Kinda Meh Wednesday
Jan. 31st, 2024 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThe day didn't start out great -- I was running a bit late most of the morning, smacked my leg against my own license plate trying to get around and into my car, and work wasn't great, as detailed below -- but I had a decently productive evening, at least --
Work – Another mostly quiet, kind of irritating day – had a couple of calls (one credit card, one “cancel my gift”), did some more obituary work, and tried to ignore my coworkers talking politics behind me. *grumble* At least the ride home was quick for a change – don’t expect it to last past today, but it was nice to get home slightly early!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another chunk of Oxventure: Deadlands – “Dead Man’s Worth, Part II!” We picked up with Garnet meeting Bellows on his balcony – he was a little surprised to see just her there, as the one he really wanted to meet with was Delacy, but she explained that, while Bellows had his rule of “no one brings weapons into my home,” Delacy had his rule of “nobody takes my gun,” so she was here as his messenger. Bellows accepted that and explained that he was honestly quite impressed with Delacy’s shooting and was wondering if the kid would like to join his organization. Garnet would be allowed to come along too, and he assured him that those who worked for him lived satisfying lives. Garnet said she was PRETTY sure what Delacy’s answer was going to be, but asked to go confer with him anyway, and was escorted back to where Delacy was hanging out under a tree. She told him about Bellows’s offer, and explained that, while they obviously wanted to kill him, maybe they should pretend to be interested in order to lull him into a false sense of security or something. Delacy was pretty intent on meeting Bellows in the duel, though, so Garnet decided to try and see if Bellows would keep the offer open if Delacy, you know, survived the duel. He just laughed and said it was a shame that he had to kill the boy, and had her escorted off his property again (though her gun and the dynamite were returned to the pair). The duo thus resolved to win the duel –
And Delacy, remembering that they’d intended to try and see if Bellows would be willing to switch spots, decided to just go ahead and stand in Bellows’s spot and see what happened. Bellows was like “excuse me, that’s MY spot,” but Delacy just BARELY successfully taunted him into standing on the other side of the street, helped by the townsfolk going “hey, why DOES it matter which side of the street you’re on?” Delacy gave Garnet directions to his parent’s place to let them know what happened should everything go wrong (“go 700 miles until you see a red house”), and Garnet squared up with her cards to try and cast a spell to both boost Delacy’s gunmanship again AND reduce Bellows’s skill – the first one didn’t go off, unfortunately, but she WAS able to successfully hex Bellows and give him disadvantage. Delacy taunted Bellows again by insulting his statue as the cards were dealt, and after a bit of admin (getting rid of some of Bellows’s cards to represent the hex and the taunt, and Delacy getting to draw a new card because of his “Quick” trait), the cards were revealed! Bellows had a King –
And Delacy had an Ace. Which, as Andy had confirmed earlier, was ranked the highest in this draw. Delacy thus didn’t even really look at Bellows (or the arm of Ned pulling on the whistle) – he just shot him, once again, in the throat, relying purely on natural skill. Blood began jetting from Bellows’s neck –
But, unfortunately, unlike Rex and Slim, he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He scrambled for cover behind his statue while screaming for his men to get them as an official combat round began! Andy drew for initiative, and after discarding his initial card because of his lovely “Quick” trait, Delacy ended up with the Joker! Which allowed him to go whenever he wanted in the first round, got him +2 to all his rolls, AND scored everyone a much-needed benny to reroll stuff as necessary. Garnet, however, got a terrible card, meaning she went last after Bellows and all his goons –
But as it turned out, her going last was a good thing. Because, just as the fight began, a noise came from the undertaker’s office. A noise that sounded an awful lot like someone banging on the inside of a coffin lid –
And Johnny Chiodini doing a ridiculous old man voice. :D Garnet immediately rushed in to see what the hell was going on there while Delacy, having gotten his dynamite back, pulled out a stick, lobbed it in the air toward the statue, and then shot it. An excellent roll meant that he blew up the top half of the statue and sent shrapnel raining down on Bellows, dealing him more Wounds (Luke joked that they took out the other side of his throat, leaving him with just the middle). One of Bellows’s goons then fired at Delacy, but just BARELY missed, leaving the kid shaken as he fell over into the dirt – and then, unfortunately, Bellows got a REALLY good hit on him, blasting him in the foot and giving him two Wounds of his own. Things were not looking great for Delacy. . .
But in the undertaker’s office, Garnet had successfully located the noisy coffin and popped it open – to discover Nate, asking if he’d won his duel! Garnet was naturally a bit discombobulated by this. XD Examining him showed that he still had the massive hole in his chest from where Bellows had shot him and no pulse, though. Hmmm. Garnet had an inkling of what was going on because of her Huckster powers, but decided the explanation could wait until they’d taken care of the firefight. Nate was only too happy to help –
And, thanks to a decent pull to join the initiative order and still having his shotgun on him, was able to stride out of the undertaker’s like the Terminator and just blast one goon’s spine straight out. XD Delacy was naturally very O.O about this. XD Nate encouraged him to shoot first, ask questions later in this case (Delacy: “We’re learning from each other!”), and the fight continued! Sort of – the gunmen up on the rooftops were deeply rattled by the sight of a previously-murdered competitor suddenly getting up and murdering one of their own, as per their dice rolls. One guy tried to shoot Nate, but got distracted by a passing bird and ended up hitting it instead; one guy SUCCESSFULLY shot Nate, only for the bullet to do no damage because, well, dude already dead; and the third guy just whiffed his shot entirely. The turn order finally came around to Garnet, who chose to run across the street, grab Delacy, and barrel him into the nearest building on the opposite side. She pleaded, “can it be a gun shop?” with Andy, and he made her roll Faith to find out –
And we ended with Garnet’s dice exploding and getting her a success with two raises, meaning she was indeed in Simon’s Shooting Irons. XD We’ll wrap this up and see what exactly Nate’s deal is tomorrow! I knew the old guy wasn’t permanently dead. . .
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I’ve gotten Alice through the rest of Nines’s speech (with him confirming that no, he is not LaCroix’s golf partner) and him giving her some tips on how to punch, which she has taken with perhaps not the most grace as she didn’t like the implications she couldn’t defend herself. Left off with Alice managing to stop Damsel mid-rant about what a shit brainless Cammy-do-girl Malkavian Alice is by asking her what is plaguing the Anarchs – time to pick up the other half of the “plaguebearer” quest chain!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – double feature tonight –
A) First up, the latest from Josh Way – “SCREEN TIME: All of Us Strangers Review!” Another movie review from Josh, of the recent UK indie flick All Of Us Strangers (which is apparently an adaptation of a Japanese novel – a very LOOSE adaptation, according to Josh), which features a gay man whose parents died when he was young going back to his childhood home while wishing he could have introduced them to the man he was. . .and finding them there, exactly how he remembers. The movie then balances the big conversations he has with them with him having a whirlwind love affair with another lonely, broken gay man. Josh refused to get into any more detail than that, plot-wise, as he didn’t want to spoil things (apparently this is a complicated movie), but he really enjoyed it and thinks it’s a good watch for anyone who likes Complicated Movies. Though he admits that everyone is really frank about their feelings and their issues, which is both refreshing and jarring in a movie where you expect everything to be super subtle. XD But it sounds like he had a good time, and what more can you ask for?
B) And second up, the latest from GrayStillPlays – “Trying your insane GTA 5 ideas!” A very special commenter-inspired Alex Torture Board, this video featured –
I. That one guy who won’t stop commenting about mountain lions and C4 (danielpeare8364) – Gray having to bust Daniel’s myth that you can’t hit a mountain lion with C4 while in midair on the Shinobi motorcycle! This was set up by putting Gray on the Shinobi and having him jump a giant gap with a mountain lion on a platform in the middle, tossing C4 behind him (as he quickly learned tossing it in front of him would NOT work, it just went past the lion). Gray spent a LOT of time crashing into the fences and hay bales of the farm that the course was built on, but after many, MANY tries, he finally managed to nail the lion and bust the myth! Yay!
II. Bottle Run In GTA (jacarr983) – Just what it sounded like, a Happy Wheels-style bottle run for Gray to attempt! Gray had to ride the Shinobi over the tops of a bunch of giant beer bottles to reach his beloved checkpoint, while trying not to drift off to either side or get distracted by biplanes flying into the bottles. XD Gray actually said that trying to do this was worse than trying to hit the mountain lion (and that was pretty bad, but after many instances of falling off or being yeeted off his bike into the citrus grove beneath), he made it through.
III. Math Wallrides (paulthetexan) – A wall ride with math-themed multiple choice questions, such as “69 + 69” or “69/666.” Gray had to go through the section with the correct answer or get teleported back to the beginning (or, on the final question, run straight into a wall). And the wall ride itself was no joke, consisting of multiple narrow wall ribbons and two spirals that had to be handled JUUUST right. So Gray had to do math AND concentrate on his driving, which he did not enjoy. Fortunately he was good enough at math to guess a lot of the answers, including getting the final one on the – first-ish try (first time he actually got that far, as the spiral right before the answer set gave him some real issues). And then he crashed and got run over by his own car. XD
IV. Roles Reversed (boblion1588) – Okay, this one was a bit complicated – the actual comment by Bob was to have GRAY make a board and have ALEX play it. Alex did not trust Gray to make a board for him, so instead what he did was give Gray the Force/Forge gun (the gun that lets you move things around by telekinesis), put him in the middle of a simple challenge course that he’d created for GTA NPC!Alex (driving the beloved Wastelander), and then – once Gray stepped into a script circle – had him recreate the course using the pieces provided and the forge gun to get NPC!Alex safely to the end. Gray did actually do his best to get NPC!Alex all the way around without too much incident – though he did delight in NPC!Alex getting wrecked by a couple of windmills. And did take the time, once NPC!Alex got to the end and he was allowed to teleport over there and take the Wastelander for himself, to run NPC!Alex over. XD Look, Gray has a looot of frustration to work out against his main board creator. XD
V. Snake Stairs 3-Piece Combo (Change car every 30 10 seconds by samuelwrite + Sawblade Windmill by Mr_Creeper2018 + Story Board by KatieBerinato) – And, for the grand finale, a board made out of three comments at once – Gray had to escort “Stan” to HELL’S BAR by ascending, and then descending, a wavy snaky set of stairs, all the while being tormented by NPC!Alex and his baby minion clones wielding firework rocket launchers. Also, as indicated, Gray’s vehicle changed every ten seconds (and no, it wasn’t always a car – Gray ended up with boats a couple of times, plus a blimp and a helicopter once each), AND waiting for him at the very end, before the bar, was the horrible spinning sawblade windmill (which Gray actually deliberately got hit by once to see what would happen – it knocked him off the board, is what happened). This one was EXTREMELY painful just because the vehicle-switching meant that Gray often ended up stuck in a car that simply could NOT climb the stairs, and the sawblade windmill at the end ruined his day a few more times, but eventually Gray managed to get past it and deliver Stan to the bar. Where he got to say “Not today, Satan!” to his offer to grab a beer before driving through the win. XD Fucking chaotic mess – I loved it. More commenter videos, please! XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice to worry about tonight, yay. I finished off my Thurday post about my vague Valicer In The Dark/Baldur’s Gate III crossover idea, and got a start on the Not-Incorrect Quotes collection I have for said crossover. :) I’ll finish that off tomorrow for Friday’s post, and put up this cool BG3-inspired song “Make Your Move” for Song Saturday! I think that’ll work out nicely.
And so ends my Wednesday! Time to get to bed so I can prepare to do it all over again tomorrow. *shakehead* Night all!
Work – Another mostly quiet, kind of irritating day – had a couple of calls (one credit card, one “cancel my gift”), did some more obituary work, and tried to ignore my coworkers talking politics behind me. *grumble* At least the ride home was quick for a change – don’t expect it to last past today, but it was nice to get home slightly early!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another chunk of Oxventure: Deadlands – “Dead Man’s Worth, Part II!” We picked up with Garnet meeting Bellows on his balcony – he was a little surprised to see just her there, as the one he really wanted to meet with was Delacy, but she explained that, while Bellows had his rule of “no one brings weapons into my home,” Delacy had his rule of “nobody takes my gun,” so she was here as his messenger. Bellows accepted that and explained that he was honestly quite impressed with Delacy’s shooting and was wondering if the kid would like to join his organization. Garnet would be allowed to come along too, and he assured him that those who worked for him lived satisfying lives. Garnet said she was PRETTY sure what Delacy’s answer was going to be, but asked to go confer with him anyway, and was escorted back to where Delacy was hanging out under a tree. She told him about Bellows’s offer, and explained that, while they obviously wanted to kill him, maybe they should pretend to be interested in order to lull him into a false sense of security or something. Delacy was pretty intent on meeting Bellows in the duel, though, so Garnet decided to try and see if Bellows would keep the offer open if Delacy, you know, survived the duel. He just laughed and said it was a shame that he had to kill the boy, and had her escorted off his property again (though her gun and the dynamite were returned to the pair). The duo thus resolved to win the duel –
And Delacy, remembering that they’d intended to try and see if Bellows would be willing to switch spots, decided to just go ahead and stand in Bellows’s spot and see what happened. Bellows was like “excuse me, that’s MY spot,” but Delacy just BARELY successfully taunted him into standing on the other side of the street, helped by the townsfolk going “hey, why DOES it matter which side of the street you’re on?” Delacy gave Garnet directions to his parent’s place to let them know what happened should everything go wrong (“go 700 miles until you see a red house”), and Garnet squared up with her cards to try and cast a spell to both boost Delacy’s gunmanship again AND reduce Bellows’s skill – the first one didn’t go off, unfortunately, but she WAS able to successfully hex Bellows and give him disadvantage. Delacy taunted Bellows again by insulting his statue as the cards were dealt, and after a bit of admin (getting rid of some of Bellows’s cards to represent the hex and the taunt, and Delacy getting to draw a new card because of his “Quick” trait), the cards were revealed! Bellows had a King –
And Delacy had an Ace. Which, as Andy had confirmed earlier, was ranked the highest in this draw. Delacy thus didn’t even really look at Bellows (or the arm of Ned pulling on the whistle) – he just shot him, once again, in the throat, relying purely on natural skill. Blood began jetting from Bellows’s neck –
But, unfortunately, unlike Rex and Slim, he wasn’t about to go down without a fight. He scrambled for cover behind his statue while screaming for his men to get them as an official combat round began! Andy drew for initiative, and after discarding his initial card because of his lovely “Quick” trait, Delacy ended up with the Joker! Which allowed him to go whenever he wanted in the first round, got him +2 to all his rolls, AND scored everyone a much-needed benny to reroll stuff as necessary. Garnet, however, got a terrible card, meaning she went last after Bellows and all his goons –
But as it turned out, her going last was a good thing. Because, just as the fight began, a noise came from the undertaker’s office. A noise that sounded an awful lot like someone banging on the inside of a coffin lid –
And Johnny Chiodini doing a ridiculous old man voice. :D Garnet immediately rushed in to see what the hell was going on there while Delacy, having gotten his dynamite back, pulled out a stick, lobbed it in the air toward the statue, and then shot it. An excellent roll meant that he blew up the top half of the statue and sent shrapnel raining down on Bellows, dealing him more Wounds (Luke joked that they took out the other side of his throat, leaving him with just the middle). One of Bellows’s goons then fired at Delacy, but just BARELY missed, leaving the kid shaken as he fell over into the dirt – and then, unfortunately, Bellows got a REALLY good hit on him, blasting him in the foot and giving him two Wounds of his own. Things were not looking great for Delacy. . .
But in the undertaker’s office, Garnet had successfully located the noisy coffin and popped it open – to discover Nate, asking if he’d won his duel! Garnet was naturally a bit discombobulated by this. XD Examining him showed that he still had the massive hole in his chest from where Bellows had shot him and no pulse, though. Hmmm. Garnet had an inkling of what was going on because of her Huckster powers, but decided the explanation could wait until they’d taken care of the firefight. Nate was only too happy to help –
And, thanks to a decent pull to join the initiative order and still having his shotgun on him, was able to stride out of the undertaker’s like the Terminator and just blast one goon’s spine straight out. XD Delacy was naturally very O.O about this. XD Nate encouraged him to shoot first, ask questions later in this case (Delacy: “We’re learning from each other!”), and the fight continued! Sort of – the gunmen up on the rooftops were deeply rattled by the sight of a previously-murdered competitor suddenly getting up and murdering one of their own, as per their dice rolls. One guy tried to shoot Nate, but got distracted by a passing bird and ended up hitting it instead; one guy SUCCESSFULLY shot Nate, only for the bullet to do no damage because, well, dude already dead; and the third guy just whiffed his shot entirely. The turn order finally came around to Garnet, who chose to run across the street, grab Delacy, and barrel him into the nearest building on the opposite side. She pleaded, “can it be a gun shop?” with Andy, and he made her roll Faith to find out –
And we ended with Garnet’s dice exploding and getting her a success with two raises, meaning she was indeed in Simon’s Shooting Irons. XD We’ll wrap this up and see what exactly Nate’s deal is tomorrow! I knew the old guy wasn’t permanently dead. . .
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – I’ve gotten Alice through the rest of Nines’s speech (with him confirming that no, he is not LaCroix’s golf partner) and him giving her some tips on how to punch, which she has taken with perhaps not the most grace as she didn’t like the implications she couldn’t defend herself. Left off with Alice managing to stop Damsel mid-rant about what a shit brainless Cammy-do-girl Malkavian Alice is by asking her what is plaguing the Anarchs – time to pick up the other half of the “plaguebearer” quest chain!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – double feature tonight –
A) First up, the latest from Josh Way – “SCREEN TIME: All of Us Strangers Review!” Another movie review from Josh, of the recent UK indie flick All Of Us Strangers (which is apparently an adaptation of a Japanese novel – a very LOOSE adaptation, according to Josh), which features a gay man whose parents died when he was young going back to his childhood home while wishing he could have introduced them to the man he was. . .and finding them there, exactly how he remembers. The movie then balances the big conversations he has with them with him having a whirlwind love affair with another lonely, broken gay man. Josh refused to get into any more detail than that, plot-wise, as he didn’t want to spoil things (apparently this is a complicated movie), but he really enjoyed it and thinks it’s a good watch for anyone who likes Complicated Movies. Though he admits that everyone is really frank about their feelings and their issues, which is both refreshing and jarring in a movie where you expect everything to be super subtle. XD But it sounds like he had a good time, and what more can you ask for?
B) And second up, the latest from GrayStillPlays – “Trying your insane GTA 5 ideas!” A very special commenter-inspired Alex Torture Board, this video featured –
I. That one guy who won’t stop commenting about mountain lions and C4 (danielpeare8364) – Gray having to bust Daniel’s myth that you can’t hit a mountain lion with C4 while in midair on the Shinobi motorcycle! This was set up by putting Gray on the Shinobi and having him jump a giant gap with a mountain lion on a platform in the middle, tossing C4 behind him (as he quickly learned tossing it in front of him would NOT work, it just went past the lion). Gray spent a LOT of time crashing into the fences and hay bales of the farm that the course was built on, but after many, MANY tries, he finally managed to nail the lion and bust the myth! Yay!
II. Bottle Run In GTA (jacarr983) – Just what it sounded like, a Happy Wheels-style bottle run for Gray to attempt! Gray had to ride the Shinobi over the tops of a bunch of giant beer bottles to reach his beloved checkpoint, while trying not to drift off to either side or get distracted by biplanes flying into the bottles. XD Gray actually said that trying to do this was worse than trying to hit the mountain lion (and that was pretty bad, but after many instances of falling off or being yeeted off his bike into the citrus grove beneath), he made it through.
III. Math Wallrides (paulthetexan) – A wall ride with math-themed multiple choice questions, such as “69 + 69” or “69/666.” Gray had to go through the section with the correct answer or get teleported back to the beginning (or, on the final question, run straight into a wall). And the wall ride itself was no joke, consisting of multiple narrow wall ribbons and two spirals that had to be handled JUUUST right. So Gray had to do math AND concentrate on his driving, which he did not enjoy. Fortunately he was good enough at math to guess a lot of the answers, including getting the final one on the – first-ish try (first time he actually got that far, as the spiral right before the answer set gave him some real issues). And then he crashed and got run over by his own car. XD
IV. Roles Reversed (boblion1588) – Okay, this one was a bit complicated – the actual comment by Bob was to have GRAY make a board and have ALEX play it. Alex did not trust Gray to make a board for him, so instead what he did was give Gray the Force/Forge gun (the gun that lets you move things around by telekinesis), put him in the middle of a simple challenge course that he’d created for GTA NPC!Alex (driving the beloved Wastelander), and then – once Gray stepped into a script circle – had him recreate the course using the pieces provided and the forge gun to get NPC!Alex safely to the end. Gray did actually do his best to get NPC!Alex all the way around without too much incident – though he did delight in NPC!Alex getting wrecked by a couple of windmills. And did take the time, once NPC!Alex got to the end and he was allowed to teleport over there and take the Wastelander for himself, to run NPC!Alex over. XD Look, Gray has a looot of frustration to work out against his main board creator. XD
V. Snake Stairs 3-Piece Combo (Change car every 30 10 seconds by samuelwrite + Sawblade Windmill by Mr_Creeper2018 + Story Board by KatieBerinato) – And, for the grand finale, a board made out of three comments at once – Gray had to escort “Stan” to HELL’S BAR by ascending, and then descending, a wavy snaky set of stairs, all the while being tormented by NPC!Alex and his baby minion clones wielding firework rocket launchers. Also, as indicated, Gray’s vehicle changed every ten seconds (and no, it wasn’t always a car – Gray ended up with boats a couple of times, plus a blimp and a helicopter once each), AND waiting for him at the very end, before the bar, was the horrible spinning sawblade windmill (which Gray actually deliberately got hit by once to see what would happen – it knocked him off the board, is what happened). This one was EXTREMELY painful just because the vehicle-switching meant that Gray often ended up stuck in a car that simply could NOT climb the stairs, and the sawblade windmill at the end ruined his day a few more times, but eventually Gray managed to get past it and deliver Stan to the bar. Where he got to say “Not today, Satan!” to his offer to grab a beer before driving through the win. XD Fucking chaotic mess – I loved it. More commenter videos, please! XD
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice to worry about tonight, yay. I finished off my Thurday post about my vague Valicer In The Dark/Baldur’s Gate III crossover idea, and got a start on the Not-Incorrect Quotes collection I have for said crossover. :) I’ll finish that off tomorrow for Friday’s post, and put up this cool BG3-inspired song “Make Your Move” for Song Saturday! I think that’ll work out nicely.
And so ends my Wednesday! Time to get to bed so I can prepare to do it all over again tomorrow. *shakehead* Night all!
