OxBoxy Day

Turned out to be a hot one, so I stayed inside and marathoned a bunch of the OXBox/OXtra videos I had saved up in my Watch Later queue, plus one Call Me Kevin video and one Kubz Scouts video. The following topics were touched upon:

-->Call Me Kevin: DNA testing and what it reveals about you! In Kevin's case, it reveals that he is pretty much 100% Irish (surprise!), and has a slightly increased risk of late-onset Alzheimer's (only who knows if that's real because the website itself tells you that no physician has recommended you look at these reports)

-->Kubz Scouts: Can you give the delinquent who asks for a knife the ritual knife from the Occult Club? Yes! Can you give the same delinquent a knife you used to end a life while wearing gloves and get them framed for murder? Also yes! Is there now a new joke mode that lets you freeze time and then pelt people with knives set up during frozen time? Yup! Does it look cool as shit? Hell yeah.

-->OXBox & OXtra: Andy was left alone in the studio, so it's time for more humiliating fighting game moves to lose to, such as being spun to death! Here's a list of stuff you will only properly get if you were old enough to game in the 90s! (Featuring Blockbuster -- remember when THAT was a thing?) Here's a list of Easter Eggs that only pop up one day out of the year, as suggested by our commenters! Here's a list of brutal bonus levels in video games that for some reason includes the evil levels people make in Super Mario Maker 2 despite those not being "bonus levels." Here's a list of Standard Dungeon features, from easy-to-solve puzzles to eternally-lit torches thanks to diligent zombies (this is apparently literally a thing in Skyrim). And here is the Oxventurers' beloved DM Johnny telling of all the times they have thrown his campaigns off the rails, much to everyone's amusement. Go check out his new channel! XD

So that was all very fun. :) A little less fun and a little more frustrating was playing Fallout 4 today -- more firefights against enemies I'm probably (actually, definitely -- I've discovered recently that if an enemy has a skull icon next to their name, it means they're probably too tough for you) rather underleveled to take on. Not that this STOPPED me from killing them, it just meant that I had to take it slow and reload a lot. Today's massacre was at the Easy City Downs race track, where a bunch of raiders (and what looked like mobsters) led by a guy named Eddie were having robot races. Taking out the human enemies was hard enough -- but then good old Strong, who hasn't exactly been earning his keep lately, managed to anger one of the bots on the course. A full-on war mech type with a DEADLY LASER. I died to that thing so many times before I finally managed to book it. *sigh* Have I mentioned I don't particularly care for Strong as a companion? Particularly with how aggressive he is and how repetitive his "human weak, Super Mutant better" quotes are? The only reason I'm holding onto him at this point is because I think he'll be helpful in the fight against the monster in the Minutemen's "Castle." I fully intend to dump him after that point.

Anyway, FINALLY made it down to Nordhagen Beach (after getting a bit turned around on the way), and fortunately, all these massacres mean that I'd already taken care of their raider problem and could immediately get them associated with the Minutemen. And dump my junk at their workbench. And get Strong's admiration, not that I particularly CARE if he admires me. He just likes that our travels together have been pretty much all killing all the time. *sigh* And then I ended up going back and killing that damn bot he aggroed just because I needed circuitry to build the settlement a turret so they'd have defense and be happy. (This is AFTER I got kicked back to before I spoke to them because I got killed by a random monster scouring the beach for stuff to scavenge.) I've currently ported Victor and Strong back to the Red Rocket base to upgrade weapons and armor, drop off all the stuff they don't really need, and get prepped for the "Taking Independence" quest. Come hell or high water, that is NEXT on the list! And then I'm headed over to Diamond City and nothing can stop me! Everything else can WAIT five minutes. At the rate I'm going, I'm going to do EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE GAME before I actually get to the main plot.

Only other thing of note today was that writing mostly consisted of setting up some ideas for my "now necessary because I threw some of Victor's Otherland characters into the end of 'A Wedding A Wedding' and they need to be Properly Introduced in the timeline" Victor Otherland fic. I have a few ideas -- mainly Alice encountering Mr. Explorer, Victor's inner child, for the first time and going "squee, he's so cute," and Alice and Victor giving The Conductor, his love of music, a fright when they first encounter him (since he's very much NOT used to having an audience). But as I'd like to do something for each of Victor's domains -- yeah, a little pre-writing fleshing out of my notes is necessary. (Especially since I have to come up with a "main resident" for the Sketchbook World area! He's got to represent Victor's artistic leanings, but should he be a drawing version of Victor? A painted one? Hmmm. . .)

So yeah, that was my Friday in a nutshell. Now to see what else I can manage to do tonight before I have to get to bed -- I stayed up a bit too late last night because I got swept up in a neat tumblr blog, and I don't want to do the same tonight. Especially since tomorrow's a cleaning Saturday, and the last thing I need is sleepiness leading me to clonk myself in the head with my own fan again. Also I'd like to try and get it done before lunch, so. . . Other things to do tomorrow: Catch up on the Talks Machina for "Thursday By Night" and the two OXBox Hitman 2 videos I didn't get to today, and play some Bloodlines -- I got plaguebearers to be killing! For now, though, comments. Night all!