Happy Valicetine's Day!
Feb. 14th, 2021 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAnd I have to say, on the whole, I had a good one. Started the day off with more bran-and-chocolate-granola cereal for breakfast, wore my new Valice shirt (the short-sleeve t-shirt my Mom made me for my birthday -- obviously I wore my pink hoodie over it), got cream puffs topped with chocolate for dessert. . .oh, and had a nicely productive day!
1. Watch some Corpse Bride clips on YouTube, along with Kevin and Jon's FO4 YOLO episode: More than check -- I managed to keep up on the ENTIRETY of my Subscriptions! :D See below --
A) Actually started with something new that popped into my Subscriptions this morning – James Turner using Geoguessr to search for stuff he could try to recreate in Sims 4! Geoguessr is a game that uses Google Maps to plonk you down in a certain location, and you have to guess where you are using clues from zooming around the street view you’re given. James played a “Bad Architecture” set of maps (which actually had some pretty “meh” buildings and two cool ones, including a basket-shaped building – according to the comments, it’s an Ohio basket company, natch), and an “Australia’s Most Expensive Houses” series (which had a few very fancy buildings, including one huge house that took up two numbers on perpendicular streets!). James was super good at figuring out where he was from the information he could glean from street view, but he admitted he wasn’t sure how much actual building inspiration he’d gotten from the video. XD Hey, James, I don’t mind watching you just play Geoguessr, it’s pretty cool to see you track down where you are! And l’m all for building a basket house (or retail shop?) in Sims 4, so. . .
B) And then Kevin uploaded while I was watching James’s video, so I popped over to that – just a bit of fun with him investigating what’s going on on the “Call Me Kevin” subreddit. There’s all sorts of fun stuff on there, including lots and lots of memes of him standing behind himself in funny poses (thanks to streams and stream compilation videos of him standing weirdly – he even threw out a new pose for people to use in this video!), fan art (cute – a picture of Jim and Turg together doing the “Someone will die.” “Of Fun!” quote from Parks and Recreation – and cursed – cowboy Kevin in thigh-high high-heeled boots thanks to a photo mashup), videos (including a cursed GTA V vid that Kevin said was actually a lot like the dreams he has on the regular), and general silliness. It was a good time. :)
C) Then after that (with one of Mom’s chocolate crinkles) was my Corpse Bride clips! I watched Victor’s piano solo, the wedding rehearsal, Victor practicing in the woods and waking up Emily, Victor and Emily’s piano duet, Victor’s duel with Barkis, and the final scene of Emily becoming butterflies. Not a bad mix, I think! Though watching these has made me realize just how old, and thus BLURRY, some of them are. Might be time to sneak around YouTube and see if I can find some HQ replacements for a few. . .
D) And then, this evening, I realized something – since I did my writing early today (see item 3), I had a little extra time to watch videos tonight. And since I’d already covered Kevin. . .yup, I decided I should also be able to fit in GrayStillPlays! Can’t turn down another GTA V impossible stunt challenge, can I? :p This one was a return to Gray’s most hated enemy – WALL RIDES. Specifically, wall rides with lots of transfers, lots of dead-ends that force you to turn around and do the course from the opposite direction (including the transfer), lots of very difficult landings that make you immediately rocket off into space if you’re just a millimeter off, and throwing yourself at targets. Gray was calling it “S-for-Satan” Class. XD I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound so relieved when a board ended, honestly. Poor guy, he puts himself through so much for our entertainment these days. XD
E) And then, of course, it was time for the big one – the next episode of Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO Run! Today was all about clearing out military installations for Miss Finalley – starting with Fort Strong from last time! Jon spent most of it anxiously creeping about, laying lots of mine traps for Super Mutants that might spot and chase him, and taking as many sneaky shots as possible. Fortunately, he was always able to keep Finalley out of sight and on top of her enemies. He even got another sneaky magazine (US Covert Ops Manual) out of it! Plus, once all was said and done and he was able to follow Danse back to the Prydwen, vertibird signal grenades! Jon has EARNED back the ability to fast travel, that’s for damn certain. Though the process of getting them left him overencumbered, so he had to scarf down some Radstag meat and get to a container quick.
With that settled, he chose to go over to County Crossing, who had asked for help from the Minutemen, and agree to take on their issue – namely, the ghouls in the National Guard Training Yard! Again, Jon spent most of his time being as sneaky-deaky as possible, though a few very interesting things happened:
I. Because this is also the location for one of the steps in “The Lost Patrol” quest, Jon was technically able to start that quest one step in from where he should have started (Aistlin is the second corpse you’re meant to find). He grabbed her stuff because why not.
II. A number of Legendary feral ghouls in the building led to Jon getting severely trolled when it comes to Legendary drops. He was having absolutely NO luck getting anything good that would suit his character (lots of stuff that requires you to be in melee combat, or was a decent effect on a crappy weapon – Troubleshooter’s Lead Pipe, anyone?). The dice FINALLY came up sixes when he got a Staggering Combat Rifle off the last one, but it was a long slog to that point!
III. Jon decided he wanted to be badass and fight the sentry bot that’s sitting in the pod in the back, which only activates when you open up the power armor room. Jon laid down some mines to blow it up and make Finalley’s job a bit easier.
Jon forgot from his Survival playthrough with Grills that the game is a cheaty bastard and does not actually let out the sentry bot you see in the pod. Instead it opens the door and spawns a different sentry bot outside, so it never runs over the mines.
Said sentry bot has a chance of being a Legendary.
Cue Finalley running for her life back to County Crossing while Jon babbles on about making mistakes and how they can never come here again. XD Fortunately for him, the heroes of the hour happened to be passing by – namely, Doc Weathers and his Caravan Guards! Who are marked as either essential or protected, meaning they’re not going to be dying from anything except perhaps a player-directed bullet. As Finalley reported her success with the ghouls to the settlers at County Crossing, the guards kept the Legendary Sentry Bot busy long enough for it to regenerate, and THEN Finalley got to be a badass by putting a bullet right in its fusion core. Whew! Shame it didn’t have great gear (Kneecapper Missile Launcher, which – a) not a great effect for a MISSILE LAUNCHER and b) too heavy). But yes, Finalley managed to make it through THIS episode without getting hit once! And with taking an extra rank in Endurance, she even has a little more health to spare. Now it just remains for Jon to figure out where he goes from here – because he spent part of the episode discussing how he was going to handle the DLC, specifically the ones that put you in a new world space – Nuka World and Far Harbor. Nuka World he can get to pretty much whenever he feels ready – he has some cleared-out stuff right nearby. Far Harbor, though – the Nakano Residence is on the other side of the map, and he hasn’t been scouting there recently. So, it seems the idea for next week is to go wandering around that area, clearing out enemies and maybe trying to claim a settlement or two. Hopefully it goes well!
2. Play some Alice: Madness Returns: Check! When I was first testing it on this computer, I left off about midway through the Vale of Tears before everything goes to hell – I’m now in Hatter’s Domain, just before getting the umbrella and meeting my first Menacing Ruin. It’s been a fun ride – I’m glad that I haven’t completely forgotten how to kill everything in Alice’s path. XD Though I did accidentally kill her by missing a few jumps. Sorry about that, Alice – sometimes it’s hard to tell just how far away something is! On the plus side, I’m currently on-track for 100% completion – like to get that if I can!
3. Either come up with an idea for a gift fic for my tumblr friend whose birthday is coming up, or work on something generally Valicey: Check on the latter, definitely – spent the hour or so before lunch and a little more time afterward working on something that’s been one of my personal “I really want to write this” hypnokinky scenes for a while. Though, hilariously, the version of it that came out? It’s explicitly set in my “Fallout of Darkness” AU! You see, this is why I can’t escape the game even if I’m currently too pissed off to even try playing it. XD
4. Get in a workout: Check! Another round on the bike, and some more time with Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I caught up with Grills having cleared out Pine Crest Cavern, and in looking for a way out, finding a door with lots of can chimes in front of it, along with various “stop” and “danger” signs. Naturally, Grills and Jon had to find out what was on the other side!
What was on the other side was a big drop into a pit of ghouls. XD Fortunately they were pretty much all low-level, and Grills was able to take them out without too much issue. He found his way back to the surface after clearing the lot, finding himself at Kitteredge Pass, pretty much directly north of where he’d intended to go. Changing plans on the fly, Jon headed for the nearest body of water and – swimming low to avoid notice from some trappers – made his way to the Nucleus, aka the headquarters of the Children of Atom! Grills had previously taken some “Children of Atom” short rags off a corpse in the Wind Farm Maintenance building (seems like they were an unsuccessful saboteur), and Jon hoped to use them to just sneak into the camp (never mind that sneaking is very hard when putting on the rags makes you overencumbered and thus is breaking your legs with every step). Unfortunately, the leader of the place, Tektus, saw through his disguise despite being distracted with zapping dead some disobedient members. Grills swapped back to his normal clothes and claimed a missionary had sent him here to sign up; Tektus said that he would have to complete a holy rite by drinking from a certain spring first. Grills was up for that, as he had other things he needed to do in the area anyway.
That capped off episode 52 – 53 opened with Grills heading out into the wider world again to loop his way around and complete the various objectives he had in the south of the Island. First up – back into the water to find his way over to the wrecked boat containing the storage drives Faraday in Acadia wanted! Along the way, he found the old Vim! factory – now a Super Mutant stronghold; Grills sniped off a few while he was in the area – and an oil slick that has apparently been burning for over 200 years. Jon thought this was a bit of a stretch, as he took his cyrogenically-frozen character onto the nearby boat to grab the storage drives. XD From there he headed back to shore – taking a moment to kill a Legendary Trapper with a “Ghoul Slayer’s Boxing Glove” on him, which is one of the most useless legendary weapons to date – to make his way to the spot on the Island where he needs to chum the waters to complete the “Captain’s Dance.” He located a road and proceeded down it, passing through the remains of a few towns along the way, until he came frighteningly close to another Super Mutant encampment, this one with Masters and Primuses. Grills snuck around them, but couldn’t resist the urge to check out an open building nearby that looked to have once been a gas station. . .
Store was full of ghouls. Including a Legendary Charred. Grills was forced to yank out the Crippling Plasma gun and the PsychoJet to survive the encounter. And after all that, what did the Legendary have on him? A 10mm that had the “extra damage resistance while reloading” effect. Jon was not impressed and sent Grills off into the wilderness, as sneaking among the trees seemed safer than taking on the roads. I left him having just killed a pair of very tough Gulpers. The things Grills does to earn respect in Far Harbor, honestly. . .
So yeah -- lot of "Jon runs into fights with stronger enemies than he was anticipating" on the FO4 LP scene today, interpersed with me catching up on subs and getting my Valice on. XD Speaking of which, here's my set of Valicetines for the day -- four based off my recent Sim shenanigans with them, and one of my old photo mashups. I enjoyed them, at any rate! I also took a moment this evening to go into "Secundus," "Finding You," and "Forgetting You" to quickly skim-read over all the sections where Victor and Alice realize they're in love with each other, and I'm currently listening to some American McGee's Alice and Corpse Bride music before retiring for the night. Because I can and I want to get the most out of this Valicetine day.
So yeah, that's my day just about sorted. Now I just have to finish up queuing an ask over on the Valice Multiverse, answer my comment over here, and prepare for what sounds like a week of weird weather extremes. Apparently it's supposed to get surprisingly warm on Tuesday, and then snow all day Thursday? O.o And then be mid-forties again on Friday? *shrug* You know what, I'll just take whatever the hell comes at us. I've given myself an extra day off at the end of the week, so I'm guaranteed THAT for free time, at least.
So yeah, let's finish up here to the sound of Victor's piano solo, give my Victor Plush and Alice Dolly one final kiss, and head to bed. Night all!
1. Watch some Corpse Bride clips on YouTube, along with Kevin and Jon's FO4 YOLO episode: More than check -- I managed to keep up on the ENTIRETY of my Subscriptions! :D See below --
A) Actually started with something new that popped into my Subscriptions this morning – James Turner using Geoguessr to search for stuff he could try to recreate in Sims 4! Geoguessr is a game that uses Google Maps to plonk you down in a certain location, and you have to guess where you are using clues from zooming around the street view you’re given. James played a “Bad Architecture” set of maps (which actually had some pretty “meh” buildings and two cool ones, including a basket-shaped building – according to the comments, it’s an Ohio basket company, natch), and an “Australia’s Most Expensive Houses” series (which had a few very fancy buildings, including one huge house that took up two numbers on perpendicular streets!). James was super good at figuring out where he was from the information he could glean from street view, but he admitted he wasn’t sure how much actual building inspiration he’d gotten from the video. XD Hey, James, I don’t mind watching you just play Geoguessr, it’s pretty cool to see you track down where you are! And l’m all for building a basket house (or retail shop?) in Sims 4, so. . .
B) And then Kevin uploaded while I was watching James’s video, so I popped over to that – just a bit of fun with him investigating what’s going on on the “Call Me Kevin” subreddit. There’s all sorts of fun stuff on there, including lots and lots of memes of him standing behind himself in funny poses (thanks to streams and stream compilation videos of him standing weirdly – he even threw out a new pose for people to use in this video!), fan art (cute – a picture of Jim and Turg together doing the “Someone will die.” “Of Fun!” quote from Parks and Recreation – and cursed – cowboy Kevin in thigh-high high-heeled boots thanks to a photo mashup), videos (including a cursed GTA V vid that Kevin said was actually a lot like the dreams he has on the regular), and general silliness. It was a good time. :)
C) Then after that (with one of Mom’s chocolate crinkles) was my Corpse Bride clips! I watched Victor’s piano solo, the wedding rehearsal, Victor practicing in the woods and waking up Emily, Victor and Emily’s piano duet, Victor’s duel with Barkis, and the final scene of Emily becoming butterflies. Not a bad mix, I think! Though watching these has made me realize just how old, and thus BLURRY, some of them are. Might be time to sneak around YouTube and see if I can find some HQ replacements for a few. . .
D) And then, this evening, I realized something – since I did my writing early today (see item 3), I had a little extra time to watch videos tonight. And since I’d already covered Kevin. . .yup, I decided I should also be able to fit in GrayStillPlays! Can’t turn down another GTA V impossible stunt challenge, can I? :p This one was a return to Gray’s most hated enemy – WALL RIDES. Specifically, wall rides with lots of transfers, lots of dead-ends that force you to turn around and do the course from the opposite direction (including the transfer), lots of very difficult landings that make you immediately rocket off into space if you’re just a millimeter off, and throwing yourself at targets. Gray was calling it “S-for-Satan” Class. XD I don’t think I’ve ever heard him sound so relieved when a board ended, honestly. Poor guy, he puts himself through so much for our entertainment these days. XD
E) And then, of course, it was time for the big one – the next episode of Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO Run! Today was all about clearing out military installations for Miss Finalley – starting with Fort Strong from last time! Jon spent most of it anxiously creeping about, laying lots of mine traps for Super Mutants that might spot and chase him, and taking as many sneaky shots as possible. Fortunately, he was always able to keep Finalley out of sight and on top of her enemies. He even got another sneaky magazine (US Covert Ops Manual) out of it! Plus, once all was said and done and he was able to follow Danse back to the Prydwen, vertibird signal grenades! Jon has EARNED back the ability to fast travel, that’s for damn certain. Though the process of getting them left him overencumbered, so he had to scarf down some Radstag meat and get to a container quick.
With that settled, he chose to go over to County Crossing, who had asked for help from the Minutemen, and agree to take on their issue – namely, the ghouls in the National Guard Training Yard! Again, Jon spent most of his time being as sneaky-deaky as possible, though a few very interesting things happened:
I. Because this is also the location for one of the steps in “The Lost Patrol” quest, Jon was technically able to start that quest one step in from where he should have started (Aistlin is the second corpse you’re meant to find). He grabbed her stuff because why not.
II. A number of Legendary feral ghouls in the building led to Jon getting severely trolled when it comes to Legendary drops. He was having absolutely NO luck getting anything good that would suit his character (lots of stuff that requires you to be in melee combat, or was a decent effect on a crappy weapon – Troubleshooter’s Lead Pipe, anyone?). The dice FINALLY came up sixes when he got a Staggering Combat Rifle off the last one, but it was a long slog to that point!
III. Jon decided he wanted to be badass and fight the sentry bot that’s sitting in the pod in the back, which only activates when you open up the power armor room. Jon laid down some mines to blow it up and make Finalley’s job a bit easier.
Jon forgot from his Survival playthrough with Grills that the game is a cheaty bastard and does not actually let out the sentry bot you see in the pod. Instead it opens the door and spawns a different sentry bot outside, so it never runs over the mines.
Said sentry bot has a chance of being a Legendary.
Cue Finalley running for her life back to County Crossing while Jon babbles on about making mistakes and how they can never come here again. XD Fortunately for him, the heroes of the hour happened to be passing by – namely, Doc Weathers and his Caravan Guards! Who are marked as either essential or protected, meaning they’re not going to be dying from anything except perhaps a player-directed bullet. As Finalley reported her success with the ghouls to the settlers at County Crossing, the guards kept the Legendary Sentry Bot busy long enough for it to regenerate, and THEN Finalley got to be a badass by putting a bullet right in its fusion core. Whew! Shame it didn’t have great gear (Kneecapper Missile Launcher, which – a) not a great effect for a MISSILE LAUNCHER and b) too heavy). But yes, Finalley managed to make it through THIS episode without getting hit once! And with taking an extra rank in Endurance, she even has a little more health to spare. Now it just remains for Jon to figure out where he goes from here – because he spent part of the episode discussing how he was going to handle the DLC, specifically the ones that put you in a new world space – Nuka World and Far Harbor. Nuka World he can get to pretty much whenever he feels ready – he has some cleared-out stuff right nearby. Far Harbor, though – the Nakano Residence is on the other side of the map, and he hasn’t been scouting there recently. So, it seems the idea for next week is to go wandering around that area, clearing out enemies and maybe trying to claim a settlement or two. Hopefully it goes well!
2. Play some Alice: Madness Returns: Check! When I was first testing it on this computer, I left off about midway through the Vale of Tears before everything goes to hell – I’m now in Hatter’s Domain, just before getting the umbrella and meeting my first Menacing Ruin. It’s been a fun ride – I’m glad that I haven’t completely forgotten how to kill everything in Alice’s path. XD Though I did accidentally kill her by missing a few jumps. Sorry about that, Alice – sometimes it’s hard to tell just how far away something is! On the plus side, I’m currently on-track for 100% completion – like to get that if I can!
3. Either come up with an idea for a gift fic for my tumblr friend whose birthday is coming up, or work on something generally Valicey: Check on the latter, definitely – spent the hour or so before lunch and a little more time afterward working on something that’s been one of my personal “I really want to write this” hypnokinky scenes for a while. Though, hilariously, the version of it that came out? It’s explicitly set in my “Fallout of Darkness” AU! You see, this is why I can’t escape the game even if I’m currently too pissed off to even try playing it. XD
4. Get in a workout: Check! Another round on the bike, and some more time with Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I caught up with Grills having cleared out Pine Crest Cavern, and in looking for a way out, finding a door with lots of can chimes in front of it, along with various “stop” and “danger” signs. Naturally, Grills and Jon had to find out what was on the other side!
What was on the other side was a big drop into a pit of ghouls. XD Fortunately they were pretty much all low-level, and Grills was able to take them out without too much issue. He found his way back to the surface after clearing the lot, finding himself at Kitteredge Pass, pretty much directly north of where he’d intended to go. Changing plans on the fly, Jon headed for the nearest body of water and – swimming low to avoid notice from some trappers – made his way to the Nucleus, aka the headquarters of the Children of Atom! Grills had previously taken some “Children of Atom” short rags off a corpse in the Wind Farm Maintenance building (seems like they were an unsuccessful saboteur), and Jon hoped to use them to just sneak into the camp (never mind that sneaking is very hard when putting on the rags makes you overencumbered and thus is breaking your legs with every step). Unfortunately, the leader of the place, Tektus, saw through his disguise despite being distracted with zapping dead some disobedient members. Grills swapped back to his normal clothes and claimed a missionary had sent him here to sign up; Tektus said that he would have to complete a holy rite by drinking from a certain spring first. Grills was up for that, as he had other things he needed to do in the area anyway.
That capped off episode 52 – 53 opened with Grills heading out into the wider world again to loop his way around and complete the various objectives he had in the south of the Island. First up – back into the water to find his way over to the wrecked boat containing the storage drives Faraday in Acadia wanted! Along the way, he found the old Vim! factory – now a Super Mutant stronghold; Grills sniped off a few while he was in the area – and an oil slick that has apparently been burning for over 200 years. Jon thought this was a bit of a stretch, as he took his cyrogenically-frozen character onto the nearby boat to grab the storage drives. XD From there he headed back to shore – taking a moment to kill a Legendary Trapper with a “Ghoul Slayer’s Boxing Glove” on him, which is one of the most useless legendary weapons to date – to make his way to the spot on the Island where he needs to chum the waters to complete the “Captain’s Dance.” He located a road and proceeded down it, passing through the remains of a few towns along the way, until he came frighteningly close to another Super Mutant encampment, this one with Masters and Primuses. Grills snuck around them, but couldn’t resist the urge to check out an open building nearby that looked to have once been a gas station. . .
Store was full of ghouls. Including a Legendary Charred. Grills was forced to yank out the Crippling Plasma gun and the PsychoJet to survive the encounter. And after all that, what did the Legendary have on him? A 10mm that had the “extra damage resistance while reloading” effect. Jon was not impressed and sent Grills off into the wilderness, as sneaking among the trees seemed safer than taking on the roads. I left him having just killed a pair of very tough Gulpers. The things Grills does to earn respect in Far Harbor, honestly. . .
So yeah -- lot of "Jon runs into fights with stronger enemies than he was anticipating" on the FO4 LP scene today, interpersed with me catching up on subs and getting my Valice on. XD Speaking of which, here's my set of Valicetines for the day -- four based off my recent Sim shenanigans with them, and one of my old photo mashups. I enjoyed them, at any rate! I also took a moment this evening to go into "Secundus," "Finding You," and "Forgetting You" to quickly skim-read over all the sections where Victor and Alice realize they're in love with each other, and I'm currently listening to some American McGee's Alice and Corpse Bride music before retiring for the night. Because I can and I want to get the most out of this Valicetine day.
So yeah, that's my day just about sorted. Now I just have to finish up queuing an ask over on the Valice Multiverse, answer my comment over here, and prepare for what sounds like a week of weird weather extremes. Apparently it's supposed to get surprisingly warm on Tuesday, and then snow all day Thursday? O.o And then be mid-forties again on Friday? *shrug* You know what, I'll just take whatever the hell comes at us. I've given myself an extra day off at the end of the week, so I'm guaranteed THAT for free time, at least.
So yeah, let's finish up here to the sound of Victor's piano solo, give my Victor Plush and Alice Dolly one final kiss, and head to bed. Night all!
