Valice Anniversary With Extra Bullshit
Jul. 7th, 2022 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, unfortunately, it hasn't been the most relaxing day off -- as probably evidenced by the fact that I'm updating late. Again. Morning was spent trying to register our damn new fridge for its warranty with Samsung (which really hated our e-mail addresses); then this evening we got a panicked call from my aunt (currently out of state visiting my cousin, her son) regarding her dog and the dogsitter apparently not staying as long as she should, leading to my Mom needing to pick up the dog on Sunday and have him stay overnight here and just -- ugh. Been little things like that screwing up my day.
I did get some stuff done, though:
1. Continue writing "As Long As You Love Me": Check – rather nice scene today between Victor and Alice, which feels appropriate for the Valice Anniversary. Alice has just admitted to Victor that her social skills with anyone who isn’t from Wonderland are kind of rusty – she doesn’t really talk to people unless it’s a brief “getting food or gas” transaction – and apologized for making him uncomfortable, and Victor has apologized for not always being understanding and thanked her for saving him. And then they talked about hobbies, with Victor telling her about his love of butterflies, drawing, and little robots, and Alice saying how her father got her into photography a bit when she was younger. Victor’s suggested she pick up the hobby again during her downtime, and she seems into the idea. . .a shame her next target, this universe’s version of one Biff Tannen, has just shown up to spoil the fun. *sigh* And now next time I get to write Alice threatening to break Victor’s finger if he grabs her again. Fun. At least it’s only a brief nasty moment!
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs and finish the OXBoxtra still in the Watch Later: Ugh, three-fifths check – I THOUGHT I’d have more time for this, but the various bits of bullshit today, plus one video being a long one that I needed to take notes on (plus getting into my gaming a bit late, see below), meant that I had to push Call Me Kevin and the other two lists to tomorrow. At least I get home early. . . But I did get through the following –
A) Started mid-afternoon with the latest from James Turner in the Subs – “I added a secret room to this house!” Otherwise known as him updating the Volkov house build from Werewolves! He didn’t have a lot that he wanted to change about the house itself – he added more greenery to the outside, including vines up the side of the house, a bit more décor clutter using moveobjects, and made Rory’s old room look even MORE trashed – but he did, as the title suggests, add a secret room! Specifically, he added a secret basement, in which he built some containment cells for the Volkovs to use if they feel like they’re going out of control (the Volkovs being Moonwood Collective werewolves and thus all about mastering their Fury). It took some doing – basements and platforms don’t play well together, and his initial attempt using the Get To Work unlockable cell walls and doors from the Detective career proved to not work the way he wanted – namely, the Sims could just walk right through them like they didn’t exist – but eventually he managed something decent! And without relying on too many other packs (though more than he initially expected to rely on – look, it’s VERY HARD to build in this game with just base game and one pack and make it look good).
B) Then, this evening, I focused on getting out both OXtra lists from my Watch Later:
I. “7 Most Annoying Boss Fights We Will Curse With Our Dying Breath” – a team effort between OXtra and OXBox, where the gang talked about the most annoying boss fights they HAAATE (with hosts Luke and Ellen granted two each). The trashed fights were – under a cut, as the vast majority of them are particularly tough and horrible final boss fights, so looots of spoilers:
Ellen – Whispering Harbinger from the Final Fantasy VII Remake and the Corrupt Rot God from Kena: Bridge of Spirits – both multi-stage boss fights that give you NO time to catch your breath and heal – in fact, in the first stage of the latter, you CAN’T heal because the boss has it on lockdown! Neither has great checkpoints either, with both basically booting you to the start of the fight if you die (though the Corrupt Rot God also has a weird platforming section at one point, and if you fall into the abyss, THEN the game will show you mercy). Ellen’s main complaint about the Harbringer fight was that it was simply TOO LONG without a break (she spent a half-hour trying to beat it before dying, and the idea of doing it all over again made her quit the game); while the Corrupt Rot God was just hard and made her look up how to actually win in the final phase (as the rules had suddenly changed). Not fun.
Luke – Monk Maz Koshia from Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – The Champion’s Ballad DLC SPECIFICALLY in Master Mode and Maurader from Doom Eternal – both bosses that kind of ruined games that he loved. Monk Maz is the final boss you have to defeat in the Champion’s Ballad DLC in BotW to earn your sweet motorbike from said DLC, and under normal circumstances, he’s fine, if tricky. But the game’s DLC also introduced “Master Mode,” which makes everything tougher – notably by giving all enemies a REGENERATING HEALTH BAR if you leave them alone for too long. This includes Monk Maz – and the problem comes in during the second stage of his fight, where he summons a bunch of clones. Which, if you attack THEM, just vanish – you have to hit HIM to do any damage. But first you have to find him, and – well. The time spent finding him can easily equal the time it takes him to HEAL ANY PREVIOUS DAMAGE YOU DID, as Luke found out to his detriment ON A LIVESTREAM. You’re basically stuck in a terrible perpetual loop as your weapons slowly break, unless you find a way to cheese him like Luke did. Maurader from Doom Eternal, meanwhile, is an enemy that has to be defeated in an EXTREMELY specific way that is different from every other enemy in the game (most enemies are a “resource management” issue where you have to figure out what combination of shooting and murder will get you the best results; Maurader is strictly “keep the right distance from him and shoot him when his eyes flash green”). Worse, once he’s done being a boss, he becomes a regular enemy that still uses the same tactics, which in Luke’s mind, completely disrupted his vibes. Some people were a fan of changing up the gameplay loop in such a matter, but Luke very much was NOT, and he didn’t enjoy ever having to fight this beast.
Mike – Onikage from Technu: Stealth Assassins – okay, first off, yes, Mike played a stealth-based game. In a very Mike way, which was quickly murdering anyone before they could spot him and grenading bosses. XD In fact, that was his complaint with Onikage, a demon ninja who looks like Marilyn Manson – while the guy is all right the FIRST time you fight him, the SECOND time, he’s much tougher, and proved impossible to cheese with the three grenades Mike was allowed to carry in the game. Couple that with a nasty attitude (not only does the guy make mean comments, he won’t even bother to get out his sword, instead kicking you to death), and Mike never got past him to see the actual final boss. I am starting to wonder if remembering this is why he plays games like Hitman the way he does. XD
Jane – Dark Malak from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – this one was Jane’s most frustrating boss fight for one simple reason – she’d been building her character for fun and not optimization. Having all the force powers that SOUND cool isn’t really all that helpful up against the final boss of the game in his Starforge, healing himself from the life force of captured Jedi. Jane also never looked up any strategy guides for the fight, and thus never knew that killing his Jedi captives wouldn’t net her Dark Side points as a Light Sider (I’m assuming the game considers it a mercy kill) or that you could put down loads of mines before triggering the opening cutscene and then get Malak to just run straight into them and die immediately. XD So she instead spent the fight running in circles around the arean and lobbing the occasional grenade at the guy (like a Mike), leaving her feeling like the world’s worst Jedi because she couldn’t manage a cool lightsaber battle. Aww.
Andy – Elden Beast from Elden Ring – another boss hated for a very simple reason – the Elden Beast is the second stage of the final boss fight of Elden Ring, and it was a second stage that Andy did not expect AT ALL. He was all for the first stage, which is a fight against the guy who shattered the original Elden Ring and thus is awesome and lorey and just all sorts of cool things. But then the Elden Beast appears like a “MRI of the Loch Ness Monster,” to quote Andy (which actually does the thing a disservice, it’s a gorgeous Nessie made of SPACE with a sword), and he was just like “what? Who are you?!” This thing apparently is not hinted at at ALL earlier in the game, and is one of those bosses where you have to constantly chase it to do any damage, while it teleports around and does horrible area-of-effect attacks on you. Oh, and if you die to it, you have to do BOTH stages of the fight over again, meaning you end up rushing through the first fight because you have to kill this guy quickly so you keep your health for the SECOND fight. Andy had to cheese it by attacking its butt, and he was not proud.
Yeah, uh, seeing a theme here of “multi-stage boss fights with insufficient checkpointing,” “bosses that can heal themselves,” and “bosses I did not have the skills to cheese when I was younger.” XD All sound legit! (And my personal entry in the comments was the Jabberwock from AMA – that fucker is SO HARD TO HIT when he’s flying. . .)
II. “7 Times Being Enormous Let Us Crush Our Enemies, Problems” – and then just a normal list from Luke and Ellen about the times you got to be big and stompy and murder all the things for all too short a while. And the reason I prioritized this over the actually chronologically next OXBox video?
Alice was on the thumbnail. Yup, very first entry was the “Giant Alice” sections from A:MR, and of course I had to watch the video featuring Alice on Valice Anniversary day. :p Other notable entries included being “Goggalor” in Liz the Lungfish’s brain in Psychonauts, getting the powerup that makes you a giant Mario (or Luigi) in New Super Mario Bros 1 & 2, and playing as the bear form of Queen Elinor (Bearlinor, as Ellen insisted on calling her) to wipe out enemies when Merida was overwhelmed in Pixar’s Brave: The Video Game. Just succumbing to the urge to go smashy smashy. :D
3. Play – SOMETHING, I haven't decided what yet: Check – thanks to James’s video above, I decided that “something” should be Sims 4 and my building save! Namely, starting the “coffee shop” build I’ve been wanting to do for a bit. It’s called “Sunny Brews,” after the coffee shop that I originally made up for the Dirk Gently crossover AU ideas with my friend Newt, and that I may reuse for a different AU idea now featuring Alice and Smiler as employees and Victor, Victoria, and Emily as regulars – all with a different supernatural secret. . . Anyway, I haven’t gotten TOO far yet, but I’ve gotten the basic shape I want down, all the items in that the lot needs to be functional so the game doesn’t yell at me, and the bathroom sorted because you always gotta sort the bathroom first. Especially if, like me, you always tend to use the bigger Discover University stalls in community lot builds. Place is brick with a yellow interior theme to match the name, at least for the moment – I may be adjusting things the next time I come back to it. But it’s started, and so far it’s looking all right! Though I regret the fact that I can’t get any booths into it – why are all the booths in this game so freaking big?? Ah well, maybe I’ll think of something next time I go to work on it. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – took me a bit longer to get on tumblr and do my usual checking of dashboard and tags on Victor Luvs Alice this morning, thanks to the fridge nonsense, but I did catch up on all that, and I did end up turning one of my drafts into an actual post to put up later – the one where I finalize where Alice was accidentally staked by the apocalypse in the “Fallout of Darkness” universe (the basement of the New State House – she was hiding in the room with all the artifacts under some pictures, and one of the frames broke and stabbed her). Been meaning to clean that one up for a while, so that’s good at least! Every little bit counts. :)
And over on Valice Multiverse, drafted out the replies to two asks this afternoon (technically three, but one was the last few sentences of the previous ask, so I just combined them together for the reply) and stuck 'em in the queue this evening. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, today with a handful of Alice: Madness Returns and Corpse Bride videos in honor of the Valice Anniversary –
I. The “Talking Games” speed-recap of A:MR using various cutscene clips from the game (which always amuses me because it just skips the Deluded Depths altogether)
II. The official Warner Bros preview of an early chunk of CB (covering from the wedding rehearsal to the very beginning of “Remains of the Day”)
III. Fan clip from “Qing 345” of the scene from CB where Victor duels Barkis
IV. About two-thirds of a fan clip from “SadysticBathory” of the ending of the movie where Emily turns into butterflies (the final third was the actual credits roll)
V. And, just because, two old The Smiler adverts (uploaded by “Theme Park Focus” and “MullenLowe London”) that added up to a minute to close things out
So yes, very Valicey, with a touch of Valicer right at the end. :p
Additionally:
-->It was a nice day, and I was home, so it was out this afternoon to play five rounds of beanbags! I had a – palindromic day, by which I mean I sucked in the first and last game and did great on the third one, while Dad just had a good day overall and Mom managed an early win before going back to her usual ways. Final scores were me 3-2-W-2-3; Dad 2-W-2-W-W; Mom W-3-3-3-2. Hey, everyone won ONCE, so it’s better than yesterday!
-->And for what it's worth, I did listen to a bunch of music I consider "Valicey" this morning, wore my favorite Valice t-shirt, and reread the wedding chapter of "Fixing You." At least all THAT was good times!
And damn, it's almost midnight now -- I HAVE to get to bed. So glad tomorrow is only a half-day. Night all!
I did get some stuff done, though:
1. Continue writing "As Long As You Love Me": Check – rather nice scene today between Victor and Alice, which feels appropriate for the Valice Anniversary. Alice has just admitted to Victor that her social skills with anyone who isn’t from Wonderland are kind of rusty – she doesn’t really talk to people unless it’s a brief “getting food or gas” transaction – and apologized for making him uncomfortable, and Victor has apologized for not always being understanding and thanked her for saving him. And then they talked about hobbies, with Victor telling her about his love of butterflies, drawing, and little robots, and Alice saying how her father got her into photography a bit when she was younger. Victor’s suggested she pick up the hobby again during her downtime, and she seems into the idea. . .a shame her next target, this universe’s version of one Biff Tannen, has just shown up to spoil the fun. *sigh* And now next time I get to write Alice threatening to break Victor’s finger if he grabs her again. Fun. At least it’s only a brief nasty moment!
2. Keep up on YouTube Subs and finish the OXBoxtra still in the Watch Later: Ugh, three-fifths check – I THOUGHT I’d have more time for this, but the various bits of bullshit today, plus one video being a long one that I needed to take notes on (plus getting into my gaming a bit late, see below), meant that I had to push Call Me Kevin and the other two lists to tomorrow. At least I get home early. . . But I did get through the following –
A) Started mid-afternoon with the latest from James Turner in the Subs – “I added a secret room to this house!” Otherwise known as him updating the Volkov house build from Werewolves! He didn’t have a lot that he wanted to change about the house itself – he added more greenery to the outside, including vines up the side of the house, a bit more décor clutter using moveobjects, and made Rory’s old room look even MORE trashed – but he did, as the title suggests, add a secret room! Specifically, he added a secret basement, in which he built some containment cells for the Volkovs to use if they feel like they’re going out of control (the Volkovs being Moonwood Collective werewolves and thus all about mastering their Fury). It took some doing – basements and platforms don’t play well together, and his initial attempt using the Get To Work unlockable cell walls and doors from the Detective career proved to not work the way he wanted – namely, the Sims could just walk right through them like they didn’t exist – but eventually he managed something decent! And without relying on too many other packs (though more than he initially expected to rely on – look, it’s VERY HARD to build in this game with just base game and one pack and make it look good).
B) Then, this evening, I focused on getting out both OXtra lists from my Watch Later:
I. “7 Most Annoying Boss Fights We Will Curse With Our Dying Breath” – a team effort between OXtra and OXBox, where the gang talked about the most annoying boss fights they HAAATE (with hosts Luke and Ellen granted two each). The trashed fights were – under a cut, as the vast majority of them are particularly tough and horrible final boss fights, so looots of spoilers:
Ellen – Whispering Harbinger from the Final Fantasy VII Remake and the Corrupt Rot God from Kena: Bridge of Spirits – both multi-stage boss fights that give you NO time to catch your breath and heal – in fact, in the first stage of the latter, you CAN’T heal because the boss has it on lockdown! Neither has great checkpoints either, with both basically booting you to the start of the fight if you die (though the Corrupt Rot God also has a weird platforming section at one point, and if you fall into the abyss, THEN the game will show you mercy). Ellen’s main complaint about the Harbringer fight was that it was simply TOO LONG without a break (she spent a half-hour trying to beat it before dying, and the idea of doing it all over again made her quit the game); while the Corrupt Rot God was just hard and made her look up how to actually win in the final phase (as the rules had suddenly changed). Not fun.
Luke – Monk Maz Koshia from Legend Of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – The Champion’s Ballad DLC SPECIFICALLY in Master Mode and Maurader from Doom Eternal – both bosses that kind of ruined games that he loved. Monk Maz is the final boss you have to defeat in the Champion’s Ballad DLC in BotW to earn your sweet motorbike from said DLC, and under normal circumstances, he’s fine, if tricky. But the game’s DLC also introduced “Master Mode,” which makes everything tougher – notably by giving all enemies a REGENERATING HEALTH BAR if you leave them alone for too long. This includes Monk Maz – and the problem comes in during the second stage of his fight, where he summons a bunch of clones. Which, if you attack THEM, just vanish – you have to hit HIM to do any damage. But first you have to find him, and – well. The time spent finding him can easily equal the time it takes him to HEAL ANY PREVIOUS DAMAGE YOU DID, as Luke found out to his detriment ON A LIVESTREAM. You’re basically stuck in a terrible perpetual loop as your weapons slowly break, unless you find a way to cheese him like Luke did. Maurader from Doom Eternal, meanwhile, is an enemy that has to be defeated in an EXTREMELY specific way that is different from every other enemy in the game (most enemies are a “resource management” issue where you have to figure out what combination of shooting and murder will get you the best results; Maurader is strictly “keep the right distance from him and shoot him when his eyes flash green”). Worse, once he’s done being a boss, he becomes a regular enemy that still uses the same tactics, which in Luke’s mind, completely disrupted his vibes. Some people were a fan of changing up the gameplay loop in such a matter, but Luke very much was NOT, and he didn’t enjoy ever having to fight this beast.
Mike – Onikage from Technu: Stealth Assassins – okay, first off, yes, Mike played a stealth-based game. In a very Mike way, which was quickly murdering anyone before they could spot him and grenading bosses. XD In fact, that was his complaint with Onikage, a demon ninja who looks like Marilyn Manson – while the guy is all right the FIRST time you fight him, the SECOND time, he’s much tougher, and proved impossible to cheese with the three grenades Mike was allowed to carry in the game. Couple that with a nasty attitude (not only does the guy make mean comments, he won’t even bother to get out his sword, instead kicking you to death), and Mike never got past him to see the actual final boss. I am starting to wonder if remembering this is why he plays games like Hitman the way he does. XD
Jane – Dark Malak from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic – this one was Jane’s most frustrating boss fight for one simple reason – she’d been building her character for fun and not optimization. Having all the force powers that SOUND cool isn’t really all that helpful up against the final boss of the game in his Starforge, healing himself from the life force of captured Jedi. Jane also never looked up any strategy guides for the fight, and thus never knew that killing his Jedi captives wouldn’t net her Dark Side points as a Light Sider (I’m assuming the game considers it a mercy kill) or that you could put down loads of mines before triggering the opening cutscene and then get Malak to just run straight into them and die immediately. XD So she instead spent the fight running in circles around the arean and lobbing the occasional grenade at the guy (like a Mike), leaving her feeling like the world’s worst Jedi because she couldn’t manage a cool lightsaber battle. Aww.
Andy – Elden Beast from Elden Ring – another boss hated for a very simple reason – the Elden Beast is the second stage of the final boss fight of Elden Ring, and it was a second stage that Andy did not expect AT ALL. He was all for the first stage, which is a fight against the guy who shattered the original Elden Ring and thus is awesome and lorey and just all sorts of cool things. But then the Elden Beast appears like a “MRI of the Loch Ness Monster,” to quote Andy (which actually does the thing a disservice, it’s a gorgeous Nessie made of SPACE with a sword), and he was just like “what? Who are you?!” This thing apparently is not hinted at at ALL earlier in the game, and is one of those bosses where you have to constantly chase it to do any damage, while it teleports around and does horrible area-of-effect attacks on you. Oh, and if you die to it, you have to do BOTH stages of the fight over again, meaning you end up rushing through the first fight because you have to kill this guy quickly so you keep your health for the SECOND fight. Andy had to cheese it by attacking its butt, and he was not proud.
Yeah, uh, seeing a theme here of “multi-stage boss fights with insufficient checkpointing,” “bosses that can heal themselves,” and “bosses I did not have the skills to cheese when I was younger.” XD All sound legit! (And my personal entry in the comments was the Jabberwock from AMA – that fucker is SO HARD TO HIT when he’s flying. . .)
II. “7 Times Being Enormous Let Us Crush Our Enemies, Problems” – and then just a normal list from Luke and Ellen about the times you got to be big and stompy and murder all the things for all too short a while. And the reason I prioritized this over the actually chronologically next OXBox video?
Alice was on the thumbnail. Yup, very first entry was the “Giant Alice” sections from A:MR, and of course I had to watch the video featuring Alice on Valice Anniversary day. :p Other notable entries included being “Goggalor” in Liz the Lungfish’s brain in Psychonauts, getting the powerup that makes you a giant Mario (or Luigi) in New Super Mario Bros 1 & 2, and playing as the bear form of Queen Elinor (Bearlinor, as Ellen insisted on calling her) to wipe out enemies when Merida was overwhelmed in Pixar’s Brave: The Video Game. Just succumbing to the urge to go smashy smashy. :D
3. Play – SOMETHING, I haven't decided what yet: Check – thanks to James’s video above, I decided that “something” should be Sims 4 and my building save! Namely, starting the “coffee shop” build I’ve been wanting to do for a bit. It’s called “Sunny Brews,” after the coffee shop that I originally made up for the Dirk Gently crossover AU ideas with my friend Newt, and that I may reuse for a different AU idea now featuring Alice and Smiler as employees and Victor, Victoria, and Emily as regulars – all with a different supernatural secret. . . Anyway, I haven’t gotten TOO far yet, but I’ve gotten the basic shape I want down, all the items in that the lot needs to be functional so the game doesn’t yell at me, and the bathroom sorted because you always gotta sort the bathroom first. Especially if, like me, you always tend to use the bigger Discover University stalls in community lot builds. Place is brick with a yellow interior theme to match the name, at least for the moment – I may be adjusting things the next time I come back to it. But it’s started, and so far it’s looking all right! Though I regret the fact that I can’t get any booths into it – why are all the booths in this game so freaking big?? Ah well, maybe I’ll think of something next time I go to work on it. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – took me a bit longer to get on tumblr and do my usual checking of dashboard and tags on Victor Luvs Alice this morning, thanks to the fridge nonsense, but I did catch up on all that, and I did end up turning one of my drafts into an actual post to put up later – the one where I finalize where Alice was accidentally staked by the apocalypse in the “Fallout of Darkness” universe (the basement of the New State House – she was hiding in the room with all the artifacts under some pictures, and one of the frames broke and stabbed her). Been meaning to clean that one up for a while, so that’s good at least! Every little bit counts. :)
And over on Valice Multiverse, drafted out the replies to two asks this afternoon (technically three, but one was the last few sentences of the previous ask, so I just combined them together for the reply) and stuck 'em in the queue this evening. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, today with a handful of Alice: Madness Returns and Corpse Bride videos in honor of the Valice Anniversary –
I. The “Talking Games” speed-recap of A:MR using various cutscene clips from the game (which always amuses me because it just skips the Deluded Depths altogether)
II. The official Warner Bros preview of an early chunk of CB (covering from the wedding rehearsal to the very beginning of “Remains of the Day”)
III. Fan clip from “Qing 345” of the scene from CB where Victor duels Barkis
IV. About two-thirds of a fan clip from “SadysticBathory” of the ending of the movie where Emily turns into butterflies (the final third was the actual credits roll)
V. And, just because, two old The Smiler adverts (uploaded by “Theme Park Focus” and “MullenLowe London”) that added up to a minute to close things out
So yes, very Valicey, with a touch of Valicer right at the end. :p
Additionally:
-->It was a nice day, and I was home, so it was out this afternoon to play five rounds of beanbags! I had a – palindromic day, by which I mean I sucked in the first and last game and did great on the third one, while Dad just had a good day overall and Mom managed an early win before going back to her usual ways. Final scores were me 3-2-W-2-3; Dad 2-W-2-W-W; Mom W-3-3-3-2. Hey, everyone won ONCE, so it’s better than yesterday!
-->And for what it's worth, I did listen to a bunch of music I consider "Valicey" this morning, wore my favorite Valice t-shirt, and reread the wedding chapter of "Fixing You." At least all THAT was good times!
And damn, it's almost midnight now -- I HAVE to get to bed. So glad tomorrow is only a half-day. Night all!
