People Who Like Me

Yeah, the weather did a complete turn-around from the extreme heat and humidity and sunshine of the past couple of days, being rather cool and cloudy with a few morning sprinkles. To be fair, it was a relief after how hot the past couple of days have been -- and it made for a gorgeous sunset this evening, let me tell you. :p My day was accordingly a bit better, as the daily write-up should prove:

Work – Was another fairly quiet day at work – apart from the usual morning reports, my day was taken up pretty much entirely with:

A) Finishing off the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and cleaning up some other records that I found while I was at it – I also tried to call someone who I think sent us a credit card gift but didn’t include more than her name, but she was in a class and unwilling to talk. I’ll have to see if I can get her at some point tomorrow!

B) Taking a couple of credit card calls – one lady who I e-mailed yesterday about her second pledge card and if that meant she wanted to up her pledge or not (she did), and one lady who wanted to make a “double payment” on her pledge after confirming her balance (since she had the funds). Nothing too major – and the stupid payment screen actually worked today, so hooray for that.

C) Doing a bit more roster maintenance in between working on a crossword in the afternoon, because it was quiet and there wasn’t much else to do

D) And doing a reversal to move someone’s pledge overpayment into the next Appeal year as a one-time gift

Nothing too exciting! The most stress I had was from rereading my old “this is all the problems we’ve had with the credit card company” doc and making myself mad about how incompetent they are all over again. *sigh* Hopefully Friday will be a decent day – fingers crossed they let us out a little early!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Part 2 - The Ghost Town!” Today’s chunklet featured –

A) Doc Mitchell venturing out of Victortron’s shack and – after a moment’s worry about the sky turning a worrisome shade of yellow (fortunately, it didn’t appear to be a radstorm, as was Jon’s fear) – going to explore/loot the rest of Goodsprings! Or “Ghost Town,” as this mod officially named it, which at least assured Jon he wasn’t going to see much in the way of human enemies. His first three targets were:

I. The house that belonged to that lady who you have to save from the geckos during the tutorial, which gave him such goodies as dirty water, vodka, some squirrel on a stick, a Sunset Sarsaparilla, a single shotgun he could use to improve his own, and the Chinese Army Spec Ops Training Manual, which he immediately used to boost his Sneak skill up 3 points, as that was a VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in this mod!

II. Another random settler house, which had a Future Weapons Today magazine in the mailbox outside, a stimpack, a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of dirty water, and – most importantly – a bottle of beer! Why was that the most important? Well, because in this mod, beer not only hydrates you (not as much of water, but it makes the H20 meter go down a bit), but it also removes rads AND heals sanity. Jon immediately declared that Doc Mitchell would probably be picking up a beer habit.

III. And the schoolhouse, which had worker ants inside instead of mantises – Doc M was able to kill one and kite around the rest, fortunately, allowing him to hack the nearby terminal and open the safe, scoring among other things two vials of antivenom, 29 bottlecaps, a super stimpack, and the Stealth Boy Jon was hoping for – plus some meat off the dead ant, because why waste the meat?

( This is not the Goodsprings Doc Mitchell originally knew... )

2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got about a page of heist (or, rather, heist escape) shenanigans edited today, covering –

A) Kasimir confirming that Mrs. Pemberly would never have let any tradesmen steal anything from her kitchen, then – after asking where the tripwire in front of the vault door was (Alice pointed it out, as to her Caterpillar was still sitting on it) – inquiring if there were any guards at the tradesman’s entrance; Victor told him that there was supposed to be at least one servant there at all time to greet people and lead them to where they were meant to go, but he wouldn’t be surprised if said servant had been dragged into helping out with the party – after all, it looked like Nell had gone all out! Alice confirmed that the chaos in the kitchen seemed to support that hypothesis, and that she suspected Mrs. Pemberly had recruited all the help she could get from around the place. Smiler cheerfully declared (after pointing out the first tricky tile in the mosaic to Alice when she asked) that that meant the tradesman’s entrance was their best shot for getting out –

B) Prompting Barnaby to happily inform everyone that he would not be going out that door, thanks. Victor was like “what?” causing Barnaby to point out that he couldn’t use that door, he wasn’t a tradesman – quite the opposite, in fact! He didn’t mind if the others used that door, but he would be going out the front, thank you very much! Which you think would have gotten him in trouble with Kasimir –

Except, well, our favorite Spider had to reluctantly admit that Barnaby had a point – he was an invited guest, so it made sense for him to leave through the front with the others. And, in fact, it inspired Kasimir to suggest they all split up, with Barnaby going out the front, Victor and himself heading out the tradesman’s entrance, and Alice and Smiler leaving through the servant’s entrance near the kitchen (with the cover story of taking out the trash or something). Alice, however, said that while she wasn’t necessarily opposed to splitting up, she didn’t think going back by the kitchens was a good idea – Mrs. Pemberly was already waiting on their return, after all. Meaning that if she spotted Alice and Smiler, they’d probably be pulled into service decorating a cake or similar. She was fine with Barnaby leaving separately, but felt the rest of them should stick together. Smiler agreed and advised Barnaby that he should stick with them until they got to the tradesman’s entrance, then break off on his own so it didn’t look like he’d come directly out of the hallway with the entrance to the vault and the two unconscious guards, saying he could always say he just got lost if he got caught in this part of the house. (“Or just get lost, this is a big house,” Alice added.) Barnaby decided that was a plan he could live with, adding that he just had to look after his reputation, you know – he was already going to get comments about “indulging the upstarts” for attending this party. Smiler noted that rich people really seemed to like dragging each other down – Victor mumbled they didn’t know the half of it.

C) And the group then successfully making it back through the hallway traps and out the door at the other end, where Victor was relieved to find just the two unconscious guards from before, and no sign of anyone having come across them. He admitted that was a real piece of luck – Kasimir agreed, but said he didn’t want to rely on that, and urged Victor to lead them on…

And that is where I left off! So yeah, tomorrow Victor gets them within sniffing distance of the tradesman’s entrance, only for everything to start going wrong thanks to surprise Nell. I do still want to split this chapter into two chapters, but I think I’m just gonna edit the whole thing, then skim through it and look for the best break point. Seems logical to me, anyway!

3. Watch something on YouTube: Technical check again in the form of “watching these videos put me in the right mindset for working on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” –

A) Some more of “Colouring Books, Trains, and A Great Big Dog – The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (this chunk featuring things like Barnaby getting utterly blinded by the high winds and grit atop the train because he refused the goggles, and Kasimir eating his babysitting certificate out of shame when one of the murderous children they’re traveling with gets charmed by a smoke bomb in the shape of a cymbal-banging monkey and picks it up just as it goes off XD)

B) And all of of “Corpse Bride Moon Dance [HD]” by peanutbuttergold (which is the bit in the film where Emily dances in the moonlight in the forest when she and Victor go Upstairs again so he can “introduce her to his parents” – another one I haven’t watched in a bit, so!)

*shrug* Better than nothing!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Partial check – I unfortunately didn’t get to figuring out my Song Saturday for this week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (meh), but I did at least answer my friend thesatiricaldemon’s comment on the “Bugs Bunny vs Light Yagami” ask over on Valice Multiverse! He said “I maintain Columbo as my favorite ‘who could beat Light Yagami’ matchup, however this is becoming a close second;” I replied “I'm sure Columbo would do an excellent job giving Light just enough rope to hang himself, so to speak. :p But there is something to be said for Bugs's ‘just turn the genre to comedy’ approach too. XD” Just a bit of silly fun between friends!

Whew! Not bad!! Though it has kept me up a bit later than expected (mostly because I got distracted by stuff like "why does the Pip-Boy glove exist" and "oh, the YouTube Recommendeds is showing me a potential new BG3 mod for Wyll, that's neat"), so I'd better rush off to bed. Night all!

Yeah, I was in a very grumpy mood today, which I think is a combination of having to deal with the extreme heat that hit today (it was 93F or so for a high, which broke the old record of 92) and the onset of PMS -- it is starting to come up on that time of the month for me! And PMS would explain why the grumpiness came on so suddenly. *shakehead* Hormones suck and should be banned, especially in hot weather. Ugh. At least it's only supposed to last one more day, and then we get some thunderstorms to cool things off again... Anyway, here's the write-up of how my day went:

Work – Was a bit of a frustrating day at work today – or, perhaps more accurately, a bit of a frustrating afternoon, as the morning was pretty dull overall. My tasks for the day ended up including:

A) The usual morning reports and check-scanning

B) Helping my coworker and the printer guy test out the new printer for envelopes that we got today – which was stressful, but more for them than for me, as I didn’t actually have to test-print anything until the very end. ...Where, of course, we had some trouble getting the damn thing to print from the envelope feeder. *grumbles* Printers – they are evil.

C) Taking a couple of credit card calls, including one guy doing a one-time gift and one guy updating his card on all three of his pledges (supporting three parishes)

D) Taking a couple of calls from one of the parish secretaries to add new parishioners

E) Taking a call from a couple having trouble with the website...and spending thirteen minutes on the phone with them trying to figure out why they couldn’t log in and attempting to see if I could reset the husband’s password, only for the wife to object because she was sure they’d forget to change it. Honestly, them talking over each other and getting confused as to whether or not they’d even given this year was the main reason the call took so long. *sigh* Fortunately, they eventually asked if I could just take the gift over the phone, and I was able to do that for them. But yeesh.

F) And helping my coworker try to figure out some weirdness on someone’s pledge billing after she had a long call with a donor, where some gifts that he made at the end of last year (which had to be credited to THIS year’s Appeal as we go by fiscal year) were showing up as payments on the pledge he recently sent in, despite not actually being attached to said pledge. She sent an e-mail to the database people to figure out how they do the billings, because – that’s not right, as you might imagine.

Yeah, I think you can see why some of that would be frustrating. *sigh* And tomorrow I get to have another useless call with the credit card people, yay… *shakehead* We’ll see what happens beyond that.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Ashes to Ashes” by Many A True Nerd! Tonight’s chunklet of “Post-Post-Post-Apocalyptic Doc Mitchell Comes To Terms With The Mojave” featured –

A) Doc Mitchell leaving the Ant Mound barn and heading east (with Jon musing about how hunting animals for meat might be a little less viable in this game because there’s just generally less wildlife then there is in Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 – side effect of being set in a more-built-up area!) and coming across an abandoned caravan, with a corpse inside. A corpse with a eulogy on him, written by his son, which revealed that he was Hank Jacobson Sr., that he’d been a good father, and that, even in the darkest times, he’d never lost hope, and he’d imparted that to Hank Jr., who vowed to carry on in this hell for his sake. Awww. It was a very sweet moment –

Slightly ruined by Jon noting that Hank Jr. could have taken a moment to BURY his dad, since coming across graves you could dig up was a thing in Fallout: New Vegas. XD But then you wouldn’t be able to come across Hank Sr.’s body with his touching eulogy! And, as Jon himself noted a moment later, there was no guarantee Hank Jr. had a shovel. Can’t dig a grave with your bare hands!

( Doc Mitchell travels the wasteland and dies a lot, mostly to tunnelers )

2. Continue writing Chapter 1 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got a little over a page done today, covering –

A) Alice warning Knox not to get too comfortable about the situation between the Camarilla and the Anarchs Downtown staying Downtown – after all, Therese and Jeannette had both thrown their lots in with the Camarilla and Anarchs respectively, so… Knox was like “don’t remind me” and commented that he was very glad Tung was not into the politics, as it made life easier – an envious Alice was like “as someone with no choice but to be into the politics, I bet it does.”

B) Alice then steering the conversation back to its intended topic – namely, figuring out what was going on with Victor and his weird “Alice needs me” sense. Fortunately, Knox had done a lot of research on ghouls when he first got recruited by Tung (because he wanted to know what cool powers he’d be getting and what sort of things he needed to look out for), and he actually remembered reading about something that sounded a lot like what Alice had described – a special ability that some ghouls ended up with called “Blood Empathy.” Alice was extremely relieved to learn that Victor’s thing was a known quantity instead of a strange never-before-seen phenomenon – unfortunately, Knox couldn’t tell her what caused it, just that it was something that popped up in ghouls every so often. And that he wished he had it, as it would make serving Tung easier (less e-mails, for a start). Alice warned him that that depended on where he actually was in relation to Tung, as Victor seemed to have a range – her distress over what had happened at Grout’s hadn’t hit him until she was back Downtown. And then had pounded at him for a while because she hadn’t gone straight home, which she now felt guilty about. Knox reminded her that she hadn’t known and that he was sure Victor was fine in the end – Alice admitted they’d both felt a lot better after he built her that blanket nest. :)

C) And Knox, after Alice thanked him for the information, leaning in and asking if Alice might do him and Tung a little favor in return. Alice was amenable (especially since she wanted to stay on Knox and Tung’s good sides, given what they knew about Victor) and asked what they needed; Knox confirmed she was heading to Hollywood to head into the Warrens there and talk to Gary, then explained that Tung had recently lost a data CD down in said Warrens and needed to get it back. And couldn’t go and fetch it himself as he was on the outs with some of the regulars down there. Alice said she could look for it, sure, but was surprised Knox wasn’t going down himself – Knox explained that Tung was pretty sure he wouldn’t get a good reception, especially as a ghoul. People like him were supposed to stay above-ground and take care of everything up there, after all! But since Alice was going to be down there already… He then sweetened the pot by explaining Tung was willing to trade some hacking tips for the CD’s safe return – Alice was only too happy to improve her hacking skills (and rely less on Wonderland’s cryptic hints when it comes to passwords), so she promised to keep an eye out for it.

*nods* Not bad! I’m kind of glad that I thought this would be a good way to slip in Tung’s little side quest – Alice has ended up not reading her e-mail much in these stories, so having it passed through Knox works a lot better. :) I left off with Alice saying her goodbyes to Knox and preparing to head out – next time, she bumps into Jeannette before she gets out the door! Because I can’t set up her thinking she should warn the sisters they need to be a little more openly combative and not pay it off. *nods*

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check – even if I’d had the time after the Workout Video Write-Up, I spent most of the rest of my evening crafting a comment for the latest chapter of my friend Nebby’s fanfic “MediEvil Resurrection II” (she just put it up the other day). We’ll see what happens as the week goes on, but I do not have high hopes.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Half check – due to working on the aforementioned comment for Nebby’s fanfic (which I didn’t even finish, because we all know that I’m fucking wordy), I actually completely forgot to even look at Valice Multiverse until just a couple of minutes ago – and, of course, because I forgot, I had two asks and a comment on the “Light Yagami Vs Bugs” ask waiting for me. *sigh* So I guess I’m going to break my usual routine and do something about those tomorrow. I did, however, get my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) queue sorted for the next three days, slapping up:

A) The movieposters1 Corpse Bride poster (the extra-blue one) for Wednesday

B) The sleepygummy The Smiler mood boards (in varying tints) for Thursday

C) And the wisteriasorrows Alice: Madness Returns fanart (of Alice floating in a lily-pad-filled pond in her Siren dress) for Friday

So that’s at least something.

And I really have to go to bed, so I'm going to leave that there for now and fix the spacing tomorrow. We'll see if Wednesday is any better -- night all! EDIT 5/20/2026: Spacing sorted!

Yeah, the temperature soared into "middle of summer" temps today -- our little temperature reader thing claimed it was in the 90s at one point, and I totally believed it! Fortunately, it was a pretty dry heat, which made it much more bearable. It's always the humidity that REALLY gets you, people! *nods* However, despite nearly melting, I ended up having quite a solid day on the old computer...

Tumblr: Ended up having a pretty damn productive day on the old tumbls, getting stuff done on both of my blogs –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I spent the time before lunch going through my tracked tags (and, in one case, a variant of said tracked tag in a desperate attempt to find something I wanted to reblog – thank you, “#the corpse bride”) and putting a bunch of posts into my drafts for later queuing! Specifically:

A) Two posts by vesperthebagel featuring “blinkie” banners –

I. One featuring banners for a bunch of Alton Towers rides, including The Smiler, Oblivion, Th13teen, Rita, Spinball Whizzer, Toxicator, Wicker Man, Galactica, and Nemesis Reborn (all very nicely done, though hilariously The Smiler’s blinking border looks almost static compared to the others because it has the least contrast)

II. And one featuring a banner for Taskmaster (apparently a redo of an older, less high-resolution one – as a Taskmaster fan I had to grab that one as well)

( BIG haul of reblogged posts below )

Whew! Yeah, got a lot of stuff to fill out my drafts on that tag trawl. Though, again, rather lacking in Corpse Bride stuff...at least I found a few posts I wanted to throw into future queues! Hopefully the next look through that tag will be more fruitful.

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I chucked another anon ask into my queue this eve (right before posting this entry, in fact), featuring Light Yagami from Death Note trying to off Bugs Bunny with the Note...only for Bugs to confuse him by constantly pretending he was spelling Bugs’s name wrong, then startle him into tossing the notebook and pen so Bugs could grab them and draw an unflattering picture of Light in the Note’s pages. XD I turned the scene in the ask into something Inevitable High School!Smiler was watching on their phone, and had them respond to it by laughing and noting that Bugs was not going to give Light the easy way out by putting his name in the Note – no, he was just going to make Light WISH he was dead –

Then had Alice, also watching the fan animation, wonder if Bugs had actually condemned Light to death, because, well, he’d drawn the guy’s image in the Death Note. Smiler said that they were pretty sure you had to write the person’s name and a cause of death in there – but then admitted that this cartoon could go in any direction, and that they should continue watching to find out. XD Fun little ask – I like goofy stuff like this. Much nicer to answer than some of the heavier stuff the anons throw at me sometimes!

Fallout: New Vegas: I really wanted to play F:NV this weekend, so – despite being a touch worried about how long this subsequent write-up would take – I went ahead and fired up the game this afternoon after lunch! Ended up playing for just under an hour, with Courier Victor learning more about the Vikki & Vance Casino and its namesake crime duo; discovering the sheriff’s office outside – and the corpses within; doing a bit of inventory management and discovering the corpse of a fellow courier; and sneaking into the Bison Steve and doing a bit of computer hacking! And if you would like a more detailed version with screenshots:

A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor hanging out in the Vikki & Vance Casino with the rest of Primm’s surviving residents, having just learned that his best bet to figure out where the hell the people who shot him went would be to rescue the town’s deputy, Beagle, from the Bison Steve Hotel across the way. Before he got going on that, though, he decided to take a moment to talk to the protectron with a cowboy hat that he’d seen wandering around the casino, because – well, why wouldn’t you? XD Besides, I think Victor had been wondering who that particular cowboy robot was from the moment he learned that it wasn’t the one who hired him (as a refresher, that was Victor the Securitron, aka Victortron). The Protectron welcomed him with a warm “Howdy pardner! Welcome to the Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum,” and when asked who he was, replied, “Primm Slim at your service! Authentic cowpoke and official spokesbot of the Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum! Yeehaw!” Victor, amused and intrigued, asked who Vikki and Vance even were – a surprised Primm Slim inquired as to if he’d been living under a rock, and informed him that they were “this nation's fourth or maybe fifth most infamous celebrity outlaw couple ever, that's who they was!” He offered to tell Victor their story if the courier had a minute – Victor most certainly did, and an excited Primm Slim told him the whole tale – starting with how they were not Bonnie and Clyde copycats, thank you very much: “Fact is, they begun their crime spree two days before Bonnie and Clyde robbed their first bank – so who was copying who?” He then went on to admit that “Vikki and Vance didn't exactly cut a wide swath of murder and bank robbery across the central U.S., like Bonnie and Clyde did. It was more like a narrow swath of shoplifting, check-cashing fraud, and gas pump driveoffs – but crime is crime! They drove reckless, too,” before launching into the thrilling end of their spree: “Having lived by the gun – well, Vance owned one, anyway – it was only fitting that the duo of desperados would die by the gun. Perhaps it was fate itself that accidentally drove them into a crossfire between police and a gang of bank robbers in Plano, Texas. Or maybe they just didn't notice until it was too late. It's been said that Vikki would have tried to cash a bad check in that bank, had she lived. We'll never know for sure. All we know is that the crossfire tore the car and both occupants to pieces, and the police issued an official apology.” He finished up by telling Victor that he could see their death car nearby, along with Vance’s machine gun in the case next to it, and giving him a brochure talking about how the gun was one of the highlights of the museum. XD A most engaging yarn! You gotta love Fallout’s sense of humor.

( Victor investigates a missing gun and becomes Temporary Sheriff below )

Workout/YouTube: Well, I did have to watch something else first – the music video for OK Go’s “The Writing’s On The Wall” (a sad song about having a final good night with a partner before breaking up, with the music video featuring loads of cool optical illusions) – but Jon did upload the first episode of his newest series in time for me to watch the first twenty-nine minutes with my workout and the final eighteen after supper. And what was said first episode of said new series, you may ask?

“Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer!” AKA the return of none other than Useless Steve! :D Useless Steve, if you need a refresher, was the star of Jon’s “Fallout New Vegas: The Worst Courier” series (and its follow-up “Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues – The Level 1 Naked Useless Survival Run”) and was the most useless character in the Mojave Wasteland due to starting out with all of his SPECIAL stats at 1, all of his skills at 5, and with no helpful traits whatsoever. He ended up managing to become at least somewhat useful by the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, helping win it, and the game overall, for the NCR, then repeated the trick when Jon bumped him back down to his terrible starting stats before throwing him into Big MT with nothing but his underwear to his name – but it was always an uphill fight to figure out how to get him to do anything competently. But Jon loved the battle, and had decided it was finally time for Useless Steve to come back in a new adventure in the Capital Wasteland! And this version of Steve has it even harder than his Mojave counterpart thanks to Jon adding an additional rule to the challenge –

Namely, this Useless Steve can never level up. Thanks to the power of console commands, not only are Useless Steve’s stats stuck at 1, his level is as well. So now he has to complete the game relying solely on apparel, drugs, bobbleheads, and skill books (which add +1) to get him through all the challenges. :D How did things go for him in this opening episode? Well:

A) After his slightly-traumatic birth (Jon still thinks it’s amazing FO3 starts with you being born in FIRST PERSON), his childhood in Vault 101 went quite well – Jon glossed over most of his time in the vault before the big escape sequence, as basically nothing Steve did in any of the little tutorial/character creation vignettes would have any impact on the challenge, but he did make it clear that Useless Steve peaked as a one-year-old (as he HAD to give the guy proper SPECIAL stats when first selecting them from the baby book – he wasn’t allowed to bump them down to the canonical “1 in everything” until Steve’s 10th birthday party, when he received his Pip-Boy), and that Steve definitely skipped his GOAT, (using more console commands to remove the game’s attempt to force him to tag some skills), noting that was probably where the trouble started for Steve and warning any kids watching to stay in school. :p

( It’s Useless Steve! Being Useless! )

Not bad at all -- I am VERY happy that I was actually able to get that write-up for my Fallout: New Vegas session done BEFORE my workout. :D I think starting the game right at 2 PM really did make the difference there -- have to remember that for future. For now, though, I do need to get to bed, as I do have work tomorrow. At least my window fan is keeping my room reasonably cool...night all!

Yeah, it was another day of low-60s-at-best weather, with partly-cloudy skies occasionally threatening a rain shower -- though it never actually rained, luckily. Weird to think that we're getting summer-like weather starting tomorrow...but then again, that's RI for you -- the weather can be fucking bizarre sometimes. At least it's being bizarre in a pleasant direction for the next few days! *shrugs* Anyway, here's the daily write-up:

Work – Today was one of the quietest, dullest Fridays I’ve had at work in a while – my supervisor wasn’t in because she had to take a sick day; my coworker left early because she had some errands to run; the phone didn’t even ring once; and by lunchtime I’d kind of run out of things to do. My activities for the day consisted of:

A) Doing the GL, which didn’t take very long at all

B) Answering a question about a supposedly-deceased donor (who’d been wrongly marked dead because he shared a name with his late father – happens all the time), which led to me cleaning up all instances of donors with that same name (plus a couple with a related one)

C) Putting on another small chunk of Easter Collection gifts

D) Helping my coworker with a few questions (mostly about a piggybacked check that needed to be redeposited by our processing center)

E) Cleaning my area because it was looking kind of dusty

F) ...and doing the puzzles I swiped from the paper the other day because, seriously, NOT A LOT TO DO.

Yeah – not exactly the most fun of Fridays! But I made it through, and now it is the weekend, yay. We’ll see what Monday brings!

To-Do List –

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

A) “Forza Horizon 6 | Racing a GIANT MECH to Tokyo” by OXBox! Featuring Mike tooling around scenic Japan in the latest installment of Playground’s open-world driving/racing games, eventually unlocking the ability to do the thing in the title, while Jane played passenger princess next to him on the couch. XD I spotted this in my Recommendeds earlier this afternoon before going down and thought it would make for a fun workout video. :) Highlights included:

I. Jane believing Mike’s starting car had no room for passenger princesses, only for Mike to inform her it actually had room for two, as the driver actually sat in a center seat with room for a person on either side; this then led to Fun Car Trivia with Mike, as he revealed that such central driver seating was actually illegal in the UK, so McLaren – a British manufacturer of automobiles that produced cars with such seating – offset the driver’s seat by like 1.5 millimeters so it was technically on one side. Jane was like “Oh, McLaren.” XD

II. Mike demonstrating how the guardrails on the sides of the road were just “origami,” as per Jane – basically, instead of stopping you from going off the side, they instead just broke away and let you crash onto the landscape below. I guess they figured “eh, people will prefer the breakaway stuff”?

( More driving and the mech race underneath )

B) And “Fallout: NV - Gun Runners' Arsenal - Unique Weapons Guide (DLC)” by Caedo Genesis! A video I stumbled across while looking for something Fallout: New Vegas-themed to watch to finish out my workout and decided was worth checking out. It’s basically just a list of where you can buy all the unique weapons added by the “Gun Runners’ Arsenal” DLC and what makes them, well, unique. I won’t go through all of them, but I will give you one from each vendor:

I. From Cliff Briscoe in Novac, you can get the Microfusion Hyperbreeder Alpha, a recharger pistol that has better base and crit damage than the standard AND is fully automatic, meaning it apparently recharges faster too (which, of course, you want). Plus it just looks cool.

II. From Knight Torres in the Hidden Valley BOS Bunker, you can get Greased Lightning, a super-fast power fist that can dish out three attacks per second as per Caedo! Has the lowest base damage of all the power fists, admittedly, but when combined with the right perks, you’ll be hitting the enemies so many times it won’t matter.

III. From the Vendortron in the Gun Runners’ booth outside of New Vegas, you can get Two-Step Goodbye, a ballistic fist that has slightly less regular damage than its ordinary cousins, but an incredible crit kill effect – basically, get a critical on a lethal hit with this thing, and shortly thereafter your enemy will EXPLODE, dishing out a decent amount of damage to everyone in a short radius. VERY nice if you like exploding people!

IV. From Mick & Ralph’s in Freeside, you can get the Nuka Breaker, a large Nuka-Cola neon sign that you can use to pummel people and which shocks enemies on critical hits (meaning it’s excellent to use against robots). If you’re wondering how the hell they came up with this, it’s actually a reference to “Nuka Break,” a fun little Fallout miniseries about a Vault Dweller, a ghoul, and a slave they freed from New Vegas wandering around having adventures. So that’s cool. :)

V. And from Gloria Van Graff in the Silver Rush (also in Freeside), you can get The Smitty Special, a modified plasma caster that does half-damage compared to its ordinary brethren, but – like the Hyperbreeder Alpha – is fully automatic, meaning you just have to hold down the trigger and keep your target in front of them to kill them. :P

There you are – a bunch of ridiculous awesome weapons for all your ridiculous awesome weapon needs. :p

2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – edited another page and a bit this evening after Game Night (Blizzard Game – Dad won both times), which included –

A) Victor telling Smiler that the weird discs on the wall were Coins – and when Smiler was like “what sort of coins?” clarifying that he meant “Coins with a capital C.” As in, the unit of money used to define how rich someone is. Cue Smiler being absolutely gobsmacked that physical Coins were still being minted (Victor explaining the bank only does it for very special clients, and, well, his rich parents counted); Alice pointing out that one Coin is equivalent to a week’s wages for most people, and goggling over the fact the Van Dorts have a wall of them for show (Victor: “I told you it was over the top”); Victor warning Kasimir off stealing any, as his mother would notice (Kasimir agreed it would be a bad idea, but his white-knuckled grip on his cane belied his desire to go and rip off as many Coins as he could); and Barnaby declaring the whole thing outrageous – because he should have thought of this first, damn it, he’s got enough money to cover a whole ROOM in Coins! How dare he get shown up by Nell Van Dort! He really has to have a talk with his decorator… XD

B) And an amused Victor going to open the safe so Barnaby wouldn’t have to pay his decorator with his own money (“Finally, someone who understands!”)...only to be unable to turn the handle after putting in the combination, even when he put his back into it. Smiler, going to help, suggested that maybe his parents had changed it while he was gone – Victor was initially like “they never changed it before,” then realized that maybe Nell or William had changed it just in case someone got it out of him while he was disappeared. Kasimir started searching his pockets for an alternate way to get into the safe, while Smiler suggested Victor go over the numbers again, as he might have mixed two of them up. Victor wasn’t sure he had, but did go through the combination again –

And realized that he’d switched the digits in the final number (putting in 86 instead of 68). Cue him grumpily redoing the combination on the dial while complaining that he’d done the same thing the first time he’d come down here with William, and he couldn’t figure out why he kept thinking the final number was 86. He apologized to Kasimir and Barnaby as he finally got the door open, saying it had been a day – Barnaby told him that he should have had some canapes. :p

And that’s where I left it for now! Next time, the gang gets the money out of the safe, and I figure out where to split this chapter, because I’ve come to the conclusion that the actual escape from the Van Dort manor post-heist should be its own thing instead of part of Chapter 5. (Especially since Chapter 5 is already twenty pages…) Though maybe I’ll just keep editing for now and figure out how to split it later – that way I can post two chapters in quick succession. :p We’ll see!

3. Watch something on YouTube: CHECK, shockingly enough – and not even just a technical check in the form of “I watched the first four minutes of ‘Colouring Books, Trains and A Great Big Dog - The OX Crew Play BITD’ by CaitlinRC and the entire two minutes of ‘Corpse Bride Practicing Vow’ by Qing 345 as ‘research’ for the latest bit of editing on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” (though I did do that). For, you see, before going downstairs to work out tonight, I spotted a YouTube Short that I knew immediately that I had to watch –

“Humble Cudgel vs Legate Lanius - Who Wins? #fnv #fallout” by The Fallout Family! A follow-up to the patriarch of said family’s short about how you acquire the Humble Cudgel (which is a special pipe melee weapon you can find in the sewers below McCarran), where – in order to prove the naysayers on that video wrong – he used it as his exclusive weapon in the final fight for Hoover Dam! Not just against Legate Lanius either, but against all the other Legion enemies, the NCR troopers in power armor protecting the Dam’s control center, and General Lee Oliver! And how did the Humble Cudgel acquit itself?

Very damn well, honestly! Turns out this cudgel has its own special melee attack, Lights Out, that does 125% damage when you pull it off. And when you combine that with a character optimized for melee attacks, well. Sure, a few of the enemies on the initial run across the top of the dam had been softened up by gunfire first, but the power armor troopers, Lanius, and Oliver all went down to the rapid swings of the cudgel without any prior damaging required. Hell, Lanius got straight-up knocked over and couldn’t get back up before succumbing to the power of what I presume to be the Bloody Mess perk and exploding into giblets. XD It was a delightful two-and-a-half minutes of watching the Courier kick ass with a pipe –

Made even better by my sneaking suspicion I might have helped inspire it. Because, well, I DEFENDED the Humble Cudgel when I watched the original short, and noted that I’d like to see if it COULD take down Lanius during a brief convo with The Fallout Family. Because people did ridiculous challenge runs all the time anyway, so why not HC vs LL? :p Very glad to see my idea bear fruit!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Double check as, in another shocking twist, I had something to queue up on both my tumblrs for a change –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I sorted out my Saturday queue, which now includes:

A) Squid’s birthday fic – after a final glance at the story itself for typos, all I had to do was add the tags, and I was all set here :)

B) And my Song Saturday offering – “Isolated” by Chasm! As that’s the song that plays in The Asylum, I felt it appropriate to bring back given that the above post is VTMB fanfic AND I just started “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” which features Alice visiting The Asylum at the start. *nods* (Plus it’s been seven years since I shared it apparently, so – yeah.)

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had an anon ask to chuck into my Saturday queue, talking about how Bram Stoker wrote his friend Mark Twain into Dracula via having Van Helsing reference “an American” who defined faith as “the belief in what we know to be untrue” and how his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt probably inspired Quincy Morris, the cowboy who helps kill Dracula at the end by stabbing him in the heart! My initial response was “well, these are Fact Core facts, so let’s answer the ask with the Aperture Wage Slave Victor and Alice” –

But then I went on Bram Stoker’s Wikipedia page, and it looks like he did know Teddy Roosevelt? At the very least, he was invited to the White House? Huh. O.o I still answered the ask with Aperture Wage Slave Victor and Alice, I just changed the response to have Alice suspicious of the facts, and Victor reveal that Stoker did know Roosevelt, so they might not be completely wrong. We’ll see if there’s any follow-ups after the post goes up tomorrow!

*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose! Though yeah, long boring day at work. At least it wasn't too stressful! But now I have to hit the sheets -- it's a Cleaning & Laundry Saturday tomorrow, so I already know what I'll be doing for most of the day. After that -- it's either Fallout: New Vegas and more Courier Victor, or just focusing on answering Moose's messages already. ^^; It'll happen this weekend one way or the other, Moose! Night all!

Not much to say about it, honestly -- let's just hop right into the write-up:

Work – It was another pretty quiet day at work, with me spending my time:

A) Getting through the usual check scan and morning reports

B) Sorting some old e-mails into inbox categories now that they were taken care of

C) Gathering some pledge card scans to attach to future reversals (applying payments to pledges and changing parishes on gifts and such)

D) Doing some roster maintenance and cleaning up all the members of a particular family (marking a few people deceased and merging a trio of records that all proved to be the same guy)

E) Doing all the reversals that I needed to do

F) And e-mailing the credit card company to ask for a THIRD TIME that they put up a missing Capital Campaign pledge payment *huffs*

Nothing particularly exciting, as you can see! But I suppose the day went by, and that’s all I can ask for. *nods* We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: FINAL EPISODE | Episode 9!” Today’s roughly-a-half-hour featured –

A) Leon proceeding through the facility, finding the (of course locked) room he needed and fighting more lickers as Mike brought up a terrifying possibility – LEON ending up the final boss as he succumbed to his T-Virus infection. Andy immediately declared “I’ll never allow it,” then pointed out that the “women of Capcom” who designed Leon would never allow for him to die or mutate into something unsexy. It was much more likely that he’d be somehow miraculously cured, and then his shirt would come off in tatters. XD It’s what the game’s been building up to!

B) Leon braving the Room Of Containers that had so confused Andy before, leaping down and doing a cool combat roll before raiding containers and shooting lickers – Andy praised him for handing jumping down three meters better than Grace, asking if they didn’t teach cool combat rolls in FBI training...which turned into a mini-discussion of who they could see in the FBI doing combat rolls (Jodie Foster as Claire from The Silence Of The Lambs yes; David Duchovny as Fox Mulder from The X-Files no, but he’d try to do them). Mike also brought up how the lickers took three sniper bullets to the head to go down despite having an exposed brain – Andy theorized it was “a bit calcified,” while Mike suggested the brains had gone rubbery and the bullets were thus bouncing off. :p

( More of Leon doing things and Grace being Grace )

2. Edit Squid’s birthday gift fic: Check – took a dive back into the archives of my and Squid’s VTMB RP stuff tonight to read through the relevant bits of the relevant scenes again, then did another pass on my “Ash (Rivers) convinces Bianca (Hawke, one of Squid’s VTMB OCs and Ash’s girlfriend in the RP) to let him keep the terrible baseball hat he was wearing as a ‘disguise’ on his first night back in LA because he associates it with the night that they properly met” story I wrote them! Can’t say I changed much during the editing process, though – mostly, I just bulked up the bit where Bianca and Ash talk about said first night back in LA. Specifically, I added in Bianca bringing up the moment where Ash dove under a table to avoid facing Isaac again when the Baron of Hollywood was summoned to The Last Round. XD (Yes, that is indeed something we roleplayed out!) But other than that, it was mostly just rewording a few bits here and there – making sure my phrasing was just right and whatnot. *shrug* I’m happy enough with it – we’ll see what Squid thinks on Saturday!

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, we all know why, let’s not dwell.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: No check – I’d HOPED to get my Saturday posts sorted (Squid’s birthday fic and Song Saturday offering), but, well, Workout Video Write-Up happened. I’ll have to get them into the queue tomorrow – or maybe Friday, so I can just reset the queue speed then. We’ll see what happens!

And, as usual, the Workout Video Write-Up ends up taking up most of my evening. *shakehead* I have to figure out something to do about that -- in the meantime, I'm off to bed. Night all.

Can't say anything special happened on this first day of the work week -- it was all pretty much Standard Monday Shit, as the write-up below will bear out:

Work – It was a fairly quiet start to the work week, though I did have more to do than I initially suspected I would:

A) I did the GL, as I usually do on Monday, which took up a decent portion of the morning

B) I did a little security training course about account takeovers and “lateral phishing” (where someone who has taken over your account uses it to phish your colleagues and try to take over THEIR accounts) – we’ve had a lot of phishing e-mails recently, so I guess IT felt it was important we brush up on this stuff

C) I reviewed some old returns of failed credit cards and the like – no changes there

D) I took a few phone calls, including giving someone our tax ID number for “sending in IRA gift” purposes and helping a guy set up seven different pledges to seven different parishes on his credit card (yes, really – he does this every year)

E) I put on a fresh batch of Easter Collection gifts

F) And I finally got an answer out of our credit card people regarding ONE of the problems we’d contacted them about earlier (where gifts were going on the wrong person) – seems there was some faulty logic in their caging batches regarding where gifts went if an ID number for a donor couldn’t be found. We’ll see if it’s truly been fixed or not later!

*shrug* It made the time go by! ...as did doing the puzzles from my Mensa page-a-day calendar and the crossword in a filched bit of newspaper. ^^; We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – hopped back on the bike tonight and fired up the penultimate episode of the OXBox RE9 LP – “Let's Play Resident Evil Requiem: It's a Licker Reunion! | Episode 8!” The first chunk of the second-to-last episode of The Adventures Of Leon S. Kennedy (And Also Grace Is There) included –

A) Leon entering the orphanage to discover that there wasn’t a hell of a lot left of it, and heading into some underground tunnels through a gap in the remains of the floor to keep looking for Grace and the mysterious ARK facility – Mike wondered why an evil science lab would be built under an orphanage, only for Andy to respond “so they’ll have a steady supply of orphans! It’s why you build the cider mill near the orchard!” XD This then segued into Mike asking why little girls were so creepy in video games, and why they seemed to be used for creepiness purposes more than little boys – he and Andy came to the conclusion that it was because you didn’t expect such aggression and violence from little girls (while little boys were generally considered to be little shits), prompting Jane to go, “You didn’t go to an all girls school and it shows.” XD

B) Leon eventually emerging from an old sewer pipe into a big open crater, and going from there into the remains of a subway tunnel (while the OXBoxers joked about whoever fired the thermobarbic bomb prioritizing the orphanage and its creepy little girls), which eventually led him to a huge chasm bridged by the rusted remains of a subway train. Mike and Andy promptly began joking about the game getting all Uncharted again as Leon began navigating the subway train bridge, expertly squeezing through half-open doors –

Only for some giant vines to burst in and wrap through one of the cars, and a big old toothy flower to menace Leon! He was able to shoot it and make the killer plant retreat, but it destabilized the train, forcing him to grab onto some old bars as it went sideways, then swing himself out a broken window and jump out as it fell into the abyss. Mike and Andy were like “oh, just do a little hop as it lands, it’ll be fine, like in an elevator,” which led to a discussion of how that was featured on Mythbusters, and then on to how people have been mythbusting Mythbusters and showing how everything they said was true was wrong (Jane: “Now I don’t know who to trust!”).

( A deep descent, a plant boss fight, and a look at the Umbrella bioweapon catalog below )

2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths”: Check – wrote up another page of this tonight after supper, covering:

A) Mercurio’s reaction to Alice asking him how he handled the feeling that he needed to go help LaCroix when his domitor was in a bad mood – which was “I...don’t? What the hell are you talking about?” Cue a confused Alice confirming with him that he didn’t get the same “hey your domitor needs you” feeling when LaCroix was in trouble that Victor got with her, and Mercurio letting her know that, while he was loyal to LaCroix, the guy needed to call him when he needed help, and even then Mercurio wasn’t inclined to rush to his aid unless it was a real emergency. He definitely didn’t have a voice inside his head telling him to go wipe LaCroix’s butt or whatnot!

B) A discombobulated Alice accidentally blurting out Victor’s first name while trying to explain how he’d described the feeling (berating herself for doing so and warning herself not to say his last name), and Mercurio telling her that, if that was a ghoul thing, it wasn’t one he had. He asked if she’d talked to Knox, as he might know more about what she was talking about (given the way he talked about Tung) – Alice said she hadn’t seen him, but that she supposed she could search for him in The Asylum before she left for Hollywood. And that she hoped he had some answers, as she didn’t know what she’d do otherwise. Mercurio apologized for not being to help, then noted that it sounded to him like Victor’s little talent was pretty damn useful to her, and that most vampires would be over the moon to have a ghoul who just KNEW when they were needed –

Cue Alice informing him that most vampires didn’t have to deal with Grout’s mansion, and about how upset Victor was when she finally arrived home from that horror show. :( Understandably, she did not want him to have to go through that again!

C) Mercurio commenting that it was weird to hear a vampire talk about a ghoul as if they actually cared about them (noting he was pretty sure LaCroix saw him as just another employee), and Alice countering that she learned the value of ghouls early on, thanks to how she was introduced to vampire-hood. Before going on about how nice it was to have a friendly face to come home to after her various adventures, and how kind Victor was, all while thinking about some of the good times they’d shared together and smiling…

Causing Mercurio to warn her that, if she wasn’t careful, people might think she was sweet on the guy. Alice promptly stammered that she wasn’t sweet on Victor, she just liked him as a friend (feeling like she wanted to blush all the while) – and besides, wouldn’t it be inappropriate for her to start a relationship with Victor, given the nature of their bond? Mercurio admitted he didn’t know anything about that (he and LaCroix had strictly a business relationship), and urged her again to talk to Knox, since he probably knew more about this stuff.

D) And Alice agreeing that she should speak to Knox and thanking Mercurio for listening – and for the new gun. XD Mercurio laughed and promised that he’d at least always be able to hook her up with a good weapon, presenting her with her new Jaegerspas XV and some ammo as he did. I left it with Alice thanking him and saying she should be on her way so LaCroix didn’t get any angrier, and Mercurio promising to let her know when he got the McLusky pistol – tomorrow, Alice chats with Wonderland about what she just learned, then goes and finds Knox! After possibly giving Victor the bag holding her gun – haven’t decided yet.

3. Watch something on YouTube: No check, but that is just standard by this point, given how long my Workout Video Write-Ups take these days. I really wish I knew how to keep those in check better...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A – just had to worry about Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today, and given my queue on THAT runs from Wednesday through Saturday, I didn’t have anything pressing to do over there. We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

*nods* Very standard Monday indeed. And now I need to hit the sack and get some sleep in preparation for what shall probably be a very standard Tuesday. Night all!

It was chilly and miserable most of the day -- like, the sun peeked out once or twice, but most of the day was gray and gloomy, and it rained a lot in the afternoon. Not that I had any plans to go anywhere, admittedly, but -- still. More pleasant when it's sunny. At least Mother's Day tomorrow is supposed to be nice! And at least I got the things I most wanted to get done today done:

Tumblr: Twas another day without anything happening on Valice Multiverse, but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I managed to get two things done before lunch –

A) First things first – after changing my sheets and getting dressed and all of that, I immediately dove into my Song Saturday post featuring “Traveler’s Song” by Aviators and finally finished that off! Yeah, turns out trying to explain that I found the song shortly after encountering their Baldur’s Gate III-inspired song “Make Your Move,” ended up associating it with BG3 as well thanks to a lot of the lyrics in the song fitting the game’s storyline, then finally made it a “Valicer In The Dark meets Baldur’s Gate III” song after I started coming up with all those thoughts and began picturing it as the kind of song Smiler would sing at the grove celebration party is a lot easier at noon than one in the morning. ^^; Got it sorted by 12:09 PM, twenty minutes before the post was scheduled to go up. Bit more last-minute than I usually like with my queued posts, but at least I got it done!

B) And second, I spent some time working on the “Valicer Eats God” post, which included:

I. Organizing Victor and Smiler’s sections to match Alice’s in format, so I have the same categories covering all aspects of character creation for all three

II. Doing proper write-ups for Victor and Smiler’s chosen traits, which included canonizing “Lanky Limbs” as Victor’s third trait after going through the others and confirming that no, that one fits him the best alongside “Fast Feet” and “Sticky Steps”

III. Deciding on Victor and Smiler’s creeds (the reasons why they want to eat God) – Victor’s is so far “it really feels like God is out to get me and my friends, so I want to show Him how it feels,” while Smiler’s is “God is doing a shit job of making people happy, so I’m going to destroy Him so someone or something else can take over”

IV. Deciding on Victor and Smiler’s quirks (some extra little personality traits to flesh them out) – Smiler’s is “has strong opinions on how to correctly make tea,” but I’m still figuring if I want Victor’s to be “world-class expert in some obscure and mostly irrelevant academic field” (with the field being, naturally, the study of butterflies and moths), “untargeted mishaps actually target him most frequently” (just funny, and ties in well with his creed), or “can interact with immaterial beings, such as ghosts, as if they were solid” (given Victor’s adventures in the Land of the Dead in Corpse Bride, this feels like a natural trait for him to have)

So that’s slowly but surely starting to come together, yay!

Baldur’s Gate III: Ended up playing a two hour session of this today instead of my usual one – which is what happens when you mix inventory management, important character convos, and paladin fights, it appears! But it was a very productive session, and I will be happy to tell you all about it –

A) Picked up right where I left off last time, with Smiler and the gang hanging out at the bottom of a ladder up to the upper levels of the Risen Road tollhouse, ready to climb up and confront the false Paladins of Tyr hunting Karlach inside – but before we did that, I decided that I wanted to bring everyone back to camp, get their thoughts on the Karlach and Wyll situation, and make sure Karlach was appropriately kitted out for the big battle. So off to the Wilderness camp the gang went, where I discovered with interest that Karlach’s tent was apparently right next to Smiler’s spawn point. Well, that’ll make it convenient to talk to her while at this camp, at least! :p First, though, they had to get the other companion’s thoughts on the new recruit, and thus made the usual rounds:

I. Shadowheart was relieved to note that “Karlch and Wyll seem to have put their differences aside. I thought it was going to come to blows for a moment.” Good thing Wyll was easily persuaded that he’d made a mistake, huh?

II. Astarion, by contrast, complained, “I thought we were going to see some real sparks fly between Wyll and Karlach. It’s almost a pity things ended so amicably, seeing those two duke it out would be fun.” To be fair, seeing them spar probably WOULD be interesting...but as that isn’t a thing in this game, seeing them fight side by side will have to do, Astarion!

III. Lae’zel was direct and to the point, as always, stating, “Karlach’s got the brawn of a warrior and the wiles of a survivor. Best of all, she speaks her mind, plainly and fully. Show her due respect.” Yeah, I already know you want to climb that tiefling like a tree, Lae’zel. XD But don’t worry, Smiler is all on board with showing her respect.

IV. Gale was his usual eloquent self, commenting, “A devil and devil hunter, standing shoulder to shoulder against a common enemy. Rather poetic, I think.” It is, rather, Gale, thank you.

V. And Wyll – had no special lines, greeting Smiler with his generic “Well met.” Which annoyed me at first, but then I remembered “well, they did get a cutscene together earlier, and our next long rest should trigger the special cutscene where Mizora shows up, which is also all about Wyll and Karlach,” so I’m a little less annoyed now. Still, a line about how he’s horrified about how close he came to killing an undeserving target or something would not have gone amiss! Just another instance of Wyll getting screwed over by Larian’s writers...

( More conversations, inventory management, and a decently nasty fight below )

YouTube: Twas Saturday today, which meant we had a new video from C. M. Alongi – “CaFae Latte Season 86 - TikTok Compilation!” Watched this a little early today (before my shower) so I’d have more time for the Inevitably Long Write-Up. This season wrapped up the cliffhanger at the end of last season (where Cyrus, Rethu, and Rabbi Rabbit discovered that what appeared to be two of Rabbi Rabbit’s synagogue-goers, Joe and Lucy, being haunted by a poltergeist was actually Joe’s ghost trying to save his wife from SOMETHING going around in his skin with the help of Ghost Hunter John) and featured:

A) Herla (having being summoned to the scene by John) being as stunned and horrified to learn what had happened as any of the others; confirming that yes, the ghost John had been in contact with was Joe, and that he’d bet his immortality that the skinless corpse he’d directed them to was as well; and that the “Joe” they’d spoken to at the house was a demon wearing Joe’s skin. Rethu was like “well, THAT’S new,” while Rabbi Rabbit and John were similarly confused –

But as it turned out, Cyrus was actually vaguely familiar with this concept, asking it if was “demon glamour.” Herla confirmed it was, explaining for the sake of the others that it was a form of shapeshifting demons used since they couldn’t pull off proper form changes like fairies and dragons – ripping the skin off a mortal or creature and then using magic to wear said skin and assume the mortal or creature’s form (kind of like a selkie). Normally demons murder their victims to get the skin, but this demon just happened to be in the right place at the right time to grab Joe’s corpse (Herla suspects they were waiting around the morgue for a good candidate). Poor Rabbi Rabbit was nearly sick hearing this. :( Cyrus confirmed with Herla that he had the jurisdiction to handle this sort of thing, since this shit was most DEFINITELY illegal on Earth – Herla said he did, and that it was actually illegal most other planes of existence as well, including the Abyssal Plane (where demons come from and where the magic was created). Apparently one can use it for spycraft, but in all other cases – well. If you’re wearing another’s skin, you’re a fugitive. Fortunately for everyone, he had access to the list of inter-Realm fugitives, including their full names. John noted that fairies could use full names to jerk around mortals, and asked if it was the same with demons, and Herla commented that they actually had it worse – while Cyrus (if he’d been properly versed in magic) could only use John, Herla, or Rabbit’s names to punish them for disobedience, using a demon’s full name against them would compel them to obey orders. Apparently it was a trade-off for the kind of powers they had. Rethu, hearing this, quietly asked Cyrus why they hadn’t tried that shit against Erik – Cyrus said that Erik was only a quarter demon, and thus it probably wouldn’t have worked against him, and Herla confirmed that, since Erik wasn’t immortal, he was immune to such things. Herla then handed over the tablet with the list of names to John so he could have a look –

And John noted there were a looot of names on there. And when Herla asked if they had time for a proper investigation, Rabbi Rabbit noted they did not, because, well, Lucy was still stuck with whatever demon was in Joe’s skin. Cyrus then asked how they were even going to ID the guy, since he and Rethu had been around “Joe” for half and hour and hadn’t detected squat –

Prompting Herla to explain only a fellow demon could see through the deception. And asking if they knew any. Rethu was immediately like “NO,” but Cyrus, resigned, said, “we do, and as the guy he nearly killed, I think I have final say here.” Cue a call to Erik, who – having just told a guy that he would not be doing any security consulting for his business because the guy had shitty opinions about Catholics, and given Erik himself was Catholic...yeah – was VERY surprised to hear from Cyrus, to the point where he opened the conversation by asking if someone had stolen his phone. Cyrus said no, reminded him of the whole “smoothie of immortality” incident, asked if he was willing to make it up to him…

( Okay, as you can tell, these were some long videos, so cut time )

Aaand I have officially stayed up WAY later than I'd intended, so it's time to go to bed so I don't sleep through Mother's Day. ^^; Don't know what, if anything, Mom will want to do tomorrow, but my own goals include continuing to work on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts; watching the Grand Finale of the F:NV YOLO Remastered series from Jon; playing some Portal 2 and putting Wheatley in charge of the facility; and maybe even working some more on "Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood's Deluded Depths." We'll see. Night all!