Yep, re-posting a review from yesterday because I found that google documents cut off half of it. Well, I knew it had been cut off but couldn’t remember what was in the missing bit.
Just finished typing up the first chapter of my unnamed pony fanfic. Turns out to be 3000 or so words. Which is more than I thought it would be seeing it written down on paper. Going to have my editor give it a run-through and probably just put it up. Thought about waiting for finishing the second (of two) chapters, but that might take a while. So looks like I’m going to try this story-in-progress incomplete thing.
So You’ve Just Slept With Your Best Friend by Nyronus
I’ve read worse starts (story-wise anyway) for a romantic relationship. This could easily be the start of a longer romance story, but works pretty well just as itself as well. Short and simple without being shallow. Though I don’t have much to say about it, so wasn’t exceptional or anything either. I would firmly place this in plausible, but perhaps not probable on a scale of character voices and/or shipping.
I think it’s time to finally do a top to bottom virus and malware scan. Today was a bit too clunky to completely blame on the computer’s age.
Social Bathing by Admiral Biscuit
That was satisfying. Nothing really happens, just a meandering conversation between Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. Some nice worldbuilding in the style this author is good at, subtle cultural stuff. Would have liked to have even more of this. Well, I’d rather have more of Celestia Sleeps in sequel, but more of this would be neat too. I do so enjoy the author’s slice of life stuff. Seeing the two Ponies turned humans chatting about the differences between human and pony in a casual fashion was, well, neat. Also, there is a brief implication that Sunset Shimmer occasionally does work at either a strip club or a topless bar and suggested it as a way for Twilight to make money if she ever needs any. Which has nothing to do with the rest of the story, but amused me.
Huh. Just had the interesting experience of going through the Funimation streaming site to check out their anime. Specifically going through it year by year and I saw several anime from, well, guess I have to say from my childhood. Though most of it was stuff I saw in my mid to late teens. Was nostalgic. Should rewatch some of those older shows. Especially the ones that were even older than I thought they were. I could have sworn Bubblegum Crisis 2040 was early 90s. Nope, 1987. Jeeze. Time just keeps going on and on. Someone should invent a solution for that.
Got back into Fallout 4. More observations for today’s intro bit. I’ve been avoiding the main quest(s) for as long as possible, which has thrown the main quest emotions into even sharper contrast. It’s been like a year and a half in game that I’ve been running around clearing settlements, creating trade routes, and generally just messing around with exploring and settlement building. Almost two years without doing a single thing to find the guy who killed my significant other and kidnapped my child. Yet every time a conversation touches on the topic, my character responds with the emotional distress as if it happened recently. It has also really highlighted the main strength (and weakness) of the game. It was something I noticed in Skyrim, but its even worse here. In Skyrim it was that every quest-line had to be written as if it was the first you encountered. So if you do it late in your playthrough a lot of it doesn’t make sense. None of the quests reference any other quest-line, even the world-affecting ones. In Fallout 4, this is even worse. The freedom of the game is incredibly broad, you can go anywhere and do nearly anything. The freedom is because nothing you do really matters. Doesn’t matter what you select in dialogue menus, the other character’s line is pretty much the same no matter what. I met a guy that praises you for a really hard enemy you killed in a particular quest, but this time I met him before I did that quest and his lines are almost identical. Just swapping out that enemy killing for another couple of quest events I was involved in.
However, I did have a cool emergent game moment. I was at one of my many settlements at night working on some weapons I think and I got the notification it was being attacked. I figure it’s raiders or super mutants, something that happens a lot. So I get up from the workbench and turn to the right and suddenly this horde of ghouls rush out of the darkness right at me. Swarming right over the settlers nearby and it was a real nasty fight. That moment of turning and seeing them come out of the darkness was a moment of almost complete immersion that I haven’t felt with a video game in a long time. So whatever the flaws of the game, it is still good at grabbing me. Plus I’m still having fun using my elder god knife to slaughter my way across the Commonwealth.
The City of Doors 