Maybe Not The Most Productive Sunday
Jul. 6th, 2025 11:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThough at least it was a very chill one -- er, in every way BUT weather-wise. Weather-wise it was quite hot. XD But I didn't have to deal with that, as we all hid in the air conditioning all day. I dealt with all the following stuff instead:
Tumblr: Pleased to report I had a good time on the tumbls this Sunday –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I managed a pretty productive roughly hour-and-a-half before lunch over here –
A) First up, I went back through my dash and my “tracked blogs” (aka the ones I tend to read separately because it’s easier to keep up with their posts that way) and reblogged three things:
I. A post by “thememedaddy” featuring a screenshot of a post by “CG Drews” (I believe from Twitter/X) being incredulous that some people go to bed and just sleep without doing things like coming up with epic stories in their heads, or bathing in existential dread, or getting a play-by-play of all their mistakes, with a follow-up reblog by “kingkit7734” going “This. Just This.” As I am too one of those who cannot just Go To Sleep unless I am absolutely beyond exhausted, I considered this a Mood and thus had to reblog it
II. A post by “izel-scribbles” consisting of: “first rule of being a rare pair shipper is find a freak or three who can be convinced to enjoy the rare pair as much as you do. second rule is feed each other's insanity” XD As a rare pair shipper myself, this was also a Mood and had to be on my blog – though I did ramble on in the tags about how the freaks more found me in my case, as I never really sought out fellow freaks – I just did my thing, and ended up pleasantly shocked that other people liked it. I even specifically cited how I wasn’t even the one who named the Victor/Alice ship “Valice” – if memory serves me right, that was artist DanyDarkly, who was briefly into it as much as I was and provided some lovely fan art of the ship (one piece of which is STILL my desktop wallpaper – even if I do switch to something more Valicer in the near future, I’ll probably have it cycle between whatever I chose and that piece). Haven’t found as many freaks who like Valicer, but given some friends have asked for it in their gift fics, I know it has some fans. :)
III. And a post by “prokopetz” talking about the history of pinball! Specifically, about how the earliest forms of the game (made in France in the mid 1700s) were strictly games of chance, having the mechanism to launch the balls and all the bumpers and such, but no flippers to allow players to manipulate the ball afterwards, because all the mechanical flippers people tried to add were simply too weak to propel the ball all the way back up the table. They didn’t come into their own until the 1940s, when people started giving the flippers a boost by attaching electric motors to them. However, Prokopetz noted that the technology to boost the flippers was available in the 1880s, and the only reason that it wasn’t attempted was because it was economically impractical (how, he did not specify)...meaning, if you were willing to go a bit alternate history on things, you could have a story where Count Dracula owned a pinball machine (as the book was published in 1897). Cue some follow-up posts where Prokopetz responded to “winduppup” and their tags rambling on about how they want to know more about the eccentric tinkerer who was obsessed with electricity and old-fashioned pinball games and decided to make a pinball machine for Count Dracula by noting that, if you go by the Universal Studios Horror canon, there’s a certain scientist who’s notably obsessed with electricity and apparently hangs out with Dracula a fair bit (aka Dr. Frankenstein); and “do-not-fold-spindle-or-mutilate” running with that by positing a scenario where Dracula is trying to gently turn down another one of Frankenstein’s weird-ass electrical inventions, and Frankenstein (unaware that this looks like flirting) is utterly convinced Dracula will love “the philosophical implications of turning pinball into a game of skill.” XD I found this all very amusing, as you might expect –
But the reason I reblogged it was because my first thought upon seeing the post was “Holy crap, does this mean I could have someone invent pinball in my Valicer In The Dark verse?” And then realizing that, given this is a Blades In The Dark-based world, that probably any pinball machine would be somehow ghost powered...meaning that, if I really wanted, I might be able to have my trio fight a haunted pinball machine. XD Probably have to be a one-off comedy story, but still. As per my tags on the post, I am keeping it in mind! XD
B) Then (with her kind permission), I went ahead and posted Gig’s birthday gift fic (featuring Secundus!Victor meeting the local version of Smiler and helping them avoid getting shut down by the local police for selling their Joy Serum on the street without a permit (learning along the way that he shouldn’t have assumed Smiler was a ‘he,’ but making up for it by letting them know he has a friend, Richard, who doesn’t feel like a man either, proving Smiler’s not alone in feeling like they don’t have a ‘normal’ gender)), along with the author’s notes explaining what this Smiler’s deal is, to my blog as a surprise Secundus Sunday post! ...which involved fixing a few misspellings I somehow managed to miss when I originally posted the fic (also fixed them over here on DW, Gigs!). ^^; But yeah, I just really wanted to share the “Smiler in Secundus” shenanigans over on my main tumblr too – especially since it contains one of my favorite lines for explaining what it’s like dealing with Smiler in full salesperson mode, as per Victor’s thoughts upon first meeting them: Goodness – it’s like being hit in the face by a very cheery sack of bricks. XD Love it.
C) And finally, I did work a tiny bit on one of my drafts over here, cleaning up the text for my “Valicer as text posts” photo set post a little bit and adding a proper link to the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post that inspired me (and provided the actual text posts I used). It’s still not anywhere near DONE, but I DID make progress on it. *serious nod*
Valice Multiverse – And over here – well, it was another quiet night, so I just reblogged the “Smiler in Secundus” fic into my queue and called it a day. :P Nothing too exciting! Though I should mention that I forgot to tell you all about an anon ask I got yesterday, making a joke about how LaCroix said, upon opening the sarcophagus, “I don’t see an Antediluvian, I see four!” Took me a moment to get the joke, but when I did, both me and Londerland Bloodlines!Alice had a good chuckle over it. XD (If you don’t get it – sarcophagus is in fact a giant bomb, wired with C4.)
Baldur’s Gate III Planning: Yeah, this is the bit that I wasn’t very productive on, despite blocking out a pretty decent chunk of the afternoon to work on it. I was hoping to at LEAST figure out my modlist for my next playthrough, even getting a start on what I considered “required” mods (a few cosmetic mods to make sure Smiler looks right, plus one giant bugfix mod that could be considered the games “Unofficial Patch”) –
But, well, every time I start looking at mods for this game – either on the official modding page on Larian’s website, mods.io, or NexusMods – I get caught up in how cool some of the mods are, and think about how I should install them! ...And then I start wondering if I want to go back to the BG3 Mod Manager over just using the in-game mod manager for some of the more complicated stuff. And if some of these mods are even compatible with the mod manager. And if some of them are functional with patch 8. And if Unlock Level Curve is truly fixed – the issues with it SEEM to stem from a problem with the patch to make it compatible with 5e Spells, and I’m happy enough to use Mystra’s Spells instead, but I really don’t want to get caught out by this mod not working and not letting me do my Bardlock build the way I hope! And what’s this about PixellByte’s Adjustable Party Limit causing crashes in Act 2? I was hoping to use that! And should I get the difficulty enhancing mod that goes with it? I honestly think this game will be hard enough for me, the D&D turn-based-game newbie –
Aaand yeah, I think you see the problem. No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself overthinking the mod situation. *grumbles* And going full vanilla isn’t possible just because I need some mods to make Smiler look right...I dunno. I just want to get this sorted so I can just install all the mods at the beginning of my playthrough and hopefully not have to worry about them again. And then get to figuring out how the hell I’m going to make sure Smiler gets Persuasion as one of their first proficient skills… Maybe I can make some more progress next weekend.
Writing: Very good day for the Valicer In The Dark universe writing-wise, I must say –
A) As per the tumblr write-up above, I did in fact add a note about doing a comedy story about the gang having to deal with a haunted pinball machine after an initial attempt to turn it from a chance-driven game into a skill-driven one by adding a ghost to move the flippers goes horribly wrong to my list of score and story ideas in the Valicer In The Dark master doc – because I don’t want to forget it, after all, that’s too good XD
B) And I wrote nearly two pages on “The Van Dort Vacancy” before my workout, featuring Alice and Smiler:
I. Managing to sneak out of the kitchen to chase their mystery man (after Alice had finished slicing her tomatoes and Smiler preparing their cream sauce, of course) on the pretext of getting more vegetables
II. Heading down to the greenhouse, with Alice admitting she felt a little bad leaving all those clearly-overworked people to their cooking (Smiler agreed, but said they’d at least helped in a small way), and Smiler admiring the luxury of the back hallway (which had fish-scale-pattern wallpaper in pale green and silver chandeliers shaped to look like splashing water – gotta stay on-theme)
III. And reacting to the greenhouse when they found it, with Alice initially believing that she’d started hallucinating the Deluded Depths, because why else would she see what looked like a big old slice of the ocean right next to her like that –
Only for Carpenter to set her straight, and Smiler to reveal that, yes, they see it too. Because as it turns out, the Van Dort greenhouse is in fact encased in what is essentially a giant aquarium. With walls and ceiling made of glass and filled with ocean water and a ton of various bizarre fish. Why? Because most of those fish are infused with electroplasm and thus emit “radiant energy,” which allows the plants inside to grow! It’s a concept taken straight from some of the fluff text in the book! Both Smiler and Alice were completely gobsmacked, because they’ve never seen anything like it before (well, sort of – Alice has seen a greenhouse with aquarium walls before, when she was little and her father was visiting a rich patron of the university he worked at, but that one only had two walls worth of fish and wasn’t nearly this big). Though Alice couldn’t help noting that, beautiful as it was, if any of the glass cracked, the Van Dorts were in serious trouble –
Aaaand I left it on a mysterious voice agreeing that the rich never think these things through. Tomorrow, Alice and Smiler officially meet Kasimir, and then Barnaby shows up with Victor in tow to explain “oh hey, we’re robbing the vault!” XD Should be fun! :D
Workout/YouTube: We’re combining these two categories today because I watched the same thing for both my workout and my nightly YouTubery – “Fallout: London - Grand Finale - London Falling” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! Yes, Jon did indeed upload the big almost-hour-long final episode of his Fallout: London adventure tonight – and, luckily for me, did so 32 seconds before I had to choose a video to watch with my workout. So I was able to watch the first half while burning some calories on the bike, and the second half while digesting some calories at my computer after supper! :D Yay~ So allow me to tell you one final time about the adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they –
A) Went to report back to Smythe after the broadcast they helped set up last week – establishing a fake Angel run by a Russian Frenchman as the “real threat” to London and allowing Smythe to tighten martial law even further – went out! She thanked them for their good work via telephone, as usual, then revealed that there was one last situation that she needed Aria to take care of before their promised face-to-face meeting: a dual assault on Westminster by the remains of Camelot and the Fifth Column! It seemed that, with their leaders dead and Angel now fully in control of Westminster, they’d decided to put aside old differences and join forces to destroy their mutual enemy and wrest back control of London in one last glorious stand. Smythe informed Aria that Camelot had set up a trebuchet by Westminster Bridge to launch an attack (literally) over the river, while the Fifth Column were busy invading Waterloo Station to sneak into “Westminster’s soft underbelly” via the Underground tunnels, and told her that she needed to take out one of these threats so they weren’t fighting a war on two fronts – though Smythe wasn’t picky about which one she handled.
Aria was immediately like “TREBUCHET, PLEASE.” XD Yeah, Jon had been extremely excited to see that thing get built during the brief period of time where he was working with Camelot, and he was NOT going to turn down a chance to see it in person! Even if he was sending Aria there to destroy it before it actually did anything cool. :p Smythe told her that she had a week to finish off any other business before the two sides were ready to begin their assault, wished her luck, then ended the call by letting her know that she should come to the Palace at Westminster once the threat was dealt with, as she had some friends who were just “dying” to meet her. Aria was immediately like “yeah, that’s a trap,” but figured it was still her best shot of getting to her creator, killing her, and then taking over Angel and reforming it into a NICE mad-science-based despotic government. Gotta make sure all the horrors she’s committed could be justified as for “the greater good” after all! XD
B) Waited a week in the chair in the room next to Smythe’s office (because Aria didn’t really have any major sidequests hanging over her head anymore, and Jon was eager to get to the action), then headed over to Westminster Bridge to take out Camelot’s trebuchet! Most of the trip was pretty quiet, with Aria easily making her way through Eastminster and Trafalgar Square, past Waterloo Station (where she was a little concerned to see a bunch of dead Tommies by the entrance – she’d hoped to have their help in the upcoming fights), and through the remains of the London Eye settlement, before finally coming across a shit-ton of Camelot knights on the bridge, guarding the trebuchet on the bank of the river nearby. Aria and Jack cleared out the force, then Aria took a moment to admire the glorious machine before heading down to the riverside, slaughtering the remaining few knights protecting it, and setting it on fire with the help of a nearby sconce. :( Oh Jon...if you’d just gone ahead and kept working with Arthur, you could have probably actually USED that thing instead of just destroying it...
C) Made their way into Waterloo Station to clear out the Fifth Column still lingering there and use the tunnels to get into Westminster proper to join the fight against the insurgents who made it inside the borough! Which, uh, proved to be quite easy, as not only where all the Fifth Column enemies low level and this often taken out in a single shot by Aria’s guns, some proper Angel troops joined them for the slaughter near the end. Jon was a little puzzled as to why these guys were so much easier than the Camelot troops Aria and Jack had fought outside, but ended up just shrugging it off, killing them all, and concentrating on avoiding the water in the tunnels as much as possible to not get super irradiated. :P
D) Made it back into Westminster and joined the fight to take control of Parliament Square! It was a fierce battle, with Angel troops and Tommies fighting side-by-side to fend off the furious Fifth Column and Camelot warriors – but with Aria sniping off people from the back with the lovely Queen’s Gambit sniper rifle she got from Tenpenny, and Mad Jack rushing into the fray with his axe and tanking a LOT of damage from the various enemies, the interlopers were soon defeated. Chalk up another win for the forces of evil – that is, “the greater good.” XD
E) Got a message from a courier (who was VERY upset by the fact that he’d had a BOMB strapped to his chest to force him to wade into the warzone to deliver this message – he quit right after saying his piece, and promptly exploded as he tried to run away) that the remaining insurgents had taken control of 10 Downing Street, Admiralty Arch, and the Broadcasting House (aka the BBM), and headed out to take them back! Which proved to be not very difficult at all, because –
I. Most of the enemies that were spawning were low-level generic scrubs, who Aria could easily take out with her array of high-powered weaponry
II. As she cleared out the locations, more and more Tommies and Angel soldiers joined up with her, until by the time she marched on the Broadcasting House, she was leading her own veritable army! Meaning that she could more or less sit back and let them down most of the hard work of taking down the interlopers, occasionally blasting someone with her sniper rifle or getting in close to build up her crits with Scaramanga. Aria was very happy with this state of affairs. :p
So yeah – with the help of her extremely powerful guns and vast array of minions, Aria easily reclaimed all three locations, taking down the flags of the enemy and ensuring that Angel would truly reign supreme. All for the greater good!
F) Headed over to the Palace at Westminster – specifically, the House of Commons – after a time-skipping fade-to-black for that long-anticipated meeting with Smythe...only to find a lot more Smythe than they bargained for. Because, well, it turned out that Aria wasn’t the only Smythe clone on the block – the entire House was FILLED with clones of the mysterious leader of Angel! All identical to Aria, right down to the scars on her face (though not down to the clothes – which is good, as our Lady Aria probably would have opened fire on anyone else wearing a crown XD). And as it turns out, they were having a meeting about our beloved protagonist, directing her to the dispatch box –
To face off against Opposition Leader Smythe, who promptly declared that she hoped to start a motion to officially confirm Lady Aria as an inferior Smythe! Why? Well, apparently Aria once ended up sacrificing a bunch of one Dr. North’s experiments to “play hero” at some point, apparently with Camelot (I, uh, genuinely don’t recall what this is referring to – it’s been a long series!) –
And she also let a certain giant sapient mittenlurk with a human brain named Reggie escape into the Thames while blowing up the secret Angel lab in the aquarium. Whoops – turns out that action actually had consequences! XD Aria couldn’t defend herself regarding Reggie, not having the SPECIAL stats needed (though she was given the option to start the chant “CRABS ARE PEOPLE!” XD), but fortunately her high Luck allowed her to mount a defense regarding the mess with Dr. North – a defense that consisted of, essentially, “I’ve been in loads of firefights that should have killed me and always walked away without a scratch – why change my strategy?” XD And hilariously enough, that rebuttal, combined with the fact that Aria was basically responsible for them having control over Westminster, and soon the entirety of London, was enough to convince the Opposition Leader Smythe to instead start a motion to have her declared a superior Smythe! The motion carried, and Aria was thus allowed through to meet “the creator” as all the various Smythes sang “For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow” in creepy unison. Jon was quite put off. XD
(Also, bonus fun facts while we’re here – one of the Smythes was wearing a robe and a bucket on her head to represent everyone’s favorite joke politican Lord Buckethead – now Count Binhead due to some sort of copyright concern – and the one non-Smythe member of the House, the robot speaker, was voiced by John Bercow – actual former Speaker of the House of Commons! Sheesh – dunno how the mod creators managed THAT.)
G) Climbed Elizabeth Tower (the tower that houses the clock we all know as Big Ben) to finally meet with Smythe! Aria was unfortunately forced to dump all of her lovely powerful weapons in a big bin before she ascended, but was able to use her final two ever level-ups to boost her Charisma up to 10 in preparation for any last-minute speech checks – and, right before meeting her creator, was able to find a silenced hardened 9mm in a safe (in what looked like Smythe’s personal bedroom, no less) and a pipe wrench lying around on a table. Both kind of shitty weapons, but better than nothing! Not to mention the game just gave her a poison-tipped umbrella right before she confronted Smythe, as if it knew she’d need SOMETHING going forward…
Anyway – Aria met Smythe right behind the clock face for Big Ben, where her erstwhile creator (who also looked just like Aria, down to the scars – Jon, amused, decided that the star-shaped scar must be genetic) finally explained everything. Namely, that she, and Aria, and all the other Smythes were the latest of a long line of clones of the original Ms. Smythe – a pre-War Ministry of Information worker who saw the War coming; attempted to warn various people in government; was ignored and eventually imprisoned for unspecified “activities” (as she admitted to having already gotten the MoI under her thumb, using it to start the organization that would eventually become known as Angel, I think it was that – or perhaps illegal use of cloning technology, as Jon suggested); escaped the day the world burned to the Pindar under the Angel underground station; and started building her empire in the ruins. Most Smythes, or at least the line that runs everything and orders around all the other Smythes, are specially conditioned in their cloning tubes so they have all the original’s memories, plus the knowledge of their predecessors – however, thanks to the Vagabonds, Aria was busted out of her tube before the process was completed, leaving her a blank slate. A shame, because she was supposed to be the replacement for THIS Smythe once she passed on. Aria promptly asked if that was still on the table, and Ms. Smythe told her no – a new replacement had already been conditioned and put into stasis. She in fact expected Aria to simply leave and make her own life, now that her job as an Angel operative was done.
...Aria being Aria, she promptly responded to that with “There can be only one Smythe!” (Literally, that was the dialogue option. XD) Smythe was like “so be it,” and the pair began to duel to the death! Aria quickly learned that Smythe was really fucking tough (even her crits did very little damage!), but fortunately Aria was even tougher, and had her stimpacks so she could heal. The pair thus battled through the tower (with Aria getting in a few shots with her stolen gun and a few whacks with her pipe wrench before switching to using her umbrella), and Aria managed to chip away at Smythe’s health until the woman was ready to be downed in her own bedroom –
Aaaand cue the game teleporting Smythe back up to the room behind the clock face so Aria had to run up there and fight her AGAIN. -.- However, the game had a good reason for doing this, as the SECOND time Aria got her down to no health, Smythe ended up falling off the platform they were fighting on, snagging the (for some reason on the interior) clock hand of Big Ben in a desperate attempt to save herself from the drop! The game then presented Aria with the choice to save her or let her fall –
And Aria being Aria, happily said bye-bye to Ms. Smythe as she plummeted to her death. All for the Greater Good! XD
H) Settled in to watch the ending slides to see what would become of everyone now that they’d taken control of Angel! In short:
I. The remains of the Fifth Column and Camelot were quietly disposed of by Angel troops once their invasion of Westminster was repelled
II. Aria did indeed take control of Angel, and even willingly submitted to the conditioning to get all of her predecessors’ memories
III. The Tommies became the friendly face of the despotic regime under the new leadership
IV. The Pistols of Camden furiously kicked Aria out of their group, and remained independent against the forces of Angel as long as they could
V. Miller’s Men began falling to infighting as they kept to the little chunk of London they called home
VI. The Normans (aka the French ghouls) ended up blowing THEMSELVES up when trying to attack Westminster during the big battle
VII. The Croydonians largely ignored the bridge built into their territory and continued keeping themselves to themselves
VIII. The Briktonians, by contrast, were brought into line with the rest of London by a combination of Tommy and Angel forces after Aria remanned the nearby garrison, ending their dream of being an independent settlement
IX. The Gentry joyously celebrated the defeat of the enemy forces, unaware that they would soon be nothing more but pawns of Angel
X. The Globe Theater ended up closed to all but Aria, who often visited to see the troupe perform the various plays she’d collected for them
XI. The Vagabonds and the Syndicate managed to keep their uneasy peace, with the days of constant warfare soon becoming just a bad memory neither gang wanted to see repeated
XII. The Thamesfolk still had to deal with the occasional disappearance, and continued hiding out from the rest of the world in their own private enclaves
XIII. Archie, having never truly found a place to call home in London, ended up traveling what was left of the world, always chasing that new horizon (what you get for not completing his companion quest!)
XIV. Kiera also ended up leaving London after a few more treasure hunts, deciding to travel and make a name for herself as the most famed adventurer in the world (you go Kiera)
XV. Mad Jack returned to his gym and turned it into a haven for those like himself, the forgotten and left behind of London, teaching them both how to defend themselves and the virtues he learned from Aria (me: Oh no)
XVI. And Arthur managed to hang onto his sanity for a while longer thanks to the experiments of Dr. Herbertson, making up for lost time and helping as many as he could, before finally asking Aria to end his life once his struggle with feralisation finally failed
Yeah, uh, mostly a very dark ending, with a few bright spots (like Arthur getting a good life and Mad Jack turning his gym into a home for others like him). Jon, for his part, was very annoyed Aria got kicked out of the Pistols, as he’d liked them a lot; delighted that the French blew themselves up; very happy Arthur managed to get some extra time thanks to Angels’ terrible experiments; and admitted that securing his own personal theater and Shakespeare troupe IS something he’d do if you gave him absolute power. XD Good to know, I guess. XD
And that was the end of our time with Fallout: London! Jon happily declared it the single best mod he’s ever played, praising the voice actors, the map creators, and everyone else involved highly. Though he also called out the creators for claiming the mod was merely “DLC sized,” stating that was pretty sure what they’d created was bigger than the whole of Fallout 3! I can believe it. This was a hell of a project, and the Fallout: London team should be very proud of themselves. Next week, though, we’re returning to the Mojave and Fallout: New Vegas for something mysterious and special. Hopefully it’s something I can sum up faster than these Fallout: London episodes!
And, as you might expect, it's later than I intended to stay up, so I have to go to bed. Good thing I have tomorrow off, huh? :p Anyway, tomorrow is the Valicer Anniversary (aka the date I generally use for Victor and Alice's wedding, and which will be used for any polyamorous weddings they have with Smiler in AUs that allow for that) -- plans for celebration include watching some Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler-related clips on YouTube; reblogging the Valicer Wedding Round-Up post (and maybe adding a link to the latest Not-Incorrect Quote collection for the Modern AU Valicer trio -- it was technically just about moving in together, but marriage WAS mentioned in the last one!) on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Sims 4 and doing a bit of dress-up with one of my Valicer trio (I'm thinking some new formalwear outfits, since it is a wedding anniversary :P); and of course working on "The Van Dort Vacancy," a Valicer fanfic. I also hope to maybe get some work done on my other drafts on VLA(NS) (or maybe go through some of my tracked tags again), get in a workout, and see about getting something else out of my Watch Later on YouTube. We will see. Night all!
Tumblr: Pleased to report I had a good time on the tumbls this Sunday –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I managed a pretty productive roughly hour-and-a-half before lunch over here –
A) First up, I went back through my dash and my “tracked blogs” (aka the ones I tend to read separately because it’s easier to keep up with their posts that way) and reblogged three things:
I. A post by “thememedaddy” featuring a screenshot of a post by “CG Drews” (I believe from Twitter/X) being incredulous that some people go to bed and just sleep without doing things like coming up with epic stories in their heads, or bathing in existential dread, or getting a play-by-play of all their mistakes, with a follow-up reblog by “kingkit7734” going “This. Just This.” As I am too one of those who cannot just Go To Sleep unless I am absolutely beyond exhausted, I considered this a Mood and thus had to reblog it
II. A post by “izel-scribbles” consisting of: “first rule of being a rare pair shipper is find a freak or three who can be convinced to enjoy the rare pair as much as you do. second rule is feed each other's insanity” XD As a rare pair shipper myself, this was also a Mood and had to be on my blog – though I did ramble on in the tags about how the freaks more found me in my case, as I never really sought out fellow freaks – I just did my thing, and ended up pleasantly shocked that other people liked it. I even specifically cited how I wasn’t even the one who named the Victor/Alice ship “Valice” – if memory serves me right, that was artist DanyDarkly, who was briefly into it as much as I was and provided some lovely fan art of the ship (one piece of which is STILL my desktop wallpaper – even if I do switch to something more Valicer in the near future, I’ll probably have it cycle between whatever I chose and that piece). Haven’t found as many freaks who like Valicer, but given some friends have asked for it in their gift fics, I know it has some fans. :)
III. And a post by “prokopetz” talking about the history of pinball! Specifically, about how the earliest forms of the game (made in France in the mid 1700s) were strictly games of chance, having the mechanism to launch the balls and all the bumpers and such, but no flippers to allow players to manipulate the ball afterwards, because all the mechanical flippers people tried to add were simply too weak to propel the ball all the way back up the table. They didn’t come into their own until the 1940s, when people started giving the flippers a boost by attaching electric motors to them. However, Prokopetz noted that the technology to boost the flippers was available in the 1880s, and the only reason that it wasn’t attempted was because it was economically impractical (how, he did not specify)...meaning, if you were willing to go a bit alternate history on things, you could have a story where Count Dracula owned a pinball machine (as the book was published in 1897). Cue some follow-up posts where Prokopetz responded to “winduppup” and their tags rambling on about how they want to know more about the eccentric tinkerer who was obsessed with electricity and old-fashioned pinball games and decided to make a pinball machine for Count Dracula by noting that, if you go by the Universal Studios Horror canon, there’s a certain scientist who’s notably obsessed with electricity and apparently hangs out with Dracula a fair bit (aka Dr. Frankenstein); and “do-not-fold-spindle-or-mutilate” running with that by positing a scenario where Dracula is trying to gently turn down another one of Frankenstein’s weird-ass electrical inventions, and Frankenstein (unaware that this looks like flirting) is utterly convinced Dracula will love “the philosophical implications of turning pinball into a game of skill.” XD I found this all very amusing, as you might expect –
But the reason I reblogged it was because my first thought upon seeing the post was “Holy crap, does this mean I could have someone invent pinball in my Valicer In The Dark verse?” And then realizing that, given this is a Blades In The Dark-based world, that probably any pinball machine would be somehow ghost powered...meaning that, if I really wanted, I might be able to have my trio fight a haunted pinball machine. XD Probably have to be a one-off comedy story, but still. As per my tags on the post, I am keeping it in mind! XD
B) Then (with her kind permission), I went ahead and posted Gig’s birthday gift fic (featuring Secundus!Victor meeting the local version of Smiler and helping them avoid getting shut down by the local police for selling their Joy Serum on the street without a permit (learning along the way that he shouldn’t have assumed Smiler was a ‘he,’ but making up for it by letting them know he has a friend, Richard, who doesn’t feel like a man either, proving Smiler’s not alone in feeling like they don’t have a ‘normal’ gender)), along with the author’s notes explaining what this Smiler’s deal is, to my blog as a surprise Secundus Sunday post! ...which involved fixing a few misspellings I somehow managed to miss when I originally posted the fic (also fixed them over here on DW, Gigs!). ^^; But yeah, I just really wanted to share the “Smiler in Secundus” shenanigans over on my main tumblr too – especially since it contains one of my favorite lines for explaining what it’s like dealing with Smiler in full salesperson mode, as per Victor’s thoughts upon first meeting them: Goodness – it’s like being hit in the face by a very cheery sack of bricks. XD Love it.
C) And finally, I did work a tiny bit on one of my drafts over here, cleaning up the text for my “Valicer as text posts” photo set post a little bit and adding a proper link to the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post that inspired me (and provided the actual text posts I used). It’s still not anywhere near DONE, but I DID make progress on it. *serious nod*
Valice Multiverse – And over here – well, it was another quiet night, so I just reblogged the “Smiler in Secundus” fic into my queue and called it a day. :P Nothing too exciting! Though I should mention that I forgot to tell you all about an anon ask I got yesterday, making a joke about how LaCroix said, upon opening the sarcophagus, “I don’t see an Antediluvian, I see four!” Took me a moment to get the joke, but when I did, both me and Londerland Bloodlines!Alice had a good chuckle over it. XD (If you don’t get it – sarcophagus is in fact a giant bomb, wired with C4.)
Baldur’s Gate III Planning: Yeah, this is the bit that I wasn’t very productive on, despite blocking out a pretty decent chunk of the afternoon to work on it. I was hoping to at LEAST figure out my modlist for my next playthrough, even getting a start on what I considered “required” mods (a few cosmetic mods to make sure Smiler looks right, plus one giant bugfix mod that could be considered the games “Unofficial Patch”) –
But, well, every time I start looking at mods for this game – either on the official modding page on Larian’s website, mods.io, or NexusMods – I get caught up in how cool some of the mods are, and think about how I should install them! ...And then I start wondering if I want to go back to the BG3 Mod Manager over just using the in-game mod manager for some of the more complicated stuff. And if some of these mods are even compatible with the mod manager. And if some of them are functional with patch 8. And if Unlock Level Curve is truly fixed – the issues with it SEEM to stem from a problem with the patch to make it compatible with 5e Spells, and I’m happy enough to use Mystra’s Spells instead, but I really don’t want to get caught out by this mod not working and not letting me do my Bardlock build the way I hope! And what’s this about PixellByte’s Adjustable Party Limit causing crashes in Act 2? I was hoping to use that! And should I get the difficulty enhancing mod that goes with it? I honestly think this game will be hard enough for me, the D&D turn-based-game newbie –
Aaand yeah, I think you see the problem. No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself overthinking the mod situation. *grumbles* And going full vanilla isn’t possible just because I need some mods to make Smiler look right...I dunno. I just want to get this sorted so I can just install all the mods at the beginning of my playthrough and hopefully not have to worry about them again. And then get to figuring out how the hell I’m going to make sure Smiler gets Persuasion as one of their first proficient skills… Maybe I can make some more progress next weekend.
Writing: Very good day for the Valicer In The Dark universe writing-wise, I must say –
A) As per the tumblr write-up above, I did in fact add a note about doing a comedy story about the gang having to deal with a haunted pinball machine after an initial attempt to turn it from a chance-driven game into a skill-driven one by adding a ghost to move the flippers goes horribly wrong to my list of score and story ideas in the Valicer In The Dark master doc – because I don’t want to forget it, after all, that’s too good XD
B) And I wrote nearly two pages on “The Van Dort Vacancy” before my workout, featuring Alice and Smiler:
I. Managing to sneak out of the kitchen to chase their mystery man (after Alice had finished slicing her tomatoes and Smiler preparing their cream sauce, of course) on the pretext of getting more vegetables
II. Heading down to the greenhouse, with Alice admitting she felt a little bad leaving all those clearly-overworked people to their cooking (Smiler agreed, but said they’d at least helped in a small way), and Smiler admiring the luxury of the back hallway (which had fish-scale-pattern wallpaper in pale green and silver chandeliers shaped to look like splashing water – gotta stay on-theme)
III. And reacting to the greenhouse when they found it, with Alice initially believing that she’d started hallucinating the Deluded Depths, because why else would she see what looked like a big old slice of the ocean right next to her like that –
Only for Carpenter to set her straight, and Smiler to reveal that, yes, they see it too. Because as it turns out, the Van Dort greenhouse is in fact encased in what is essentially a giant aquarium. With walls and ceiling made of glass and filled with ocean water and a ton of various bizarre fish. Why? Because most of those fish are infused with electroplasm and thus emit “radiant energy,” which allows the plants inside to grow! It’s a concept taken straight from some of the fluff text in the book! Both Smiler and Alice were completely gobsmacked, because they’ve never seen anything like it before (well, sort of – Alice has seen a greenhouse with aquarium walls before, when she was little and her father was visiting a rich patron of the university he worked at, but that one only had two walls worth of fish and wasn’t nearly this big). Though Alice couldn’t help noting that, beautiful as it was, if any of the glass cracked, the Van Dorts were in serious trouble –
Aaaand I left it on a mysterious voice agreeing that the rich never think these things through. Tomorrow, Alice and Smiler officially meet Kasimir, and then Barnaby shows up with Victor in tow to explain “oh hey, we’re robbing the vault!” XD Should be fun! :D
Workout/YouTube: We’re combining these two categories today because I watched the same thing for both my workout and my nightly YouTubery – “Fallout: London - Grand Finale - London Falling” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! Yes, Jon did indeed upload the big almost-hour-long final episode of his Fallout: London adventure tonight – and, luckily for me, did so 32 seconds before I had to choose a video to watch with my workout. So I was able to watch the first half while burning some calories on the bike, and the second half while digesting some calories at my computer after supper! :D Yay~ So allow me to tell you one final time about the adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they –
A) Went to report back to Smythe after the broadcast they helped set up last week – establishing a fake Angel run by a Russian Frenchman as the “real threat” to London and allowing Smythe to tighten martial law even further – went out! She thanked them for their good work via telephone, as usual, then revealed that there was one last situation that she needed Aria to take care of before their promised face-to-face meeting: a dual assault on Westminster by the remains of Camelot and the Fifth Column! It seemed that, with their leaders dead and Angel now fully in control of Westminster, they’d decided to put aside old differences and join forces to destroy their mutual enemy and wrest back control of London in one last glorious stand. Smythe informed Aria that Camelot had set up a trebuchet by Westminster Bridge to launch an attack (literally) over the river, while the Fifth Column were busy invading Waterloo Station to sneak into “Westminster’s soft underbelly” via the Underground tunnels, and told her that she needed to take out one of these threats so they weren’t fighting a war on two fronts – though Smythe wasn’t picky about which one she handled.
Aria was immediately like “TREBUCHET, PLEASE.” XD Yeah, Jon had been extremely excited to see that thing get built during the brief period of time where he was working with Camelot, and he was NOT going to turn down a chance to see it in person! Even if he was sending Aria there to destroy it before it actually did anything cool. :p Smythe told her that she had a week to finish off any other business before the two sides were ready to begin their assault, wished her luck, then ended the call by letting her know that she should come to the Palace at Westminster once the threat was dealt with, as she had some friends who were just “dying” to meet her. Aria was immediately like “yeah, that’s a trap,” but figured it was still her best shot of getting to her creator, killing her, and then taking over Angel and reforming it into a NICE mad-science-based despotic government. Gotta make sure all the horrors she’s committed could be justified as for “the greater good” after all! XD
B) Waited a week in the chair in the room next to Smythe’s office (because Aria didn’t really have any major sidequests hanging over her head anymore, and Jon was eager to get to the action), then headed over to Westminster Bridge to take out Camelot’s trebuchet! Most of the trip was pretty quiet, with Aria easily making her way through Eastminster and Trafalgar Square, past Waterloo Station (where she was a little concerned to see a bunch of dead Tommies by the entrance – she’d hoped to have their help in the upcoming fights), and through the remains of the London Eye settlement, before finally coming across a shit-ton of Camelot knights on the bridge, guarding the trebuchet on the bank of the river nearby. Aria and Jack cleared out the force, then Aria took a moment to admire the glorious machine before heading down to the riverside, slaughtering the remaining few knights protecting it, and setting it on fire with the help of a nearby sconce. :( Oh Jon...if you’d just gone ahead and kept working with Arthur, you could have probably actually USED that thing instead of just destroying it...
C) Made their way into Waterloo Station to clear out the Fifth Column still lingering there and use the tunnels to get into Westminster proper to join the fight against the insurgents who made it inside the borough! Which, uh, proved to be quite easy, as not only where all the Fifth Column enemies low level and this often taken out in a single shot by Aria’s guns, some proper Angel troops joined them for the slaughter near the end. Jon was a little puzzled as to why these guys were so much easier than the Camelot troops Aria and Jack had fought outside, but ended up just shrugging it off, killing them all, and concentrating on avoiding the water in the tunnels as much as possible to not get super irradiated. :P
D) Made it back into Westminster and joined the fight to take control of Parliament Square! It was a fierce battle, with Angel troops and Tommies fighting side-by-side to fend off the furious Fifth Column and Camelot warriors – but with Aria sniping off people from the back with the lovely Queen’s Gambit sniper rifle she got from Tenpenny, and Mad Jack rushing into the fray with his axe and tanking a LOT of damage from the various enemies, the interlopers were soon defeated. Chalk up another win for the forces of evil – that is, “the greater good.” XD
E) Got a message from a courier (who was VERY upset by the fact that he’d had a BOMB strapped to his chest to force him to wade into the warzone to deliver this message – he quit right after saying his piece, and promptly exploded as he tried to run away) that the remaining insurgents had taken control of 10 Downing Street, Admiralty Arch, and the Broadcasting House (aka the BBM), and headed out to take them back! Which proved to be not very difficult at all, because –
I. Most of the enemies that were spawning were low-level generic scrubs, who Aria could easily take out with her array of high-powered weaponry
II. As she cleared out the locations, more and more Tommies and Angel soldiers joined up with her, until by the time she marched on the Broadcasting House, she was leading her own veritable army! Meaning that she could more or less sit back and let them down most of the hard work of taking down the interlopers, occasionally blasting someone with her sniper rifle or getting in close to build up her crits with Scaramanga. Aria was very happy with this state of affairs. :p
So yeah – with the help of her extremely powerful guns and vast array of minions, Aria easily reclaimed all three locations, taking down the flags of the enemy and ensuring that Angel would truly reign supreme. All for the greater good!
F) Headed over to the Palace at Westminster – specifically, the House of Commons – after a time-skipping fade-to-black for that long-anticipated meeting with Smythe...only to find a lot more Smythe than they bargained for. Because, well, it turned out that Aria wasn’t the only Smythe clone on the block – the entire House was FILLED with clones of the mysterious leader of Angel! All identical to Aria, right down to the scars on her face (though not down to the clothes – which is good, as our Lady Aria probably would have opened fire on anyone else wearing a crown XD). And as it turns out, they were having a meeting about our beloved protagonist, directing her to the dispatch box –
To face off against Opposition Leader Smythe, who promptly declared that she hoped to start a motion to officially confirm Lady Aria as an inferior Smythe! Why? Well, apparently Aria once ended up sacrificing a bunch of one Dr. North’s experiments to “play hero” at some point, apparently with Camelot (I, uh, genuinely don’t recall what this is referring to – it’s been a long series!) –
And she also let a certain giant sapient mittenlurk with a human brain named Reggie escape into the Thames while blowing up the secret Angel lab in the aquarium. Whoops – turns out that action actually had consequences! XD Aria couldn’t defend herself regarding Reggie, not having the SPECIAL stats needed (though she was given the option to start the chant “CRABS ARE PEOPLE!” XD), but fortunately her high Luck allowed her to mount a defense regarding the mess with Dr. North – a defense that consisted of, essentially, “I’ve been in loads of firefights that should have killed me and always walked away without a scratch – why change my strategy?” XD And hilariously enough, that rebuttal, combined with the fact that Aria was basically responsible for them having control over Westminster, and soon the entirety of London, was enough to convince the Opposition Leader Smythe to instead start a motion to have her declared a superior Smythe! The motion carried, and Aria was thus allowed through to meet “the creator” as all the various Smythes sang “For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow” in creepy unison. Jon was quite put off. XD
(Also, bonus fun facts while we’re here – one of the Smythes was wearing a robe and a bucket on her head to represent everyone’s favorite joke politican Lord Buckethead – now Count Binhead due to some sort of copyright concern – and the one non-Smythe member of the House, the robot speaker, was voiced by John Bercow – actual former Speaker of the House of Commons! Sheesh – dunno how the mod creators managed THAT.)
G) Climbed Elizabeth Tower (the tower that houses the clock we all know as Big Ben) to finally meet with Smythe! Aria was unfortunately forced to dump all of her lovely powerful weapons in a big bin before she ascended, but was able to use her final two ever level-ups to boost her Charisma up to 10 in preparation for any last-minute speech checks – and, right before meeting her creator, was able to find a silenced hardened 9mm in a safe (in what looked like Smythe’s personal bedroom, no less) and a pipe wrench lying around on a table. Both kind of shitty weapons, but better than nothing! Not to mention the game just gave her a poison-tipped umbrella right before she confronted Smythe, as if it knew she’d need SOMETHING going forward…
Anyway – Aria met Smythe right behind the clock face for Big Ben, where her erstwhile creator (who also looked just like Aria, down to the scars – Jon, amused, decided that the star-shaped scar must be genetic) finally explained everything. Namely, that she, and Aria, and all the other Smythes were the latest of a long line of clones of the original Ms. Smythe – a pre-War Ministry of Information worker who saw the War coming; attempted to warn various people in government; was ignored and eventually imprisoned for unspecified “activities” (as she admitted to having already gotten the MoI under her thumb, using it to start the organization that would eventually become known as Angel, I think it was that – or perhaps illegal use of cloning technology, as Jon suggested); escaped the day the world burned to the Pindar under the Angel underground station; and started building her empire in the ruins. Most Smythes, or at least the line that runs everything and orders around all the other Smythes, are specially conditioned in their cloning tubes so they have all the original’s memories, plus the knowledge of their predecessors – however, thanks to the Vagabonds, Aria was busted out of her tube before the process was completed, leaving her a blank slate. A shame, because she was supposed to be the replacement for THIS Smythe once she passed on. Aria promptly asked if that was still on the table, and Ms. Smythe told her no – a new replacement had already been conditioned and put into stasis. She in fact expected Aria to simply leave and make her own life, now that her job as an Angel operative was done.
...Aria being Aria, she promptly responded to that with “There can be only one Smythe!” (Literally, that was the dialogue option. XD) Smythe was like “so be it,” and the pair began to duel to the death! Aria quickly learned that Smythe was really fucking tough (even her crits did very little damage!), but fortunately Aria was even tougher, and had her stimpacks so she could heal. The pair thus battled through the tower (with Aria getting in a few shots with her stolen gun and a few whacks with her pipe wrench before switching to using her umbrella), and Aria managed to chip away at Smythe’s health until the woman was ready to be downed in her own bedroom –
Aaaand cue the game teleporting Smythe back up to the room behind the clock face so Aria had to run up there and fight her AGAIN. -.- However, the game had a good reason for doing this, as the SECOND time Aria got her down to no health, Smythe ended up falling off the platform they were fighting on, snagging the (for some reason on the interior) clock hand of Big Ben in a desperate attempt to save herself from the drop! The game then presented Aria with the choice to save her or let her fall –
And Aria being Aria, happily said bye-bye to Ms. Smythe as she plummeted to her death. All for the Greater Good! XD
H) Settled in to watch the ending slides to see what would become of everyone now that they’d taken control of Angel! In short:
I. The remains of the Fifth Column and Camelot were quietly disposed of by Angel troops once their invasion of Westminster was repelled
II. Aria did indeed take control of Angel, and even willingly submitted to the conditioning to get all of her predecessors’ memories
III. The Tommies became the friendly face of the despotic regime under the new leadership
IV. The Pistols of Camden furiously kicked Aria out of their group, and remained independent against the forces of Angel as long as they could
V. Miller’s Men began falling to infighting as they kept to the little chunk of London they called home
VI. The Normans (aka the French ghouls) ended up blowing THEMSELVES up when trying to attack Westminster during the big battle
VII. The Croydonians largely ignored the bridge built into their territory and continued keeping themselves to themselves
VIII. The Briktonians, by contrast, were brought into line with the rest of London by a combination of Tommy and Angel forces after Aria remanned the nearby garrison, ending their dream of being an independent settlement
IX. The Gentry joyously celebrated the defeat of the enemy forces, unaware that they would soon be nothing more but pawns of Angel
X. The Globe Theater ended up closed to all but Aria, who often visited to see the troupe perform the various plays she’d collected for them
XI. The Vagabonds and the Syndicate managed to keep their uneasy peace, with the days of constant warfare soon becoming just a bad memory neither gang wanted to see repeated
XII. The Thamesfolk still had to deal with the occasional disappearance, and continued hiding out from the rest of the world in their own private enclaves
XIII. Archie, having never truly found a place to call home in London, ended up traveling what was left of the world, always chasing that new horizon (what you get for not completing his companion quest!)
XIV. Kiera also ended up leaving London after a few more treasure hunts, deciding to travel and make a name for herself as the most famed adventurer in the world (you go Kiera)
XV. Mad Jack returned to his gym and turned it into a haven for those like himself, the forgotten and left behind of London, teaching them both how to defend themselves and the virtues he learned from Aria (me: Oh no)
XVI. And Arthur managed to hang onto his sanity for a while longer thanks to the experiments of Dr. Herbertson, making up for lost time and helping as many as he could, before finally asking Aria to end his life once his struggle with feralisation finally failed
Yeah, uh, mostly a very dark ending, with a few bright spots (like Arthur getting a good life and Mad Jack turning his gym into a home for others like him). Jon, for his part, was very annoyed Aria got kicked out of the Pistols, as he’d liked them a lot; delighted that the French blew themselves up; very happy Arthur managed to get some extra time thanks to Angels’ terrible experiments; and admitted that securing his own personal theater and Shakespeare troupe IS something he’d do if you gave him absolute power. XD Good to know, I guess. XD
And that was the end of our time with Fallout: London! Jon happily declared it the single best mod he’s ever played, praising the voice actors, the map creators, and everyone else involved highly. Though he also called out the creators for claiming the mod was merely “DLC sized,” stating that was pretty sure what they’d created was bigger than the whole of Fallout 3! I can believe it. This was a hell of a project, and the Fallout: London team should be very proud of themselves. Next week, though, we’re returning to the Mojave and Fallout: New Vegas for something mysterious and special. Hopefully it’s something I can sum up faster than these Fallout: London episodes!
And, as you might expect, it's later than I intended to stay up, so I have to go to bed. Good thing I have tomorrow off, huh? :p Anyway, tomorrow is the Valicer Anniversary (aka the date I generally use for Victor and Alice's wedding, and which will be used for any polyamorous weddings they have with Smiler in AUs that allow for that) -- plans for celebration include watching some Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler-related clips on YouTube; reblogging the Valicer Wedding Round-Up post (and maybe adding a link to the latest Not-Incorrect Quote collection for the Modern AU Valicer trio -- it was technically just about moving in together, but marriage WAS mentioned in the last one!) on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Sims 4 and doing a bit of dress-up with one of my Valicer trio (I'm thinking some new formalwear outfits, since it is a wedding anniversary :P); and of course working on "The Van Dort Vacancy," a Valicer fanfic. I also hope to maybe get some work done on my other drafts on VLA(NS) (or maybe go through some of my tracked tags again), get in a workout, and see about getting something else out of my Watch Later on YouTube. We will see. Night all!
