What We Did in November
Sometimes we Sisters In Geek get too distracted by our geekiness to update our own website. For example, you may have noticed that we were silent on the subject of the new Supergirl show. And Marvel’s Jessica Jones. And Maisie Williams on Doctor Who (awesome). And that new Mockingjay Part 2 movie. And a million other amazing nerdtastic things that happened in November! This is because we were kind of busy inhabiting other worlds.
So, Sisters In Geek, what HAVE we been up to this month??
Megan: The short answer is I spent November playing Fallout 4, making pies, and eating, but since I’ve spent so much time in game, I think you need to hear about all my wasteland successes.
I became a hoarder, but in a good way! Fallout 4 encourages crafting from junk so I’ve been collecting and storing a lot of interesting things in game. Of course, playing Fallout 4 means, I’ve started collecting some fun trash in my house too. I really need to do some dishes, and take my cans to be recycled. (To be recycled into defensive turrets!)
The hoarder’s motto is that nothing can be thrown out if it could be useful one day. This is that day! Everything is useful! Everything must be stockpiled in my workbench. Cans, toys, globes, duct tape…I can turn those into armor and weapons! The game even keeps my hoard looking clean. What should look like a landfill size pile of junk just appears as several workbenches with a few small baskets and tools on top. Fancy hoarding! NPCs (non player characters) make fun of me for buying and hauling around “junk”, but I will rule the world one day! I will rule it with hotplates!
I also used my junk hoard to build an empire in the wasteland, selling purified water and food. To defend my empire, I may have also, possibly, become obsessed with putting turrets on everything in my fallout settlements. Settlement management is half about making sure everyone has resources like food, water, beds, roofs, and beer. The other part of settlement management is like a big tower defense game. Except imagine you are defending your settlers with turrets that will sometimes fire at the settlers they are defending. And your settlers will stand in front of the turrets when they are firing at enemies. So even when the settlers aren’t being targeted they still get shot. It is really hard to decide which is more stupid, the settlers, or the turrets. I created a brilliant death tunnel of turrets, which thanks to my settlers being suicidal, resulted in a massacre. I’ve learned my lesson, though. Now my turrets are all at the very edge of the settlement so it is harder for the settlers to get in front of them. However, I’m also crafting the very best in metal armor to protect those poor idiots when they do. Next up, LASER TURRETS! I’m going to have the most well defended ghost town in the wasteland.
Now here are pictures of my dog!
Shannis: While these two abandoned polite society in favor of Fallout 4 all month, I did what I always do in November: I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or NaNo for the super lazy, which I am). Basically I wrote just over 50,000 words of pure, unadulterated crap in the month of November, under the guise of it being a “novel”. This year’s story was about a rock star who is somewhere between Taylor Swift and P!nk but has issues… so many issues. Her boyfriend is basically Jim James from My Morning Jacket with half a fake name. She cheats on him with a guy who is Jared Leto with a fake name. So basically I spent the month writing smut about Jared Leto and my favorite rock star crush. That’s my November confession.
Also, if you’re addicted to Fallout 4 like my two besties here, you should be careful when you’re talking to your non-gamer friend (me) lest she begin to confuse your game life with real life. I have thought the following things during various conversations with Megan and Carolyn during the last couple of weeks:
1. That Megan got a dog and I didn’t even know about it. The dog had a bandana that somehow got lost.
2. That Carolyn was making homemade adhesive. At home. In her house. I was like, “How did you learn to do that? Is there a YouTube video, or did you find something on Pinterest? It seems complicated. Do you have something against the 3M company, or what?”
3. That when Megan mentioned smacking her head on a cupboard in REAL LIFE, I thought that it actually just happened IN GAME, and I couldn’t figure out why it was still hurting her hours later.
The other thing that can happen is that if you keep your non-gamer friend (me) included on a lengthy messaging thread in which you discuss Fallout 4 at length, your non-gamer friend and her teenage son might end up doing a dramatic reading of your game play discussion when bored in a public place. Maybe. I can neither confirm nor deny.
No, okay. That really happened.
Also, I binge-watched Jessica Jones and then had an R-rated dream about Luke Cage.
Carolyn: Well, I basically got eaten by Fallout 4, folks. In addition to making the previously mentioned adhesive (crafting forever!), I have tirelessly rid the Wasteland of super mutants, collectible Vault-Tec memorabilia, and plants. I don’t even know what some of those plants do, people, I just know it is important to gather them all! For SCIENCE! And reasons.
When I wasn’t playing Fallout, my husband and I cultivated our growing obsessions with Ricky & Morty, Fargo, and Drunk History. Is there anything better than spending your evenings watching a wasted, time traveling mad man? Or having your favorite comics explain the badassery of Harriet Tubman? I didn’t think so.
I took a break from murder, mayhem, and shenanigans to host our annual Thanksgiving extravaganza at our house. We went with an ALL PIE theme this year. PIEGIVING! It was delicious and delightful, and filling. Oh. My. God. So filling.
We hope you’ll all forgive our brief absence, readers. We swear, those settlements in post-apocalyptic Boston weren’t going to rebuild themselves. It’s a tough job, but we volunteer as tributes.
Oh crap. That reminds us: we haven’t seen Mockingjay Part II yet.