burnin’ up the dance floor

I entered chat on Saturday to find an ongoing debate about whether “flesh house” or “human house” was the proper term for a house made of human flesh. Luis suggested “human house” was better for plausible deniability (oh, it’s probably just a house for humans, that’s all). numbers said it was situational, just like you might refer to a “fur coat” or “mink coat” depending on whether you wanted to emphasize the exact material used.

On that note, we entered the Dancing Green arena. “Lock in,” said newbie. “Lock in. Lock in, Chang. Changhai.”

Saturday was when the Dancing Green fight really clicked for me, although I still have execution issues on the back half of Arcady Night Fever. The second version is what really gets me. In that version, there’s eight halfroom cleaves in rapid succession. So, for instance, Dante will call out “north, south, west, east” and we do that; and then he calls “southeast, northwest” and we do that. His calls are fine. It’s purely a mental issue on my end, because the moves are very rapid and I often mix up “west” and “east” on short notice. HGR suggested we switch to “star” and “lar” (for starboard/larboard). That got vetoed.

Sadly we didn’t clear Saturday, so the “flesh house” discussion didn’t make it into the clear vid. On Sunday I played like garbage. I didn’t feel more tired or more distracted than usual, but my head wasn’t in the game. My two dumbest completely unforced deaths: (1) During the first funky floor, I somehow de-targeted the boss. I got so distracted trying to re-target that I forgot to move into my spotlight and died of shame. (2) During Arcady Night Fever 1, I thought the mechanic had ended when it hadn’t, and stood in multiple halfroom cleaves.

It was like that all afternoon. Somehow I managed to get my act together, and we cleared near the end of the session—a picture perfect finish as he was casting enrage. Amazingly, it was mostly a clean run on my part (no deaths; one damage down on Arcady Night Fever 2, but I’ll take it). That’s a 15%. Wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the highest I get on this fight.

I do generally like the fight. It’s fast, it’s fun, it’s flashy. I enjoy the movement for funky floor + spotlights and the in-out portion of Arcady Night Fever. It’s interesting how much the fight is set up as a dps gatekeeper: it constantly hands out damage downs whenever you get a mech wrong (we had 10 total damage downs on our winning run), and you get a damage buff for perfect execution of Arcady Night Fever. Setting the tone for the tier, I guess.