Endgame Viable

First, catching up on Promptapalooza prompts: Tell us about some of your hobbies outside of the realm of your specific niche. Ugh. I feel like all my hobbies have fallen by the wayside. But music, writing, stuff like that. Tell us about some of your favourite antagonists and explain why. Recently, Abby from The Last Of Us Part 2, though I would say it’s arguable whether she’s an antagonist or a protagonist. (742 words.)

I meant to post this two days ago four days ago but I kept putting it off because I hated what I wrote and kept thinking that maybe if I just add a little more it will magically fix itself. So here we are. Not magically fixed at all. Then I put it off again because I didn’t feel like finding a picture. The Promptapalooza prompt from what is now two days past was: Do you “finish” games/hobbies/projects and move on or do you come back to the same things again and again? I typically do finish projects, then forget about them and move on to the next one. I’m a very project-oriented sort of person, as opposed to a routine-oriented person, if that makes any sense. My biggest difficulty is starting projects. (756 words.)

I got distracted with Remnant: From The Ashes, so here are the Promptapalooza prompts I missed: Tell us about a person/s or thing/s that has greatly influenced you. Most of the people on that list would be family or people I’ve known personally, but the first “famous” name that came to mind is Brian May, guitarist for Queen. I don’t play much like him, but his intellectual approach to musicianship has inspired me greatly. (440 words.)

I’m rendering some videos so I have a moment here. Soon after ragequitting Remnant: From The Ashes because of the Shroud boss, I went back and figured out how to defeat that bastard. My recipe for success was: Replace the medium/short-range coach gun I was given at the start with a long-range hunter’s rifle. Upgrade the hunter’s rifle to +2. Install the Hot Shot weapon mod in the hunter’s rifle, which does stacks of fire damage over time. Listen to YouTube videos while mindlessly repeating the boss fight over and over again for a total of about an hour and a half. I counted a total of 33 tries. UPDATE 8/27: Here is my victorious Shroud video. (420 words.)

Well that was quick. I got to the first boss fight (Shroud) and I’m ready to uninstall the game forever now. I chose “Hard” difficulty because I’m a Souls veteran. The combat has been taxing at times, but after some adjustments in tactics, easily overcome. Up until this one boss fight, when it became ludicrously impossible. Shroud has a million hit points. Shroud teleports away after every attack. Shroud lives in an arena that is choked with obstacles preventing you from moving around freely. Shroud causes a bleeding effect if you have the misfortune of being hit. Oh, and Shroud has an army of spawning adds that magically appear and harass you constantly. (553 words.)

Yesterday’s Promptapalooza topic du jour came from Just Geeking By, a blog that is new to me. Check it out. What are some of the things that get you excited in life? One exciting thing for me is discovering an interesting new make-believe world through the medium of games, movies, television, or books, which segues neatly into Remnant: From The Ashes, which is free on the Epic Store right now. Last year I didn’t think very much of this game, when it was announced and promoted as “the next great Souls-like game.” I did not see any resemblance to a Souls game in the footage I watched, so I felt no need to reward the blatantly false advertising. (329 words.)

Now there’s a title that’s sure to wreck some page layouts. Thanks to forgetting about blogging for a day, I’m a day behind now, so I’ll be combining two prompts into one post. This works out well, because I don’t want to respond to one of them anyway. The first prompt from two days ago started with SDWeasel over at Unidentified Signal Source: What is something you have lost along the way that you would love to have back? Can be serious or frivolous. (646 words.)

Yesterday’s Promptapalooza prompt started with Krikket, and exhorted: Tell us about your physical creative space, and how it influences your content creation. Except it wasn’t yesterday’s prompt, it was the day-before-yesterday’s prompt now, because I completely forgot to post this yesterday. My first reaction to this prompt was pretty similar to Krikket’s: “Oh God I don’t want any part of that.” I have major problems organizing my “physical space.” My creative (and living) space is almost entirely inside my head or on a screen of some kind. Consequently in situations where there’s nobody else in the house to see, as is currently the case, I make little or no effort to organize, clean, or otherwise decorate my physical environment, because it’s invisible to me. (366 words.)

I’ve been having a lot of back pain over the last several days, so sitting down to write in the mornings, when I feel the most like writing blog posts, has been a massive chore. I’m trying to push through it to get this post done on Sunday so I don’t fall another day behind. I don’t think of myself as a chronic pain sufferer but over the last several years it’s becoming clear that my freedom of will is increasingly limited by the day-to-day status of my back, and I haven’t quite adjusted to it yet. (767 words.)

Technically I’m starting this post on the night of the 5th, while a thunderstorm passes overhead and rain pours down again. This time, there’s a lot of lightning as well, so I’ve turned off most everything in the house. I haven’t had a working uninterruptible power supply in quite some years, and the only drawback I’ve experienced is that I don’t like leaving my most expensive electrical equipment plugged in while lightning strikes within a few miles. (446 words.)