So much for the tolerant left

Yeah, for whatever reason, my get-up-and-go got up and went today. Probably at least some of it can be blamed on a poor night's sleep last night -- went to bed too late, woke up too early thanks to needing the bathroom and not really being able to get back to sleep afterward -- but otherwise, no clue why I was so distracted and generally out of it most of the day. Meh. At least I managed to accomplish a handful of things:

Tumblr: Just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about today – and while I was hoping to get more done, I did at least manage to get a little more written on that “when do Victor and Alice (and occasionally others) find out Smiler’s birth name is ‘Marmaduke’” post that I started yesterday, adding in an entry for when the Running Into The Bullshit mega-polycule finds out that fact and an “Honorable Mentions” category for Victor and Alice finding out a particular Smiler is Mar-Mal, eldritch being of happiness! So that’s slowly coming along. ...and it occurs to me that you guys might want to know the answer to that question too, so here’s a quick sum-up:

( I mean, I say ‘quick’...also, Gigs, potential spoilers for an upcoming birthday fic )

Whew! You see why I didn’t try to sum all that up for you guys last night. :p

Portal 2: Welp, today’s half-hour trip to Aperture Science ended up surprising me, as it turned out Wheatley was rather closer to breaking Chell out of the testing track than I had originally thought at the end of last week’s session, meaning today’s session consisted mostly of rather a lot of madcap running around and careful-yet-speedy jumps...let me tell you all about it –

A) I started things off right at the entrance to Chamber 21, the second-to-last test chamber on the testing track, having just been informed by GLaDOS that there was a “surprise with tragic consequences” awaiting Chell at the end of the next chamber. So she had that to look forward to! :D Anyway, I entered the test chamber itself to discover it was a rather tall room, sporting a couple of deadly water pits on the floor – one by the entrance to the left, and one by the exit (which, incidentally, was halfway up the wall) to the right. The one by the entrance had a hard light bridge stretching across it into a portal-able patch of wall and a cube dispenser over it – though, unfortunately, the cube dispenser was just to the left of the hard light bridge, so any cubes dispensed would be immediately fizzled in the deadly water – while the one by the exit was just there to make life a little bit more difficult for Chell when she had to find a way to reach said exit. There was also a big red button on the floor in front of the exit; a cube dispensing button in a little notch to the side of the exit, also elevated off the floor; and a few more patches of portal-able wall around the place. After taking in the landscape, I started out by putting a portal in front of the hard light bridge and another on the very narrow patch of wall by the exit, in front of the cube dispensing button nook – to my delight, this not only provided access to the cube dispensing button, but also a platform for the cube itself to land on! I thus cheerfully walked through the portals, hit the cube dispensing button, and prepared to walk over and pick up the newly-dispensed cube –

Only for the lights to turn out and the hard light bridge to disappear. Cue Chell falling to the floor (safely, thanks to her long fall boots) and the cube plopping into the water to fizzle while I and GLaDOS both wondered who had turned out the lights –

And then cue the portal-able bit of wall in front of the hard light bridge opening up, and Wheatley popping his eye through the gap! Greeting Chell with an ATROCIOUS Texan accent that he claimed was beyond GLaDOS’s range of hearing. XD He then informed her that he knew he was a little early, but that they had to go right now, instructing her “Walk casually toward my position and we’ll go shut her down.” Naturally, I had Chell do just that –

As slowly as possible, because I was pretty sure he had additional dialogue to urge you along if you didn’t walk over to him fast enough. XD Unfortunately, none of it actually triggered – he just kept staring at Chell as she inched toward him, not saying anything at all. Eventually I was like “either I’m misremembering or you have to keep him waiting for a WHILE,” gave up, and just had Chell approach him normally. Prompting GLaDOS to inform Wheatley coolly that she could hear him –

B) And Wheatley to tell Chell in a panic, “Run! I don’t need to do the voice. RUN!” as he opened up the wall fully so she could get through. Cue me running into the backstage area, making onto a catwalk with the help of the reactivated hard light bridge, and then sending Chell on a desperate jog through the maze of catwalks and stairs and tubing and whatnot back there, trying to keep Wheatley in sight so I knew where the hell to go. Wheatley being Wheatley, he kept up a steady stream of encouraging babble throughout, telling Chell to keep moving and informing her of the plan – “We are going to shut down her turret production line, turn off her neurotoxin, and then confront her!” Sounded good to me, and I’m sure it sounded good to Chell too! After a bit more scrambling about trying to keep our favorite Intelligence Dampening core in sight, I had Chell exit the latest catwalk to instead book it across the top of a hanging chamber, as there was nowhere else to go –

And then GLaDOS, commenting on how Chell had almost finished the testing track, opened up the chamber next to her, revealing a pre-solved cube-and-button test with a heart on the wall and an entrance door with fake greenery inside. She encouraged Chell to step inside via a hard light bridge and finish things properly, as it would be better than whatever ridiculous plan Wheatley had come up with, prompting Wheatley to scoff and ask, “Oh, what? How stupid does she think we are?” –

And me to wonder, “...I do have the achievement for going inside that chamber and getting killed by GLaDOS, right? Ah, hell, even if I do, let’s go ahead and do it anyway, it’ll be fun.” XD So I slapped down a save and had Chell head inside the chamber, to Wheatley’s horrified astonishment. She made it all the way to the fake exit door before GLaDOS slammed it shut in her face, locked her inside the chamber, and gassed her. XD What can I say – I’m a very compliant test subject!

( And here is your second cut to spare your reading pages )

Workout/YouTube: Back on the bike tonight, and back with the OXBoxers to watch the trio try to take down another Elusive Target in “Hitman 3 Ways to Play: GRANNY MURDER Elusive Target | Angel of Death!” (With the last five minutes being watched after supper, hence the dual category.) This one saw Andy, Jane, and Mike all try to kill Etta Davis, a retired nurse who tended to poison her charges back when she worked (taking out many a pensioner in a retirement home), who was roaming around the original Hitman (No Subtitle) level of Marrakesh! With a retinue of military bodyguards, which was a bit troublesome, as you might guess. And, as usual, they all committed the assassination in their own unique ways:

Andy arrived in the level in the cream-colored summer suit, intending to be a conscientious hitman and fulfill the optional objective of murdering Etta with lethal poison, as per the client’s request. He thus not only had the ICA smuggle in some poison in a syringe for him, but – just to be on the safe side – infiltrated the military base in the level to grab some poison from the general’s office. He then sent about finding his target –

Only to discover that she had no less than four bodyguards. At least one of which was a noticer and would see through his disguise. Fortunately, having to flee from her and her guards into a rug shop ended up setting up the perfect opportunity for him to get rid of said bodyguards – namely, lure them into the shop with a distracting coin, then strangle them and hide the bodies! And so the Strangling Spot was born, where people got strangled and then hidden in a box. The grand opening was a little rough – the owner of the shop spotted 47 trespassing, which then led to the noticer guard seeing 47 wasn’t one of his men, forcing Andy to make a tactical retreat to the roof (where he had to knock out the people already up there) – but it did result in him managing to choke out at least ONE of the bodyguards, and once he cleaned up his mess, the remaining stranglings went a lot smoother (especially once he knocked out the actual shopkeeper and took his clothes). He eventually got rid of all her bodyguards (though the last one involved having to hastily change into his victim’s outfit when his strangling was noticed by some passersby), then proceeded to follow her around on her loop, watching her do all her window shopping, until FINALLY she went down a side alley where there were no NPCs, allowing him to prick her with the syringe and murder her nice and silently. From there, it was just a matter of looping back to where he’d left his summer suit and swapping back into it (couldn’t just leave it on the ground in the base, his tailor would be FURIOUS), getting out of the base without being seen, and heading for the marketplace exit to successfully end the level. Envenoming Assassin, 2 Stars! Which is a low score for Andy, but he did strangle a LOT of people! And leave at least one unconscious witness in the shopkeeper. Ah well.

Jane arrived in the level in the bright red suit that makes 47 look like a Pitbull cosplayer and – having smuggled in a sniper rifle – made her way up to the rooftops through one of the shops, knocking out the woman hanging out up there before waiting for what she felt like ages for her target to actually appear (wandering around from sniping spot to sniping spot to stretch 47’s legs from time to time). Eventually she spotted Etta by the entrance to the cafe and tried to shoot the sign down on top of her (as she’d never done such a kill before) – unfortunately, the falling letters JUST missed her target, and she went into temporary lockdown in the VIP lounge. Jane descended back to street level and checked on the target (as she’d picked up an invitation to get into the lounge during her wanderings on the roof), then tailed her for a while once the lockdown was lifted, contemplating killing her with her old friend Screwy the Screwdriver (picked up from a local mechanic) –

But then decided “No, I brought in the sniper rifle for a reason,” went back up on the roof, and eventually successfully sniped Etta from above. Unfortunately a wandering soldier meant that she couldn’t just flee down the most convenient flight of stairs; fortunately, she was easily able to climb down the front of the building instead, moving onto a different, lower rooftop, and from there to the front gates of the market, striding out scot-free. Shadow ICA Assassin, 3 Stars! (Probably because she didn’t have to choke out a lot of people like Andy.)

And Mike arrived in the level dressed like a clown, immediately went to pick up his drop from a nearby alleyway – an emetic gas mine – and immediately compromised himself by carrying the clearly-illegal item around, sending everyone into a panic. XD Cue him:

I. Fleeing up to a rooftop to hide and setting off an unnecessary explosion with a propane flask when he couldn’t bring it down off the bit of roof it was on without throwing it and causing it to start leaking

II. Eventually murdering one of the guards after him and swapping into a private’s outfit so he could carry around his emetic mine without everyone causing a fuss

III. Somehow being the FIRST to get eyes on the target and tailing her around until he could throw said emetic mine INTO HER HEAD (because unfortunately he realized he could do that while wandering through the civilians in the market and had to try it out) in the lamp store – and getting compromised again

IV. Fleeing back up onto the roofs and murdering so many guys coming after him, before getting an elite soldier disguise off one so he could go back to looking for his target...and then someone woke up the one guy he left alive, and he ended up having to change disguises again, eventually shooting one of the local shopkeepers who found him on a rooftop where he wasn’t supposed to be (it wasn’t even the shopkeep who outed him, I think!)

V. Wandering into the consulate carpark while looking for his target (who he thought MIGHT be throwing up somewhere) and inflicting “hammer time” on all the guards (i.e., hitting them in the head with a hammer to knock them out) before realizing where he was and leaving through a nearby store...which involved him murdering a bunch MORE militia members after his latest “hammer time” crime was noticed

VI. Compromising his shopkeeper outfit, killing a guard in view of the target and sending her into lockdown, then going on a rampage against even MORE militia members which swarmed into try and arrest him

VII. Going BACK into the consulate carpark to get a fresh disguise (admittedly a compromised one, but at least he wasn’t being actively hunted) – only to discover the military guys he was trying to flee from coming down; cue him killing EVEN MORE of them, including shooting one guy in the crotch until he died, then having an ammo crisis and picking up a sword from a shoe shop instead

VIII. Heading into one of the local bathrooms and setting up a sink overflow trap to maybe lure in a waiter to get a new disguise; instead he got some more military dudes (one of whom got choked out for making the mistake of taking a leak, and one of whom fell to the sword) – and fortunately, one cameraman, who got knocked out and stripped

IX. FINALLY locating his target again on a hostile rooftop and trying to distract her guard with precious coins on the stairs so he could knock him out with a brick – only for the guard to abruptly teleport back onto the roof because the game was just DONE with Mike’s shit; fortunately the second attempt to coin him down worked out a lot better

X. Dropping a remote-control mine just by the stairs to kill his target – but, for some reason, not immediately blowing her up when she came to investigate the disturbance on the stairs, which led to her spotting the body of her guard and panicking; Mike attempting to flee, only to be caught by a DIFFERENT militia guy coming UP the stairs; and Mike finally running back, knocking his target out, then blowing her and the militia guy up with a carefully-thrown bottle of nitroglycerin

XI. Killing the last few militia guys who came to investigate the disturbance and then FINALLY fleeing the level, admitting that was the most south any of these Elusive Targets has ever gone and commenting on how “this proves that, in ten years, I’ve learned – basically nothing.”

...Yeah. Messy Amateur, 0 Stars. Mike fully admitted he deserved that. XD But damn was it fun to watch.

And there you have it -- not much, but at least I had fun with what I did do. *nods* And now it's time to head to bed and prepare to go to work again. *sigh* Night all!