Ael

Yes, despite getting almost eight full hours of sleep last night for a change, I still had a few moments of fairly unpleasant tiredness -- mostly during the afternoon as I struggled a bit with figuring out how to word things in the old write-up. I blame PMS, which is now in full swing -- body keeps giving me fake-outs regarding my period starting, and I am quite annoyed by them. >( Just -- I wish the stupid thing would come already and get it over with. I know it would be early, but that means it would be early NEXT month too, and I wouldn't have to worry about it on vacation...

Well, despite the PMS and the brain-foggy moments, I still had a pretty decent day -- no croquet (my parents never got a chance to set it up, and it ended up being too hot this afternoon anyway), but I got plenty of stuff done online --

Tumblr: Managed to get some stuff done on both blogs, go me –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I got a few very important things done over here during the course of the day –

A) Started things off by figuring out my Song Saturday post – a reblog of my post featuring Rachel Platten’s “Stand By You!” A very nice, hopeful song about how the singer is gonna stand by their loved one no matter what, as per this bit in the chorus: “Even if we can’t find Heaven/I’ll walk through Hell with you/Looooove you’re not alone/‘Cause I’m gonna stand by you” :) I found it while looking through my “#song saturday” tag for inspiration, and after relistening to it, said to myself, “Yeah, I can see this having Valicer vibes – especially the stuff about ‘and love if your wings are broken/borrow mine so yours can open too,’ since that definitely seems to be the mood Smiler brings to the OT3!” So I reblogged it into my queue for tomorrow. Yay! :) (Granted, I did also get a “passage of time” gut-punch from realizing the original post was nine years old, and the song itself almost ten – it released 9/11/2015 – but that’s just the way of things these days.)

B) Then I headed into my drafts and wrote up a post about a recent revelation I had after going through tumblr user thestuffedalligator’s “#discworld” tag on my lunch break at work recently and seeing some stuff about my favorite Discworld book, Going Postal, and my favorite Discworld character, Moist von Lipwig – namely, that I think some of Moist’s personality – in particular, his ability to make himself charming and likable to just about everyone he meets, and to take charge of a situation with a smile – ended up in Smiler. XD Look, it’s been a while since I READ Going Postal, so it’s not surprising that it took me a while to make the connection! Even if Moist is the man in the golden suit. But yes, it seems that my beloved Smiler has a little bit of Moist in them. At least I’ve made them a bit more ethical than Moist was at the beginning of his first book!

C) And then I realized that, having noted thestuffedalligator’s “#discworld” tag as the catalyst to me figuring out the Moist von Lipwig-Smiler Alton connection, I should probably, you know, reblog some of the Going Postal-related stuff on their blog. XD So that’s what I did, adding to my drafts:

I. A piece of thestuffedalligator’s own Moist fanart, a watercolor piece depicting him from the waist-up in the famous golden suit and winged hat, running out of what looked to be a cloud of smoke and flame with a letter in his hand, with “Always move fast” written under it in gold (it was done really well and I liked it a lot)

II. Some Moist fanart originally drawn and posted by littlesmartart, featuring Moist either saying or being subject to a bunch of famous John Mulaney quotes – like declaring “my wife is a bitch and I like her so much” about Adora Belle Dearheart, or being told by Vetinari “you have the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair” (John Mulaney may now no longer be a tumblr darling, but those quotes are still gold and they all fit Moist so well XD – plus the art style was great, littlesmartart NAILED all the character designs :D)

III. And a more serious post originally by joaniam, talking about how important Going Postal is, because it’s a book whose plot analyzes and showcases the problems of modern capitalism in its ongoing struggle between Moist (Postmaster, very successful small-time conman) and Reacher Gilt (owner of the Grand Trunk clacks system, THE conman, who is the distilled essence of a business owner who does not care about the business, only what it can bring him), specifically citing how, 16 years after publication (the post was originally written in 2020), you can read the book and look at all the problems with the Grand Trunk clacks company (towers being run literally into the ground, a board of directors quietly embezzling everything they can, and an owner who can double-talk his way out of anything) and be like “I can name at least one real-world company that was run/is being run the same way” (because yes, while I understand why everyone on tumblr loves Night Watch in particular, Going Postal needs more love as it is so fucking relevant to our modern world – I took the opportunity to ramble on in the tags about the scene where Reacher Gilt double-talks the head of maintenance for the towers into working with about a quarter of what he asked for to keep everything up and running (when it what it really needs is a total shutdown and refurbish), then chats with his Igor about his plans and how everyone around him must be mad because he SHOWS them what he does and they just smile and nudge each other...all while Igor thinks about quitting and going back to the mountains, because there the monsters had the decency to LOOK like monsters. Tell me that sort of thing does NOT feel relevant in the Age of Enshittification!)

So yeah – feeling good about what I accomplished here! ...even if there was an extra-long break near the end where I reread a few good chunks of Going Postal looking for exactly what happened in the scene I was rambling about in the tags in that last drafted reblog. XD What can I say, it’s a really good book and I should reread it properly.

Valice Multiverse – And then, over here, I managed to stick in my queue tonight an answer to that ask that came in last-minute yesterday and that I was too tired to answer then – which was an anon stating simply “The only World Peace we will truly get is the kind you Rest In.” :( I had my Valicer In The Dark!Smiler respond, telling the anon not to be so negative and that humans could be as kind and loving as they were nasty and cruel, and that they knew peace was possible if everyone kept working toward maximum happiness –

And then VITD!Alice popped her head in to say “Or let your god turn everyone into smiling vegetables?” XD Poor Smiler was like “I have told you multiple times we’re working on that!” XD I dunno – while my cynical ass agrees that the anon’s probably right, I just really wanted to do something that might get a chuckle out of them. I’m glad Smiler’s still capable of being optimistic about human nature, even if I’m not!

BG3 Tav!Smiler Master Doc Updates: While I spent more of the afternoon dealing with PMS-induced brain-haze than I’d like, I did actually get something done over here – mainly, make some serious progress getting my list of mods that I’ll be using in my This Is It Hopefully For Real playthrough sorted! The “Appearance” and “Bugfixing” sections are both complete, and the “Utility” section almost complete – though I did discover while checking on all the mods from my previous list that “Better Inventory UI” and “Better Tooltips” still require “ImpUI” be installed...and since that mod is no longer maintained, I didn’t really want it in my game. So I’ve had to dump both of those from the list, meeh. They were useful! >( Fortunately, I found a mod for “smart containers” (aka containers that automatically store things of a particular type in them when you pick those things up) during my search for the other mods that should do some of the work that “Better Inventory UI” did (by sorting everything into the correct container automatically and thus letting me see what’s what by what container it’s in), so that’s all right. Nothing I can do about the tooltips, though. :( Ah well. Tomorrow, hopefully I can get the remaining mods I have in my list sorted out, and then MAYBE figure out the damn “what should Smiler’s background be” question once and for all! Fingers crossed!

Workout: My final night on the bike this week saw me pedaling through the following:

A) “10 Times The Sims 4 Sparked CONTROVERSY!” by onlyabidoang! Which released earlier today as per my Recommendeds, and which I immediately added to my Watch Later for workout purposes, since I don’t want to start the Oxventure Wyrdwood Season 1 finale until next week. XD Anyway, this video featured Abi talking about ten controversies that have popped up over the eleven years that The Sims 4 has existed, and included incidents like:

I. The base game’s feature-poor release, which didn’t include ghosts, swimming pools, toddlers, burglars, or a color wheel, but did include a weird monochrome map screen with the neighborhoods only appearing in color if you hovered your mouse over them (most of these things have been fixed over the years, if very slowly in some cases (we only JUST got burglars back) – and we STILL don’t have a color wheel that you can use with hair, clothes, or furniture)

II. Eco Lifestyle’s first trailer getting a pretty poor reception, as people didn’t think it looked like it would make a good expansion, or thought was too similar in theme to Island Living’s conservation aspect, or – as per the comments – were pretty disappointed it wasn’t a farming pack (it ended up winning back at least some of the crowd with some interesting gameplay ideas, though I think we can all agree Neighborhood Action Plans should have been implemented differently – and I’m still not sure why, for this one pack, they went with Lifestyle over Living. Just weird!)

III. Their attempt to get us to buy DLC for a DLC by releasing My First Pet Stuff not long after Cats & Dogs, and including in that pack not only a whole bunch of pet clothes for cats and dogs (which didn’t even appear if you didn’t own the pack, naturally) but furniture items that clearly went with the sets included in C&D (people were rightfully livid, and the trailer apparently got so many nasty comments EA set it to “private” on their channel – also, this is the one pack that James Turner REFUSES to even have in his game unless he’s doing a challenge where he HAS to, and, as per the next entry, he can be pretty forgiving regarding a pack’s flaws)

IV. The reveal of Star Wars: Journey To Batuu, the infamous branded pack that nobody asked for and nobody, Sims 4 fans and Star Wars fans alike, wanted – especially after it was released and those who did try it found it to be an incredibly shallow experience (I have joked in the past that exactly one person likes this pack – James Turner – and even he is more into it for the Build/Buy stuff than the actual gameplay)

V. And, of course, the even more infamous release of My Wedding Stories, aka The Pack That Was Released Broken and basically ruined weddings in the game (we all knew it was going to be bad when the Gurus couldn’t get it to function properly during their own livestream right before release! This disaster nearly put me off buying Sims 4 packs for good, honestly – only the fact that Werewolves was an actual good pack released in workable condition kept me willing to try their products!)

Yeaaah – been some pretty bad moments over The Sims 4’s history! And the comments on the video were already filling up with suggestions for a Part 2, like how poorly certain occults (namely aliens, mermaids, and PlantSims) have been treated; the poor reception to the Moschino Stuff pack when it was first announced/released (everyone was very confused when it actually had some good stuff included); and – from my own comment – how Island Living was eagerly anticipated, only to prove one of the emptier expansion packs. We’ll see what happens, but Abi DEFINITELY should have enough material for a sequel!

B) “INSANE COMBO! Warlock Class Guide For Baldur's Gate 3! - (Baldurs Gate 3 Warlock Build Guide)” by NorZZa! A guide on how to play a Warlock in BG3 that I mainly watched just to fill in the time I had left after Abi’s video. Featured:

I. A very amusing beginning where NorZZa essentially said “just spam Eldritch Blast and Hex people occasionally, okay bye” XD

II. Some basics on how a warlock works as a spellcaster (very few spell slots, but they refresh on a short rest, so you definitely want to make sure you get those in after your battles to get the most out of the pact magic)

III. Recommendations on what to pick regarding subclasses (Fiend for temporary hit points whenever you kill something, or Great Old One for terrifying nearby enemies if you score a critical hit on one of them), pact boons (Pact of the Tome just for access to the Guidance spell, which lets you add a D4 to any ability check roll), and eldritch invocations (Agonizing Blast to add your Charisma modifier to your Eldritch Blast’s damage; Repelling Blast to make it push enemies away; and Devil’s Sight to give yourself the ability to see in all darkness regular and magical)

IV. And the best spells and cantrips to pick for your warlock (Eldritch Blast, Hex, and Misty Step, okay bye XD)

Nothing too groundbreaking, but it was fun to watch and got me through the end of my workout. :)

YouTube: I got to it late, but I got to it – tonight I finished off catching up on my OXBoxtra lists with “7 Murdery Games You Can Complete Without Killing Anyone: Commenter Edition!” Mike, Jane, and Andy talking about more games that, despite pushing you toward murdering all those in your path, CAN be completed without you personally getting your hands dirty, as inspired by the top comments on the last video they did on this subject! Ranging from the Hitman: World of Assassination series’ letting you engineer accident kills or manipulate other people into doing the killing for you (which does feel like you’re putting a rather big asterisk next to the “Pacifist” in “Pacifist Run”); to Watch Dogs 2 making a nonlethal run possible, just very very difficult (thanks to the guards waking up on their own after a set amount of time rather than just staying knocked out – WD2, don’t you know that’s illegal in a stealth game?), to Postal 2 not actually requiring you to engage in any violence whatsoever during the game’s missions, meaning this game famous for being breathtakingly violent can be completed without harming anyone at all (though, given that it is Postal 2, the achievement you get for it is called “Anustart”). Bottom line, more games than you think can be completed without murdering a single person! You may not want to complete them like that, given how hard it is for some of them, but the option is there. XD

And because my brain is having trouble concentrating, I have officially stayed up too late. :P To be fair, I was looking at old Chill Valicer Save posts and reminiscing...I miss my Valicer trio on that game. :( I gotta get the Teen Valicer save up and running sooner rather than later, meeh. But for now, I gotta get to bed -- tomorrow I hope to answer all of Moose's messages; see what I can do on tumblr; keep working on the Tav!Smiler stuff; and maybe watch one of Proxy Gate Tactician's other videos -- still behind on all of his challenge runs, after all! We'll see how much of this I actually accomplish -- night all!

As my write-up for the day should make abundantly clear --

Work – Very quiet day to end out my short work week – my director was out sick today, and with the assistant director out on vacation this week, that meant it was just me and my coworker there today. We ended up working on a spreadsheet together once she’d done the GL and I’d pulled the morning credit card reports and done some obituaries, looking at donors who were potential duplicates on the system and determining if they needed to be merged or not. Only phone call I took all day was from a donor I called yesterday about a failing credit card, and after a bit of struggle I was able to update her card and stop it constantly throwing “Security Denials” (turned out the expiration date was wrong). *shrug* Honestly, I’ll take it – after Monday and Tuesday were so annoying, it was nice to have a quiet day! And now I have a five-day weekend, yay~ Looking forward to it!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – after confirming with Mom that, yes, tomorrow’s adventures should constitute a workout in and of themselves, so I shouldn’t worry about doing an “official” one, tonight’s stationary-bike-riding videos consisted of:

A) The last twelve or so minutes of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 7: Friends & Falsehoods - Part 1!” Which featured:

I. Happen managing, after a false start, to clamber up and out of the hole he made in The Superior’s roof, slip back down unnoticed, get his hood back into place, and finally rejoin the others with his hand tucked into his robes Napoleon-style because his encounter with Beatrice made him realize, oh yeah, that tattoo makes him highly identifiable. XD Better late than never?

II. The gang heading to the dining hall (with Morven dispelling her Minor Illusion on her hood and returning it to the initiate blue once no one was looking – Johnny had a very “damn it, I was hoping Andy would forget” look on their face XD), and discovering that, one, all of the tables were arranged so everyone sat in concentric rings around a central table for The Superior, with everyone sitting on the inside edge so they would be facing the next ring’s backs and thus avoid seeing their faces, meaning everyone could eat together while maintaining the cult’s rules (Luke was like “why have real restaurants not implemented this?!” XD) –

And two, as the initiates, it was their job to serve everyone the evening meal. Which was, you guessed it, stew and bread. XD Cressida was fuming, both because she had to call everyone “superior” as she served them and because she already hated soup and here was yet more of it. (Well, STEW technically, but I don’t think she particularly cared about the distinction. XD) Jokes were made about how before now the only ladle she’d ever touched was a punch ladle, with Johnny teasing that that was the thing she used to beat people who were behind on their payments. XD But she did her duty (very grumpily), and so did the others, and eventually everyone was served, yay. Leading to –

III. Johnny having everyone roll Charisma/Performance to eat their meals and saying “just don’t biff it” – only for everyone but Morven to totally biff it. XD Johnny described it as the others having real trouble figuring out how to get the food to their mouths given the tunnel of stiffened cloth protruding from their faces, and thus getting food all over themselves. Not a great look in front of the others – especially not The Superior, who we learned was NOT Beatrice! Beatrice’s black hood actually marked her as a SECOND-in-command – the actual The Superior’s hood, when they showed up, was white. Fortunately they didn’t notice the messy initiates – instead, the job of scolding our heroes for getting food all over themselves went to the red-hooded woman who met them at the gate. Willowfine attempted to bow her head in shame, only for stew to start pouring out of her woven faceplate. XD The woman then informed them that they had one last duty before they could retire – to clean the sacrificial chamber and prepare it for a sacrifice tomorrow. Lug was like “a sacrifice? Right after we showed up?” causing Happen to nudge him in a desperate “quit the backtalk” kind of way, then skitter away as the woman scolded our poor barbarian on how the work of the cult doesn’t stop for mere initiates. First time Happen’s want to get AWAY from Lug and his poor luck, I’m sure. XD

IV. The red-hooded woman thus leading everyone down to a secret room underneath one of the storage sheds, full of the scent of dried blood and decay, with strange arcane symbols on the wall and five plinths stretching up from the floor – plinths with corpses on them. Corpses that looked like they’d died in absolutely horrific pain. And as Lug quickly counted to make sure that the number of plinths exactly matched the number of people in their little party, Johnny revealed that some of the corpses looked at least vaguely familiar to the others – and confirmed, once Jane/Willowfine asked, that one was missing a hand… Yeaaaaah – think we found North Team. And the people who axed their copestone. D:

V. And the episode ending on the Rolling Rite, with Cressida picking up her first envelope, and poor Happen his second (the result of Luke rolling the die away from the edge of the tray when it initially stopped cocked – I don’t know how you TELL that on a D100, but okay then!).

So yeah – seems like the reason that red-hooded woman might have been happy to see them was because the cult needed fresh blood to SPILL, not take in. We’ll see how this all wraps up next week with the big season finale! SOMEONE is probably gonna get Sorcerous Bursted, that’s all I’m saying. :P

B) The entirety of “7 Incredibly Stressful Situations in Games That Will Take Years Off Your Life” by OXtra! Because I figured, if I couldn’t watch more Oxventure, I could at least work on getting yet more OXBoxtra list videos out of my Watch Later. :P This one featured Ellen and Jane talking about those ultra-stressful situations in video games that feel like they’re shortening your actual real-world lifespan, and featured such things like:

I. Trying to get all the loot you’ve collected over to the relevant quest-giver in Sea Of Thieves so you can level up and get all the fun bonuses, without falling victim to the other players in the game or to the various horrible tentacle monsters in the sea

II. Hiding from the Alien in Alien Isolation, which, thanks to various AI tricks, knows EXACTLY where you are and how best to terrify you as you hide under a desk sobbing

III. And, worst of all – TRYING TO WRANGLE YOUR FELLOW PLAYERS IN THE OVERCOOKED GAMES. Because at least in the other two cases, you were facing off against enemies – in THIS one, you’re being fucked over in the stressful cooperative cooking game by your supposed friends. As Ellen can attest to, it is rage-inducing. XD

So yeah – long story short, if you’re looking for stress relief, maybe don’t turn to video games. Or, at least, don’t turn to these video games in particular. :P

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I wrapped up Alice’s meeting with LaCroix tonight, with –

A) LaCroix setting Alice the task of going to the Museum of Natural History and retrieving the Ankaran Sarcophagus for him so it would be safe under Camarilla protection! ...Tomorrow evening, because – as Alice pointed out when he started going on about how she needed to get it as soon as possible – it was almost dawn by the time she made it back to see him. XD He gave Alice the keys to the front door, told her that Mercurio would be waiting for her in the nearby parking garage with a truck to bring it back, and warned her not to kill the security staff – Alice was like “do I seem like the sort of person who just wants to randomly murder anyone in front of them?” and LaCroix was like “right now you do, yes.” XD (Alice quietly noted in her head “that’s because you’re in front of me” XD)

B) And Alice shaking down LaCroix for some cash after the hell she’d gone through, as she is his employee and he just said she was indispensable – and, to her mild surprise, getting it, as LaCroix handed over $300. Without even putting up much of a fuss. She really wasn’t expecting that, as she will elaborate on in tomorrow’s editing session!

Not bad, not bad at all. I left it on Alice walking out of LaCroix’s office, having stunk it up enough (probably literally). Tomorrow, the poor girl FINALLY makes it back to her apartment in Skyeline – and to a certain deeply-worried ghoul of hers...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – as I watched my OXBoxtra list with my workout, I decided that my “official” YouTubery tonight would be another one of Proxy Gate Tactician’s videos instead – specifically, “Can you level 1-12 Without Leaving Baldur's Gate?” Yes, after seeing how much there is to do in Baldur’s Gate Lower City in Act 3, Proxy started wondering if it was possible to go from level 1 to level 12 (the normal max level in the game) in just that area. So, with the help of mods, he transported his level 1 ranger (and his pet cat summon) to the city, got rid of all his starting gear to accurately roleplay as a homeless fellow seeking his fortune, and began looking for ways to earn XP without ever leaving the region! Which involved:

I. Ranger (I don’t think we ever learned this character’s name) starting out slaying level 1 rats in the basement of the Elfsong Tavern

II. Ranger attempting to parley this money into becoming a thief, breaking into people’s houses to steal their shit – only to get near-immediately caught by the guards and thrown in jail. Lucky that he had a cat buddy to help distract them while he escaped

III. Ranger embarking on a quest to steal everything he could get his hands on and lie (well, “lie,” given he genuinely had no idea what most of these NPCs talking about “the Nightsong” and “the Absolute” were yammering on about) to a bunch of different NPCs to gain as much XP as he could

IV. Ranger getting some fancy threads from clothing merchant Figaro and then attempting a bank heist on the counting house – only to find that Minsc and his handlers had already beaten him to it, forcing him to pick off the assassins the guards couldn’t handle. Fortunately he got some extra-sneaky leather armor out of it, allowing him to be a Stealth Archer, the most broken of builds

V. Ranger realizing that the only truly viable career path in Baldur’s Gate was as a murderer for hire and thus making his bid to join the Unholy Assassins of Bhaal – after saving the life of Figaro because that guy really helped him clean himself up, you know? But he happily killed two of the other targets on the list he found (including his former boss the chef at the Elfsong), presented their hands to the tribunal, killed the weird flying elephant they presented to him as his final test, and officially became an Unholy Assassin

VI. Ranger then having second thoughts about the life he’d chosen and going to the House of Grief for counseling…only to find it was a front for a brainwashy cult and murdering everyone with the help of some barrels to create an impenetrable barrier in front of the door he kept hiding behind XD

VII. Ranger deciding that he might as well try to find those rapscallions who got away with the bank’s money before he could and tracking them down in the sewers, before finding a note on them that led him to the guild headquarters of the Thieves’ Guild, where he helped leader Nine-Fingers take down a potential usurper because Nine-Fingers had never tried to take his job or kill him

VIII. Ranger taking a moment to save poor Volo from being blown up, before heading to the Water Queen’s temple to see what was up there, leading to him avenging a recently-killed member by tracking down the asshole who ran her over with his submersible for the head priestess. Because, well, he is an assassin for hire :p

IX. Ranger taking a stroll through the park to enjoy the statuary – only to find a bunch of his fellow assassins hanging out and talking about killing civilians, prompting Ranger to kill them because he’s not into the murder hobo lifestyle

X. Ranger deciding to take out the Steel Watch Factory to destroy the emo lord Gortash’s mechanical guards and make it easier for him and his fellow criminals to exist on the streets – he was planning on saving the enslaved Gondians inside, but a fun new bug meant that he couldn’t turn off the “motivator” controlling their collars, and all their heads blew up. Ranger considered this an acceptable loss XD

XI. Ranger invading Cazador’s house and deciding to make up for not being able to save the Gondians by killing Cazador (after stealing Astarion’s corpse to shut down his ascension ritual) and setting free all the bloodthirsty vampire spawn trapped within, yay~

XII. Ranger tracking down a thief for a mummy trader in the city...only to learn that the “thief” was in fact an innocent man and instead taking out the trader and his mummy spawn (while the citizenry walked by like “ho hum, just another day”)

XIII. And finally, Ranger deciding that he wasn’t impressed with his fellow assassins and heading down into the depths of the Bhaal temple hidden under the city to slay them all, ending with Orin

All of which, yes, did indeed get him to level 12. XD Kind of by the skin of his teeth, but he did it! Proxy was very impressed – ESPECIALLY since it didn’t involve him having to resort to doing any murder hoboing! Just following as many quests as he could did the trick. Great stuff! I do like his challenge runs, he has very interesting ideas and makes playing them out VERY amusing. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice to worry about tonight, and I did figure out what I wanted to stick in my queue for Friday at least: Deals And Revelry! A story by “shady-tavern” about a woman who, after discovering a plot against herself and her parents by her future mother-in-law and escaping after being drugged, goes to the leader of the Revelry (a party street in her city), Quin, to make a devil’s deal with him because all she wants is to live...and ends up falling in love with him once he takes care of her little problem. It’s a somewhat dark fantasy romance, as Quin is a dangerous person who made a deal with an ancient god that turned him into something not exactly human that puts off most people...but the protagonist (never named because it’s a second-person story) doesn’t care. She loves him not despite his sharp edges, but BECAUSE of them. It’s sweet, in a faintly-twisted way. XD I quite like it, so I figured it was about time it got put on my blog! Now I just have to figure out Saturday, and I am set...

Yeah -- not a lot of stressful stuff happening today! I am very pleased. And now I should wrap things up and see about getting to bed, as while I don't have to get up SUPER early tomorrow, I do need to get up early enough to have breakfast and get dressed before we head out to the zoo and the botanical gardens and all that. I'll tell you all how that goes tomorrow! Night all!

Ended up having a stress dream/nightmare this morning about getting to work late (don't remember all of it, but I do remember looking at the clock and seeing it was 8:43 AM and realizing with a jolt I was supposed to be at work already), then got up to find Mom taking everything out of the pantry because, yup, THERE WERE MORE FUCKING ANTS. She then proceeded to spend most of the day cleaning, spraying, repainting, and putting down fresh contact paper in there in a desperate attempt to clear them out --

Only for another two to appear tonight. *heavy sigh* I just -- I don't know WHAT is going on with these fucking bugs. I've floated the idea of calling an exterminator, but Mom's certain that they wouldn't do anything to help, and I have no idea how to convince her otherwise. Just -- I am SO SICK of dealing with these little fuckers. They have cost me TWO boxes of cereal at this point, and all of our peace of mind. Just -- I'd really love to have TWO nice days in a row for once!

*shakehead* Anyway -- here's the daily write-up:

Work – Kind of an annoying day, though I suspect that was largely due to my own very cranky mood thanks to the one-two punch of the nightmare and the ants this morning. Basically, after the GL, it was all about catching up on the failed credit cards and taking calls from people trying to update their cards and make gifts and whatnot. With me playing phone tag with two callers in particular who called on Friday after we left, and then insisted on calling me back during my lunch break after I called them back. *sigh* Plus one lady deciding to call in and finish off her Capital Campaign pledge at the very end of the day...and a surprise thank-you QC file for me to do in the afternoon (fortunately it wasn’t too big, so I got through it pretty fast). Just – irritating, given the mood I was in. We’ll see if it’s any better tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with Oxventure as I started “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 7: Friends & Falsehoods - Part 1!” Today’s chunklet featured:

A) Morven immediately confronting the Poor Man about what the hell happened to her to put her into Robin’s body and what he knew about it – turned out he was not responsible for it, he’d just gotten an inkling that something interesting was going to happen at her burning and showed up to see what it was. He found the whole thing both quite amusing and quite fascinating, even if he didn’t know exactly what had happened! Morven was like “well, you want to know what happened, I want to know what happened, maybe we could work together and you could help me take over this idiot’s body or something.” The Poor Man was like, “we have to get Robin’s opinion on that first” and brought Robin out quickly with a snap of his fingers – Robin, naturally, objected to the plan during his brief moment conscious (earning his IMDB credit for the episode, as Luke joked), and Morven said “okay fine I’m willing to work with that – maybe we find a new body for me. Or for him! Let’s stick him in a sheep, they do all the same things he does – wander around, eat, and argue with dogs.” XD Poor Robin, Morven is so mean to him…

B) While all this was going on, Happen cast a spell to try and determine what exactly the Poor Man was. He was able to get that the man was fey, but also a placeholder of some kind? Johnny refused to elaborate beyond that. O.o Happen didn’t get much chance to mull on it, though, as casting a spell meant Luke had to open the envelope he got from last week’s Rolling Rite, and the effect this time was painfully and immediately negative – twenty points of radiant damage from the spell going off explosively in Happen’s face! D: Happen was of course knocked over – Morven looked at him on the ground and was like “you see what I’m working with here.” XD

C) The Poor Man revealing to the group that, if he’d done his “job” properly, they’d all be dead by now – Willowfine being like “what?!” before Lug reminded her that he’d been the one to save them from the dullahan just before they’d met the Green Man. The Poor Man explained that he found them all so interesting that he just had to save their skins – and that, despite warning Morven earlier that she was assuming a lot thinking he’d help (Morven protesting that that was why she was asking if he would), he was willing to aid them in their current quest, at least. If only because he really wanted to see what happened next! He thus cut them a deal – he would tell them where they needed to go next and provide some aid in the form of the costumes they needed to get around said place, and they would retrieve for him a certain amulet from the pile of “confiscated items” the people of said place had. There was a little bit of trouble with Happen, panicking over hearing a prophecy of the future, covering his ears so he wouldn’t know his fate and thus be tempted to change it (as that is VERY much against the teachings of Cadence), but once the others had heard what the Poor Man had to say and assured him it wasn’t a prophecy so much as just a task for them to accomplish, they all agreed to this bargain.

D) The Poor Man thus providing everyone with mysterious beekeeper-like outfits (Johnny had a miniature and everything – Luke commented that it looked like a Midsommer Big Daddy XD), the garb of the people who lived in the encampment they’d be coming across in about two miles. They were well-worn, with blue hoods and weird wicker meshing in front of their faces – the Poor Man warned them not to take them off, as seeing each other’s faces would be forbidden, and delightedly added that he’d gotten them the lowest-ranking hood color, so they’d better address everyone else as “Superior!” They were also quite dirty and smelled weird inside (Jane comparing them to the inside of a Disney mascot costume). Oh, and as Johnny explained a little bit later, they also came with magic-suppressing iron torque collars, only the Poor Man had made sure they were fake so they’d still have access to their spells. He took quite a lot of pleasure in watching Morven squirm about putting one on until that fact was revealed! Lug was like “could you at least pretend not to enjoy all this so much?” with Morven replying “I don’t think he could.” XD Anyway, Happen said that they should maybe try to undo the wicker a little bit on one side to help make sure they could spot members of the group in a crowd, which evolved into everyone making a mark on their mask somehow in a clockwise pattern so they could try and identify each other individually too (Cressida insisting she get the one o’clock position because she was the best XD). The group thus altered their masks, put on their costumes (Cressida only after hitting the inside with Prestidigitation, naturally), said farewell to the Poor Man (who was still deeply amused by everything), and set off!

E) Willowfine informing Morven as they set off that she hadn’t wanted to say anything in front of the Poor Man, but she and the others rather liked Robin and didn’t want to see Morven take over his body. After all, Robin was a lot kinder and didn’t ridicule them constantly! Morven protested that “I’m not RIDICULING, I’m pointing out your shortcomings so you can do something about them.” XD Happen backed Willowfine up about Robin being a good man, though, and Willowfine insisted they wouldn’t let Morven hijack his body. Morven was like “I’d like to see you stop me” (and as she has thirty freaking spells at her disposal, including the famous Sorcerous Burst, it probably would be a tough fight) but said that they could table the issue for now as currently their goals aligned, and the group agreed.

F) The group traveling along the road for a bit before seeing a sort of town in the distance, with simple mud-and-thatch houses surrounded by a big wooden gate – Cressida, with her half-elf eyes, could just about spot people in there, and something that MIGHT be a beehive, but she wasn’t sure. Morven used Gaseous Form to scout out the place while Cressida sat and thought about her life choices and Willowfine attempted to find bees they could bring to the camp as a cover story, only to be interrupted by Happen politely asking her help healing his shattered face. She accordingly yanked up his hood and fired Cure Wounds in there for 15 points of healing damage. XD Morven then came back and drew them all a crude map of the encampment (provided by Johnny), stating that she’d seen about a dozen people in brown and red robes milling about (though she hadn’t been able to determine which of the two were higher-ranked in the society they were entering, putting a damper on Lug’s plan to try and use mud to change the color of at least one of their hoods) and that there was indeed at least one beehive in the middle of the whole thing. This reignited Willowfine’s desire to find some bees, and she cast Locate Object to find some. The magical ping led her to a hive dangling from a tree, which Happen offered to shoot down – it was pointed out that this might anger the bees, but Happen said that was going to happen anyway, and Morven offered to cast Feather Fall on it so it didn’t come smashing down and make things worse. And so one excellent shot (from an inspiration-fueled reroll, because why not use your free point of inspiration per long rest on the bee-gathering sidequest? XD) and one well-cast spell later, the group had acquired a beehive with less-than-angry bees! And the players had acquired a cute story from Andy about how honey was Robin’s favorite food, after a harvest festival where he managed to get a taste finishing off someone else’s discarded honeycomb. It was honestly very sweet! Uh, no pun intended. XD

G) And, finally for this chunklet, the group approaching the encampment with beehive in tow (Plan B, as Morven called it, with Plan Other B being to start blasting since they still had their magic XD), and Lug calling as politely as he could for the “superiors” on the other side to open the gate. Which did happen, but only after a worryingly-long pause… I left it with the group being met at the newly-opened gate by a woman (or, at least, someone who had a feminine voice), one of the red-hooded members of the encampment, who called them “fresh blood” – tomorrow, we see what the deal is with the creepy beekeepers, and if Morven can keep herself from Sorcerous Bursting everyone and calling it a day. XD

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – today’s page was all about the group following Kasimir as he showed them how best to sneak down the hallway and avoid those tricksy little pressure plate tiles they’d found! Poor Victor was very nervous about doing it right, and almost took an unfortunate tumble when the toe of his shoe caught in a crack between two tiles – but fortunately Smiler was right at his back to catch him before he could topple over. And even more fortunately, after a check-in with Barnaby (who was like “this is murder on my thighs”) and Alice (who reported that Cheshire was making a game out of only stepping on the fish in the mosaic...and abusing his power to become merely eyes and smile to get over large gaps), Victor turned back to the front – and spotted a little black tile poking up a tiny bit above the best. I left it with him getting Smiler’s opinion on if they thought that might be the final tile – next time, he warns Kasimir to avoid it, and the group makes it through the danger zone! ...though, again, not without Kasimir tripping and falling over. Because the poor bastard rolled a 3 as his highest result on the Prowl group action and thus must suffer the consequences. :P

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – managed to get in one video and one Short tonight –

A) First, I continued my quest to chip away at the OXBoxtra lists sitting in my Watch Later tonight by viewing “7 Stupidest Armour Sets That Could in No Way Protect You!” Ellen and Jane going through a set of ridiculous armor sets and outfits that should make it very easy for the enemy to murder you, NOT offer amazing bonuses! The Mushroom Set from Elden Ring, that makes you appear as a walking pile of fungus? Best immunity in the game to poisons and the dreaded Scarlet Rot! The Bare Chested And Oiled legendary torso armor from Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey that basically gives you a couple of pieces of cloth to wrap around your naughty bits and a bucket of baby oil? +9% “warrior damage,” whatever that is, and +10% elemental build-up! AND if you get covered in black oil from smashing pots while wearing it, that’s a +500% damage boost! The Chicken Hat from Resident Evil 4 Remake that plops a rubbery chicken head on Leon’s head? Significantly reduces all damage from enemies! At least that one has the metatextual excuse that the game is calling you a chicken...which is undercut by the fact that the hat is only unlocked once you complete a Hardcore game in under five-and-a-half hours while getting S+ rank. Mixed messages, RE4R! But yes, video games do love making absolutely ridiculous things absolutely amazing armor. I am looking forward to the commenter’s edition of this one. XD

B) And second, I couldn’t resist checking out this Short that was sitting in the sidebar next to the video: “How to Save Squire And Have Him Join You in #bg3 #baldursgate3 #baldursgate” by Toyhouze! A clip out of one of his longer videos that details how to avoid having to fight Squire, Ketheric Thorm’s loyal skeletal warhound and one of the many good boys in BG3. Basically, Squire will show up as part of the initial battle against Ketheric atop his tower UNLESS you find him earlier during your explorations (he’s hanging out in Ketheric’s room, unsurprisingly), chat with him (either figuratively or literally, depending on if you’ve got Speak With Animals), and pass one of three checks to make him friendly and thus disinclined to hurt you. If you do this, he won’t show up during the fight. And, if you’re an Oathbreaker Paladin and at least Level 6, you can also use Control Undead on him to get him to fight on YOUR side! Turns out he has an extra attack and a nasty bite, but – unsurprisingly – pretty low hit points. So yeah – if you want to save the undead pupper, make sure you find him BEFORE any boss battles kick off!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Usual Monday N/A – had no idea what I wanted to do, if anything, on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight. Like, I know I need a Friday post for my queue, but I’m not sure what it should be. Meeeh – maybe tomorrow I’ll have some inspiration. (And if not, I’ve got plenty of one-off shit in my drafts.)

Yeah, pretty typical Monday, all told. And now it's time for me to head to bed. Fingers crossed I don't wake up having had another stress nightmare...night all!

I went to bed at around 1:40 AM this morning, expecting to wake up at like 9 AM or so as I usually do...only to open my eyes this morning, look at the clock, and see it was 9:55 AM. *facepalm* Of course -- on the Cleaning Saturday, when I don't really want to sleep in, I of course sleep in. And then a lot of the rest of the rest of the day was kind of stressful for one reason or another --

A) My eye was still tender and sore this morning from whatever was irritating it (though it's gotten a lot better since then, fortunately)

B) Mom spent most of the morning pulling apart the kitchen, cleaning everything and spraying behind the fridge and whatnot, because we keep finding ants in there AND WE DON’T KNOW WHY. We CANNOT figure out where the fuck they’re coming from. And even WITH everything she did today, when she and Dad went off to get rid of some old books and pick up some groceries this afternoon, right after they left, I saw an ant on the frame of the back door. *heavy sigh* Just the one, but fucking hell. Every bit of food at this point is in a sealed plastic container or can, so – I don’t even know. Ugh. Absolutely fucking ridiculous.

C) We had a scare this afternoon with my parents' printer (which they need for their online business) not working -- turns out that at some point during the morning cleaning, a circuit breaker got tripped for the outlet it was plugged into. No, none of us could figure out how or why. It is working now, but it was a Bad Moment.

D) During all this, Mom did some laundry, which meant I kept getting interrupted in what I was doing by laundry-based tasks. Like, I'm happy to help, but it was kind of annoying to walk into the kitchen looking for a snack this afternoon and get immediately asked "hey, can you go move the colored load from the washer to the dryer, I totally forgot." Meh

E) And of course there was the usual amount of "hey, look at all this absolute bullshit happening in the news" on tumblr, which -- yeah. Never helps my mood.

Yeaaaah -- not the worst Saturday, but definitely NOT one of the best. *sigh* Despite that, though, I still managed to accomplish some stuff --

Cleaning: Welp, as stated above, I woke up later than I intended, so I got to this later than I intended, starting just before 11 AM – and despite listening to an indie/alternative rock playlist rather than an Oxventure episode of any description, I STILL didn’t finish the whole round of dusting, Swiffering, and vacuuming until 2 PM. Granted, I did end up taking a little extra time to dust behind some stuff I hadn’t dusted behind in a while, and did get slightly distracted at one point when the playlist strung three songs I really like together in a row, but – still. I’m thinking that cleaning’s just gonna take roughly three hours (give or take a half-hour, especially if laundry is involved – no blankets or bathrobe this week, but I did throw my sheets and pajamas into the family load) and I’m just going to have to live with that. Though, hilariously, despite my late start and late finish, I still ended up finishing before lunch because of Mom's efforts to rid the kitchen of ants. Figures, right? Meeeh.

Sims 4: Despite my long cleaning session and subsequent late lunch, I did pop in here for another Offline Building Session on Smiler’s Potion Caravan. And I even managed to make some progress on it! Here’s what I accomplished today:

( Under here because this entry's long enough )

Writing: Got another page done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” – Steven and Alan were successfully drugged, but unfortunately Steven – who worked on the equivalent of the drug squad in the Bluecoats before taking the Van Dort guard job – recognized the taste of slumber essence in the gin and started calling for help while Alan tried to stumble off. Smiler managed to shut Steven up with a hand over his mouth, and both men collapsed unconscious soon after, but – not the neatest start to the heist! No matter what Barnaby said. XD There was some talk about trying to hide them, but Kasimir didn’t think they had the time – and Victor backed him up, explaining that they weren’t quite at the vault yet, but instead about to enter the trap-filled hallway that led to the vault. And no, he didn’t know how to turn off the traps – he’d never been down here except when the traps had already been turned off – but he knew what and where they were, at least. As Kasimir said, “Good enough.” XD Tomorrow, Victor gets them past the first trap – a tripwire in front of the door – and then gets Smiler’s help identifying the second – pressure plate tiles in the floor! Should be fun – for me, anyway. :P

(Oh, and if you’re wondering about how Victor and company reacted to the whole “Steven and Alan saying that Victor should have hopped a train out of town rather than face his mother’s wrath, and that she would have only been happy if he’d returned as ashes in an urn” thing from the last writing session – Smiler did offer Victor a hug, but he said he’d take it later, as he really just wanted to get into that vault and show his parents that their traps WEREN’T impenetrable. *nods* Best revenge is embarrassing the fuck out of your awful relatives, after all!)

YouTube: Well, I didn’t get to anything in my Watch Later, but I at least managed to catch up on my Subs tonight by watching “Fun With Shorts: Responsibility” by Josh Way! Featuring a short all about the trials and tribulations of one Hank Evans, student at Lincoln High, as he struggled with being responsible – presented in such a way that I kind of ended up on Hank’s side. Like, yes, fine, the kid probably should have double-checked better what homework he was supposed to do for English class – but on the flip side, the teacher that assigned that homework did so at the VERY END of class, when everybody was too busy trying to get to their next class, and it looked like that poor kid had too much homework anyway. And yes, he should have prepared better for the debate against Wilson School, instead of relying on his “gift of gab,” but the way it was phrased, it was like all of Lincoln High’s hopes and dreams were riding on that one debate tournament, which I’m sure they were not! Add in that it was made very clear that Hank was struggling with being compared to his perfect-straight-A sister Vera, who’d attended the year before and who all the teachers loved, and – yeah. I feel for the teenager in this situation! Josh, meanwhile, felt for no one, and mocked everything and everyone equally – from calling Bev Anderson a “kiss-ass” for going to the English teacher for the assignment and then repeating it as she wrote it down, to saying that Hank getting stage fright “couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.” XD Good stuff – and nice to see him take on one of these shorts all in one go, rather than chopping it up into multiple videos! Hopefully that shall now be the norm.

So yeah -- not as much as I'd hoped to get done, but I hit all the important stuff -- and it was nice to work more on both the Potion Caravan and "The Van Dort Vacancy." Little bright spots in a very annoying day!

And now I should really get to bed, before it gets too late. Tomorrow, plans include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts (again, hoping to clean up that post on the teen versions of the Valicer trio so I can get it posted sooner rather than later); playing Superliminal and replaying "Optical" and "Labyrinth" to find my missing fire extinguisher and fire alarm and get a few last achievements; working more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and combining my workout and YouTubery as usual to get through the next installment of Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered: No Guns LP! Hopefully these are all achievable, and hopefully they will not be derailed by fucking ants. Night all.

Mostly because I didn't get to bed until nearly 1 AM because I ended up in a battle with a bug that was flying around the bathroom (which Dad says was a fly, but sure as hell looked a lot more like a bee or wasp to me!). A battle I lost, by the way -- I couldn't suck it up with the vacuum cleaner because it kept flying away too fast, so eventually I said "screw it," retrieved my bathrobe, and closed the door to trap it in there. And then a lot of today was just a procession of things annoying me -- from the weather being crappier than they said (it was still pretty warm and sticky this morning, though it HAD cooled down nicely by the afternoon), to various things at work getting under my skin (I'll go into more detail on THAT below), to having to stop for gas on my way home (up to $3 a gallon), to -- despite the cool weather and me opening my windows this afternoon a couple of times -- my room staying unpleasantly warm to the point where I had to turn on the AC to cool it down. *sigh* It's just -- it wasn't the WORST day, but it was definitely not a fun one. Hmph.

Well, anyway -- here's the typical nightly write-up:

Work – A somewhat-annoying day at work, I must admit – though that’s probably at least partly because I arrived in a bad mood thanks to the lack of sleep from the bug shenanigans. But yeah, it was a day full of things that irritated me, such as:

A) Looking over the report of one-time gifts that had to be moved to the new Appeal year and pledge overpayments that had to be fixed with my coworker and listening to her go on about how the recurring gifts were hard to spot when they didn’t have the recurring gift source code (which was a legit complaint, but she kept going on about it in a way that suggested she expected me to have all the answers, which, I don’t)

B) Trying to call one of our database people to answer some questions about the report and the call not connecting for unknown reasons, then e-mailing her to let her know we had some questions, only for her to call back right before lunch (fortunately it wasn’t a LONG call, and it gave us the answers we needed, but still)

C) Having to e-mail our credit card people after lunch to get them to sort out the source codes on their end (who knows when THAT will fucking happen, because they’re useless idiots)

D) Having to coach my coworker through the reversals on the one-time gifts because for some reason she couldn’t figure out which gifts should get which updated source codes (hint: only the RECURRING GIFTS get the RECURRING SOURCE CODE)

E) Having to send an e-mail to my supervisor to ask his opinion on what I should do about some partial overpayments on credit cards (which are a pain in the ass to deal with)

F) And contacting a guy to let him know that we couldn’t process his credit card information to update his capital campaign pledge because of an error (known one on our end), but I could take it for him over the phone (since I could do a work-around to get around the error)...and him not calling back until RIGHT BEFORE IT WAS TIME TO GO (fortunately he did NOT make me leave late, but still)

Yeaaaah, it was a bitchy day. I mean, some very important stuff got done, but not without me being in a very bad mood throughout. *sigh* At least tomorrow’s only a half day...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 6: Shapes in the Mist!” Tonight’s chunklet featured:

A) Lug, having guessed that the magical melody on the air was the cause of all their woes, and seeing that Morven was paralyzed and unable to cover her ears, getting some moss and plugging up her ears (and his, as Johnny assumed – Willowfine just covered hers) to save her from the tune’s effects. This rendered Morven able to move again –

Just in time, as the fey creatures making the creepy folk music – a pair of satyr-like beings covered in bark, with legs hairy with lichen, one of which was carrying pan pipes – appeared from behind some trees, looking very annoyed that Lug had spoilt all of Johnny’s plans to whisk the group away one by one. XD Morven promptly got out the Sorcerous Blast and straight-up incinerated the one with the pan pipes, reducing it to ashes. Like, this thing just WENT UP. Naturally, the other one was like “oh fuck this” and BOOKED it away, and the remaining three members of our team gave chase, hoping to capture it or at least see where it was going!

“But wait,” I hear you cry, “what about magic’s due?” Well, as it turned out, magic didn’t have it fully out for Morven today – when Andy opened the envelope he’d gotten from the last rolling rite, he found that the spell had warped Morven’s (and by extension Robin’s) bones, making them sturdier but also older and more weary. So Morven/Robin now has +2 to their normal AC – except when it rains, where – even indoors – they have -2 instead. Basically, the joints be achy in bad weather now! Andy didn’t seem to consider that much of a minus. :P

B) Lug, Willowfine, and Morven chasing the – Johnny has not given them an official name yet, so I’m going to call them “barksatyrs” for now – barksatyr to a clearing! Where they found dozens more barksatyrs going about their business (under the orders of a superior one with more ornate bark and a bad temper – he smacked around the one who ran in and presumably gave him the bad news about his companion being ashed) – and a giant pit in the midst of it all –

Into which was dumped Cressida! Yes, Cressida and Happen were back (Ellen and Luke having been welcomed back into the room), and they were at the bottom of a fifty-foot pit, which was surrounded on all sides by a strange woven thing of vines and panels of bark. They both had a look around, and, on a good Perception check, they were able to find a small note tucked into the bark by the author of the journal they were given before, Edie (not Etta, as I misremembered – Ellen was very pleased with the name, and Johnny and I both went “oh yeah” as we remembered that’s the name of her character from Oxventure: Deadlands XD)! The note explained that the North Team had been reunited in the pit, and questioned by the barksatyrs, who were apparently trying to figure out what had happened to the “Shimmering Lady,” the spirit who looks after the river that feeds this part of the forest. They were convinced that North Team had something to do with her disappearance, and weren’t pleased by the fact that the team couldn’t answer their questions. Edie then explained that they hoped to escape the pit and send a message to the Northwest Team using the one copestone the first team member to vanish, Kole, had managed to keep a hold of. Given what we know happened to the copestone later, seems like that escape didn’t go as well as they’d hoped. :( But it did make Cressida and Happen note that, despite the kidnappings and the being thrown into a pit, the barksatyrs and them might not actually be enemies, as they too wanted to figure out what was going on with the river…

C) The barksatyrs haltingly questioning Cressida and Happen about the whereabouts of the Shimmering Lady (while Lug, Willowfine, and Morven tried to figure out how to send a message to them – Morven said she could communicate telepathically with them if she was within 30 feet, but then Lug pointed out they were in a deep pit, and things just got more complicated from there XD)! The pair tried to communicate that they hadn’t done anything with the Shimmering Lady, and that they were seeking her themselves – and fortunately, Cressida putting on her best customer service smile as she explained this at least convinced the guy who initially questioned them to go and get their superior. Unfortunately, despite Cressida’s best efforts to explain that they didn’t really know the people who were here before, and that she didn’t know where their current companions were as she’d been, you know, paralyzed, kidnapped, and thrown down a pit, but they were willing to help find the Shimmering Lady if they’d just let them out (aka rolling a 19 when the DC to beat was a 20), the superior was unimpressed. He smacked his underling upside the head, turned to go, and made a mysterious signal with his hand to something –

Cue Happen yelling, “we have the Shimmering Lady, release us if you ever want to see her alive again!” Cressida and Johnny were both like “…” XD However, it was too little, too late, as the strange vine-and-bark covering surrounding them suddenly began to move, pulling itself off the walls and reconfiguring itself into a giant displacer-beast-like bark-and-vine bear! Which, let’s face it, is a pretty epic monster. :D Good work on that, Johnny!

D) The gang rolling initiative as they prepared to fight the bear (Happen and Cressida) and head toward their friends to help them (Morven, Willowfine, and Lug)! Here’s how that’s going so far:

I. In the pit, Happen opened strong by rolling a twenty on the Cadence die, which resulted in him shooting the bear, his sprites zooming in and basically throwing the bear into the air, Happen hitting it with ANOTHER arrow, and then the bear crashing to the ground, taking five extra points of bludgeoning damage and ending up prone. Luke tried to negotiate for a little extra damage from an arrow getting shoved deeper in, but Johnny wouldn’t let him have it. XD

II. This was followed up by Morven running toward the pit and then attempting to Reduce its size with her magic to make it shallower and easier to get out of – and when Johnny vetoed that because Reduce only works on people and objects, and a hole is more a lack of an object, switched plans to instead Enlarge the soil at the bottom of the hole to get the same effect. Johnny allowed it, knowing they would regret it (XD), and stated that this halved the depth of the hole, meaning it was now 25 feet deep instead of 50. Cressida and Happen naturally got a bit of a jolt from the ground suddenly rising beneath their feet, and Luke tried AGAIN to get some extra damage on the bear from the enlarged soil pushing the arrow in. (Johnny: “No! This is no longer G’eth!” XD)

III. And, when I left off, Willowfine had sprinted toward the edge of the hole and cast Spirit Guardians on herself, surrounding herself with orbs of light that could do radiant damage and slowed any enemies nearby! Which, there were sure to be a lot of soon, as the other barksatyrs, hearing the sounds of combat, were rushing toward the hole to get a good view of the show. XD (Though they wouldn’t arrive until the end of the round, thanks to their shitty initiative roll.) However, as you might have noticed, Spirit Guardians is MAGIC, and that means it’s time for Jane to open her envelope… Tomorrow, we see what effect Willowfine gets from magic taking its due, and finish off the episode! And now I’m wondering if the mystery woman who was so tormenting North Team was in fact the Shimmering Lady everyone’s seeking...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – and hey, happily I was able to channel my annoyance at everything into writing Alice being annoyed at everything! Specifically, the scene where she arrives back at Venture Tower and reports in about Grout, snapping at LaCroix that he’s dead, was dead before she got there, is really dead now that someone’s blown up his house, and who the fuck is this Bach asshole who tried to set her on fire? XD LaCroix tried to lecture her about her tone, but Alice brushed him off with a “this is as polite as I can be right now; throw me out if you must, but this is as good as you’re getting for now” and he let it go with a “I guess I appreciate your honesty.” XD Anyway, he told her about his and Bach’s beef (namely, that he killed Bach’s grandfather and father) and the Society of Leopold (bunch of super-pious hunter jerks), while also implying that Bach must have killed Grout to draw him out. Except Alice knows what she saw and heard in the mansion, and Bach was very surprised to learn Grout was dead… Next time, Alice gets pissy all over again about what was going on in the mansion with the ghouls – causing her to slip up and mention a name she REALLY shouldn’t have...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – continued chipping away at my collected OXBoxtra list videos tonight with “7 Annoying Sentient Weapons That Made Us Pacifists!” Andy, Mike, and Jane taking the viewers through a bunch of chatty weapons that will very rapidly get on your last nerve. Such as Skippy, the gun with its own bullet-shaped version of Clippy installed, from Cyberpunk 2077 – which, despite its annoying chatter, looks useful because it has an auto-aim feature that always targets the head...except if you choose THAT mode over its “go for the legs” mode, once you hit fifty kills it’ll switch permanently into “go for the legs” mode, thus robbing it of its main utility (basically, you HAVE to choose the more “pacifist” mode first so it’ll swap instead into all headshots all the time). Or Lilacror, a talking sword from Baldur’s Gate II, which is either possessed by the spirit of a notorious village idiot or simply acts just like him, and whose hobbies include encouraging to you to hack and slash your way to fortune by killing richer and richer people. Or every weapon in High On Life, as they’re all sentient, very chatty aliens, and whether or not you’ll be able to stand them depends a LOT on if you like Rick and Morty and its style of humor. Me, I do not, and thus I wanted to slap all the weapons in this clip. *shakehead* Give me a nice weapon that does NOT have a mind of its own any day of the week! I do not need my Two-Shot Combat Sniper from Fallout 4 to talk in order to love it.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – as I finished up everything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)’s queue last night, I just had Valice Multiverse to worry about today – and that had one anon ask that consisted of the following: “You can't spell advertisements without putting semen between tits.” Which – interesting observation. I had Cuddlepile!Alice respond with a raised eyebrow, then a groan as she looked at the word again and realized the anon was technically right. More reason to call them ads, I suppose!

And there we have it -- the end of July being very annoying. I'm going to go hit the sack, HOPEFULLY without having to deal with any insect shit in the bathroom. *sigh* Night all.

We broke a record today, with the Official Actual Temp in RI being 96F, and the feel-like temperature being well in the 100s, bleeeh. >( I am very glad that I work in a place with decent air conditioning and that we now have three ACs at home to keep the house cool. That little bit of time I spent outside today was fairly brutal! And we've still got one more day of this to go before the rain sweeps in and the temperatures improve...this has been a truly brutal summer weather-wise, I swear. *shakehead* Anyway, here's how my day went:

Work – Very quiet day at work – the only two calls I got all day were from a parish secretary letting us know about a check she was sending our way (apparently it got lost in the postal system and was only just returned), and a telemarketer. The rest of the day was spent doing the usual morning reports, finishing off my obituaries, then keeping myself busy going through a particular last name and cleaning up a lot of deceased people who happened to share it while also doing what puzzles I could sneak out of the paper. *shrug* Boring day, but not horrible. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 5: Ironclad!” Today’s chunklet featured:

A) Edmond leading the group back to Elmsteader, a large town built entirely in the branches of a GINORMOUS elm tree (bigger than a giant redwood!), and taking them to I presume his house, where he sat them down, offered them some water, and provided the following pertinent information:

I. The iron collars they all wore were gifts from some anti-magic pilgrims from Robin’s neck of the woods (he recognized the clothes Edmond described them wearing as being the “uniform” of the local inquisitors), who passed through the area and lectured them on how they were walking the path of damnation about five years ago. The community had sort of tossed them aside with some vague ideas of melting them down, but when magic went wonky, they went “actually wait these might be useful” and put ‘em on. *shrug* I mean, fair enough – if magic’s gone bad, then maybe you do want to start wearing magic suppressors! At least until someone’s figured out what’s going on.

II. Yes, the North Team had stopped at their settlement – and badly fucked things up for Elmsteader. You see, the community had told them what was going on in their neck of the woods, including that they seemed to be suffering from a drought of sorts – in addition to the strange, unseasonable heat, the river that fed this place and made it so lush had apparently lost its ability to nourish the plants. Which was a problem for the giant elm, because obviously a tree that size needs a FUCKTON of water, and while the citizenry were trying to keep the roots wet... Anyway, someone in the North Team offered to try and stabilize the tree with their magic, and went to enchant it –

Aaaand their hand exploded. Moments later, all the magic came roaring out of the tree in a giant swirling purple vortex of energy and shot off northwest. The tree promptly sickened even worse, and the angry citizenry chased the North Team out of town, even further north. Robin argued that he couldn’t believe anyone on the team had done that DELIBERATELY, and while Edmond allowed that, he was said that what was done was done, and as a result he didn’t want any of THEM getting near the tree, which the others allowed was fair. Also, they could only stay one night, and he’d be taking their weapons for said night – which rankled a little, but everyone turned their stuff over without much complaint. (Robin handed over his stale baguette, which Edmond just looked at briefly before handing it back. XD) Willowfine also got a timeline out of Edmond during this discussion – namely, that the disastrous visit by the North Team had happened roughly five or so days ago. Meaning that the villagers here were NOT responsible for whatever had happened to the North Team to split their copestone in two. Interesting…

B) The team discussing what to do once all their weapons were locked up and Edmond had headed off back on watch – Happen noted that there were a few mysteries in play here, namely what was going on with the river; what happened to North Team; and what happened with the purple magic that got yanked out of the tree. Robin was all for going after the magic and bringing it back to put in the tree to help the town (or just putting some of their own magic in the tree if necessary), but Willowfine pointed out that the town had made it pretty clear that they did not want their help. Happen was much more interested in figuring out what was going on with the river, figuring that if they sought that out, they might find North Team along the way – Willowfine agreed, saying that everything seemed pretty interconnected! Robin too was all for killing two birds with one stone (promptly apologizing for using such an idiom as he was still kinda stuck on the bird thing – Lug was like “how the HELL do YOU know the word idiom??” XD Turns out Robin attended one day of school and that was the day they learned idioms) and suggested they head out immediately, despite the others pointing out they didn’t have their weapons and could use a rest –

And then Happen realized “oh, right – Robin doesn’t want to rest because that would mean Morven coming out.” The others insisted they needed their sleep (especially Cressida), and said they could strike out first thing in the morning – Robin relented and said he’d just stick himself in the thigh with a fork to stay awake. As the others went to sleep, Johnny had Robin roll for sticking himself –

Aaand Robin promptly got a three, meaning he went to stab himself, completely missed his leg, and passed out. XD Thus both ensuring that Morven would be present for the latter half of this adventure, and answering a question of mine in the process – namely, do Robin/Morven ever actually SLEEP as they always swap consciousnesses when one goes unconscious? Turns out they do, good. I was getting worried about the shared meat shell for a bit there!

C) Everyone being woken up in the middle of the night by a massive CRACK from the tree, and seeing the damn thing starting to split and collapse in on itself, indicating the tree did NOT have long to last! The community promptly started rushing around in a panic, trying to get away from the tree before it either imploded or exploded. Happen sought out Edmond to tell him that they hoped to help and that they wanted to seek the river – however, it quickly became apparent even to No Social Skills Happen that Edmond was in no mood to chat, as he told them that they COULDN’T help, the river was north and two days away, did they want him to guide them or what?! Happen quickly apologized for bothering him and stopped Lug from asking the guy where the key to the chest with all their weapons was.

Morven, meanwhile, woke up and INSTANTLY felt the horrible, gaping void at the center of the tree where its magic should be and was like “the fuck?” The others quickly filled her in on the situation, and she was like “well, we HAVE to put some magic in this tree, I don’t care what the townspeople say, it’s already dying so we’re going to save them from themselves.” First, though, the gang had to retrieve their weapons, with Luke describing Happen trying to smack open the padlock with the butt of one of his shortswords –

Only for Andy, Mike, and Jane to be like, “Uh, Luke, the swords are weapons, and thus would be in the chest.” The look on Luke’s face as they explained this was hilarious. XD Morven ended up using a tiny Magic Missile on it instead, breaking it into four pieces and allowing everyone to get their stuff back. Happen promptly smacked the remains of the padlock with the butt of one of his shortswords, presumably because he was annoyed he couldn’t before. XD

D) And the gang, realizing there was no talking Morven out of her plan to pour magic into the tree, instead deciding to join her in sneaking past the panicking villagers to fire as much magic power into the dying tree as they could! Johnny had them all roll initiative (with both Andy and Ellen getting nat 20s – Ellen tried to get a high-five from Andy, who left her hanging until it was clarified she was doing so OOC XD), then explained that how this was going to work was that they didn’t need to specify what spells they were firing, but rather what level spell slot they were using for said spells, as that would determine how many D20s they could roll to see how many “magic points” they put into the tree – one D20 for a Level 1 spell slot, two for a Level 2, and so on. Johnny, meanwhile, would be checking to see if the villagers noticed what the group was doing on their turn, and if the tree exploded on ITS turn (and noting that they’d already got a crit 1 on the initiative roll for it...). The five promptly got to firing magic into the tree, with Morven, Cressida, and Willowfine each using up a Level 3 spell slot on their turns; Happen a Level 2 slot (as he’s a ranger and thus only a “half” caster who gets weaker spells); and Lug a pseudo-Level 1 slot (as he only has a TINY bit of magic from the “Magic Initiate” feat, which includes one level 1 spell he can cast once per long rest and a couple of cantrips). Their combined efforts poured 132 points of magic back into the tree, which was pretty damn solid! Johnny then rolled for the villagers noticing (getting a four, meaning they were much more concerned with stabilizing someone who’d previously fallen out of the tree when it initially started collapsing), and for the tree imploding, stating that if they got another crit 1, it was going boom –

And getting a two. XD Talk about avoiding disaster by the skin of their teeth… I left it with everyone preparing for round two of “pour magic into the tree,” with Johnny warning that if they rolled a 1 or a 2 this time, the tree would go boom. Eeep. O.o We’ll see what happens tomorrow! Hopefully it’s not a tree explosion!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – and today officially started The Worst Moment Of Alice’s Unlife! Because, right after she found the pile of ash that was Grout’s staked-and-chained-up corpse, the whole room shook with an absolutely massive BOOM. Causing Alice to rush out the door on the other side at Carpenter’s direction to see what the fuck that was –

Only to find herself overlooking A GIANT PIT OF FLAMES. Followed immediately by one Grünfeld Bach screaming at her to lay low and be cleansed. Alice proceeded to scream back at him that she wasn’t Grout and that she had no idea who he was, but he just told her that all people like her would be “washed from the earth,” and that this whole fiery display was a promise to everyone who served the “archfiend LaCroix” before running off. Leaving poor, panicking Alice trapped in the middle of the raging conflagration. D: I left off with the Queen of Hearts shoving her toward the balcony and pointing out a safe spot where she could drop down – tomorrow, Alice gets to relive the burning of her childhood home as she rushes through the flaming wreck of Grout’s mansion! Yaaaay...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and I actually did keep up with my Subs today, watching the latest from Josh Way – “Fun With Shorts: Crimes of Carelessness!” A fire safety short all about scaring people with statistics about how many people get killed and injured and how much property is lost from fires, before yelling at them for doing dumb things like extinguishing their cigarettes in the wastebasket beside their chair with the faux-wood cover (seriously), letting their kids play with matches, and using gasoline to get out stains while an open flame burns merrily on the stove nearby. It was over the top and ridiculous, and Josh got some in some good riffs against it (like accusing the narrator of being like J.J. Abrams – able to start a story but not finish it – when he kept talking about how fires start; commenting “wow, that sounds really nice” when the narrator talked about people going to sleep forever thanks to smoking in bed; and claiming at the end he was going to do his part to stop fires by REMOVING ALL THE OXYGEN FROM THE AIR, MWAHAHA). All in all, another quality bit of cinema from my current favorite riffer!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I in fact was quite busy on tumblr this eve, as the below shall show –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I both set up my queue and straight-up reblogged some stuff that intrigued me:

A) On the queue side, I got three things in for the next three days:

I. A reblog of that transparent png of the eye fish from A:MR by “roachpng” for Wednesday

II. A reblog of the behind-the-scenes Corpse Bride stuff featuring the bushy-eyebrowed Elder Gutknecht maquette by “atimburtonfan” for Thursday

III. And my latest set of Valicer In The Dark-related Not-Incorrect Quotes (featuring the gang’s pets) for Friday! Because the previous two reblogs were both tagged “#valicer in the dark au” thanks to me thinking the eye fish would be fun to add as a creepy real fish to the setting, and taking direct inspiration from the bushy-eyebrowed Elder Gutknecht for my ghostly one. :)

Now I just have to figure out a matching VITD-related Song Saturday, and I will be all set! :)

B) And on the “straight-up reblog” side, I reblogged onto my dash tonight:

I. A post by “prokopetz” talking about an idea for a “Backrooms”-inspired game where the local fire department has to go and rescue any pets or people that clip through reality into the titular backrooms, and this is just treated as a mundane part of the job (with “goodbyenorthernlights” adding his tag about being allowed to blast shadow monsters with the hose XD) – I reblogged this with a tag for my pal Satirical Demon (author of “Beneath A Broken Sky,” the Eldritch Hellworld Valice story) saying that this sounded like his jam (as he loves this kind of thing). Sure enough, he reblogged it from me saying he was scribbling down notes furiously XD

II. A post by “deadn0w” consisting simply of “your son is a pleasure to have on his knees for me” – this just IMMEDIATELY hit me as something Smiler or Alice would think while having to deal with Nell, and I tagged it as such (along with noting that Victor would either die of embarrassment or kill them if they ever said it out loud XD)

III. And a post from “firestormmaidenanddragon” talking about how Discord has implemented an age verification system for UK users in early compliance with a new bullshit “online safety” law that was recently passed, to prepare themselves for other sites doing this bullshit (including tumblr), and asking people to spread the word about a petition to get this stupid law repealed (with another user, “mankillercalledbunny,” noting that it would require you to upload your government ID to use these sites, and asking people who stood up to KOSA in the US to help with this) – I’m pretty sure all my own UK friends already know about this, but I figured I should signal boost it anyway, because fucking hell >(

*nods* Busy night over here, to be sure! But I am trying to be a little more generally active, so I guess that’s a good thing.

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had three anon asks to slot into my queue for tomorrow:

A) One just singing the “Orange Orange Bo Borange” song – I had the Inevitable High School version of the Valicer trio respond, with Alice being bemused and asking if they were just making up words that rhyme with orange; Victor saying he’s sure he’s heard the “Banana Fanana” thing in another song; and Smiler trying to come up with another lyric, submitting “Kiwi Diwi Do Dorange” because it was the first thing that popped into my head XD

B) Another asserting that “There is an inanimate object which has a capacity to exasperate which no human being will ever attain: a piano” – Cuddlepile!Smiler and Victor answered that one, with Smiler asking Victor if he agreed with that, and Victor saying he didn’t know about using it to exasperate other people (he generally doesn’t play for crowds), but tuning one could be a pain sometimes :P

C) And a third asking “Do you think Pavlov ever got the urge to feed his dogs every time he heard a bell?” – I returned to the Inevitable High School kids for this one, with Alice going to answer, only to pause, close her mouth, and get really thoughtful instead, and Smiler saying “I don’t know but it would have been really funny” XD

Busy night over here too, as you can see! But at least I don’t have to worry about content for a change. :P

Yeah -- lot to do over here this eve! And now I should head to bed and try to get some sleep. Wish me luck with the heat again tomorrow! Night all!

Yeah, the weather was pretty miserable today, with a lot of clouds and a few bursts of pouring rain. And a lot of humidity, which is apparently going to stick around at least through Tuesday and make it feel like it's 102 degrees out. Bleeeh. >( And yes, it was also one of those days where I just felt tired for a lot of it -- which is annoying, because I actually got a better-than-usual night's sleep last night! Nearly a full eight hours! I should have been feeling more refreshed, damn it... But the body is gonna do what the body does, I suppose. *sigh* And despite the tiredness and the icky weather, I had a pretty good day overall --

Tumblr: Another nothing day on Valice Multiverse, but I fortunately had another productive morning on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) Started by answering an anonymous ask from someone wanting to know if I’d ever played Lies of P, and, if so, what I thought about crossovers with P – mostly because they’d seen plenty of crossovers between that game and the Alice games (unsurprising, since there’s a pretty healthy shipping community for Alice/P based on what I’ve seen on tumblr), and wanted to know how P would fit into the Forgotten Vows world. I had to tell them that no, I’d never played the game because it wasn’t my jam gameplay-wise (it’s apparently very Dark Souls-esque, and I get frustrated enough with games that aren’t trying to murder me every five seconds!) – but that I was aware of the Alice/P shippers and trusted their judgment on P being a good romantic partner for Alice. After all, Alice and P both do have that “classic literature reimagined through a more violent, psychological lens” vibe going on in their games. :p But yeah, I let them know that I didn’t know enough about P or his game to figure out how he’d fit into the Forgotten Vows verse, so the anon would have to figure that out on their own! And then proceeded to ramble on in the tags about how I’m pretty sure P is some sort of steampunk robot or cyborg, so maybe he’d fit better in Secundus. :p And that he can be an honorary member of the Greater Valicer Polycule, aka the Running Headlong Into The Bullshit nine person relationship, because I already stuck Preston Garvey and Piper Wright from my own Fallout 4 playthrough in there – and am kinda-sorta thinking about having Wyll from Baldur’s Gate III join, as he’s going to be my romance option for my Tav Smiler…

B) Then I headed into my drafts and finished off the “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume V” post (with scenes featuring the VITD crew and their various pets – Sooty the raven, Guide the cat, Dogmeat the dog, Benny the lap dragon, and Us the intellect devourer) with a few last-minute edits and a bunch of tags about how making these posts always takes a while as I have to make sure I have enough scenes. And how yes, I know you shouldn’t give yarn balls to cats in case they eat the yarn, but the Alice of this verse doesn’t know that, so… Don’t worry, Alice – if you do find out it’s a bad idea, it’ll be through Guide pooping out a bunch of turds on a string and nothing more serious!

C) And finally, I started a draft of a post showing off the teenified versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler that I made back on Smiler’s birthday, because I never did share the results of that mini-CAS session over on tumblr! Mostly because it took me ages to whip up a post about the save file that they’re supposed to be a part of. ^^; It’s not complete yet, but I feel like I made a good start – I’ve got the introduction; the pictures of everyone in their outfits (with alt text copied from the descriptions I gave the pics over here); the descriptions of why I chose said outfits and what traits I’ve given the teens copied from my initial post on Dreamwidth; and a bunch of tags covering my discoveries that teens in Sims 4 MAY be a tiny bit shorter than adults and DEFINITELY have higher-pitched voices. XD Looking forward to editing it and getting it into postworthy condition later!

Sims 4: I did indeed return to my offline adventures in my Building Save today (after the EA App updated – was a little nervous that was going to force my Sims 4 game to update too, but fortunately it did not!) to work some more on Smiler’s Potion Caravan – and I am very pleased to announce that I had a much better and more productive building session today! Mostly because I took some time beforehand to look up pictures of “fantasy wagons” to get a better idea of what I wanted the build to, you know, actually look like. *nods* Here’s what I accomplished today:

A) After loading into the lot, I immediately took all objects out of the caravan (building a little bit of wall for all the wall-mounted decorations/lights to hang out on) and removed all the doors and stairs and such – then went ahead and “decapitated” the house by removing the room at the front and moving it to a different section of the lot! Reason? My research into what “fantasy wagons” typically looked like (backed up by me looking them up on my phone for a quick refresher) had revealed that I hadn’t built the front of Smiler’s little mobile home right. You see, I’d built it as one big blocky room with an entrance on the side, like what you might see on a modern mobile home –

But all the stuff I saw online indicated that a Proper Fantasy Wagon needed, essentially, a “front porch” of sorts. Usually a place for whoever was driving to sit once whatever was pulling the wagon was hooked up to the front, but even those wagons that didn’t have any place to hook up a horse or goat or what-have-you (presumably being animated by magic or machinery or both) still had that little front porch bit. So I figured I’d better add one to Smiler’s caravan! And since I wanted to make sure I had enough room to do so (as this build is a bit long and stretches almost all the way across the tiny lot I’m building on in Newcrest), I took the front bit off the main body temporarily. Makes sense now, right? :P There usually is a method to my madness! Not always a good one, but a method.

Anyway – once detached, I proceeded to resize the room so it was smaller and raised up its foundation (as all my research indicated the caravan should really be higher off the ground too), then added a “flat square shape” (essentially just a bit of floor that acted as its own room) to the front to make the porch. I then made sure that the new porch used the same foundation as the rest of the build (that minimalistic stilt foundation from Snowy Escape I put on yesterday); readded the wall it had deleted when I shoved it onto the room; made it a little bit smaller to save some space; and stuck the Seasons slatted stairs I was using before onto the front to provide access to where the new front door would be. And once I was happy with all that, I reattached it to the rest of the caravan – after making the next room in line a bit smaller to accommodate the whole kit-and-kaboodle, of course. *nods* From there, all I had to do was make sure the new front bit matched the rest of the caravan in terms of width (it has to be a little chonky to accommodate that huge potion-making cauldron!), pull the roof over the new porch to protect it from the elements, and add a couple of columns to the front corners to provide “support” for said roof (getting briefly confused when I saw two versions of the Snowy Escape “Tests Of Time Cedar Column” that looked identical in their thumbnails while looking for a good one in black (to match the foundation) – however, when I took them both out in-game, it was revealed that one had a wood-grain pattern, and one didn’t. I went with the one with the wood grain as a little more rustic). Voila! One front porch for Smiler’s caravan. :D Without even going over the 64-floor-tile limit for a Tier 2 tiny home, yay~ (Hell, from all the resizing I did, the home actually ended up SMALLER than when I started – which is not a bad thing, as I’m trying to keep it at 64 tiles or less as a personal challenge here. :P)

B) With the front porch sorted, I took a few minutes to check to see if I wanted to change the roof trim (I did not, as all the thinner roof trims looked silly on this particular build, especially when paired with the supporting columns – though I did make it a darker shade of black, as I found that was an option), then made the roof a little higher and more domed before raising up the foundation on the main build to the height I’d decided on while playing around with making the new porch. I then gathered up my Horse Ranch debug wheels, sized them up one time (which, as previously stated, made them pretty damn big), and “attached” them to the foundation –

And holy HELL, it was absolutely amazing how much BETTER the whole build looked! Like, the damn thing suddenly looked like an actual CARAVAN! :D I hadn’t realized just how much the tiny versions of the wheels and the low foundation was hurting the build! No wonder I was struggling so much with making this look good before…it’s always the little things, you know?

C) With a new fire lit under me, I decided it was time to lean into the “rustic fantasy” vibes this thing was supposed to have and started looking for a new front door to match – because as much as I love the “Spoopy Portals” doors from Crypt-O-Club, they just weren’t right for this build. (Though I do still wish I could just draw my own spirals on the stuff I DID select. That would definitely make it more Smilery.) After checking out a few different options (all in black of course – I’m going with black wood as much as possible in this build because black and yellow are THE primary Smiler colors, I already have nice bright yellow walls, and none of the doors I was looking at had a good yellow swatch), I decided that I liked the “Worn Wood Door” from Life & Death the best and got that into place. With the door picked, I then started looking for a nice black worn-looking wooden floor to go with it, and quickly settled on the “Lub Dup Boards” from Spooky Stuff as my best candidate. Once I was satisfied with all that, I then removed all the interior walls from the build so I could redo the internal layout at my leisure; made the build a tiny bit bigger at the rear to make sure there was enough space for all of Smiler’s stuff –

And then repainted the interior with the same “Walk The Plank” wooden walls and “Lup Dup” wood floors as I was using outside. Because, again, while I love the Crypt-O-Club wallpapers, and the shiny purple basketball planks floor from City Living, they’re just not right for this build. *shrug* What are you gonna do? (...keep them in mind while designing Smiler’s living spaces over in my Teen Valicer Save file, of course. THEY don’t live in a rustic fantasy world! XD)

D) With that sorted, I now had to find a good way to light the interior of the build so I could actually see what I was doing! I had some of those bug-shaped wall lights from Realm of Magic kicking around on my “holding these until later” chunk of wall, since I’d added them to the build earlier thinking they looked fun – but once I put them inside the caravan, I realized they gave off like NO light at all. Which would NOT do. So instead I started looking for a good ceiling-mounted light option instead, as I do prefer those lights anyway. I quickly realized that there was a bit of a problem, though –

One, most of the ceiling lights in the catalog weren’t appropriate for this build at all;

Two, of those that were appropriate, they pretty much all used candles, which I wasn’t sure was a good idea inside this giant WOODEN caravan;

And three, the remaining ceiling light that I wanted to use? The other light from good old Realm of Magic that looked cool and really lit up the room well?

FUCKING HUGE. Like, it is an absolutely MASSIVE chandelier and I don’t understand why you’re allowed to put it in rooms with walls that are shorter than the tallest wall height. This thing is NOT something your average Sim could walk around in your average-sized room! And while I could resize it down, it didn’t quite resize properly, leaving three glowing spots of white light around it where the lights on the chandelier SHOULD be. Like, it wasn’t a huge deal, but it was still noticeable! *sigh* Seriously, why did they not include a smaller version of this light? It’s very neat, but you can’t use it in any build that isn’t massive without resizing it and dealing with the visual glitch! *grumble* I mean, I did still end up using it – shrunk a pair down to a REASONABLE size and recolored them black-and-white to match the Smiler Aesthetic – but I’m not sure I’m going to STICK with them. They’ll certainly do for lighting the interior for decorating purposes, though!

E) With the lighting situation resolved, at least for the moment, I then found myself beset by a question – namely, did I want to put the Horse Ranch “Crossbuck” big open sliding doors back on the side of the caravan? On the one hand, I had always imagined the caravan having big doors on the side that Smiler could open up to display their wares and allow access to customers wanting to browse…on the other, while the Crossbuck doors were definitely the style of big open door I wanted, I’d learned over the last couple of building sessions that they didn’t play nice with stairs – if I wanted to stick a set of stairs in the gap, I had to use the “bb.moveobjects on” cheat. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to MOO the stairs into place, simply because – well, what if I wanted to use this build as an actual house or something at some point in the future? Would having the stairs there break the door in some small but significant way? It was a puzzle to be sure...

Then I went “hang on, I JUST attached a porch to the front of the build by slapping a ‘flat square’ shape against one of the rooms – why not do that here as well and have the stairs attach to THAT?” So that’s exactly what I did, building a three-wide mini-porch along the side of the caravan where I wanted the doors to be, slapping the doors onto the wall above it, then attaching the stairs to it! It mostly worked – while I could put the stairs in front of the door this way, they had to be positioned so they were just attached to the lip of the foundation, instead of being partially-merged into it like the front porch stairs (basically, the top step was extended out an extra square) – if I tried to push them in any farther, they deleted the doors. I briefly tried changing the doors on the side to the “Crossbuck Four Door” version, which has the big shutter doors around a normal pair of hinged doors in the middle, since earlier testing had proved they DID play nice with the stairs – but I quickly decided that I didn’t like the look of the “regular” doors in the gap and went back to what I had before. *shrug* Look, it works well enough, and we can pretend that maybe the mini-porch flips up or something and the stairs fold away underneath it. :P

F) With that sorted, I added an interior wall to separate the “work/selling” space from the “living” space inside the caravan (though I may be shrinking the size of the latter in the future), then put my mind to the question of windows! Because while Smiler had a pair of big honking sliding doors on one side of their wagon, they didn’t have any windows at all, and that seemed just a bit sad. :p I originally thought that I’d just plop on a couple of those really simple “open gap” Werewolves windows, as they seemed to fit the vibes of the rest of the build – but after looking through the catalog a little further, I instead went with the “Broadside Shutter by Taupebeard Industries” window from Island Living! Mainly because it did have a shutter and thus the implication that it could be closed to protect the inside of the caravan from the elements. And we want Smiler and their potions to be safe from those! I ended up placing four on what I consider to be the “back side” of the caravan – two in the “work/selling” room and two in the “living” room. I was going to put two on the front of the caravan too, next to the doors, but quickly realized there was only room for one (as the other one clipped into the open door)...then decided they looked kind of weird there anyway and deleted them. Smiler does NOT need the airflow on that side, that’s for sure. :P

G) And with that sorted, I decided to wrap things up by rebuilding the little “camp” area that I originally created in front of the old version of the caravan (with a campfire, a clothesline and wash bin, and a pee bush) and hiding all the other stuff that was still hanging out on the lot behind the caravan so I could take some pictures! Because I did want to show you all the new version of the caravan now that it’s looking so much better. :D Here you go:





Not too shabby, right? :D I mean, I still very much have to figure out what’s going on with the interior, but I feel like I’m in a much better place now than I was with this thing. *nods* Hopefully future building sessions will continue to go smoothly!

Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another night where I combine what I watch during my workout with what I watch after dinner to get through the entirety of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 3 - Biting Off More Than You Can Chew!” Because it’s just easier that way to keep up with Jon’s F:NV YOLO Remastered shenanigans. :p Today’s episode saw P. D. Shoot –

A) Finish looting Primm now that Primm Slim was officially the town’s sheriff! Because, apparently, the minute you name a new sheriff, all the convicts in the town drop dead from a sudden dose of law and order. XD This mainly consisted of her heading back into the Bison Steve Hotel and – after a bit of creeping around making sure all the criminals were indeed dead and F:NV hadn’t done anything funny – collecting a bunch of sweet loot off the bodies and a lot of booze out of the fridges in the kitchen. Plus that skill book she missed in the shop the last time – turns out it was lying right on top of the floor safe exactly where she was standing last time and she missed it because Jon was panicking about getting caught by the roaming convicts. XD It’s okay, Jon, I probably would have done the same thing! She also went around getting what loot she could get out of the local houses (after getting briefly jumpscared by the Primm residents moving back in with their rifles slung across their backs) and checking all the ammo containers in the ruins hoping against hope for Stealth Boys (because apparently there’s a REALLY slim chance for one to spawn in those) – no luck this time, though. Shame.

B) Head over to the NCR Correctional Facility (NCRCF for short)! Taking the long route along the road around the sky-diving shack because going as the crow flies across the desert would have sent her straight into a pack of wild dogs, and – yeah, P. D. wasn’t about to deal with that. Her reasons for visiting the place? Well, the first was to find the local trader and sell him a bunch of the shit she picked up to get those precious, precious caps –

And the second was to do some side quests for the Powder Gangers! Because, to my surprise, the NCRCF was not actually under the control of the NCR – turns out that the leader of the Powder Gangers, Eddie, had managed to take it over at some point in the past and turn it into a base. And he needed a few things doing – simple little jobs that P. D. was only too happy to snap up for the precious XP they would grant her. Especially since she had enough Speech skill to resolve the first two completely nonviolently. :P She thus proceeded to:

I. Head over to one of the smaller Powder Ganger camps to confront a gang leader, Chavez, who was openly flouting Eddie’s rules, and let him know that he should quit while he was ahead – and alive; Chavez said “fine, pickings were getting slim around here anyway)

II. Head back to the skydiving shack to investigate a strange merchant who Eddie had a funny feeling about – turned out the guy was a bounty hunter in disguise; P. D. said he should head out because his disguise wasn’t fooling anyone (he didn’t even have any pack brahmin with him), and the guy agreed and left peacefully

Aaand –

C) Head back to Primm to investigate a rumor that the NCR was planning a raid on the prison to take it back from the Powder Gangers! Specifically, she went to talk to Nash, the old guy who told her all about Primm’s problems when she first arrived in town, and managed to coax out of him that a deserter had let slip that the NCR was indeed planning an assault on the prison to take out Eddie and reclaim the place for themselves. Which both brought P. D. up to Level 4 (she promptly leveled up Sneak a bit, Speech a bit, and Melee Weapons a LOT, and took the “Educated” perk to get two more skill points per level up – she’s not going to get as much benefit out of that perk as she could, given she’s going to stop gaining levels at Level 30, but Jon still felt it was the best option for her of the perks available), and gave her a choice – bring this information back to Eddie so he and his gang would be prepared for the NCR attack (which, in the way of video games, would happen the minute she told him about it and put her immediately in danger), or betray him and go to the local NCR camp to tell them all about Eddie and offer to join the assault (which meant the fighting would only kick off when she arrived back at the prison, and allow her to stay in the back and let the NPCs do all the work).

...Yeah, P. D. immediately went to the NCR camp to betray Eddie. XD And then proceeded to head back to the prison, meet up with her contact Sergeant Lee, and then watch him and his men enter the fray from the safety of the rocks around the camp, waiting to follow them inside until they’d taken out all the tower guards. And then made sure to stay hidden at the very entrance of the facility, looting everything she could get her hands on, until they took out all the Powder Gangers and finished the quest for her. XD Basically, it was a repeat of the “Goodsprings vs Powder Gangers” fight she kicked off back in the first episode, where P. D. got all of the rewards for the side she was backing winning the fight, but none of the consequences. Hell, she even ensured her betrayal would not lead to the remaining Powder Gangers shooting her on sight by making sure not to kill a single one of them directly – she’s still just “Shunned” by the group. Girl knows just how to get everyone to fight her battles for her, it seems! This is a skill that should serve her well thorough this challenge. XD

D) Brave the entrance to the Divide to get some goodies from the Hopewell missile silo that is your first stop on the “Lonesome Road!” Because this one DLC alone allows you to leave it any time you want (it’s narratively important that you can), and she intended to take full advantage of that to leave all the really dangerous stuff for later. XD Her tiny side-trip into the DLC world consisted of –

I. Sneaking up to the entrance, which was apparently not that far from Primm, doing her best to avoid the coyotes along the way...only to find a mother and her pup waiting RIGHT OUTSIDE the gate she needed to pass through. Cue P. D. Grand Slamming them with her baseball bat with a little help from some Psycho, and taking her very first hit of the run from the coyote pup getting in a bite for six points of damage. According to the comments, this near-perfectly mirrors the original F:NV YOLO run, where the original P. D. Shoot got bitten by a dog in episode 3 – delightful! XD

II. Making her way into the Hopewell Silo, discovering that the controls to turn the lights back on were encrypted in a way that she was NOT going to be able to hack, and locating the one being that could get past the encryption and power the place up again – the cute little eyebot companion ED-E! Companions are normally not allowed in YOLO runs, but as it’s actually IMPOSSIBLE to progress through “Lonesome Road” without ED-E at your side to open certain doors, Jon had to make an exception for the bot. Though he made it very clear that ED-E was NOT allowed to join in combat, which was fair – the extra firepower is the whole reason companions aren’t allowed, after all!

III. Getting ED-E to open up the Commissary so she could sell pretty much all of her unwanted guns and medicine to the artificial intelligence inside and get herself a VERY nice set of Riot Gear! Which Jon stressed wasn’t going to make everything easy-peasy (there was only so much it could do to reduce incoming damage), but was still nice to have. Though even nicer to have were the three Stealth Boys P. D. found in ammo boxes right outside the Commissary room – Jon, who’d predicted he was never going to find a Stealth Boy in an ammo box this run after failing to find any in Primm, was extremely pleased. :D

IV. Getting ED-E to decrypt the silo controls so she could turn on the power and sneak a little further into the facility (telling ED-E to stay behind in the main room); collect a second-level security password out of a locked desk in the rubble and use it to shut down a sentry bot in one of the rooms beyond (she promptly raided it for ammo to sell later :P); and finally make her way into the next room to loot the two Marked Men corpses there, getting a really nice Bowie Knife and taking the Scout’s armor because it was actually a pretty solid bit of kit (+5 Sneak AND +1 Agility, nice).

V. Legging it out of there and back to the regular old Mojave now that she had what she wanted – only to find the coyote and her pup had respawned. *shakehead* Fortunately, they’d respawned on the other side of the little path to get to the Lonesome Road, so P. D. was able to sneak past them without any trouble this time around and get back to Primm unchomped. *nods* It’s the little things!

And that (apart from Jon having to TWICE injure P. D. again via console commands because the game healed both when she went into the DLC land and when she came back out again) was that! We left things off with P. D. standing just outside of Primm – next week, she hits the road as Jon hopes to send her on a grand journey around to the Mojave Outpost, then Nipton, then Novac. *nods* We shall see what happens next Sunday! Hopefully no more coyote bites. :P

Writing: Got another page done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” tonight, with Victor telling Kasimir, Barnaby, Alice, and Smiler about the first obstacle that they’ll have to pass on their way to rob the Van Dort vault – Steven and Alan, the two ex-Bluecoat guards his parents hired to guard the entrance. Kasimir noted that, as former Bluecoats, they’d probably be easily bribed – Alice asked if he planned to offer them a cut of the money they were going to steal, but Kasimir had a different plan in mind. Namely, offer them a drink of the nice booze he was SURE Barnaby had on his person, and spike it with slumber essence so they’d be too unconscious to stop the robbery. XD Barnaby reluctantly revealed that yes, he did have a very nice bottle of gin on him, and he WAS willing to sacrifice it for the cause – though he couldn’t stop himself from whining that it wouldn’t taste the same after poor people drunk it. Victor had to bite back a comment about hearing that Barnaby would drink rubbing alcohol if he thought it would get him hammered. XD But yes, the plan has officially been hatched – now they just need to get to Steven and Alan! Which they should do tomorrow...

Aaand I have officially stayed up much later than I should have yet again. *sigh* Well, I'm just gonna head off to bed instead of bitching about it -- night all!