Quiet Mother's Day
May. 9th, 2021 11:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickMom's card was successfully delivered, and the day was -- well, the morning was pretty nice. The afternoon was just getting drearier and drearier as the day went on. Tomorrow's supposed to be on the gloomy side too. . .ah well, we got some sunshine and warmer air!
I also got a lot done, if you would like to check the to-do list:
1. Edit at least one of the gift fics I owe for next weekend: Double check – I put my mind to it in the hour between getting dressed and lunch, and I managed to get both stories edited into a form I am happy with! :) I hope both recipients like them – I guess we’ll find out this upcoming weekend, as they’re literally back-to-back.
2. Clear out my Watch Later, keep up on YouTube Subs as best I can, and watch Jon's Fallout 4 YOLO episode: Check, though I didn’t do so hot on the second sub-item – though admittedly that’s because three out of my four subs uploaded today, and I wasn’t expecting that. But I did get a lot watched –
A) Started with a surprise OXtra addition to the WL line-up this morning – “Mike's Race Car is in a Video Game?! | Mike Drives His Ginetta in Automobilista 2!” What this refers to is – Mike did a racing course back in 2018, driving a specific model of Ginetta around one of the courses in the game. Apaprently he contacted the people behind Automobilista 2 (a very realistic racing sim) and asked if his car could be in the game, and they obliged – complete with a “MC84 OXB” license plate! :) So the video was him using a steering wheel set up (dressed up in full racing kit) to do some races in the game (two practice circuits, then an actual race on the course he actually drove on, Brands Hatch) while Luke and Ellen watched and provided amusing commentary (namely comparing some of the other cars to video game characters, like Kirby and Crash Bandicoot). XD He came 12th out of 16, so – better than I probably would have done! And it’s just nice to see the gang having fun together despite lockdowns and whatnot. And Mike being all happy that his car is in a cool racing game. :) (Oh, and bonus surprise in the comments – Luke’s a dad as of the end of April! :D So that’s great! I wondered why he wasn’t on the last OXtra list. . .)
B) Then it was onto Linkara’s side hustle, Late Night Double Feature! We had “Stephen King Haunted Hotel Night” today – which, naturally, meant talking about The Shining, because that’s what you have to do in these situations. The other movie was 1408, about one man’s struggle with an extremely evil hotel room. Host Clive thought they were both good movies, with plenty of psychological scares and interesting themes (1408 apparently being a really good one for not being able to just escape trauma). I’ve never seen either (though obviously I’m familiar with most of The Shining just from pop culture), but hey – if you like horror and Stephen King adaptations, you could go WAAAY worse.
C) Then it was onto The Spiffing Brit exploiting the hell out of Fallout 4 again! Though not, surprisingly enough, with Reanu Keeves – as the theme of this video was doing unarmed combat, Spiffing created a new hellish being to walk the wasteland – Chuck Chorris! Chuck, thanks to an alternate start mod, was a drunk living in a junkyard just outside Diamond City, but he had big dreams – kill Swan the Super Mutant Behemoth and a Legendary Mythic Deathclaw with just his fists! And, well, whatever can fit OVER his fists, because “unarmed” weapons are a thing in this game, and trying to take on Swan with nothing but your bare hands is – as Spiffing found out – basically suicide. In fact, poor Chuck died a LOT in this episode – to raiders, to mines, to dogs, to Swan, to the Deathclaw Spiffing spawned in. . .it was not an easy challenge for him to complete. But – thanks to the powers of leveling up, a Freezing Meat Hook snagged off a Legendary Ghoul, the Grognak costume from Hubris Comics, regular meals of Yao Guai Roast (which is bugged to REALLY boost melee damage temporarily. . .I actually have no idea if that helped Chuck or not, though, as I’m pretty sure “unarmed” is technically a different category), and LOADS of booze and drugs – Chuck eventually brought down Swan, claimed his Furious Power Fist, and then brought down (after many attempts) the Legendary Mythic Deathclaw. Then proceeded to loot a Fat Man off the corpse, nuke some deer, then send himself into the stratosphere. XD Basically, it’s not an IDEAL playstyle for FO4, but if you’re willing to become a junkie. . .
D) Then it was time for James Turner and another episode of “3 Brothers!” Today was actually mostly focused on Candle, as James sent him a couple of times to Britechester campus to avoid all the nonsense happening at the house (namely, Chaz the toddler not eating – which, according to the comments, is because of a bug where toddlers won’t eat certain KINDS of food, so his insistence on giving this kid gourmet dishes is what’s tripping him up). Candle’s doing okay grade-wise, but is definitely struggling with his fun and energy needs, poor kid. At least James, in an attempt to impress a girl, allowed him to show off his true self! His true, Yeti-costumed self. XD
The other major event of the day focused on Brodie, who decided to flee all the way up Mt. Komorebi itself to escape the house nonsense. (Though he did at least put in some time to teach his toddler to talk first.) He took his mom, Lilith Vatore, because he couldn’t go alone, and James was only too happy to abuse Brodie’s ability to fly as a bat to get them up the mountain quicker. XD Okay, okay, he actually DID have Brodie scale the climbing walls that he could actually do, but the last one definitely necessitated a teleport. At least that finally wiped out another level of his aspiration – just three more goals to go! Which involve surviving wildlife attacks and going down the slopes at high intensity in inclement weather. So that’ll be fun. :P
E) And then, of course, it was time for Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO episode! As usual, I will endeavor to give you the quick-and-dirty highlights of Finalley’s adventures:
I. Defending the Castle! Jon basically said “there is a non-zero chance Finalley is going with the Minutemen endgame, and thus we must prepare at least for the Institute attack, and possibly a Brotherhood one, on the Castle,” and thus Finalley set up some defenses for the place! Said defenses are a few turrets (missile turrets in the front, regular machine gun turrets in the back) and – a bunch of railings. Because Finalley can hop over those, while the NPCs are incapable of such things. Jumping is the protagonist’s super power, and Jon is taking full advantage of that. He even put some railings in front of the armory room so Finalley can use it as a safe room if worse comes to worst. Confusing the hell out of the AI – the best defense of all.
II. Being pinned down at South Boston Checkpoint by a Gunner vertibird! Yes, Gunners occasionally have access to the flying things, and fortunately for Finalley VATS told her the pilot was a Gunner and not Brotherhood before she actually got fired on. She spent a lot more time than she would like hiding in the little building nearby, listening to the vertibird fight what Jon assumes was a local sentry bot before popping out briefly to fire on it a couple of times and encourage it to crash. It did eventually crash, and Finalley was able to move on – not without some anxiety, but also with some ammo from the chest inside the Checkpoint, so. . .evens out?
III. Building the teleporter! Back home in Hangman’s Alley, Finalley was able to chat with Sturges and get the teleporter built! She didn’t even need to go “shopping” to do so – she had all the materials she needed right in her workbench. :) Admittedly, the power situation was a little tricky (and annoying – Jon had a level-up in hand when working, and all he needed to get a large generator was one rank of Science), but she balanced everything on the roof of one of the shacks. With that all sorted, she hopped in, and Sturges telekinetically operated the controls to send her into the Institute!
Where Jon skipped over all the story stuff in favor of stealing as many various sciency things as possible, picking up all the synth relay grenades (distractions in firefights are good!), and getting Finalley’s teleportation sorted. With the ability to teleport at her fingertips, she is now a bit safer out in the wide world. She is now basically going to ignore the Institute unless she needs to steal more stuff from them. XD Finalley, your “maternal instincts” define Mother’s Day.
IV. Avoiding consequences for murder! With the Institute looted, Finalley decided it was time to take care of a few other chores – like getting the last of the drugs from the failed deal, and making a few trades in Diamond City. However, there’s one person in Diamond City that she knew wouldn’t be happy to see her – Malcolm Latimer, father of Nelson, one of the people she ruthlessly murdered in that deal so she could take all the drugs for herself. Her INITIAL plan was to get into Diamond City, find the guy, and quietly murder him in his sleep – but then it turns out he was wide awake and looking for her, so the plan switched over to “red dress, nice glasses, lots of drugs” so she could pass the hard Charisma check to convince him that she didn’t kill Nelson and she had no clue who would do so. And, even better, all that Charisma gave her a bonus to her selling, so she got plenty of caps for her goods. Up to over four thousand caps now! Nice to be rich.
V. Collecting reading material! With THAT taken care of, Finalley (after taking a moment to wonder what an explosion outside Diamond City was – turned out to be a Suicider killing a Diamond City guard) headed out of Diamond City and over to Trinity Church, the hideout of three Super Mutants and their dog. (Jon mentioned Trinity Tower nearby, but said that Strong and Rex were basically going to be stuck up there forever because it’s just too dangerous for Finalley to attempt.) Finalley attempted to take them out with a plasma grenade she’d picked up, but for some reason that failed miserably – so instead she relied on her stealth and shot them all from a safe distance. With the lot dead, she looted the place for an Astoundingly Awesome Tales magazine (which gives you +5% damage against Super Mutants, fittingly enough) and a bunch of overdue books. She then went over to the nearby Pulowski shelter and looted three more from that before going to the library and picking up even more from the back room. Why did she want all these overdue books?
Why, because there is a Massachusetts Surgical Journal (+2% limb damage against enemies per issue) in the book return, and you need to return ten books to get the 50 tokens required to purchase it. Finalley made the trade and got her limb damage boosted, yay. (And, incidentally, her own limb damage has been decreased – Jon traded that level-up I mentioned earlier for the next level of “Adimantium Skeleton.”)
VI. Making plans for the next journey! Yes, we ended back at Hangman’s Alley, with Finalley prepping for a good snooze before another great journey north to pick up some goodies before heading over to Nuka-World. Jon still won’t say which item in PARTICULAR he really wants (only that it will be exceedingly helpful in a certain part of the Gauntlet), but he did mention there’s at least another Surgical Journal he’s hoping to pick up. We’ll see how THAT goes next week! :)
3. Play some more Alice: Madness Returns: Check, though it was something of a mini-sode – I started around 2:30, and Mom asked if I wanted to play the beanbag game before it rained around 2:52 (as the clouds were really starting to move in around then). Hilariously, she asked this JUST as I reached a checkpoint, so I was able to tell her "sure" and go out. I did get a little further through the Dollhouse, though – through all the spiky, meaty, creepy-doll bits that make up the cellars. It’s mostly Annoying Puzzles Time with all the weights, pressure pads, and invisible platforms – heck, I’m up to that room that is pretty much ALL invisible platforms. But I’m doing good, collecting memories and snouts and whatnot. Hoping I can play for longer next weekend, though – I want to play on the anniversary, but I was kind of thinking of that as the “big finale” moment. . .
Oh, and in case you were curious – I won the first game of beanbag toss (we were ALL throwing horribly, but I was doing marginally better than my parents), then Dad proceeded to win the next four, with Mom managing to come ahead of me and get second in the last two. *shrug* I got one!
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike (got downstairs later than I expected and didn’t want to hold up dinner; the treadmill is guaranteed to be over a half-hour workout that leaves me sweaty and immediately needing a shower), back with “Nuka-World Level One Survival!” Caught up with Minnie back at the Fizztop Grille, freshly rad-scrubbed and ready to finish the Kiddie Kingdom! After a quick ponder of her new Freezing Sledgehammer (gotten off a Legendary; Jon doesn’t like the weight but it does good damage, so he’s storing it away for potential later use), and taking “Ninja 2” on her latest level-up for more sneak attack damage, she put on her hazmat suit and made her way back into the park, working her way up and around the remaining painted ghouls (slicing and dicing) until she finally found King Cola’s Castle, within which was the theater for her penultimate confrontation with Oswald.
Of course, she had to get into King Cola’s Castle first, and that was no easy feat. Mostly because the front doors have two MISSILE LAUNCHER traps that activate the minute you open them, AND there’s a bunch of high-level ghouls, including the nasty Charred, hanging around the front area. Minnie died no less than four times trying to just get inside without getting exploded or clawed to death. She did make an attempt to find some sort of side entrance into the castle that didn’t require a jetpack, but came up with naught (though she did find an amusing teddy bear scene, with the bear having knifed three alternate souvenir toys). Eventually she managed to avoid the traps, blow up some of the ghouls with a bottlecap mine that had been left on the stairs, and – well, it took another couple of tries to make it around the Charred in the starting area (though one helpfully broke its legs falling from the battlements above), but eventually she did it, and was able to knife her way up onto the upper levels. A quick save nap over in what was once Rachel’s quarters (along with picking up some medical supplies and cooking some food), and she was ready to go into the theater.
Where she promptly took advantage of a trick Jon had heard about since Grills’s iconic “mining up the theater so the resurrected ghouls all blow themselves up as soon as Oswald performs his magic trick” – turns out, if you just whack the dead bodies to the point where their limbs or heads come off, Oswald can’t resurrect them at all. Minnie just smashed up all the ghoul corpses while Oswald did his dramatic speech, then managed to one-shot him with her bat when he tried to get her with his sword. XD Jon was extremely tickled. Of course, after this, he sent her up and promptly had her make peace via the holotape, because otherwise he’s a real bastard of a boss fight. Oswald said he’d take his friends and leave the Kingdom, handing over his Sword of Wonders – which still didn’t interest Jon, even with the more melee-focused Minnie, because apparently its bonuses are just not that good. *shrug* We’ll finish off this episode tomorrow, and see where Minnie goes from there!
So yeah -- wish I'd managed to get to Call Me Kevin and/or GrayStillPlays in my Subs, but I decided it was more important to get the longest thing out of there first. . .and also I have an extra day off coming up on Thursday, so if I fall behind a bit, I can catch up that day. Now I just gotta finish setting up my Valice Multiverse queue, answer my DW comment, then head to bed. Back to work tomorrow, bleh. . .at least it's just three days! Hopefully they aren't too bad. . .night all!
I also got a lot done, if you would like to check the to-do list:
1. Edit at least one of the gift fics I owe for next weekend: Double check – I put my mind to it in the hour between getting dressed and lunch, and I managed to get both stories edited into a form I am happy with! :) I hope both recipients like them – I guess we’ll find out this upcoming weekend, as they’re literally back-to-back.
2. Clear out my Watch Later, keep up on YouTube Subs as best I can, and watch Jon's Fallout 4 YOLO episode: Check, though I didn’t do so hot on the second sub-item – though admittedly that’s because three out of my four subs uploaded today, and I wasn’t expecting that. But I did get a lot watched –
A) Started with a surprise OXtra addition to the WL line-up this morning – “Mike's Race Car is in a Video Game?! | Mike Drives His Ginetta in Automobilista 2!” What this refers to is – Mike did a racing course back in 2018, driving a specific model of Ginetta around one of the courses in the game. Apaprently he contacted the people behind Automobilista 2 (a very realistic racing sim) and asked if his car could be in the game, and they obliged – complete with a “MC84 OXB” license plate! :) So the video was him using a steering wheel set up (dressed up in full racing kit) to do some races in the game (two practice circuits, then an actual race on the course he actually drove on, Brands Hatch) while Luke and Ellen watched and provided amusing commentary (namely comparing some of the other cars to video game characters, like Kirby and Crash Bandicoot). XD He came 12th out of 16, so – better than I probably would have done! And it’s just nice to see the gang having fun together despite lockdowns and whatnot. And Mike being all happy that his car is in a cool racing game. :) (Oh, and bonus surprise in the comments – Luke’s a dad as of the end of April! :D So that’s great! I wondered why he wasn’t on the last OXtra list. . .)
B) Then it was onto Linkara’s side hustle, Late Night Double Feature! We had “Stephen King Haunted Hotel Night” today – which, naturally, meant talking about The Shining, because that’s what you have to do in these situations. The other movie was 1408, about one man’s struggle with an extremely evil hotel room. Host Clive thought they were both good movies, with plenty of psychological scares and interesting themes (1408 apparently being a really good one for not being able to just escape trauma). I’ve never seen either (though obviously I’m familiar with most of The Shining just from pop culture), but hey – if you like horror and Stephen King adaptations, you could go WAAAY worse.
C) Then it was onto The Spiffing Brit exploiting the hell out of Fallout 4 again! Though not, surprisingly enough, with Reanu Keeves – as the theme of this video was doing unarmed combat, Spiffing created a new hellish being to walk the wasteland – Chuck Chorris! Chuck, thanks to an alternate start mod, was a drunk living in a junkyard just outside Diamond City, but he had big dreams – kill Swan the Super Mutant Behemoth and a Legendary Mythic Deathclaw with just his fists! And, well, whatever can fit OVER his fists, because “unarmed” weapons are a thing in this game, and trying to take on Swan with nothing but your bare hands is – as Spiffing found out – basically suicide. In fact, poor Chuck died a LOT in this episode – to raiders, to mines, to dogs, to Swan, to the Deathclaw Spiffing spawned in. . .it was not an easy challenge for him to complete. But – thanks to the powers of leveling up, a Freezing Meat Hook snagged off a Legendary Ghoul, the Grognak costume from Hubris Comics, regular meals of Yao Guai Roast (which is bugged to REALLY boost melee damage temporarily. . .I actually have no idea if that helped Chuck or not, though, as I’m pretty sure “unarmed” is technically a different category), and LOADS of booze and drugs – Chuck eventually brought down Swan, claimed his Furious Power Fist, and then brought down (after many attempts) the Legendary Mythic Deathclaw. Then proceeded to loot a Fat Man off the corpse, nuke some deer, then send himself into the stratosphere. XD Basically, it’s not an IDEAL playstyle for FO4, but if you’re willing to become a junkie. . .
D) Then it was time for James Turner and another episode of “3 Brothers!” Today was actually mostly focused on Candle, as James sent him a couple of times to Britechester campus to avoid all the nonsense happening at the house (namely, Chaz the toddler not eating – which, according to the comments, is because of a bug where toddlers won’t eat certain KINDS of food, so his insistence on giving this kid gourmet dishes is what’s tripping him up). Candle’s doing okay grade-wise, but is definitely struggling with his fun and energy needs, poor kid. At least James, in an attempt to impress a girl, allowed him to show off his true self! His true, Yeti-costumed self. XD
The other major event of the day focused on Brodie, who decided to flee all the way up Mt. Komorebi itself to escape the house nonsense. (Though he did at least put in some time to teach his toddler to talk first.) He took his mom, Lilith Vatore, because he couldn’t go alone, and James was only too happy to abuse Brodie’s ability to fly as a bat to get them up the mountain quicker. XD Okay, okay, he actually DID have Brodie scale the climbing walls that he could actually do, but the last one definitely necessitated a teleport. At least that finally wiped out another level of his aspiration – just three more goals to go! Which involve surviving wildlife attacks and going down the slopes at high intensity in inclement weather. So that’ll be fun. :P
E) And then, of course, it was time for Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO episode! As usual, I will endeavor to give you the quick-and-dirty highlights of Finalley’s adventures:
I. Defending the Castle! Jon basically said “there is a non-zero chance Finalley is going with the Minutemen endgame, and thus we must prepare at least for the Institute attack, and possibly a Brotherhood one, on the Castle,” and thus Finalley set up some defenses for the place! Said defenses are a few turrets (missile turrets in the front, regular machine gun turrets in the back) and – a bunch of railings. Because Finalley can hop over those, while the NPCs are incapable of such things. Jumping is the protagonist’s super power, and Jon is taking full advantage of that. He even put some railings in front of the armory room so Finalley can use it as a safe room if worse comes to worst. Confusing the hell out of the AI – the best defense of all.
II. Being pinned down at South Boston Checkpoint by a Gunner vertibird! Yes, Gunners occasionally have access to the flying things, and fortunately for Finalley VATS told her the pilot was a Gunner and not Brotherhood before she actually got fired on. She spent a lot more time than she would like hiding in the little building nearby, listening to the vertibird fight what Jon assumes was a local sentry bot before popping out briefly to fire on it a couple of times and encourage it to crash. It did eventually crash, and Finalley was able to move on – not without some anxiety, but also with some ammo from the chest inside the Checkpoint, so. . .evens out?
III. Building the teleporter! Back home in Hangman’s Alley, Finalley was able to chat with Sturges and get the teleporter built! She didn’t even need to go “shopping” to do so – she had all the materials she needed right in her workbench. :) Admittedly, the power situation was a little tricky (and annoying – Jon had a level-up in hand when working, and all he needed to get a large generator was one rank of Science), but she balanced everything on the roof of one of the shacks. With that all sorted, she hopped in, and Sturges telekinetically operated the controls to send her into the Institute!
Where Jon skipped over all the story stuff in favor of stealing as many various sciency things as possible, picking up all the synth relay grenades (distractions in firefights are good!), and getting Finalley’s teleportation sorted. With the ability to teleport at her fingertips, she is now a bit safer out in the wide world. She is now basically going to ignore the Institute unless she needs to steal more stuff from them. XD Finalley, your “maternal instincts” define Mother’s Day.
IV. Avoiding consequences for murder! With the Institute looted, Finalley decided it was time to take care of a few other chores – like getting the last of the drugs from the failed deal, and making a few trades in Diamond City. However, there’s one person in Diamond City that she knew wouldn’t be happy to see her – Malcolm Latimer, father of Nelson, one of the people she ruthlessly murdered in that deal so she could take all the drugs for herself. Her INITIAL plan was to get into Diamond City, find the guy, and quietly murder him in his sleep – but then it turns out he was wide awake and looking for her, so the plan switched over to “red dress, nice glasses, lots of drugs” so she could pass the hard Charisma check to convince him that she didn’t kill Nelson and she had no clue who would do so. And, even better, all that Charisma gave her a bonus to her selling, so she got plenty of caps for her goods. Up to over four thousand caps now! Nice to be rich.
V. Collecting reading material! With THAT taken care of, Finalley (after taking a moment to wonder what an explosion outside Diamond City was – turned out to be a Suicider killing a Diamond City guard) headed out of Diamond City and over to Trinity Church, the hideout of three Super Mutants and their dog. (Jon mentioned Trinity Tower nearby, but said that Strong and Rex were basically going to be stuck up there forever because it’s just too dangerous for Finalley to attempt.) Finalley attempted to take them out with a plasma grenade she’d picked up, but for some reason that failed miserably – so instead she relied on her stealth and shot them all from a safe distance. With the lot dead, she looted the place for an Astoundingly Awesome Tales magazine (which gives you +5% damage against Super Mutants, fittingly enough) and a bunch of overdue books. She then went over to the nearby Pulowski shelter and looted three more from that before going to the library and picking up even more from the back room. Why did she want all these overdue books?
Why, because there is a Massachusetts Surgical Journal (+2% limb damage against enemies per issue) in the book return, and you need to return ten books to get the 50 tokens required to purchase it. Finalley made the trade and got her limb damage boosted, yay. (And, incidentally, her own limb damage has been decreased – Jon traded that level-up I mentioned earlier for the next level of “Adimantium Skeleton.”)
VI. Making plans for the next journey! Yes, we ended back at Hangman’s Alley, with Finalley prepping for a good snooze before another great journey north to pick up some goodies before heading over to Nuka-World. Jon still won’t say which item in PARTICULAR he really wants (only that it will be exceedingly helpful in a certain part of the Gauntlet), but he did mention there’s at least another Surgical Journal he’s hoping to pick up. We’ll see how THAT goes next week! :)
3. Play some more Alice: Madness Returns: Check, though it was something of a mini-sode – I started around 2:30, and Mom asked if I wanted to play the beanbag game before it rained around 2:52 (as the clouds were really starting to move in around then). Hilariously, she asked this JUST as I reached a checkpoint, so I was able to tell her "sure" and go out. I did get a little further through the Dollhouse, though – through all the spiky, meaty, creepy-doll bits that make up the cellars. It’s mostly Annoying Puzzles Time with all the weights, pressure pads, and invisible platforms – heck, I’m up to that room that is pretty much ALL invisible platforms. But I’m doing good, collecting memories and snouts and whatnot. Hoping I can play for longer next weekend, though – I want to play on the anniversary, but I was kind of thinking of that as the “big finale” moment. . .
Oh, and in case you were curious – I won the first game of beanbag toss (we were ALL throwing horribly, but I was doing marginally better than my parents), then Dad proceeded to win the next four, with Mom managing to come ahead of me and get second in the last two. *shrug* I got one!
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike (got downstairs later than I expected and didn’t want to hold up dinner; the treadmill is guaranteed to be over a half-hour workout that leaves me sweaty and immediately needing a shower), back with “Nuka-World Level One Survival!” Caught up with Minnie back at the Fizztop Grille, freshly rad-scrubbed and ready to finish the Kiddie Kingdom! After a quick ponder of her new Freezing Sledgehammer (gotten off a Legendary; Jon doesn’t like the weight but it does good damage, so he’s storing it away for potential later use), and taking “Ninja 2” on her latest level-up for more sneak attack damage, she put on her hazmat suit and made her way back into the park, working her way up and around the remaining painted ghouls (slicing and dicing) until she finally found King Cola’s Castle, within which was the theater for her penultimate confrontation with Oswald.
Of course, she had to get into King Cola’s Castle first, and that was no easy feat. Mostly because the front doors have two MISSILE LAUNCHER traps that activate the minute you open them, AND there’s a bunch of high-level ghouls, including the nasty Charred, hanging around the front area. Minnie died no less than four times trying to just get inside without getting exploded or clawed to death. She did make an attempt to find some sort of side entrance into the castle that didn’t require a jetpack, but came up with naught (though she did find an amusing teddy bear scene, with the bear having knifed three alternate souvenir toys). Eventually she managed to avoid the traps, blow up some of the ghouls with a bottlecap mine that had been left on the stairs, and – well, it took another couple of tries to make it around the Charred in the starting area (though one helpfully broke its legs falling from the battlements above), but eventually she did it, and was able to knife her way up onto the upper levels. A quick save nap over in what was once Rachel’s quarters (along with picking up some medical supplies and cooking some food), and she was ready to go into the theater.
Where she promptly took advantage of a trick Jon had heard about since Grills’s iconic “mining up the theater so the resurrected ghouls all blow themselves up as soon as Oswald performs his magic trick” – turns out, if you just whack the dead bodies to the point where their limbs or heads come off, Oswald can’t resurrect them at all. Minnie just smashed up all the ghoul corpses while Oswald did his dramatic speech, then managed to one-shot him with her bat when he tried to get her with his sword. XD Jon was extremely tickled. Of course, after this, he sent her up and promptly had her make peace via the holotape, because otherwise he’s a real bastard of a boss fight. Oswald said he’d take his friends and leave the Kingdom, handing over his Sword of Wonders – which still didn’t interest Jon, even with the more melee-focused Minnie, because apparently its bonuses are just not that good. *shrug* We’ll finish off this episode tomorrow, and see where Minnie goes from there!
So yeah -- wish I'd managed to get to Call Me Kevin and/or GrayStillPlays in my Subs, but I decided it was more important to get the longest thing out of there first. . .and also I have an extra day off coming up on Thursday, so if I fall behind a bit, I can catch up that day. Now I just gotta finish setting up my Valice Multiverse queue, answer my DW comment, then head to bed. Back to work tomorrow, bleh. . .at least it's just three days! Hopefully they aren't too bad. . .night all!
