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So I'm Now Obsessed With A Roller Coaster
Dec. 28th, 2021 11:48 pmOn the plus side, I'm not the ONLY one -- Alton Towers and its various roller coasters, in particular The Smiler, have their own little fandom on tumblr, and I've been having fun reading up on lore and finding new videos to watch. It's just -- it hits the perfect sweet spot of funny, creepy, and -- "relevant to my interests," shall we say? I just wish I could get the Valice hypnokinky thing involving it out of my head and onto virtual paper, but the brain is not cooperating. . .
Anyway! Let's take a look at the to-do list, shall we?
1. Continue whatever writing I can get out of my damn head: Again, only “main” writing I did was on my and Squid’s thing – but you know what? I had a LOT of stuff to answer on Valice Multiverse this evening, so I’m saying that counts and giving myself a pass! Will continue trying to get brain to cooperate more tomorrow.
2. Catch up on YouTube Subs: Four-fifths check – I caught up on the videos I missed yesterday, but due to tumblr queueing (see below), I had to miss out on the somewhat-longer Wyrd Sisters Podcast of Thud!. See if I can get that in tomorrow! In the meantime –
A) Started with my Call Me Kevin episodes before working out –
I. “Can you play GTA V without breaking laws?” – a short video answering this question with a resounding “no.” XD Kevin attempted to be a good citizen, first with Franklin (driving around with his buddy Lamar and trying to be nothing more than the Uber driver in all these gang shootouts) and then with TREVOR, of all people (refusing to get into any gunfights, or steal a car in the middle of a pouring thunderstorm when the cab company wouldn’t send a cab his way), but all it got him was a bunch of failed missions, a few dead Lamars and Trevors, and the NPCs themselves cutting him off by shooting across all lanes on a three-lane highway to make their turn. (Reminds me of RI drivers!) He got ONE mission done, but at the expense of the laws he was trying so hard to follow, so he ended up letting Trevor get run over by a train. XD You gave it your best shot, Kevin!
II. “Minecraft One Chunk Hardcore Challenge forced me to get creative” – back to the Chonk today, with Kevin getting a few things done – mainly, digging his way to the End Portal below his spawn (and managing to accidentally destroy the silverfish spawner while climbing up a tower of blocks to get away from them and a creeper) to check it out – no pearls preset, sadly; discovering both a bunch of iron blocks AND an iron breastplate in a chest in the same general area, allowing him to actually make some good armor; setting up a pool of water near some lava and using both to slowly BUILD an obsidian portal to the Nether as he couldn’t MINE one (he even blocked off the other side so he wouldn’t run out into the lava! . . .and then took one look at his Nether spawn point and was like “nope, not doing it” and came back XD); killing a bunch of monsters with the help of his “monster spawning room and trap pit,” AND a bunch behind one of the walls with the help of his new best friend, the Lava Bucket (which he put away at the end of the episode because he KNEW he was going to kill himself with it); and tormenting his pit of chickens by throwing even MORE in there to lay more eggs for him. XD A busy day, but a productive one for Military Genius Kevin!
B) And then, after dinner and leftover cake, moved onto GrayStillPlays –
I. “i created a world that only knows pain” – if you’re wondering what that means, it means it’s time for more Solar Smash and Solar Hax! Today, Gray created the planet PAIN (or “PAN” if you look at the populated areas) and messed with weather and god-beings. We learned that, with the right adjustments to the numbers, the God Punch can smash apart the earth in a single blow; the space worm can kill half a billion people just by appearing in the night sky; the space dragons go from burrowing through the core to not really giving a fuck; and lightning is MORE POWERFUL THAN CTHULHU (lightning is capable of vaporizing most planets, including the shielded machine planet, but Cthulhu generally only takes about half (until the numbers are fucked with again) and is repelled by force fields). His power grows by the day – I fear what happens when he gets to fiddle with ALL the rookie numbers.
II. “i literally drove to the moon and this happened” – and then I watched his latest GTA V parkour and remembered that all we have to do to stop him is surround him with wind turbines. XD After blowing up the sun in his last parkour, Gray has moved onto blowing up the moon – which was quite the difficult feat, let me tell you. Mostly because he was abused by wind turbines the entire way over there. He had to be slapped by a wind turbine to make it over the first jump and into the checkpoint; he had to DRIVE OVER a MEGA turbine with fifteen million blades TWICE to make it to the moon itself; he had to drive down to the BOTTOM of the moon in a junk mobile and avoid wind turbines while UPSIDE-DOWN (he had to resort to first person camera to get through it); he had to hover THROUGH a tunnel of wind turbines to get to the crater to get into the moon’s core; and then he had to dive through a final pair of turbines to reach the core of the core. By the time he got there, having to do a spiral wall ride was almost relaxing. ...I say ALMOST. XD But he did succeed, and flung himself into the flames of the explosion in victory! XD Yaaaay~
3. Play Bloodlines and finish off the Kuei-Jin and Ming Xiao: Check! Getting to Ming-Xiao turned out to be fairly easy, in the grand scheme of things – Crystal had a little trouble with the guards, but it wasn’t anything that her Tal’Mehe’Ra blade and Blood Theft couldn’t fix. XD She picked up each set of statues with reasonably minimal fuss, opening the portal to Ming-Xiao’s inner sanctum and going up against her in all her tentacley glory!
. . .I died three, four times before hitting on a winning strategy? ^^; In my defense, she’s a hard-hitting boss – and if her tentacles start coming off, she can make CLONES. And if you don’t kill them while they’re small. . . Eventually my winning strategy was “activate Blood Shield (and I will admit, that power has earned its way back into my good graces – it’s been VERY USEFUL in these last few boss fights), supplement it with Fortitude, hit her with everything in the flamethrower, then hit her with a few distracting Blood Boils before going over to the Dragonsbreath shotgun.” Still very difficult (especially as Ming-Xiao slapping me around often knocked Crystal out of her reload animation for the shotgun), but I persevered in the end, getting the sarcophagus key and the portal out! w00! From there, Crystal hit up Mercurio to sell all her extraneous weapons and buy a few more rounds for the Dragonsbreath; Vandal to get a few more emergency blood packs; and then it was off to LaCroix Tower! She Dominated Chunk into running and hiding, took out almost all the guards on the ground floor with a Blood Boil, and then worked her way up the building! As usual, Blood Theft did a great job of taking care of most of the people in her way – and thanks to some glitchiness with the food court roof not properly loading in, she was able to sneak attack all of the SWAT team that bursts in when you’re almost out of that area (they just stood around instead of patrolling) – AND most of the ones on that subroof too. She ran into some trouble with the boys patrolling the under-construction floor with the bomber (mostly because they kept shooting her while she was trying to dispose of the Astrolite), and hitting the vampire mooks on the seventh floor was rather painful (assholes shooting me through the windows!), but she managed it in the end! I’ve actually saved a couple of doors away from the Sheriff boss fight – made a quick attempt, but while Blood Boil DOES hit the guy for a good chunk of damage, it doesn’t really STOP his teleporting ass. I actually did pretty well against his first form before dying, though! :) On the other hand, I wasn’t really interested in doing his two-stage boss fight that soon after Ming-Xiao, so. . .one last play session to go to end this game, w00! :)
4. Get in a workout: Check! Back on the bike today, and back to the Oxventures, with the latest, “Spell Check!” Having been run out of Bumble and getting tired of sleeping in hedgerows, the gang stumbled across a surprisingly empty tavern with a surprisingly friendly barkeep! Who provided them with many drinks and seemed quite impressed with their magical prowess (Corazon and Dob working together to make sparkly lights and a cocktail umbrella for Egbert’s drink)! Yay!
. . .the drinks were drugged and everyone woke up in jail cells in a strange new location. Jail cells that drained their magical abilities (which was discovered when Corazon tried to Grease up Dob to help him slide through his cell bars), preventing them from using their spells! And also Egbert had some “interesting organs” snipped out of him (discovered AFTER he’d spewed sick so far it landed all over Merilwen in the cell across the little hall). Naturally everyone was very upset about this – FORTUNATELY, Egbert’s fire breath still worked, and he was able to partially melt the bars, and attempt to yank them apart. This didn’t quite work, but it caused a racket that brought the guard – and thanks to some real good rolls, Egbert was able to drag him THROUGH the bars into the cell, and get him to admit that the people he works for have some business of siphoning off people’s magic and stealing interesting organs to sell on the black market. Egbert forced him to unlock everyone’s cell door, and he slumped in a way that suggested he thought he was going to be killed –
And then Dob, who ALWAYS wants to adopt the NPCs, suggested that he come with them, claiming he could sense good in him, and smashed the Charisma + Persuasion roll. XD That’s where I left off, but this is ANOTHER amazing moment I remember from Johnny’s list video – this is Christopher the guard! AKA Johnny forgets AGAIN Dob loves adopting NPCs and thus has to make up a ridiculous name and backstory for this guy on the fly. XD Oooh, this is gonna be good. . .
5. Work on tumblr queues: Check in progress, though it’s nearly done – got my Chill Save update for Wednesday sorted, plus a Thursday reblog on Victor Luvs Alice. On Valice Multiverse, though – FIVE ask replies, three thread replies, AND a new starter! You see why I gave myself a pass on the first list item??
Yeah, so, gotta finish that up before hitting the sheets sooner rather than later. . . We're officially past the halfway point of my long holiday break. :( Ah well, I still have five days, and I intend to make the most of them. Even if that's defined as "looking up stuff on The Smiler on tumblr." XD But more to the point, here's my hoped-for to-dos for tomorrow:
1. Continue work on the 'write, damn you' thing
2. Keep up with YouTube subs, watch all Sims 4-related videos in the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and get Victor and Alice to their graduation in the Chill Save
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr queues
We'll see how I do! The video game line item might get a substitution or addition if I decide I REALLY want to finish off Crystal's Bloodlines run -- we'll see! For now, time to finish off my Valice Multiverse queue and head to bed -- night all!
Anyway! Let's take a look at the to-do list, shall we?
1. Continue whatever writing I can get out of my damn head: Again, only “main” writing I did was on my and Squid’s thing – but you know what? I had a LOT of stuff to answer on Valice Multiverse this evening, so I’m saying that counts and giving myself a pass! Will continue trying to get brain to cooperate more tomorrow.
2. Catch up on YouTube Subs: Four-fifths check – I caught up on the videos I missed yesterday, but due to tumblr queueing (see below), I had to miss out on the somewhat-longer Wyrd Sisters Podcast of Thud!. See if I can get that in tomorrow! In the meantime –
A) Started with my Call Me Kevin episodes before working out –
I. “Can you play GTA V without breaking laws?” – a short video answering this question with a resounding “no.” XD Kevin attempted to be a good citizen, first with Franklin (driving around with his buddy Lamar and trying to be nothing more than the Uber driver in all these gang shootouts) and then with TREVOR, of all people (refusing to get into any gunfights, or steal a car in the middle of a pouring thunderstorm when the cab company wouldn’t send a cab his way), but all it got him was a bunch of failed missions, a few dead Lamars and Trevors, and the NPCs themselves cutting him off by shooting across all lanes on a three-lane highway to make their turn. (Reminds me of RI drivers!) He got ONE mission done, but at the expense of the laws he was trying so hard to follow, so he ended up letting Trevor get run over by a train. XD You gave it your best shot, Kevin!
II. “Minecraft One Chunk Hardcore Challenge forced me to get creative” – back to the Chonk today, with Kevin getting a few things done – mainly, digging his way to the End Portal below his spawn (and managing to accidentally destroy the silverfish spawner while climbing up a tower of blocks to get away from them and a creeper) to check it out – no pearls preset, sadly; discovering both a bunch of iron blocks AND an iron breastplate in a chest in the same general area, allowing him to actually make some good armor; setting up a pool of water near some lava and using both to slowly BUILD an obsidian portal to the Nether as he couldn’t MINE one (he even blocked off the other side so he wouldn’t run out into the lava! . . .and then took one look at his Nether spawn point and was like “nope, not doing it” and came back XD); killing a bunch of monsters with the help of his “monster spawning room and trap pit,” AND a bunch behind one of the walls with the help of his new best friend, the Lava Bucket (which he put away at the end of the episode because he KNEW he was going to kill himself with it); and tormenting his pit of chickens by throwing even MORE in there to lay more eggs for him. XD A busy day, but a productive one for Military Genius Kevin!
B) And then, after dinner and leftover cake, moved onto GrayStillPlays –
I. “i created a world that only knows pain” – if you’re wondering what that means, it means it’s time for more Solar Smash and Solar Hax! Today, Gray created the planet PAIN (or “PAN” if you look at the populated areas) and messed with weather and god-beings. We learned that, with the right adjustments to the numbers, the God Punch can smash apart the earth in a single blow; the space worm can kill half a billion people just by appearing in the night sky; the space dragons go from burrowing through the core to not really giving a fuck; and lightning is MORE POWERFUL THAN CTHULHU (lightning is capable of vaporizing most planets, including the shielded machine planet, but Cthulhu generally only takes about half (until the numbers are fucked with again) and is repelled by force fields). His power grows by the day – I fear what happens when he gets to fiddle with ALL the rookie numbers.
II. “i literally drove to the moon and this happened” – and then I watched his latest GTA V parkour and remembered that all we have to do to stop him is surround him with wind turbines. XD After blowing up the sun in his last parkour, Gray has moved onto blowing up the moon – which was quite the difficult feat, let me tell you. Mostly because he was abused by wind turbines the entire way over there. He had to be slapped by a wind turbine to make it over the first jump and into the checkpoint; he had to DRIVE OVER a MEGA turbine with fifteen million blades TWICE to make it to the moon itself; he had to drive down to the BOTTOM of the moon in a junk mobile and avoid wind turbines while UPSIDE-DOWN (he had to resort to first person camera to get through it); he had to hover THROUGH a tunnel of wind turbines to get to the crater to get into the moon’s core; and then he had to dive through a final pair of turbines to reach the core of the core. By the time he got there, having to do a spiral wall ride was almost relaxing. ...I say ALMOST. XD But he did succeed, and flung himself into the flames of the explosion in victory! XD Yaaaay~
3. Play Bloodlines and finish off the Kuei-Jin and Ming Xiao: Check! Getting to Ming-Xiao turned out to be fairly easy, in the grand scheme of things – Crystal had a little trouble with the guards, but it wasn’t anything that her Tal’Mehe’Ra blade and Blood Theft couldn’t fix. XD She picked up each set of statues with reasonably minimal fuss, opening the portal to Ming-Xiao’s inner sanctum and going up against her in all her tentacley glory!
. . .I died three, four times before hitting on a winning strategy? ^^; In my defense, she’s a hard-hitting boss – and if her tentacles start coming off, she can make CLONES. And if you don’t kill them while they’re small. . . Eventually my winning strategy was “activate Blood Shield (and I will admit, that power has earned its way back into my good graces – it’s been VERY USEFUL in these last few boss fights), supplement it with Fortitude, hit her with everything in the flamethrower, then hit her with a few distracting Blood Boils before going over to the Dragonsbreath shotgun.” Still very difficult (especially as Ming-Xiao slapping me around often knocked Crystal out of her reload animation for the shotgun), but I persevered in the end, getting the sarcophagus key and the portal out! w00! From there, Crystal hit up Mercurio to sell all her extraneous weapons and buy a few more rounds for the Dragonsbreath; Vandal to get a few more emergency blood packs; and then it was off to LaCroix Tower! She Dominated Chunk into running and hiding, took out almost all the guards on the ground floor with a Blood Boil, and then worked her way up the building! As usual, Blood Theft did a great job of taking care of most of the people in her way – and thanks to some glitchiness with the food court roof not properly loading in, she was able to sneak attack all of the SWAT team that bursts in when you’re almost out of that area (they just stood around instead of patrolling) – AND most of the ones on that subroof too. She ran into some trouble with the boys patrolling the under-construction floor with the bomber (mostly because they kept shooting her while she was trying to dispose of the Astrolite), and hitting the vampire mooks on the seventh floor was rather painful (assholes shooting me through the windows!), but she managed it in the end! I’ve actually saved a couple of doors away from the Sheriff boss fight – made a quick attempt, but while Blood Boil DOES hit the guy for a good chunk of damage, it doesn’t really STOP his teleporting ass. I actually did pretty well against his first form before dying, though! :) On the other hand, I wasn’t really interested in doing his two-stage boss fight that soon after Ming-Xiao, so. . .one last play session to go to end this game, w00! :)
4. Get in a workout: Check! Back on the bike today, and back to the Oxventures, with the latest, “Spell Check!” Having been run out of Bumble and getting tired of sleeping in hedgerows, the gang stumbled across a surprisingly empty tavern with a surprisingly friendly barkeep! Who provided them with many drinks and seemed quite impressed with their magical prowess (Corazon and Dob working together to make sparkly lights and a cocktail umbrella for Egbert’s drink)! Yay!
. . .the drinks were drugged and everyone woke up in jail cells in a strange new location. Jail cells that drained their magical abilities (which was discovered when Corazon tried to Grease up Dob to help him slide through his cell bars), preventing them from using their spells! And also Egbert had some “interesting organs” snipped out of him (discovered AFTER he’d spewed sick so far it landed all over Merilwen in the cell across the little hall). Naturally everyone was very upset about this – FORTUNATELY, Egbert’s fire breath still worked, and he was able to partially melt the bars, and attempt to yank them apart. This didn’t quite work, but it caused a racket that brought the guard – and thanks to some real good rolls, Egbert was able to drag him THROUGH the bars into the cell, and get him to admit that the people he works for have some business of siphoning off people’s magic and stealing interesting organs to sell on the black market. Egbert forced him to unlock everyone’s cell door, and he slumped in a way that suggested he thought he was going to be killed –
And then Dob, who ALWAYS wants to adopt the NPCs, suggested that he come with them, claiming he could sense good in him, and smashed the Charisma + Persuasion roll. XD That’s where I left off, but this is ANOTHER amazing moment I remember from Johnny’s list video – this is Christopher the guard! AKA Johnny forgets AGAIN Dob loves adopting NPCs and thus has to make up a ridiculous name and backstory for this guy on the fly. XD Oooh, this is gonna be good. . .
5. Work on tumblr queues: Check in progress, though it’s nearly done – got my Chill Save update for Wednesday sorted, plus a Thursday reblog on Victor Luvs Alice. On Valice Multiverse, though – FIVE ask replies, three thread replies, AND a new starter! You see why I gave myself a pass on the first list item??
Yeah, so, gotta finish that up before hitting the sheets sooner rather than later. . . We're officially past the halfway point of my long holiday break. :( Ah well, I still have five days, and I intend to make the most of them. Even if that's defined as "looking up stuff on The Smiler on tumblr." XD But more to the point, here's my hoped-for to-dos for tomorrow:
1. Continue work on the 'write, damn you' thing
2. Keep up with YouTube subs, watch all Sims 4-related videos in the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and get Victor and Alice to their graduation in the Chill Save
4. Get in a workout
5. Work on tumblr queues
We'll see how I do! The video game line item might get a substitution or addition if I decide I REALLY want to finish off Crystal's Bloodlines run -- we'll see! For now, time to finish off my Valice Multiverse queue and head to bed -- night all!
