Much Better Sunday
Aug. 3rd, 2025 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWe had no fucking ant sightings today; my parents went out and got some delicious overstuffed spinach calzones from a local pizza place for lunch (and Mom packed up the half that was left over for me to take for lunch tomorrow); I had a nice, chill afternoon playing Superliminal AND getting my writing done all before my workout (though, ironically, that was partly because it got hotter than they said it was going to this afternoon and we ended up not playing beanbags -- or croquet, as my parents bought a croquet set this morning during a trip to a flea market); and dessert was half a piece of cake with a scoop of ice cream, a chocolate drizzle, and whipped cream (admittedly, I got that yesterday too -- one of the bright spots of that annoying day -- but still). *nods* Yeah, I will take all that over the stress of yesterday! And now it is time to wrap things up with the daily write-up:
Tumblr: I am happy to report that I had a nice, productive day on the tumblrs –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I got four very important things done:
A) First, I finished drafting out my “teen Victor, Alice, and Smiler” photoset post – cleaning up and rewriting some of the text I copied over from my initial Dreamwidth post; tagging the appropriate CC creators for Smiler’s outfits; and adding the final set of tags! So that is all ready to go later this week, yay~
B) Second, I reblogged a post from “bisexual-and-polyamory-is-okay,” which talked all about the pleasures of “Domestic Polyamory” (like going to the park and swinging on the swing sets, or heading downtown to a favorite food shop, or sitting around the campfire roasting s’mores and sharing stories), into my drafts for later, because that is indeed a Valicer mood – think it’ll be my Thursday post this week :D
C) Third, I made a post asking any fellow Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark enjoyers if they could clarify if Barnaby is a lord or not, because I’m no longer sure of his rank (thanks to Astor calling him “Mr. Fortescue” in the big finale) and I’d like to use his correct title, if he has any, in “The Van Dort Vacancy.” I wasn’t sure if I’d get any response – but then, after lunch, I saw someone named “squigglebug” had replied stating it’s possible that he’s nobility WITHOUT a title (like, his father Barnaby Fortescue II has a noble title, but Barnaby is only a “Mr.” because it’s a very low ranked title). Granted, they then qualified that this only matters if Volisport aristocracy follows the same patterns and rules that 19th century British aristocracy did, and if Mike planned out what Barnaby’s actual status in society even was instead of just keeping it vague, but still – it was nice to get an answer! I responded saying I thought being an aristocrat came with a title, so it was interesting to learn otherwise, and saying that I just wanted to use his specific title if he had one. Nobody has yet popped up to let me know that he is specifically a lord, though, so I guess I’ll be using “Mr.” in my fic going forward!
D) And fourth, this evening I reblogged a post from “alleecatblues” about all the bullshit that’s been going on with MasterCard and Visa putting pressure on payment processors to try and force places like Steam and itch.io to delist adult (and, of course, queer) content, all at the behest of a group called “Collective Shout” (an anti-porn group masquerading as a feminist group, apparently)! Including sections on why this is a bad thing (because it means anyone can force these sites to take down whatever they think shouldn’t exist, which as you might guess is Not Good) and what you can do to fight back (call the credit card companies, send them letters, basically make sure that they hear loud and clear that the majority of people think this kind of censorship is total bullshit). Because sometimes you gotta put the Important Social Issues on your blog about how much you love your OTP/OT3!
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I didn’t have any asks or thread reblogs to answer, so I turned back to “rpmemelibrary” and reblogged their “Mindful Monday” meme! A list of questions about how your muse(s) destress, when they started using these methods to destress, how often they do these activities, if they do them alone or with friends, etc. *shrug* It seemed appropriate for a Monday and might encourage an ask or two – we will see!
Superliminal: Welp, today was the day – I popped into everyone’s favorite maddening perspective puzzle game one last time this afternoon to see about getting those last few achievements I felt it was possible for me to get. Said achievements being:
A) “Kasparov” – for making the final move in Dr. Pierce’s chess game against the Standard Orientation Protocol! How do you do that? Well –
I. First, this achievement is only possible if you’ve completed the “Chess Master” achievement and found all the blue and pink chess pieces hidden in the various levels, because you need them to fill out the chessboard that’s visible on the computer in the reception area. So make sure you’ve gotten that achievement to pop before starting this one!
II. Once you’ve gotten that achievement, you need to visit one of the levels where you can visit the reception area and look at the computer – the earliest one of these being “Optical,” which is the level I picked as I had other stuff I needed to do there anyway. If you’ve collected all the pieces, you’ll see them all filled in on the chess board on the computer – and you’ll find the computer is clickable now! Click the screen, and it will trigger a loading sequence and deposit you into a secret room – specifically, Dr. Pierce’s hidden apartment in the level “Whitespace!” It’s tucked into one of the office buildings in the “city” area right before the wintery valley full of snowy chess pieces and water coolers – you can see the rest of the monochrome cityscape through one set of windows, and regularly-rotating views of the rest of the level (including the mountains of various piles of junk and the weird hallways and whatnot) through the other. It’s pretty wild!
III. Once you’re in the apartment, the Standard Orientation Protocol will greet you as Dr. Pierce and indicate that it’s your move, referring to the chess board on the table in the middle of the room, which reflects the set-up of the pieces that was on the reception computer. In order to get the achievement, you have to first take the pink pawn off the square in front of the pink king and put it anywhere OUTSIDE the board – as per the guide I was using, if you put it on another space on the board, the Standard Orientation Protocol will concede the game (as at that point, she’s put in check no matter what), but you won’t get the achievement – and then move the blue rook on the other side of the board to the space in front of the king. The Standard Orientation Protocol will calculate her odds of winning, conclude they are poor, and congratulate Dr. Pierce on his victory, while you will get the achievement pop-up in the corner. Yay!
IV. Of course, once you’ve gotten your victory, you then have to figure out how to get back to the rest of the game. ^^; You have two options – head back to the main menu (as once you’ve gotten an achievement, it doesn’t go away), or – the one I chose – hop out the one open window in the little apartment onto the top of the smaller apartment building next door, then drop down from there into the main “Whitespace” play area and just finish off “Whitespace!” Because at this point, you’ve probably played the game enough that completing all the puzzles should be a breeze. XD (However, before you ask – I too wondered if using this “shortcut” into “Whitespace” would be an easy way to get the two speedrunning achievements, “Speed Runner” (for completing the game in under an hour) and “Superluminal” (for completing it under 30 minutes), but according to the guide I was using to pick up these last few achievements, someone’s already tested this, and it doesn’t count. Darn.)
B) “Fires Extinguished” – for emptying all the fire extinguishers in all the levels! I was down an extinguisher in “Optical,” so I headed back to that level again and started playing through it while watching a video guide on my phone that showed off the location of every extinguisher – and as it turned out, the one I’d missed was actually on the outside of that big square room near the start of the level! The one you have to escape by grabbing an exit sign and making it into a big ramp that you can climb to get up and over the tops of the walls. You have to go out the “front” of the room (relative to where you come in), then turn around almost immediately after you drop down, and you’ll see it hanging on the plywood next to a ladder. Not sure how I never noticed it before, but okay! Anyway, emptying that one got me the achievement – and the reward that, in every level going forward, fire extinguishers now emit a blast of flame from their hoses when clicked. XD It’s very cool, honestly.
C) “Take Your Trash Elsewhere” – for failing to throw away trash! How the heck do you do that? Well, according to the guide, you have to try and put something into one of the orange trash cans with a slot in the front in the “Optical” level (and possibly other levels, but this is where they’re the most obvious). The trash can will shake a couple of times and spit the item back out, and the achievement will pop. From what I read, one of the best places to get this achievement is the secret nook in “Optical” (the door waaay up on the wall in the room with the painted cube and green chess piece you have to make real by lining up things exactly from the right position) since, after climbing up there, all you have to do is get the red die out of the trash can in the nook, resize it, and try to put it back in. So I made my way up to the nook, grabbed the red die out of the trash can, and attempted to make it small enough to put it back into the can –
And, uh, missed. But apparently missed in such a way that the game thought I had put it back in there (I guess it just brushed the lip of the slot?) and had the trash can shake a couple of times – before sucking the cube back IN. AKA I really failed at throwing away trash! XD I tried to get the effect to trigger properly, but apparently the animation only plays once, aw. Shame. Still, got the achievement, and that’s the important part!
D) “Why Are You Like This” – for cloning an object way too many times! Obviously, this achievement can only be gotten in “Clone,” and generally triggers if you keep cloning the first clone-able door you encounter until you’re just piling up super-tiny doors on the ground (because eventually, as I found, the domino stack falls). It took rather a lot of clicking, but eventually the game agreed that I’d cloned the door too much and gave me the achievement. If you can get it, I’d recommend an auto-clicker to make getting this achievement a little easier and quicker!
E) “Fire Safety Achieved” – for pulling all the fire alarms in all the levels! My missing fire alarm was in “Labyrinth,” so I headed back there and went back to my guide to find the video on where all the fire alarms where in there and follow it along as I played. Turned out my missing fire alarm was in the big orange room on its side that you enter after going through one of the backstage areas with Dr. Pierce talking about how fragile dreams are – it’s the room where you THINK you have to line up the pieces of a painted block on the wall to make it real, but in actuality you’re being tricked into falling down a gap at the edge of the room. You have to ignore the block for a moment and head to the far side of the room, where you will find an emergency exit door in the floor, and a fire alarm (painted orange so it will blend in better) next to it. It’s a very easy fire alarm to miss, especially if you’re in a hurry (as “Labyrinth” encourages you to be), so it’s not a surprise I didn’t find it before! But I found and pulled it today, getting the achievement –
And a special new button on the main menu screen, once I returned to it, shaped like a fire alarm – right under the button that looks like a fire exit sign (which you get for getting all the constellations and which allows you to go into the room where the main menu stuff lives and screw around with the items there). Clicking it turns a sprinkler at the top of the room on and off. XD Makes sense, I suppose!
And there we have it – all of the achievements that don’t involve trying to speedrun the game or play any of the multiplayer stuff! I feel accomplished. :P But you know it isn’t a Superliminal write-up unless I tell you Interesting Things I Noticed While Playing, so let’s have a final list of those for old times’ sake, why don’t we?
a. Dr. Pierce’s little apartment in Whitespace has such things as a computer desk in the corner, a waste basket with a bunch of “Perception Is Reality” papers next to it, and a fire extinguisher and fire alarm next to the entrance door – though neither is clickable, sadly. :( I guess they didn’t want to hide the final extinguisher and fire alarm in a room that most players would never find!
b. I popped into the Constellation Room in “Optical” just to see if you could get the constellation again or not – answer’s not, unsurprisingly; the constellation is still visible in there and you can’t line it up again to make the object reappear.
c. The red die you can get out of the trash can in “Optical’s” nook room actually glows! Like, you can see a little red light coming out of it. Just kinda neat!
d. The catwalk you travel along near the end of the level, where Dr. Pierce tells you about gaining access to the elevators that will slowly wake you up, is situated directly above that square room that you have to escape via giant exit sign ramp – I don’t think there’s any way to jump over the sides and get back into it, but it was neat to see.
e. I went ahead and tried out Track 2 on the two clock radios you can find while roaming the art gallery in “Clone” – both play some very smooth, jazzy tracks. It’s nice to have the option to change the background music in this level – would have liked it in some of the others (like when I got stuck in the pool room in “Labyrinth” and got heartily sick of the music there!)
f. Speaking of that room in “Labyrinth,” I never told you what stuff was floating around in the weird water steps there – there’s a potted plant and a rubber ducky wearing an inner tube in the first step, and a toilet-shaped mop bucket, coffee mug, and clock in the second. Fun!
g. Discovered that the hit box on at least one of the “no entrance” barriers tucked up against the wall in the hallway beyond the pool room is huge – mostly because I got a soda from the vending machine nearby and dropped it on top of said barrier, and the can floated a good foot off the actual wood XD Dunno why it’s like that, but okay!
h. There’s an ad for “Staircon” in the final elevator in the elevator maze (which I did NOT manage to accidentally speedrun this time), when you finally reach the parking lot at the end – included such phrases as “Pitch lines for your pitch lines” and “getting stares for your stairs” XD
i. And, once you get access to the “Main Menu” room and the ability to play around with the objects within, you’ll find that, while anything you do in the actual room you see on the main menu screen persists (sort of – I attempted to set up a nice meal for the Polite Recognition trophy with the cheese wheel and the soda from the vending machine, only for the table to topple over and spill everything the minute I actually returned to the main menu XD), everything in the second room off the side that isn’t the Polite Recognition trophy – namely, the “LOADING…” letters and bars – resets in between play sessions. You can’t muck around with those too much – the game needs them for all its weird loading screens, after all!
And that is that for Superliminal! I haven’t 100%-ed the game, but I’ve come pretty close, and I feel like that’s good enough for now. *nods* Maybe at some point in the future I will attempt the two speedrunning achievements, or try to find the final set of collectibles in the game (literal Easter eggs – they don’t have an achievement tied to them, they’re just in there for fun), but we’ll save that for either Christmas vacation or next summer. Instead, it’s time to turn our attention to another game that’s been waiting very patiently for me to get back to it, and see if maybe, just maybe, next weekend we can finally get my Bardlock Smiler run in Baldur’s Gate III off the ground...
Writing: Got another page done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” today, featuring:
A) Victor, with a lot of crouching and squinting, managing to spot the alarmed tripwire just past the door into the hall to the vault and pointing it out to the others, who managed to step over it without setting it off (though naturally Kasimir had a little more trouble than the others, thanks to his knee brace which needed oiling – Barnaby scolded him for being too uptight, only for Alice to counter that poor people had more to be uptight about, and Barnaby admitting that was probably true and saying he could never work like they did (Alice: “At least you admit it”))
B) Victor then telling the group about the next trap – three tiny pressure plates hidden within the tiles of the mosaic floor (depicting fish swimming in the starry depths of the Ink Sea), two of which caused darts coated with slumber essence to shoot out of the walls and one that released a load of flashbangs from the ceiling to stun interlopers; he wasn’t sure exactly where they were, but knew that they went left side-right side-left side and were decently spaced out, and using that information (plus a lot of crouching and squinting), Smiler was able to spot two probable candidate tiles sticking up a little bit from the others (Barnaby pointed out they could just be the result of a poor laying job, but Smiler countered that they still wouldn’t want to trip over it either).
*nods* So they’re making good progress here! I left things off with Kasimir asking the others if they were ready to follow him, an old professional – tomorrow, he leads the Prowl group action! ...and, uh, trips and falls into the wall with Smiler because, hilariously, they were the only ones who didn’t get at least a partial success. XD At least they won’t set off any of the traps?
Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another episode of Jon’s new F:NV YOLO Remastered – No Guns series to pedal my way partway through during my workout, before finishing up the remainder after supper! Tonight’s episode was “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 4 - Highway To Hell,” and featured our favorite Melee-Only Courier P. D. Shoot –
A) Making a night trip to the Mojave Outpost nearby to Primm! Which involved her taking the road going straight up the center of the desert to try and avoid all the feral ghouls and radscorpions and barkscorpions (yes, there are apparently two different types of scorpion trying to kill you in this game) roaming about...only to have to change course a little bit when some Jackal gang leaders who were supposed to be scripted to attack some nearby convicts wandering down the road and then go about their business took out their targets late for some reason, and then insisted on remaining on the alert. Poor P. D. had to thus skirt much closer to the nearby dry lake bed and its barkscorpions than she really wanted in order to keep away from the nasty people with guns! Fortunately, thanks to it being night and her having a very high Sneak skill at this point in the game, she was able to make it past all the enemies without being spotted, and her beloved 9-Iron was not needed.
B) Arriving safely at the Outpost (an NCR camp) and hitting it up for the following:
I. A Gun Runners’ Arsenal (GRA) variant of the baseball bat (in perfect condition, no less) that did more damage than her standard bat AND could be modded, and a “cork core” mod for it that makes it swing faster from the trader in the barracks, Lacey (Jon was HOPING for the “nails” mod to make the bat do even MORE damage, but took the cork core because hey, anything to make the bat better)
II. As much booze as she could steal from the kitchen without being spotted (because P. D. is a drunken master, don’t you know :P)
III. An upgrade to her beloved Desperado hat from Major Knight, one of the best repairpeople in the game, who restored it to perfect condition and even gave it an extra point of damage threshold, all for ten caps
IV. And the opportunity to sneak up on Ranger Ghost atop a nearby building and get her special “I didn’t hear you come up the ramp and I am now impressed with your sneaking skills” greeting (with the help of her new Marked Man Recon armor and a skill magazine to make her super sneaky), along with the job to go figure out what the hell’s going on in Nipton.
*nods* A solid night’s work, I think you’ll agree!
C) Heading to Nipton, avoiding the road going directly there from the outpost (because there’s apparently a raider ambush waiting for you on it once you pass some ruins along the side) and instead heading back to Primm before very carefully skirting that nearby dry lake bed with all the barkscorpions and giant ants and whatnot to get there as the crow flies. Things nearly went wrong when P. D. found one random giant worker ant in her way – but, being a worker, it was not interested in causing trouble in the slightest, and P. D. was able to slip her way around it without any problems. *whew* We do enjoy it when the wildlife is chill!
D) Arriving at Nipton to find it was a burned-out mess after an attack by Caesar’s Legion (the nastiest fuckers in the game) and doing the following:
I. Meeting Oliver Swanick at the entrance, who delightedly told her that he was the winner of the lottery (he did not specify WHICH lottery, but I presume it was the one where the winner did NOT get murdered by the Legion) – before running off toward the dry lake bed to presumably be slaughtered by radscorpions or giant ants
II. Stopping by the Nipton General Store to chat with the man inside, Boxcar (and very pointedly NOT give him any Med-X, as she needed that), and get the sidequest “Booted” to free some captive Powder Gangers from a Legion slave camp later on (she of course also looted the place because goodies)
III. Popping into a cabin on the side of town to grab some NCR dog tags off the dead soldiers in there to hand over to the Legion later to help make friends (because she ain’t doing any of their dangerous horrible quests, are you nuts)
IV. Pointedly avoiding going into the town hall, because while it had a good skill book inside it ALSO had loads of dogs, and – yeah, no, not on a fucking melee-only run
V. And chatting with Vulpes Inculta and praising the “purity of Legion justice” after his evil rant about why he crucified and burned the “degenerates” of Nipton in order to make him like her (because, again, she wants to be friendly with the Legion but avoid doing their quests).
Just another busy day in a not-so-busy town! Dunno why she needs to be friendly with the Legion, but then again Jon often ends up doing some very evil things on these challenge runs, soooo I’m sure he has his reasons!
E) Following the group of NPC Legionnaires who were hanging out with Vulpes Inculta out of Nipton and up through the nearby hills to try and avoid another raider ambush lying in wait for unwary travelers on the road nearby...only to:
I. First have to run into and bump the Legionnaires off a rock they kept getting stuck on as they tried to head up the hill because the AI be dumb sometimes
II. Then have to abandon the group in order to use wonky Bethesda-game-engine-physics to climb up some nearby rocks and onto the high ground because the Legionnaires insisted on walking by a cave full of barkscorpions without actually doing anything about the barkscorpions
III. And finally have to SPRINT for safety after discovering that the barkscorpions she had been trying to avoid had indeed noticed her presence, AND could indeed get up onto the high ground where she thought she was safe! O: Fortunately, F:NV enemies can only roam so far away from their original spawn point, so after crossing the road at the top of the ridge and leaping onto a convenient rock, all P. D. had to do was wait for the swarm of angry barkscorpions to give up and scuttle back to the cave because it was illegal for them to follow her that far. (If you’re wondering what the Legionnaires were doing, they were running scared and getting caught on the scenery. Thanks guys! Evil and incompetent!)
F) Heading up the hill to Wolfhorn Ranch, which got her enough XP to push her up to Level 5 (she chose to level up the Lockpicking skill a lot to make sure she could take on “Average” locks and the Sneak skill a little because that shit is keeping her alive), a Chopper cleaver weapon to sell, and a copy of “Tumblers Today” to boost her lockpicking even further (which made Jon wish he’d leveled up the Sneak skill more instead, but c’est la vie); then making a little trip over to the remains of Matthews Animal Husbandry Farm (avoiding her former Legion buddies and a nearby trailer that would spawn a Viper gang ambush if she went inside) to pick up a Wasteland Survival Guide to boost her Survival skill (which isn’t the MOST important skill for P. D., as of course she can’t eat or drink because that means recovering hit points, but it DOES allow her to make certain consumables at camp fires and is useful in other certain situations, so Jon figured he could go get the Guide because it was in a pretty safe area of the map)
G) Meeting up with some traveling NCR traders on a bridge nearby the Wolfhorn Ranch to see what they had in their wares (a “maple body” mod for the baseball bat to give it 50% more condition and thus make it last longer and some absinthe, but no nails to slap on her nice new bat, darn it) – then backing off because Jon knew the traders were just about to walk into a Legion ambush, and he needed to see which side would win without P. D. getting involved so he could determine if he could follow the traders along the very dangerous road to Novac or not. Fortunately for P. D., the traders very effectively slaughtered the Legionnaires in this reality, and after gathering up all the stuff off the corpses and selling it to the traders (along with her shitty spare bat because Jon wanted to make sure she only used the good GRA one), she happily joined their little caravan at the back, prepared to let them take on the dangers of the road –
Only for everything to go bananas. Jon’s words, not mine. XD Here’s what happened –
I. First, the traders took on the first ambush that awaited travelers along the Novac road – mole rats! Or, rather, one mole rat, which they easily killed. Rather than being happy about this, though, Jon was concerned, because there was never just one mole rat in that attack…
II. Then, the traders went past the nearby billboard, triggering the second ambush from some Viper raiders – only this time the attackers were Legionnaires. Led by a Veteran Legionary no less! A baffled P. D. hung way back as the Legionnaires started murdering the trader and their guards, absolutely shocked –
III. And then the missing mole rat suddenly joined the party and started attacking the Legionnaires, allowing one of the remaining traders to get the upper hand and kill the Veteran. P. D., still badly confused, starting sneaking forward to start looting the corpses for their goodies –
IV. And then MORE enemies appeared on her compass! Two more unknown red ticks, specifically. Jon was like “those could be mole rats…or they could be the missing Viper raiders” and decided that caution was the better part of valor before having P. D. activate one of her emergency stealth boys. He wasn’t happy about it at first as he wandered around looting the corpses –
But then the sole remaining trader started shooting at something, and a VATS scan revealed said something was a Night Stalker – aka a snake-dog creature that can be absolutely vicious and, in Jon’s own words, a run-ender. So yeah, the Stealth Boy was very much warranted!
H) Finishing looting the all the corpses from The Ambush Gone So Very Cocking Wrong (including one mysteriously-dead Viper’s head – no idea what happened to him, but it clearly wasn’t pretty) and then booking it (well, creeping it) to Novac before anything else could go wrong! Fortunately, the road beyond the nonsense was quiet, and – thanks to all her various perks – the Stealth Boy didn’t run out until she was safely within the city limits. Whew!
And that is where Jon left it. Next time – well, even he isn’t sure, because he had a plan, but now he isn’t sure if he should follow said plan because of all the utter chaos he just encountered on the road. XD But he has his pick of places to visit – the REPCON testing site, Nelson, Helios One, or even the outskirts of Vegas itself. Where will he send his poor stressed out courier? We will find out next week!
*nods approvingly* All very nice! I appreciate having a GOOD day off after the mildly shitty one yesterday. And now it is time for me to hit the sack while it is still relatively early -- got three days of work this week, then a five-day weekend, yay~ We'll see how it all goes -- night all!
Tumblr: I am happy to report that I had a nice, productive day on the tumblrs –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I got four very important things done:
A) First, I finished drafting out my “teen Victor, Alice, and Smiler” photoset post – cleaning up and rewriting some of the text I copied over from my initial Dreamwidth post; tagging the appropriate CC creators for Smiler’s outfits; and adding the final set of tags! So that is all ready to go later this week, yay~
B) Second, I reblogged a post from “bisexual-and-polyamory-is-okay,” which talked all about the pleasures of “Domestic Polyamory” (like going to the park and swinging on the swing sets, or heading downtown to a favorite food shop, or sitting around the campfire roasting s’mores and sharing stories), into my drafts for later, because that is indeed a Valicer mood – think it’ll be my Thursday post this week :D
C) Third, I made a post asking any fellow Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark enjoyers if they could clarify if Barnaby is a lord or not, because I’m no longer sure of his rank (thanks to Astor calling him “Mr. Fortescue” in the big finale) and I’d like to use his correct title, if he has any, in “The Van Dort Vacancy.” I wasn’t sure if I’d get any response – but then, after lunch, I saw someone named “squigglebug” had replied stating it’s possible that he’s nobility WITHOUT a title (like, his father Barnaby Fortescue II has a noble title, but Barnaby is only a “Mr.” because it’s a very low ranked title). Granted, they then qualified that this only matters if Volisport aristocracy follows the same patterns and rules that 19th century British aristocracy did, and if Mike planned out what Barnaby’s actual status in society even was instead of just keeping it vague, but still – it was nice to get an answer! I responded saying I thought being an aristocrat came with a title, so it was interesting to learn otherwise, and saying that I just wanted to use his specific title if he had one. Nobody has yet popped up to let me know that he is specifically a lord, though, so I guess I’ll be using “Mr.” in my fic going forward!
D) And fourth, this evening I reblogged a post from “alleecatblues” about all the bullshit that’s been going on with MasterCard and Visa putting pressure on payment processors to try and force places like Steam and itch.io to delist adult (and, of course, queer) content, all at the behest of a group called “Collective Shout” (an anti-porn group masquerading as a feminist group, apparently)! Including sections on why this is a bad thing (because it means anyone can force these sites to take down whatever they think shouldn’t exist, which as you might guess is Not Good) and what you can do to fight back (call the credit card companies, send them letters, basically make sure that they hear loud and clear that the majority of people think this kind of censorship is total bullshit). Because sometimes you gotta put the Important Social Issues on your blog about how much you love your OTP/OT3!
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I didn’t have any asks or thread reblogs to answer, so I turned back to “rpmemelibrary” and reblogged their “Mindful Monday” meme! A list of questions about how your muse(s) destress, when they started using these methods to destress, how often they do these activities, if they do them alone or with friends, etc. *shrug* It seemed appropriate for a Monday and might encourage an ask or two – we will see!
Superliminal: Welp, today was the day – I popped into everyone’s favorite maddening perspective puzzle game one last time this afternoon to see about getting those last few achievements I felt it was possible for me to get. Said achievements being:
A) “Kasparov” – for making the final move in Dr. Pierce’s chess game against the Standard Orientation Protocol! How do you do that? Well –
I. First, this achievement is only possible if you’ve completed the “Chess Master” achievement and found all the blue and pink chess pieces hidden in the various levels, because you need them to fill out the chessboard that’s visible on the computer in the reception area. So make sure you’ve gotten that achievement to pop before starting this one!
II. Once you’ve gotten that achievement, you need to visit one of the levels where you can visit the reception area and look at the computer – the earliest one of these being “Optical,” which is the level I picked as I had other stuff I needed to do there anyway. If you’ve collected all the pieces, you’ll see them all filled in on the chess board on the computer – and you’ll find the computer is clickable now! Click the screen, and it will trigger a loading sequence and deposit you into a secret room – specifically, Dr. Pierce’s hidden apartment in the level “Whitespace!” It’s tucked into one of the office buildings in the “city” area right before the wintery valley full of snowy chess pieces and water coolers – you can see the rest of the monochrome cityscape through one set of windows, and regularly-rotating views of the rest of the level (including the mountains of various piles of junk and the weird hallways and whatnot) through the other. It’s pretty wild!
III. Once you’re in the apartment, the Standard Orientation Protocol will greet you as Dr. Pierce and indicate that it’s your move, referring to the chess board on the table in the middle of the room, which reflects the set-up of the pieces that was on the reception computer. In order to get the achievement, you have to first take the pink pawn off the square in front of the pink king and put it anywhere OUTSIDE the board – as per the guide I was using, if you put it on another space on the board, the Standard Orientation Protocol will concede the game (as at that point, she’s put in check no matter what), but you won’t get the achievement – and then move the blue rook on the other side of the board to the space in front of the king. The Standard Orientation Protocol will calculate her odds of winning, conclude they are poor, and congratulate Dr. Pierce on his victory, while you will get the achievement pop-up in the corner. Yay!
IV. Of course, once you’ve gotten your victory, you then have to figure out how to get back to the rest of the game. ^^; You have two options – head back to the main menu (as once you’ve gotten an achievement, it doesn’t go away), or – the one I chose – hop out the one open window in the little apartment onto the top of the smaller apartment building next door, then drop down from there into the main “Whitespace” play area and just finish off “Whitespace!” Because at this point, you’ve probably played the game enough that completing all the puzzles should be a breeze. XD (However, before you ask – I too wondered if using this “shortcut” into “Whitespace” would be an easy way to get the two speedrunning achievements, “Speed Runner” (for completing the game in under an hour) and “Superluminal” (for completing it under 30 minutes), but according to the guide I was using to pick up these last few achievements, someone’s already tested this, and it doesn’t count. Darn.)
B) “Fires Extinguished” – for emptying all the fire extinguishers in all the levels! I was down an extinguisher in “Optical,” so I headed back to that level again and started playing through it while watching a video guide on my phone that showed off the location of every extinguisher – and as it turned out, the one I’d missed was actually on the outside of that big square room near the start of the level! The one you have to escape by grabbing an exit sign and making it into a big ramp that you can climb to get up and over the tops of the walls. You have to go out the “front” of the room (relative to where you come in), then turn around almost immediately after you drop down, and you’ll see it hanging on the plywood next to a ladder. Not sure how I never noticed it before, but okay! Anyway, emptying that one got me the achievement – and the reward that, in every level going forward, fire extinguishers now emit a blast of flame from their hoses when clicked. XD It’s very cool, honestly.
C) “Take Your Trash Elsewhere” – for failing to throw away trash! How the heck do you do that? Well, according to the guide, you have to try and put something into one of the orange trash cans with a slot in the front in the “Optical” level (and possibly other levels, but this is where they’re the most obvious). The trash can will shake a couple of times and spit the item back out, and the achievement will pop. From what I read, one of the best places to get this achievement is the secret nook in “Optical” (the door waaay up on the wall in the room with the painted cube and green chess piece you have to make real by lining up things exactly from the right position) since, after climbing up there, all you have to do is get the red die out of the trash can in the nook, resize it, and try to put it back in. So I made my way up to the nook, grabbed the red die out of the trash can, and attempted to make it small enough to put it back into the can –
And, uh, missed. But apparently missed in such a way that the game thought I had put it back in there (I guess it just brushed the lip of the slot?) and had the trash can shake a couple of times – before sucking the cube back IN. AKA I really failed at throwing away trash! XD I tried to get the effect to trigger properly, but apparently the animation only plays once, aw. Shame. Still, got the achievement, and that’s the important part!
D) “Why Are You Like This” – for cloning an object way too many times! Obviously, this achievement can only be gotten in “Clone,” and generally triggers if you keep cloning the first clone-able door you encounter until you’re just piling up super-tiny doors on the ground (because eventually, as I found, the domino stack falls). It took rather a lot of clicking, but eventually the game agreed that I’d cloned the door too much and gave me the achievement. If you can get it, I’d recommend an auto-clicker to make getting this achievement a little easier and quicker!
E) “Fire Safety Achieved” – for pulling all the fire alarms in all the levels! My missing fire alarm was in “Labyrinth,” so I headed back there and went back to my guide to find the video on where all the fire alarms where in there and follow it along as I played. Turned out my missing fire alarm was in the big orange room on its side that you enter after going through one of the backstage areas with Dr. Pierce talking about how fragile dreams are – it’s the room where you THINK you have to line up the pieces of a painted block on the wall to make it real, but in actuality you’re being tricked into falling down a gap at the edge of the room. You have to ignore the block for a moment and head to the far side of the room, where you will find an emergency exit door in the floor, and a fire alarm (painted orange so it will blend in better) next to it. It’s a very easy fire alarm to miss, especially if you’re in a hurry (as “Labyrinth” encourages you to be), so it’s not a surprise I didn’t find it before! But I found and pulled it today, getting the achievement –
And a special new button on the main menu screen, once I returned to it, shaped like a fire alarm – right under the button that looks like a fire exit sign (which you get for getting all the constellations and which allows you to go into the room where the main menu stuff lives and screw around with the items there). Clicking it turns a sprinkler at the top of the room on and off. XD Makes sense, I suppose!
And there we have it – all of the achievements that don’t involve trying to speedrun the game or play any of the multiplayer stuff! I feel accomplished. :P But you know it isn’t a Superliminal write-up unless I tell you Interesting Things I Noticed While Playing, so let’s have a final list of those for old times’ sake, why don’t we?
a. Dr. Pierce’s little apartment in Whitespace has such things as a computer desk in the corner, a waste basket with a bunch of “Perception Is Reality” papers next to it, and a fire extinguisher and fire alarm next to the entrance door – though neither is clickable, sadly. :( I guess they didn’t want to hide the final extinguisher and fire alarm in a room that most players would never find!
b. I popped into the Constellation Room in “Optical” just to see if you could get the constellation again or not – answer’s not, unsurprisingly; the constellation is still visible in there and you can’t line it up again to make the object reappear.
c. The red die you can get out of the trash can in “Optical’s” nook room actually glows! Like, you can see a little red light coming out of it. Just kinda neat!
d. The catwalk you travel along near the end of the level, where Dr. Pierce tells you about gaining access to the elevators that will slowly wake you up, is situated directly above that square room that you have to escape via giant exit sign ramp – I don’t think there’s any way to jump over the sides and get back into it, but it was neat to see.
e. I went ahead and tried out Track 2 on the two clock radios you can find while roaming the art gallery in “Clone” – both play some very smooth, jazzy tracks. It’s nice to have the option to change the background music in this level – would have liked it in some of the others (like when I got stuck in the pool room in “Labyrinth” and got heartily sick of the music there!)
f. Speaking of that room in “Labyrinth,” I never told you what stuff was floating around in the weird water steps there – there’s a potted plant and a rubber ducky wearing an inner tube in the first step, and a toilet-shaped mop bucket, coffee mug, and clock in the second. Fun!
g. Discovered that the hit box on at least one of the “no entrance” barriers tucked up against the wall in the hallway beyond the pool room is huge – mostly because I got a soda from the vending machine nearby and dropped it on top of said barrier, and the can floated a good foot off the actual wood XD Dunno why it’s like that, but okay!
h. There’s an ad for “Staircon” in the final elevator in the elevator maze (which I did NOT manage to accidentally speedrun this time), when you finally reach the parking lot at the end – included such phrases as “Pitch lines for your pitch lines” and “getting stares for your stairs” XD
i. And, once you get access to the “Main Menu” room and the ability to play around with the objects within, you’ll find that, while anything you do in the actual room you see on the main menu screen persists (sort of – I attempted to set up a nice meal for the Polite Recognition trophy with the cheese wheel and the soda from the vending machine, only for the table to topple over and spill everything the minute I actually returned to the main menu XD), everything in the second room off the side that isn’t the Polite Recognition trophy – namely, the “LOADING…” letters and bars – resets in between play sessions. You can’t muck around with those too much – the game needs them for all its weird loading screens, after all!
And that is that for Superliminal! I haven’t 100%-ed the game, but I’ve come pretty close, and I feel like that’s good enough for now. *nods* Maybe at some point in the future I will attempt the two speedrunning achievements, or try to find the final set of collectibles in the game (literal Easter eggs – they don’t have an achievement tied to them, they’re just in there for fun), but we’ll save that for either Christmas vacation or next summer. Instead, it’s time to turn our attention to another game that’s been waiting very patiently for me to get back to it, and see if maybe, just maybe, next weekend we can finally get my Bardlock Smiler run in Baldur’s Gate III off the ground...
Writing: Got another page done on “The Van Dort Vacancy” today, featuring:
A) Victor, with a lot of crouching and squinting, managing to spot the alarmed tripwire just past the door into the hall to the vault and pointing it out to the others, who managed to step over it without setting it off (though naturally Kasimir had a little more trouble than the others, thanks to his knee brace which needed oiling – Barnaby scolded him for being too uptight, only for Alice to counter that poor people had more to be uptight about, and Barnaby admitting that was probably true and saying he could never work like they did (Alice: “At least you admit it”))
B) Victor then telling the group about the next trap – three tiny pressure plates hidden within the tiles of the mosaic floor (depicting fish swimming in the starry depths of the Ink Sea), two of which caused darts coated with slumber essence to shoot out of the walls and one that released a load of flashbangs from the ceiling to stun interlopers; he wasn’t sure exactly where they were, but knew that they went left side-right side-left side and were decently spaced out, and using that information (plus a lot of crouching and squinting), Smiler was able to spot two probable candidate tiles sticking up a little bit from the others (Barnaby pointed out they could just be the result of a poor laying job, but Smiler countered that they still wouldn’t want to trip over it either).
*nods* So they’re making good progress here! I left things off with Kasimir asking the others if they were ready to follow him, an old professional – tomorrow, he leads the Prowl group action! ...and, uh, trips and falls into the wall with Smiler because, hilariously, they were the only ones who didn’t get at least a partial success. XD At least they won’t set off any of the traps?
Workout/YouTube: Another Sunday, another episode of Jon’s new F:NV YOLO Remastered – No Guns series to pedal my way partway through during my workout, before finishing up the remainder after supper! Tonight’s episode was “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 4 - Highway To Hell,” and featured our favorite Melee-Only Courier P. D. Shoot –
A) Making a night trip to the Mojave Outpost nearby to Primm! Which involved her taking the road going straight up the center of the desert to try and avoid all the feral ghouls and radscorpions and barkscorpions (yes, there are apparently two different types of scorpion trying to kill you in this game) roaming about...only to have to change course a little bit when some Jackal gang leaders who were supposed to be scripted to attack some nearby convicts wandering down the road and then go about their business took out their targets late for some reason, and then insisted on remaining on the alert. Poor P. D. had to thus skirt much closer to the nearby dry lake bed and its barkscorpions than she really wanted in order to keep away from the nasty people with guns! Fortunately, thanks to it being night and her having a very high Sneak skill at this point in the game, she was able to make it past all the enemies without being spotted, and her beloved 9-Iron was not needed.
B) Arriving safely at the Outpost (an NCR camp) and hitting it up for the following:
I. A Gun Runners’ Arsenal (GRA) variant of the baseball bat (in perfect condition, no less) that did more damage than her standard bat AND could be modded, and a “cork core” mod for it that makes it swing faster from the trader in the barracks, Lacey (Jon was HOPING for the “nails” mod to make the bat do even MORE damage, but took the cork core because hey, anything to make the bat better)
II. As much booze as she could steal from the kitchen without being spotted (because P. D. is a drunken master, don’t you know :P)
III. An upgrade to her beloved Desperado hat from Major Knight, one of the best repairpeople in the game, who restored it to perfect condition and even gave it an extra point of damage threshold, all for ten caps
IV. And the opportunity to sneak up on Ranger Ghost atop a nearby building and get her special “I didn’t hear you come up the ramp and I am now impressed with your sneaking skills” greeting (with the help of her new Marked Man Recon armor and a skill magazine to make her super sneaky), along with the job to go figure out what the hell’s going on in Nipton.
*nods* A solid night’s work, I think you’ll agree!
C) Heading to Nipton, avoiding the road going directly there from the outpost (because there’s apparently a raider ambush waiting for you on it once you pass some ruins along the side) and instead heading back to Primm before very carefully skirting that nearby dry lake bed with all the barkscorpions and giant ants and whatnot to get there as the crow flies. Things nearly went wrong when P. D. found one random giant worker ant in her way – but, being a worker, it was not interested in causing trouble in the slightest, and P. D. was able to slip her way around it without any problems. *whew* We do enjoy it when the wildlife is chill!
D) Arriving at Nipton to find it was a burned-out mess after an attack by Caesar’s Legion (the nastiest fuckers in the game) and doing the following:
I. Meeting Oliver Swanick at the entrance, who delightedly told her that he was the winner of the lottery (he did not specify WHICH lottery, but I presume it was the one where the winner did NOT get murdered by the Legion) – before running off toward the dry lake bed to presumably be slaughtered by radscorpions or giant ants
II. Stopping by the Nipton General Store to chat with the man inside, Boxcar (and very pointedly NOT give him any Med-X, as she needed that), and get the sidequest “Booted” to free some captive Powder Gangers from a Legion slave camp later on (she of course also looted the place because goodies)
III. Popping into a cabin on the side of town to grab some NCR dog tags off the dead soldiers in there to hand over to the Legion later to help make friends (because she ain’t doing any of their dangerous horrible quests, are you nuts)
IV. Pointedly avoiding going into the town hall, because while it had a good skill book inside it ALSO had loads of dogs, and – yeah, no, not on a fucking melee-only run
V. And chatting with Vulpes Inculta and praising the “purity of Legion justice” after his evil rant about why he crucified and burned the “degenerates” of Nipton in order to make him like her (because, again, she wants to be friendly with the Legion but avoid doing their quests).
Just another busy day in a not-so-busy town! Dunno why she needs to be friendly with the Legion, but then again Jon often ends up doing some very evil things on these challenge runs, soooo I’m sure he has his reasons!
E) Following the group of NPC Legionnaires who were hanging out with Vulpes Inculta out of Nipton and up through the nearby hills to try and avoid another raider ambush lying in wait for unwary travelers on the road nearby...only to:
I. First have to run into and bump the Legionnaires off a rock they kept getting stuck on as they tried to head up the hill because the AI be dumb sometimes
II. Then have to abandon the group in order to use wonky Bethesda-game-engine-physics to climb up some nearby rocks and onto the high ground because the Legionnaires insisted on walking by a cave full of barkscorpions without actually doing anything about the barkscorpions
III. And finally have to SPRINT for safety after discovering that the barkscorpions she had been trying to avoid had indeed noticed her presence, AND could indeed get up onto the high ground where she thought she was safe! O: Fortunately, F:NV enemies can only roam so far away from their original spawn point, so after crossing the road at the top of the ridge and leaping onto a convenient rock, all P. D. had to do was wait for the swarm of angry barkscorpions to give up and scuttle back to the cave because it was illegal for them to follow her that far. (If you’re wondering what the Legionnaires were doing, they were running scared and getting caught on the scenery. Thanks guys! Evil and incompetent!)
F) Heading up the hill to Wolfhorn Ranch, which got her enough XP to push her up to Level 5 (she chose to level up the Lockpicking skill a lot to make sure she could take on “Average” locks and the Sneak skill a little because that shit is keeping her alive), a Chopper cleaver weapon to sell, and a copy of “Tumblers Today” to boost her lockpicking even further (which made Jon wish he’d leveled up the Sneak skill more instead, but c’est la vie); then making a little trip over to the remains of Matthews Animal Husbandry Farm (avoiding her former Legion buddies and a nearby trailer that would spawn a Viper gang ambush if she went inside) to pick up a Wasteland Survival Guide to boost her Survival skill (which isn’t the MOST important skill for P. D., as of course she can’t eat or drink because that means recovering hit points, but it DOES allow her to make certain consumables at camp fires and is useful in other certain situations, so Jon figured he could go get the Guide because it was in a pretty safe area of the map)
G) Meeting up with some traveling NCR traders on a bridge nearby the Wolfhorn Ranch to see what they had in their wares (a “maple body” mod for the baseball bat to give it 50% more condition and thus make it last longer and some absinthe, but no nails to slap on her nice new bat, darn it) – then backing off because Jon knew the traders were just about to walk into a Legion ambush, and he needed to see which side would win without P. D. getting involved so he could determine if he could follow the traders along the very dangerous road to Novac or not. Fortunately for P. D., the traders very effectively slaughtered the Legionnaires in this reality, and after gathering up all the stuff off the corpses and selling it to the traders (along with her shitty spare bat because Jon wanted to make sure she only used the good GRA one), she happily joined their little caravan at the back, prepared to let them take on the dangers of the road –
Only for everything to go bananas. Jon’s words, not mine. XD Here’s what happened –
I. First, the traders took on the first ambush that awaited travelers along the Novac road – mole rats! Or, rather, one mole rat, which they easily killed. Rather than being happy about this, though, Jon was concerned, because there was never just one mole rat in that attack…
II. Then, the traders went past the nearby billboard, triggering the second ambush from some Viper raiders – only this time the attackers were Legionnaires. Led by a Veteran Legionary no less! A baffled P. D. hung way back as the Legionnaires started murdering the trader and their guards, absolutely shocked –
III. And then the missing mole rat suddenly joined the party and started attacking the Legionnaires, allowing one of the remaining traders to get the upper hand and kill the Veteran. P. D., still badly confused, starting sneaking forward to start looting the corpses for their goodies –
IV. And then MORE enemies appeared on her compass! Two more unknown red ticks, specifically. Jon was like “those could be mole rats…or they could be the missing Viper raiders” and decided that caution was the better part of valor before having P. D. activate one of her emergency stealth boys. He wasn’t happy about it at first as he wandered around looting the corpses –
But then the sole remaining trader started shooting at something, and a VATS scan revealed said something was a Night Stalker – aka a snake-dog creature that can be absolutely vicious and, in Jon’s own words, a run-ender. So yeah, the Stealth Boy was very much warranted!
H) Finishing looting the all the corpses from The Ambush Gone So Very Cocking Wrong (including one mysteriously-dead Viper’s head – no idea what happened to him, but it clearly wasn’t pretty) and then booking it (well, creeping it) to Novac before anything else could go wrong! Fortunately, the road beyond the nonsense was quiet, and – thanks to all her various perks – the Stealth Boy didn’t run out until she was safely within the city limits. Whew!
And that is where Jon left it. Next time – well, even he isn’t sure, because he had a plan, but now he isn’t sure if he should follow said plan because of all the utter chaos he just encountered on the road. XD But he has his pick of places to visit – the REPCON testing site, Nelson, Helios One, or even the outskirts of Vegas itself. Where will he send his poor stressed out courier? We will find out next week!
*nods approvingly* All very nice! I appreciate having a GOOD day off after the mildly shitty one yesterday. And now it is time for me to hit the sack while it is still relatively early -- got three days of work this week, then a five-day weekend, yay~ We'll see how it all goes -- night all!
