Kinda Stressful End To Sunday
Oct. 17th, 2021 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickBlame the Pats game -- it was a very close loss, and my Dad was doing a lot of yelling at the TV. Plus it delayed supper, and -- yeah, not exactly conducive to a calm, quiet end to the weekend. *shakehead* But at least I did good on most of my to-do list. . .
1.Write some more on "Learn to Love Again" OR start doing a final skim of Chapter One of "Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica's Deluded Depths" in preparation for that being posted on Thursday: Check on the second – I got the text into FF.net’s document editor for a final skim-through, and I’ve already managed to fix a few little typos before they become a problem. :) Doing the rest of it is probably gonna take the next few days, but hey – so long as it’s ready by Thursday, I’ll be fine! Oh, and I did end up changing the title – after some thought, I decided Hollywood works better with the Deluded Depths, because of Carpenter and his love of theater. Santa Monica is now “Vale of Tears,” simply because both are a starting area (Santa Monica for VTMB, Vale of Tears for A:MR). So that’s section titles covered for a while!
2. Watch the latest AT4W, keep up on YouTube Subs, and watch Jon's latest FO4 YOLO episode: Check! Took a while, because two of these were about an hour long each, but it was all done!
A) Started with the latest AT4W and its first “ASHOCK The Fourth Wall” episode – “The Ring, vol. 1!” A manga adaptation of – well. Okay, so it turns out that The Ring movies can trace their origins back to the first novel of a book series about psychic powers and ghosts. And the manga is kind of a combination adaptation of the Ringu movie and the book (or, at the very least, mostly the movie with some book elements). I’ve never been that into The Ring or any of its sequels, adaptations, or what have you, but I have to say, the manga held my attention well enough! Especially with Linkara complaining about stuff like how the cursed video tape is actually only a small part of the franchise (and there’s no real explanation for how the tape came into being anyway). Granted, the manga chose to adapt some of the more disgusting parts of the book (Sadako was – not just dumped into that well, let’s say), and the image of her bones being pulled out of the water is HORRIFYING, but it’s a good ride.
Also, the Contest of Champions is still happening, and thanks to the race sequence which should have come before this needing too many visual effects, this latest fight is happening out of order. And involves Linkara playing, I guess, cat and mouse with a serial killer champion. *shrug* We’ll see how it turns out. (Yeah, again, my enthusiasm for this storyline’s continued existence is very low. Linkara, you should have cut your losses and knocked yourself out of the contest AGES ago.)
B) Then, after beanbags (see below), I moved onto Call Me Kevin and another round of BitLife! He’s done a life where he constantly said “yes” to everything (actually, three lives in the end, if I recall correctly) – now it’s time for the opposite, a life where everything is a “no!” We started with “Noah T. Hanks” from Cork, Ireland, and began saying no – no vaccines (or, at least, biting his mother when she tried to bring him), no pets, no friends, no love interests, no driving test, no eye test, no college – he DID apply for a job, and was briefly employed as a bouncer, but then was let go for personal hygiene issues. Because no showers too, apparently. XD He also spent some time as a water-slide tester (and then was fired for developing hives he refused to treat) and an exorcist (after being offered the job by a friend, and Kevin accidentally said “yes” because he was desperate for money), but ended up losing it all by losing a bunch of money at the casino (by constantly standing during poker) and getting arrested when he tried to flee without paying his debt. And then he tried to escape, failed, started a riot, cried it out, and FINALLY succeeded in escaping. And then turned to a life of crime, doing a few robberies and joining the Irish Mob – before his “no” ways led to him refusing an order by his boss and starting him on a trip around the world, emigrating from country to country in a bid to find one that would let him run for office (fortunately, his mother died right before this all happened and left him two million, so he was well-funded). He eventually went back to Ireland, was beat up by his old gang, continued saying no to everyone who could share his life, and eventually died after developing foreign accent syndrome (which Kevin was surprised to learn was a real thing). Kevin did a quick “speedrun” right after where he legitimately said “no” to everything – Noah actually lived about the same amount of time, despite developing EVEN MORE health problems that he constantly ignored. XD All in all, I wouldn’t say this was as chaotic as the “yes” life, but at least it was very worldly! XD
C) Then, after a late supper (football game ran over) and me doing some initial skimming over Chapter 1 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears,” we had GrayStillPlays versus another GTA V parkour board! Lots of fun stuff today – some initial mega-jumps with the rocket car, culminating by flying into a thumbnail hole tube; climbing up and down some very sharp Vs before moving into rounding corners and dodging “!” signs as he moved from “hut” to “hut;” some even steeper climbs up some rainbow roads, including a tightrope around the lip of an almost horizontal canister and a jump just past a “!” sign on a tightrope; a “throw yourself on the landing block upside-down” section into a bunch of painful wall rides into a “hop from block to block” section (that you have to take at speed as it comes IMMEDIATELY after the wall ride); into yet another wall ride and into a stack of canisters that you have to VERY CAREFULLY transfer your way into. Four times. Gray was so freaking relieved that was the end of it. XD Only the best Satan boards for THIS channel!
D) And then, finally, we had Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO video of the week – Ms. Finalley takes on “Power Play!” . . .after sneaking, terrified, back to the Fizztop Grille for a snooze and her power armor, because she forgot to take a nap and got to Overtired the moment she got back (not helped by picking up Fatigue thanks to all the mentats she’s been doing), and left the power armor at her home base in Nuka-World, which just so happens to be right in the middle of Disciple territory. Jon himself admitted he made many stupid decisions there. XD On the PLUS side, the Operators and the Pack had already taken out most of them before Finalley properly entered the fray, so she only had to snipe off a couple herself, talk to Shanks, then lure the rest into Operator territory with a predator grenade (which spawned some albino mongrels) and her own gunshots before making it home for a rest. Once she retrieved her power armor, she carefully wound her way around the Galactic Zone (fortunately it was the Pack fighting the Super Mutants over there today), then threaded the needle between some ants and some crickets before meeting up with Mags, William, and Mason to talk about taking out Nisha (and pointing out another good reason for siding with the Operators – they have TWO gang leaders, not one, so you can get advantage of numbers by keeping them on your side). Finalley let them go ahead and start taking out the enemies out front, providing a bit of sniper support and marveling at Mags’s ability to teleport up top and throw around all the grenades –
And then she went into “caution.” And turned around to see TWO BEARS CHARGING AT HER, ONE OF WHICH WAS A LEGENDARY.
Cue a lot of “cannot talk now PANICKING” Jon as he dug out the Staggering .308 Combat Rifle and did a bunch of PsychoJet so Finalley would ACTUALLY SURVIVE. Fortunately she managed to kill both before they got near her (slightly helped by William Black, still hanging around), and even got an Incendiary pistol off the Legendary, which was good for trading later. After THAT bit of excitement, Finalley climbed up the weird balls next to the power plant to get Nisha in play, then went inside, took out a couple of Charred feral ghouls and a single Disciple, and jet-packed her way up to the exit hatch, where she found Nisha already downed by Mags, and finished her off with a headshot through the window. Grabbed the key off the corpse and turned on the power, with fireworks going off and lights going on above all of the various parks. :) Happy not-quite-one-year anniversary! :D
With THAT all set, Finalley checked in with Gage, and then Jon brought us up to speed on why he wanted the Operator and Pack perks for her – namely, Ace Operator increases her stealth a bit (nice, but meh), and increases base damage with all of her silenced weapons a LOT (w000!), while Pack Alpha increases base damage for unarmed combat and melee weapons (really NOT Finalley’s thing), and reduces incoming damage by 25% (YES YES OH HOLY GOD YES). He also swung by the World of Refreshment one last time on his way out, because now that the power’s back on, the secret labs are opened, and that means picking up the research to make Nuka Quantum Grenades! Plus two just for free, which Jon was only too happy to take! Because spoils of war – and Nuka-World is officially finished, w000!
. . .and because next time, it’s finally time to start looking at Automatron. Oh dear. The Rust Devils are coming, folks – and now it’s a question of whether or not Finalley will live past THEIR assault.
3. Play Bloodlines and get over to Chinatown OR do some prep for Fallout 4 (like a reinstall): Unfortunately, this one fell a bit by the wayside. I’ll give myself a partial check just because I did watch a video on installing “Mod Organizer 2” and how to set it up for Fallout 4 (since it seems to be the one most modders prefer), and I did prune down my mod list a little more, but – I hate to say it, it’s hard for me to want to take the leap with FO4 again simply because of the hell of a time I had with Concord crashing at the beginning of the year. I LIKE the universe, and I want to like the game. . .I dunno. I’ll figure out something. And I really do want to do SOMETHING related to it on Saturday. I’ll figure that out too.
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and back with L.A. By Night, “Mortal Stakes!” Caught up with the gang as they made their way to Griffith Park and the observatory – Annabelle annoyed everyone by getting excited by the idea of the Tremere being like Harry Potter as Jasper tried to explain clans (Victor eventually said “think more like MacBeth”); they were briefly tailed by a mysterious car, though Eve (their driver) did some fancy driving to try and lose them; and upon arrival, Nelli was briefly entranced by a ghostly vision of a woman in white, who may or may not have been a ghost – she dissolved when Annabelle tried to get Nelli’s attention one too many times. Their contact at the observatory was a young Tremere named Eva (whom I know becomes an important character later on), who did a blood magic ritual involving a silver knife, a silver cup, and some of Annabelle’s blood – determining she’s 13th generation (pretty standard), of the Brujah clan (obvious in retrospect, as most of her new coterie admitted), and apparently had Blood Magic worked upon her before (this is a somewhat disturbing revelation). Once they went to leave to report back to Isaac, however, the SUV that was tailing them before SMASHED into their car, and disgorged a couple of rather disturbing figures – one of which has unnaturally long arms on an unnaturally squat body; the other tall and athletic. Jasper went “OBFUSCATE!” while Nelli, Victor, and Annabelle sought refuge in the observatory – at least until the shooting started, though as per the Storyteller, it’s Eve shooting the squat guy, who just ripped off the driver’s side door (she’s hurt, but clearly not taking any shit). Victor’s hoping to go help her, Jasper’s sneaking up behind the other guy, and who knows what’s going to happen with Annabelle and Nelli just yet! Find out tomorrow!
5.Work on tumblr queues: Check – got all the pictures done and drafted on Victor Luvs Alice for my final Newcrest Adventures update (the one where Wheatley finally gets his desk) right before lunch! So I just gotta do the text for those for Wednesday, and I already know what’s going up Thursday and Saturday. . .just gotta figure out Friday. . . And on Valice Multiverse, nothing going on there, but I found some A:MR fanart and some Victor icons, so went ahead and reblogged those.
Additionally:
-->Another game of beanbags – I wasn’t sure if we’d play today (not because it was significantly cooler, but today is football Sunday), but Dad was open to playing before the Pats game started, so we went out. And I FINALLY had a better day than I’ve been having – W-3-W-3-2! Dad got 2-W-2-2-W, and Mom got 3-2-3-W-3! So yay, we all won one, I can once again occasionally throw well (especially when poor Dad is throwing badly), and all is right with the world. :p
-->Finally got my head together enough to answer the weekly FF.net PM, yay~
Eh, pretty good overall. Like I said, I'll figure out the Fallout 4 stuff later. (Maybe the trick should be to reinstall, temporarily remove all mods except for the most updated version of the Unofficial Patch, and then just start a new game and play through the opening sequence? I mean, the dates on the calendar matching for that bit is the main reason for my desire to do something with the game. . .) As it stands, gotta head to bed because I've got a full week ahead of me. Hopefully it won't be too bad! (And my PMS won't be too bitchy.) Night all!
1.
2. Watch the latest AT4W, keep up on YouTube Subs, and watch Jon's latest FO4 YOLO episode: Check! Took a while, because two of these were about an hour long each, but it was all done!
A) Started with the latest AT4W and its first “ASHOCK The Fourth Wall” episode – “The Ring, vol. 1!” A manga adaptation of – well. Okay, so it turns out that The Ring movies can trace their origins back to the first novel of a book series about psychic powers and ghosts. And the manga is kind of a combination adaptation of the Ringu movie and the book (or, at the very least, mostly the movie with some book elements). I’ve never been that into The Ring or any of its sequels, adaptations, or what have you, but I have to say, the manga held my attention well enough! Especially with Linkara complaining about stuff like how the cursed video tape is actually only a small part of the franchise (and there’s no real explanation for how the tape came into being anyway). Granted, the manga chose to adapt some of the more disgusting parts of the book (Sadako was – not just dumped into that well, let’s say), and the image of her bones being pulled out of the water is HORRIFYING, but it’s a good ride.
Also, the Contest of Champions is still happening, and thanks to the race sequence which should have come before this needing too many visual effects, this latest fight is happening out of order. And involves Linkara playing, I guess, cat and mouse with a serial killer champion. *shrug* We’ll see how it turns out. (Yeah, again, my enthusiasm for this storyline’s continued existence is very low. Linkara, you should have cut your losses and knocked yourself out of the contest AGES ago.)
B) Then, after beanbags (see below), I moved onto Call Me Kevin and another round of BitLife! He’s done a life where he constantly said “yes” to everything (actually, three lives in the end, if I recall correctly) – now it’s time for the opposite, a life where everything is a “no!” We started with “Noah T. Hanks” from Cork, Ireland, and began saying no – no vaccines (or, at least, biting his mother when she tried to bring him), no pets, no friends, no love interests, no driving test, no eye test, no college – he DID apply for a job, and was briefly employed as a bouncer, but then was let go for personal hygiene issues. Because no showers too, apparently. XD He also spent some time as a water-slide tester (and then was fired for developing hives he refused to treat) and an exorcist (after being offered the job by a friend, and Kevin accidentally said “yes” because he was desperate for money), but ended up losing it all by losing a bunch of money at the casino (by constantly standing during poker) and getting arrested when he tried to flee without paying his debt. And then he tried to escape, failed, started a riot, cried it out, and FINALLY succeeded in escaping. And then turned to a life of crime, doing a few robberies and joining the Irish Mob – before his “no” ways led to him refusing an order by his boss and starting him on a trip around the world, emigrating from country to country in a bid to find one that would let him run for office (fortunately, his mother died right before this all happened and left him two million, so he was well-funded). He eventually went back to Ireland, was beat up by his old gang, continued saying no to everyone who could share his life, and eventually died after developing foreign accent syndrome (which Kevin was surprised to learn was a real thing). Kevin did a quick “speedrun” right after where he legitimately said “no” to everything – Noah actually lived about the same amount of time, despite developing EVEN MORE health problems that he constantly ignored. XD All in all, I wouldn’t say this was as chaotic as the “yes” life, but at least it was very worldly! XD
C) Then, after a late supper (football game ran over) and me doing some initial skimming over Chapter 1 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears,” we had GrayStillPlays versus another GTA V parkour board! Lots of fun stuff today – some initial mega-jumps with the rocket car, culminating by flying into a thumbnail hole tube; climbing up and down some very sharp Vs before moving into rounding corners and dodging “!” signs as he moved from “hut” to “hut;” some even steeper climbs up some rainbow roads, including a tightrope around the lip of an almost horizontal canister and a jump just past a “!” sign on a tightrope; a “throw yourself on the landing block upside-down” section into a bunch of painful wall rides into a “hop from block to block” section (that you have to take at speed as it comes IMMEDIATELY after the wall ride); into yet another wall ride and into a stack of canisters that you have to VERY CAREFULLY transfer your way into. Four times. Gray was so freaking relieved that was the end of it. XD Only the best Satan boards for THIS channel!
D) And then, finally, we had Jon’s Fallout 4 YOLO video of the week – Ms. Finalley takes on “Power Play!” . . .after sneaking, terrified, back to the Fizztop Grille for a snooze and her power armor, because she forgot to take a nap and got to Overtired the moment she got back (not helped by picking up Fatigue thanks to all the mentats she’s been doing), and left the power armor at her home base in Nuka-World, which just so happens to be right in the middle of Disciple territory. Jon himself admitted he made many stupid decisions there. XD On the PLUS side, the Operators and the Pack had already taken out most of them before Finalley properly entered the fray, so she only had to snipe off a couple herself, talk to Shanks, then lure the rest into Operator territory with a predator grenade (which spawned some albino mongrels) and her own gunshots before making it home for a rest. Once she retrieved her power armor, she carefully wound her way around the Galactic Zone (fortunately it was the Pack fighting the Super Mutants over there today), then threaded the needle between some ants and some crickets before meeting up with Mags, William, and Mason to talk about taking out Nisha (and pointing out another good reason for siding with the Operators – they have TWO gang leaders, not one, so you can get advantage of numbers by keeping them on your side). Finalley let them go ahead and start taking out the enemies out front, providing a bit of sniper support and marveling at Mags’s ability to teleport up top and throw around all the grenades –
And then she went into “caution.” And turned around to see TWO BEARS CHARGING AT HER, ONE OF WHICH WAS A LEGENDARY.
Cue a lot of “cannot talk now PANICKING” Jon as he dug out the Staggering .308 Combat Rifle and did a bunch of PsychoJet so Finalley would ACTUALLY SURVIVE. Fortunately she managed to kill both before they got near her (slightly helped by William Black, still hanging around), and even got an Incendiary pistol off the Legendary, which was good for trading later. After THAT bit of excitement, Finalley climbed up the weird balls next to the power plant to get Nisha in play, then went inside, took out a couple of Charred feral ghouls and a single Disciple, and jet-packed her way up to the exit hatch, where she found Nisha already downed by Mags, and finished her off with a headshot through the window. Grabbed the key off the corpse and turned on the power, with fireworks going off and lights going on above all of the various parks. :) Happy not-quite-one-year anniversary! :D
With THAT all set, Finalley checked in with Gage, and then Jon brought us up to speed on why he wanted the Operator and Pack perks for her – namely, Ace Operator increases her stealth a bit (nice, but meh), and increases base damage with all of her silenced weapons a LOT (w000!), while Pack Alpha increases base damage for unarmed combat and melee weapons (really NOT Finalley’s thing), and reduces incoming damage by 25% (YES YES OH HOLY GOD YES). He also swung by the World of Refreshment one last time on his way out, because now that the power’s back on, the secret labs are opened, and that means picking up the research to make Nuka Quantum Grenades! Plus two just for free, which Jon was only too happy to take! Because spoils of war – and Nuka-World is officially finished, w000!
. . .and because next time, it’s finally time to start looking at Automatron. Oh dear. The Rust Devils are coming, folks – and now it’s a question of whether or not Finalley will live past THEIR assault.
3. Play Bloodlines and get over to Chinatown OR do some prep for Fallout 4 (like a reinstall): Unfortunately, this one fell a bit by the wayside. I’ll give myself a partial check just because I did watch a video on installing “Mod Organizer 2” and how to set it up for Fallout 4 (since it seems to be the one most modders prefer), and I did prune down my mod list a little more, but – I hate to say it, it’s hard for me to want to take the leap with FO4 again simply because of the hell of a time I had with Concord crashing at the beginning of the year. I LIKE the universe, and I want to like the game. . .I dunno. I’ll figure out something. And I really do want to do SOMETHING related to it on Saturday. I’ll figure that out too.
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and back with L.A. By Night, “Mortal Stakes!” Caught up with the gang as they made their way to Griffith Park and the observatory – Annabelle annoyed everyone by getting excited by the idea of the Tremere being like Harry Potter as Jasper tried to explain clans (Victor eventually said “think more like MacBeth”); they were briefly tailed by a mysterious car, though Eve (their driver) did some fancy driving to try and lose them; and upon arrival, Nelli was briefly entranced by a ghostly vision of a woman in white, who may or may not have been a ghost – she dissolved when Annabelle tried to get Nelli’s attention one too many times. Their contact at the observatory was a young Tremere named Eva (whom I know becomes an important character later on), who did a blood magic ritual involving a silver knife, a silver cup, and some of Annabelle’s blood – determining she’s 13th generation (pretty standard), of the Brujah clan (obvious in retrospect, as most of her new coterie admitted), and apparently had Blood Magic worked upon her before (this is a somewhat disturbing revelation). Once they went to leave to report back to Isaac, however, the SUV that was tailing them before SMASHED into their car, and disgorged a couple of rather disturbing figures – one of which has unnaturally long arms on an unnaturally squat body; the other tall and athletic. Jasper went “OBFUSCATE!” while Nelli, Victor, and Annabelle sought refuge in the observatory – at least until the shooting started, though as per the Storyteller, it’s Eve shooting the squat guy, who just ripped off the driver’s side door (she’s hurt, but clearly not taking any shit). Victor’s hoping to go help her, Jasper’s sneaking up behind the other guy, and who knows what’s going to happen with Annabelle and Nelli just yet! Find out tomorrow!
5.Work on tumblr queues: Check – got all the pictures done and drafted on Victor Luvs Alice for my final Newcrest Adventures update (the one where Wheatley finally gets his desk) right before lunch! So I just gotta do the text for those for Wednesday, and I already know what’s going up Thursday and Saturday. . .just gotta figure out Friday. . . And on Valice Multiverse, nothing going on there, but I found some A:MR fanart and some Victor icons, so went ahead and reblogged those.
Additionally:
-->Another game of beanbags – I wasn’t sure if we’d play today (not because it was significantly cooler, but today is football Sunday), but Dad was open to playing before the Pats game started, so we went out. And I FINALLY had a better day than I’ve been having – W-3-W-3-2! Dad got 2-W-2-2-W, and Mom got 3-2-3-W-3! So yay, we all won one, I can once again occasionally throw well (especially when poor Dad is throwing badly), and all is right with the world. :p
-->Finally got my head together enough to answer the weekly FF.net PM, yay~
Eh, pretty good overall. Like I said, I'll figure out the Fallout 4 stuff later. (Maybe the trick should be to reinstall, temporarily remove all mods except for the most updated version of the Unofficial Patch, and then just start a new game and play through the opening sequence? I mean, the dates on the calendar matching for that bit is the main reason for my desire to do something with the game. . .) As it stands, gotta head to bed because I've got a full week ahead of me. Hopefully it won't be too bad! (And my PMS won't be too bitchy.) Night all!
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Date: 2021-10-18 12:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-10-19 03:28 am (UTC)