Much Calmer Sunday

After some of the stress of yesterday's activities, it was nice to have a day that was just rather chill. And one where I could continue my experiments in playing Fallout 4 in the mornings to see if it gives me more time to do stuff in the afternoons (namely, more time to watch my Sunday Two videos without staying up too absurdly late). How did that go? Well, let's start with the write-up of my day:

Tumblr: Well, didn’t get anything done on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) today because of the morning FO4 playing, but I did get one thing into the queue for Valice Multiverse – The Coven Wars’ latest reblog on our “amnesiac Venus in the Forgotten Vows Verse” thread, with the other character involved (a soft-spoken teen on crutches) finally introducing himself to Victor as Mouse. Victor said it was nice to meet them and asked what they were doing around Sanford, as you do. We’ll see what the answer is when I next hit the blog!

Fallout 4: As previously stated, did my second foray into “playing FO4 before lunch” today, with Victor and Ada taking on Hardware Town in order to score some paint for Abbot –

A) Started with the duo right where I’d left them, hanging out by the statue outside Diamond City at 5:11 PM in-game time, with the shop where they needed to go basically right around the corner. Victor and Ada thus proceeded through the handmade entrance arch to the city and up the nearby hill, following the road until they heard a woman’s voice calling for help. One quick turn right at the nearby intersection, and they officially discovered the store, with a “settler” standing outside calling for assistance –

Except the minute Victor got close, said settler very quickly said something along the lines of “she’s inside, hurry!” and darted through the front doors, disappearing into the store. I was – slightly puzzled by this, because I was PRETTY sure that this encounter was supposed to involve a brief conversation with this woman, where she said something about her sister or friend being hurt before asking the Sole Survivor to come and help (so they could be lured into a raider ambush inside). Maybe the conversation didn’t kick off properly because I approached the encounter from the wrong angle? Or maybe I’m just remembering wrong… *does a little research* Okay, there’s nothing about talking to this woman on the main wiki – but I know I saw a “talk” prompt on her right before she disappeared through the doors, so maybe there’s no MANDATORY conversation, but you can have an optional one with her to learn the situation if you are so inclined. *shrug* Either way, she was gone before Victor could ask anything about what he was supposed to help with –

B) And I already knew that the situation here was a raider ambush, so rather than immediately follow her inside, I had Victor raid a nearby ice machine for some goodies (like a lantern), then creep down an alley by the side of the shop to check out the back! Scoring some duct tape from a tool box he found tucked into an alcove with a Nuka-Cola machine (unfortunately empty). Around the rear of the shop was a power armor frame, a wrecked car, and a big wrecked truck – the latter of which had two raiders hanging out on the other side, completely unaware of Victor’s presence. I lingered for a moment, pretty sure that these two raiders had unique dialog if you didn’t immediately pop out and shoot them –

And sure enough, I was rewarded with them talking about a previous dude who “Becka” (the supposed settler) had lured into the trap! A dude had who spooked early on and started throwing grenades everywhere – except that after a moment, all the raiders realized that he was merely throwing rocks and making all the appropriate noises for throwing grenades with his mouth. They were so utterly dumbfounded that they just stood there staring as the guy backed away while making the noises for a machine gun, then escaped out the door and pretended to get on a motorcycle (which didn’t start right away) before running off toward the freeway. Shifting gears on his fake bike and everything. One raider was like “how does someone like that even survive out here?” to which my response is – dude, you didn’t shoot him when he started pulling that, so the weirdness is very much working for him. XD (In fact, I’m pretty sure you hear about this weirdo having another little adventure somewhere else in a different raider encounter – I shall report back if and when I stumble across it!) Anyway, once they were done with that, I continued hiding for a bit longer, just to see if they told any more stories (I know there’s another one you can hear if you sneak up on some raiders about how a kid who was terrified of fire got “pranked” by a fellow raider by being put out on the river on a big flaming mattress-boat of some kind) –

But no, after that, they reverted to generic raider dialogue. Shame. So I had Victor slip around the truck and shoot both men with the Two-Shot (Ada helping out a bit with the second). Might as well make sure the raiders inside didn’t have any back-up waiting out here!

C) With that sorted, and after a quick side-trip down an alley to the left to grab some useful junk out of a dumpster, I had Victor return to the front doors and head inside, where Becka urged him to follow her into the back before darting off. Victor, wise to the game, instead stayed right in the front, hidden behind some of the shelves (as Ada dryly remarked, “Oh look, everything’s on sale – 100% off” XD). After a bit, the raiders began wondering what the hell was taking him so long, and one of them wandered out onto the main sales floor to find him. Victor crept around his little barricade and easily took him out with the Two-Shot, then ATTEMPTED to get any others in the area by tossing a grenade – but unfortunately, all the other raiders were behind the counter at the back, out of range, and the grenade went off without actually hurting anybody. So Victor instead retreated back behind his shelving barrier, before switching over to the Mighty Sniper to pick off another investigating raider through a gap between the shelves. >D Oh, I do love being able to be sneaky death sometimes…

After that, though, the raiders seemed a bit less inclined to come out and get shot (understandably) – so, after waiting a bit longer, I had Victor cautiously go around his shelf wall and see what was what. There were no raiders in the immediate vicinity, so I had him turn around and pick up one of the many desk fans in the area –

And then turned around to see the head of the group, Demo, coming out of the back, gun raised. However, between Ada’s laser fire and Victor’s Sniper, the guy went down pretty damn fast. This prompted another raider to start trying to find Victor (a woman’s voice, so perhaps it was Becka herself) –

But for some reason she refused to actually come out of the back room, instead just blind-firing at the back wall/doorframe. I was like “…” and left her to it to look for goodies down the nearby aisle instead. Located a pack of duct tape in amongst a whole bunch of skeletons at the end, which was nice –

And then I turned around and saw that the missing raider had FINALLY appeared behind the actual counter, allowing Victor to take her down with a headshot. *shakehead* Took you long enough, lady! Victor’s got shit to do!

D) With the immediate raiders taken care of, I had Victor wander around the store a bit more, checking out all the various sections (there was a whole bathroom display, complete with a mannequin in a shower) and picking up some goodies from the shelves and the bodies of the people he’d just killed (another desk fan, a plunger, and some soap from the shelves; stimpacks and ammo from the corpses). Once I was satisfied I’d gotten everything on the main sales floor, I sent Victor behind the counter as he started yawning, looting the raider bodies back there (more ammo) and grabbing TWO big bottles of economy Wonderglue (yaaay). After checking out the other stuff there (including the armor and weapon workbenches) and snagging a few more goodies, I checked the in-game time (9:30 PM), then decided to allow Victor a single Nuka-Cola just in case he ran into more trouble during his explorations. Thus fully caffeinated, he headed into the back room with all its many shelves and spare product –

And didn’t see anyone. Puzzled, but not yet ready to believe there weren’t more enemies hiding out here, I had him grab a stimpack and some vodka off some nearby crates, then climb the stairs up to his left to the little balcony overlooking everything, before climbing further onto one of the high shelves to scan for trouble. However, the [HIDDEN] brackets didn’t shuffle an inch while he did this, making me wonder if he was really okay. I had him explore the upper shelf paths for a bit, traveling over makeshift steps and bridges made out of planks and crates, grabbing some more vodka and ammo along the way before following a path across an open fridge door and down into another aisle –

Where I encountered a giant hole in the floor. With a bunch of settler and trader corpses inside it, most of which were stripped down to the skivvies. Seems like the gang here pulled this scam successfully quite a few times. :( Certainly makes you feel better about shooting people when you discover a giant corpse pit in their headquarters!

E) However, none of this exploration had triggered any wobbling of the brackets, so I was happy then to officially say that I’d wiped out the gang that had created the corpse pit. :) With Victor confirmed safe, I had him explore the back room at his leisure, picking up whatever goodies he could find (including a stash with an old lighter in it hidden in a fridge, some bobby pins in a washer, a Blast Radius board game balanced on a toilet in the remains of the old employee bathroom, and some more stimpacks and chems from various containers around the place) and having a quick snack of RadAway and rat on a stick when his stomach started grumbling. I also found the paint mixer where you’re supposed to make Abbot’s green paint, but decided I wanted to explore the upstairs a bit more first. So I sent him back up the stairs near the front of the room and into the hallway beyond to see what was in there. The first door he opened revealed an office-turned-bedroom, with the big “you win” steamer trunk right next to the desk –

But before I could actually pick up anything, the game informed me that Victor rather urgently needed to go to the bathroom. I promptly had him backtrack onto the little balcony landing at the top of the stairs and put down his port-a-potty (have I ever clarified this is an enamel bucket with a tire for a seat? Well, it’s an enamel bucket with a tire for a seat) –

Then realized in horror that what I’d thought was flat ground actually WASN’T as the port-a-potty tipped over. Now, this thing does NOT work if it’s not standing perfectly upright, AND it has no prompt to turn it BACK upright should it tip over. Your only hope if it does tip over is to find a way to knock it back upright, either by running it into a wall or hitting it with something. I thus had Victor grab Big Jim the wrench, back the rolling bucket into a corner, and start whacking it –

But the potty refused to turn back upright. And with the game warning me that Victor needed to go to the bathroom RIGHT NOW, I realized that my only options were to find out how to use the bathroom on the ground; deal with Victor getting another UTI (which, admittedly, I had a few cures for on me, so he wouldn’t be dealing with it for long) –

F) Or reload the game from my latest quicksave, which was from a few minutes ago when he was on the shelves. You can probably guess what I went with, since we’re on a new list item. :P I went ahead and redid all of his looting from before (which resulted in him getting some slightly-different items from the fridge stash this time, interesting) – then discovered some new goodies for him to grab by noticing some crates in the back loading area that formed a ramp onto the nearby flatbed truck, which had a toolbox with some ammo in it tucked away in there, and by going ahead and just having Victor stand up (no need to crouchwalk with no enemies nearby!), which resulted in him being able to find some stuff in some washers and dryers (lightbulb and suchlike) that were previously too high for him to reach. So good thing I reloaded, then! XD I then backtracked to the office, where I was able to have Victor actually get the goodies there (including some ammo in the steamer trunk – there was also armor in there, but nothing better than Victor already had – a copy of “Picket Fences” on the desk – allowing Victor to make a new high-tech light in settlements – and a technical document in a nearby filing cabinet – more future money from Quinlan!) and make a quick save before the game told me “hey, he needs to have a poop.” And THIS time, I sent Victor to the end of the hall and had him take his necessary shit in front of the Advanced-locked door there, which worked much better as the floor there was actually FLAT. XD After reclaiming his potty, I was going to then have him open the door –

But then, on a whim, I decided to see what time it was in-game, and discovered it was one minute after midnight. And with Victor already tired, I decided I really ought to send him to bed. So down he went into the back room again, pitching his tent by the flatbed truck and settling in for a good seven hours sleep. *nods* Better than I get some nights!

G) Once Victor had finished his snooze, I had him pack up his tent, then head back upstairs to check out that locked door (which I was pretty sure was another storage room, as there had been a key labeled such on the desk in the office – I deliberately avoided said key because I prefer picking locks for the XP whenever possible) – but along the way, I saw another room off to the left that had a hole in the floor, and a ramp of broken floorboards going down. Curious, I had Victor follow the path, which took him down into the wrecked public bathroom (which had a stash with a toothbrush in it in one of the sinks – appropriate), and then even farther down into the basement! My joy at finding a new area was rapidly tempered by the reveal that part of the basement was flooded, though, and I immediately got out the Sniper just in case any mirelurks showed up. Fortunately, there were no giant crabs down there to ruin my day, and I was free to have Victor explore in peace, finding a hatch that led back up into The Fens; a staircase up to a doorway leading to the behind-the-counter area; a couple of shelves with some dirty water and a Novice-locked toolbox with more glue in it; and a hole leading to the corpse pit area. I explored the latter, but there was nothing interesting in the corpse pit beyond the corpses, sadly. So I had Victor climb out and start toward the stairs again –

H) And then I was like, “Vic. You’re right next to the paint mixer. Just get Abbot’s paint already.” XD So I had Victor grab the blue paint that the game was prompting him to get, then grab some yellow paint and mix those up into green paint in the mixing machine. (Which is an OPTIONAL objective by the way – you can totally just bring back yellow or blue paint and annoy Abbot. :P) Only once that was done, and I’d confirmed the green paint was in my inventory, THEN did I have Victor head up the stairs and go unlock that Advanced door at the end of the hall. He broke a few bobby pins doing it, but he got it open and headed inside, to find some fancy wooden filing cabinets, a table with a bottlecap mine and a duffel bag with ammo and frag grenades atop it and a stealth boy underneath it, and a Master-locked safe off to the right. Victor got that open too, and found a bunch of various kinds of ammo, some Pre-War money, a nice gold watch, and a .44 pistol inside. I had him snag the ammo, watch, and money –

I) And with that, he’d officially cleared the store! :D I had him head back to the office and drop through a hole in the floor to end up behind the counter on the main floor, then loop back around and head out through the front door to return to DC with his paint. However, while heading down the hill to the quest marker, I ended up turning down the wrong road, and found myself by a couple other shops on an unfamiliar street, near a tractor trailer truck that happened to have a Glowing Radroach on it. I pulled out the Deliverer (which is very good at dealing with bugs) and prepared to line up a shot with VATS –

And discovered that there was a LEGENDARY Radroach clinging to a nearby crate! I hadn’t even noticed the damn thing since it blended into the wood so well. Fortunately, both it and its companion were easily taken down with the Deliverer (though I had to have Victor line up a second VATS shot on the Legendary when the first missed), and I had Victor head over to see what his Legendary reward was. It proved to be an Enraging Double-Barreled shotgun, which gives enemies a chance to frenzy when hit – meaning they’ll attack anything near them, friend or foe. I was like “hmmm – not sure if I want to keep this, give it to someone else, or just sell it to Arturo–”

And then Ada yelled a warning and started firing her lasers, and I turned to see another radroach trying to sneak up on Victor. A radroach that was immediately flipped on its back by Ada’s laser fire. XD I had Victor finish it off, then collect all the meat for later cooking – you may not think it, but Radroach is good eating! :p

J) Anyway – with THAT surprise side adventure done, I reoriented myself and got Victor back to Diamond City (turns out I was down a little side alley not far from the entrance), and from there back to Abbot, waiting at the wall. Victor gave him the good news about the green paint, and Abbot told him to go ahead and paint the first stroke so they could see how it looked. Victor did so, and Abbot approvingly said that it was a good shade of green, and that the wall liked it. Victor said it was an honor to help, and Abbot said it was good to work with someone who had a little respect. And then gave Victor 200 caps, double what they’d agreed upon, as a bonus for getting the right shade. :) Nice!

And so the session ended with “Painting The Town” officially complete, and me ready to send Victor on to Goodneighbor to continue “The Big Dig!” Well, after parking him in the marketplace so I could do a little more buying and selling, and maybe cook up some of that radroach meat. :P Next time, we’ll get all that sorted, then head off to join Bobbi and Mel in their tunnels!

Writing: Another Sunday playing Fallout 4, another Sunday updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the fanfic version of the game events – though, to my surprise, the trip to Hardware Town actually went quite differently for the fanfic Victor, Alice, and Ada than it did for the in-game Victor and Ada –

A) First off, when they approached Hardware Town and found Becka the “settler” outside crying for help, Victor did get into a conversation with her, where she told him that her sister was inside, trapped under a fallen shelf. And then ended up giving the game away when Victor was like “oh dear, I hope she hasn’t been found the raiders I heard were inside” and she couldn’t stop herself from making an “oh shit, he’s onto us” expression for a moment. Though Alice telling Victor that Cheshire was warning her “things aren’t what they seem to be” once Becka went inside didn’t help either. XD But yeah, no being taken by surprise for the fanfic Victor!

B) Second, having been warned there was an ambush waiting for them within, Victor decided the best thing to do was to split the party, sending Ada around the back to see what might be there while he and Alice followed Becka in to “spring the trap” and take care of the raiders inside. Ada thus was the one to hear the story about Sound Effects Guy (with his rock grenades and fake motorcycle) and take out the raiders telling it, while Victor and Alice took out the raiders in the store itself (Victor shooting a couple like in my game, and Alice draining the remaining two – Demo and Becka, not that they ever learned Demo’s name). *thumbs up* Teamwork!

C) Third, once all the raiders were dead, Ada had rejoined the others (after spooking them by banging on the back door to be let in – guys, she doesn’t have proper hands, she probably can’t handle doorknobs), and they’d discovered the terrible corpse pit in the floor, the gang split up again to explore the place – Alice getting all the goodies out of the upstairs hallway, while Ada checked out the basement and Victor searched the back room. Because, well, why wouldn’t they do so, they’re all independent beings here instead of one player-controlled character and his constantly-following companion. :p Teamwork again!

D) Fourth, as a result of not having to do all the exploring himself, Victor mixed up the paint BEFORE he went to bed (though he did still have that “one Nuka-Cola in case of trouble” earlier, so he still went to sleep around midnight), and he mixed up multiple cans of it, because, well, you wouldn’t bring back just ONE can to Abbot, now would you? That’d be silly, given how much paint he needs. (I was actually tempted to do this in-game, but I didn’t bother because I’m pretty sure you can’t give Abbot any more green paint after his quest is completed – which is a bit of a shame, as it would be a good way to get a few extra caps.)

E) And fifth, on the way back to Diamond City the next morning, the gang did encounter the radroaches, but Victor found the shotgun that was supposed to be on the Legendary in the crate that the roach was clinging to, as that was slightly more realistic. He’s thinking he’s probably gonna sell it to Arturo, which, fair. :p

So yeah – fanfic version of the raid on Hardware Town went a lot smoother than the game version thanks to the power of teamwork! And me not having to reload reality to fix things when Victor put down his port-a-potty wrong. XD (Actually, I don’t think I mentioned him needing to use it in the fanfic version of events at all – we’ll just assume he did off-screen somewhere. :P) And Abbot still ended up with his paint, which is nice. :) Next time, Victor may do a little more buying and selling in the market, then it’s off to Goodneighbor for the Big Dig! Should be fun. :)

YouTube: Ended up managing a Sunday THREE today, yay –

A) First up, before my workout, I was indeed able to catch up with the Josh Way video that I wasn’t able to watch earlier – “I’m Still Here Movie Review!” Josh’s thoughts on a movie that came out at the end of last year (but which only recently reached theaters where he lives in southern New York), which is an adaptation of the memoir of a Brazilian writer, which details his family’s experiences under the fascist government that ruled Brazil in the 70s. Basically, the father of the family at the time was a former congressman who was eventually taken away by those in charge (because, you know, potential threat), and that incident affects the family for decades to come, all of which is detailed in the film. Josh said that this a heavy movie, but an excellent one – it is directed amazingly, it is acted amazingly, and the story is done extremely well. It’s a very sad movie – he admitted to weeping during one point – and it is of course in Portuguese, the language of Brazil, so be prepared for subtitles, but in Josh’s view this is a perfect straightforward drama about real people dealing with real stuff, and he strongly encourages people to see it. And the comments are FULL of Brazilian people thanking him for his kind review, so that’s nice too. :) If you’re up for it, maybe go check it out!

B) Then, after supper, we had the Sunday GrayStillPlays Happy Wheels episode – “When you spend too much time on your phone!” Some really good boards in this one, with the best being:

I. a surprisingly-long “hand-drawn freeze fall” by MAXIMPIG (where Discount Indiana Jones had to fall through increasingly large floors of cubes, which froze in place mid-fall faster and faster – poor dude got decapitated a good number of times before Gray finally reached the bottom)

II. a rainbow rope swing that was full of rainbow conveyor belts, separating floors, X-shaped spinny things, and blades tucked away in the clouds (really well done, and also surprisingly long – Gray had to try quite a few times to make it to the heavenly win)

III. an “unusual spike fall” by DodgeChallenger_R1 (who had a couple of boards in this episode), which featured not only the usual katanas, but a bunch of harpoons and an upward yeeter at the bottom (Gray had to spend some time finding JUUUUST the right angle to drop down to avoid certain death)

IV. and of course the Dylan Snider board of the week, “Escape The TikTok Memes,” which was a beautifully done series of levels where Segway Nixon had to survive a trip through that “Sprunki” music game that Gray played once (though fortunately we didn’t get any visits from the extra-fucked-up versions of the characters), Among Us (avoiding an impostor leaping between vents), and a weird chicken nugget game (where he had to roll the very heavy nugget up a hill – pretty sure Gray played a game like that too, back in the day??).

So yeah, just some really interesting and really pretty boards this time around – I am impressed, Happy Wheels community!

C) And finally, to wrap things up, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: London - Part 31 - The Mountbatten Mystery!” The continuing (if surprisingly short tonight – episode was only 31 minutes long) adventures of Lady Aria as she –

I. Decided to not only explore her options faction-wise (as Jon had learned from the comments that you got could get locked into a major faction very early on in their quest line, and he didn’t want to commit to Angel before even MEETING Camelot and the 5th Column) but companion-wise! Because, well, she’d gotten Kiera’s awesome companion perk and completed her personal quest line, meaning there wasn’t much else Aria could do with her. :( So upon exiting Dr. Herbertson’s lab, Aria accepted a courier message from Smythe telling her to head down to the London Aquarium to figure out why there was some sort of mysterious signal coming from the lab hidden in it when said lab had been shut down years ago – then completely ignored it in favor of heading to the Hackney Checkpoint to pick up the fancy ghoul companion she’d rescued there so long ago, Arthur Mountbatten! She sent Kiera off to Convent Gardens to keep Archie company (Kiera taking her dismissal well, to Jon’s relief), then prepared to take Arthur down to Richmond so she could check in with Camelot –

Only to get immediately distracted by the fact that there were two pubs in the general area she could raid for coasters, PLUS a Ministry of Defence Bunker in an old tube station nearby. XD Yup, I know that feeling very, very well. Too many interesting places to explore in these damn games!

II. Went investigating the Defence Bunker while also trying to figure out just what it was Arthur approved of so she could get him to like her more! Might as well get a head start on getting that perk, right? The two thus descended into the former tube station to see what was what down there –

And quickly found it was full of hostile “Industrialists,” a gang that really seems to favor fire given how many of them had flamers and molotov cocktails. O.o Aria and Arthur managed to eventually wipe out the gang though (Aria using some of her own explosives to speed up the job a bit), then investigated the place. It proved to be not that interesting, with the terminal inside indicating that it had only been used for storing supplies, with no real hints of any secret evil experiments or other catastrophes to spice things up. The closest Jon could come to guessing at what had gone wrong was noting that the nearby parking garage had some oversized ladybirds and a handful of rad barrels in it, meaning maybe the people inside just fell victim to the mutating wildlife. *shrug* The trip was not wasted, though – Aria found the corpse of a Legendary Famished that the Industrialists had fought inside, which happened to have a Powered leg piece (which is one of the better legendary effects – maybe not better than the Assassin’s one she already had, but she decided to carry both just in case); she was able to collect tons of flamer fuel and a flamethrower to give to Arthur so he too could set all comers on fire (missing Kiera and her awesome flamer times already, huh?); and while wandering about, she got the idea to ask Arthur about himself so she could get a better idea of what he liked –

And discovered that he really enjoyed talking about himself when he decided to go into the entire history of his family in response to the query. Starting in the Dark Ages, when they were a peasant clan of blacksmiths who specialized in making horse mounts, and moving on through his great-great-grandfather, who survived the trenches of World War I despite terrible odds. XD Aria was like “wow, that’s amazing” once he finally finished his rambling speech and quietly noted down “find more opportunities to let him talk about himself” in the old mental checklist. XD Worse ways to get somebody to like you!

III. Raided the nearby pubs to get the all-important coasters within! The first one they went to was The Blind Beggar (though some of the local wags had converted it to The Blind “Bugger”), which just had a load of skeletons and a handful of ghouls in it, plus the Perception coaster (which Jon was very happy to get) – but the second one, The Shipmate, proved to be in Beefeater (aka cannibal) territory. Forcing Aria and Arthur to murder a bunch of Beefeaters both outside and inside the pub, while avoiding being stabbed by their flag-spears. But with the help of Scaramanga and the flamer, all the enemies were taken out, and Aria was able to claim the Hooligan Coaster and its +5% outgoing limb damage for herself. Even better, she was able to learn another thing that Arthur liked in all the mess – drinking! Yes, Arthur very much enjoys it when Aria downs whiskey or rum or vodka. Armed with this knowledge, Aria gathered as much booze as she could from the pubs, then headed over to the Whitechapel Off-License they’d passed on the way to The Shipmate to collect more –

Only to discover that, in this world, what was supposed to be a booze store was more of a corner shop, and had a lot less booze and a lot more ferals in it. Ah well, she tried! And frankly, she should have more than enough alcohol on her to keep her drunk enough for Arthur’s tastes already. :p

IV. Realized that, since she was already in 5th Column territory (she’d spotted some of the members wandering around complaining about things around town while on her coaster raids), she might as well go talk to THEM first instead of Camelot and see what they’re all about. Even if Jon is already pretty wary of them, because none of the other factions seem to like them, and their general dress is indicative of the Blackshirts, an old British fascist group, soooo – yeah. *grimace* But he was determined not to judge them before he even got to know them, so – after a moment spent fighting Hooligans in a nearby parking lot that for some reason made some of the special effects (like the fire from Arthur’s flamethrower) go all wibbly and super-big for some reason, and finding some dead Angel clones and a corporal nearby for some reason (making Jon wonder if Angel was getting a little more open and fighty with the other factions now that it had Aria nominally on-sides) – Aria started the trip to find their headquarters and speak to whoever was in charge!

Aaand once again immediately got distracted by stuff on the way. XD Specifically:

a. An emergency bunker that, when picked open, revealed itself to be a little safe house with a water pump and a stove and everything...that was the site of a surprise Hooligan ambush. Apparently they were waiting for someone to try to get in so they could kill them. Either that or Aria broke into their house. XD However, the Hooligans were very much outclassed by Aria and Arthur, and they easily swept through the gang and left their terrible Legendary Duelist gear behind as they continued on their way.

b. A creepy hospital with some very tough cultists outside – and the creepy red miasma of tunnel-cough-causing radiation around and inside it. Aria actually picked up a temporary, mild case (losing -1 HP periodically until the effect wore off) by poking around the front door without her gas mask – Jon was appropriately spooked by this and reminded himself to stick that thing on whenever he saw the telltale red dots in the air! He was also appropriately spooked by the cultists’ set-up inside the hospital, which involved multiple cases of creepy mannequins being arranged in creepy ways creepily in various locations, and a room near the top with a machine that was giving off massive amounts of radiation...and had a number of crisped, cowering corpses inside. Jon was, uh, pretty sure the cultists were using that as a human sacrifice room. *wince* At least Aria got both a level-up (which Jon spent IMMEDIATELY on “Rifleman 4” so he didn’t forget and leave it until the beginning of the next episode again) and another Cutethulhu for her collection out of it! Hopefully at some point she finishes off the quest featuring those little guys. I’m very curious about how Lovecraftian it actually gets.

But yes – after those two diversions, Aria found her way to the 5th Column recruitment center...where Jon chose to end the episode. Because he apparently felt that was the appropriate cliffhanger. XD But next week, Aria will be talking to the 5th Column recruiters, along with visiting the Jack The Ripper Museum (which just so happens to be IMMEDIATELY NEXT DOOR), and maybe even revisiting the nearby Tower of London, as the commenters have been suggesting she should take another look inside. We’ll see what happens next Sunday!

Workout: Back on the bike again this week, starting things off with the latest GrayStillPlays compilation – “100 ways to become a criminal!” A collection of games that have at least some crime in them to justify the title. XD Today I got through Gray playing a gas station simulator (where he did get robbed a couple of times, yes, but I think the real crime was how much money he earned for giving people too much of the wrong type of coffee in their cup and putting diesel fuel in motorcycles); a “cop at a checkpoint” simulator (where he was tasked with stopping criminals, but instead let everyone with bad IDs and guns go while he concentrated on earning enough money to turn his cop into Elsa); and part of Sneak Thief, where you play as a criminal invading museums and labs to steal the goofiest things within (Gray is making his thief the speediest person on the planet and is looking forward to when they can get a folding chair to knock out the cops in their way). Fun stuff, though a rather short compilation – it’s only an hour and eleven minutes long, and I’m already halfway through it. We’ll see what the second half brings tomorrow!

Pretty typical Sunday, I think you'll agree. But do I feel I genuinely had more time for everything I wanted to do today by playing Fallout 4 before lunch instead of after? The answer is --

"Kind of, but not really." Yeah, I definitely don't think I would have fit in the Josh Way video had I played FO4 later in the day -- but I don't particularly like that I wasn't able to do anything on my VLA(NS) drafts today, and it really felt like my write-up of my playsession and the subsequent fanfic update kind of expanded to fill as much of the available time as possible. Though I will admit that I was a bit more distracted than usual today...and rather more tired too, especially now. Bottom line, I don't know how much benefit I'm actually getting with the earlier playsession, so maybe I'll just leave it up to how I feel any particular Sunday when I play Fallout 4. *shrug* We'll see what happens!

And with that, I really do need to be off, because I'm definitely not getting to bed any earlier tonight. XD Night all!