Late Monday Update

Back to updating at the last minute, as you can see. Managed to have a reasonably productive Boxing Day, at least -- though I never did get to my "official" writing. Then again, it's the last week of the year, the final stretch between Christmas and New Year's, the break before everything starts over again in 2023. I think I can have a quiet day or two when it comes to the old stories. And I got a bunch of other stuff done --

Tumblr: Did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice and got two of the five Chill Save posts for this Wednesday sorted before lunch, then got the rest started after lunch (and helping my mom try to find new lightbulbs for my night light, as the one in there burned out). And then, this evening, after YouTube, I went back and got all the text and tags for each post completed! So now the Chill Save update is all ready to be queued up on Wednesday. :) I think that counts just fine for writing, honestly!

Gaming: Decided I wanted to try something else today, and after a little fiddling with Steam and looking over the other games in my library, I thought, “I DID want to run through Superliminal with the Developer Commentary, didn’t I?” So that’s what I did for a bit! Played through the first two levels, “Induction” and “Optical,” with the commentary on, clicking on the little “talking chess pieces” as they popped up. There’s fewer of them than you might think – I thought they would have discussed more about certain puzzles, like the one where you have to find just the right angle to tip a block over a wall – but it was interesting stuff nonetheless, discussing things like how they kept players from just dragging one object through the game to solve each puzzle; how the first level was just a test in the basics while foreshadowing future levels (like all the clocks in one window foreshadowing the “clone” level); thoughts on the jazzy music; and how they put secret areas wherever they noticed players particularly poking around and escaping. Including above the ceiling in the final puzzle in “Optical” (where you have to grab the moon through the skylights to get the exit door off of it). Which led to me spending about the last half-hour of my playsession working out how to combine a cheese ramp, a giant letter block, a soda can, the moon itself, and the exit door itself to get out the skylight and see the secret area. XD It’s basically just an extra “backstage” room with a whole bunch of projectors doing the night sky effects that you can turn on and off, nothing too special. I also found a few more fire alarms to pull to work toward that achievement, and discovered that the game REALLY does not like you trying to put a mini soda from the first “Dream Soda” vending machine on the button in the room where you’re supposed to shrink the cube to fit in the little slot with the button near the door. SOO much glitching. XD I’ll probably do a few more sessions this week, just for something different!

YouTube: I am back to being pretty much caught up on Subs (apart from the Rewind video, but as per below, I’m watching that with my workouts for the moment, so we’ll count it as “watched enough”), having done a Gray-Kevin-Gray sandwich today –

A) First up after Superliminal and cookies, we had GrayStillPlays and “When you live a life of never ending pain” – aka that hour-and-a-half-long Happy Wheels compilation I told you about a few days ago. As per usual, the first one was some new content – well, semi-new in this case; Gray went back to a bottle flip board that had previously given him a lot of trouble (as seen a bit later in the video) to show how much better he’s gotten at it and get the win properly – and then the rest of it was kind of a “best of” of rope swings, bottle flips, various bike parkours, and of course Dylan Snider’s famous “story boards” featuring such things as “Gorefield” stalking you in your house and the sewers, taking a trip over your own desk, and visiting the GrayStillPlays airport. Though a handful of the earliest ones I didn’t actually REMEMBER – like a particular rainbow rope swing – I dunno if it’s been THAT LONG or I missed an episode at some point (I haven’t been subscribed to Gray all that long, so. . .). Still, good to go back to a game I really enjoyed seeing him play in the past – the HW board creators could be as weird and wild as the GTA V people. (Dylan in particular was probably the Happy Wheels equivalent of Alex.) :)

B) Then, after supper, it was over to Call Me Kevin’s upload today – “This game has a talking gun as the main character,” aka Kevin plays High On Life! A game by one of the creators of Rick and Morty that has you playing as a slacker who loves video games getting mixed up in the middle of an alien invasion, teleporting himself, his sister, and his house to a whole new planet, and then becoming an alien bounty hunter after the guy he was looking to try and help them proved to be, uh, not up to the task after being evicted (but who was willing to give you his stuff in exchange for being allowed to crash in your house). Also, all your weapons are aliens themselves and talk to you. Starting weapon is basic pistol Kenny, who does things like shoot bouncing goo that can knock down platforms and enemies, and you get ones like Knifey (a murder-happy knife who can also work as a grappling hook), Gus (a bigger frog-like gun that can shoot discs into walls to make platforms for you to use, and pull enemies closer for easier kills), and Sweezy (who shoots time-slowing bubbles) as you complete the various bounties. From what I could see, the game isn’t as funny as it THINKS it is (there’s a lot of self-aware “this is all a video game” jokes that just kind of get old, and a lot of crass language for the sake of having crass language), but it is bright and colorful and well-suited for chaos magnet Kevin. The kind of guy who tries to kill every NPC (and is occasionally allowed to), leaps into the acid water on the regular, and who has a lot of thoughts on how bizarre everything is. I don’t think I’d want to play it myself, but it was fun watching him romp across the levels, cheesing his way past puzzles and shooting various aliens until they died and he could harvest their DNA. Which Knifey was VERY keen on, let me tell you. XD

C) And then it was back over to GrayStillPlays for his upload of the day – “When you upgrade dinosaurs 9,999,999 times,” aka Gray plays CyberDino: T-Rex Vs Robots! Which is basically what it says on the tin – it’s one of those side-scrolling shooters, only your character is an angry orange T-Rex going up against various robots – some that look at least vaguely like actual animals (like cybernetic penguins and tank-like beetles), others that are a little harder to parse (like, you can kind of understand the snowmen with buzz saw hands, but there’s this purple thing with a gun that is just – a purple thing). Fortunately the angry orange T-Rex has its own gun at its disposal, with matching leg and head armor – and as it works its way through the stages, it picks up copies of these items that can be combined and used to upgrade the armor and guns and give them new abilities (like shooting a Scorpion-style chain out of the starter yellow gun, or summoning an orbital laser with the purple gun, or just straight up firing a nuke with the red gun). And every so often, you fight a bizarre boss like a robotic gorilla or Krang’s younger cousin to proceed. It’s all goofy, cartoony fun and Gray got a lot of pleasure out of upgrading the guns and seeing the T-Rex take down the robots. :) Good times!

Workout: Back on the bike today, starting the Call Me Kevin “Rewind 2022” video while sucking down loads of water from my new bigger water bottle. XD I’m about a half-hour in, with Kevin showing off a bunch of his own personal favorite clips – such as going around without a boat in Sea of Thieves and making friends with a random crew and impressing them with his musical skills; teaching JackSepticEye the basics of Project Zomboid (a rare instance of Kevin possibly being the more sensible one); trying to play Sims 2 following all the suggestions in The Sims 2 Prima Guide; playing Hermit in Stardew Valley and planting a fuckton of potatoes to get up his farming skill; playing virtual reality Among Us and making new friends; and – where I left off – making a monster in that awful WWE wrestling game. XD Good stuff, and nice to relive Kevin’s year with him! Even if I have to do so during workouts because VIDEO LONG.

Not too shabby! Got through pretty much everything I wanted to do today. :) And, of course, tomorrow is my birthday! :D (As of 3:15 AM tomorrow, anyway, as per my Mom.) Dunno exactly what I'm gonna do tomorrow, but I'm gonna try and be chill and enjoy the day. :) Night all!