Audience of Strangers

So I got Fallout 76. It mostly seems like a crafting-heavy version of Fallout, with the exception that sometimes there are other people running around. I waved to one of them, but that's about it.

It's slow, because I'm slow - I need to adjust the mouse sensitivity. But it's pretty, and mostly I don't need to deal with other people, and it's fun to explore.

Also I found two housecats.

This is probably not a big deal to most people, but cats have been pretty much extinct in the Fallout-verse for nearly twenty-one years (to me as a player, I mean; that's established in 2241, although right now I'm playing a game set in 2012). The Chosen One has never seen or heard of them, and Stacy's clearly used to people not knowing what they are when she explains her story about her cat Cuddles. Seeing one walking around alive before they all get eaten made me curse the developers for not giving you an option to pet them.

He brings me trailers.

And the trailers make be bounce and squee and carillion I knew it![1] before I have even finished my coffee.

The trailer advertises a new show within an existing continuum, and contains what is probably a spoiler. It will probably be revealed early in the first episode, but that is not for a few months yet, so I am carefully talking around it. (Trailer is here if you want a look though.)
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[1] Please note: that "I knew it!" is not the cry of someone who is right. That is the cry of someone who happens to be right and is happy. For a cinematic version, please refer to Brandon Wheeger's response when he is explaining that he understands completely that Galaxy Quest is just a TV show, and is interrupted and told that it is all real.

I am thinking, now, of Thad Beaumont's attempt to explain a writer's grasp on the reality of the fiction he writes about.

First, if I can help, please let me know. Please? I'm checking in, but I can't see everything.

Third, I am am afraid I am quite tipsy. It's a strange soft feeling, and not unpleasant. It's a bit unnerving; I am not at all used to being this tipsy.[1] I keep getting the urge to read the Ramsey Campbell-based Chaosium mythos supplement, for some reason.[2]

Last, the unicorn; The Last Unicorn. Because someone said they didn't understand the appeal, and I get that they don't get it, but that's not the point. And theweaselking and I were talking about it to them and to each other and then he played the opening music, and I cried, and it wasn't in a bad way and we are watching it now.

I do not say it is a movie immune from criticism, but for me it is not "brilliant" or "terrible". It operates on an alternate criteria stream.[3] ( Cut for... schmaltz? But okay. ) I hope you are well. I hope you and yours are well, and you are taking care and being taken care of, and I wish you only the best. Let me know if I can help.
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[1] Sample dialogue, petting the cat: "Her eyes are very green. Her eyes are green as limes, which is how Poppy Z. Brite described the eyes of the vampire Zillah in her first novel which I can't remember the name of but it wasn't Drawing Blood. Also, Z is for Zillah who drank lye by mistake in the Gashlycrumb Tinies."
[2] It sort of makes me a teeny bit sad how few people I expect to follow that statement.
[3] I have been using Leverage as a comparison point for everything from Game of Thrones to The Last Unicorn tonight. It is for me a show about handling cruelty with grace and compassion and wit, and making amends, and balancing scales. It is a good collection of stories.

So. There's this thing Fallout: New Vegas lets you do, which is talk to people. Almost all people, in fact, and if you're good at it, you can win a great number of conflicts that way. (I think I did that with everyone of note in my playthough, except Caesar and the Legate, because, uhm, no. It's my game and my story and my relaxation, and I get to decide that some people are horrible enough that shooting them is okay.) People will let you go, people will decide to cover for you or actually support you.

Colloquially, this is called talking the monster to death (thank you, TV Tropes!), even if you usually don't actually kill them, and I tend to think of it as talking them 'round, as Daniel Webster is purported to have done to the Devil's jury.

Anyway.

John and I were discussing F:NV this morning, since the weather brought on thoughts of snow globes, and from there we got to the cigarette butts (these are A Clue) you can find early on in the game, and I was mentioning that I'd missed them the first time. John was surprised, and was explaining their use at one particular point, and then a sudden realization came upon me.

"...son of a bitch, Benny talked me to death."
*pause* *John started laughing*
"No wonder I let the little prick live.[1]"
*laughing harder*

And then there was a lot of, well, sputtering.

I mean, I went there with a plan of what to do. There was no advantage to changing it, and there was, I think, some personal satisfaction to letting it play out as it would have. And then the character said things, things mostly that weren't even intended to persuade me, and the next thing you know I'm thinking "okay, right, I personally object but I can see the rationale, here," and the next thing I'm dishing out resources to let him get away and busily annoying certain people it is expensive (in terms of game resources) and painful to annoy by doing so.

I know that part of it is that I generally actively dislike being a bad guy in video games, but... damn. A story that can change your mind, even a bit, is not a hugely common thing. Affect you, upset you, show you something new, sure[2], but not so much make you ditch a plan and decide to do something harder. Admittedly, most stories don't unfold in a context where you are directly involved in making decisions, but still.
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[1] I am not in the habit of using such language, but really, he shot me in the head and buried me in a shallow grave before the game even started, I feel some acrimony is not unwarranted.
[2] Okay, not sure, but a lot of stories do and can.

Bear with me for background: there's an author called Jay Lake. His weird short story "The Soul Bottles" was actually the first story I ever bought in e-format, and is still one of my favourites. He has cancer, and it's not going well. And someone organized an online fundraiser (I think around noon today, my time?) to see if they could get him a particular diagnostic tool, and it went really well.

It's... partly being happy that he's getting help, and partly "oh god internet I'm so glad you make nice things happen sometimes," and partly just... I hope it helps, I really do.

(cmpriest doing a steampunk/gothic fashion show with her pets should also be cool.)

(Also seanan_mcguire filking. I understand it's filk, and not "Wicked Girls", but still!)

I made dinner tonight; I got the A Feast of Ice and Fire cookbook last night, after deciding that dammit I really wanted to look up a few things, and today I made the modern leek soup. (Not the same as the blog recipe; the one from the book has less spice, and uses butter and potatoes.) It actually worked out really well; the book calls it comfort food and it manages to be that, despite being a large pile of vegetables. It's less odd when I remind myself that it has butter and carbs.

(At some point I need to figure out exactly which cooking tends to stress me and which doesn't. I know part of it is mood and part of it is familiarity, but that's not all of it.)

Also, I finished three books today, and am halfway through a fourth. Only started one of them today, but still. Am trying to actually write reviews on goodreads, so may be a bit before I toss them all up there, but still. Coraline is the fourth; I'm finding I like it better than the movie in most particulars.

There was a Kickstarter for miniatures for Hell on Earth, which is a Deadlands thing.

I will, uhm, have a few things to paint. And a bit of Classic Hell on Earth[1] to read through.

It's been a long and kind of draining day, and I'm not quite finding myself in a state to discuss Hell on Earth[2], which is sad, because there are a lot of things about it that I would like to articulate. But I am glad that I will have some more Deadlands to read, and I am trying to get my thoughts on Hellstromme in order.
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[1] Bubbly Fizz. Mmmmm.
[2] Except to say dammit, they cheated.

Fifteen-odd years ago, someone told me a story about how the world was going to end in eighty years. In 2077. On October 23, 2077, in fact. Told me a story about how the world did end then--

In 2077, the storm of world war had come again. In two brief hours, most of the planet was reduced to cinders. And from the ashes of nuclear devastation, a new civilization would struggle to arise.

--and what came after.

So you can be the Vault Dweller. Or the Chosen One. Or the Lone Wanderer, if you must. Or the Courier. And you make it through the weird double-beat story setup, and you learn to care about the world. And over and over again, you go slogging through it and-- well, there's a reason John calls games that give you scenarios that have no clear good answer "Fallout scenarios". And sometimes the better thing--best of a bad lot--is so hard to do, and it would be so much easier to not, and...

It's hard to do a good thing, sometimes. Oh, it's possible, often enough. F:NV is the game John teases me about taking the talk-the-enemy-to-death-or-alliance tack with, but dammit, you can. That's deeply awesome to me, and I will patiently get shot at for the chance to pull it off, because come on, is that not among the best things you can do? Communicate, community, to hold communion, and yes I am tipsy hush.

This is the truth of Fallout--if war never changes, then people must. Must. There are alternatives, surely--there is the Master, the Enclave, there is Caesar and Brother Elijah and First Citizen Joanne Lynette. But there are no acceptable alternatives. People need to change.

Sometimes you can't get to a good enough change. I remember those times. I remember them as a world and a setting that was hurt too badly to work well, not as a poorly written game.

(Like Vault 11. Jesus. That place made Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" seem like a sweet and pleasant setup.)

But yes: if war never changes, then people must.

"Begin again, but learn how to let go."
"She cast aside the recording of her grandchildren, no longer remembering its significance."
"I wish them well. It's been a gift to me, at the end of it all, to behold innocence."

The first time I played Fallout: New Vegas, I ran across the Yang-Tze Memorial. And I didn't have a lot of time to look around--it was a hectic moment, early-game, I was busy surviving the hostile wildlife[1]--but I came away thinking it was an apology. A recognition that what had been done was wrong. That made me smile. It's not enough, it would have been better to not have happened, but it's a start, you know?

Sixty-five years and counting until there's no more jokes about the story happening--like counting down to August 29, 1997, I guess. That's okay.

It's been a pretty awesome story to have around.
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[1] Oh, the wildlife. "Docile. Curious. Safe. Sterile."--my ass. My bitten, stabbed, slashed, poisoned, hit-point-deficient ass.

I accidentally hesitantly a con; mostly yesterday, but there were a couple of panels today.

I was actually unsure about going. I'm almost unspeakably glad I did.

Yesterday, there was (among other things) a single discussion that covered both "The Yellow Wallpaper" and the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a good dozen book recommendations, more than a dozen new books, and apparently I need very badly to see a movie called Martyrs. Also smart and educated strangers were willing to talk to me, in person, which always feels a bit strange. But nice!

Today was a bit quieter, which is good, because I am sure I am coming down with something; I was only out for a few hours. Still good to hear people talk.

Have a couple of things I need to pass along to people.

And a puzzle. And coffee cups.



Alright. See, there's a game called ADOM--Ancient Domains of Mystery. I'd link to my earlier discussions of it, except it's not something I mentioned much on LJ. It's a dungeon crawl, with... well, pretty much everything. Secret passages. Writhing masses of primal chaos. Altars to the gods. Holy water. Gremlin fluffballs. Angry trees. Cats. Traps. Blankets. The Black Tome of oh god I did not just get that did I? Shining silvery two-handed swords--well, sword. Smithing. Herbs. Pools you can drink from with uncanny effects. Weird mutations from the background corruption slowly destroying the land of Ancardia. Wishes being granted. And puppies that should really, really not need to be rescued.

And sheep. Spoiler-y protip: DO NOT wish for sheep.

And there's $1,013 $971 $946 $861 left for it to make the stretch goal of publishing it to Steam.

Could do worse than check it out, is all I'm saying. :)

I played a bit of Fallout 3 on... Monday, I think. Touring the Capitol Wasteland and sticking my nose in abandoned factories to see what would bite it off. Would have gotten killed if it wasn't for Dogmeat, who single-handedly (pawedly? jawedly?) dispatched the feral ghoul reaver that was still doing just fine after being hit by a Nuka-Cola Grenade[1].

(Who's the best puppy ever? You are. Yes you are!)

He didn't even need healing afterwards. I paused the game and went downstairs to make startled noises at John.

Anyway. Had a bit of time before knitting tonight, and... eh, well.


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[1] The second most damaging weapon in the game, after a mini-nuke. "Imagine the look on your enemy's face when they're burning alive in an explosion of effervescent cola and fruit flavors!" Have said repeatedly that Fallout 3 is not a patch on F:NV, but dear god the dialogue sometimes. O.o