Quite Productive Sunday
Mar. 21st, 2021 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI managed to channel my frustration over losing most of my Saturday to the fan thing into getting shit done today, look at me. I'm a little surprised I managed to fit in all of it, but the to-do list does not lie --
1. Watch the long Atop The Fourth Wall three-part episode, Call Me Kevin, and Jon's Fallout 4 YOLO episode: Check! Amazing what being able to actually go on your computer and do things can result in, huh? ;p
A) Actually started with something else in my Subs – a new James Turner video! Being nine minutes long and focused on him going on reddit and laughing over silly Sims memes (from 2 through 4), I figured I could fit it in. :) Learned that the old dusty TV in Sims 2 actually has handprints on it (another little detail the other games didn’t bother with), someone made a frankly amazing recreation of New York City in Sims 3 (James downloaded it and wants to do an LP in it), and someone made a recreation of the “house” in the Sims 4 Build/Buy menu (James wants to do this too, color-matching the items as they appear when you hover over them). Just a bit of simple fun! :)
B) Then it was onto Linkara and his latest Atop the Fourth Wall – the three part “Marvel Meets The Eye: The Transformers #1-40,” the first part of his look at the Marvel Transformers comics! Apparently these comics were the basis for the whole Transformers story – back in Japan, these things were actually different kinds of transforming toys that Hasbro and Marvel combined into one brand. Comics #1-40 detailed the history of the Transformers on their home planet, Cybertron, their arrival on earth (Decepticons chasing Transformers who’d gone to clear an asteroid belt that threatened to destroy their knocked-out-of-orbit-because-of-the-civil-war planet and who fled to Earth to try and avoid their enemies), and their adventures – mainly in figuring out how to convert Earth’s energy resources to Energon, various leadership changes on both sides (Megatron being deposed by Shockwave, Optimus Prime killing himself due to dishonorable behavior in a videogame – yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds – and being replaced by Grimlock the Dinobot, who promptly went tyrant), and various weirdness like a mind-controlling carwash and the creation of the Headmasters (alien humanoids controlling Transformer bodies). I can’t pretend to have understood a good chunk of it, but Linkara did his best to make it all accessible and make some dumb jokes and astute observations along the way. We should be covering the second half of the run this upcoming week!
C) Then it was onto Call Me Kevin and a dive into Assassin’s Creed 2! A very wonky, awkward dive that misses the hay cart, because this game cannot be bothered to actually TELL you the controls. Instead it uses weird symbols and you have to check the control scheme yourself to figure out what the hell any of them actually do. (Legs are “Space,” by the way.) After a brief bit of running around forcing the NPCs to fight as Desmond (remember him? Remember that this series has a modern-day framing story that I’m pretty sure no one likes?), Kevin did some extra running around as Ezio, never actually getting to the assassin stuff. Possibly because his Ezio, thanks to his trouble figuring out the controls, is constantly pushing ghosts out of his path and beating up random civilians when he isn’t going around collecting feathers for his creepy younger brother or beating up his sister’s cheating boyfriend. Kevin left it after Giovanni, the patriarch of the family, got imprisoned, feeling like it was a good chance for Ezio to go and make his own life. XD Well said, Kevin, well said.
D) And then it was time for Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO Playthrough! Today was all about taking another long trip down to the south – this time down to the southeastern corner of the map to pick up some stuff Jon wanted to boost our dear Miss Finalley’s stats before heading to Greentech Genetics to kill all those Gunners. Namely, he was looking for the Endurance Bobblehead, in Poseidon Energy, and the Agility Bobblehead, on the wreck of the FMS Northern Star. He got the latter of the two in today’s episode, and his journey went something like this:
1. A trek up to the Castle that was largely uneventful apart from a couple of raiders by Diamond City, and a sneak around University Point where he ended up wasting a crit on a synth after foolishly following a Brotherhood vertibird into the area. Whoops.
2. Building two new artillery pieces at the Castle to increase the power of his artillery strikes, just in case either of his targets was within range. He’d only planned to build one, but it turns out the Castle has as lot of the stuff necessary to build them, so he slapped another one in there.
3. Visiting Preston Garvey to turn in his latest Minutemen quest, then running away so all of his future quests will come from Radio Freedom. He was hoping for the quest that takes you to Warwick Homestead, but no dice.
4. Hiking over to Jamaica Plains to set up some artillery there (with the extremely unhappy settlers), and deciding to rebuild his criticals by hunting the ghouls. Got himself another decent piece of Unyielding armor – a Synth Chest Piece – off a Legendary ghoul in this one house, which he considered more than worth the exchange of ammo. And then he nearly fell through a hole in the roof of the church, which basically would have ended the run. XD Made it down without incident, though.
5. Moving from Jamaica Plains to the Atom Cats Garage, just to tag it for the XP (boosted by Idiot Savant) – turned out to be a great idea as, once Finalley went to leave, a radstorm started up. Having chairs inside to wait it out plus having her Hazmat Suit saved her bacon there!
6. Passing by the Quincy Ruins and Poseidon Energy, sniping a couple of raiders off the latter, before making his way to the Northern Star and deciding to throw an artillery grenade on it to see if it was in range. It was, and the Castle lit that sucker UP! It was glorious to watch!
7. Taking a very unnecessary risk by fighting Rags, the “boss” of the area, semi-head-on – Finalley was far away and sniping, but Rags knew where she was, which is never good in YOLO. Fortunately she was lucky and managed to kill him – and level up! – before getting shot.
8. Sneaking into the ship in her hazmat suit because of super-radioactive barnacles on the lower levels, avoiding Mirelurk Razorclaws and suchlike, then – the moment she took off her hazmat suit – having to put it back ON thanks to some surprise radiation near some Glowing Mirelurk corpses.
9. Hacking the turret controls to turn the turrets against the few surviving raiders – Finalley had to take a couple of the final shots herself, but she managed, and got her Agility Bobblehead! She’s now about as sneaky as it is possible for her to be, yay. :)
After all that, Jon decided that was enough for one day, so we’re doing Poseidon Energy next week. That should prove to be interesting. Then I assume it’s up to Sanctuary for the Mama Murphy hint, and then Greentech. And then, I guess, we figure out what faction Finalley – who cares about nothing more than not getting shot – sides with. . .
2. Play EITHER Alice: Madness Returns and start the Vale of Doom/Mysterious East chapterOR the Sims 4 and try to do the Newcrest McFlys going to Mt. Komorebi: Yeah, I think we all knew I was gonna do the former – especially with me needing to fit in the Linkara three-parter and some other stuff today. A:MR I can reliably fit into just an hour – Sims 4, not so much. But yeah, I have officially started Chapter 3 and the Vale of Doom! Had Alice visit Radcliffe in the real world (hey, did you know the clock at the end of his hallway in the regular version of the house actually advances hour by hour? And when you go in the downstairs study, you can tell something’s gone fucky with time, because it’s suddenly bright sunshine with flowers blooming on a previously rather cloudy and gray day. . .), went through the cutscene, had her leave the abandoned house, started fighting her way through the Vale, got up to the first Radula Room –
Remembered that the game likes to crash upon exiting this one particular Radula Room. . .
Yeah, okay, this was annoying, but it’s not like my Fallout 4 crashes, in that, upon encountering it, I remembered it was a thing, and this thing has a fix. Well, a couple of fixes – for some reason, you can play around with getting one or two of the available riddles wrong (even though they’re easy, Cheshire always has three, just in case somebody can’t figure out the first two), and sometimes that’ll work. It didn’t for me, though, so I went with the tried and true method of “turn the Physx settings to ‘Low’ for this one bit.” Given I was already having a bit of stuttering just from all the crap falling from the sky, I can totally believe a bad bit of “showing off the interactable debris” is the reason for the crash. So yeah, got past that room, and left it on "Low" so I could get past the next group of enemies over to the next checkpoint, past the wreckage of the Looking-Glass Station (mostly because you can’t reset Physx from the mid-game version of the configuration menu). Turned it back to “High” again before quitting for the day, because screw you, I have a really nice computer now and I want to play the game with proper settings. :p
3. Edit the second draft of my gift fic for my tumblr friend Newt, who's birthday is this upcoming Friday: Check! Went through it, made a few changes, added a couple of lines – it’s looking good! I think he’ll enjoy it – it’s technically a crossover between two of his favorite fandoms at the moment (I don’t know one, Supernatural, very well, so it’s the characters from the one I do know, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, talking about the characters from the former) and, well, I think it’s funny. XD
4. Get in a workout (subject to change based on time/if I get my period): Check! Got back on the bike for another chunk with Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Caught back up with Grills as he entered the King Cola Castle and the theater inside – due to Jon already knowing how this goes from previous battles, he knew that the ghouls inside were already dead (and one was a Legendary, allowing him to take its loot early – it was bad loot, though, so Jon passed) and wouldn’t wake up until Oswald resurrected them. So he cheesed the fight by dropping bottlecap mines all over the place, then just shot Oswald with his gun until he did his teleport trick (which – kind of lends credence to Oswald’s beliefs that he has real magic). However, Oswald told him to go and meet him in the Funhouse next, rather than indicating that they should meet on the roof – and indeed, when Grills jetpacked up to that final area, there was no one there. So there is no way to completely sequence-break this nonsense – you have to do all the areas!
On the plus side, from the walls, Jon could easily see that the Funhouse was in fact really close to the castle – close enough that he could jetpack onto the roof, snipe the various ghouls coming at him (including another Legendary Charred with a Wounding Machete – not for Grills, but a decent weapon for a melee character. Especially if you have the machete from Dunwich Borers, whose legendary effect can actually be removed and put on other weapons. . .), and then sneak in that way. And inside the funhouse, he was able to sneak around and avoid most of the “Hypno-Tunnels” with their swirling green lights thanks to the jetpack’s sequence-breaking again. Though he did have to take a fuckton of rads in the spinny room, because one of the side rooms contains a Hidden Cappy for Sierra’s quest as well as a radiation mister, and Grills couldn’t use his Cappy glasses to “mark” it in his protective power armor. Yeowch. Still, he managed to make through the Funhouse without TOO much agony – and when he completed it, was surprised to hear Oswald direct him to the roof! Yeah, apparently since he ENTERED through the tunnel area, the game counted that as him already doing them and skipped him to the end. Not before spawning a few more ghouls outside, though – including TWO more Legendary Charred! One had some armor on it that Jon wasn’t interested in; the other a Crippling Deathclaw Gauntlet, which – again, not suitable for Grills’s playstyle, but still looks cool.
After a quick skip over to another, early-game save for Jon to see if the incredibly-powerful rad-reducing Nuka-Grape could be created by a character at the very start of the game (answer: no – a beginning character can make a Nuka-Mixer without any perks, but can only craft a limited number of recipes – you will have to go to Nuka-World and find the recipe books to get the power of Grape), Jon directed Grills back to the rooftop to meet with Oswald. And yes, handing over the holotape provided a quick, easy, and relatively bloodless way to end Oswald’s inadvertent reign of terror (he’s convinced his feral ghoul friends can be cured, you see). Oswald in turn gave Grills his Sword of Wonders (not particularly good according to Jon) and his hat (reasonably good but can’t take ballistic weave!), before turning off the radiation and leaving the park with his ferals. Yay, an ending to this quest that doesn’t have Grills murdering the guy! The BOS won’t approve, but who gives a shit? :p
After that was a quick trip back to base via the walls (Jon commenting that traversing the park on top of them is probably the best way to go, as most enemies simply cannot reach you there – even the flying ones can’t go that high), Grills dropped off his power armor again, then headed for the Galactic Zone, off to fight Mr. Frothies and find himself some star cores to fully power up the place! I left him preparing to head into the theater – we’ll see what happens in there next time!
Additionally:
-->Got the pictures sorted for the next “Chill Save” update on my tumblr last night – and then, after editing that gift fic didn’t take as long as anticipated, went ahead and made a draft of the post! I mean, these are always easy, so far they’re only ever one post long because I don’t go as nuts taking pictures of this save as I do the Newcrest Adventures save, but yay being a little ahead of the game on tumblr queues! (If only because I didn’t get a chance to do the ACTUAL update I had planned. . .)
-->Me and the fam played our beanbag toss game out in the backyard this afternoon, since it was actually decently nice out! I managed to pull ahead with some good throws and win the first game – Dad won the second, fourth, and fifth games, while a good final throw won Mom the third. I’m pleased with that outcome! I like it when everybody manages to win one. Granted, I prefer it if I can win MORE than one, but I will take what I can get.
-->Made my muffins tonight – though given my mom also made raisin bread, I probably could have pushed it back a night. I didn’t realize she was making an alternate breakfast option at the time, though. :p At least I’m well-stocked for the upcoming week!
-->And, of course, we finished off Expedition: Back To The Future! (With only a couple of freezes, fortunately.) The DeLorean was finished with a trip to the surplus store that pretty much all special effect and prop makers in Hollywood use to get their stuff, and a little extra gift from Christopher, before finally being given to Michael J. Fox and his foundation. It's always great to see Christopher and Michael together -- they just have such a great dynamic, on and off the screen. :) Mom looked up the car on the auction site afterwards, and was insulted that it's only up to $500,000. :p Hey, what can we say -- we're a BTTF family, and we want that thing to raise a LOT of money.
And with that and queuing up the three asks over on Valice Multiverse, I'm just about set for this Sunday. Just gotta answer my final ask, then get to bed. Got a long week ahead of me -- five full days, I'm guaranteed to get my period at some point during them, and they're followed up by a cleaning Saturday. *sigh* Just gotta get through them. . .hopefully they won't be too annoying. Night all!
1. Watch the long Atop The Fourth Wall three-part episode, Call Me Kevin, and Jon's Fallout 4 YOLO episode: Check! Amazing what being able to actually go on your computer and do things can result in, huh? ;p
A) Actually started with something else in my Subs – a new James Turner video! Being nine minutes long and focused on him going on reddit and laughing over silly Sims memes (from 2 through 4), I figured I could fit it in. :) Learned that the old dusty TV in Sims 2 actually has handprints on it (another little detail the other games didn’t bother with), someone made a frankly amazing recreation of New York City in Sims 3 (James downloaded it and wants to do an LP in it), and someone made a recreation of the “house” in the Sims 4 Build/Buy menu (James wants to do this too, color-matching the items as they appear when you hover over them). Just a bit of simple fun! :)
B) Then it was onto Linkara and his latest Atop the Fourth Wall – the three part “Marvel Meets The Eye: The Transformers #1-40,” the first part of his look at the Marvel Transformers comics! Apparently these comics were the basis for the whole Transformers story – back in Japan, these things were actually different kinds of transforming toys that Hasbro and Marvel combined into one brand. Comics #1-40 detailed the history of the Transformers on their home planet, Cybertron, their arrival on earth (Decepticons chasing Transformers who’d gone to clear an asteroid belt that threatened to destroy their knocked-out-of-orbit-because-of-the-civil-war planet and who fled to Earth to try and avoid their enemies), and their adventures – mainly in figuring out how to convert Earth’s energy resources to Energon, various leadership changes on both sides (Megatron being deposed by Shockwave, Optimus Prime killing himself due to dishonorable behavior in a videogame – yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds – and being replaced by Grimlock the Dinobot, who promptly went tyrant), and various weirdness like a mind-controlling carwash and the creation of the Headmasters (alien humanoids controlling Transformer bodies). I can’t pretend to have understood a good chunk of it, but Linkara did his best to make it all accessible and make some dumb jokes and astute observations along the way. We should be covering the second half of the run this upcoming week!
C) Then it was onto Call Me Kevin and a dive into Assassin’s Creed 2! A very wonky, awkward dive that misses the hay cart, because this game cannot be bothered to actually TELL you the controls. Instead it uses weird symbols and you have to check the control scheme yourself to figure out what the hell any of them actually do. (Legs are “Space,” by the way.) After a brief bit of running around forcing the NPCs to fight as Desmond (remember him? Remember that this series has a modern-day framing story that I’m pretty sure no one likes?), Kevin did some extra running around as Ezio, never actually getting to the assassin stuff. Possibly because his Ezio, thanks to his trouble figuring out the controls, is constantly pushing ghosts out of his path and beating up random civilians when he isn’t going around collecting feathers for his creepy younger brother or beating up his sister’s cheating boyfriend. Kevin left it after Giovanni, the patriarch of the family, got imprisoned, feeling like it was a good chance for Ezio to go and make his own life. XD Well said, Kevin, well said.
D) And then it was time for Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO Playthrough! Today was all about taking another long trip down to the south – this time down to the southeastern corner of the map to pick up some stuff Jon wanted to boost our dear Miss Finalley’s stats before heading to Greentech Genetics to kill all those Gunners. Namely, he was looking for the Endurance Bobblehead, in Poseidon Energy, and the Agility Bobblehead, on the wreck of the FMS Northern Star. He got the latter of the two in today’s episode, and his journey went something like this:
1. A trek up to the Castle that was largely uneventful apart from a couple of raiders by Diamond City, and a sneak around University Point where he ended up wasting a crit on a synth after foolishly following a Brotherhood vertibird into the area. Whoops.
2. Building two new artillery pieces at the Castle to increase the power of his artillery strikes, just in case either of his targets was within range. He’d only planned to build one, but it turns out the Castle has as lot of the stuff necessary to build them, so he slapped another one in there.
3. Visiting Preston Garvey to turn in his latest Minutemen quest, then running away so all of his future quests will come from Radio Freedom. He was hoping for the quest that takes you to Warwick Homestead, but no dice.
4. Hiking over to Jamaica Plains to set up some artillery there (with the extremely unhappy settlers), and deciding to rebuild his criticals by hunting the ghouls. Got himself another decent piece of Unyielding armor – a Synth Chest Piece – off a Legendary ghoul in this one house, which he considered more than worth the exchange of ammo. And then he nearly fell through a hole in the roof of the church, which basically would have ended the run. XD Made it down without incident, though.
5. Moving from Jamaica Plains to the Atom Cats Garage, just to tag it for the XP (boosted by Idiot Savant) – turned out to be a great idea as, once Finalley went to leave, a radstorm started up. Having chairs inside to wait it out plus having her Hazmat Suit saved her bacon there!
6. Passing by the Quincy Ruins and Poseidon Energy, sniping a couple of raiders off the latter, before making his way to the Northern Star and deciding to throw an artillery grenade on it to see if it was in range. It was, and the Castle lit that sucker UP! It was glorious to watch!
7. Taking a very unnecessary risk by fighting Rags, the “boss” of the area, semi-head-on – Finalley was far away and sniping, but Rags knew where she was, which is never good in YOLO. Fortunately she was lucky and managed to kill him – and level up! – before getting shot.
8. Sneaking into the ship in her hazmat suit because of super-radioactive barnacles on the lower levels, avoiding Mirelurk Razorclaws and suchlike, then – the moment she took off her hazmat suit – having to put it back ON thanks to some surprise radiation near some Glowing Mirelurk corpses.
9. Hacking the turret controls to turn the turrets against the few surviving raiders – Finalley had to take a couple of the final shots herself, but she managed, and got her Agility Bobblehead! She’s now about as sneaky as it is possible for her to be, yay. :)
After all that, Jon decided that was enough for one day, so we’re doing Poseidon Energy next week. That should prove to be interesting. Then I assume it’s up to Sanctuary for the Mama Murphy hint, and then Greentech. And then, I guess, we figure out what faction Finalley – who cares about nothing more than not getting shot – sides with. . .
2. Play EITHER Alice: Madness Returns and start the Vale of Doom/Mysterious East chapter
Remembered that the game likes to crash upon exiting this one particular Radula Room. . .
Yeah, okay, this was annoying, but it’s not like my Fallout 4 crashes, in that, upon encountering it, I remembered it was a thing, and this thing has a fix. Well, a couple of fixes – for some reason, you can play around with getting one or two of the available riddles wrong (even though they’re easy, Cheshire always has three, just in case somebody can’t figure out the first two), and sometimes that’ll work. It didn’t for me, though, so I went with the tried and true method of “turn the Physx settings to ‘Low’ for this one bit.” Given I was already having a bit of stuttering just from all the crap falling from the sky, I can totally believe a bad bit of “showing off the interactable debris” is the reason for the crash. So yeah, got past that room, and left it on "Low" so I could get past the next group of enemies over to the next checkpoint, past the wreckage of the Looking-Glass Station (mostly because you can’t reset Physx from the mid-game version of the configuration menu). Turned it back to “High” again before quitting for the day, because screw you, I have a really nice computer now and I want to play the game with proper settings. :p
3. Edit the second draft of my gift fic for my tumblr friend Newt, who's birthday is this upcoming Friday: Check! Went through it, made a few changes, added a couple of lines – it’s looking good! I think he’ll enjoy it – it’s technically a crossover between two of his favorite fandoms at the moment (I don’t know one, Supernatural, very well, so it’s the characters from the one I do know, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, talking about the characters from the former) and, well, I think it’s funny. XD
4. Get in a workout (subject to change based on time/if I get my period): Check! Got back on the bike for another chunk with Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Caught back up with Grills as he entered the King Cola Castle and the theater inside – due to Jon already knowing how this goes from previous battles, he knew that the ghouls inside were already dead (and one was a Legendary, allowing him to take its loot early – it was bad loot, though, so Jon passed) and wouldn’t wake up until Oswald resurrected them. So he cheesed the fight by dropping bottlecap mines all over the place, then just shot Oswald with his gun until he did his teleport trick (which – kind of lends credence to Oswald’s beliefs that he has real magic). However, Oswald told him to go and meet him in the Funhouse next, rather than indicating that they should meet on the roof – and indeed, when Grills jetpacked up to that final area, there was no one there. So there is no way to completely sequence-break this nonsense – you have to do all the areas!
On the plus side, from the walls, Jon could easily see that the Funhouse was in fact really close to the castle – close enough that he could jetpack onto the roof, snipe the various ghouls coming at him (including another Legendary Charred with a Wounding Machete – not for Grills, but a decent weapon for a melee character. Especially if you have the machete from Dunwich Borers, whose legendary effect can actually be removed and put on other weapons. . .), and then sneak in that way. And inside the funhouse, he was able to sneak around and avoid most of the “Hypno-Tunnels” with their swirling green lights thanks to the jetpack’s sequence-breaking again. Though he did have to take a fuckton of rads in the spinny room, because one of the side rooms contains a Hidden Cappy for Sierra’s quest as well as a radiation mister, and Grills couldn’t use his Cappy glasses to “mark” it in his protective power armor. Yeowch. Still, he managed to make through the Funhouse without TOO much agony – and when he completed it, was surprised to hear Oswald direct him to the roof! Yeah, apparently since he ENTERED through the tunnel area, the game counted that as him already doing them and skipped him to the end. Not before spawning a few more ghouls outside, though – including TWO more Legendary Charred! One had some armor on it that Jon wasn’t interested in; the other a Crippling Deathclaw Gauntlet, which – again, not suitable for Grills’s playstyle, but still looks cool.
After a quick skip over to another, early-game save for Jon to see if the incredibly-powerful rad-reducing Nuka-Grape could be created by a character at the very start of the game (answer: no – a beginning character can make a Nuka-Mixer without any perks, but can only craft a limited number of recipes – you will have to go to Nuka-World and find the recipe books to get the power of Grape), Jon directed Grills back to the rooftop to meet with Oswald. And yes, handing over the holotape provided a quick, easy, and relatively bloodless way to end Oswald’s inadvertent reign of terror (he’s convinced his feral ghoul friends can be cured, you see). Oswald in turn gave Grills his Sword of Wonders (not particularly good according to Jon) and his hat (reasonably good but can’t take ballistic weave!), before turning off the radiation and leaving the park with his ferals. Yay, an ending to this quest that doesn’t have Grills murdering the guy! The BOS won’t approve, but who gives a shit? :p
After that was a quick trip back to base via the walls (Jon commenting that traversing the park on top of them is probably the best way to go, as most enemies simply cannot reach you there – even the flying ones can’t go that high), Grills dropped off his power armor again, then headed for the Galactic Zone, off to fight Mr. Frothies and find himself some star cores to fully power up the place! I left him preparing to head into the theater – we’ll see what happens in there next time!
Additionally:
-->Got the pictures sorted for the next “Chill Save” update on my tumblr last night – and then, after editing that gift fic didn’t take as long as anticipated, went ahead and made a draft of the post! I mean, these are always easy, so far they’re only ever one post long because I don’t go as nuts taking pictures of this save as I do the Newcrest Adventures save, but yay being a little ahead of the game on tumblr queues! (If only because I didn’t get a chance to do the ACTUAL update I had planned. . .)
-->Me and the fam played our beanbag toss game out in the backyard this afternoon, since it was actually decently nice out! I managed to pull ahead with some good throws and win the first game – Dad won the second, fourth, and fifth games, while a good final throw won Mom the third. I’m pleased with that outcome! I like it when everybody manages to win one. Granted, I prefer it if I can win MORE than one, but I will take what I can get.
-->Made my muffins tonight – though given my mom also made raisin bread, I probably could have pushed it back a night. I didn’t realize she was making an alternate breakfast option at the time, though. :p At least I’m well-stocked for the upcoming week!
-->And, of course, we finished off Expedition: Back To The Future! (With only a couple of freezes, fortunately.) The DeLorean was finished with a trip to the surplus store that pretty much all special effect and prop makers in Hollywood use to get their stuff, and a little extra gift from Christopher, before finally being given to Michael J. Fox and his foundation. It's always great to see Christopher and Michael together -- they just have such a great dynamic, on and off the screen. :) Mom looked up the car on the auction site afterwards, and was insulted that it's only up to $500,000. :p Hey, what can we say -- we're a BTTF family, and we want that thing to raise a LOT of money.
And with that and queuing up the three asks over on Valice Multiverse, I'm just about set for this Sunday. Just gotta answer my final ask, then get to bed. Got a long week ahead of me -- five full days, I'm guaranteed to get my period at some point during them, and they're followed up by a cleaning Saturday. *sigh* Just gotta get through them. . .hopefully they won't be too annoying. Night all!
no subject
Date: 2021-03-23 06:20 am (UTC)That was pretty much my main fandom from preschool age right up until, well... Beast Wars I liked (as evidenced from some RP charas I need to dust off someday), but B4F (aka Bobby (Skir)'s Big-Budget Bad Fanfic? Aka Beast Machines?)... the best I can say is I wasn't the only one who disliked it. The guy had to avoid a TF fan convention because of risk of lynch mobs. I watched one later cartoon series (Car Robots) and found it amusing as an AU but at that point it was kind of too late. I never got as far back into the fandom, and in a way that's a relief as I want as little as possible to do with the live action films.
But if you're talking G1 Transformers, yeah, I might be able to help. XD For starters, yes, the original thing was basically a big toy commercial, and not even for the same toy lines. They repainted a bunch from mostly one other line, and a few from another... which lead to legal issues and the toy of Skyfire being called Jetfire instead because of Bandai owning the mold or some stuff.
Also GoBots was made off of one of the same toy lines, and I'm pretty sure was actually a year sooner, AND had more die cast bits on the toys. I'm one of the few people you might meet who really thinks it does not deserve some the hatred it gets from most Transformers fans. Yeah, the GoBots show had an added layer of cheese or two, but it was also way ahead in having more female characters (including one of the main recurring villains). G1 Transformers pretty much only gave us Spike's blond-haired, blue-eyed, and boring girlfriend Carly from Season 2 onward, and the incredibly pink Arcee from the movie onward.
Another starter thing - the comic book and the cartoon for G1 follow completely separate continuities. The Japanese cartoon continuity is pretty much the same as the U.S. Cartoon continuity for the first two seasons and the film, but then had a completely different series for a sequel (Headmasters) instead of the Season 3 we had in the U.S. And then they got several more follow-up series and one-shots besides.
And if you ever hear of a G2 cartoon? It was just the G1 eps with new scene bumpers.
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Date: 2021-03-24 03:13 am (UTC)Linkara did an episode on the Car Wash of Doom, though I forget when -- a while back, I know that much. And he covered Spider-Man's appearance in the book briefly, and mentioned the GI Joe stuff while summarizing something else. Also mentioned the whole "multiple toy lines merged into one for the American market" bit. Though not the Skyfire/Jetfire thing, that's interesting. And is that so about the GoBots? Wow, sounds like they actually got more of a budget for their toys. XD Not to mention, yes, always good for a show from that era to have more female characters. Good for GoBots!
I figured they must have, as Linkara commented on some of the characters (like Starscream) not acting exactly the same as their cartoon counterparts. In fact, I think at one point we see the comics being told to make a character conform more to their cartoon characterization, as Comic!Grimlock goes from being able to refer to himself as "I" and being maybe just a bit of a jerk, to full third person mode and being a full-on tyrant. It's weird (as if anything about this series isn't).
Is that so about the G2 cartoon? Talk about milking the franchise. . .but then again, toy-line-based media. Milking is to be expected.
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Date: 2021-03-24 08:18 am (UTC)The whole thing is marked in my notes as the Sunbow Unit-E multiverse (because yes it is definitely in the timesoup for later! Also Sunbow cartoons crossover link between Jem, Inhumanoids, GI Joe and Transformers, and a later link from a game called Unit-E that Hasbro made to tie some of their toylines together... and that had an odd cameo from Drizzt the angsty drow from Forgotten Realms, which gives it a nice strong crossover link to D&D :) )
I actually have a Jetfire toy somewhere. I think it was actually from, urgh, can't recall, but some Bandai owned toyline related to Gundam I think. Or was it Robotech... Anyhow, the vehicle mode is the same, but the head looks nothing like the cartoon chara. That was actually a problem with a LOT of the G1 toys. The comics looked more like the toys, but the characters got some redesigns for the cartoon (they kind of HAD to with Megatron or the cartoon probably couldn't have been aired. It was ok back then to have a chara whose alternate mode was a Walther P-38 handgun... but not one whose trigger ended up where his did when transformed XD) and rather than make new toys, well, we just had to live with the fact that Ratchet and Ironhide only looked right if you never took them out of vehicle mode.
GoBots was actually a more direct (tho still scrambled up) import of the Machine Robo toy line from Japan, so they just shipped over leftover toys. I think the cartoon versions of the GoBots having eyes with pupils made them fall into the uncanny valley for some people and lead to unpopularity. Might be another part of why the Transformers show changed the designs. But I still remember they had Crasher, who despite being a villain was probably the most progressive/positive female role model in kids cartoons until the 90's.
https://machinerobo.fandom.com/wiki/Crasher
Yeah, Comic!Grimlock was an actual adult and, like you said, a bit of a jerk. Cartoon!Grimlock and the other Dinobots were actually made by Wheeljack and Ratchet. Which kind of made me uneasy as a kid, because the Autobots were supposed to be the good guys, but their leader keeps kids locked in a closet and then banishes them to an island all alone for being too accidentally destructive. That (and what happened with KARR in Knight Rider, and the fate of a little android girl named Vanessa (I think) in a show called Small Wonder) probably what started my now life-long habit of being suspicious of the good guys and poking into motivations.
Transformers did the same thing as GoBots as far as importing toys to cut costs, but the design changes for the cartoon led to a lot of toys not looking like the charas. The comics stuck more to the toy designs, hence the big difference there. I still remember reading the first comic issues and being used to how Ironhide looked from the cartoon and going "what the FK is that thing and why does everyone thing it's Ironhide?" The altmode of the toy lacks legs and looks like a stray pallet hand-truck or something.
Another funny side of the toy imports is that the original Machine Robo line, well, I'm not sure it had much of a story or standardization in terms of characters. Meaning that a lot of the figures came in multiple colors, especially the smaller ones. My very first (and should still be around here somewhere in a box because I lack display space) Transformer toy was sold on card as Bumblebee, but is what is known as a "Bumblejumper" (or sometimes Cliffbee, tho that's usually for a red toy with the Bumblebee mold, and mine's a yellow toy with the Cliffjumper mold.) I'll admit they did try to be careful about that, but that's one notorious case that slipped through and I'm sure there are others.
Yeah, a lot of cartoons back then were really half-hour-long toy commercials. That had some other unfortunate effects besides the franchise being milked as long as the toys are on the shelves. That being what would happen when a character's toy was no longer on the shelves and the writers felt they had to make room for the new toys in the line. From all the deaths in Transformers: The Movie to Terrorsaur and Scorponok falling in lava in Beast Wars. it's all to make a buck. (I actually don't recall GoBots doing that, but they had a HUGE cast of characters that rotated around and all had names, to the point where I can't remember the names of more than a handful of them even now without looking them up! If they needed someone gone, they just didn't show them again... On the other hand, you really got more a feeling of it being two HUGE groups at war with each other. The Transformers cartoon tried (and the comic did better there with lots of toyless characters filling in), but it always felt like kind of a small war when you can keep a checklist of everyone in both armies on one piece of paper...
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Date: 2021-03-25 03:25 am (UTC)Ahh, cool! So convenient when the toy company already stitches up the multiverse for you. XD And is that so about the cameo? Kinda weird, but okay, makes it easier to integrate into soup, I suppose.
Huh -- got me, I've never watched any of those shows. *shrug* But I see what you mean anyway. And oof, I see. I mean, yeah, different mediums, the designs were never going to be exact (and some things had to be changed, as you said -- seriously, Megatron had a crotch trigger?? XD Oh man. . .) but still. Kinda sad that you had situations where the toy only looked right if you never saw the face. Meh.
Ahhhh, I see. Feels like a "maximum profit for minimal effort" proposition, but what do I know? :p And aha -- you know what, that could be the case. It hitting my personal "uncanny valley" buttons is a good part of the reason why I don't like Sims 3 Sims. They're just -- off. Give me the more cartoony styles any day. . . But man, that's something to have such a big female villain in those days. Good for Crasher for holding her own with the guys.
Is that so? Apparently the ship that the Autobots were traveling in made the Dinobots in the comics continuity, to deal with some other Decepiticon that arrived the prehistoric age. . .which is a whole different kettle of fish for "fucked up beginnings," especially since they were apparently made out of other Autobots. . . But yeah, if they were Autobot creations and Optimus Prime didn't look after them properly, I can see why you would think that unfair. And yes, I've noticed that a lot with the time soup stuff.
*nods* As noted before. And heh, yeah, I imagine that was quite the trip. Again, differences in mediums and whatnot, but still. And seriously? How weird. O.o Poor Ironhide.
LOL -- and then when suddenly everyone is SUPPOSED to be a particular color. . . And that's pretty cool! Makes the little guy a little more special, I suppose. :D And there's always going to be stuff like that when you're dealing with toys, especially imported toylines that you're kind of welding together into a larger narrative. At least it keeps things interesting with collecting?
So I have heard, yes. And I can believe it -- always gotta promote what's hot now, what the marketing department says will be the next big hit! Seemed to be a thing with the comics too, given there seemed to be new characters every issue. Damn. . . (And heh, I see. To be fair, the comics implied it was a pretty small group of Autobots and Decepiticons that got stuck on Earth at first. . .at least, until they needed to start introducing all the new toys. But yeah, comics made it feel like it was SUPPOSED to be a relatively small war, at least at first.)
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Date: 2021-03-26 06:28 am (UTC)Oh yeah. Megatron's trigger issue is notorious. Not to mention all the fandom jokes about how, despite Starscream being one of the most treacherous beings ever, Megatron lets Starscream hold him in gun form and... after that all the 'pull my trigger' jokes just start making themselves.
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Megatron_(G1)/toys
The toy designers honestly haven't learned that much last I looked. BW Waspinator's face was nearly unrecognizable as the character (and the 'nearly' is only because the toy had a second 'mutant head' option that DID look like Waspy). And the trigger thing? Well... The later Japanese Beast Wars series that never made it to the US had a Maximal rabbit named Stampy. Stampy was a rare triplechanger. In addition to rabbit form he had a scissor-weapon-thing mode other BW toys could hold. Now, said weapon didn't have a trigger that could be seen, but it did have a peg handle to fit into the hands of other BW toys.
At one of the two BotCon conventions I managed to attend way back in the day, I bought a new-in-box Stampy. Because I wanted a Japanese TF, couldn't afford Dinoforce or Deathsaurus or any of that sort, and he was a bunny and, let's face it, just friggin cute.
Now, several other people from the same TF fan forum I hung out on at the time (which was so heavily female in demographics that the chatroom was called the Estrogen Zone.) attended the convention and had a pizza party that evening with everyone paying a share of the cost and us all camping out in the forum manager's room, which most of them were sharing (I was sharing with two other people elsewhere.. that room was already so overpacked I heard later that Wayward had to sleep in the bathtub). Anyhow, during that pizza party, I showed off Stampy and proceeded to his first de-boxing. I remember someone saying something like "Now remember, you're the first" as in first to take him out of the box.
And then we all saw where, in rabbit mode (which is what he was in in said box) Stampy's handle-peg is. It wasn't much better with him transformed, as that just put the peg a little 'too high' at about belly button height instead of actually on his crotch, but at that point... close enough to where everyone was in fits of laughter and it somehow led to someone doing a photoshoot of someone else's Depth Charge toy giving Stampy a handjob.
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:FacebookEaster.jpg
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:BWN-toy_Stampy.jpg
Stampy then went back into bunny mode, back in his box, and that is where he has stayed. I can see him in my closet right now.
And, yeah, the ship crashed in the Savage Land or something in the comics, which is I think a Marvel location, and Shockwave was involved. I haven't managed to read those issues, but I do have ol' Shocky's toy. Either that or the radio shack knockoff of said toy. I'd have to find it to be sure. Supposed to light up and do all kinds of things, but mine doesn't work (the few of my toys that were new are well-loved, and the rest were bought secondhand out of the 'junk for parts' bins at BotCon where I could get them around $3 a pop because someone was missing a leg or something. I have a lot of wingless Seekers. I usually saved up an extra $100-200 to spend on toys when I went to those, and filled up a second suitcase for the trip back. XD)
And Ironhide was especially horrifying for me. See, I got to the comics a bit late due to lack of access, so until I was in late teens and had the internet my experience was pretty much cartoon only. I was used to Ironhide looking like this:
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:TFU_Ironhide.jpg
I had also already been through the movie, where Ironhide (one of my favorite characters) was one of the characters who died horribly. Not as horribly as Prowl, who caught on fire from the inside out (who the hell thought this was acceptable for children?), but he ends up getting his head blown off point blank by Megatron.
And then I get the first issues of the comics, and Ironhide looks like THIS (which is like the toy, which I did not have at the time and did not get until I went to conventions):
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:Ironhideg1firstappearance.jpg
As you see, he HAS NO HEAD. He also has no legs, being attached to the little gunner platform thing. Of all the things the comic was forced to change later to look more like the cartoon, the character models were probably the best decision of the lot. (Some of the characterization not so much, the comic charas and stories had more depth, since they were written for an older audience.)
Yeah. It's actually surprising we only got yellow Cliffjumpers (apparently some later comic named him Bumper XD) and red Bumblebees, but since Cliffjumper was supposed to be red and Bumblebee yellow and both were mini cars I guess people dumping them to be sorted into new English packaging just had a few screwups when they were in a hurry. Mine's the yellow one here, next to an actual red Cliffjumper:
https://tfwiki.net/wiki/File:G1_Cliffjumper_toy.jpg
*snerk* According to the wiki, some R&D guy tried to claim it was on purpose. "This confusion was not helped by the fact that both Cliffjumper and Bumblebee were released in both red and yellow during the first two years of the Generation 1 toyline; a move designed to "make the line look bigger" according to former Hasbro R&D Vice President George Dunsay." I don't believe him. If that were true, we would have also gotten the white, black, blue, green, and whatever other colors that mold came in (those are just the ones I remember seeing pictures of offhand.)
Yeah, the comics actually bothered to indicate this wasn't everyone. The cartoon... tried to, maybe, but... the few eps they went to Cybertron, the whole population seemed to consist of Shockwave, Alpha Trion, and four girls who were token girlfriends for some of the guys and were in one ep (I think, and a little more in the comics). And their leader was pink. That's a planetwide population of six, one of whom dies later, making it look like those on Earth actually ARE the majority of the species that isn't dead yet. The comic book had nameless background characters, named characters the cartoons didn't, and basically made the planet look like it was actually populated, if under a wartime lockdown.
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Date: 2021-03-27 03:42 am (UTC)Oh cripes XD Welp, if you give the fandom an opening like that. . .I guess Megatron has his kinks? :P Starscream too. . .
Well, at least the designers got one of the heads right? But yeah, I mean, they're making these toys for maximum profits, not quality craftsmanship. And oh man, that story about Stampy. . . XD Do they not REALIZE where the pegs end up? Do they think "oh, it's for kids, they're not gonna know?" And that's how you end up with Stampy getting jacked off by Depth Charge in front of a group of overly amused women. XD Cripes. At least he's safe and sound in his box in your room now. XD
Yeah, that's what Linkara said -- it was part of a Marvel mandate that all their comics had to tie back into the same universe, hence also the Spider-Man crossover. I think they dropped the conceit for the comics pretty quickly, though. Mostly because it didn't really work -- harder than they expected to work in the giant robots into the rest of the convoluted mess that is the Marvel universe. XD And I guess the knockoff of Shockwave would be "Light Tremor" or something like that. :p (And heh, I see -- hey, if you don't mind the missing bits, that's a pretty good deal. Sounds like you got a pretty decent collection out of those bins!)
. . .that is quite the difference in designs, yes. O.o I mean, I know he's an alien robot creature, and thus doesn't NEED a humanoid head or anything, but -- just for CONSISTENCY'S sake, the cartoon redesign seems like a good idea. I mean, MOST of them follow that "kinda human shaped when not a car" model, so it really makes the poor guy stick out. (And oof, yeah, those are NOT good deaths. "For kids" really does sometimes mean "well, it's robots, so it can't be THAT traumatic to have them shot and set on fire." Yikes. . .) (And I hear you -- seems like the ideal marriage would have been designs more like the cartoon with writing more like the original comics.)
LOL -- welp, if you have the color variation and need to explain it away. . . And yeah, that makes sense. They'd be easy enough to mix up, especially if they were getting down to the wire with shipments. They look cute though!
Hah! Yeah, they'll say anything to make it look like they didn't have a few dumb accidents. And exactly -- this was a toy line designed to milk lots and lots of money out of families. If the color thing were deliberate, there DEFINITELY would have been a "collect them all!" vibe going on. (And now I want to call the differently-colored Cliffjumpers and Bumblebees "shiny" variants, a la Pokemon.)
*nods* And I see -- methinks THAT might have been an animation budget getting in the way. Costs more to have a whole lot of characters hanging around, especially if there's the threat of needing them to move! But yeah, it doesn't make the planet feel very populated! Ah well. . .
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Date: 2021-03-27 06:59 am (UTC)Yeah, I just pretended they were all battle-damaged because the stupid things just wouldn't quit fighting (I also used to confiscate all weapons from my TFs when possible and put them in a baggie...)
Yeah. It's probably why most of the fanart I've seen follows the cartoon designs (and so did the later Dreamwave comics and such) but most of the fics either use the comic or are set in the cartoon and swipe stuff from the comic to add detail, or go completely off the rails trying to fix some of the issues in other ways.
They are. I used to sleep with that little guy under my pillow. (Hey, I was maybe five years old...)
Heh! I like that. Tho technically most TFs would be 'shiny' if they used enough wax. (Suntreaker... urgh, just realized how much he probably actually needs therapy for the underlying PTSD and related mental issues, but then most of them are a mess when you really LOOK at them.)
And I would have loved a whole shelf of all the different color CJ/Bees. Heck, I'd still like to get the blue and green ones at least. And an Eggleo, which was never released in the U.S. But these days I think I'll settle for adding them to Mosaic and making game models of them so I can play with them in Unreal Editor instead. Takes up less space, and I can see them in scale to other things. :) It does give me the idea, tho, of doing one better on the comic and going back to the original toyline and finding out how many recolors there were... and designating them as additional characters (even if nameless to start with) that I could potentially work in to increase the species population.
True, you have to keep costs down... but shows also made by Sunbow (Jem, G.I. Joe, Inhumanoids) weren't afraid to add the ocassional unnamed background chara briefly seen or have a crowd scene or two just so the planet didn't look deserted. Jem especially had audience crowds at concerts and the like. Inhumaoids would have groups of nameless humans attacked by monsters and they would flee or get turned into zombies by D'Compose or something... Even Transformers would have unnamed background humans when they were on Earth, so it couldn't have been TOO much a budget issue. And when it comes to designs, I do recall one unnamed (later named Sunstorm by the Dreamwave comics) yellow Seeker in the early eps, so they could have just made use of all those redesigns and had randomly colored 'bots in the background. I think it was too much trying to keep attention on the characters that had toys, and taking it too far to the point where it seemed almost no one else existed.
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Date: 2021-03-28 03:23 am (UTC)*snork* Hey, given that they were all at war, totally makes sense! (And LOL -- welp, given that they were going to have to coexist with each other from now on, that's a smart move. ;) )
*nods* Yeah, that all makes sense. And in a series like this, I imagine there's a lot of fun and interesting ways to go off the rails trying to fix some of the nonsense. I mean, it's already about transforming robots from space who end up with embarrassing things in the general crotch area sometimes. :P
Awwww XD (And hey -- you're talking to someone who slept with her Silly Putty once. And NOT with it in the egg.)
Hehehe -- and yes, true enough. (And oof, I see. . .but it's not really surprising. The basic conceit of their line is that they're at war on an alien planet. PTSD and other mental issues are just going to be a given, sadly.)
Yeah, making them virtually is probably the better call. Sounds like you don't have enough real-life space as-is -- and as someone who has decent-sized collections of various toys that she just had to dust today, real-life collectibles can sometimes be a pain in the butt. (Especially if they turn out to be fragile. *glares at Corpse Bride toys*) And yes, figuring out scale is always a good thing! As is having ready-made extra characters thanks to the color variations. Sounds like their mistake is your gain!
Aaah, I see -- yeah, okay, that is rather weird, then. O.o Though I think you're onto something there -- I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of mandate along those lines. "Must always focus on the bots with actual toys!" And they did that so well they forgot they were dealing with an entire planet here.
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Date: 2021-03-29 07:07 am (UTC)And my G1 Megatron spent most of my childhood disassembled in pieces in a jar. I didn't put him back together until I was in maybe my late teens? That's also when I learned that the screws from old cassette tapes will fit for missing ones from most G1 Transformers...
That sounds like it would have gotten almost as messy as the Dissect-An-Alien incident. (Glow in the dark slime. In my hair. Not because I slept with it, but because one of my cousins came over and started messing with the play slime 'blood' while I was playing with it. But still, it wasn't noticed until that night when there were all these little glowing flakes in my hair...)
Yes, space is a continual problem (and yet I went and bought More Dolls today, but then I make no claims to sanity.) Heh, and yes. It could be a lot of fun doing the repaints in Unreal... maybe I can even work a little at correcting the gender-bias in the demographics. And if I class the 'extra colors' charas as Neutralists (Hey, no 'Bot or 'Con symbols! So they'd have to be.) that'll probably do something to help with the major divisiveness issues to work out with that particular group.
Yeah. It's like "Look, I know you guys can make background characters, and random NPCs do not usually even require voice acting to run up the bill. I know you can even design charas that actually have a part in a story, because of the girls in ONE lousy ep (none of whom had toys, of course 9.9). So WHY is Cybertron make Fallout Earth look like an overcrowded slum?" Hell, it makes Final fantasy 1 look overcrowded, and you can usually count the population of each town without running out of fingers.
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Date: 2021-03-30 03:11 am (UTC)Oooof -- well, that must have been fun to clean up! Though I bet it looked cool. XD If I remember correctly, a good chunk of the Silly Putty got stuck in my hair too. I'm sure some cutting was involved, but it was a while back, and my memory ain't the greatest, so. . . I just recall it being a bit of a mess. And my parents not understanding at all what I'd done. XD
Space is the eternal problem. *eyes her own shelves* And I hope it is fun! And that would be great -- take advantage of every opportunity to fix THAT gap. And ooo, nice -- some people to try and talk down the other two sides, perhaps. If they'll listen, anyway. . .
Really. Having played Fallout 4 -- well, I guess there's a fair amount of RAIDERS, but still. You don't make the effort to attract settlers to settlements, most of them are gonna have two people there max. If Cybertron can't manage THAT much. . . It's frankly embarrassing on the creators' part. Though, again, if there was some sort of edict to focus near-exclusively on "bots that have toys," the blame could possibly be more on Hasbro than the animators. Who knows.
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Date: 2021-03-30 03:33 am (UTC)Well, Mosaic is following a habit of letting the people who are useful and who will listen to reason out first, so anyone not willing to keep it consensual either doesn't get pulled from the Timesoup yet, or is in for a nice long stay in Silent Hill.
I'm putting together a spreadsheet that... basically the first page is a list of everyone that is out of the timesoup and not in Silent Hill (so everyone existing AND alive). Columns mostly of ones and zeros (as yes/no) depending on whether someone is in a certain demographic category follow. And a row that automatically updates to tell me their current age (or what age they will turn that year) calculated from a row down at the bottom that I put the current Mosaic year in...
... and then the second page automatically tallies all the world demographics for me! It is so cool. I used to spend way too much time doing math on that stuff, and even then I know the balance is all out of whack because of drawing from biased media (Jeannie and the vast majority of the ex-Gotham crowd are white.) But now I can compare that to real life stats and try to get some better diversity as things continue.
It is embarrassing. And there's probably no way to ever really know. After so long, they'd likely claim they don't remember, or that it was on purpose for reasons (like the Bumper/Bumblejumper thing).
Tho it really IS going to be fun for me tracking down all the alternate colors to pad out the 'gene pool' there (so to speak). There should be some research sources with info on that. But maybe after I'm done making a list of Dr Teal's entire inventory to see which nice bath goodies I want. XD
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Date: 2021-03-31 03:22 am (UTC)*nods* I see -- that's one way to make sure everyone doesn't start fighting again once they're out. And probably one of the best ways too.
Ooooh, that is indeed cool! :D Spreadsheets can make life so much easier in these respects. . . :) I'm glad the program is working out for you. And yeah, that should make it easier to help find ways to get in a lot more diversity going forward. :)
Mmmmm -- and yeah, I know. And hell, maybe they genuinely don't remember. Who knows -- not us, certainly.
Heh, good. I wish you all the best of luck with that. And with Dr. Teal's inventory. XD
no subject
Date: 2021-03-31 07:33 am (UTC)Yeah, I want a better world, so I'm trying to make sure there are systems in place to try to help everyone keep things consensual... and systems in place to deal swiftly with those who won't. (Let's just say I have some plans for all those assassins that will eventually get imported from Elder Scrolls and Assassin's Creed... tho hopefully it will be a good long while before they're needed.)
Oh yes, and it'll save me so much time next time someone asks a chara how many people are out or how old someone's kids are...
XD Almost done with it. The EO is near-obsessed with epsom salt soaks, and I like nice smells when I am going to spend time in a bath, Surprisingly, between the two of us, we actually want less than 1/4 of their reported product line. I'm hoping I can barter my pricing work for an item or two... but I probably won't be able to.
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Date: 2021-04-01 03:26 am (UTC)*nods* That's -- more than can be said about the real world, that's for sure. Swift justice is best justice. (I see. . .yeah, hopefully, though good to know you have plans and the people to carry out those plans.)
Oh, I'll bet! Organization is a nice thing. :)
Heh, I see. And huh -- well, means it won't be too expensive in the end? And I see -- yeah, probably not, sadly. Ah well. Hopefully you can find some of it for cheap!
no subject
Date: 2021-04-01 06:19 am (UTC)I'm now trying to remember if that is what prompted recarpeting the living room and dining room and putting a hardwood floor in my room, or if that was earlier or later. I have crap memory for sequence of events in my childhood.
Honestly, there wasn't THAT much of it, but my gran had dust allergies and was an obsessive vacuumer because of it (I liked vacuuming too sometimes to help.) and getting up for a midnight snack and spotting just one more little glowing flake somewhere... yeah, I'm glad she blamed Lora more than me. (I wanted the slime to stay IN the alien.) Come to think of it, I don't think Lora got to spend the night again.
This is the toy in question, btw. Wish sometimes I still had it. Seems the darned thing is $20 or so without his guts these days, and up to $100 complete. I never got anything later in that set.
https://flashbak.com/too-gross-remembering-mattels-mad-scientist-toys-of-the-1980s-361689/
But then I'm lucky I still have Bony Tony. Who is a Bog-O-Bones Halloween Boglin like at the top of this article:
https://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3412987/remember-awesome-halloween-boglins/
I've seen them go loose for over $100, and he's still got his box (battered tho it is. It's basically his little house so I would never hear of tossing it as a kid, thankfully.) Because he was interestingly rubbery and supposedly a swamp creature he was one of my favorite bath toys through most of my childhood.
Given that an organization fail and a following drive crash lead to my long RP hiatus, yes, yes it is.
Most Dr. Teals stuff is around $5 a pop if you hunt for the best deals. And my list ended up just 5 items for now (a scrub, a shampoo, a conditioner, a second shampoo because no one had the body wash I wanted in the scent I wanted for a reasonable price, and a lotion.) So not that bad. Her list was I think about twice as long. There's still some chance she'll get mine in with hers if they send her a covid check - she loves to shop...
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Date: 2021-04-02 03:12 am (UTC)Heh, that's okay, I hear you. My own long-term memory tends to be pretty shit, so I'd have trouble parsing that sort of thing out myself.
Ooh dear, I see -- poor woman! I'm sure it did not help her mood in any way. Yes, you are lucky she did spot who was the real culprit here! And I don't blame her for banning her from staying the night, if she did. Kid couldn't be trusted.
Wow -- that's pretty damn good for a toy like that. And it looks horrible and oozy, so that means it must have been fun. XD
And aww, neat! That's awesome you've got him and his home. :) And heh, that's adorable. I'm sure he was happy to splash around with you in the bath.
*nods* Mmmmm.
Ah, that's good. Seems like you've got that largely sorted out for the moment. And we'll see, I guess! I'll keep my fingers crossed.
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Date: 2021-04-02 09:08 am (UTC)Yep. Tho, being me, I felt bad for the alien and worked really hard to get all his innards in the right place, even if he does look like some kind of ugly anthro cockroach... (or considering the glowy blood and see-through body maybe a lightning bug?) Y'know, since I didn't want to fake-cut him up anyway, maybe I'll try to make myself a plushy replacement. They do make glow in the dark paints and fabrics and stuff these days! I wonder how hard it would be...
Bony Tony's eyes glow in the dark, btw. I had a thing for glow in the dark stuff for a while. Still have glow star stickers on my ceiling (tho I don't get to enjoy them since the lights stay on all the time for the plants and I have to wear a sleep mask).
Yeah, I stopped putting him in the bath when I started using scented bath oils and stuff tho because I didn't want them to maybe damage him. Otherwise I'd consider taking him out of his little cage for some playtime. That, and there's barely room for me in the trailer-sized tub here. Eh... maybe I could start a yearly or so "Oh, I just need to give the Boglin a wash. Dust happens, y'know" excuse. XD
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Date: 2021-04-03 03:28 am (UTC)Heh, why am I not surprised? :p And hmmm -- lightning bug alien sounds pretty cool, actually. And would indeed fit with the glowy blood. . .aww, that would be cute! The soft version of old Slimy. :p Though I have no idea how hard it would be, not being someone who sews, so. . .
That's cool -- I have a glow-in-the-dark DJ PON-3 I got from a blind box, and a glow-in-the-dark Minimate Slimer. They're prestty neat. :) And a shame you can't enjoy the stars, but the plants gotta come first. (I hope the latest ones survive the cold snap!)
Ahh, that's understandable. I wouldn't want anything to happen to my toys either. Though a year slash-around sounds good. XD
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Date: 2021-04-03 05:47 am (UTC)Soft sculpture in fleece is surprisingly not too hard, but even then... might not be easy. I'd have to track down and look off a LOT of photos for that.
I've actually considered ideas to paint all the ceilings in here glow in the dark as a 'first stage emergency backup' for when the electric goes out.
I think I'll plan it for some nice hot day in summer to double as an excuse to play in some cool water (as I kind of cringe at another reason to run the hot because of it switching the electric off almost every time I run a bath)
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Date: 2021-04-04 03:23 am (UTC)*nods* Yeah, you would. But hey, if you do decide to give it a go, I hope it goes well!
That's -- actually not a bad idea. I know I would appreciate something like that if I couldn't see normally!
Heh, there you go. Sounds like a plan. (And ugh -- that sucks. But you don't need me to tell you that.)
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Date: 2021-04-04 04:09 am (UTC)I'm actually plotting, as a result, to make the hall floor glow in the dark, also in case of power outages. And then after floors maybe move on to the ceilings with the concept. Having just enough light to find the flashlight by when the power goes off, without knocking things over and walking into furniture, would be a great thing. And look cool, too.
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Date: 2021-04-05 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-13 09:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-14 03:11 am (UTC)