Slightly Snowy Sunday

We had a bit of snow this morning, but while it looked like it might turn into something serious for a few minutes, it didn't actually amount to anything but a bit of fluff in a few spots. Halle-freaking-lujah -- we do NOT need more snow! And according to Dad, it looks like -- after tomorrow's arctic burst -- the rest of the week is going to be mostly rainy, which should help continue to melt all the snow that's still piled up outside. Though he did also mention the weather people getting nervous about ANOTHER big storm that's apparently hanging out somewhere...oh, I hope we're not going to get a third snowstorm. One each during January and February was ENOUGH. *sigh*

As for my day, I am pleased to say I accomplished pretty much everything I hoped to accomplish:

Tumblr: Twas another day when nothing happened on Valice Multiverse – but I did manage to add a couple of things to my drafts for later over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) –

A) An old post by polyshipprompts (which I found on the blog polyamorousmood) which offered up this prompt: “imagine your polyship sharing a bed for the first time and trying to figure out who should sleep where” Which I reblogged with this addition: “As per the "Sleepytime" set of Not-Incorrect Quotes I did for my OT3, Alice and Smiler very quickly figured out during that first time that if Victor didn't sleep in the middle, he stole all the covers. XD” Because yeah, that headcanon was literally the first thing I thought of when I saw the prompt. XD As per the tags (and the linked post), though, Victor actually really enjoys sleeping in the middle, as it makes him feel very safe and loved, so it all works out!

B) And the post “Secundus Sunday: A Smiler In Secundus, Part 2” because it occurred to me recently that I’d never cross-posted Gigs’s “Secundus!Smiler ends up coming home with Victor and meeting the family after the whole ‘getting a permit to sell their wares’ things” Christmas fic over on tumblr. It just kind of fell by the wayside after all the medical bullshit we’ve been dealing with. So I figured I should correct that and whipped up a post with the story and the notes on how it came to be. It’s not going up THIS Sunday because I was a little groggy earlier thanks to my late wake-up this morning, and thus I want to give the post a second look before actually posting it, but I figure it can go into the queue for NEXT Sunday this week. :)

Hooray, a few extra things to queue up if I need ‘em! :P

Writing: I made sure to edit a page on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodines: Downtown Queensland” after lunch today – today’s session included:

A) Alice getting into the “workshop” area of the museum, which initially involved navigating a dark and dingy storage space with various boxes full of potential exhibits the museum staff hadn’t gotten to yet – she wondered how long some of them had been waiting, noting one in particular had a pretty healthy layer of dust on it, which prompted Carpenter to complain about how the item inside must crave the spotlight and how the museum might as well send it back to its country of origin to see if THEY want to display it. Alice was like “we’ll see what happens once I get the sarcophagus – I somehow doubt that many places will want their precious artifacts stored here after the theft is discovered” in response

B) Alice finding a door in the wall that would have been nearly impossible to see if not for the keycard reader next to it (making her wonder if the reader should be painted to match the wall to deter thieves...before going “wait, no, you’d want the STAFF to be able to figure out where they’re going”) and using Auspex to confirm that it was the right door for her – cue the Insane Children drawing a pair of arrows pointing to the door on either side –

And a frazzled Alice face on the door itself, causing Alice to complain that that was rather contradictory of them. :P She wondered if that meant that there was a guard on the other side that she needed to watch out for, then noted that she hadn’t seen any guard-shaped outlines through the wall when she had Auspex on (reminding herself (and me) that she needed to use that aspect of the power more often, as it was useful), so maybe it was a camera she needed to hide from instead. Either way, though, she didn’t see any other doors anywhere nearby, so she took a chance and swiped her card to open it. Leading to…

C) Alice stepping through the door into a big old workroom with all sorts of stuff in it – including a big blood-spattered crate she recognized from the Elizabeth Dane – but no sarcophagus. And then being startled almost back to life by the sudden appearance of Beckett behind her, commenting on how he wasn’t sure why anyone would want to steal the “box with a very ancient corpse. This city’s not that dull.” XD She asked what the hell he was doing there, and he explained that, as an archaeologist himself, he’d wanted a look at the sarcophagus that was sending the city into a tizzy. His guess was that all that was in there was a mummified Mesopotamian king, but he needed confirmation. Alice told him that he wasn’t getting it here and asked if he was sure it was supposed to be in this room (as she’d wondered briefly if it had been moved) – he assured her that he’d had it on good authority the sarcophagus was supposed to be in here, meaning someone had stolen it – “or ‘intentionally misplaced,’ if you prefer.” XD Beckett really does have some excellent lines.

And so I left off for today with the pair staring at the empty examination table where the sarcophagus should be, wondering who took it and why! Tomorrow, Alice and Beckett start talking potential suspects before veering off into discussing how it ties into the Gehenna superstitions that Beckett hates so much. Should be fun – like I said, Beckett does have some banger lines. :p

Portal 2: My grand return to Aperture Science proved to be a little less grand than I’d expected, as I only completed two test chambers today. ^^; But they are getting a little harder, and I only played for about forty minutes (so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed trying to summarize a long gaming session and the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode later), so… *shrug* It is what it is! Today’s chambers were –

Chamber 12: Another test featuring everyone’s favorite architectural feature created from sunlight – the hard light bridge! Along with a bit of actual plot stuff before the test itself, courtesy of Wheatley sabotaging the door leading into the chamber by dumping a bunch of bird eggs into the mechanism so GLaDOS would go off and fix it and he could check in with Chell. Granted, his check in was interrupted by him being attacked by the furious mama bird, and his impassioned declaration that he was going to break him and Chell out soon was rather undercut by him admitting he still had to think of how he was going to do that, but – it was still nice to see him again. XD Anyway, he disappeared once more when GLaDOS returned and announced she’d basically killed the door mechanism for failing her, allowing Chell and I to get on with the actual test, which went like so:

( Sparing your reading pages because every game write-up I do is long )

Workout: In a surprise twist this Sunday, I ended up watching two videos with my workout today – mostly because Jon was a little late uploading the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode again today, which led to me watching one short video I found in my Recommendeds while seeing if it would pop up or not. So today’s workout saw me pedal my way through:

A) The entirety of “GLaDOS Actor Reacts to Your Comments” by Fall Damage! A seven-minute video of voice actress Ellen McLain, voice of GLaDOS, responding to various YouTube comments about her role! Including:

I. “I can’t believe the voice actor for a murderous robot villain is just a nice old lady I love that” by mothbrain – Ellen jokingly responded that she only pretends to be nice >D

II. “Imagine they used AI voice instead of a voice actor. Her performance was so incredible” by keith3915 – this one made Ellen reveal that, at the time the original Portal was made, you had to license the only true AI voice out there, meaning it was actually cheaper for Valve to hire an actual voice actress to play GLaDOS and then just run her voice through a filter. Ellen apparently got the job by virtue of sounding the most like the robot voice! Good for her!

III. “The worst part about Portal 1 and 2 is that you can never play them for the first time again” by rubric167 – Ellen said that was so sweet...and then revealed she’d never played the games herself. Her husband, fellow voice actor John Patrick Lowry (The Sniper in Team Fortress 2) has, but Ellen just couldn’t get past the first room when she attempted the original. Apparently she’s “sort of a technophobe,” which is very amusing given GLaDOS must be the role she’s most famous for now.

IV. And “The TF2 announcer is pretty much the only person I could imagine playing chess with Glados” by gilamasan – after having fun trying to figure out how to pronounce their name, Ellen admitted that the Administrator – whom she ALSO voices – would probably give GLaDOS a run for her money, martini in one hand and cigarette in the other. And that the Administrator is one of the toughest characters on her voice (along with the Broodmother spider-monster from DOTA 2).

It was a fun little video, and I am glad that I got the chance to watch it. :)

B) And the first twenty-four minutes of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 32 - The Beginning of the End” by Jon of Many A True Nerd, with the final fourteen minutes watched after supper! As is my wont. *nods* Today’s episode saw our favorite drunken melee courier P. D. Shoot tackle the first of her two finales in this series – wrapping up the main game with an NCR win at the Second Battle Of Hoover Dam! A dangerous task which involved:

I. P. D. descending into the very deepest level of the Dam to report to Cassandra Moore that President Kimball was safe (as she stopped his assassination last episode) while Jon explained how this made the NCR ending probably the most dangerous for old P. D. – mostly because, rather than starting at the top of the Dam as she would if she was doing the House or Yes Man endings, and fighting her way across to the Legion camp at the other side, she would first have to fight her way back up to the top of the Dam through all the Legion invading the place and then make her way across! There were four extra zones worth of Legion she would have to face off against! (He didn’t mention how the ending would have worked if she’d stayed with the Legion rather than turning on them rather last-minute, but I presume it would have involved fighting her way into Hoover Dam to take it from the NCR – another not-ideal situation!) Meaning there was a non-zero chance that P. D. was going to find herself wrapped up in at least one firefight she couldn’t avoid. Jon had a route in mind for her to follow while trying to get out of the power plant, and failsafes in the form of her Stealth Boys and precious Turbo, but he fully admitted that P. D. getting through this ending was not guaranteed! (Though, on the plus side, he was able to show off how, if you get into the lower levels of the Dam, you can slip out a side door and take a look at the actual dam itself from the bottom. It’s pretty cool, honestly!)

II. P. D. then reporting to Cassandra that the president had survived the assassination attempts last episode and safely evacuated, resulting in her getting her orders to report to the newly-arrived General Oliver as soon as possible, and triggering the game’s “hey, you’re locking in fighting with the NCR during the Second Battle of Hoover Dam and getting their ending – if there is anything else you want to do, now is the time to back out and go do it” warning pop-up. P. D., content in getting a save at that exact moment that she could warp back to once this whole mess was over, told the pop-up she was ready, then went to talk to General Oliver, who informed her that – thanks to the work she’d done for them – the NCR had an opportunity to assault the Fort and take the fight to the Legion. He revealed that he’d called in all their allies, and once they arrived, they’d start their plans for the big push in earnest –

Aaaand then cue one of the maintenance workers rushing in to tell the General, “So the Legion are invading us through the clogged intake tunnels, and their leader the Legate has set up a camp on the eastern bank.” Welp, so much for a surprise attack on the Legion, eh, Oliver? XD P. D. was thus tasked to get to the camp and take out the Legate to hamstring the attack –

And then was promptly warped via cutscene into a nearby room where panicking engineer Mike Lawson told her about the Legion coming in through the intake tunnels and how someone needed to stop them, preferably by finding a way to restart the turbines and shred the incoming Legion...which P. D. had no interest in doing, because Jon did not feel that side objective was in any way worth it. It would just put her in more danger than she already was! She said she’d try just to keep Mike off her back, but – yeah. No turbine murder for you, Mike!

III. P. D. then backing into a corner the moment she left the conversation and slapping on a Stealth Boy to prepare for her stealth mission back up to the top of Hoover Dam...followed by her having to do a dose of Turbo to maneuver around all the Legionnaires pouring into the room through its one door. Mostly because, for this portion of the final fight, the game cheated and basically subconsciously told all the Legionnaires where she was, meaning – even if they couldn’t actually detect her, they still automatically went to her position. It’s like how a couple of the enemies in “Lonesome Road” just KNOW where to aim to give the Courier a bad time – I think it’s intended to FORCE the player character into helping out instead of letting the NPCs do all the work. P. D. however, was like “fuck that” and simply speed-crouch-walked past all the various fights, passing through every door on her way up that Jon knew would spawn friendly NCR reinforcements instead of Legionnaire enemies. She made it past almost all of the nonsense in her way without much trouble, though she did have to take a second dose of Turbo to shake a conga line of Legionnaires who were tracking her thanks to their game-given “we can tell where you are even if we can’t actually detect you” powers –

And then she went to go into the Visitor’s Center level and the game crashed. XD Figures, eh? Fortunately the game had autosaved fairly recently, so she just had to trek her way through the final power plant again (and THIS time, there were a few friendly NCR lads hanging out ready to fight the Legionnaires trying to follow her – though she still took that second dose of Turbo, just to be safe), and her second attempt to get into the Visitor’s Center went just fine. *whew* Glad that game crash didn’t screw her over – New Vegas is gonna New Vegas, people!

IV. P. D. then reaching the top of the Dam, greeting the arriving Great Khans, and proceeding across to the eastern bank to get into the Legate’s camp! Which at first involved her taking the road running along the side of the Dam so she didn’t have to get involved in the fighting –

Before deciding, “Eh, I should probably help out if I can” and hopping over the wall onto the sandbag-wall-covered top of the Dam itself to weave through the Legionnaires and punch a few of them into the stratosphere. XD This strategy did not always work out for her – punching off the head of a Legionnaire near the door to the second half of the Dam put her into [CAUTION] because his buddy noticed the death (I mean, how could you MISS it?), while trying to help out Alpha Squad (who’d she’d just Speech checked into trying to overwhelm the oncoming Legion by pushing the advance on them – aka, running forward to serve as decoys as she snuck past) by punching the three Legionnaires trying to attack them resulted in two misses despite a 95% chance to hit (Jon was absolutely BAFFLED, but I think at least one of them just moved out of position before she could pull off the punch) – but she did kill a few (including the ones she missed previously)! And between that, all her allies drawing fire, and her Stealth Boy making her much harder to detect, she made it over to the other side of the dam, past the one Legionnaire who runs down to the bottom of the Dam instead of joining the fight at the top (Jon doesn’t know why that happens but thinks it’s hilarious) and the Legionnaire and his dog guarding the front gate, and into the camp! Yay!

V. P. D. then crouch-running through the Legate’s camp, killing a few lone Legionnaires standing around and using her Repair skill to lock the Legion Mongrels inside their little pen so they couldn’t get out and cause trouble, before quickly reading a “Meeting People” magazine to raise her Speech to 100 and doing a final dose of Turbo (via Implant GRX, because Jon suddenly remembered “oh right, I got that perk at the end of last episode, I should, you know, MAKE USE OF IT”) to outpace the two NCR Rangers running toward Legate Lanius so she could start the conversation with Lanius early and save their lives (because, otherwise, those two Rangers end up murdered by the Legate to show off how badass he is. Having seen Jon save them by accident recently in the “Worst Courier” series, it was kind of sweet to see him pull it off deliberately in this one!). She then proceeded to chat with Lanius and pass all the Speech checks to convince him that crushing the NCR at Hoover Dam would lead to the destruction of the Legion in the long term – mostly through telling him that, if he chose to focus his army’s efforts on holding the newly-conquered West, he’d have to give up all the hard-fought territory they’d won in the East. The empire would just be too big for the Legion to handle. Which caused Lanius to admit that the East had been a “hard-fought campaign” and that he’d already felt that Caesar had directed too many members of the army to the Mojave on the quest to take Hoover Dam. He then declared the Dam to be “just a place” and that “I will not have it be the gravestone of the Legion – whether quickly, or as you describe, slowly...by attrition.” P. D. thus convinced him there was victory in wisdom (pointedly AVOIDING the option asking if he agreed to retreat, since that would make him realize she was bullshitting him and make him challenge her to combat anyway), and he agreed to leave with his remaining troops and head back east – though he warned that, eventually, he would return to fight the NCR again, and they would meet on the battlefield once more. And if there were more people like P. D. to fight that time – perhaps it would be a worthy battle indeed. *nods* I’m glad Jon showed off the entire conversation in this run – as he himself pointed out, Legate Lanius only appears for a very short time at the end of the game, but he leaves an impression with his iconic stone mask and his excellent voice acting. And it was cool to see P. D. talk him down, even if Jon still thinks that’s a weird way to wrap up that fight. (And even if Jon also lamented for this specific run that there was no special dialogue for Couriers who did a lot of Legion work before swapping sides to the NCR. Ah well – can’t cover every weird player case in 18 months of development!)

VI. P. D. then wrapping up the mission by going back to the main gate and chatting with General Oliver once he and his rangers blew it open and came through – saying “thank you, I couldn’t have done it alone” when he praised her for helping secure the NCR’s future, before telling him that, if there was nothing else, she had to head out – and getting her ending slides! Which included:

a. The NCR, post-victory celebration, annexing the Strip and the other communities around it

b. P. D. getting the Golden Branch, the highest civilian honor the NCR had, despite her rather brutal methods not being improved of by many NCR citizens

c. The Brotherhood of Steel and the NCR managing to maintain their truce in the Mojave, with the NCR surrendering all their salvaged power armor in exchange for the Brotherhood helping to patrol the I-15 and Highway 95 to encourage trade

d. Veronica feeling better about the Brotherhood’s immediate future in the wake of the truce...but realizing there was a gap between herself and her fellows that could never been bridged, and spending much of her time hiding out in Old World libraries, researching incredible technologies she knew the Brotherhood would never use ( :( LET HER PUNCH MCNAMARA)

e. The NCR evicting the Followers of the Apocalypse from the Old Mormon Fort – and, after a little bit, Outer Vegas altogether

f. The Great Khans returning to Red Rock Canyon...only for the NCR to eventually come in, kill a bunch of them, and exile the rest to a “barren reservation” far north of their trade routes so they could have the land

g. The Nightkin, having never actually gotten a cure for their schizophrenia, leaving Jacobstown and attacking the local humans as their conditions worsened, leading to reprisal attacks on Jacobstown, eventually leading to the rest of the mutants abandoning it as well

h. The Kings and the NCR actually managing to maintain their truce in Freeside, coordinating on relief efforts to help all the citizens – and the Kings stubbornly maintaining their independence in the face of repeated NCR pushing to join the Republic (I don’t know if that extended to Freeside, given it was said to be annexed in an earlier slide, but still)

i. And Primm Slimm turning out to be a decent sheriff for Primm, even if he was so slow some criminals got away clean (Jon decided that this was the best ending for Primm and said that handing control over to a cowboy robot is obviously how you get a perfect society XD)

Yeah – a pretty mixed ending there! Though I’m glad the Kings were all right in the end – and Primm. But yes, this is just more evidence that I should do the Independent Vegas ending in my own run – the NCR do NOT seem to treat the people under their purview as well as they ought!

VII. P. D. then going back in time to the moment when the pop-up warned her she was committing to an ending and going “I’m not ready!” so she could do the remaining bits of DLC that needed doing! Though, in order to keep things fair, she stored a Stealth Boy and two doses of Turbo in Colonel Moore’s desk, so her inventory matched what it looked like at the end of the main campaign (though she did forget that she used a “Meeting People” – Jon promised he’d store one of those away too before she moved on into “Dead Money” when the comments reminded him). On the plus side, doing so allowed her to discover that Moore kept the Hoover Dam saferoom key in there, meaning Jon had once again Learned A New Thing about New Vegas. Neat! :)

VIII. And Jon ending the episode by telling all the people who have been telling him in the comments of the past few episodes, “Hey, before you go into ‘Dead Money,’ go back into ‘Lonesome Road’ and kill the super deathclaw Rawr – his hand is a quest item, so Elijah can’t take it off you, meaning you can convert it into a super-powerful deathclaw gauntlet once you’re in the Sierra Madre” that no, he will NOT be doing that. Because to him, it’s just too much of an exploit – the whole point of “Dead Money” is that you arrive in there with nothing – it’s important to both the difficulty and the story. And he wants to respect that, damn it. (...I suspect he also worries that P. D. would never be able to take on Rawr, but we’ll see what happens once he actually finishes “Lonesome Road” and actually meets the Deathclaw. XD)

And there we have it! Next week, poor Jon finally faces his fears and starts the “Dead Money” DLC. Having never seen him play it before, I am very eager to see just how terrible and painful it is. Hopefully his decision not to take the Light Step perk does NOT screw him over!

YouTube: While I don’t usually watch anything other than the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode on Sundays, today saw me watch one other video that I spotted this morning while looking for stuff to listen to as I made my bed: “Velma Losing It in the Background Is the Best Part (Scooby-Doo 2)!” A short by Heartsnreels showing a silly throw-away joke from Scooby-Doo 2 that they felt was one of the best in the movie! Basically, the gang has been captured in big rolling ball cages (don’t know why, never saw the movie), and their fellow captives (in different balls) are a Girl Scout and a pair of evangelists. The Girl Scout asks if they want to buy some cookies, followed by the evangelists asking if they’ve heard the good news –

And cue Scooby going, “Yeah! There’s cookies!” XD And yes, the actress playing Velma IS laughing in the background as he says it. XD Just a few seconds, but it was fun!

*nods* Not bad at all! Was hoping to get a bit more done on tumblr, but -- I woke up late this morning, so it is what it is. *shrug* And now I have to head to bed, as it is a work day tomorrow. Hopefully it won't be too bad...night all!