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Nice Productive Sunday
Sep. 19th, 2021 11:20 pmThis time without any home projects throwing off everyone's rhythm for the day. Behold my progress --
1. Write some more on "Learn To Love Again": Check! Got another page done before lunch (almost exactly a page, in fact), wrapping up the brief conversation with Victoria (with Victor reminding her when she expressed surprise over Alice and him being so close after a week that he was ready to marry her after three hours XD – thanks for justifying the speed run, Victor!). Alice has admitted that she and Victor have to leave soon if she’s to make it to Houndsditch on time. . .but there’s a bit of information about birthdays that needs to come out first. . .
2. Watch the list videos in the Watch Later, YouTube Subs, and Jon's FO4 YOLO episode: Check! :D Helped a bit by the fact that James Turner did not update today, and we didn’t end up playing any beanbags because my Dad spent the afternoon watching football, as he does during this time of year.
A) Started with all the OXBox/OXtra lists I had saved up –
I. “7 Extreme Difficulty Modes People Invented for Themselves” – Andy presents the self-imposed challenges people make for themselves in vidya games! In addition to the reasonably well-known “Nuzlocke” Pokemon series and “Knife Only” Resident Evil series challenges, we also had stuff like playing as a vegan in Skyrim (nothing at ALL with animal products, which is hard when one of the main foodstuffs in the game is cheese), and doing “Onebros” in Dark Souls (playing as a Level 1 Pyromancer AND NEVER LEVELING UP – the horror). I mean, I understand the allure of challenges in video games – look at me making up VTMB and FO4-themed ones for my Sims 4 game – but damn. Some of these seem like just pure torture. Whatever floats your boat, I guess!
II. “7 Evil Achievements for Heartless Bastards: Back for More Evil” – Mike and Andy present a variety of super-evil achievements for games that might not necessarily be super-evil themselves! From punching a horse in the face to kill it in time-travel game Darkest of Days, to betraying your friends planning a robbery (and one who wasn’t trying to rob anyone) in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, to ruining a wedding by sniping bouquets, cakes, and the father of the bride (who, admittedly, IS one of your targets) as Agent 47 in one of the Hitman games, these achievements appeal to our most evil instincts. Though perhaps none as much as the one you get in The Outer Worlds for shooting thirty people in the groin in their version of bullet time. Ouch.
III. “7 Hitman Disguises That Agent 47 Was Worryingly Way Too Into” – Andy presents seven disguises that 47 got a little too much into character for! From the famous drummer Abe that proved that 47 is actually an amazing drummer in his own right (I remember Andy playing this particular mission story and being stunned that 47 could riff out those sick beats), to famous model Helmut that shows 47 knows how to strut his stuff on the catwalk (if you don’t make him punch out the other models), to famous tattoo artist P-Power who actually seems to know a thing or two about tattooing (well, right before he murders the guy with the gun, anyway). I think my favorites are when his inability to act like a truly normal human runs up against the disguise, though – notably his attempt to be a real estate agent selling a house to a target, and going on about how the living room has two easy-to-get-to exits and a dark floor that hides stains. XD Fantastic.
IV. “7 Great Games That Were Nearly Extremely Boring” – Andy and Luke present seven games that changed drastically from a potentially much-more-boring concept to their current awesome selves. Well, mostly – Halo turning from a turn-based strategy game to a first-person shooter, largely because the developers wanted to drive the cool jeeps around the cool world they were building? Good call! Conker’s Bad Fur Day changing from your average cutesy 3D platformer to a gross parody of itself? Didn’t make the game a lot of money, but certainly helped it stand out from the crowd. InFamous going from an Animal Crossing-inspired game where you spent part of your time as a property developer building up a town to pure electric superhero antics? . . .a) yes, really, the developers confirmed it and b) probably the right call but I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’d actually play the “superhero is also a town builder” game. You could design the buildings to either best benefit the citizenry or your own crime-fighting style! I’d be fun! :D
V. “7 Huge Videogame Phenomena No One Saw Coming” – Jane, Andy, and Mike present seven games that achieved sudden and almost frightening popularity in a short span of time. For at least three of those games, that span of time was summer 2020, and suddenly the fact that multiplayer games like Fall Guys and Among Us and the game-creator Roblox – allowing you to play with other humans without getting within breathing distance – isn’t surprising at all. I also learned that the two premiere names of “battle royale” – Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite – both released in 2017, and that Fortnite (which was originally a zombie survival game) cheerfully admitted to ripping off the concept once they saw it was becoming popular. And of course Pokemon Go made the list, and damn do I want to go back to the simpler times of overenthusiastic Pokemon Trainers causing relatively small amounts of chaos looking for augmented reality creatures in the real world. *sigh* Happy days. . .
B) Then, after supper, it was over to Call Me Kevin and an unplanned look at GTA IV! Kevin was just taken to play it the other day, and discovered that – well, the AI hasn’t held up as well as you might have thought thirteen years later. And neither have the facial animations – you should have seen the demon woman his main character, L.C., seduced in the club. XD But yeah, it was chaos without the chaos mod – a garbage truck driving into a wall for no reason, allowing Kevin to steal it; a swingset that can launch you and your character for MILES with the power of janky physics (Kevin eventually got his garbage truck stuck in a tree because of it); really poorly done golf minigames (or maybe Kevin was just really bad at hitting a golf ball at some guy tied to a golf cart); taking a taxi driven by the world’s angriest cabdriver, who was not afraid to muscle ALL traffic out of the way – before getting stuck at a toll booth because he’d knocked the car in front of him out of position (and all attempts to get him to turn or otherwise move were fruitless); and L.C. and his friends going out drinking and then attempting MORE driving, which Kevin found difficult enough when they were all SOBER. XD Video ended with him getting tired of an NPC he was escorting and flinging him into the bay before rolling into the water himself. XD I know pretty much nothing about this entry of GTA, but I’m happy to watch more if he’s in the mood to record it!
C) After that, it was over to GrayStillPlays – and look at that, he also was doing GTA stuff! Specifically, he had another GTA V challenge board, where a bunch of Angry Birds (tm) forced him to do challenges such as get yeeted by a wind turbine into two hovering rows of super heroes (and paint their blood on the concrete below), use the machine guns on a plaid tank to shoot down various shapes of people, use a gun to launch cars at a bunch of people spelling “help us” in the sky, and finally play Flappy Bird with a monster truck, dodging assholes in monkey costumes, before diving through the Flappy Bird’s mouth hole. And his reward? A grenade with an Angry Bird (tm) skin on it, which he promptly used to murder his tormentors before jumping to his death. XD Felt a bit like going back to the old days where he used to set up courses like this for his own amusement, honestly. Nostalgic!
D) And finally, we had our usual Sunday Fallout 4 You Only Live Once Episode, courtesy of Jon! And this one was nice, because Finalley finally got her jetpack! It took a little fiddling – and the emergency acquisition of tatos and mutfruit to make some extra adhesive – but she whacked together the X01 torso on the base of Paladin Danse’s old power armor, made a few improvements (like overdrive servos on the legs for sprinting), painted it all with Hot Rod Flame paint (because it gives you extra agility for some reason), and added her jetpack. :D And then she decided to take the new lovely jetpack out for a test run! Because there was something she needed to do that now was going to be a lot easier with a jetpack –
Visit Hallucingen, Inc. to pick up the Vault 88 chemical research! Now, normally you’d either have to fight your way through the building and all the Gunners affected by the gas and killing each other, or have enough Lockpicking to open the Master-locked door at the back to skip the dungeon. But, with a jetpack on her power armor, and Jon’s knowledge of how FO4 dungeons work (namely, that the place he would have ended up following the regular path was more or less directly above him), Finalley was able to go into the front room, wait out the fight triggered by her entrance (with the help of a stealth boy), pick off the survivors, then jetpack to the floor she needed, drop down a hole to the basement, critical the one remaining enemy in the last room, then pick up the research from the trunk at the end. Also the gas canisters for Fred Allen over at the Hotel Rexford, which netted her some bottlecaps and XP, the former of which she ended up spending on ammo and purified water when she took the Institute teleport back home. With that all sorted, she put the power armor in a safe place and went down to Vault 88 to finish off her building and get that DLC done and out of the way!
And then she discovered she needed a lot more nuclear material for the optometrist chair and had to go BACK to the Institute to loot all their radioactive stuff. Whoops. (And, even worse, the comments have pointed out there’s an old broken reactor she could have scrapped nearby rather than risking going into the uranium-rich tunnels with the monsters.) Ah well – she made the return trip back, put together the remaining experiments, did the nice one for each because there’s no differing perks depending on how you do it and she doesn’t care about getting Barstow to stay, and completed the DLC with all the experiments shoved in a corner attached to a mysterious windmill and a few guard posts for the nine people living there. XD Hey, a completion is a completion!
And that was that – Finalley returned home, a proud level 60, and took the final rank of Demo Expert to celebrate. Next time, she should FINALLY be returning to Nuka-World to complete THAT DLC! If, you know, she doesn’t get exploded by vertibird first – there were no less than THREE that showed up frighteningly close to her at different points in the episode, circling around and trying to fight something – two blew up, and one – well, we don’t know it’s fate because it was at the very end of the episode. I kind of half-expected a horrible last-minute death, honestly. XD But no, so far so good – we’ll see how Nuka-World goes next Sunday, yay!
3. Play Bloodlines and do some more Hollywood stuff: Check – after swinging by Mercurio’s and picking up the SPAS-16 (not that Crystal uses guns much, but it’s nice to have as a backup), Crystal headed back to Hollywood and finished off finding the tape at Ginger Swan’s tomb in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery mausoleum, delivering it to Isaac and getting a look at its gruesome contents. Isaac charged her with finding a more complete copy so they could get a better idea where this horror show (which seems to be linked to the disappearance of the Nosferatu) is kept – though, naturally, I decided Crystal needed to do a bit more side-questing first. XD Stop #1 was the Cavoletti Cafe and talking to Tommy Flayton – after seducing him didn’t work, Crystal instead defaulted to pretending the chefs didn’t wash their hands and got him to leave a bad review. Stop #2 was Vesuvius, where Crystal flirted her head off with VV (she got to call her Velvet pretty much immediately) and picked up the hunter quest, since that would take her to the Sin Bin anyway. She then headed over there to seduce Flynn into giving up how one gets copies of the DMP tape, then went down to the peepshow, stole all the money out of the change machine, locked down the windows, and sent the other girl over to the “Pleasure Palace” to get her out of the way. Crystal then ATTEMPTED to murder Chastity via good old Blood Theft, but apparently hunters are made of sterner stuff, so after a brief scrap with the fire ax, Crystal drank her dry instead. She grabbed her katana, stopped at the Pleasure Palace for a drink from the other girl, and went to report her success to VV –
Who accused her of being loud and making a scene. O.o I was – completely baffled by this and reloaded a slightly earlier save to see if just sucking Chastity dry before she could do anything would work better (Crystal needed the blood anyway). Also left the other girl alone, and that worked out. So I guess you’ve really gotta be careful about what Disciplines you use to try and kill Chastity early. . .aka, Dementation beats Thaumaturgy there. *shrug* Anyway, picked up the David Hatter quest, got the creepy phone call from the DMP folks, seduced Hatter into handing over his script and Julius’s name, visited Room 2 at the motel to find all the blood and the Ground Zero key, and then headed back to Santa Monica –
Where I was IMMEDIATELY in combat with a bunch of police officers! O.O The hell? All I can think of is, my mouse is having an issue where sometimes it’ll double-click when I mean it to single-click, and maybe I punched the guy while the area was loading. Crystal fled and hid down an alleyway until they gave up, then went and confronted Julius, before being moved to pity by his desperation and letting him flee the city. Ended by heading back to her haven to get LaCroix’s email about Tommy, pick up the $100 reward, and max out Thaumaturgy with her experience. :D I really, REALLY hope I can explode those damn monsters in the snuff studio – would make life a LOT easier!
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and back with Jon’s Original FO4 Playthrough! Started Episode 30 today – Past!Jon was a little surprised, but not that much, to see his contact on the inside for the Railroad was Liam Binet, aka “guy in closet I previously found looting the place.” He’s a fan of Alan and Liam’s beliefs that synths are human, and thinks that if they could be put in charge, then the Institute wouldn’t be a bad faction to side with (as he’s openly uncomfortable with the fact the majority of the Institute refers to them as things) – I’m sad to say, Past!Jon, that isn’t really an option. At any rate, Miss Jon followed Liam to meet his co-conspirator, Z1-47, and discuss the details of a jailbreak of 13 synths that involves searching for a username and password up-top in the Commonwealth for Liam to use to crack an old terminal that he can then use to bypass some of SRB’s security on the teleporter room. She’s in favor, though she’s not sure yet where to look – Liam ruled out the CIT ruins, but he did say some of the staff lived off-campus. . .
Anyway, with espionage completed, Miss Jon went to see Father, who sent her back up top to meet with a courser – X6-88 – and retrieve a rogue synth who’d become a raider gang leader (couching it as “oh, look, the Railroad wiped his memories and he chose violence,” with Past!Jon responding “yeah, but all of the very human raiders I’ve killed in the past have chosen violence too”). After a quick trip to Virgil’s cave to give him his serum, Miss Jon then headed toward the Libertalia from Finch Farm –
And discovered there was a bit of a problem, as some Brotherhood Knights were also in the area, and naturally took offense to the existence of both the raiders and X6-88. Miss Jon was happy to have back up on the raiders, of course (well, sort of, they were VERY low level for the most part), but ended up having to leave X6 behind because he kept getting downed by the BOS Knights, then getting back up and aggroing them again. And then he teleported to her in his downed state to tell her Gabriel’s recall code, which – I guess this is really just average Bethesda chaos, isn’t it? :p At any rate, Miss Jon used the recall code, took out the other raiders, then teleported back to Father, who thanked her for her help and sent her to check out her quarters. (Past!Jon was not impressed by the lack of a balcony, like most of the other rooms have.) Then X6 told her that Father wanted to speak to her AGAIN, which started “The Battle of Bunker Hill” and the quest where Father asks his parent to “retrieve” some synths that the Railroad has been sitting on, trying to relocate, in Bunker Hill – oh, and teach those idealistic idiots a lesson, will you? Miss Jon was not on board and, once agreeing to help, promptly headed back to the Railroad and told Desdemona what was up (after receiving her hero’s welcome for coming back in one piece, that is). Desdemona was all for turning it into a trap for the Institute, while Past!Jon mused about if he could turn it into a three-way brawl with the Brotherhood providing a kind of cover for the Railroad. . .but ultimately decided against it as the BOS would kill the synths too. Methinks Past!Jon is in for a shock when he actually gets to Bunker Hill. . .
5. Get more done with tumblr queues: Check! Valice Multiverse queue for tomorrow is done – one thread reply, three ask replies. And I got the pictures and starter/placeholder text drafted for my next Newcrest Adventures update on Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice, which is good.
Additionally:
-->Mom and I rinsed off my car (COVERED in paver dust) and attached my new license plate frame to the back – Dad’s suggested next weekend we take a moment to get it waxed up too for the coming winter. We’ll see how that pans out!
So yeah -- can't complain about how this Sunday turned out! Weather was beautiful too -- hopefully it stays just like this for a while. That'd be the ideal. As it stands, though, I do have to head out because, well, another full work week looms. *sigh* We'll see how it goes. Night all!
1. Write some more on "Learn To Love Again": Check! Got another page done before lunch (almost exactly a page, in fact), wrapping up the brief conversation with Victoria (with Victor reminding her when she expressed surprise over Alice and him being so close after a week that he was ready to marry her after three hours XD – thanks for justifying the speed run, Victor!). Alice has admitted that she and Victor have to leave soon if she’s to make it to Houndsditch on time. . .but there’s a bit of information about birthdays that needs to come out first. . .
2. Watch the list videos in the Watch Later, YouTube Subs, and Jon's FO4 YOLO episode: Check! :D Helped a bit by the fact that James Turner did not update today, and we didn’t end up playing any beanbags because my Dad spent the afternoon watching football, as he does during this time of year.
A) Started with all the OXBox/OXtra lists I had saved up –
I. “7 Extreme Difficulty Modes People Invented for Themselves” – Andy presents the self-imposed challenges people make for themselves in vidya games! In addition to the reasonably well-known “Nuzlocke” Pokemon series and “Knife Only” Resident Evil series challenges, we also had stuff like playing as a vegan in Skyrim (nothing at ALL with animal products, which is hard when one of the main foodstuffs in the game is cheese), and doing “Onebros” in Dark Souls (playing as a Level 1 Pyromancer AND NEVER LEVELING UP – the horror). I mean, I understand the allure of challenges in video games – look at me making up VTMB and FO4-themed ones for my Sims 4 game – but damn. Some of these seem like just pure torture. Whatever floats your boat, I guess!
II. “7 Evil Achievements for Heartless Bastards: Back for More Evil” – Mike and Andy present a variety of super-evil achievements for games that might not necessarily be super-evil themselves! From punching a horse in the face to kill it in time-travel game Darkest of Days, to betraying your friends planning a robbery (and one who wasn’t trying to rob anyone) in Kingdom Come: Deliverance, to ruining a wedding by sniping bouquets, cakes, and the father of the bride (who, admittedly, IS one of your targets) as Agent 47 in one of the Hitman games, these achievements appeal to our most evil instincts. Though perhaps none as much as the one you get in The Outer Worlds for shooting thirty people in the groin in their version of bullet time. Ouch.
III. “7 Hitman Disguises That Agent 47 Was Worryingly Way Too Into” – Andy presents seven disguises that 47 got a little too much into character for! From the famous drummer Abe that proved that 47 is actually an amazing drummer in his own right (I remember Andy playing this particular mission story and being stunned that 47 could riff out those sick beats), to famous model Helmut that shows 47 knows how to strut his stuff on the catwalk (if you don’t make him punch out the other models), to famous tattoo artist P-Power who actually seems to know a thing or two about tattooing (well, right before he murders the guy with the gun, anyway). I think my favorites are when his inability to act like a truly normal human runs up against the disguise, though – notably his attempt to be a real estate agent selling a house to a target, and going on about how the living room has two easy-to-get-to exits and a dark floor that hides stains. XD Fantastic.
IV. “7 Great Games That Were Nearly Extremely Boring” – Andy and Luke present seven games that changed drastically from a potentially much-more-boring concept to their current awesome selves. Well, mostly – Halo turning from a turn-based strategy game to a first-person shooter, largely because the developers wanted to drive the cool jeeps around the cool world they were building? Good call! Conker’s Bad Fur Day changing from your average cutesy 3D platformer to a gross parody of itself? Didn’t make the game a lot of money, but certainly helped it stand out from the crowd. InFamous going from an Animal Crossing-inspired game where you spent part of your time as a property developer building up a town to pure electric superhero antics? . . .a) yes, really, the developers confirmed it and b) probably the right call but I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’d actually play the “superhero is also a town builder” game. You could design the buildings to either best benefit the citizenry or your own crime-fighting style! I’d be fun! :D
V. “7 Huge Videogame Phenomena No One Saw Coming” – Jane, Andy, and Mike present seven games that achieved sudden and almost frightening popularity in a short span of time. For at least three of those games, that span of time was summer 2020, and suddenly the fact that multiplayer games like Fall Guys and Among Us and the game-creator Roblox – allowing you to play with other humans without getting within breathing distance – isn’t surprising at all. I also learned that the two premiere names of “battle royale” – Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds and Fortnite – both released in 2017, and that Fortnite (which was originally a zombie survival game) cheerfully admitted to ripping off the concept once they saw it was becoming popular. And of course Pokemon Go made the list, and damn do I want to go back to the simpler times of overenthusiastic Pokemon Trainers causing relatively small amounts of chaos looking for augmented reality creatures in the real world. *sigh* Happy days. . .
B) Then, after supper, it was over to Call Me Kevin and an unplanned look at GTA IV! Kevin was just taken to play it the other day, and discovered that – well, the AI hasn’t held up as well as you might have thought thirteen years later. And neither have the facial animations – you should have seen the demon woman his main character, L.C., seduced in the club. XD But yeah, it was chaos without the chaos mod – a garbage truck driving into a wall for no reason, allowing Kevin to steal it; a swingset that can launch you and your character for MILES with the power of janky physics (Kevin eventually got his garbage truck stuck in a tree because of it); really poorly done golf minigames (or maybe Kevin was just really bad at hitting a golf ball at some guy tied to a golf cart); taking a taxi driven by the world’s angriest cabdriver, who was not afraid to muscle ALL traffic out of the way – before getting stuck at a toll booth because he’d knocked the car in front of him out of position (and all attempts to get him to turn or otherwise move were fruitless); and L.C. and his friends going out drinking and then attempting MORE driving, which Kevin found difficult enough when they were all SOBER. XD Video ended with him getting tired of an NPC he was escorting and flinging him into the bay before rolling into the water himself. XD I know pretty much nothing about this entry of GTA, but I’m happy to watch more if he’s in the mood to record it!
C) After that, it was over to GrayStillPlays – and look at that, he also was doing GTA stuff! Specifically, he had another GTA V challenge board, where a bunch of Angry Birds (tm) forced him to do challenges such as get yeeted by a wind turbine into two hovering rows of super heroes (and paint their blood on the concrete below), use the machine guns on a plaid tank to shoot down various shapes of people, use a gun to launch cars at a bunch of people spelling “help us” in the sky, and finally play Flappy Bird with a monster truck, dodging assholes in monkey costumes, before diving through the Flappy Bird’s mouth hole. And his reward? A grenade with an Angry Bird (tm) skin on it, which he promptly used to murder his tormentors before jumping to his death. XD Felt a bit like going back to the old days where he used to set up courses like this for his own amusement, honestly. Nostalgic!
D) And finally, we had our usual Sunday Fallout 4 You Only Live Once Episode, courtesy of Jon! And this one was nice, because Finalley finally got her jetpack! It took a little fiddling – and the emergency acquisition of tatos and mutfruit to make some extra adhesive – but she whacked together the X01 torso on the base of Paladin Danse’s old power armor, made a few improvements (like overdrive servos on the legs for sprinting), painted it all with Hot Rod Flame paint (because it gives you extra agility for some reason), and added her jetpack. :D And then she decided to take the new lovely jetpack out for a test run! Because there was something she needed to do that now was going to be a lot easier with a jetpack –
Visit Hallucingen, Inc. to pick up the Vault 88 chemical research! Now, normally you’d either have to fight your way through the building and all the Gunners affected by the gas and killing each other, or have enough Lockpicking to open the Master-locked door at the back to skip the dungeon. But, with a jetpack on her power armor, and Jon’s knowledge of how FO4 dungeons work (namely, that the place he would have ended up following the regular path was more or less directly above him), Finalley was able to go into the front room, wait out the fight triggered by her entrance (with the help of a stealth boy), pick off the survivors, then jetpack to the floor she needed, drop down a hole to the basement, critical the one remaining enemy in the last room, then pick up the research from the trunk at the end. Also the gas canisters for Fred Allen over at the Hotel Rexford, which netted her some bottlecaps and XP, the former of which she ended up spending on ammo and purified water when she took the Institute teleport back home. With that all sorted, she put the power armor in a safe place and went down to Vault 88 to finish off her building and get that DLC done and out of the way!
And then she discovered she needed a lot more nuclear material for the optometrist chair and had to go BACK to the Institute to loot all their radioactive stuff. Whoops. (And, even worse, the comments have pointed out there’s an old broken reactor she could have scrapped nearby rather than risking going into the uranium-rich tunnels with the monsters.) Ah well – she made the return trip back, put together the remaining experiments, did the nice one for each because there’s no differing perks depending on how you do it and she doesn’t care about getting Barstow to stay, and completed the DLC with all the experiments shoved in a corner attached to a mysterious windmill and a few guard posts for the nine people living there. XD Hey, a completion is a completion!
And that was that – Finalley returned home, a proud level 60, and took the final rank of Demo Expert to celebrate. Next time, she should FINALLY be returning to Nuka-World to complete THAT DLC! If, you know, she doesn’t get exploded by vertibird first – there were no less than THREE that showed up frighteningly close to her at different points in the episode, circling around and trying to fight something – two blew up, and one – well, we don’t know it’s fate because it was at the very end of the episode. I kind of half-expected a horrible last-minute death, honestly. XD But no, so far so good – we’ll see how Nuka-World goes next Sunday, yay!
3. Play Bloodlines and do some more Hollywood stuff: Check – after swinging by Mercurio’s and picking up the SPAS-16 (not that Crystal uses guns much, but it’s nice to have as a backup), Crystal headed back to Hollywood and finished off finding the tape at Ginger Swan’s tomb in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery mausoleum, delivering it to Isaac and getting a look at its gruesome contents. Isaac charged her with finding a more complete copy so they could get a better idea where this horror show (which seems to be linked to the disappearance of the Nosferatu) is kept – though, naturally, I decided Crystal needed to do a bit more side-questing first. XD Stop #1 was the Cavoletti Cafe and talking to Tommy Flayton – after seducing him didn’t work, Crystal instead defaulted to pretending the chefs didn’t wash their hands and got him to leave a bad review. Stop #2 was Vesuvius, where Crystal flirted her head off with VV (she got to call her Velvet pretty much immediately) and picked up the hunter quest, since that would take her to the Sin Bin anyway. She then headed over there to seduce Flynn into giving up how one gets copies of the DMP tape, then went down to the peepshow, stole all the money out of the change machine, locked down the windows, and sent the other girl over to the “Pleasure Palace” to get her out of the way. Crystal then ATTEMPTED to murder Chastity via good old Blood Theft, but apparently hunters are made of sterner stuff, so after a brief scrap with the fire ax, Crystal drank her dry instead. She grabbed her katana, stopped at the Pleasure Palace for a drink from the other girl, and went to report her success to VV –
Who accused her of being loud and making a scene. O.o I was – completely baffled by this and reloaded a slightly earlier save to see if just sucking Chastity dry before she could do anything would work better (Crystal needed the blood anyway). Also left the other girl alone, and that worked out. So I guess you’ve really gotta be careful about what Disciplines you use to try and kill Chastity early. . .aka, Dementation beats Thaumaturgy there. *shrug* Anyway, picked up the David Hatter quest, got the creepy phone call from the DMP folks, seduced Hatter into handing over his script and Julius’s name, visited Room 2 at the motel to find all the blood and the Ground Zero key, and then headed back to Santa Monica –
Where I was IMMEDIATELY in combat with a bunch of police officers! O.O The hell? All I can think of is, my mouse is having an issue where sometimes it’ll double-click when I mean it to single-click, and maybe I punched the guy while the area was loading. Crystal fled and hid down an alleyway until they gave up, then went and confronted Julius, before being moved to pity by his desperation and letting him flee the city. Ended by heading back to her haven to get LaCroix’s email about Tommy, pick up the $100 reward, and max out Thaumaturgy with her experience. :D I really, REALLY hope I can explode those damn monsters in the snuff studio – would make life a LOT easier!
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and back with Jon’s Original FO4 Playthrough! Started Episode 30 today – Past!Jon was a little surprised, but not that much, to see his contact on the inside for the Railroad was Liam Binet, aka “guy in closet I previously found looting the place.” He’s a fan of Alan and Liam’s beliefs that synths are human, and thinks that if they could be put in charge, then the Institute wouldn’t be a bad faction to side with (as he’s openly uncomfortable with the fact the majority of the Institute refers to them as things) – I’m sad to say, Past!Jon, that isn’t really an option. At any rate, Miss Jon followed Liam to meet his co-conspirator, Z1-47, and discuss the details of a jailbreak of 13 synths that involves searching for a username and password up-top in the Commonwealth for Liam to use to crack an old terminal that he can then use to bypass some of SRB’s security on the teleporter room. She’s in favor, though she’s not sure yet where to look – Liam ruled out the CIT ruins, but he did say some of the staff lived off-campus. . .
Anyway, with espionage completed, Miss Jon went to see Father, who sent her back up top to meet with a courser – X6-88 – and retrieve a rogue synth who’d become a raider gang leader (couching it as “oh, look, the Railroad wiped his memories and he chose violence,” with Past!Jon responding “yeah, but all of the very human raiders I’ve killed in the past have chosen violence too”). After a quick trip to Virgil’s cave to give him his serum, Miss Jon then headed toward the Libertalia from Finch Farm –
And discovered there was a bit of a problem, as some Brotherhood Knights were also in the area, and naturally took offense to the existence of both the raiders and X6-88. Miss Jon was happy to have back up on the raiders, of course (well, sort of, they were VERY low level for the most part), but ended up having to leave X6 behind because he kept getting downed by the BOS Knights, then getting back up and aggroing them again. And then he teleported to her in his downed state to tell her Gabriel’s recall code, which – I guess this is really just average Bethesda chaos, isn’t it? :p At any rate, Miss Jon used the recall code, took out the other raiders, then teleported back to Father, who thanked her for her help and sent her to check out her quarters. (Past!Jon was not impressed by the lack of a balcony, like most of the other rooms have.) Then X6 told her that Father wanted to speak to her AGAIN, which started “The Battle of Bunker Hill” and the quest where Father asks his parent to “retrieve” some synths that the Railroad has been sitting on, trying to relocate, in Bunker Hill – oh, and teach those idealistic idiots a lesson, will you? Miss Jon was not on board and, once agreeing to help, promptly headed back to the Railroad and told Desdemona what was up (after receiving her hero’s welcome for coming back in one piece, that is). Desdemona was all for turning it into a trap for the Institute, while Past!Jon mused about if he could turn it into a three-way brawl with the Brotherhood providing a kind of cover for the Railroad. . .but ultimately decided against it as the BOS would kill the synths too. Methinks Past!Jon is in for a shock when he actually gets to Bunker Hill. . .
5. Get more done with tumblr queues: Check! Valice Multiverse queue for tomorrow is done – one thread reply, three ask replies. And I got the pictures and starter/placeholder text drafted for my next Newcrest Adventures update on Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice, which is good.
Additionally:
-->Mom and I rinsed off my car (COVERED in paver dust) and attached my new license plate frame to the back – Dad’s suggested next weekend we take a moment to get it waxed up too for the coming winter. We’ll see how that pans out!
So yeah -- can't complain about how this Sunday turned out! Weather was beautiful too -- hopefully it stays just like this for a while. That'd be the ideal. As it stands, though, I do have to head out because, well, another full work week looms. *sigh* We'll see how it goes. Night all!
