Hot And Stormy Friday
Jul. 25th, 2025 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, the heat index was up near 101 F earlier today -- and then, between 3 and 4 PM, we had a pretty nasty thunderstorm blow through, with high winds and heavy rain and lots of thunder and lightning. I spent that hour playing games on my iPad, as you might expect! But despite the heat and the rain, I had a pretty productive day overall --
Work – A busyish half-Friday to end out the work week – I spent most of my morning working on the GL (proved to be a little more complicated than usual because our database people moved a bunch of gifts from one Appeal year to another, which shows up different than our standard reversal reports on the GL) and answering some e-mails; then called a guy at my supervisor’s behest to get his pledge set up on automatic payments; then spent the remaining hour and a half looking up why some people overpaid their pledges for my supervisor so we could plan calling them and offering them refunds as necessary. *nods* Little more stressful than I would have liked, but it filled the time! And I did get to go home at 1:30 PM, so that’s all that matters. *nods*
Fallout 4 – I did indeed finally have another Fallout Friday today, sneaking in just under an hour of Victor and Ada continuing to make their way through the Mechanist’s lair before having to quit thanks to the thunderstorm that rolled in around 3 PM. How’d that go? Let me tell you:
A) Started off with Victor and the now-very-electric Ada hanging out in the room with all the assembly lines and the partially-completed swarmbots being carried across the ceiling on hooks. I’d guessed that trying to traverse this area would trigger some sort of fight when I first entered it, and I was proven right today as, while trying to see if I could sneak Victor through a gap between one of the floor-level conveyor belts and a cage with some electrical equipment in it (I could not – either it was a tiny bit too small or there was an invisible wall there), a swarmbot spawned in on the ramp leading up to the catwalk at the other end of the room. Victor lined up a shot and easily took it out with a nice highly-charged blast from the Tactical Tesla before the bot even noticed them –
Aaand then things got rather more chaotic as a couple of laser turrets up on the wall suddenly woke up and started firing at him, and a tankbot trundled into the room and began sending blasts Ada’s way. Fortunately, the laser turrets weren’t too hard to take out (once I figured out exactly where I needed to shoot, anyway), and while the tankbot took a good few hits in VATS to die (the Tactical Tesla isn’t really a VATS gun, sadly – you gotta be able to charge it to get the full effect), the fact that it, like most of the other enemies I have faced recently, decided to focus all its murderous efforts on Ada meant that Victor at least didn’t get creamed by the – I THINK they were gamma shots? Some sort of green orb thing, which I’m pretty sure is what the gamma gun fires, so – while trying to kill it. Ada – best companion simply because EVERYTHING focuses its wrath on her, allowing Victor to kill enemies at his leisure. :P
B) Once the enemies were defeated (including backing up and waiting a minute to let the tankbot explode), I had Victor and Ada explore the room looking for goodies. There wasn’t really much to find, though – just a window to the left that looked in on the room we’d passed through before; a little storage area behind the stairs up to the catwalk that yielded some ammo and a bit of useful junk; various boxes and rad barrels scattered around (I made sure to give the latter a wide berth) –
And a big room at the end that had an armor workstation, a box of various drugs, a box of various explosives, and a button in it that made me wonder if it was some sort of giant elevator. Like, I know that sounds a little mental, but this was a big robotics facility that was working on making robots powered by human brains – making a big old room that doubled as an elevator didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility! I was just about to press the button and see what it did –
C) When I saw the open catwalk bridge above me, with a little area to the left with a Nuka-Cola machine and some tables. Curious, and not wanting to press the button in case it WAS an elevator and took me deeper into the facility with no way back up, I had Victor do a little parkour to hop onto the catwalk (basically getting him to jump onto the ramp railing under it, then from there onto the catwalk) and explore the area I’d spotted. He proceeded to find:
I. A bunch of decorative tables and cabinets and cupboards with junk both decorative and grabbable – I had him get a big old industrial oil can and a carton of cigarettes to turn into cloth later :P
II. The Nuka-Cola machine I’d spotted before, which proved to be pretty well-stocked with cola – two empty bottles, two regular Nukas, and a Cherry! Nice :)
III. An openable door leading deeper into the facility at the back
IV. And the button to extend the catwalk over to the other side of the room!
Not wanting to progress anything just yet (as I still needed to figure out what the button did in what I was now calling the “lift room”), I had Victor collect all his goodies, then hit the button to extend the catwalk. This connected the two sides of the bridge – but ALSO closed a big metal shutter on the “lift room,” sealing it off. Curiouser and curiouser! I had Victor cross the bridge to do a little investigating of the stairs on the other side – discovering in the process the button that controlled the catwalk from THAT side, meaning if I’d just gone UP the stairs on the left side of the room instead of simply poking around BEHIND them for goodies, I wouldn’t have had to do the parkour; live and learn – then head back toward that door he’d found with Ada at his side. Opening it revealed another storage area with more tables and cabinets, three whole rolls of duct tape (score!), an aluminum can (will never say no!) –
And another MST3K door (seriously, I am like 99% sure these super-complicated doors are a nod to the “getting into/out of the theater” bits of MST3K with the multiple doors Cambot takes us through) with an access port that required Ada’s scanning expertise to open! Which really suggested that THIS was the way I was meant to go. “So what the heck is the deal with the button in the ‘lift room?’” I wondered, heading back to the catwalks to find out. Once Ada and I were safely across the bridge (a process that took a little longer than it should have, as Ada’s AI glitched out and made her keep walking into the railing until the game was like “oh, FINE” and teleported her to me), I hit the button to retract it and open the “lift room,” then went down the stairs, around and up the ramp into it, and made sure Ada was safely inside before hitting the button…
Aaaand discovered all it did was extend the catwalk bridge and close the shutter. Just like the other buttons outside. I guess this wasn’t so much a “lift” room as, potentially, a “panic” room. *shrug* Hey, I had to find out! Don’t want to miss any secrets or fun stuff!
D) With the secret of the “panic room” uncovered, it was time to continue on! Victor thus got himself and Ada out of the “panic room” and back across the catwalk bridge to the door at the back of the storage area. Ada scanned the access port, the door went through its overly-complicated opening sequence, and the pair found themselves in a big wrecked hallway, in front of a pair of heavy-looking doors looking down over some gigantic room below. They proved to be unpickable, though (mag-locked, probably), so they just continued onward, heading around and over the rubble to the right to a door with another access port – this one labeled “Facilities Wing.” Ada did her scan, the door did its thing, and she and Victor entered another crumbling corridor, this one with some big old pipes on the walls, an ice-cold Nuka-Cherry by one of the cabinets, and a novice-locked toolbox Victor broke open for yet more duct tape (yay). The pair thus continued forward, toward a ramp with steam coming up from under it –
Only to be jumpscared by another Mechanist Eyebot! She angrily told Victor that people were right to fear him, someone who had no respect for human life, and that she, the Mechanist was sworn to protect the innocent, which she would do by getting rid of people like him! Victor wasn’t having that and took down the eyebot with a quick couple of blasts from the Tactical Tesla – but I could hear and see more robots coming in up ahead. I had Victor and Ada carefully go down the slope, with Victor creeping to the side to try and find a good vantage point to take them out –
And then the swarmbot and junkbot both decided to run directly at the pair – as usual, prioritizing targeting Ada – and Victor was able to take them both out with one blast each. XD Elite troops, these were not! Come on, Mechanist, we know you can do better than this!
E) With those foes downed, Victor and Ada continued on their journey, around the nearby corner past tables and toolboxes (the latter had some more duct tape – seriously, there is so much duct tape in this place, it’s great), over to another robot workbench sitting in a forgotten corner, and right to some stairs leading down –
Into a partially-flooded corridor. Cue me going “Oh shit, water” and promptly swapping Victor back to his beloved Two-Shot Combat Rifle, because, well, I didn’t want him getting electrocuted! I’m pretty sure using electrical weapons in water does that in this game! Feeling a little safer, I thus had him descend into the corridor and take a look around –
And then I noticed that, um, the air looked kind of – wavy. Like, not “water reflecting on the walls” wavy (which was happening), but “there’s a gas leak” wavy. Suspicious, I had Victor retreat back up the stairs a safe distance, then fired a single shot into the corridor below –
And sure enough, the air ignited in a brief but spectacular fireball! Well – that could have gone very badly. Good thing I have both played enough of this game and watched enough LPs of it to spot those danger zones! (But not to recognize when a room is not an elevator, of course. :P)
F) With the gas leak cleared (and Victor having had a lunch break at the game’s insistence – Jambalaya Pasta, which not only counted as food AND drink but ALSO gave him +25% XP gain for a couple of hours, nice), Victor and Ada were free to explore the lower corridor! There was a little caged area to the left that proved to have nothing interesting inside it – just a cabinet with nothing area – but to the right was a larger room with some stairs in that I was curious to check out. So I had Victor poke his head in –
Then pull it right back out because oh shit, radiation. D: However, it wasn’t a LOT of radiation, and I WAS curious to see what was in there, so I had him quickly sprint in and up the stairs onto the little catwalk area at the top of the room. Fortunately, the rads only got him on the stairs themselves, and he was free to explore the catwalk area, which mainly consisted of some cabinets; a desk with a big bottle of Economy Wonderglue on it (yay!); and the Power Substation A Terminal! Victor thus sat himself down and checked that out – it proved to belong to one Brandon McDaniel, and had four logs on it –
I. 77, What A Waste (consisting of him bitching about the fact that he’d gone through four years of electrical engineering school and could strip a Mr. Handy down to parts in under two hours, but no, he had to sit in here and babysit the generators)
II. 80, Cunning Plan (consisting of him coming up with a plan – courtesy of some comments by his friend Sharpley – to sneak a cigarette vending machine, loaned to him by a civilian friend, into his station to earn a few bucks from people looking for smokes and get to say hi to all the lovely ladies)
III. 82 Substation B (consisting of him complaining about how his coworker Banks started complaining about all the smoke when the vending machine was put in place – and then made it clear that he wanted a cut of McDaniel’s vending machine cash to keep quiet)
IV. And 90, Official Approval (consisting of him happily declaring that he’d come out on top by bribing the General with a few free cartons of cigarettes to give his machine official approval, meaning he didn’t have to pay Banks squat).
Fun stuff – made even funnier by the fact that the one thing I didn’t see in this room was a cigarette vending machine. Like, I spotted a Nuka-Cola vending machine, tucked into a corner by the generators (I had Victor risk the rads to get a couple more Nukas on his way out), but I did NOT see anything that sold cigarettes. Now, I admit, my Perception score CAN be comparable to Jon of Many A True Nerd’s sometimes (the joke being that Jon misses shit all the time, to the point where it’s joked he has a Perception of -1), so it’s possible I just didn’t pay enough attention, but it was a pretty small room, so...also quite possible that someone at Bethesda put the wrong vending machine in here!
G) With that room explored, it was time for Victor and Ada to move onward, going straight down the corridor into the wreckage of a locker room – which had a scrapbot in it “playing dead.” I had Victor sneak just close enough to activate it and get it to sit up, then blast it with his Two-Shot to instantly kill it with a technical sneak attack. :D I do enjoy flinging lightning around with the Tactical Tesla, but there’s a reason the Two-Shot is beloved! Anyway, I had Victor grab what he wanted out of the room (some toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a robot parts model), then had him move onward, into another big storage room with giant carts and lots of shelving. And an entire PACK of duct tape, which now makes me think they were literally duct-taping the robobrains together or something. XD Victor grabbed that, then dumped some stuff on Ada (the Crippling Gamma Gun – he wasn’t using it – and a bunch of junk) to free up some space, as the pockets were getting full on his Silver Shroud costume. :P He then led the way around the corner, past the carts and into a big, partially collapsed tunnel, with tracks on the ground and a big metal shutter to the left, with a button to open it…
Aaand that’s when the thunder really started thundering, and I had to quickly save and quit before the storm truly kicked off. Meh. But hey, it was nice to make some progress here again! :) And find all of that duct tape and Wonderglue – seriously, if you have played even a couple hours of this game, you will KNOW how much you need adhesive. :P Next Friday, we’ll see what’s behind that metal shutter, and get that much closer to the final showdown with the Mechanist...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through:
A) The end of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 4: The Path of Broken Oaths!” The final half-hour of this relatively-lighthearted adventure of the gang discovering that a local hamlet was being swindled by an asshole pretending to be the local Green Man featured –
I. The fight against the Fraudulent Green Man continuing with Willowfine trying and failing to cast “Hold Person” on the fraudster (her magical beam of sunlight just not being up for the job); Lug managing to break the unlucky rolls curse and get two good hits on the guy with his hammer, all the while complaining about how maybe the NEXT hamlet they visited would be fine and normal and he could get a nice drink; and Morven wrapping things up by giving the man a very solid Mind Slivering with her sorcery, causing him to yield. Yeah, doesn’t feel so nice now when it’s you having the psychic spike slammed into your head, huh?
II. The gang berating the fraudster, who attempted to claim that all that stuff in the cave wasn’t his – only to confess to the truth when Morven started warming up a fresh Mind Sliver. XD He then switched tactics, trying to say that what he’d done wasn’t THAT bad, all he’d taken was some silver and some cloth and some chickens, and he never hit the same place twice (patently untrue, sir!) –
And then Cressida tried to spook him with a “levitating” chest of money (having already robbed all the most expensive stuff out of it herself), he cast Dispel Magic on her to see what was going on – and upon seeing her face, went APOPLECTIC. Turns out the fraudster was one Evander Mountforth, who took out a loan from the Blackwater Bank, only to lose everything when he couldn’t pay off the principal fast enough and Cressida ended up jacking up the interest rate in response. So he’d turned to trickery and thievery to survive, and learned magic in the hopes of finding her one day and killing her for what she’d done.
...Cressida was like “I – do not remember you at ALL.” Which, as you might imagine, made him EVEN ANGRIER. And the others did not help his mood by not quite understanding what it was that Cressida had done (given they all live in barter societies and don’t have any concept of “interest rates”) and not QUITE remembering his name (Willowfine calling him “Evangelo” at one point). He got off a Mind Spike against her (though an accidental nat 20 from Ellen when she missed her dice tower roller with the d20 meant all she got was a bad headache) – mostly because Morven was done with all this and busy shrinking everything down to make it easier to carry back to the villagers – but then the others intervened, saying that, even if Cressida had ruined him, that didn’t give him the right to ruin others, and that they felt he needed to go to the court of the Green Man to answer for what he’d done. Evander was like “face the very guy I’ve been impersonating?! No way – how about I promise to never do this again and stop trying to kill Cressida, and you’ll let me go?” Willowfine agreed as long as he handed over the costume –
Including the bits he was wearing. XD The deeply embarrassed Evander reluctantly stripped off his clothes, then turned himself invisible and wandered off. And Cressida, being Cressida, couldn’t resist sending him a final message: “Thank you for banking with Blackwater.” XD Oh, Ellen is loving being an evil bitch, let me tell you. XD
III. The gang returning what items they could to the villagers and explaining about the trickster (with Happen offering his condolences to Lionel about Mark in apology, having seen for himself that Evander could kill, or at least harm, with a glance – and then going to Willowfine “we did kind of forget he murdered someone when we let him go, didn’t we?” XD Fortunately the villagers were a little distracted by the giant chest of silver Morven had delivered to them) – the villagers thanked them for their help and promised to renew their bonds with the ACTUAL Green Man as soon as possible. The gang then headed back to the Green Man’s court through the woods (which involved the others chasing after the impatient Morven), where they reported on what had happened and how they’d fixed it to the Green Man. And, in Morven’s case, tried to unload the trickster’s trousers on him (the Green Man was like “you can keep those” XD). The Green Man thanked them for their help, and Happen once again tried to charm some sweet loot out of the guy by saying they’d clearly gone above and beyond, using the powers of the Cadence Die. His first roll was a paltry 11, but when Andy reminded him that he should still have a free inspiration (apparently humans just GET a point of that after every long rest, fancy), he rolled again –
And – praise Cadence! – got a crit 1. XD It was decided that Happen’s sprites playfully yanked his pants down the minute he tried to seal the deal. XD The Green Man fortunately was amused, and while he didn’t give Happen any sweet loot, he did at least fix his busted bowstring. This Green Man is a fucking nice wild folk, let me tell you. Case in point, he also gave Morven the information he’d promised to give Robin about the strange fellow in the hat and patched coat – he didn’t know much, but he knew that the guy called himself the Poor Man, and that while he SEEMED to be new to Heorth, there was something about him that seemed to be much older than even the Green Man. Which is – somewhat worrying. Morven said she’d have to do some research – I don’t know where, but we’ll see what happens.
IV. And, to end things off, the gang being assured by the Green Man that their debt had been repaid and they could travel through the Wyrdwood freely once more (so long as they kept their bargains and caused no trouble) – and then getting another message from the team in the North on their copestones! Or, rather, they STARTED to get a message –
Only for the copestone to suddenly SPLIT IN TWO. And when Willowfine picked up the pieces, they all saw that it was like someone had taken an ax to the stone. O.o Given that the North team had already suffered injuries the last time we heard from them, this seems – less than ideal. *grimace* We’ll see what happens with that when we watch Episode 5 next week!
B) And, to fill the last few minutes at the end of my workout, three Baldur’s Gate III-related Shorts:
I. “Your first BG3 playthrough VS every save after…” by JourdanGames – featuring a woman cheerily going on about how awesome BG3’s lore and worldbuilding is and how she wants to talk to everyone and read every book and find every place in her first playthrough...and then speeding through everything (the specific example given being Gale explaining his whole situation) on subsequent runs XD
II. “Warlock's unique dialogue about Raphael for Astarion | Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream – featuring a special interaction a warlock can have with Astarion regarding when Raphael shows up to offer them a deal regarding their tadpoles! Seems a warlock can tell Astarion “Oh, he’s a cambion, we can take him” – only for Astarion to dress them down but HARD for being too flippant. Featuring a lot of him sarcastically going on about how they must know EXACTLY what was going on with their tadpoles, and thus EXACTLY why a devil – oh, excuse him, a CAMBION – would find them interesting enough to want to make a deal – because if they DIDN’T actually know...well, they might as well sign their souls away right then. Another excellent bit of acting from Neil Newbon there!
III. And “When Archfey Warlock got denied entry to the circus | Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream – featuring what happens when a warlock with an Archfey patron gets denied entry to the Circus of Lost Days in Baldur’s Gate, because the ghoul at the entrance, Benji, accuses them of having a brain that smells of piss and iron (Benji’s supposed to sniff out murderers, so I guess that’s what you smell like if you murder people?). The warlock’s patron, who’d been all excited about the fey magic inside, got snippy and gave their little magic user some barbed words to use as a weapon, with the warlock thusly informing the guy at the entrance that, unless he wanted trouble with the Seelie court, he’d let them in –
And then proceeded to fail the Intimidation check, causing Benji to attack and the warlock to have to explode everyone. XD Kinda ruins one’s day at the circus, gotta say!
2. Update the FO4 Playthrough Progression Doc: Check – Victor, Alice, and Ada all dove deeper into the Mechanist’s lair today, following the path my game!Victor and Ada laid out for them through the assembly line room, out and around into the Facilities Wing, and over to the cart tracks at the end of the flooded corridor – with the following relatively-minor changes:
A) Nobody made the mistake I did of even briefly thinking that the room the tankbot emerged out of at the end of the assembly line room was an elevator of sorts – though Victor did JOKE that it was one while hitting the button inside to see what it did while exploring. He was very surprised to see it extend the catwalk and close a big shutter in front of the room. XD He did climb his way up onto the retracted catwalk bridge after opening the shutter, though, doing so while Alice and Ada went around the other side to look for the external controls. He had a lot of fun hitting the button on his side to re-extend the bridge right when they found the button on their side. XD
B) And rather than Victor exploring Power Substation A and reading the terminal entries therein about McDaniels and his briefly-illegal cigarette vending machine, Ada was the one to explore the lightly-irradiated room, as she is her own person in this universe and much more suited to taking on rads than the fleshy folks. She related the story of McDaniels to Victor and Alice after she returned (with the Economy Wonderglue in hand, of course), and asked if such behavior was typical of military personnel from his time – Victor was like “yup.” XD
I told you they were relatively minor! :P Just wasn’t a lot to adjust in today’s adventures. Next week, we’ll see what they find on the other side of that big metal shutter in the mysterious tunnel with the tracks, and if I have to make any bigger changes to what actually happens in my game!
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – though I didn’t actually watch anything in my “Watch Later,” as it was another day where I got to the YouTubes very late and thus couldn’t take on anything too long. So instead, having enjoyed some of their shorts earlier at the end of my workout, I headed over to DragonsDream’s channel to check out their actual videos –
And got intrigued by “Companion's secret deepest desire in Baldur's Gate 3!” This was a video on the special “Rapture” interaction you can have with the wood elf Naoise at Sharess’ Caress, a brothel you can visit in the game. Naoise isn’t offering sex, though – instead, if you chat with her (after killing her previous client, who turned into a mind flayer upon seeing you), she offers Rapture, where she weaves for your character a moment of purest ecstasy based on their deepest desire, summed up in a single word. There’s a few generic responses you can give – “revered,” “contented,” “powerful,” “rich” – but most of the “Origin” characters (the companions who double as player characters if you don’t want to make your own), plus The Dark Urge custom origin and one regular companion, have unique desires:
A) Shadowheart, who spends the game largely amnesiac because the cult she’s in keeps wiping her memories, wants to be whole
B) Karlach, who spends the game slowly dying because the infernal engine that’s replaced her heart is slowly but surely overheating outside of Avernus, wants to be alive
C) Astarion, who spends the game dealing with the fact that he was the puppet of an abusive vampire lord and never wants to go back to that life again, wants to be safe
D) Gale, who spends the game dealing with the consequences of trying to prove to his goddess girlfriend he could handle the higher-level magics she dealt with and fucking up big time, wants to be wise
E) Wyll, who spends the game trapped in a horrible pact with a devil who delights in making his life hell (no pun intended) and may only get out of it by agreeing to sacrifice his father, wants to be free
F) The Dark Urge, who spends the game tormented by the urge to murder and maim courtesy of their Bhaalspawn blood, wants to be sane
G) And Minsc, who is a delightfully goofy barbarian you can pick up late in the game who DOES have to deal with the fact he was mind controlled by someone pretending to be one of his dearest friends, wants to be – Minsc. XD Naoise struggles with that one for a moment. XD
All very cute – and very touching, except for Minsc. XD Though a little sad to see that Jahiera, Halsin, Minthara, and ESPECIALLY Lae’zel don’t get specific desires if they ask for Rapture. Like, okay, I can understand it for the first three – Jahiera gets recruited rather late in the story, and Halsin and Minthara are both very optional companions (and used to be mutually exclusive until Larian caved to everyone wanting to have a Minthara on an otherwise-good-aligned playthrough), but Lae’zel is the final Origin character! You’d think she of all people would have a special option! Maybe they thought “Powerful” sufficed, but given her whole thing is to prove herself to her people and get to ride a dragon and wield a silver sword, I think “Honored” would be better. Meh. It’s very weird the stuff Larian didn’t put in – and you notice it a lot more because so much of the rest of the game is treated with so much care.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – it was another nothing day on Valice Multiverse (plus, while checking my tracked tags, I suddenly ran into an error where I couldn’t load my dash, so I couldn’t have added anything to my queue if I’d WANTED to), but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I put one last thing in my queue for this week – my Song Saturday song selection! Which was Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” a song about how a mundane life can be elevated to something more by sharing it with the right person. :) My initial thought was this was a Valicer song (especially with the lyrics “On the edge of your knife/Stayin' drunk on your vine” making me think of Victor describing his relationship with Alice and Smiler respectively), but while writing up the post, I came to the conclusion that, since the opening lyrics about holy water being watered down and the town having lost its faith made me think of Burtonsville, perhaps the song was in fact best suited for the Multiplayer Wonderland OT5 (Victor/Victoria/Emily/Alice/Smiler, for reference). They’re the ones who still live in that crappy village, after all! Either way, it gives me the warm fuzzies picturing Victor feeling so loved and adored by his partners, and thinking about how they make his life anything but ordinary. :) Perfect Song Saturday!
*nods* Not bad, not bad -- though thanks to the thunderstorm, it DEFINITELY took me longer than I wanted to write that all up. If I just hadn't lost that hour to the weather... *grumbles* Ah well, maybe next Friday will be better. As it is, I gotta hit the sheets. Tomorrow, plans include working on tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (need to finish off the pet-related VITD Not-Incorrect Quotes for a start), playing Sims 4 (while I'd love to start my new save file, there is YET ANOTHER PATCH coming next week, so it might be easier to stick with offline caravan building); working on "The Van Dort Vacancy" (gotta get the gang past Mrs. Pemberly so they can start the heist proper); and hopefully getting some more videos out of my Watch Later (maybe an OXboxtra list or two?). We'll see what actually happens! Night all!
Work – A busyish half-Friday to end out the work week – I spent most of my morning working on the GL (proved to be a little more complicated than usual because our database people moved a bunch of gifts from one Appeal year to another, which shows up different than our standard reversal reports on the GL) and answering some e-mails; then called a guy at my supervisor’s behest to get his pledge set up on automatic payments; then spent the remaining hour and a half looking up why some people overpaid their pledges for my supervisor so we could plan calling them and offering them refunds as necessary. *nods* Little more stressful than I would have liked, but it filled the time! And I did get to go home at 1:30 PM, so that’s all that matters. *nods*
Fallout 4 – I did indeed finally have another Fallout Friday today, sneaking in just under an hour of Victor and Ada continuing to make their way through the Mechanist’s lair before having to quit thanks to the thunderstorm that rolled in around 3 PM. How’d that go? Let me tell you:
A) Started off with Victor and the now-very-electric Ada hanging out in the room with all the assembly lines and the partially-completed swarmbots being carried across the ceiling on hooks. I’d guessed that trying to traverse this area would trigger some sort of fight when I first entered it, and I was proven right today as, while trying to see if I could sneak Victor through a gap between one of the floor-level conveyor belts and a cage with some electrical equipment in it (I could not – either it was a tiny bit too small or there was an invisible wall there), a swarmbot spawned in on the ramp leading up to the catwalk at the other end of the room. Victor lined up a shot and easily took it out with a nice highly-charged blast from the Tactical Tesla before the bot even noticed them –
Aaand then things got rather more chaotic as a couple of laser turrets up on the wall suddenly woke up and started firing at him, and a tankbot trundled into the room and began sending blasts Ada’s way. Fortunately, the laser turrets weren’t too hard to take out (once I figured out exactly where I needed to shoot, anyway), and while the tankbot took a good few hits in VATS to die (the Tactical Tesla isn’t really a VATS gun, sadly – you gotta be able to charge it to get the full effect), the fact that it, like most of the other enemies I have faced recently, decided to focus all its murderous efforts on Ada meant that Victor at least didn’t get creamed by the – I THINK they were gamma shots? Some sort of green orb thing, which I’m pretty sure is what the gamma gun fires, so – while trying to kill it. Ada – best companion simply because EVERYTHING focuses its wrath on her, allowing Victor to kill enemies at his leisure. :P
B) Once the enemies were defeated (including backing up and waiting a minute to let the tankbot explode), I had Victor and Ada explore the room looking for goodies. There wasn’t really much to find, though – just a window to the left that looked in on the room we’d passed through before; a little storage area behind the stairs up to the catwalk that yielded some ammo and a bit of useful junk; various boxes and rad barrels scattered around (I made sure to give the latter a wide berth) –
And a big room at the end that had an armor workstation, a box of various drugs, a box of various explosives, and a button in it that made me wonder if it was some sort of giant elevator. Like, I know that sounds a little mental, but this was a big robotics facility that was working on making robots powered by human brains – making a big old room that doubled as an elevator didn’t seem outside the realm of possibility! I was just about to press the button and see what it did –
C) When I saw the open catwalk bridge above me, with a little area to the left with a Nuka-Cola machine and some tables. Curious, and not wanting to press the button in case it WAS an elevator and took me deeper into the facility with no way back up, I had Victor do a little parkour to hop onto the catwalk (basically getting him to jump onto the ramp railing under it, then from there onto the catwalk) and explore the area I’d spotted. He proceeded to find:
I. A bunch of decorative tables and cabinets and cupboards with junk both decorative and grabbable – I had him get a big old industrial oil can and a carton of cigarettes to turn into cloth later :P
II. The Nuka-Cola machine I’d spotted before, which proved to be pretty well-stocked with cola – two empty bottles, two regular Nukas, and a Cherry! Nice :)
III. An openable door leading deeper into the facility at the back
IV. And the button to extend the catwalk over to the other side of the room!
Not wanting to progress anything just yet (as I still needed to figure out what the button did in what I was now calling the “lift room”), I had Victor collect all his goodies, then hit the button to extend the catwalk. This connected the two sides of the bridge – but ALSO closed a big metal shutter on the “lift room,” sealing it off. Curiouser and curiouser! I had Victor cross the bridge to do a little investigating of the stairs on the other side – discovering in the process the button that controlled the catwalk from THAT side, meaning if I’d just gone UP the stairs on the left side of the room instead of simply poking around BEHIND them for goodies, I wouldn’t have had to do the parkour; live and learn – then head back toward that door he’d found with Ada at his side. Opening it revealed another storage area with more tables and cabinets, three whole rolls of duct tape (score!), an aluminum can (will never say no!) –
And another MST3K door (seriously, I am like 99% sure these super-complicated doors are a nod to the “getting into/out of the theater” bits of MST3K with the multiple doors Cambot takes us through) with an access port that required Ada’s scanning expertise to open! Which really suggested that THIS was the way I was meant to go. “So what the heck is the deal with the button in the ‘lift room?’” I wondered, heading back to the catwalks to find out. Once Ada and I were safely across the bridge (a process that took a little longer than it should have, as Ada’s AI glitched out and made her keep walking into the railing until the game was like “oh, FINE” and teleported her to me), I hit the button to retract it and open the “lift room,” then went down the stairs, around and up the ramp into it, and made sure Ada was safely inside before hitting the button…
Aaaand discovered all it did was extend the catwalk bridge and close the shutter. Just like the other buttons outside. I guess this wasn’t so much a “lift” room as, potentially, a “panic” room. *shrug* Hey, I had to find out! Don’t want to miss any secrets or fun stuff!
D) With the secret of the “panic room” uncovered, it was time to continue on! Victor thus got himself and Ada out of the “panic room” and back across the catwalk bridge to the door at the back of the storage area. Ada scanned the access port, the door went through its overly-complicated opening sequence, and the pair found themselves in a big wrecked hallway, in front of a pair of heavy-looking doors looking down over some gigantic room below. They proved to be unpickable, though (mag-locked, probably), so they just continued onward, heading around and over the rubble to the right to a door with another access port – this one labeled “Facilities Wing.” Ada did her scan, the door did its thing, and she and Victor entered another crumbling corridor, this one with some big old pipes on the walls, an ice-cold Nuka-Cherry by one of the cabinets, and a novice-locked toolbox Victor broke open for yet more duct tape (yay). The pair thus continued forward, toward a ramp with steam coming up from under it –
Only to be jumpscared by another Mechanist Eyebot! She angrily told Victor that people were right to fear him, someone who had no respect for human life, and that she, the Mechanist was sworn to protect the innocent, which she would do by getting rid of people like him! Victor wasn’t having that and took down the eyebot with a quick couple of blasts from the Tactical Tesla – but I could hear and see more robots coming in up ahead. I had Victor and Ada carefully go down the slope, with Victor creeping to the side to try and find a good vantage point to take them out –
And then the swarmbot and junkbot both decided to run directly at the pair – as usual, prioritizing targeting Ada – and Victor was able to take them both out with one blast each. XD Elite troops, these were not! Come on, Mechanist, we know you can do better than this!
E) With those foes downed, Victor and Ada continued on their journey, around the nearby corner past tables and toolboxes (the latter had some more duct tape – seriously, there is so much duct tape in this place, it’s great), over to another robot workbench sitting in a forgotten corner, and right to some stairs leading down –
Into a partially-flooded corridor. Cue me going “Oh shit, water” and promptly swapping Victor back to his beloved Two-Shot Combat Rifle, because, well, I didn’t want him getting electrocuted! I’m pretty sure using electrical weapons in water does that in this game! Feeling a little safer, I thus had him descend into the corridor and take a look around –
And then I noticed that, um, the air looked kind of – wavy. Like, not “water reflecting on the walls” wavy (which was happening), but “there’s a gas leak” wavy. Suspicious, I had Victor retreat back up the stairs a safe distance, then fired a single shot into the corridor below –
And sure enough, the air ignited in a brief but spectacular fireball! Well – that could have gone very badly. Good thing I have both played enough of this game and watched enough LPs of it to spot those danger zones! (But not to recognize when a room is not an elevator, of course. :P)
F) With the gas leak cleared (and Victor having had a lunch break at the game’s insistence – Jambalaya Pasta, which not only counted as food AND drink but ALSO gave him +25% XP gain for a couple of hours, nice), Victor and Ada were free to explore the lower corridor! There was a little caged area to the left that proved to have nothing interesting inside it – just a cabinet with nothing area – but to the right was a larger room with some stairs in that I was curious to check out. So I had Victor poke his head in –
Then pull it right back out because oh shit, radiation. D: However, it wasn’t a LOT of radiation, and I WAS curious to see what was in there, so I had him quickly sprint in and up the stairs onto the little catwalk area at the top of the room. Fortunately, the rads only got him on the stairs themselves, and he was free to explore the catwalk area, which mainly consisted of some cabinets; a desk with a big bottle of Economy Wonderglue on it (yay!); and the Power Substation A Terminal! Victor thus sat himself down and checked that out – it proved to belong to one Brandon McDaniel, and had four logs on it –
I. 77, What A Waste (consisting of him bitching about the fact that he’d gone through four years of electrical engineering school and could strip a Mr. Handy down to parts in under two hours, but no, he had to sit in here and babysit the generators)
II. 80, Cunning Plan (consisting of him coming up with a plan – courtesy of some comments by his friend Sharpley – to sneak a cigarette vending machine, loaned to him by a civilian friend, into his station to earn a few bucks from people looking for smokes and get to say hi to all the lovely ladies)
III. 82 Substation B (consisting of him complaining about how his coworker Banks started complaining about all the smoke when the vending machine was put in place – and then made it clear that he wanted a cut of McDaniel’s vending machine cash to keep quiet)
IV. And 90, Official Approval (consisting of him happily declaring that he’d come out on top by bribing the General with a few free cartons of cigarettes to give his machine official approval, meaning he didn’t have to pay Banks squat).
Fun stuff – made even funnier by the fact that the one thing I didn’t see in this room was a cigarette vending machine. Like, I spotted a Nuka-Cola vending machine, tucked into a corner by the generators (I had Victor risk the rads to get a couple more Nukas on his way out), but I did NOT see anything that sold cigarettes. Now, I admit, my Perception score CAN be comparable to Jon of Many A True Nerd’s sometimes (the joke being that Jon misses shit all the time, to the point where it’s joked he has a Perception of -1), so it’s possible I just didn’t pay enough attention, but it was a pretty small room, so...also quite possible that someone at Bethesda put the wrong vending machine in here!
G) With that room explored, it was time for Victor and Ada to move onward, going straight down the corridor into the wreckage of a locker room – which had a scrapbot in it “playing dead.” I had Victor sneak just close enough to activate it and get it to sit up, then blast it with his Two-Shot to instantly kill it with a technical sneak attack. :D I do enjoy flinging lightning around with the Tactical Tesla, but there’s a reason the Two-Shot is beloved! Anyway, I had Victor grab what he wanted out of the room (some toothpaste, a toothbrush, and a robot parts model), then had him move onward, into another big storage room with giant carts and lots of shelving. And an entire PACK of duct tape, which now makes me think they were literally duct-taping the robobrains together or something. XD Victor grabbed that, then dumped some stuff on Ada (the Crippling Gamma Gun – he wasn’t using it – and a bunch of junk) to free up some space, as the pockets were getting full on his Silver Shroud costume. :P He then led the way around the corner, past the carts and into a big, partially collapsed tunnel, with tracks on the ground and a big metal shutter to the left, with a button to open it…
Aaand that’s when the thunder really started thundering, and I had to quickly save and quit before the storm truly kicked off. Meh. But hey, it was nice to make some progress here again! :) And find all of that duct tape and Wonderglue – seriously, if you have played even a couple hours of this game, you will KNOW how much you need adhesive. :P Next Friday, we’ll see what’s behind that metal shutter, and get that much closer to the final showdown with the Mechanist...
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – final night on the bike this week, pedaling my way through:
A) The end of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 4: The Path of Broken Oaths!” The final half-hour of this relatively-lighthearted adventure of the gang discovering that a local hamlet was being swindled by an asshole pretending to be the local Green Man featured –
I. The fight against the Fraudulent Green Man continuing with Willowfine trying and failing to cast “Hold Person” on the fraudster (her magical beam of sunlight just not being up for the job); Lug managing to break the unlucky rolls curse and get two good hits on the guy with his hammer, all the while complaining about how maybe the NEXT hamlet they visited would be fine and normal and he could get a nice drink; and Morven wrapping things up by giving the man a very solid Mind Slivering with her sorcery, causing him to yield. Yeah, doesn’t feel so nice now when it’s you having the psychic spike slammed into your head, huh?
II. The gang berating the fraudster, who attempted to claim that all that stuff in the cave wasn’t his – only to confess to the truth when Morven started warming up a fresh Mind Sliver. XD He then switched tactics, trying to say that what he’d done wasn’t THAT bad, all he’d taken was some silver and some cloth and some chickens, and he never hit the same place twice (patently untrue, sir!) –
And then Cressida tried to spook him with a “levitating” chest of money (having already robbed all the most expensive stuff out of it herself), he cast Dispel Magic on her to see what was going on – and upon seeing her face, went APOPLECTIC. Turns out the fraudster was one Evander Mountforth, who took out a loan from the Blackwater Bank, only to lose everything when he couldn’t pay off the principal fast enough and Cressida ended up jacking up the interest rate in response. So he’d turned to trickery and thievery to survive, and learned magic in the hopes of finding her one day and killing her for what she’d done.
...Cressida was like “I – do not remember you at ALL.” Which, as you might imagine, made him EVEN ANGRIER. And the others did not help his mood by not quite understanding what it was that Cressida had done (given they all live in barter societies and don’t have any concept of “interest rates”) and not QUITE remembering his name (Willowfine calling him “Evangelo” at one point). He got off a Mind Spike against her (though an accidental nat 20 from Ellen when she missed her dice tower roller with the d20 meant all she got was a bad headache) – mostly because Morven was done with all this and busy shrinking everything down to make it easier to carry back to the villagers – but then the others intervened, saying that, even if Cressida had ruined him, that didn’t give him the right to ruin others, and that they felt he needed to go to the court of the Green Man to answer for what he’d done. Evander was like “face the very guy I’ve been impersonating?! No way – how about I promise to never do this again and stop trying to kill Cressida, and you’ll let me go?” Willowfine agreed as long as he handed over the costume –
Including the bits he was wearing. XD The deeply embarrassed Evander reluctantly stripped off his clothes, then turned himself invisible and wandered off. And Cressida, being Cressida, couldn’t resist sending him a final message: “Thank you for banking with Blackwater.” XD Oh, Ellen is loving being an evil bitch, let me tell you. XD
III. The gang returning what items they could to the villagers and explaining about the trickster (with Happen offering his condolences to Lionel about Mark in apology, having seen for himself that Evander could kill, or at least harm, with a glance – and then going to Willowfine “we did kind of forget he murdered someone when we let him go, didn’t we?” XD Fortunately the villagers were a little distracted by the giant chest of silver Morven had delivered to them) – the villagers thanked them for their help and promised to renew their bonds with the ACTUAL Green Man as soon as possible. The gang then headed back to the Green Man’s court through the woods (which involved the others chasing after the impatient Morven), where they reported on what had happened and how they’d fixed it to the Green Man. And, in Morven’s case, tried to unload the trickster’s trousers on him (the Green Man was like “you can keep those” XD). The Green Man thanked them for their help, and Happen once again tried to charm some sweet loot out of the guy by saying they’d clearly gone above and beyond, using the powers of the Cadence Die. His first roll was a paltry 11, but when Andy reminded him that he should still have a free inspiration (apparently humans just GET a point of that after every long rest, fancy), he rolled again –
And – praise Cadence! – got a crit 1. XD It was decided that Happen’s sprites playfully yanked his pants down the minute he tried to seal the deal. XD The Green Man fortunately was amused, and while he didn’t give Happen any sweet loot, he did at least fix his busted bowstring. This Green Man is a fucking nice wild folk, let me tell you. Case in point, he also gave Morven the information he’d promised to give Robin about the strange fellow in the hat and patched coat – he didn’t know much, but he knew that the guy called himself the Poor Man, and that while he SEEMED to be new to Heorth, there was something about him that seemed to be much older than even the Green Man. Which is – somewhat worrying. Morven said she’d have to do some research – I don’t know where, but we’ll see what happens.
IV. And, to end things off, the gang being assured by the Green Man that their debt had been repaid and they could travel through the Wyrdwood freely once more (so long as they kept their bargains and caused no trouble) – and then getting another message from the team in the North on their copestones! Or, rather, they STARTED to get a message –
Only for the copestone to suddenly SPLIT IN TWO. And when Willowfine picked up the pieces, they all saw that it was like someone had taken an ax to the stone. O.o Given that the North team had already suffered injuries the last time we heard from them, this seems – less than ideal. *grimace* We’ll see what happens with that when we watch Episode 5 next week!
B) And, to fill the last few minutes at the end of my workout, three Baldur’s Gate III-related Shorts:
I. “Your first BG3 playthrough VS every save after…” by JourdanGames – featuring a woman cheerily going on about how awesome BG3’s lore and worldbuilding is and how she wants to talk to everyone and read every book and find every place in her first playthrough...and then speeding through everything (the specific example given being Gale explaining his whole situation) on subsequent runs XD
II. “Warlock's unique dialogue about Raphael for Astarion | Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream – featuring a special interaction a warlock can have with Astarion regarding when Raphael shows up to offer them a deal regarding their tadpoles! Seems a warlock can tell Astarion “Oh, he’s a cambion, we can take him” – only for Astarion to dress them down but HARD for being too flippant. Featuring a lot of him sarcastically going on about how they must know EXACTLY what was going on with their tadpoles, and thus EXACTLY why a devil – oh, excuse him, a CAMBION – would find them interesting enough to want to make a deal – because if they DIDN’T actually know...well, they might as well sign their souls away right then. Another excellent bit of acting from Neil Newbon there!
III. And “When Archfey Warlock got denied entry to the circus | Baldur's Gate 3” by DragonsDream – featuring what happens when a warlock with an Archfey patron gets denied entry to the Circus of Lost Days in Baldur’s Gate, because the ghoul at the entrance, Benji, accuses them of having a brain that smells of piss and iron (Benji’s supposed to sniff out murderers, so I guess that’s what you smell like if you murder people?). The warlock’s patron, who’d been all excited about the fey magic inside, got snippy and gave their little magic user some barbed words to use as a weapon, with the warlock thusly informing the guy at the entrance that, unless he wanted trouble with the Seelie court, he’d let them in –
And then proceeded to fail the Intimidation check, causing Benji to attack and the warlock to have to explode everyone. XD Kinda ruins one’s day at the circus, gotta say!
2. Update the FO4 Playthrough Progression Doc: Check – Victor, Alice, and Ada all dove deeper into the Mechanist’s lair today, following the path my game!Victor and Ada laid out for them through the assembly line room, out and around into the Facilities Wing, and over to the cart tracks at the end of the flooded corridor – with the following relatively-minor changes:
A) Nobody made the mistake I did of even briefly thinking that the room the tankbot emerged out of at the end of the assembly line room was an elevator of sorts – though Victor did JOKE that it was one while hitting the button inside to see what it did while exploring. He was very surprised to see it extend the catwalk and close a big shutter in front of the room. XD He did climb his way up onto the retracted catwalk bridge after opening the shutter, though, doing so while Alice and Ada went around the other side to look for the external controls. He had a lot of fun hitting the button on his side to re-extend the bridge right when they found the button on their side. XD
B) And rather than Victor exploring Power Substation A and reading the terminal entries therein about McDaniels and his briefly-illegal cigarette vending machine, Ada was the one to explore the lightly-irradiated room, as she is her own person in this universe and much more suited to taking on rads than the fleshy folks. She related the story of McDaniels to Victor and Alice after she returned (with the Economy Wonderglue in hand, of course), and asked if such behavior was typical of military personnel from his time – Victor was like “yup.” XD
I told you they were relatively minor! :P Just wasn’t a lot to adjust in today’s adventures. Next week, we’ll see what they find on the other side of that big metal shutter in the mysterious tunnel with the tracks, and if I have to make any bigger changes to what actually happens in my game!
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – though I didn’t actually watch anything in my “Watch Later,” as it was another day where I got to the YouTubes very late and thus couldn’t take on anything too long. So instead, having enjoyed some of their shorts earlier at the end of my workout, I headed over to DragonsDream’s channel to check out their actual videos –
And got intrigued by “Companion's secret deepest desire in Baldur's Gate 3!” This was a video on the special “Rapture” interaction you can have with the wood elf Naoise at Sharess’ Caress, a brothel you can visit in the game. Naoise isn’t offering sex, though – instead, if you chat with her (after killing her previous client, who turned into a mind flayer upon seeing you), she offers Rapture, where she weaves for your character a moment of purest ecstasy based on their deepest desire, summed up in a single word. There’s a few generic responses you can give – “revered,” “contented,” “powerful,” “rich” – but most of the “Origin” characters (the companions who double as player characters if you don’t want to make your own), plus The Dark Urge custom origin and one regular companion, have unique desires:
A) Shadowheart, who spends the game largely amnesiac because the cult she’s in keeps wiping her memories, wants to be whole
B) Karlach, who spends the game slowly dying because the infernal engine that’s replaced her heart is slowly but surely overheating outside of Avernus, wants to be alive
C) Astarion, who spends the game dealing with the fact that he was the puppet of an abusive vampire lord and never wants to go back to that life again, wants to be safe
D) Gale, who spends the game dealing with the consequences of trying to prove to his goddess girlfriend he could handle the higher-level magics she dealt with and fucking up big time, wants to be wise
E) Wyll, who spends the game trapped in a horrible pact with a devil who delights in making his life hell (no pun intended) and may only get out of it by agreeing to sacrifice his father, wants to be free
F) The Dark Urge, who spends the game tormented by the urge to murder and maim courtesy of their Bhaalspawn blood, wants to be sane
G) And Minsc, who is a delightfully goofy barbarian you can pick up late in the game who DOES have to deal with the fact he was mind controlled by someone pretending to be one of his dearest friends, wants to be – Minsc. XD Naoise struggles with that one for a moment. XD
All very cute – and very touching, except for Minsc. XD Though a little sad to see that Jahiera, Halsin, Minthara, and ESPECIALLY Lae’zel don’t get specific desires if they ask for Rapture. Like, okay, I can understand it for the first three – Jahiera gets recruited rather late in the story, and Halsin and Minthara are both very optional companions (and used to be mutually exclusive until Larian caved to everyone wanting to have a Minthara on an otherwise-good-aligned playthrough), but Lae’zel is the final Origin character! You’d think she of all people would have a special option! Maybe they thought “Powerful” sufficed, but given her whole thing is to prove herself to her people and get to ride a dragon and wield a silver sword, I think “Honored” would be better. Meh. It’s very weird the stuff Larian didn’t put in – and you notice it a lot more because so much of the rest of the game is treated with so much care.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – it was another nothing day on Valice Multiverse (plus, while checking my tracked tags, I suddenly ran into an error where I couldn’t load my dash, so I couldn’t have added anything to my queue if I’d WANTED to), but on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I put one last thing in my queue for this week – my Song Saturday song selection! Which was Alex Warren’s “Ordinary,” a song about how a mundane life can be elevated to something more by sharing it with the right person. :) My initial thought was this was a Valicer song (especially with the lyrics “On the edge of your knife/Stayin' drunk on your vine” making me think of Victor describing his relationship with Alice and Smiler respectively), but while writing up the post, I came to the conclusion that, since the opening lyrics about holy water being watered down and the town having lost its faith made me think of Burtonsville, perhaps the song was in fact best suited for the Multiplayer Wonderland OT5 (Victor/Victoria/Emily/Alice/Smiler, for reference). They’re the ones who still live in that crappy village, after all! Either way, it gives me the warm fuzzies picturing Victor feeling so loved and adored by his partners, and thinking about how they make his life anything but ordinary. :) Perfect Song Saturday!
*nods* Not bad, not bad -- though thanks to the thunderstorm, it DEFINITELY took me longer than I wanted to write that all up. If I just hadn't lost that hour to the weather... *grumbles* Ah well, maybe next Friday will be better. As it is, I gotta hit the sheets. Tomorrow, plans include working on tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (need to finish off the pet-related VITD Not-Incorrect Quotes for a start), playing Sims 4 (while I'd love to start my new save file, there is YET ANOTHER PATCH coming next week, so it might be easier to stick with offline caravan building); working on "The Van Dort Vacancy" (gotta get the gang past Mrs. Pemberly so they can start the heist proper); and hopefully getting some more videos out of my Watch Later (maybe an OXboxtra list or two?). We'll see what actually happens! Night all!
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Date: 2025-07-26 05:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-27 03:52 am (UTC)