Heading To Our New Year's Marathon
Dec. 31st, 2025 07:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickSo I'll just say Happy New Year's Eve, I'll see you in 2026!
EDIT 1/1/2026: Happy New Year! The marathon went -- MOSTLY well; no trouble with what we watched (the end of Greg Davies's comedy special "You Magnificent Beast" (which we'd started earlier and figured we might as well finish) and James Acaster's four-part comedy special series "Repertoire" (made in 2017, still very funny)), but Dad had to bail early because he really wasn't feeling well. :( He's been dealing with not feeling right for a while, and I do not like it. Here's hoping that he can get into a doctor soon and that 2026 lets up on the damn health scares...in the meantime, I'll fill in here what I did on the last day of 2025:
Tumblr: Didn’t do much over here because I was suffering from The Tireds most of yesterday (not 100% sure why, though I did have a bit of a time trying to get to sleep the night before), but I did manage to start the rough draft of another post I wanted to make on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – one focusing on recreating my beloved OT3 in one David J. Prokopetz’s in-development TTRPG, Eat God. Which, if you are unfamiliar (and I’m pretty sure you are), is an RPG where you play as muppety creatures with bullshit cartoon powers going around causing problems on purpose because you have some sort of bone to pick with whatever may pass as a higher deity in this situation. If you would like a look at one of the playtest copies of the book, you may download it for free at the Penguin King itch.io page. I backed the Kickstarter for the full release, and I’ve been intrigued by at least the character creation rules for quite some time, so I figured I ought to see what Victor, Alice, and Smiler would look like in this world! So far, Smiler’s the one who is the most feature-complete – I have three traits (Dizzying Display, which allows them to flash people with bright lights – aka The Flasher; Languorous Lure, which allows them to distract people and draw them in – aka The Hypnotizer; and Vile Venom, which allows them to inject people with hallucinogenic venom – aka The Inoculator), plus a distinct appearance (obviously a mini version of the actual roller coaster’s Marmaliser – my backstory is that they were a broken robot created by a wizard the Folk – the official name for the muppety people you play as – found and put in the big pot of alchemical stew they use to create other Folk to see if it would come to life – it did!). Still deciding what Victor and Alice’s Folk-forms should have as traits, and what that means about what they look like – I kinda wanted to do Victor as a sort of Moth-Man and give him Fluttering Flight, but looking at his in-movie skills versus Alice’s in-game abilities, it might make more sense to give the ability to Alice...suppose he could still have moth wings, they’d just be nonfunctional. Or maybe help with his Fast Feet ability? More thought required...
FreeTube: Spent the afternoon over here with OXBox, watching their two major end-of-the-year videos:
A) “What the Hell Just Happened: So You Think You Know 2025 | Quiz of the Year!” The annual battle of Jane versus Mike in Andy’s quiz about the games and games-related events of the past year (er, mostly – as you’ll see in the write-up below, one round dealt with anything BUT 2025). I went ahead and played along this time around, just for fun – here’s how each round went, and how everyone did:
I. Complete The Eurogamer Headline – the usual starting round of “fill in the missing word or words from a Eurogamer headline,” which revealed such things as the song “Defying Gravity” from Wicked has a Fortnite sound effect in it (specifically, when Elphaba tosses herself out the window, layered into the music is the sound of a Fortnite player falling from the battle bus – Mike was like “what?!” quite understandably), and the GTA series has never returned to London after going there for one spin-off game was simply because the UK has, you know, proper gun laws, and the series relies on the gun culture and easy access to firearms that only exists in the US (Jane thought it was because they drive on the left side of the road and nobody in the US can handle that XD). Final scores were Jane 3/5, Mike 2/5 – I also got 2/5 thanks to some lucky guesses.
II. Screenshots – Andy showed the pair 7 screenshots of games with the main character obscured and tasked them with guessing the game. Both proved very adept at identifying games from their scenery, with Jane getting 6/7, and Mike 7/7! Me, I got a mere 2/7, and that was the result of one correct guess and two instances of me getting SOMETHING about the screenshot right without getting the exact game (specifically, I gave myself a half-point for correctly guessing that the first game was “that Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan” (I didn’t recall it was specifically called Assassin’s Creed: Shadows), and a half-point for correctly guessing another screenshot as being related to the Dune franchise – apparently they released a Dune RPG, Dune Awakening, this year. This was the one Jane got wrong, misidentifying it as Dune ASCENSION – she tried to argue Andy into a half-point, but he refused to give it to her).
III. Silksong Boss or He-Man Villain? – Andy presented various ridiculous names, like Kobra Kahn and Gurr the Outcast, to the pair and asked them to guess if they were Silksong bosses or villain characters from the old He-Man toy line and cartoons. Again, they proved to be very adept at sorting out who was a bug and who was 80s ridiculousness, with Jane scoring 6/8, and Mike 7/8. I got a paltry 3/8, simply because I didn’t expect Andy to stuff so many He-Man characters into the line-up – I thought most of them were trick questions! But no, I’m just bad at identifying He-Man villains. :p
IV. Celebrity Launch Parties – This is the round that went all “blast from the past” – inspired by Paul Rudd doing a commercial for the Switch 2 this year that apparently aped an old commercial he did back in the 90s for the Super Nintendo, Andy gathered up four pictures of early 2000s celebrities attending launch parties for games and asked Jane and Mike to identify the game (with the game title and other identifying characteristics blacked out). Nobody did particularly well in this round – Jane got 1/4 due solely to Andy failing to properly conceal ALL of The Sims Online’s iconic title text behind Elijah Wood in his screenshot (he left some visible just beside his knee), while Mike managed 2/4 on the basis of Andy accepting just The Sims for the Elijah shot (as he’d declared previously he’d accept the general franchise) and recognizing some of the iconic mountains of Skyrim behind Christina Aguilera. As for me, I didn’t spot the The Sims Online title text in time to get the Elijah Wood screenshot – but I did successfully guess that Zac Efron was at a Halo release event in his screenshot! The specific game was Halo 3, but I figured if Mike got a point for The Sims, I could get a point for Halo, thus giving me also 1/4 this round.
V. Music Round – Andy presented Jane and Mike with the most banging tunes from games this year, and tasked them with identifying them! LOT of good music this year, let me tell you – who knew Mario Kart World would have such an awesome track tune for the “Boo Cinema” stage? Unfortunately, though, while I love video game music, I’m often not good at identifying the games they come from – fortunately for me, neither are Jane or Mike. Jane managed to fare better with some lucky guesses this year, getting 4/8, while Mike struggled to get 2/8, and I only got 1/8 with a lucky guess about a song that proved to indeed come from Donkey Kong: Bananza. XD Still, at least I got to hear some more excellent music!
VI. Lightning Round – And the usual ending round, featuring what was supposed to be quick-fire questions answered quickly, but in practice weren’t so much. :p Oh, and amusingly, one of the questions had an answer that was right at time of filming, but wrong at time of release – namely, “Which of these characters, ranging from Godzilla to Sabrina Carpenter to Marty McFly to Jar-Jar Binks, has Fortnite NOT added this year?” Apparently the team behind Fortnite added Marty to their game at the absolute last minute (December 23rd, meaning we now know the quiz was filmed before that date), just to make things harder for OXBox. XD Anyway, Jane did well this round, especially on the anagrams at the end, getting 7/10, while Mike struggled his way to a 4.5/10 and I got a mere 0.5/10 (both of us getting the half-point for recognizing that Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 contained two actors that last worked together in the Scream movies – it’s Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich, incidentally, the two characters who teamed up to play the original Ghostface in the first movie).
And there you had it! Final scores were Jane 27, Mike 24.5, and me 9.5 (which I consider really good given I do NOT follow modern games except when they appear on OXBox). Jane was fairly magnanimous in victory, telling Mike to take good vibes into the next year (because she was not going to let him forget she won this quiz), while he swore revenge in 2026. XD Good times, as always!
B) And “Game of the Year 2025: WE DECIDE” – Jane, Andy, Mike, and Ellen talking about their personal Games Of The Year, along with a few honorable mentions. In order, we had –
Jane: Her GOTY was Blue Prince, which she stated was a masterwork of a puzzle game that she got really deep into and absolutely adored (if you’re curious, her favorite room is the Observatory with its big telescope, while her least favorite the Chapel with its red carpet and stark pews) – sure, it was hard, but she liked that it made her think, finding it satisfying to watch the story unfold – and listen to the music. Her sole Honorable Mention was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which she praised for looking beautiful and capturing hearts and minds with its story and gameplay.
Andy: His GOTY was Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (who is surprised), which he declared was the most fun game he’d played all year, thanks to leaning fully into its silly premise (like, he admitted that most of the main story missions were pretty serious, but everything else was completely bonkers in the best way) and allowing him to live his dreams of owning a pirate galleon with laser cannons. :p His two Honorable Mentions were – amusingly – Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, backing up Jane’s assertions that they were both excellent games (especially the latter, which he said rightfully won a bunch of awards).
Mike: His GOTY was Mario Kart World, which he explained was a game that he’d originally had his doubts about as a follow-up to the perfection of Mario Kart 8, but which had exceeded all his expectations thanks to deciding to do something new with the formula by taking it open world and introducing new gameplay modes (specifically, he said that he absolutely loves the “battle royale” feel of the Knockout Tour mode – which I think goes a long way to explaining how he did so well in that Christmas challenge) – he just appreciates that now he has two Mario Kart titles to love for different reasons! His two Honorable Mentions were Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, a beat-em-up that he appreciated was doing something a bit different from the Street Fighter franchise, and Blades Of Fire, a game he admitted was just mid, but had the good challenge of a Soulsborne combined with the chunky combat of a later God Of War (basically, it wouldn’t be your FAVORITE game, but if you liked the combo, it could be up there).
Ellen: Her GOTY was Ghost of Yotei (again, who is surprised, she did two videos on it), which she gushed was an excellent follow-up to its predecessor that polished up all the good bits and improved on the flaws (for example, making it so the open world didn’t feel too open and thus kind of repetitive), provided a compelling new main character, and gave her lots of fun new weapons and techniques to use in combat. Just a perfect example of a perfect sequel! Her THREE Honorable Mentions were Donkey Kong Bananza, due to being a fun Donkey Kong game; Blue Prince, due to enjoying not only trying to solve the puzzles herself, but watch others on social media solve them; and Mario Kart World, due to also enjoying the new tracks and the Knockout Tours (mostly because she’s actually pretty good at them – hasn’t yet got a first in Knockout, but she’s gotten at least one second!)
So that was all nice. Nothing PARTICULARLY surprising from the group, admittedly – nobody was shocked Andy’s GOTY was the Yakuza spin-off that let him be a pirate and beat people up, for example, nor that Mike picked some sort of driving game – but it was still fun to hear them talk about the games they loved. :) Here’s hoping the new year gives them plenty of new candidates for GOTY this time in 2026!
Workout: And, shortly before The Marathon commenced, I headed downstairs for another ride on the stationary bike and another chunk of “Blades in the Dark RETURNS! 🎁 | Oxventure Holiday Special - The Effugium Contract” by Oxventure! Things got tense during today’s just-over-a-half-hour, with:
A) Troy NEARLY blowing things after seeing the lady talking to the waiter about their poor performance by hopping off the stage to hype up the crowd and address her directly to see if she has any requests – as you can imagine, she was SHOCKED at someone of HIS station talking directly to HER. Barnaby, watching all of this, used some of his light load to produce a hip flask, top up his drink, and take a big swig. XD Fortunately, it turned out all right, as Troy got a 4 on the Sway roll, meaning the richies weren’t exactly keen on this, but willing to let it slide, and the woman actually did make a request – the song “Four Cuckoos.” Johnny immediately used a flashback to establish that the Quartet knew the song very well. XD But yeah, they were able to play that competently and win back the crowd a bit, stopping the “Ejected From The Room, and Possibly The Airship” clock. Yay!
B) The Minister pausing the music to make a speech to the assembled, talking about how he was so glad to see all the elite here on this airship; how he was sure they would be able to find themselves a spot, far away from the site of The Attack, to found their new utopia – and even if they could, how the airship would allow them to continue on, as it was a marvel of engineering designed to be self-sustaining; and how the Effugium had been a real labor to construct, but whenever he had been tempted to give up and just let the rabble in, he’d pictured all of their brave faces and pushed on. And how he hoped that all their ungrateful inferiors left behind in Elessia tore themselves apart, the scum. ...That last rather brought the mood down, as you might imagine! But the speech did yield some interesting information – namely, that the airship was designed to last a while, and that it was lifted by some mysterious self-sustaining self-replenishing gas that his engineers had supposedly worked up. I am suspicious of that, and the Quartet was too.
C) Gabe managing to talk the group into dedicating their next song to Oswin Fry in order to try and impress him and hopefully inspire him to ask them to give him a private performance in his hopefully-soundproof rooms (or, as Eliza suggested a little later, annoy him by playing badly enough that he was inspired to discipline personally and privately) – this nearly went wrong again when Troy asked the guy what he wanted and it turned out he wasn’t very fond of music (and started telling the Minister he’d be happy to procure better entertainment at the next banquet…) – however, Troy saved it by offering to play the minister’s inauguration song, “Five Cuckoos,” which Oswin HAD to agree to because, well, he couldn’t be seen disliking THAT, now could he? Jane then successfully got Luke to agree to let her use her Mastermind special ability (which is supposed to allow you to push yourself for no stress when working on a long-term project or gathering information) on making sure this song was played as beautifully as possible, on the basis of “this is a one-shot and I won’t get to use it otherwise” – Luke ruled it was a long song and made sense, and with those extra dice, they managed to move Oswin with their beautiful music, causing him to book them for a session in the Bacchanalatorium later. Yay again!
D) While all the above was going on, Barnaby quietly slipping out of the room to follow the waiter the lady was complaining to earlier to impress upon him how much he liked the band and their “experimental music,” topping things off with a small bribe (well, small to Barnaby – Luke immediately started going on about how this waiter was now dreaming of the bakery he could now open). Shortly thereafter, a waitress arrived on the scene to talk to the waiter and inform him of the band being booked for the Bacchanalatorium later, causing Barnaby to realize the Quartet must have managed to turn things around; he then proceeded to use the opportunity to learn Oswin’s schedule from the waiter, which revealed that the man was going to go around the ship performing brief inspections and getting reports from everyone running all the various sections, before heading off to the Bacchanalatorium to hang out with the Minister. useful!
E) The Quartet taking a 15-minute break upon seeing Barnaby return, allowing the two to stealthily share information (with Barnaby looking like he was just hanging out NEAR the band, not actually chatting with them). Barnaby informed them of what Oswin’s schedule looked like (indicating he thought that pushing him off the deck and making it look like an accident was the best plan), but – when Troy asked what he wanted in return – admitted that he’d rather like to talk to the man to get more info on the airship before they murdered him, as not only was he suspicious about the supposed mission, he was also suspicious about how this whole airship worked. The Quartet thus shared what they’d learned about the magical self-sustaining gas from the Minister’s speech, and Troy showed him the map he’d gotten earlier – which indicated there was an engine room on the lowest deck running the length of the ship, but didn’t actually show what the hell was in it. Hmmm. (Oh, and Gabe revealed to the others the secret of his mandolin, causing Troy to be like “is THAT why you were playing so badly?” ...and then to nearly go through the floor when Gabe handed it to him so he could see for himself. XD)
F) Gabe using his Prestidigitation powers to spice up a heckler’s nose, and the group using the distraction to slip out and maybe get a better feel for the ship (Barnaby leading the way as the Established Rich Person, and Troy changing into his fancy “can pass as an actual passenger” clothes just in case), deciding to first check out the Bacchanalatorium to assess its suitability as an assassination location, under the guise of the band checking the acoustics. Cue them arriving at the famed location (marked with doors carved with bunches of grapes and gods smooching and all that), an attendant opening the door –
And Luke going into a description of what’s going on in the room that was VERY MUCH censored. Like, there were soooooo many bleeps. And soooooo many expressions of shock and horror from the players. XD We don’t know if he was genuinely describing horrifying sexual acts or just pretending to for comedy – all we know is that it involved clarified butter, something going round and round like a Catherine wheel, and something on the couches that prevented stainage. Barnaby was like “First time fraternizing with the rich folk, eh?” while Troy just slooooowly closed the door. XD
G) The group then deciding they’d much rather check out the engine room and whatever horrors might be happening there and heading down that way – they managed to get down to the penultimate deck, just above the engine room, without any trouble (though they did see a sign indicating trespassers would be confined to the brig), but couldn’t find any way into the actual engine room. And then they heard voices from up ahead, one of which was definitely Oswin Fry. Winnie, as the Lurk, offered to lead a Prowl roll, and made her way down the corridor to the corner where the voices were coming from with perfect stealth –
Only stopping once to have a near-heart attack as Eliza, Gabriel, and Barnaby all blundered along making noise behind her. XD But they all made it to the corner, close enough to hear that Oswin was getting a report from the engineers on how everything was going – a report that was “conspicuously bland,” according to Luke. Hmmmmmm…
And that’s where I left off. Tomorrow, we’ll see if the group gets away with their eavesdropping, and if they can make it into the mysterious Engine Room! Because I want to know what the fuck is going on on this airship myself already. *suspicious eyebrow lift*
Not a bad way to end 2025, I suppose! Now we'll see how I start 2026...
EDIT 1/1/2026: Happy New Year! The marathon went -- MOSTLY well; no trouble with what we watched (the end of Greg Davies's comedy special "You Magnificent Beast" (which we'd started earlier and figured we might as well finish) and James Acaster's four-part comedy special series "Repertoire" (made in 2017, still very funny)), but Dad had to bail early because he really wasn't feeling well. :( He's been dealing with not feeling right for a while, and I do not like it. Here's hoping that he can get into a doctor soon and that 2026 lets up on the damn health scares...in the meantime, I'll fill in here what I did on the last day of 2025:
Tumblr: Didn’t do much over here because I was suffering from The Tireds most of yesterday (not 100% sure why, though I did have a bit of a time trying to get to sleep the night before), but I did manage to start the rough draft of another post I wanted to make on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – one focusing on recreating my beloved OT3 in one David J. Prokopetz’s in-development TTRPG, Eat God. Which, if you are unfamiliar (and I’m pretty sure you are), is an RPG where you play as muppety creatures with bullshit cartoon powers going around causing problems on purpose because you have some sort of bone to pick with whatever may pass as a higher deity in this situation. If you would like a look at one of the playtest copies of the book, you may download it for free at the Penguin King itch.io page. I backed the Kickstarter for the full release, and I’ve been intrigued by at least the character creation rules for quite some time, so I figured I ought to see what Victor, Alice, and Smiler would look like in this world! So far, Smiler’s the one who is the most feature-complete – I have three traits (Dizzying Display, which allows them to flash people with bright lights – aka The Flasher; Languorous Lure, which allows them to distract people and draw them in – aka The Hypnotizer; and Vile Venom, which allows them to inject people with hallucinogenic venom – aka The Inoculator), plus a distinct appearance (obviously a mini version of the actual roller coaster’s Marmaliser – my backstory is that they were a broken robot created by a wizard the Folk – the official name for the muppety people you play as – found and put in the big pot of alchemical stew they use to create other Folk to see if it would come to life – it did!). Still deciding what Victor and Alice’s Folk-forms should have as traits, and what that means about what they look like – I kinda wanted to do Victor as a sort of Moth-Man and give him Fluttering Flight, but looking at his in-movie skills versus Alice’s in-game abilities, it might make more sense to give the ability to Alice...suppose he could still have moth wings, they’d just be nonfunctional. Or maybe help with his Fast Feet ability? More thought required...
FreeTube: Spent the afternoon over here with OXBox, watching their two major end-of-the-year videos:
A) “What the Hell Just Happened: So You Think You Know 2025 | Quiz of the Year!” The annual battle of Jane versus Mike in Andy’s quiz about the games and games-related events of the past year (er, mostly – as you’ll see in the write-up below, one round dealt with anything BUT 2025). I went ahead and played along this time around, just for fun – here’s how each round went, and how everyone did:
I. Complete The Eurogamer Headline – the usual starting round of “fill in the missing word or words from a Eurogamer headline,” which revealed such things as the song “Defying Gravity” from Wicked has a Fortnite sound effect in it (specifically, when Elphaba tosses herself out the window, layered into the music is the sound of a Fortnite player falling from the battle bus – Mike was like “what?!” quite understandably), and the GTA series has never returned to London after going there for one spin-off game was simply because the UK has, you know, proper gun laws, and the series relies on the gun culture and easy access to firearms that only exists in the US (Jane thought it was because they drive on the left side of the road and nobody in the US can handle that XD). Final scores were Jane 3/5, Mike 2/5 – I also got 2/5 thanks to some lucky guesses.
II. Screenshots – Andy showed the pair 7 screenshots of games with the main character obscured and tasked them with guessing the game. Both proved very adept at identifying games from their scenery, with Jane getting 6/7, and Mike 7/7! Me, I got a mere 2/7, and that was the result of one correct guess and two instances of me getting SOMETHING about the screenshot right without getting the exact game (specifically, I gave myself a half-point for correctly guessing that the first game was “that Assassin’s Creed game set in Japan” (I didn’t recall it was specifically called Assassin’s Creed: Shadows), and a half-point for correctly guessing another screenshot as being related to the Dune franchise – apparently they released a Dune RPG, Dune Awakening, this year. This was the one Jane got wrong, misidentifying it as Dune ASCENSION – she tried to argue Andy into a half-point, but he refused to give it to her).
III. Silksong Boss or He-Man Villain? – Andy presented various ridiculous names, like Kobra Kahn and Gurr the Outcast, to the pair and asked them to guess if they were Silksong bosses or villain characters from the old He-Man toy line and cartoons. Again, they proved to be very adept at sorting out who was a bug and who was 80s ridiculousness, with Jane scoring 6/8, and Mike 7/8. I got a paltry 3/8, simply because I didn’t expect Andy to stuff so many He-Man characters into the line-up – I thought most of them were trick questions! But no, I’m just bad at identifying He-Man villains. :p
IV. Celebrity Launch Parties – This is the round that went all “blast from the past” – inspired by Paul Rudd doing a commercial for the Switch 2 this year that apparently aped an old commercial he did back in the 90s for the Super Nintendo, Andy gathered up four pictures of early 2000s celebrities attending launch parties for games and asked Jane and Mike to identify the game (with the game title and other identifying characteristics blacked out). Nobody did particularly well in this round – Jane got 1/4 due solely to Andy failing to properly conceal ALL of The Sims Online’s iconic title text behind Elijah Wood in his screenshot (he left some visible just beside his knee), while Mike managed 2/4 on the basis of Andy accepting just The Sims for the Elijah shot (as he’d declared previously he’d accept the general franchise) and recognizing some of the iconic mountains of Skyrim behind Christina Aguilera. As for me, I didn’t spot the The Sims Online title text in time to get the Elijah Wood screenshot – but I did successfully guess that Zac Efron was at a Halo release event in his screenshot! The specific game was Halo 3, but I figured if Mike got a point for The Sims, I could get a point for Halo, thus giving me also 1/4 this round.
V. Music Round – Andy presented Jane and Mike with the most banging tunes from games this year, and tasked them with identifying them! LOT of good music this year, let me tell you – who knew Mario Kart World would have such an awesome track tune for the “Boo Cinema” stage? Unfortunately, though, while I love video game music, I’m often not good at identifying the games they come from – fortunately for me, neither are Jane or Mike. Jane managed to fare better with some lucky guesses this year, getting 4/8, while Mike struggled to get 2/8, and I only got 1/8 with a lucky guess about a song that proved to indeed come from Donkey Kong: Bananza. XD Still, at least I got to hear some more excellent music!
VI. Lightning Round – And the usual ending round, featuring what was supposed to be quick-fire questions answered quickly, but in practice weren’t so much. :p Oh, and amusingly, one of the questions had an answer that was right at time of filming, but wrong at time of release – namely, “Which of these characters, ranging from Godzilla to Sabrina Carpenter to Marty McFly to Jar-Jar Binks, has Fortnite NOT added this year?” Apparently the team behind Fortnite added Marty to their game at the absolute last minute (December 23rd, meaning we now know the quiz was filmed before that date), just to make things harder for OXBox. XD Anyway, Jane did well this round, especially on the anagrams at the end, getting 7/10, while Mike struggled his way to a 4.5/10 and I got a mere 0.5/10 (both of us getting the half-point for recognizing that Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 contained two actors that last worked together in the Scream movies – it’s Matthew Lillard and Skeet Ulrich, incidentally, the two characters who teamed up to play the original Ghostface in the first movie).
And there you had it! Final scores were Jane 27, Mike 24.5, and me 9.5 (which I consider really good given I do NOT follow modern games except when they appear on OXBox). Jane was fairly magnanimous in victory, telling Mike to take good vibes into the next year (because she was not going to let him forget she won this quiz), while he swore revenge in 2026. XD Good times, as always!
B) And “Game of the Year 2025: WE DECIDE” – Jane, Andy, Mike, and Ellen talking about their personal Games Of The Year, along with a few honorable mentions. In order, we had –
Jane: Her GOTY was Blue Prince, which she stated was a masterwork of a puzzle game that she got really deep into and absolutely adored (if you’re curious, her favorite room is the Observatory with its big telescope, while her least favorite the Chapel with its red carpet and stark pews) – sure, it was hard, but she liked that it made her think, finding it satisfying to watch the story unfold – and listen to the music. Her sole Honorable Mention was Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which she praised for looking beautiful and capturing hearts and minds with its story and gameplay.
Andy: His GOTY was Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii (who is surprised), which he declared was the most fun game he’d played all year, thanks to leaning fully into its silly premise (like, he admitted that most of the main story missions were pretty serious, but everything else was completely bonkers in the best way) and allowing him to live his dreams of owning a pirate galleon with laser cannons. :p His two Honorable Mentions were – amusingly – Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, backing up Jane’s assertions that they were both excellent games (especially the latter, which he said rightfully won a bunch of awards).
Mike: His GOTY was Mario Kart World, which he explained was a game that he’d originally had his doubts about as a follow-up to the perfection of Mario Kart 8, but which had exceeded all his expectations thanks to deciding to do something new with the formula by taking it open world and introducing new gameplay modes (specifically, he said that he absolutely loves the “battle royale” feel of the Knockout Tour mode – which I think goes a long way to explaining how he did so well in that Christmas challenge) – he just appreciates that now he has two Mario Kart titles to love for different reasons! His two Honorable Mentions were Fatal Fury: City Of The Wolves, a beat-em-up that he appreciated was doing something a bit different from the Street Fighter franchise, and Blades Of Fire, a game he admitted was just mid, but had the good challenge of a Soulsborne combined with the chunky combat of a later God Of War (basically, it wouldn’t be your FAVORITE game, but if you liked the combo, it could be up there).
Ellen: Her GOTY was Ghost of Yotei (again, who is surprised, she did two videos on it), which she gushed was an excellent follow-up to its predecessor that polished up all the good bits and improved on the flaws (for example, making it so the open world didn’t feel too open and thus kind of repetitive), provided a compelling new main character, and gave her lots of fun new weapons and techniques to use in combat. Just a perfect example of a perfect sequel! Her THREE Honorable Mentions were Donkey Kong Bananza, due to being a fun Donkey Kong game; Blue Prince, due to enjoying not only trying to solve the puzzles herself, but watch others on social media solve them; and Mario Kart World, due to also enjoying the new tracks and the Knockout Tours (mostly because she’s actually pretty good at them – hasn’t yet got a first in Knockout, but she’s gotten at least one second!)
So that was all nice. Nothing PARTICULARLY surprising from the group, admittedly – nobody was shocked Andy’s GOTY was the Yakuza spin-off that let him be a pirate and beat people up, for example, nor that Mike picked some sort of driving game – but it was still fun to hear them talk about the games they loved. :) Here’s hoping the new year gives them plenty of new candidates for GOTY this time in 2026!
Workout: And, shortly before The Marathon commenced, I headed downstairs for another ride on the stationary bike and another chunk of “Blades in the Dark RETURNS! 🎁 | Oxventure Holiday Special - The Effugium Contract” by Oxventure! Things got tense during today’s just-over-a-half-hour, with:
A) Troy NEARLY blowing things after seeing the lady talking to the waiter about their poor performance by hopping off the stage to hype up the crowd and address her directly to see if she has any requests – as you can imagine, she was SHOCKED at someone of HIS station talking directly to HER. Barnaby, watching all of this, used some of his light load to produce a hip flask, top up his drink, and take a big swig. XD Fortunately, it turned out all right, as Troy got a 4 on the Sway roll, meaning the richies weren’t exactly keen on this, but willing to let it slide, and the woman actually did make a request – the song “Four Cuckoos.” Johnny immediately used a flashback to establish that the Quartet knew the song very well. XD But yeah, they were able to play that competently and win back the crowd a bit, stopping the “Ejected From The Room, and Possibly The Airship” clock. Yay!
B) The Minister pausing the music to make a speech to the assembled, talking about how he was so glad to see all the elite here on this airship; how he was sure they would be able to find themselves a spot, far away from the site of The Attack, to found their new utopia – and even if they could, how the airship would allow them to continue on, as it was a marvel of engineering designed to be self-sustaining; and how the Effugium had been a real labor to construct, but whenever he had been tempted to give up and just let the rabble in, he’d pictured all of their brave faces and pushed on. And how he hoped that all their ungrateful inferiors left behind in Elessia tore themselves apart, the scum. ...That last rather brought the mood down, as you might imagine! But the speech did yield some interesting information – namely, that the airship was designed to last a while, and that it was lifted by some mysterious self-sustaining self-replenishing gas that his engineers had supposedly worked up. I am suspicious of that, and the Quartet was too.
C) Gabe managing to talk the group into dedicating their next song to Oswin Fry in order to try and impress him and hopefully inspire him to ask them to give him a private performance in his hopefully-soundproof rooms (or, as Eliza suggested a little later, annoy him by playing badly enough that he was inspired to discipline personally and privately) – this nearly went wrong again when Troy asked the guy what he wanted and it turned out he wasn’t very fond of music (and started telling the Minister he’d be happy to procure better entertainment at the next banquet…) – however, Troy saved it by offering to play the minister’s inauguration song, “Five Cuckoos,” which Oswin HAD to agree to because, well, he couldn’t be seen disliking THAT, now could he? Jane then successfully got Luke to agree to let her use her Mastermind special ability (which is supposed to allow you to push yourself for no stress when working on a long-term project or gathering information) on making sure this song was played as beautifully as possible, on the basis of “this is a one-shot and I won’t get to use it otherwise” – Luke ruled it was a long song and made sense, and with those extra dice, they managed to move Oswin with their beautiful music, causing him to book them for a session in the Bacchanalatorium later. Yay again!
D) While all the above was going on, Barnaby quietly slipping out of the room to follow the waiter the lady was complaining to earlier to impress upon him how much he liked the band and their “experimental music,” topping things off with a small bribe (well, small to Barnaby – Luke immediately started going on about how this waiter was now dreaming of the bakery he could now open). Shortly thereafter, a waitress arrived on the scene to talk to the waiter and inform him of the band being booked for the Bacchanalatorium later, causing Barnaby to realize the Quartet must have managed to turn things around; he then proceeded to use the opportunity to learn Oswin’s schedule from the waiter, which revealed that the man was going to go around the ship performing brief inspections and getting reports from everyone running all the various sections, before heading off to the Bacchanalatorium to hang out with the Minister. useful!
E) The Quartet taking a 15-minute break upon seeing Barnaby return, allowing the two to stealthily share information (with Barnaby looking like he was just hanging out NEAR the band, not actually chatting with them). Barnaby informed them of what Oswin’s schedule looked like (indicating he thought that pushing him off the deck and making it look like an accident was the best plan), but – when Troy asked what he wanted in return – admitted that he’d rather like to talk to the man to get more info on the airship before they murdered him, as not only was he suspicious about the supposed mission, he was also suspicious about how this whole airship worked. The Quartet thus shared what they’d learned about the magical self-sustaining gas from the Minister’s speech, and Troy showed him the map he’d gotten earlier – which indicated there was an engine room on the lowest deck running the length of the ship, but didn’t actually show what the hell was in it. Hmmm. (Oh, and Gabe revealed to the others the secret of his mandolin, causing Troy to be like “is THAT why you were playing so badly?” ...and then to nearly go through the floor when Gabe handed it to him so he could see for himself. XD)
F) Gabe using his Prestidigitation powers to spice up a heckler’s nose, and the group using the distraction to slip out and maybe get a better feel for the ship (Barnaby leading the way as the Established Rich Person, and Troy changing into his fancy “can pass as an actual passenger” clothes just in case), deciding to first check out the Bacchanalatorium to assess its suitability as an assassination location, under the guise of the band checking the acoustics. Cue them arriving at the famed location (marked with doors carved with bunches of grapes and gods smooching and all that), an attendant opening the door –
And Luke going into a description of what’s going on in the room that was VERY MUCH censored. Like, there were soooooo many bleeps. And soooooo many expressions of shock and horror from the players. XD We don’t know if he was genuinely describing horrifying sexual acts or just pretending to for comedy – all we know is that it involved clarified butter, something going round and round like a Catherine wheel, and something on the couches that prevented stainage. Barnaby was like “First time fraternizing with the rich folk, eh?” while Troy just slooooowly closed the door. XD
G) The group then deciding they’d much rather check out the engine room and whatever horrors might be happening there and heading down that way – they managed to get down to the penultimate deck, just above the engine room, without any trouble (though they did see a sign indicating trespassers would be confined to the brig), but couldn’t find any way into the actual engine room. And then they heard voices from up ahead, one of which was definitely Oswin Fry. Winnie, as the Lurk, offered to lead a Prowl roll, and made her way down the corridor to the corner where the voices were coming from with perfect stealth –
Only stopping once to have a near-heart attack as Eliza, Gabriel, and Barnaby all blundered along making noise behind her. XD But they all made it to the corner, close enough to hear that Oswin was getting a report from the engineers on how everything was going – a report that was “conspicuously bland,” according to Luke. Hmmmmmm…
And that’s where I left off. Tomorrow, we’ll see if the group gets away with their eavesdropping, and if they can make it into the mysterious Engine Room! Because I want to know what the fuck is going on on this airship myself already. *suspicious eyebrow lift*
Not a bad way to end 2025, I suppose! Now we'll see how I start 2026...
