An Accomplished Tuesday
Dec. 8th, 2020 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickLet's take a look at the to-do list:
Listen to my two "Wyrd Sister Podcast" episodes: Check! Hogfather and Jingo – uploaded in the wrong order, though I’m not sure why (I suspect Manning simply forgot she hadn’t put the former up), so I’m a bit late on actually listening to them. Worth it, though – I like their chat about the Discworld books – what works, what doesn’t, what weird parallels might exist that you perhaps haven’t noticed! Like in Hogfather, Manning pointed out that Death’s famous speech about how the universe doesn’t naturally contain justice, mercy, or any of that – human BELIEF makes them real – kind of got a “rough draft” with Dorfl more or less going, “Okay, you grind me and one of the humans accusing me of not being alive down to powder, and see if you can detect any life in either of us” back in Feet of Clay. I’d forgotten entirely about that bit! There was also a lot of talk about how creepy Hogfather can be (childhood fears are a powerful thing, after all), and how the weird digressions in the plot and the character conversations sometimes honestly just add to the charm of the book (with a specific mention of somebody arguing that bananas are actually a type of fish, contrasted with the real-world argument that a banana tree is honestly a giant herb, because botanical classifications are, as Manning put it, the same never-ending argument as “is a hot dog a sandwich?” XD). Jingo was also a favorite – the police actually actively working against racial profiling and trying to stop violence was noted as a nice feature. There were a few thoughts about how Reg Shoe’s over-enthusiastic campaigning for equal rights for the “differently alive” is a bit in bad taste (I think this book was written during a time when it was okay to make fun of people for being too “politically correct,” and Reg is probably a reflection of that – he gets better in later books), Angua getting at least partially “damsel in distressed” (fair; I always wanted her to get at least a punch in on Amed for the silver collar business), and if Nobby’s time in drag could be seen as transphobic (they came down on the “we personally don’t think it is, as it’s integral to his character growth in seeing women more as people, but we’re willing to hear arguments”), but overall it was a win for Manning and Dani. Looking forward to the next one in the line when it comes out next month!
Catch up on GrayStillPlays: Check! We had --
1. Started off with an episode of Happy Wheels, so starting strong! :D More bottle flips (he managed to win one board WITHOUT unlocking the win area!); more bottle runs (or, more accurately, bottle/watermelon/radio runs); and a super-long multi-challenge board that had a multitude of ways to kill him, mainly through head smashing. XD It was delightful, as this game always is.
2. Then onto more Turbo Dismount, with more impossible challenges! :D Slice and dice your way through multiple opposing lanes of traffic on a shopping cart! Avoid the twitching blades of a horizontal mass of terrible wind turbines on a motorcycle! SMASH YOUR WAY THROUGH FROGGER ON A STEEP HILL IN A MONSTER TRUCK! Gray did it all – and Gray did it WELL! Except by Nicolas Rage’s standards, of course. XD
3. Then time for more GTA V impossible stunt races! With more wall rides – and when we start off with a CORKSCREW one. . . Ooooh, but they got worse. They got SO MUCH WORSE. How much worse? Well, how about multiple corkscrews? Or boosts in the middle with jumps? Or one that’s a simple curve but about a THIRD of the size of your average wall ride wall? Poor Gray, he was SUFFERING by the end. . .but he beat them all. Can’t take that away from him. XD
Better yet, as a bonus, I managed to slip in today’s Kevin upload of Among Us afterward! More friend-making, via venting and encouraging others to vent. There was a false start in bugged lobby at first (started with three people, immediately won because no impostor player), but eventually the Pickle Alliance was formed, thanks to Kevin befriending a player named Pickle who always wanted people to form a circle around them. Eventually the red player was added to the team, and then EVERYONE started hanging around them in a desperate attempt to prove their innocence, I guess. XD Good times, good times. . .also, Kevin pretended to be a gamer father (to a 23-year-old) occasionally, just to add to the confusion. XD So I'm officially all caught up on my subscriptions after this, w000~
Another workout: Check -- another round on the bike this afternoon, after my dad had finished working out! And another ride means another round with Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Finished off episode 25 with Jon taking on the Boston Mayoral Shelter – both because it has good loot, and because it has some guaranteed synth spawns for fusion cells! Some mines took out most of the synths as Jon explored, and he was able to shoot up the rest with little issue. Thus restocked, he took a vertibird back to home base – and into a Super Mutant attack, which was marvelous. Fortunately he, Dogmeat, and Sheffield were able to kill them all (including a legendary!), and Jon was able to return home, repair his power armor a bit, and deliver the next relay beacon to the returned Ada to get the next part of the quest. Episode 26 continued with the Automatron stuff, with Jon returning to the relay station (and nearly getting toasted by setting off a trap) and venturing inside to take care of the Rust Devils within. Careful shots with a silenced weapon, along with some mines at his fall-back point for back-up, ended up making short work of robots and humans, and he was able to make it to the final Robobrain and the final “boss” of the area with little issue (and little good legendary loot, sadly). Left him collecting the “Automatron” Pip-Boy game from a little bedroom off the boss room before he kicked that off! Wonder if he ever did do that video of the Pip-Boy games he expressed an interest in showing off. . .
Another gift fic: Check, did one for a tumblr friend where I have a theme going with my latest fics for her. Slowly but surely knocking them all off the list. . .
More Fallout 4: Check! Got in about an hour -- most of which was spent trying to kill that first damn Deathclaw. >.< The main problem was Dogmeat, honestly -- whenever I got on the ground to try and kill the damn thing after taking out the raiders, Dogmeat would get hurt -- and if I tried to go and stimpack him, he wiggles around so much that I wouldn't be able to do it quickly, and I'd promptly get caught and torn up by the Deathclaw. FINALLY managed it by taking out all the raiders from the roof, jumping down while the Deathclaw was at the far end of the street, telling Dogmeat to STAY, then luring the Deathclaw over and pumping it full of lead from within one of the storefronts. A VERY hard-won victory, let me tell you! Then I met back up with Preston and the team, walked with them over to Sanctuary, and got the first couple of Minutemen quests from Preston and the "Sanctuary" quest from Sturges. Victor's gonna be doing all the crafting next time -- I've already started him off with his first backpack, as he's gotten Armorer 1 thanks to a level-up. :D
So yeah, good productive day on those fronts! Kinda wish I'd had more time for my game, but long podcasts and the need for exercise forbid. Maybe this upcoming weekend. . .
Right now, though, it's time to finish up my Victor Luvs Alice and Valice Multiverse queues (should be set straight through Saturday with the latter, yay!), answer comments, then head to bed. Back to work tomorrow, meeeh. :( We're all kind of hoping I'll be switching back to working from home sooner rather than later -- we'll see, honestly. At least I only have three days this week. *sigh* Night all!
Listen to my two "Wyrd Sister Podcast" episodes: Check! Hogfather and Jingo – uploaded in the wrong order, though I’m not sure why (I suspect Manning simply forgot she hadn’t put the former up), so I’m a bit late on actually listening to them. Worth it, though – I like their chat about the Discworld books – what works, what doesn’t, what weird parallels might exist that you perhaps haven’t noticed! Like in Hogfather, Manning pointed out that Death’s famous speech about how the universe doesn’t naturally contain justice, mercy, or any of that – human BELIEF makes them real – kind of got a “rough draft” with Dorfl more or less going, “Okay, you grind me and one of the humans accusing me of not being alive down to powder, and see if you can detect any life in either of us” back in Feet of Clay. I’d forgotten entirely about that bit! There was also a lot of talk about how creepy Hogfather can be (childhood fears are a powerful thing, after all), and how the weird digressions in the plot and the character conversations sometimes honestly just add to the charm of the book (with a specific mention of somebody arguing that bananas are actually a type of fish, contrasted with the real-world argument that a banana tree is honestly a giant herb, because botanical classifications are, as Manning put it, the same never-ending argument as “is a hot dog a sandwich?” XD). Jingo was also a favorite – the police actually actively working against racial profiling and trying to stop violence was noted as a nice feature. There were a few thoughts about how Reg Shoe’s over-enthusiastic campaigning for equal rights for the “differently alive” is a bit in bad taste (I think this book was written during a time when it was okay to make fun of people for being too “politically correct,” and Reg is probably a reflection of that – he gets better in later books), Angua getting at least partially “damsel in distressed” (fair; I always wanted her to get at least a punch in on Amed for the silver collar business), and if Nobby’s time in drag could be seen as transphobic (they came down on the “we personally don’t think it is, as it’s integral to his character growth in seeing women more as people, but we’re willing to hear arguments”), but overall it was a win for Manning and Dani. Looking forward to the next one in the line when it comes out next month!
Catch up on GrayStillPlays: Check! We had --
1. Started off with an episode of Happy Wheels, so starting strong! :D More bottle flips (he managed to win one board WITHOUT unlocking the win area!); more bottle runs (or, more accurately, bottle/watermelon/radio runs); and a super-long multi-challenge board that had a multitude of ways to kill him, mainly through head smashing. XD It was delightful, as this game always is.
2. Then onto more Turbo Dismount, with more impossible challenges! :D Slice and dice your way through multiple opposing lanes of traffic on a shopping cart! Avoid the twitching blades of a horizontal mass of terrible wind turbines on a motorcycle! SMASH YOUR WAY THROUGH FROGGER ON A STEEP HILL IN A MONSTER TRUCK! Gray did it all – and Gray did it WELL! Except by Nicolas Rage’s standards, of course. XD
3. Then time for more GTA V impossible stunt races! With more wall rides – and when we start off with a CORKSCREW one. . . Ooooh, but they got worse. They got SO MUCH WORSE. How much worse? Well, how about multiple corkscrews? Or boosts in the middle with jumps? Or one that’s a simple curve but about a THIRD of the size of your average wall ride wall? Poor Gray, he was SUFFERING by the end. . .but he beat them all. Can’t take that away from him. XD
Better yet, as a bonus, I managed to slip in today’s Kevin upload of Among Us afterward! More friend-making, via venting and encouraging others to vent. There was a false start in bugged lobby at first (started with three people, immediately won because no impostor player), but eventually the Pickle Alliance was formed, thanks to Kevin befriending a player named Pickle who always wanted people to form a circle around them. Eventually the red player was added to the team, and then EVERYONE started hanging around them in a desperate attempt to prove their innocence, I guess. XD Good times, good times. . .also, Kevin pretended to be a gamer father (to a 23-year-old) occasionally, just to add to the confusion. XD So I'm officially all caught up on my subscriptions after this, w000~
Another workout: Check -- another round on the bike this afternoon, after my dad had finished working out! And another ride means another round with Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Finished off episode 25 with Jon taking on the Boston Mayoral Shelter – both because it has good loot, and because it has some guaranteed synth spawns for fusion cells! Some mines took out most of the synths as Jon explored, and he was able to shoot up the rest with little issue. Thus restocked, he took a vertibird back to home base – and into a Super Mutant attack, which was marvelous. Fortunately he, Dogmeat, and Sheffield were able to kill them all (including a legendary!), and Jon was able to return home, repair his power armor a bit, and deliver the next relay beacon to the returned Ada to get the next part of the quest. Episode 26 continued with the Automatron stuff, with Jon returning to the relay station (and nearly getting toasted by setting off a trap) and venturing inside to take care of the Rust Devils within. Careful shots with a silenced weapon, along with some mines at his fall-back point for back-up, ended up making short work of robots and humans, and he was able to make it to the final Robobrain and the final “boss” of the area with little issue (and little good legendary loot, sadly). Left him collecting the “Automatron” Pip-Boy game from a little bedroom off the boss room before he kicked that off! Wonder if he ever did do that video of the Pip-Boy games he expressed an interest in showing off. . .
Another gift fic: Check, did one for a tumblr friend where I have a theme going with my latest fics for her. Slowly but surely knocking them all off the list. . .
More Fallout 4: Check! Got in about an hour -- most of which was spent trying to kill that first damn Deathclaw. >.< The main problem was Dogmeat, honestly -- whenever I got on the ground to try and kill the damn thing after taking out the raiders, Dogmeat would get hurt -- and if I tried to go and stimpack him, he wiggles around so much that I wouldn't be able to do it quickly, and I'd promptly get caught and torn up by the Deathclaw. FINALLY managed it by taking out all the raiders from the roof, jumping down while the Deathclaw was at the far end of the street, telling Dogmeat to STAY, then luring the Deathclaw over and pumping it full of lead from within one of the storefronts. A VERY hard-won victory, let me tell you! Then I met back up with Preston and the team, walked with them over to Sanctuary, and got the first couple of Minutemen quests from Preston and the "Sanctuary" quest from Sturges. Victor's gonna be doing all the crafting next time -- I've already started him off with his first backpack, as he's gotten Armorer 1 thanks to a level-up. :D
So yeah, good productive day on those fronts! Kinda wish I'd had more time for my game, but long podcasts and the need for exercise forbid. Maybe this upcoming weekend. . .
Right now, though, it's time to finish up my Victor Luvs Alice and Valice Multiverse queues (should be set straight through Saturday with the latter, yay!), answer comments, then head to bed. Back to work tomorrow, meeeh. :( We're all kind of hoping I'll be switching back to working from home sooner rather than later -- we'll see, honestly. At least I only have three days this week. *sigh* Night all!
