Better Thursday

[crossover_chick]

The hormones have calmed down, and work wasn't quite as irritating as a result. Got a decent lunch break, got some more roster maintenance and phone calls done -- had to e-mail our credit card people again, but that's just freaking standard at this point. And I didn't have the same problems as I did yesterday getting out of the building, so yeah. Call that a win.

And I did pretty well with the evening checklist as well --

1. Get in a workout: Check! Feeling better today, so it was back on the bike and back to Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I caught back up with Grills as he attended to his needs and his kit over at Longfellow’s – drinking a ton of water, storing a bunch of weapons and armor that he didn’t need, upgrading his new Powered Combat Armor Left Leg (can’t quite get it up to max, but second-best was nothing to sneeze at), and getting in a good night’s rest. He happily showed off his visually completely-unbalanced armor set the next day, running around to show just how slowly his Action Points go down and how fast they increase now that he’s upped his Endurance, taken a bunch of perks to increase refresh speed and whatnot, and gotten this Powered gear. It’s very nice and gives me ideas on where I’d take Victor’s build (if, you know, I could get into the damn game). There was also a moment while he was doing this where the game gave him a prompt to talk to Teddy Wright, even though Teddy was nowhere nearby, but – Bethesda. We know what they’re like.

Anyway, with that all sorted, Grills headed back to Far Harbor to check out the latest upgrade to the defenses (Mirelurk carapaces dotted about all the spikes and metal), then talk to the Mariner to receive her last quest – come with her on one last big adventure to hunt the Red Death, a mysterious monster that lures ships to their doom on some island out in a far corner of the map. Grills, who quite likes her, happily agreed to go with her, and after shooting down Captain Avery’s objections, sailed his boat to the island where the Red Death made its lair.

Its teeny, teeny lair, as the whole point of this quest is that the Red Death is a tiny Bloodrage Mirelurk who has extra-glowy eyes that basically serve as the opposite of a lighthouse – ships, puzzled by this red beam out of nowhere, go to investigate and sink. The Mariner was heartbroken by the revelation, while Grills could barely keep in his laughter. Aware that she was looking to be a hero to the Harbormen, though, he encouraged her to play up the fight and make the whole thing a legend – she wasn’t keen, but figured it better than some of the alternatives. Grills punched the tiny Level One Mirelurk to see if it would even fight back – it did, a BIT, and the Mariner shot it. Grills dumped it in the ocean so its still-glowing eyes wouldn’t be a bother, and they sailed back to Far Harbor to receive their hero’s welcome. The Mariner managed to awkwardly stumble her way through a few lies of omission regarding the monster, earning some cheers, then had a very heartfelt conversation with Grills about what to do with her final days – she was still thinking of setting off to sea quietly, before her time came. Grills encouraged her to leave a legacy, something to be remembered by, and they parted ways as good friends. I really like the Mariner – she’s another one of those characters I wish the game would let you hug. I suspect Jon wishes you could too.

Enough of that sappy shit, though – Jon’s got stuff to find if he hopes to complete his quests. After a quick off-camera stop back at Longfellow’s, Grills was on the move again, going to a certain hotel in the south to grab some nuclear launch codes which I suspect will be important in how he resolves the main conflicts on the Island. Main problem is that these codes were surrounded by many powerful Super Mutants, including a good number of Primuses. (Primi? Jon wasn’t sure either.) Jon managed to handle the ones outside okay, taking shots from afar, and blowing the head off a sniping Legendary – I left him and Grills inside the hotel, working their way to the codes so they could book it the hell out of there. XD Looking forward to seeing more!

2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Good solid page – Alice has FINALLY learned that she’s a vampire, and has accepted help from Smilin’ Jack, because any good protagonist worth her salt should go through the tutorial. :p We’re right on the verge of part one – drinking from random strangers on the street. XD You do need to heal up that hole in your chest, kiddo. At least the Kiss being pleasurable should help with any guilt?

3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: TECHNICALLY half a check because I only watched one out of the two – but I ALSO cleared out three videos in my Watch Later, so I’m going to count it as a full check. See below –

A) Started with Call Me Kevin and his community destroying Minecraft through mods! Basically there’s a mod for Minecraft that’s similar to the one he tried for Skyrim – chat can summon in stuff and apply effects to his character – and he ran it during a stream. The Twitch Chat promptly proceeded to MAKE HIS LIFE HELL IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. Seriously – in addition to the constant spawning in of horses, they were also constantly spawning in Ender Dragons, Withers, and Creepers. Kevin could barely MOVE at the beginning before dying! I don’t know HOW he managed to get the wool and wood necessary to make a bed, but he did, and then somehow managed to get a boat and sail away to new lands! Not that it helped him. . .even his attempts to make an underground base were constantly stifled by various spawns, and chat just straight-up killing him. The only reason he got ANYTHING done were a few friendly faces giving him diamond pickaxes and the like. Fortunately, one of the things he got done was find a load of diamonds in a secret lava cave – a self-imposed challenge he was probably a BIT too happy to complete. XD Poor Kevin. . .I kinda wanted to give him a hug after that.

B) Then, because the other thing in my Subs was the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast, just dropped and just over an hour long (and will require a proper well-thought-out comment from me instead of a mini-shitpost), I decided to wait on that one and instead clear a few OXBox and OXtra videos out of my Watch Later! Had a few lists, after all, including:

I. “7 Failed Videogames That Were Too Ahead of Their Time” – video games that had at least the germ of a good idea, but were limited by the technology constraints when they came out. For example, Resident Evil: Outbreak, a four-player co-op game about escaping a zombie-infested city that came out five years before Left 4 Dead – and five years before good internet. Or Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem, a horror game full of scares, sanity effects (before Amnesia: The Dark Descent), and playing as historical figures (before Assassin’s Creed – and doing it better too) that unfortunately sold poorly. Or APB, an open-world co-op crime shooter that could have been GTA Online if it hadn’t been kinda shit despite being super expensive to make. What I’m saying is, there’s a lot of genuinely good remake possibilities here, people.

II. “7 Superheroes Betrayed By Their Own Crappy Game” – yes, superheroes who deserved better than the games they got! . . .and Halle Berry’s take on Catwoman, who absolutely deserved the game she got. XD But yes, while a lot of these were terrible movie tie-ins (the Thor and Daredevil tie-ins being especially bad – Chris Hemsworth was EXTREMELY wooden in the former’s voice-acting), there were a couple of original terrible games, like Spawn having a tank control horror, or the Fantastic Four suffering from a very poor side-scrolling beat-em-up. Not to mention poor Aquaman, whose video game didn’t even get properly animated cutscenes. . . Basically, if you want superheroes in good games, you could probably do worse than sticking with the various LEGO adaptations.

III. “7 Ludicrous Death Traps You Escaped Easily” – video game death traps that weren’t as deadly as one might think. Vampire: the Masquerade – Bloodlines got a shout with the Fu Syndicate “dungeon,” where your fledgling is subjected to a number of tests to determine how best to kill a vampire. As Jane puts it, the Mandarin mainly learns “don’t let your vampire bring their gun into the course.” XD There was also a raised-floor spike trap from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion that is only deadly if you’re an NPC with one hit point; an acid trap from Monkey Island 2 that can’t kill protagonist Guybrush because, well, he’s telling the story to his love interest after the fact; and Wheatley’s “death option” from Portal 2 where he tries to convince you to just let yourself be dragged into a crusher via a conveyor belt because you’re getting close to his lair and he figured he’d give you a choice. (Though, really, the best one is at the beginning, where he tries to talk you into a pit, and you get an achievement for letting him. XD) Not deadly, but very funny.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: . . .Check? There actually wasn’t any asks or threads or anything on my Valice Multiverse tumblr – the only one that needed an update – so I just found some fandom stuff to reblog. Counts, right?

Not too shabby -- now to answer my DW comment and head to bed. Got one more day to get through before the weekend! ...and then a Saturday full of chores and taxes. And a Sims 4 patch (which seems to have been them getting some custom content creators to add some of their stuff to the game, and the revelation that "Kit Packs" are going to be a thing, because they're now testing the waters to see how small they can make a pack before we'll stop paying for it?). Hopefully it's not the kind that shatters Sims CC. . .we'll see. Night all!

Comments

[crossover_chick]

I see -- I've never seen the movie or the prequel series, so I didn't know. That's pretty wild, though! It's hard to make creatures that are truly and fully alien. . .but hey, if there was ever a company I'd trust to do it, it's Jim Henson's. :) Cool stuff!

Heh -- well, since I sure as heck didn't know any better, you don't need to worry about in my case. Though, ooh, yeah, having a character that's essentially "Starscream but he's kind of better at it and definitely more under the radar" is probably a worrying thing to have in the plotbunny area. I wouldn't be surprised if he did have something to do with the whole mess. . . (And curiouser and curiouser -- so basically they're in it for themselves at all times. Yeah, that doesn't sound like a mindset that would lead itself to good morals. Hmmm.)

And LOL, I saw -- yeah, it probably makes sense that the "basic" Mirelurks are the transfers (however it happened), and a lot of the other kinds -- Kings and such -- are native to the Fallout-verse and just ended up evolving to some sort of symbiosis with the Garthim. I mean, Fallout is already a weird verse that has lots of weird shit in it, so. . .

Awww, I'm glad! Yeah, always better to have a clearer connection than not when you're trying for a crossover, especially the type you're going for! No harm in figuring out if there were other shared designs (especially if one of the creature creators DID see the movie ages back and then forgot). And I can seen overlap between Fallout and RE too. . . (And heh, okay, I see -- I wasn't sure! Though I hadn't heard that the Elder Scrolls was their D&D world -- neat!)

[whitedove01s]

I highly recommend checking them out if you ever get a chance. I know there's a tendency to see "Henson" and think "Muppets" and comedy, but Dark Crystal is really something else. This is high-grade fantasy with a sci-fi icing, and you know how picky I can get even with the stories I like. (Heck, if we lived in reasonable range and the EO wasn't a factor I would totally invite you over for a marathon. It's like finding someone hasn't watched Star Wars. And... honestly, I rank Dark Crystal as a bit better than Star Wars. And one of those rare instances when a made-ages-later prequel or sequel lives up to, effectively builds on, and sometimes surpasses the original.)

There's a lot of interesting fan debate and speculation and chatter on the division as it isn't a pure good/evil thing no matter how much it seems on the surface. It's more like a yin/yang thing, with the Mystics being generally passive and the Skeksis getting most of the willpower and initiative. Mystics being introverted, Skeksis extroverted, and so on. It's fascinating just from a psychological point even if the story wasn't good enough to make me absolutely forget these are puppets every time I watch it. (Which is actually slightly annoying in some ways as I like picking apart how movie scenes were made and I keep forgetting every time to watch for technical details of the puppetry. I have to rely on making-of vids and articles. XD)

The crab-based ones are really the only ones that actually look like Garthim, and there's enough in-world evidence that the others are different species that just share a similar habitat and common name. It's like the average person saying 'those little wild daisies', and some of them are daisies, some are fleabane, and some are chamomile. And, honestly, those look more like each other than the Mirelurks. XD

Very much so. I think this moves the multiverse set I had Dark Crystal in a few levels closer to core, as well, which is always good to keep things nice and tight. (I should probably be putting those notes in a calc file too, now that I'm learning to do spreadsheets.) And, yes, Tamriel began as a tabletop D&D setting. I was happy to find that out, given there's a lot of content in a lot of Bethesda stuff I'd like to play with.

[crossover_chick]

*whistles* Yeah, I do indeed from reading everything you've written about Mosaic and the stuff you want to put in it. :p Maybe one day when I have a little extra free time I'll see if I can find them somewhere. I'd probably like it better than Star Wars myself. (And really? That's impressive. Good for the prequel series creators!)

Ahhh, I see -- so yeah, it's a relatively even split, but it's not necessarily a good/evil split. Because none of those traits are necessarily weighted one way or the other. I'm sure it is very psychologically intriguing. :p (And LOL -- whoops. Well, I suppose that's just a compliment on the talents of the creators.)

*nods* I can believe that -- I mean, I don't know why they're even called "Mirelurks" to begin with. I suppose they can lurk in the sand or whatnot, but. . . *shrug* Not for me to question the naming conventions of the post-apocalypse, I suppose.

Nice! :D That's good to hear. (And yes, spreadsheets are a good thing, especially for a project like this.) And heh, cool. :D Hooray for having reasonable excuses to drag in new universes. XD

[whitedove01s]

It's odd for me that it's one of the few fandoms I like that I can't think of much bad to say about or anything I feel a need to plothole patch or come up with headcanon to "fix". I really just want the rest of the story. (If I really scrape for anything, all I can come up with is that the comic book attempts to expand the story that came out back around the time of the movie are best left questionably canon. And maybe that the special effects in the film are noticeably a little dated if you watch in story-chronological order... but it's still aged better than 90+% of other films from the same time. But for the most part, this one's as near to perfect as it gets for me. (Which doesn't rule out pondering the occasional AU, since characters here make a lot of difficult choices and there are potential branch points everywhere.))

Even the music is amazing. I have the soundtracks and listen to them a lot. The prequel was highly interesting because, along with basically adding to the backstory behind the events of the movie, it basically showed the point at which the Skeksis went from being a bunch of hedonistic overlords who con-gamed the planet's population into treating them as lords (which ain't great to start with) and tumbled over the Morality Event Horizon into genocidal monsters literally feeding on the life force of others. And implies this has been a slippery slope they've been sliding down since division.

Yeah. it's even proven not to be a simple black-and-white thing in the prequel series by skekGra the Heretic. Though, in addition to being a good guy camping out in the desert with his counterpart, he's also stoned out of his buzzardy gourd on hallucinogenic berries. so...

Oh, a lot of the original designs were also worked on by Brian Froud, btw. Same guy who did designs for Labyrinth. So a lot more intricate detail than the average muppet.

[crossover_chick]

Wow, that's pretty amazing. Good for the creators of this stuff -- you don't often hit it out of the park like that with writing. (And yeah, well, the special effect stuff is always going to be a thing with prequels made in eras with much better tech. But on the other hand, since I'm pretty sure DC is mostly practical effects, naturally it would have aged pretty well -- puppets seem to hold up a heck of a lot better than CGI! And LOL, trust me, I get the urge to make AUs. XD)

Niice -- if nothing else, maybe I can sample some of the music for later. And oooh, interesting indeed. . . Seems like there's a heck of a lot going on here, especially with the Skeksis! Creeps. . .

*nods* Gotta have at least one holdout from the hedonism. . .well, sort of. XD I guess being a stoner is the least of the sins of this race, so. . .

Oooo, I see. Sounds like they definitely brought out the big guns for this film, and the series afterward!

[whitedove01s]

Some of the writing gets even more brilliant when you can go to TV Tropes and go over the Fridge section. Most shows don't fine tune and track character development enough to where you can later go... oh, fk, it makes perfect sense that putting a basket over skekTek's head sent him into a complete ragefit breakdown.

The music I can definitely help with! Let's see if this works...
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLX6_LhslFWEiA6ot_-oPyy3iyPKfwYiMZ

I'd far rather have interestingly written and fleshed out villians, even if it means occasional rare sympathetic moments (mostly involving skekTek, but then he's kind of my favorite) than one that just seems to be doing it 'for the evulz'.

Yep, and his narcotic of choice can also cause precognitive visions, so when he's found he's all like "I've been waiting so long for you to show up! I have a surprise! No, you can't skip it! I've been working for SO LONG on this!" Yes, all those exclamation points are needed.

Yep. Fascinating levels of worldbuilding, too. I spot new things every time.

[crossover_chick]

Heh, nice -- I tend to go on TV Tropes binges of stuff after I watch/read/otherwise consume it, so that suits me just fine. It sounds like they took a hell of a lot of care with this story to make sure it was good and worked! :)

Ooooh, very suitably dramatic! I like. :) I'll have to remember this one, see about listening to more of it later. :)

*nods* Yeah -- I can get amusement out of a "for the evulz" villain, but the more fleshed out ones tend to make for better villains overall, and for more interesting stories.

*snork* I see. He sounds like quite the character. XD

w000, awesome. Sounds like it's packed full of -- well, just about everything.

[whitedove01s]

In this case, the time probably helped... as from what I've heard the sequel series was made almost exclusively by people who'd watched the film as a kid and were fans.

Yeah. Almost no one gets out of bed and thinks "How can I be evil today". I've also heard it as "everyone thinks they're the hero in their own story". I like it when characters have motivations that probably make perfect sense from their own perspectives... even if said motivations and resulting actions make me want to reach into the screen and throttle them (and/or reveal that they'd have to have some kind of underlying mental issue to think the way they do).

He is. The Heretic is definitely someone who has spent way too much time, er... well, in his introduction he says he is "Alone, so very alone. And yet, I am also with myself!" just before introducing urGoh. He and urGoh are both strange.

[crossover_chick]

Ahhh -- yes, having your prequel/sequel made by people who thoroughly loved the original is always going to be helpful. :)

Indeed -- I mean, it may feel like some people roll out of bed and go "EVIL!" but it's rarely exactly like that. People have complex inner worlds and all that. Though, yes, said complex inner worlds may be shitholes. Nothing stopping someone from having understandable motivations and still being a dickweed!

Heh, well, he at least seems like the fun kind of strange, instead of the worrying kind.

[whitedove01s]

Yeah. There's one certain chara who ends up a bit of a secondary villain just because her mind can't take the way certain revelations demolish her personal worldview until that point, so she goes into this full-blown denial mode and then just keeps trying to justify it. (Yes, vague, trying to avoid too many spoiler-y things.) Her actions still make me want to punch her face in, and yet they are also a thing that some real people do, especially when they have deep-set beliefs and then are confronted with a major shock that contradicts those beliefs.

Yeah. I can't swear it's true, as I've never watched the film (I think it's a film, not even sure on that) for comparison, but I've heard he and his other half were based off a couple charas from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

[crossover_chick]

Oooh, I see -- yeah, that's a good example. She's doing something all of us can recognize is a legit response to having her beliefs challenged, yet is still awful. She's not being evil for the sake of it, she's being evil because it's easier than changing her mind. Which is -- kind of depressing, but here we go.

Heh -- I believe it was a book turned into a film. Hunter S. Thompson I want to say? At the very least there should be drug references in it. . .

[whitedove01s]

Yeah, and the more she'd gone along with it the more she had actually done herself and the deeper the hole was and the worse the whole mess she had to face. Can't say more without spoiling some fairly epic moments.

Yeah, and those two at least act like one's on uppers and the other's on downers. Though I think they also mess with each other a little with it. Like when urGoh is introducing himself he does so extremely slowly while skekGra is getting frustrated with how slow he's being and at one point - and I didn't catch it the first time - urGoh actually just repeats the 'der' syllable in 'Wanderer' (and I think looks over at skekGra just before he does) and skekGra just completely loses it and starts screeching "Wanderer! Your name is urGoh the Wanderer! Just say it!"

[crossover_chick]

Yuuup. She basically looked at everything, grabbed a shovel, and went, "welp, time to dig to the molten core of the earth!" (Or whatever's in the middle of the world Dark Crystal is set on.)

LOL -- so they're the kind of friends who are occasionally pains in the ass to each other. I can dig it. XD

[whitedove01s]

Pretty much. Even at the very end of that particular plot arc bit she's like... one more scoop, did that fix it? ok... one more, this has to be salvageable... oh fk why isn't this working... one more... I was sitting there like, girl, do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth at this point?

Yeah, those two are hillarious

[crossover_chick]

*shakehead* Some people just aren't gonna stop digging until they find themselves on the other side of the world.

They sound it XD

[whitedove01s]

Oh, with this? You can almost hear the clang of her hitting rock bottom with that shovel in the end. I wish I could say more, but I can't. I do not want to spoiler that.

[crossover_chick]

Yeowch -- for her, at least. It's cool, I think I get the gist of it.