Quiet Cool Friday
May. 15th, 2026 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, it was another day of low-60s-at-best weather, with partly-cloudy skies occasionally threatening a rain shower -- though it never actually rained, luckily. Weird to think that we're getting summer-like weather starting tomorrow...but then again, that's RI for you -- the weather can be fucking bizarre sometimes. At least it's being bizarre in a pleasant direction for the next few days! *shrugs* Anyway, here's the daily write-up:
Work – Today was one of the quietest, dullest Fridays I’ve had at work in a while – my supervisor wasn’t in because she had to take a sick day; my coworker left early because she had some errands to run; the phone didn’t even ring once; and by lunchtime I’d kind of run out of things to do. My activities for the day consisted of:
A) Doing the GL, which didn’t take very long at all
B) Answering a question about a supposedly-deceased donor (who’d been wrongly marked dead because he shared a name with his late father – happens all the time), which led to me cleaning up all instances of donors with that same name (plus a couple with a related one)
C) Putting on another small chunk of Easter Collection gifts
D) Helping my coworker with a few questions (mostly about a piggybacked check that needed to be redeposited by our processing center)
E) Cleaning my area because it was looking kind of dusty
F) ...and doing the puzzles I swiped from the paper the other day because, seriously, NOT A LOT TO DO.
Yeah – not exactly the most fun of Fridays! But I made it through, and now it is the weekend, yay. We’ll see what Monday brings!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through the following –
A) “Forza Horizon 6 | Racing a GIANT MECH to Tokyo” by OXBox! Featuring Mike tooling around scenic Japan in the latest installment of Playground’s open-world driving/racing games, eventually unlocking the ability to do the thing in the title, while Jane played passenger princess next to him on the couch. XD I spotted this in my Recommendeds earlier this afternoon before going down and thought it would make for a fun workout video. :) Highlights included:
I. Jane believing Mike’s starting car had no room for passenger princesses, only for Mike to inform her it actually had room for two, as the driver actually sat in a center seat with room for a person on either side; this then led to Fun Car Trivia with Mike, as he revealed that such central driver seating was actually illegal in the UK, so McLaren – a British manufacturer of automobiles that produced cars with such seating – offset the driver’s seat by like 1.5 millimeters so it was technically on one side. Jane was like “Oh, McLaren.” XD
II. Mike demonstrating how the guardrails on the sides of the road were just “origami,” as per Jane – basically, instead of stopping you from going off the side, they instead just broke away and let you crash onto the landscape below. I guess they figured “eh, people will prefer the breakaway stuff”?
III. Mike showing off a couple of other cars he owned to Jane after coming 4th in a cool nighttime street race (he ALMOST came 2nd, but had to rewind to grab a checkpoint he’d only just missed, which led to two of his opponents overtaking him), including a modded 1992 Honda race car with a huge rear spoiler wing (Jane said he’d be able to decapitate pedestrians with it) and a front scraper-thing on the bumper (which got caught on the foliage when he failed to take a turn correctly going at ludicrous speed and ended up in the bushes beyond the guardrail), and a Dream Project Nissan Silvia S race car with an even BIGGER rear spoiler wing (“sarcastically huge,” as per Mike) and a top speed of Yes (Jane noted that, by the time you could think to react to what was in your way, you were already a mile further on, and Mike said the only people who could actually steer the darn car were 12-year-olds with still-developing brains :P).
IV. Mike going on a couple of lovely day trips through Japan (the Hokubu and Minamino Day Trip and the Tokyo Day Trip) which actually encouraged you to slow down and enjoy the scenery, shockingly – and despite being a bit of a speed demon in other parts of the game, Mike actually quite enjoyed the slower pace. And he appreciated that he wasn’t the only one driving into all the barriers in the Hokubu and Minamino day trip specifically. XD Sure, both trips ended with a proper race (with the Tokyo one specifically doing the Speed thing and telling Mike to keep above 80 MPH while zipping through the streets of the city, though fortunately for him it gave you a generous 20-second time to get back to speed if/when you crashed), but still – if you’re into the slower-paced life, Forza Horizon 6 has got you covered! (Though Jane suggested a further improvement – passenger avatars to populate your car while you’re driving around, changing the radio station on you and screaming when you started going fast. XD)
V. Mike participating in the very amusing “Eclectic Domestics” race in Shimanoyama, purchasing an ACTY 1994 Honda flatbed truck (that apparently you can put a camper shell on if you like) at Jane’s request – and getting roasted at the very start of the race by the game noting he hadn’t won many races lately and asking if he would like to turn down the difficulty. XD This was blamed on the fact that Mike both had to talk to make an interesting video AND had to use a regular controller instead of his preferred steering wheel. Anyway, the ACTY proved to be the world’s slowest vehicle, but fortunately Mike was able to use the power of gravity to muscle his way to the front of the pack (including some weird “mini-hearse” cars, as per Jane, and a few other ACTY trucks) and managed to win the race, yay! :D (Granted, I’m pretty sure he took FH6 up on its offer to lower the difficulty, but still. XD)
VI. Mike unlocking the actual race against a giant mech by doing an absolutely EPIC off-road jump – his first attempt with Sarcastically Huge Spoiler car did not go well (he didn’t even get to the jump), but fortunately switching to a somewhat more normal ride did the trick, and he was able to leap off the makeshift ramp and get airborne long enough to impress the game and unlock the event, called – appropriately enough – “Mech My Day.”
VII. And, of course, Mike actually racing the giant mech, which was called Chaser Zero and had an absolutely over-the-top entrance (virtually putting on shades by wiping its fingers over its visor to make it light up, doing dramatic poses, the works). Jane joked that this was Playground’s way of saying they wanted to do a mech game next. XD The race itself was delightful, with Mike doing his best to keep up with Chaser Zero in his Acura NSX ‘22 as it showboated all over the shop – slaloming down a tree-covered mountainside after a huge jump; leaping into a nearby lake and zipping through it before jumping over Mike and spraying it with water from its intake vents; doing a cool slide underneath a bridge (Jane: “Okay, Playground, you may make your mech game”); leaping over a tunnel and landing just as Mike did an awesome leap himself (and nearly landed into the stands because he was distracted by a bullet train – fortunately the citizens were saved by an invisible wall); and Spider-Man-swinging across a bunch of the various buildings in Tokyo. However, pride came before a fall with Chaser Zero, as its experimental power systems failed right before the finish line, allowing Mike to take the win and the rare achievement “Meching My Way Downtown.” Jane and Mike were both certain that the mech had given them the win, but didn’t care. XD
Fun stuff! Especially the mech race at the end, that was cool. :D If you’re into driving games, you might want to check this one out – Mike certainly seems to adore it!
B) And “Fallout: NV - Gun Runners' Arsenal - Unique Weapons Guide (DLC)” by Caedo Genesis! A video I stumbled across while looking for something Fallout: New Vegas-themed to watch to finish out my workout and decided was worth checking out. It’s basically just a list of where you can buy all the unique weapons added by the “Gun Runners’ Arsenal” DLC and what makes them, well, unique. I won’t go through all of them, but I will give you one from each vendor:
I. From Cliff Briscoe in Novac, you can get the Microfusion Hyperbreeder Alpha, a recharger pistol that has better base and crit damage than the standard AND is fully automatic, meaning it apparently recharges faster too (which, of course, you want). Plus it just looks cool.
II. From Knight Torres in the Hidden Valley BOS Bunker, you can get Greased Lightning, a super-fast power fist that can dish out three attacks per second as per Caedo! Has the lowest base damage of all the power fists, admittedly, but when combined with the right perks, you’ll be hitting the enemies so many times it won’t matter.
III. From the Vendortron in the Gun Runners’ booth outside of New Vegas, you can get Two-Step Goodbye, a ballistic fist that has slightly less regular damage than its ordinary cousins, but an incredible crit kill effect – basically, get a critical on a lethal hit with this thing, and shortly thereafter your enemy will EXPLODE, dishing out a decent amount of damage to everyone in a short radius. VERY nice if you like exploding people!
IV. From Mick & Ralph’s in Freeside, you can get the Nuka Breaker, a large Nuka-Cola neon sign that you can use to pummel people and which shocks enemies on critical hits (meaning it’s excellent to use against robots). If you’re wondering how the hell they came up with this, it’s actually a reference to “Nuka Break,” a fun little Fallout miniseries about a Vault Dweller, a ghoul, and a slave they freed from New Vegas wandering around having adventures. So that’s cool. :)
V. And from Gloria Van Graff in the Silver Rush (also in Freeside), you can get The Smitty Special, a modified plasma caster that does half-damage compared to its ordinary brethren, but – like the Hyperbreeder Alpha – is fully automatic, meaning you just have to hold down the trigger and keep your target in front of them to kill them. :P
There you are – a bunch of ridiculous awesome weapons for all your ridiculous awesome weapon needs. :p
2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – edited another page and a bit this evening after Game Night (Blizzard Game – Dad won both times), which included –
A) Victor telling Smiler that the weird discs on the wall were Coins – and when Smiler was like “what sort of coins?” clarifying that he meant “Coins with a capital C.” As in, the unit of money used to define how rich someone is. Cue Smiler being absolutely gobsmacked that physical Coins were still being minted (Victor explaining the bank only does it for very special clients, and, well, his rich parents counted); Alice pointing out that one Coin is equivalent to a week’s wages for most people, and goggling over the fact the Van Dorts have a wall of them for show (Victor: “I told you it was over the top”); Victor warning Kasimir off stealing any, as his mother would notice (Kasimir agreed it would be a bad idea, but his white-knuckled grip on his cane belied his desire to go and rip off as many Coins as he could); and Barnaby declaring the whole thing outrageous – because he should have thought of this first, damn it, he’s got enough money to cover a whole ROOM in Coins! How dare he get shown up by Nell Van Dort! He really has to have a talk with his decorator… XD
B) And an amused Victor going to open the safe so Barnaby wouldn’t have to pay his decorator with his own money (“Finally, someone who understands!”)...only to be unable to turn the handle after putting in the combination, even when he put his back into it. Smiler, going to help, suggested that maybe his parents had changed it while he was gone – Victor was initially like “they never changed it before,” then realized that maybe Nell or William had changed it just in case someone got it out of him while he was disappeared. Kasimir started searching his pockets for an alternate way to get into the safe, while Smiler suggested Victor go over the numbers again, as he might have mixed two of them up. Victor wasn’t sure he had, but did go through the combination again –
And realized that he’d switched the digits in the final number (putting in 86 instead of 68). Cue him grumpily redoing the combination on the dial while complaining that he’d done the same thing the first time he’d come down here with William, and he couldn’t figure out why he kept thinking the final number was 86. He apologized to Kasimir and Barnaby as he finally got the door open, saying it had been a day – Barnaby told him that he should have had some canapes. :p
And that’s where I left it for now! Next time, the gang gets the money out of the safe, and I figure out where to split this chapter, because I’ve come to the conclusion that the actual escape from the Van Dort manor post-heist should be its own thing instead of part of Chapter 5. (Especially since Chapter 5 is already twenty pages…) Though maybe I’ll just keep editing for now and figure out how to split it later – that way I can post two chapters in quick succession. :p We’ll see!
3. Watch something on YouTube: CHECK, shockingly enough – and not even just a technical check in the form of “I watched the first four minutes of ‘Colouring Books, Trains and A Great Big Dog - The OX Crew Play BITD’ by CaitlinRC and the entire two minutes of ‘Corpse Bride Practicing Vow’ by Qing 345 as ‘research’ for the latest bit of editing on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” (though I did do that). For, you see, before going downstairs to work out tonight, I spotted a YouTube Short that I knew immediately that I had to watch –
“Humble Cudgel vs Legate Lanius - Who Wins? #fnv #fallout” by The Fallout Family! A follow-up to the patriarch of said family’s short about how you acquire the Humble Cudgel (which is a special pipe melee weapon you can find in the sewers below McCarran), where – in order to prove the naysayers on that video wrong – he used it as his exclusive weapon in the final fight for Hoover Dam! Not just against Legate Lanius either, but against all the other Legion enemies, the NCR troopers in power armor protecting the Dam’s control center, and General Lee Oliver! And how did the Humble Cudgel acquit itself?
Very damn well, honestly! Turns out this cudgel has its own special melee attack, Lights Out, that does 125% damage when you pull it off. And when you combine that with a character optimized for melee attacks, well. Sure, a few of the enemies on the initial run across the top of the dam had been softened up by gunfire first, but the power armor troopers, Lanius, and Oliver all went down to the rapid swings of the cudgel without any prior damaging required. Hell, Lanius got straight-up knocked over and couldn’t get back up before succumbing to the power of what I presume to be the Bloody Mess perk and exploding into giblets. XD It was a delightful two-and-a-half minutes of watching the Courier kick ass with a pipe –
Made even better by my sneaking suspicion I might have helped inspire it. Because, well, I DEFENDED the Humble Cudgel when I watched the original short, and noted that I’d like to see if it COULD take down Lanius during a brief convo with The Fallout Family. Because people did ridiculous challenge runs all the time anyway, so why not HC vs LL? :p Very glad to see my idea bear fruit!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Double check as, in another shocking twist, I had something to queue up on both my tumblrs for a change –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I sorted out my Saturday queue, which now includes:
A) Squid’s birthday fic – after a final glance at the story itself for typos, all I had to do was add the tags, and I was all set here :)
B) And my Song Saturday offering – “Isolated” by Chasm! As that’s the song that plays in The Asylum, I felt it appropriate to bring back given that the above post is VTMB fanfic AND I just started “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” which features Alice visiting The Asylum at the start. *nods* (Plus it’s been seven years since I shared it apparently, so – yeah.)
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had an anon ask to chuck into my Saturday queue, talking about how Bram Stoker wrote his friend Mark Twain into Dracula via having Van Helsing reference “an American” who defined faith as “the belief in what we know to be untrue” and how his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt probably inspired Quincy Morris, the cowboy who helps kill Dracula at the end by stabbing him in the heart! My initial response was “well, these are Fact Core facts, so let’s answer the ask with the Aperture Wage Slave Victor and Alice” –
But then I went on Bram Stoker’s Wikipedia page, and it looks like he did know Teddy Roosevelt? At the very least, he was invited to the White House? Huh. O.o I still answered the ask with Aperture Wage Slave Victor and Alice, I just changed the response to have Alice suspicious of the facts, and Victor reveal that Stoker did know Roosevelt, so they might not be completely wrong. We’ll see if there’s any follow-ups after the post goes up tomorrow!
*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose! Though yeah, long boring day at work. At least it wasn't too stressful! But now I have to hit the sheets -- it's a Cleaning & Laundry Saturday tomorrow, so I already know what I'll be doing for most of the day. After that -- it's either Fallout: New Vegas and more Courier Victor, or just focusing on answering Moose's messages already. ^^; It'll happen this weekend one way or the other, Moose! Night all!
Work – Today was one of the quietest, dullest Fridays I’ve had at work in a while – my supervisor wasn’t in because she had to take a sick day; my coworker left early because she had some errands to run; the phone didn’t even ring once; and by lunchtime I’d kind of run out of things to do. My activities for the day consisted of:
A) Doing the GL, which didn’t take very long at all
B) Answering a question about a supposedly-deceased donor (who’d been wrongly marked dead because he shared a name with his late father – happens all the time), which led to me cleaning up all instances of donors with that same name (plus a couple with a related one)
C) Putting on another small chunk of Easter Collection gifts
D) Helping my coworker with a few questions (mostly about a piggybacked check that needed to be redeposited by our processing center)
E) Cleaning my area because it was looking kind of dusty
F) ...and doing the puzzles I swiped from the paper the other day because, seriously, NOT A LOT TO DO.
Yeah – not exactly the most fun of Fridays! But I made it through, and now it is the weekend, yay. We’ll see what Monday brings!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike this week saw me pedal my way through the following –
A) “Forza Horizon 6 | Racing a GIANT MECH to Tokyo” by OXBox! Featuring Mike tooling around scenic Japan in the latest installment of Playground’s open-world driving/racing games, eventually unlocking the ability to do the thing in the title, while Jane played passenger princess next to him on the couch. XD I spotted this in my Recommendeds earlier this afternoon before going down and thought it would make for a fun workout video. :) Highlights included:
I. Jane believing Mike’s starting car had no room for passenger princesses, only for Mike to inform her it actually had room for two, as the driver actually sat in a center seat with room for a person on either side; this then led to Fun Car Trivia with Mike, as he revealed that such central driver seating was actually illegal in the UK, so McLaren – a British manufacturer of automobiles that produced cars with such seating – offset the driver’s seat by like 1.5 millimeters so it was technically on one side. Jane was like “Oh, McLaren.” XD
II. Mike demonstrating how the guardrails on the sides of the road were just “origami,” as per Jane – basically, instead of stopping you from going off the side, they instead just broke away and let you crash onto the landscape below. I guess they figured “eh, people will prefer the breakaway stuff”?
III. Mike showing off a couple of other cars he owned to Jane after coming 4th in a cool nighttime street race (he ALMOST came 2nd, but had to rewind to grab a checkpoint he’d only just missed, which led to two of his opponents overtaking him), including a modded 1992 Honda race car with a huge rear spoiler wing (Jane said he’d be able to decapitate pedestrians with it) and a front scraper-thing on the bumper (which got caught on the foliage when he failed to take a turn correctly going at ludicrous speed and ended up in the bushes beyond the guardrail), and a Dream Project Nissan Silvia S race car with an even BIGGER rear spoiler wing (“sarcastically huge,” as per Mike) and a top speed of Yes (Jane noted that, by the time you could think to react to what was in your way, you were already a mile further on, and Mike said the only people who could actually steer the darn car were 12-year-olds with still-developing brains :P).
IV. Mike going on a couple of lovely day trips through Japan (the Hokubu and Minamino Day Trip and the Tokyo Day Trip) which actually encouraged you to slow down and enjoy the scenery, shockingly – and despite being a bit of a speed demon in other parts of the game, Mike actually quite enjoyed the slower pace. And he appreciated that he wasn’t the only one driving into all the barriers in the Hokubu and Minamino day trip specifically. XD Sure, both trips ended with a proper race (with the Tokyo one specifically doing the Speed thing and telling Mike to keep above 80 MPH while zipping through the streets of the city, though fortunately for him it gave you a generous 20-second time to get back to speed if/when you crashed), but still – if you’re into the slower-paced life, Forza Horizon 6 has got you covered! (Though Jane suggested a further improvement – passenger avatars to populate your car while you’re driving around, changing the radio station on you and screaming when you started going fast. XD)
V. Mike participating in the very amusing “Eclectic Domestics” race in Shimanoyama, purchasing an ACTY 1994 Honda flatbed truck (that apparently you can put a camper shell on if you like) at Jane’s request – and getting roasted at the very start of the race by the game noting he hadn’t won many races lately and asking if he would like to turn down the difficulty. XD This was blamed on the fact that Mike both had to talk to make an interesting video AND had to use a regular controller instead of his preferred steering wheel. Anyway, the ACTY proved to be the world’s slowest vehicle, but fortunately Mike was able to use the power of gravity to muscle his way to the front of the pack (including some weird “mini-hearse” cars, as per Jane, and a few other ACTY trucks) and managed to win the race, yay! :D (Granted, I’m pretty sure he took FH6 up on its offer to lower the difficulty, but still. XD)
VI. Mike unlocking the actual race against a giant mech by doing an absolutely EPIC off-road jump – his first attempt with Sarcastically Huge Spoiler car did not go well (he didn’t even get to the jump), but fortunately switching to a somewhat more normal ride did the trick, and he was able to leap off the makeshift ramp and get airborne long enough to impress the game and unlock the event, called – appropriately enough – “Mech My Day.”
VII. And, of course, Mike actually racing the giant mech, which was called Chaser Zero and had an absolutely over-the-top entrance (virtually putting on shades by wiping its fingers over its visor to make it light up, doing dramatic poses, the works). Jane joked that this was Playground’s way of saying they wanted to do a mech game next. XD The race itself was delightful, with Mike doing his best to keep up with Chaser Zero in his Acura NSX ‘22 as it showboated all over the shop – slaloming down a tree-covered mountainside after a huge jump; leaping into a nearby lake and zipping through it before jumping over Mike and spraying it with water from its intake vents; doing a cool slide underneath a bridge (Jane: “Okay, Playground, you may make your mech game”); leaping over a tunnel and landing just as Mike did an awesome leap himself (and nearly landed into the stands because he was distracted by a bullet train – fortunately the citizens were saved by an invisible wall); and Spider-Man-swinging across a bunch of the various buildings in Tokyo. However, pride came before a fall with Chaser Zero, as its experimental power systems failed right before the finish line, allowing Mike to take the win and the rare achievement “Meching My Way Downtown.” Jane and Mike were both certain that the mech had given them the win, but didn’t care. XD
Fun stuff! Especially the mech race at the end, that was cool. :D If you’re into driving games, you might want to check this one out – Mike certainly seems to adore it!
B) And “Fallout: NV - Gun Runners' Arsenal - Unique Weapons Guide (DLC)” by Caedo Genesis! A video I stumbled across while looking for something Fallout: New Vegas-themed to watch to finish out my workout and decided was worth checking out. It’s basically just a list of where you can buy all the unique weapons added by the “Gun Runners’ Arsenal” DLC and what makes them, well, unique. I won’t go through all of them, but I will give you one from each vendor:
I. From Cliff Briscoe in Novac, you can get the Microfusion Hyperbreeder Alpha, a recharger pistol that has better base and crit damage than the standard AND is fully automatic, meaning it apparently recharges faster too (which, of course, you want). Plus it just looks cool.
II. From Knight Torres in the Hidden Valley BOS Bunker, you can get Greased Lightning, a super-fast power fist that can dish out three attacks per second as per Caedo! Has the lowest base damage of all the power fists, admittedly, but when combined with the right perks, you’ll be hitting the enemies so many times it won’t matter.
III. From the Vendortron in the Gun Runners’ booth outside of New Vegas, you can get Two-Step Goodbye, a ballistic fist that has slightly less regular damage than its ordinary cousins, but an incredible crit kill effect – basically, get a critical on a lethal hit with this thing, and shortly thereafter your enemy will EXPLODE, dishing out a decent amount of damage to everyone in a short radius. VERY nice if you like exploding people!
IV. From Mick & Ralph’s in Freeside, you can get the Nuka Breaker, a large Nuka-Cola neon sign that you can use to pummel people and which shocks enemies on critical hits (meaning it’s excellent to use against robots). If you’re wondering how the hell they came up with this, it’s actually a reference to “Nuka Break,” a fun little Fallout miniseries about a Vault Dweller, a ghoul, and a slave they freed from New Vegas wandering around having adventures. So that’s cool. :)
V. And from Gloria Van Graff in the Silver Rush (also in Freeside), you can get The Smitty Special, a modified plasma caster that does half-damage compared to its ordinary brethren, but – like the Hyperbreeder Alpha – is fully automatic, meaning you just have to hold down the trigger and keep your target in front of them to kill them. :P
There you are – a bunch of ridiculous awesome weapons for all your ridiculous awesome weapon needs. :p
2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – edited another page and a bit this evening after Game Night (Blizzard Game – Dad won both times), which included –
A) Victor telling Smiler that the weird discs on the wall were Coins – and when Smiler was like “what sort of coins?” clarifying that he meant “Coins with a capital C.” As in, the unit of money used to define how rich someone is. Cue Smiler being absolutely gobsmacked that physical Coins were still being minted (Victor explaining the bank only does it for very special clients, and, well, his rich parents counted); Alice pointing out that one Coin is equivalent to a week’s wages for most people, and goggling over the fact the Van Dorts have a wall of them for show (Victor: “I told you it was over the top”); Victor warning Kasimir off stealing any, as his mother would notice (Kasimir agreed it would be a bad idea, but his white-knuckled grip on his cane belied his desire to go and rip off as many Coins as he could); and Barnaby declaring the whole thing outrageous – because he should have thought of this first, damn it, he’s got enough money to cover a whole ROOM in Coins! How dare he get shown up by Nell Van Dort! He really has to have a talk with his decorator… XD
B) And an amused Victor going to open the safe so Barnaby wouldn’t have to pay his decorator with his own money (“Finally, someone who understands!”)...only to be unable to turn the handle after putting in the combination, even when he put his back into it. Smiler, going to help, suggested that maybe his parents had changed it while he was gone – Victor was initially like “they never changed it before,” then realized that maybe Nell or William had changed it just in case someone got it out of him while he was disappeared. Kasimir started searching his pockets for an alternate way to get into the safe, while Smiler suggested Victor go over the numbers again, as he might have mixed two of them up. Victor wasn’t sure he had, but did go through the combination again –
And realized that he’d switched the digits in the final number (putting in 86 instead of 68). Cue him grumpily redoing the combination on the dial while complaining that he’d done the same thing the first time he’d come down here with William, and he couldn’t figure out why he kept thinking the final number was 86. He apologized to Kasimir and Barnaby as he finally got the door open, saying it had been a day – Barnaby told him that he should have had some canapes. :p
And that’s where I left it for now! Next time, the gang gets the money out of the safe, and I figure out where to split this chapter, because I’ve come to the conclusion that the actual escape from the Van Dort manor post-heist should be its own thing instead of part of Chapter 5. (Especially since Chapter 5 is already twenty pages…) Though maybe I’ll just keep editing for now and figure out how to split it later – that way I can post two chapters in quick succession. :p We’ll see!
3. Watch something on YouTube: CHECK, shockingly enough – and not even just a technical check in the form of “I watched the first four minutes of ‘Colouring Books, Trains and A Great Big Dog - The OX Crew Play BITD’ by CaitlinRC and the entire two minutes of ‘Corpse Bride Practicing Vow’ by Qing 345 as ‘research’ for the latest bit of editing on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” (though I did do that). For, you see, before going downstairs to work out tonight, I spotted a YouTube Short that I knew immediately that I had to watch –
“Humble Cudgel vs Legate Lanius - Who Wins? #fnv #fallout” by The Fallout Family! A follow-up to the patriarch of said family’s short about how you acquire the Humble Cudgel (which is a special pipe melee weapon you can find in the sewers below McCarran), where – in order to prove the naysayers on that video wrong – he used it as his exclusive weapon in the final fight for Hoover Dam! Not just against Legate Lanius either, but against all the other Legion enemies, the NCR troopers in power armor protecting the Dam’s control center, and General Lee Oliver! And how did the Humble Cudgel acquit itself?
Very damn well, honestly! Turns out this cudgel has its own special melee attack, Lights Out, that does 125% damage when you pull it off. And when you combine that with a character optimized for melee attacks, well. Sure, a few of the enemies on the initial run across the top of the dam had been softened up by gunfire first, but the power armor troopers, Lanius, and Oliver all went down to the rapid swings of the cudgel without any prior damaging required. Hell, Lanius got straight-up knocked over and couldn’t get back up before succumbing to the power of what I presume to be the Bloody Mess perk and exploding into giblets. XD It was a delightful two-and-a-half minutes of watching the Courier kick ass with a pipe –
Made even better by my sneaking suspicion I might have helped inspire it. Because, well, I DEFENDED the Humble Cudgel when I watched the original short, and noted that I’d like to see if it COULD take down Lanius during a brief convo with The Fallout Family. Because people did ridiculous challenge runs all the time anyway, so why not HC vs LL? :p Very glad to see my idea bear fruit!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Double check as, in another shocking twist, I had something to queue up on both my tumblrs for a change –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I sorted out my Saturday queue, which now includes:
A) Squid’s birthday fic – after a final glance at the story itself for typos, all I had to do was add the tags, and I was all set here :)
B) And my Song Saturday offering – “Isolated” by Chasm! As that’s the song that plays in The Asylum, I felt it appropriate to bring back given that the above post is VTMB fanfic AND I just started “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths,” which features Alice visiting The Asylum at the start. *nods* (Plus it’s been seven years since I shared it apparently, so – yeah.)
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I had an anon ask to chuck into my Saturday queue, talking about how Bram Stoker wrote his friend Mark Twain into Dracula via having Van Helsing reference “an American” who defined faith as “the belief in what we know to be untrue” and how his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt probably inspired Quincy Morris, the cowboy who helps kill Dracula at the end by stabbing him in the heart! My initial response was “well, these are Fact Core facts, so let’s answer the ask with the Aperture Wage Slave Victor and Alice” –
But then I went on Bram Stoker’s Wikipedia page, and it looks like he did know Teddy Roosevelt? At the very least, he was invited to the White House? Huh. O.o I still answered the ask with Aperture Wage Slave Victor and Alice, I just changed the response to have Alice suspicious of the facts, and Victor reveal that Stoker did know Roosevelt, so they might not be completely wrong. We’ll see if there’s any follow-ups after the post goes up tomorrow!
*nods* Not too shabby, I suppose! Though yeah, long boring day at work. At least it wasn't too stressful! But now I have to hit the sheets -- it's a Cleaning & Laundry Saturday tomorrow, so I already know what I'll be doing for most of the day. After that -- it's either Fallout: New Vegas and more Courier Victor, or just focusing on answering Moose's messages already. ^^; It'll happen this weekend one way or the other, Moose! Night all!
