Snowy Stressful Sunday
Dec. 11th, 2022 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, we were supposed to get snow showers tonight resulting in a dusting to an inch -- but the snow came in early and stuck around for a while, and I think we may have a couple of inches out there now. So far no delays on the "closings" list, but we'll see if anything changes in the morning. At any rate, it's likely not to be a fun ride in just because bad weather makes already bad RI drivers worse. >(
In non-snow-related news -- oh boy, did I NOT get most of what I wanted to get done, done today. No gaming, no writing (well, no fic-related writing), very little tumblr. . .and all the blame can be laid on the first item on the below list:
Decorating: Okay, woke up this morning to Mom getting the bird feeders we’d gotten everyone in my office for Christmas all fancied up with some ribbon and fake greenery and such, which was slightly annoying as I felt like I should actually be participating in that – I ended up helping her tie a few jingle bells to them, wrap them up in tissue paper, and put them in the gift bags. Actually decorating the house happened after lunch, and took about three hours – everything had to be untangled, broken stuff had to be tossed or glued back together, I had to get new sticky-tack for the snowflakes and stuff that was stuck on the front window, give Mom the ornaments to hang on the curtain (we, uh, don’t have a tree), etc, etc. We got it all sorted, and it’s done now, but whew! Decorating during the holiday is a process, even with the relatively low-key amount of stuff we have.
Tumblr: I feel like I could have gotten a LOT more done on this if I hadn’t woken up to Mom doing all those bird feeders and throwing off my morning groove. . .as it is, it suffered mightily from me doing Christmas stuff all day. My main accomplishments were:
A) Getting like a post and a half properly drafted on my upcoming Chill Save update on Victor Luvs Alice. *wince* I started before lunch, and intended to keep going AFTER lunch, but then the decorating took three hours, and I REALLY wanted to get my YouTube sorted, so. . .yeah. Gonna have to dedicate my Monday evening to getting THAT sorted!
B) Checking Valice Multiverse early, which revealed that Marie said “surprise me” in response to my message regarding if she had a prompt or just wanted me to come up with something on my own. Happily I almost immediately came up with an idea based on one of the threads we have going, regarding her Valice daughter OC Madeline coming back from a clothes shopping trip with Alice, so I can write up the rough draft of that tomorrow! This just leaves confirming my FF.net friend Ace’s prompt. . . I also didn’t have any replies or asks to answer when I went back this evening, so I just found a great piece of fanart of Nick Valentine and slapped it in the queue.
YouTube: Okay, so, as previously stated, I had to skip playing Fallout 4 and then writing about it in the Playthrough Progression thanks to the decorating today throwing me off (well, that and what I am starting to suspect is an incoming case of PMS). But I decided that I was going to get THIS done if nothing else, and I am pleased to say I succeeded –
A) Started by FINALLY watching those two AT4Ws that have been sitting in my Watch Later –
I. “Spider-Man: Funeral For An Octopus” – a miniseries that dealt with the death of Otto Octavius by Kaine at the end of the previous storyline (where Peter was fatally poisoned but Doc Ock, not wanting to let his noble enemy fall, saved him). Both Peter and the Scarlet Spider ended up tangling with the Fearsome Four (the remaining members of the Sinister Six – Electro, Hobgoblin, Mysterio, and Vulture) at separate times as the villains, unwillingly led by Otto’s cousin Elias Hargroves, tried to retrieve Otto’s lab notes and his tentacle arms from the government (who were trying to reverse-engineer the latter). The whole thing turned out to be a scam by Mysterio to get his hands on one of Ock’s data cores containing LOADS of information on underworld figures (which he couldn’t even use in the end because he couldn’t decrypt it without setting off the self-destruct – ended up using it as a bomb to try and kill Scarlet Spider and Elias), and featured both Scarlet Spider giving the Fearsome Four a definite run for their money at their own hideout before they finally managed to bury him in rubble, and Spidey at the governmental facility briefly fighting the Fearsome Four using Doc’s own tentacles and a helmet that helped him mimic Otto’s brainwaves – at least until Electro fried and the tentacles went out of control, forcing Spider to destroy the harness to escape them and stop a potential rampage. Barely related to the Clone Saga except via a brief appearance by Spidey-clone Kaine, but a perfectly serviceable story as per Linkara. Not any great shakes, but it’s not a horrible read either. Just – kinda there.
Oh, and in Linkara’s own storylines, he managed to escape the evil version of the Magic Gun from Mirrorkara’s universe (who was torturing him as part of the Halloween stuff – I don’t blame you if you don’t remember, this WAS long-delayed and has been sitting in the WL for two weeks on my end) by setting Moarte on her (basically by using the Longbox of the Damned as a shield against one of her shots, which summoned the guy in), but she got yanked into a pocket universe before Moarte could finish doing whatever it was he was doing to her – by Robokara, who is trying to turn himself back into a proper robot and doing a rather messy job of it, and would like an alliance. I feel like I should have had more of a reaction to that, but honestly? His schedule slip has so destroyed my interest in his own storylines, I’m just kind of “eeh.” *shrug* Kind of ironic, as he started this episode talking about how he’s not out of Clone Saga stuff because they just wouldn’t let the concept die or be properly resolved, and that’s how I feel about a lot of his own stories lately. . .
II. “Christmas Quickies #2” – a short video of holiday and/or winter-related comic book ads and short stories to start the AT4W Christmas season! Featuring a bike ad where Jimmy has his biggest Christmas ever after his parents get him the advertised Roadmaster bike (Linkara was creeped out by the fact the mom was only ever called “Mother,” even by her husband); a “Marvel subscription service” ad featuring Magneto, Doc Ock, and Doctor Doom caroling while Spider-Man sneaks down a chimney (yes, Linkara did point out that Magneto’s JEWISH, so why is he here?); Green Lantern saving some bobsledders from an accident with a boulder on the track, and them letting him know about all the Twinkies stuffed in the sled that they would have lost otherwise (Linkara wondered if those were to weigh the sled down and thus these guys cheated their way to victory); Captain Tootsie, the Tootsie Roll superhero, giving some orphan kids a sled and Tootsie Pops (yes, this guy is real – AND he’s currently in the public domain, so if you want to play around with him. . .); and some kids at Superboy’s workshop learning the true meaning of the holiday spirit when a kid whose mom has been sick for a while is more excited that she’s finally coming home than by presents (also yes, SUPERBOY’S WORKSHOP. What this is and why it is the setting for this is not explained in any way). Just some quick holiday fun to get us all in the spirit!
B) Then, after supper, it was time for OXtra and “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 2! Farming Simulator 22 Pikachu Drawing Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Yes, the Pikachu Drawing Challenge was back, but with a twist – instead of Ellen and Luke competing for Andy’s approval, this year it was Ellen and Jane, with all three boys judging! The medium? Harvestable fields in Farming Simulator 22, with combine harvesters to draw the lines! Ellen and Jane quickly found that this was a VERY hard way to draw a Pikachu, simply because you had to act like it was a drawing where you couldn’t lift pen from paper – even with the actual harvester up, the vehicle smushed down the plants in its path, meaning making proper details on the face was hard. Ellen went minimal with the facial features in her field and concentrated on the roundness, while Jane took the time to carefully carve out cheeks and make pointing arms on hers. Once finished, the boys were allowed to see the Pikachus both from ground level in the harvesters and from above via the map, and after some discussion about which was better (with Luke saying there was a lot to hate about both XD), they ended up settling on Ellen’s, as it was shaped like a friend, aww. The comments are mostly “how dare, Jane’s was clearly superior” and “Ellen’s is actually a better depiction of MEW than Pikachu.” XD But no, Ellen officially has the Christmas point! What challenge shall tomorrow bring? Only time will tell. . .
C) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays for his video – “When a bullet shoots through the earth,” aka Gray plays GunSpin! This is a strange little game where you take control of a gun and shoot it so it spins across varying strange landscapes, trying to beat your personal best distance every time and slowly unlock new guns. Or, well, that’s how it works for NORMAL people. For GRAY, what happened is that he found out the secret to getting a really good spin and really good speed quickly (rapid-fire a couple of bullets after the first shot), discovered how best to send his gun into space by using the little bumps and ramps on the ground, and basically shot (pun intended) through the game, regularly beating his personal best scores and unlocking guns and upgrades (more projectiles, better first shot power, more ammo boxes (which actually provide speed boosts, not more ammo)) super-fast. He progressed rapidly through regular pistols, water pistols, and Nerf guns to Super Soakers, fancy muzzle-loaders, a chainsaw-gun – and the Legendary Unicorn Gun. Which he started shooting – and managed to glitch through the ground, meaning it never actually stopped, meaning he ended the episode on INFINITE METERS. XD Only GrayStillPlays, ladies, gentlemen, and others.
D) And finally, of course, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 8 - The Writing's On The Wall!” This is where we got into the actual “Two Wastelands” part of the mod, with Jon spending most of it preparing for the trip to New Vegas. Here are the highlights:
I. After a quick discussion of why murdering the people of Arefu didn’t count toward lowering his karma but stealing did at the end of last episode (namely, the game has rules in place to stop you losing karma every time you defend yourself from raiders, and certain factions are tagged as “okay to kill” – Jon thinks that by setting up Arefu to be friendly with the cannibals The Family, they got lumped in with said Family as “okay to kill”), Jon had Wanda report to Moira to start researching the very final chapter of the Wasteland Survival Guide, which had Moira direct her to the Arlington Library to see if she could confirm it was still standing and get access to the archives there. Wanda zipped over to Rivet City and followed a departing caravan, helping them kill super mutants before swimming across a river to Arlington and said library. The library proved to be under the control of the Brotherhood, specifically Senior Scribe Yearling. Jon told us all it was important to be polite to her and had Wanda do just that, and Yearling gave her a nice collectathon quest – find good-condition Pre-War books for her, and she’d pay her for her trouble. Wanda proceeded to explore the library with the local Brotherhood patrols, killing raiders and picking up eight Pre-War books that could be given to Senior Scribe Yearling, netting her 800 caps (100 caps per book). Now, in regular Fallout 3, there are not a lot of Pre-War books – the whole library itself has only ten. In New Vegas, on the other hand, since the Strip was protected from the bombs by Mr. House’s security system. . .yeah. Running off to the Mojave and stealing all their Pre-War books is going to make Wanda a very rich young woman indeed. (And give her loads of XP to boot!)
II. So, after making her way down to the Library Archives to copy them for Moira, Wanda set about completing her last few tasks in the Capital Wasteland before she fucked off to the Mojave. This included killing a giant radscorpion milling about the front of the Arlington Arms hotel (which involved some very weird pathfinding on the scorpion’s part); visiting the heavily-trapped tower of a random raider sniper nearby just so Jon could show off how competent this one unnamed random enemy is (Jon, in fact, insisted she get a name and called her Tina, and made up a backstory that she was once part of the raider gang in the library, but chose to actually read the books they were sitting on, learned how to make good drugs, and became a wealthy drug-dealer, who set up her trap tower to protect herself when the Brotherhood moved in); visited the Arlington Arms to explore a surprisingly-large location that the game never actually directs you to (and which, conveniently, had most of the items Wanda needed for her new dart gun in a back storage room); leveled up and got her Guns, Science, and Survival skills up a bit; came back to Megaton and stole some surgical tubing from the clinic before reporting back to Moira to get her rewards and make her dart gun; and did some inventory management back at her house so she’d have room for new stuff once she was on her way. Oh, and stopped by Paradise Falls for payment and a new slave collar, as, you know, teetering on the edge of evil.
III. And then it was off to Columbus Circle and Union Station! A new little DC bubble created by the mod, accessed by a metro station near the National Archives (which is itself near the Museum of History; as Jon learned during his travels, pop a Stealth Boy if and when you go that way, there is a non-trivial number of mutants there), which now has a certain blocked tunnel unblocked so people can access the new station. Union Station also has a little quest to ensure that characters have actually got their hand in before heading to New Vegas, which involves running around the station restoring the power (and fighting a few ghouls that used to be senators in the basement). With the power turned on, Wanda was able to access the train to Vegas (amusingly, there is a canceled “V. Buren” train on the signboard, referencing the code name for what would have been Interplay’s FO3, along with a “delayed” train to Boston), went down to the ticket office, found a ticket, and hopped on the train to the tunes of “Chrysalis Highwayman” (a chunk of the soundtrack from Fallout 2 when you were using the fast travel car, and one of my favorite pieces of video game music EVER, so I was DELIGHTED to hear it here).
IV. Cue a time skip of three years as Wanda got herself established as the courier, the opening of New Vegas playing out, and Wanda waking up in Doc Mitchell’s office after having been patched up. And Jon revealing that, in order to stop Wanda from being overpowered in the Mojave Wasteland, he’d installed a mod that has Benny not only shoot you in the head and cause you Head Trauma (a “perk” that gives you loads of debuffs to running speed, reload speed, weapon spread, etc, until you level up enough to “heal” from it), but also drops you back down to level one, and has him STEAL ALL YOUR SHIT. Wanda’s beloved Lincoln hat and gun, along with all her other gear, is now locked in a safe at The Tops, and she only has some random Wastelander gear, a naughty nightie, and some bombs and a terrible gun that uses junk rounds. The trip DID come with some upsides, though – she kept all the perks she couldn’t actually replace (all bobblehead perks and such); she has a new perk, “Humbled,” which gives her a permanent 25% increase to her XP gain, meaning she’ll level up faster; and the chance to redo character creation in New Vegas meant that Jon was finally able to officially change her name from “Lone Wanderer” to “Wanda.” It’s the little things, you know. And, of course, there’s the whole reason she came to the Mojave in the first place, just sitting around in giant piles all around Doc Mitchell’s house. . .
But yeah, first things first, Wanda needs to start leveling up again, get herself properly established in the New Vegas wasteland, and get her shit back. Next week, Jon starts showing off some of the fun stuff you might not know exists in New Vegas as Wanda starts climbing her way back up from the bottom! Good stuff.
So yeah -- I am not happy with tumblr or the fact that I didn't get to game today, but at LEAST I'm starting with a clean slate for YouTube. That is SOMETHING. And now I have to rush off to bed because it's my last full week of work, and -- oof. I am REALLY gonna have to schedule my free time carefully this week if I want to do my best to keep up with Subs, OXmas, my tumblr updates, and -- yeah. But I've already stayed up too late right now, so night all!
In non-snow-related news -- oh boy, did I NOT get most of what I wanted to get done, done today. No gaming, no writing (well, no fic-related writing), very little tumblr. . .and all the blame can be laid on the first item on the below list:
Decorating: Okay, woke up this morning to Mom getting the bird feeders we’d gotten everyone in my office for Christmas all fancied up with some ribbon and fake greenery and such, which was slightly annoying as I felt like I should actually be participating in that – I ended up helping her tie a few jingle bells to them, wrap them up in tissue paper, and put them in the gift bags. Actually decorating the house happened after lunch, and took about three hours – everything had to be untangled, broken stuff had to be tossed or glued back together, I had to get new sticky-tack for the snowflakes and stuff that was stuck on the front window, give Mom the ornaments to hang on the curtain (we, uh, don’t have a tree), etc, etc. We got it all sorted, and it’s done now, but whew! Decorating during the holiday is a process, even with the relatively low-key amount of stuff we have.
Tumblr: I feel like I could have gotten a LOT more done on this if I hadn’t woken up to Mom doing all those bird feeders and throwing off my morning groove. . .as it is, it suffered mightily from me doing Christmas stuff all day. My main accomplishments were:
A) Getting like a post and a half properly drafted on my upcoming Chill Save update on Victor Luvs Alice. *wince* I started before lunch, and intended to keep going AFTER lunch, but then the decorating took three hours, and I REALLY wanted to get my YouTube sorted, so. . .yeah. Gonna have to dedicate my Monday evening to getting THAT sorted!
B) Checking Valice Multiverse early, which revealed that Marie said “surprise me” in response to my message regarding if she had a prompt or just wanted me to come up with something on my own. Happily I almost immediately came up with an idea based on one of the threads we have going, regarding her Valice daughter OC Madeline coming back from a clothes shopping trip with Alice, so I can write up the rough draft of that tomorrow! This just leaves confirming my FF.net friend Ace’s prompt. . . I also didn’t have any replies or asks to answer when I went back this evening, so I just found a great piece of fanart of Nick Valentine and slapped it in the queue.
YouTube: Okay, so, as previously stated, I had to skip playing Fallout 4 and then writing about it in the Playthrough Progression thanks to the decorating today throwing me off (well, that and what I am starting to suspect is an incoming case of PMS). But I decided that I was going to get THIS done if nothing else, and I am pleased to say I succeeded –
A) Started by FINALLY watching those two AT4Ws that have been sitting in my Watch Later –
I. “Spider-Man: Funeral For An Octopus” – a miniseries that dealt with the death of Otto Octavius by Kaine at the end of the previous storyline (where Peter was fatally poisoned but Doc Ock, not wanting to let his noble enemy fall, saved him). Both Peter and the Scarlet Spider ended up tangling with the Fearsome Four (the remaining members of the Sinister Six – Electro, Hobgoblin, Mysterio, and Vulture) at separate times as the villains, unwillingly led by Otto’s cousin Elias Hargroves, tried to retrieve Otto’s lab notes and his tentacle arms from the government (who were trying to reverse-engineer the latter). The whole thing turned out to be a scam by Mysterio to get his hands on one of Ock’s data cores containing LOADS of information on underworld figures (which he couldn’t even use in the end because he couldn’t decrypt it without setting off the self-destruct – ended up using it as a bomb to try and kill Scarlet Spider and Elias), and featured both Scarlet Spider giving the Fearsome Four a definite run for their money at their own hideout before they finally managed to bury him in rubble, and Spidey at the governmental facility briefly fighting the Fearsome Four using Doc’s own tentacles and a helmet that helped him mimic Otto’s brainwaves – at least until Electro fried and the tentacles went out of control, forcing Spider to destroy the harness to escape them and stop a potential rampage. Barely related to the Clone Saga except via a brief appearance by Spidey-clone Kaine, but a perfectly serviceable story as per Linkara. Not any great shakes, but it’s not a horrible read either. Just – kinda there.
Oh, and in Linkara’s own storylines, he managed to escape the evil version of the Magic Gun from Mirrorkara’s universe (who was torturing him as part of the Halloween stuff – I don’t blame you if you don’t remember, this WAS long-delayed and has been sitting in the WL for two weeks on my end) by setting Moarte on her (basically by using the Longbox of the Damned as a shield against one of her shots, which summoned the guy in), but she got yanked into a pocket universe before Moarte could finish doing whatever it was he was doing to her – by Robokara, who is trying to turn himself back into a proper robot and doing a rather messy job of it, and would like an alliance. I feel like I should have had more of a reaction to that, but honestly? His schedule slip has so destroyed my interest in his own storylines, I’m just kind of “eeh.” *shrug* Kind of ironic, as he started this episode talking about how he’s not out of Clone Saga stuff because they just wouldn’t let the concept die or be properly resolved, and that’s how I feel about a lot of his own stories lately. . .
II. “Christmas Quickies #2” – a short video of holiday and/or winter-related comic book ads and short stories to start the AT4W Christmas season! Featuring a bike ad where Jimmy has his biggest Christmas ever after his parents get him the advertised Roadmaster bike (Linkara was creeped out by the fact the mom was only ever called “Mother,” even by her husband); a “Marvel subscription service” ad featuring Magneto, Doc Ock, and Doctor Doom caroling while Spider-Man sneaks down a chimney (yes, Linkara did point out that Magneto’s JEWISH, so why is he here?); Green Lantern saving some bobsledders from an accident with a boulder on the track, and them letting him know about all the Twinkies stuffed in the sled that they would have lost otherwise (Linkara wondered if those were to weigh the sled down and thus these guys cheated their way to victory); Captain Tootsie, the Tootsie Roll superhero, giving some orphan kids a sled and Tootsie Pops (yes, this guy is real – AND he’s currently in the public domain, so if you want to play around with him. . .); and some kids at Superboy’s workshop learning the true meaning of the holiday spirit when a kid whose mom has been sick for a while is more excited that she’s finally coming home than by presents (also yes, SUPERBOY’S WORKSHOP. What this is and why it is the setting for this is not explained in any way). Just some quick holiday fun to get us all in the spirit!
B) Then, after supper, it was time for OXtra and “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 2! Farming Simulator 22 Pikachu Drawing Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Yes, the Pikachu Drawing Challenge was back, but with a twist – instead of Ellen and Luke competing for Andy’s approval, this year it was Ellen and Jane, with all three boys judging! The medium? Harvestable fields in Farming Simulator 22, with combine harvesters to draw the lines! Ellen and Jane quickly found that this was a VERY hard way to draw a Pikachu, simply because you had to act like it was a drawing where you couldn’t lift pen from paper – even with the actual harvester up, the vehicle smushed down the plants in its path, meaning making proper details on the face was hard. Ellen went minimal with the facial features in her field and concentrated on the roundness, while Jane took the time to carefully carve out cheeks and make pointing arms on hers. Once finished, the boys were allowed to see the Pikachus both from ground level in the harvesters and from above via the map, and after some discussion about which was better (with Luke saying there was a lot to hate about both XD), they ended up settling on Ellen’s, as it was shaped like a friend, aww. The comments are mostly “how dare, Jane’s was clearly superior” and “Ellen’s is actually a better depiction of MEW than Pikachu.” XD But no, Ellen officially has the Christmas point! What challenge shall tomorrow bring? Only time will tell. . .
C) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays for his video – “When a bullet shoots through the earth,” aka Gray plays GunSpin! This is a strange little game where you take control of a gun and shoot it so it spins across varying strange landscapes, trying to beat your personal best distance every time and slowly unlock new guns. Or, well, that’s how it works for NORMAL people. For GRAY, what happened is that he found out the secret to getting a really good spin and really good speed quickly (rapid-fire a couple of bullets after the first shot), discovered how best to send his gun into space by using the little bumps and ramps on the ground, and basically shot (pun intended) through the game, regularly beating his personal best scores and unlocking guns and upgrades (more projectiles, better first shot power, more ammo boxes (which actually provide speed boosts, not more ammo)) super-fast. He progressed rapidly through regular pistols, water pistols, and Nerf guns to Super Soakers, fancy muzzle-loaders, a chainsaw-gun – and the Legendary Unicorn Gun. Which he started shooting – and managed to glitch through the ground, meaning it never actually stopped, meaning he ended the episode on INFINITE METERS. XD Only GrayStillPlays, ladies, gentlemen, and others.
D) And finally, of course, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 8 - The Writing's On The Wall!” This is where we got into the actual “Two Wastelands” part of the mod, with Jon spending most of it preparing for the trip to New Vegas. Here are the highlights:
I. After a quick discussion of why murdering the people of Arefu didn’t count toward lowering his karma but stealing did at the end of last episode (namely, the game has rules in place to stop you losing karma every time you defend yourself from raiders, and certain factions are tagged as “okay to kill” – Jon thinks that by setting up Arefu to be friendly with the cannibals The Family, they got lumped in with said Family as “okay to kill”), Jon had Wanda report to Moira to start researching the very final chapter of the Wasteland Survival Guide, which had Moira direct her to the Arlington Library to see if she could confirm it was still standing and get access to the archives there. Wanda zipped over to Rivet City and followed a departing caravan, helping them kill super mutants before swimming across a river to Arlington and said library. The library proved to be under the control of the Brotherhood, specifically Senior Scribe Yearling. Jon told us all it was important to be polite to her and had Wanda do just that, and Yearling gave her a nice collectathon quest – find good-condition Pre-War books for her, and she’d pay her for her trouble. Wanda proceeded to explore the library with the local Brotherhood patrols, killing raiders and picking up eight Pre-War books that could be given to Senior Scribe Yearling, netting her 800 caps (100 caps per book). Now, in regular Fallout 3, there are not a lot of Pre-War books – the whole library itself has only ten. In New Vegas, on the other hand, since the Strip was protected from the bombs by Mr. House’s security system. . .yeah. Running off to the Mojave and stealing all their Pre-War books is going to make Wanda a very rich young woman indeed. (And give her loads of XP to boot!)
II. So, after making her way down to the Library Archives to copy them for Moira, Wanda set about completing her last few tasks in the Capital Wasteland before she fucked off to the Mojave. This included killing a giant radscorpion milling about the front of the Arlington Arms hotel (which involved some very weird pathfinding on the scorpion’s part); visiting the heavily-trapped tower of a random raider sniper nearby just so Jon could show off how competent this one unnamed random enemy is (Jon, in fact, insisted she get a name and called her Tina, and made up a backstory that she was once part of the raider gang in the library, but chose to actually read the books they were sitting on, learned how to make good drugs, and became a wealthy drug-dealer, who set up her trap tower to protect herself when the Brotherhood moved in); visited the Arlington Arms to explore a surprisingly-large location that the game never actually directs you to (and which, conveniently, had most of the items Wanda needed for her new dart gun in a back storage room); leveled up and got her Guns, Science, and Survival skills up a bit; came back to Megaton and stole some surgical tubing from the clinic before reporting back to Moira to get her rewards and make her dart gun; and did some inventory management back at her house so she’d have room for new stuff once she was on her way. Oh, and stopped by Paradise Falls for payment and a new slave collar, as, you know, teetering on the edge of evil.
III. And then it was off to Columbus Circle and Union Station! A new little DC bubble created by the mod, accessed by a metro station near the National Archives (which is itself near the Museum of History; as Jon learned during his travels, pop a Stealth Boy if and when you go that way, there is a non-trivial number of mutants there), which now has a certain blocked tunnel unblocked so people can access the new station. Union Station also has a little quest to ensure that characters have actually got their hand in before heading to New Vegas, which involves running around the station restoring the power (and fighting a few ghouls that used to be senators in the basement). With the power turned on, Wanda was able to access the train to Vegas (amusingly, there is a canceled “V. Buren” train on the signboard, referencing the code name for what would have been Interplay’s FO3, along with a “delayed” train to Boston), went down to the ticket office, found a ticket, and hopped on the train to the tunes of “Chrysalis Highwayman” (a chunk of the soundtrack from Fallout 2 when you were using the fast travel car, and one of my favorite pieces of video game music EVER, so I was DELIGHTED to hear it here).
IV. Cue a time skip of three years as Wanda got herself established as the courier, the opening of New Vegas playing out, and Wanda waking up in Doc Mitchell’s office after having been patched up. And Jon revealing that, in order to stop Wanda from being overpowered in the Mojave Wasteland, he’d installed a mod that has Benny not only shoot you in the head and cause you Head Trauma (a “perk” that gives you loads of debuffs to running speed, reload speed, weapon spread, etc, until you level up enough to “heal” from it), but also drops you back down to level one, and has him STEAL ALL YOUR SHIT. Wanda’s beloved Lincoln hat and gun, along with all her other gear, is now locked in a safe at The Tops, and she only has some random Wastelander gear, a naughty nightie, and some bombs and a terrible gun that uses junk rounds. The trip DID come with some upsides, though – she kept all the perks she couldn’t actually replace (all bobblehead perks and such); she has a new perk, “Humbled,” which gives her a permanent 25% increase to her XP gain, meaning she’ll level up faster; and the chance to redo character creation in New Vegas meant that Jon was finally able to officially change her name from “Lone Wanderer” to “Wanda.” It’s the little things, you know. And, of course, there’s the whole reason she came to the Mojave in the first place, just sitting around in giant piles all around Doc Mitchell’s house. . .
But yeah, first things first, Wanda needs to start leveling up again, get herself properly established in the New Vegas wasteland, and get her shit back. Next week, Jon starts showing off some of the fun stuff you might not know exists in New Vegas as Wanda starts climbing her way back up from the bottom! Good stuff.
So yeah -- I am not happy with tumblr or the fact that I didn't get to game today, but at LEAST I'm starting with a clean slate for YouTube. That is SOMETHING. And now I have to rush off to bed because it's my last full week of work, and -- oof. I am REALLY gonna have to schedule my free time carefully this week if I want to do my best to keep up with Subs, OXmas, my tumblr updates, and -- yeah. But I've already stayed up too late right now, so night all!
