Better Time Management Sunday
Dec. 28th, 2025 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAs in, I think I will be able to finish this entry before I go to bed tonight, hooray~ Bit sad that that's a reason to celebrate -- really gotta work on my time management in 2026, I swear. But for now, here is the write-up for the day's activities:
Dreamwidth: Giving this its own category because I did spend a lot of time on here today:
A) First, I spent about an hour before lunch finishing off yesterday’s entry because I couldn’t get everything together by the time I decided “it’s 2 AM and I have to go to bed” (you can see the completed version here) – it really does annoy me whenever I have to do that, but at least it’s easier to do during this Christmas/New Year’s break!
B) Then I spent the rest of the time before lunch (and a little time afterward) answering all of Moose’s messages, because it was about freaking time I did that. *nods* Ball’s back in your court, Moose!
C) And of course I spent the time right before this entry answering all of Gigs’s comments from earlier, including that terrifying one about someone driving on a sidewalk past a schoolbus letting kids off and the much nicer one about how my Mom is cool. :) Keeping up with things, yay~
Tumblr: Had another “nothing on Valice Multiverse, reasonably busy on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)” day over here on the tumbls –
A) First, I saw that my friend Newt posted an ask meme called “AO3 Wrapped” on his blog (full of questions like “How many works did you publish this year?” and “What WIP are you taking into next year with you?”), and – after taking a moment to leave a comment on his “hatesex turns into unrequited feelings” Charles Rowland/Cat King Dead Boy Detectives fic, because I saw it mentioned in one of his answers to a previous ask (because it contains one of his favorite lines: “You’ll look back on that as the day he snuck his hand through your ribs and clicked the safety off.”), decided to check it out, and found it was really good (not to mention I already wanted to leave a nice comment on one of his fics in exchange for the nice comment on “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” yesterday, so...) – sent him an ask requesting him to answer question 30: “Biggest surprise while writing this year?” He replied that it was the mostly-positive reception to his “fat!Cat King” DBD smut fic (since the cast is filled with skinny, conventionally-attractive people); the way the Cat King (aka Thomas) took over a large portion of his DBD All Of Us Strangers-AU fic “never fade away” (but he wasn’t complaining about it); and how he managed to carry off writing the first chapter of the big collab DBD fic “The Great Escape Debacle Of 2025” because he came in as a pinch hitter WITHOUT reading the brief’s fine print and really had to SCRAMBLE to get something together (fortunately, his love of Saw helped him come up with an appropriate scenario to stick the poor boys in XD). I commented back that I was glad the “fat!Cat King” fic got so much love; that we shouldn’t be surprised that Thomas took over so much of “never fade away,” as he seems to like the spotlight; and that he was to be congratulated for getting that “Great Escape Debacle” fic chapter done. :) Good times – tempted to do the ask meme myself now, honestly...we’ll see how I feel tomorrow!
B) Then I quickly answered an ask from multiple-characters1-acct which simply said “Hap (Late) Birt!” – I simply said “Thank you! :)” back
C) Then, later in the afternoon, I responded to a post regicidalheart, aka Marie, tagged me in about Valicer’s reaction to Cajun food (as I believe she lives in New Orleans or somewhere in that general area and thus is familiar with it) – she posited that Alice wouldn’t be able to handle the spice, Victor would love it, and Smiler would find their mouth on fire but either enjoy the burn/be too polite to say anything for fear of offending the host. I said that I personally would switch Victor and Smiler’s reactions, or at least make both of them the “ow it burns but I can’t say anything because then the cook will be sad” type – though I admitted that might be just because I personally cannot handle spice and thus would wimp out when confronted with Cajun cooking. XD Though I did agree with her second point that they would find Cajun French confusing – especially Victor, who grew up learning PARISIAN French – but insisted they’d do their best to keep up. And said that if she wanted to do a Cajun OC, like she said at the end of the post, feel free! Smiler at least was always ready to make new friends. :p Nice to see people thinking of my trio – even if I don’t always agree with their headcanons. XD
D) And finally, late tonight, I reblogged Satirical’s latest reply in our conversation (over two different threads) about my Valicer trio in the Mortasheen world, talking about the various monsters the trio would find in their company. Apparently Carerazors are incapable of expressing negativity, which is why Alice’s Carerazor Beth calls Bumby the “least best friend” (though they are capable of tearing said “least best friends” apart with their claws – I approved of this and said that Beth and Smiler are definitely going to get along great); Greef vampires are meant to invoke the Gothic castles that traditional vampires live in, complete with flying “bat” polyps and whatnot (I had to admit that’s very cool); Orlock!Victor’s vampire companion, Sir Rhodes Glitterfin, is the way he is because he’s actually a young scamp by vampire fish standards (I compared him to a bratty teen, or someone in their 20s newly out on their own and making all sorts of bad decisions :P); and Psychodromes like the one Smiler will eventually pick up are weird even by Mortasheen standards, manifesting as weird biological “feelers” coming out of an old-school CRT TV set and forming a symbiotic connection to the nearest mind, “drinking” thoughts from nearby enemies and scrambling their brains if they threaten its host (Satirical thought it was very on-brand given the coaster’s “hypno-screen” stuff, and I agreed). This all remains extremely weird, but extremely fun to hear about. :)
Portal: Yes, I returned to the bowels of Aperture Science this afternoon, because – in a fit of absolute madness – I decided I wanted to go for the “Fruitcake” achievement (beat four Advanced portal maps) by taking on the Advanced version of Chamber 16 again. You know – the one that’s supposedly a live fire course for military androids? Full of deadly turrets? Which, in the Advanced version are in cages, so you can’t even knock them over and disable them – you have to work around them? The one where I got killed more times that I could count because I couldn’t get across that hallway midway through where the two turrets are facing each other without getting shot to absolute pieces? Yeah, that one. Why put myself through that torture again, you ask? Well, one, I’d already beaten three Advanced chambers, and, as stated, I wanted the achievement for beating a fourth –
And two, my only other options for Advanced chambers were Chamber 15, the one that now involves having to set up an infinite-fall-into-a-fling situation (aka I have to perfectly fire a portal while falling rapidly between two other portals, which I am not good at) right at the start, which I didn’t feel like doing, and Chamber 18, which was hard enough in the NORMAL version and I don’t even WANT to know how bad the Advanced one is. *wince* So yeah – really my only choice for completing a fourth Advanced map was Chamber 16, where I at least knew what I was getting into and had an idea or two on how to handle it. How did it go this time around? Well –
A) The beginning wasn’t so bad – I managed to sneak past the first turret in the doorway without taking more than a couple of bullets (I was hoping that I could portal past it, but once I got atop the cage, it became apparent that all the portal-able surfaces were around the corner, just out of sight), and I managed to use portals to completely bypass the second and third turrets. Felt pretty proud of myself there, given I got shot a lot more during this early bit in my first attempt!
B) THEN, having quicksaved, I was faced with my old nemesis – the hallway with two turrets facing each other, just past Doug’s Ratt Den. Getting past here was an adventure, let me tell you –
I. First, noticing that I could portal the floor over by the gap that I needed to get through to reach the next chamber, I tried putting a portal on the floor there, then tried popping through with a cube. Unsurprisingly, I immediately got turned around, ended up very shot, and died.
II. Then I attempted to set up a bounce situation where I popped myself and some cubes through the floor and up near the gap – same result as before, which really should not have come as a surprise.
III. Then I grabbed my phone to see what the ancient texts (aka various strategy guides) on the internet said – to my surprise, they revealed that the metal-double-cubes that Doug was using as makeshift tables in his Ratt Den could be moved around by pushing and portaling (but NOT by picking up, they were immune to that), and thus could potentially be used as extra obstacles to hide behind. I promptly portaled a few into the hallway with me and started shoving them around in the hopes of making mobile shields I could hide behind, putting a cube atop one for extra protection since I couldn’t stack them properly. This KIND OF worked, but I couldn’t get between two of them to set up my mobile fortress of sorts, and ended up continually getting shot whenever I ended up in a gap where a turret could see me.
IV. Tiring of this approach, I eventually retreated and attempted to use some different advice from the internet – namely, portal myself and the two Weighted Storage Cubes atop the turret at the far end of the hallway, closest to where I needed to go, and use those cubes as protection from turret shenanigans. This looked like it might work – but both my attempt to sneak out behind a stacked cube tower and my attempt to put one cube on one side of the turret cage to block fire from the turret in the next room looking in at the hallway through the gap and sloowly creep my way toward a portal in the wall (leading to a safe zone in the next room behind the two caged turrets) both fell victim to the fact that if you’re right next to a turret, it can indeed see you – and it can indeed shoot sideways to kill you. With extreme prejudice.
V. Having learned that two cubes was not nearly enough protection, I loaded an earlier save, set up a portal above the turret at the far end of the room – then used more portals to dump as many metal double-cubes from Doug’s Ratt Den atop and around it as I could, along with the two Weighted Storage Cubes, and – by accident – his big old water bottle. Reason? I figured, if I filled the place with enough junk, it would be EXTREMELY hard for any of the turrets to shoot me –
And I was right! The combination of random crap and cubes meant that I FINALLY had enough protection to get to the portal-able bit of wall and slip my way behind the two turrets in the next chamber! Still took a lot of careful creeping and sneaking and manipulating what bits of the scenery I could to make sure the turrets couldn’t get a bead on me (such as moving where the storage cubes were placed), but I did it! Killer Hallway – defeated!
C) Having FINALLY made it into the next chamber, I was able to portal with relative safety into the Room Of Cubes on the other side of the room (one turret took a few potshots at me, but I was able to get out of sight), move a few cubes into the doorway, then head back and – after a few tries – successfully portaled one via bounce into the doorway of the button room. I then tried to sneak my way over there –
Only to get very shot by the OTHER turret in the room, which has a much greater range of vision than you might expect. *shakehead* Undaunted, I tried again, this time using portals to get a few cubes out of the cube room, then sliding along the back wall (where neither turret can see you) before trying to see if I could use portals to just drop them onto the button in the button room. Unfortunately, my portal drop did NOT have the “oomph” necessary to get the cubes on the button – and I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to get in the button room without getting shot, given there were three goddamn turrets in there that were almost sure to see me. After sneaking around the turret nearest me and testing the limits of its vision (it proved unable to see me so long as I stayed away from the middle of the doorway), I tried to portal into the room behind the turret in the far corner, next to the pane of bulletproof glass separating it from the starting room, believing that was a safe zone –
And was quickly proven wrong by one of the other turrets seeing me. And while I tried to get behind a cube to save myself, I was quickly taken down. Ugh.
D) Getting a little sick of all the dying, I consulted the sacred strategy guides again, then – having learned it was better to have LOTS of cubes instead of few – reloaded an earlier save and got ALL of the cubes out of the cube room via portals. I then used three to make a pyramid of “mostly not getting shot” in front of the turret that was giving me all the trouble with the doorway, then carefully snuck into the button room with some cubes and set them up to form a little, poorly-made “wall” of sorts that I could duck behind and that would stop the turrets from seeing me right away. I then carefully crept up to the button and placed a cube on it, before shooting a portal into the hallway just beyond the door the button opened. After an initial attempt to just head into that hallway led to me getting shot again by overeager turrets, I took the cube off the button (as, admittedly, the guide I’d looked at said to do) and carefully backed away, before again trying to go through the portal (after saving, of course) –
Only to discover myself STILL getting shot from two directions. Turned out my cube pyramid didn’t QUITE protect me from the turret next to me from certain angles. Unwilling to give up now, I grabbed a cube from the pyramid to serve as an extra barrier on the side, then carefully tried to go through the portal into the exit hallway with another cube to protect me from the turret that was going to shoot me through the mesh screen in there –
E) And made it in! I promptly hid behind my protection cube, then – after a bit of anxious peeking and getting occasionally shot at – managed to set up a portal behind the turret trying to kill me and drop down behind it (while it tried to shoot at my foot behind the cube). I was initially worried that I was about to be murdered in a hail of gunfire by the other turret I could see behind the mesh screen beside the turret I was sneaking around, but fortunately it was facing away from me, and I was able to portal next to it without being detected. And, to my INTENSE relief, I could see the exit elevator just on the other side of it. I promptly fired a portal at the end of the little “hallway” there, intending to pop through and get the hell out of there –
Buuut portaling the wall alerted the turret to my existence, and before I could hop through the portals to freedom, it shot me down. *facepalm* You absolute little fucker... Fortunately for my sanity, I’d saved upon arrival in the room, and my second attempt saw me successfully get through the portals, get to the elevator, and FINISH THE FUCKING CHALLENGE. FUCKING FINALLY. NEVER WANT TO SEE THIS CHAMBER AGAIN.
*wipes brow* So, ah, yes – I successfully finished Advanced Chamber 16 and got my “Fruitcake” achievement! At the cost of my sanity and patience! :D Yeah, I’m not even looking at those other Advanced maps, or the remaining challenges I can do – next Sunday, we’re doing “new year new game” and moving onto Portal 2! I will be very happy to just look at the ceiling and the floor in my relaxation chamber when directed by the announcer, TRUST me.
Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight, and returned to YouTube proper to watch as much of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 24 - Critical Condition” by Jon of Many A True Nerd as I could while pedaling, finishing off the last chunk after supper. Because if I’m going back to YouTube for Oxventure, I might as well also go back to it for Jon and see if that helps my time management on Sundays any. *shrugs* I was pretty much out of movies to watch anyway. So yeah – tonight’s episode of The Adventures of Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot featured:
A) P. D. making her way through the Ashton Missile Silo, which included:
I. Her activating a THIRD Stealth Boy (just to make sure she stayed invisible as long as she needed to stay invisible) and throwing on the good armor to protect herself against danger should things go awry
II. Her taking a terrifying trip down the lift just inside the door while everything exploded around her and tunnelers hopped onto the platform with her to enjoy the ride – she just stayed crouched and invisible in the corner, trembling in fear, and fortunately – despite a few moments of [CAUTION] from the tunnelers – neither they nor the explosions ever touched her
III. Her making a run through the lower levels of the silo, avoiding every side door because all of them had not-good things in them (including one apparently very dangerous robot) – on the plus side, she was able to pick up a weapon repair kit in the first room she went through and use it to repair her new Industrial Hand, improving its condition, its damage, and its DPS
IV. Her descending very cautiously into a giant pit in the middle of the room at the end (taking things slow and easy to avoid fall damage as she hopped from fallen platform to fallen platform and sneaking around some tunnelers at the bottom)
V. And finally exiting into the Sunstone Towers building on the other side and heading up that, murdering a few lone tunnelers along the way (gotta kill those abominations for the perk!) and avoiding the ones that were hanging out in pairs
Very stressful journey! But she made it through without taking a single scratch, which Jon really did not expect. (Though he admitted later that he should have, given that everything he thinks is going to wreck poor P. D. ends up being not that bad, and it’s instead the little unexpected problems that end up dinging her health. You know, like very pointy motorcycles. XD)
B) P. D. making it to the roof of Sunstone and – after some chatter from Ulysses and ED-E trying to share more of her backstory (apparently she was found by a random kid at some point after fleeing the lab she was created in?) – carefully making her way down to blow up the one warhead she needed to get rid of to proceed through the Divide and get the second bit of gear that she wanted out of “Lonesome Road.” (And to not blow up the two guys hanging out by another warhead nearby, funny as that would have been – not allowed to weaponize the Laser Detonator!) Fortunately, she made it down and around all the local enemies without any trouble, and – after waiting for one guy on a high ledge nearby to start walking in the other direction – blew up the warhead in her way and made it through the resultant gap without being detected or getting involved in any scripted bullshit. Hooray! I was a bit worried when the end of Ulysses’s monologue resulted in a bunch of rockets being fired into the sky, but apparently Obsidian didn’t see fit to include any “can magically see you and try to murder you” enemies in this particular area. Lucky Jon!
C) P. D. climbing up into the Third Street Municipal Building, taking a quick detour into the broken sewer pipe nearby, and – after having a bit of trouble murdering the two tunnelers in their way (as they refused to properly separate from each other – she eventually got one when it ended up JUST out of sight of its friend around a bit of wall, then the other during one of the brief moments it wasn’t worrying about its dead friend in the aftermath) – emerging out the other side on the floor that had the second item she so desperately wanted – the Elite Riot Gear! The chosen armor of a dead NCR Riot Control officer, this thing had excellent DT (22 after being repaired with her old riot gear) AND upped her crit chances by another 5%, meaning that – if forced into a situation where she had to fight openly instead of slipping through the shadows getting sneak attack criticals, which apparently happens a lot in the DLC she’s planning on entering next, “Honest Hearts” – she now had excellent protection AND a better chance of getting a crit with whatever weapons she was using! And given Jon has done everything in his power to make it so that P. D. keeps getting better and better chances to score crits with every hit, AND gotten her a weapon that has a VERY high damage per second, meaning it hits a LOT in a short period of time...oh yeah. She is ready for whatever bullshit “Honest Hearts” might throw at her. (As for the Elite Riot Gear Helmet, that was a little less good, as it gave the same protection as her power armor helmet, but was heavy armor – and while it gave a nice bonus to Speech, she already had plenty of gear that could do the same. She did take it in the end, but mostly as a trophy.)
D) P. D. leaving the world of “Lonesome Road” by fast-traveling back to the canyon entrance (finally losing the invisibility from all her Stealth Boys in the process) and proceeding back into the Mojave – where she was IMMEDIATELY met by a bunch of coyotes, very angry that she’d popped back into existence in their personal space. XD Fortunately, Jon’s predictions that THIS is where P. D. was going to lose a bunch of health (after managing to get through almost all of “Lonesome Road” largely unscathed) proved inaccurate, as she had just enough time to get into her Pip-Boy, equip the Industrial Hand, and do a bit of Turbo before starting to fight. Cue the coyotes getting utterly wrecked before they could sink a single tooth into her, and cue Jon very narrowly avoiding yet another heart attack during this run. XD
E) P. D. taking a trip back to the Big MT and the Sink to use the Sink’s central AI to get the Industrial Hand, the Protonic Inversal Axe, Embrace Of The Mantis King, and the Elite Riot Gear up to tip-top condition (cost a LOT of money, but Jon figured it was worth it – what else is P. D. going to spend her caps on at this point), and to swing by the Think Tank and ask Dr. Borous for more cazador poison glands, before returning to the Mojave to get some turpentine (stolen from Nellis Air Force Base) and make some more Turbo over at Red Rock’s campfire. And then hit up all the chem dealers she could find for yet more, because Turbo is her “get out of jail free” card. XD She ended up scoring one dose off Dr. Strauss and one off the bartender at Gomorrah, bringing herself up to a total of nine. *nods* Given how long that shit lasts when she uses it, I doubt she’ll need more – but you never know, as I don’t know shit about the DLC she’s entering. But Jon seemed happy with that number, so I presume it’ll be fine! (Watch it not be fine.)
F) P. D. proceeding to the Northern Passage and the people preparing to leave with the latest caravan into Zion (the world of “Honest Hearts”) to check how much stuff she was allowed to bring with her (as, apparently, the leader of the expedition, Jed, will only allow you to bring up to a certain weight) – and to meet Ricky, who is a creep and braggart extraordinaire who Jon loves. XD He is a most amusing dickhead, that is true! Though much more amusing was how P. D. spent the majority of their conversation calling out his lies and puncturing his ego:
I. First, after he greeted her in the creepiest manner possible, promising to “keep an eye” on her, P. D. used her medical skills to immediately diagnose him with an addiction to Psycho, before proceeding to sell him five doses for 150 caps. Free money!
II. Then, she noted that he was wearing a Vault suit and asked where he got it – Ricky claimed it was from the Vault where he grew up, “Vault Two-Two,” but P. D. was like “yeah, no, I’ve been to Vault 22, and there hasn’t been anyone living in there for the better part of 150 years,” forcing him to admit he found it on a dead prospector who was coming out of Zion, so that’s how he knows the place has good loot. *shrug* Fair enough, that.
III. Then she asked about his Pip-Boy – or “Pit-Boy,” as Ricky kept calling it (guy has a talent for getting the names of things wrong). He snootily informed her that the shit he did with it was so next-level, she’d never understand it, before bragging that it mostly made him a total badass (Jon allowed that he wasn’t really wrong, as they DO tend to confer Protagonist Powers on people) and that the maps and shit on it were what was going to allow him to lead the caravan where it needed to go. P. D.’s response?
“You noticed I’m wearing a Pip-Boy too, right?” And when Ricky tried to argue that of course he had, but she’d better not think it made her special, she noted that his appeared to be nonfunctional – the screen was locked up, and the reboot button missing. Ricky loudly protested that it was fine, then angrily asked what she wanted –
And P. D. said that what she wanted was for him to carry some of her gear, so she could get around the weight limit. Ricky was annoyed, complaining he traveled light for a reason, but said he’d tell Jed that he would take less so she could take more. So P. D. got herself a pack mule for the trip – which was good, because the quest update text that popped up on the side right afterward indicated that she’d only be able to take 100 pounds max of stuff, and she was currently carrying 191. O.o “Honest Hearts” isn’t fucking around when it comes to load limits!
V. And finally, she asked what it was he actually did, causing Ricky to reply, “Anything I want, Toots” and start going on about how he’s a “storm of death” in battle and how he shoots things in the eye and how his nickname is “Deadeye” and all that bullshit. Claimed to have shot four “Deathjaws” in the eye when they menaced him (P. D.: “Don’t you mean DeathCLAWS?” Ricky: “No, no, you heard me right – they’re LIKE Deathclaws, but bigger teeth”) and to have killed one of the Brotherhood of Steel after he demanded the laser gun Ricky was carrying by shooting him through the eyeslit in his helmet (P. D.: “Uh, dude, those eyeslits are bulletproof.” Ricky: “He must have had a shit D-series helmet then! All I know is he died real good!”). ...I firmly believe Ricky is going to get himself killed on this caravan trip, and no one will mourn the loss. XD Well, except maybe P. D., since she’ll have lost her pack mule.
G) P. D. returning to her room at the Lucky 38 to put away a bunch of stuff she won’t need in Zion – like the Protonic Inversal Axe (no robots in “Honest Hearts”), the unneeded Elite Riot Gear Helmet (power armor helmet does the job), and a bunch of junk cluttering up her inventory – to get her weight down to about 90 so she could pick up a few more Stealth Boys before leaving, as she was down to her last two. She then swung by the Legion goodie boxes near Cottonwood Cove to see if they were being refilled even if the game wasn’t telling her to check them –
And boy were they ever! With Legion money, ammo, doctor’s bags (10 of them!), and – very importantly – two Stealth Boys! Just what she needed, yay! And then she went to the Legion safehouse and found Atticus there, which netted her ANOTHER two Stealth Boys! Bringing her total up to six, which Jon was happy with, because apparently there aren’t any ultra-perceptive cheaty enemies in “Honest Hearts.” That he remembers, anyway...we’ll see if he’s right soon enough!
H) And P. D. ending off the episode by swinging by Gomorrah one last time to check their secret chems menu and pick up two more doses of Turbo (meaning she has eleven now, nice), before returning to the Northern Passage to report to Jed! So yes, next time, we begin P. D.’s adventures in the land of “Honest Hearts” – which, while it doesn’t have any ultra-perceptive enemies, DOES apparently have some ridiculous scripted bullshit right at the beginning of the whole mess. Meaning there’s about a 50-50 chance poor P. D. will be taking some damage right off the bat. *grimace* At least she has some good armor now to help her cushion the blow? Ah well – no matter what happens, I am looking forward to it! This has been a great series so far, and I don’t expect anything to change. :)
FreeTube: In addition to the end of P. D.’s adventures above, I also got in another one of CaitlinRC’s “best of” Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark videos for writing research purposes: “Dave, Drinks, Unions and Weekends - The OX Crew Play BITD!” The best moments from Lilith and Barnaby’s adventure stealing Darnell Ironhook’s fancy anchor off his fancy party ship the De Ballena (which, yes, is named after Corazon and his ship). Featuring Barnaby, of all people, telling Lilith to get a job when she complains about a lack of money (and then saying “oh, it’s not for ME” when Luke was like “you are the LAST person to tell anyone to get a job”); Lilith introducing the ship’s staff to the concept of unions to get them on-side and let them go wherever they wish (Barnaby telling her afterward that it was brilliant, but also he’s never introducing her to his butler); and Barnaby having to roll for “Dave! Dave?” when he gets them down into the belly of the ship and attempts to greet one of the crewmen he consorted with via flashback (he fortunately rolled well, and Dave recognized him and went for a drink with him later, clearing the room so Lilith could bonk the remaining potential witness – no, not like that XD), among other things. XD Good stuff! I’m very glad Caitlin has made these videos, they’re perfect bite-sized bits of OX:BITD deliciousness. :)
Writing: I got a late start on this, but – thanks to watching most of the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode with my workout instead of after it – I did indeed have enough time tonight to finish editing Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy!” Hooray! :D The final page-and-a-half featured:
A) Barnaby trying to ingratiate himself with Victor by talking about how he’s the most interesting member of his family right now, and how his father is an awful bore who won’t stop talking about his cannery; Victor agreed that William does like to go on about it, but that it bought them this beautiful house, so he has reason to be proud. Barnaby admitted that was true...then ruined the potential bonding moment by commenting about how the Van Dorts are a perfect example of how people can make their lives better by just stopping being poor. XD Oh Barnaby...
B) Barnaby then going on about how his family has three houses, including a “cottage” in Barrowcleft that just has the one ballroom, along with a study, lounge, and vault, to Victor’s growing disinterest...and then asking about the Van Dorts’ own vault. If they had one, where was it in the house, what kind of security did it have, could he possibly go see it… As you might imagine, Victor was rather taken aback by this line of questioning, and commented that it sounded like Barnaby was trying to rob his parents.
Cue Barnaby looking horrified in an “oh shit he’s onto me” way for a split-second, before desperately covering with some prattle about how he doesn’t need to rob the Van Dorts, he’s SO much richer than they’ll ever be, he’s just so interested in security, invested in a new firm recently, just making sure they really are the best of the best, really Master Van Dort, don’t insult him like that. XD I think we can safely say that Barnaby failed his Sway roll there! Sorry, buddy, it was for the plot.
C) And Victor listening to all this, looking around the ballroom filled with rich people who will never care about him (and made by rich people who will never care about him), thinking about his friends waiting back at the servant’s entrance – and coming to a decision. A decision that involved apologizing to Barnaby for any insult, and assuring him that he knew he didn’t need to rob the Van Dorts…
But that, if he wanted to, Victor would happily help him get inside the vault, so long as he was permitted to get his things first. Cue the chapter ending on Barnaby preparing to take Victor aside for a more private talk. XD Very happy to be done with this editing pass – tomorrow, we’ll see about starting the final pass over in FF.net’s document editor so I can get this sucker posted sooner rather than later!
Hooray, that is indeed everything! And all before 1 AM, nice -- though admittedly, I did end my convo with my friend Squid earlier than normal in an effort to not totally wreck my sleep schedule, which freed up a little more time to work on all this. *nods* And because I do want to try and not totally wreck my sleep schedule, I will be heading off to bed now. Tomorrow, the big thing that's happening is a post-lunch trip with Mom out to the stores to get some new work shoes and slippers, plus maybe some new work tops -- I also hope to figure out what I want to do with Fallout: New Vegas (best mod manager to use, what mods I might need other than the Unofficial Patch, etc), maybe see about starting a few new post drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and of course, as per the above, start the process of getting Chapter 2 of "The Van Dort Vacancy" ready to post. *nods* We'll see what happens -- night all!
Dreamwidth: Giving this its own category because I did spend a lot of time on here today:
A) First, I spent about an hour before lunch finishing off yesterday’s entry because I couldn’t get everything together by the time I decided “it’s 2 AM and I have to go to bed” (you can see the completed version here) – it really does annoy me whenever I have to do that, but at least it’s easier to do during this Christmas/New Year’s break!
B) Then I spent the rest of the time before lunch (and a little time afterward) answering all of Moose’s messages, because it was about freaking time I did that. *nods* Ball’s back in your court, Moose!
C) And of course I spent the time right before this entry answering all of Gigs’s comments from earlier, including that terrifying one about someone driving on a sidewalk past a schoolbus letting kids off and the much nicer one about how my Mom is cool. :) Keeping up with things, yay~
Tumblr: Had another “nothing on Valice Multiverse, reasonably busy on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)” day over here on the tumbls –
A) First, I saw that my friend Newt posted an ask meme called “AO3 Wrapped” on his blog (full of questions like “How many works did you publish this year?” and “What WIP are you taking into next year with you?”), and – after taking a moment to leave a comment on his “hatesex turns into unrequited feelings” Charles Rowland/Cat King Dead Boy Detectives fic, because I saw it mentioned in one of his answers to a previous ask (because it contains one of his favorite lines: “You’ll look back on that as the day he snuck his hand through your ribs and clicked the safety off.”), decided to check it out, and found it was really good (not to mention I already wanted to leave a nice comment on one of his fics in exchange for the nice comment on “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” yesterday, so...) – sent him an ask requesting him to answer question 30: “Biggest surprise while writing this year?” He replied that it was the mostly-positive reception to his “fat!Cat King” DBD smut fic (since the cast is filled with skinny, conventionally-attractive people); the way the Cat King (aka Thomas) took over a large portion of his DBD All Of Us Strangers-AU fic “never fade away” (but he wasn’t complaining about it); and how he managed to carry off writing the first chapter of the big collab DBD fic “The Great Escape Debacle Of 2025” because he came in as a pinch hitter WITHOUT reading the brief’s fine print and really had to SCRAMBLE to get something together (fortunately, his love of Saw helped him come up with an appropriate scenario to stick the poor boys in XD). I commented back that I was glad the “fat!Cat King” fic got so much love; that we shouldn’t be surprised that Thomas took over so much of “never fade away,” as he seems to like the spotlight; and that he was to be congratulated for getting that “Great Escape Debacle” fic chapter done. :) Good times – tempted to do the ask meme myself now, honestly...we’ll see how I feel tomorrow!
B) Then I quickly answered an ask from multiple-characters1-acct which simply said “Hap (Late) Birt!” – I simply said “Thank you! :)” back
C) Then, later in the afternoon, I responded to a post regicidalheart, aka Marie, tagged me in about Valicer’s reaction to Cajun food (as I believe she lives in New Orleans or somewhere in that general area and thus is familiar with it) – she posited that Alice wouldn’t be able to handle the spice, Victor would love it, and Smiler would find their mouth on fire but either enjoy the burn/be too polite to say anything for fear of offending the host. I said that I personally would switch Victor and Smiler’s reactions, or at least make both of them the “ow it burns but I can’t say anything because then the cook will be sad” type – though I admitted that might be just because I personally cannot handle spice and thus would wimp out when confronted with Cajun cooking. XD Though I did agree with her second point that they would find Cajun French confusing – especially Victor, who grew up learning PARISIAN French – but insisted they’d do their best to keep up. And said that if she wanted to do a Cajun OC, like she said at the end of the post, feel free! Smiler at least was always ready to make new friends. :p Nice to see people thinking of my trio – even if I don’t always agree with their headcanons. XD
D) And finally, late tonight, I reblogged Satirical’s latest reply in our conversation (over two different threads) about my Valicer trio in the Mortasheen world, talking about the various monsters the trio would find in their company. Apparently Carerazors are incapable of expressing negativity, which is why Alice’s Carerazor Beth calls Bumby the “least best friend” (though they are capable of tearing said “least best friends” apart with their claws – I approved of this and said that Beth and Smiler are definitely going to get along great); Greef vampires are meant to invoke the Gothic castles that traditional vampires live in, complete with flying “bat” polyps and whatnot (I had to admit that’s very cool); Orlock!Victor’s vampire companion, Sir Rhodes Glitterfin, is the way he is because he’s actually a young scamp by vampire fish standards (I compared him to a bratty teen, or someone in their 20s newly out on their own and making all sorts of bad decisions :P); and Psychodromes like the one Smiler will eventually pick up are weird even by Mortasheen standards, manifesting as weird biological “feelers” coming out of an old-school CRT TV set and forming a symbiotic connection to the nearest mind, “drinking” thoughts from nearby enemies and scrambling their brains if they threaten its host (Satirical thought it was very on-brand given the coaster’s “hypno-screen” stuff, and I agreed). This all remains extremely weird, but extremely fun to hear about. :)
Portal: Yes, I returned to the bowels of Aperture Science this afternoon, because – in a fit of absolute madness – I decided I wanted to go for the “Fruitcake” achievement (beat four Advanced portal maps) by taking on the Advanced version of Chamber 16 again. You know – the one that’s supposedly a live fire course for military androids? Full of deadly turrets? Which, in the Advanced version are in cages, so you can’t even knock them over and disable them – you have to work around them? The one where I got killed more times that I could count because I couldn’t get across that hallway midway through where the two turrets are facing each other without getting shot to absolute pieces? Yeah, that one. Why put myself through that torture again, you ask? Well, one, I’d already beaten three Advanced chambers, and, as stated, I wanted the achievement for beating a fourth –
And two, my only other options for Advanced chambers were Chamber 15, the one that now involves having to set up an infinite-fall-into-a-fling situation (aka I have to perfectly fire a portal while falling rapidly between two other portals, which I am not good at) right at the start, which I didn’t feel like doing, and Chamber 18, which was hard enough in the NORMAL version and I don’t even WANT to know how bad the Advanced one is. *wince* So yeah – really my only choice for completing a fourth Advanced map was Chamber 16, where I at least knew what I was getting into and had an idea or two on how to handle it. How did it go this time around? Well –
A) The beginning wasn’t so bad – I managed to sneak past the first turret in the doorway without taking more than a couple of bullets (I was hoping that I could portal past it, but once I got atop the cage, it became apparent that all the portal-able surfaces were around the corner, just out of sight), and I managed to use portals to completely bypass the second and third turrets. Felt pretty proud of myself there, given I got shot a lot more during this early bit in my first attempt!
B) THEN, having quicksaved, I was faced with my old nemesis – the hallway with two turrets facing each other, just past Doug’s Ratt Den. Getting past here was an adventure, let me tell you –
I. First, noticing that I could portal the floor over by the gap that I needed to get through to reach the next chamber, I tried putting a portal on the floor there, then tried popping through with a cube. Unsurprisingly, I immediately got turned around, ended up very shot, and died.
II. Then I attempted to set up a bounce situation where I popped myself and some cubes through the floor and up near the gap – same result as before, which really should not have come as a surprise.
III. Then I grabbed my phone to see what the ancient texts (aka various strategy guides) on the internet said – to my surprise, they revealed that the metal-double-cubes that Doug was using as makeshift tables in his Ratt Den could be moved around by pushing and portaling (but NOT by picking up, they were immune to that), and thus could potentially be used as extra obstacles to hide behind. I promptly portaled a few into the hallway with me and started shoving them around in the hopes of making mobile shields I could hide behind, putting a cube atop one for extra protection since I couldn’t stack them properly. This KIND OF worked, but I couldn’t get between two of them to set up my mobile fortress of sorts, and ended up continually getting shot whenever I ended up in a gap where a turret could see me.
IV. Tiring of this approach, I eventually retreated and attempted to use some different advice from the internet – namely, portal myself and the two Weighted Storage Cubes atop the turret at the far end of the hallway, closest to where I needed to go, and use those cubes as protection from turret shenanigans. This looked like it might work – but both my attempt to sneak out behind a stacked cube tower and my attempt to put one cube on one side of the turret cage to block fire from the turret in the next room looking in at the hallway through the gap and sloowly creep my way toward a portal in the wall (leading to a safe zone in the next room behind the two caged turrets) both fell victim to the fact that if you’re right next to a turret, it can indeed see you – and it can indeed shoot sideways to kill you. With extreme prejudice.
V. Having learned that two cubes was not nearly enough protection, I loaded an earlier save, set up a portal above the turret at the far end of the room – then used more portals to dump as many metal double-cubes from Doug’s Ratt Den atop and around it as I could, along with the two Weighted Storage Cubes, and – by accident – his big old water bottle. Reason? I figured, if I filled the place with enough junk, it would be EXTREMELY hard for any of the turrets to shoot me –
And I was right! The combination of random crap and cubes meant that I FINALLY had enough protection to get to the portal-able bit of wall and slip my way behind the two turrets in the next chamber! Still took a lot of careful creeping and sneaking and manipulating what bits of the scenery I could to make sure the turrets couldn’t get a bead on me (such as moving where the storage cubes were placed), but I did it! Killer Hallway – defeated!
C) Having FINALLY made it into the next chamber, I was able to portal with relative safety into the Room Of Cubes on the other side of the room (one turret took a few potshots at me, but I was able to get out of sight), move a few cubes into the doorway, then head back and – after a few tries – successfully portaled one via bounce into the doorway of the button room. I then tried to sneak my way over there –
Only to get very shot by the OTHER turret in the room, which has a much greater range of vision than you might expect. *shakehead* Undaunted, I tried again, this time using portals to get a few cubes out of the cube room, then sliding along the back wall (where neither turret can see you) before trying to see if I could use portals to just drop them onto the button in the button room. Unfortunately, my portal drop did NOT have the “oomph” necessary to get the cubes on the button – and I wasn’t entirely sure how I was going to get in the button room without getting shot, given there were three goddamn turrets in there that were almost sure to see me. After sneaking around the turret nearest me and testing the limits of its vision (it proved unable to see me so long as I stayed away from the middle of the doorway), I tried to portal into the room behind the turret in the far corner, next to the pane of bulletproof glass separating it from the starting room, believing that was a safe zone –
And was quickly proven wrong by one of the other turrets seeing me. And while I tried to get behind a cube to save myself, I was quickly taken down. Ugh.
D) Getting a little sick of all the dying, I consulted the sacred strategy guides again, then – having learned it was better to have LOTS of cubes instead of few – reloaded an earlier save and got ALL of the cubes out of the cube room via portals. I then used three to make a pyramid of “mostly not getting shot” in front of the turret that was giving me all the trouble with the doorway, then carefully snuck into the button room with some cubes and set them up to form a little, poorly-made “wall” of sorts that I could duck behind and that would stop the turrets from seeing me right away. I then carefully crept up to the button and placed a cube on it, before shooting a portal into the hallway just beyond the door the button opened. After an initial attempt to just head into that hallway led to me getting shot again by overeager turrets, I took the cube off the button (as, admittedly, the guide I’d looked at said to do) and carefully backed away, before again trying to go through the portal (after saving, of course) –
Only to discover myself STILL getting shot from two directions. Turned out my cube pyramid didn’t QUITE protect me from the turret next to me from certain angles. Unwilling to give up now, I grabbed a cube from the pyramid to serve as an extra barrier on the side, then carefully tried to go through the portal into the exit hallway with another cube to protect me from the turret that was going to shoot me through the mesh screen in there –
E) And made it in! I promptly hid behind my protection cube, then – after a bit of anxious peeking and getting occasionally shot at – managed to set up a portal behind the turret trying to kill me and drop down behind it (while it tried to shoot at my foot behind the cube). I was initially worried that I was about to be murdered in a hail of gunfire by the other turret I could see behind the mesh screen beside the turret I was sneaking around, but fortunately it was facing away from me, and I was able to portal next to it without being detected. And, to my INTENSE relief, I could see the exit elevator just on the other side of it. I promptly fired a portal at the end of the little “hallway” there, intending to pop through and get the hell out of there –
Buuut portaling the wall alerted the turret to my existence, and before I could hop through the portals to freedom, it shot me down. *facepalm* You absolute little fucker... Fortunately for my sanity, I’d saved upon arrival in the room, and my second attempt saw me successfully get through the portals, get to the elevator, and FINISH THE FUCKING CHALLENGE. FUCKING FINALLY. NEVER WANT TO SEE THIS CHAMBER AGAIN.
*wipes brow* So, ah, yes – I successfully finished Advanced Chamber 16 and got my “Fruitcake” achievement! At the cost of my sanity and patience! :D Yeah, I’m not even looking at those other Advanced maps, or the remaining challenges I can do – next Sunday, we’re doing “new year new game” and moving onto Portal 2! I will be very happy to just look at the ceiling and the floor in my relaxation chamber when directed by the announcer, TRUST me.
Workout: Hopped back on the bike tonight, and returned to YouTube proper to watch as much of “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Part 24 - Critical Condition” by Jon of Many A True Nerd as I could while pedaling, finishing off the last chunk after supper. Because if I’m going back to YouTube for Oxventure, I might as well also go back to it for Jon and see if that helps my time management on Sundays any. *shrugs* I was pretty much out of movies to watch anyway. So yeah – tonight’s episode of The Adventures of Drunken Melee Courier P. D. Shoot featured:
A) P. D. making her way through the Ashton Missile Silo, which included:
I. Her activating a THIRD Stealth Boy (just to make sure she stayed invisible as long as she needed to stay invisible) and throwing on the good armor to protect herself against danger should things go awry
II. Her taking a terrifying trip down the lift just inside the door while everything exploded around her and tunnelers hopped onto the platform with her to enjoy the ride – she just stayed crouched and invisible in the corner, trembling in fear, and fortunately – despite a few moments of [CAUTION] from the tunnelers – neither they nor the explosions ever touched her
III. Her making a run through the lower levels of the silo, avoiding every side door because all of them had not-good things in them (including one apparently very dangerous robot) – on the plus side, she was able to pick up a weapon repair kit in the first room she went through and use it to repair her new Industrial Hand, improving its condition, its damage, and its DPS
IV. Her descending very cautiously into a giant pit in the middle of the room at the end (taking things slow and easy to avoid fall damage as she hopped from fallen platform to fallen platform and sneaking around some tunnelers at the bottom)
V. And finally exiting into the Sunstone Towers building on the other side and heading up that, murdering a few lone tunnelers along the way (gotta kill those abominations for the perk!) and avoiding the ones that were hanging out in pairs
Very stressful journey! But she made it through without taking a single scratch, which Jon really did not expect. (Though he admitted later that he should have, given that everything he thinks is going to wreck poor P. D. ends up being not that bad, and it’s instead the little unexpected problems that end up dinging her health. You know, like very pointy motorcycles. XD)
B) P. D. making it to the roof of Sunstone and – after some chatter from Ulysses and ED-E trying to share more of her backstory (apparently she was found by a random kid at some point after fleeing the lab she was created in?) – carefully making her way down to blow up the one warhead she needed to get rid of to proceed through the Divide and get the second bit of gear that she wanted out of “Lonesome Road.” (And to not blow up the two guys hanging out by another warhead nearby, funny as that would have been – not allowed to weaponize the Laser Detonator!) Fortunately, she made it down and around all the local enemies without any trouble, and – after waiting for one guy on a high ledge nearby to start walking in the other direction – blew up the warhead in her way and made it through the resultant gap without being detected or getting involved in any scripted bullshit. Hooray! I was a bit worried when the end of Ulysses’s monologue resulted in a bunch of rockets being fired into the sky, but apparently Obsidian didn’t see fit to include any “can magically see you and try to murder you” enemies in this particular area. Lucky Jon!
C) P. D. climbing up into the Third Street Municipal Building, taking a quick detour into the broken sewer pipe nearby, and – after having a bit of trouble murdering the two tunnelers in their way (as they refused to properly separate from each other – she eventually got one when it ended up JUST out of sight of its friend around a bit of wall, then the other during one of the brief moments it wasn’t worrying about its dead friend in the aftermath) – emerging out the other side on the floor that had the second item she so desperately wanted – the Elite Riot Gear! The chosen armor of a dead NCR Riot Control officer, this thing had excellent DT (22 after being repaired with her old riot gear) AND upped her crit chances by another 5%, meaning that – if forced into a situation where she had to fight openly instead of slipping through the shadows getting sneak attack criticals, which apparently happens a lot in the DLC she’s planning on entering next, “Honest Hearts” – she now had excellent protection AND a better chance of getting a crit with whatever weapons she was using! And given Jon has done everything in his power to make it so that P. D. keeps getting better and better chances to score crits with every hit, AND gotten her a weapon that has a VERY high damage per second, meaning it hits a LOT in a short period of time...oh yeah. She is ready for whatever bullshit “Honest Hearts” might throw at her. (As for the Elite Riot Gear Helmet, that was a little less good, as it gave the same protection as her power armor helmet, but was heavy armor – and while it gave a nice bonus to Speech, she already had plenty of gear that could do the same. She did take it in the end, but mostly as a trophy.)
D) P. D. leaving the world of “Lonesome Road” by fast-traveling back to the canyon entrance (finally losing the invisibility from all her Stealth Boys in the process) and proceeding back into the Mojave – where she was IMMEDIATELY met by a bunch of coyotes, very angry that she’d popped back into existence in their personal space. XD Fortunately, Jon’s predictions that THIS is where P. D. was going to lose a bunch of health (after managing to get through almost all of “Lonesome Road” largely unscathed) proved inaccurate, as she had just enough time to get into her Pip-Boy, equip the Industrial Hand, and do a bit of Turbo before starting to fight. Cue the coyotes getting utterly wrecked before they could sink a single tooth into her, and cue Jon very narrowly avoiding yet another heart attack during this run. XD
E) P. D. taking a trip back to the Big MT and the Sink to use the Sink’s central AI to get the Industrial Hand, the Protonic Inversal Axe, Embrace Of The Mantis King, and the Elite Riot Gear up to tip-top condition (cost a LOT of money, but Jon figured it was worth it – what else is P. D. going to spend her caps on at this point), and to swing by the Think Tank and ask Dr. Borous for more cazador poison glands, before returning to the Mojave to get some turpentine (stolen from Nellis Air Force Base) and make some more Turbo over at Red Rock’s campfire. And then hit up all the chem dealers she could find for yet more, because Turbo is her “get out of jail free” card. XD She ended up scoring one dose off Dr. Strauss and one off the bartender at Gomorrah, bringing herself up to a total of nine. *nods* Given how long that shit lasts when she uses it, I doubt she’ll need more – but you never know, as I don’t know shit about the DLC she’s entering. But Jon seemed happy with that number, so I presume it’ll be fine! (Watch it not be fine.)
F) P. D. proceeding to the Northern Passage and the people preparing to leave with the latest caravan into Zion (the world of “Honest Hearts”) to check how much stuff she was allowed to bring with her (as, apparently, the leader of the expedition, Jed, will only allow you to bring up to a certain weight) – and to meet Ricky, who is a creep and braggart extraordinaire who Jon loves. XD He is a most amusing dickhead, that is true! Though much more amusing was how P. D. spent the majority of their conversation calling out his lies and puncturing his ego:
I. First, after he greeted her in the creepiest manner possible, promising to “keep an eye” on her, P. D. used her medical skills to immediately diagnose him with an addiction to Psycho, before proceeding to sell him five doses for 150 caps. Free money!
II. Then, she noted that he was wearing a Vault suit and asked where he got it – Ricky claimed it was from the Vault where he grew up, “Vault Two-Two,” but P. D. was like “yeah, no, I’ve been to Vault 22, and there hasn’t been anyone living in there for the better part of 150 years,” forcing him to admit he found it on a dead prospector who was coming out of Zion, so that’s how he knows the place has good loot. *shrug* Fair enough, that.
III. Then she asked about his Pip-Boy – or “Pit-Boy,” as Ricky kept calling it (guy has a talent for getting the names of things wrong). He snootily informed her that the shit he did with it was so next-level, she’d never understand it, before bragging that it mostly made him a total badass (Jon allowed that he wasn’t really wrong, as they DO tend to confer Protagonist Powers on people) and that the maps and shit on it were what was going to allow him to lead the caravan where it needed to go. P. D.’s response?
“You noticed I’m wearing a Pip-Boy too, right?” And when Ricky tried to argue that of course he had, but she’d better not think it made her special, she noted that his appeared to be nonfunctional – the screen was locked up, and the reboot button missing. Ricky loudly protested that it was fine, then angrily asked what she wanted –
And P. D. said that what she wanted was for him to carry some of her gear, so she could get around the weight limit. Ricky was annoyed, complaining he traveled light for a reason, but said he’d tell Jed that he would take less so she could take more. So P. D. got herself a pack mule for the trip – which was good, because the quest update text that popped up on the side right afterward indicated that she’d only be able to take 100 pounds max of stuff, and she was currently carrying 191. O.o “Honest Hearts” isn’t fucking around when it comes to load limits!
V. And finally, she asked what it was he actually did, causing Ricky to reply, “Anything I want, Toots” and start going on about how he’s a “storm of death” in battle and how he shoots things in the eye and how his nickname is “Deadeye” and all that bullshit. Claimed to have shot four “Deathjaws” in the eye when they menaced him (P. D.: “Don’t you mean DeathCLAWS?” Ricky: “No, no, you heard me right – they’re LIKE Deathclaws, but bigger teeth”) and to have killed one of the Brotherhood of Steel after he demanded the laser gun Ricky was carrying by shooting him through the eyeslit in his helmet (P. D.: “Uh, dude, those eyeslits are bulletproof.” Ricky: “He must have had a shit D-series helmet then! All I know is he died real good!”). ...I firmly believe Ricky is going to get himself killed on this caravan trip, and no one will mourn the loss. XD Well, except maybe P. D., since she’ll have lost her pack mule.
G) P. D. returning to her room at the Lucky 38 to put away a bunch of stuff she won’t need in Zion – like the Protonic Inversal Axe (no robots in “Honest Hearts”), the unneeded Elite Riot Gear Helmet (power armor helmet does the job), and a bunch of junk cluttering up her inventory – to get her weight down to about 90 so she could pick up a few more Stealth Boys before leaving, as she was down to her last two. She then swung by the Legion goodie boxes near Cottonwood Cove to see if they were being refilled even if the game wasn’t telling her to check them –
And boy were they ever! With Legion money, ammo, doctor’s bags (10 of them!), and – very importantly – two Stealth Boys! Just what she needed, yay! And then she went to the Legion safehouse and found Atticus there, which netted her ANOTHER two Stealth Boys! Bringing her total up to six, which Jon was happy with, because apparently there aren’t any ultra-perceptive cheaty enemies in “Honest Hearts.” That he remembers, anyway...we’ll see if he’s right soon enough!
H) And P. D. ending off the episode by swinging by Gomorrah one last time to check their secret chems menu and pick up two more doses of Turbo (meaning she has eleven now, nice), before returning to the Northern Passage to report to Jed! So yes, next time, we begin P. D.’s adventures in the land of “Honest Hearts” – which, while it doesn’t have any ultra-perceptive enemies, DOES apparently have some ridiculous scripted bullshit right at the beginning of the whole mess. Meaning there’s about a 50-50 chance poor P. D. will be taking some damage right off the bat. *grimace* At least she has some good armor now to help her cushion the blow? Ah well – no matter what happens, I am looking forward to it! This has been a great series so far, and I don’t expect anything to change. :)
FreeTube: In addition to the end of P. D.’s adventures above, I also got in another one of CaitlinRC’s “best of” Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark videos for writing research purposes: “Dave, Drinks, Unions and Weekends - The OX Crew Play BITD!” The best moments from Lilith and Barnaby’s adventure stealing Darnell Ironhook’s fancy anchor off his fancy party ship the De Ballena (which, yes, is named after Corazon and his ship). Featuring Barnaby, of all people, telling Lilith to get a job when she complains about a lack of money (and then saying “oh, it’s not for ME” when Luke was like “you are the LAST person to tell anyone to get a job”); Lilith introducing the ship’s staff to the concept of unions to get them on-side and let them go wherever they wish (Barnaby telling her afterward that it was brilliant, but also he’s never introducing her to his butler); and Barnaby having to roll for “Dave! Dave?” when he gets them down into the belly of the ship and attempts to greet one of the crewmen he consorted with via flashback (he fortunately rolled well, and Dave recognized him and went for a drink with him later, clearing the room so Lilith could bonk the remaining potential witness – no, not like that XD), among other things. XD Good stuff! I’m very glad Caitlin has made these videos, they’re perfect bite-sized bits of OX:BITD deliciousness. :)
Writing: I got a late start on this, but – thanks to watching most of the latest F:NV YOLO Remastered episode with my workout instead of after it – I did indeed have enough time tonight to finish editing Chapter 2 of “The Van Dort Vacancy!” Hooray! :D The final page-and-a-half featured:
A) Barnaby trying to ingratiate himself with Victor by talking about how he’s the most interesting member of his family right now, and how his father is an awful bore who won’t stop talking about his cannery; Victor agreed that William does like to go on about it, but that it bought them this beautiful house, so he has reason to be proud. Barnaby admitted that was true...then ruined the potential bonding moment by commenting about how the Van Dorts are a perfect example of how people can make their lives better by just stopping being poor. XD Oh Barnaby...
B) Barnaby then going on about how his family has three houses, including a “cottage” in Barrowcleft that just has the one ballroom, along with a study, lounge, and vault, to Victor’s growing disinterest...and then asking about the Van Dorts’ own vault. If they had one, where was it in the house, what kind of security did it have, could he possibly go see it… As you might imagine, Victor was rather taken aback by this line of questioning, and commented that it sounded like Barnaby was trying to rob his parents.
Cue Barnaby looking horrified in an “oh shit he’s onto me” way for a split-second, before desperately covering with some prattle about how he doesn’t need to rob the Van Dorts, he’s SO much richer than they’ll ever be, he’s just so interested in security, invested in a new firm recently, just making sure they really are the best of the best, really Master Van Dort, don’t insult him like that. XD I think we can safely say that Barnaby failed his Sway roll there! Sorry, buddy, it was for the plot.
C) And Victor listening to all this, looking around the ballroom filled with rich people who will never care about him (and made by rich people who will never care about him), thinking about his friends waiting back at the servant’s entrance – and coming to a decision. A decision that involved apologizing to Barnaby for any insult, and assuring him that he knew he didn’t need to rob the Van Dorts…
But that, if he wanted to, Victor would happily help him get inside the vault, so long as he was permitted to get his things first. Cue the chapter ending on Barnaby preparing to take Victor aside for a more private talk. XD Very happy to be done with this editing pass – tomorrow, we’ll see about starting the final pass over in FF.net’s document editor so I can get this sucker posted sooner rather than later!
Hooray, that is indeed everything! And all before 1 AM, nice -- though admittedly, I did end my convo with my friend Squid earlier than normal in an effort to not totally wreck my sleep schedule, which freed up a little more time to work on all this. *nods* And because I do want to try and not totally wreck my sleep schedule, I will be heading off to bed now. Tomorrow, the big thing that's happening is a post-lunch trip with Mom out to the stores to get some new work shoes and slippers, plus maybe some new work tops -- I also hope to figure out what I want to do with Fallout: New Vegas (best mod manager to use, what mods I might need other than the Unofficial Patch, etc), maybe see about starting a few new post drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), and of course, as per the above, start the process of getting Chapter 2 of "The Van Dort Vacancy" ready to post. *nods* We'll see what happens -- night all!
