Busy Rushed Sunday As Usual
Jul. 9th, 2023 11:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAnd while I feel like I didn't get as much done as I should have, I got more done than I feared I might, so that's good at least --
Tumblr: Had a rather slow start on the tumblrs this morning, unfortunately – mostly because, after I was done catching up on everything else, my parents went out shopping (to get groceries and a new floor fan for helping cool the house), and I didn’t want to get too caught up in anything too complicated while waiting for them to come back because I knew I’d have to help put away said shopping and then help with lunch. However, I did get some good stuff done regardless –
Victor Luvs Alice – got caught up on my tracked tags while waiting for my parents to get back – even got two new items for the drafts (a cool AMA “Ragebox Alice” cosplay and a cute sculpted Victor)! Then, this evening, I put my mind to it and made sure to get three of the seven Chill Valicer Save post drafts completed, so I didn’t feel like I was TOTALLY behind on those. Also reblogged Satirical Demon’s latest “Beneath A Broken Sky” teaser (after seeing it four days late *wince*) – that Victor is being pestered by some horrible Thing In Red Space in his dreams and Alice and Smiler are NOT HAPPY about it. And apparently his morning isn’t going to improve from there. . . Next chapter is apparently going up TOMORROW, so I guess I’ll get to see soon what happens to my poor boy!
Valice Multiverse – again, nothing actually happening on there – just some people liking my posts. So I ended up going into the tags and finding that “Rage Alice Cosplay” and “Clay Sculpted Victor” posts again and putting them in the queue. XD Hey, they were probably gonna end up there anyway!
Fallout 4: Had a good productive session with Victor and Ada in old FO4 today – the Treasures of Jamaica Plain have been discovered, and the Headhunting of Robobrains has begun! Let me tell you all about it –
A) Picked up just where I left off, with Victor having dropped off a fresh load of junk into the workbench after going around the town trying to clear out the last of the ferals. He’d found most of the team that had tried and failed to take Jamaica Plain – Carl, Sal, and Luke – but had not yet located the corpses of the Standishes, Ken and Tanya. So I sent him back out into the town to look for them, heading back toward the diner and harvesting lots of hubflower along the way. After a little poking around, I found a house on the main road near said diner that I hadn’t entered yet – and that proved to be chock full of ghouls! Victor was able to take care of most of them no problem with the Two-Shot (only getting hit once by one that managed to sneak up on him), looted the corpses and any good junk around the house, then headed upstairs –
B) Bingo! Standishes up top on the half-collapsed second floor, along with a bunch of ammo. Ken had a copy of the Jamaica Plain Archives key on his body, along with the holotape Carl had sent him inviting him to the heist; Tanya had a spare flyer and a torn journal page indicating that she was planning on murdering Sal for “leering” too much at Ken. Sheesh, even if they’d made it to the treasure, it was gonna be a bloodbath. . . Victor took everything useful off their corpses and headed back downstairs –
C) To find one of the police protectrons he’d activated last time lying dead just outside! O.o The hell? When did THAT happen? I thought I’d personally taken out all the ghouls! Its buddy is still walking around fine. . .well, nothing for it but to loot the corpse and do a final check of the town, I decided. And so I did, picking up more useful junk, picking open a few doors, and killing one last ghoul that popped out of the wrecked house closest to the rocks overlooking the place. *nods* Oh, and on my way back to the workbench, I ALSO found out what had killed me in the little bus stop area previously – there’s a bottlecap mine hidden in the leaf clutter! I had Victor sneak up and disarm it so it didn’t do me any damage later. w00!
D) With that sorted, and more junk dropped off in the workbench, I took a moment to find the actual “Treasures of Jamaica Plain” quest in Victor’s Pip-Boy, then went ahead and went around back to Carl to get the official town hall key off him, and Sal to get the mayor’s password off her. *shrug* The game was insistent, and it does make life a little easier in actually getting to the treasures. Once back in the town hall, I took a moment to look into what was left of the mayor’s office, cracking her wall safe via lockpicking (every little bit of XP helps, and it had some bottle caps and ammo inside) and checking her terminal with the help of her password (read her speech for sealing up the treasures, and the budget for the month, which was very much in the red because of all the security measures she’d bought for the treasures – whoops), before heading down into the basement. After watching Ada walk right into the dangling light that she said would help prevent ambushes (XD – oh Ada), I then proceeded into the janitorial side office to get a few bits of junk there and check out the janitor’s terminal. Most of it was him complaining about how the funds that were SUPPOSED to fix the basement had been diverted to the mayor’s “Treasures” project, and how stupid the advanced security was – though, at the very end, with the bombs falling, he chose to risk his life to lock up the treasures once and for all before trying to leave because, well, they might be important to somebody someday now. *nods* We salute you, sir. (There was also a rather cute entry on him getting called up to fix something, only to discover it was actually a surprise 25th anniversary celebration for him. That was nice.)
E) With that sorted, it was into the main room through the big blue double doors. The area had been set up for the mayor’s big speech, complete with coffee and ashtrays (I do wish that smoking wasn’t still “cool” in the Fallout universe – consequence of being 50s-esque I suppose) – I left Ada to knock around all the folding chairs in there while I sent Victor inside the archives to loot it and pick open the expert safe inside (some more pre-War money and ammo and such). With that sorted, it was out through the other door and around to the main security room, where a voice informed Victor and Ada that, if they wanted through the massive laser grid, they’d better present identification. Victor, fortunately, already had the mayor’s ID on him – though, for what it’s worth, on the terminal that controls the lasers, you can also find the janitor’s ID, which will also do the job. He swiped it, and the laser grid turned off, allowing him and Ada to proceed cautiously into the final room, where the access terminal and two Protectrons in their charging pods awaited. I had Victor crack their control computer for the XP, but made sure to leave them off because, as per the note on the terminal, they’re on high alert and will be IMMEDIATELY hostile to anyone they don’t recognize. Instead, he used the mayoral password on the access terminal, opening the big security doors, which revealed a button. . .and when that button was pressed –
F) Well, welcome to the Treasures of Jamaica Plain – an elaborate time capsule set up so that people two hundred years in the future could see what the citizens of 2077 thought of as most important. No actual treasure in here, just ordinary items that people used in their everyday lives. (Okay, fine, there is one actual thing that could be considered a treasure – a 2076 World Series bat that happens to also be a legendary weapon (it has a unique effect that can send opponents flying like a baseball hit for a home run), and I think can be sold to Moe Cronin for a lot of caps if you’re so inclined.) Yes, Mayor Alyssa definitely went overboard in trying to protect this stuff, but, at the same time, I imagine this is a hell of a find for the Sole Survivor, or any ghoul who remembers what stuff was like back then. Talk about memories. . . I played Mayor Alyssa’s “welcome” holotape, took a look at the inventory holotape of the treasures and the treasures themselves, and then dropped both holotapes back near where I found them (er, in theory – in practice they seem to have vanished into the ether, because Bethesda) and left everything in place where I found it. Because I feel like that’s what Victor would do – refuse to touch the exhibit so, hopefully, more people can visit and actually have a look at some of the stuff the people of his own time period treasured.
G) All right, Treasures officially discovered – with that sorted, I had Victor slip through the gas-filled gap that had been blown through the walls between the access room and the archives and head back upstairs and over to the workbench to store the last of his junk (and get his port-a-potty back again – I REALLY wish that damn thing was under “Misc” instead!) and drop off some of the guns he’d found in the gun chest. He was feeling kind tired at that point, but I delayed putting him to bed (in the handy-dandy sleeping bag just above the workbench in the ruined house said workbench is connected to) just to take a look at the borders of the settlement and scrap all the ruined cars and street lamps – turns out you do not get much space at ALL! Like, there’s a whole TOWN that you could use here, but nope – the settlement is basically two houses, a parking lot, part of a bush shelter, and one road. Like, how the hell are you even supposed to get WATER? No wonder there’s so many mods on the Nexus to make it bigger. . . I shook my head at the whole thing and sent Victor to bed at 8 PM in-game, letting him have a nine-hour snooze so he didn’t get up too early.
H) Victor woke up with a desperate need to use the bathroom – good thing I had the port-a-potty on him! (He’s still got that damn UTI, incidentally – still have to figure out how to cure that.) Once his biological needs were taken care of, though, and the port-a-potty stowed in a hopefully-safe corner, it was time to advance the Automatron quest line! Victor grabbed his junk and built a nice robot bench in the parking lot area of Jamaica Plain, confirmed with Ada that it had to be her that the radar beacon was attached to (she was like, “I appreciate your concern, but I’m the one with all the relevant info in my memory – I’ll be fine, don’t worry”), then got her into the workbench and put the radar beacon on her! While she was in there, though, I checked through some of the other stuff I could do to her – most of the good stuff was locked behind “Robotics Expert,” but I was able to give her some torso armor to better protect her innards (and give her better carrying capacity ;) ) and upgrade her right hand laser to a better model. Once everything was properly installed, Victor and Ada had a chat – Ada could DETECT the signal that the Mechanist was using to track and communicate with their robobrains (and assured a nervous Victor she’d pre-installed some failsafes to stop the Mechanist trying to track or command her), but couldn’t decrypt it to find the source yet. She needs more beacons to get the keys and such she needs to crack the code. So now Victor has to find some new robobrains to murder, starting the new quest “Headhunting!” I had him check the location of the first robobrain he had to take out on his Pip-Boy –
It’s by Fort Hagen. Or, rather, by the fueling station in Fort Hagen, but still. Which would very much be on Victor’s way to the Glowing Sea. I think the game is going “hey, remember the main quest?” again. XD
I) Never mind that right now, though – tinkering with Ada had actually secured Victor a level-up! My intention was to promptly take “Robotics Expert” for the thematic appropriateness and the ability to make more cool robot stuff, but as it turned out, Victor needed Int 8 for that, and he only had Int 7. So I spent the point on making him Int 8. XD Hey, that also means more XP for everything he does, so I’m happy enough with that!
And with that, I ended the playsession with Victor once again parked by the workbench. Next time, I’m going to focus on making Jamaica Plain an at least SOMEWHAT nice settlement? Gotta set it up so I can tell the people at County Crossing it’s ready for people, anyway. . . So yeah, building episode next Sunday, w00. XD Should be fun!
Writing: Another Sunday, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression! As I indicated last week, the big change to this week’s recounting of my actual playthrough for potential fanfic purposes is the addition of Preston and Piper to the party – specifically, I had them reach the town right after Victor found the Standishes at the top of the ghoul house, and actually be the ones responsible for killing the mysteriously-dead police protectron (mostly because it malfunctioned and tried to shoot THEM for the “crime” of being visitors). They accompanied Victor on his final tour of the town to make sure it was truly clear of ferals, then everybody (including Alice – she had to be carried to the door in her sleeping bag, admittedly, but once IN the basement she could move around freely) headed into the basement once Victor had had a look at the mayoral terminal (and gotten an inkling that the “treasures” of Jamaica Plain weren’t actually monetary. . .). The group made it past all the security with no issues thanks to the mayoral ID and password (in fact, Alice took the gassy passage to the access room, bypassing the need to turn off the laser hallway entirely – that being said, in this reality, she was the only one who could have taken that shortcut safely due to not needing to breathe, so. . .) and headed into the actual time capsule room, where Piper and Preston had their canonical reactions (Piper being excited right up until she saw the actual “treasures;” Preston just cracking up over the absurdity of it) and Ada got a new “somewhat confused” reaction from me –
Up until the point where they noticed that Victor was having all of the feels over the objects, and Victor confessed to them that this whole thing was a part of his home time, and he hates the idea that nobody will care because none of this is particularly valuable. Yes, fine, his home time was kind of shit, but it was still HIS, damn it. Cue all the hugs and the gang agreeing with him that the exhibit should be preserved, at least for his sake, and the sake of the ghouls who may also want to see this small piece of the world before the War. And so they left it alone, taking with them only the skeleton of the janitor (who I named Ted) outside the security doors so he could have a proper burial. *nods* Solemn stuff.
And then the next morning, everyone smashed up some cars, Victor and Ada built the robot workbench and attached the beacon to her (Ada assuring Victor she’d be fine, she had failsafes to prevent the Mechanist messing with her), learned that they need more beacons to decrypt the signal coming in and trace it back to the Mechanist, and Victor discovered the next robobrain they needed was in Fort Hagen and took it as a hint from the universe to start getting a move on when it comes to braving the Glowing Sea nearby. :p First, though, gotta get the settlement sorted! Which should be a bit easier in fanfic-land now that there’s a couple of extra hands to help. :) Dunno how long I’ll have Preston and Piper stick around in the story, but it’s nice for Victor to have his two favorite companions with him again for the time being. :)
YouTube: Welp, I said before in the Tumblr section that I spent some time this evening doing Chill Valicer Save post drafts. . .and as a result of that, I only got to watch one of my usual two Sunday videos, skipping GrayStillPlays in favor of Jon of Many A True Nerd. Meh. Honestly, though, it’s not really a big deal, as the Gray video was fairly short, meaning I have a better chance of catching up on it tomorrow – and I really wanted to get those Chill Valicer Save drafts completed so I wasn’t stuck doing ALL of them post-work tomorrow and Tuesday. *nods* Less stress that way!
But yes, it being Fallout Sunday, we of course had the latest of Jon’s new LP – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 37 - Impure Thoughts!” We officially ended the base game and entered the Broken Steel DLC this episode, and – well. Why don’t I tell you exactly what Wanda did to end off vanilla Fallout 3. . .
A) First things first – having completed both her Mojave big game hunt, her visit to the Big Empty, and her ridiculous crouch-speed experiments, Wanda had just one last trip to make before ending her vacation in New Vegas. That one last trip was to House’s penthouse, where she told him to fuck off and get his Platinum Chip himself; sold a snow globe to one of his staff Securitrons for 2,000 caps (because apparently he collects them – and also he will apparently pay more for a SNOW GLOBE than he will for the PLATINUM CHIP once you retrieve it); and then stole almost every pre-War book he owned (both in his office and his bedroom) with the help of her power armor and a quick Buffout addiction to boost her strength and carry capacity. Those pre-War books went with her straight back to the Capital Wasteland, where she hurried off to the Arlington Library and sold the lot to Scribe Yearling, getting 12,600 caps and 1,575 XP, pushing her over into Level 40 (Jon grabbed the “Laser Commander” perk for +15% damage on all laser weapons (and everything the game THINKS is a laser weapon) and a +10% flat critical hit chance rate). So between the snow globe and the books, she earned 14,600 caps at the very end of her vacation. Hell of a payday, right?
B) But wait – Jon had had Wanda borrow against her future self in order to get some of the stuff for his special speed experiments (specifically, one implant where he had to console command in the money to pay for it because he hadn’t brought that much to the Mojave, and one implant where he had to console command in the implant itself because he hadn’t gotten that particular one at the time), and now, that 12,000 cap debt was due. And as he didn’t want to just leave the money sitting in a box or spend it on anything (because then Wanda would be benefiting from the cash), that left just one other option –
Donate it to charity! Specifically, giving it to Father Clifford at Saint Monica’s Church in Rivet City, as Jon didn’t want to help fund the Children Of Atom. (Though, really, given what happened in the rest of the episode, he might as well have. . .) Unfortunately, Father Clifford only accepts donations of up to 100 caps in one go, so Jon had to sit there and spam the “I want to make a donation to the church” options about 120 times. *wince* He ended up giving closer to 13,000 caps to the guy because he pressed (A) a few too many times, but decided to write it off as “interest” on the loan. So that cleared the debt her past self had incurred. . .
C) But oh no, all those donations had given Wanda a different problem – namely, a massive amount of good karma. As it turns out, when you give a lot of money to a local church, Fallout 3 decides you are the most saintly person alive. But Wanda doesn’t want to be the most saintly person alive – she wants to be neutral, for the speech bonuses and the lack of mercenaries hunting her. So what she needed was to commit an act so heinous that it would immediately knock her down to neutral status.
. . .hey, she still had that vial of the modified FEV virus that President Eden gave her to put in the water supply. . .
D) Of course, before she could poison the water supply, she had to secure the water supply, which meant heading back to the Citadel and talking to Elder Lyons! And, unfortunately for Elder Lyons, after learning the Enclave got the GECK and are trying to activate the purifier themselves, he’s in a bit of a rush to mobilize. Meaning, when he asks you to tell him any other information you have that could help the cause, you can tell him only ONE thing out of the three options given – letting him know about the plan to poison the water supply and handing over the FEV vial; letting him know that there’s a bit of a rift in the Enclave between Colonel Autumn and President Eden; or letting him know that the Enclave don’t have the activation code yet. And of course, Wanda wasn’t about to hand over her Vial of Ultimate Evil, so she just let him know that they didn’t have the activation code. Sorry, Lyons – next time, maybe don’t be in such a rush!
E) This led directly into “Fun With Liberty Prime!” Because, yes, everyone’s favorite giant AMERICA! robot was released to deal with the problem of actually getting to the purifier, leading to an amusing penultimate mission where all you have to do is follow the giant robot and let him kill all the things. Jon just likes it for the spectacle, and for being the inverse of the usual “slogging through all the enemies at a snail’s pace killing every last one” final mission. (Oh, and because when Liberty Prime is being lifted out by crane, the crane operator smashes his foot into the wall of the Citadel before realizing he’s not high enough to go over it. XD) He did, however, let us know that there’s a few ways to break this easy “walk behind the robot” mission –
I. Liberty Prime will NOT just fight the Enclave when he goes out – if you kill a member of Lyon’s Pride, even accidentally, he will go after you without hesitation; if you have Fawkes with you on this final trip, and happen to dismiss him halfway through, Liberty Prime will laser his super mutant ass; and if any caravans happen to pass by the battle, Liberty Prime will try his best to murder them because for some reason the AMERICA! robot that throws nukes like footballs doesn’t like capitalism. O.o
II. When on this trip, you are NOT prevented from actually just up and leaving – Jon popped into an alternate universe briefly where Wanda fast-traveled over to Oasis to spend some time in peaceful solitude among the trees, then fast-traveled back again in the middle of the night. However, he does not recommend actually doing this, because both Sarah Lyons and Liberty Prime have a chance of despawning if you do – he personally was lucky, but better not to take the risk, right?
III. And it’s not recommended to run ahead of the robot, no matter how much you want to try out your awesome killer pulse gun on the Hellfire Troopers in their power armor, because apparently it just totally breaks Liberty Prime’s pathfinding somehow and he’ll straight up stop moving. Jon learned about THAT little glitch the hard way. XD
F) Anyway, after finally getting to the purifier with Prime (and demonstrating briefly that the Enclave WILL send out reinforcements if you tarry about instead of going straight inside – Prime just lasers them too), Wanda and Sarah headed in, clearing out the remaining scrub soldiers before confronting Colonel Autumn in the purifier itself. Jon indicated that most people have a choice of speech checks here while talking to Autumn – one easier one and one harder one – because most people destroy Raven Rock and leave Autumn with no base to go back to, and most people interested in making him stand down choose the easier one. Wanda, however, had left Raven Rock standing, and thus only had the harder of the two speech checks, involving asking Autumn about his allegiance to President Eden despite their differences. Fortunately, in Jon’s opinion, the harder speech check leads to the better dialogue, where the PC gets to rip the foundations of Autumn’s worldview (namely, that Eden still considers him important and trustworthy) out from under him by letting him know about Eden entrusting the vial of FEV to them and just how out of the loop he is, before taunting him to go back to his base and actually take control of his faction if he really is The Enclave like he says. Jon just feels it’s more narratively satisfying to hit him where it HURTS like that. (Even if it took some reloads and Wanda doing Grape Mentats to increase her Charisma to pass all the checks.)
G) And with that, we got to the infamous ending of Fallout 3, where in the vanilla game, your choices are to go into the lethally-irradiated control room yourself to turn on the purifier and vent the pressure threatening to make it explode and get called a self-sacrificing hero by the ending slides, or send in Sarah to do it and get called a cowardly asshole by the ending slides. Even if you have radiation-immune companions (like Fawkes or Charon), you can’t send them in in your steed in vanilla – each will refuse because the game wants you to be self-sacrificing, damn it. Broken Steel, which added post-main-quest content, fixed this a little bit by 1. allowing you to survive the dose of radiation so you could experience the content if you went in yourself (Sarah Lyons is not so lucky, being the only character who will still die if she goes into that room), and 2. allowing you to send in those radiation-immune companions, who are suddenly okay with helping you out – but if you do so, you still get the “you asshole coward” ending slides, because reasons. (Jon’s personal theory is that they couldn’t get Ron Perlman back to record new endings.) However, did you know there’s a THIRD way to end the game, with or without DLC?
Did you know it involves being a total dick? XD Basically, when Dr. Li says that you have to turn on the purifier and vent the pressure within a certain time frame, she’s not kidding – there is a brief window to turn off the purifier, and then it will explode, taking you and Sarah with it. But you can only let it explode by not doing anything to turn it on – and THAT involves telling Sarah to go into the room, and then refusing to give her the code to turn it on. And you are a true horrible dick about it too, telling her that everyone can just burn in Hell when she demands the code from you. Jon just thinks it’s funny that the game will allow you to actually do this at the very end, when it honestly makes no sense for you to hold back the code. Oh, and even funnier, when he demonstrated this with Wanda, after the purifier exploded, he got the Good Karma ending because, well, Wanda had maximum good karma at the time! XD This game is so broken, seriously. . .
H) But Jon didn’t want the purifier to explode, no – he wanted it POISONED. Because Wanda had all that good karma, and she needed to get rid of it, and as it turns out, sticking the FEV vial into the purifier to turn it into a horrible genocide machine is the most evil action in the game (not really a surprise). Though, hilariously, the most GOOD action in the game is sacrificing yourself to turn on the purifier – and you ARE allowed to do both, poisoning the water to lose the karma, and then immediately sacrificing yourself to gain it back. Wanda personally would still be seen as a saint if she poisoned the water and then killed herself to distribute it across the Capital Wasteland. Oh Fallout 3, why are you like this. XD
I) Again, though, Wanda wasn’t interested in GAINING any karma – only losing it. So she slapped in the vial (completing the “Project Impurity” quest), told Sarah to go into the purifier (giving her the code this time), watched her die, sat through the awkward ending slides that were mostly silent because the game doesn’t know how to handle a neutral character (there are only “good” and “bad” endings – that being said, she did get called an asshole coward for sending in Sarah, and a bastard for poisoning the water supply and condemning everyone in the Capital Wasteland to death), and then woke up two weeks later back in the Citadel because apparently even if you don’t go in and get heavily irradiated you still end up in a coma somehow. And also Elder Lyons wasn’t angry with her because he was sure Sarah volunteered herself to keep Wanda from harm. Uh, yeah, you believe that, Lyons. . .
And that ended the episode and put us into Broken Steel! Next week, we see the changes to the Wasteland made in the wake of our betrayal, and what happens when you make the BOS “aqua pura” not so pura. . .spoiler alert, apparently Wanda MAY get kicked in the ass by consequences. XD At least the situation won’t be as dire as the ending slides made it out to be, with everyone already dead. . .we hope. . .
Workout: Back on the bike today, and back to the James Turner High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic with “I Dropped out of High School! High School Years (Part 39)!” Here’s what happened to the core four Bigwallets in this episode –
A) Addison, as you might expect from the title, dropped out of high school – in fact, they did it while AT school, by telling the principal they wanted to quit while playing chess with her. XD They then spent the rest of their final day at school using the treadmill as James wanted to encourage them to actually run places, and then the rest of the episode practicing their guitar and starting to learn to cook in preparation for their future career as a restaurateur!
B) Breanne is still in school, however, and making good strides on being the most popular girl in school – she so impressed one of the students in the school, Pamela, when she first spoke to her that she instantly wanted to both be best friends (Breanne said “okay!”) and go to prom with her as buddies (Breanne said “uh, that’s a little much, and I already have a guy in mind. . .”). She’s also making good strides on becoming the ultimate fashionista, using the family thrift store to design new Trendi looks and getting into photography by taking loads of selfies to show off said looks. XD (Considering I know in future episodes that she actually moves to San Myshuno to start her own photo studio, though, it’s cool to see where the idea to do that might have started!)
C) Reginald earned enough money from his book sales and his job to purchase the Bigwallet Emporium/Nightclub/Museum for Addison to turn into a restaurant later – it took almost all of the family cash, though, and those book royalties are starting to fall off. . .fortunately, he’s still earning raises all the time, so I think they’ll be all right. XD He also had his mother Column over to show her his cool magical attic room (James wanted them to do potions together, but no go) and have a friendly duel out in the back yard – and he bested her, proving himself more powerful than the actual Realm of Magic Bigwallet. XD I’d like to think Column is very proud of him for that.
D) And Kevin – well, Kevin’s still Kevining, working out whenever James isn’t paying attention to him and knitting things whenever he is. XD He’s only got to complete four more Legendary knitted items to finally complete his aspiration, but James is having some real trouble getting him in the right mood to knit good stuff. . .
So yeah, everybody’s keeping busy and doing their thing! :) We’ll see how things go for the family next time I drop into this LP!
And yeah, I really need to go to bed as I am up far later than I should be. Damn Mondays. . .night all!
Tumblr: Had a rather slow start on the tumblrs this morning, unfortunately – mostly because, after I was done catching up on everything else, my parents went out shopping (to get groceries and a new floor fan for helping cool the house), and I didn’t want to get too caught up in anything too complicated while waiting for them to come back because I knew I’d have to help put away said shopping and then help with lunch. However, I did get some good stuff done regardless –
Victor Luvs Alice – got caught up on my tracked tags while waiting for my parents to get back – even got two new items for the drafts (a cool AMA “Ragebox Alice” cosplay and a cute sculpted Victor)! Then, this evening, I put my mind to it and made sure to get three of the seven Chill Valicer Save post drafts completed, so I didn’t feel like I was TOTALLY behind on those. Also reblogged Satirical Demon’s latest “Beneath A Broken Sky” teaser (after seeing it four days late *wince*) – that Victor is being pestered by some horrible Thing In Red Space in his dreams and Alice and Smiler are NOT HAPPY about it. And apparently his morning isn’t going to improve from there. . . Next chapter is apparently going up TOMORROW, so I guess I’ll get to see soon what happens to my poor boy!
Valice Multiverse – again, nothing actually happening on there – just some people liking my posts. So I ended up going into the tags and finding that “Rage Alice Cosplay” and “Clay Sculpted Victor” posts again and putting them in the queue. XD Hey, they were probably gonna end up there anyway!
Fallout 4: Had a good productive session with Victor and Ada in old FO4 today – the Treasures of Jamaica Plain have been discovered, and the Headhunting of Robobrains has begun! Let me tell you all about it –
A) Picked up just where I left off, with Victor having dropped off a fresh load of junk into the workbench after going around the town trying to clear out the last of the ferals. He’d found most of the team that had tried and failed to take Jamaica Plain – Carl, Sal, and Luke – but had not yet located the corpses of the Standishes, Ken and Tanya. So I sent him back out into the town to look for them, heading back toward the diner and harvesting lots of hubflower along the way. After a little poking around, I found a house on the main road near said diner that I hadn’t entered yet – and that proved to be chock full of ghouls! Victor was able to take care of most of them no problem with the Two-Shot (only getting hit once by one that managed to sneak up on him), looted the corpses and any good junk around the house, then headed upstairs –
B) Bingo! Standishes up top on the half-collapsed second floor, along with a bunch of ammo. Ken had a copy of the Jamaica Plain Archives key on his body, along with the holotape Carl had sent him inviting him to the heist; Tanya had a spare flyer and a torn journal page indicating that she was planning on murdering Sal for “leering” too much at Ken. Sheesh, even if they’d made it to the treasure, it was gonna be a bloodbath. . . Victor took everything useful off their corpses and headed back downstairs –
C) To find one of the police protectrons he’d activated last time lying dead just outside! O.o The hell? When did THAT happen? I thought I’d personally taken out all the ghouls! Its buddy is still walking around fine. . .well, nothing for it but to loot the corpse and do a final check of the town, I decided. And so I did, picking up more useful junk, picking open a few doors, and killing one last ghoul that popped out of the wrecked house closest to the rocks overlooking the place. *nods* Oh, and on my way back to the workbench, I ALSO found out what had killed me in the little bus stop area previously – there’s a bottlecap mine hidden in the leaf clutter! I had Victor sneak up and disarm it so it didn’t do me any damage later. w00!
D) With that sorted, and more junk dropped off in the workbench, I took a moment to find the actual “Treasures of Jamaica Plain” quest in Victor’s Pip-Boy, then went ahead and went around back to Carl to get the official town hall key off him, and Sal to get the mayor’s password off her. *shrug* The game was insistent, and it does make life a little easier in actually getting to the treasures. Once back in the town hall, I took a moment to look into what was left of the mayor’s office, cracking her wall safe via lockpicking (every little bit of XP helps, and it had some bottle caps and ammo inside) and checking her terminal with the help of her password (read her speech for sealing up the treasures, and the budget for the month, which was very much in the red because of all the security measures she’d bought for the treasures – whoops), before heading down into the basement. After watching Ada walk right into the dangling light that she said would help prevent ambushes (XD – oh Ada), I then proceeded into the janitorial side office to get a few bits of junk there and check out the janitor’s terminal. Most of it was him complaining about how the funds that were SUPPOSED to fix the basement had been diverted to the mayor’s “Treasures” project, and how stupid the advanced security was – though, at the very end, with the bombs falling, he chose to risk his life to lock up the treasures once and for all before trying to leave because, well, they might be important to somebody someday now. *nods* We salute you, sir. (There was also a rather cute entry on him getting called up to fix something, only to discover it was actually a surprise 25th anniversary celebration for him. That was nice.)
E) With that sorted, it was into the main room through the big blue double doors. The area had been set up for the mayor’s big speech, complete with coffee and ashtrays (I do wish that smoking wasn’t still “cool” in the Fallout universe – consequence of being 50s-esque I suppose) – I left Ada to knock around all the folding chairs in there while I sent Victor inside the archives to loot it and pick open the expert safe inside (some more pre-War money and ammo and such). With that sorted, it was out through the other door and around to the main security room, where a voice informed Victor and Ada that, if they wanted through the massive laser grid, they’d better present identification. Victor, fortunately, already had the mayor’s ID on him – though, for what it’s worth, on the terminal that controls the lasers, you can also find the janitor’s ID, which will also do the job. He swiped it, and the laser grid turned off, allowing him and Ada to proceed cautiously into the final room, where the access terminal and two Protectrons in their charging pods awaited. I had Victor crack their control computer for the XP, but made sure to leave them off because, as per the note on the terminal, they’re on high alert and will be IMMEDIATELY hostile to anyone they don’t recognize. Instead, he used the mayoral password on the access terminal, opening the big security doors, which revealed a button. . .and when that button was pressed –
F) Well, welcome to the Treasures of Jamaica Plain – an elaborate time capsule set up so that people two hundred years in the future could see what the citizens of 2077 thought of as most important. No actual treasure in here, just ordinary items that people used in their everyday lives. (Okay, fine, there is one actual thing that could be considered a treasure – a 2076 World Series bat that happens to also be a legendary weapon (it has a unique effect that can send opponents flying like a baseball hit for a home run), and I think can be sold to Moe Cronin for a lot of caps if you’re so inclined.) Yes, Mayor Alyssa definitely went overboard in trying to protect this stuff, but, at the same time, I imagine this is a hell of a find for the Sole Survivor, or any ghoul who remembers what stuff was like back then. Talk about memories. . . I played Mayor Alyssa’s “welcome” holotape, took a look at the inventory holotape of the treasures and the treasures themselves, and then dropped both holotapes back near where I found them (er, in theory – in practice they seem to have vanished into the ether, because Bethesda) and left everything in place where I found it. Because I feel like that’s what Victor would do – refuse to touch the exhibit so, hopefully, more people can visit and actually have a look at some of the stuff the people of his own time period treasured.
G) All right, Treasures officially discovered – with that sorted, I had Victor slip through the gas-filled gap that had been blown through the walls between the access room and the archives and head back upstairs and over to the workbench to store the last of his junk (and get his port-a-potty back again – I REALLY wish that damn thing was under “Misc” instead!) and drop off some of the guns he’d found in the gun chest. He was feeling kind tired at that point, but I delayed putting him to bed (in the handy-dandy sleeping bag just above the workbench in the ruined house said workbench is connected to) just to take a look at the borders of the settlement and scrap all the ruined cars and street lamps – turns out you do not get much space at ALL! Like, there’s a whole TOWN that you could use here, but nope – the settlement is basically two houses, a parking lot, part of a bush shelter, and one road. Like, how the hell are you even supposed to get WATER? No wonder there’s so many mods on the Nexus to make it bigger. . . I shook my head at the whole thing and sent Victor to bed at 8 PM in-game, letting him have a nine-hour snooze so he didn’t get up too early.
H) Victor woke up with a desperate need to use the bathroom – good thing I had the port-a-potty on him! (He’s still got that damn UTI, incidentally – still have to figure out how to cure that.) Once his biological needs were taken care of, though, and the port-a-potty stowed in a hopefully-safe corner, it was time to advance the Automatron quest line! Victor grabbed his junk and built a nice robot bench in the parking lot area of Jamaica Plain, confirmed with Ada that it had to be her that the radar beacon was attached to (she was like, “I appreciate your concern, but I’m the one with all the relevant info in my memory – I’ll be fine, don’t worry”), then got her into the workbench and put the radar beacon on her! While she was in there, though, I checked through some of the other stuff I could do to her – most of the good stuff was locked behind “Robotics Expert,” but I was able to give her some torso armor to better protect her innards (and give her better carrying capacity ;) ) and upgrade her right hand laser to a better model. Once everything was properly installed, Victor and Ada had a chat – Ada could DETECT the signal that the Mechanist was using to track and communicate with their robobrains (and assured a nervous Victor she’d pre-installed some failsafes to stop the Mechanist trying to track or command her), but couldn’t decrypt it to find the source yet. She needs more beacons to get the keys and such she needs to crack the code. So now Victor has to find some new robobrains to murder, starting the new quest “Headhunting!” I had him check the location of the first robobrain he had to take out on his Pip-Boy –
It’s by Fort Hagen. Or, rather, by the fueling station in Fort Hagen, but still. Which would very much be on Victor’s way to the Glowing Sea. I think the game is going “hey, remember the main quest?” again. XD
I) Never mind that right now, though – tinkering with Ada had actually secured Victor a level-up! My intention was to promptly take “Robotics Expert” for the thematic appropriateness and the ability to make more cool robot stuff, but as it turned out, Victor needed Int 8 for that, and he only had Int 7. So I spent the point on making him Int 8. XD Hey, that also means more XP for everything he does, so I’m happy enough with that!
And with that, I ended the playsession with Victor once again parked by the workbench. Next time, I’m going to focus on making Jamaica Plain an at least SOMEWHAT nice settlement? Gotta set it up so I can tell the people at County Crossing it’s ready for people, anyway. . . So yeah, building episode next Sunday, w00. XD Should be fun!
Writing: Another Sunday, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression! As I indicated last week, the big change to this week’s recounting of my actual playthrough for potential fanfic purposes is the addition of Preston and Piper to the party – specifically, I had them reach the town right after Victor found the Standishes at the top of the ghoul house, and actually be the ones responsible for killing the mysteriously-dead police protectron (mostly because it malfunctioned and tried to shoot THEM for the “crime” of being visitors). They accompanied Victor on his final tour of the town to make sure it was truly clear of ferals, then everybody (including Alice – she had to be carried to the door in her sleeping bag, admittedly, but once IN the basement she could move around freely) headed into the basement once Victor had had a look at the mayoral terminal (and gotten an inkling that the “treasures” of Jamaica Plain weren’t actually monetary. . .). The group made it past all the security with no issues thanks to the mayoral ID and password (in fact, Alice took the gassy passage to the access room, bypassing the need to turn off the laser hallway entirely – that being said, in this reality, she was the only one who could have taken that shortcut safely due to not needing to breathe, so. . .) and headed into the actual time capsule room, where Piper and Preston had their canonical reactions (Piper being excited right up until she saw the actual “treasures;” Preston just cracking up over the absurdity of it) and Ada got a new “somewhat confused” reaction from me –
Up until the point where they noticed that Victor was having all of the feels over the objects, and Victor confessed to them that this whole thing was a part of his home time, and he hates the idea that nobody will care because none of this is particularly valuable. Yes, fine, his home time was kind of shit, but it was still HIS, damn it. Cue all the hugs and the gang agreeing with him that the exhibit should be preserved, at least for his sake, and the sake of the ghouls who may also want to see this small piece of the world before the War. And so they left it alone, taking with them only the skeleton of the janitor (who I named Ted) outside the security doors so he could have a proper burial. *nods* Solemn stuff.
And then the next morning, everyone smashed up some cars, Victor and Ada built the robot workbench and attached the beacon to her (Ada assuring Victor she’d be fine, she had failsafes to prevent the Mechanist messing with her), learned that they need more beacons to decrypt the signal coming in and trace it back to the Mechanist, and Victor discovered the next robobrain they needed was in Fort Hagen and took it as a hint from the universe to start getting a move on when it comes to braving the Glowing Sea nearby. :p First, though, gotta get the settlement sorted! Which should be a bit easier in fanfic-land now that there’s a couple of extra hands to help. :) Dunno how long I’ll have Preston and Piper stick around in the story, but it’s nice for Victor to have his two favorite companions with him again for the time being. :)
YouTube: Welp, I said before in the Tumblr section that I spent some time this evening doing Chill Valicer Save post drafts. . .and as a result of that, I only got to watch one of my usual two Sunday videos, skipping GrayStillPlays in favor of Jon of Many A True Nerd. Meh. Honestly, though, it’s not really a big deal, as the Gray video was fairly short, meaning I have a better chance of catching up on it tomorrow – and I really wanted to get those Chill Valicer Save drafts completed so I wasn’t stuck doing ALL of them post-work tomorrow and Tuesday. *nods* Less stress that way!
But yes, it being Fallout Sunday, we of course had the latest of Jon’s new LP – “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 37 - Impure Thoughts!” We officially ended the base game and entered the Broken Steel DLC this episode, and – well. Why don’t I tell you exactly what Wanda did to end off vanilla Fallout 3. . .
A) First things first – having completed both her Mojave big game hunt, her visit to the Big Empty, and her ridiculous crouch-speed experiments, Wanda had just one last trip to make before ending her vacation in New Vegas. That one last trip was to House’s penthouse, where she told him to fuck off and get his Platinum Chip himself; sold a snow globe to one of his staff Securitrons for 2,000 caps (because apparently he collects them – and also he will apparently pay more for a SNOW GLOBE than he will for the PLATINUM CHIP once you retrieve it); and then stole almost every pre-War book he owned (both in his office and his bedroom) with the help of her power armor and a quick Buffout addiction to boost her strength and carry capacity. Those pre-War books went with her straight back to the Capital Wasteland, where she hurried off to the Arlington Library and sold the lot to Scribe Yearling, getting 12,600 caps and 1,575 XP, pushing her over into Level 40 (Jon grabbed the “Laser Commander” perk for +15% damage on all laser weapons (and everything the game THINKS is a laser weapon) and a +10% flat critical hit chance rate). So between the snow globe and the books, she earned 14,600 caps at the very end of her vacation. Hell of a payday, right?
B) But wait – Jon had had Wanda borrow against her future self in order to get some of the stuff for his special speed experiments (specifically, one implant where he had to console command in the money to pay for it because he hadn’t brought that much to the Mojave, and one implant where he had to console command in the implant itself because he hadn’t gotten that particular one at the time), and now, that 12,000 cap debt was due. And as he didn’t want to just leave the money sitting in a box or spend it on anything (because then Wanda would be benefiting from the cash), that left just one other option –
Donate it to charity! Specifically, giving it to Father Clifford at Saint Monica’s Church in Rivet City, as Jon didn’t want to help fund the Children Of Atom. (Though, really, given what happened in the rest of the episode, he might as well have. . .) Unfortunately, Father Clifford only accepts donations of up to 100 caps in one go, so Jon had to sit there and spam the “I want to make a donation to the church” options about 120 times. *wince* He ended up giving closer to 13,000 caps to the guy because he pressed (A) a few too many times, but decided to write it off as “interest” on the loan. So that cleared the debt her past self had incurred. . .
C) But oh no, all those donations had given Wanda a different problem – namely, a massive amount of good karma. As it turns out, when you give a lot of money to a local church, Fallout 3 decides you are the most saintly person alive. But Wanda doesn’t want to be the most saintly person alive – she wants to be neutral, for the speech bonuses and the lack of mercenaries hunting her. So what she needed was to commit an act so heinous that it would immediately knock her down to neutral status.
. . .hey, she still had that vial of the modified FEV virus that President Eden gave her to put in the water supply. . .
D) Of course, before she could poison the water supply, she had to secure the water supply, which meant heading back to the Citadel and talking to Elder Lyons! And, unfortunately for Elder Lyons, after learning the Enclave got the GECK and are trying to activate the purifier themselves, he’s in a bit of a rush to mobilize. Meaning, when he asks you to tell him any other information you have that could help the cause, you can tell him only ONE thing out of the three options given – letting him know about the plan to poison the water supply and handing over the FEV vial; letting him know that there’s a bit of a rift in the Enclave between Colonel Autumn and President Eden; or letting him know that the Enclave don’t have the activation code yet. And of course, Wanda wasn’t about to hand over her Vial of Ultimate Evil, so she just let him know that they didn’t have the activation code. Sorry, Lyons – next time, maybe don’t be in such a rush!
E) This led directly into “Fun With Liberty Prime!” Because, yes, everyone’s favorite giant AMERICA! robot was released to deal with the problem of actually getting to the purifier, leading to an amusing penultimate mission where all you have to do is follow the giant robot and let him kill all the things. Jon just likes it for the spectacle, and for being the inverse of the usual “slogging through all the enemies at a snail’s pace killing every last one” final mission. (Oh, and because when Liberty Prime is being lifted out by crane, the crane operator smashes his foot into the wall of the Citadel before realizing he’s not high enough to go over it. XD) He did, however, let us know that there’s a few ways to break this easy “walk behind the robot” mission –
I. Liberty Prime will NOT just fight the Enclave when he goes out – if you kill a member of Lyon’s Pride, even accidentally, he will go after you without hesitation; if you have Fawkes with you on this final trip, and happen to dismiss him halfway through, Liberty Prime will laser his super mutant ass; and if any caravans happen to pass by the battle, Liberty Prime will try his best to murder them because for some reason the AMERICA! robot that throws nukes like footballs doesn’t like capitalism. O.o
II. When on this trip, you are NOT prevented from actually just up and leaving – Jon popped into an alternate universe briefly where Wanda fast-traveled over to Oasis to spend some time in peaceful solitude among the trees, then fast-traveled back again in the middle of the night. However, he does not recommend actually doing this, because both Sarah Lyons and Liberty Prime have a chance of despawning if you do – he personally was lucky, but better not to take the risk, right?
III. And it’s not recommended to run ahead of the robot, no matter how much you want to try out your awesome killer pulse gun on the Hellfire Troopers in their power armor, because apparently it just totally breaks Liberty Prime’s pathfinding somehow and he’ll straight up stop moving. Jon learned about THAT little glitch the hard way. XD
F) Anyway, after finally getting to the purifier with Prime (and demonstrating briefly that the Enclave WILL send out reinforcements if you tarry about instead of going straight inside – Prime just lasers them too), Wanda and Sarah headed in, clearing out the remaining scrub soldiers before confronting Colonel Autumn in the purifier itself. Jon indicated that most people have a choice of speech checks here while talking to Autumn – one easier one and one harder one – because most people destroy Raven Rock and leave Autumn with no base to go back to, and most people interested in making him stand down choose the easier one. Wanda, however, had left Raven Rock standing, and thus only had the harder of the two speech checks, involving asking Autumn about his allegiance to President Eden despite their differences. Fortunately, in Jon’s opinion, the harder speech check leads to the better dialogue, where the PC gets to rip the foundations of Autumn’s worldview (namely, that Eden still considers him important and trustworthy) out from under him by letting him know about Eden entrusting the vial of FEV to them and just how out of the loop he is, before taunting him to go back to his base and actually take control of his faction if he really is The Enclave like he says. Jon just feels it’s more narratively satisfying to hit him where it HURTS like that. (Even if it took some reloads and Wanda doing Grape Mentats to increase her Charisma to pass all the checks.)
G) And with that, we got to the infamous ending of Fallout 3, where in the vanilla game, your choices are to go into the lethally-irradiated control room yourself to turn on the purifier and vent the pressure threatening to make it explode and get called a self-sacrificing hero by the ending slides, or send in Sarah to do it and get called a cowardly asshole by the ending slides. Even if you have radiation-immune companions (like Fawkes or Charon), you can’t send them in in your steed in vanilla – each will refuse because the game wants you to be self-sacrificing, damn it. Broken Steel, which added post-main-quest content, fixed this a little bit by 1. allowing you to survive the dose of radiation so you could experience the content if you went in yourself (Sarah Lyons is not so lucky, being the only character who will still die if she goes into that room), and 2. allowing you to send in those radiation-immune companions, who are suddenly okay with helping you out – but if you do so, you still get the “you asshole coward” ending slides, because reasons. (Jon’s personal theory is that they couldn’t get Ron Perlman back to record new endings.) However, did you know there’s a THIRD way to end the game, with or without DLC?
Did you know it involves being a total dick? XD Basically, when Dr. Li says that you have to turn on the purifier and vent the pressure within a certain time frame, she’s not kidding – there is a brief window to turn off the purifier, and then it will explode, taking you and Sarah with it. But you can only let it explode by not doing anything to turn it on – and THAT involves telling Sarah to go into the room, and then refusing to give her the code to turn it on. And you are a true horrible dick about it too, telling her that everyone can just burn in Hell when she demands the code from you. Jon just thinks it’s funny that the game will allow you to actually do this at the very end, when it honestly makes no sense for you to hold back the code. Oh, and even funnier, when he demonstrated this with Wanda, after the purifier exploded, he got the Good Karma ending because, well, Wanda had maximum good karma at the time! XD This game is so broken, seriously. . .
H) But Jon didn’t want the purifier to explode, no – he wanted it POISONED. Because Wanda had all that good karma, and she needed to get rid of it, and as it turns out, sticking the FEV vial into the purifier to turn it into a horrible genocide machine is the most evil action in the game (not really a surprise). Though, hilariously, the most GOOD action in the game is sacrificing yourself to turn on the purifier – and you ARE allowed to do both, poisoning the water to lose the karma, and then immediately sacrificing yourself to gain it back. Wanda personally would still be seen as a saint if she poisoned the water and then killed herself to distribute it across the Capital Wasteland. Oh Fallout 3, why are you like this. XD
I) Again, though, Wanda wasn’t interested in GAINING any karma – only losing it. So she slapped in the vial (completing the “Project Impurity” quest), told Sarah to go into the purifier (giving her the code this time), watched her die, sat through the awkward ending slides that were mostly silent because the game doesn’t know how to handle a neutral character (there are only “good” and “bad” endings – that being said, she did get called an asshole coward for sending in Sarah, and a bastard for poisoning the water supply and condemning everyone in the Capital Wasteland to death), and then woke up two weeks later back in the Citadel because apparently even if you don’t go in and get heavily irradiated you still end up in a coma somehow. And also Elder Lyons wasn’t angry with her because he was sure Sarah volunteered herself to keep Wanda from harm. Uh, yeah, you believe that, Lyons. . .
And that ended the episode and put us into Broken Steel! Next week, we see the changes to the Wasteland made in the wake of our betrayal, and what happens when you make the BOS “aqua pura” not so pura. . .spoiler alert, apparently Wanda MAY get kicked in the ass by consequences. XD At least the situation won’t be as dire as the ending slides made it out to be, with everyone already dead. . .we hope. . .
Workout: Back on the bike today, and back to the James Turner High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic with “I Dropped out of High School! High School Years (Part 39)!” Here’s what happened to the core four Bigwallets in this episode –
A) Addison, as you might expect from the title, dropped out of high school – in fact, they did it while AT school, by telling the principal they wanted to quit while playing chess with her. XD They then spent the rest of their final day at school using the treadmill as James wanted to encourage them to actually run places, and then the rest of the episode practicing their guitar and starting to learn to cook in preparation for their future career as a restaurateur!
B) Breanne is still in school, however, and making good strides on being the most popular girl in school – she so impressed one of the students in the school, Pamela, when she first spoke to her that she instantly wanted to both be best friends (Breanne said “okay!”) and go to prom with her as buddies (Breanne said “uh, that’s a little much, and I already have a guy in mind. . .”). She’s also making good strides on becoming the ultimate fashionista, using the family thrift store to design new Trendi looks and getting into photography by taking loads of selfies to show off said looks. XD (Considering I know in future episodes that she actually moves to San Myshuno to start her own photo studio, though, it’s cool to see where the idea to do that might have started!)
C) Reginald earned enough money from his book sales and his job to purchase the Bigwallet Emporium/Nightclub/Museum for Addison to turn into a restaurant later – it took almost all of the family cash, though, and those book royalties are starting to fall off. . .fortunately, he’s still earning raises all the time, so I think they’ll be all right. XD He also had his mother Column over to show her his cool magical attic room (James wanted them to do potions together, but no go) and have a friendly duel out in the back yard – and he bested her, proving himself more powerful than the actual Realm of Magic Bigwallet. XD I’d like to think Column is very proud of him for that.
D) And Kevin – well, Kevin’s still Kevining, working out whenever James isn’t paying attention to him and knitting things whenever he is. XD He’s only got to complete four more Legendary knitted items to finally complete his aspiration, but James is having some real trouble getting him in the right mood to knit good stuff. . .
So yeah, everybody’s keeping busy and doing their thing! :) We’ll see how things go for the family next time I drop into this LP!
And yeah, I really need to go to bed as I am up far later than I should be. Damn Mondays. . .night all!
