Late-Running Wednesday

Yeah, unfortunately things have not gone according to plan today when it comes to having enough time to do everything I wanted to do. Not only did I wake up a little later than I wanted, the traffic was most unkind when I was coming home, meaning everything this afternoon happened late, and -- yeah. *grumbles* Here's what I did get done today --

Work – Today proved to be one of those days where I feel like I didn’t really do a lot – mostly because I ended up distracted from what I was trying to do (get through the rest of the exceptions) by stuff my coworkers were trying to do (namely, untangle the mystery of what to do with some matching gift checks that came in about half a year after the gifts they were supposed to match). And also figure out what’s happening next Tuesday, when that damn mass for the new Bishop coming in is going to happen. Plus side, looks like the only thing I have to go to is the mass itself; minus side, it starts earlier than they said it was going to because of stupid religious nonsense. *grumbles* My own fault for staying at that place, I suppose… Just gotta focus on getting through the final couple of days this week, and then we can worry about THAT.

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Baldur's Gate 3 But it's Only Bad Choices” by OXtra! You will be thrilled to learn that Shove Fighter Luke and Newbie Warlock Ellen continued to make only the worst choices – which led to them getting caught in a bit of a time loop on top of the chapel ruins for a while...let me explain:

A) After Luke was saved from burning to death in his bare feet, the pair ended up on top of the chapel ruins, with Ellen interrupting the conversation between Gimblebock and his friend as they argued about going to check out the ruins of the Nautiloid. Ellen, of course, quickly seized on attacking the pair as the worst decision to make – and she was right, as Gimblebock and his companions (the guy he was talking two and the two keeping watch from further up on ruins) easily wiped the floor with her and Luke. Good thing Luke had made sure to save during the convo!

B) After rewinding time, Ellen then managed to successfully intimidate Gimblebock and friends away (because for some reason they thought that was the one most likely to go wrong – not when you have a +3 to Charisma checks it ain’t), and she and Luke were free to explore the area! They immediately found that fragile bit of floor that dumps you into a room right next to the party exploring the interior of the ruins, and the big stone block hanging above it that you can use to smash through the hole if you are so inclined. Luke was of course promptly like “I’ll stand here and you drop the block on me,” and Ellen was happy to oblige by climbing onto the structure and hitting the rope with an Eldritch Blast –

Cue a mostly-dead Luke dropping into the room and immediately ending up in combat with everyone there. Completely unable to defend himself because, well, he was already dying. XD He got wailed on for a while before Ellen jumped in the hole after him, and while she did her best to help him (and got to show off her new “Hellish Rebuke” spell via reaction – it’s actually quite powerful), she too got wailed on until she died. Whoops.

C) However – now they knew what was going on with that block and that floor, the pair now had an idea – use the block against Gimblebock and the guy he was arguing against. So the pair rewound time again, and – after a brief misstep that required another reload – while Ellen kept the pair distracted in conversation, Luke used his new sword-throwing skills to sever the rope and smash them with the block. This worked beautifully –

But it did mean that the pair were now in combat with Gimblebock’s two OTHER friends, and Luke was now unarmed, as his sword was floating above the hole. Fortunately, Ellen’s Hellish Rebuke ended up murdering the guy with the acid arrows before he could do TOO much damage, and while taking down the mage proved to be a very tough fight (as she did like casting Sleep and Firebolt on the two), the pair did indeed best her. Luke then went to collect his sword –

And was punished for making a good decision by falling down the hole and starting fight number two with the people inside. XD He just managed to hold them off for a while (mostly because they HAD bothered to heal a bit this time around) while Ellen talked her way past the guy guarding the door on the other side of the ruins, before murdering him immediately with an Eldritch Blast and running into the fray – unfortunately, his insistence on throwing shovels and trying to flex by hitting someone with an entire chest (only to MISS) meant that he was soon taken out, and it wasn’t long before the enemies found the hiding Ellen nearby and took her out too (though she did nearly kill their barbarian with some Eldritch Blasting). They tried!

D) And thus time was rewound once more! This time, things finally went the pair’s way, with Luke successfully throwing his sword at the rope and crushing Gimblebock and friend under a stone block; Ellen successfully murdering the guy with the acid arrows (though unfortunately her Hellish Rebuke didn’t just outright murder him this time); Luke chasing the mage and managing to shove her off the very contraption that had held the block to kill her; and Luke managing to grab his sword WITHOUT falling down the hole. Cue the pair of them getting the fuck out of dodge before they got pulled back into that fight again. XD

E) With the time loop successfully broken, the two continued on their way, and – after a brief trip to the spot where Lae’zel SHOULD have been hanging in her cage, had she not been already murdered (which now just featured the random bit of weak floor hanging there in midair), and to a cliffside where the pair attempted to shove each other off the side, only to discover the game wouldn’t let them (dang invisible walls!), they stumbled across the tiefling refugee camp, and the cutscene with Aradin and his adventurers demanding to be let inside, only for the goblins chasing them to show up and kill the guy opening the gate. Once all the players were in position (including our boy Wyll), the game informed Luke and Ellen that they were part of this fight whether they liked it or not. Luke said “I have an idea, if you’re interested–”

Cue Ellen going “we join the fight on the side of the goblins?” Luke was like “that is SO much worse than what I was going to suggest – let’s do it!” XD (For the record, he was going to suggest running away.) So yeah – when I left things off, they were preparing to help out the goblin invaders! Granted, Ellen had accidentally killed one with a Hellish Rebuke thanks to the goblin attacking her on their turn, but hey – wouldn’t be a “bad choices only” run if they didn’t have EVERYONE mad at them. XD Tomorrow, we finish things off with this grand finale fight! Should be interesting!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – though rather than making any FORWARD progress, I ended up re-editing what I edited yesterday, with Alice entering the library and knocking out that ghoul playing with one of the wall sconce levers you need to fiddle with for the first of Grout’s puzzles. Mostly because I decided to double-check that I was right in assuming that the accent table with the note that explains the puzzle was indeed next to the desk with the Weekapaug Thistle bonus item –

Aaaand discovered that, while I’d gotten THAT right, I’d described the library IN GENERAL wrong. Natural consequence of these stories taking ages to write, I suppose – I forget what things look like because I haven’t actually played the game or watched an LP in a while! So I watched a bit of somebody’s video and redid my descriptions to better match the actual game. Fortunately I’m pretty satisfied with the end result, but – meh. Hoping next week I can actually have Alice solve the puzzle and continue onward!

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – just one rather long GrayStillPlays video in there today: “Smallest to biggest bike wheels in GTA 5!” Yes, having done the ridiculous tire sizes on cars, Gray’s GTA team figured it was about time they did the same thing with motorcycles! Gray was thus given a set of four bikes – the little Teensy Tires, the regular Normal Tires, the oversized Big Thin Tires, and the very oversized Big Fat Tires – and a set of five challenges to complete to determine the overall winner when it came to which tires were the best! You already know the drill, so let’s get to the challenges and who defeated each one –

I. A set of three slalom courses that each had to be completed in a 13-second time limit, with the little walls Gray had to weave around getting closer and closer together and more and more numerous with each successive course! As you might imagine, the big-tired vehicles could barely make it around the first set of walls, though the Big Thin Tires DID make it all the way to the second challenge after some practice. But as expected, the one that did the best was the Teensy Tires bike, which had plenty of maneuverability despite being VERY prone to overcorrection whenever Gray turned. Needed a perfect run to get the point, but it DID get there in the end!

II. A set of growing speedbumps made up of LEGO bricks that got larger and steeper as time went on, with one particularly narrow section right in the middle just to keep Gray on his toes! Gray gave the Teensy Tires its best shot, but it proved to be too agonizing to keep going after a certain point. The Normal Tires bike also underperformed...but the Big Thin Tires bike ended up doing really well, mostly because the giant tires and ridiculously long frame meant that it could get some SERIOUS air and jump most of the obstacles. Gray still struggled on the sheer walls that were the final two speedbumps, of course, but eventually through sheer persistence and luck he got over them, and the Big Thin Tires claimed a point!

III. A lengthy tightrope challenge, which started out with a tightrope with a couple of turns in it, then transitioned to a thinner tightrope with various off-center sections Gray had to transfer between, then transitioned to an EVEN THINNER tightrope with gaps in it for Gray to jump, before ending with an enormous leap onto the THINNEST tightrope which at the very end turned into a ramp up to the checkpoint! Now, you probably think that the Teensy Tires bike, given it has, well, teensy tires, was the obvious winner of this challenge, right?

WRONG. Its tendency to overcorrect meant that it was the WORST bike for the challenge! The winner, hilariously enough, was the BIG FAT TIRES bike, because the hitboxes on the tires were so wide, Gray could balance impossibly easily on even the thinnest bits! This did not make the challenges THAT much easier – the gaps in particular had a tendency to toss Gray around – but it made it to the end after much trial and error, and snagged a point!

IV. An acceleration challenge, with Gray having to get to the end of a course full of windmills ready to slap him around in 15.5 seconds, otherwise he would crash into a sudden wall. Once again, Gray thought that the Teensy Tires would have this in the bag – but while they were fast, they weren’t QUITE fast enough. No, the honor of winning this challenge went to the Normal Tires, which had excellent acceleration and didn’t nearly send him flying on every turn to boot. There’s a reason they’re the tires we use everyday!

V. And finally, a gliding challenge, with Gray having to launch himself off a ramp and glide over some mountains, past a weebmill, and into a giant tube over the ocean that led to the win! Gray has a lot of experience gliding motorcycles, and he was able to get both the Normal Tires bike and the Teensy Tires bike a pretty fair distance –

But the one that was most able to defy physics while in the air was the Big Fat Tires bike. Meaning, after a few flubbed attempts, that was the one Gray was able to float over to the tube and drive into the win! So it appears that the bigger and fatter your tires, the better they will be! Who would have thunk? :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check-ish – I did figure out what I wanted to do for Song Saturday over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – reblog the post on K. Flay’s “Make Me Fade,” since it’s a song I associate with “Londerland Bloodlines” AND I could make it at least a little Valicer – but I wasn’t able to finish off the post properly, nor edit the one for Squid’s gift fic. I just didn’t have the time. *sigh* Hopefully tomorrow I’ll able to go over both and finish them off properly!

Other: It was SUPPOSED to rain this afternoon, but the prophecized wetness never showed up, so once I got home from work and changed, we did indeed play beanbags (which did contribute to “everything is late today,” sadly, because I didn’t get in pretty much any computer time before my workout, meaning I had to catch up AFTERWARD). And fortunately, I was a little better today than yesterday, scoring a few good throws in the last game and pulling out one win. :) In fact, we all won one today – final scores were me 3-3-W; Dad W-2-2; and Mom 2-W-3. :) So that’s nice! Dunno if we’ll be able to play tomorrow – depends on if this rain ever shows up or not, I guess!

And yeah, I really need to get to bed now, because once again, I'm running late. *grumbles* One of these days I will figure out time management, I swear...for now, night all!