Much Cooler Somewhat Calmer Day
May. 21st, 2026 11:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, the weather did a complete turn-around from the extreme heat and humidity and sunshine of the past couple of days, being rather cool and cloudy with a few morning sprinkles. To be fair, it was a relief after how hot the past couple of days have been -- and it made for a gorgeous sunset this evening, let me tell you. :p My day was accordingly a bit better, as the daily write-up should prove:
Work – Was another fairly quiet day at work – apart from the usual morning reports, my day was taken up pretty much entirely with:
A) Finishing off the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and cleaning up some other records that I found while I was at it – I also tried to call someone who I think sent us a credit card gift but didn’t include more than her name, but she was in a class and unwilling to talk. I’ll have to see if I can get her at some point tomorrow!
B) Taking a couple of credit card calls – one lady who I e-mailed yesterday about her second pledge card and if that meant she wanted to up her pledge or not (she did), and one lady who wanted to make a “double payment” on her pledge after confirming her balance (since she had the funds). Nothing too major – and the stupid payment screen actually worked today, so hooray for that.
C) Doing a bit more roster maintenance in between working on a crossword in the afternoon, because it was quiet and there wasn’t much else to do
D) And doing a reversal to move someone’s pledge overpayment into the next Appeal year as a one-time gift
Nothing too exciting! The most stress I had was from rereading my old “this is all the problems we’ve had with the credit card company” doc and making myself mad about how incompetent they are all over again. *sigh* Hopefully Friday will be a decent day – fingers crossed they let us out a little early!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Part 2 - The Ghost Town!” Today’s chunklet featured –
A) Doc Mitchell venturing out of Victortron’s shack and – after a moment’s worry about the sky turning a worrisome shade of yellow (fortunately, it didn’t appear to be a radstorm, as was Jon’s fear) – going to explore/loot the rest of Goodsprings! Or “Ghost Town,” as this mod officially named it, which at least assured Jon he wasn’t going to see much in the way of human enemies. His first three targets were:
I. The house that belonged to that lady who you have to save from the geckos during the tutorial, which gave him such goodies as dirty water, vodka, some squirrel on a stick, a Sunset Sarsaparilla, a single shotgun he could use to improve his own, and the Chinese Army Spec Ops Training Manual, which he immediately used to boost his Sneak skill up 3 points, as that was a VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in this mod!
II. Another random settler house, which had a Future Weapons Today magazine in the mailbox outside, a stimpack, a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of dirty water, and – most importantly – a bottle of beer! Why was that the most important? Well, because in this mod, beer not only hydrates you (not as much of water, but it makes the H20 meter go down a bit), but it also removes rads AND heals sanity. Jon immediately declared that Doc Mitchell would probably be picking up a beer habit.
III. And the schoolhouse, which had worker ants inside instead of mantises – Doc M was able to kill one and kite around the rest, fortunately, allowing him to hack the nearby terminal and open the safe, scoring among other things two vials of antivenom, 29 bottlecaps, a super stimpack, and the Stealth Boy Jon was hoping for – plus some meat off the dead ant, because why waste the meat?
B) Doc Mitchell taking a moment to kill some more dogs and chow down on some squirrel on a stick (as all the other animal meat in his inventory was uncooked and thus going to drop his Strength if he ate it, kind of defeating the point, and Jon didn’t want Doc Mitchell to go cannibal just YET), then hitting up Easy Pete’s house, noting that this house was always available to the player and thus had another working bed he could use – unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of goodies there, just some Buffout and another Sunset Sarsaparilla (which Doc M immediately downed, along with the other one in his inventory, to relieve his thirst). Disappointed, he headed outside and started toward his own house –
Only to get distracted by a truck on the road. A truck with bodies in it. Bodies of what were labeled as “plague victims.” At least two of which Doc M recognized – sure, their heads were all bandaged up, but their clothes marked them as Easy Pete and Chet from the general store. :( So yes, now we know what happened to Goodsprings – a plague swept through and killed everyone (apart from Doc M, of course...though I suspect we’re also going to find the NPC Doc Mitchell’s corpse somewhere in town at some point…). Sad. :(
C) Doc Mitchell attempting to get into his own house – only to find it was locked. And just above his ability to actually pick it open. Apparently the good doctor lost his front door key when he was elevated to the status of “protagonist.” :P Trying to get into the gas station up the road yielded the same result (though at least Doc M was able to score a Sunset Sarsaparilla out of the machine out front), so he instead headed back into town –
And ended up abandoning proper stealth in favor of running around and gunning down the wild dogs as they ran to attack him (with very derpy expressions it must be said), because all the careful creeping around he was doing was wasting too much time and leading to things like minor dehydration. He also made sure to stop by the house next to the general store to look for goodies – looked like a bust at first, but then he found an ammo case with .357 Magnum ammo in it, plus a Star bottle cap, so all was forgiven. :p
D) Doc Mitchell getting some more Sunset Sarsaparillas from the crates outside the store, downing those with some dirty water to get himself properly hydrated, then – after checking out another plague victim outside the Prospector Saloon (which he successfully identified as Ringo – did the Courier never help with the Powder Gangers, or did he just come back for a visit at the worst time?) and killing another dog (and NOT taking the meat because oh hell he had PLENTY of dog meat) – venturing inside the bar to see what he could find. First thing was yet another dog; second thing was more plague victims (including the woman you’re supposed to save from the geckos) –
And the third thing was LOADS of booze, including wine! Which, like beer, is a triple threat in that it hydrates, restores sanity, and removes rads. Doc M promptly hoarded as much of the alcohol as he could (accepting his probable fate of becoming an alcoholic), dropping the human flesh, ant meat, and some other stuff he didn’t need to make room. *nods* Yeah, all things considered, I’d rather Doc M be a boozehound than a cannibal, so thanks, Jon! He followed this up by grabbing the Fixing Things from the room with the pool table, then ducking into the back storage area to loot as much alcohol and dirty water and other useful odds and ends as he could find, along with hacking the terminal to open the safe. This, hilariously, caused him to become Vilified by Goodsprings, despite the fact that there was no one left alive to see him doing all this. Perhaps all their ghosts were hanging around and judging him? The game did say this was a “ghost” town… :p
E) Doc Mitchell cracking open a Very Easy-locked door in the saloon for the XP (as he needed to get to Level 2 so he could boost his Lockpick skill and, you know, get into his own house), then raiding the general store – and finding a dead family in the back, including a child. Which was unusual, as Fallout games generally protect their children. He was sad for about ten seconds, then dragged the mother’s body out of the way to get at their Rad-X bottles and the pork-n-beans and whiskey in the fridge. XD Which prompted him to do the math to compare how much hard liquor, like whiskey, raised his thirst versus how much wine lowered it – turned out, if he wanted to combine the effects to remove more rads and boost more sanity, all he had to do was chug a wine after his whiskey. Good to know! Would definitely make him an alcoholic, given there was no way to avoid addiction in this game if you didn’t take the “Logan’s Loophole” trait (which Jon WAS tempted by, but balked when he saw they’d limited the max level to TEN in the mod O.O), but still! He then followed this up by grabbing everything useful from the store front, then breaking into the secret moonshine shed for more lockpicking XP – didn’t find the moonshine itself worth carrying around as it didn’t hydrate nor cure any rads, but hey, at least now he knew where to find some if he ever wanted to try it.
F) Doc Mitchell checking how far he had to go to level up and get his damn Lockpick skill raised (still 80 XP, ouch), then heading up to the cemetery to see what was going on there (with Jon declaring that, if there were bloatflies, he was noping out, because those fuckers could spit projectiles at you and were really hard to hit). Fortunately, there were no bloatflies –
Instead, there was a LIVING plague victim up there! Dumping the last of the bodies into the Courier’s old grave. And who was immediately hostile and attempted to clobber poor Doc M with his shovel upon seeing him. Fortunately, Doc M was able to defend himself with his Bowie knife – then, when that broke, chase the disarmed victim down and punch him to death. ...at which point Jon realized that he really hadn’t had to do that, the guy was already fleeing. XD Ah well – murder means more XP toward Level 2! Plus it netted Doc M his shovel, which he used to dig up the already-filled graves, which netted him a .357 Magnum and a bunch of ammo for it, along with some more 9mm rounds. *nods* Nice! He also took a moment to look out at the lights of Vegas –
And then took a moment to note that Vegas was indeed actually lit up, meaning SOMEONE was maintaining the infrastructure there. Which just cemented his desire to go there. Doc M, Jon, you’re not gonna like it…
G) Doc Mitchell, needing to go out into the world to find stuff to do and get his level-up already, considering the different routes one could take to Vegas proper and The Strip from Goodsprings (ranging from “brave the cazadores in the nearby valley to the north and then head up through Red Rock Canyon” to “follow the path the main quest in base F:NV takes you”) – then, despite having just called it the hardest route because of all the horrible flying murder-bugs, deciding to check out the route to the north just to see if the cazadores were actually there. And, to his surprise, they weren’t –
Instead, he found an NCR Trooper! With a nice service rifle that he rather wanted. So, after the beer wore off (very dramatically, I might add), he attempted to sneak up on her – then, when that failed, tried to wait for her to get close enough to take a potshot at with his .357 Magnum –
Which resulted in him dying. Jon promptly noted down “don’t mess with the NCR, got it.” XD (Though he did also note that, if he had a good enough weapon to which to snipe her down later, she could be very useful in clearing out the passage for him...)
H) Doc Mitchell heading out of town via a DIFFERENT route, toward the Yangtze Memorial...only to first discover that the coyotes in the hills around Goodsprings had been replaced with night stalkers (aka coyotes mixed with RATTLESNAKES), and that the memorial itself had been taken over by tribals, who were now using it as a sacrificial altar. Fortunately, Doc M was able to outrun the former (using the terrain and his ability to jump over obstacles the snoyotes would have to go around to his advantage), and the latter proved to be the kind who would leave you alone so long as you didn’t get too close to them, meaning Doc M was able to just ease his way around the edge of the memorial no problem. He was even able to rob the graves there, picking up more ammo and a baseball bat as a new melee option. :) Yay!
And I ended with Doc Mitchell having to hastily outrun a radscorpion (again, using his ability to jump on rocks to his advantage) and going to check out Sloan – which looked like it had become a camp full of cannibals, oh dear. O.o Tomorrow, we finish off the final few minutes of this episode and see if Doc M ends it being killed by cannibals or not! Hopefully not, but this is the kind of series where death will be coming often to the main character, so… :p
2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got about a page of heist (or, rather, heist escape) shenanigans edited today, covering –
A) Kasimir confirming that Mrs. Pemberly would never have let any tradesmen steal anything from her kitchen, then – after asking where the tripwire in front of the vault door was (Alice pointed it out, as to her Caterpillar was still sitting on it) – inquiring if there were any guards at the tradesman’s entrance; Victor told him that there was supposed to be at least one servant there at all time to greet people and lead them to where they were meant to go, but he wouldn’t be surprised if said servant had been dragged into helping out with the party – after all, it looked like Nell had gone all out! Alice confirmed that the chaos in the kitchen seemed to support that hypothesis, and that she suspected Mrs. Pemberly had recruited all the help she could get from around the place. Smiler cheerfully declared (after pointing out the first tricky tile in the mosaic to Alice when she asked) that that meant the tradesman’s entrance was their best shot for getting out –
B) Prompting Barnaby to happily inform everyone that he would not be going out that door, thanks. Victor was like “what?” causing Barnaby to point out that he couldn’t use that door, he wasn’t a tradesman – quite the opposite, in fact! He didn’t mind if the others used that door, but he would be going out the front, thank you very much! Which you think would have gotten him in trouble with Kasimir –
Except, well, our favorite Spider had to reluctantly admit that Barnaby had a point – he was an invited guest, so it made sense for him to leave through the front with the others. And, in fact, it inspired Kasimir to suggest they all split up, with Barnaby going out the front, Victor and himself heading out the tradesman’s entrance, and Alice and Smiler leaving through the servant’s entrance near the kitchen (with the cover story of taking out the trash or something). Alice, however, said that while she wasn’t necessarily opposed to splitting up, she didn’t think going back by the kitchens was a good idea – Mrs. Pemberly was already waiting on their return, after all. Meaning that if she spotted Alice and Smiler, they’d probably be pulled into service decorating a cake or similar. She was fine with Barnaby leaving separately, but felt the rest of them should stick together. Smiler agreed and advised Barnaby that he should stick with them until they got to the tradesman’s entrance, then break off on his own so it didn’t look like he’d come directly out of the hallway with the entrance to the vault and the two unconscious guards, saying he could always say he just got lost if he got caught in this part of the house. (“Or just get lost, this is a big house,” Alice added.) Barnaby decided that was a plan he could live with, adding that he just had to look after his reputation, you know – he was already going to get comments about “indulging the upstarts” for attending this party. Smiler noted that rich people really seemed to like dragging each other down – Victor mumbled they didn’t know the half of it.
C) And the group then successfully making it back through the hallway traps and out the door at the other end, where Victor was relieved to find just the two unconscious guards from before, and no sign of anyone having come across them. He admitted that was a real piece of luck – Kasimir agreed, but said he didn’t want to rely on that, and urged Victor to lead them on…
And that is where I left off! So yeah, tomorrow Victor gets them within sniffing distance of the tradesman’s entrance, only for everything to start going wrong thanks to surprise Nell. I do still want to split this chapter into two chapters, but I think I’m just gonna edit the whole thing, then skim through it and look for the best break point. Seems logical to me, anyway!
3. Watch something on YouTube: Technical check again in the form of “watching these videos put me in the right mindset for working on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” –
A) Some more of “Colouring Books, Trains, and A Great Big Dog – The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (this chunk featuring things like Barnaby getting utterly blinded by the high winds and grit atop the train because he refused the goggles, and Kasimir eating his babysitting certificate out of shame when one of the murderous children they’re traveling with gets charmed by a smoke bomb in the shape of a cymbal-banging monkey and picks it up just as it goes off XD)
B) And all of of “Corpse Bride Moon Dance [HD]” by peanutbuttergold (which is the bit in the film where Emily dances in the moonlight in the forest when she and Victor go Upstairs again so he can “introduce her to his parents” – another one I haven’t watched in a bit, so!)
*shrug* Better than nothing!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Partial check – I unfortunately didn’t get to figuring out my Song Saturday for this week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (meh), but I did at least answer my friend thesatiricaldemon’s comment on the “Bugs Bunny vs Light Yagami” ask over on Valice Multiverse! He said “I maintain Columbo as my favorite ‘who could beat Light Yagami’ matchup, however this is becoming a close second;” I replied “I'm sure Columbo would do an excellent job giving Light just enough rope to hang himself, so to speak. :p But there is something to be said for Bugs's ‘just turn the genre to comedy’ approach too. XD” Just a bit of silly fun between friends!
Whew! Not bad!! Though it has kept me up a bit later than expected (mostly because I got distracted by stuff like "why does the Pip-Boy glove exist" and "oh, the YouTube Recommendeds is showing me a potential new BG3 mod for Wyll, that's neat"), so I'd better rush off to bed. Night all!
Work – Was another fairly quiet day at work – apart from the usual morning reports, my day was taken up pretty much entirely with:
A) Finishing off the latest batch of exceptions, marking a few people deceased and cleaning up some other records that I found while I was at it – I also tried to call someone who I think sent us a credit card gift but didn’t include more than her name, but she was in a class and unwilling to talk. I’ll have to see if I can get her at some point tomorrow!
B) Taking a couple of credit card calls – one lady who I e-mailed yesterday about her second pledge card and if that meant she wanted to up her pledge or not (she did), and one lady who wanted to make a “double payment” on her pledge after confirming her balance (since she had the funds). Nothing too major – and the stupid payment screen actually worked today, so hooray for that.
C) Doing a bit more roster maintenance in between working on a crossword in the afternoon, because it was quiet and there wasn’t much else to do
D) And doing a reversal to move someone’s pledge overpayment into the next Appeal year as a one-time gift
Nothing too exciting! The most stress I had was from rereading my old “this is all the problems we’ve had with the credit card company” doc and making myself mad about how incompetent they are all over again. *sigh* Hopefully Friday will be a decent day – fingers crossed they let us out a little early!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Fallout: New Vegas - Dust - Part 2 - The Ghost Town!” Today’s chunklet featured –
A) Doc Mitchell venturing out of Victortron’s shack and – after a moment’s worry about the sky turning a worrisome shade of yellow (fortunately, it didn’t appear to be a radstorm, as was Jon’s fear) – going to explore/loot the rest of Goodsprings! Or “Ghost Town,” as this mod officially named it, which at least assured Jon he wasn’t going to see much in the way of human enemies. His first three targets were:
I. The house that belonged to that lady who you have to save from the geckos during the tutorial, which gave him such goodies as dirty water, vodka, some squirrel on a stick, a Sunset Sarsaparilla, a single shotgun he could use to improve his own, and the Chinese Army Spec Ops Training Manual, which he immediately used to boost his Sneak skill up 3 points, as that was a VERY IMPORTANT SKILL in this mod!
II. Another random settler house, which had a Future Weapons Today magazine in the mailbox outside, a stimpack, a bottle of Scotch, a bottle of dirty water, and – most importantly – a bottle of beer! Why was that the most important? Well, because in this mod, beer not only hydrates you (not as much of water, but it makes the H20 meter go down a bit), but it also removes rads AND heals sanity. Jon immediately declared that Doc Mitchell would probably be picking up a beer habit.
III. And the schoolhouse, which had worker ants inside instead of mantises – Doc M was able to kill one and kite around the rest, fortunately, allowing him to hack the nearby terminal and open the safe, scoring among other things two vials of antivenom, 29 bottlecaps, a super stimpack, and the Stealth Boy Jon was hoping for – plus some meat off the dead ant, because why waste the meat?
B) Doc Mitchell taking a moment to kill some more dogs and chow down on some squirrel on a stick (as all the other animal meat in his inventory was uncooked and thus going to drop his Strength if he ate it, kind of defeating the point, and Jon didn’t want Doc Mitchell to go cannibal just YET), then hitting up Easy Pete’s house, noting that this house was always available to the player and thus had another working bed he could use – unfortunately, there wasn’t much in the way of goodies there, just some Buffout and another Sunset Sarsaparilla (which Doc M immediately downed, along with the other one in his inventory, to relieve his thirst). Disappointed, he headed outside and started toward his own house –
Only to get distracted by a truck on the road. A truck with bodies in it. Bodies of what were labeled as “plague victims.” At least two of which Doc M recognized – sure, their heads were all bandaged up, but their clothes marked them as Easy Pete and Chet from the general store. :( So yes, now we know what happened to Goodsprings – a plague swept through and killed everyone (apart from Doc M, of course...though I suspect we’re also going to find the NPC Doc Mitchell’s corpse somewhere in town at some point…). Sad. :(
C) Doc Mitchell attempting to get into his own house – only to find it was locked. And just above his ability to actually pick it open. Apparently the good doctor lost his front door key when he was elevated to the status of “protagonist.” :P Trying to get into the gas station up the road yielded the same result (though at least Doc M was able to score a Sunset Sarsaparilla out of the machine out front), so he instead headed back into town –
And ended up abandoning proper stealth in favor of running around and gunning down the wild dogs as they ran to attack him (with very derpy expressions it must be said), because all the careful creeping around he was doing was wasting too much time and leading to things like minor dehydration. He also made sure to stop by the house next to the general store to look for goodies – looked like a bust at first, but then he found an ammo case with .357 Magnum ammo in it, plus a Star bottle cap, so all was forgiven. :p
D) Doc Mitchell getting some more Sunset Sarsaparillas from the crates outside the store, downing those with some dirty water to get himself properly hydrated, then – after checking out another plague victim outside the Prospector Saloon (which he successfully identified as Ringo – did the Courier never help with the Powder Gangers, or did he just come back for a visit at the worst time?) and killing another dog (and NOT taking the meat because oh hell he had PLENTY of dog meat) – venturing inside the bar to see what he could find. First thing was yet another dog; second thing was more plague victims (including the woman you’re supposed to save from the geckos) –
And the third thing was LOADS of booze, including wine! Which, like beer, is a triple threat in that it hydrates, restores sanity, and removes rads. Doc M promptly hoarded as much of the alcohol as he could (accepting his probable fate of becoming an alcoholic), dropping the human flesh, ant meat, and some other stuff he didn’t need to make room. *nods* Yeah, all things considered, I’d rather Doc M be a boozehound than a cannibal, so thanks, Jon! He followed this up by grabbing the Fixing Things from the room with the pool table, then ducking into the back storage area to loot as much alcohol and dirty water and other useful odds and ends as he could find, along with hacking the terminal to open the safe. This, hilariously, caused him to become Vilified by Goodsprings, despite the fact that there was no one left alive to see him doing all this. Perhaps all their ghosts were hanging around and judging him? The game did say this was a “ghost” town… :p
E) Doc Mitchell cracking open a Very Easy-locked door in the saloon for the XP (as he needed to get to Level 2 so he could boost his Lockpick skill and, you know, get into his own house), then raiding the general store – and finding a dead family in the back, including a child. Which was unusual, as Fallout games generally protect their children. He was sad for about ten seconds, then dragged the mother’s body out of the way to get at their Rad-X bottles and the pork-n-beans and whiskey in the fridge. XD Which prompted him to do the math to compare how much hard liquor, like whiskey, raised his thirst versus how much wine lowered it – turned out, if he wanted to combine the effects to remove more rads and boost more sanity, all he had to do was chug a wine after his whiskey. Good to know! Would definitely make him an alcoholic, given there was no way to avoid addiction in this game if you didn’t take the “Logan’s Loophole” trait (which Jon WAS tempted by, but balked when he saw they’d limited the max level to TEN in the mod O.O), but still! He then followed this up by grabbing everything useful from the store front, then breaking into the secret moonshine shed for more lockpicking XP – didn’t find the moonshine itself worth carrying around as it didn’t hydrate nor cure any rads, but hey, at least now he knew where to find some if he ever wanted to try it.
F) Doc Mitchell checking how far he had to go to level up and get his damn Lockpick skill raised (still 80 XP, ouch), then heading up to the cemetery to see what was going on there (with Jon declaring that, if there were bloatflies, he was noping out, because those fuckers could spit projectiles at you and were really hard to hit). Fortunately, there were no bloatflies –
Instead, there was a LIVING plague victim up there! Dumping the last of the bodies into the Courier’s old grave. And who was immediately hostile and attempted to clobber poor Doc M with his shovel upon seeing him. Fortunately, Doc M was able to defend himself with his Bowie knife – then, when that broke, chase the disarmed victim down and punch him to death. ...at which point Jon realized that he really hadn’t had to do that, the guy was already fleeing. XD Ah well – murder means more XP toward Level 2! Plus it netted Doc M his shovel, which he used to dig up the already-filled graves, which netted him a .357 Magnum and a bunch of ammo for it, along with some more 9mm rounds. *nods* Nice! He also took a moment to look out at the lights of Vegas –
And then took a moment to note that Vegas was indeed actually lit up, meaning SOMEONE was maintaining the infrastructure there. Which just cemented his desire to go there. Doc M, Jon, you’re not gonna like it…
G) Doc Mitchell, needing to go out into the world to find stuff to do and get his level-up already, considering the different routes one could take to Vegas proper and The Strip from Goodsprings (ranging from “brave the cazadores in the nearby valley to the north and then head up through Red Rock Canyon” to “follow the path the main quest in base F:NV takes you”) – then, despite having just called it the hardest route because of all the horrible flying murder-bugs, deciding to check out the route to the north just to see if the cazadores were actually there. And, to his surprise, they weren’t –
Instead, he found an NCR Trooper! With a nice service rifle that he rather wanted. So, after the beer wore off (very dramatically, I might add), he attempted to sneak up on her – then, when that failed, tried to wait for her to get close enough to take a potshot at with his .357 Magnum –
Which resulted in him dying. Jon promptly noted down “don’t mess with the NCR, got it.” XD (Though he did also note that, if he had a good enough weapon to which to snipe her down later, she could be very useful in clearing out the passage for him...)
H) Doc Mitchell heading out of town via a DIFFERENT route, toward the Yangtze Memorial...only to first discover that the coyotes in the hills around Goodsprings had been replaced with night stalkers (aka coyotes mixed with RATTLESNAKES), and that the memorial itself had been taken over by tribals, who were now using it as a sacrificial altar. Fortunately, Doc M was able to outrun the former (using the terrain and his ability to jump over obstacles the snoyotes would have to go around to his advantage), and the latter proved to be the kind who would leave you alone so long as you didn’t get too close to them, meaning Doc M was able to just ease his way around the edge of the memorial no problem. He was even able to rob the graves there, picking up more ammo and a baseball bat as a new melee option. :) Yay!
And I ended with Doc Mitchell having to hastily outrun a radscorpion (again, using his ability to jump on rocks to his advantage) and going to check out Sloan – which looked like it had become a camp full of cannibals, oh dear. O.o Tomorrow, we finish off the final few minutes of this episode and see if Doc M ends it being killed by cannibals or not! Hopefully not, but this is the kind of series where death will be coming often to the main character, so… :p
2. Continue editing Chapter 5 of “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check – got about a page of heist (or, rather, heist escape) shenanigans edited today, covering –
A) Kasimir confirming that Mrs. Pemberly would never have let any tradesmen steal anything from her kitchen, then – after asking where the tripwire in front of the vault door was (Alice pointed it out, as to her Caterpillar was still sitting on it) – inquiring if there were any guards at the tradesman’s entrance; Victor told him that there was supposed to be at least one servant there at all time to greet people and lead them to where they were meant to go, but he wouldn’t be surprised if said servant had been dragged into helping out with the party – after all, it looked like Nell had gone all out! Alice confirmed that the chaos in the kitchen seemed to support that hypothesis, and that she suspected Mrs. Pemberly had recruited all the help she could get from around the place. Smiler cheerfully declared (after pointing out the first tricky tile in the mosaic to Alice when she asked) that that meant the tradesman’s entrance was their best shot for getting out –
B) Prompting Barnaby to happily inform everyone that he would not be going out that door, thanks. Victor was like “what?” causing Barnaby to point out that he couldn’t use that door, he wasn’t a tradesman – quite the opposite, in fact! He didn’t mind if the others used that door, but he would be going out the front, thank you very much! Which you think would have gotten him in trouble with Kasimir –
Except, well, our favorite Spider had to reluctantly admit that Barnaby had a point – he was an invited guest, so it made sense for him to leave through the front with the others. And, in fact, it inspired Kasimir to suggest they all split up, with Barnaby going out the front, Victor and himself heading out the tradesman’s entrance, and Alice and Smiler leaving through the servant’s entrance near the kitchen (with the cover story of taking out the trash or something). Alice, however, said that while she wasn’t necessarily opposed to splitting up, she didn’t think going back by the kitchens was a good idea – Mrs. Pemberly was already waiting on their return, after all. Meaning that if she spotted Alice and Smiler, they’d probably be pulled into service decorating a cake or similar. She was fine with Barnaby leaving separately, but felt the rest of them should stick together. Smiler agreed and advised Barnaby that he should stick with them until they got to the tradesman’s entrance, then break off on his own so it didn’t look like he’d come directly out of the hallway with the entrance to the vault and the two unconscious guards, saying he could always say he just got lost if he got caught in this part of the house. (“Or just get lost, this is a big house,” Alice added.) Barnaby decided that was a plan he could live with, adding that he just had to look after his reputation, you know – he was already going to get comments about “indulging the upstarts” for attending this party. Smiler noted that rich people really seemed to like dragging each other down – Victor mumbled they didn’t know the half of it.
C) And the group then successfully making it back through the hallway traps and out the door at the other end, where Victor was relieved to find just the two unconscious guards from before, and no sign of anyone having come across them. He admitted that was a real piece of luck – Kasimir agreed, but said he didn’t want to rely on that, and urged Victor to lead them on…
And that is where I left off! So yeah, tomorrow Victor gets them within sniffing distance of the tradesman’s entrance, only for everything to start going wrong thanks to surprise Nell. I do still want to split this chapter into two chapters, but I think I’m just gonna edit the whole thing, then skim through it and look for the best break point. Seems logical to me, anyway!
3. Watch something on YouTube: Technical check again in the form of “watching these videos put me in the right mindset for working on ‘The Van Dort Vacancy’” –
A) Some more of “Colouring Books, Trains, and A Great Big Dog – The OX Crew Play BITD” by CaitlinRC (this chunk featuring things like Barnaby getting utterly blinded by the high winds and grit atop the train because he refused the goggles, and Kasimir eating his babysitting certificate out of shame when one of the murderous children they’re traveling with gets charmed by a smoke bomb in the shape of a cymbal-banging monkey and picks it up just as it goes off XD)
B) And all of of “Corpse Bride Moon Dance [HD]” by peanutbuttergold (which is the bit in the film where Emily dances in the moonlight in the forest when she and Victor go Upstairs again so he can “introduce her to his parents” – another one I haven’t watched in a bit, so!)
*shrug* Better than nothing!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Partial check – I unfortunately didn’t get to figuring out my Song Saturday for this week on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (meh), but I did at least answer my friend thesatiricaldemon’s comment on the “Bugs Bunny vs Light Yagami” ask over on Valice Multiverse! He said “I maintain Columbo as my favorite ‘who could beat Light Yagami’ matchup, however this is becoming a close second;” I replied “I'm sure Columbo would do an excellent job giving Light just enough rope to hang himself, so to speak. :p But there is something to be said for Bugs's ‘just turn the genre to comedy’ approach too. XD” Just a bit of silly fun between friends!
Whew! Not bad!! Though it has kept me up a bit later than expected (mostly because I got distracted by stuff like "why does the Pip-Boy glove exist" and "oh, the YouTube Recommendeds is showing me a potential new BG3 mod for Wyll, that's neat"), so I'd better rush off to bed. Night all!
