Might As Well Have My Period
Sep. 4th, 2022 11:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickBecause I have basically all the usual symptoms EXCEPT the actual period -- tiredness, irritability, a desire for meat and chocolate, a lack of mental focus -- it's frustrating, it really is. I just want it to come so I can have it OVER WITH, darn it! I am done with all this damn waiting! *grumbles* It's gonna show up the SECOND I go back to work, isn't it. . .
Well, at least I got through most of the things I wanted to get through on this Fallout Sunday --
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – managed to get that done this evening. As per my playsession (below), Victor, Piper, and Alice have come across the USS Constitution and have been roped into helping repair it by Captain Ironsides and his robot crew. Victor is actually only too happy to give the robots a hand, though in fanfic-land he has managed to talk Ironsides down from trying to launch an assault on China or Canada to just patrolling the bay defending people from new threats. He’s also not only started repairing the ship, but also the crew, as my headcanons for him include being raised by robots and thus knowing a lot about what makes them tick, and being in the Engineer Corps and thus knowing how to do a lot of repairs with little available equipment. XD What, I like the robots and I want Victor to help put arms back on the Bosun for a start. Victor also ATTEMPTED to negotiate with Mandy and her scavengers for the guidance chip after being informed of its theft by them by Mr. Navigator, but his insistence on treating Ironsides and his crew like people did not endear him to them, and he was kicked out sans chip. Fortunately Obfuscate master Alice just stole it for him while all that was happening. XD Handy having a super-sneaky vampire about, huh? As things currently stand, they’ve discovered that they need a new transmitter for the guidance radar dish, and the best place to find one is actually not far from where they came, so they’re gonna take out the super mutants worrying County Crossing first and then go pick that up. *thumbs up* Efficient!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Jon's Fallout Shelter and "Legendary Roulette" videos: Three-fourths check – due to various factors, including a late lunch (Mom was having trouble with her little cooktop not cooking anything with speed and her burger buns not rising), my schedule got thrown off and I wasn’t able to fit in GrayStillPlays’s latest video in the end. But I did get all my Fallout content watched, at least –
A) Started with the Jon of the past (two years ago) and “Fallout Shelter - Fallout Free!” AKA “Jon isn’t really into mobile microtransaction games, but there’s a Steam port now and Jon feels weird not having played all the Fallout games.” XD Most of it was the kind of thing I remembered from my own time playing when it first came out – building and expanding vault rooms, assigning vault dwellers to those rooms to produce resources, staying on top of resource production, attracting and breeding new dwellers, sending out people to explore the wasteland and get you stuff – but the actual “going out on quests and exploring new buildings with teams of dwellers” was completely new to me, as that wasn’t a thing when I played the game. That was kinda cool, in that you actually go to another location and slowly uncover it with your team, before fighting a boss and collecting a bunch of new goodies for the vault. Granted, that and its special crit mechanic (click at the right time and get a decent damage multiplier) are kind of the extent of the gameplay. And the game has some really LONG timers for stuff like people exploring and going places on quests, and it quite likes to tease you with “speed up these timers by buying Nuka-Quantum!” Basically it’s more complicated and more monetized these days, in the way of popular mobile games. Jon wasn’t sure where to have it, because it wasn’t exactly BAD for what it was (especially if you’re willing to play it in short bursts to avoid the nonsense from the timers), but it’s not really his thing, so. . . *shrug* Some fun nostalgia, but I don’t know if I’ll be putting the new version on my phone or not.
B) Then, this evening, it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and “I tried living as a Minecraft villager” – aka, another episode of his “build a village in Minecraft challenge” series! Today’s episode focused around adventure and farming! Specifically, Kevin redoing his farm (the pumpkins are now in little sunken trenches for the villagers to fall into) and building a little farming hut, and Kevin going out adventuring and finding loads and loads of cool treasure!
Cool treasure that he could NOT fit in his inventory! Yeah, basically this episode proved that there can be too much of a good thing if that “good thing” is random boats with chests and treasure maps. XD Kevin was actually quite pleased with his first haul – a bit of sunken treasure not far from the village, containing stuff like pretty birch doors (which he ended up using on the farming hut) and a “bottle o’enchantment,” but when he went looking for new biomes for new material for the village (just to get stuff that looked different, like mossy cobbles, and lilypads, and some nice vines), he just kept stumbling upon shipwreck after shipwreck after shipwreck! Most of which contained tons of iron, some books, a few emeralds, a handful of potatoes, and in one case an enchanted leather tunic. Kevin had some real trouble trying to figure out what he could actually FIT in his inventory, the poor sod. XD He ended up having to leave his own boat behind in the end – which THEN resulted in him getting lost. Even though one of the treasures he’d picked up was a compass of all things. :p He did find his way back to his own little patch of civilization eventually, though! Just in time to see the villagers walking all over his pumpkin crop. We’ll see if he takes out his frustrations on having the world’s most awesome adventure when he didn’t have the inventory space for it on them next time. XD
C) And finally, we returned to Jon for the Grand Finale of “Legendary Roulette!” And hooo boy, what a grand finale it was. Let me take you through it:
Step One: Jon Goes Pure Villian – Jon, flush with victory after shooting down a vertibird with an explosive pipe weapon at the end of the last episode, decided that the Legend of Boston should be as evil as possible and had her chose all the scariest options in her prerecorded speech to the Commonwealth. And then, while dropping off said speech at Travis’s little trailer radio station in the heart of Diamond City, decided Travis wasn’t cowering enough and SHOT HIM. Which led to Legend shooting MOST OF THE POPULATION OF DIAMOND CITY AS THEY STREAMED INTO THE TRAILER TO TAKE HER DOWN. Most of the guards, Moe Cronin, Percy the Mr. Handy from the general store. . .the only one to end up walking away was Dr. Sun, who somehow avoided getting blown up with the explosive Pipe Rifle (or, at least, permanently downed by it) and decided to just walk away while the walking was good. When Evil!Jon comes out to play, Evil!Jon comes out to play.
Step Two: Remove The Railroad – With the broadcast planted, Legend returned to the Institute and was tasked with removing the Brotherhood of Steel by the board of directors, and the Railroad by Father in a more clandestine meeting. Jon decided to take out the Railroad first, simply because it was the easier mission. Reasons it was easier? One, the Railroad, despite hating Legend for siding with the Institute, did not aggro the minute she stepped inside their base, allowing her to just run around and figure out the best angle of attack, and two, they tend to all stay clumped together in one room. Jon thus was able to take out both Glory and Desdemona in one shot with his legendary Fat Man (I actually forget what the legendary effect is, but does it matter with a Fat Man?), and use his explosive rifle to easily take out the rest from some pretty good cover. Not a single legendary among them either, mostly because all of the heads are named NPCs and CAN’T be, and for some reason none of the anonymous Railroad Heavies that spawned ever spawned as legendaries. Dunno why. *shrug* But yeah, with the power of explosives (in multiple senses), Legend was easily able to take out everyone in the Railroad. Only one who gave her ANY trouble was Tinker Tom, and that was solely from grabbing Glory’s famous minigun. And even then he went down fast. RIP, guys.
Step Three: OH FUCK THE BROTHERHOOD – And with that done, we got to the mission that took up most of the episode – Jon going to take out the Brotherhood of Steel for the Institute. Which Jon considers pretty much the hardest end-game mission in all of the various faction paths, simply because of the set-up – you’re going in with a direct assault on the Brotherhood, smashing up the generators they set up to prevent the Institute synths from relaying in, and then you have to basically stand around in a very specific area to protect a synth that is uploading a virus to Liberty Prime, exposing yourself to attack from both air and ground. And unlike the Railroad, the Brotherhood has loads of unnamed NPCs that can spawn as legendary. Just LOADS. Even with Jon’s incredible super-weapons, even with Jon taking out some early assholes with missile launchers with the Fat Man, even with Jon having backup from his own legendary synths when he started killing the generators, he died SO MANY TIMES at the start of the mission to angry Knights in power armor. (Admittedly, one death was a Classic Bethesda glitch, where a vertibird exploded so hard on the roof above Legend it blew her head and arms off, but still.) And THEN, after making it through the first half, he tried to find a better position with which to defend the virus-uploading synth during the second half –
Only to find that the synth WON’T EVEN GET INTO POSITION if you move too far away. Jon HAD to be directly on the scaffolding and a target for every vertibird and named and unnamed character within twenty miles. Fortunately he brought a shit-ton of synth relay grenades to spawn backup, but the ammo for his beloved explosive pipe gun ran out fast, and he had to rely on his bleeding weapons – which, to be fair, were STILL doing the job. The chaos was absolutely real, and the virus synth actually died and had to be replaced at one point, but Jon perserved, taking down multiple BOS members, a couple of vertibirds, and Elder Maxson himself, claiming his special unique Gatling gun Final Judgment (can’t use it, but as this is literally the ONLY way you can grab it, he wasn’t going to leave it behind either). And in the end, he succeeded, being teleported at the last minute to a safe location to watch Liberty Prime take out the Prydwen and the entire airport burn.
Step Four: Legend Hates Everybody – And with that done, the Institute plotline was more or less wrapped up, and all that remained was for Legend and Shaun to have their heartfield goodbye on his deathbed. Except. . .well. You know how Step One of this finale was Jon embracing evil?
Yeah, he decided he instead wanted to find out what happened if you SHOT Shaun instead of speaking to him in the final “Nuclear Family” quest. Turns out – ending slides play! The game accepts this as a resolution to the final main quest! Tickled, Jon decided to rewind time a bit and see what happened if he started picking off Institute staff before engaging with or shooting Shaun.
Not much until he started picking on a named character, and even then it took a bit for her (Allie Filmore for the curious) to go hostile. But when she did – oh man. Everyone in the Institute was suddenly gunning for the new Director. . .but Shaun himself never went hostile (then again, literally confined to his deathbed here), the game never failed “Nuclear Family” – in fact, shooting him again completed it – and even though everyone else in the Institute was trying to murder her, she wasn’t officially banished. She couldn’t use the big “escape” teleporter, but she could teleport in and out with her Pip-Boy just fine – she just wasn’t getting a warm welcome when she did. XD And because she wasn’t officially banished, she couldn’t wage PROPER war against the Institute with the Minutemen, because that’s a prequisite to that particular version of “The Nuclear Option.” (Also I don’t think Jon ever got to the point of completing “Old Guns” with them either, which I think is another prequisite. . .and CAN he do “Old Guns” now? After the game is technically over? Hmm.) So she’s just in a weird limbo state of being the head of the Institute but with all of her employees shooting at her on sight.
Perfect way to end this absolutely bonkers series! XD I have thoroughly enjoyed “Legendary Roulette,” as I tend to enjoy all of Jon’s various Fallout-related videos. And apparently, next Sunday we’re going back into the past with an entirely different game! I’m curious to see what it is. . .have to wait until next weekend!
3. Play Fallout 4 and see about maybe doing some of the USS Constitution quests: Check, and did you really think there was a chance I WOULDN’T? XD After fending off an attack by a raider scavver and their dog, Victor and Piper promptly went to investigate the ship that was for some reason lodged on top of a bank, and met the Lookout, who recognized Victor as a veteran and said that it was good to see someone from the Congressional Army (Victor was like “Uh, WHICH Army?”). Lookout asked them to go report to the Captain post-haste, so Victor and Piper headed into the wreckage of the bank and found their way up into the belly of the ship. There was a brief tense moment as they wound their way through the inner decks with the First Mate protectron, who promptly started asking for permission to use lethal force against the intruders, but Victor claiming it was just a misunderstanding and Ironsides demanding that he stand down defused things. (I mean, it makes sense that the First Mate would immediately jump to wanting to use lethal force, he’s a police protectron, ba-dum tish.) Victor and Piper found their way to the top after that, where Victor greeted Ironsides, learned their predicament (stuck on top of the bank thanks to various things being broken in the ship), agreed that it was a shame for the boat to be becalmed, but was absolutely confused as to why they wanted to contribute to the war effort (because, you know, two hundred years since active hostilities). But Ironsides was not to be deterred, and ordered Victor to report to the Bosun and Mr. Navigator to receive his instructions on how to repair the ship.
And then the scavengers attacked! Victor promptly fired the cannon to help deter them, then used his Mighty Sniper to take out the ones who weren’t killed or driven off by that. He and Piper then took a moment to go loot the corpses and the building they were all clustered around as a thunderstorm rolled through (gotta get all that good loot and ammo), before returning to the ship to talk with the robots. Mr. Navigator informed him of the stolen guidance chip and said that there was a bounty for its return (with Ironsides insisting Victor try to avoid lethal force by all means possible) – as that involved heading out to talk to the scavengers, I had Victor instead head inside the boat to do the Bosun’s two little jobs first, as those just involved stuff on the ship. First was repairing or replacing power cables for the power supply – Victor was smart enough to jury-rig new ones, so now he has spare power cables if he wants! He was also able to clean and repair the relay coil causing the power supplies to fluctuate after the cables were repaired, earning him high praise and implied applause (as he has no actual arms) from the Bosun. Yay high Intelligence. :D
With that sorted, it was time to go talk to Mandy Stiles of the scavengers! Mandy claimed the guys who attacked the boat weren’t really with her, they were just associates who got pissed off when they saw Victor up top. Victor was willing to let that pass, but wasn’t impressed with the way she was salivating over the salvage and accused her of just being greedy – she claimed stripping and selling it might help orphans or something. XD She asked what the “tin can” had had to say, and Victor vaguely said that they wanted something stolen back – Mandy refused and tried to get Victor to join her team and blow the robots up, but Victor declined, saying he was with Ironsides. Piper was – verbally disapproving (saying the scavengers might need the stuff more than the robots needed their fantasyland – I get what you’re saying, Piper, but the robots are more fun and also I already know these assholes betray you to get all the scrap if you side with them), but I didn’t see a message about her actually disliking/hating that, interesting. (I’m pretty sure most of the companions don’t actually approve of you siding with Ironsides – the only one I can actually think of off the top of my head who does is Deacon.) So I dodged potential relationship trouble there!
So – scavengers refusing to hand back chip. I knew how to handle that. One – park Piper out of the way so she can’t actually see Victor stealing something from other people and really start disapproving. Two – sneak up as close to the scavenger camp as possible in the rain. Three – turn on a Stealth Boy and speed-crouch while invisible to find the chip, grab it, and get out. Four – have a meal because hunger, thirst, and exhaustion all fired at once (some squash soup should do the trick), collect Piper, and head up the building where all the scavengers were attacking from to pitch the tent and get some sleep. Easy peasy! :D
And then, the next in-game morning, it was back to the ship for Victor and Piper, to install the stolen navigation chip back in its housing, get their payment from Mr. Navigator, and get his next quest – recover a Poseidon radar transmitter to fix the broken radar dish (the one currently in there is burnt out). This one CAN technically be repaired if you’re a “master repairman,” but unfortunately Victor doesn’t have the Intelligence for that. So I had him check his Pip-Boy for where the needed transmitter was –
Actually, back up the way they came, not too far from County Crossing! Okay then – plan for next week is to go down to Fanueil Hall and take care of the super mutants there to get County Crossing on-side with the Minutemen, then go over to where the transmitter is and retrieve that. Then we’ll finish off the USS Constitution, and THEN resume main plot. Sounds good to me!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning, leading to me grabbing a post someone made about a human Smiler wearing light-up Sketchers for my drafts (because Smiler Alton most totally WOULD); then did the initial drafts (pictures and starter text) for my three Chill Save posts for this upcoming Wednesday before lunch! And then, just now, I finished up the stuff over on Valice Multiverse – three ask replies, nothing too difficult (which is good, given the state my brain is in right now).
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches! And as of this episode, the Early Access stuff was officially merged into the ACTUAL current Bigwallet save file – James actually spent a good portion of the episode explaining what he’d done to put Reginald back into the Bigwallet family tree, re-establish those relationships that were possible in the current save file (namely, Molly and Sidney, as the others were all either random Sims specific to that save or Sims that would already be dead by this point in the Bigwallet timeline (sorry Cassandra Goth!)), redoing his lot, all of that. He also showed off his own personal ThrifTea and Copperdale High builds that he’d added to the save – the high school was a LOT bigger than I was expecting, but a lot of that was for show (including the entire empty second floor) – James had instead been careful to clump together everywhere that Reginald would HAVE to go on one side of the first floor (Class One (with computers at the back), gym, chess club area, bathrooms and showers, and the cafeteria), so hopefully there will be a lot less random wandering around! Cool beans.
As for Reginald himself, James ended up selling all the stuff he’d unlocked from both his Cheer after-school activity and his part-time Barista job and building him a tiny shack for his bed and shower! Because having a house is a LOT more important with Seasons, don’t you know. He also visited both ThrifTea to make a new outfit (Werewolf Chic) and the school to eat up and finish his homework (James thought he had class, but the game had given him a free day instead). And then it was back home to grab some zzzs before Cheer practice (which he was NOT excused from), interrupted briefly by Sidney coming over and asking if they could be best friends again, aw. :) And then he headed over to Cheer –
And ranked up to Team Captain! :D James promptly sold the very expensive golden cheerleading practice mat and the trophy Reginald had unlocked and gave him a toilet and a mini-fridge for snacks before sending him over to ThrifTea to make a whole bunch of outfits! He made five in total (a couple of weird ones, including “Awww Batuu!” (guess what pack that look used XD), and a token more “normal” one), did his best to hype them up, then headed home for a shower (interrupted by Molly – James promptly locked his door) and some more sleep. Left it with James complaining about how buggy Trendi outfits are now – basically, Reginald won’t stop wearing them randomly after showing them off. He was wearing his “2022 Cowpoke” look (crop top and short shorts with a cowboy hat) in the SHOWER, for example. Yeaaah, again, I start thinking some of this looks cool, and then I am reminded that this pack had a total of SIX quality control testers. Meeh. I have different ideas for save files just at the moment anyway.
Additionally:
-->Despite being warmer and more humid, we did get out for some beanbags (as the rain moving in isn’t supposed to really be a thing until tomorrow) – though it was NOT my day, let me tell you that. I just could NOT get out of my own way when it came to scoring. Didn’t help that the second and fourth games turned into tie-fests (though the second game was much worse, with us getting into the thirties for scores before it resolved). . . Final scores were me 2-2-2-3-3; Dad W-W-3-W-2; Mom 3-3-W-2-W. Well, at least Mom is doing better?
So not really a BAD day, overall -- I just wish that a) lunch hadn't been late and thus thrown off my schedule a bit, and b) that I could have concentrated a bit better, because I'm sure THAT didn't help matters either. Rugh, PMS. . .at least I still have tomorrow off and can make up a few things then! Which, speaking of --
1. Work on the Blades in the Dark Valicer doc
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch the 700th AT4W Episode
3. Play Sims 4 and get Alice werewolfed already
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
I assume I should be able to get all of this done. . .especially if it rains tomorrow and keeps beanbags from being a thing. I could use that extra time right now. I don't know how I used to watch so many YouTube videos in a day. . .on the other hand, I used to not talk about the ones I did watch in such detail, did I? Ironically, updating the to-do list is probably the biggest time suck of them all sometimes. . .but damn it, I like telling you guys about the latest Oxventure, or the newest Sims video, or what I've been working on, or. . .
Anyway. Gonna try to get to bed a little earlier tonight (I keep staying up until 2 AM, and I don't think THAT'S helping either), so let me wrap this up. Night all!
Well, at least I got through most of the things I wanted to get through on this Fallout Sunday --
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – managed to get that done this evening. As per my playsession (below), Victor, Piper, and Alice have come across the USS Constitution and have been roped into helping repair it by Captain Ironsides and his robot crew. Victor is actually only too happy to give the robots a hand, though in fanfic-land he has managed to talk Ironsides down from trying to launch an assault on China or Canada to just patrolling the bay defending people from new threats. He’s also not only started repairing the ship, but also the crew, as my headcanons for him include being raised by robots and thus knowing a lot about what makes them tick, and being in the Engineer Corps and thus knowing how to do a lot of repairs with little available equipment. XD What, I like the robots and I want Victor to help put arms back on the Bosun for a start. Victor also ATTEMPTED to negotiate with Mandy and her scavengers for the guidance chip after being informed of its theft by them by Mr. Navigator, but his insistence on treating Ironsides and his crew like people did not endear him to them, and he was kicked out sans chip. Fortunately Obfuscate master Alice just stole it for him while all that was happening. XD Handy having a super-sneaky vampire about, huh? As things currently stand, they’ve discovered that they need a new transmitter for the guidance radar dish, and the best place to find one is actually not far from where they came, so they’re gonna take out the super mutants worrying County Crossing first and then go pick that up. *thumbs up* Efficient!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Jon's Fallout Shelter and "Legendary Roulette" videos: Three-fourths check – due to various factors, including a late lunch (Mom was having trouble with her little cooktop not cooking anything with speed and her burger buns not rising), my schedule got thrown off and I wasn’t able to fit in GrayStillPlays’s latest video in the end. But I did get all my Fallout content watched, at least –
A) Started with the Jon of the past (two years ago) and “Fallout Shelter - Fallout Free!” AKA “Jon isn’t really into mobile microtransaction games, but there’s a Steam port now and Jon feels weird not having played all the Fallout games.” XD Most of it was the kind of thing I remembered from my own time playing when it first came out – building and expanding vault rooms, assigning vault dwellers to those rooms to produce resources, staying on top of resource production, attracting and breeding new dwellers, sending out people to explore the wasteland and get you stuff – but the actual “going out on quests and exploring new buildings with teams of dwellers” was completely new to me, as that wasn’t a thing when I played the game. That was kinda cool, in that you actually go to another location and slowly uncover it with your team, before fighting a boss and collecting a bunch of new goodies for the vault. Granted, that and its special crit mechanic (click at the right time and get a decent damage multiplier) are kind of the extent of the gameplay. And the game has some really LONG timers for stuff like people exploring and going places on quests, and it quite likes to tease you with “speed up these timers by buying Nuka-Quantum!” Basically it’s more complicated and more monetized these days, in the way of popular mobile games. Jon wasn’t sure where to have it, because it wasn’t exactly BAD for what it was (especially if you’re willing to play it in short bursts to avoid the nonsense from the timers), but it’s not really his thing, so. . . *shrug* Some fun nostalgia, but I don’t know if I’ll be putting the new version on my phone or not.
B) Then, this evening, it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and “I tried living as a Minecraft villager” – aka, another episode of his “build a village in Minecraft challenge” series! Today’s episode focused around adventure and farming! Specifically, Kevin redoing his farm (the pumpkins are now in little sunken trenches for the villagers to fall into) and building a little farming hut, and Kevin going out adventuring and finding loads and loads of cool treasure!
Cool treasure that he could NOT fit in his inventory! Yeah, basically this episode proved that there can be too much of a good thing if that “good thing” is random boats with chests and treasure maps. XD Kevin was actually quite pleased with his first haul – a bit of sunken treasure not far from the village, containing stuff like pretty birch doors (which he ended up using on the farming hut) and a “bottle o’enchantment,” but when he went looking for new biomes for new material for the village (just to get stuff that looked different, like mossy cobbles, and lilypads, and some nice vines), he just kept stumbling upon shipwreck after shipwreck after shipwreck! Most of which contained tons of iron, some books, a few emeralds, a handful of potatoes, and in one case an enchanted leather tunic. Kevin had some real trouble trying to figure out what he could actually FIT in his inventory, the poor sod. XD He ended up having to leave his own boat behind in the end – which THEN resulted in him getting lost. Even though one of the treasures he’d picked up was a compass of all things. :p He did find his way back to his own little patch of civilization eventually, though! Just in time to see the villagers walking all over his pumpkin crop. We’ll see if he takes out his frustrations on having the world’s most awesome adventure when he didn’t have the inventory space for it on them next time. XD
C) And finally, we returned to Jon for the Grand Finale of “Legendary Roulette!” And hooo boy, what a grand finale it was. Let me take you through it:
Step One: Jon Goes Pure Villian – Jon, flush with victory after shooting down a vertibird with an explosive pipe weapon at the end of the last episode, decided that the Legend of Boston should be as evil as possible and had her chose all the scariest options in her prerecorded speech to the Commonwealth. And then, while dropping off said speech at Travis’s little trailer radio station in the heart of Diamond City, decided Travis wasn’t cowering enough and SHOT HIM. Which led to Legend shooting MOST OF THE POPULATION OF DIAMOND CITY AS THEY STREAMED INTO THE TRAILER TO TAKE HER DOWN. Most of the guards, Moe Cronin, Percy the Mr. Handy from the general store. . .the only one to end up walking away was Dr. Sun, who somehow avoided getting blown up with the explosive Pipe Rifle (or, at least, permanently downed by it) and decided to just walk away while the walking was good. When Evil!Jon comes out to play, Evil!Jon comes out to play.
Step Two: Remove The Railroad – With the broadcast planted, Legend returned to the Institute and was tasked with removing the Brotherhood of Steel by the board of directors, and the Railroad by Father in a more clandestine meeting. Jon decided to take out the Railroad first, simply because it was the easier mission. Reasons it was easier? One, the Railroad, despite hating Legend for siding with the Institute, did not aggro the minute she stepped inside their base, allowing her to just run around and figure out the best angle of attack, and two, they tend to all stay clumped together in one room. Jon thus was able to take out both Glory and Desdemona in one shot with his legendary Fat Man (I actually forget what the legendary effect is, but does it matter with a Fat Man?), and use his explosive rifle to easily take out the rest from some pretty good cover. Not a single legendary among them either, mostly because all of the heads are named NPCs and CAN’T be, and for some reason none of the anonymous Railroad Heavies that spawned ever spawned as legendaries. Dunno why. *shrug* But yeah, with the power of explosives (in multiple senses), Legend was easily able to take out everyone in the Railroad. Only one who gave her ANY trouble was Tinker Tom, and that was solely from grabbing Glory’s famous minigun. And even then he went down fast. RIP, guys.
Step Three: OH FUCK THE BROTHERHOOD – And with that done, we got to the mission that took up most of the episode – Jon going to take out the Brotherhood of Steel for the Institute. Which Jon considers pretty much the hardest end-game mission in all of the various faction paths, simply because of the set-up – you’re going in with a direct assault on the Brotherhood, smashing up the generators they set up to prevent the Institute synths from relaying in, and then you have to basically stand around in a very specific area to protect a synth that is uploading a virus to Liberty Prime, exposing yourself to attack from both air and ground. And unlike the Railroad, the Brotherhood has loads of unnamed NPCs that can spawn as legendary. Just LOADS. Even with Jon’s incredible super-weapons, even with Jon taking out some early assholes with missile launchers with the Fat Man, even with Jon having backup from his own legendary synths when he started killing the generators, he died SO MANY TIMES at the start of the mission to angry Knights in power armor. (Admittedly, one death was a Classic Bethesda glitch, where a vertibird exploded so hard on the roof above Legend it blew her head and arms off, but still.) And THEN, after making it through the first half, he tried to find a better position with which to defend the virus-uploading synth during the second half –
Only to find that the synth WON’T EVEN GET INTO POSITION if you move too far away. Jon HAD to be directly on the scaffolding and a target for every vertibird and named and unnamed character within twenty miles. Fortunately he brought a shit-ton of synth relay grenades to spawn backup, but the ammo for his beloved explosive pipe gun ran out fast, and he had to rely on his bleeding weapons – which, to be fair, were STILL doing the job. The chaos was absolutely real, and the virus synth actually died and had to be replaced at one point, but Jon perserved, taking down multiple BOS members, a couple of vertibirds, and Elder Maxson himself, claiming his special unique Gatling gun Final Judgment (can’t use it, but as this is literally the ONLY way you can grab it, he wasn’t going to leave it behind either). And in the end, he succeeded, being teleported at the last minute to a safe location to watch Liberty Prime take out the Prydwen and the entire airport burn.
Step Four: Legend Hates Everybody – And with that done, the Institute plotline was more or less wrapped up, and all that remained was for Legend and Shaun to have their heartfield goodbye on his deathbed. Except. . .well. You know how Step One of this finale was Jon embracing evil?
Yeah, he decided he instead wanted to find out what happened if you SHOT Shaun instead of speaking to him in the final “Nuclear Family” quest. Turns out – ending slides play! The game accepts this as a resolution to the final main quest! Tickled, Jon decided to rewind time a bit and see what happened if he started picking off Institute staff before engaging with or shooting Shaun.
Not much until he started picking on a named character, and even then it took a bit for her (Allie Filmore for the curious) to go hostile. But when she did – oh man. Everyone in the Institute was suddenly gunning for the new Director. . .but Shaun himself never went hostile (then again, literally confined to his deathbed here), the game never failed “Nuclear Family” – in fact, shooting him again completed it – and even though everyone else in the Institute was trying to murder her, she wasn’t officially banished. She couldn’t use the big “escape” teleporter, but she could teleport in and out with her Pip-Boy just fine – she just wasn’t getting a warm welcome when she did. XD And because she wasn’t officially banished, she couldn’t wage PROPER war against the Institute with the Minutemen, because that’s a prequisite to that particular version of “The Nuclear Option.” (Also I don’t think Jon ever got to the point of completing “Old Guns” with them either, which I think is another prequisite. . .and CAN he do “Old Guns” now? After the game is technically over? Hmm.) So she’s just in a weird limbo state of being the head of the Institute but with all of her employees shooting at her on sight.
Perfect way to end this absolutely bonkers series! XD I have thoroughly enjoyed “Legendary Roulette,” as I tend to enjoy all of Jon’s various Fallout-related videos. And apparently, next Sunday we’re going back into the past with an entirely different game! I’m curious to see what it is. . .have to wait until next weekend!
3. Play Fallout 4 and see about maybe doing some of the USS Constitution quests: Check, and did you really think there was a chance I WOULDN’T? XD After fending off an attack by a raider scavver and their dog, Victor and Piper promptly went to investigate the ship that was for some reason lodged on top of a bank, and met the Lookout, who recognized Victor as a veteran and said that it was good to see someone from the Congressional Army (Victor was like “Uh, WHICH Army?”). Lookout asked them to go report to the Captain post-haste, so Victor and Piper headed into the wreckage of the bank and found their way up into the belly of the ship. There was a brief tense moment as they wound their way through the inner decks with the First Mate protectron, who promptly started asking for permission to use lethal force against the intruders, but Victor claiming it was just a misunderstanding and Ironsides demanding that he stand down defused things. (I mean, it makes sense that the First Mate would immediately jump to wanting to use lethal force, he’s a police protectron, ba-dum tish.) Victor and Piper found their way to the top after that, where Victor greeted Ironsides, learned their predicament (stuck on top of the bank thanks to various things being broken in the ship), agreed that it was a shame for the boat to be becalmed, but was absolutely confused as to why they wanted to contribute to the war effort (because, you know, two hundred years since active hostilities). But Ironsides was not to be deterred, and ordered Victor to report to the Bosun and Mr. Navigator to receive his instructions on how to repair the ship.
And then the scavengers attacked! Victor promptly fired the cannon to help deter them, then used his Mighty Sniper to take out the ones who weren’t killed or driven off by that. He and Piper then took a moment to go loot the corpses and the building they were all clustered around as a thunderstorm rolled through (gotta get all that good loot and ammo), before returning to the ship to talk with the robots. Mr. Navigator informed him of the stolen guidance chip and said that there was a bounty for its return (with Ironsides insisting Victor try to avoid lethal force by all means possible) – as that involved heading out to talk to the scavengers, I had Victor instead head inside the boat to do the Bosun’s two little jobs first, as those just involved stuff on the ship. First was repairing or replacing power cables for the power supply – Victor was smart enough to jury-rig new ones, so now he has spare power cables if he wants! He was also able to clean and repair the relay coil causing the power supplies to fluctuate after the cables were repaired, earning him high praise and implied applause (as he has no actual arms) from the Bosun. Yay high Intelligence. :D
With that sorted, it was time to go talk to Mandy Stiles of the scavengers! Mandy claimed the guys who attacked the boat weren’t really with her, they were just associates who got pissed off when they saw Victor up top. Victor was willing to let that pass, but wasn’t impressed with the way she was salivating over the salvage and accused her of just being greedy – she claimed stripping and selling it might help orphans or something. XD She asked what the “tin can” had had to say, and Victor vaguely said that they wanted something stolen back – Mandy refused and tried to get Victor to join her team and blow the robots up, but Victor declined, saying he was with Ironsides. Piper was – verbally disapproving (saying the scavengers might need the stuff more than the robots needed their fantasyland – I get what you’re saying, Piper, but the robots are more fun and also I already know these assholes betray you to get all the scrap if you side with them), but I didn’t see a message about her actually disliking/hating that, interesting. (I’m pretty sure most of the companions don’t actually approve of you siding with Ironsides – the only one I can actually think of off the top of my head who does is Deacon.) So I dodged potential relationship trouble there!
So – scavengers refusing to hand back chip. I knew how to handle that. One – park Piper out of the way so she can’t actually see Victor stealing something from other people and really start disapproving. Two – sneak up as close to the scavenger camp as possible in the rain. Three – turn on a Stealth Boy and speed-crouch while invisible to find the chip, grab it, and get out. Four – have a meal because hunger, thirst, and exhaustion all fired at once (some squash soup should do the trick), collect Piper, and head up the building where all the scavengers were attacking from to pitch the tent and get some sleep. Easy peasy! :D
And then, the next in-game morning, it was back to the ship for Victor and Piper, to install the stolen navigation chip back in its housing, get their payment from Mr. Navigator, and get his next quest – recover a Poseidon radar transmitter to fix the broken radar dish (the one currently in there is burnt out). This one CAN technically be repaired if you’re a “master repairman,” but unfortunately Victor doesn’t have the Intelligence for that. So I had him check his Pip-Boy for where the needed transmitter was –
Actually, back up the way they came, not too far from County Crossing! Okay then – plan for next week is to go down to Fanueil Hall and take care of the super mutants there to get County Crossing on-side with the Minutemen, then go over to where the transmitter is and retrieve that. Then we’ll finish off the USS Constitution, and THEN resume main plot. Sounds good to me!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning, leading to me grabbing a post someone made about a human Smiler wearing light-up Sketchers for my drafts (because Smiler Alton most totally WOULD); then did the initial drafts (pictures and starter text) for my three Chill Save posts for this upcoming Wednesday before lunch! And then, just now, I finished up the stuff over on Valice Multiverse – three ask replies, nothing too difficult (which is good, given the state my brain is in right now).
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches! And as of this episode, the Early Access stuff was officially merged into the ACTUAL current Bigwallet save file – James actually spent a good portion of the episode explaining what he’d done to put Reginald back into the Bigwallet family tree, re-establish those relationships that were possible in the current save file (namely, Molly and Sidney, as the others were all either random Sims specific to that save or Sims that would already be dead by this point in the Bigwallet timeline (sorry Cassandra Goth!)), redoing his lot, all of that. He also showed off his own personal ThrifTea and Copperdale High builds that he’d added to the save – the high school was a LOT bigger than I was expecting, but a lot of that was for show (including the entire empty second floor) – James had instead been careful to clump together everywhere that Reginald would HAVE to go on one side of the first floor (Class One (with computers at the back), gym, chess club area, bathrooms and showers, and the cafeteria), so hopefully there will be a lot less random wandering around! Cool beans.
As for Reginald himself, James ended up selling all the stuff he’d unlocked from both his Cheer after-school activity and his part-time Barista job and building him a tiny shack for his bed and shower! Because having a house is a LOT more important with Seasons, don’t you know. He also visited both ThrifTea to make a new outfit (Werewolf Chic) and the school to eat up and finish his homework (James thought he had class, but the game had given him a free day instead). And then it was back home to grab some zzzs before Cheer practice (which he was NOT excused from), interrupted briefly by Sidney coming over and asking if they could be best friends again, aw. :) And then he headed over to Cheer –
And ranked up to Team Captain! :D James promptly sold the very expensive golden cheerleading practice mat and the trophy Reginald had unlocked and gave him a toilet and a mini-fridge for snacks before sending him over to ThrifTea to make a whole bunch of outfits! He made five in total (a couple of weird ones, including “Awww Batuu!” (guess what pack that look used XD), and a token more “normal” one), did his best to hype them up, then headed home for a shower (interrupted by Molly – James promptly locked his door) and some more sleep. Left it with James complaining about how buggy Trendi outfits are now – basically, Reginald won’t stop wearing them randomly after showing them off. He was wearing his “2022 Cowpoke” look (crop top and short shorts with a cowboy hat) in the SHOWER, for example. Yeaaah, again, I start thinking some of this looks cool, and then I am reminded that this pack had a total of SIX quality control testers. Meeh. I have different ideas for save files just at the moment anyway.
Additionally:
-->Despite being warmer and more humid, we did get out for some beanbags (as the rain moving in isn’t supposed to really be a thing until tomorrow) – though it was NOT my day, let me tell you that. I just could NOT get out of my own way when it came to scoring. Didn’t help that the second and fourth games turned into tie-fests (though the second game was much worse, with us getting into the thirties for scores before it resolved). . . Final scores were me 2-2-2-3-3; Dad W-W-3-W-2; Mom 3-3-W-2-W. Well, at least Mom is doing better?
So not really a BAD day, overall -- I just wish that a) lunch hadn't been late and thus thrown off my schedule a bit, and b) that I could have concentrated a bit better, because I'm sure THAT didn't help matters either. Rugh, PMS. . .at least I still have tomorrow off and can make up a few things then! Which, speaking of --
1. Work on the Blades in the Dark Valicer doc
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch the 700th AT4W Episode
3. Play Sims 4 and get Alice werewolfed already
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
I assume I should be able to get all of this done. . .especially if it rains tomorrow and keeps beanbags from being a thing. I could use that extra time right now. I don't know how I used to watch so many YouTube videos in a day. . .on the other hand, I used to not talk about the ones I did watch in such detail, did I? Ironically, updating the to-do list is probably the biggest time suck of them all sometimes. . .but damn it, I like telling you guys about the latest Oxventure, or the newest Sims video, or what I've been working on, or. . .
Anyway. Gonna try to get to bed a little earlier tonight (I keep staying up until 2 AM, and I don't think THAT'S helping either), so let me wrap this up. Night all!
