So for whatever reason, there was a decision to not have family night on Friday. I don't actually know why, but it was instead meant for Sunday, aka, today. However, among the four of us who actually live at our home (my parents, me, and my older sister), we had a pseudo-family-night anyway by binge-watching Agents of Shield until we had finished with the latest season (season four).
I rather liked the framework, and was relieved it didn't end the way I thought (I thought that for teh dramaz not to mention for furthering the chance of reviving Hydra, that evil!Fitz would come out, altogether overriding Fitz as we had known him, because that is what was multiple times foreshadowed), but also disappointed in how they concluded the framework (because it was essentially "too clean" and a lot of wasted potential--with the technology they built and the characters they had, I thought that an LMD would be made to bring them in as heroes, especially since it was possible that one character was a "loyal" Hydra agent actually loyal to Shield and if brought into the real world would help to sabotage the plan and I have to admit I was hoping for that).
Still, the direction the season did take was along the same lines of what I was predicting, just in a less drama-filled way. I do have to wonder what exactly will be happening here, but it was nice to have seen. My Saturday had the anime-night I talked about before, though I didn't mention the game I was wasting time on is Binding of Isaac. (I got it from one of my girlfriends as a gift.)
It's rather fun, but sometimes it can be frustrating when the game literally spawns hellish nightmares of floors. My best run ever, for instance, I managed to get luck of the gods early-on by--without a deal with the devil--managing to pick up the ghost upgrade, which gives you flight and makes your shots pass through walls. I also got helpers, to give me multiple shots, and also had multiple upgrades to range and speed, so I was basically a god. I gained permanent health to fill out the full first bar...
...Except that one level spawned with basically no health refills. And lots of enemies I had never encountered before (this being my first time having gotten that deep), meaning I took damage from being unfamiliar with how they worked. And then I kept searching. And searching. And searching. For health. The level was ridiculously long. Like, most floors have something around twelve rooms total or so, this one was at least fourteen and not even finished because I died before having explored it all.
And how did I die? I spent a key to enter a room. 99% of the time, when you use a key to unlock a room, the room inside is a shop. I was expecting a shop, and I had like 50 coins to spend. (Part of my luck? I had a massive surplus of both bombs and keys and also coins. Yet zero ability to spend said coins because no shops were spawning.) 99% of the time. When you use a key. You enter a room which is a shop. Swear to god, play the game and test it out yourself. It really is, almost 100%, a guaranteed shop.
...What did I get instead of a shop?
...A boss battle.
At two health.
I was unprepared for a boss battle because I was still desperately searching for health and I was hoping that I was going to be entering a shop (which often contains health both normal and spirit which I could afford to buy both of, effectively doubling my health and enabling me to have a realistic chance of surviving the floor's official boss battle), and yet. Instead of the 99% chance of getting the shop I needed. On that hellish floor which spawned terrain useless for my abilities and enemies which could easily surpass my strengths. I got a less-than-1%. Boss. battle.
I was streaming this at the time, and ranting and raving to one of my girlfriends who was watching the stream about how the game hated me. (Literally I was the floor above the original-final-boss's floor. The penultimate floor of a person's first playthrough.) They were like, "Hey it's not quite as bad as it looks" literally moments before I opened that door. And then when I did, they instantly were like, "Okay maybe the game does hate you" because they, as a veteran of the game, also knew just how improbable it is to encounter a boss instead of a shop when unlocking a room.
I swear that the game loves to give absolutely junk spawns half of my playthroughs and yet in said playthroughs in spite of me having no advantages I manage to get relatively far (most of the time) with my skills alone...and then when I am given good spawns, I am instead given ridiculously bad rooms for those abilities. As in, getting abilities which are literally god-tiered for free (another playthrough I got that one item I can't remember the name of which is considered :easymode: because of its massive wave of damage, and it was from a demon door but I was at full health with a health drop outside the demon door so I went in, got the item, and restored myself to full health), and then entering areas where said abilities are a hindrance.
(Said :easymode: ability has a charge time. If fighting multiple enemies, especially ones which can't be one-hit killed, and ESPECIALLY ones which can regenerate over time, and throwing into that the need to actually hit the enemies in the first place and not miss when often enemies have movement trajectories that allow them to evade, it proves to be my death every single time even though it's a god-tiered ability.)
If someone told me there was a predictive AI which sees how well you are doing and deliberately messes with the RNG numbers when it thinks you are doing "too good" (and which offers zero sympathy the other way if you just suck), I would absolutely believe them. Because it's just so infuriating to have been on the fast-track to godhood and then be thrown into situations where said god-tiered abilities are of no actual use, reducing you bit by bit to a withered husk which eventually perishes when overwhelmed.
Still fun though. I'm also still hoping to pick up one item in particular. In one playthrough of the game, I got an item which turned my head green and made my shots be puke-bombs (essentially), and I found that I was reasonably skilled at not blowing myself up with them. In fact I was rather good at not doing so. (I did die eventually, but for much the same reasons as above: areas spawning where enemies couldn't be killed by my bombs without me killing myself, in that they were too fast to be hit and were right on top of me. I think it was actually a boss battle in the form of lust which killed me, since lust is fast, gets right on top of you, stays right on top of you, and with bombs instead of shots, can't be knocked back at all.)
There's a different item which has a similar effect, turning shots into normal bombs. The difference is, this item once picked up for the first time unlocks a challenge where you always 100% of the time spawn with that ability. Given my positive experience with using bomb-shots, I think that if I could use them on every runthrough I'd do reasonably well. It'd take some adjusting to, of course. I'd blow myself up often enough to make my girlfriends question if it'd actually be worth it. I'd get bad luck draws frequently enough where they would see me screwed over by the enemies' formation.
Not to mention, having bomb-shots makes the majority of items you'd pick up be worthless since bomb-shots don't have great synergy with most other items. However, the sheer convenience of having effectively an unlimited bomb supply, combined with practice and luck of the draw ability-wise, would allow me to eventually get something able to take me all the way.
Anyway. That was my Saturday. Now for my Sunday. We're having family night tonight from my understanding, in spite of the recent developments I hinted about. What were the recent developments? Yesterday, my grandfather took a turn for the worse--much, much, much, much worse. This information was passed to us second-hand: his caretaker tends to panic and exaggerate and say things which aren't quite true, and she was the only direct source of information. Said information was then filtered through our mother, who is also prone to panic and exaggeration, making it a second unreliable source of information.
This is why I indicated it might not be as severe as they thought--but in this case. It turns out they were actually right, as of today. My grandfather died a few hours ago, so now we're making funeral arrangement plans and so on and so forth. Half the family (as in, everyone living here except me) is leaving soon. I think tomorrow, but I'm not sure of the details.
The rest are meant to leave the day before the funeral and presumably return home the day after the funeral. When the funeral will be, I don't know exactly. How long I'll be gone, also don't know that. But I will in fact be gone for a few days. Dealing with family members who are emotionally unstable, and who have noticed that I seem unfazed by this and assume me being unfazed is a type of apathy/indifference in that they are outright accusing me of not caring. (And the worst part is, in a sense, they're not exactly wrong.)
A bit of a hostile environment where I'm at risk, but I'll survive. I always do. The main thing is, there will be coordination of stuff which I'm not so good at coordinating. Getting the house prepared. (Food for the cats, alarm set with me having knowledge of how to disarm said alarm, doors locked, etc.) What to pack. (I don't even have a clue.) How to communicate, how much responsibilities I'm expected to have, and so on and so forth.
There's just a lot of juggling involved and I don't know what is expected of me. I don't know how I'm supposed to act, what I'm supposed to do, and how I'm supposed to live my life while everyone is grieving. (I've previously explained in a prior blog how for whatever reason, I can't actually grieve in a situation like this. It's difficult to explain, but basically the pain of loss isn't there because I don't feel like I have lost them in spite of them being gone, if that makes sense. Death as a celebration of life, as it were.)
Soyeah, that's the drama. Turns out it's a little more significant than I thought last night and will be impacting me. I'm a little worried, but I don't think concern for me would be warranted because everything I'm worried about is for the most part smaller stuff.
I'll let you know when I know more.
I rather liked the framework, and was relieved it didn't end the way I thought (I thought that for teh dramaz not to mention for furthering the chance of reviving Hydra, that evil!Fitz would come out, altogether overriding Fitz as we had known him, because that is what was multiple times foreshadowed), but also disappointed in how they concluded the framework (because it was essentially "too clean" and a lot of wasted potential--with the technology they built and the characters they had, I thought that an LMD would be made to bring them in as heroes, especially since it was possible that one character was a "loyal" Hydra agent actually loyal to Shield and if brought into the real world would help to sabotage the plan and I have to admit I was hoping for that).
Still, the direction the season did take was along the same lines of what I was predicting, just in a less drama-filled way. I do have to wonder what exactly will be happening here, but it was nice to have seen. My Saturday had the anime-night I talked about before, though I didn't mention the game I was wasting time on is Binding of Isaac. (I got it from one of my girlfriends as a gift.)
It's rather fun, but sometimes it can be frustrating when the game literally spawns hellish nightmares of floors. My best run ever, for instance, I managed to get luck of the gods early-on by--without a deal with the devil--managing to pick up the ghost upgrade, which gives you flight and makes your shots pass through walls. I also got helpers, to give me multiple shots, and also had multiple upgrades to range and speed, so I was basically a god. I gained permanent health to fill out the full first bar...
...Except that one level spawned with basically no health refills. And lots of enemies I had never encountered before (this being my first time having gotten that deep), meaning I took damage from being unfamiliar with how they worked. And then I kept searching. And searching. And searching. For health. The level was ridiculously long. Like, most floors have something around twelve rooms total or so, this one was at least fourteen and not even finished because I died before having explored it all.
And how did I die? I spent a key to enter a room. 99% of the time, when you use a key to unlock a room, the room inside is a shop. I was expecting a shop, and I had like 50 coins to spend. (Part of my luck? I had a massive surplus of both bombs and keys and also coins. Yet zero ability to spend said coins because no shops were spawning.) 99% of the time. When you use a key. You enter a room which is a shop. Swear to god, play the game and test it out yourself. It really is, almost 100%, a guaranteed shop.
...What did I get instead of a shop?
...A boss battle.
At two health.
I was unprepared for a boss battle because I was still desperately searching for health and I was hoping that I was going to be entering a shop (which often contains health both normal and spirit which I could afford to buy both of, effectively doubling my health and enabling me to have a realistic chance of surviving the floor's official boss battle), and yet. Instead of the 99% chance of getting the shop I needed. On that hellish floor which spawned terrain useless for my abilities and enemies which could easily surpass my strengths. I got a less-than-1%. Boss. battle.
I was streaming this at the time, and ranting and raving to one of my girlfriends who was watching the stream about how the game hated me. (Literally I was the floor above the original-final-boss's floor. The penultimate floor of a person's first playthrough.) They were like, "Hey it's not quite as bad as it looks" literally moments before I opened that door. And then when I did, they instantly were like, "Okay maybe the game does hate you" because they, as a veteran of the game, also knew just how improbable it is to encounter a boss instead of a shop when unlocking a room.
I swear that the game loves to give absolutely junk spawns half of my playthroughs and yet in said playthroughs in spite of me having no advantages I manage to get relatively far (most of the time) with my skills alone...and then when I am given good spawns, I am instead given ridiculously bad rooms for those abilities. As in, getting abilities which are literally god-tiered for free (another playthrough I got that one item I can't remember the name of which is considered :easymode: because of its massive wave of damage, and it was from a demon door but I was at full health with a health drop outside the demon door so I went in, got the item, and restored myself to full health), and then entering areas where said abilities are a hindrance.
(Said :easymode: ability has a charge time. If fighting multiple enemies, especially ones which can't be one-hit killed, and ESPECIALLY ones which can regenerate over time, and throwing into that the need to actually hit the enemies in the first place and not miss when often enemies have movement trajectories that allow them to evade, it proves to be my death every single time even though it's a god-tiered ability.)
If someone told me there was a predictive AI which sees how well you are doing and deliberately messes with the RNG numbers when it thinks you are doing "too good" (and which offers zero sympathy the other way if you just suck), I would absolutely believe them. Because it's just so infuriating to have been on the fast-track to godhood and then be thrown into situations where said god-tiered abilities are of no actual use, reducing you bit by bit to a withered husk which eventually perishes when overwhelmed.
Still fun though. I'm also still hoping to pick up one item in particular. In one playthrough of the game, I got an item which turned my head green and made my shots be puke-bombs (essentially), and I found that I was reasonably skilled at not blowing myself up with them. In fact I was rather good at not doing so. (I did die eventually, but for much the same reasons as above: areas spawning where enemies couldn't be killed by my bombs without me killing myself, in that they were too fast to be hit and were right on top of me. I think it was actually a boss battle in the form of lust which killed me, since lust is fast, gets right on top of you, stays right on top of you, and with bombs instead of shots, can't be knocked back at all.)
There's a different item which has a similar effect, turning shots into normal bombs. The difference is, this item once picked up for the first time unlocks a challenge where you always 100% of the time spawn with that ability. Given my positive experience with using bomb-shots, I think that if I could use them on every runthrough I'd do reasonably well. It'd take some adjusting to, of course. I'd blow myself up often enough to make my girlfriends question if it'd actually be worth it. I'd get bad luck draws frequently enough where they would see me screwed over by the enemies' formation.
Not to mention, having bomb-shots makes the majority of items you'd pick up be worthless since bomb-shots don't have great synergy with most other items. However, the sheer convenience of having effectively an unlimited bomb supply, combined with practice and luck of the draw ability-wise, would allow me to eventually get something able to take me all the way.
Anyway. That was my Saturday. Now for my Sunday. We're having family night tonight from my understanding, in spite of the recent developments I hinted about. What were the recent developments? Yesterday, my grandfather took a turn for the worse--much, much, much, much worse. This information was passed to us second-hand: his caretaker tends to panic and exaggerate and say things which aren't quite true, and she was the only direct source of information. Said information was then filtered through our mother, who is also prone to panic and exaggeration, making it a second unreliable source of information.
This is why I indicated it might not be as severe as they thought--but in this case. It turns out they were actually right, as of today. My grandfather died a few hours ago, so now we're making funeral arrangement plans and so on and so forth. Half the family (as in, everyone living here except me) is leaving soon. I think tomorrow, but I'm not sure of the details.
The rest are meant to leave the day before the funeral and presumably return home the day after the funeral. When the funeral will be, I don't know exactly. How long I'll be gone, also don't know that. But I will in fact be gone for a few days. Dealing with family members who are emotionally unstable, and who have noticed that I seem unfazed by this and assume me being unfazed is a type of apathy/indifference in that they are outright accusing me of not caring. (And the worst part is, in a sense, they're not exactly wrong.)
A bit of a hostile environment where I'm at risk, but I'll survive. I always do. The main thing is, there will be coordination of stuff which I'm not so good at coordinating. Getting the house prepared. (Food for the cats, alarm set with me having knowledge of how to disarm said alarm, doors locked, etc.) What to pack. (I don't even have a clue.) How to communicate, how much responsibilities I'm expected to have, and so on and so forth.
There's just a lot of juggling involved and I don't know what is expected of me. I don't know how I'm supposed to act, what I'm supposed to do, and how I'm supposed to live my life while everyone is grieving. (I've previously explained in a prior blog how for whatever reason, I can't actually grieve in a situation like this. It's difficult to explain, but basically the pain of loss isn't there because I don't feel like I have lost them in spite of them being gone, if that makes sense. Death as a celebration of life, as it were.)
Soyeah, that's the drama. Turns out it's a little more significant than I thought last night and will be impacting me. I'm a little worried, but I don't think concern for me would be warranted because everything I'm worried about is for the most part smaller stuff.
I'll let you know when I know more.
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