Raithe

That kind of feels too..immediate. They've always seemed to push the long term view of consequences rather then the "immediately after" view. Of course, that's just my perception.

Yeah, I think the Powder Gangers depends on how you deal with the part of the gang that moved into the Vault.. um. 34 was it?

Hm, I got specific mention of how the chaos was minimilised and there was little loss of life around New Vegas one moment.. then it followed up with how Freeside became one of the safest places in the area but outside it was quite dangerous.. followed by how the Followers of the Apocalypse at Fort Mormon (which as you may all recall is in Freeside).. was swamped by the surrounding chaos and troubles and hurt people... Little things like that.. which felt just a tad contradictory to me... Edit: Although I'm wondering if the last has something to do with whether you get Gannon to embrace his past rather then focus on the doctoring side of htings...

Now I really really liked that they did the improved endings for the various factions, locations and characters.. It was one of the missing elements that was such a flaw in FO3... but the trouble is..having seen how they don't always match up with each other.. (ie, one thing saying you minimised chaos in an area causing this effect..while 2 seconds later another faction in the same area has to deal with the utter chaos...) Between that, and that I picked up the Explorer perk at the last..and there were only about 10 or 15 places I hadn't found.. I just can't get into the mood to have another playthrough.. its nearly a week since I finished that first playthrough and I just can't find the oomph to go back again...

The Mind Boggles. Although one part of me wonders just how hard it would be for someone to hack Hansard to do this as a joke.. but yes.. paranoia can run rampant..

Then again, there are parents who picked up games like Grand Theft Auto x for their kids, even though they had the whole age rated mention on the game boxes. Picking up FONV and not seeing the shiney red 18 on the spine of the dvdbox is kind of silly. To me it seems that if parents would check what ratings there are on films before they get them as birthday/christmas presents or the like, they should be capable of checking a computer games rating. Think how many games come with the small "due to violence, gore, etc" warning these days. Sure, a lot of parents seem to be in the whole "computer games are for kids, so why worry about whats on them".. and then they turn around and complain about the corrupting effects games have on kids.. Why have a need to regulate whats on games in a harsher manner then is used to consider film and tv? There's a certain amount of.. nanny-state behind it almost..as if parents don't have the common sense to pay attention and regulate what they let the kids have.. or is it parents just not wanting to deal with that effort and wanting the government to have control so they have someone else to blame? (hm, my point is running all over the place....)

It's always been said both of them were under the effects. And she's always been firm that he was under the effects as much as her. On the one hand it caused a lot of problems to his life as well and he was a fairly decent guy although I didn't really know him that well at the time, and she was always quite firm on how shocked, surprised and kind of horrified over it he was... On the other, his parents and hers had been trying to push them together since they were kids, and he had wanted to be more then just friends. They'd gotten home safely from the party and when he called over later with the "hey, i've kind of got a blank spot over last night and I don't have the single condom in my wallet that I had.. who did I meet up with and what happened?" So I've always had that niggling suspicious edge over it about him. But that could be natural bias over it all.

There was a reason I told you I crawled into a bottle for awhile Wals. Actually I subsumed and compartmentalised a lot of it for awhile. The party had been at the end of September, I shut down a lot of my feelings and tried to be the moral support and help her deal. Hell, I even made it through the February when they ended up married. It wasn't until her daughter was born that I started to shred and lose control. You can get so far on stiff-upper lip and rigid self-control. That and a damn good amount of self-delusion and bottling emotions up and locking them away rather then deal with them.

Well, to overshare and try to compress a long story... the love-of-my-life went to a birthday party for one of her friends one night when I was working (back during my university days) and someone thought it would be amusing to spike the non-alcoholic punch with a few...chemical additions. Under the influence she and one of her best friends ended up sleeping together, she got pregnant, her and his families are seriously catholic...and both had been trying to push them together as a couple as they grew up together. I actually tried talking about the possibility of..taking the steps of marriage, but she cut me off before I could go anywhere with the run of "This might frack up my life, but I am not going to let it ruin yours". So in a very short amount of time it went from a heavy, serious relationship between us..to her engaged and married in about 2 months with what turned out to be a very..hard and troubled pregnancy. Then her family really didn't like having me around or involved, and shortly after she gave birth she went with the whole.. total cut off comunication levels to stop both of us having to deal with the emotional twistup and feeling crappy. Now x years later, she gets back in contact to apologise for having to do that, admit how much it hurt her to do, tell me she still has feelings for me but will never act on it because it would screw up her family, but she wants to be friends and know how i am.. and doesn't want the husband to know because he might still be a little jealous of how she felt for me back then.... (a few other twists and turns..but thats the basics) See, I told you I felt like some weird soap opera guy wrote some of my life...

There was a reason I stopped keeping tequilla bottles at the end of the bed..

Feeling much more recovered now.. the remnants of the aches and ick of the flu seem to be passing.. although the not-sleeping due to the chills and fevers the past couple of nights has my body clock out of whack..spent half the afternoon in that dozy recuperative state, half-reading, and managing a few things around the house... But going to try an earlyish night and see if that helps. Haven't got any FONV playtime in since the start of the weekend.. now I'm not sure if I've got the oomph to start up a new playthrough.. think it'll have to wait awhile for the mood to be back. On the side-note.. got an Ex who wants to talk with me (actually THE Ex, the consuming love interest, soul tagging, the one you find yourself thinking about 10 years on type of Ex) and keep the whole friendship thing running (and firmly at just the friendship level, nada more).. but apparently wants to keep it a secret from her hubby and family so it won't cause stress. It's.. complicated and a lot of history behind it all. There are times I feel as if my life was partially written as some warped soap opera.

Meh, it's the curse of families spreading sickness around.. as one gets over it..it naturally has to pass to someone else. Luckilly the worst of the chills and fever broke last night..leaving me with just the acheyness and throbbing head. ..That and the really drained tiredness of the lack of proper sleep due to it.. So pop a couple of ibruprofen, then sink into a bath after a fresh cup of tea and see how fresh and compos mentus it leaves me feeling..

Basically just got up to make a cup of tea and get fluid replacement..that and take more aspirin. Spent most of the night awake with the joys of chills and fever of flu. Resorted to the wet flannel over the face to get some cool from the headache. The half check on the family before disapearing back into bed... gah.

.. I've realised why I've been feeling so damnably cruddy this weekend. I've inherited the flu my sister was just getting over. When I mentioned that to her..she smiled..and did a "well, families are supposed to share" comment. So popping some meds and trying to ignore the joint aches, headache, tiredness and general blah. Edit: I am trying to decide if everything lately is the sign of a great start to the autumn/winter period....

The Canterville Ghost.. pre-Scream Neve Campbell and Patrick Stewart as the Ghost.. it's a semi-oldy.. but it's still a quite good adaption of the story.

Ahh, righty-ho...

I didn't think there was one.. the survivors all shot themselves didn't they? You hear the shots..then the guy with the gun shoots himself and you have his dying whimper and the gun dropping.... Or did I totally misread it...

Hm, and the joy of the clocks going back tonight..so technically I'm losing an hours sleep tonight.. So now I'm rolling into "official" all hallows eve time.. Not sure if it's its just that wave of tired that's kicking in for some reason or not.. or maybe listening to too much Loreena McKennit music.. but having that roll of loss and missing the girl I really should be over by now.. that totally inspires the urge to drink copious amounts of alcohol.. Which I shall resist and settle for a large mug of hot chocolate.

Dang it.. did you virtually pass it across to me? Curse you Wals!! Finished off my first playthrough of FONV this morning.. then caught up with reading.. working my way back through the Wheel of Time before the next book is released in November..

It depends on the character build.... I kind of pumped up my lockpicks, science, stealth.. then barter and speech.. There were some fun perks that helped around.. but I couldn't see pumping so many perks on Training ..I mean by the time you reach high level..you've got a lot of skill points if you had high intelligence to start with.. Woops, my bad.I was having a brain fart moment and for some reason thought the Intensive Training was the skill boost.. well, if you've got the money there are always the Implants you can get that give you a bonus of 1 to a stat.. although you can only have so many Implants..

Just have to remember not to kill Cachino early..otherwise it'll break the main quest line for both the NCR and House... Even though I decided to get around it by killing Troike, the other guy, and Big Sal.. I still got word the Omerta tried attacking the strip during the Hoover Dam assault...

Finished my first walkthrough.. and on the one hand.. I love that you actually get comments about the various communities and the effects from your choices on them... On the other.. While one tells me what I did reduced chaos to a minimum.. another tells me that due to the increase in chaos x happened around group x.. and then another tells me that due to the presence of group y thats in the same area as group x, the streets were safe and quiet... It's like some of them almost contradict the "general background" of some of the others..

A chunk of what seems "silly" to a lot of people is how the Fallout world uses the whole concept of.. everything is based around the 'traditional 50's view of what the future would be like'.. and how thats taken to a certain level of..caricature.

Its the Ewok vs Stormtrooper syndrome at work....

On the slightly random tangent.. the Star Wars Saga RPG supplement inspired by The Force Unleashed was actually quite well written with a lot of expansion on what the SW Universe was like during that time frame...