

III. Then sought out the commander of Forlorn Hope, Major Polatli and said, “Heard you haven’t moved against the Legion in Nelson yet; what’s the problem and how can I help?” Polatli explained that he had neither the men nor the supplies to risk in a skirmish with the Legion right now, and – seeing her eagerness to assist – sent her over to chat with Quartermaster Mayes about their supply issues. Mayes subsequently revealed that he’d sent some soldiers out to get whatever supplies they could find, but they hadn’t returned, and that he needed P. D. to find out what had happened to them and recover whatever they’d found. P. D. agreed and headed back to Helios One to see if they knew anything about the missing troopers – turns out, they did, informing P. D. they’d put a GPS tracker in the crate for the boys and that she should be able to follow it with her Pip-Boy. P. D. thus tracked the signal over to where the cache was sitting among some dead soldiers –

And not that far from some fire geckos. O.o Now, Jon had been prepared to deal with one of F:NV’s rare “unfair” ambushes (that is, an ambush where the enemies only spawn in once the ambush-inciting event is triggered, rather than them being in the world already and just running in when the event happens) over here – some Legionnaires spawn in the moment your character picks up the supply cache, but they only attack if they think you’re an enemy, and P. D. had a set of Legion Recruit Armor she’d picked up on her travels that she could don before grabbing the supplies, thus fooling the ambushers into thinking she was one of them – but with the added element of fire geckos...yeah, Jon decided that the best thing for P. D. to do was both put on the armor and burn one of her spare Stealth Boys, just in case. So that’s exactly what she did. As it turned out, the fire geckos were just far enough away that they wouldn’t have been a problem (and appeared to be distracted by some unlucky Legionnaires who had spawned in next to them), but while Jon was a little annoyed, he couldn’t consider the Stealth Boy wasted. Better safe than sorry!

IV. Anyway – after getting past all that, shucking off the Legion armor, and delivering the supplies to Mayes, P. D.’s next stop was to see Dr. Richards, the camp medic, and offer her assistance with whatever problems he had! And as it turned out, he had two of them:

a. First, he needed someone to help him treat the various wounded troopers he had in the infirmary, as he was up to his elbows in hurt people and required a second set of hands. And he wasn’t picky – anyone with a Medicine skill above 20 would do. P. D. had one of 36, and thus got to work checking up on the three patients that needed attention. She was able to patch up the one who was suffering from some nasty machete wounds with her own medical knowledge, but the other two – the one with a leg needing amputation, and the one whose chest was tore up with shrapnel from a close-range explosion – both required her to find the right equipment around the tent before attempting any treatment. Fortunately, she saved both of them too – though the guy with the bad leg also needed his gangrenous hand cut off, sadly. It’s tough being a soldier in the Mojave!

b. And second, he needed someone to look into some missing medical supplies – apparently someone was sneaking his doses of Hydra. P. D. took on the job – but as she didn’t have the medical knowledge to recognize the symptoms of Hydra use in any of the locals, she instead resorted to chatting with one Private Sexton to see if he knew anything of use. He told her that he often took walks at night to calm his nerves, and had seen his fellow private, Stone, doing the same thing – though he took way longer walks than him, often staying out past midnight. P. D. filed that information away and went to confront Stone about his long-ass nightly walks –

Only to discover that she was just shy of being able to pass the speech check to make him fess up – she couldn’t boost her Charisma, and thus her Speech skill, quite enough with the power of booze and sexy nighties. Fortunately, she was close to a level-up, and Jon had a couple of quests from the Mojave Outpost that he’d been keeping in-hand to turn in whenever a situation like this arose. So she quickly popped over there to tell a couple of random NCR about the atrocities the Legion had committed at Nipton (completing “Cold, Cold Heart”) and Ranger Ghost specifically what had happened to the town (completing “Keep Your Eyes On The Prize”). This got her up to Level 7, which allowed her to boost her Speech skill up to 46 (and her Melee skill up to 75). At that level of Speech, all she needed was the sexy nightie and one bottle of booze to call Stone out on his “late night walks” and get him to confess to stealing Richards’s supplies. She turned down his attempts at explaining himself and reported him to Richards, and Richards declared he’d have a world with Polatli at the first opportunity. Quest completed and problems solved, yay! P. D. thus went to Major Polatli to tell him the good news (and quietly steal his Big Book Of Science while hiding behind a typewriter in the corner of the command tent) –

V. Before pulling another switcheroo and deciding to kill all the officers at Forlorn Hope after all! Because she’d already gotten all the XP she could out of this group, and she was not eager to take the meager help they could offer her back to Nelson to help liberate it. Especially since Jon knew from experience the troopers would NOT be following her into any buildings and thus would NOT be helping her kill Dead Sea and his two bodyguards. So instead of mustering the troops and storming the town, she instead waited until nightfall when most of her targets would be asleep, then popped a Stealth Boy and proceeded to sneak around the camp and Grand Slam to death Major Polatli, Quartermaster Mayes, Dr. Richards (whose outfit she stole for future Medicine-skill-boosting purposes) –

And one Tech Officer Reyes! Who was the trickiest of the four to kill, because unlike the first three, she never goes to sleep – she just sits at her ham radio 24/7, in the command tent with two other NPCs wandering around. Meaning P. D. had to wait for quite a bit for the two other NCR troopers to be in a position where they’d be unlikely to see their commanding officer get murdered by an invisible nail-bat slamming into her head. Fortunately, they did eventually turn away, and P. D. was able to kill Reyes, get out of the tent, and fast-travel back to Nelson before a single corpse was discovered. She then reported back to Dead Sea, who congratulated her on her glorious victory and rewarded her with his personal blade, the Liberator – a machete with the highest limb damage multiplier in the game. Meaning that it essentially functions as a staggering weapon that’s even better than her 9 Iron. Yeah, given P. D.’s inability to use guns, you can see why she sided with the Legion in the end to get this thing!

VI. That being said, she did consider swapping loyalties one last time to get the XP from freeing the poor NCR hostages strung up on their crosses in the middle of town...but unfortunately for them, her Stealth Boy had run out right before she’d spoken to Dead Sea. And she wasn’t willing to free them without using a Stealth Boy to avoid the Legion turning hostile, and she wasn’t willing to use another one so soon after using two on her previous missions. Sorry boys – seems you’re going to be staying up there for a while yet!

And so the episode ended with P. D. having gotten herself a new weapon and some fame with both the NCR and the Legion, and us having gotten a look at just how flexible Miss Please Don’t Shoot’s morals are. XD Well, it is a YOLO run – anything goes so long as it keeps you alive! And next week, Jon intends to help add to P. D.’s arsenal by getting her up to Level 8 and finally getting her Unarmed skill up to 50. Because, apparently, that’s where the real fun with unarmed weaponry begins. Again, I am very much looking forward to seeing how nuts it gets! :D

Writing: Well, unfortunately I wasn’t able to make any serious progress on editing Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” today, between the Sims 4 stuff and the F:NV YOLO Remastered stuff – but I did make sure to upload the chapter to FF.net’s chapter editor, and I did spend a little time correcting some minor errors near the beginning of the chapter (for some reason, every time I upload a chapter to the FF.net editor, all quotes at the start of an italicized sentence get un-italicized. It’s rather annoying). So at least I’m in a good spot to dive into the edits tomorrow! Fingers crossed I can get a good chunk done!

Aaand I have once again stayed up too late, but that's just a thing that happens now, so I'm not going to worry about it. Instead, I'm just gonna head to bed and get what sleep I can before work tomorrow. Night all.

Which I am glad of, because I needed a decent day after the fun of discovering my car battery was dead yesterday. *nods* Like, it wasn't PERFECT, but it was definitely better than yesterday. Allow me to prove it to you via the medium of the daily write-up:

Work – A very quiet half-day at work to end the week – I did the GL; I ran some reports and looked up some people’s overpayments to figure out how they ended up overpaying; I reversed some one-time gifts that need to be put under the right campaign or applied to a pledge or put under the right campaign AND applied to a pledge; I did some write-offs (and got my assistant director’s help changing the ink cartridge in the copier while trying to copy them, because the old one was definitely going); and I finally trucked my office plants home because the poor things need a repot (the snake plant in particular needs some space as it has produced All The Babies). Nothing particularly exciting, but that is fine with me – I’d rather save my excitement for video gaming. Speaking of which...

Baldur’s Gate III – Hopped back into the world of Faerun today to get my new Warlock (soon to be Bardlock) Smiler through as much of the Nautiloid as I could in just about an hour – here’s how that went:

A) Before getting into the tutorial, I did a little pre-game set-up – specifically:

I. I went ahead and, after a bit of a think, downloaded the “Initiate Feats” mod that gives every class one extra feat at level 2. What can I say, I really want that “Experimental Alchemy” feat for Smiler as early as possible! And I have a plan for the extra feat that my companions will be getting – I’m going to have them all get an Ability Score Improvement! My initial thought was to use it to tweak their stats to match their pre-recruitment ones (as the game changes their stats to match the standard ones for their level when you do ask them to join the party), but looking at the pages for the companions, their pre-recruitment stats are actually worse, so...maybe I’ll just have Gale, Wyll, and Astarion all up Strength to 10 so they’re not such weaklings. :P (As for the ladies – Karlach has a Charisma of 12 pre-recruitment and 10 afterward, so that’s that sorted; Lae’zel is supposed to have an Intelligence of 11, so maybe I’ll up that; and Shadowheart – okay, all her stats are worse pre-recruitment, so I might just make two of her odd-number stats even for proper bonuses. We’ll figure it out when it happens!)

II. After trying and failing to find out if it was a bad idea or not, I updated a couple of mods that indicated they needed updating, figuring “well, I’m only JUST past character creation on this particular save – if something goes wrong, it won’t be hard to get back to where I was” –

And then, when I went to continue my game, Larian went “Hey, we noticed that you added a new mod and that these mods don’t match the versions you started out with! Would you like to downgrade the updated mods or disable the new one? Totally optional, do whatever makes you comfortable.” O.o I – I’m so used to dealing with EA and Bethesda and their “keeping track of your mods and their updates is YOUR business” model that it always throws me when Larian demonstrates they give a shit. XD I actually did downgrade the mods that I updated, just to be on the safe side, but maybe next time I will update them. One of them is the bug-fixing mod, after all… We’ll see!

B) With that sorted, it was back to Smiler’s Nautiloid adventures! As usual, things started with me having Smiler poke around the first room (Smiler commenting “Cursed to put my hands on everything” as I made them look at all the various pods and such XD) – this resulted in:

I. Smiler investigating but pointedly not touching the “nursery” in the center of the room (as I already know from other people’s playthroughs it explodes and damages you if you touch it) – I did this mainly to get the “here’s how you do skill checks” tutorial out of the way, and to set my custom Gilded Obsidian dice as the ones to roll. :D So now Smiler has matching dice for their adventure, yay!

II. Me opening Smiler’s spellbook and going to the “Reactions” tab to make sure the game knew to always ask me before Smiler took a reaction – currently the only thing in there is “Opportunity Attack,” but as Smiler gets spells we’ll want to keep a close eye on that!

III. Smiler investigating the other pods, and me discovering to my horror that a couple of the ruptured ones actually had burnt corpses in them – I never noticed those before! I mean, it makes sense, those must have been the people roasted by the dragon fire right before the jump to Avernus, but damn. D: Sorry for making you look at those, Smiler!

IV. And Smiler picking up some first room goodies – a couple of onyxs off a dead mindflayer and a desk on the upper “balcony,” and 13 gold and a “FED Ration Pack” out of the chest at the very end of the balcony. The FED Ration Pack being a double-size pack of camp supplies (80 instead of 40) added by the “Fade’s Equipment Distribution AIO” mod I have. The description indicated that “Fade’s Equipment Distribution” is a company in-universe, dedicated to “delivering quality supplies to adventures across the realm.” I thought it was very cute! And having a nice healthy pack of camp supplies is never a bad thing – need those for long rests!

C) With the goodies in the first room acquired, Smiler moved onto the second room, where they grabbed a gold piece off a dead goblin on a table and read the nearby rune tablet before heading up to save Us from the skull of Myrnath, the unlucky elf whose brain got turned into an intellect devourer. This happily went well, with Smiler smashing the Investigation check to see why Us was stuck (they were experiencing odema, swelling of the brain) with a 21, then passing the “attempt cerebral extraction” Medicine check with a 12 (just above the DC of 10, yay). As per my other playthroughs, Smiler declined to try and lobotomize Us (which permanently cripples Brain Friend and is to be avoided), then had their usual “getting to know you” chat with their new buddy (why was I forced onto this ship, what was put in my eye, where even are we) before proceeding. No other goodies in the room other than the usual rune slates, sadly, but I did have the pleasure of seeing Us lounging in one of the organic chairs, since I learned recently they can sit in them. :) Fun stuff – glad that I get this all-too-brief moment with Brain Friend before they disappear to the end of Act 2.

D) With Us now at their side, Smiler thus proceeded to the next area and met Lae’zel – who, as usual, greeted them by doing a fantastic flip over their head before threatening to kill them. XD Fortunately, the tadpole link helped her to realize that Smiler was no thrall to the mind flayers, and she instead proposed a team-up to reach the helm and get the hell out of Avernus (pun not originally intended but now very much is :P). Though, before they could get anywhere near the helm, the trio of protagonists had to take down the trio of imps in their way, meaning it was time for me to get familiar with combat again! Fortunately, I didn’t need to get too familiar, as the imps were taken down pretty quickly – Lae’zel cut down two with her sword, while a Gilded Eldritch Blast from Smiler and a claw swipe from Us took out the third. Did take two rounds, but the imps missed all their attacks, so the gang ended the fight with a bunch of experience and no wounds, yay. :P As for the spoils of war, they included:

I. A scimitar, a light crossbow, and a couple of hand axes on the imps – Smiler let Lae’zel take the scimitar, as they weren’t proficient with those types of weapons and she was

II. A void bulb (which sucks things in), a spiked bulb (which makes things bleed), a skull, and a healing potion on a dead mindflayer nearby – we like having things to throw at enemies!

III. Another light crossbow, another healing potion, a simple robe, a shortsword, and a total of 8 gold on all the dead thralls littered around the battle arena – the simple robe is a lower AC than Smiler’s current armor, and the shortsword another weapon they can’t use, but perhaps both shall be good to sell

IV. And me going into the Options menu and lowering the background music and ambient noise as they’d almost drowned out some of Lae’zel’s dialogue in the scene where she confronted Smiler – they’re now both at around 60. Hopefully this will stop the music overpowering people’s voices when things are dramatic!

E) With everything collected (and the music calmed), it was time for the trio to climb the arterial mesh and proceed through the sphincter door into Shadowheart’s room! Smiler quickly checked on the unresponsive cultists, then went to see if they could help the imprisoned Shadowheart (over Lae’zel’s objections) –

And, to my surprise, I discovered a new option in my dialogue box while chatting with her – a Warlock option, to be precise, using Smiler’s knowledge of Arcana to determine the magic keeping her sealed in! I of course had to pick that, and to my delight, Smiler got a dirty 20 on the Arcana check to figure it out, determining that she was sealed in with warding runes that were linked to the console! They thus told her they were going to check that out and went to examine it –

And had another option to inscribe upon it the glyphs they’d sensed from checking out the warding runes! Which caused the console to hum to life – no eldritch rune from the other room needed! :D Smiler then smashed the Arcana check to take a closer look at the console with a nat 20 (learning that it was more like a beating heart than a piece of machinery), before placing a hand on it and willing Shadowheart’s pod to open with the power of their tadpole. For some reason, the clip of the pod opening and Shadowheart falling out didn’t play, but she was freed, and Smiler was able to chat with her and agree to let her join the party. :) That was so neat to find another way to open up the pod and free her – I looked it up on the wiki, and apparently Sorcerers, Wizards, and Warlocks all get access to this check, probably because they’re so well-attuned to magic. I’m just glad Smiler passed – Mar-Mal was generous in sharing information today. :)

And I left things on Smiler looting the backpack near Shadowheart’s pod for an agate and 4 gold – hope those weren’t Shadowheart’s things. XD Next time, the group will fight the cultists (because doing so grants a little XP), and take a poke in the room where you normally find the eldritch rune that powers the console. Because the “tutorial chest” is in there, and I have some dyes and stuff to fetch...plus a woman to accidentally turn into a mind flayer. And oooh, I get to see what Shadowheart’s reaction to that horrific scene is now...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike for the final time this week, pedaling my way through the OXBoxtra lists of the week:

A) “7 ‘Exclusive’ Pre-Order Bonuses that Became Free Anyway” – Ellen and Andy going through those games that offered pre-order bonuses to players willing to fork over the cash to buy the game before it was even released...only to turn around and just give the bonuses to everyone some time later. (Well, except for Darksiders, which just stupidly gave everyone the same pre-order code to unlock their special pre-order weapon, meaning everyone was able to get it the moment someone leaked the code on the internet. XD) Did you pre-order Left 4 Dead 2 to get the baseball bat, which was guaranteed to spawn in safe rooms and was something everyone on the team could pick up? Well, I hope you enjoyed Valve patching the game six months later to not only make the bat available to all players, but to turn it into a regular melee weapon that spawned wherever and could only be picked up by one person! Did you pre-order Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to grab stuff like the orange blade for the lightsaber and the yellow-and-black paint job for B-D-1? Well, I hope you enjoyed EA releasing all those cosmetic exclusives to everyone just two months after launch! And did you pre-order Infamous: Second Son to get the special “Cole’s Legacy” DLC and Cole’s iconic yellow jacket without having to pay for it like the special edition enthusiasts or the common gamer scrubs? Well, I hope you enjoyed Sony making the DLC free for everyone – eight years later. ...yeah, there’s a consensus in the comments that “if it’s been eight years, you can’t be mad about everyone getting it.” XD

B) And “7 Dystopias That Weren't So Bad Now We Think About It” – Jane, Mike, and Andy talking about those video game dystopias that don’t seem so terrible after seeing how bad reality has gotten! The Forgotten City under Rome from the game of the same name has statues that come to life if anyone sins and turn all the citizens into golden statues, and a time loop that the protagonist is stuck in? Mike just sees a chance to enjoy some pleasant Mediterranean weather, learn Latin, and figure out a way to smuggle out at least one of those golden statues once the time loop ends. Cascadia from Mirror’s Edge Catalyst is owned by a couple of mega-corporations working on medical technology that removes free will? Andy notes that we’re already owned by a couple of mega-corporations in the real world and at least this world has very slick-looking architecture that offers loads of parkour possibilities! The private islands of Tropico can be run as a brutal dictatorship if the player so chooses, full of slums and sadness? “But what about the massive golden statue of the leader?” Jane cries. “Would an oppressed populace actually build that?” ...I mean, yes, Jane, they would, given the oppression and all. XD Bottom line, the horrible societies they’re coming up with in video games are suddenly struggling to keep up with the horrors that we’re all living. Are there any free houses in your banana republic with the giant golden statue, Jane? XD

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I am pleased to report that I officially wrapped up Chapter 5 this afternoon! With Alice recounting the horrors of Grout’s mansion to Victor, and him being appropriately horrified and sorry for her. Which Alice appreciated so much after feeling like no one was in her corner all night that she went ahead and took Victor’s hand, implicitly giving him touch privileges. :) We love to see it. Anyway, the chapter ended on Alice jokingly asking Victor if he could go get the Ankaran Sarcophagus for her, or at least figure out where the hell it was in the Natural History Museum, and more seriously asking him to stay until daybreak so she didn’t have to go to sleep alone – Victor was more than happy to do the latter. And, as we will see once I start working on Chapter 6, he was only too happy to do the former too. :P But that’s for later – next week is all about cleaning up Chapter 5 one last time and getting it posted!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – as it was BG3 Friday today, I of course watched another one of Proxy Gate Tactician’s delightful challenge videos: “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 As The Lich King?” A special run where Proxy transplanted Arthas, the Lich King himself, from World of Warcraft to Baldur’s Gate III (with the help of a couple of mods to allow him to have the correct appearance, correct sword (can’t be the Lich King without Frostmourne!), and be able to revive downed enemies as his zombie slaves) to see if he could beat the Netherbrain! The rules were simple – no regular companions, only zombie slaves; no talking to anyone unless the game absolutely FORCED a conversation; and murder everyone in sight to claim every throne in the game as his own! How did that go?

Except for a couple of small missteps, VERY well. Mostly because Arthas made it a point to raise all of his most powerful enemies to join his cause as he slaughtered his way across the acts. Notable highlights of this “all murder all the time” run included:

A) Arthas discovering that the best undead ally to claim at the Emerald Grove wasn’t Kagha, head of the druids (who only had one wild shape!), but instead the Strange Ox, who was able to headbutt and paralyze loads of enemies that would otherwise give Arthas trouble

B) Arthas having his ass handed to him by the spider matriarch under the Blighted Village on his initial attempt to slaughter her and turn her into an undead thrall – fortunately, with a stronger team and a Leeroy Jenkins reference, he was able to kill her and turn her into a chompy poison tank

C) Arthas learning that harpies are very useful to have on one’s side while fighting goblins (as they seemed very vulnerable to her luring song), and claiming Dror Ragzlin’s throne after raising him as an undead slave

D) Arthas mouthing off to Vlaakith when she appeared in astral form before them at the mountain creche, and somehow NOT getting Wished to death (though maybe Proxy just never showed us him reloading after that encounter)

E) Arthas murdering Balthazar, the local mad scientist/mage in the Shadow-Cursed Lands, and forcing him to complete the Gauntlet of Shar legit because Proxy thought it would be wrong to cheese it in this playthrough, and wanted to make Balthazar do the work for once instead of him just swooping in and stealing the hard work of the player

F) Arthas murdering Yurgir and gleefully using him to bomb the shit out of all enemies in his way, including Ketheric Thorm and the avatar of Myrkul – only to get annoyed when Yurgir did NOT appear to help him fend off the githyanki ambush on the Emperor during the long rest afterward (because sometimes the mod summons get yeeted into the outer darkness for a time)

G) Arthas of course attacking the Emperor, and the Emperor thus attacking him and ONLY him back until the last of the githyanki lay dead, causing Arthas to quietly swear vengeance…

H) Yurgir showing back up as Arthas prepared to enter the city, and Arthas gleefully using him to bomb the shit out of EVERYTHING because why not – then mourning his loss when he invaded the House of Hope to kill Raphael and bring him onto the team, causing Yurgir to vanish permanently :(

I) Arthas murdering Cazador and Lorroakan not to add them to his murder team (Saverok of the Bhaal murder tribunal was chosen for that), but simply to claim their rather shitty thrones – and then going to the Iron Throne and sitting on a chair there to make sure the YouTube commenters didn’t get to smugly say “you missed one” XD

J) Arthas discovering that, alone among the Chosen, Gortash can be raised as an undead minion (the game wouldn’t let him claim Ketheric, and Orin melted into goo at the end of her boss battle and couldn’t be raised) – not a particularly GOOD undead minion, mind, but it was the principle of the thing

K) And, of course, after a long slog through many enemies, Arthas ending the run by betraying the Emperor, dominating the Netherbrain, and claiming his final throne as he prepared to lay waste to his remaining enemies and rule over his new dead kingdom. Hooray!

Yeah, it was a pretty brutal run for everyone who wasn’t Arthas. XD Proxy admitted it was probably his favorite run up to that point – must have been very freeing to just be as evil as possible to everyone! Surprised he didn’t go just straight up Dark Urge with the guy – but then again, I guess it would have been pretty hard for a WoW villain to be fathered by Bhaal. :P Looking forward to the next video – and to see if he ever does the “Disney Princess” run he mentioned as a joke after seeing an adorable little undead bunny’s hopping animations. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – nothing for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today, but I had an anon ask over on Valice Multiverse – someone claiming, “It’s just like chess. Whoever eats the most pieces without throwing up wins!” (What “it” was was not specified.) XD I queued up a reply from the Cuddlepile Valicer trio, with Alice going “...well, that’s one way to win;” Smiler commenting that this makes them want a chocolate chess set; and Victor wondering if Christopher would be willing to help them with that, as he does like unusual cooking projects. (He probably would, though given I bet there’s chess set molds for chocolate, it wouldn’t be too unusual. Unless they let him doctor up the chocolate with chili peppers or something like that, which – well, I don’t know about Alice or Smiler, but Victor probably has the same tolerance for spice and heat I have, which is none, soooo…) Hopefully people shall find it amusing!

And there we have it! And now I very much have to go to bed -- not only do I have to get up early to do my cleaning, we're also going out tomorrow to get COVID and flu shots, so I gotta be up early enough to do that. *nods* Other plans for the day include video gaming (I'm not sure which one -- Fallout 4 and Baldur's Gate III are both options); writing (FO4 Playthrough Progression stuff if FO4; a write-up on BG3's Smiler if BG3); and watching the latest onlyabidoang video (keeping the Watch Later clear!). We'll see what happens -- night all!

In terms of me listening to stuff, anyway -- today was "No YouTube because fuck their age verification AI" day, and that meant I didn't have access to a lot of my "background" music (video game soundtrack stuff mostly). And while I have a personal music collection, I don't have a lot of stuff without lyrics, which is what I was looking for (I tend to get distracted from whatever task I'm trying to accomplish if I listen to music WITH lyrics). So there was a lot of long stretches of silence, broken up by me listening to the few pieces of lyricless music I have on my computer. Which did include the two bits of music I got for backing the Alice: Otherlands shorts ages and ages ago -- forgotten how good those two soundtracks were. Walter Sickert did a good job. :)

Anyway! Time to fight the quiet and the period-fueled distractions to bring you this update:

Work – A somewhat more stressful day today, though I’m inclined to put a non-zero portion of the blame for that just on it being the first full day of my period. (And having trouble getting the dress I wanted to wear to properly fit over my boobage – normally I can pin it without too much difficulty, but today...bleh. Tempted to blame that on the period too.) But it was certainly a bit busier than yesterday:

A) I did the GL and the morning reports, as per usual – took up less time than yesterday, but the GL did still involve going back and forth to match some stuff posted by the credit card company

B) I put on all the checks that came in the mail yesterday (as there was no mail today)

C) I went to my coworker’s phone to check the messages as I kept hearing it ring and I didn’t want to leave anyone who had an urgent question hanging – this led to me calling one lady to update her credit card; calling another lady to re-update her recurring gift because said coworker hadn’t done it right (wrong amount and wrong fund code); leaving messages for someone looking for their pledge balance and someone looking for the “Catholic Relief Fund” (different organization); and passing on a message from an attorney calling to tell us about a gift a recently-deceased client left us, and one from a lady looking for help with her own fundraising efforts for children in Gaza, to the assistant director so she could call them back

D) I had the Useless Credit Card Check-In Call with our contact at the credit card processors (as usual, nothing got done)

E) I did a bunch of reversals to fix some gifts not posted in the right places/update parish affiliations/etc.

F) I delivered some checks to the newspaper office, since sometimes their checks come to us and vice-versa, and made sure a refund check that Fiscal had cut for a donor who overpaid went in the mail

G) And, at the end of the day, I ripped all the obituaries out of the papers for the week so I (or my coworker, when she comes back) can go through them and make sure we’ve probably updated any potential dead people in our system.

So yeah – plenty to keep me busy! Nothing too horrible, just kind of annoying in spots. We’ll see how tomorrow goes!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – and as today was No YouTube Day, I instead decided to take advantage of the fact that the DVD/Blu-Ray player now lives down in the basement and watched the first half of Corpse Bride with my workout! :D Because it’s been a while since I’ve seen the original movie and I figured this was the perfect opportunity to watch it again. :) I’ve gotten up to Victor climbing back into Victoria’s room, telling her how she makes him want to get married, then reluctantly confessing to her “er, I actually am married, it was a surprise to me too” when Emily showed up on the balcony behind her. XD Tomorrow, I’ll pick up from that point, and we’ll see if I can finish off the rest of the movie!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got a good chunk done on Chapter Five today, featuring:

A) Alice having a breakdown in the shower and ending up crying on the floor of the tub hugging the shampoo because everything was too much :(

B) Alice finally getting it together and getting washed up, only to hear a noise in her bedroom as she was drying off – calling out confirmed it was Victor, who was trying to make a surprise for her

C) And Alice giving Victor a little time to complete the surprise as she finished drying off and combing her hair, poking her head out once she was done to discover that he’d built her a little blanket nest, because he is a sweetheart :)

Yeah – kind of running the gamut of emotions in this page-and-a-half! But at least it’s from negative to positive and not the other way around. *nods* Anyway, I left it with Victor giving Alice her nightgown and pantie and preparing to leave, only for Alice to stop him as she doesn’t want to be alone (or, at least, alone except for the Wonderlanders), and saying she’d be out once she was decent. Tomorrow, she gets decent, and there is sweet blanket nest times, awww~ She needs ‘em after the horrors of Grout’s mansion!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Substitution check – as, again, it was No YouTube Day, I instead made it a point to properly read and review a couple of fics I’ve been meaning to get to:

A) “Alice: Dreamstride” by LizzieAdamsTookAnAxe, a crossover putting Alice and some of the supporting cast of the games (such as Dr. Wilson) into the world of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion! With an order worshiping the Dark Lady of dreams Vaermina taking an interest in this orphaned survivor of a terrible fire, whose dreamscape is powerful enough to leak into other people’s minds (some of Alice’s nurses had some frightening dreams of the Jabberwock) and who can sneak into other people’s dreams herself sometimes (revealing to Dr. Wilson Nurse Witless stealing from her fellow employees in the process). I’m not QUITE sure what’s going on, as the only Elder Scrolls game I have any passing familiarity with is, of course, Skyrim, but I am intrigued nonetheless!

B) And “Victor’s Birthday” by Dragonfly_kisses, a short post-movie story about Victor’s 22nd birthday and Victoria giving him a special present – a framed embroidered doily shaped like a butterfly with their initials and various intricate patterns within, flanked by roses from Emily’s bouquet. :) It made me a little sad in the beginning with the reveal that Victor’s birthday was largely ignored by his parents when he was growing up, but Victoria’s at least more than willing to celebrate the occasion! In more than one way, as the slightly-saucy ending revealed. :P It was just cute and I wanted to say I liked it. :)

Hooray, I have actually made some progress toward completing one of my New Year’s resolutions. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – the only thing left I had to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) was pick a Song Saturday, and given most of my Song Saturdays feature YouTube videos...yeah, gotta wait until tomorrow at the earliest. Ah well – I’m sure I’ll find something.

And there we have it! And now it is time for me to head to bed. Hopefully tomorrow will be a decent day, with less period distractions and more music. We shall see. Night all!

And while I am sad to end my long weekend (as always), I can at least report that I had a pretty nice day, all things considered:

Tumblr: Decently productive day on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I’m happy to report, with me accomplishing two key things:

A) First, before lunch, I went through my tracked tags and reblogged into my drafts:

I. Some very interesting Fallout 4 fanart by badlydrawnfallout (which was based off an idea by corvidcentral and was actually quite well drawn) of our favorite synth detective with identity issues, Nick Valentine...next to a ghoul version of the ORIGINAL Nick Valentine (I was like “oh now THAT is neat, imagine them teaming up to take out Eddie Winter” in the tags)

II. Some shockingly gorgeous Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines fanart by asylumpixie of her Malkavian OC, dressed up in Elizabethian-style finery (complete with ruff) standing over LaCroix in a French soldier’s outfit from the era of Napoleon, pouring blood from a cup all over his front so it runs down and over his neck as he lays on a slab before her with a silver dagger in his chest (probably meant to be like the letter opener you stab him with), all in a frame with carvings of two people laboring and fighting above them and the phrase “Enoch also did not last forever” (the VIBES, the DETAIL – it was incredible and I had to save it for a future queue)

III. Some art from shenanigansz of their Smiler OC – one picture of him just eating a lollipop and sliding off his fancy fluffy coat to reveal his cool mismatched waistcoat (one side plain black with yellow detailing, the other side black-yellow-and-white-striped); the other the same picture except his face is suddenly a black glitched mess with a red/green eye peering at the viewer, plus a speed-paint of how they did the pictures (just very cool – I like this Smiler’s design, and the glitchy face was neat)

IV. Some Alice: Madness Returns fanart from rhythm10goku, featuring a little Alice looking back at her burning house in horror, tears running down her cheeks, as bits of fiery debris drift past her; an adult Alice in the Royal Suit dress glancing over at something to her right; and another little Alice looking anxious in a dark blue dress (I so wanted to hug the little Alices :( )

V. Some “Alice: Asylum” fanart (I’m putting that in quotations since the game never actually got greenlit, so we only have a story bible and concept art) from melankoliart, featuring the younger Alice with the chaos necklace standing among a bunch of super-colorful mushrooms – what set this one apart is that it’s a traditional watercolor piece, the pictures are photographs of the artist holding the piece of paper while out among some flowers (VERY pretty and well done – I’m not usually a fan of “Alice: Asylum” stuff but the art was so good and the mushrooms so colorful I had to add it to the drafts for later!)

VI. And a small Corpse Bride gifset from atimburtonfan featuring the two soldier skeletons, Wellington and Bonesaparte, mustering the skeleton troops for Emily’s wedding and pretending to take Victor on a boat ride (atimburtonfan asked what Wellington and Napoleon were doing there, and I was like “mustering the troops for Emily’s wedding of course” in the tags, before saying “don’t know why they included the characters except for the LOLs, but they were amusing” and talking about how, since the “Napoleon: is Bonesaparte, I like to call the Wellington guy “Wellindead” :P)

B) And second, after lunch, I spent a little bit of time editing the second “VITD in BG3 Not-Incorrect Quotes” collection! Writing up a rough draft of the “party in the Underdark” scene (though I had to change my original idea after looking at the “banter” pages for some of the characters on the BG3 Wiki and discovering that most of them don’t actually have many negative things to say about the Underdark – now the scene involves Wyll asking the VITD trio if the Underdark reminded them of home; Alice telling him “no, it’s too natural, actually reminds me more of Wonderland,” Victor pointing out that they also have a moon to light the sky in Duskwall, and Smiler adding that they sometimes even have multiple moons for reasons they’ve never figured out; and Wyll being a bit “…” while Gale commented “you probably should have investigated that more over eight centuries” XD) and adding a new idea for a future scene (Alice talking to Lae’zel after they meet some more githyanki and realizing “Oh, so you’re all like that” XD). Slowly but surely fleshing it out!

So yeah – I feel like I am pretty well set for any number of future queues now. Hooray! :D

Baldur’s Gate III: Well everyone – I am pleased to say that, after months of stressing out over how Patch 8 affected mods (especially the depreciated ImpUI, which I was using at the time), realizing that, oh hey, Smiler had the wrong base class in my initial run, and making tumblr polls about what I should do about it, and doing a lot of fairly meticulous planning about what I wanted out of a new run, I have Officially Started A New Game Of BG3! :D I mean, I’ve just barely started it – the roughly hour-and-forty-five minutes I played today was all about installing mods, watching the opening cutscenes, and getting through character creation – but I have started it nonetheless. Here’s how it all went:

A) After booting up the game, my first stop was the Options menu so I could make some tweaks to stuff – like turning off Karmic Dice (which does help you not have streaks of failure while rolling, but also gives that same benefit to your enemies, so – I’ll live with natural computer-generated chance); making the text in books and subtitles and such a little bigger (want to make sure they’re nice and easy to read); and turning off characters having visible genitals when they get naked (which I presume means their underwear just always stays on – I don’t object to them having genitals, I’m just not that interested in SEEING them. And frankly, I didn’t particularly want to put that much thought into what Smiler’s penis looks like. Felt – awkward). I also later returned to try and make sure that Smiler’s Reactions (stuff they can do in response to people getting too close in combat or attacking them) were set to “always ask me before you do it,” but I couldn’t find the option in there – turns out, after a little post-game research, that you set those in the “Spellbook” tab of your character’s “character sheet” and inventory screens. Which makes sense, as a lot of the Reactions you’d want the game to ask you about involve a character firing off a spell (potentially using up precious spell slots)! So yeah, just have to pop in there later and make sure any and all Reactions are set to “please ask first!”

B) After that, it was off to the Mod Manager to install all the mods that I’d previously chosen while browsing the Mods page on the official BG3 site – a lot of the more popular ones were right on the front page for me to pick up, and the others were easily found through a little searching. :) Though I did find myself lingering over two other mods I found on my journeys – one that gives Warlocks an extra spell slot (as they spend most of the game with a mere two – granted, that refresh every SHORT rest, instead of every LONG rest like most other spell slots, but still), and one that gives every class an extra feat at level 2 (to as closely replicate as possible a D&D house rule that all characters can start with a feat – you just aren’t allowed to choose one at level 1 in this game, even with mods). I didn’t install either at the time, but while I think I can work around Smiler having such a small number of Warlock spell slots (they are gonna be a Bardlock, after all, and thus pick up proper spell slots once they multiclass into Bard – plus their invocations and Pact Of The Tome will provide more spells), that “extra feat” one looks tempting, just to get that “Experimental Alchemy” feat I downloaded a little early...we’ll see how I feel the next time I play! I also took a moment to figure out if there was any way for me to move mods around in the in-game mod manager after checking my list and finding they’d been arranged in a rather bizarre order (for example, “Colorful Eldritch Blast” was at the top of the order, while “Unlock Level Curve” and its patch to help you level up faster was closer to the bottom, when I was sure it ought to be the other way around), but a little online research on my phone did not reveal any way to move them around, so – I guess it’ll be fine! I’m trusting you on this one, game!

C) And then, after that, it was time to start a new game, cover my eyes during the opening cutscene (which affords you not one, but TWO great views of a mindflayer tadpole forcing its way into someone’s eyesocket – no thank you), then do character creation! And while I had most of the options I wanted to pick locked down (for example, Smiler’s race, subrace, head shape, body type, class, and ability stats), there were a few things I ended up tweaking or pondering for longer than I anticipated:

I. Smiler in the game is a Half-High Elf, since Head #5 of that particular subrace of Half-Elves looked the most like the Sim I created of them in Sims 4, which means they got a free cantrip (cast using their Intelligence stat instead of Charisma stat, but their Int is still pretty high – 14 – so it’s not a big deal). I pondered a few different options for them for a while – “Dancing Lights” (to light an area for ten turns – thought it kinda fit thematically with the actual coaster having The Flasher), “Poison Spray” (to use noxious gas to poison enemies – while I’m having them focus on psychic damage, poison damage would also be in their wheelhouse), and “Minor Illusion” (to create an illusion that distracts people – thought it might be interesting) – but in the end, I went with the same thing I gave them last time: “Mind Sliver,” which stabs a person’s brain with psychic force and gives them -1D4 on saving throws for two turns. Like I said, I’m having Smiler focus on psychic damage, and it’s good for them to have another cantrip besides “Eldritch Blast” that causes damage! Just in case. :P

II. I ended up tweaking their makeup slightly, giving them slightly different eyeliner – I thought the #4 option looked better than the #1 option I’d originally noted down as my pick. *shrug* Nothing groundbreaking, but still.

III. I considered a couple of different fringe options for their hair, but ultimately went with the Precision Bolt hairstyle paired with the Layered Lob fringe again as the best match for Smiler’s Sims 4 hairstyle (granted, BG3 Smiler looks like they don’t own a comb, but… XD). As for color, I ended up going with the “Darkest Black Neutral” shade provided by one of my mods, and purple highlights at about “25 Intensity” to get the proper “bangs with purple tips” style. I think it looks good!

IV. Smiler’s choice of class wasn’t hard – Great Old One Warlock – and neither was their choice of spells – “Friends” and “Prismatic Eldritch Blast” for their cantrips (the latter so they can fire a yellow beam instead of the standard green one, to stay on-theme); “Tasha’s Hideous Laughter” and “Charm Person” for their Level 1 spells (to incapacitate people with laughter and charm them from attacking them). Though I was briefly tempted to use “Id Insinuation” from “Mystra’s Spells” instead, as that was another spell that I really wanted Smiler to have (fills a person’s mind with conflicting desires and incapacitates them – felt on-brand) – maybe that’ll be the next Warlock spell they learn on level-up!

V. And then we came to the matter of their Background. And I finally had to chose between “Entertainer” and “Guild Artisan.” And after so much indecision for over two months on which would be better and which fit Smiler more as a person...when it came right down to it, I wanted the skill proficiencies that “Guild Artisan” provided – Persuasion and Insight, both two key skills Smiler needed. And as they are supposed to be a traveling alchemist, “Guild Artisan” DOES fit them. I’m a little sad they’ll miss out on getting inspired by some of the stuff on the “Entertainer” list of inspiring moments, but hey – sometimes, you gotta go with what’s best for their build.

VI. As for their other skills, after getting their abilities set (Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Constitution 12, Intelligence 14, Wisdom 14, Charisma 16 – Smiler is very focused on using their smarts and their words over their body, as you can see), I decided to have them take proficiency in Arcana (knowing stuff about magic – important when you’re trying to capture it in a bottle) and Nature (for identifying plants and such – also important when you’re making potions and elixirs people are supposed to drink). I plan to pick up Performance once Smiler gets their Bard on (as you get a free skill proficiency upon multiclassing), and Medicine will be covered by that Alchemy feat I mentioned before.

VII. Oh, and after making Smiler, I of course had to make their “Dream Guardian” (aka the disguise a certain mind flayer uses to contact you in the first two acts) – I went with a golden-skinned tiefling with curly horns, glowing purple eyes, and purple tattoos that looked kind of like circuitry. Because it was fun and looked like something Smiler might dream up. :P

And that, apart from watching the rest of the intro cutscene and getting Smiler out of their pod and into the tutorial, was that! I left it with Smiler in the first room on the Nautiloid getting ready to investigate all the things and pick up all the loot – on Friday, we’ll pick this up again and see how far we can get on the horrible squid ship! In the meantime, I shall leave you with these images of BG3 Warlock Smiler:





Let me know what you think!

Workout: Hopped back on the bike again tonight, and started pedaling my way through “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 8: Friends & Falsehoods - Part 2 (Season Finale)!” Yup, after having had to delay it due to the Roger Williams Park visit last Thursday, I was finally able to see how the Oxventure gang ended their very first season of their new D&D series!

...judging by the first thirty-five minutes I watched today, they chose to end it with utter chaos. XD As you’ll remember, the last episode ended with our heroes – Happen, Lug, Willowfine, Cressida, and Morven – in the sacrificial chamber under the compound of The Hive, the cult they infiltrated to get an amulet for a strange being called The Poor Man, who promised to aid them if they did. They’d been tasked with cleaning up the bodies on the plinths there by one of the superior members of the cult, and had realized said bodies were the North Team they’d been trying so hard to find these past few episodes. Thus finding themselves in both a murder basement and a pickle (as Johnny put it), things roughly went like so –

A) Lug going “Get her?” to the others regarding the cult member supervising them – then, not waiting for a response, proceeding to get her, prompting an immediate roll for initiative. XD Lug appropriately went first and managed to grapple the woman and pull off her red hood –

And then used his bonus action to start trying to interrogate her, causing a confused Johnny to be like “I guess we’re not fighting?” XD An argument between Lug and the de-hooded woman thus broke out, and it quickly became apparent that Lug had jumped to a few conclusions regarding why they’d been tasked to clean out the sacrificial chamber – namely, he’d assumed that they would be the next ones to be sacrificed, but it appears that the number of plinths exactly matching how many was in their group was just a coincidence. Meaning that the reason he’d jumped this lady was just all a big misunderstanding. XD Oh dear – it may not be Egbert, but it’s still Mike behind the character, so… Happen proceeded to make things worse by revealing they knew the previous sacrifices as “North Team,” while Willowfine desperately tried to put the genie back in the bottle by going about her clean-up duties. With Cressida pointedly not helping her. XD

B) The gang getting out of the woman that the cult considered magic to be an abomination – which meant that she was pretty damn surprised when Happen pulled the amulet he’d stolen earlier out of his pocket and asked her what it was for. And even more surprised when he revealed he’d gotten it out of The Superior’s house, going “that should have been destroyed ages ago.” Everyone proceeded to mock her for being part of a hypocritical cult. XD Anyway, she didn’t know anything about the amulet (though Morven could sense through Detect Magic that it was old and VERY powerful), so Lug was like “okay, now you’re going to help us get out of here.” The woman was understandably reluctant to do this and started screaming instead –

Prompting Morven to use Gaseous Form to turn into a vapor, flow inside her mouth – and then turn back into a human, tele-fragging the woman’s head. Johnny was like “I HAVE to look this up before I set a dangerous precedent,” while the others protested that it was only the first season, it was a TIME for setting precedents. XD Johnny eventually allowed it after getting a promise from Andy that he wouldn’t start using it on the regular (Andy assuring them that it would be boring if Morven used that to win every encounter). Lug took advantage of the situation to steal her red hood and put it on, though as was noted, thanks to the spray of red mist everywhere, probably everyone’s hoods were red now. XD

C) The gang then getting into an argument about what they were going to do about the bodies (after telling Happen that no, the purpose of cleaning the sacrificial chamber is not to clean around the bodies XD), because Willowfine was insistent on bringing them back to Folkmoot so that word could be sent to their families. Morven suggested cutting them up into little pieces for easier transport; Willowfine was like “uh, couldn’t you just Reduce them?” prompting Happen to point out that the rest of the magic-hating cult probably wouldn’t like seeing them carrying around toy-sized bodies, and also that the people probably didn’t expect anyone to collect their corpses should the worst happen; Willowfine angrily going she’d want someone to get her corpse back to her home village if the worst happened to her –

And Morven deciding to end things by setting all the bodies on fire with a bunch of Sorcerous Bursts, reducing them to ashes that she then bundled into jars to be trucked back to Folkmoot later. Problem solved. XD

D) Another red-hooded cult member coming down right after this and asking what the hell was going on – Morven snarkily explained she’d set fire to the bodies to make them easier to clean up, going “It’s my first day!” when the red hood objected to such measures. XD That plus not recognizing Lug’s voice as “Agatha” when he tried to order the others out (he claimed he had a frog in his throat) made her suspicious, and she forcibly herded the group out of the chamber and up the stairs –

Where they were confronted by a giant ring of brown-hooded acolytes, all with sickles. Lug tried to get them to go away by exploiting his red-hood status, only for the actual red hood to belay his order (causing him to belay her belay – fortunately the back-and-forth didn’t go beyond that XD). After an unsuccessful attempt to try and trick the brown hoods into thinking the actual red hood was an imposter, Cressida opened up a gap for them by casting Fear in a cone directly in front of her – causing eight brown hoods to panic and run – and the group booked it back to the gate they’d originally come in, with Happen getting some middling help from his sprites (as he used the Cadence die for the Strength/Athletics check, but got one of “regular” results). The gang did successfully keep ahead of the cultists pursing them –

But the use of magic meant that Ellen and Luke had to open their envelopes! Cressida was thus touched briefly by some ancient intelligence and had a sigil burned into her palm, granting her Psychic damage resistance but making all the Wildfolk in the area permanently mistrustful of her (bonus: Johnny threw Ellen a sketch of the symbol, and it proved to be the same one on the amulet they grabbed), while Happen got a first-hand look at the whirling malestrom that was magic and took 15 points of Psychic damage, but gained a permanent extra Level 1 spell slot. And managed to dodge two sickles aimed at his head while dealing with the resultant headache. XD I do like these “mixed result” envelopes – makes it feel like magic is really screwing with everyone by being both mean and nice at the same time. :p

E) The gang successfully escaping the compound (with Morven using Magic Missile to bust open the lock and Lug hauling open the doors)...only to find that, while the brown hoods wouldn’t follow them out the gate, the white-hooded Superior would. On all fours, skittering around like some inhuman monster. Because, well, that’s what she was. Cue a PROPER combat round starting, with –

I. Willowfine opening strong by hitting the Superior with a spear of light for some decent damage, only to miss with her Sacred Flame

II. Morven attempting to shove some Dissonant Whispers into the Superior’s mind, even using metamagic to make it a Heightened spell and have Johnny make the roll to resist it at Disadvantage...only for Johnny to roll a pair of 17s. Andy was like “well, that fucks me over” and had Morven use her bonus action to mope about that not working XD

III. Happen, of course, shooting the Superior with arrows (getting a nat 20 on the first hit, praise Cadence) and getting his sprites to shove her over and away – he initially had them throw her up in the air and drop her for 6 points of fall damage, but then realized that “up” wasn’t a valid direction according to the ability as-written and told Johnny to add the 6 points back; Johnny said it was a shame that Happen’s new strategy of lifting enemies up and dropping them wasn’t going to be a thing, but said that he could probably still shove somebody off a cliff at some point :p

IV. Cressida attempting to Witchbolt the Superior, but unfortunately missing; fortunately, the Superior then proceeded to miss both her attacks on Cressida, claws swiping the air JUST in front of her

V. And, when I left it, Lug finding himself torn, because when his turn came around, Johnny informed Mike that the other cultists weren’t watching the fight – instead, they were dragging a big iron cage toward a makeshift sacrificial altar. Lug promptly activated his rage, complaining about how it was never a flower-picking cult, noooo – Johnny was like “this is folk horror, not Animal Crossing!” only for everyone else to be like, “no, we can totally buy the animals in Animal Crossing being in a sacrificial cult.” XD I stopped with Happen trying to assure Lug that not all of these strange orders did sacrifices...then realizing he couldn’t use his order as an example, because they totally did sacrifices. (Of themselves, apparently, but still. XD) Tomorrow, we see how this fight wraps up, and if the gang can stop the Superior in time to save whoever’s about to be sacrificed!

Writing: Got another page written on “The Van Dort Vacancy” tonight, featuring our merry gang of thieves having to deal with the Van Dort’s hull vault guardian, Slugs! So named because he’s permanently wielding a pair of slugger rifles. Kasimir was like “you really should have told us about him first” to Victor when he appeared. XD Victor explained that he was going to tell them about him right after they got past the mosaic tile traps, and that he’d been hoping they could sneak by his little closet. Alice was like “too late for that now” and confessed to shock that the Van Dorts had something in the hall literally designed to kill intruders – Kasimir clarified that the rifles it carried shot compressed air and were designed to just break bones, which I’m sure was cold comfort. Barnaby, operating under his usual logic, was like “Oh, I’ll just tell it to stand down, it won’t shoot me, I’m too rich” and went to do just that –

Only for Smiler to haul him back and say in essence “great idea, but maybe let the person whose family owns Slugs give that a try first?” Victor was initially extremely nervous, as he’d never given orders to Slugs before (AND he was creeped out by his new ability to sense the ghost inside...and feel that it was “flat” thanks to the mind control magic built into the hull), but Alice gave him a pep talk and some advice, and he did indeed step up and give Slugs the order to stand down and let them pass. And, happily, Slugs recognized him as who he said he was and obeyed, turning to go back to his little closet. Smiler cheerfully declared they’d known that would work, and Barnaby congratulated Victor on a pretty good job, saying they’d get him comfortable ordering around the help in no time. XD So yeah, that’s the penultimate trap disarmed – now they just have to find that second tripwire before braving the actual door into the vault room...

YouTube: Got to the YouTubes late today (who is surprised), but I still managed to sneak in one of the shorter videos by Proxy Gate Tactician – “Does Baldur's Gate Have Any Boring Places?” His most recent offering took us the viewers on a tour of the titular city in Baldur’s Gate III to see if there were any truly boring places (i.e., if you went there, you’d feel like you’d wasted your time) he could find. The answer?

Not really! Because Larian loves shoving interesting things into every location you might reasonably visit. Did you know that just under a third of basements in the city have something in them indicating they could be a murder basement? Or that a seemingly-empty beach across from one of the docks hides a treasure chest and a skeleton you can dig up? Or that the house of the Ambrusts only seems boring because you chose to kill the mind flayer that, had you let it live, would have eaten them and taken over their home? Pretty much everywhere you look, there is something to find, or at least something you could find on a future playthrough having made different choices. And having searched through the whole city, Proxy only found three places that might be considered boring, and one place he personally did consider boring:

I. Dammon’s basement, under his forge – the only basement without any murder or traps or hidden safes or anything like that to discover! But it does have some unlocked chests with some nice loot that Dammon does not even mind you straight-up taking, so it’s not that boring.

II. Old Jol’s house – a locked one-bedroom shack you can find in town belong to the absent NPC Old Jol. Probably the smallest house in the game, without much stuff inside...but there is a letter from Jol, warning that he doesn’t want any letters, herb sellers, potion peddlers, or ESPECIALLY Steel Watch coming by. Which prompts speculation into who Jol is and what his deal is, so it’s not that boring.

III. The city rooftops – which, like most rooftops, don’t really have much on them. Though you can find Tara up on one while investigating the missing letters from the post office, and she does sell magical items for fish, so – not that boring! And even if the rest aren’t that exciting, Proxy was willing to give them a pass because nobody expects the rooftops to be that interesting.

IV. And finally, Cazador’s secret non-murder basement, which is accessed via some VERY convoluted methods (including sneaking down a secret hatch and solving multiple pressure plate related puzzles)...all to access a chest that has some bog-standard loot and one book full of confessions about minor wrongdoings from one of the vampire lord’s victims. Given the rather poor reward for going through all the fuss to find it, Proxy was willing to label THIS place as boring. Or, at least, extremely annoying. XD

But yeah – so much to see and do in the city, and only one place that Proxy would label as “not worth your time.” Just more proof that, even in Act 3 (the act that the least number of players would see), Larian made sure to give their players an excellent experience! I look forward to eventually getting there and exploring all those murder basements myself. :P

Other: I was going to brave the heat today to see if I could get my desired frozen hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts...but while I was working on making BG3 Smiler, Mom surprised me by bringing me a homemade one! Turns out she was making Dad a chocolate shake and figured she should make me something too. It was pretty much as chocolatey as the DD one (if a little less decadent thanks to a lack of whipped cream on top), and there was plenty to it, so I was quite satisfied. :) Just nice of her to do – I really appreciated it!

So yeah -- pretty solid Monday off, all things considered. *nods* But now I have to head to bed, as tomorrow is a work day -- and it'll be me alone at the front, as my coworker took this week off for her vacation. Hopefully there won't be TOO much to catch up on, but we shall see -- night all!

I only got about five proper hours of sleep, thanks to waking up at 7 AM to use the bathroom and not being able to get back to sleep thanks to a racing mind and my body panicking about Potential Period; my body continued giving me false alarms about my period all day; I went to the local Dunkin Donuts this afternoon to get a frozen hot chocolate, but after a rather hot walk I got there only to be told their frozen drinks machine was busted; and Mom stole my water bottle to water her sunflower this afternoon during beanbags without even asking me. >( I can't say it was a BAD day, but those moments did get rather under my skin. Probably more than usual because I am PMSing, bleeh. Really wish the stupid period would just show up already!

However, despite all that, I did get some stuff done today:

Dreamwidth Messages: Decided to just go ahead and give it its own category today – and, as promised last night, once I had my breakfast and changed my sheets and got dressed and helped get the last of the laundry out of the dryer, I spent the rest of the time before lunch answering Moose’s messages! :) Yay, I wasn’t more than a week getting to them~ XD Talk to you when you hit ‘em back to me, Moose!

BG3 Tav!Smiler Master Doc Updates: Didn’t get quite as much done over here as I might have liked, but I did pretty much settle on my final mod list! :D Including:

A) A handful of appearance mods to make sure that Smiler looks like Smiler (or as close as I can get in BG3’s character creator)

B) The big old bugfix mod to, well, fix bugs

C) A good number of “utility” mods for things like allowing a bigger party of characters to roam around with me, allow Smiler to multiclass all the way up to level 20, make gold weightless, and allow Smiler to choose their “Pact Of The Tome” spells (Warlock feature – normally it comes with three preloaded spells, but I’d like the ability to choose my own)

D) A couple of spell mods to add more spells to the game – including a colorful version of Eldritch Blast that will allow Smiler to fire a yellow beam

E) A big old equipment mod to add fun new gear to the game that can be looted from the world (I was using just the “bard stuff” mod by the same author before, but now that Smiler’s a Bardlock, well – figured it was easier to get the all-in-one version of the mod!)

F) A couple of feat mods to add new feats to the game for Smiler to play with, like that “Experimental Alchemy” feat, or one that will let Smiler learn metamagic (something that’s normally only for Sorcerers)

G) A quest mod that adds a quest to track down a mad alchemist in Act 2 along with everything else you’re doing there, which rewards you with a new “flask” weapon – I felt like this would be Smiler’s jam

H) And a custom dice mod so I can have cool black dice with gold edges for rolling – it’s Smiler’s color scheme!

So that’s good! Feel like I’m more ready to get the game off the ground now. *nods* Now I just have to figure out what spells I want for Smiler and how to get them...and of course the question of their background...

YouTube: With my Watch Later cleared out, I was free to watch two very fun videos today –

A) First up, because I spotted it pop up in my Recommendations right before lunch, we had “CaFae Latte Season 73 - TikTok Compilation” by C. M. Alongi this afternoon! :D This was the season she made before going on hiatus to take care of all the Kickstarter orders for Heart of Iron, the first CaFae Latte book coming out in October, and wrapped up Drek’s troubles with Gabriel and his church. Which involved:

I. Drek getting served by a court admin at the cafe – small claims case from Westview Protestant over Drek’s water balloons damaging some people’s phones and watches and hearing aids – and calling Cyrus to engage his services in exchange for a BBQ invite, unlimited waffles during the case, and a plate of PB&J brownies; Cyrus popped into the cafe JUST as Drek finished saying that, forcing C. M. to clarify “he didn’t teleport, he just has good timing” XD

II. Drek and Cyrus going to the initial court date, where Cyrus and Gabriel’s lawyer went head-to-head with their arguments – Gabriel’s lawyer saying that the church insisted they were protesting a sexual predator and that the items destroyed were too expensive to replace for most of the congregation; Cyrus countering that there was no harassment from Drek (whose last name is Anderson, if you’re curious) and that he was willing to take a truth potion to prove it (and pushing a motion to make Gabriel and Conner take truth potions as well), and that he was acting in self-defense when the protesters came to his and his parents’ house, aka their private property. The judge denied Cyrus’s motion to make Gabriel and Conner take truth potions (First Amendment rights, apparently the SERAPH PRIEST has problems with magic), but said that if Drek was willing to go under one, she’d allow it; said they could submit the other evidence that Drek had not done any predatory things to Conner; and set the trial date for next week. Afterward, Cyrus told Drek that he’d been hoping that she’d just throw the whole thing out, but that they had a solid case, so don’t worry –

Only for Drek to let HIM know that, while the arguments were going on, he’d noticed that Gabriel had a BRAND NEW cell phone, plus cufflinks that looked like REAL GEMSTONES. Which seemed – odd, given he was claiming he and his were too poor to replace the damaged items. Cyrus agreed and wrangled him into helping fill out the paperwork for starting an investigation into Gabriel’s finances…

III. Drek meeting up with his friends Abigail, Xander, and Melody at the Wulver’s cafe to let them know what had happened with the case – turns out, once Cyrus started that investigation into Gabriel’s finances, once his lawyer stopped stonewalling, it was revealed that Gabriel was embezzling church funds. Just straight-up stealing money that should have gone to the building upkeep and stuff and using it on himself! And that, the fact that they had a very strong case, and a possible last surge of good luck from the good luck charm Nicole gave Drek led to all the charges being dropped. And Gabriel going away for two years and paying a big fine. :D Drek was a little sad they hadn’t gotten to go toe-to-toe in court, but was happy it was over and that he didn’t have to worry about Gabriel for two years. Or see Conner again. He even swore off asking out men...at least, until Melody started talking about her college’s track captain. XD

IV. A scene shift to Erik in prison, congratulating his buddy Old Jack on making parole – Old Jack credited it to being old, adorable, and helping out in the prison chapel, and teased that that’s why he and his buddies made Erik help them clean up the place. XD Talk then shifted to all the volunteering Erik’s been doing, and Erik giving his “friend...girl?” (aka Lindsey) credit for the idea. Cue Old Jack being like “she writes you every month, visits every week, calls almost every day, AND has come by for two conjugal visits. She is your girl.” XD However, Erik was firm he didn’t want to label their relationship until he figured himself out, because he didn’t want to put Lindsey through anything else – after all, they only had one life, and it was short. And also relationships are a bit scary (he’s never had a serious one before). Fortunately for Erik, a troll buddy of theirs showed up to let them know fresh meat was coming into the jail – he and Jack asked what for, and it turned out it was for embezzling. Old Jack joked that he and Erik would get along just fine (while the troll was like “didn’t he get put in here for kidnapping or endangerment?” Erik: “I was broadening my horizons) – and then a certain seraph priest showed up, dressed in prison orange, looking for the chapel…

V. Gabriel being surprised that Erik was comfortable in the chapel, as those of “demonic heritage” usually avoid them – Erik explained the priest he had growing up was like a father to him, and that demons usually avoid churches to avoid the bigots within. Gabriel was like “rude, we’re not bigoted,” to which Erik was like “you’re in JAIL, get used to it.” XD Anyway, the troll asked why Gabriel was in jail, and Gabriel tried to go the “God works in mysterious ways” route (Erik: “heard it was less about God and more about embezzlement”) before saying that he was arrested for standing up for his beliefs. The others were like “oh, did you stand up to ICE? Try to house the homeless?” before a baffled Gabriel gave them the “I was trying to protest a sexual predator who harassed a young parishioner” line –

And fortunately, before Old Jack or the troll could get taken in, Erik was like “he’s lying.” Because HE’D gotten a letter from Lindsey detailing the whole sorry situation and thus knew who Gabriel was. An angry Gabriel was like “he was a predator and everyone else didn’t want to be labeled a homophobe, like that’s a mark of shame–”

Aaaand cue Erik asking Old Jack and the troll who wanted dibs on beating the asshole. Old Jack declined because he was getting out soon, and the troll kindly let Erik’s puny human arms go first. XD

VI. And Andy visiting the cafe after dropping Abigail off at the airport (admitting that he’d have rather she drove because you can survive a car crash) to find that they had a new product – bags of Siren Song tea! The one he was holding was “green and minty, with some fruit,” as per Oscar, causing him to joke that he had recently realized he was a fruit, causing Drek to boo him. XD Bob then popped up to break the fourth wall and let us viewers know where we could purchase it, assuring us that the bad jokes were not included. XD

Another fun video as always! Though it sounds like it’s gonna be a little while until we get another one – especially since C. M. revealed in a message at the beginning of the video that she’s been really busy getting stuff packed and shipped, and the shipping costs are kicking her ass. So, in addition to her Patreon, and all the CaFae Latte merch, she’s also set up a Ko-Fi account. All donations welcome! I dropped $25 in her bucket – felt it was the least I could do.

B) Then, this evening, we had “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 Using Only Gifts & Rewards?” by Proxy Gate Tactician! The video Proxy made for the one-year anniversary of both BG3 and his own channel, where he not only decided to try and complete the game using only items he received in cutscenes, could take through dialogue options, or received as a quest reward, he ALSO decided to bring back Bom Trady, the halfling Dark Urge who could only throw stuff, Felix the druid who spends all of his time as a cat (specifically a housecat in this world), Viel Gluck, the githyanki cleric who is the unluckiest man in the world (aka can only roll 1s), and Nuet, the duergar pacifist to be his party. So, did they manage to complete the game and save the world with only gifts and rewards, all while staying true to their specific challenges?

Yes, but it was not easy. Mostly because Proxy realized early on that most people do NOT give your character food, meaning that long resting was NOT on the table most of the time unless the game forced one on him. And considering most spell slots and special abilities refresh on long rest...yeaaaah, it’s very lucky that Bom’s throwing and Felix’s little kitty claws were always available! And Proxy came up with some pretty cool ways to get past some of the trickier bits in the game:

I. Luring ALL THREE goblin camp bosses – Minthara, Dror Ragzlin, and Priestess Gut – to a specific flimsy bridge with Felix’s meow, then smashing it with his mighty claws to kill them all in one shot

II. Having Nuet save True Soul Nere in Grymforge, side with him against the local duergar, and then sitting on the sidelines safe under Sanctuary until Nere dealt with everyone for him, earning him the Spider Lyre to aid in getting a Moonlantern in Act 2 – as a bonus, Nere freed all the enslaved gnomes, so Barcus Wroot could come rest at camp and give the gang a nice arrow for later

III. Using the battle horn you can get from Lump the Ogre and his friends to summon them to deal with a particular encounter for him to save a shipment being brought to a group of thieves that netted him a crossbow (because you gotta take what weapons you can get)

IV. Killing most people in fights by using Bom Trady to yeet them into the nearest body of water or chasm, to the point where he respected Bom into a Fighter when the boys hit Act II to turn him into a fighter with super-high Strength and the “Tavern Brawler” feat, allowing him to pick up everyone but the very heaviest of enemies

V. Defeating Kethric Thorm’s second boss fight (the one where the actual Avatar of Myrkul, the god of death, shows up) via respeccing a couple of his boys into Sorcerers; setting up a situation where Viel would be invisible for twenty turns, have an enhanced jump, be Enlarged so he would be heavier, and be a big old fucking bear; using Felix to lure Ketheric into a certain spot; and then having Viel-Bear just fucking JUMP on him constantly until he died. XD Viel got to be useful because this did not actually involve any dice rolls, and Kethric/Myrkul got to die the world’s most confused death

VI. Cutting off Gale’s hand when it was first presented to Bom Trady at the beginning of the game so he could then use it as proof he’s a vile twisted murderer and become an Unholy Assassin when he met the Murder Tribunal in Act 3...after Felix spent ages killing their trapped celestial winged elephant with his little kitty claws because Bom couldn’t throw her due to her being chained up

VII. Helping Ethel the hag to kill her enemies in Act III to get the 300 gold she rewards you with to gamble with at the circus, getting a number of joke prizes from the djinn’s wheel...which included a throwable axe that automatically returned to its wielder, thus FINALLY giving Bom a weapon (he couldn’t throw any before because he wasn’t allowed to pick them up afterward – them’s the rules!). Sure, the “joke” part of the prize was that the axe returned to the wielder blade-first, meaning that Bom took damage himself every time he threw the damn thing, but Proxy quickly found out that you could use various objects in the world, like trees and roofs, to block the damage-dealing effect while still getting the axe back, so nice :D

VIII. And defeating the Netherbrain by getting all the allies they’d gathered to act as distractions while they invisibly snuck through the initial gauntlet (Viel, of course, being in charge of summoning said allies because he was last in the initiative order); using a Globe of Invulnerability to protect the party until the portal to the Netherbrain’s will was opened; then using Divine Intervention to get a second Globe of Invulnerability going and Haste Spores the gang received from the mushroom people to give Bom multiple chances to whack the Netherbrain with his axe while the Emperor telekinetically threw all the explosives they still had at it; before finally ending things with Felix leaping over and setting off a Runepowder bomb to finally kill it.

Good stuff! Especially the big invisible bear method for defeating Ketheric, I thought that was fantastic. XD This is why I love his challenge runs – they’re always so goofy, and yet so clever. XD Hopefully I can watch another soon!

Other: Well, still no croquet, but as it wasn’t TOO bad out this afternoon (so long as you weren’t in the sun – fortunately our house shaded our playing area), we did all head out to the backyard and play beanbags! And while I managed to squeak my way to victory in the first game, Dad absolutely creamed Mom and me in all the remaining ones. Especially Mom, who only got up to second place in the fourth game because I really had trouble throwing decently that round for some reason. Final scores were me W-2-2-3-2; Dad 2-W-W-W-W; and Mom 3-3-3-2-3. We’ll see if things end up a little more evenly balanced the next time we play! I suspect not, but you never know. :P

Yeah, felt good to get that mod list done! (Well, mostly -- there's one more mod I want to investigate, but it's not on the mod page I usually visit, so...) Along with those videos watched and those messages answered. :) But now I very much need to go to bed in the hopes I get some more sleep tonight. Tomorrow I intend to work some more on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tumblr drafts; work some on "The Van Dort Vacancy" (gotta get back to my writing and get the new schedule sorted!); keep working on BG3 Tav!Smiler stuff; and of course keep up with Jon's latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode! Hopefully all achievable goals -- night all!

Partly because I had a long, hot, but reasonably fun day out (as will be detailed below), and partly because I didn't sleep particularly well last night, unfortunately -- I kept getting woken up by stuff like needing to use the bathroom (drank a lot of water last night), being intensely sweaty thanks to a late-night hot flash (had to throw my PJ top in the wash this morning and replace it with another one), and my Nightcrawler Minimate falling off the shelf wall where I stuck him up (attached to a teleporting cloud piece) and hitting the floor with a pretty loud bang (fortunately he and his cloud didn't break!) It all came to a head this morning when I woke up needing the bathroom AGAIN at like 7 this morning...and after using the toilet, tried to get back to sleep, only for my body to start screaming at me "OH HEY I THINK YOUR PERIOD IS STARTING." Because, yes, it appears my bitchiness earlier this week and that hot flash were the result of PMS. I eventually got up and got a pad, but by that point I was too awake to fall back asleep, no matter how long I lay in bed, so I ended up getting up around 8:30 AM. *shakehead* Not how I wanted to start the day, that's for sure! At least my period didn't ACTUALLY start (I figured it was too early), but I'm gonna be on-edge looking out for it for the rest of the weekend now...

Anyway -- after that less-than-ideal wake-up, here's how my day went:

Roger Williams Park Day Trip: As previously state, today me and the parents headed out to Roger Williams Park, the biggest park in all of Providence (I believe, anyway) to visit the zoo, get some ice cream, walk through the botanical gardens, and take a swan boat ride around the lake! How did all that go? Well –

Zoo – Our trip to the zoo was rather more crowded and chaotic than we thought it would be, as we managed to come on the same day that a bunch of summer camps ferried a bunch of kids down there. Parking was, uh, limited, as you might expect. *grimace* Also, the zoo was in the middle of building a new educational center and refurbishing some of the habitats, plus it was hotter out than they originally said it was going to be (they kept claiming the high was 80F – we checked when we got home, it was 90F), so a lot of the animals either weren’t out or were just laying in the shade trying to avoid the heat. *shrug* Couldn’t blame them! Oh, and don’t get me started about the food prices when we considered having lunch there (19 bucks for a mere three chicken tenders! And fries, but still), or the way we paid three dollars each to take the world’s shortest (faux)-train ride around a TINY section of the zoo. *grumbles* I know that we’ve been spoiled by Southwick Zoo’s faux-train, but damn – you think they would have gone a LITTLE farther than just past the food court to the armadillo exhibit and back!

However, it wasn’t a total disappointment – among the fun stuff we got to see was:

A) The new Humboldt penguin exhibit – as you might imagine, all the penguins were very much enjoying the water today

B) The flamingos hanging out in their pen, with two of them having a bit of a squabble at one point (Mom joked one was telling the other to stand on just ONE leg like the others XD)

C) The radial tortoises enjoying their lunch of lettuce

D) The EXTREMELY LARGE komodo dragon chilling in its habitat (seriously, this thing was BIG)

E) The red panda having a good scratch atop one of the platforms in its exhibit before flopping over for a rest

F) And a couple of animatronic dinosaurs! Because they’d had a special dino exhibit going on during the summer (probably why the kids were there, honestly). We didn’t go into it (it had a separate admission cost, and the trip was proving expensive enough – and after how generally goofy the “Dragons and Mythical Creatures” exhibit was last year, we didn’t think it would be worth it), but it was nice to see a couple of dinos around the place. Especially a fucking GIANT Brachiosaurus that was situated near the room in and out – I unfortunately couldn’t get a picture of it, but it was very cool. :)

So that all made the trip worth it! At least somewhat. :P

Ice Cream – We hit up the Carousel Cafe food stand near the big carousel in the park to get our ice cream after the zoo – I got a cookies-and-cream Oreo sundae, and while it was good, it wasn’t exactly mind-blowing. The ice cream tasted pretty much like the kind I’d get in the grocery store, and the Oreo part of the sundae consisted of three Oreos stuck into the side of the whipped cream. *shrug* Tasty enough, though, and REALLY appreciated on a hot day, let me tell you.

Botanical Gardens – This came after ice cream, and it was a pretty nice, relaxing trip through the various gardens and greenhouses in the park (especially after dealing with the crowds at the zoo!) Unfortunately, our wanderings were somewhat marred by a surprising lack of signage throughout the gardens. SOME plants had signs – like the lacework birch with its colorful patches on its bark, or the various catci in the desert plants area – but a lot of them didn’t. Meaning I’m genuinely not sure what some of the plants I photographed actually are – I just knew they looked pretty! But I do enjoy seeing pretty plants, and there were plenty of them! Plus plenty of other neat things to look at. :) Some standouts among the crowd included:

A) An American Oil Palm Tree that not only, as per its sign, survived a cold January night back in 2015 when the greenhouse lost heat, but thrived so much that the damn thing REACHED THE CEILING OF THE GREENHOUSE (seriously, it was HUGE – I think Mom said that it actually BROKE THROUGH the ceiling at one point, in fact)

B) A number of pretty fountains, including a kid holding a leaf pouring water and a big old basin with water dripping off the sides

C) A koi pond with loads of Japanese carp in it, all swimming around happily in the shallows

D) A gorgeous purple lotus flower floating in another fountain that was so perfect it didn’t look real (Mom assured me that it was, though – apparently she quietly felt it the last time she and Dad came to make sure!)

E) Some fun rocks painted to look like bees and ladybugs and a smiley face in the “flavor garden” (where University of RI students grow food plants for local people in need, which is really nice)

F) Some beautiful purple ground cover plants, with a cheeky little cat statue right next to them

G) And some bright and pretty roses in pink, red, and yellow in a rose “maze” that, uh, wasn’t very mazey (none of the bushes had filled out much yet).

*nods* So yeah – it was a nice enough place to stroll through, with plenty of things to look at. But if you’re ever in RI and decide to visit the place, you might want to bring some sort of book or app on your phone to identify the stuff you’re looking at!

“Swan” Boat – And finally, we had our boat ride on the lake – and if you’re wondering why “swan” is in quotation marks there, well, as it turns out, the actual swan-shaped boats only hold two people, so we had to rent the regular electric boat that seats four for our trip. Meh. But it was a reasonably-relaxing trip out on the water, going under the fancy ironwork bridges and past some of the lake decorations (like a fancy metal half-circle thing featuring various plants and animals on its spokes that Mom THINKS might be used to light off fireworks, and a couple of little fountains) and islands (one of which had wooden monkey cutouts all over it). Plus it was nice and cool out on the lake with the breeze, after all the hot walking around we’d done! Nice way to end the trip, just a little on the expensive side – $50 for three people for a half-hour. Plus they warned us that while the water is treated, you still didn’t want to get wet in any way if you could help it, sooo – yeah. Don’t think we’ll be doing it again anytime soon!

Sooo yeah – overall, I’d class it as a GOOD day out, but not a GREAT day. I’ve had better day trips, but I’ve also had much worse ones, so… If you would like to see the pictures I took of our outing, they are available in this tumblr post, as there were thirty of them and it was thus easier to upload them over there. Hope you enjoy!

Tumblr: Not a very productive day over here, as you might expect, but there were a few things of note that happened –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Well, as stated above, I did a post on my Roger Williams Park trip over here this afternoon! XD Because I took a fair number of photos, and by God I wanted to share them. So far only a couple of people have liked it, but one of them was my friend Squid, and they were the one I wanted to tell about the trip, so – win! :P

Valice Multiverse – And while I didn’t do anything over here because I had nothing to reply to (well, until a couple of minutes ago, when I saw an ask in my inbox – too tired to respond to it tonight, though), I do want to mention that one of the things in my “Activity” feed was a notice that someone had reblogged that “Malkavian talking to a lamp post” ask that went up as part of today’s queue (the one where Londerland Bloodlines Alice advised the anon to try talking to stop signs instead) –

With tags talking about how much they love the “fic” (presumably the ones on AO3) and praising me for my work on balancing “so many different voices from three very different fandoms” and “vtm’s gothic punk vibe.” Which is nice and all – I just cannot for the life of me figure out why “vampirical-research” chose THAT post to start going on about much they liked the fic. XD Just amusingly weird to me is all!

Writing: Edited another page on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” tonight, featuring:

A) Alice finally leaving LaCroix’s office and telling the Wonderlanders that she was surprised that LaCroix actually did pay her when she asked for money (Cheshire was like “either he was afraid you’d run to the Anarchs and tell them everything you CAN say, or he felt he could indulge you – either way, maybe be a little more polite asking for cash next time”) and complaining that she definitely should have gone to the Last Round first to ask Nines what was going on (Caterpillar pointing out that LaCroix probably would have used such a conversation as proof of collaboration and killed her)

B) And Alice making it out of the tower and back to Skyeline...only to be surprised by a panicked Victor throwing open the door to their apartment and babbling that he could feel something was wrong – before noticing her disheveled state and asking if she was all right. And while normally Alice would be snarky as hell about such a question, the genuine concern behind it set off something in her, and – yea. She essentially shoved her bag at him to unpack and ran away to go take a shower before she broke down in front of him. :(

Not the most fun writing session, to be sure! But next time, Alice gets her much-needed shower (along with a much-needed cry), before hearing a noise in her bedroom. A noise that shall herald a pleasant surprise for a change...

YouTube: I am happy to report that, despite getting to them a bit later than I wanted, I successfully continued chipping away at the OXBoxtra lists in my Watch Later today – the only one I have left to watch now is the one that was uploaded today, yay! :D So I am just about caught up, with the videos I watched today including –

A) “7 Most Embarrassing Moments for Your Roommate to Walk in On” – Andy, Mike, and Jane talking about those moments in video games that will make anyone who happens to walk in and see what you’re playing go “…” From Ezio running around holding a bloody, protesting Jesus Christ in one mission in Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood (it’s an actor, lover of Lucrezia Borgia, who has just been poisoned while acting in a passion play – Ezio’s trying to get him to a doctor so he’ll live), to Quiet having a sensual shower with Snake in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain if he maxes his relationship with her and then gets absolutely filthy (she’s actually still in her usual bikini and ripped tights, but she’s definitely dancing sensually under that water, and as this is happen in her personal prison cell, everyone’s gathered around watching, yeck), to character customization having multiple options for genitalia for player character V in Cyberpunk 2077 (and according to the comments, it’s not even relevant to gameplay, as there’s apparently no opportunities for V to get it on, so it’s really just there to embarrass you), these games are determined to make you look like a total weirdo and/or pervert to whoever might walk in during these key moments. Makes me glad I don’t generally play games with adult scenes! Or any instances of kidnapping Jesus, real or fake. XD

B) “7 Dead Bodies With Hilariously Tragic Backstories” – Ellen and Mike talking about those video game corpses that have unfortunately amusing backstories (either explicit in the form of logs and diaries left behind, or implicit in the form of context clues surrounding the corpse) designed to make the player chuckle. And no, the entire list was not Bethesda games. XD Examples included the random unnamed corpse in a cave you can find in fantasy RPG Avowed, next to a “hazing note” indicating that he had to get a “bear egg” as his first task as an initiate to some sort of society (naturally getting mauled by one of the games numerous, and distinctly mammalian, bears in the process); the legally-distinct dead Not-Altair from Assassin’s Creed lying in a busted hay cart Geralt can stumble across in The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings (mocking the game’s “Leap of Faiths” into convenient hay bales from heights – lingering around and judging the corpse grants Geralt the “Assassin” ability); and Rory Rigwell, the idiot who thought you could tame mirelurks and raised a group of them that proceeded to kill him once they were big enough, whose corpse the Sole Survivor can discover while clearing out the Irish Pride Shipyard in Fallout 4 (hey, I said that the entire list was not Bethesda games – not that they weren’t represented at ALL). A cautionary tale to all who live in video game universes – try to make sure your deaths are the most mundane possible, or else!

*nods* Pretty solid day overall! And now I'm gonna try and get a better night's sleep, if the PMS will let me. Tomorrow -- well, we WERE going to go out, but we're worried every place we might go is gonna be mobbed like the zoo was today, so there's a very good chance we're gonna stay home and play croquet with Mom and Dad's new croquet set. XD Hoping to work on some drafts for new posts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) and work on getting BG3 up and running again with my new Tav!Smiler, along with watching that final OXBox list video -- we'll see what I can accomplish! Night all!