Obsessed Fangirl

Seriously -- it was unusually warm for the start of November, to the point where I actually opened my windows for a little while! My parents were pretty sure it got into the low 70s for a bit, and I believe them! Absolutely bizarre (and probably a sign of climate change), but still nice. You got appreciate these moments of nice weather while you can -- because soon enough, we're gonna be diving into the depths of winter...

Anyway -- in addition to being a pleasantly warm day, it was also a pleasantly productive one as well, with me getting through the following:

Writing: I spent the time before lunch today working on my PolyShip Week 2026 fics, and I’m pleased to report that I –

A) Finished the rough draft for the Day Seven fic – “Forced Proximity!” Which was a Valicer Severance AU fic (as I believe I have previously mentioned), and talked about how Innie!Victor sometimes worried that his love for Alice and Smiler was simply the result of them being the only two (human-shaped) people he saw every day, and that on some level, he’d chosen love because the alternative – hating them – would have made life in the office unbearable...but then Alice would throw out a quip about the numbers, or Smiler would stick a goofy doodle they’d done on top of his divider, or they’d both smile at him when he stood up to see how they were doing, and he’d realize all over again that no – he loved them for who they were. And that he would have still fallen in love with them even if he’d had his pick of people to choose from. :) And that he tried not to let it go to his head too much when their Outies eventually got together too. XD This was a short one, but I’m pretty satisfied with it nonetheless – some fics are just better in a shorter format! And it’s just good to have another rough draft sorted. :)

B) And decided that the Day Five prompt, “Artist(s)/Subject(s),” will be a Modern AU story featuring Smiler – lounging on the couch – noticing that Alice and Victor both have their sketchbooks out and seem to be drawing them...resulting in them them striking a pose and Alice asking if they’ve been possessed by the spirit of Jeff Goldblum from Jurassic Park. XD Because the mental image popped into my head while I was pondering the prompts I had left and I just had to run with it. XD I’ll probably end up writing that one tomorrow!

*nods* Slowly but surely making progress! We love to see it.

Baldur’s Gate III: I made it back to Faerûn this afternoon and proceeded to send Smiler on an adventure full of music, rude squirrels, terrible hats, and trying to find a specific guy they could use Speak With Dead on. :p Again, the full write-up should be more comprehensible –

A) I picked up where I left off a couple of weeks ago, with Smiler and company hanging out in the Inner Sanctum of the Emerald Grove, having just grabbed a letter addressed to Kagha from a mysterious Olodan from Kagha’s secret chest in the servant quarters. Naturally, they wanted to get out of there before their theft was discovered, and I wanted the group to meet Alfira and help her finish her song already, so once all the scenery had loaded in, I had Smiler lead their companions out of the Sanctum and back into the Sacred Pool –

Where I decided to try an experiment before the group went to visit everyone’s favorite purple tiefling bard. Namely, if Smiler stood by the druids casting the Rite Of Thorns upon the Idol of Silvanus in the center and started playing a song on their lute, would the druids be distracted from their duty and come to watch them instead? I thus had them stand by the glowing green circle, pull their lute off their back, and launch into the upbeat “Bard Dance” (as that one seemed the most them) –

And discovered that no, the druids working on the ritual would not stop casting the spell just to watch a mere bard(lock). However, two of the guards at the stairs – wood elf Jeorna and rock gnome Mino – were drawn over by the beautiful music and – after a successful performance check from Smiler – even admitted they were pretty good, with Jeorna in particular asking if Smiler knew any of Volo’s tunes:



They probably do, but I doubt any are among the playable songs, sadly! Smiler even got a positive review from the local animal community, as Tusk the boar came over to listen and have a pleasant wiggle in the grass nearby:



Isn’t that cute? :) Eventually, I had Smiler stop playing (via directing them to run off to one side – I’m, uh, not sure how you stop a performance otherwise ^^;), and the two guards applauded their efforts –

And threw a couple of gold coins on the ground! :D Just one apiece, but still. Smiler quickly gathered those up for the party’s kitty. Seems like they might have a future as a busker if they can’t get back to their alchemy business once all this is over! :P

( Smiler helps Alfira finish her tribute, scolds some squirrels, gets an invisible hat, and explores the ravaged beach )

Workout: Tonight’s stationary bike ride saw me pedal my way through –

A) The final twenty-five-ish minutes of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 25 - More Bang For Your Buck” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! The second part of this portion of The Adventures Of Useless Steve, Grenades Are Good But The Mauler Is Still The MVP Edition, featured –

I. Useless Steve entering Falls Church on the search for more turpentine to make Nuka-Grenades with...and stumbling right into a fight between some Brotherhood of Steel Paladins and some Super Mutant Brutes! With the one named Paladin in the area, Hoss, making things harder for his own side by blowing up one of his own friends trying to kill a super mutant Steve had already dealt with via Mauler. *shakehead* Steve, as you might expect, immediately felt a kinship with this idiot Paladin and decided to help him out. XD Cue him running around the nearby ruins for a bit, doing lots of drugs and slicing up every Brute he could find with his beloved auto axe (seriously, it is so good. If there was anything like it in New Vegas I would use it in a heartbeat). But once that was done and he’d confirmed that Hoss was still alive, he moved onto his real objective next door –

L.O.B. Enterprises! An old office building full of turpentine – and murderous robots, because the story behind this location was that they went into lockdown to avoid being raided by the government and the robots are still on the lookout for trespassers over 200 years later. Steve initially thought he’d be okay because he had five pulse grenades on his person –

And then he encountered his first robot in the reception area – and it turned out to be a Mr. Gutsy. With a plasma weapon. Which took much less damage from the pulse grenade that Steve was hoping. Luckily for Steve, rushing the damn thing with his Mauler while high on Psycho helped him take it out before he died –

UNLUCKILY, it was far from the only one in the building – AND there was at least one SENTRY BOT in there too. Fortunately, Steve encountered that one while it was trying to come up a stairwell to get him, and thus he was able to Mauler it through the railing a bit, then back off and let it do its charge attack so he could get around behind it and slice its torso off its treads. Before immediately running away from what sounded like another Gutsy. XD So yes, Steve’s trip to this location was a lot more nightmarish than he’d originally anticipated, and resulted in his Mauler nearly breaking because he had to saw up so many robots. But he did obtain nine more bottles of turpentine and a “Pugilism Illustrated” Unarmed skillbook, so – win!

( It’s Useless Steve! Making loads of Nuka-Grenades and then taking a little trip to get bobbleheads from bears! )

B) And “The Video Game ‘Commute’ Problem | Semi-Ramblomatic” by Second Wind and Yahtzee Croshaw! This installment featured Yahtzee putting forth his thesis that, post the lackluster response to Starfield, video game players were over games advertising themselves as huge open worlds to explore (though he also allowed that he had a bit of a skewed perspective on this, as he had much less time to spend with any given open world game as a critic with a deadline than your average player) and discussing the “commute problem” in the title – namely, that if a game had a big open world, naturally it had a lot of travel time in between the places a player wanted to actually go, and a lot of the time that travel was honestly rather boring. Or involved looking at a horse’s ass for long periods of time. XD His suggested solutions for solving this problem, and some of the other problems that popped up in open-world games, included:

I. Making the way one traveled around fun, noting that he never used the fast-travel system in the Spider-Man game because, fuck, why would you do that when you could websling? He also allowed that driving some sort of vehicle was generally at least somewhat entertaining, simply because you had to make sure that you could steer it and keep it on an appropriate surface, but he didn’t have much nice to say about horse-riding, which he considered to be slightly faster walking with a larger hit box.

II. Make sure the things that one might want to stop for on the way were fun, because a big open world that was just full of the same repetitive shit over and over was going to rapidly change into being a big boring world. And make stopping to get it more of a chore than anything else. He specifically highlighted some of the older Grand Theft Autos tying side activities into their own little stories, making sure each side mission was unique in some way (or at least appropriately flavored for the area it appeared in) and making sure to wrap up each extra storyline in an interesting way once you’d completed all there was to do.

III. And opening up the world a bit more slowly, rather than shoving the entire map and all its location markers at the player at the beginning – because, well, Yahtzee personally often suffered from choice paralysis when given complete free reign at the beginning of a game, terrified that he was not going to be making the maximally optimal choice to have fun. So he likes it when a game uses the “unfolding” method, where it starts the character off in a small area, and then gradually lets them escape into bigger and bigger areas as they master the tools they find in the smaller ones. Like Dark Souls starting the player out in the Undead Asylum, allowing them to progress from the cell to the asylum corridors to the boss arena, before finally being taken off to Firelink Shrine to start accessing all the bigger areas of the main game. It helps get the player used to the game and doesn’t overwhelm them with options right at the start. Because it is very easy to get overwhelmed with options, yes.

*nods* All reasonable ideas, I believe! Though fortunately for me, I don’t often find travel boring in video games – wandering the map in Baldur’s Gate III and both Fallout 4 and Fallout: New Vegas is part of the fun in my eyes. Let me see all the scenery and run into all the potential encounters and goodies, damn it. :P

Other: As it was such a lovely day, my parents and I went out this afternoon to play three rounds of beanbags in the back yard – and, unfortunately, while I threw decently, Mom and Dad were just more on point today. Dad in fact got his first twelve of the year today to wrap up the second game, which made us all happy – he was the only one who hadn’t gotten one yet, after all! :) But yeah, he and Mom had some solid games, while I just had some good ones. Final scores were me 2-3-2; Dad W-W-3; Mom 3-2-W. *nods* This’ll probably be our last game for a while – it’ll be too dark to play once I get home on weekdays now – but I’ll keep you updated if we do any more weekend rounds!

Yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. :) But now it is time for me to head to bed, as I DO have work tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be a decent day...night all!

Mostly because, after going to bed at the second of the night's two 1:30 AMs (Fall Back, remember?), I ended up waking up at 10 AM. (Well, okay, I woke up sometime in the 7 AM hour because I needed to pee, but I GOT UP at 10 AM.) Which naturally meant I ended up having breakfast later, and then getting to everything else I do in the morning later, and -- yeah. I didn't even get dressed until about noon. ^^; And then my afternoon consisted largely of stuff that takes a while for me to summarize, meaning I didn't quite get to everything I was hoping to get to. But I still managed to accomplish a good amount of stuff, including:

Dreamwidth: I’m happy to report that I was able to answer all of Moose’s messages today – two before lunch, two afterward (I was hoping to answer them ALL before lunch, but, again, I had a pretty damn late start today thanks to the surprise sleeping in until 10 AM). So that’s all sorted, yay~ Ball’s back in your court, Moose!

Fallout: New Vegas: I did indeed return to the Mojave this afternoon to continue the adventures of Courier Victor – which today involved accidentally stumbling upon the entrance to one of the DLCs, then discovering the horrors of Nipton and having a very long chat with a guy who was wearing a dog on his head. ...I assure you that the longer version of his adventures is slightly more comprehensible. XD Here we go –

A) I picked up right where I left off a couple of weeks ago, with Victor hanging out on a rock near the side of Nipton, looking at the plumes of smoke rising from the town – I promptly had him make his way down off the rocks and start following the railroad tracks around to the actual entrance, where he gradually grew more and more concerned as he spotted more and more fires burning in the settlement:



Yeah, that is not a sight one wants to see in any town, much less one that you were hoping had some information about where the guys who tried to kill you went! Determined to figure out what was going on, Victor continued following the tracks, squinting at whatever he could glimpse behind the smoke in the dying light and passing through where the road crossed the tracks before starting to climb up a hill –

Where the game crashed. *grumbles* Well, it is New Vegas, which is held together with string and dreams. And at least it was polite enough to crash early, when I had barely played for a minute. That’s about the best thing you can hope for when it comes to a video game crash. *shrug* I thus restarted and had Victor retrace his steps, taking a moment to save once he came to the railroad crossing just in case the game crashed again. Fortunately, it did not, and Victor was able to continue on – though I did take a moment to note the faintest tick of red on his compass to the west. As he made his way forward, though, it vanished, so I assumed that whatever had been there had fucked off somewhere else –

And then, as Victor crested the hill, I saw what I thought was a billboard on the side of the road ahead. A billboard that I automatically assumed (thanks to Jon’s various LPs and the brief flash of red on the compass) had a raider ambush behind it. I thus had Victor veer off to the right, cutting through the scrubland in the direction of what I assumed to be the little compass marker indicating the entrance to Nipton –

Only to suddenly see a familiar twitching satellite half-buried in the ground. And for the game to inform me cheerfully that Victor had found the Mojave Drive-In, and the Mysterious Broadcast associated with it! O.O Yup, apparently the old drive-in theater that serves as the entrance to “Old World Blues” is right below Nipton! I never realized this before! Have I ever seen Jon travel here from Nipton? I can’t remember...and he does use fast travel a lot in this particular game…

( Victor stumbles across some peculiar tech, then sees the horrors of Nipton first-hand )

Workout: Tonight’s bike ride proved to be a double feature of sorts, with me pedaling my way through –

A) “Call of Cthulhu: Part 3 - Building Your Party” by Seth Skorkowsky! The third entry in his Call of Cthulhu review/overview/epic saga, this one featured a topic he hadn’t initially thought to include in his outline, but which he decided was important to cover after getting a comment asking for suggestions about how to get a campaign together on an earlier video – namely, how to narratively justify why all the player characters were in the party! Because unlike in Dungeons & Dragons, there’s no in-built “oh, the PCs are all adventurers, so going on adventures is what they do” excuse as to why everyone is hanging out and fighting monsters together – in CoC, you have to come up with a reason why – to take Seth’s example – a bootlegger, a medical doctor, an acrobat, a diver, and a hobo would decide to consistently look into strange and unusual happenings together over the course of a campaign. And why people would keep asking them to do so. (Though, if you’re me, your immediate thought is “sheer hilarity factor.” XD) Fortunately, Seth had two suggestions for players and Keepers alike to solve these problems simply but effectively:

I. Make all of the characters part of the same “Investigator Organization” – a cabal of people from all walks of life who look into Mythos happenings! The characters can be part of this organization from the beginning, or join one early on in the campaign after having a few nasty experiences with Mythos monsters. Seth’s own example from one of his campaigns involved his players’ characters all wanting to get into the inner circle of the Arcanum Club – a society all about the occult. In order to do so, though, they needed to get proof of having experienced a supernatural event. Fortunately, they all had a mutual friend – a certain detective named Jack – who was already part of said inner circle, and was willing to take them with him on a case to investigate a haunted house so they could get the proof they needed… Cue the PCs taking on the classic starter adventure “The Haunting” and, presumably, managing to get into the club. XD

II. Make all of the characters work in the same place – for example, they’re all part of a detective agency, or a newspaper, or a traveling band! This one does require that the Keeper put a few limits on what the PCs can be – for example, everyone’s profession has to make sense for their workplace – but it does at least give everyone a reason to know and trust each other right off the bat. The Keeper could also go a bit more general and just specify that everyone has to be in the same social class, or have a profession related to a specific field – Seth’s example in THIS case was talking about how, for a different campaign, he asked that all of his players either make detectives, journalists, or someone with some sort of link to academia, and that they all be at least a bit on the wealthy side so he could justify them all being invited to the soiree of some big-wig who did regular “astronomy gatherings” for the elite in Arkham. The result was a party consisting of a private detective, a student getting his doctorate in linguistics, a wealthy anthropologist, and a wealthy archaeologist – the latter two both having strong ties to Miskatonic University – who were brought together at one of those astronomy gatherings after they stayed late and ended up talking to the host about the occult. The host told them about a medium that he knew was the real deal and offered to get them all seats at a séance she would be hosting soon – the group agreed, and headed out (after some car trouble) to go see the medium in Ipswich –

Aaaand then Seth hit them with the module “Dead Light” because why not surprise his players with a scenario totally different to the one they were expecting. XD According to Seth, that campaign actually lasted for a while, and apparently a good number of his module reviews feature anecdotes from it, which is neat. :)

So yeah – that is how you justify all the characters working together to investigate the Mythos! With Seth adding to the Keepers that, if all possible, they should let their players help create the organization/workplace/club/etc that their characters would all be a part of, because it would help them feel like the organization is truly “theirs” and keep them invested in all the adventures. :) Very smart, yes – nothing makes a player feel wanted like buy-in!

B) And the first thirteen-odd minutes of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 25 - More Bang For Your Buck” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! Because he wasn’t that late in uploading the new episode tonight. XD This first chunk of The Adventures Of Useless Steve, Time To Become An Explosives Expert Edition, included:

I. Useless Steve, confronted with a wasteland that now contained things like Super Mutant Overlords, sentry bots, deathclaws, and yao guai, deciding he needed to improve his chances of hitting things in VATS (especially with grenades) and thusly taking on the quest “The Replicated Man!” A shockingly easy quest to complete once you know what’s going on with it. Basically, there’s an escaped synth from the Commonwealth living in Rivet City under the name “Harkness,” and one of the Institute scientists, Dr. Zimmer, is on the ship looking for him. Harkness, however, is one of those synths who’s undergone a fake memory installation procedure and thus no longer knows he’s a synth, and Zimmer doesn’t actually know which of the residents is the synth he’s looking for (as Harkness probably underwent facial reconstruction surgery too). So once the player receives the quest, before they can either tell Harkness “hey, you’re a synth, and this guy is trying to recapture you,” or tell Zimmer, “Hey, the guy you’re looking for is the one named Harkness,” they have to find three pieces of evidence (AKA holotapes) showing where the synth went to get his fake memories installed so the player can confront the person responsible and confirm Harkness is the synth. Fortunately, these pieces of evidence are absolutely EVERYWHERE across the Wasteland – Steve actually picked up one during his previous raids on Tenpenny Tower, and Jon knew of three others that were in Megaton itself! So Steve’s method of completing the quest consisted of –

( It’s Useless Steve! Getting his reflexes wired before gathering all the Nuka-Grenade ingredients! )

Tumblr: In a reverse of yesterday, while I didn’t do anything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did end up adding two anon questions to my queue over on Valice Multiverse! One of which was a little on the naughtier side, so for those of you who might prefer not to see it I’ll slap it under a cut –

( Slightly NSFW ask below )

B) And “One of Toucan Sam's nephews transitioned recently on a box of Cocoa Loops. Susey goes back Suzy now.” I had Victor and Smiler from the Inevitable High School verse answer this one, with a slightly puzzled Victor going, “Er – good?” before noting that he didn’t think he’d ever had Cocoa Loops – or Froot Loops, and Smiler shrugging and saying they’d take “representation via breakfast cereal.” Have no idea if this is true or not, but if it is, I too am fine with representation via breakfast cereal. :P

...yeah, looking at it now, that was actually quite a full day. XD It just started out quite slow! But now I shall head out and maybe try to get to bed a little earlier -- I have a day off tomorrow, and I'd very much like to fit in some writing if I could! Along with some Baldur's Gate III (time for Smiler to meet Alfira!), and some more "Worst Wanderer" during my workout. We'll see how the day goes -- night all!

Don't get me wrong -- it wasn't a TERRIBLE day. I listened to a lot of my favorite Halloween songs, had plenty of candy (plus a chocolate cupcake), bummed around in my costume, watched the 2021 season of Halloween Wars on Roku (which actually had some really nice cakes), and got to give out candy to cute kids in costumes (one little girl was a pilot in a wearable plane, with her dad as one of the guys who directs planes on tarmacs :D Plus we had a very nice Coraline at one point). But I was also a bit grouchy thanks to my period at a couple of points, had a brief scare that someone had destroyed our jack-o-lanterns when I saw some kids milling about on our lawn for a bit (fortunately they were fine), had to rub my face raw to get the green makeup Mom put on me off during my shower (my cheeks and nose were quite tender!), and we didn't get very many kids this year -- maybe 40? The street was just EMPTY for most of the night. It was rather sad. :( So yeah, definitely not the greatest Halloween I've ever had. *sigh* Kind of par for the course with how 2026 in general has been going, though.

Anyway -- somewhat "meh" holiday aside, I did accomplish a few things today:

Writing: I am pleased to say that I knocked out another Polyship Week 2026 story after lunch, this time for the Day Three prompt “Realizing Polyamory Is An Option!” I previously mentioned that this was going to be a Multiplayer Wonderland story, featuring Victoria, Emily, Smiler, and Alice finding Victor stuck in a pitch-black space from his nightmares, crying because he was being tormented by voices yelling at him for falling in love with all four of them and being unable to choose between them...and them realizing that they don’t want him to have to choose – today’s first draft expanded upon that idea with a Smiler-POV story featuring –

A) Smiler being both surprised and not when they and their compatriots entered the pitch black space – surprised because they’d all just come out of much more complicated custom nightmare scenarios (Emily a forest maze where she was being chased by her old fiancee; Victoria a labyrinth made out of the Everglot mansion where she was being chased by Barkis – which eventually merged with Emily’s to reveal they were both being targeted by the same man; Alice the canonical twisted version of Rutledge she had to stumble through; and Smiler a nightmarish version of The Sanctuary they had to scramble through – which eventually merged with Alice’s so they could help each other escape), so the endless blackness felt weirdly simple; and not because – well. They remembered very clearly little Victor telling them back when they were children about how his nightmares so often featured him stuck in pitch blackness, being yelled at by a bunch of Nell-like voices about what a disappointment he was while he waited for a monster to come and eat him up. :( So yeah, they knew very well this scenario was the perfect one to torment Victor. :(

( Smiler discovering that Victor’s nightmares have taken a turn – and just how willing they are to share )

YouTube: I ended up doing my YouTube watching this afternoon once I was done with my writing, because I wasn’t sure if I’d get a chance to watch anything this evening what with giving out candy and such (and indeed, once I was done with that, taking my shower, and getting my Halloween tumblr post up – see below – I did NOT have the time to watch anything else) – today’s videos consisted of –

A) “Ghostbusters (2016) - Battling the Ghosts Scene (9/10) | Movieclips” by, well, Movieclips! The part of the big climax of Answer The Call where the girls go up against a bunch of the ghosts that Rowan has summoned using all their cool tech, and which includes (along with all the usual proton pack firing) –

I. Abby saving Erin from a Puritan ghost by attempting to bat a proton bomb at her with the wand of her pack – and when that failed, just kicking it into the guy

II. Abby, after Erin saved her from being kidnapped by the flying bat ghost, using the proton punching glove against a few ghosts to vaporize them

III. Patty, seeing the bat ghost going after Holtzmann, pulling out the ghost chipper and shredding it into ectoplasm

IV. Abby and Holtzmann throwing more proton bombs at ghosts after another smashes the chipper

V. Erin wasting both Gertrude Aldridge and the subway prisoner ghost with one shot from the ghost shotgun (which surprised her enough that she forgot to finish her “say hello to my little friend” one-liner)

VI. And – the moment I came to see – Holtzman pulling out her proton pistols and absolutely wasting a whole bunch of ghosts, finishing off with the giant “carnival barker” ghost who was directing the others, to the most badass version of the Ghostbusters theme tune conceived. :D

*grin* Good stuff – this is why I will always defend the 2016 reboot.

B) And four CaFae Latte shorts as I continued my catch-up on the latest storyline:

I. “CaFae Latte: 2 wishes” – featuring an astonished Cyrus on the phone with Bob, going “What the hell do you mean, they’re charging you with attempted murder?!” Bob explained that she had been surprised too, but, apparently her rake fight with Gabriel and his two little cronies had been deemed sufficiently heinous (despite nobody getting seriously hurt) that she had to go to court to prove she hadn’t been trying to kill him. And Yule Cat was being charged as an accessory. Cyrus told her that he was fine representing the both of them, but was still incredulous about the charge, noting it should have been at most “assault with a deadly weapon” – and that it was surprising she was being charged at all, because prison fights generally didn’t even show up on any prosecutor’s radar. Bob agreed, saying she felt this was all – off. Cyrus then said that he was happy enough to clobber them in court, but told Bob that her having struck first did not help things, and that she was probably looking at more jail time win OR lose, because they’d want to hold her there until the next trial. He thus asked her to “try to avoid trouble from now on” – Bob, with a little sly smile, promised she’d try –

And then we cut to Lindsey’s place, where she was on the phone with someone herself. Thanking them for telling her something and asking when the funeral was – and then, in response to some screaming, saying, “Fine, I won’t come, see you never.” Erik walked in as she hung up and asked what had happened – Lindsey explained one of her aunt just died, then told him not to even say he was sorry, as she’d been a real piece of work and had favored Nancy just like the rest of her family. And that Nancy was likely to get all her money and assets while she got squat. Erik made a sympathetic “oooh” and asked if the aunt had been rich – Lindsey confirmed her retirement fund had been valued at just over a million, and that she’d only just started using it when she had a heart attack. Before admitting that, while she didn’t particularly want the old bitch’s money, the injustice still rankled a bit. Erik tried to comfort her by reminding her that once Bob got out of jail, Nancy’s curse kicked back in, meaning she’d probably lose it all in record time –

Causing Nancy to be like “...yeah,” very thoughtfully. And given what this short is titled, I think we know what Nancy wished Gene/Jean to do first!

( Husniya and Herla explain djinn to JC, Erik is called in for his connections, and the gang discover Nancy has got the djinni )

Tumblr: As per usual, there wasn’t anything going on over on Valice Multiverse, but I did make a post this evening on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – my annual “showing off my costume and our jack-o-lanterns” post! So if you want to actually see my costume and our jack-o-lanterns, I recommend you head over there. :p Enjoy the face paint it took ages for me to get off!

*nods* Nice -- got the most important stuff done! But now I should head to bed, as it is very late and I am tired. At least I can get up a bit earlier tomorrow thanks to Fall Back making 1 AM again. :p As for goals...answering Moose's latest messages is up there, along with seeing if I can get some more Polyship Week fic done. Would like to also play some Fallout: New Vegas and have Victor experience the horrors of Nipton, and watch the latest episode of "The Worst Wanderer," but we'll see about those. *nods* Night all!

Yes, while the temperatures were lovely, the breezes were not -- so much so that we ended up not playing beanbags because of them. Mom was too afraid that we'd be out there for ages because the wind would end up screwing up our throws! Given I could hear the skeleton hanging from the flagpole out front rattling away for most of the afternoon because it kept getting caught in gusts, I believe that was a good call. *grimace* Still opened my windows a bit to get some fresh air, though. Soon enough they're gonna have to remain closed all the time against the cold!

As for the rest of my day, it was spent pretty productively:

Work: It was a pretty chill end to the work week, I am pleased to report – even with my coworker having taken the day off, leaving me to man the front alone. My abbreviated time in the office consisted of –

A) Doing the morning credit card reports – no check scan because there were no checks yesterday

B) Doing the GL (since our processors DID put on stuff yesterday)

C) Going through the latest report of people with one-time gifts to the wrong Appeal or overpayments on their pledges (all the latter this time) and e-mailing everyone with an overpayment (except one guy whose overpayment may have been deliberate – I couldn’t tell without the scan of the pledge billing he sent in with the gift); got one reply back telling me to go ahead and apply the overage to the next Appeal year

D) Going through the checks in the mail and putting on the one from United Way with a bunch of little “payroll deduction” payments on pledges (I followed how the last one my coworker did back in July looked, so everything SHOULD be posted right); the other one my supervisor and I determined was actually meant for the newspaper office to pay for a subscription, but their office was shut when I went to deliver it, so I just put it in my bin of stuff

E) Doing a reversal on the final pledge payment of the person who told me to keep their overpayment to split it into a payment on their pledge and a one-time gift to the next Appeal

F) Doing a little bit of roster maintenance (looked at the obituaries in the paper, but all there was was one “In Memoriam” thing for a guy who died two years ago – found the name in our system, but couldn’t figure out if it was him or his same-name son *shakehead*)

G) And e-mailing my coworker at the end of the day to let her know about the check that needed to go to the newspaper office, the UW payroll deduction check I put on, and the guy with the possible deliberate overpayment, since she’ll be there on Monday and I won’t. :p

*nods* Not too shabby! The day was just busy enough to keep the time moving, and it was very nice to leave at 3 PM. :) And now I have three whole days off, w000~

Writing: After beanbags was canceled on account of “it fucken WIMDY,” I spent much of the rest of the afternoon working on the fic for Day Two of Polyship Week 2026 – “Movie Night!” Which, as I said last night, I recently determined was going to be another fic featuring the Running Headlong Into The Bullshit mega-polycule talking about picking movies for an upcoming movie night. As is my wont with this particular AU, I proceeded to write a fic featuring the gang in their group chat, with Smiler (with encouragement from Emily, Piper, and Alice) spinning a virtual wheel they’d set up to pick a theme –

( The gang discusses classic – and problematic – movies from the 80s )

Workout: My final night on the bike this week was spent pedaling my way through “7 Scariest Games We've Ever Played” by OXBox! This seasonally-appropriate list saw Jane, Andy, Mike, and Ellen discuss the games that have scared them the most during their years on this earth – most of them played for the channel, but some on their own time. And if you’re curious as to what each picked so you can use their greatest fears against them –

A) Andy went with P. T., the “playable teaser” for that canceled Silent Hill game with Norman Reedus (noting how it created scares from building up patterns in the endless looping through the same corridor and then slowly breaking them, and stating that because it was so short and there was no opportunity to actually advance or learn more about the plot (because, you know, teaser), it actually felt more dangerous and spooky than many longer, proper games) and Undertale (saying that he found a game that actually reacted to your choices like it did (such as Flowey knowing if you reloaded after accidentally killing the first boss) to be frightening because games were supposed to be consequence-free environments, and adding that player character became pretty damn terrifying in a “kill everything” run just because of how EMPTY they seemed as a result of all that killing)

B) Mike settled on Alien Isolation (citing the fact that the Alien was programmed so well to react to what the player does and follow them around intelligently for maximum scariness, and throwing in that the Working Joe androids were so frightening in their own right with their expressionless faces and worryingly-strong grips that they could have been the main villains in another horror game) and Dying Light (explaining that he found it scary because the daylight sequences were such standard “slow zombie” fare that it really ramped up the tension when night came and you had to deal with the fast zombies who were fifty million times more dangerous...and because the fast zombies were nude, which for some reason added to their spook factor :P)

C) Jane chose Silent Hill (admitting that part of her fear came from having played it too young, but praising how the famous fog hiding the low draw distance made it so even being out in the open didn’t feel safe (because monsters could still get the jump on you), and talking about how the radio static just made everything spookier because there was just something inherently scary about it (she thought it had something to do with the brain trying to make a pattern out of randomness)) and Outlast (stating that the “found footage” aspect of it (as the main character spends much of the game looking through his camcorder) makes it feel scarier by making everything feel a tiny bit more real, and giving props to the game for making even cheesy jumpscares work somehow (like a body swinging on a rope into your face when you opened a door, complete with orchestral sting – should have been goofy, but it made her jump!))

D) And Ellen chose Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (explaining that it ramped up the tension and kept it going beautifully (instead of just throwing jumpscares aplenty in your direction, like some games she’s played), and adding that she liked how the environments made everything creepier by covering things in mold so you didn’t want to touch them and by hinting at how pleasant and normal things had been before the horrors by presenting you with the occasional slightly-nicer spot)...and nothing else, because this was a seven-entry list and I guess they figured they’d cut the scaredy-cat of the group a break. :P

So there you have it – a bunch of horror games you can try, if you are so inclined that way (and can find a way to get your hands on a copy of P. T., which is no longer able to be purchased). Me, I think I’ll stick with lighter fare, thanks. ^^;

YouTube: Thanks to a combination of me being able get my writing done this afternoon (because I got home early), me being able to wrap up my workout video write-up quickly (because it was a list video and not something more complicated), and Game Night ending a touch early (Parcheesi – Dad won the first game very quickly, I won the second rather more slowly), I actually had some extra free time tonight, meaning I could watch a longer video if I so desired! And so I went ahead and watched “Call of Cthulhu: Part 2 - Character Creation” by Seth Skorkowsky! Because it felt appropriate with Halloween on the horizon. :) This video was all about how to create a character in Call of Cthulhu – or, at least, how to create a character when Seth was running the game. He made it clear that other methods were available. :p In order, we had –

A) Figuring out your character’s occupation – he liked to do this before doing any of the main stats because it helped him get an idea of who the character was, though for this sample character page he just did “Private Investigator” since it was a classic – then filling out their name, age, gender, residence, and birthplace (naturally, Seth filled it out as if it was a sheet for Jack The NPC)

B) Sorting out the main characteristics – Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Constitution, Appearance, Education, Size, Intelligence, and Luck! If you’re wondering how “Education” differs from “Intelligence,” I believe that the former is supposed to represent your level of schooling – what you’ve learned during your life – and the latter is your raw brain power. Anyway, Seth’s preferred method of generating these is to use dice rolls – 3D6 for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Appearance, and Power, and 2D6+6 for Size, Education, Intelligence, and Luck – and then multiply the resultant values by five to get the actual scores for the sheet! Though he mentioned two optional/house rules he follows during this process –

I. He rerolls all 1s he gets during the initial dice rolls because he feels that doing so makes for better characters (certainly stronger ones)

II. After doing the initial rolls and calculations, he then rolls a D10 to get some bonus points to add to the stats however he likes (he got a 7 in the example and added two points to Jack’s Willpower and five to his strength to boost them)

*nods* Fair. Once all the calculations were done, he filled them out on the character sheet, then took a moment to find out what one-half and one-fifth of each stat was for “hard success” and “extreme success” purposes (in CoC, when testing something, you roll percentile dice and try to get below your number – for especially hard tasks, you have to get below one-half or one-fifth of said number). Better to get the math done now so you don’t have to worry about it later!

( Jack The NPC – or Jack Mallone, as he is called on the sheet – comes together with stats, skills, and backstory )

*nods* I'm pretty happy with that. But I am also pretty tired, so I am heading off to bed. Tomorrow be Halloween, after all, and I'd like to be awake for most of it. XD Don't know what my goals are gonna be beyond "work some more on Polyship Week prompts" and "hand out candy" -- we'll find out together, I suppose. Night all!

As in, I got stuff done, but in a kind of meandering, no-real-urgency way. Which I suppose I can blame on the fact that I'm definitely PMSing, and the fact that I chose not to play any video games today, which always adds some urgency to my Sundays (because of needing to finish the write-up in time for me to go to sleep at a decent hour). *shrug* Not complaining, just -- I dunno. Might have been nice to have a little more motivation for stuff!

That being said, I'm happy with what I did accomplish, at least:

Tumblr: We were back to nothing happening on Valice Multiverse tonight, but I got a couple of important things sorted over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) earlier today –

A) First, I headed into my Drafts and took a moment to finish off this year’s addition to the “Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes, Halloween Edition” collection by:

I. Doing a quick editing pass on the two scenes I came up with (just tweaking some wording here and there, nothing major)

II. And completing my explanatory tags (adding how the second scene of them putting designs on their pumpkins – and Alice asking Victor not to get TOO elaborate with his because they DID have to carve it out with a knife – was originally one featuring Smiler talking the others into doing jack-o-lanterns after seeing pumpkins on a grocery run, but it didn’t really gel, so…)

So that is now all ready to go up this Friday before Halloween. :)

B) And second, I was tagged in a “get to know your mutuals” tag game by thesatiricaldemon, so I made up a post for that! Which I did have to post after lunch, because some of the answers took a bit more thought that I was expecting. ^^; Here is the completed post if you would like to see my answers to the sometimes-bit-odd questions!

So yeah, that was good, at least. :) Nice to add a thing or two to my dash!

Writing: I managed to do two writing things today, which was nice –

A) First, I officially finished off the first draft of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman!” The very final scene of the Epilogue covered –

I. Smiler knocking on the doorway to Dr. Gladwell’s laboratory in the MOJ, and the good doctor popping out from behind the big “test subject” seat in the middle of the room to greet them with a terrible pun about being “Gladwell” to see them. Smiler returned it, making a hidden Joytide groan (fondly). Smiler asked how things were, and Gladwell delightedly told them that they’d been doing more experiments about the intersection of fear and joy, and why some people like to be scared (since, you know, he and his assistant are from the 2023 Smiler Takeover Fear Test show) – Joytide added that Grin-Grin (one of the cult’s clowns and the other Fear Test performer) was really enjoying popping balloons to startle people. :p Gladwell agreed and declared that everyone had been having a lovely time –

Before admitting that they’d had to fix one of the containers built into the arms of the chair as a spider got out and caused a bit of a “kerfluffle” before it could be tracked back down. Smiler agreed that they couldn’t have that! :P

( Smiler talks spiders and spark-craft with Dr. Gladwell, and I work in a bit of the whole ‘everyone has really high expectations of Smiler’ thing from one of my recent tumblr posts )

And that is that, at least for now! Couldn’t have wrapped it up at a better time – now it can sit and percolate for a bit while I work on gift fics and Polyship Week fics and such. :)

B) And, speaking of Polyship Week, I also got the section for the upcoming 2026 Polyship Week ready in that doc, and picked what prompts I wanted to do from the official list for Days One, Two, Three, Five, Six, and Seven! “Sickfic,” “Movie Night,” “Realizing Polyamory Is An Option,” “Artist(s)/Subject(s),” “Cooking Together,” and “Forced Proximity,” if you were curious. :p Still trying to decide what to pick for days Four and Eight, and what AUs should be paired with which prompts, but I’ve got a bit of time to figure that out. Just gotta make sure they’re all ready to go by November 21st!

Workout: Well, Jon was once again late in putting up the latest “The Worst Wanderer” episode (judging by the timestamp that was under it when it finally appeared on my YouTube homepage, it didn’t get uploaded until 7:30 PM my time, damn), so – after futzing around for a bit hoping it might pop up – I ended up going back to OXBox to see if there was something lurking in their latest set of Hallowstreams that I might want to watch. And indeed, I found a video that intrigued me – “FMV ZONE: TENEBRIS SOMNIA | Hallowstream 2026 🎃!” One of the first Hallowstreams of this year, this featured Mike playing (with Andy watching, offering commentary and advice), well Tenebris Somnia – an Argentinian-made horror game about a woman named Julia who, plagued by nightmares of her ex-boyfriend and fellow film nerd Iván being torn apart by monsters, goes to check up on him at his apartment...only for everything to start going to hell. Despite being a brand-new game – it only came out about a week ago, on the 16th! – it has a retro look, with levels done in a 2D pixelated style featuring mostly point-and-click-adventure-type gameplay (though there is real-time hitting monsters with wrenches) and live action cutscenes (filmed with real actors using practical effects, yay). Hence why it’s in the “FMV Zone” – it has Full Motion Video cutscenes. Just, you know, nicer quality ones than the ones we got during the genre’s heyday. :p I got through about the first 32 minutes of the stream during tonight’s pedal session, which covered –

A) Mike introducing the game and asking Andy what the title meant, as it was in Latin and Andy was the one who’d done Latin in school (Andy in fact has a GCSE in it apparently) – Andy translated it as “dreams in the darkness? Dreams in the shadows? Something like that. I think.” XD

B) Mike going into the inventory screen for the first time to get the key to Iván’s apartment (which for some reason Julia still has) and showing us our first look at Julia’s pixelated face – Andy noted that she looked quite haunted, poor thing. And this was before the game had even properly kicked off!

( Julia discovers quite a lot of weirdness both inside and outside her ex’s apartment, and is visited by a hot goth woman in an elevator )

Other: As it turned out to be a pretty nice day today (a comfortable mid-60s in the afternoon), my parents and I ended up going out at around 4 PM to play some beanbags – and I’m pleased to say that we all won a game! Though my parents did better than me, scoring two wins each to my one, with Dad ending up the ultimate champ by also coming second twice. But I managed to pull out a win in the last game, and that’s enough for me. :) Final scores were me 2-3-3-2-W; Dad 3-W-2-W-2; and Mom W-2-W-3-3. We’ll see what happens next time we play!

So yeah -- that's all pretty good, I think. :) And now it is time for me to head to be so I can get ready to go to work in the morning. Night all!

Yeah, I can tell my PMS is ramping up because it is becoming increasingly hard to concentrate on the things I should be doing. Especially when it comes to the write-ups, as I find myself second-guessing everything I write. >( However, after much fucking around online, I have finally managed to wrangle myself and get the record of my day sorted:

Cleaning & Laundry: As usual, changing my sheets, getting my room cleaned up, and washing my blankets, bathrobe, and pajamas was a most-of-the-day affair –

A) I started right around 10:50 AM with stripping the sheets off my bed and dusting the shelves directly above/behind it

B) Then I finished making my bed with the new sheets and got my laundry into the washer shortly after noon

C) Then I started the rest of the dusting, though I didn’t even get through most of my shelves before I had to take an hour’s break for lunch around 1 PM

D) Immediately after lunch, I got the laundry into the dryer around 2 PM and resumed my dusting

E) I finished up the dusting and got everything out of the dryer around 3 PM

F) And finally I then Swiffered and vacuumed until about 3:30 PM

*whew* Fortunately, listening to more Seth Skorkowsky made the whole experience much more tolerable – I ended up putting on his playlist of videos about the Pulp Cthulhu adventure “The Two-Headed Serpent,” which was equal parts a review of the adventure (which sees your characters traveling all over the world trying to stop the machinations of three separate sub-cults of serpent-people, each of whom wants to destroy humanity and take back control over Earth in their own way and are fighting each other over it, with a final confrontation against whichever sub-cult comes out on top in a pocket dimension that contains the lost continent of Mu) and a “campaign diary” detailing what happened when he ran it for his players (there were many instances of things being blown up by the demolitions expert, and the sole woman in the group got temporarily turned into a serpent-person herself, which she was NOT happy about). Very fun stuff –

So fun, in fact, that when it became apparent that I would finish cleaning before finishing the final episode, I ended up spending a half-hour watching it once I was done vacuuming. ^^; I wanted to see how it ended! Sue me!

Writing: After finally finishing my cleaning (and the Pulp Cthulhu with a snack), I managed to finish off Victor’s section of the Epilogue to “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” this afternoon. The final bit of that covered –

A) Victor being startled out of his piano playing by Alice asking him “...another bad dream?” and jumping from his seat to see both her and Smiler watching him from the doorway – Alice promptly apologized for scaring him, and Victor assured her it was fine while righting the bench (and feeling a bit of deja-vu because, yes, this WAS rather like how he met Victoria). He then apologized for waking her and Smiler up, stating that he’d just had to reassure himself that his hands were fine – Smiler assured him it was okay, and that there were worse things to wake up to than his piano playing. *nods* Looking on the bright side as always!

( Victor bemoans a stubborn nightmare and gets plenty of sympathy from his friends...and makes a decision regarding sharing his music with them )

YouTube: Saturday Nights are Cafae Latte Nights around here, as you all well know by this point – tonight’s mini-marathon included –

A) “CaFae Tales: Orangey & Appley (or: the White Dove)” – another entry in the “CaFae Latte cast tell each other fairy tales, folk stories, and ancient myths” mini-series that pops up from time to time! And this one was very appropriate to pop up in the month of spooks and scares, let me tell you… The video featured –

I. JC manning the Cafae, telling Nicole that they considered Cinderella to be the best fairy tale and complaining about how Disney didn’t have the stepfamily’s eyes scratched out by birds (or mice, they weren’t picky) at the end like in “the original” (AKA the Grimm version, which is very much NOT the original but we’ll let it slide), when the Wulver (Scottish werewolfy dude who runs a fish-based restaurant) showed up and asked if he wanted to know what they were discussing. JC told him their complaint about the Disney version of Cinderella’s stepfamily not getting maimed by wildlife (and thus not suffering any major consequences), prompting the Wulver to sigh about the old tales and how Disney does not do them justice. Nicole admitted that she could do without the bodily mutilation that JC was discussing, but agreed that she did not care for how “safe” Hollywood was these days, given that art was supposed to be dangerous and get people to ask questions. The Wulver then revealed that there was a Scottish Cinderella-esque tale that featured both murder and punishment, if they were interested – JC was immediately like “:D Go on…”

( Scottish fairy tales are apparently dark as shit, if you were wondering )

B) And three CaFae Latte shorts (I was hoping to watch more, but I just didn’t have the time after the above write-up):

I. “CaFae Latte: 10/10 glare” – featuring Lindsey and Erik visiting Mark at his foster home, with Lindsey noting that Mark’s first emancipation hearing was coming up and asking how it was going – Mark replied “it’s going” and said that he really hoped his father just let it happen, but he didn’t know for sure...and that that was really the worst part. Erik sympathized, nothing that it was one thing when you knew exactly where your abuser was and what they were doing, and another when they were out somewhere in the wild, with you sure that they were going to show up sometime to ruin your day but not when. Lindsey noted that was “why we have protection charms” and confirmed that Mark had the one Nicole had gave him –

And then Erik added that it was also why they had “overprotective foster fathers, lurking in the corner when guests show up.” Hudson told him that he knew the pair had been highly recommended by the other adults in Mark’s life, and that they were redeemed in the eyes of most people and society, but they were both ex-criminals who did shady shit. And that he wouldn’t be doing his job as a foster father if he just left “the impressionable 15-year-old” unsupervised with them. Mark responded, “So your solution is to glare from the corner?” –

Prompting Hudson to go “Yup” and Erik to note that it was a ten-out-of-ten glare. Lindsey agreed that she certainly had no notes – Hudson thanked them and said that he’d had a lot of practice, as some of his former fosters had had bad visits with biological relatives. And he was fine kicking those sorts out if the CPS agent was useless. He then launched into a story about how his wife once purposely burned lunch to irritate the sensitive nose of a former foster’s abuser and get him to leave earlier – Erik went “that’s awesome” while Mark facepalmed about his foster dad now bonding with these new adults. XD

( Rethu gets called a really nasty (but fortunately bleeped-out) word, and we learn what Nancy’s been up to )

Tumblr: I didn’t get a chance to do anything on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today other than keep up on my dash, but I did end up answering a question over on Valice Multiverse tonight – a follow-up to yesterday’s question about why more vampires don’t just try Dominating humans who see through the Masquerade into forgetting (and which my Malkavian!Alice answered with “not every vampire has Dominate, and learning it can be tricky given you have to find a vampire willing to teach you”), in fact! The anon came back this eve with “Counterpoint, why don’t Kindred who don’t or can’t do dominate just capture Kine who find out and take them to a Kindred who can?” –

To which Malk!Alice responded “because most Kindred are assholes.” XD Explaining more specifically that many vampires would see killing the human as the quickest and easiest solution, and that those would might be inclined to try out the anon’s plan would find themselves in the unpleasant position of having to owe the vampire who helped them a pretty fucking large favor. Especially if the Masquerade breach they had to cover up was their own. Throw in the risk of the mortal authorities getting involved if the capture doesn’t go well, and – yeah. Alice isn’t surprised a lot of Kindred don’t try the anon’s plan! *shakehead* It’s called the World Of Darkness for a reason, buddy.

*nods* Not too bad for a very distracted Saturday, I suppose. But now I very much have to go to bed, as it's starting to creep toward 2:30 AM. Tomorrow, not entirely sure what I'll be doing other than finishing off the tags on my latest entry into the Valicer Halloween Not-Incorrect Quotes and finishing up "They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman" -- depends on how focused I'm feeling! Though I am very much hoping Jon uploads "The Worst Wanderer" early enough for me to watch it with my workout again...keep your fingers crossed! Night all!

Yup, today's the day that, according to the timeline of the Fallout series, all the nuclear bombs got launched and wiped out large portions of the world. Fun, right? :p Well, playing in the resulting setting is, anyway -- I do enjoy my New Vegas adventures with Courier Victor. :) And my old Fallout 4 adventures with Sole Survivor Victor. :p Maybe one day I'll get back to those... We'll see how I feel after more New Vegas!

Anyway -- as the bombs did not actually fall today, I was able to get some stuff done:

Work: My last day at work was also the most boring, consisting entirely of –

A) Doing the GL in the morning – which, despite being mostly reversals (all the payments we moved yesterday), didn’t take as long as I thought it might

B) Spending the rest of the day noodling around with looking for duplicates and updating all the deceased people in a list of folks with the last name and occasionally looking up some online obituaries (as my coworker snagged the ones from the paper first)

C) And completing all the puzzles I stole from the paper yesterday, because I didn’t have anything else to do!

Yeah – kind of a long Friday, as you might expect! *sigh* But I’m out for the weekend, so yay for that.

Workout: My final fake bike ride of the week saw me pedal my way through the following –

A) The second 18 minutes of “Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer - Part 23 - The Highly Visible Man!” The latter half of The Adventures Of Useless Steve Trying To Complete The Wasteland Survival Guide For Moira featured –

I. Useless Steve making his way through the broken bow of the boat that makes up Rivet City to find a mysterious fellow called Pinkerton and learn the settlement’s true history! Which was quite the dangerous trip, as it involved:

a. Swimming through some flooded hallways at the bottom of the boat – fortunately, Steve was able to find the door to the area he needed pretty quickly and managed to make it up to the somewhat-less-wet upper levels without drowning even once

b. Taking on some mirelurks that had infested the area – The Mauler made short work of them, though Steve did take a few hits (and Jon learned that standing at a corner waiting for your enemy to come at you doesn’t always work) – good thing our boy carries a lot of stimpacks!

c. Getting past all the traps that Pinkerton had laid to discourage intruders – Steve managed to spot a frag mine trap in time to disable it (allowing him to open up the front door so he can just walk in normally if and when he chooses to visit again), but totally missed a tripwire in the “gas leak” hallway and thus got knocked down and set on fire by – whatever set off the gas leak, I’m not sure what it was. XD Again, good thing our boy carries a lot of stimpacks!

( It’s Useless Steve! Using all sorts of tricks to boost his Science and get the best version of the perk he wanted! )

B) “Call of Cthulhu: The Darkness Beneath The Hill - RPG Review” by Seth Skorkowsky! Featuring Seth and Jack The NPC talking about the very first game module in the “Doors To Darkness” collection, designed for beginning Keepers (GMs) to help ease them into running the game! “The Darkness Beneath The Hill” is all about the PCs going to meet with their friend Josh Winscott after he inherits a house in Providence and finds a mysterious tunnel under it that he believes was used to smuggle slaves back in the bad old days, and subsequently discovering a forgotten network of tunnels and caves below the streets of Providence, populated with serpent-people and the stunted sad creatures that are the descendants of the slaves and slavers said serpent-people captured to make their servants. It’s basically the CoC version of a dungeon crawl, making it ideal for Keepers and players who are used to D&D-style gameplay and thus would appreciate the familiar surroundings in the new system. :P Seth’s review included such highlights as:

I. Seth noting that, for some reason, the module does not actually have any way to encourage players (especially newbies) to go to the library and research stuff (which is THE activity in a CoC game), and suggesting that Keepers plant the seed in their players’ minds by having Josh talk about how he barely knows his own family’s history because his parents were ashamed of the fact that the Winscotts made their money from slavery, and how he should go to the library to look it up sometime (Jack, who had just commented on how he was looking forward to dungeon crawling and getting out of the library, looked a touch put out and sarcastically commented on how much he loved the Dewey Decimal system XD)

( Seth makes a few more nitpicks and tells a funny story, while Jack offers some post-session suggestions to new Keepers )

C) And, to fill out the final minute or so, “1900s evening dress/ ballgown | Edwardian Fashion” by The Sewlo Artist! Featuring Ivy breaking out the “bumblebee” yellow-striped-with-black-accents Victorian walking suit again while talking about how clothing was quite expensive at the turn of the century because of the sheer amount of fabric involved, and how a stylish woman would be expected to have an outfit for pretty much any and every occasion (going shopping, walking out and about, visiting friends, having friends visit her, etc). And how, as a result, a smart woman would try to maximize the use she could get out of her current clothes by using the same skirt with a few different bodices –

And then demonstrating by turning the 1897 Victorian walking skirt into an Edwardian-style ballgown just by removing the jacket and pairing the skirt with a new bodice made out of the same type of fabric with lacy black detailing on the top! :) It was very pretty – perfect for the dance floor! And a great example of how you can get a whole new outfit just by putting a different top on the same skirt. :) Fun stuff!

Writing: Hopped back into the Epilogue of “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” right after Game Night tonight (one game of Scrabble – I got quite lucky with my letter pulls and finding good places to put my words, and ended up winning with a score of 258! :D Though, admittedly, it would have been rather less if Mom hadn’t accidentally pointed out I could turn her “troll” into “trolley” for a Triple Word Score if I had the right letters at one point… :P), finishing up Alice’s section and starting Victor’s! Which involved –

A) June admitting that learning Alice and company stole those contracts from Wilson’s as cover for stealing back a list of union reps that Wilson himself had stolen from the workers so he could threaten their families made the whole thing sound a lot more noble...then wondering if Alice had done some sort of “reverse heist” to plant the papers in Silvestri’s Metal Shaping, as the Doskvol Illustrated had made it pretty clear they had the contracts. Alice said “sort of” –

And explained that she’d planted the contracts in the pocket of a Silvestri’s guard who happened to be “otherwise occupied” at the Mangled Mermaid (after a tip-off from Nanny, who felt bad about letting slip that Alice came to visit her before the robbery when the Bluecoats showed up to question her about it), along with a note stating they were “from a friend.” Before admitting that she’d fully expected the guy to be suspicious and look more into where the contracts came from, instead of just accepting it and immediately trying to ransom them back to Wilson’s. “Standards for guards are falling all over.” XD They really are!

( June and Alice bond a little over Alice taking to the thief lifestyle like a turtle to water...then we have some mood whiplash as poor Victor has a nightmare )

Tumblr: Didn’t have anything going on over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) tonight, but I did have one anon ask to throw into tomorrow’s queue over on Valice Multiverse – “How come whenever someone discovers the masquerade, we kill them instead of just dominating them into forgetting?” Naturally, I had my Londerland Bloodlines Malkavian!Alice field this one, with her pointing out that the simplest answer was a lot of vampires just straight up didn’t have Dominate – only Ventrue and Tremere got it as a starting discipline (at least as per VTMB rules). And while other vampires could learn it, that involved finding a vampire willing to teach them – and in Alice’s own experience, vampires hate telling other vampires anything, even the basics of their existence. Though she did make it clear that she felt there should be some steps in between “let me Dominate this person into forgetting what they saw” and “let’s just kill the witness and be done with it” – she just couldn’t control other vampires! *shrug* What can one do… I admit, I was briefly tempted to have Malkavian!Smiler stick their head in and talk about how a small subset of Malkavians also get Dominate, but I ended up thinking that would unnecessarily complicate the answer. Maybe they’ll get a chance to pop up in the next ask that comes for this lot!

*nods* I'm pretty satisfied with that -- and watching the second half of the latest "Worst Wanderer" while wearing my "Intelligence" Fallout 4 SPECIAL shirt during my workout probably counts as celebrating Fallout day. :P As for tomorrow -- well, it's a Cleaning Saturday, WITH Laundry, so I know what I'll be doing most of the day. Only other plans are to continue working on "They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman" (since I'm SO close to being done with the first draft) and watching more CaFae Latte stuff (I have a "Tales" to catch up on as well as my usual shorts, so that'll be fun). We'll see how the day goes -- night all!