Gloomy Chill Saturday
May. 28th, 2022 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWell, "chill" in terms of hanging out, not temperature -- wasn't SUPER warm, but it was still kinda sticky, so I spent most of the day in a tank top, shorts, and my bathrobe for optimal layering. XD But I had a good, quiet day, and did well on my simplified to-do list:
1. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Did the usual morning catch-up on tags and dashboard and whatnot on Victor Luvs Alice, threw a nice shot of Piper from FO4 into the drafts, then finally finished my “here’s all my current ship names for your viewing pleasure” post for a couple of weeks ago in said drafts, as well as added in starter posts for “everyone I ship with Victor and Alice’s sexualities and gender presentations” and “where Alice now resides in the Mass State House and her surprise ‘don’t have to be dead in the daytime’ thing for FO4,” all before lunch! (Which, admittedly, was late today, but still. . .)
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch the Hitman 3 Rubber Duck OXBox Stream video: Three-fourths check, simply because Wyrd Sisters Podcast uploaded their episode on Snuff today, but thanks to my previous engagement with OXBox, I wasn’t able to listen to it. Hope to get to it tomorrow! But I got through all the rest –
A) Started with “Hitman 3 RUBBER DUCK CONTRACTS | Mike vs Rubber Duck Featured Contracts Hitman 3 Live Stream” – the two-hour livestream of Mike doing various “rubber duck”-themed contracts in Hitman 3! Why Mike? Because Mike is the one who famously managed a truly awesome stealth kill of an elusive target (the Chef) with an explosive rubber duck once. XD (In fact, I went and rewatched that clip first just for funsies.) However, poor Mike was NOT as successful at ducking targets this time around –
I. Livestream started during a period of server maintenance, so they couldn’t even play online and DO the contracts. While they were waiting, they decided to do some offline missions and see if they can kill the targets with The Pale Duck (the aforementioned explosive rubber duck). First mission was them attempting the New York bank level from Hitman 2 – Mike naturally went in dressed as a clown, armed with a tranquilizer gun and both the regular explosive duck and the concussive “only knocks you out” duck. Unfortunately, while he was initially able to skirt around some guards using the tranq gun and get up to the second floor, hiding from pursuit in a cupboard, he ended up being spotted when he went into one of the side offices and was eventually gunned down by like five million guards because he ran out of ammo on a stolen gun.
II. They moved onto the Miami level, which was more suited to Mike’s level of chaos, and discovered there was a new “Special Assignment” there that they hadn’t seen before – 47 tasked to assassinate one AJ Krish, a multi-level marketing scammer selling “demineralized salt water.” Yes, really. One of his victims wanted him to die painfully, and the gang decided that blowing him up with a rubber duck counted. XD This one took two tries, as they accidentally wandered off miles away from the target in an effort to avoid getting frisked at the front gates – AJ was actually in the VIP area trying to scam more people into supporting his product. The winning strategy turned out to be drop the illegal gun, get frisked, sneak through the security guard office by the VIP area, knock out a guard, steal his outfit, then look for the target to blow him up. First time Mike tried to bounce the duck off his head while he talked to potential marks – this ended up killing SOMEONE ELSE, and Mike went down in a hail of gunfire. Second time, Mike managed to get him just as he was leaving the parking lot during his little “wander back to my car periodically” routine, blow him to smithereens, then run back, get his clown outfit, and exit with no one really the wiser. Yes, okay, he accidentally killed the guard he stole the outfit from this time, but – can’t make an omelet without cracking a few duck eggs? XD
III. After that was a check of the server status – everything was back online! They promptly went to the Featured Contracts to check out “The Night The Duck Cried,” with was set in Chongqing with the premise that 47 was “researching” why most agents didn’t use The Pale Duck explosive to eliminate their targets. He had two people to eliminate – Josef up in the weird mind-controlly complex, and one in the actual ICA facility behind the noodle place (I cannot for the life of me recall his name) – preferably using the duck, preferably dressed as a researcher, preferably without being recorded or spotted doing anything illegal, and he HAD to hide all bodies and not take out any non-targets. Basically this was some sort of weird explosive stealth run, and Mike hated it. XD He tried twice to get Josef up in the mind control facility – managed a pretty good strategy of sneaking into the building by the main stairs, waiting for the candidate interviews to stop in the room nearby, knocking out the two researchers in there, stealing the outfit off the man, then dragging the bodies out the windows on either side of the room (to avoid the camera) to hide them in a nearby bin, before strolling past the guards on the stairs to the upper levels, where he retrieved his hidden explosive pen (since you can only use one duck per level) before finding the stairs where Josef hung out with a potential noticer – but was never actually able to get him. The first time, he tried to just blow up Josef from behind the noticer, but the guy, well, noticed him – and while Mike was trying to escape, he acccidentally shanked him, failing the mission for eliminating a non-target; the second time, he managed to coin and tranquilize the noticer, get Joseph with the exploding pen, and then leg it – but since all bodies, dead or not, must be hidden, the minute the guards found the corpse and bagged it up, he auto-failed the level. Try three had him going after the target in the ICA facility, which involved a lot of skulking around the streets until he could find a good door in, then a lot of skulking around various staircases trying to find a good way to get to the target – he eventually found a side room where he was able to knock out both an office worker and a high-level security guard, steal the latter’s clothes, hide them both in a cupboard in the bathroom, and finally get close enough to get to his target to blow him up with the duck – but again, the “all bodies must be hidden” obligation came into play, and Mike was not able to clear a path to a nearby cupboard in time to drag the body there before it was bagged up. Hmph.
IV. Mike decided he’d had enough of ducks crying at night and moved onto another featured contract – “Boom Stick,” set in the Berlin nightclub! This one had the conceit of 47 being hired by someone who’d had their shotguns stolen from them by some of the bikers and drug dealers hanging around the club, and wanted them hunted down. So it was a shotgun murder spree instead of a duck murder spree, but the gang figured the idea was that it was like a “duck hunt” of a sort. Mike didn’t have the preferred shotgun of the contract, but managed to smuggle in one of the shotguns he did have through the agency drop, and took along The Pale Duck for moral support and to keep the stream on-theme. XD He chose to start as a DJ in the DJ booth, and after hyping the crowd, went off to do murder things (Andy criticized him for neglecting the drop XD). He spotted his first target relatively early on, sitting on a bench near the outdoor clubbing area; after some careful sneaking to retrieve his shotgun (happily stored in a briefcase for easy concealment), he was able to sneak back over there, blow the guys brains out, then go around what I assume to be some sort of outdoor air conditioner unit to hide while the guards ran around trying to figure out what happened. And stopping JUST SHORT of Mike’s hiding place on the other side of the thing. XD The corpse was summarily bagged up and dragged away, Mike hid the shotgun in his briefcase, and continued creeping around, looking for his other targets. There was one worrying moment when he found himself in a restricted area courtesy of a door that locked behind him and was spotted by a woman, but fortunately he was able to knock her out with the briefcase. Causing her to collapse in a really weird pose and earning her the nickname of “Yoga Lady.” XD Mike dragged her to a slightly-less-obvious spot and got back into the parts of the club he was allowed into, and found his second target, the local drug dealer. He lured him into a semi-isolated area by means of asking him to sell him drugs, then shotgunned him in the face before hopping into a nearby box to hide from the heat again. There was some worry about Mike having dropped either his shotgun or his briefcase and either being taken away by security, but as it turns out, in the darkness of the corner they were in, nobody had noticed he was still carrying both when he hopped in the box. XD Security carted away the body; Mike got out of the box and made sure his shotgun was stashed in his briefcase, then proceeded to do the sneaky thing down to the lowest level of the club, working his way around some biker guards so he could shoot the owner of the whole place. He nailed the guy with a shell, then ran to the nearest box by the stairs and hid – unfortunately, he was rumbled relatively quickly, and had to just book it up the stairs, all the way to the top, to get away from the gunfire. But get away he did, and he was able to make it back into the main club, out, and around with only minimal panic until he finally reached the abandoned bike by the main entrance and was able to pedal off into the night! Poor Mike earned no stars for that showing (probably because he used the wrong shotgun), but at least he got the title “Refined Shotgun Assassin” out of it. XD
V. Then, finally, with just enough time to try one more contract, Mike found himself back in New York for “Duck Billed Dollars,” with a client hoping for 47 to eliminate a pair of bank robbers – one posing as staff, one posing as a client, both down in the safe deposit box room – via The Pale Duck. Once again, though, the bodies had to be hidden, and this time no pacification was allowed – murder only! (Though judging by how these attempts went down, I think that was an optional objective everyone mistook for a required one.) Mike tried SEVEN times to get this to work, and failed each time. First time, admittedly, was a trial run, with him legging it past the guards to avoid a frisk and tossing the duck at the pair when they were in the vault together – turns out that they were just far enough apart and away from the blast that THEY DIDN’T DIE. They were just knocked out. Second try saw Mike drop the gun to pass the frisk and not set off all the guards right away – again, though, he couldn’t actually KILL them with the duck, AND he noticed that the vault had absolutely nowhere he could hide a body. Third try had him take the Emetic Gas Mine to poison them and make them run for the bathroom – however, it quickly became apparent that Mike couldn’t get the damn thing through the frisk, so instead Jane helped him find a screwdriver so he could loosen the grate on a vent and send it down into the vault itself for later retrieval. Unfortunately, one of the security staff found it first – and when Mike followed them to retrieve it from the security room, he both got locked out of the room while hiding from the guard, and locked into a place where he was trespassing. Fourth try involved the same basic principle, only sending Mike’s GUN down first to pre-distract the guard and try to get the Emetic Mine down there while he was putting the gun in the security room – unfortunately, the frisk took long enough that the mine was noticed, and Mike’s attempt to pick it up before the guard to could get it made everyone freak out as it’s an illegal item. FIFTH try had them try smuggling it into the vault via briefcase, with Jane saying that if they carefully PLACE the briefcase down while getting frisked, then pick it right back up again, they can just take it into the vault without issue – unfortunately, Mike forgot to drop his gun off first, and when he ran off to the nearest trash bin to conceal it, one of the guards picked up the “abandoned” briefcase and took it away. SIXTH try had Mike drop his gun FIRST and then get the briefcase past the frisk with the “careful placement” trick, and even get the mine set up behind one of his targets – but then the OTHER target noticed it, went to get a guard, and Mike got noticed carrying around the illegal item as he tried to pick it up again. SEVENTH time, Mike dropped his gun, got his briefcase past the frisk, figured out how to get just the DETONATOR for the mine out of the briefcase, put the briefcase behind one of his targets, set the mine off INSIDE the briefcase as the other wandered over wondering what the deal with the briefcase was, watched as they both walked off and went upstairs (one visibly sick, the other apparently fine because her animations for giving a “lost” item to a guard may have overpowered her “be sick” animations) –
And realized the two women were going to DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. He ended up following the visibly sick one into a nearby bathroom, blew her up with the duck in there, and tried to hide her, only to be caught by either a passerby or a guard, and ended the level, and the stream, in a hail of gunfire. Once again. XD So yeah, only two contracts successfully completed, and one didn’t even involve the duck! Shame. . . As I put in my comment, these contracts were duckin’ hard. XD Another time, Mike!
B) Then, after supper, we moved into the Subs for Call Me Kevin and “Red Dead Redemption 1 is not how you remember it!” Yes, Kevin returned to the original Red Dead Redemption today, to do such things as terrorize an elixir salesman and repeatedly struggle to win a horse race (against both the AI and his own gaming system turning itself off at bad times); help out wrangling cattle on a cattle ranch, and have such a bad time (from his horse bucking him off and one cow just flinging itself off a cliff) that he went around and killed every last cow once he’d actually completed the mission; help save that same rancher’s horses from a barn fire, only to repeatedly fail every time he lightly bumped an NPC, “terrorizing” them; murder a thief by tying them to the railroad tracks – and then watch as his horse got pulverized by the same train; get so drunk he literally basically fell asleep and chewed sand in the middle of the road for a while; attempt to track down and stop a cannibal, only to spend all of his time just lightly pushing him, before tracking him down and hogtying him while constantly glitching out on a certain voice line (his “stutter” lasted ten minutes, apparently); save a man and his horse that were glitching into the ground (he managed to lasso out the man, but the horse ended up taking a bullet); and finally save the rancher from a bunch of outlaws who had kidnapped her to hang her, a process that went very poorly thanks to Kevin having to push the man into place and then constantly missing the rope to cut her down via dead-eye shot. XD It was delightfully weird and chaotic – perfect Kevin material!
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “I became the strongest man in GTA 5” – AKA, Gray goes through a hydraulic-press-themed parkour board in GTA V courtesy of Alex! And the people in the comments who were suggesting a board like this, which inspired Alex. The damn board STARTED with Gray being pressed through a road into the first checkpoint, where he had to choose the correct vehicle to do the upcoming obstacle course with – fortunately, Gray was smart enough to know the motorcycle was the right choice due to its better speed and zoomed through a whole long road full of various crushers, all ready to grind him and his bike into a thin paste. After that, there was a tightrope which ended in a jump and a sideways turn onto ANOTHER tightrope, which then led into a jump through another crusher – THEN onto another series of tightropes around the edges of some canisters! Except that every other canister kept popping out of existence – first one alternated every five seconds, second one every four seconds, third one every THREE seconds. And when Gray got past all of THAT, he THEN had to do a jump through a bunch of cars being thrown around by magnets and a WINDMILL through a THUMBNAIL HOLE on the bike. And THEN he had to trade the bike for a car and go through a series of sideways crushers (think like the ones from the Portal series), flanked by windmills, a series of his own clones, and – at the very end – Satan in a clown car. Gray stole the clown car to leap into the win area. XD A painful board, but once again, Gray’s determination and masochism saw him through, hooray! XD
3. Play Sims 4 either get through another day with Smiler Alwaysor do some more building: Check to the first! After putting my mods and CC back into my game (everything seems to be working all right!), I hopped into Sims 4 and went back to Smiler! They had a pretty chill Friday, all things considered – they started by refining and organizing their final presentation for their “Pondering Personalities” class, then took care of their garden, cleaned up the dishes from Harvestfest, and set their pronouns to “they/them” because we can do that now. :D Then it was off to the campus to do some more homework, attend their first class, and then meet up with their buddy Davion (who nearly walked off and despawned, but apparently was willing to go back and say hi after Smiler waited in place long enough). They chatted for a while, and Smiler was able to get a drink with permission from him – a drink that allowed them to level up their “Influence Emotions” power into “Alter Emotions” (which looks like it affects more Sims, judging from the bigger “blast radius”). Then they flew around for a bit – playing games at the arcade, picking up “Hopper” the MySims trophy from a fossil rock, and then meeting up with Angela Pleasant and having a nice chat before heading to their Mixology class. And once that was done –
It was time to hit the Game Day Party, w000! A – kinda pathetic little gathering with a stereo, a ping-pong table, and a few people hanging around in face paint. O.o I was expecting a bit more? Still, Smiler was able to hang out there for a while – getting to know fellow Spirit Squad member Hajar, doing some VERY BRIEF streaking (the game kept resetting them before they got more than a few feet), encouraging people to dance, playing Ping Pong against Lilith Pleasant (and losing), and starting the Foxbury Cheer a few times! It wasn’t a lot of school spirit, but it was enough to upgrade them to a Seasoned Member of the squad. :) Plus they got the inheritance phone call again – $2,500 for asking about the conditions, nice. That plus their paycheck from work has funded the purchase of the Ultimate Vampire Tome, w00! So they’re one step closer to maxing out their Vampire Lore skill! :D Yes, things are going pretty darn well for Smiler. Maybe not the most exciting day today for them, but given they’ve been going on dates and having parties and whatnot a lot recently, it’s good to have a quieter day every so often. :)
Ahhh, good to have a low-stakes day -- especially when it lets me get a few things into the drafts that I've been meaning to cover already. Trying to keep a good backlog of content in there for -- well, for weeks like the ones I've had recently at work, where the creative urges are low! But this has been pretty good for a brain break weekend -- hoping I can get back into the fanfic flow on Monday!
But for now, Sunday to-dos:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's FO4: Point Lookout video
3. Play Fallout 4 and get past Power Armor Raider
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
That last one remains optional, but I do hope to get down there. Also hope to get something out of the Watch Later too, but we'll see! Depends on if we do beanbags and other factors. As it is, I've got social and RP stuff going on right now, so I'd best get back to it -- night all!
1. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Did the usual morning catch-up on tags and dashboard and whatnot on Victor Luvs Alice, threw a nice shot of Piper from FO4 into the drafts, then finally finished my “here’s all my current ship names for your viewing pleasure” post for a couple of weeks ago in said drafts, as well as added in starter posts for “everyone I ship with Victor and Alice’s sexualities and gender presentations” and “where Alice now resides in the Mass State House and her surprise ‘don’t have to be dead in the daytime’ thing for FO4,” all before lunch! (Which, admittedly, was late today, but still. . .)
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch the Hitman 3 Rubber Duck OXBox Stream video: Three-fourths check, simply because Wyrd Sisters Podcast uploaded their episode on Snuff today, but thanks to my previous engagement with OXBox, I wasn’t able to listen to it. Hope to get to it tomorrow! But I got through all the rest –
A) Started with “Hitman 3 RUBBER DUCK CONTRACTS | Mike vs Rubber Duck Featured Contracts Hitman 3 Live Stream” – the two-hour livestream of Mike doing various “rubber duck”-themed contracts in Hitman 3! Why Mike? Because Mike is the one who famously managed a truly awesome stealth kill of an elusive target (the Chef) with an explosive rubber duck once. XD (In fact, I went and rewatched that clip first just for funsies.) However, poor Mike was NOT as successful at ducking targets this time around –
I. Livestream started during a period of server maintenance, so they couldn’t even play online and DO the contracts. While they were waiting, they decided to do some offline missions and see if they can kill the targets with The Pale Duck (the aforementioned explosive rubber duck). First mission was them attempting the New York bank level from Hitman 2 – Mike naturally went in dressed as a clown, armed with a tranquilizer gun and both the regular explosive duck and the concussive “only knocks you out” duck. Unfortunately, while he was initially able to skirt around some guards using the tranq gun and get up to the second floor, hiding from pursuit in a cupboard, he ended up being spotted when he went into one of the side offices and was eventually gunned down by like five million guards because he ran out of ammo on a stolen gun.
II. They moved onto the Miami level, which was more suited to Mike’s level of chaos, and discovered there was a new “Special Assignment” there that they hadn’t seen before – 47 tasked to assassinate one AJ Krish, a multi-level marketing scammer selling “demineralized salt water.” Yes, really. One of his victims wanted him to die painfully, and the gang decided that blowing him up with a rubber duck counted. XD This one took two tries, as they accidentally wandered off miles away from the target in an effort to avoid getting frisked at the front gates – AJ was actually in the VIP area trying to scam more people into supporting his product. The winning strategy turned out to be drop the illegal gun, get frisked, sneak through the security guard office by the VIP area, knock out a guard, steal his outfit, then look for the target to blow him up. First time Mike tried to bounce the duck off his head while he talked to potential marks – this ended up killing SOMEONE ELSE, and Mike went down in a hail of gunfire. Second time, Mike managed to get him just as he was leaving the parking lot during his little “wander back to my car periodically” routine, blow him to smithereens, then run back, get his clown outfit, and exit with no one really the wiser. Yes, okay, he accidentally killed the guard he stole the outfit from this time, but – can’t make an omelet without cracking a few duck eggs? XD
III. After that was a check of the server status – everything was back online! They promptly went to the Featured Contracts to check out “The Night The Duck Cried,” with was set in Chongqing with the premise that 47 was “researching” why most agents didn’t use The Pale Duck explosive to eliminate their targets. He had two people to eliminate – Josef up in the weird mind-controlly complex, and one in the actual ICA facility behind the noodle place (I cannot for the life of me recall his name) – preferably using the duck, preferably dressed as a researcher, preferably without being recorded or spotted doing anything illegal, and he HAD to hide all bodies and not take out any non-targets. Basically this was some sort of weird explosive stealth run, and Mike hated it. XD He tried twice to get Josef up in the mind control facility – managed a pretty good strategy of sneaking into the building by the main stairs, waiting for the candidate interviews to stop in the room nearby, knocking out the two researchers in there, stealing the outfit off the man, then dragging the bodies out the windows on either side of the room (to avoid the camera) to hide them in a nearby bin, before strolling past the guards on the stairs to the upper levels, where he retrieved his hidden explosive pen (since you can only use one duck per level) before finding the stairs where Josef hung out with a potential noticer – but was never actually able to get him. The first time, he tried to just blow up Josef from behind the noticer, but the guy, well, noticed him – and while Mike was trying to escape, he acccidentally shanked him, failing the mission for eliminating a non-target; the second time, he managed to coin and tranquilize the noticer, get Joseph with the exploding pen, and then leg it – but since all bodies, dead or not, must be hidden, the minute the guards found the corpse and bagged it up, he auto-failed the level. Try three had him going after the target in the ICA facility, which involved a lot of skulking around the streets until he could find a good door in, then a lot of skulking around various staircases trying to find a good way to get to the target – he eventually found a side room where he was able to knock out both an office worker and a high-level security guard, steal the latter’s clothes, hide them both in a cupboard in the bathroom, and finally get close enough to get to his target to blow him up with the duck – but again, the “all bodies must be hidden” obligation came into play, and Mike was not able to clear a path to a nearby cupboard in time to drag the body there before it was bagged up. Hmph.
IV. Mike decided he’d had enough of ducks crying at night and moved onto another featured contract – “Boom Stick,” set in the Berlin nightclub! This one had the conceit of 47 being hired by someone who’d had their shotguns stolen from them by some of the bikers and drug dealers hanging around the club, and wanted them hunted down. So it was a shotgun murder spree instead of a duck murder spree, but the gang figured the idea was that it was like a “duck hunt” of a sort. Mike didn’t have the preferred shotgun of the contract, but managed to smuggle in one of the shotguns he did have through the agency drop, and took along The Pale Duck for moral support and to keep the stream on-theme. XD He chose to start as a DJ in the DJ booth, and after hyping the crowd, went off to do murder things (Andy criticized him for neglecting the drop XD). He spotted his first target relatively early on, sitting on a bench near the outdoor clubbing area; after some careful sneaking to retrieve his shotgun (happily stored in a briefcase for easy concealment), he was able to sneak back over there, blow the guys brains out, then go around what I assume to be some sort of outdoor air conditioner unit to hide while the guards ran around trying to figure out what happened. And stopping JUST SHORT of Mike’s hiding place on the other side of the thing. XD The corpse was summarily bagged up and dragged away, Mike hid the shotgun in his briefcase, and continued creeping around, looking for his other targets. There was one worrying moment when he found himself in a restricted area courtesy of a door that locked behind him and was spotted by a woman, but fortunately he was able to knock her out with the briefcase. Causing her to collapse in a really weird pose and earning her the nickname of “Yoga Lady.” XD Mike dragged her to a slightly-less-obvious spot and got back into the parts of the club he was allowed into, and found his second target, the local drug dealer. He lured him into a semi-isolated area by means of asking him to sell him drugs, then shotgunned him in the face before hopping into a nearby box to hide from the heat again. There was some worry about Mike having dropped either his shotgun or his briefcase and either being taken away by security, but as it turns out, in the darkness of the corner they were in, nobody had noticed he was still carrying both when he hopped in the box. XD Security carted away the body; Mike got out of the box and made sure his shotgun was stashed in his briefcase, then proceeded to do the sneaky thing down to the lowest level of the club, working his way around some biker guards so he could shoot the owner of the whole place. He nailed the guy with a shell, then ran to the nearest box by the stairs and hid – unfortunately, he was rumbled relatively quickly, and had to just book it up the stairs, all the way to the top, to get away from the gunfire. But get away he did, and he was able to make it back into the main club, out, and around with only minimal panic until he finally reached the abandoned bike by the main entrance and was able to pedal off into the night! Poor Mike earned no stars for that showing (probably because he used the wrong shotgun), but at least he got the title “Refined Shotgun Assassin” out of it. XD
V. Then, finally, with just enough time to try one more contract, Mike found himself back in New York for “Duck Billed Dollars,” with a client hoping for 47 to eliminate a pair of bank robbers – one posing as staff, one posing as a client, both down in the safe deposit box room – via The Pale Duck. Once again, though, the bodies had to be hidden, and this time no pacification was allowed – murder only! (Though judging by how these attempts went down, I think that was an optional objective everyone mistook for a required one.) Mike tried SEVEN times to get this to work, and failed each time. First time, admittedly, was a trial run, with him legging it past the guards to avoid a frisk and tossing the duck at the pair when they were in the vault together – turns out that they were just far enough apart and away from the blast that THEY DIDN’T DIE. They were just knocked out. Second try saw Mike drop the gun to pass the frisk and not set off all the guards right away – again, though, he couldn’t actually KILL them with the duck, AND he noticed that the vault had absolutely nowhere he could hide a body. Third try had him take the Emetic Gas Mine to poison them and make them run for the bathroom – however, it quickly became apparent that Mike couldn’t get the damn thing through the frisk, so instead Jane helped him find a screwdriver so he could loosen the grate on a vent and send it down into the vault itself for later retrieval. Unfortunately, one of the security staff found it first – and when Mike followed them to retrieve it from the security room, he both got locked out of the room while hiding from the guard, and locked into a place where he was trespassing. Fourth try involved the same basic principle, only sending Mike’s GUN down first to pre-distract the guard and try to get the Emetic Mine down there while he was putting the gun in the security room – unfortunately, the frisk took long enough that the mine was noticed, and Mike’s attempt to pick it up before the guard to could get it made everyone freak out as it’s an illegal item. FIFTH try had them try smuggling it into the vault via briefcase, with Jane saying that if they carefully PLACE the briefcase down while getting frisked, then pick it right back up again, they can just take it into the vault without issue – unfortunately, Mike forgot to drop his gun off first, and when he ran off to the nearest trash bin to conceal it, one of the guards picked up the “abandoned” briefcase and took it away. SIXTH try had Mike drop his gun FIRST and then get the briefcase past the frisk with the “careful placement” trick, and even get the mine set up behind one of his targets – but then the OTHER target noticed it, went to get a guard, and Mike got noticed carrying around the illegal item as he tried to pick it up again. SEVENTH time, Mike dropped his gun, got his briefcase past the frisk, figured out how to get just the DETONATOR for the mine out of the briefcase, put the briefcase behind one of his targets, set the mine off INSIDE the briefcase as the other wandered over wondering what the deal with the briefcase was, watched as they both walked off and went upstairs (one visibly sick, the other apparently fine because her animations for giving a “lost” item to a guard may have overpowered her “be sick” animations) –
And realized the two women were going to DIFFERENT LOCATIONS. He ended up following the visibly sick one into a nearby bathroom, blew her up with the duck in there, and tried to hide her, only to be caught by either a passerby or a guard, and ended the level, and the stream, in a hail of gunfire. Once again. XD So yeah, only two contracts successfully completed, and one didn’t even involve the duck! Shame. . . As I put in my comment, these contracts were duckin’ hard. XD Another time, Mike!
B) Then, after supper, we moved into the Subs for Call Me Kevin and “Red Dead Redemption 1 is not how you remember it!” Yes, Kevin returned to the original Red Dead Redemption today, to do such things as terrorize an elixir salesman and repeatedly struggle to win a horse race (against both the AI and his own gaming system turning itself off at bad times); help out wrangling cattle on a cattle ranch, and have such a bad time (from his horse bucking him off and one cow just flinging itself off a cliff) that he went around and killed every last cow once he’d actually completed the mission; help save that same rancher’s horses from a barn fire, only to repeatedly fail every time he lightly bumped an NPC, “terrorizing” them; murder a thief by tying them to the railroad tracks – and then watch as his horse got pulverized by the same train; get so drunk he literally basically fell asleep and chewed sand in the middle of the road for a while; attempt to track down and stop a cannibal, only to spend all of his time just lightly pushing him, before tracking him down and hogtying him while constantly glitching out on a certain voice line (his “stutter” lasted ten minutes, apparently); save a man and his horse that were glitching into the ground (he managed to lasso out the man, but the horse ended up taking a bullet); and finally save the rancher from a bunch of outlaws who had kidnapped her to hang her, a process that went very poorly thanks to Kevin having to push the man into place and then constantly missing the rope to cut her down via dead-eye shot. XD It was delightfully weird and chaotic – perfect Kevin material!
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “I became the strongest man in GTA 5” – AKA, Gray goes through a hydraulic-press-themed parkour board in GTA V courtesy of Alex! And the people in the comments who were suggesting a board like this, which inspired Alex. The damn board STARTED with Gray being pressed through a road into the first checkpoint, where he had to choose the correct vehicle to do the upcoming obstacle course with – fortunately, Gray was smart enough to know the motorcycle was the right choice due to its better speed and zoomed through a whole long road full of various crushers, all ready to grind him and his bike into a thin paste. After that, there was a tightrope which ended in a jump and a sideways turn onto ANOTHER tightrope, which then led into a jump through another crusher – THEN onto another series of tightropes around the edges of some canisters! Except that every other canister kept popping out of existence – first one alternated every five seconds, second one every four seconds, third one every THREE seconds. And when Gray got past all of THAT, he THEN had to do a jump through a bunch of cars being thrown around by magnets and a WINDMILL through a THUMBNAIL HOLE on the bike. And THEN he had to trade the bike for a car and go through a series of sideways crushers (think like the ones from the Portal series), flanked by windmills, a series of his own clones, and – at the very end – Satan in a clown car. Gray stole the clown car to leap into the win area. XD A painful board, but once again, Gray’s determination and masochism saw him through, hooray! XD
3. Play Sims 4 either get through another day with Smiler Always
It was time to hit the Game Day Party, w000! A – kinda pathetic little gathering with a stereo, a ping-pong table, and a few people hanging around in face paint. O.o I was expecting a bit more? Still, Smiler was able to hang out there for a while – getting to know fellow Spirit Squad member Hajar, doing some VERY BRIEF streaking (the game kept resetting them before they got more than a few feet), encouraging people to dance, playing Ping Pong against Lilith Pleasant (and losing), and starting the Foxbury Cheer a few times! It wasn’t a lot of school spirit, but it was enough to upgrade them to a Seasoned Member of the squad. :) Plus they got the inheritance phone call again – $2,500 for asking about the conditions, nice. That plus their paycheck from work has funded the purchase of the Ultimate Vampire Tome, w00! So they’re one step closer to maxing out their Vampire Lore skill! :D Yes, things are going pretty darn well for Smiler. Maybe not the most exciting day today for them, but given they’ve been going on dates and having parties and whatnot a lot recently, it’s good to have a quieter day every so often. :)
Ahhh, good to have a low-stakes day -- especially when it lets me get a few things into the drafts that I've been meaning to cover already. Trying to keep a good backlog of content in there for -- well, for weeks like the ones I've had recently at work, where the creative urges are low! But this has been pretty good for a brain break weekend -- hoping I can get back into the fanfic flow on Monday!
But for now, Sunday to-dos:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's FO4: Point Lookout video
3. Play Fallout 4 and get past Power Armor Raider
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
That last one remains optional, but I do hope to get down there. Also hope to get something out of the Watch Later too, but we'll see! Depends on if we do beanbags and other factors. As it is, I've got social and RP stuff going on right now, so I'd best get back to it -- night all!
