Ael

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

C) The radial tortoises enjoying their lunch of lettuce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like, it still wasn't great -- as you will see below, I had an annoying day at work, and the weather today was OKAY, but the wildfire haze and some lingering humidity made it far from perfect -- but I felt generally a bit calmer. Possibly because we didn't see any ants today, possibly because we got Chinese food for supper from a local restaurant and had a very good time feasting on it. :) Either way, glad to feel a little less angry at the world today! So here is the write-up --

Work – Another annoying day at work, with my woes being largely credit-card-related today:

A) While pulling the morning reports from our credit card processor’s site today, I discovered that a handful of gifts – including some final payments on last year’s pledges – hadn’t been uploaded because they were under the wrong event. *sigh* It wasn’t a LOT of missing money, fortunately, but it was a non-zero amount! And then, after writing an e-mail to my boss to let him know (and ask what he wanted to do with the 2024 Appeal payments, as I wasn’t sure if they could posted or not), I had to clarify to him that the 2024 Appeal stuff I was asking about was part of the stuff that hadn’t been posted. When I thought that was perfectly clear. *grumbles* Anyway, it’s with the credit card people now, so – we’ll see what happens!

B) While I was getting that sorted, I also had to field some questions from my coworker about some payments on some 2026 Appeal pledge payments that had come across as 2025 Appeal one-time gifts, because the pledges had been made at the absolute last minute and thus had 2025 Appeal source codes. I told her that she should apply the gifts to the pledges and fixed the source codes.

C) Then, after lunch, I had to help someone update her pledge (and do a catch-up payment to get her back to where she THOUGHT she was supposed to be), and explain to my coworker that our credit card system is dumb and that you had to always go by the pledge on our main database (because updating a card on a pledge changes the pledge on the credit card processor’s site to match the current BALANCE of the pledge) and ignore the “remaining amount” bit (because that’s always the “processed amount” being subtracted from the current pledge amount and thus won’t accurately reflect reality...especially if the “processed amount” is higher than the current pledge amount, resulting in a negative “remaining amount”). Which I swear I’ve explained to her before, but…

D) Then I had to create a new record for a guy who’d called in to do his very first gift...only to find that when I checked the version of the record that had ended up on the credit card processor’s site afterward, he had entirely the wrong parish listed. *facepalm* I’ve seen this problem before, but this was the first time I could take screenshots of the issue, so that’s what I did, e-mailing them off to the credit card processor’s support team –

Only to get an e-mail back from someone going “Oh, the transaction’s fine, the confusion resulted from the wrong parish being on the donor’s profile, I’ve fixed that. :)” *huff* I e-mailed back thanking them for fixing it and saying my question was why was the parish wrong in the first place. God knows if I’ll get an answer.

*grumbles* So yeah, not a great day. Though at least I caught most of this nonsense before it could get too bad...and I was able to get in some downtime with my puzzles. Very happy now that I took Thursday and Friday off for a long weekend – just one more day!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 7: Friends & Falsehoods - Part 1!” Tonight’s half-hour-ish chunk featured:

A) The group being welcomed by the red-hooded woman, handing over their bees and presenting themselves as new initiates to the cult (for that is what it was) from Elmsteader – the woman was surprised, as the residents hadn’t seemed very interested in their teachings when they passed through about five years ago, but the group successfully claimed that they’d mulled it over and realized the cult was right, especially after recent events. The woman thus welcomed them to “The Hive,” telling them that they would get their own little cloistered cells because of their “nobody sees anybody’s face” thing (and not to abuse the privilege) and that their duties would include whatever their superiors asked of them, basically. Morven reached into her mind with Detect Thoughts to get an idea of what she was thinking, and learned that she was honestly pleased and relieved that they’d shown up, as they were the first initiates in quite a while, and the extra hands would help with the work around the place. Morven then tried to reach in further, curious –

Only for Johnny to make their saving throw, ending the spell – and making the woman aware that Morven had been poking around in there. Uh-oh. She didn’t do anything about it right away, though, just getting one of the brown-hooded acolytes to escort the group to the barracks. And Morven naturally did not let on what had just happened, as, well, she’d been ragging on the others constantly and did not need them knowing about her failure. XD We’ll see if anything comes of it later!

B) The group being seen to their cells in the barracks (tiny little things with pallets to sleep on, a table to stack things on, and a wash basin to wash up in), then fortunately being left alone, with just a warning that soon they’d be called to the evening meal. Happen was like “well, guess this is our life now,” prompting Morven to remind him that they weren’t actually joining the cult. XD Which then segued into Willowfine asking how this compared to his cult back home; Happen insisting he didn’t belong to a cult, it was an order, and that this was actually nicer, as back home he slept on a stone bed with a bunch of other acolytes; Lug pointing out that it’s very odd to have an organization devoted to chaos call itself an “order” and actually try to make things orderly (at least inside the temple), with Willowfine agreeing and Morven adding “it should be called a cult;” and Happen going “you’re all just trying to get a rise out of me and it won’t work” before shutting the door of his cell on them. XD Fortunately, with that out of their systems, things got a little more productive, and it was quickly agreed upon that they should go check out that nearby storage barn while they had a little time before dinner. Morven Minor Illusioned her hood to be red so they’d have the cover story of “a high-ranking member giving the lower-ranking members a tour;” they got Happen out of his room (and reminded him again that they weren’t actually joining the cult when he said they were supposed to wait for the gong); Morven got into character as a superior asshole (which didn’t need much doing, as Lug/Mike pointed out XD), and off they went!

C) The gang visiting the storage barn where they’d seen one of the brown hoods go to get a fresh beehive for the bees they’d brought – only to find it occupied by four brown hoods, working away. Fortunately, Morven’s disguise held as she questioned them on what they were doing (pretending to be testing them on if they knew their duties or not), and they explained they were checking on the grain stores to make sure none of the food had rotted. Morven then asked about the “non-edible” storage –

Only to get confused “we don’t know what you mean” responses. A look around the barn revealed that it was pretty much all general living stuff – bolts of cream-colored cloth for the robes, the grain stores previously mentioned, a wood pile in the corner, etc. No magical items at all! Morven told the brown hoods “good job, get on with it” and led the others out to discuss the issue. Happen suggested splitting the party to search all the remaining buildings quicker, but Lug shot that down as them needing the protection of their fake superior, so Willowfine instead tried casting Detect Object on the general category of amulets. She got a ping from a location directly north of them, which led to…

D) The gang finding their way over to what was clearly the grand leader’s (aka THE Superior, as per the brown hoods in the grain stores) house! After a brief diversion wandering over to a mysterious gated pen near the edge of the compound (and declining to go inside – in-character because it wasn’t where they needed to be; out-of-character I suspect because Johnny wouldn’t tell them what was in it without them going inside XD). This house proved to be guarded by some brown hoods – Happen, however, had a plan, and – as sneakily as he could – climbed up onto the roof, found a spot that was hidden from general view, and prepared to use his shortsword to cut a little peeping window in the thatch! (Making sure to act alone so the others would have plausible deniability should he be caught.) He asked the sprites for aid as Luke rolled the Cadence Die –

And – praise Cadence! – got a crit 1. XD Leading to Happen’s sprites pulling the thatch a little TOO tight, causing the sword to go through it like butter and Happen to rapidly follow it through the rotten underlayer before falling into the house itself! Where he found himself confronted with a rich-looking bed (because of course the leader has a nicer bed, they work harder! XD), a weird-looking painting of a beehive with a strange shadow behind it on the wall –

And someone in a black hood, looking straight at him. Morven used Telepathic Speech to ask if he was all right, and Happen said he was okay but that he’d been caught, and to tell the others that, if he was killed, he’d really enjoyed traveling with them, aww. However, the black-hooded person didn’t seem intent on killing him right away – instead, they seized his arm and turned it so they could see the symbol of Cadence (a skull with dice for eyes) on his hand. They then released him and rolled up their sleeve –

Revealing a similar symbol on their arm. One that had been ravaged by time and what looked like chemicals, yes, but was clearly the symbol of Happen’s order. O:

E) Happen having a surprise reunion with the black-hooded person – a woman named Beatrice – while the rest of the group waited outside, wondering what the hell was going on (with Morven doing a bit of telepathic checking-in occasionally). Beatrice asked Happen what he was doing here, and Happen explained “helping the order, just like you!” Beatrice said that was many years ago and explained she meant what he was doing here specifically – as in, in The Hive’s camp – and Happen proceeded to give her an increasingly-smaller-picture rundown of what he’d been up to, starting with “investigating magic and why it has gone wrong” and ending with “I need to find an amulet for the fey person who sent us here.” (Meanwhile, Morven was just “I bet he’s weaving a hell of a cover story.” XD) Beatrice considered all this, then took out one of the order’s coins and said “one last flip” before flipping the coin and catching it perfectly (without even looking). After checking the result, she informed Happen that he’d find a hidden lever behind the painting, but that he’d better hurry getting what he needed, as The Superior would notice if he wasn’t at the evening meal, before striding out. Happen was a bit nonplussed, but quickly set to finding the lever, which opened a hidden compartment in the wall. Inside of which was a chest –

Inside of which was the amulet they sought! Hidden among a bunch of confiscated magical items. He quickly informed Morven that he had it, and after confirming that he should leave the rest of the items (Cressida’s banker soul twinged at that XD), asked if he needed any help getting out. Happen was pretty sure he could climb out the hole he’d created in the roof, so Morven went to distract the guards with some idle chatter – asking them how their duties were going and whatnot – while he tried that. I left off with her having just told them to kiss, then passing it off as another test, as the gong for the evening meal rang out. Tomorrow, we’ll wrap up with how the evening meal goes, then...well, I don’t know if I should start the second part right away, because our plans for my Thursday off are to go to Roger Williams Park and visit the zoo and the botanical gardens, take a swan boat ride, and get ice cream. There’s a good chance I won’t want to work out because we’ll have done all the walking! So yeah, might have to think of another thing to watch for tomorrow and Friday, and leave the grand finale til next week...we’ll see!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice completed her report about Grout’s mansion to LaCroix tonight, which – very unfortunately for her – included mumbling to herself about if some of the horrors she saw within were what chased Nines out and made him act so very oddly toward her. Which caused LaCroix to suddenly be like “you saw Nines there? Leader of the Anarchs? Do you know what this means??” and Alice to be like “no I – WAIT WAIT WAIT I am not saying Nines killed Grout!!” Not that it did her any good, as LaCroix insisted that Nines’s very presence there was tantamount to guilt, over all of Alice’s protests. He did at least say that he would discuss things with the primogen before calling a “blood hunt” –

Before promptly Dominating Alice not to tell anyone about the matter, especially the Anarchs, until he’d made his decision. *wince* Ooooh, you could bet Alice was fucking mad about that. Even as she admitted in the privacy of her own head that of course she’d planned to visit the Last Round and ask Nines what he was doing there. But yeah, now she’s stuck being unable to tell anyone anything until LaCroix inevitably calls his blood hunt. Her night just keeps getting worse and worse, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, Alice – you’re ALMOST to the one good bit...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – another night chipping away at the OXBoxtra lists in my Watch Later, watching “7 NPCS Whose Lives You Ruined Like a Hero! (Commenter’s Edition but for some reason they didn’t actually include that in the title!)” Jane, Andy, and Mike going through seven more NPCs who have their lives ruined by the heroes of the games they star in, as inspired by the comments on the last video they did on the subject. Including Chunk, everyone’s favorite security guard from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (who first gets fired from his initial guard job by Therese for letting the PC slip past him and ruin the paintings in Gallery Noir, then gets hired by LaCroix and thus ends up fighting you at the very end of the game (assuming you don’t side with LaCroix) – which doesn’t go well for him); Brelas, the wood elf serving girl at the Thalmor party the Dragonborn attends during the quest “Diplomatic Immunity” in Skyrim (who can be thrown in the dungeon if you tell the asshole guest harassing her that she is not into him so you can use the commotion as a distraction to slip away and do quest stuff – and even if you free her, she could easily die during the escape or spend the rest of her life hunted by the vengeful Thalmor who employed her); and every random NPC straight-up eaten by Alex Mercer in Prototype (because to Alex all they are is a disguise he can use to slip past the authorities). Man – it is ROUGH being an NPC in a video game sometimes...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check for a change –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I got a couple of things queued up for the next couple of days:

A) The “Teen Valicer Save looks” post for Wednesday, featuring my pictures of the teenified version of the trio I made for Smiler’s birthday (two months late XD)

B) And that post by “bisexual-and-polyamory-is-okay” about how great “domestic polyamory” is for Thursday, featuring my tags about how that is so the mood for my Valicer trio :)

Still not sure what Friday and Saturday are gonna be yet, but at least I have a couple more days now to think of something!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, while I didn’t get any asks related to the “Mindful Monday” meme I reblogged, I did at least get an anon roleplaying a Malkavian trying to have a conversation with a lamp post – and then being like “wow rude” when it didn’t reply. XD Naturally, I had my own Londerland Bloodlines Malk!Alice reply and suggest the other Malk might have better luck with the local stop signs – after all, those at least know one word. XD

And there we have it -- Tuesday, in the books. And now I need to go to bed so I can get through Wednesday. *sigh* We'll see what that brings...night all!

We had no fucking ant sightings today; my parents went out and got some delicious overstuffed spinach calzones from a local pizza place for lunch (and Mom packed up the half that was left over for me to take for lunch tomorrow); I had a nice, chill afternoon playing Superliminal AND getting my writing done all before my workout (though, ironically, that was partly because it got hotter than they said it was going to this afternoon and we ended up not playing beanbags -- or croquet, as my parents bought a croquet set this morning during a trip to a flea market); and dessert was half a piece of cake with a scoop of ice cream, a chocolate drizzle, and whipped cream (admittedly, I got that yesterday too -- one of the bright spots of that annoying day -- but still). *nods* Yeah, I will take all that over the stress of yesterday! And now it is time to wrap things up with the daily write-up:

Tumblr: I am happy to report that I had a nice, productive day on the tumblrs –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I got four very important things done:

A) First, I finished drafting out my “teen Victor, Alice, and Smiler” photoset post – cleaning up and rewriting some of the text I copied over from my initial Dreamwidth post; tagging the appropriate CC creators for Smiler’s outfits; and adding the final set of tags! So that is all ready to go later this week, yay~

B) Second, I reblogged a post from “bisexual-and-polyamory-is-okay,” which talked all about the pleasures of “Domestic Polyamory” (like going to the park and swinging on the swing sets, or heading downtown to a favorite food shop, or sitting around the campfire roasting s’mores and sharing stories), into my drafts for later, because that is indeed a Valicer mood – think it’ll be my Thursday post this week :D

C) Third, I made a post asking any fellow Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark enjoyers if they could clarify if Barnaby is a lord or not, because I’m no longer sure of his rank (thanks to Astor calling him “Mr. Fortescue” in the big finale) and I’d like to use his correct title, if he has any, in “The Van Dort Vacancy.” I wasn’t sure if I’d get any response – but then, after lunch, I saw someone named “squigglebug” had replied stating it’s possible that he’s nobility WITHOUT a title (like, his father Barnaby Fortescue II has a noble title, but Barnaby is only a “Mr.” because it’s a very low ranked title). Granted, they then qualified that this only matters if Volisport aristocracy follows the same patterns and rules that 19th century British aristocracy did, and if Mike planned out what Barnaby’s actual status in society even was instead of just keeping it vague, but still – it was nice to get an answer! I responded saying I thought being an aristocrat came with a title, so it was interesting to learn otherwise, and saying that I just wanted to use his specific title if he had one. Nobody has yet popped up to let me know that he is specifically a lord, though, so I guess I’ll be using “Mr.” in my fic going forward!

D) And fourth, this evening I reblogged a post from “alleecatblues” about all the bullshit that’s been going on with MasterCard and Visa putting pressure on payment processors to try and force places like Steam and itch.io to delist adult (and, of course, queer) content, all at the behest of a group called “Collective Shout” (an anti-porn group masquerading as a feminist group, apparently)! Including sections on why this is a bad thing (because it means anyone can force these sites to take down whatever they think shouldn’t exist, which as you might guess is Not Good) and what you can do to fight back (call the credit card companies, send them letters, basically make sure that they hear loud and clear that the majority of people think this kind of censorship is total bullshit). Because sometimes you gotta put the Important Social Issues on your blog about how much you love your OTP/OT3!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I didn’t have any asks or thread reblogs to answer, so I turned back to “rpmemelibrary” and reblogged their “Mindful Monday” meme! A list of questions about how your muse(s) destress, when they started using these methods to destress, how often they do these activities, if they do them alone or with friends, etc. *shrug* It seemed appropriate for a Monday and might encourage an ask or two – we will see!

Superliminal: Welp, today was the day – I popped into everyone’s favorite maddening perspective puzzle game one last time this afternoon to see about getting those last few achievements I felt it was possible for me to get. Said achievements being:

( Saving Your Reading Pages Again! )

And that is that for Superliminal! I haven’t 100%-ed the game, but I’ve come pretty close, and I feel like that’s good enough for now. *nods* Maybe at some point in the future I will attempt the two speedrunning achievements, or try to find the final set of collectibles in the game (literal Easter eggs – they don’t have an achievement tied to them, they’re just in there for fun), but we’ll save that for either Christmas vacation or next summer. Instead, it’s time to turn our attention to another game that’s been waiting very patiently for me to get back to it, and see if maybe, just maybe, next weekend we can finally get my Bardlock Smiler run in Baldur’s Gate III off the ground...

Writing: Got another page done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” today, featuring:

A) Victor, with a lot of crouching and squinting, managing to spot the alarmed tripwire just past the door into the hall to the vault and pointing it out to the others, who managed to step over it without setting it off (though naturally Kasimir had a little more trouble than the others, thanks to his knee brace which needed oiling – Barnaby scolded him for being too uptight, only for Alice to counter that poor people had more to be uptight about, and Barnaby admitting that was probably true and saying he could never work like they did (Alice: “At least you admit it”))

B) Victor then telling the group about the next trap – three tiny pressure plates hidden within the tiles of the mosaic floor (depicting fish swimming in the starry depths of the Ink Sea), two of which caused darts coated with slumber essence to shoot out of the walls and one that released a load of flashbangs from the ceiling to stun interlopers; he wasn’t sure exactly where they were, but knew that they went left side-right side-left side and were decently spaced out, and using that information (plus a lot of crouching and squinting), Smiler was able to spot two probable candidate tiles sticking up a little bit from the others (Barnaby pointed out they could just be the result of a poor laying job, but Smiler countered that they still wouldn’t want to trip over it either).

*nods* So they’re making good progress here! I left things off with Kasimir asking the others if they were ready to follow him, an old professional – tomorrow, he leads the Prowl group action! ...and, uh, trips and falls into the wall with Smiler because, hilariously, they were the only ones who didn’t get at least a partial success. XD At least they won’t set off any of the traps?

Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another episode of Jon’s new F:NV YOLO Remastered – No Guns series to pedal my way partway through during my workout, before finishing up the remainder after supper! Tonight’s episode was “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 4 - Highway To Hell,” and featured our favorite Melee-Only Courier P. D. Shoot –

A) Making a night trip to the Mojave Outpost nearby to Primm! Which involved her taking the road going straight up the center of the desert to try and avoid all the feral ghouls and radscorpions and barkscorpions (yes, there are apparently two different types of scorpion trying to kill you in this game) roaming about...only to have to change course a little bit when some Jackal gang leaders who were supposed to be scripted to attack some nearby convicts wandering down the road and then go about their business took out their targets late for some reason, and then insisted on remaining on the alert. Poor P. D. had to thus skirt much closer to the nearby dry lake bed and its barkscorpions than she really wanted in order to keep away from the nasty people with guns! Fortunately, thanks to it being night and her having a very high Sneak skill at this point in the game, she was able to make it past all the enemies without being spotted, and her beloved 9-Iron was not needed.

B) Arriving safely at the Outpost (an NCR camp) and hitting it up for the following:

I. A Gun Runners’ Arsenal (GRA) variant of the baseball bat (in perfect condition, no less) that did more damage than her standard bat AND could be modded, and a “cork core” mod for it that makes it swing faster from the trader in the barracks, Lacey (Jon was HOPING for the “nails” mod to make the bat do even MORE damage, but took the cork core because hey, anything to make the bat better)

II. As much booze as she could steal from the kitchen without being spotted (because P. D. is a drunken master, don’t you know :P)

III. An upgrade to her beloved Desperado hat from Major Knight, one of the best repairpeople in the game, who restored it to perfect condition and even gave it an extra point of damage threshold, all for ten caps

IV. And the opportunity to sneak up on Ranger Ghost atop a nearby building and get her special “I didn’t hear you come up the ramp and I am now impressed with your sneaking skills” greeting (with the help of her new Marked Man Recon armor and a skill magazine to make her super sneaky), along with the job to go figure out what the hell’s going on in Nipton.

*nods* A solid night’s work, I think you’ll agree!

C) Heading to Nipton, avoiding the road going directly there from the outpost (because there’s apparently a raider ambush waiting for you on it once you pass some ruins along the side) and instead heading back to Primm before very carefully skirting that nearby dry lake bed with all the barkscorpions and giant ants and whatnot to get there as the crow flies. Things nearly went wrong when P. D. found one random giant worker ant in her way – but, being a worker, it was not interested in causing trouble in the slightest, and P. D. was able to slip her way around it without any problems. *whew* We do enjoy it when the wildlife is chill!

D) Arriving at Nipton to find it was a burned-out mess after an attack by Caesar’s Legion (the nastiest fuckers in the game) and doing the following:

I. Meeting Oliver Swanick at the entrance, who delightedly told her that he was the winner of the lottery (he did not specify WHICH lottery, but I presume it was the one where the winner did NOT get murdered by the Legion) – before running off toward the dry lake bed to presumably be slaughtered by radscorpions or giant ants

II. Stopping by the Nipton General Store to chat with the man inside, Boxcar (and very pointedly NOT give him any Med-X, as she needed that), and get the sidequest “Booted” to free some captive Powder Gangers from a Legion slave camp later on (she of course also looted the place because goodies)

III. Popping into a cabin on the side of town to grab some NCR dog tags off the dead soldiers in there to hand over to the Legion later to help make friends (because she ain’t doing any of their dangerous horrible quests, are you nuts)

IV. Pointedly avoiding going into the town hall, because while it had a good skill book inside it ALSO had loads of dogs, and – yeah, no, not on a fucking melee-only run

V. And chatting with Vulpes Inculta and praising the “purity of Legion justice” after his evil rant about why he crucified and burned the “degenerates” of Nipton in order to make him like her (because, again, she wants to be friendly with the Legion but avoid doing their quests).

Just another busy day in a not-so-busy town! Dunno why she needs to be friendly with the Legion, but then again Jon often ends up doing some very evil things on these challenge runs, soooo I’m sure he has his reasons!

E) Following the group of NPC Legionnaires who were hanging out with Vulpes Inculta out of Nipton and up through the nearby hills to try and avoid another raider ambush lying in wait for unwary travelers on the road nearby...only to:

I. First have to run into and bump the Legionnaires off a rock they kept getting stuck on as they tried to head up the hill because the AI be dumb sometimes

II. Then have to abandon the group in order to use wonky Bethesda-game-engine-physics to climb up some nearby rocks and onto the high ground because the Legionnaires insisted on walking by a cave full of barkscorpions without actually doing anything about the barkscorpions

III. And finally have to SPRINT for safety after discovering that the barkscorpions she had been trying to avoid had indeed noticed her presence, AND could indeed get up onto the high ground where she thought she was safe! O: Fortunately, F:NV enemies can only roam so far away from their original spawn point, so after crossing the road at the top of the ridge and leaping onto a convenient rock, all P. D. had to do was wait for the swarm of angry barkscorpions to give up and scuttle back to the cave because it was illegal for them to follow her that far. (If you’re wondering what the Legionnaires were doing, they were running scared and getting caught on the scenery. Thanks guys! Evil and incompetent!)

F) Heading up the hill to Wolfhorn Ranch, which got her enough XP to push her up to Level 5 (she chose to level up the Lockpicking skill a lot to make sure she could take on “Average” locks and the Sneak skill a little because that shit is keeping her alive), a Chopper cleaver weapon to sell, and a copy of “Tumblers Today” to boost her lockpicking even further (which made Jon wish he’d leveled up the Sneak skill more instead, but c’est la vie); then making a little trip over to the remains of Matthews Animal Husbandry Farm (avoiding her former Legion buddies and a nearby trailer that would spawn a Viper gang ambush if she went inside) to pick up a Wasteland Survival Guide to boost her Survival skill (which isn’t the MOST important skill for P. D., as of course she can’t eat or drink because that means recovering hit points, but it DOES allow her to make certain consumables at camp fires and is useful in other certain situations, so Jon figured he could go get the Guide because it was in a pretty safe area of the map)

G) Meeting up with some traveling NCR traders on a bridge nearby the Wolfhorn Ranch to see what they had in their wares (a “maple body” mod for the baseball bat to give it 50% more condition and thus make it last longer and some absinthe, but no nails to slap on her nice new bat, darn it) – then backing off because Jon knew the traders were just about to walk into a Legion ambush, and he needed to see which side would win without P. D. getting involved so he could determine if he could follow the traders along the very dangerous road to Novac or not. Fortunately for P. D., the traders very effectively slaughtered the Legionnaires in this reality, and after gathering up all the stuff off the corpses and selling it to the traders (along with her shitty spare bat because Jon wanted to make sure she only used the good GRA one), she happily joined their little caravan at the back, prepared to let them take on the dangers of the road –

Only for everything to go bananas. Jon’s words, not mine. XD Here’s what happened –

I. First, the traders took on the first ambush that awaited travelers along the Novac road – mole rats! Or, rather, one mole rat, which they easily killed. Rather than being happy about this, though, Jon was concerned, because there was never just one mole rat in that attack…

II. Then, the traders went past the nearby billboard, triggering the second ambush from some Viper raiders – only this time the attackers were Legionnaires. Led by a Veteran Legionary no less! A baffled P. D. hung way back as the Legionnaires started murdering the trader and their guards, absolutely shocked –

III. And then the missing mole rat suddenly joined the party and started attacking the Legionnaires, allowing one of the remaining traders to get the upper hand and kill the Veteran. P. D., still badly confused, starting sneaking forward to start looting the corpses for their goodies –

IV. And then MORE enemies appeared on her compass! Two more unknown red ticks, specifically. Jon was like “those could be mole rats…or they could be the missing Viper raiders” and decided that caution was the better part of valor before having P. D. activate one of her emergency stealth boys. He wasn’t happy about it at first as he wandered around looting the corpses –

But then the sole remaining trader started shooting at something, and a VATS scan revealed said something was a Night Stalker – aka a snake-dog creature that can be absolutely vicious and, in Jon’s own words, a run-ender. So yeah, the Stealth Boy was very much warranted!

H) Finishing looting the all the corpses from The Ambush Gone So Very Cocking Wrong (including one mysteriously-dead Viper’s head – no idea what happened to him, but it clearly wasn’t pretty) and then booking it (well, creeping it) to Novac before anything else could go wrong! Fortunately, the road beyond the nonsense was quiet, and – thanks to all her various perks – the Stealth Boy didn’t run out until she was safely within the city limits. Whew!

And that is where Jon left it. Next time – well, even he isn’t sure, because he had a plan, but now he isn’t sure if he should follow said plan because of all the utter chaos he just encountered on the road. XD But he has his pick of places to visit – the REPCON testing site, Nelson, Helios One, or even the outskirts of Vegas itself. Where will he send his poor stressed out courier? We will find out next week!

*nods approvingly* All very nice! I appreciate having a GOOD day off after the mildly shitty one yesterday. And now it is time for me to hit the sack while it is still relatively early -- got three days of work this week, then a five-day weekend, yay~ We'll see how it all goes -- night all!

The weather was nicer -- some early rain, but then the sun came out and it was nice and bright without being either overly hot or humid -- my day was less irritating, and I had a good gaming session today. Major annoyance right now is one of my eyes being irritated for no reason I can guess. >( It's really tender and keeps tearing up, bleeh. Hopefully it'll be better in the morning! In the meantime, here is my write-up for the day!

Work – As stated, today was not nearly as annoying as yesterday – probably because it wasn’t as long. :P I spent a good chunk of the morning doing the GL, then most of the rest of the day catching up on other stuff – calling a lady back who’d left a few messages regarding updating her credit card on her Appeal pledge; making sure the guy who called in to update his card on his Capital Campaign pledge had the right number of payments scheduled; making sure I had properly updated my Spreadsheet of Credit Card Stuff and Document Of Credit Card Issues with the latest notes; fielding some questions from my coworker as she did some reversals and contacted a guy about a pledge overpayment; and – not long before we left – calling someone with an overpayment and setting them up with a refund (which involved refunding them the entire amount of their last payment and redoing it at the correct amount, which I trusted more than trying to do a partial refund). Nothing too painful, in the end! I was most annoyed about my commute home, honestly – traffic just STOPPED on the main drag at a certain point, which utterly confused and irritated me. But then again, that road is often a mess, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised...point is, I got through it all, and now it is the weekend, yay~

Fallout 4 – Had another successful Fallout Friday today, booting up the game right after I got home and sending Victor and Ada deeper into the Mechanist’s lair –

( This Is Long, As Usual, So I'll Spare Your Reading Pages )

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – one last ride on the bike this week, one last turn with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 6: Shapes in the Mist!” With the final chunklet of the episode featuring –

A) The gang continuing their fight against the barksatyrs – or, to give them their canonical name, the Goodfellows (yes, mobster jokes were indeed made) – and their weird magically-animated bear-thing! Which included:

I. Willowfine’s Spirit Guardians utterly VAPORIZING four of the Goodfellows...but also causing something in her mind to crack, hampering her ability to tell truth from falsehood and deduce things about people. AKA, the envelope decreed that all of Willowfine’s Wisdom/Insight rolls would be made by Johnny, who would NOT be telling Jane what number they got – just informing her of the general vibes. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been – Johnny made it clear that this did not apply to ALL rolls involving the Wisdom stat, just Insight (meaning her cleric spells were safe) – but still. Poor Willowfine!

II. Johnny attempting to have the bear hit Happen with a vine tendril, but missing...and then remembering the bear was prone anyway, so all it could do was stand up. Though they made it stand up in a cool way, yanking out the arrows and breaking them in its hand-paws

III. Lug successfully sprinting over to the leader of the Goodfellows and grappling him, but not making the Intimidation check to get him to call off the monster, because poor Lug has very poor Charisma

IV. Cressida smacking the bear thing with a couple of Scorching Rays, then – taking advantage of the fact that she’s primarily an Illusion Wizard – using her bonus action to create a Minor Illusion of what SHE thought the Shimmering Lady looked like (kind of like her mother, with blond hair and shimmery blue highlights), calling out to the Goodfellows to let the people in the pit go so they could find her. Because, well, they were all in now, might as well work with what Happen yelled before! The Goodfellows surrounding the pit were taken in entirely and tried to get their leader over there, only to be confused to see him being apparently hugged by Lug…

V. Happen then ATTEMPTING to lunge at the bear with his shortswords to attack its head with the help of his sprites – but the die roll came up 1 (Praise Cadence), so instead the sprites bodied him directly into the bear’s mouth, where it chomped on him for 11 piercing damage. Happen was like “this is an excellent opportunity for me to test my faith.” XD

VI. The bear plunging one of its vine tendrils into the ground, where it emerged as a grasping vine that absolutely BODIED Cressida into the wall – knocking her unconscious, uh-oh (hilariously, the illusion actually stayed because it’s NOT a concentration spell – it just kinda stood there blankly instead)

VII. Morven, seeing the trouble her friends were in, hitting the bear with a fire-based Sorcerous Burst (which rolled over the bear’s back in a MOST epic fashion) and leaping into the pit to get more up close and personal with the problem

VIII. Willowfine ALMOST leaping into the pit to cast – don’t remember the name of the spell, but it stabilized Cressida so she at least wasn’t dying – only to remember that actually, with the pit now shallower, Cressida was in range without her leaping in

IX. And Lug finally bringing things to a close by succeeding his second Intimidation check to get the leader to call off the bear, causing the guy to let out a high-pitched noise that made the bear instantly stop what it was doing and return to being a collection of vines and planks covering the wall. A MUCH THICKER collection of vines and planks covering the wall, granted, as the pit was now shallower, but still. XD

B) Willowfine casting Aid on Cressida and Happen to boost their hit points (with Cressida finally waking up woozily...just in time to see a spectral rabbit hop into and meld with her shadow...being on five hit points, all she could manage upon seeing this was “bunny” XD) while the Goodfellows leader desperately pleaded with Lug (who was marching him to the edge of the pit) that this was all a misunderstanding. Lug let him go to explain himself, and he obligingly explained that they were just desperate to find the missing Shimmering Lady (as, without her presence in the river, the woods here were slowly dying – and I presume that they, as people, weren’t doing too well either), and had just automatically assumed that both North Team and this team had something to do with it. In fact, they captured this team mainly because the previous team did a runner (they never even got the bear set on them!) and figured that was some sort of admission of guilt. Johnny described them as being guilty, but less in the “we shouldn’t have done this” kind of way and more in the “we shouldn’t have gotten caught” kind of way. XD Lug said that they were only too willing to try and find the Shimmering Lady themselves – they could see how much trouble this part of the Wyrdwood was in – and the leader offered to personally escort them to where the North Team had disappeared, then (after Happen asked if he could lead them there to see what they could find), the river, so they could get an idea of what the hell was going on. He even let them have a nice rest, giving them a beautiful cold broth (unfortunately rather like the terrible soup from Oakburn) that allowed them to get all the benefits of a long rest from a short one, yay. :) Once everyone was sufficiently refreshed, they then headed out, with the leader bringing them to a spot near a steep hill, just around a tree –

Only to stop, confused. Because rather than the spot being empty, it was occupied. Occupied – by none other than the Poor Man in his tattered coat and weird-ass hat! O.O Morven was like “motherfucker.” XD

C) Johnny leaving things on a cliffhanger there and enacting the Rolling Rite – and while Morven, Willowfine, Cressida, and Lug all managed to avoid an envelope, Happen rolled poorly and thus received an envelope! Nobody’s sure if it will be a “Praise Cadence” moment or not when he opens it. XD

So yeah – pretty epic episode! Very glad we didn’t lose poor Cressida before the end of the first season, that’s for sure. XD And hey – looks like next week, we might actually get to learn what the Poor Man’s deal is! At least in part. I’m sure Morven is itching to shake the answers out of this guy. XD

2. Update the FO4 Playthrough Progression Doc: Check – I had to do it in two parts (doing roughly half before my workout, and the other half after dinner and game night), but I did get it done! And while it was pretty much the same as what I detailed above – the gang heading into the giant wrecked production room in Facilities and fighting the robots there (along with accidentally igniting a gas leak); making their way up to the upper offices and finding the holotape from Tony Deluca and the Facilities Management terminal (and DELIBERATELY igniting a gas leak); getting jumpscared by another Mechanist eyebot before shooting it; taking a rest before getting on the wibbly platform ride to the other side of the room just in case there were enemies to shoot (there weren’t, which completely confused them); and making their way into the Research Wing, where they found the logs of Broadrick on the Watch Station terminal and a goodies jackpot in the back of Forfeiture – there were of course a few small changes:

A) Because Alice was there with Victor and Ada in the fanfic version, she was the one to spot the patrolling Cybermech Scrapbot – and subsequently freaked out a bit when Victor fired on it and accidentally ignited the gas leak he realized was there too late. Victor profusely apologized to her once all robots were dead and the fires burned out, and Alice assured him she knew he hadn’t done it deliberately but to PLEASE be more careful; Victor promised, and – upon smelling gas in the upstairs room – made sure to tell Alice to skedaddle for a bit before he shot into the leak to ignite it and burn it up

B) Ada was the one to spot the scrapbot playing dead, and Alice was the one to take it out (Victor let her have the kill as a sort of apology for the “accidental fireball” thing). And then Ada took out the one that attacked them while they were distracted watching the first “breakdance” all on her own, no help from Victor required. Because she is a competent young robot woman, damn it. :P (And yes, I kept the breakdancing scrapbot – how could I NOT throw that in there?)

C) Given Esteban’s comment in the Watch Station Terminal’s entry about Broadrick probably getting latrine duty at some outpost in Anchorage, I thought it might be interesting if Victor had run into Broadrick at some point – so I made it canon that Broadrick was in fact assigned to Victor’s Canadian outpost (and was indeed on latrine duty). Victor remembered him as a quiet guy who never talked to anyone – just did his tasks and then went off to be alone. :( Alice comforted Victor by saying that Broadrick at least TRIED to make a difference, and that counts for something, but – yeah. I think they both found it extremely depressing!

D) And finally, the looting of the “reception area” of the Research Wing went a little differently, with Victor getting everything out of the Watch Station desk AFTER looking at the terminal (as I figured he and the others would be more interested in what’s on the terminal first), and using the holotape with the password he found at the desk on the Property Storage terminal to unlock the Room Of Goodies (because he didn’t need the hacking XP). He and his were even more confused by the boxes of plates in Forfeiture than I was, though – seriously, why PLATES, Bethesda? Wasn’t there ANY other junk you could put there??

Again, nothing major – well, nothing overtly major, anyway, as Victor knowing Broadrick is a pretty big change, but doesn’t have much of an effect on the current day. Given Broadrick is dead and all (unless I have him show up as a ghoul…) Anyway, I left things off there with them in the same spot as my in-game Victor and Ada – preparing to brave the horrors of Holding Cell A and the Research Labs! I don’t expect they will have a good time.

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Semi-check – I didn’t really have time tonight for a proper video (which was a shame, as Josh Way uploaded another riff AND Proxy Gate Tactician uploaded another video about the places in BG3), but I really wanted to watch something. So I went ahead and watched a trio of Shorts by dragonsdream! Because I enjoyed the last couple I watched to fill in a gap at the end of my workout. :) So tonight, we had –

A) “Auntie Ethel's best vicious mockery lines to companions | Baldur's Gate 3” – a collection of Auntie Ethel’s meanest insults to the companions when she uses the Vicious Mockery spell! Ranging from “Why would Shar love you when no one else does” to Shadowheart, to “I can smell what’s under those bandages, wizard. You’re all rot and ruin” to Gale, to “You’re one thirsty night away from betraying everyone” to Astarion. Basically, this bitch does NOT hold back when she brings out the magical mockery! The clips of all the companions looking upset were paired perfectly with this collection, let me tell you.

B) “Most adorable romance between companions in Baldur's Gate 3” – showing off a unique kiss Origin!Karlach (aka player character Karlach) can have with Wyll during the epilogue party if she romanced him – after talking about the cambions she’s slayed and their plans for the future (which include sneaking into Zariel’s private forge and snatching a smith to fix Karlach’s heart so she can live outside the hells), Wyll tells her “I love you. Hasn’t changed, never will” (or never “wyll” as the subtitles put it XD) and dramatically blows her a kiss, which Karlach catches and puts in her pocket before bouncing like a giddy schoolgirl. :D It’s delightfully cute, and really cements that they’d be a great couple.

C) And “The most overlooked cave in Baldur's Gate 3,” showing off where to find a little cave near the edge of the map (just beside a beach by the “Water Queen’s House,” presumably in Act 3), and what’s inside – a waterfall pouring through the skull of what I presume to be a dragon, or perhaps a sea creature. It’s very cool. :) Hopefully I remember to go check it out when I get to that point in the game!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – I didn’t have anything going on Valice Multiverse, and nothing to add to my queue this week for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler). Though I will have to see if I can get that photoset post I started, showing off the teen versions of Alice, Victor, and Smiler I made for my hypothetical Teen Valicer Save file, sorted this weekend – be nice to have it ready for next week if I can!

Other: A nice day meant we headed outside and played a few rounds of beanbags this afternoon – and this time, it was Dad’s turn to get second constantly while Mom and I traded wins and losses. XD Though I was the ultimate champ, winning two times out of three, so that was nice. :) Final scores were me W-3-W; Dad 2-2-2; Mom 3-W-3. We’ll see if the scores end up a little more even tomorrow!

Yeah, a pretty solid Friday -- though today's Fallout 4 session did make me realize something. Namely, that playing the game, then summarizing the game, then doing the FO4 Playthrough Progression write-up of the session, then summarizing THAT is always going to take loads of time. It doesn't matter what I do, it just is. Meaning -- as much as I like the alliteration of Fallout Friday, or pairing my playsession with the Fallout video Jon of Many A True Nerd posts every Sunday -- I really should be playing Fallout 4 on SATURDAYS. Simply because I don't work out on Saturdays, and thus have a little bit of extra time that I could spend on the above. So yeah, I think I'm going to move to that schedule going forward, see how that works. Not sure what I'll do with my remaining half-day Fridays, but I'm sure I'll think of something!

And with that, I should really head to bed -- it's a Cleaning (but not Laundry, yay) Saturday tomorrow, and I want to make sure I get up early enough to try and get that all done before lunch. Other planned activities include working some more on Smiler's Potion Caravan in Sims 4; writing some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and hopefully managing to find the time to watch both Josh's latest riff and another OXBoxtra list video! We'll see what happens. Night all!

Another absolute scorcher of a day over here -- they say that the heat is supposed to break tomorrow, though, and I am desperately hoping they're right! Even if it does come with two days of rainy weather, I just want to be able to not have to hide in the AC anymore! *grumbles* Anyway, here's how my day went:

Work – Another really-quiet day – I did the usual morning reports, I cleaned up some deceased people and duplicates in the system, I reran some reports for our Fiscal department as they were looking to see why the bank account wasn’t quite balancing on certain days, and I had the usual useless check-in call with the credit card people. And I got through another crossword. ^^; Just a day and a half to go, thankfully!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped back on the bike this even and pedaled my way through –

A) The end of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 5: Ironclad!” Which featured in the last ten-or-so minutes:

I. The five pouring more magic into the dying giant elm of Elmsteader, which happily began to heal as a result of their efforts! The moment he saw this, Happen decided he needed to show the villagers and cast a big old Mage Hand to get their attention before slapping it against the tree to add to the magic total – all while being glared at by Morven and Cressida, who remembered very well they’d been told specifically NOT TO GO NEAR THE TREE. XD But, happily, with the expenditure of a level 3 spell slot (Cressida), a couple of level 2 spell slots (Morven and Happen), a level 1 spell slot (Willowfine, who needed her level 2 spell slot to heal the guy who fell out of the tree and was screaming in agony), and a couple of cantrips (Lug and Happen), the tree received 219 whole points of magic energy, and – on a roll of 4 from Johnny – did not explode, implode, or otherwise collapse. Hooray! :D

II. The group being confronted by Edmond and the locals, who were naturally kind of pissed that the group had gone near the tree (and gotten their weapons back) – Willowfine apologized and explained that they’d had to act to save the dying tree, while Morven and Cressida were both bitchily like “you’re welcome.” XD Edmond set aside his iron collar for a moment and very cautiously cast Detect Magic on the tree – and, upon realizing that they had saved it, or at least bought it some more time, quietly palmed a little journal to Willowfine while putting his collar back on and softly told her exactly where they’d last seen North Team and how to get there. Before making a big ostentatious show out of kicking them out of the village, because he did have to save face. The group left without much of a fuss (Morven simply walking a liiiittle slower than normal), and once they were out of town (and behind a tree) checked out the journal. Which had a note inside from Edmond, explaining that one of the water-gatherers found it about two days ago, and that they were pretty sure that, based on the contents, North Team was dead. And begging them to give up their folly. :( Awww – I think this proves that, despite his grumpy demeanor, Edmond ALWAYS intended to give them the journal – he certainly didn’t have time to write a bespoke note to them after checking the tree! Good guy, honestly – I hope the elm survives. Anyway, Johnny then revealed that reading the journal would have to wait until next episode, which led into –

III. The players enacting the “rolling rite,” rolling that D100 to see if any of them would have their magic go wrong the next time they cast a spell – and after everyone avoiding consequences for ages, both Jane AND Andy had to take an envelope from the pile! Johnny was quite pleased. XD So yeah – next time Morven and Willowfine cast magic, those envelopes get cracked open, and we get to see just what it is they do!

B) The beginning of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 6: Shapes in the Mist!” The first twenty-two minutes of which featured:

I. Willowfine reading out the most relevant journal entries from the journal they got from Edmond to the others as they prepared to journey onward! They’d written by someone named Edda from North Team, and detailed how, after they’d accidentally removed the magic from the elm of Elmsteader and gotten banished from the village, they traveled further into the woods...where one by one, every member of the team mysteriously vanished. Possibly as the result of a mysterious figure called only “the woman” who was noted to have previously harassed them. Edda’s last entry simply told the world that they’d just wanted to help. :( Morven wasn’t particularly sympathetic to North Team’s plight, summing it up as “we suck, everyone’s dead” and blaming their troubles on them being incompetent – however, she was rather interested in “the woman,” and scanned the journal for any information. There wasn’t much in the way of description – just that she was “strangely dressed” – but it did indicate that she had an MO much like The Poor Man who’d been following them around, only much more malicious. *grimace* Not fun! Anyway, the gang decided to try and find the trail of the missing team (or at least try to work their way toward the town they were trying to reach) and see if they could work out what had happened, which led to –

II. The team making their way through the hot and crispy forest, with Lug in the front leading, Willowfine, Cressida, and Morven in the middle, and Happen bringing up the rear. Happen, very in-tune with the ways of the forest (thanks to some good rolls) noticed pretty quickly that something seemed to be fucking around with his senses – all the noises of the forest were decreased, while all the noises of their clothes were increased. He relayed this to the others, and Willowfine decided it was time for them to tie themselves together in a nice chain with her fifty foot of hempen rope! You know, just in case. XD The gang thus knotted themselves up, and they continued onward, Lug marching them down a game trail –

That, on another good roll, Happen realized was going the wrong way. He went up to Lug to quietly inform him of this fact, pulling the chained-together party into a U-shape, and Johnny called for Wisdom-Perception checks for Morven, Willowfine, and Cressida, leading to –

III. Cressida getting an 8, and Johnny asking Ellen to leave the table as Cressida disappeared. The others were appropriately shocked – though they did wonder for a moment if she’d simply finally had enough of all these shenanigans and abandoned them and the mission. As Morven said, she did complain a LOT. XD But then Happen reached out with his awesome Swarmkeeper Ranger abilities (which allowed him to sense, among bunch of other things, any fey creatures within SIX MILES because they were in his favored terrain – Johnny was like “holy SHIT” XD) –

And managed to sense Cressida, surrounded by a crowd of fey creatures, traveling off impossibly fast. He told the others what he’d sensed, and after a brief argument about whether they needed to go after Cressida or form defensive ranks, they decided to go after Cressida –

Except. Around this time, Happen began to hear a strange, haunting melody. And when Johnny asked him for a Constitution saving throw, he flubbed it, leading to –

IV. Luke leaving the table, and the others rushing off, only to realize Happen was not with them and had also vanished! There was a very distinct moment of panic among the three remaining, and after trying to figure out what the best thing to do would be, they chose to huddle together, facing each other and looking over each other’s shoulders, arms linked. Which was a good thing, because when Johnny next called for Perception rolls, and Morven flubbed hers, she did not get immediately vanished! Instead, Johnny said that the melody got louder and louder in her head until it was the only thing she could hear, and paralyzed her so she couldn’t move. *grimacing* Lug, thanks to his good roll, could also hear the melody but was able to resist its effects – and, sensing it was bad news, told everyone to cover their ears. Which Willowfine of course did, but Morven naturally could not...

And that is where I left it! Oooh boy – people are being spirited away by the fairies, and it is NOT good! We’ll see tomorrow if Morven gets got, and, if so, what Lug and Willowfine do about it! Hopefully not magic, because Willowfine’s still got that envelope...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – spent tonight’s writing session refining Alice’s mad dash out of the Grout mansion post-Bach setting it ablaze, with poor Alice:

A) Having to leap off a balcony into a room that was mostly on fire – which she rapidly discovered included the ghouls that were in it

B) Trying desperately to see if she could at least save 6768 and 6789 when she came across the door to the mirrored rooms they “lived” in – only to open it and find that the whole place had already gone up in flame

C) Running frantically through the various hallways up to the other side of the balcony she’d been on previously (where Bach was before he fled), her memories of the Liddell house fire assaulting her mind

D) Following Cheshire as he led her through the burning halls to the one safe window in the place

E) Throwing herself through said window and scrambling off the roof to land on the lawn, just out of danger

F) Curling up in a ball and crying :(

Yeaaaah – it was not a fun page today for Alice! Which means that it’s not going to be a surprise at all tomorrow when she shows up at LaCroix’s office in a VERY foul mood...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – it was back to my Watch Later today to start whittling down the number of OXBoxtra lists I had sitting there, starting with the OXtra list from two days ago – “7 Harmless Items That Are Definitely Not Monsters: The Return!” Ellen and Mike talking all about those seemingly-harmless items that were actually monsters looking to get you, as compiled from the top comments on the last video they did on this subject! And yes, after being shamefully excluded from the last list, the infamous Super Mario 64 grand piano with its lid-maw full of teeth made it onto this one – along with such winners as the Voltorbs from Pokemon (who happen to look almost exactly like Pokeballs and made life really hard for the people playing the original games who approached them looking for items), the rock crabs from Stardew Valley (almost identical to actual rocks except for some slightly different shading, some tiny pixel eyes, and a tendency to spawn off the grid from the other rocks), and the fake save point in the True Lab from Undertale (which looks EXACTLY like a regular save point but is in fact one of the horrible amalgamation monsters that you must fight – but not too hard, because you’re on a True Pacifist Run here). Basically, when you’re playing a video game, be prepared for anything to be a monster, because it could! I mean, nine times out of ten it won’t, but that tenth time...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)’s queue to finish off today, and as it turned out, picking my Song Saturday song was very easy! Why?

Because it was the same song I listened to while writing Alice’s No Good Very Bad Escape From Grout’s Mansion! Basically, what happened is I wanted to listen to something appropriately frantic and scary while writing Alice’s escape to match the mood of the scene. And while trying to figure out what music I wanted, and where I could go on YouTube to get it, I suddenly remembered that I’d already come across a piece of music that would be perfect for the vibe I wanted – the “Survival” theme from the Dishonored soundtrack! The minute-long track that I looped repeatedly while writing the chase sequence in “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of!” Which I’d put on my blog last year for a Song Friday (because I missed a Song Saturday due to real-life shenanigans)! So I tracked that down on my blog, opened it up on YouTube, and set it to loop while writing my scene. And then, once I was done with my writing and had watched my OXtra list video, I started thinking about what I wanted to do for my Song Saturday post –

And went, “You know, I’ve already got the post with the ‘Survival’ theme open on my tumblr...and it was originally a VITD song, meaning it would go well with all the VITD-tagged stuff I posted this week...and I posted it just under a year ago, so it’s just about old enough for a reblog…”

Aaand yeah – I went ahead and reblogged it into my queue for Saturday, talking about how I still love it as a piece of music for tense scenes; how I’d used it as background for Alice escaping Grout’s; and how I was sure I would use it again for more VITD adventures. :) So the queue for the rest of the week is officially all set, yay! We love to see it!

*nods* Not too bad, eh? I do like keeping on top of things when I can, and getting the queue sorted so quickly and easily was nice. :) Now I just have to get myself to bed so I can get a decent amount of sleep! Night all!

As so many days are this summer...it didn't start out too bad, but by the time I got out of work it had definitely worked its way up to "scorcher" levels. And tomorrow's supposed to be more of the same, if not worse... *sigh* I know it's summer, and this kind of weather shouldn't be unexpected, but still -- I'm kind of sick of the heat and humidity. Especially when it's so often followed by miserable rainy days. I don't think I could count the number of truly NICE days we've had this summer on one hand, but I probably could on two! Meeeh... Ah well, at least I got some stuff done today --

Work – Fairly busy Monday, but not in an overwhelming way, thankfully – I just had a bunch of stuff that I had to do! Such as getting through the GL; calling those people about their overpayments (two elected to apply the gift to the next campaign year, the third asked for a refund, so I whipped up a memo about that to Fiscal so they could issue the check); checking all the recent failed credit card payments (which I was rather behind on) and sending e-mails to people who needed them; and finally getting back to the obituaries I was working on last week. Nothing particularly exciting, but all things that needed doing! Now I just have to see what’s waiting for me tomorrow...

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped back on the bike tonight, this time pedaling my way through the first half-hour of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 5: Ironclad!” After a brief recap from Johnny about how the first half of the season had gone for the group (had to kill a human-turned-abomination at Folkmoot; had to burn down an evil tree spirit to save Cressida and Happen in Oakburn; had to escape a headless horseman hunting them after they got a ride from the family whose son stole his head in the moors; and finally had to stop a trickster defrauding a small hamlet on the edge of the Wyrdwood as part of fulfilling a debt to the local Green Man), the episode proper picked up right where the previous had left off, with the group staring in shock at the magical messaging copestone that connected them to Team North – or, rather, at the two halves of the copestone, as it had suddenly split apart as if hewn by an ax. Which, uh, did not imply anything good had happened to Team North, that’s for sure! The rest of the first chunklet consisted of the following:

A) Morven trying to convince the others that they shouldn’t bother going to see what had happened to Team North, being much more concerned with finding the “Poor Man” (the weird guy in the hat and patched leather jacket who keeps following them around and who seems to be related to Morven and Robin’s whole “sharing a body” situation) – however, the others insisted that they had to go help if they could. Which culminated in Happen saying that the teams were made up of hardy adventurers and thus this threat could be very serious indeed; Morven countering that they let Robin onto this team, and that maybe Team North was a whole team of Robins who died of fright after seeing a weird dog; and Lug shooting back that they’d be fine then if they went and checked it out – and Happen adding that then they’d get to see a weird dog. XD Morven eventually capitulated, saying they could go look at the bodies, put them in a shallow grave, then get back to business. XD

B) Willowfine messaging Folkmoot to let them know that Team North seemed to be in trouble and they were going to help – and treating it like a phone messaging app, complete with asking if there was a character limit (not numerically, but the copestone was only so large) and using emojis (drawing a little picture of a dog when Happen got her to add the bit about Team North possibly being attacked by a weird dog). XD Despite this, she did actually get her message to Folkmoot, and even got a reply back, saying that Team North went dark two days ago, their last known location was Elmstead, and to tread carefully. *grimace* Oooh dear...

C) Lug and Happen preparing for the trip to Elmstead (which was a hike of a few days’ east for the group) by making Survival checks – Lug rolled an 18 and took down a nice big animal to turn into jerky; Happen rolled a 5 and ate some very red berries at the sprites’ behest, ending up with a massive tummy ache. XD Praise Cadence?

D) The gang making their way toward Elmstead, which involved entering a new part of the Wyrdwood not under the jurisdiction of the Green Man they’d met before – a part that, thanks to being fed by a mountain river, had absolutely GIANT vegetation, but was also weirdly and unseasonably hot (though it was at least a dry heat and not a wet one). Along the way, Morven passed out, letting Robin take control of his body again, and he marveled at the giant flowers, saying one was the second-biggest one he’d ever seen – the first being a costume of a sunflower his friend Orrin put on during the children’s parade. Everyone was like it was unfair for a grown man to be part of the parade, but he still won first prize in the costume contest. XD And then got drunk and took his trousers off. XD Robin’s village is very – interesting!

E) Johnny calling for Perception checks, and everyone but Lug failing (with Ellen, Jane, and Luke all getting sevens, which they found amusing) – Johnny ruled that Robin got distracted by the third-biggest flower he’d ever seen, which was not wearing trousers, and all the rest were too hot and miserable to concentrate (which, fair).

F) Lug spotting some platforms up in the nearby trees on that Perception check and – after Happen discerned that there was no one actually on them – the gang deciding to go ahead and use the “rat trails” (a pair of ropes hung one above the other, with the idea being that you walk on the lower one while hanging onto the upper one) extending off them to keep moving on, as they were probably already being watched and it would be easier than braving the vegetation. Cue Robin and Lug easily climbing the tree; Happen and Willowfine getting lifted up in a makeshift harness made out of Robin’s standard-issue 50 foot of hempen rope (which Johnny had to stop themselves saying was actually only THIRTY foot long in this world, causing Mike to crack that Heorth uses the metric system); and Cressida using Misty Step to get up there before using Prestidigitation to cool herself off with a personal breeze...only for Robin to keep leaning into her personal space to cool off. XD

G) Robin having trouble grasping the idea that the bird calls they keep hearing might not be from actual birds, asking why the people around here would have platforms if they can fly around, and having his mind blown when he tried to communicate back in bird calls and Willowfine pointed out that he’d made a bird noise while not being a bird. XD

H) The gang deciding to leave a present for the people watching them in case it made them more favorably inclined to treat them as friends instead of foes – Robin suggested “fat balls” (aka balls of some sort of fat) because he was still stuck on the bird thing, leading to a lot of ??? from his companions. In the end, he made some suet balls with birdseed and Lug stuck some salted meat on a plate to form a sort of charcuterie board, which they very ostentatiously placed on the platform. XD

I) Willowfine and Lug having some major trouble with the rat trails, falling off them almost immediately – Willowfine was able to grab the top rope and save herself from falling with a little help from Robin (who rolled really well and made it across the trail without any trouble), but Lug got yet another crit 1 (praise Cadence!) and just went toppling. Happen and his sprites DID manage to grab his arm and at least swing him around so he wasn’t falling headfirst or anything, and Lug landed in the thick brush, having only taken eight points of bludgeoning damage. Seriously, Lug, considering your bad luck, it could have been worse!

J) And finally, the fall causing the locals to finally come out, with one guy, Edmond, briefly threatening Lug with a bow and arrow before Lug and the others managed to assure him and his men they weren’t a threat. Edmond led Lug back up into the tree, and the gang explained why they were in the area as he sampled their charcuterie board – causing Edmond to grimly say they’d better come with him and his men, implying he knew EXACTLY what had happened to poor Team North. I left it with Edmond leading the way along the rat trails, while Robin noticed an interesting fact about him and his men – namely, that they were wearing iron collars. Iron collars from Robin’s part of Heorth, which inhibit magic and, in his village, are usually locked on witches to stop them casting spells – but this group looked to be wearing them willingly… Hmmmm. Well, the episode IS called “Ironclad…” Tomorrow, we’ll see if we’ll get any answers as to why these folks are wearing those collars, and what happened to Team North! I’m sure nothing good!

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – Victor, Alice, Smiler, Kasimir, and Barnaby all reached the hallway where Steven and Alan were standing around guarding the door to the vault (or, well, the door to the HALLWAY to the vault, as will soon be revealed) today. The glasses of gin were thus poured and drugged, and – after Victor demurred from taking them out himself, noting that he’s not good at this sort of thing and was worried he’d give the game away somehow – Barnaby waltzed up to the guards to deliver the gin as a “good job” reward from Nell, with Smiler actually carrying the glasses (they did volunteer for this role, Barnaby didn’t just shove the glasses in their hands). Steven and Alan were a bit confused by this, as actually rewarding her staff wasn’t really Nell’s way, but figured maybe she was in a good mood from all the hobnobbing she was doing at the party. Barnaby said “oh yes, and her son’s come back in one piece too–”

Which prompted Steven and Alan to laugh and say she’d be furious about that, not happy, given that he didn’t get married on time. Steven even said that Victor should brave a train out of the city before she got to him, while Alan said the only way Victor could have come back that would have pleased her would have been as ashes fresh from Bellweather Crematorium. :( Barnaby was like “Oh...uh, well, drink up before she goes back on the warpath then,” while Smiler’s smile definitely got rather strained. And I haven’t even covered poor Victor’s reaction to this yet...I think he’s going to need some extra comforting when I next come back to this story...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – well, sort of; I actually had another riff from Josh in my Subs today, but I decided to push that back until tomorrow in favor of clearing out some more stuff from my Watch Later. XD Specifically, I watched:

A) “The New Sims 4 Pack Has Problems... (Enchanted by Nature)” by onlyabidoang! A video all about the “fun” new bugs and tuning issues that come with the latest pack, including:

I. Changes to facial features when linking a Sim’s normal form and fairy forms not QUITE carrying over correctly (Abi demonstrated by making some pretty extreme changes to his self-Sim’s face while he was in fairy form, then switching back to human form – the facial structure wasn’t QUITE the same)

II. Fairy wings disappearing when they should be visible (it looked to me like a case of the game hiding them pre-emptively when a Sim was heading to sit down in a chair that they’d otherwise clip through)

III. Sims being hit with ailments WAAAAY too frequently (mostly because not only is the cooldown between ailments only a single day, they’re also CONTAGIOUS, meaning a Sim with an ailment can basically pass it on to the entire neighborhood with simple socializing)

IV. Sims keep randomly throwing up even if they don’t have any ailments or are not pregnant (I guess they’re just sick of all the bugs too)

V. The game sometimes crashing if you apply glowing tattoos to the fairy form of a recently-aged-up-to-teenager fairy Sim (Abi wasn’t able to replicate this one on-camera, though he said he HAD experienced it once)

VI. Sims being unable to connect the new lightning root plant to their power grid to lower their bills if the plant was in the “Blossoming” stage (apparently it only works if the plant is mature but not putting out harvestables, which – seems very odd)

VII. Clients who come to a Naturopath’s house if they choose to see clients at home refusing to just STAND STILL for their examinations, instead wandering all over the place and forcing the Naturopath to chase them down (though this just seems like a good old case of “no Sim can stand still for fifteen seconds”)

VIII. Enchanted gnomes asked to fix and upgrade items applying all upgrades to an item...including unwanted ones (like that “composting” upgrade for the toilet that, unless you have an insect farm where you can unload the compost, IS going to set your Sim on fire sooner or later)

IX. And pre-made Fairy Sims attached to older save games not properly showing up as fairies (Abi loaded up one of his older saves to show that Titania and Oberon in that game were showing up as regular humans...though they still had the special “Fairy” social category when Abi went to visit them in Live Mode)

Yeaah – there was a reason that Abi compared the game to his own terrible, fragile, held-together-with-duct-tape cardboard fairy wings when he started this video. *facepalm* I suppose none of these are FULL-on gamebreaking bugs, like we’ve had in packs like My Wedding Stories, but there are some SERIOUS oversights here! Get it together Sims 4 team! *sigh* Seriously, what has happened with the QA...

B) And “Everything You Need To Know About Ailments | The Sims 4 Enchanted By Nature Guide” by Petey Plays It! Petey taking us through – well, see the title. XD Specifically, he covered:

I. How a Sim gets an ailment (they can be inflicted by fairies, caught from other Sims, result from low balance, and even apparently come from using a public toilet – yeesh!)

II. How a Sim cures an ailment (by getting the help of a friendly fairy, visiting a Naturopath (via rabbithole, not by going to an actual lot), trying to manifest ailment relief in Moondrop Springs, crafting their own cure at the apothecary table, or just waiting it out)

III. And the specifics of each of the eight ailments in the game, which includes things like “Creation Impulse” (which covers your Sim in paint splatters and occasionally gives them a super-energized moodlet that can only be cleared early by creating something); “Gnome Lure” (which gives your Sim red skin with white spots and causes gnomes to appear periodically around them, who can be good and helpful or evil and destructive – it’s like having to deal with the damn holiday tradition all the time); “Greenie Meanie” (which gives your Sims vine patterns and makes them really angry and mean while – well, it’s SUPPOSED to boost gardening skill, but from Petey’s testing it doesn’t actually do that); and “Sonic Sneezes” (which gives your Sims splotches and makes their sneezes break things around them while also making them faster at repairing them...but, again, not actually boosting Handiness gain by any significant amount despite the description).

Very informative guide – it was nice to see what all the different ailments did while not having to actually risk having them in my game. Though they really do seem like mostly pains in the damn ass – especially the ones that don’t actually give the positive benefits the game claims they do. *sigh* You know, I was actually kind of interested in the “Natural Living” skill this pack brings, and the Apothecary stuff, and maybe playing around with fairies a bit, but it’s looking more and more like it would be safer to give this pack a skip. Bleeh.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – usual “nothing pressing on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and I don’t visit Valice Multiverse on Mondays” situation. At least this means I won’t be staying up any later!

Speaking of which, I'd better get to bed -- I want to try and get at least a LITTLE more sleep than I got yesterday! We'll see how successful I am, though -- night all!

Yeah, it was nice for most of the day -- I even cracked my window open for a while! But right near the end of the day, everything started getting sticky again, which was unpleasant. >( Stupid humidity -- I am so over it, I swear. But summer's not over yet, so all I can do is crank up the AC whenever it appears. *shakehead* In the meantime, here's the summation of my Saturday --

Tumblr: Had a very productive day over here, I am happy to announce –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I spent the time before lunch over here, working on:

A) Bulking up my drafts by going through my tracked tags again for stuff to save in there for later reblogging – and unlike last time, I found a veritable bounty of things I enjoyed and wanted to add to my blog at some point! :D Including –

I. Two pieces of VTMB fanart by “benmix98” – Beckett looking at something offscreen while wiping blood from his lip (which was just cool); and the masc and fem Malkavian fledglings...genderswapped in EACH OTHER’S outfits (that is, the masc!Malk was wearing the slutty cheerleader outfit everyone knows from his fem counterpart, while the fem!Malk had his mostly-shaved hairstyle, bright yellow glasses, and trousers with no shirt (though in her case she had a bra) – Ben was like “I’m tired of oversexualized women!” in his tags, while I was just impressed at how good they looked in each other’s outfits)

II. A Smiler OC drawing by “steam-powered-chaos” – a Black person (it/its pronouns as per the side label) with yellow and white streaks in its black hair (including its goatee), a black-and-yellow clawed mechanical hand, a “necklace” that I think is a tube of Joy Serum sewn into its throat, a blood-spattered labcoat, a belt with canisters of what I believe is Giggler Gas, and bright yellow boots (we love a good Smiler OC, and it’s nice to see one a little different from the norm)

III. A screenshot of A:MR by “ovcvlt” – Alice standing in the street by Radcliffe’s, looking at the camera in her London form while burning mushrooms sprout from the ground behind her (the caption was “my new hobby is taking pictures of beautiful women” and I agreed in my tags she was very beautiful :) )

IV. A pair of posts featuring transparent pngs of stuff from the A:MR game by “roachpng” – specifically, the eye fish from the Deluded Depths (which is a big old eyeball in fish form – I said in the tags that I was tempted to make that a real fish in VITD because the fish caught there are said to be the dreams of the leviathans that swim in the starry waters); and a pair of lightbulb-flies from Hatter’s Domain paired with a nutterfly (a nut with butterfly wings) from the Vale of Tears (I just thought these were cute – and the wings on the nutterfly were more detailed than I thought, damn)

V. And a pair of posts from “atimburtonfan” – one of behind-the-scenes stuff featuring Elder Gutknecht, including Victor and Emily’s wedding with him presiding, his big Land of the Dead library room, and most notably some maquettes featuring his earlier design with big bushy eyebrows instead of glasses (which I felt compelled to add to my drafts because, well, that early design is what inspired the look of my ghost!Gutknecht from the Valicer In The Dark verse); and a gifset of Victor dropping the ring during his and Victoria’s rehearsal at the beginning of the movie, diving under Maudeline’s skirt to get it, and then forgetting his lit candle on her dress, setting her on fire, with the caption “Let's all be grateful that Victor van Dort didn't inherit the one ring from Bilbo” (which was just plain funny XD Poor Victor XD)

So yeah – I now have some more stuff I can just drop into the queue if I have nothing of my own to add to it! Nice to have a buffer while I work on new posts. :)

B) Finishing up the “Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, Valicer In The Dark Edition, Volume V” post with a scene featuring Sooty trying to steal a mixing rod from Smiler’s alchemy bench – and when that didn’t work, stealing their hat (poor Smiler was trying to keep an eye on a concoction they were making, and of course the MOMENT they looked away because of hat theft, it started boiling); and a scene featuring Guide, Dogmeat, Sooty, and Benny coming in to bug Victor, Alice, and Smiler while they ate dinner (Victor was like “remember when we could just eat dinner?” while Alice pointed out he and Smiler had often begged her for food in the past while given Guide some chicken XD). So that post is pretty much done now – just have to finish off the tags, and I’ll be set to post it when I so choose!

Valice Multiverse – And while I didn’t have anything to answer over here, thread-or-ask-wise, tonight, since the dashboard wasn’t bugging out, I was able to reblog the VITD fic snippet, “Blessing,” that I posted over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) the other day into the queue for tomorrow! And it occurs to me that you guys would probably like to read it too, so here’s the link for the original VLA(NS) version: Blessing Hope you enjoy!

Sims 4: Welp, I went offline again to try working some more on Smiler’s Potion Caravan today – but, unfortunately, I did not have a very productive playsession. Mostly because:

A) I spent the majority of the session attempting to start over on the whole build by making a room that could rest atop those debug “plow wheels” (two wheels attached by their axle to a bunch of plow spikes) that I found in the Cottage Living section of the debug-and-live-edit items, as per a video I found on my phone while trying to look up “Sims 4 fantasy caravans” for inspiration about where I wanted to take the build. The person in the video grabbed those wheels, used the TOOL mod to resize them slightly, then did the “build a room on top of a room, delete the first story room, then lower the second story room until it’s actually about first story height so you can put it atop the object of your choice” trick to put the body of the caravan atop the wheels, which I thought was very clever. However, when I tried doing that in my game –

I. Well, first of all, I don’t have the TOOL mod, so I couldn’t resize the wheels any way other than the usual in-game cheats, which made them waaaay too big. However, I was determined not to worry about that, figuring I’d just make a caravan that fit the size of the wheels as they already were. And I admittedly managed to make a room that fit perfectly between the wheels –

II. But when I tried to do the “lower a second story room to first story height” trick with said room, I quickly realized that – I had no idea how to do that. ^^; I’ve never tried it before – I’ve only ever seen builders in videos use it! I eventually found out that I could more or less move a room around freely (at least, with “move objects” on – I have no idea if you can do that without good old MOO) just by grabbing it and dragging it around, but that didn’t end up helping much either, because…

III. Whenever I tried to attach the wheels to the room – either by trying to get the room to float atop them (which I never managed), or by putting the room on the ground, raising it up a bit, and trying to merge the wheels into the foundation – either the wheels snapped onto the bottom of the room itself, dangling ABOVE any foundation, or they just turned invisible entirely except for their shadow for some reason. O.o I eventually learned that the latter happened if I put them too far inside the room – they could go right on the very edge of the front or back of the room, with about half the wheel overlapping the wall (which changed the lighting on them from “outdoor” to “indoor” for unknown reasons), but if I tried to shove them in any further, BAM! Invisible wheels. No idea what the fuck is up with that, but then again, they are debug objects… After a lot of fussing and trying to get everything the way I wanted, I did eventually manage to get the room flat on the ground (after my initial attempt to lower it managed to put the whole kit-and-kaboodle into a pit in the “front yard” of the build – no idea how I managed that) with the wheels properly attached to it, visible and everything, looking actually somewhat like a boxy caravan –

But because the room was flat on the ground, the whole thing just looked rather – weird. Like it was just a box with some wheels pasted to the sides. And as I already knew that I couldn’t use a foundation to raise the room off the ground...yeah, that’s when I finally decided I should really just try and work with what I’ve already built and deleted the whole lot. *sigh* A shame – I like those “plow wheels” a lot better than the broken Horse Ranch wheels I’m currently using on the build! But if I don’t have the skills (or mods) to make them work...

B) And then I spent most of the rest of the session playing around with making the original build look a little more like a “fantasy” caravan by replacing the all the Crypt-O-Club “Spoopy Portal” doors with a Cottage Living one that looked more old-timey, removing the Snowy Escape mailbox on the side (though that was more because I tried to move it into a better position beside the new door, only to see it mysteriously keep going further and further up the wall and onto the roof every time I tried to interact with it o.O), and repainting Crypt-O-Club-wallpapered insides with the same chipped yellow planks I used on the outside –

And then reverting all the changes because it looked less Smilery like that. >( Yeah, one of the problems with this build is the constant tug-of-war between my desire to make the build look like something appropriate to a fantasy setting like, say, Faerun in Baldur’s Gate III, and my desire to make the build look like somewhere Smiler would live – because, unfortunately, all the most Smilery CC I have right now is the Crypt-O-Club stuff, and the Build/Buy stuff in those sets does NOT suit a fantasy aesthetic. For example, those “Spoopy Portal” doors from I believe “Creepy Creations” – the ones with a yellow-and black swirl on them? PERFECT for Smiler, fits their aesthetic BEAUTIFULLY – but they’re very clearly a MODERN door, complete with a modern round doorknob and keyhole. The yellow-and-black wallpapers and paneling? Really nice, love to use them, great for any Smiler-related build – except possibly this one, because fantasy those wall coverings are NOT. How do I justify the inside of the caravan looking so different from the outside? I’m just barely justifying the purple flooring I’m using, and that’s at least wood! *facepalm* I just – I dunno. I want the build to look right for the setting I’m picturing, but I also want it to look like it’s Smiler’s, and given the depressing dearth of good yellow-and-black stuff in this game, especially in the right rustic aesthetic… *sigh* I suddenly understand perfectly why the Sims 3 people were so saddened by the lack of Create A Style in The Sims 4 – if I could just paint the yellow and black swirls onto the walls MYSELF, I’d be fine! Uuuugh…

So yeah – today was mostly all about fiddling around with stuff that I decided didn’t work and had to be changed back. I did manage to make a tiny bit of progress, though:

a. I changed the foundation to the Minimal Modern stilt style from Snowy Escape, because I liked the thinner stilts on that one – made the caravan look a little less rooted to the ground

b. I added a dining table to the front room with the kitchen – a high-top table in black with a fancy pattern on top from Realm of Magic, paired with two yellow barstools/dining chairs from Cats & Dogs – a bit mismatched, but I feel like it goes with the vibe of the caravan

c. I put the Laundry Day broom and dustpan wall decoration on the wall by the front door (Smiler’s gotta have a way to clean up inside the caravan after all!)

d. And I added the City Living Chest of Secrets to the kitchen area, because it looked a bit like a cupboard full of dishes and I liked the look of it with the kitchen stuff. :)

So that was nice, at least. Still, I wish I’d managed to get more done. This is turning out to be a surprisingly-vexing build! *sigh* Maybe I need to let it sit for a while and work on something else. I did want to turn the library in Copperdale into a full-blown community center for the Teen Valicer Save file...

Writing: Got another page written on “The Van Dort Vacancy” today! Which featured –

A) Victor managing to successfully bluff Mrs. Pemberly into believing he was just taking Alice and Smiler to put their things in the servant’s quarters (faking that he’d been banned from the party for arriving late) – Mrs. Pemberly noted that it was a bit odd for one of the masters of the house to do that sort of thing DIRECTLY (instead of leaving it to another servant), but admitted that she really did need all hands on deck in the kitchen and thus couldn’t do it herself. So she simply told Alice to get her bag out of the changing room; asked that her wayward servants be returned to her as soon as possible; and thanked Victor for helping and requested he let Nell know that they were filling shoes full of caviar as fast as they could if he saw her again, before heading back to the kitchen to help control the chaos there. Smiler subsequently asked if anyone else felt a bit guilty about the fact that they would NOT be returning to the kitchen, and would probably get her in trouble once the robbery was discovered – Barnaby and Kasimir were immediately like “no” XD Barnaby was in fact a bit insulted that she didn’t immediately take on the job of showing Alice and Smiler the servants’ quarters – Kasimir had to remind him that would have been a bad thing :P

B) And Kasimir taking a moment to ask what the hell the “filling shoes full of caviar” thing was, because he assumed that it meant something like having the rich folks walk around in shoes full of caviar to cure something on their feet. Victor explained that no, these were tiny decorative shoes that were being used as caviar bowls – only for Alice to point out that that was weird too and ask how it even came about as a fad. Victor was like “I don’t know” –

Cuing Barnaby to say that it was probably someone in Brightstone just having a laugh, and telling them all about the time his friend Squiffy started a fashion for wearing your gloves inside-out for a short while! Naturally, he and Barnaby were very drunk when this happened. XD I left it with Kasimir deciding they needed to get this show on the road and asking Victor again about the defenses they’ll be facing – tomorrow, Victor leads the group to the vault, and they take on their first obstacle: Steven and Alan, the guards waiting for them by the door into the trapped hallway! Looking forward to writing that out properly… :)

YouTube: Well, I was thinking of trying to catch up a bit on my OXBoxtra list videos tonight – but then Gigs told me that the next season of CaFae Latte was up, and thus my plans shifted to instead catch up on some C. M. Alongi videos instead! Specifically –

A) “Cafae Latte Q & A” – a video from four months ago, where C. M. answered a bunch of questions about CaFae Latte, as submitted to her Discord channel! Queries included:

I. “What are the favorite colors of the cast?” – As per C. M.’s musings, Bob likes purple, Cyrus orange, Nicole jewel tones, JC gold, Rethu gold and silver (stereotypical, yes, but still), Husniya pink (like her hijab), and Drek – doesn’t know yet :P

II. “Does the Tooth Fairy exist in the Heart of Iron continuity (since it’s a different animal to the web series, even if it features roughly the same cast), and if so what does she look like?” – C. M. told us all that Toothie does exist in the book series, though she won’t be showing up until maybe book 3 – and that she hasn’t figured out what she looks like. XD Apparently names and descriptions are a bit of a weak spot for old C. M.! They are tough sometimes, I agree… *looks over at the paragraph describing Smiler that I had to add to “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” after the fact*

III. “Is ‘equivalent exchange’ a cultural thing for fairies, or a biological thing?” – C. M. said it was a cultural thing from the kingdom Bob and Cyrus come from, though taken VERY seriously. Well, usually – Cyrus takes it a bit more casually, having spent most of his life on Earth and thus only learning about it through Bob (though I’m not sure if this was specific to book!Cyrus or not). And she considered the idea of another fairy kingdom NOT working by those rules to be very interesting and something she might have to ponder more later…

IV. “As an autistic person, I love the representation you’ve put in regarding stuff like stimming, but are we ever going to see a meltdown on screen? It’s okay if you’re worried about triggering sympathetic ones in your audience, I’m just curious” – C. M. immediately went “hard no,” explaining that it wasn’t just that she was worried about triggering sympathetic meltdowns, but that she didn’t think her acting skills were up to the job. She has successfully WRITTEN a few into her books, but acting them out? Not her jam. Which is fair

V. “As a poly person, I have this big long suggestion about Yarn Granny and Vet Grampa showing up with a big old hairy bear of a man in their 40s who loves knitting and fixing things and introducing him as their third and the cast being like ????” – C. M. was amused by the thought put into the suggestion, and said that she’d heard a LOT about including poly rep in the series from people. She was just reluctant to add YET ANOTHER character to the cast. XD But she assured everyone that, once the series came back from the hiatus she’d put it on at the time, she’d see what she could do to get in that rep!

...As you might expect, this Q&A was filmed not long before the compilation where we saw Yarn Granny and Vet Grampa, aka Caroline and Andy, get together with Oscar. XD I hope that poly suggester was okay with a feathery Minnesotan sweetheart as their third instead! XD

B) And “CaFae Latte Season 72 - TikTok Compilation” – the latest video collecting all the TikTok shorts that make up the latest season of CaFae Latte! This one dealt with the fallout of Drek learning his crush, Conner, was a nasty little homophobe, and featured –

I. JC checking in on Drek to make sure he was okay after the rejection (Drek said he cried into some ice cream, and half-joked that at least Conner got him looking at trade schools) – only for Bob to pop in and reveal that they had a situation outside – namely, a load of protesters outside the cafe! She went outside to see what was up – and found Gabriel (the seraph preacher who was an asshole to Oscar in an earlier episode; thinks charity encourages “social leeches”) and Conner, both of whom claimed Drek was a sexual predator who’d harassed the underage Conner (barely – his 18th birthday was next week)…

II. Bob coming in and explaining the situation to a dumbfounded Drek (assuring him that she knew their reasons for protesting were bullshit) while JC called Cyrus to get his legal opinion – unfortunately, Cyrus had to tell them that, since the protesters were technically protesting Bob’s business for HIRING Drek, their nonsense was covered by free speech. And that while what they were saying was technically defamatory, until it caused Drek actual harm (like being fired, or involved in a fight), they’d have a hard time proving it in court. JC was NOT impressed. Drek then went out and braved the protesters to try and prove his innocence, saying that he’d take a truth potion or let them look at the security camera footage (and pointing out he was BARELY A YEAR OLDER than Conner) – Gabriel, however, refused to consider witchcraft and claimed all the footage would be doctored, saying this didn’t end until Drek left town. And that’s when Janine showed up…

III. Janine calmly and coldly giving Gabriel the business for being a horrible homophobe slinging around nasty words to discredit anyone he doesn’t like – and then, when Gabriel tried to repel her with a cross, grabbing it and letting it burn her before licking the blood off her hand. That shut everyone up RIGHT fast. She and Drek then headed inside, where Bob treated Janine’s wound and scolded both her and Drek for doing something so dangerous (while JC was like “I thought holy objects didn’t burn you?” Janine: “they do if the person REALLY believes”). JC was like “so what do we do about this, the law isn’t going to help us,” but Bob said she would make some calls and get some back-up…

IV. Drek heading to work the next day (over the protests of his mother, and getting a ride from JC and Nicole just to be safe – the latter gave him a good-luck charm for good measure)...to find that the back-up Bob had summoned was a whole crowd of counter-protesters! Michael and his coven, Vet Grampa Andy’s volunteer fire department, Rethu on the roof in dragon form, and – notably – Vet Grampa and Yarn Granny’s lesbian granddaughter, Abby! Who admitted she had never heard of Drek or Bob before yesterday – she just wanted to tell some homophones to fuck off. Which she did, delightfully, pointing out to Gabriel when he warned her that she was talking to a “predator” that she had a lot more chance of being abused by someone in HIS profession than by Drek. Drek was like “I gotta introduce you to our baker.” XD

V. Abby complaining that the other protesters left pretty fast after the massive amount of counter-protesters showed up – Janine reminded her that a fight you win without having to throw a punch is a good fight, then headed over to the first aid tent to help with a few people over there (not sure if any fights broke out or if it was just people suffering from heat exhaustion – apparently it was super hot in CaFae Latte’s Minnesota while all this was happening). Drek then showed up to see how Abby was going, and Abby asked who the gorgeous redhead was, causing Drek to tell her all about Janine – including that she was dating Patrick – and chatting with her about how Patrick was his gay awakening. And then Oscar showed up and introduced himself to Abby, who realized he was her grandpa’s Bisexual Awakening (as the only other out queer person in the family, they naturally called her when they realized they were developing a poly thing for the cute angel). And went “...sure” when Oscar described their situation as merely “friends with benefits, and the benefits is mainly your grandma’s cooking.” XD Unfortunately, Nicole then interrupted the good times by reporting that she’d just gotten a text from Lindsey, saying the protesters had moved on to her food shelf, where Drek’s dad also works, to demand Drek’s dad be fired from there…

VI. Lindsey and Drek’s dad facing down the protesters, with Lindsey worrying about potential violence breaking out because lunch was coming up and a LOT of the homeless folk they feed are queer; Gabriel was like “you feed DEGENERATES?!” and Lindsey was like “if I get just ONE feather off you I am cursing spiders to find their way into your asshole!” Which led to the reveal that she learned that kind of thing from her kind-of-sort-of-boyfriend, who happens to be in jail… Yeah, oh man, JC’s gonna FLIP when they finally learn about Erik and Lindsey. O.O But, fortunately, that did not come up here – instead, they called in the cavalry (aka Lindsey sent the text to Nicole), causing Husniya and Rethu (still in dragon form) to show up at the food shelf to scare away the protesters, and Bob and the others to head to Drek’s mom’s work to make sure Gabriel and his mob didn’t show up THERE next. Unfortunately, Asif then got into the congregation’s Facebook group and revealed the protesters intended to set up outside Drek’s house (since they could protest there as long as they were on the public part of the street), and everyone started talking about how it might be easier for Drek and his family to go to a relative’s house until this blows over…

And Drek was like “no, I’m not doing that – if Mom and Dad want to go, that’s fine, but I am sticking this out.” Everyone was like O.o over that, as you might imagine.

VII. JC and Cyrus discussing the fact that Drek was facing down the protesters outside of his house and deciding to go check on him aboard Rethu with Bob (staying invisible until they were needed) – only to find that Drek had called in his OWN back-up – his friends from the house party where they accidentally got drunk off Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Xander and Melody, along with Logan, Ethan, and Ben! And Abby, of course, who was more than happy to come along and fuck over some more homophobes. And what were the gang of young adults and teenagers doing?

Pelting their tormentors with water balloons! Melody had even built a trebuchet for the attack. :D Gabriel attempted to blind them with seraph light, but the gang were all wearing enchanted sunglasses Bob had made for the counterprotesters just in case this very thing happened. So the attack continued until the protesters were finally driven off –

VIII. And finally, JC, Cyrus, Rethu, and Bob revealing themselves – Drek was a little annoyed, telling them that he’d said he’d had this, but they said they just wanted to make sure and that’s why they stayed invisible and let him and his friends do their thing. Bob even agreed that it was better that he fought his own battles. :) Drek thus introduced them to the gang he’d rounded up, then said that while they were here, they could help clean up all the water balloon remains. JC and Cyrus were like “damn it” while Xander tried to soften the blow by saying Drek’s dad was making waffles. XD

And there we had it! I’m really sorry that poor Drek had to go through all that, but I’m glad that he stuck to his guns and didn’t let the protesters intimidate him into leaving. Our little dishwasher is growing up so fast! :D The one thing I was a little sad about was not seeing the Sphynx, as I do like her friendship with Drek, but I imagine she was busy protecting her stream and her forest. And it was still fantastic to see all the rest of the extended cast of the series come together to protect Drek from Gabriel and his congregation of assholes. And to finally meet Abby, Yarn Granny and Vet Grampa’s granddaughter! Funny how C. M. keeps complaining about how large the cast has grown and yet keeps adding new people. XD Looking forward to the next one, whenever it comes out!

Other: As it was nice out for most of the day, we did get out this afternoon to play beanbags (though unfortunately, thanks to my parents running around doing errands most of the day, we accidentally timed it so we ended up playing during the late afternoon, just as it was getting humid again, bleh) – and poor Mom jinxed herself by saying she’d win all five rounds, before proceeding to lose the first four and come second in the last one. XD On the other hand, I had a FANTASTIC day, with three wins and only one straight-up loss, while Dad did very well too and got the other two wins and a bunch of seconds. Final scores were me W-W-2-W-3; Dad 2-2-W-2-W; and Mom 3-3-3-3-2. XD Dunno when we’ll play next – tomorrow’s supposed to be miserable – but hopefully Mom will do better then!

Not too shabby! Very glad that I got that much done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) this morning, though that bad Sims 4 session kinda took the wind out of my sails right afterward. I really gotta figure out just what the hell I want to do with that caravan already...at least I had a good day at beanbags, and got some writing done and some stuff cleared out of the old Watch Later! That's always good! :)

And now it's bedtime, because it is LATE, bleh. Tomorrow -- well, what I accomplish tomorrow kind of depends on the weather, since we're supposed to be getting more thunderstorms again. *heavy sigh* But ideally I will work some more on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tumblr drafts (finishing off that VITD Not-Incorrect Quotes collection at the least); playing either Sims 4 (to make up for today's meh session) or Superliminal (to track down that last fire extinguisher I need in "Optical," along with some other stuff); working some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and keeping up with the latest episode in Jon's F:NV YOLO Remastered series (via watching as much of it as I can with my workout). HOPEFULLY this will all be possible! Night all!