Crossover Chick (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crossover_chick) wrote2021-02-01 10:50 pm
crossover_chick) wrote2021-02-01 10:50 pm
Mostly A Day Off
For some reason, my work never saw fit to actually update itself on the Closing and Delays website, but fortunately one of my coworkers texted me this morning about if I'd checked my work e-mail -- after she didn't immediately reply to my text back asking why (apparently she went to the grocery store), I lugged out my laptop to check myself, and it turns out they'd sent an e-mail stating that the building was closed, and those who could should work from home. Fine, but JEEZ -- have a thought for people who might NOT be able to check their work e-mail from home! Why are they suddenly allergic to the Closings list, seriously. . .
Anyway, I quickly realized I wasn't going to have much luck working from home -- everything I was working on is, well, at work. I called up my supervisor to let him know that, and he told me not to worry too much about it -- just keep an eye on my e-mail and put out any immediate fires if possible. So that's basically what I did -- kept the laptop up and plugged in, and checked it periodically. Only had two items of note -- two voicemails that I could listen to, with roster updates. Did both right after lunch. Other than that -- yeah, nothing. Fine by me! And tomorrow is going to be a late start -- opening at 10 AM. This seems reasonable, given that the actual impact of the storm was rather -- odd. We up here didn't get much snow at all -- it started later than predicted, and Dad doesn't think we got more than an inch of additional build-up. But in other parts of the state, they got like eight inches! It's supposed to change over to rain at some point (we're having a slight warmish spike as the week goes on, before it plunges back into the 20s next week) -- I just hope the roads don't get all icy overnight. That'll be fun to navigate if they do! *wince* But having some extra time in the morning tomorrow will be nice -- plan to sleep in a tiny bit (like maybe 45 minutes or so). Might as well, right?
Today was pretty damn nice too, frankly. Look at how I smacked down this to-do list:
1. Keep Up With YouTube Subscriptions: ULTRA-CHECK! Not only did I catch up on everything in my Subscriptions, I also caught up with everything in my Watch Later, plus some videos uploaded today! I have genuinely watched it all! :D
A) Actually started with a new onlyabidoang video I slapped in the Watch Later a bit early – his overview of the January Sims 4 patch that added the Scared emotion. Not much in the way of truly new information, but it was good to see some specific examples of how the emotion works in-game, along with the associated “Brave” reward trait, and some illustrations of some of the bugfixes. :) Abi’s good like that!
B) Then it was over to the James Turner “3 Brothers” video I couldn’t get to yesterday – after some fun with green screens and nearly wrecking his girlfriend’s set-up with his standing desk, we proceeded onto the “meat” of the episode: mostly trying to level up Brodie in vampire power so he could unlock sunlight resistance and, you know, stop nearly dying every time he has to go out in the daylight! Unfortunately, it seems that experience gain is limited when you’re either burning in the sunlight, thirsty as all get out, or dazed from previous fights, so James’s initial plan – fight with his uncle Caleb – didn’t go very well. Eventually James resorted to repairing the relationship while waiting for Brodie to be less Dazed, then sneakily taking ranks of Vampiric Strength to start winning some fights and really getting the power points. Brodie didn’t level up this episode, though, mostly because Isaiah and Candle have needs that need to be attended to as well. On the plus side, now Brodie can summon Bonehilda for a little extra help around the house! And James finally let them mop up the slime creature puddle so they’d stop slipping in it and being filthy. On the minus side, giving the specters gifts isn’t working out that great, their power has been cut off for nonpayment of bills, they don’t have enough money to pay said bills, and – oh yeah – SHE’S HERE. I’m not sure who SHE is, but I seem to remember the pack lore talking about an ex-girlfriend of Guidry’s who might be a vengeful ghost these days. . . This should be interesting.
C) Then, over on Call Me Kevin, Kevin visited AI Dungeon to make stories with an AI! It was – well. First go-round, Kevin and the AI wrote the story of punkman in a cyberpunk setting. Said story include Punkman trying to eat just about everything; Punkman being attacked by spiders; Punkman visiting a diner with a broken window; Punkman calling his brother Al to fix the window; Al being eaten by a dog; Punkman punching the waitress after shitting on the floor of the diner; Stuart Little showing up as a mouse mutant; Punkman eating Stuart Little, only for him to tear his way out of Punkman’s stomach mid-conversation with sentient rat poison; Stuart’s parents dying and Punkman attending the funeral; Stuart dying and Punkman becoming ruler of the world and burning it to ash. And then the SECOND story was supposed to be a haunted house story – except the ghost, “Baddie,” ditched Kevin pretty early on thanks to not being able to handle the weirdness and Kevin’s new obsession with Stuart Little, and the story took a sharp swerve into Kevin “pranking” his mom by faking a kidnapping and then essentially kidnapping HER at gunpoint – and taking her to Hogwarts. There Kevin and his father had a magic duel, which Kevin won through editing the story. XD Kevin then proceeded to steal and eat a baby, go back home, become a pirate with the ghost pirate skull of his father – only the ghost pirate was actually a ghost pirate SHIP, forcing Kevin to learn the definition of the word “chandlery” (where ships are made). So Kevin prepared to set sail, only for a kraken to appear – and become Stuart Little. So Kevin walked away and died of old age on a porch. XD I think Kevin may have met his match in chaos with this AI, and he’s played HOW many chaos mods at this point? Oh man. . .
D) Then, oh ho ho, look what came out just today – more OXBox “3 Ways To Play” for Hitman 3! And it’s the English Murder Mystery Level! :D Our trio ventured forth inside the grounds of Thornby Manor and proceeded to show off how they played:
1. Andy managed to get himself the detective outfit and proceeded to run through the actual murder mystery you can solve of the target’s brother, Zachary. I of course already saw Kevin do this, so I knew who the murderer was, but Andy’s investigation revealed extras secrets that would allow 47 to also frame the butler or pass Zachary off as a genuine suicide! Andy was determined to find the real killer, though, and kept scanning for clues until he did. He got the file from his target as payment, managed to sneakily push her off a balcony while all her guards were looking the other way, then escaped by boat! Five stars, Silent Assassin. Usual excellence, Andy.
2. Jane wanted to be the detective, but was unable to lure the guy – she instead became a gardener and roamed the grounds until she stumbled across a different opportunity. Namely, another fuse box puzzle! XD This one involved getting a fuse to power a camera and lighting set-up for a family portrait the target, Alexa, was having with her children and suchlike. Jane disguised herself as the photographer (playing round robin with a guard as she did), got the fuse, took a test picture, then set up a water-and-electricity trap as the family came down. One picture with the target on a metal chair later, and we had a lovely shot of Alexa being electrocuted. XD Jane promptly scarpered, grabbed an outdoor security detail outfit, snuck into the house when that proved to be insufficient to get her inside the mansion, grabbed a staff uniform by playing with electricity again (this time turning it off), then found the target’s office, worked out the code to her safe, grabbed her file, and escaped on her motorbike! Five stars, Silent Assassin! Good work, Jane. :)
3. And Mike arrived as the Riddler (no, not really, there’s just a new white suit with a green shirt that he wanted to try out), subdued the guards outside the gate for one of their outfits, subdued some of the INDOOR guards to get inside the mansion after he too discovered outdoor security wasn’t allowed inside (good on him for not randomly snapping necks as he did – he was a good boy and used coins and hammers), wandered around trying desperately to avoid noticers for a while with his shotgun, accidentally found his way to Alexa’s office, got himself a hunting rifle, hid upstairs as his target entered the office, shot down the chandelier over her for an accident kill, managed to successfully hide from his pursuers, destroyed some priceless artifacts in the office looking for the safe, worked out the code, grabbed the file, legged it outside, changed back into the Riddler, and escaped via powersliding on his motorbike.
Five stars. Silent Assassin.
I’M SERIOUS. The guy SHOT DOWN A CHANDELIER WITH A HUNTING RIFLE and got away scot-free. He was as shocked as we are. XD This is almost as good as the time he got a damn near perfect kill throwing an exploding duck at that one elusive target like five seconds into the mission. XD
E) Oh hey, look at that – I also had two Atop the Fourth Walls to catch up on! Mostly because I never got a chance to watch last week’s on the actual weekend, and Linkara actually managed to upload the one for this week today. And since the second one was surprisingly short, I decided I could try to watch them both. So, in order:
1. “Justice League 1x01-3: Secret Origins” – Linkara reviews the first three episodes of the Justice League cartoon for a Patron! Basically, how the team got together in the cartoon was “weird alien race which previously wiped out the Martians sets its sights on Earth after an astronaut unknowingly opens up their containment center; Superman is not allowed to be too super to stop the threat on his own due to aging; Wonder Woman has a weird “rebelling against her mother thing” going on; Batman is most awesome off-camera; and poor J’onn The Martian Manhunter suffers some pretty terrible body horror before kicking ass.” It’s a good three-parter, even with some of the weaker bits, and it was fun to see Linkara doing his Batman impersonation again (especially because he was wearing a Superman suit during the review XD).
2. “The Star Wars #6” – the sixth issue of the comic series based on the original script to Star Wars: A New Hope! This one was mainly focused around action set-pieces – Annikin taking on the proto-TIE fighters, then getting blasted out into space and needing to be saved by Talking R2-D2 when the shields on his gunner pod fail; the group needing to abandon ship after steering it into an asteroid field to get away from the fighters and taking heavy damage in the process, leading to Captain Whitsun sacrificing himself for Proto-Leia when their escape pod doesn’t launch; everyone crash-landing on proto-Yavin and Leia getting captured by proto-Boba Fett and some other bounty hunters – Annikin tries to take them on, but fails; Luke and the others finding Owen Lars and learning about an Imperial Outpost on the planet they can take on; and Annikin being saved by proto-Wookie/Ewoks and fighting one of them to gain their respect. It’s very very weird, but hardly the worst thing ever produced by the Star Wars franchise. (You all can argue among yourselves about the actual worst thing.)
F) And finally, time to catch up on GrayStillPlays! We had:
1. From yesterday, a new game – Descenders! It’s essentially “Fall Guys/Wipeout on a mountain bike.” And it has impossible maps, so of course Gray Must Play. He did two obstacle courses in this episode, both of them with terrible jumps, terrible tight ropes, and terrible sweepy things, though the second had more of each and lots and lots of weird stuff that looked like congealed meat formed into tubes. O.o Gray, of course, fucked up a lot and fell through the board to hell more times than any of us could count, but he did eventually beat both. And so a new game joins the ranks of “things that will cause Gray to lose sanity. . .”
2. And from today, we’re back to Guts And Glory, aka 3-D Happy Wheels, for more impossible maps over there! And damn, did we have some doozies coming at Gray this time. Death runs full of spiked tighrope runs, dangling meat hooks, and spinning blades all over the place! Terrible parkour with a thousand arrows being shot at your balls! The “Festival of Blood” featuring more buzzsaws than you could shake a stick at, PLUS a variety of yeety sledgehammers! This thing is not only three times more D than Happy Wheels, it’s three times more sadistic! And yet Gray beat all the challenges. He puts himself through so much for our pleasure.
2. Work on “In A World Of His Own”: Check! Rewrote the opening page today, tightening up some stuff and changing the location a tad – I originally had Victor and Alice closer to the waterfall that plunges the river into the ravine Victor accidentally falls in, but decided it was unrealistic for Victor to not hear it (even in his own dream world) and just had them be further along the river. Still got Snarks, though, so plenty of opportunities to make sure Victor at least gets wet. XD Because for some reason that became a running theme in later chapters, so I’m just embracing it for the story. XD
3.Get in a workout: Check – started episode 48 of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! We rejoined Grills in Acadia, the synth refuge on The Island, wandering around and picking up sidequests for people. Got one from Faraday, DiMA’s loyal assistant, sending Grills to a wrecked ship in the south to find some storage drives that were supposed to be delivered; and one from Chase, which I guess is the third-in-command in the refuge, asking him to locate a lost synth (and revealing that Brooks, in Far Harbor itself, is apparently a synth! I thought he was just the local merchant). With those secured, Grills went and talked with Kasumi herself – he tried to tell her that she was just confused, but she insisted that it was better for her to be here trying to find answers than back home feeling like she didn’t belong.
She was, however, willing to let Grills in on a secret – namely, that something weird has been going on with DiMA, Faraday, and Chase. Kasumi was allowed to help with the computers that keep a bunch of DiMA’s memories on file, and she found some creepy stuff, like death counts from a nuclear annihilation scenario for the Island. She wanted to know the truth, and said that the trio have regular meetings near a storage room that would be perfect for eavesdropping. As Grills already had the key, he said he’d go in there and listen in. Jon admitted he wasn’t sure if this would work (apparently that interaction was bugged at first, and in “No Guns” he just went and talked with DiMA directly), but he was able to sit and wait, and hear DiMA, Faraday, and Chase talk about the rising tensions between the Far Harbor citizens and the Children of Atom, with Acadia stuck in the middle. Apparently, in a show of good faith in the past, DiMA gave the Children his old sub base. . .and left a bunch of his old memory storage discs inside. Chase wanted to go in and retrieve them (and decode them with the help of a program Faraday was writing), but DiMA was worried it would spark off total war. Once they were done talking, Grills went and snatched the program holotape from Faraday’s desk and told Kasumi, who said she’d help out as she could once they got the memory banks back.
That, however, is main quest stuff, and best left for another day. Jon decided that he wanted instead to go back up north, as he still had to find the body of Harold (the guy who went out to fix the Fog Condensers on the road to the water purifiers) and report in with some people at Far Harbor – and also set up Longfellow’s cabin as a base. So he and Nick hit the road again! Grills actually found the water purifiers FIRST, but was unable to activate them as he hadn’t found Harold (game won’t let you do the quest backward!). So they continued onward, and found a location that Jon hadn’t been in before – Beaver Creek Lanes! He’d previously thought this was just the name of the road he was on, but nope – fortunately, his viewers informed him this was a nice little prewar bowling alley to explore! :D And explore Jon did, killing some ghouls (one of which he basically STOOD RIGHT ON TOP OF – yup, good old -1 Perception Jon! XD Though he did get a nice Deadeye Hunting Rifle legendary drop), poking into some terminals, and picking up everyone’s favorite impractical Fat Man mod, The Striker! Shoots special modified bowling balls, was made as a gift for an injured veteran who loved bowling. Not great in a fight, but still a fun weapon to have around. Jon grabbed it, then finally found Harold and grabbed his “Fog Condenser Components” to fix up the Condensers on the way back to the water purifiers. Ended my watch time right before he fixed up the last one, which he fully expected to spawn ten million Mirelurks or something. We’ll see if he’s right next time!
4. Do my best to complete the “Pub, Quickly” achievement in Untitled Goose Game and complete the game: Check! Though it took some fucking doing, let me tell you. About two and a half solid hours (split pre-and-post lunch) of finagling the pub to-do list to get it done before the church bells rang. The main problems were getting the toy boat (you don’t need to hold onto it for long, but actually getting the water level to where you can grab it can be a pain in the tail feathers) and figuring out the best way to lure the burly man back to have a bucket dumped on his head (you have to make sure the tomato is far enough back that he’ll go to the back area’s box instead of the two in the front area; you have to make sure enough people aren’t distracted and pushing each other around the map so that routines aren’t too disrupted; you have to make sure he isn’t distracted by other things; AND you have to make sure the ENTIRE sequence plays out before the church bells ring – I had TWO near-misses where the end of the animation was just as the bells ran out!). Woof! Though I did discover that, if you’re chased out the back gate, a reset will put you BEHIND the pub, meaning you can avoid having to figure out how to sneak in quickly as going in the back way will also cross off “get into the pub.” At any rate, I DID manage to do it eventually, and claimed my crown prize! All achievements unlocked, all to-do list items crossed off, game officially done! :)
5. Start designing Valicetines for this year: Check! In fact, I FINISHED designing my Valicetines this morning! Went through my Sims 4 screenshots and chose four pics from my recent vacation to Sulani with the Newcrest Liddell-Van Dorts to use (it was going to be three, but I decided to do two variations on a fishing-themed one, since they did a lot of that on vacation), then – still inspired – grabbed an old photo mashup from the archives and turned that into a Valicetine too. :D So I am well-prepared for the 14th! :)
Yeah, look at THAT. :D Admittedly, this is me working on an unexpected mostly-day-off where I woke up early and thus had some more time to fit in long YouTube videos and the like, but still. I am satisfied. :) Apart from my extreme annoyance at my job for forcing me to log into my work e-mail early, good start to February! :p
Now, of course, I still do need to answer my final DW comment, and do my best to get into bed at a halfway-decent hour, because tomorrow is almost certainly a workday, even if it is an abbreviated one. Still, the more time spent away from my office, the better, in my opinion. This just makes the weekend come quicker. :P Night all, hope you're staying safe!
Anyway, I quickly realized I wasn't going to have much luck working from home -- everything I was working on is, well, at work. I called up my supervisor to let him know that, and he told me not to worry too much about it -- just keep an eye on my e-mail and put out any immediate fires if possible. So that's basically what I did -- kept the laptop up and plugged in, and checked it periodically. Only had two items of note -- two voicemails that I could listen to, with roster updates. Did both right after lunch. Other than that -- yeah, nothing. Fine by me! And tomorrow is going to be a late start -- opening at 10 AM. This seems reasonable, given that the actual impact of the storm was rather -- odd. We up here didn't get much snow at all -- it started later than predicted, and Dad doesn't think we got more than an inch of additional build-up. But in other parts of the state, they got like eight inches! It's supposed to change over to rain at some point (we're having a slight warmish spike as the week goes on, before it plunges back into the 20s next week) -- I just hope the roads don't get all icy overnight. That'll be fun to navigate if they do! *wince* But having some extra time in the morning tomorrow will be nice -- plan to sleep in a tiny bit (like maybe 45 minutes or so). Might as well, right?
Today was pretty damn nice too, frankly. Look at how I smacked down this to-do list:
1. Keep Up With YouTube Subscriptions: ULTRA-CHECK! Not only did I catch up on everything in my Subscriptions, I also caught up with everything in my Watch Later, plus some videos uploaded today! I have genuinely watched it all! :D
A) Actually started with a new onlyabidoang video I slapped in the Watch Later a bit early – his overview of the January Sims 4 patch that added the Scared emotion. Not much in the way of truly new information, but it was good to see some specific examples of how the emotion works in-game, along with the associated “Brave” reward trait, and some illustrations of some of the bugfixes. :) Abi’s good like that!
B) Then it was over to the James Turner “3 Brothers” video I couldn’t get to yesterday – after some fun with green screens and nearly wrecking his girlfriend’s set-up with his standing desk, we proceeded onto the “meat” of the episode: mostly trying to level up Brodie in vampire power so he could unlock sunlight resistance and, you know, stop nearly dying every time he has to go out in the daylight! Unfortunately, it seems that experience gain is limited when you’re either burning in the sunlight, thirsty as all get out, or dazed from previous fights, so James’s initial plan – fight with his uncle Caleb – didn’t go very well. Eventually James resorted to repairing the relationship while waiting for Brodie to be less Dazed, then sneakily taking ranks of Vampiric Strength to start winning some fights and really getting the power points. Brodie didn’t level up this episode, though, mostly because Isaiah and Candle have needs that need to be attended to as well. On the plus side, now Brodie can summon Bonehilda for a little extra help around the house! And James finally let them mop up the slime creature puddle so they’d stop slipping in it and being filthy. On the minus side, giving the specters gifts isn’t working out that great, their power has been cut off for nonpayment of bills, they don’t have enough money to pay said bills, and – oh yeah – SHE’S HERE. I’m not sure who SHE is, but I seem to remember the pack lore talking about an ex-girlfriend of Guidry’s who might be a vengeful ghost these days. . . This should be interesting.
C) Then, over on Call Me Kevin, Kevin visited AI Dungeon to make stories with an AI! It was – well. First go-round, Kevin and the AI wrote the story of punkman in a cyberpunk setting. Said story include Punkman trying to eat just about everything; Punkman being attacked by spiders; Punkman visiting a diner with a broken window; Punkman calling his brother Al to fix the window; Al being eaten by a dog; Punkman punching the waitress after shitting on the floor of the diner; Stuart Little showing up as a mouse mutant; Punkman eating Stuart Little, only for him to tear his way out of Punkman’s stomach mid-conversation with sentient rat poison; Stuart’s parents dying and Punkman attending the funeral; Stuart dying and Punkman becoming ruler of the world and burning it to ash. And then the SECOND story was supposed to be a haunted house story – except the ghost, “Baddie,” ditched Kevin pretty early on thanks to not being able to handle the weirdness and Kevin’s new obsession with Stuart Little, and the story took a sharp swerve into Kevin “pranking” his mom by faking a kidnapping and then essentially kidnapping HER at gunpoint – and taking her to Hogwarts. There Kevin and his father had a magic duel, which Kevin won through editing the story. XD Kevin then proceeded to steal and eat a baby, go back home, become a pirate with the ghost pirate skull of his father – only the ghost pirate was actually a ghost pirate SHIP, forcing Kevin to learn the definition of the word “chandlery” (where ships are made). So Kevin prepared to set sail, only for a kraken to appear – and become Stuart Little. So Kevin walked away and died of old age on a porch. XD I think Kevin may have met his match in chaos with this AI, and he’s played HOW many chaos mods at this point? Oh man. . .
D) Then, oh ho ho, look what came out just today – more OXBox “3 Ways To Play” for Hitman 3! And it’s the English Murder Mystery Level! :D Our trio ventured forth inside the grounds of Thornby Manor and proceeded to show off how they played:
1. Andy managed to get himself the detective outfit and proceeded to run through the actual murder mystery you can solve of the target’s brother, Zachary. I of course already saw Kevin do this, so I knew who the murderer was, but Andy’s investigation revealed extras secrets that would allow 47 to also frame the butler or pass Zachary off as a genuine suicide! Andy was determined to find the real killer, though, and kept scanning for clues until he did. He got the file from his target as payment, managed to sneakily push her off a balcony while all her guards were looking the other way, then escaped by boat! Five stars, Silent Assassin. Usual excellence, Andy.
2. Jane wanted to be the detective, but was unable to lure the guy – she instead became a gardener and roamed the grounds until she stumbled across a different opportunity. Namely, another fuse box puzzle! XD This one involved getting a fuse to power a camera and lighting set-up for a family portrait the target, Alexa, was having with her children and suchlike. Jane disguised herself as the photographer (playing round robin with a guard as she did), got the fuse, took a test picture, then set up a water-and-electricity trap as the family came down. One picture with the target on a metal chair later, and we had a lovely shot of Alexa being electrocuted. XD Jane promptly scarpered, grabbed an outdoor security detail outfit, snuck into the house when that proved to be insufficient to get her inside the mansion, grabbed a staff uniform by playing with electricity again (this time turning it off), then found the target’s office, worked out the code to her safe, grabbed her file, and escaped on her motorbike! Five stars, Silent Assassin! Good work, Jane. :)
3. And Mike arrived as the Riddler (no, not really, there’s just a new white suit with a green shirt that he wanted to try out), subdued the guards outside the gate for one of their outfits, subdued some of the INDOOR guards to get inside the mansion after he too discovered outdoor security wasn’t allowed inside (good on him for not randomly snapping necks as he did – he was a good boy and used coins and hammers), wandered around trying desperately to avoid noticers for a while with his shotgun, accidentally found his way to Alexa’s office, got himself a hunting rifle, hid upstairs as his target entered the office, shot down the chandelier over her for an accident kill, managed to successfully hide from his pursuers, destroyed some priceless artifacts in the office looking for the safe, worked out the code, grabbed the file, legged it outside, changed back into the Riddler, and escaped via powersliding on his motorbike.
Five stars. Silent Assassin.
I’M SERIOUS. The guy SHOT DOWN A CHANDELIER WITH A HUNTING RIFLE and got away scot-free. He was as shocked as we are. XD This is almost as good as the time he got a damn near perfect kill throwing an exploding duck at that one elusive target like five seconds into the mission. XD
E) Oh hey, look at that – I also had two Atop the Fourth Walls to catch up on! Mostly because I never got a chance to watch last week’s on the actual weekend, and Linkara actually managed to upload the one for this week today. And since the second one was surprisingly short, I decided I could try to watch them both. So, in order:
1. “Justice League 1x01-3: Secret Origins” – Linkara reviews the first three episodes of the Justice League cartoon for a Patron! Basically, how the team got together in the cartoon was “weird alien race which previously wiped out the Martians sets its sights on Earth after an astronaut unknowingly opens up their containment center; Superman is not allowed to be too super to stop the threat on his own due to aging; Wonder Woman has a weird “rebelling against her mother thing” going on; Batman is most awesome off-camera; and poor J’onn The Martian Manhunter suffers some pretty terrible body horror before kicking ass.” It’s a good three-parter, even with some of the weaker bits, and it was fun to see Linkara doing his Batman impersonation again (especially because he was wearing a Superman suit during the review XD).
2. “The Star Wars #6” – the sixth issue of the comic series based on the original script to Star Wars: A New Hope! This one was mainly focused around action set-pieces – Annikin taking on the proto-TIE fighters, then getting blasted out into space and needing to be saved by Talking R2-D2 when the shields on his gunner pod fail; the group needing to abandon ship after steering it into an asteroid field to get away from the fighters and taking heavy damage in the process, leading to Captain Whitsun sacrificing himself for Proto-Leia when their escape pod doesn’t launch; everyone crash-landing on proto-Yavin and Leia getting captured by proto-Boba Fett and some other bounty hunters – Annikin tries to take them on, but fails; Luke and the others finding Owen Lars and learning about an Imperial Outpost on the planet they can take on; and Annikin being saved by proto-Wookie/Ewoks and fighting one of them to gain their respect. It’s very very weird, but hardly the worst thing ever produced by the Star Wars franchise. (You all can argue among yourselves about the actual worst thing.)
F) And finally, time to catch up on GrayStillPlays! We had:
1. From yesterday, a new game – Descenders! It’s essentially “Fall Guys/Wipeout on a mountain bike.” And it has impossible maps, so of course Gray Must Play. He did two obstacle courses in this episode, both of them with terrible jumps, terrible tight ropes, and terrible sweepy things, though the second had more of each and lots and lots of weird stuff that looked like congealed meat formed into tubes. O.o Gray, of course, fucked up a lot and fell through the board to hell more times than any of us could count, but he did eventually beat both. And so a new game joins the ranks of “things that will cause Gray to lose sanity. . .”
2. And from today, we’re back to Guts And Glory, aka 3-D Happy Wheels, for more impossible maps over there! And damn, did we have some doozies coming at Gray this time. Death runs full of spiked tighrope runs, dangling meat hooks, and spinning blades all over the place! Terrible parkour with a thousand arrows being shot at your balls! The “Festival of Blood” featuring more buzzsaws than you could shake a stick at, PLUS a variety of yeety sledgehammers! This thing is not only three times more D than Happy Wheels, it’s three times more sadistic! And yet Gray beat all the challenges. He puts himself through so much for our pleasure.
2. Work on “In A World Of His Own”: Check! Rewrote the opening page today, tightening up some stuff and changing the location a tad – I originally had Victor and Alice closer to the waterfall that plunges the river into the ravine Victor accidentally falls in, but decided it was unrealistic for Victor to not hear it (even in his own dream world) and just had them be further along the river. Still got Snarks, though, so plenty of opportunities to make sure Victor at least gets wet. XD Because for some reason that became a running theme in later chapters, so I’m just embracing it for the story. XD
3.Get in a workout: Check – started episode 48 of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! We rejoined Grills in Acadia, the synth refuge on The Island, wandering around and picking up sidequests for people. Got one from Faraday, DiMA’s loyal assistant, sending Grills to a wrecked ship in the south to find some storage drives that were supposed to be delivered; and one from Chase, which I guess is the third-in-command in the refuge, asking him to locate a lost synth (and revealing that Brooks, in Far Harbor itself, is apparently a synth! I thought he was just the local merchant). With those secured, Grills went and talked with Kasumi herself – he tried to tell her that she was just confused, but she insisted that it was better for her to be here trying to find answers than back home feeling like she didn’t belong.
She was, however, willing to let Grills in on a secret – namely, that something weird has been going on with DiMA, Faraday, and Chase. Kasumi was allowed to help with the computers that keep a bunch of DiMA’s memories on file, and she found some creepy stuff, like death counts from a nuclear annihilation scenario for the Island. She wanted to know the truth, and said that the trio have regular meetings near a storage room that would be perfect for eavesdropping. As Grills already had the key, he said he’d go in there and listen in. Jon admitted he wasn’t sure if this would work (apparently that interaction was bugged at first, and in “No Guns” he just went and talked with DiMA directly), but he was able to sit and wait, and hear DiMA, Faraday, and Chase talk about the rising tensions between the Far Harbor citizens and the Children of Atom, with Acadia stuck in the middle. Apparently, in a show of good faith in the past, DiMA gave the Children his old sub base. . .and left a bunch of his old memory storage discs inside. Chase wanted to go in and retrieve them (and decode them with the help of a program Faraday was writing), but DiMA was worried it would spark off total war. Once they were done talking, Grills went and snatched the program holotape from Faraday’s desk and told Kasumi, who said she’d help out as she could once they got the memory banks back.
That, however, is main quest stuff, and best left for another day. Jon decided that he wanted instead to go back up north, as he still had to find the body of Harold (the guy who went out to fix the Fog Condensers on the road to the water purifiers) and report in with some people at Far Harbor – and also set up Longfellow’s cabin as a base. So he and Nick hit the road again! Grills actually found the water purifiers FIRST, but was unable to activate them as he hadn’t found Harold (game won’t let you do the quest backward!). So they continued onward, and found a location that Jon hadn’t been in before – Beaver Creek Lanes! He’d previously thought this was just the name of the road he was on, but nope – fortunately, his viewers informed him this was a nice little prewar bowling alley to explore! :D And explore Jon did, killing some ghouls (one of which he basically STOOD RIGHT ON TOP OF – yup, good old -1 Perception Jon! XD Though he did get a nice Deadeye Hunting Rifle legendary drop), poking into some terminals, and picking up everyone’s favorite impractical Fat Man mod, The Striker! Shoots special modified bowling balls, was made as a gift for an injured veteran who loved bowling. Not great in a fight, but still a fun weapon to have around. Jon grabbed it, then finally found Harold and grabbed his “Fog Condenser Components” to fix up the Condensers on the way back to the water purifiers. Ended my watch time right before he fixed up the last one, which he fully expected to spawn ten million Mirelurks or something. We’ll see if he’s right next time!
4. Do my best to complete the “Pub, Quickly” achievement in Untitled Goose Game and complete the game: Check! Though it took some fucking doing, let me tell you. About two and a half solid hours (split pre-and-post lunch) of finagling the pub to-do list to get it done before the church bells rang. The main problems were getting the toy boat (you don’t need to hold onto it for long, but actually getting the water level to where you can grab it can be a pain in the tail feathers) and figuring out the best way to lure the burly man back to have a bucket dumped on his head (you have to make sure the tomato is far enough back that he’ll go to the back area’s box instead of the two in the front area; you have to make sure enough people aren’t distracted and pushing each other around the map so that routines aren’t too disrupted; you have to make sure he isn’t distracted by other things; AND you have to make sure the ENTIRE sequence plays out before the church bells ring – I had TWO near-misses where the end of the animation was just as the bells ran out!). Woof! Though I did discover that, if you’re chased out the back gate, a reset will put you BEHIND the pub, meaning you can avoid having to figure out how to sneak in quickly as going in the back way will also cross off “get into the pub.” At any rate, I DID manage to do it eventually, and claimed my crown prize! All achievements unlocked, all to-do list items crossed off, game officially done! :)
5. Start designing Valicetines for this year: Check! In fact, I FINISHED designing my Valicetines this morning! Went through my Sims 4 screenshots and chose four pics from my recent vacation to Sulani with the Newcrest Liddell-Van Dorts to use (it was going to be three, but I decided to do two variations on a fishing-themed one, since they did a lot of that on vacation), then – still inspired – grabbed an old photo mashup from the archives and turned that into a Valicetine too. :D So I am well-prepared for the 14th! :)
Yeah, look at THAT. :D Admittedly, this is me working on an unexpected mostly-day-off where I woke up early and thus had some more time to fit in long YouTube videos and the like, but still. I am satisfied. :) Apart from my extreme annoyance at my job for forcing me to log into my work e-mail early, good start to February! :p
Now, of course, I still do need to answer my final DW comment, and do my best to get into bed at a halfway-decent hour, because tomorrow is almost certainly a workday, even if it is an abbreviated one. Still, the more time spent away from my office, the better, in my opinion. This just makes the weekend come quicker. :P Night all, hope you're staying safe!