Another "Saturday" (Friday) Past

Not quite as good as yesterday -- I woke up earlier than I wanted for no real reason, and Dad had computer problems, meaning he was in a mood, but I still got a decent amount done --

Tumblr: Did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch today, then did a bit more drafting of posts I’d like to make – a follow-up reblog to my “big multi-fandom multi-fairy-tale AU featuring Victor/Victoria/Emily/Alice/Smiler” (aka my “Four Victorians On A Roller Coaster” ship), and a post about a DIFFERENT post I saw on my friend Newt’s tumblr, and I don’t know how rude it would be to reblog it with my OT3’s tag, but WOW are all those gifs of the three mains from “The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself” Valicer – after lunch. Slowly making progress on those drafts! And there’s another two ask replies over in the queue on Valice Multiverse, so that’s doing all right too. *nods*

Fallout 4: Had a pretty successful day out in the old Commonwealth! Let me tell you all about it –

A) Picked up right where I’d left off last time, outside Oberland Farm, getting ready to follow the train tracks in the general direction of Diamond City. Following said tracks caused a distress signal to pop up on Victor’s Pip-Boy – curious, I had him open it up and tune in his radio to the signal. Turned out to be an old one from a mother asking for help for her and her son as they hid in a train car after being chased by something, only for it to rip into their hiding spot and the mother to scream for her son to run. *grimace* As we were coming up on a derailed train, I wondered if I could find them (or their Environmental Storytelling Skeletons) and started hopping around the cars – only to spot a feral ghoul lurking underneath one. I shot it without issue, but then its buddies showed up and got in a few good swipes before I could shoot them too, the bastards. *grumbles* On the other hand, I guess I know what attacked the woman and her kid now?

B) And then, while investigating the train, I heard some raiders sticking up some farmers for an absurdly high toll of 500 caps, and a firefight breaking out! However, as it was foggy, I couldn’t quite pinpoint where the voices, and the subsequent shots, were coming from. Eventually it occurred to me to investigate the shack above the staircase where you could go from the train tracks to the road criss-crossing it below – and ran into a raider! Victor shot him and his buddy dead as he ran down the stairs, and found a farmer on the road at the bottom. I could still hear another raider wandering around, though, and went upstairs just in time to see her shoot the other farmer and kill him. *wince* I avenged the guy’s death, but I still felt bad. . .

C) And then I realized, “Hang on a second, I literally quicksaved right before I heard the raiders start shaking down the farmers!” So I reloaded my save, turned off the distress signal, and had Victor and Nick book it down to the stairs, where they found the farmers and the raiders just starting their firefight. Victor took down the raiders pretty easily with his 10mm, and both farmers survived and thanked him, yay. :)

D) With that sorted, I decided that it was probably a better idea to start following the road below rather than the tracks above. . .and that paid off when I came across that little produce stand by the side of the road I encountered when FIRST working my way to Diamond City! There was fresh produce laid out, so Victor grabbed all of that, the pre-War cash out of the register, then cracked open the door to the back chem lab, where he made a glowing blood pack because what ELSE am I gonna do with the blood in his inventory. XD Also did a little cooking on the available stove, because never a bad idea to have more food.

E) From there it was down the road into the ruined neighborhood Victor’s been through a couple of times – I spotted a dude and had him go down low, but then the guy proved to be just part of a Brotherhood patrol, so no worries. I also had Victor tag the lake at the other end of the street – Chestnut Hillock Reservoir, aka “that lake Ashes the cat goes to when he escapes Vault 81.” Victor spent a little time gathering good junk from the dock there, then went up on the nearby building’s roof for a better view of the area before coming down to go along the boardwalk by the lake’s edge. I spotted a bloatfly far ahead and began rooting around for Righteous Authority or the Mighty Sniper –

Only to hear the telltale yell of a SUPER MUTANT SUICIDER nearby. Victor grabbed his Two-Shot Combat Rifle and attempted to retreat, but it was already too late, and he and Nick exploded.

F) Okay, fortunately I’d saved really recently THERE too, shortly after finding the place – Victor thus grabbed his junk from the shore (including a Nuka-Quantum I’d missed before, nice), then went back the OTHER WAY and back onto the roads, keeping low and slow to avoid any super mutant notice. Fortunately, after going past a tunnel and a few other wrecked buildings, I suddenly recognized that were were close to the old super mutant camp Victor had helped the DC guards clear out, and thus close to Diamond City! Once I spotted the defenses, I let Victor stop sneaking so he could get to the entrance quicker. . .

G) And who should be there but traveling gun merchant Cricket! Well, I had some trading to do anyway – might as well start with her! I sold her the Instigating Submachine Gun (a good legendary, but on a gun I was likely never to use) and a bunch of old weapon mods to her for more .44 ammo for Kellogg’s pistol (so I’d be more likely to use it), then headed into DC itself to make the rounds of the merchants there while Nick chatted with the residents. Hit up Polly and sold her some applesauce, grilled radroach, spare mirelurk meat, some mushroom medleys, and some roasted squash for some radstag meat, some milk, and a mirelurk egg; then moved to Solomon and traded him the drugs I’d found recently for some purified water; and finally went over to Arturo and (after getting some stuff off Nick), sold him the Freezing 10mm, the VATS-Enhanced Rolling Pin, the Safecracker Metal Chest Piece, and a bunch of ammo I wasn’t using for more .44 ammo. From there it was to the armor workbench to scrap all the leather armor Victor had picked up. While I was there, I realized I could move his Powered Synth leg up to Microcarbon material – the game kept wanting to scrap my port-a-potty to do it, though, so I gave it to Nick temporarily and traded for some other junk so I could do it safely. Also used the weapon bench to scrap the spare shotgun and give the Two-Shot Combat Rifle a small quick-eject magazine for faster reloading. Also, as usual, did a bit of cooking, because cooking good.

H) And then a damn radstorm rolled in as Victor started to succumb to exhaustion – I had him and Nick go over to the little farm by Diamond City Radio to pitch the tent, and Victor (after having a quick chug of Nuka-Cherry) went to bed at 10 PM.

He awoke the next morning at about 6 AM IN A RADSTORM. You were supposed to have cleared out, damn it! After a quick poop break with the reclaimed port-a-potty, I had him run into Nick’s office nearby with the intent of starting the “cutscene” with Nick and Piper. . .

I) Only for nothing to happen (other than the game telling me to talk to Ellie so I could start Far Harbor – not YET, game). Slightly puzzled, but thinking maybe it was a bit early for Piper to be up, I ventured back outside to find it was just raining normally (whew), and had Victor hit up Percy for more adhesive, a gold-plated lighter (I need gold if Righteous Authority’s ever going to have its maximized capacitor) and a bit of razor grain in exchange for a bunch of shotgun shells. And then I thought, “hang on a second – was the quest marker at Nick’s, or Publick Occurrences?” So I went over Piper’s. . .

J) Yup, THERE is my cutscene! Nick and Victor (looking very spooky in his synth helmet – damn, it protects him, but it makes him talking to anyone just that bit creepier) filled Piper in on what happened, and Piper commenting about Victor blowing Kellogg’s brains out gave Nick the idea to bring Victor to the Memory Den to get Dr. Amari’s help, especially since Victor had already pulled out all his weird cybernetic implants. Victor kept Nick as his companion (because Nick still had some of Victor’s stuff on him), and “Reunions” finally completed –

K) JUST SHY of a level-up! Well, we know what we do when that happens – MORE COOKING! Specifically, turning a bunch of wolf meat I couldn’t use for anything else into stew meat ended up doing the job, getting Victor up to level 28 and allowing him to take Science! Level 3! :D Couldn’t upgrade Righteous Authority any more because of the lack of gold, but I at least had him add a Beam Focuser to the Kneecapper Laser Musket.

And so I ended my playsession with Victor and Nick venturing out into Diamond City around midmorning, ready to start heading to Goodneighbor to meet up with Dr. Amari! And once that’s done, I am doing a whole BUNCH of little sidequests. XD And also going back to the USS Constitution to help Ironsides and his crew with their boat. Gotta finish off the robots’ quest. XD

Writing: As per usual, since I played Fallout 4, my writing was updating my FO4 Playthrough Progression document! It was pretty much the same as above (minus the reload to save both farmers and the death to the suicider) up until Victor, Nick, and Alice (in her sleeping bag) reached Diamond City – in that universe, when the radstorm kicked up after Victor was done doing all his buying and selling and his various mods, they all ended up in Publick Occurrences and spent the night there, with them giving Piper a short version of what happened before she took Victor upstairs to bunk down with her. XD The “cutscene proper” happened the next morning after breakfast – and then took ANOTHER weird turn because – well. Victor’s already been to The Memory Den and had a traumatic experience there (breaking one of the pods while reliving seeing Victoria get shot), which he awkwardly confessed to Nick when he mentioned the place. XD Honestly, that should just be a dialogue option for the Sole Survivor in general, letting him know about accidentally tricking yourself into seeing your spouse murdered again and Nick being like “uh, damn – unfortunately, Amari IS our best shot. . .” Alice is also the one carrying Kellogg’s mods thanks to Wonderland, and she’s feeling pretty smug about anticipating that his weird cybernetics would come in handy! XD But yeah, they’ve saved some farmers from raiders demanding tolls, made it successfully back to Diamond City, done a lot of shopping, filled in Piper, and are now ready to start toward Goodneighbor and the Memory Den! We’ll pick it back up there on Sunday! :)

Workout: Check – one final night on the bike this week, finishing off the Live Oxventure “Wedded Redemption!” As it turns out, I was indeed right – when Corazon accused Norman of bribing sommelier Chase to poison Viscount Featherby, the dude just told him “good job, worth extra credit” and confirmed that yes, he’d set all this up to ensure that the gang had a quest to do together to facilitate mutual understanding between worlds. He asked Aubrey if he had good or bad impressions of G’eth from all this, and Aubrey had to admit it was a mixed bag. Corazon was like “but what if Featherby had drunk the wine” and Norman was like “he would have died and you wouldn’t have scored well!” XD Basically, he sees his role as a facilitator here – sometimes he chooses the right dungeon, sometimes he pays off someone to poison a guy on his daughter’s wedding day –

Sometimes he sabotages the menagerie so that the animals escape just as everyone is having coffee after dinner. . .oh, by the way, what time is it? The Oxventurers and Aubrey were rather pissed off by this, but Norman didn’t care – he’d guaranteed them some combat, after all. Corazon attempted to tiger-kick him and only nudged his nose slightly – fortunately, Aubrey was there to pull out the big guns with a Banishment to another plane full of OTHER animals that had been let loose from menageries! XD Norman vanished, and the gang stampeded back to the dining hall to warn the diners –

Just as three cockatrices stormed in, like clever lizard-bird girls! Time to roll for initiative! Corazon FINALLY started rolling decently and got a 25 to start the fight – a bit beat down by his poor performance this quest, he just went for the standard “hit it with my cutlasses” attack. Fortunately, this worked beautifully, especially when he worked in his roguish Sneak Attack, and he ended up chopping the legs of a cockatrice and leaving it wobbling on the dining table with four hit points left while he hid under the table with his bonus action. Egbert was next, and ATTEMPTED to leap onto one of the remaining cockatrices to ride it around while throttling it – however, he whiffed the attack roll, and instead belly-flopped onto the trifle, upsetting the children (who were still in the room for some reason). Prudence stepped in with some Agonizing Blasts – she managed to explode the cockatrice Corazon had nearly killed, but missed the other one, sadly. Then it was Aubrey’s turn to step up –

And Aubrey happens to know the rules. Aubrey, specifically, knows how to use his sorcery points to create a fireball that only cooks one cockatrice while allowing everyone around it to auto-save against the damage, and make it cast so fast that he can use it as a BONUS action, allowing him to Firebolt the other for another round of massive damage. Firing both spells out of his TAIL. One cockatrice was reduced to pink mist (Johnny having to stop Aubrey from continuing to add up his damage and add modifiers with “it’s already dead!”), and the other basically ended up just like the one Corazon cut the legs off of. The Oxventurers were stunned, and Andy finally got an inkling that MAYBE all their characters were kind of sub-optimal. XD

Anyway, after Aubrey’s one-cat murder spree was over with, Merilwen (who’d been PLANNING to cast Animal Friendship) put the remaining cockatrice out of its misery with a bit of Create Flame. Hilariously, everyone present at the wedding thought this was dinner theater, and Corazon was able to pass a cup around and get 33 gold pieces in tips! Right before Norman’s corpse returned from the other dimension and landed smack-dab in the middle of the dining table. XD Corazon quickly took the guy’s clipboard in case they needed it somehow to get Dob back (now that the guy organizing this swap was dead), and the gang rushed out to new adventures! XD Ah, good times, good times – and yes, seeing them react to someone who REALLY knows their stuff when it comes to D&D was pretty freaking hilarious. I wonder if this episode inspired the gang when it came to future level-ups. . .

With that sorted, I still had about sixteen minutes to fill – fortunately Petey Plays It had my back, with the videos “12 Of The Best Lot Traits To Improve Gameplay” (featuring things like using the “Clothing Optional” trait to create nude beaches; the “Cat Friendly” trait to create a cat cafe, and the “Dog Friendly” trait to create a dog park; and the “Teen Hangout” trait to create teen-centered lots like an internet cafe), and “Complete Guide To Every Island Living Festival” (including where they are, what they feature, and when they’re on, since the game doesn’t actually notify you about most of these. Apparently most of them are a bit shit as there’s not much to do, but the Thursday Island Celebration and the Saturday Fishing Competition are worth visiting). Good way to end the week’s workouts!

YouTube: Well, I’m closer to caught up than I was, but I’m still down two videos in the Subs. We’ll have to see if Saturday I can get some more video-watching time in (I imagine so, given I’m not working out). In the meantime –

A) First up, pre-workout, a trio of SKETCHY episodes by Josh Way –

I. “Darkwing Duck!” Josh draws the iconic Disney Duck superhero in a nice actiony pose, and admits he had a LOT of trouble with his face for some reason – took a few tries to get those eyes right! But he eventually got it right, and it gave me some fond memories of watching the cartoon when I was younger, sooo. . . (Funnily enough, though, Josh himself never watched the cartoon, despite being a Ducktales fan – Darkwing’s series came after he’d moved onto other things. He just, as usual, liked the design.)

II. “Plucky Duck from Tiny Toons” – Josh draws Daffy Duck’s protege/mini-version from the famous TV show! Lot less to say in this one, though he did comment on how he’s noticed how the Looney Tunes duck bills are different from the Disney ones (the Looney Tunes bills tend to be more exaggerated and bigger overall). Also mentioned the “They Might Be Giants” tie-in segments from Tiny Toons, one featuring the song “Istanbul Not Constantinople” – something I was only recently introduced to myself, so I found that amusing too. :p

III. “Muppet Family Christmas” – Josh draws – well, he drew four pictures from this TV special from the late 80s, but he only recorded two, Fozzie singing with a snowman and Big Bird helping out the Swedish Chef, and those because he wanted to redo them in a more “animated” style while still keeping them recognizable as the Muppets. They were both very cute drawings, however, and I did enjoy hearing him talk about this Christmas special that I’ve never seen with all the Muppets (including the Sesame Street and Fraggle Rock Muppets) hanging out at Fozzie’s mother’s house in the country. And hearing him complain about how the special had ten minutes cut out when it was syndicated because in the late 90s everything had more commercials, and now he’s pretty sure that butchered version is the only one available. Man has OPINIONS on film preservation, you see. XD

B) Then, after supper, we had “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 14! Pokemon Scarlet Catch 'Em All Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Yes, today we had the penultimate day of OXmas, with Mike vs Jane in Pokemon Scarlet (using Luke’s save and his very well-dressed character)! The challenge was to run around this one particular grassy area outside a town (ignoring the people walking in the background at two frames per second) and catch as many Pokemon in five minutes as possible, all while fighting with the rather terrible controls. XD Jane ended up going first and – despite some early trouble with accidentally making PokeLuke spin around and get dizzy, and getting sucked into accidentally naming her very first catch (a Lechonk) with some bad button presses – did pretty damn well, managing to find a bunch of low-level Leconks, Igglybuffs, Fidoughs, and even one fish pokemon that I didn’t catch the name of that she could catch without any effort at all! She only had to fight ONE battle with Luke’s Psyduck, and even then she barely had to do anything at all. Tossing Pokeballs like they were going out of style and hammering her way through the menus netted her six Pokemon within the time limit!

And Mike – well. An unfortunate combination of finding some HIGHER-level Pokemon up the hill that refused to just be caught without being scratched first, his Psyduck being put to sleep in a few different battles, and his just general bad luck with throwing pokeballs meant that he ran out of time mid-fight with a Fidough and only caught four. He then insisted on trying to “kill” the Fidough, only to have it paralyze the Pokemon Luke advised him to send out. XD So he caught it to “kill” later. XD But yes, Jane redeems herself a bit with a second Christmas point! Meaning both Mike and Luke are tied at three points each as we go into the final challenge tomorrow. . .this is gonna get INTERESTING. XD

C) And then it was back to the Subs to finish catching up on Call Me Kevin with “nobody simulator!” This was Kevin playing the game Nobody: The Turnaround, which is a game all about digging your way up out of poverty (thanks to your asshole father’s gambling debts), trying to help your poor mother in the hospital and keep your sister from being forcibly engaged to a terrible person while paying off a loan shark on the regular and also finding a way to tend to your basic needs. Or, if you’re playing it the KEVIN way, you start off as a sorry-ass running into traffic and getting an immediate tragic game over. XD Then you progress to getting your sorry ass beat by an asshole foreman at the construction job you’ve taken; manage to make friends with the supervisor of the site by lending him money for lunch and getting your foreman fired with a cool “Hasta la vista, baby!”; occasionally work as a security guard on the days that you remember to call the job agency; bathe regularly in the sinks at the local park until you finally catch a cold from it; spend your days trying to keep your mood up by running around playing the claw machines, ring toss, and basketball, and also dancing with the local aunties in a rhythm minigame; just barely keep yourself afloat in your little hostel by working double shifts to help pay off the interest with the loan shark and occasionally playing computer games to help your mood; meet your sister and discover she stole a TON of money from the guy she was forcibly engaged to; take that money and rent a nice apartment you CANNOT afford long-term; try to set up a sidewalk peddling stall by a disco by buying lots of glow glasses and bracelets (and a few dinosaurs), only for the quest to expire and leave you stuck with the goods; treat yourself to cake on the regular and new clothes and lottery tickets; finally realize there’s no way to pay off the loan shark and spend ALL your cash on energy drinks (to the point where the little “cash -6” that pops up whenever you buy it just goes on forever); and somehow manage to fail the game by failing to fix your phone (which for some reason can only accept calls now), which at least saves you from being kneecapped by the loan shark. :p I’m sure that game has a lot to say about poverty and how hard it is to escape it, but it’s hard to hear over the sound of Kevin buying like 400 energy drinks. XD

D) And finally, while I didn’t have the time to get to GrayStillPlays’s full-length video today, I did catch up on his Thursday short – “Busting 5 Myths in GTA 5 #shorts!” A quick video of him completing quick “myth” challenges – flying a plane through a train tunnel under a mountain without touching the ground (he had to remember not to lean too far on the stick, but he did it); parachuting onto a windmill from the front (he got smacked and landed in a puddle of blood, but he DID land it); skydiving into a moving boat (he knows exactly where to aim for this one); throwing grenades out the window of the building near the cable cars (he knows exactly where to aim for this one too – at the side of the window so the grenade bounces out); and testing to see if killing one of the yoga hippies kills all of them (yes, which is slightly disturbing). Good quick dose of Gray!

All right, so I'm basically caught up on Subs apart from the two latest videos uploaded, I'm in a good spot with tumblr, and I've finished workouts, yay. Tomorrow, gonna do my best to catch up on all my videos (plus watch the end of OXmas!), play some Sims 4 (have not decided if building or Valicer house yet), and do SOME sort of fun writing. Oh, and get a bunch of gift fics queued up at the end of the day on Victor Luvs Alice, because Christmas. Gonna be busy, but hopefully I can most of it done! Night all!