Dad Is Home Once More

Though he came home later than expected -- mostly because they did his chemo late in the afternoon, and then it took forever to find someone to take out his IV line. *sigh* He was pretty annoyed, as was Mom. And then, when they did make it back home, Dad was pretty exhausted and rather out of it from his meds and everything. Didn't manage to eat much supper and kept falling asleep on the couch. :( We're hoping that he feels better tomorrow so we can have game night and get some Chinese from our favorite place, but -- we will see.

As for what I accomplished today -- well, I vacuumed the kitchen rug at Mom's request this morning (and discovered a few things left on the floor, including a coaster in the radiator -- I KNEW we had four!). And then I went online and did all of this --

Tumblr: Got stuff done on both my tumblrs, shock and awe –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Had a good productive time over here today, accomplishing three things of note:

A) First, I decided to solve the problem of “I forgot to queue something up for Friday over here yesterday; what do” by reblogging all the various “text post meme” posts that inspired the collection of “Valicer As Text Posts” pictures I made two Fridays ago (you know, when the shit hit the fan and Dad first had to be checked into the hospital) – the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency one by thecarnivalcryptid; the Elder Scrolls one by freerainhl; the Baldur’s Gate III one by sappho-official; and the Assassin’s Creed one by of-stars-and-seas – before editing the opening of my own “Valicer As Text Posts: The Return” post to reflect my little reblog spree and posting that as well! So yeah, today ended up being “Text Post Meme Friday” over on my blog. XD Which, happily, means I can finally share my latest collection of Valicer text post memes with you all – you can see it here!

B) Then, right before lunch, I took some time and finally finished off my post on “The Miseries Of Margaret Kelman (AKA What Happened To Smiler’s Birth Mother?),” which involved –

I. Adding in a final link to a playlist I found on YouTube that has both Kelman’s “greeting” video from The Sanctuary scare maze and the “Smile. Always” mini-series that Alton Towers used to promote The Smiler to the part where I talked about who Kelman is and why I made him Smiler’s sire in the “Londerland Bloodlines” AU

II. Writing the final few paragraphs explaining poor Margaret’s fate in most of the universes she would be a part of (basically, Kelman does some immoral brain surgery when he sees her struggling with depression post-Smiler’s birth and either kills her or turns her into a vegetable), and how the worst part is that Smiler believes Margaret actually abandoned them to get away from Kelman in those universes (because Kelman is not going to own up to performing surgery on her to them!)...and how poor VITD Smiler is going to be absolutely horrified to find out the truth, to the point where they have to slip off and have a cry about it :(

III. Finalizing the tags – adding in some “medical” and “brain surgery” trigger warnings and talking about how I know that Margaret’s fate can sound a bit like the classic “woman horribly killed off to horrify man close to her and further his story” trope, but that was not my intention and it’s just how her role in most of my human Smilers’ backstories evolved, because Kelman IS the kind of person who would happily “correct” his own wife. And that I’m glad there was at least ONE universe where I could unequivocally let her get away due to how I structured it. (And that I was probably going to let her get away in “Londerland Bloodlines” too, because the poor woman deserved it.)

So that’s all set and can be dropped into a future queue to horrify everyone! Yay!

C) And finally, late tonight, I went ahead and queued up that post by shutyourmoustache, featuring the TikTok of OK Go’s iconic “dancing on treadmills” music video with added text commentary by the band (the OP said that it gave her VH1 Pop-Up video vibes, which, yeah, it does), as my Song Saturday offering. Nice and simple, and I will never say no to having more OK Go on my blog. :)

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had one anon ask to put into the queue: “What are Modern Victor’s thoughts on pianists past the Victorian Era?” As I’m not that familiar with modern pianists, I did a little research, and eventually had my Cuddlepile!Victor (my main modern one) praise Manny Perahia, who does lovely interpretations of Bach; Yanni, who does some fun, more experimental stuff – and has a song called “Butterfly Dance” which is quite nice (Victor stressed he did not like it just because of the name XD); and Ralph Zurmühle, who is more in the traditional classical vein but composes his own work – his song “Horizon” is very pretty. :) Did not expect to find some cool new music as the result of a tumblr ask, but here we are! I’m not complaining.

Writing: Twas another day where I got two writing-related things done –

A) First, post-lunch, I edited more of Chapter 3 of “The Van Dort Vacancy,” covering –

I. Alice discovering that what she initially thought was just a hallucination of the Deluded Depths was in fact the Van Dort’s very real aquarium greenhouse full of radiant fish that Smiler could very much see too – the pair were pretty much in shock over the scale of it (the last one Alice saw only had two walls’ worth of fish – she never imagined anybody would make one where even the ROOF was part of the aquarium), and Alice pointed out that if any of the glass cracked even slightly, the Van Dorts were in serious trouble

II. The pair getting discovered by the very man they’d been tracking, who noted that, after hearing their conversation, they were as likely to be Van Dort servants as he was – that was, not at all – and asking what their game was – the pair promptly replied, “it depends on what YOURS is,” with Smiler explaining that they’d followed him in to figure out what he was up to, as they had a friend in the house and didn’t want him getting hurt or inconvenienced. The guy said he wasn’t expecting on anyone getting hurt – though he made no promises – but inconvenienced was a possibility, and asked for the friend’s name –

And I left off with Barnaby showing up right before Smiler could admit it was the Van Dort’s son. XD I’ve only got a little over a page to go in this chapter now – hoping next week we might see it posted! We’ll see what happens!

B) And second, a little after that, I added two new scene ideas to the BG3 Master Doc – Smiler admitting they’re the “discount cleric” version of a warlock (because they are trying to hype up Mar-Mal to the masses, like a cleric might with their god), and Smiler going “irony of my life – I only cast Friends on people I don’t want to be friends with.” Hopefully one day I will be able to write these!

Fallout: New Vegas: Returned to the Mojave for the final time this week, to have Courier Victor set up everything for the grand fight between Goodsprings and the Powder Gangers pursuing Ringo! Which involved reading a few skill magazines and doing a lot of talking...let me take you through it:

A) I started off where I left off – with Victor in the Poseidon Energy gas station, waiting for Ringo to wake up from his victory nap after the guy beat him at Caravan at the end of my last session. XD While he was waiting, I had him look through the various shelves at the items available to grab, and found another skill magazine that he could take – Boxing Times, which boosts one’s Unarmed skill! I – don’t think this will be particularly relevant to Victor, who will be wanting to avoid fisticuffs, but still. You never know. XD After picking that up, though, I noticed Ringo was awake and lounging on the floor by the shelves on the other side of the room, so I had Victor head over and – after grabbing another bent tin can from the floor by Ringo’s feet – ask, “Did you know there’s a man named Joe Cobb looking for you?” Ringo confirmed he did, noting, “He doesn’t look very tough, though. I hear he’s afraid I’ll shoot him down from one of the windows when I see him, and he’s right” –

But then confessed, “I’ll have a much bigger problem once his friends show up. There’s no way I could handle all of them in a gunfight.” Victor was like, “why are the Powder Gangers after you in the first place?” and Ringo explained that his caravan was returning from California, heading back to the New Vegas branch of the company he works for, when they were jumped. “Not even a ‘drop your weapons and hands up’ before the bullets started flying. We put up a good fight, but there was too many of them. I took a few of the bandits down before I ran, so I figure their friends are out for revenge.” Victor thought that made sense and asked what Ringo planned to do, and he admitted that his only plan was to “lay low for as long as I can, assuming the town doesn’t throw me to the wolves. I’ve got no chance against the gang on my own.” Which didn’t sound good –

And prompted Victor, who’d just been jumped and nearly killed by a gang of assholes himself, to offer his help. Ringo pointed out that “We'd just end up sharing the same grave if it's just the two of us” before adding, “Now, if some of the other people in town were also on board…” Victor promised to ask around and see who he could round up, and Ringo suggested starting with good old Sunny Smiles, as she’d been friendlier than most to him. Victor took that under advisement and – having finished the conversation – grabbed a fission battery and some whiskey off the nearby shelf and some BlamCo Mac & Cheese and some dirty water from a sack on the counter before heading out the door! What – a man needs his supplies before starting a gunfight. :p

( The usual sparing of the reading pages )

Workout: Final night on the bike this week, final night with The Adventures of Useless Steve this week as I finished off “Fallout: New Vegas - The Worst Courier - Part 4 - The Doomsday Device!” The last chunk of which featured:

A) Useless Steve showing off one of the most obscure interactions you can have with an NPC in the game, and how complicated it is to get it! Basically, you have to be a Low Intelligence character (1 or 2 in the stat); then you have to get to the Boomers at Nellis and agree to help out around their base; then you have to go to the medical tent there and somehow convince the local doctor to let you help him with his patients (either by having a high enough Medicine skill to convince him you know what you’re doing, or a high enough Speech skill to straight up lie to him that you know more than him – Steve went with the latter option with the help of a copy of Meeting People); then get your hands on a knife or other bladed weapon (Steve managed to get one from the table in the medical tent, but DAMN did it take him a while with his pathetically low Sneak); THEN make sure you were holding it (that is, didn’t have it sheathed) when you went to check on the Boomer in the middle row of beds, with an injured leg that was probably going to need to be amputated. Then, and ONLY then, can you get the option to CHOP! CHOP! CHOP! in order to treat said injured leg –

And said wild frantic chopping actually helps enough that the guy is allowed to keep his limb. The doctor himself comments on how that was pure straight-up dumb luck. XD Jon was delighted that such an obscure thing could be found in this game.

B) Useless Steve then leaving Nellis (because he couldn’t do shit for the other two patients, they sadly have no Low Intelligence options) and locating the Brotherhood Patrol in the field just outside the fence (having been bombed by the local) so he could take their power armor and sell it to the Gun Runners Protectron at their little store – then, realizing that he was having problems both making lots of money AND getting around undetected, deciding that his best option for solving both problems was to head back to Novac and do “Come Fly With Me,” the quest to send Jason Bright and his ghoul followers streaking off into the sky. Even though all the ghouls would be detecting him like immediately thanks to his abysmal Sneak and thus he couldn’t just snipe them off. Good thing he had the Q-35 to gooify them right quick!

C) Useless Steve trekking up to the REPCONN Test Site – killing some feral ghouls and gathering useful things to sell from the little checkpoint along the way – then using the power of ARCHIMEDES II to murder two of the ferals around the front of the building because he couldn’t get a good bead on them with his BB gun sniper. XD Well, I suppose if he’s got the superweapon, he may as well USE it! Even if it’s on a couple of ferals that probably could have been taken out by easier means. XD

D) Useless Steve then clearing out the area around the building with his 10mm submachine gun before looting all the Bright Brotherhood bodies around the shop for goodies like plasma rifles – he ended up having to leave his shovel on one corpse and then fast travel back to the Gun Runners shop to sell everything to make sure he had enough carry weight to pick up things inside the main building. Got him above 2,000 caps AND completed a challenge to sell things to people using his Barter skill, though, so that was good!

E) Useless Steve then heading inside the main Test Site building to kill the ghouls, loot the Bright Brotherhood bodies, and pick up as many Stealth Boys as he could find around the place so he had an ice cube’s chance in Hell of actually SNEAKING somewhere. Oh, and also do the main quest, since that was a nice pile of XP. XD This involved:

I. An incident early on where Steve got detected by some ghouls before he could even see them, missed a 95% chance-to-hit shot at one of the ghoul’s heads in VATS, and then, while backing away so he could reload his Q-35 and shoot again, stepping into a bear trap he’d originally managed to avoid. XD Good thing he had gotten himself some good combat armor from the Boomers previously!

II. Steve discovering piles of microfusion cells on practically every Bright Brotherhood corpse he came across, and being unable to stop himself from picking them up because that’s what his beloved Q-35 used; as a result, he kept going over weight capacity (as he was picking up their guns as well to sell later), leading to him getting addicted to Whiskey again as he tried to get himself more room to pick stuff up

III. Steve completing the “Energetic” challenge to kill enemies with energy weapons while fighting some ghouls in the big room with all the stairs, earning some bonus XP and causing Jon to comment that this was probably the first time he’d ever just straight-up skipped guns and gone to energy weapons this early in the game – he enjoyed the change

IV. Steve getting lucky and getting two “random drop” Stealth Boys off some of the corpses (well, ash pile and corpse) around – which was good, because he unfortunately couldn’t get the one locked in the safe in the CEO’s office, as his lockpicking simply was not up for the job, and he needed to burn one to get past all the Nightkin in the basement so he could talk to their leader, Davison, after being tasked to clear them out by Jason Bright (Jon rather liked how the invisibility effect looked on the Q-35)

V. Steve just straight-up killing Harland, the ghoul who tasks you with finding his dead girlfriend in the Nightkin prison, because yeah, he was never going to be able to sneak around in there, and then very carefully making his way around all the guy’s traps (including “disarming” a few bombs and tripwires with the power of shooting them with a gun) so he could learn from his terminal that the Stealth Boy stockpile was never at REPCONN – the shipment was sent back (after a few sneaky employees took a few for their own use) – and also take the hunting rifle off the guy’s body, which meant he ended up over weight capacity AGAIN. XD Poor hoarder Steve, he was not built for this

VI. Steve upsetting a Nightkin RIGHT before reaching Davison to tell him about the lack of Stealth Boys in the building – fortunately, Steve made it into the room before the Nightkin could murder him, and telling Davison that they would have to look farther afield for their Stealth Boys chilled them out, so Steve didn’t get his ass handed to him by an invisible super mutant

VII. Steve doing a lot of running around to help finish off the quest (up and down the building following his employers, into Novac and over to Old Lady Gibson’s scrapyard to get the parts they needed), with Jon explaining that the reason this quest was like that was because it was the first major quest the developers worked on and thus they didn’t QUITE know what they were doing – hence, it’s kind of rough around the edges and involves going back and forth a lot. At least the trip to Novac allowed Steve to sell some of the crap he’d picked up – which was good, as he both needed the storage capacity and the caps to pay Old Lady Gibson for the parts he needed from her

VIII. Steve finishing up the quest by mashing the buttons on the navigation computer the ghouls were using to direct their rockets because it made him feel better – at least, until he managed to break it. XD Fortunately this did not seem to affect the launch of the rockets at all, and Steve successfully completed the quest, earned a good reputation with Novac, and got enough XP to level up to Level 8! Jon desperately wanted to raise Sneak, but acknowledged that he had to get Speech and Lockpick moving in the right direction too – in the end, he raised Speech to 35 and Sneak to 18, and took another round of Intense Training to get his Endurance up to 3, making him less squishy and allowing him to eventually get another implant to fix his horrible stats

F) Useless Steve then finishing up his looting in the building, grabbing more laser rifles and plasma rifles and microfusion cells (soooo many microfusion cells – Jon was like “I thought I was coming here for guns to sell and Stealth Boys, but it seems that the real treasure was all the ammo for my favorite gun”) – he ended up merging the laser rifles and using the plasma rifle to maintain his Q-35 to save on weight, and managed to get outside and fast-travel to his favorite gun shop before all his various strength-boosting stuff wore off. Very lucky break, that!

G) And Useless Steve ending the episode by traveling back to Goodsprings to store a bunch of the microfusion cells he’d picked up in the footlocker in what was once Easy Pete’s house (RIP Easy Pete, Useless Steve is still wearing your hat) and crack open the safe inside the old schoolhouse for another Stealth Boy, discovering in the process that Cheyenne the dog was still alive (and had her eyes inside her head – that’s apparently a common glitch that can happen with her, them popping out and floating next to her face) and the giant radscorpion had FINALLY moved out, yay! Some good news for a change!

And so the episode ended with Jon declaring that Useless Steve’s next moves would be to find a way to earn loads of caps (that wasn’t gambling, as that relies on your Luck stat, and his Luck is garbage) and complete a lot of surprisingly-simple quests that reward you with a surprising amount of XP. So yeah, we’ll be picking up with that next week! Looking forward to it – especially since I can hopefully use whatever I learn to help level up my Courier Victor...

Aaand I have officially stayed up waaaaay too late due to accidentally finding someone who writes some fascinating Fallout essays on tumblr and going through their blog. *facepalm* I'm off to bed -- tomorrow is a Cleaning & Laundry Saturday, and after I finish that, I'm taking a break from video games to catch up on all the videos I've been neglecting in favor of getting the write-ups finished. That is, if I don't end up sleeping the entire day away. Night all!