Welp That Was Less PMS Than Expected

Got the red curse today! I thought it was coming later in the week! >.< On the plus side, it was an EXTREMELY polite one that showed up very faintly right after lunch and has been very light for the first afternoon, but -- I'm still feeling absolutely worn out and grouchy right now -- AND I'm updating really late because of social things and trying to catch up on stuff, so let me just get this up and head out (Moose, I will answer your latest thing tomorrow, promise):

1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – Victor, Alice, and Piper have successfully rescued Nick from Vault 114 in Park Street Station, yay! It pretty much follows how my actual playthrough in the game went, below – up until the end where, thanks to being a Malkavian with psychic insights, Alice was able to get Skinny to give them the ten-second window to leave the vault by invoking “the quarry, and Lily June on the rocks” (the speech check that, in-game, you can only get if you give Mama Murphy some drugs). I also moved the UFO event from before they all collapsed in the tent for a nap until after, because why not? It was interrupting Nick’s conversation anyway. XD Next time, they all go to investigate that, then Piper, at least in fanfic-land, will be going to go catch up with her sister again (and actually write the “View From The Vault” article) while Victor and Alice hit all the Minutemen settlements currently active and do some repairs and upgrades while getting to know each other more. :) Fun!

2. Catch up on YouTube Subs, watch Jon's latest Fallout video: Wanna say two-third’s check – still behind two videos on James Turner’s stuff! Gosh darn it, if only he hadn’t been uploading every day. . .and if only I weren’t on my period and thus very distracted. But I got one of the three that are currently sitting in my Subs watched, plus Kevin, Gray, and Jon, so that’s something –

A) Started after FO4 with Call Me Kevin and “Being a Good Student In Bully is the Funniest Challenge” – yes, he’s back to trying to make the main character of Bully a good student, if not always a good person. XD I mean, on the one hand, his version of Jimmy Hopkins tries to get to every class that he possibly can, braving the art teacher forcing them to constantly paint her in seductive poses and the biology teacher yelling at him to “take your time, boy!” while dissecting things against the time limit, to do as good a job as possible, pass all his classes, and get the fun unlocks (like a fish hat, which Kevin promptly made part of Jimmy’s core personality). On the OTHER hand, Jimmy also attends all of his classes in a muscle shirt (as in, a t-shirt with muscles printed on it), tighty-whiteys, and weird headgear (like the fish hat, or a pumpkin mask); occasionally spends his free time following people into the school basement for illegal fights in the sewage (where he has to trick a student into ramming his head into a wall constantly to win); helps a teacher hide his booze problem by giving all the bottles to the art teacher (who then takes them to have some fun times with the guy living in the broken bus on school grounds); steals people’s mopeds so he can get to class earlier; rides one of the school bikes into the ocean while hunting crabs for a restaurant owner; beats up multiple people while trying to retrieve someone’s TTRPG character sheets; and dropped one of his girlfriends over the side of a boardwalk onto the beach trying to lure her away from the movie theater for someone else. But on the third mutant hand, Jimmy is also so good at boxing the club members gave him AN ENTIRE CLUBHOUSE to live in (complete with a fish over the door!), so now that Jimmy is a property owner at sixteen, maybe he doesn’t have to worry about his reputation. Or school. XD Oh dear, this game paired with Kevin. . .

B) Then it was onto GrayStillPlays and Welcome Baby, another terrible mobile game – this one centered around, you guessed it, babies! You start off with a mother in the hospital, getting an ultrasound and checking the baby’s heartbeat and getting her blood pressure taken (at least when Gray isn’t exploding the cuff), then move on eventually to taking care of the baby themselves – mixing up its formula and heating the bottle in the bottle warmer (again, Gray managed to blow the damn thing up by making it too hot); teaching the kid how to crawl around various obstacles (Gray allowed BabyStillPlays to get run over by a toy plane just to see what would happen); yanking a toy soldier out of the kid’s nose (Gray seemed shocked the whole thing fit – I’m sure any parents in the audience were like “you have no idea, Gray”); fishing the baby out of their ball pit; helping them blow out the candles at their birthday party (Gray discovered BabyStillPlays had some excellent lung power when they BLEW OVER THE ENTIRE CAKE when Gray “overblew” the candles); and helping them create great art for the fridge (“Murder is Good” writes BabyStillPlays). It’s the usual goofy bullshit made even goofier and better by Gray being, well, Gray. XD

C) Then, this evening, I skipped forward in James Turner to his Saturday video to watch his third Werewolves lot-build for the Volkov house! This is the house for the only in-game pre-made family, and it’s the leader of the Moonwood Collective, his adopted son, his friend Lily, and – well, Rory, leader of the Wildfangs, USED to live here, but. . . This one took James a few tries to get right – it’s supposed to be a house that’s kind of hidden away from the rest, but James had to end up making it a bit bigger than the team really wanted just to fit all the necessary rooms into it! And then he forgot a bedroom for Lily and had to make her her own “granny flat” by the side of the house. XD Fortunately the Gurus liked that little touch. There also had to be a solid “self-sufficient” vibe to the place – lots of planters, wood-working table, stuff like that. It all came together well in the end – nice little two-story cabin-kinda deal with all the bedrooms on the second floor and all the living space on the first – but it was pretty fascinating to watch James try to get it to all come together over the various revisions! Tomorrow, I hope to watch his video on the final lot, the abandoned factory library, and then I can get started on his actual LP for the pack. . .

D) And, of course, we ended with Jon of Many A True Nerd – revisiting Fallout 4 in “Fallout 4: Legendary Roulette!” What does this mean? Well, it’s not “let’s scramble all the Legendary effects and see what ends up where on what weapons and armor,” as I first suspected (thought I think that would be fun too). No, what Jon’s done is installed a mod that turns as many enemies as possible (mostly the unnamed randos) into Legendaries. Meaning Jon’s character, The Legend of Boston, would be facing off against Legendary enemies everywhere – but also would be swimming in Legendary gear. To the point where Jon instituted a special rule that Legend could only use randomly-dropped Legendary items – no regular weapons or armor at all. He wasn’t sure if the run would be easy, kind of difficult, or an absolute nightmare.

ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE. Legend could barely get out of Vault 111. Mostly because there are a lot of radroaches, all those radroaches are now Legendary, and Legend couldn’t initially grab a weapon to deal with them. Because she wasn’t allowed to grab the stun baton that the Sole Survivor NORMALLY uses to fuck these things up, and while one of the earliest weapons she got off a radroach was a Kneecapper 10mm, she couldn’t USE it until she had the Pip-Boy because she couldn’t auto-equip it without picking up the stun baton (or the regular 10mm in the Overseer’s office, I guess). So she was reduced to punching to death those radroaches that she could, then either sprinting past those she could just lock away, or luring the others into places where she could lock them away. Took about three, four tries to get the Pip-Boy – and when that happened, all the radroaches just despawned so Jon couldn’t even take them out for their gear. Boo.

Getting out into the wider world didn’t see things improve much either. Yes, Jon had some help from Codsworth in killing the bugs in Sanctuary, but there was only a handful of good items on them. And then, when he sent Legend down to the Red Rocket to greet Dogmeat, he TRIED to set up some turret defenses and perch Legend on top of a car to better handle the resultant mole rat swarm – only for the rats to take out his turrets, blow up the car Legend was standing on, then prove able to climb up ONTO the car and attack her. And don’t even get poor Legend started on the Legendary bloodbugs feeding on the Brahmin near the entrance to Concord. . . I mean, those things are just plain bitches ANYWAY, since they’re so freaking spindly, but these ones were just MEAN. And the raiders outside Concord – oooh man. No way. Jon decided to take out some ghouls at the random encounter spawn spot first (relying on Kneecapper to cripple the legs and bring them down before wailing on them with some of his shittier melee weapons), then went to see about Drumlin Diner to get some more ammo –

And encountered the real MVP, Trashcan Carla! AKA, a trader on the road who cannot die. Jon sold her a bunch of crap Legendaries in exchange for tons of 10mm ammo, then helped Trudy kill Simone and Wolfgang in exchange for buying more ammo off her. Then he backtracked back to Concord to catch up with Carla and let HER take on the scary “way over my level” raiders while he provided support from atop the roof, much like Preston was doing on his balcony. Once those guys were dealt with, Jon sent Legend inside the Museum of Freedom –

And couldn’t complete it. He managed to brute-force some of the earlier raiders, but the ones in the room with the big mural? Can’t get past them. He tried to blow them up multiple times with the extinguishers/gas canisters in there, but those extinguishers are traps, man. One of them actually went off, started zipping around the room, zipped AROUND THE CORNER AND STRAIGHT INTO LEGEND, and went off. Never seen THAT before. But yeah, Legend just kept on dying, so Jon is starting ANOTHER inadvertent mini-series out of an intended one-shot to see if he can at LEAST conquer this hellish version of the game enough to rescue Preston and get the Minutemen to Sanctuary. So far, all that’s keeping him alive is the Kneecapper 10mm, a Violent Pipe Pistol (which has greater damage, but horrific recoil), a Chameleon Leather Left Arm, and a Martyr leg piece that gives him slow time whenever his health gets low – and his health keeps getting low, let me tell you! And, in contrast, he’s had THREE Poisoner Legendary pieces spawn, his least favorite kind of Legendary, so he’s thinking the run is cursed. Naturally, there are calls in the comments for him to play the whole game this way. XD I’ve suggested just getting past the initial steps in the Minutemen quest line and getting named General – we’ll see where he takes it!

3. Play Fallout 4 and get further into rescuing Nick: Check! Picked up in the pre-actual-vault area after taking a moment to install the “Recruit the Wounded Dog” mod I found a little while back (I now have a Miscellaneous quest to “Recruit Mutt” :D). Victor was feeling tired, but I felt it would be out-of-character for him to just straight up sleep, so I began a process of chugging a Nuka-Cola or Nuka-Cherry every two in-game hours to keep him awake as he and Piper moved their way deeper into the vault, coming across and shooting various Triggermen in the process (including the two who think the Vault was all a giant grift) near the beginning. Victor took his fair share of hits from all those damn submachine guns, but he managed to get through all the guys with the help of Righteous Authority and all that food and drink I have sitting in his inventory. Eventually he and Piper dropped down a hole into the lower areas, and ended up entering Vault 114 proper –

And finally, right at the top of some stairs, was good old Nick! Taunting Dino with how Skinny Malone was gonna kill him for being a cheating card shark. Dino ran off to try and “smoothe” things over, and Victor – er, well first he had to use the toilet, and THEN he had to dump a TON of stuff on Piper as his magical extra 100 carry weight ran out just as I was looting some more duct tape and tools. But eventually he got to the overseer’s office and was able to crack the terminal and bust Nick out. They met, Victor explained about his kidnapped son, and Nick started leading them out of the vault – though Victor stayed behind in the office a moment to grab the Speech bobblehead (has nothing to do with speech checks or Charisma, just gives all vendors 100 more caps for bartering purposes) and the two holotapes of the guy who WOULD have been Overseer (because they’re funny). From there it was a trip through the vault, trying to kill some guys quietly but not having much luck. Victor continued chugging Nuka-Cola, but managed to restrict his looting to just more duct tape and Wonderglue (adhesive!). The gang killed more Triggermen (Victor needing to stimpack himself on the regular thanks to broken limbs – damn submachine guns!), and Victor picked open a few things, including a money locker –

Which prompted Piper’s third affinity chat. Now, Piper? XD But yeah, this is the one where she admits she stays away from home so much because she’s terrified of her sister ending up like her – Victor encouraged her just to love her, because you don’t want to drive your family away in case. . .well. Piper agreed she didn’t want to lose Nat, and thanked him for being a good friend – Victor said the feeling was mutual because I felt like now wasn’t the time to do any flirting. XD

Anyway, with that settled and a few more bits and pieces looted, the gang looped back around to the unfinished entrance, where Skinny Malone and Darla now waited. Victor got the story of how the three were connected (Darla was a runaway to become Skinny’s moll; Skinny and Nick are sort of frenemies with how often Nick stopped his schemes in the old neighborhood), then attempted to end things peacefully. Even with his Charisma gear, though, the attempt failed, Skinny saying it would look like weakness. First time, this ended with Victor rapidly shot to pieces by Skinny and his goons – SECOND time, I managed to get his armor on again faster and get him to sprint to the side to avoid the damage. Darla came after him and beat him with her bat, but he was able to kill her, then help Piper and Nick kill the goons and Skinny. *shrug* I tried! I had Victor eat some Grilled Radstag for health and enough carry weight to take some shit off their corpses, then followed Nick up the ladder into Back Bay, where they talked about the missing kid and how Victor would meet him in Diamond City –

And Piper noticed a UFO streaking overhead, because Victor hit Level 20 killing all those Triggermen, and that triggers THAT little fun thing. XD So Nick’s heading back to Diamond City, and Victor and Piper are going to go around visiting all the settlements and fixing them up a little more (along with investigating the UFO crash), as now STARLIGHT needs help after an attack. Also gotta recruit Mutt. :) First things first, though – a NAP. Poor Victor’s earned it. Oh, and the “Awareness” perk (which shows specific damage resistances in VATS), as Victor’s earned THAT too! Hopefully it will serve us both well, as I am using VATS a lot more often. . .

4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Spent the morning working on the Fairy Tale AU post on Victor Luvs Alice – oh man, that thing ended up so long, but it is DONE now, and it is ready to go up this Thursday. I also, before starting my evening YouTubery, got the pictures and some starter text into draft posts for the Wednesday Chill Save update featuring Smiler Always at another School Spirit Day and the Romance festival! So that’s good. And for Valice Multiverse. . .eh, someone left me an ask, but I couldn’t think of a good response to it, so I defaulted instead to reblogging a VTMB gif set with Beckett. *shrug* It’s something!*

5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, and immediately back with the Oxventure, because the next one in line, “Fast and Furriest,” is a little unusual! You see, this is a PAX virtual con Oxventure – and for some reason the Oxventurers only got an hour time slot. Live shows do tend to be shorter, but usually they get an hour and a half, at least! So this one is explicitly a “speed quest,” without a lot of complication.

Anyway – in-universe, we picked up with the gang on the mountainside where their balloon crashed in “Gnome Alone,” having been chased out by said gnomes. Max took Shattershield back to the balloon to see if they could recover any of it, while Corazon, Prudence, Egbert, and Merilwen started picking their way down the path to civilization and were startled to find Dob doing some root foraging! They brought him up to speed on the adventure they’d just had while he was hanging out with Suzette (Dob, upon hearing that Corazon had been attacked by a mind flayer, asked if it had died of starvation; Corazon, annoyed, managed to pickpocket – and pickmouth, because he’d shoved some in there – the roots Dob had gathered from his person), then they all continued down into a lovely little ravine. Here they were met by Bromine, a wizened but very agile old man who asked if they were up for a “speed quest,” as previously said. Turns out a nearby mountain hamlet was having a problem with a mysterious monster going through their trash at night, and would like some heroes to deal with the problem. The gang was more than happy to check it out and hopefully just have to chase away some raccoons, so they followed Bromine to the village, where he left them. A discussion immediately sprung up on how to deal with the issue – first idea was trap the bins with Egbert’s bombs, but when he reminded them he only had three (there were eight bins in the hamlet) and they were all fuse bombs (meaning there was no way to really control when they went off), the new plan became “make a giant trash pile in the town square, have Dob hide in it, let Corazon set up some tripwires nearby with bells to alert us when the monster is getting close, then hide nearby and see what we can see.” Dob was all for that and even got Corazon to lube him up with Grease to better hide in the pile. XD The mayor of the place was NOT so keen, but the Oxventurers promised them that they’d put all the bins and such back later. Night fell shortly thereafter (with the mayor in particular running inside and immediately falling asleep on their floor, because they are nothing if not punctual), and the gang took up various positions around the trash pile – Corazon melted into the nearby shadows with a magazine; Merilwen became a town cat; Egbert climbed onto a roof and tried to “hide” behind a small clay chimney; and Prudence climbed onto another roof with Spider Climb, attempted to turn herself into a big old gargoyle – and thanks to a bad roll, ended up falling off and dragging a load of roof tiles with her. XD Whoops!

This did, however, put her in a good position to investigate when the first tripwire went off (after a brief argument with Corazon about how he’s not her dad and she’ll be investigating of her own free will, thank you). She slipped into a doorway and was briefly confronted with something big, fuzzy, and brown, which snuffled her before continuing toward the trash pile. She messaged Dob to let him know the creature was on its way – Dob asked if they could somehow get some light to see it better, so Prudence messaged Corazon to get him to cast Dancing Lights so they could get a better look at it. Result?

Big old fuckin’ bear! Which happily began clawing at the trash pile, looking for goodies, as Dob stayed limp at the bottom. Egbert, seeing his opportunity, tried to do an “elbow drop” attack on the bear (even as Merilwen changed back and screamed “Noooooo” in slow motion), but missed and ended up bouncing off the creature. It immediately turned on him, and Merilwen cast Animal Friendship –

No sell. The bear continued advancing on Egbert, pinning him to the ground with a massive paw and glaring at him. Merilwen, shocked and desperate, turned into a bear herself and roared to get its attention, and the bear turned to her, raising up on its hind legs and growling to tell her to get away (all while her companions kept talking about her trying to seduce it XD). Corazon was busy reading his magazine during all this nonsense (despite Merilwen making awful “Vitamin Sea” puns), but did spot during one of his glances upward that the bear seemed weirdly frightened, glancing at all the buildings around them as if expecting trouble. He encouraged Merilwen to talk to the bear – she reverted back to elf and cast Speak With Animals, apologizing for being a confusing shapeshifter person and asking the bear’s name.

Bear freaked out, yelled “NO ONE CAN EVER KNOW” and tried to book it out of town – but thanks to Johnny rolling a nat one, ended up instead crashing into the local tavern. The others ran after it to see it flailing and growling as the tavern-goers tried to defend themselves with ornamental weapons and gardening tools and a pot of fish stew – but before things could get any more out of hand, Dob cast Calm Emotions on the beast to calm it down.

This is significant because Calm Emotions is NOT supposed to work on animals. But the bear was calmed, though still very unhappy, and shrugged off Dob’s attempt at comfort to run off into the woods. Merilwen attempted to keep up with it, but no dice – but, thanks to the townsfolk, it did leave an easily-followed trail of fish stew behind it. She went back to the tavern to assure everyone there that they would track down the bear in the morning, and Dob called a huddle and explained that Calm Emotions would not work on a regular bear – that, combined with Merilwen’s Animal Friendship not working, is leading them to believe they’ve got a werebear on their hands, or at least some sort of humanoid that was currently in bear form. Interesting! Well, tomorrow they follow the trail and see what’s going on – dunno how they wrap this up in another half-hour, but it’ll be exciting to find out!

Okay, that's actually pretty decently productive for the first day of my period, you gotta admit that. I just wish I had better focus so I wasn't updating this so late. . .ugh. Night all!