![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger in the first round of playoffs. She was put in a group of four for your classic PAPA-style playoff, three games and the top two point-getters moving on to the next round. (Winning a game got you four points, second place two points, third place one point, last place zero points.) One of the players, ALX, is new to tournament play --- the International Flipper Pinball Association doesn't list him having anything before four weeks ago --- and, must admit, he looked it. The other players in her group were MEW and AES, women she who intimidate her or worse, get in her head.
MEW has over the last year become a power player, making it into state finals in open and winning or coming in highly in a lot of high-value tournaments. AES, a more average player, meanwhile bunnyhugger feels beats her all the time. This is the power of selective memory: according to their IFPA records, they've been trading off the higher finish in both open and women's only tournaments with remarkable consistency. The last time either of them finished higher than the other two tournaments in a row was January-February 2024. Admittedly, AES finished higher both times.
So. MEW had the pick of all three games. First one was Jim Henson's Labyrinth and, as it was playoffs, RLM started up the live-stream to share with the public. MEW often commentates on these streams so perhaps for that, or perhaps to show off the new Labyrinth, RLM put the stream on that game. Nobody knows much about Labyrinth; it's from a boutique manufacturer and as often happens the grammar of the game is all weird. MEW either knows something or got lucky as she put up 35 million points, an easy win. But bunnyhugger put up six million points for a safe second.
MEW's next choice was Space Shuttle, the solid-state game that saved Williams Pinball in the 80s. Here MEW's usually deft touch failed her and she bottomoed out, coming in last and giving ALX his only point of the round. But AES had two great and one okay balls, taking the win. bunnyhugger took second place again. She would move on if she beat MEW, or if she finished at least one position ahead of AES.
The game: Getaway, luckily a game she knows and likes well enough and that she's played well several times that night, including in head-to-head competition. It also plays enough like the specific table at our local hipster bar that her reflexes are basically right for it. (Not perfectly. The other players all used this trick of letting the ball drain right away and let the ball save launch it back; this is a way to make progress to the next gear. Our home game has historically always had too short a ball save period for this --- it was pretty near useless --- so we would never try that.) She had a solid first ball that left her, MEW, and AES pretty near tied for the lead. (Poor ALX was outclassed.) MEW blew up the second ball, and the third, finishing well over 200 million points. But AES finished her last ball at only about 77 million, and bunnyhugger at 55 million could fairly reliably catch that, and have to do a playoff against AES to move on to the next round.
But, and to the shock of the commenters first and then us sitting around the table watching the stream a few seconds later, her last ball saw what should have been a shot up the left orbit to start multiball fail, and ping out of play, leaving her in third place. She was knocked out and AES took a second win in a row against bunnyhugger.
She cursed out her bad play, of course, but the fact is there really wasn't any bad play. The worst you can say is her second ball on Getaway was almost a house ball, but that happens to everyone sometimes. And she might have been better off, that third ball, shooting the Supercharger, which would have given her only something like eight million points but still, that's a good bit of the gap she needed to make up, and it's always easier to play when the gap you're trying to make up is smaller.
MEW would be knocked out the next round. AES just squeaked through the next, winning a tiebreaker to make it to the third and final round. She didn't win --- RLM did, with DOM taking second --- but, well, maybe next time. Just getting into playoffs is good, getting through a round would be great, getting into finals would have her well-set for the year to come. We'll see what happens.
The drive home was slow, partly because she accidentally left her travel mug behind and we had to return for it. But also because the snow had arrived, and it wasn't extremely heavy but the roads were slow --- I felt comfortable at about 45-50 miles per hour the whole ride home on normally 70 mph Interstates --- and now and then someone passed us, sending my windshield too near a whiteout for my liking. bunnyhugger's too. Had the forecast been clear that this would be the driving conditions, we likely wouldn't have set out.
Next Friday RLM's supposed to have the Dungeons and Dragons launch party, which is supposed to highlight the new game in the tournament in some way. It seems optimistic to suppose they'll be able to get everyone together to play Dungeons and Dragons the same night.
Now please enjoy some more pictures from the Wildwood Grove area of Dollywood, only this time by day.
Here's a view of the Big Bear Mountain tracks, seen from beneath a waterfall that runs (was built?) in front of them. Somewhere way past that is track for the train, too.
And now here ... well, in back you see the twists of the Big Bear Mountain coaster. But what about this little track in front? Are you thinking, as we were, Moose! Moose! Moose on the Loose?
Your thinking is correct! Much like at Darien Lake and at Festyland they have a steeplechase-style track with a single-rider car, in this case with a bear theme. It doesn't share as relentless a string of puns and recitations of ``Moose! Moose! Moose on the Loose!' as the ride at Darien Lake does, but the ride operator who sees you on the return has several good lines to toss at you.
Here's the station, with a bear ready for me to go out and you can see a bear coming around a curve returning someone. There's a lot of nice little scenes to look at along the way; it's a scenic ride, not a thrill one.
Then, here's a bunch of hoppy frogs. I bet this would have been one of my favorite rides as a kid.
From Wildwood Grove you get this view of both the Mystery Mine up front and the Wild Eagle coaster, behind.
Trivia: When Iowa applied for territorial status (granted in 1838) it sought a re-surveying of the border with Missouri, which had been intended (and was specified in the Missouri constitution) to run on the ``parallel of latitude which passes through the rapids of the river Des Moines'', but which as surveyed (in 1816) had curved northward on the east end (along the Des Moines river). Furthermore, there are no rapids in the Des Moines river. Source: How The States Got Their Shapes, Mark Stein. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled (in 1849) that there was no way to know what was meant by the Des Moines rapids but the curved line had been recognized as the border for so long that it should stay as that.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zine Volume 53: Pturkey Island, Tom Sims, Bela Zaboly, Editor Stephanie Noelle.
