Semi-Lazy Saturday

Like, I can't say it was FULLY lazy, simply because it was a cleaning Saturday and I couldn't be lazy in the morning, but I certainly didn't get a lot done today beyond said cleaning. (Though I did end up staying up til 2:30 AM last night, and then having a bit of a hard time getting to sleep, so that didn't help.) Good thing I didn't actually PLAN on doing that much today -- and the stuff I WAS adamant on doing DID happen, so --

Cleaning & Laundry: Pretty typical “first cleaning Saturday of the month,” honestly – got the dusting done and the first load of laundry in the wash before lunchtime, then finished up with Swiffering, vacuuming, and getting both loads of laundry out of the dryer after lunch. Took a little more of the day that I’d like, but given I was dealing with period blahs and a not-great night of sleep the night before, it could have been worse.

Writing: Got another chunk edited on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” with Alice telling Victor about being pulled back to Wonderland to fight the Ruin while she was in Houndsditch, and dropping the bombshell about what Bumby was doing to the children under his care. And sincerely thanking the Queen of Hearts for making sure she didn’t miss that he was abusing them so, causing said monarch a lot of befuddlement. XD But yeah, Victor is disgusted, and Alice isn’t enjoying this particular trip down memory lane much better. Fortunately we’re almost out of exposition land now – but unfortunately, that just means Alice is just that much closer to having to deal with the first of the plaguebearers. . .

YouTube: Well, I started watching all these videos a little later than I intended (between finishing up my laundry, making sure I got my writing done, and playing beanbags), so I didn’t get through everything I wanted, but I at least made a decent dent in the old Watch Later, so that’s something –

A) First, we had “A Look Back at All Occults in The Sims 2” by onlyabidoang – a video I’ve been meaning to watch for two weeks now! This was an overview of all the various occults, both playable and non-playable, in the good old Sims 2: aliens (though Abi noted that these Sims were treated more like they had a special gene set with specific skintones and eye colors – they didn’t have any special powers), ghosts, zombies, vampires, Servos, werewolves, PlantSims, Bigfoot, the Genie, and witches (and their spectral cats), with a small note on how these occults could be hybridized under the right circumstances (apparently the max number of occult states you can inflict on one sim is eight: turn an alien into a vampire, a werewolf, a zombie, a PlantSim, and a witch, then kill them so they wander around as a ghost). It was pretty interesting stuff, and a fun trip down memory lane – I have fond memories especially of playing with some witch Sims in my later Sims 2 saves. :) Though it did also highlight that I think some occults have indeed improved over time – imagine playing a vampire Sim who could only eat regular food!

B) Next, we had “Fallout: New Vegas - A Super Mario Adventure” from Jon of Many A True Nerd – last Saturday’s Additional Fallout Content From Jon that I didn’t get to watch at the time. This video was partly Jon’s back-up plan in case Sim Settlements 2 wasn’t playing nice with the Next-Gen Update last weekend (with him explaining in the opening narration that it would be released Saturday if things were fine, Sunday if things were not) and partly Jon having to play around with one of the stupidest mods he’d ever encountered for New Vegas. One that disabled all movement – except when you were jumping. And if you held down the jump button for longer, you did higher, more powerful jumps – except that the mod did not mess about with the fall damage. Meaning that you could travel around safely at high speeds if you were going uphill, or straight along, but if you were going DOWNHILL. . .well, that’s where things got interesting. XD Jon was determined to make a go of it for a fun one-off thought and, as per the title, decided to do his best to recreate Mario in F:NV! His courier plumber had S6 P6 E10 C1 I9 A7 L1 (because Jon was like “this guy needs Endurance out the WAZOO to be able to survive his jumps”), tagged skills Medicine, Speech, Energy Weapons (Medicine again to heal better after all the failed jumps, and Energy Weapons because Mario doesn’t do normal guns), and the traits “Claustrophobia” (which makes him weaker indoors – as Jon was planning on spending most of his time jumping around outside, no problem) and “Skilled” (instant increase to all skills in exchange for 10% less experience gain, which seems like a bad deal to me but whatevs I don’t play New Vegas). Jon then spent the rest of the video leaping around, figuring out how to use the jump (and dying a LOOOT) and making his Mario ever more Mario-ish –

I. First, by getting a red pre-War baseball cap off a dead prospector lying on the hills near the geckos by the edge of Goodsprings (which took a little doing, but Jon figured out the right angle of approach eventually)

II. Then by going to the deathclaw-infested road to Vegas that Chomps warns you off of and figuring out how to use the jump to sneak into the deathclaw nest and grab an egg without getting murdered either by fall damage or deathclaws (Jon actually didn’t say this was anything other than hubris on his part, but you could make an argument for this being Mario getting a Yoshi – if you ignore the fact that he then turned it into Jas Wilkins at Sloane and had it made into a deathclaw omelet XD)

III. Then by leaping to Lake Las Vegas, then from there to Aerotech Office Park to do the NCR quest there to investigate a dude called Keith running a crooked gambling ring (just had to steal his marked cards out of his house and present them to the NCR soldier). Why? Because Keith unwisely brought up the fact that the NCR soldier’s wife left him while being arrested, causing the guy to shoot Keith. Allowing Mario to swoop in and steal his red overalls so he had the right jumpsuit XD

IV. Then by heading over to the Old Bison Hotel in Primm to kill all the convicts there (using his spiked knuckles, which Jon rationalized as “Mario DOES have some sort of punch attack in his games usually” – they actually worked REALLY well though, can’t complain) and steal the Incinerator flamethrower off the leader, thus getting himself a “fire flower” (Jon even edited in the sound effect of Mario throwing a fireball whenever his Mario used it XD)

V. Then finally by leaping over to Helios One, doing the quest there to get the satellite up and running, then skipping the entire main dungeon by leaping around the roof of the main building until he could launch himself to the top of the tower! An excellent plan full of delightful hubris –

That was knocked down a peg by the discovery that Jon had forgotten to get the key for the locked door up there. XD Whoops. Well, fortunately Mario was not above using console commands to open things in his way, so he was still able to complete the quest and light everything up. He then ended the episode by heading over to Freeside, stealing Euclid’s C-Finder off a kid there, and using it to call some “Super Mario Sunshine,” aka an orbital strike, on the Securitrons outside of the Strip’s main gate. XD Just some very stupid, very silly, very good fun from our favorite Fallout guy! Glad I was able to catch up on it!

C) Then we had the Outside Xtra list of the week – “7 Most Disappointing Endings That Weren’t Worth the Effort!” Ellen and Mike talking about those endings that were a total disappointment for one reason or another! From Far Cry 5 having a nuclear apocalypse and letting the bad guy win by dragging you off to his bunker (and that’s the GOOD ending), to Bugsnax having an awful final mission with no checkpoints where you have to kill the titular Bugsnax before your friends eat them and push you into the bad ending (though apparently this can at least be somewhat mitigated by making sure to complete all their sidequests), to Starfield pushing you into a New Game Plus that might not actually have any “plus” to it (you’re supposed to be starting over in a parallel universe, but who knows if the changes you face will actually make any significant difference to your gameplay?), these endings were NOT worth going through all the proceeding gameplay. Hmph.

D) And finally, it was over to the Subs to watch the GrayStillPlays video of the night – “What is the safest vehicle in GTA 5?” Featuring Gray taking a Safety-Based Torture Board, trying to find the car that could survive all of the following challenges –

I. Safest Vehicle For Tetanus (aka enhanced corrosion) – Gray had 50 seconds to complete a course with “tetanus” (the advanced corrosion effects) turning his car into a semi-mobile lump of twisted metal, before a coffee cup came up and blocked the way to his repair kit. Perfect for determining which cars had decent wheel bases and which didn’t!

II. Safest Vehicle For Potholes – Gray had to take his car across two sets of Minecraft-block chunks with slowly-growing potholes between them, starting with tiny squares among a field of blocks and ending with huge gaps between strips of blocks. Suspension and/or a good bounce was key here!

III. Safest Vehicle For Flooding – Gray had to navigate a road submerged reasonably deep under the water of the nearby bay, dodging other vehicles stranded in the water, his own coffee mugs trying to scoop him up, flames pouring from his own mouth out of a Members Only video thumbnail, and a speedboat being shot at him through the “Join” button of another thumbnail screen. Oh, and if Gray tried to cheat it with a car that could swim, there was an invisible teleporter that sent him and the offending car to a monster truck rally to be smashed by the force of the Liberator and ten tons of gravity. Because Alex (or whoever made this board) is sick of his cheating cheating ways. XD

IV. Safest Vehicle For Crashing – Gray had to find a car that – after being yeet-celerated for six seconds – did NOT send him flying through the windshield when it smashed into the wall at the end of the road. This proved to be harder than advertised, because some windshields that looked like they should protect Gray really, really did not. . .

V. Safest Vehicle For Explosions – Gray had to survive for 69 seconds on a slowly-rotating platform of “I’m Still Alive” emotes, while dodging and/or tanking rocket launcher shots from Satans standing atop “Not Today Satan!” emotes. XD If he did, the teleporter to the win dropped down from the nearby crane – if he didn’t, well, he just had to try again until he did.

So, which car won the challenge? Well, the bikes did pretty well against the tetanus because, as it turns out, motorcycles and quads are unaffected, but none of them were able to get past the biggest potholes. The Insurgent did well against both tetanus AND potholes, but drowned in the high water of the flood zone. The Wastelander and the rusty arena car were both high enough to avoid being flooded out (though the latter had an absolutely AWFUL time trying to escape one of Gray’s coffee cups scooping it up again and again and again), but despite both having windshields you SHOULDN’T be able to fly out of (a large metal cage and basically a vent cover respectively), Gray went through both regardless when he did the crash test. Leaving an unexpected contender to take the win –

THE FUCKING SHERP. I am NOT kidding – everyone’s favorite Failchild Box On Giant Wheels won a challenge. Tetanus – no problem, it barely takes any damage. Potholes – no problem, just bounce over them on the giant wheels. Water – no problem, just swim across all obstacles. Crash – no problem, the windshield holds. Rocket launchers – BIT of a problem, as the Sherp could take a hit but would bounce around and often fall off the platform if it did, but once Gray found the right spot to stay in while the platform did its circle, it made it through the whole 69 seconds and got to the win. :D I’m so happy for it – if nothing else, at least it has THIS to look back on in future challenges!

Other: Did the usual weekend five rounds of beanbags today – and while I still wasn’t great, I at least pulled out one win at the end (mostly because Mom and Dad just BARELY couldn’t beat my score). Final scores were me 3-2-2-3-W; Dad W-W-3-2-3; Mom 2-3-W-W-2. Which I guess makes Mom the champ, so good for her. We’ll see how things change tomorrow (if they do)!

Yeah -- not a heck of a lot accomplished, but I'm happy with what I did manage to do. But now it is time to think about tomorrow! When I will finally be past the worst of my period, I hope. . .anyway, plans include working on draft stuff on Victor Luvs Alice; playing some Fallout 4 and at least making it back over to Fort Hagen to start the next Automatron plot beat; updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; getting in a workout and starting the next GrayStillPlays compilation; and keeping up with Gray and Jon on YouTube (want to watch both the latest SS2 episode and Jon's 11th anniversary episode as it involves being introduce to his and Claire's new kittens :D). Hopefully those are reasonable goals! We'll see how my brain cooperates tomorrow. . .night all!