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Very Vampire Saturday
Nov. 23rd, 2019 11:26 pmMostly because one of the items on yesterday's to-do list -- catching up with the Atop the Fourth Wall episodes I've missed -- got knocked off for two reasons, one bad, one good:
Bad: After finishing cleaning my room and having a late lunch, I went to get on my computer and watch some videos around 3:20 -- only to have the entire damn thing freeze up on me. Ended up having to restart, which took a few minutes, and then I was tooling around on tumblr blogs to chill out, which meant I didn't really get properly started on anything online until around 4:00. *sigh* I get the nasty feeling that next year is going to have to be the year of a new computer. Please, Lenny, just hold on until I can finish my Bloodlines Alice timeline LP!
Good: I already had one Outstar video on V:tM that I planned to watch before the two episodes -- but then that video mentioned something Paradox had uploaded from their semi-recent PDXCon, AND the recommended in the sidebar showed that Outstar had ALSO recently posted Rik Schaffer's (the composer behind Bloodlines soundtrack) responses to our questions! So yeah, I had to watch both of THOSE on Vampire Saturday. :p
So yeah, the day pretty much ended up dedicated to my love of vampires and Bloodlines in particular. In order:
-->Played some Bloodlines myself -- finished off VV's quests (and got a nice payout of $400 for it), then went over to the Asp Hole and did Ash's "escape from the hunters" quest. Sewer battles were -- harder than anticipated. *grumbles* I mean, I know I'm not the BEST at combat, but I swear, the controls in this game are REALLY sluggish to respond sometimes -- especially when it comes to feeding in combat. I fail so many freaking attempts! And it's so hard to keep track of your health and the position of multiple enemies. . .and I swear Mass Hallucination barely makes a difference. I'm better off hitting individual problem enemies with Vision of Death (which is what I ended up doing). Thinking about it, though, I also forgot to put on my heavier armor, so. . .have to remember that for fighting the monsters in King's Way and in the sewers! But Ash and I got through in the end, and I got $500 from him for saving him. So that was nice. :P
After that, I went over and took care of the Tommy Flayton quest -- I went ahead and had him hallucinate he was eating maggots to complete the quest (took three attempts talking to him to get the option, but DAMN he has some funny dialogue, so I'm fine with that XD). I don't know if it'll go down that way in Alice's actual story, but if it does, my justification is that Alice wanted Tommy to go so over the top with his review that he'll destroy his reputation instead of the restaurant's (as she's reluctant to ACTUALLY harm the restaurant because, well, Victoria works there). We'll see how it pans out! At least game-Alice will get the XP. . . And then I hit Isaac's and completed the business with the tape, so next play session is heading up to King's Way! Not sure if I'm going to split the night before she leaves or after. . .probably before, because she's going to need an entire night to get through the house AND sewer hell. Ugh, writing a fanfic with realistic day-night cycles and the like is the worst. . .
-->Watched the PDXCon video -- a few highlights from the various talks they gave regarding the game, including their struggle to make combat that isn't hard to pick up, but does take some effort to master (so it's a challenge, but not pull-your-hair-out frustrating), crafting dialogue and NPC moods (and getting introduced to a new Kindred NPC, Chip, who was Embraced during the Grunge days), and questions Brian has been asked by his co-writer Kate that were presented without much comment (beyond vampires not wearing socks is a Masquerade violation XD)
-->That last list of questions is what inspired the Outstar video I had queued up, where she went through the list and answered the questions to the best of her ability, noting where things that changed between versions (for example, V20 vampires have all bodily fluids replaced with blood; in V5, that's no longer a hard and fast rule). All sorts of fun stuff, from "can vampires get pregnant" (only if they're a VERY high-generation Thin-Blood whose body still functions that way), to "can vampires ghoul a dog" (yup, you can make animal ghouls! They function much like human ones), to "what is a frito pie" (okay, not vampire related, but still a question Kate asked -- Outstar, who is Polish I believe, Googled it and was fairly disgusted with what she found XD). Good times -- and informative too!
-->Also informative -- the Rik Schaffer interview, with a backing soundtrack of his newly remastered Bloodlines soundtrack! :D Yeah, I've already asked for that for Christmas. . . He talked a lot about his process, and how the first soundtrack was inspired by a rough time in his life, and how he drew upon the experience of his parents dying to fuel the soundtrack for the second game (aww). Apparently his favorite track is mine too -- the Hollywood theme! Though he's also fond of Chinatown as he wrote that when he'd moved in with his girlfriend (now wife), so that one at least makes him think of his life finally starting to turn around back then. :) And he answered my question, which was how he went about doing the theme for Bloodlines 2 -- he was aiming for a grander, more "cinematic" version of the original theme, and a couple of happy accidents with his guitar (like holding one certain note, and forgetting to turn off his repeater at the end) really shaped the new one. :D And apparently he's got a third version on his Spotify page? I'll have to go searching that out. . .
So yeah, that was all fun. :) Really, the only non-vampire things I've done today are:
-->Clean my room (and even then, I was wearing my "Fang-tastic" shirt for most of that, sooo)
-->Posting another Scenes from Secundus -- Worth Sticking Around, about Victor feeling a bit overwhelmed by Secundus in his early days, but finding the friends he's made in the city to be more than worth sticking around for. :) Planning on switching to Christmas-themed stories next week -- hey, December starts next Sunday, so I feel justified!
-->And do the RP thing, with some comments in the inbox and some threads and asks on tumblr. And even one of those was set in the Londerland Bloodlines verse. XD Vampires vampires vampires today!
Tomorrow, of course, I plan to be Sims Sims Sims -- I have a couple of videos to watch, plus my own game to play. Thinking I'll pick up Discover University tomorrow! Dunno who of the Newcrestians I'll dump in college (if anybody yet), but it'll be nice to have. Especially since I keep planning out that other save file that kind of revolves around it. . . Also want to get to Linkara tomorrow! But since I won't have to clean my room, that should be easier. So long as my computer doesn't freeze again, of course.
Anyway -- gotta get my VictorLuvsAlice queue sorted (and that DOES seem to be working again -- as I have stated, I will take the posts posting a little off their prescribed times over everything posting at once), then get back to the RP thing. Expecting some replies to stuff very soon. . . Night all!
Bad: After finishing cleaning my room and having a late lunch, I went to get on my computer and watch some videos around 3:20 -- only to have the entire damn thing freeze up on me. Ended up having to restart, which took a few minutes, and then I was tooling around on tumblr blogs to chill out, which meant I didn't really get properly started on anything online until around 4:00. *sigh* I get the nasty feeling that next year is going to have to be the year of a new computer. Please, Lenny, just hold on until I can finish my Bloodlines Alice timeline LP!
Good: I already had one Outstar video on V:tM that I planned to watch before the two episodes -- but then that video mentioned something Paradox had uploaded from their semi-recent PDXCon, AND the recommended in the sidebar showed that Outstar had ALSO recently posted Rik Schaffer's (the composer behind Bloodlines soundtrack) responses to our questions! So yeah, I had to watch both of THOSE on Vampire Saturday. :p
So yeah, the day pretty much ended up dedicated to my love of vampires and Bloodlines in particular. In order:
-->Played some Bloodlines myself -- finished off VV's quests (and got a nice payout of $400 for it), then went over to the Asp Hole and did Ash's "escape from the hunters" quest. Sewer battles were -- harder than anticipated. *grumbles* I mean, I know I'm not the BEST at combat, but I swear, the controls in this game are REALLY sluggish to respond sometimes -- especially when it comes to feeding in combat. I fail so many freaking attempts! And it's so hard to keep track of your health and the position of multiple enemies. . .and I swear Mass Hallucination barely makes a difference. I'm better off hitting individual problem enemies with Vision of Death (which is what I ended up doing). Thinking about it, though, I also forgot to put on my heavier armor, so. . .have to remember that for fighting the monsters in King's Way and in the sewers! But Ash and I got through in the end, and I got $500 from him for saving him. So that was nice. :P
After that, I went over and took care of the Tommy Flayton quest -- I went ahead and had him hallucinate he was eating maggots to complete the quest (took three attempts talking to him to get the option, but DAMN he has some funny dialogue, so I'm fine with that XD). I don't know if it'll go down that way in Alice's actual story, but if it does, my justification is that Alice wanted Tommy to go so over the top with his review that he'll destroy his reputation instead of the restaurant's (as she's reluctant to ACTUALLY harm the restaurant because, well, Victoria works there). We'll see how it pans out! At least game-Alice will get the XP. . . And then I hit Isaac's and completed the business with the tape, so next play session is heading up to King's Way! Not sure if I'm going to split the night before she leaves or after. . .probably before, because she's going to need an entire night to get through the house AND sewer hell. Ugh, writing a fanfic with realistic day-night cycles and the like is the worst. . .
-->Watched the PDXCon video -- a few highlights from the various talks they gave regarding the game, including their struggle to make combat that isn't hard to pick up, but does take some effort to master (so it's a challenge, but not pull-your-hair-out frustrating), crafting dialogue and NPC moods (and getting introduced to a new Kindred NPC, Chip, who was Embraced during the Grunge days), and questions Brian has been asked by his co-writer Kate that were presented without much comment (beyond vampires not wearing socks is a Masquerade violation XD)
-->That last list of questions is what inspired the Outstar video I had queued up, where she went through the list and answered the questions to the best of her ability, noting where things that changed between versions (for example, V20 vampires have all bodily fluids replaced with blood; in V5, that's no longer a hard and fast rule). All sorts of fun stuff, from "can vampires get pregnant" (only if they're a VERY high-generation Thin-Blood whose body still functions that way), to "can vampires ghoul a dog" (yup, you can make animal ghouls! They function much like human ones), to "what is a frito pie" (okay, not vampire related, but still a question Kate asked -- Outstar, who is Polish I believe, Googled it and was fairly disgusted with what she found XD). Good times -- and informative too!
-->Also informative -- the Rik Schaffer interview, with a backing soundtrack of his newly remastered Bloodlines soundtrack! :D Yeah, I've already asked for that for Christmas. . . He talked a lot about his process, and how the first soundtrack was inspired by a rough time in his life, and how he drew upon the experience of his parents dying to fuel the soundtrack for the second game (aww). Apparently his favorite track is mine too -- the Hollywood theme! Though he's also fond of Chinatown as he wrote that when he'd moved in with his girlfriend (now wife), so that one at least makes him think of his life finally starting to turn around back then. :) And he answered my question, which was how he went about doing the theme for Bloodlines 2 -- he was aiming for a grander, more "cinematic" version of the original theme, and a couple of happy accidents with his guitar (like holding one certain note, and forgetting to turn off his repeater at the end) really shaped the new one. :D And apparently he's got a third version on his Spotify page? I'll have to go searching that out. . .
So yeah, that was all fun. :) Really, the only non-vampire things I've done today are:
-->Clean my room (and even then, I was wearing my "Fang-tastic" shirt for most of that, sooo)
-->Posting another Scenes from Secundus -- Worth Sticking Around, about Victor feeling a bit overwhelmed by Secundus in his early days, but finding the friends he's made in the city to be more than worth sticking around for. :) Planning on switching to Christmas-themed stories next week -- hey, December starts next Sunday, so I feel justified!
-->And do the RP thing, with some comments in the inbox and some threads and asks on tumblr. And even one of those was set in the Londerland Bloodlines verse. XD Vampires vampires vampires today!
Tomorrow, of course, I plan to be Sims Sims Sims -- I have a couple of videos to watch, plus my own game to play. Thinking I'll pick up Discover University tomorrow! Dunno who of the Newcrestians I'll dump in college (if anybody yet), but it'll be nice to have. Especially since I keep planning out that other save file that kind of revolves around it. . . Also want to get to Linkara tomorrow! But since I won't have to clean my room, that should be easier. So long as my computer doesn't freeze again, of course.
Anyway -- gotta get my VictorLuvsAlice queue sorted (and that DOES seem to be working again -- as I have stated, I will take the posts posting a little off their prescribed times over everything posting at once), then get back to the RP thing. Expecting some replies to stuff very soon. . . Night all!
