I Get Distracted ONCE Tonight. . .
Jan. 24th, 2024 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAand just like that my entire evening has been thrown off because suddenly I have a lot less time to do all the stuff I need to do. *sigh* I mean, I did get it all done, fortunately, but still. Have to remember NOT to look up any Sims 4 mods while I'm having my dessert -- too easy for me to go down modding website rabbit holes! *shakehead* Anyway, here's the to-do list for the day --
Work – Kind of a long, dreary day – it was pretty quiet in the office, and while I had some duplicate nonsense in the morning to keep me occupied, by the afternoon I was pretty much out of things to do – not even any obituaries. Meaning the last few hours of the day really dragged. *sigh* At least the traffic coming home wasn’t too awful. . .we’ll have to see what happens tomorrow, and if I can find a way to keep myself busy!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, finishing up Oxventure: Deadlands – “Dead Man’s Worth, Part I!” With all the names drawn and matched, and the time of the first duels set, Delacy, Garnet, and Nate all decided that it might be a good idea to head out to the edge of town to maybe do a few practice shots and decide on their plan. Delacy was all for sneaking up on Bellows tonight and just killing him in his bed, but Nate pointed out that there was probably ALL the armed guards in there, considering how many the dude brought with him to just visit the saloon briefly. Delacy argued that plenty of people in town would probably appreciate Bellows getting a bullet through the brainpan, but Nate figured that their best chance was to just participate in the contest, and if they didn’t manage to pull out a win, then they could just stick around in town and make other plans (Garnet promising to revenge them if they ended up shot in the guts and writhing around bleeding in the streets, and NOT to take all the reward money from Victoria for herself). This did bring up the question of whether or not Bellows would be shooting to kill in his duels, but Nate pointed out that the barman survived (well, his body did, his spirit was clearly broken), meaning that Bellows spares people he think might be of use to him. And Nate has been an itinerant grave digger for a good portion of his life, and in a town like this. . . Garnet told him to lead with that when it came time to duel. XD Delacy also offered to let Nate use Rooster (his fancy-ass Remington), but Nate declined politely, saying his shotgun was what he was used to. With that, the group headed back to their room to get some sleep (hampered somewhat by the wild party going on downstairs – Slim in particular was living it up, which is understandable when you recall that he’s only got three months to live anyway).
And then, upon sunrise, we had THE DUELS. Which apparently decided by card draws in Deadlands – how it works is, each player (or, in this case, the player and the “Marshall”) are dealt a card in the first two rounds, while their characters posture and yell taunts and suchlike. Then, in the third round, the guns are drawn, and each reveals which of their two cards they like more. Whoever’s card is highest wins. *nods* The two NPC duels were montaged, with a hungover Slim going up against frontierswoman Hattie – and putting a bullet clean through her head; and with black-jacketed Rosa managing to successfully disarm Big Bill the convict, though she declined to actually kill him (he was instead reshackled and, presumably, put back in jail). This brought us to Delacy versus Rex –
And to Garnet, who had some power points to burn, deciding to cast a little spell on Delacy to help improve his stats (though, as noted by Luke, Delacy did NOT particularly need any help in shooting better). Normally what a spell like this does is improve a character’s next dice roll, but as duels are decided solely through card draws, Andy decided that for each success, he’d give Delacy an extra card to pick from.
Garnet rolled a success with two raises, and Delacy was promptly handed FOUR cards in his first round. XD And THEN used his “Quick” edge to hand one back and get a better one, because he’s allowed to discard any card that’s a five or lower and have it redrawn. XD Rex spent some time playing to the crowd, doing lariat tricks and signing autographs (apparently he was a famous celebrity cowboy on the radio), while Delacey waited until the last moment to try and distract him by saying he had mud on his fancy boots. And then it was time to draw (as per the whistle of the train in the nearby trainyard) –
Delacy had a King, Rex a five. Delacy promptly shot Rex in the throat, causing blood to spray everywhere and completely ruin his nice white suit. Oh, and also kill him, as he bled to death before the town doctor could do anything. Garnet had to take a moment to pick her jaw up off the floor. XD Rex’s body was dragged off. . .
And then – it was Nate against Bellows. Nate handed Delacy an old cameo case of his (presumably with a picture of his late wife) to keep safe – Delacy asked if there was anyone they could contact, say a few words to, if the worst happened, but Nate said that there wasn’t, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, as he’d be right back. Delacy, having started to bond with the old coot, shook his hand, and then – after briefly considering a plan of going up on one of the rooftops and trying to dome Bellows from behind a chimney, only to realize EVERY rooftop had one of Bellows’s goons on it – went to join Garnet on the balcony as Bellows strode out of his house and down to the dueling spot, flanked by a couple of bodyguards. (And, because this ISN’T Blades In The Dark, Delacy was not allowed to flashback to digging a pit of spikes for him to fall into on the way. XD) Nate introduced himself and started rambling, talking about his work as a gravedigger – Bellows assured him that all the graves had already been dug and that he intended to put Nate in one. Nate chose to interpret that as Bellows wanting him to check his work. XD He doggedly continued nattering on as a desperate Garnet cast a spell on him to try and deflect any damage done to him – she got a single success on the roll, so Andy promised to discard one of Bellows’s cards at random. He then dealt the first couple of rounds of cards to Nate – who, thanks to his “Hesitant” hindrance, had to get two and pick the LOWEST to keep for each round. *wince* The duel thus commenced, with Nate fumbling with his shotgun and Bellows pulling his pistol –
Nate had a five, and Bellows a King. Meaning Bellows shot Nate right in the chest. Nate slowly slumped over as a furious Delacy ran out onto the street, wanting to draw against – uh, BILL, as Luke had temporarily forgotten the bad guy’s first name (it’s BEN Bellows). Bellows’s security guards caught him and held him back from doing anything stupid as Garnet rushed to join him, and Nate’s body was dragged off by the doctor as Johnny left the table, to the bewilderment of Jane and Luke.
Cue end of episode! XD Yeah, so, that happened – BUT. I know these people. I don’t think Andy would actually kill off one of the player characters in the second episode. I think one of two things is happening here – a) Nate isn’t actually dead, but it’s important plot-wise that he LOOKS dead for the time being, or b) Nate is dead, but that’s not actually the end of his character – aka, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can play as a ghost in this game. I mean, you can in Blades In The Dark! And I know Johnny is part of future episodes, they’re on one of the thumbnails, so they’re obviously not gone. . .I guess we’ll see what’s going on with Nate next week, when we watch “Dead Man’s Worth, Part II!”
2. Continue writing “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of”: Check – got another page done on the latest chapter, with the gang heading off toward the Everglots to see if Emily’s old fiance/murderer is Victoria’s new husband (thus meaning it’s okay for Emily to soul-suck him a bit). Along the way, the conversation has turned toward the Advocates – which means I’m actually moving some stuff out of the later section where they’re exploring Elder Gutknecht’s house post-being-accused-of-Spirit-Warden-murder to this bit. Probably better for the pacing, I always felt like Smiler explaining the Advocate’s deal was in an awkward place. We’ll see how that continues going on Friday!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half-check – Josh Way uploaded a new video late, and the bad timing plus me getting distracted looking at historical Sims 4 mods meant that I couldn’t watch both it and GrayStillPlays today. So that was saved for tomorrow while I checked out the latest from Gray today – “Reaper Wheels vs Stairs in GTA 5!” Another Alex Modded Vehicles Torture Board, this one saw Gray take various cars and trucks with wheels made from spikes, sawblades, half-treads, and gummy bears up these killer stair challenges –
I. Triangle Distancing Stairs – a set of pointed stairs that got gradually higher and higher as you went up them – basically, your classic growing stairs, only with extra triangle-ness to them to make climbing them that bit trickier.
II. Drunk Stairs With Alcoholic Fountains – a set of stairs made from overlapped beer bottles, with helicopters circling overhead pouring beer all over the stairs. Unfortunately, getting hit by the beer spray made you drunk, and being drunk in this game means you just CANNOT climb stairs – especially tightrope rounded stairs made out of bottles! Oh, and you had a sixty second time limit to get up them too. Fun!
III. Rotating Stairs – A set of stairs (made from some asset that, when put together, formed rounded-corner rectangles) that continually rotated like a hunk of meat around a spit. If your car couldn’t handle transferring over the corners to another side as they climbed, it was NOT going to make it up those stairs.
IV. Flying Speeding Stairs – a small set of stairs attached to a blimp that continually flew the stairs over the landscape to the ending platform (teleporting back shortly after reaching it), with the twist being that, every few seconds, it hit a boost and started going faster. Meaning that you had to continually go faster to keep up with it and not fall off the steps. A very tricky proposition, especially with how big the gap between the start and the end actually was!
So, which of the horrible modded cars with their horrible modded wheels actually made it? Well, the gummy-bear-wheel car couldn’t get past the first challenge; the first two horrible-spiked-wheel cars and the half-tank-treads car got halfway through, but couldn’t do the transfer necessary to stay on the Rotating Stairs as they turned; the sawblade-wheels car actually got all the way to the Flying Speeding Stairs, but just didn’t have the speed and skills to keep up with the speeding blimp. Leaving the third, most powerful spiked-wheel car (the only one with actual TRACTION) to finally pull off the win! After falling off multiple times and driving Gray mad first, of course. XD But eventually he had the perfect run (well, I say perfect, if I remember correctly the car itself still ended up pretty smashed up) and made it the end, yay! Another Torture Board conquered! Which means he’s probably due some chaos on Saturday. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had to fix up Victor Luvs Alice’s queue tonight, which consisted of resetting the queue post speed to “one per day” and finding myself a Song Saturday for, well, Saturday. Ended up going with one of the first “Valicer” songs I ever posted, since it was over a year ago that I put it up (Juice Wrld/Marshmello’s “Come & Go,” if you’re curious – I picture it as Victor being anxious about ruining his new poly relationship). So that’s all set, yay~
Whew -- at least it's all done! And now I really have to go and get some sleep, as I still have two more days of this workweek to get through. Meeeh. Night all!
Work – Kind of a long, dreary day – it was pretty quiet in the office, and while I had some duplicate nonsense in the morning to keep me occupied, by the afternoon I was pretty much out of things to do – not even any obituaries. Meaning the last few hours of the day really dragged. *sigh* At least the traffic coming home wasn’t too awful. . .we’ll have to see what happens tomorrow, and if I can find a way to keep myself busy!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, finishing up Oxventure: Deadlands – “Dead Man’s Worth, Part I!” With all the names drawn and matched, and the time of the first duels set, Delacy, Garnet, and Nate all decided that it might be a good idea to head out to the edge of town to maybe do a few practice shots and decide on their plan. Delacy was all for sneaking up on Bellows tonight and just killing him in his bed, but Nate pointed out that there was probably ALL the armed guards in there, considering how many the dude brought with him to just visit the saloon briefly. Delacy argued that plenty of people in town would probably appreciate Bellows getting a bullet through the brainpan, but Nate figured that their best chance was to just participate in the contest, and if they didn’t manage to pull out a win, then they could just stick around in town and make other plans (Garnet promising to revenge them if they ended up shot in the guts and writhing around bleeding in the streets, and NOT to take all the reward money from Victoria for herself). This did bring up the question of whether or not Bellows would be shooting to kill in his duels, but Nate pointed out that the barman survived (well, his body did, his spirit was clearly broken), meaning that Bellows spares people he think might be of use to him. And Nate has been an itinerant grave digger for a good portion of his life, and in a town like this. . . Garnet told him to lead with that when it came time to duel. XD Delacy also offered to let Nate use Rooster (his fancy-ass Remington), but Nate declined politely, saying his shotgun was what he was used to. With that, the group headed back to their room to get some sleep (hampered somewhat by the wild party going on downstairs – Slim in particular was living it up, which is understandable when you recall that he’s only got three months to live anyway).
And then, upon sunrise, we had THE DUELS. Which apparently decided by card draws in Deadlands – how it works is, each player (or, in this case, the player and the “Marshall”) are dealt a card in the first two rounds, while their characters posture and yell taunts and suchlike. Then, in the third round, the guns are drawn, and each reveals which of their two cards they like more. Whoever’s card is highest wins. *nods* The two NPC duels were montaged, with a hungover Slim going up against frontierswoman Hattie – and putting a bullet clean through her head; and with black-jacketed Rosa managing to successfully disarm Big Bill the convict, though she declined to actually kill him (he was instead reshackled and, presumably, put back in jail). This brought us to Delacy versus Rex –
And to Garnet, who had some power points to burn, deciding to cast a little spell on Delacy to help improve his stats (though, as noted by Luke, Delacy did NOT particularly need any help in shooting better). Normally what a spell like this does is improve a character’s next dice roll, but as duels are decided solely through card draws, Andy decided that for each success, he’d give Delacy an extra card to pick from.
Garnet rolled a success with two raises, and Delacy was promptly handed FOUR cards in his first round. XD And THEN used his “Quick” edge to hand one back and get a better one, because he’s allowed to discard any card that’s a five or lower and have it redrawn. XD Rex spent some time playing to the crowd, doing lariat tricks and signing autographs (apparently he was a famous celebrity cowboy on the radio), while Delacey waited until the last moment to try and distract him by saying he had mud on his fancy boots. And then it was time to draw (as per the whistle of the train in the nearby trainyard) –
Delacy had a King, Rex a five. Delacy promptly shot Rex in the throat, causing blood to spray everywhere and completely ruin his nice white suit. Oh, and also kill him, as he bled to death before the town doctor could do anything. Garnet had to take a moment to pick her jaw up off the floor. XD Rex’s body was dragged off. . .
And then – it was Nate against Bellows. Nate handed Delacy an old cameo case of his (presumably with a picture of his late wife) to keep safe – Delacy asked if there was anyone they could contact, say a few words to, if the worst happened, but Nate said that there wasn’t, and it wouldn’t matter anyway, as he’d be right back. Delacy, having started to bond with the old coot, shook his hand, and then – after briefly considering a plan of going up on one of the rooftops and trying to dome Bellows from behind a chimney, only to realize EVERY rooftop had one of Bellows’s goons on it – went to join Garnet on the balcony as Bellows strode out of his house and down to the dueling spot, flanked by a couple of bodyguards. (And, because this ISN’T Blades In The Dark, Delacy was not allowed to flashback to digging a pit of spikes for him to fall into on the way. XD) Nate introduced himself and started rambling, talking about his work as a gravedigger – Bellows assured him that all the graves had already been dug and that he intended to put Nate in one. Nate chose to interpret that as Bellows wanting him to check his work. XD He doggedly continued nattering on as a desperate Garnet cast a spell on him to try and deflect any damage done to him – she got a single success on the roll, so Andy promised to discard one of Bellows’s cards at random. He then dealt the first couple of rounds of cards to Nate – who, thanks to his “Hesitant” hindrance, had to get two and pick the LOWEST to keep for each round. *wince* The duel thus commenced, with Nate fumbling with his shotgun and Bellows pulling his pistol –
Nate had a five, and Bellows a King. Meaning Bellows shot Nate right in the chest. Nate slowly slumped over as a furious Delacy ran out onto the street, wanting to draw against – uh, BILL, as Luke had temporarily forgotten the bad guy’s first name (it’s BEN Bellows). Bellows’s security guards caught him and held him back from doing anything stupid as Garnet rushed to join him, and Nate’s body was dragged off by the doctor as Johnny left the table, to the bewilderment of Jane and Luke.
Cue end of episode! XD Yeah, so, that happened – BUT. I know these people. I don’t think Andy would actually kill off one of the player characters in the second episode. I think one of two things is happening here – a) Nate isn’t actually dead, but it’s important plot-wise that he LOOKS dead for the time being, or b) Nate is dead, but that’s not actually the end of his character – aka, I wouldn’t be surprised if you can play as a ghost in this game. I mean, you can in Blades In The Dark! And I know Johnny is part of future episodes, they’re on one of the thumbnails, so they’re obviously not gone. . .I guess we’ll see what’s going on with Nate next week, when we watch “Dead Man’s Worth, Part II!”
2. Continue writing “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of”: Check – got another page done on the latest chapter, with the gang heading off toward the Everglots to see if Emily’s old fiance/murderer is Victoria’s new husband (thus meaning it’s okay for Emily to soul-suck him a bit). Along the way, the conversation has turned toward the Advocates – which means I’m actually moving some stuff out of the later section where they’re exploring Elder Gutknecht’s house post-being-accused-of-Spirit-Warden-murder to this bit. Probably better for the pacing, I always felt like Smiler explaining the Advocate’s deal was in an awkward place. We’ll see how that continues going on Friday!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Half-check – Josh Way uploaded a new video late, and the bad timing plus me getting distracted looking at historical Sims 4 mods meant that I couldn’t watch both it and GrayStillPlays today. So that was saved for tomorrow while I checked out the latest from Gray today – “Reaper Wheels vs Stairs in GTA 5!” Another Alex Modded Vehicles Torture Board, this one saw Gray take various cars and trucks with wheels made from spikes, sawblades, half-treads, and gummy bears up these killer stair challenges –
I. Triangle Distancing Stairs – a set of pointed stairs that got gradually higher and higher as you went up them – basically, your classic growing stairs, only with extra triangle-ness to them to make climbing them that bit trickier.
II. Drunk Stairs With Alcoholic Fountains – a set of stairs made from overlapped beer bottles, with helicopters circling overhead pouring beer all over the stairs. Unfortunately, getting hit by the beer spray made you drunk, and being drunk in this game means you just CANNOT climb stairs – especially tightrope rounded stairs made out of bottles! Oh, and you had a sixty second time limit to get up them too. Fun!
III. Rotating Stairs – A set of stairs (made from some asset that, when put together, formed rounded-corner rectangles) that continually rotated like a hunk of meat around a spit. If your car couldn’t handle transferring over the corners to another side as they climbed, it was NOT going to make it up those stairs.
IV. Flying Speeding Stairs – a small set of stairs attached to a blimp that continually flew the stairs over the landscape to the ending platform (teleporting back shortly after reaching it), with the twist being that, every few seconds, it hit a boost and started going faster. Meaning that you had to continually go faster to keep up with it and not fall off the steps. A very tricky proposition, especially with how big the gap between the start and the end actually was!
So, which of the horrible modded cars with their horrible modded wheels actually made it? Well, the gummy-bear-wheel car couldn’t get past the first challenge; the first two horrible-spiked-wheel cars and the half-tank-treads car got halfway through, but couldn’t do the transfer necessary to stay on the Rotating Stairs as they turned; the sawblade-wheels car actually got all the way to the Flying Speeding Stairs, but just didn’t have the speed and skills to keep up with the speeding blimp. Leaving the third, most powerful spiked-wheel car (the only one with actual TRACTION) to finally pull off the win! After falling off multiple times and driving Gray mad first, of course. XD But eventually he had the perfect run (well, I say perfect, if I remember correctly the car itself still ended up pretty smashed up) and made it the end, yay! Another Torture Board conquered! Which means he’s probably due some chaos on Saturday. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just had to fix up Victor Luvs Alice’s queue tonight, which consisted of resetting the queue post speed to “one per day” and finding myself a Song Saturday for, well, Saturday. Ended up going with one of the first “Valicer” songs I ever posted, since it was over a year ago that I put it up (Juice Wrld/Marshmello’s “Come & Go,” if you’re curious – I picture it as Victor being anxious about ruining his new poly relationship). So that’s all set, yay~
Whew -- at least it's all done! And now I really have to go and get some sleep, as I still have two more days of this workweek to get through. Meeeh. Night all!
