martyfan | Reading

What the hell does that title mean, you ask? Well, as for "Periody," it was the second day of my period, meaning I was rather moody, sluggish both mentally and physically, and dealing with a murder scene every time I went to the bathroom today -- fucking biology, I swear. And as for "Mostly Cleaning" -- well, see below --

Cleaning & Laundry: Yup, we had a full load today, with me both needing to clean my room and do the monthly wash of all my blankets and my bathrobe along with my sheets. And unfortunately, it was also one of those days where I had a bit of a slow start, and everything took a little longer than I thought it was going to take. :( Which I think can be blamed on a combination of my period making me feeling generally drained, and me deliberately drawing the dusting out some I could listen to the whole two-and-a-half-hour final episode of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark, “Magic, Ghosts, Danger & Death.” XD What, I really love it and I wanted to make sure I heard the whole thing! How could I pass up hearing the gang finally reaching the Barricade? Cheering them on as they battled Amadeus Astor in one final massive boss fight? Laughing my ass off as Barnaby threw a flask of water on someone because he thought it was some strange exotic chemical concoction? XD Yeah, that kind of highlights the problems with listening to these things while I clean – they’re really fun, but they DO slow me down because I get so into them. Should probably go back to just plain music now that I’m done!

Anyway, regarding how the actual cleaning went – initial dusting started around 10:30 AM-ish, and I threw the laundry in around 11:30 AM-ish. Lunch was kind of late today (mom had to bake the bread for sausage-and-pepper sandwiches because we had no premade rolls or anything), so I was able to get the dusting and Swiffering done and my laundry in the dryer before we finally ate a little after 1:30 PM. I’d hoped to get to my vacuuming right afterward, but a combination of having to help dry all the dishes (working around Mom making meatballs for supper) and an – unfortunate intestinal incident – driving me to the toilet for an embarrassingly long time (I don’t know if I ate something that somewhat disagreed with me, or if my period is just encouraging my intestines to be bastards, but – yeah) meant I didn’t start vacuuming until about 2:50 PM, and didn’t wrap up until just after 3 PM. At which point, my blankets and such were ready to come out of the dryer, so I just went and go those and folded them up while listening to the Superliminal title screen music. Meaning I finally finished and got to start my video gaming around 3:20 PM. *sigh* It would have been earlier if my guts had declined to be such bastards! Meeeh...

Superliminal: I went through the “Labyrinth” level today after finally finishing my cleaning today – and this was another one where getting some of those goodies took some real doing, let me tell you! But I didn’t falter in my mission and, with the help of my guide (and a bit of reloading), I managed to collect:

A) The red pawn hiding in a secret corridor in the sideways room you fall into after falling down a hallway you were previously walking down! This room has a gimmick where there’s an exit door up on the wall high above your head that’s interactive – however, the first time you try to interact with it, it just falls off and hit the wall-floor that you’re standing on. Picking it up again puts a hole in the floor that you can use to escape the room and continue the level. However, there’s a bright blue corridor up on the wall where the exit door originally was, and to reach it, you have to manipulate the exit door into becoming a big old ramp that you can climb up. Hidden in that corridor, under a window in the floor (because of course the corridor is sideways too), is the red pawn. It took me two tries to get the door into the proper position to become a ramp – the first time I ended up shrinking it to tiny size and eventually dropping it through the level architecture, forcing me to reload – but I did it in the end. Moving to another position so I wasn’t fighting the benches nailed to the floor-wall next to me helped a lot, let me tell you! And I also found a fire extinguisher I missed in that corridor, so doubly-glad I got up there!

B) The first blueprint of the level, which was atop the scaffolding sitting on the right-hand side of the “waterfall” pool room, where you have to climb the ledges with the help of a die – which disappears on you when you climb the first ledge, then reappears on the next ledge up with a cheeky smiley face drawn on it. Annoyingly, when this first happened, I turned around too quickly to try and catch the die reappearing, and fell off the first ledge, preventing myself from grabbing the die and forcing a reload – lucky for me the game made a checkpoint right at the start of the room! *sigh* Anyway, to get up onto the scaffolding, you have to climb up the ledges with the die, then go into the backstage area just beyond the room, get a soda from the Dream Soda machine, then use the soda and the die to create a crude pathway up to the top of the scaffolding (generally by making them both really big in a way where you can still climb up them). This REALLY took some doing, as I couldn’t get the die to balance properly on the soda can for the LONGEST time, and kept shrinking the damn thing by accident, but EVENTUALLY I got something that worked and was able to get up on the scaffolding and get the damn blueprint. *shakehead* Oh Pillow Castle (the people behind the game), why are you like this…

C) The blue queen chess piece, which was stuck to the cord of a lamp in the corridor just beyond the room with a yellow button you have to weigh down with a chess piece to open the way forward (at least, that’s how it looked to me – it was dark up near the ceiling!). And using the yellow queen chess piece in the room with you won’t work, because if you put that piece on the button, it immediately turns into a painted image on the wall (it’s delightfully freaky). What you do for the puzzle is stand on the button yourself, see the yellow knight chess piece waiting for you in the corridor beyond, and pick it up and put it on the button to weigh it down and let you proceed. What you do to get the blue queen is to then grab the knight chess piece from the button (thanks to how this game works, once it’s in your pointer hand it’ll be close enough to you not to disappear when the door closes again – it’ll just be small), resize it so you can use it to climb onto the big green pipe running along the side of the room, then grab it and put it on the pipe with you near the lamp, leaning against the wall so you can use it to jump onto the lamp and get close enough to the blue queen to click it (as she’s easily visible from the floor, just too far away to interact with). This one was also a bit annoying, as I had trouble getting the knight into a good position on the pipe so I could use it to leap onto the lamp, but I got there in the end!

D) The second blueprint of the level, which was at the end of a little corridor behind where you land when you drop into the faux-cubism art gallery room with the die that, when you pick it up, suddenly turns the room into an overlit “simulation” room with white lights everywhere and the avocado bed in the middle of the ledge that you you have to climb up. If you turn around instead of immediately picking up the die, you can go around a corner and find some blueprints for, interestingly enough, the NEXT level, “Whitespace,” depicting some of the giant chess pieces there. This is probably one of the easiest blueprints in the game to find –

As evidenced by the fact that, when I went to collect it – I found that the blueprint was already completed. Meaning I’d already clicked on this at some point in the past. O.o I’m guessing that, at one point during one of my original runs, I must have turned around and come this way thinking that maybe it was the way I was MEANT to go, clicked on the blueprint, gone “???”, and then just continued playing because I don’t think I knew about all the collectibles when I first played this back in 2022. XD Welp, at least I knew that one already counted toward my total!

E) The “Projector” constellation room, which was in the overlit simulation room you find yourself after picking up the die in the previous room! Or, rather, it was under it – there’s a square of rectangular white lights in the floor on the lower level of that room, and behind the fake elevator door behind you, there’s some hidden stairs leading down to the corridor that leads to the star room (or you can just wander around until you fall down the hole, like I did XD). I found what I thought were the stars for the constellation pretty quickly, but lining them up took a minute as I struggled to find the right angle to make the projector. Figured it out in the end, though, and was pleased to see the image come to life! That’s almost every constellation collected now, yay~

F) And the third blueprint of the level, which was atop the little room that appears in the endless parking lot once you’ve walked far enough to turn all four horizons you were heading for into four solid walls (I’m – not sure how to explain it any better than that). My guide said that the best way to do that was to climb up the electrical box on the side of the room – I did so, with the help of a nearby chair, and discovered the blueprint lying on the roof. Glad it didn’t require me to drag any items along with me to climb up there! I would have been so annoyed…

So yeah – that’s the penultimate set of collectibles snagged! And as for interesting things I noticed along the way:

I. The electrical boxes you see in various places in this level have proper warning signs on them, telling people not to mess with them – I’d say “safety first,” but this is a game that actively encourages you to empty any fire extinguishers and pull every fire alarm you find, so… XD

II. The water fountains you find while navigating the corridors of the section where the Standard Orientation Protocol stops the Emergency Exit Protocol from waking you up have a sign over them that says “WARNING: This machine is remotely controlled and may start without warning.” I do not think the water fountains actually turn on at any point – but after seeing that sign, they really should! Those two, at least. (Honestly, I think you should just be able to click on them and dispense water, like you can click on the fire extinguishers. Have an achievement for it: “Hydration Achieved” or something like that.)

III. I also got a good look at one of the corkboards in this area, which had two things of interest pinned to it –

a. The mysterious “How To Start It” paper I’ve seen in the reception area of other levels, finally in a place and at a size where I could read it! Turns out it was something Dr. Glenn (yes, two “n”s, apparently I misspelled it before) Pierce typed up while trying to come up with greetings for people who were starting their SomnaSculpt experience! Ranging from the casual “Hey, Glenn here – welcome to your first ever Somnasculpture!” to the fanciful “Greetings, traveler. Welcome to the wonderful world of SomnaSculpt. I am Glenn Pierce, and I will be your guide on this journey.” to the egotistical “Welcome to the future of medical treatment. My name is Dr. Pierce, and I invented SomnaSculpt. Given time, we can, and will, solve everything.” XD And yes, his familiar “Hello. My name is Dr. Glenn Pierce” was on the list too, because it had to be. Honestly, I’m glad he went with that one – him going “Hey, Glenn here” at the start of every message like Cave Johnson from Portal 2 would have had a much different vibe.

b. And a paper covered in code for – well, I thought it was actual code from the game, but apparently it’s code for how the SomnaSculpt system itself works! Which is pretty neat, though much neater are the two Post-It notes stuck to the code printout, one saying “Always asking WHY we’re doing this,” and the other saying “Keep making the game, keep going, don’t mess it up, don’t worry about the bugs in your brain, just do everything by the time it’s over with.” Which is – kinda creepy! But this whole game is kinda creepy, frankly, especially this level – yeah, I know “Blackout” is the explicitly horror-themed one, but this is the one that implies you’re going to be trapped in a dream forever by the incompetence of your carers, which is a lot scarier. I feel like whoever we’re playing should sue Dr. Pierce after this is all over!

IV. There’s a bit in the part where you keep being teleported back into your room whenever you try to leave it after the Standard Orientation Protocol stops you leaving where you fall out of a sideways version of your bedroom and into a big backstage area with a lot of tables and chairs set up for dinner and an alarm clock on a chair, beeping at you (which, when pressed, teleports you back into the standard version of your suite). Now, after playing through “Blackout,” you’d think dinner would be beans, but instead they chose to reuse the chopped-up carrot assets from the “knife jumpscare” moment right before you reach the “IDEA” generator. Maybe the staff accidentally re-enacted the famous fart scene from Blazing Saddles and decided they need more vegetables in their diet or something. XD

V. Something does make a return from “Blackout,” though – the RySan boxes from the box maze! One is in one of the corridors in the backstage area where you’re trying to make your escape, right before you end up falling down a hallway that’s suddenly turned sideways onto a giant red pawn.

VI. Those blue recycling bins you see around the place are apparently only for recycling cardboard, according to a sign above one right next to that giant red pawn. Good to know!

VII. There’s a weirdly shiny SOMETHING attached to one of the walls in the room just below the breakaway floor room (where you THINK you have to resize some stairs to reach an exit high on a wall, but making the stairs bigger makes the floor break apart under you and drops you into a basement area), reflecting the doors on the opposite wall – no idea what it was, but it was interesting!

VIII. The room you go through right before entering the “waterfall pool” room with its moving dice shakes as you go through it, and sounds like a subway train is traveling over it – given SomnaSculpt’s headquarters are in a strip mall, I wonder if this is a reference to something happening in the real world?

IX. Remember that disappearing die in the “waterfall pool” room? What’s interesting is, when it disappears, you can actually hear the die land behind you with a “thunk” – hearing that is what caused me to spin around too fast and fall off the ledge my first time in there.

X. At one point, there’s a maze where you have to find the correct path through a bunch of elevator doors, eventually aided by arrows on the floor (the actual “maze” is pretty small, as per the director’s commentary, because with every room looking alike, they didn’t need to make it big – they just needed to loop people through the same few rooms a couple of times). By sheer coincidence, I managed to speed-run it, taking the right path so that I ended up where the last arrow actually points you to the door that leads outside to the seemingly-endless parking lot. I have no idea how I did that and could not tell you the path I took if you put a gun to my head, but – I’m proud of myself regardless. XD

XI. In addition to the room with your bed that appears in the parking lot once you’ve closed it in, there’s also a separate wall containing a door with a welcome mat, plus a fancy griddle stove next to it for some reason. Complete with a pot on the stovetop. O.o Oookay then. XD

XII. And the big one – when I consulted my guide on where to find the “Projector” constellation room, the person who wrote it mentioned they called it the “Moon Projector” constellation because the projector appears on the main menu screen after you find it, and projects a big old moon on the wall. I was like “ooh, cool,” and – once I was done with the level – returned to the main menu screen to check this. To my delight, I discovered that the guide creator had not lied, and the projector was there, resting on a shelf and projecting the moon on the wall –

And then I looked around the main menu screen and went “hang on. Are ALL the constellation objects in here? Have they ALL been gradually added after I find the rooms and I just haven’t noticed because I haven’t paid that much attention to the main menu?” I thus did some research this evening – and yes, I do believe that is the case! Mostly because I found a couple of examples of a main menu from people who hadn’t yet played the game, and THOSE images didn’t have the Dream Soda machine, or the coffee cup on the ladder, or the cheese wheel on the desk, or any of the other objects I’ve found! So that’s cool – wish I’d noticed earlier! And, apparently, once I find all the constellation objects, I unlock a way to dynamically CHANGE the main menu screen if I want. :D So that’s something to look forward to!

*nods* And that is – NOT that for “Labyrinth,” because unfortunately while I found all the collectibles, and the one fire extinguisher I hadn’t yet emptied, I did not find any unpulled fire alarms! I don’t know where the missing one is lurking – I was looking HARD for those! *frowns* But yes, “Labyrinth” now joins “Optical” in the category of “Levels I Will Have To Replay Later To Get A Missing Item.” Tomorrow, though, we concentrate on finishing off the game proper with “Whitespace,” the final actually playable level (as the actual finale, “Retrospective,” is basically just a big cutscene). And fortunately, as per the Level Select, I HAVE found all the fire alarms and fire extinguishers in there, so I just need to get the collectibles proper. Wish me luck! (Not in finding them, since I’ve got the guide, but in just grabbing the fiddly little bastards. XD)

Writing: Got another page written on “The Van Dort Vacancy” – Victor, Alice, and Smiler got Victor’s clothes, books, sketchbook, and quills packed up today, with Victor lamenting that he didn’t dare take his inks or paints for fear of them spilling, or his easel because it was just too unwieldy (Alice promising him they’d earmark some of their ill-gotten gains to buy him a new one). Smiler suggested Victor also take the big purple blanket on his bed (aka my big purple blanket, which I included in what I believe was one of the first VITD short stories I ever wrote (for the first Polyship Week I participated in, if I recall correctly) – I had Victor explicitly think he was glad he took it from home in that story, so I had to include it here), which prompted Victor to realize that he wanted to take something hidden under said bed – his collection of “slug stories,” aka the Duskwallian equivalent of Victorian “penny dreadfuls.” Hey, my regular Victors read stuff like “Varney The Vampire,” so my VITD Victor had to have a similar vice! :P Anyway, he rooted around for them under there for a bit while talking cheap periodicals with Smiler and Alice (allowing me to bring up the “Amusements” magazine Smiler was reading in one of my more recent VITD stories for Multiamory March – Alice and Victor were very surprised to learn it was NOT an Advocate publication) –

Only to instead find an old fancy masquerade mask. From a party where he was forced to stand around in a stiff, elaborate, horrible costume, and where, when he attempted to woo some ladies the way he saw the other men doing, he got laughed at so cruelly he ran and hid by the buffet for the rest of the party. I ended the chunklet with Smiler asking if Victor had ANY happy memories. I am starting to wonder that myself, Smiler! But don’t worry – tomorrow, Victor’s going to make an announcement that’s going to make YOU very happy, at least...

YouTube: Well, I was hoping to watch more than just the one video, but circumstances forbade. So instead I focused on getting out of my Watch Later the one video I most wanted to watch: “Fast Traffic in Red Dead Redemption 2 is CARNAGE | We React to Ultra Fast Carriages in RDR2” by OXBox! Another one of their newly-beloved “react” videos, this one featured Mike letting Andy play his copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 while Jane watched on, giving Andy control of John Marston in the town of St. Denis and tasking him with getting over to the train station – with Andy and Jane adding the goal of getting to the tailor first, because neither of them approved of the shitty outfit Mike had stuck his John Marston in. There was just one small problem with this plan – Mike had installed the mod “Rampage Trainer,” which makes every carriage in this game travel at the speed of light. As you might imagine, this caused no small amount of chaos, and no small amount of trouble for poor Andy as he tried to get around town. XD Highlights of the video included:

A) Andy starting the challenge being wanted for murder because so many people had died from all the carriages crashing into the buildings/the ground/each other, and then promptly making things worse by shooting every policeman who came for him, all while desperately trying to dodge the carriages – it ended with him having to die so he could start clean

B) Andy having a horse just taken out from clean under him by one of the ultrafast carriages while trying to figure out how to cross a busy road in front of him

C) Andy finally getting John to the tailor (after yet more horse death, flying horses from all the crashing carriages, some very Silent Hill-esque juddering from a carriage on fire caught in a small tunnel off a building, and a brief stint in jail from John being accused of murder AGAIN thanks to being near all this carriage death) and the editors having to speed up how long it took him to chose a new outfit for John (to be fair, I have heard via my friend Squid, who also plays this game, that the clothing system in RDR2 is TOP NOTCH, so him taking a while to get it just right makes sense)

D) Andy getting double-tapped by two carriages in short succession after thinking he found a safe place to stand on the tram line in an area where there are almost no carriages, being launched practically to space, and then falling down and landing perfectly on the top of the tram, giving him three seconds to actually heal up

E) Andy having to deal with another carriage slam knocking John Marston onto a boat in the nearby harbor as he finally got near the station – which was a problem, because John canonically can’t swim (if he drops into swimmable water, his stamina bar INSTANTLY drains). Fortunately, there was a ladder nearby that he could climb before he drowned, and he managed to avoid death by carriage

F) Andy finally getting John to the ticket station...only for the ticket seller to be too busy cowering in terror of the carnage outside to actually sell him a ticket. So Andy instead had John get into the trainyard and climb into one of the train’s freight carriages, and they called that a win. XD He then stupidly climbed out of the carriage to investigate why a dead horse was on a rooftop, and got creamed by another flaming carriage wreck. XD

Fucking hilarious – it’s amazing how much fun you can have with just one mod adding a specific bit of chaos. XD Totally recommend watching this – it’s fourteen minutes of pure superfast carriage comedy!

Other: Got myself a frozen hot chocolate from Dunkin Donuts for the first time in years this afternoon, after playing Superliminal – I felt like, after all the cleaning and the intestinal nonsense, I deserved a treat. Was very tasty, AND I had a gift card that I found in my drawer at work, so I didn’t even have to pay for it. Yay! :)

So yeah -- not the worst day, but I wish I'd been more focused and hadn't had to spend most of it cleaning or, uh, pooping. *shakehead* Hopefully Sunday will be a little better -- hoping to answer Moose's messages; play Superliminal and finish off "Whitespace;" work some more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and keep up with Jon's latest F:NV YOLO Remastered video (probably gonna see if I can watch most of it with my workout). We will see what happens! But right now, I really have to get to bed -- night all!

Current Mood: sleepy

crossover_chick

One because I have officially gotten my period (though my body happily gave me enough warning signals that I was prepared and had a pad in when it actually started at work), and two -- well, see the "Work" section (and, to a lesser degree, the "Superliminal" section) below:

Work – Well, my second half-day Friday started out okay – while I was working in the front alone (my coworker having taken the day off), I was doing just fine – working on the GL, putting on the checks that came in the mail, talking with my supervisor about rearranging some of my vacation days (as my Mom said that it would be better for us to go where we’re going in September), posting some last-minute Easter Collection, and sending a file to my supervisor once my lunch break was done. I was just about ready to wrap everything up by doing some of the roster maintenance he forwarded…

Aaand then the assistant director showed up like ten minutes before we closed with another batch of gifts for me to put on (EXTRA last-minute Easter Collection). *grumble* I managed to do it, simply because there were only four gifts and I was able to put them on very quickly, but it was still annoying to have that happen just as I was getting ready to leave. But I put it out of my mind as I got everything put away and headed out the door. I had a decent commute home, and managed to arrive at the house at about 1:45 PM…

Aaaand that’s when I came upon my Mom ordering plane tickets to our destination. Or, rather, trying to, because she was having trouble with one of the bank cards, and – yeah. Cue her and my Dad having some real problems with trying to verify the charges as real (apparently the e-mails they were getting were VERY confusing), and me retreating to my room as quickly as possible so I didn’t get wrapped up in it. Though I could still hear them both yelling at the various customer service reps they were dealing with from time to time. *wince* Yeah, that – that was not fun. At all. I managed to play my video games like I wanted (see below), and the tickets were eventually successfully acquired, but it really put a damper on the whole afternoon. Ugh. *shakehead* Gonna be very glad to leave this week and all its various annoyances behind, that’s for damn sure...

Superliminal – Well, I got through the “Dollhouse” level today – which took longer than it should have, because that final fucking puzzle in this level is a fucking pain in the ass, especially if you’re doing a Collectibles Run. *huff* But I got everything in the end, which included:

A) The “Chair” constellation room, which was hidden in a fake shadow behind the right-hand exit door for the Relaxation Room (the room with a looping image of clouds being projected on one wall) – and I’m pleased to say that I got the stars for the chair lined up pretty quickly! :) Then again, it wasn’t hard to spot the big old clusters of stars that made up the chair – I just had to back myself into the right position. Still, happy it was one of the easier constellations to get!

B) The first blueprint of the level, which was atop a stack of boxes in the room where you end up after going through the window you have to resize so you can slip through the missing pane (making yourself smaller in the process) – just a simple hop, skip, and jump up said boxes, and I had my dream architectural sketch.

C) The blue king chess piece, which was atop the small doorway you have to go through to reach the pool room of the “hotel” you’re traveling through in this level – coincidentally, right next to the boxes where you get the first blueprint! It’s tiny, so it’s hard to see, but I spotted it right away after collecting the blueprint and made sure to give it a good click. Another one for the old computer chess game!

D) The second blueprint of the level, which is located atop the doorway you got through in the middle of the locker room for the pool (where, when you look up, you see a SECOND locker room stretching out above you, perpendicular to the one you’re traveling through) – all I had to do to get it was retrieve the bouncy castle floatie from the empty pool, head back to the doorway, and set down the floatie in front of it, resized so I could climb up it and onto the top of the door, scoring the blueprint lying on the “wall” next to the first bank of sideways lockers. Appropriately, it was the blueprint for the locker room itself. :) I mean, I had already figured all the blueprints were for the bits of the level where you found them, but this was the first one where it was really obvious!

E) And the third blueprint of the level, which is located atop the punch clock in the “employee break room” where you find yourself after completing the “resize yourself using these two linked doors (which you can resize using perspective tricks as usual) to get out of a locked box through the keyhole up above” puzzle. And THIS is where everything went wrong, because –

I. When I tried to complete the puzzle the FIRST time, right after finally getting one of the doors tiny enough to fit into the keyhole, when I turned around to go through the big door next to me to shrink myself and creep through said keyhole, I suddenly found myself glitching THROUGH the door to the other side of the piece of wall it was on, instead of coming out its linked twin. And after a couple more unsuccessful attempts to go through the big door, the door itself vanished, leaving me stranded in the box with no way to get up to the tiny door and thus get out. O.o I’ve heard of this bug before (or at least something like it), but I’ve never actually EXPERIENCED it, so it was a very confusing moment! (I wrote down in my notes that this was the game getting me back for managing to glitch my way into being the correct size for a door I was a little too large for after resizing the bouncy castle floatie slightly wrong in the previous puzzle. :P)

II. Then, after successfully completing the “through the keyhole” puzzle on my SECOND go, after falling in tiny form down onto the table with the chess game, I realized I had no idea how the hell I was supposed to actually get over to the blueprint atop the punch clock because I was one, so tiny, and two, moved INCREDIBLY fucking slowly (I tried to get to the end of the table, and I had to check if I was actually moving at one point by looking at the chess pieces behind me to see if they were receding at all!). Hell, I wasn’t even sure where the punch clock WAS, even though I knew it had to be in this room because of the description of the blueprint’s location in the guide I was using. The only thing I could grab in the room was the little cardboard dollhouse, and THAT only provided me with the exit to the level itself. So I went back and looked at the video included with my guide –

Aaaand realized that the author was using the linked doors from the inside of the box to resize themselves to something actually able to move around the room more freely and get to the punch clock. *facepalm* Makes sense once you see it!

III. Then, after resetting and redoing the puzzle, I attempted THREE TIMES to grab the doors and take them with me – all unsuccessfully. One time I just straight up accidentally dropped one of the doors onto the table below, making it so tiny in the process that I couldn’t actually pick it up again; the other two times, I managed to use the linked doors and resize myself at least a little, but not big enough to actually climb up to the top of the punch clock! I gave it the old college try, of course, using the chunk of wall the “embiggening” door was in as an extra ledge to try and climb onto the edge of the recycling bin right under the punch clock, but all I succeeded in doing was falling into the trash bin and the recycling bin respectively. Feel like I should get achievements for those failures, honestly. *grumble*

IV. FINALLY, realizing I was getting too frustrated, I took a moment, saved and quit, hopped on YouTube, and found a guide to getting all the blueprints that I could watch. I then skipped forward to the final blueprint of the “Dollhouse” section and watched what the creator, CarbonCarl, did, then got back into my game and did my best to copy his actions as exactly as possible. THAT worked, and I was able to resize myself back to roughly normal size, hop onto the table with all the boxes and the chess game and such, then collect the blueprint atop the punch clock. *huffs* I then proceeded to struggle with making the dollhouse big enough for my oversized ass to pass through so I could reach the exit elevator and end the damn level, but I managed it in the end. Very glad I did NOT have to reset from the checkpoint again – I think I would have cried. Thank you CarbonCarl!

So yeah, that was my experience getting all the “Dollhouse” collectibles. Easy-peasy up until the last one, and then FUCKING HELL. *pinches the bridge of her nose* At least it’s cleared now… Anyway, here’s the list of Other Fun Things I Noticed/Experienced While Playing This Level:

( Because This Gets Long, As Per Usual )

Aaaand there we have it – another level of Superliminal cleared! Tomorrow, we tackle “Labyrinth,” the one level where I haven’t gotten ANYTHING cleared. Mostly because it’s meant to be played with a sense of urgency, not a sense of “looking for collectibles.” :P Hopefully it goes well!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – last night on the bike, last night with “The Sims 4 Enchanted By Nature Build & Buy Overview” by James Turner! The second half of his overview focused on household items – bedroom stuff, bathroom stuff, kids’ room stuff, living room stuff, etc. Plus a quick look at the Required New Bar (which, admittedly, was gorgeous, and had an AMAZING bar back that looked like a glimmering galaxy), some of the unlockable stuff from working your way up the Apothecary skill and the Naturopath career, and some of the debug/live edit objects. And while he was once again overall impressed with the commitment to fairy tale styling and themes, and how beautiful everything was, he once again had some criticisms:

A) He felt one particular “leaf” rug was a LITTLE too cartoony compared to the rest of the items, explicitly comparing it to something you’d find in Animal Crossing

B) While he liked the new kitchen counters overall, he wasn’t wild about the visible seams between the joined counters...and even less wild about the low-quality wood textures on the top, with visible pixelation. Took him right out of the game! He also didn’t like that the “outer corner” matching cupboard piece with a big empty shelf didn’t have any slots to put anything on

C) He was not a fan of the fact that there were so few “clutter”-type decoration items (to go along with his annoyance over the lack of wall art), and that most of the few that we had were locked behind advancing in the Apothecary skill or the Naturopath career – he’s not against unlockables in theory, but it just seemed odd to him that you’d put basic clutter behind learning a few levels of a skill, or advancing in a career

D) While he was glad there was a full bathroom set, he noted that the pieces didn’t go together very well – the sink was very clean carved wood, while the toilet was a mossy stump, and the shower and tub were both made out of crystals and stone (which meant they matched ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in the rest of the pack). They all looked good INDIVIDUALLY, just they didn’t make a very cohesive set when put together. Also, the wall mirror was set just a little bit too low to be used with the sink without clipping

E) He was utterly confused by the addition of a single ordinary park bench in among all the other fairy-tale-themed stuff one could sit on – especially when he realized the world around the lot he was showing everything off on was using BASE GAME benches. O.o Like, what the hell, guys? Why make a new ordinary bench if you’re not going to USE it anywhere? (Though maybe the bench is used in a different neighborhood – I think he was in Sprucederry Grove, and the bench looked like a good fit for the Coast of Adhmor and its aesthetic)

F) He pointed out that a few very important things were missing – namely, the bedroom set does NOT have a single bed (it goes bassinet – crib – toddler bed – big old canopied double bed); the living room set is missing a two-seater couch (aka a loveseat – and the weird Ordinary Park Bench does not count); and the kitchen set was missing THE ACTUAL KITCHEN. Literally, all we got for kitchen stuff is the counters, the cupboards, and the sink, which does double duty as a bathroom sink. No fridge, no stove, no nothing! James was like “that’s probably because one of the big things about this pack is living naturally without such appliances” but COME ON. Not everybody is going to want to have their Sims do that! You could have at LEAST included a campfire one could cook on!

G) And he reiterated how baffled/annoyed he was that the Enchanted By Nature pack didn’t come with any new outdoor plants, showing that there was TONS of fun stuff hiding in the “debug” section that could have been shoved into the catalog proper! Lots of bright colorful flowers, giant mushrooms, cool mossy stones – all stuff that I’m sure Simmer would LOVE to landscape with! It’s baffling why it’s all hidden behind a cheat!

So yeah – while James was very excited to build with the pack and play around with all the fun fairytale vibes, he wasn’t shy about revealing where he felt the pack let him down. And it does feel utterly stupid that they don’t have any outdoor plants, or a single bed to go with the double bed, or a single kitchen appliance. I mean, I really like the stuff I saw in this pack – major Wonderland vibes, especially with some of the fun mushroom-themed décor – but cripes. This is definitely a “get on sale” pack if I do pick it up! You can’t be bothered to give me all the items I should be entitled to in an expansion pack? I can’t be bothered to give you full price. *shakehead* That being said, I do look forward to seeing James build with this pack, as it is probably going to lend itself to some fun houses. In fact, he already noticed that one might be able to recreate the dollhouse included in the kids’ stuff as a full-sized house, given all the stuff in it is just tiny versions of actual assets in the pack...

2. Edit WeirdKev’s Gift Fic: Check – the “Glomgold details his plan for getting rid of Zan Owlson, involving Trojan Butts and ghouled sharks and fake Santa Clauses throwing chum, to LaCroix’s growing bafflement and annoyance” fic got its second draft today! Which, honestly, was not really much different from the first draft – I just reworded a few sentences here and there to make some of LaCroix’s lines sound a bit more like him, added in a couple of new lines, and reworked some awkward ones. Otherwise, it’s pretty much exactly what I wrote last week, with the most chaotic, ridiculous plan this side of Ducktales. XD Hopefully WeirdKev will like it – he’s the one who came up with all of Glomgold’s nonsense, after all! XD

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got another video out of my Watch Later tonight: “Innisgreen World Secrets And Features | The Sims 4 Guide” by Petey Plays It! A tour of the new world that comes with Enchanted By Nature and its three neighborhoods – Everdew, Sprucederry Grove, and The Coast of Adhmor! And happily, while each neighborhood is kind of compact (especially Adhmor, which is just crammed full of admittedly-adorable colorful houses), they all have plenty of stuff to see and to interact with! Including little parks with benches for Sims to nap on, woohoo bushes, and sometimes swingsets and/or barbecues; Fable Boards to find the Sims that can handle out “Fables,” the EBN version of the Cottage Living Henford-on-Bagley “Errands” (which offer rewards from the mundane to the fabulous); various bodies of water to splash around or bathe in; plants to harvest (including the new magical plants that come with this pack); and rabbit hole businesses to shop at (like a used bookstore, or a grocery)! Each neighborhood has unique features too – for example, Everdew has the headquarters of the fairy council, a good place to research fairy lore and the history of the land; Sprucederry Grove has the tree that allows you to summon Spruce Almighty, creator of PlantSims and gnomes; and the Coast of Adhmor has the Giant Gnome, who can influence your luck if you ask him nicely (or attempt to kick him). All in all, it’s a very pretty world, and Petey was on the opinion it was one of the more solid ones when it came to both interactivity and feeling alive. *nods* A point in the pack’s favor, that! ...Still probably gonna get it on sale, though. :P

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – we had the reverse of yesterday’s situation, where I had nothing to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) (as the queue was already sorted), but I did have something to stick in the queue on Valice Multiverse – another reblog on the “helping Seth find his brother Richard” thread that I have with The Coven Wars in the Forgotten Vows Verse! Their latest reblog saw the group indeed find Richard (who was still wandering in a daze near the square where Seth last saw him, happily), with a worried Seth asking him why he’d run off and Richard responding “...They’re loud today.” (For reference, the kid suffers from hallucinations, like Alice – Alice feels a bit of a kinship with him as a result.) I had Alice comment that she’s had days like that too, pointing out that Victor would know, while Victor introduced himself to Richard (as they hadn’t met previously). We’ll see what happens when Coven Wars next responds!

So yeah -- not the greatest Friday, but at least I accomplished everything that I wanted to accomplish. And now I have to go to bed, as I have a full Cleaning & Laundry Saturday tomorrow, meeeh. At least it comes with getting to listen to the last episode of Oxventure Presents: Blades In The Dark! Other things I hope to do include working more on "The Van Dort Vacancy;" getting through the "Labyrinth" level of Superliminal as indicated above; and watching at least one of the videos in my Watch Later (maybe the OXBoxtra crew reacting to super-fast carriages in Red Dead Redemption 2?). Hopefully all goals that can be accomplished -- night all!

Current Mood: drained

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My morning computer time was still cut short thanks to those fucking ants in the pantry (there was another little one on my granola bar box when I took it out this morning -- cue Mom taking EVERYTHING out of their original boxes and putting them in plastic sealed containers, and later washing out the entire thing AGAIN), and I had an annoyingly-long commute home tonight followed by more "what should we do for our vacation" talk almost the moment I walked in the door, but fortunately it wasn't as long a talk as yesterday, and I was able to catch up on all my stuff properly and watch my YouTube and all that jazz. :) Which means I am officially in a better mood tonight, yay. :) But I am still running a little later than I should on getting to bed, so here's my write-up:

Work – Well, it started out as another quiet day, with me doing the usual morning reports, then keeping as busy as I could with the obituaries...then, right after lunch, we got the go-ahead to start processing again, and while my coworker put on a bunch of checks, I concentrated on calling all the people with credit card issues/payments that I hadn’t been able to reach out to before. Had to leave messages for a few people, but I got one payment and one one-time gift done, so THOSE are out of my hair, at least. *nods* Though now I’m faced with a big batch of gifts from one of the parishes that all have to go on together because they’re under the same parish check...and I only just discovered none of them have ID stickers. *facepalm* Meaning I have to go through them and look them up/add them one by one. And there’s a LOT of them. *heavy sigh* My coworker got some of them done for me right before we left, at least, but she’s not gonna be in tomorrow, so...we’ll see what I manage to get done during my half-day!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back to James Turner’s for a couple of nights to watch “The Sims 4 Enchanted By Nature Build & Buy Overview!” Because it was the perfect length to watch with my final two workouts this week, and because I WAS curious what this pack had to offer, Build/Buy-wise. The half I watched today was mostly focused on the “Build” half of the equation, covering all the doors, windows, wall decorations (including friezes and floor trims and fake balconies for windows), foundations, stairs, columns, spandrels, stairs, railings, fences, gates, floor tiles, and wallpapers that came with the pack – plus all fancy plant wall decorations, some vaguely-plant-related items (like a pergola, wedding arch, swingset, and the apothecary stall), the new gnomes, and the potted plants, both regular “no maintenance needed” and new “actually you need to water these occasionally.” :P It was very interesting, with two distinct “sets” of items on display – a more mossy and whimiscal one, and a “could maybe be used in more normal builds” one – and a lot of stuff that would make a build look fun and magical. I liked it, and James did too –

For the most part. Because while he liked the general fairy-tale style of a lot of this stuff, he did still have some complaints too, namely:

I. He thought all of the doors, windows, etc. needed more fun and whimsical color swatches – the color options for them were kind of lacking, and he was confused why they didn’t just go all-in with bright colors and bold combinations and whatnot. (Though he did like the “villainous” purple-and-green swatches...and the pink-and-light-blue ones too, as they reminded him of cake. XD We might see a “building a cake house” video from him in the future!)

II. He complained how there was no need to make both a “regular” variant and a “curved” variant of one of the windows – and the curved variant didn’t even WORK correctly! Not only did the model squash and stretch in bizarre ways, when you viewed it from the inside, you could see the cut-out of the window around the actual model! That is, there were BIG GAPS around the edges of the window! Sheesh! I hoped they fixed that before release (as obviously this game out while James was playing with the Early Access version)

III. He didn’t like how stretched out the gates for the fences looked when on a diagonal (though he was glad each fence did COME with a matching gate, as we don’t always get those) – he just felt like it was lazy design. He also took advantage of the moment to complain more generally that, now that we’ve got the ability to place doors and windows anywhere on a wall, we should have the ability to place gates anywhere in a fence. (Would be nice, but I don’t think we’re getting it anytime soon!)

IV. He was kind of surprised at the lack of new floors and wallpapers in this expansion – and again, at the lack of fun color swatches for them. Whimsy! He demanded more whimsy!

V. He didn’t like that the two new roof-placeable plants in the pack were stuck into the “roof sculptures” category instead of the “outdoor plants” category, because one, they’re not really roof SCULPTURES, and two, THEY WERE THE ONLY NEW OUTDOOR PLANTS THAT CAME WITH THE PACK. Like, seriously – apparently those two, at least in Early Access, were IT. The fuck??? How can you be Enchanted By Nature if you don’t give us any nature to be enchanted by? O.o

VI. And, on the flip side, he wasn’t keen on the fact that most of the new wall art was JUST branches of fantasy wisteria to drape lovingly over your windows. Like, he ENJOYED that, he really liked the pieces, but at the same time, he’d been looking forward to new fairy-themed pictures and posters and whatnot, and the pack did NOT deliver. Hell, one of the few non-plant wall art pieces was an UNLOCKABLE – only accessible either via cheats or by maxing out the new “Naturopath” career. *shakehead* Absolutely ridiculous – I thought there was going to be a plethora of new pictures and posters myself! Meeeh.

So yeah – overall, he’s enjoying what the pack has to offer (and it all DOES look very nice – though I suspect I’m tempted by it mostly because of the “Smiler’s Fantasy Caravan” build I’m working on right now), but he isn’t afraid to criticize what he feels are dumb decisions and missed opportunities. *nods* Why we like his content! We’ll finish off with the more “house-focused” stuff tomorrow, as he put it – though I think we need to look at the new bar first. Because you can’t have a Sims 4 expansion pack without a bar! XD Granted, it is a VERY pretty bar with a VERY magical backdrop, but still. :P

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – having successfully escaped and contained another clawed ghoul last time, Alice spent today’s page in the maze examining the routes available to her from the little landing where she found herself – starting with the green corridor that the ghoul had been guarding. That led to a fancy white door, which, when picked, opened on a room containing the starved corpse of an orderly and his last scribbled message on the wall (which I implied was written in his own blood! Fun). Reading through the message revealed that he’d once been Grout’s most loyal servant, but then his master had succumbed to his growing paranoia and locked him in there to waste away. Alice was like “not a fan of you helping Grout with his experiments, but I allow this was a terrible way to go. And seeing as you missed Grout’s blood more than food, I am once again glad I don’t intend to fully blood-bond Victor.” (Insert authorial snickering here.)

Anyway – having seen all that room had to offer, she returned the main landing and went right next, which led her into a makeshift little chapel! Complete with another orderly corpse (this guy a victim of the clawed ghoul) slumped on a pew. Because as long as we’re being creepy, we might as well throw some twisted religious imagery in there too! Alice was like “I would not have pegged Grout for this kind of thing.” XD I left it with her heading up to the pulpit to examine his holy text – next time, we’ll finish up in there, and FINALLY get Alice out of this maze! I feel like the poor woman’s been in there forever...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – popped back into my Watch Later tonight to take on “Reacting to YOUR CaFae Latte Hot Takes - Part 2” by C. M. Alongi! Featuring C. M. reading a collection of hot takes/headcanons people had for the characters of CaFae Latte and talking about how she felt about them and if she thought they would work or not. Which sometimes led to interesting facts being revealed about the characters, and of course more talk about how the Heart of Iron book is going to differ from the TikTok series. Examples included:

A) Someone saying that Oscar doesn’t need another partner after dealing with his wife dying – C. M. essentially confirmed that he wasn’t looking for anything long-term or committed (especially since he’s demi and needs time to bond with someone anyway)...but that he’d be down for something a little more casual (I’m PRETTY sure this came out right before the “Oscar gets into a poly relationship with Yarn Granny and Vet Grampa” episode XD Which, yes, Oscar treats fairly casually)

B) Someone saying that the “golden retriever angel” should get his own doggo (or catto, or both) – C. M. said that in-universe, Oscar would want to get a bit more settled in his new home before introducing a pet, and out-of-universe, she is VERY RELUCTANT to get an unpredictable animal in front of the camera (cue everyone in the YouTube comments telling her to use stuffed animals :P)

C) Someone saying that Cyrus has definitely called Bob “mom” at some point and ended up embarrassed about it – C. M. confirmed he’s done that, usually when he’s sick, awwww

D) Someone saying that Cyrus and Rethu should definitely go on a date to the Southern food place in the demon dimension by the lava lake – C. M. was like “this is the problem with doing a web series for two years, you forget all these sorts of details” and then added the idea to her “filler skits” doc :D

E) Someone saying that Bob started the coffee shop because the free drinks helped keep her alive in the mornings – C. M. laughed at that and said that it was a LITTLE deeper than that, but yes, it was definitely a factor! Apparently Bob fell in love with coffee either during the Civil War, or right after while she and Cyrus were roaming the Wild West, hiding their immortal status from the normies pre all the “fae rights” stuff, and thus when it came time to settle down, she was into doing a coffee shop :)

F) And someone saying that Bob, as a former princess, struggled a bit with stuff like cooking, cleaning, what-have-you after being exiled – C. M. was like “sort of” on this one, saying that Bob was a fairly self-sufficient royal because she liked to experience what her troops experienced so she could keep them happy, so she wasn’t TOTALLY unskilled at these kinds of things...but yes, at the same time, when she had a house of her own in the human realm, she had some trouble keeping it clean without the help of servants! And keeping herself clean, apparently – she was almost grateful the Civil War broke out so she could stop worrying if she was dirty or her hair was tangled or what have you. And apparently neither she nor Cyrus are particularly good cooks – leading them to be very relieved when JC showed up!

*nods* Fun stuff as always! Though a little shorter than I would have liked – her Patreons didn’t submit enough takes! Hopefully if she does a third one it’ll be a little meatier.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – while it was another “nothing” day over on Valice Multiverse, I’m pleased to say I got my Song Saturday pick for Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) sorted! “Shooting Stars” by Rival Sons, a song I’ve heard a couple of times on the radio and really liked. Both because it feels like an excellent protest song for the bullshit world and all the bullshit situations we’ve found ourselves in –
Aaand because the first time I heard it, specifically the “my laughter is louder than your/shouting will ever be” lyrics, I was like “This is totally my Valicer In The Dark Smiler taunting Bob Wickerman of the Beornen.” :P And I have since expanded it to be about the entire trio shouting defiance at anyone trying to beat them down. *nods* So yeah, gotta add that to the VITD playlist I have on YouTube at some point! In the meantime, it’s ready to be posted under the “#song saturday” and “#valicer in the dark” tags on Saturday. :)

*nods* Nice and productive, all that. And now I have to head to bed -- tomorrow, gonna get through work, then hopefully come right home and be able to get right to playing either Superliminal or Fallout 4. Because god damn it, I want to play my games again. *serious nod* Night all!

Current Mood: calm

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What I mean by that is:

-->My morning computer time was cut short because I found yet more little ants crawling around my cereal box when I had breakfast this morning and had to tell Mom (the cereal was summarily disposed of -- my parents got me a new box, and transferred all the cereal to a new plastic container with a snap lid)

-->And my evening computer time was also cut short because we had to discuss vacation plans after Mom and Dad watched some videos of some of the rides at the Canadian theme park we were thinking of going to (Canada's Wonderland), and Mom got spooked because it looks like a lot of them are extreme thrill rides (a swing ride that takes you way up into the sky, for example), and Mom's not a fan of those. (Despite CONSTANTLY going on coasters with Dad when I was younger and scared of them myself...) Cue us trying to find other things to do, like tour the Ben & Jerry's factory (this was eventually dismissed due to it being too far to drive for one thing), or hit up Boston for a day or two to do some stuff there (like the speedboat "Codzilla" ride). We're still not one hundred percent on what's going to happen, but it appears Canada's Wonderland is definitely out.

So yeah -- my time on the web was severely curtailed today, and thanks to PMS, I am extra not happy about that. *grumbles* Yes, I know it's a small problem in the scheme of things, but the hormones do not listen to logic. They only care that I didn't get to do everything I hoped to do tonight. *sigh* Speaking of which, here's the write-up:

Work – A pretty quiet, boring day at work – still not allowed to process, so I did what I could by going through the obituaries in the paper, then looking up more online. Along the way I also had another check-in call with the credit card people (useless as always, as all the person I talk to can do is forward the problems I point out to the guy who never seems to have time to fix them); helped stuff some envelopes for a mailing; and completed multiple puzzles from the paper while trying to look busy. *shrug* I have had days much worse! Probably better for my PMS for me to be bored rather than frustrated, honestly… We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with the final chunk of “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 2: Rootbound!” Today was the big fight against the tree and its possessed villagers, and it went down roughly like so:

A) Happen – who was still trying to pretend to be a fully-possessed villager protecting the tree instead of just a partially-possessed one managing to fight off its influence – after his Web attack didn’t go off like planned, deciding to try and ignite the remaining shreds of web hanging from the tree by firing an arrow at the ax resting on the ground and hopefully sending a spray of sparks up onto them. However, when he rolled the attack roll, it proved to be time to praise Cadence, because crit 1. Happen thus accidentally killed one of the other villagers with an arrow to the forehead. He tried to play it off as “he meant the tree harm” –

And, luckily for him, that’s when Cressida and the others burst into the clearing with the three, and combat officially started, so he wasn’t immediately harmed. XD

B) Willowfine, Lug, Morven, and Happen all trying to take down the villagers and destroy the tree while Cressida dealt with the compulsion to protect it! This resulted in, among other things, the following:

I. Willowfine hitting the tree with a bunch of radiant damage (partially because the saving throw for avoiding it was Dex, which, as you might imagine, a tree was weak in) – which, while technically not being fire damage in and of itself, DID successfully ignite the webs shreds and get her some bonus damage due to fire being a weakness for, again, a tree

II. Lug successfully smacking some people around with his hammer for a change, killing one and getting the other stuck on the end

III. Morven walking into the crowd and casting Arms of Hadar to inflict a bunch of necrotic damage on the villagers (managing to use her sorcery to exclude Lug and Happen, but NOT Cressida – didn’t have enough points) – Johnny got in some REALLY good creepy description of the villagers rotting like WOOD rots instead of flesh, revealing horrible white roots where there should be a nervous system, brrr...and then describing Cressida feeling the seed inside her growing into HER nervous system

IV. Happen continually making his Constitution saving throws to avoid the tree’s influence, which was honestly pretty badass, even, if it was just the result of lucky die rolls, and shooting a couple more villagers

V. Ellen needing a moment to figure out what Cressida was going to do to “protect the tree” (leading to some fun moments of the others getting to use opportunity attacks – Lug tried to shove someone into the fiery webs, but failed, while Happen successfully cut open the belly of a passing villager and yanked a root from their stomach, eugh) – and then, when it came back to her, deciding that Cressida would try to throw a wineskin full of “water” on the tree to put it out. She did not succeeded, and everyone promptly called Cressida a “wine aunt.” XD

VI. Lug once again taking the lion’s share of the damage during combat by getting smacked by a tree branch for 13 bludgeoning damage (Johnny was SO delighted he wasn’t raging and thus had to take the full amount)

VII. Willowfine doing good work with the radiant damage and taking out the remaining villagers; Lug (not realizing Cressida was under the tree’s power) deciding to use his turn to get out of branch-smacking range so he could watch the tree burn; and Morven attempting to use Toll The Dead on the tree, only to fail and promptly Misty Step away in shame XD

VIII. Happen alerting the others to the fact that Cressida was possessed by using his turn to try and drag her away from the tree (she successfully resisted and tried to use Prestidigitation to put out the flames, which didn’t really work), which led to Willowfine trying to grapple her on HER turn to try and drag her away –

And BOTH LADIES getting crit 1s on their roll. (Praise Cadence!) It was initially decided that Willowfine did manage to grab Cressida, but couldn’t move thanks to how much she was squirming, then that they’d gotten pretty thoroughly entangled when Lug used his turn to pick up Willowfine (and thus Cressida by default) and carry them BOTH away. XD Well, that’s one way to solve the problem!

IX. And Morven happily hearing me shout at everyone “KILL THE TREE! KILL THE FUCKING TREE! IT’LL SOLVE YOUR POSSESSED FRIEND PROBLEM IF YOU KILL THE FUCKING TREE!” and slamming it with FIVE Magic Missiles. :D Granted, Johnny ruled that it still took two hours for the tree to finally die after all this abuse, but it was nice to see someone being proactive about KILLING THE FUCKING TREE.

C) Everyone watching the tree burn (restraining Cressida and, eventually, Happen (as it was decided he’d have to bork one of those saving throws EVENTUALLY) until the seeds inside them died and they were themselves again)...except that Morven finally nodded off at one point during all that, meaning, welcome back Robin! He was naturally rather bewildered about what was happening, and the gang (by which I mean Willowfine, as everyone else passed the buck, though Lug DID hop in at one point to help) explaining what happened and what’s going on with him. Robin was, understandably, not exactly keen on sharing his body with someone else’s spirit, but the others reassured him that no, of course they weren’t going to knock him out whenever there was an emergency – in fact, if he fell unconscious, they’d knock Morven out to get him back. (“Playing both sides,” as Happen put it. XD) Though Happen did make it clear that Morven probably saved their lives with her spellwork today, so they SHOULD at least think about getting her a body of her own to inhabit. But he was sure that Robin was just as capable in a fight! Cue Robin agreeing before checking if his bread had gone stale, then attempting to cast a spell through sheer willpower. XD I think you might be getting knocked out in an emergency, Robin!

D) And finally, a message coming through from the team investigating the North on the “copestone” message tables they were given, revealing that two of them were injured, and to be careful as the Wyrdwood was ANGRY. Willowfine tapped out a message back saying they were fine and asking if the North Team needed any help – and as she did so, Happen noticed a strange rabbit made of black shadow hop past the burning tree and into Willowfine’s shadow before melding into it…

Cue the end of the episode. XD Well, except for the rolling of the D100, aka the Ball Of Numbers, to see if anyone’s going to have Fun Times the next time they try to cast a spell – not yet! But yeah – seems like the next adventure, they might need to take care of that little bunny problem. Though they’ll want to do so carefully, mind, as they MIGHT be in trouble with the Wild Folk already for burning that parasitic ash. Key word there being “might” – as Johnny told Lug, them killing the tree was a bit of a weird situation, vis-a-vis keeping things chill with the Wild Folk. Because the tree was clearly a punishment on the village for breaking the “Windfall Bargain” (presumably “let the holben imps stay in their bramble homes in your veggie patches and you get to have nice vegetables”), BUT it attacking Lug and company, explicitly NON-villagers, could be construed as it getting greedy for more slaves and overreaching its bounds. *shrug* We’ll see what happens once some Wild Folk show up! Which I assume will happen eventually...

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice made a little forward progress in the latter portion of Grout’s maze today, finding her way out of the mostly-upside-down bedroom via discovering picking up the telephone makes the far wall turn (and that there was a convenient electric candle lever on the other side to shut it up again); going up some stairs and discovering a landing with a few different ways to go – and another clawed ghoul, who promptly attacked her (Alice was like “never thought I’d be happy to see one of YOU, but given you’re not a creepy mannequin); and managing to successfully lure the clawed ghoul back to the mostly-upside-down bedroom and trap him in there with judicious use of a kick to the ankle and that candle lever (she just didn’t want to have to fight and possibly kill him if she could avoid it). I left off with her deciding to check out the green corridor the ghoul was hanging out in and see what he was guarding – tomorrow, we get a creepy room with writing all over the walls! Every mansion-turned-makeshift-asylum has to have at least ONE.

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: No check – as stated above, my evening computer time was severely curtailed by the “what are we doing on our vacation” chat, and this resulted in me deciding to skip the YouTube entirely in favor of making sure I got my fanfic writing done. *sigh* Hopefully tomorrow will be better!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, thankfully! And while I wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to even put in there for the next few days, going looking through the “#blades in the dark” tag on tumblr introduced me to user “ghosts-just-wanna-have-fun,” who had a couple of things I wanted to put on my blog:

A) First, I stuck into my queue –

I. A post he reblogged from “door” (yes, that was the username) complaining about why so many fantasy books these days have exactly ONE nonbinary person in them for Thursday (mostly as a reminder to myself to make sure Smiler isn’t the only nonbinary person in Valicer In The Dark – I can probably at least put in some nonbinary background Advocates if nothing else!)

II. And a post he reblogged from “shisasan” with a quote from Franz Kafka: “I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly” for Friday (because awww, the OTP/OT3 mood~ :) )

B) And then I stuck in my drafts a really cool picture he drew of his BITD character, Lorelai (a woman with literally-smoking purple eyes and horns, in a blue Southern Belle-style dress, surrounded by the ghosts of women in various states of decay) because that was the thing that caused me to go on his blog in the first place – I’ll have to stick it in the queue during a particularly VITD-focused week.

So that’s all set for another couple of days, yay. :) We’ll sort out Song Saturday tomorrow!

And yes, as you might expect, I am officially up too late. *sigh* Time to get to bed and hope that tomorrow is a little better, or at least doesn't set off the PMS-rage so much. Night all!

Current Mood: grumpy

crossover_chick

Dad had a dentist appointment to remove some broken-loose teeth and get some new lower dentures put in, meaning he was in pain a lot of the evening; I found another of the tiny ants we're trying to get out of the house crawling on my cereal box (though, fortunately, not IN the cereal -- I was still not happy, though, as you might expect) while trying to have breakfast this morning; dealing with said ant (and its buddy I found on the counter) made it so I got basically no computer time before work; work itself was kind of annoying (details below); and it was also really hot and humid today because summer. Yeah, it was -- well, see the title. *sigh* But we all made it through, and I even managed to accomplish some stuff:

Work – A fairly “meh” day at work – I spent pretty much all of it going through the exceptions we got back the other day, seeing what I could handle while we were still in our processing freeze (calling some people to assure them that we did have their final payments on their pledges, the billings just got sent out before they were processed; writing out a big long letter to a couple who thought they’d paid their GFGP pledge and wanted an itemized list if we found a discrepancy – their online pledge missed a few payments back in the day), and what I couldn’t (no putting on any of the checks or calling anyone who’d had a failed credit card payment, basically). My coworker and I also went through all the envelopes from that one big bundle from one of the parishes that was returned to us, which took most of the morning, only to discover that the parish check included with it didn’t match the amount the envelopes added up to – it was a little too much. *sigh* My supervisor handled that, but – meeeh. Little mistakes like that just slow processing down so much… Oh, and speaking of mistakes, my coworker found a rejected ACH payment that never got properly taken off by our credit card processors, so now I get to talk to them about that on the call tomorrow. Yay. Plus my supervisor keeps asking me to download things for him from the file sharing site because apparently he figures he doesn’t have to get his password reset if I’m there. *grumbles* Just annoying...but then again, that sums up MOST of my time at work, so… We’ll see if tomorrow’s any better!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, back to “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 2: Rootbound!” And things got even hairier in this chunklet, let me tell you – or perhaps the correct phrasing is even leafier… Anyway, here’s the gist of what went down:

A) After agreeing they needed to find Ashling, Happen tried to climb on the roof for a better view of the village and see if he could find her – only to be knocked off the roof by his own sprites and get the wind knocked out of him. Praise Cadence! XD Some of the roof-fixing people asked if he was all right, and when he said he was mostly fine, asked if he’d be joining them for the midday meal. He said yes, and went to confer with the others – it was decided that at least one of them should snoop around while the others went to lunch, and Cressida immediately volunteered herself to nose around. Because she’s nosy, and she suspected lunch would be another terrible bread-and-soup deal. So Happen, Willowfine, Lug, and Morven all went off to eat in the communal dining hall while she stayed behind –

And sure enough, it was a terrible bread-and-soup deal! XD Or, rather, a surprisingly-delicious-looking soup with greens and what looked like little goat cheese pearls (Lug/Mike was like “I’d be happier about that if I didn’t already know there were no goats), paired with HORRENDOUSLY awful barely-baked bread. Morven quickly used Sending to let Cressida know she should check out the bakery, while she and the others all pretended to eat their food. Unfortunately, Happen’s chosen “pretending to eat” method meant putting the soup in his mouth (to spit back out into his napkin later), and thus got him a private note from Johnny! Which prompted a mysterious die roll…

B) And then a swap over to Cressida, going to investigate the bakery! She got in without an issue, and discovered pretty quickly that the place hadn’t been touched in a while – everything was covered in dust, and when she opened one of the big barrels of flour in the back and gave it a little stir with a spoon, she found it was utterly infested with weevils. Cue her using Message to scream at poor Morven in a panic about the weevils. XD However, things rapidly got even worse for our stuck-up spoiled little rich girl, as she turned around after poking through the weevil flour –

To find a villager right behind her. Who grappled her by the back of the neck, and shoved his hand in her face...as the palm split open and deposited a seed in her mouth. A seed that then sprouted on her tongue and crawled its way down her throat. D: Cressida was naturally horrified and attempted to punch the guy – though, thanks to a poor damage roll (a one plus her Strength modifier – which was minus one XD), she didn’t actually hit him, realizing at the last moment she didn’t actually WANT to touch him. XD However, the attack set off a strange shiver of alarm in the back of her head…

C) And in the back of HAPPEN’S head, as the villagers around the group all froze for a moment. Some of them attempted to go back to eating, or at least pretending to, but about six men got up and headed for the bakery. Around the same time, Cressida was able to send another Message to Morven about being forced to eat the seed – Morven relayed this to the others, and while Happen kept playing along with the villagers (who were eating their food in increasing slow motion), Willowfine deliberately knocked her and Lug’s soups all over them so they and Morven could pretend to need to do laundry and get out of there. They made their way over to the bakery, where they found the six men already inside, watching Cressida but also clearly ready to take on any threats that walked through the door. Cressida, spotting her traveling companions, quickly began chattering on about how happy she was that everyone had been so hospitable, and how she’d wanted to help, and that she’d baked as a child, and what was that delicious sprout they’d just fed her? A good Charisma/Persuasion roll meant that she kept all the villagers’ attention on her –

And Morven promptly took advantage of that to cast Hunger of Hadar on the lot, using a sorcery point to make it a “Careful” spell and keep Cressida out of the blender. (Mike: “Spells can be careful?” Johnny: “Not historically!”) Cressida was thus stuck in the middle of hungry hungry Hadar just absolutely DECIMATING these poor villagers. XD Hey, Cress, you’re just lucky you’re not part of the OLD Oxventurer’s Guild – PRUDENCE would NOT have tried to protect you! Eventually the slaughter stopped, and the others went in to check on the horrified Cressida and ask her what had happened. Cressida began telling them all about the seed and whatnot –

And then Johnny interrupted her with a Constitution saving throw! Which she failed! Cue Cressida suddenly getting a very strong urge to “protect the tree” and running off, with Willowfine, Lug, and Morven being like “???”

D) At the same time all this was going on, the villagers still in the dining hall got up and headed off themselves, into the Wyrdwood. Happen, still playing along, followed them, trailing near the back of the group as they headed carefully into the forest, avoiding brambles and such –

And then there was another flash of panic in the back of his head as Hadar started nomming on the villagers in the bakery, and suddenly everyone started BOOKING IT, crashing through the underground and charging straight over a large pile of all the village’s goats, who Happen just had time to see had been slaughtered and bled before he rushed to catch up with the others. Their frantic run took them to a strange tree, which looked KIND OF like an ash tree, only it had strange creeping tendrils moving all through it, and a number of bizarre fruits, kind of like raspberries, all over it. Oh, and a big old gash in its side, the rest of an ax lying next to it. And with Happen’s ranger experience, he was able to tell that gash was about two weeks old...when the last of Ashling’s sister’s letters was delivered to the village…

Anyway – the villagers formed a protective ring around the tree, clearly eager to keep it from harm. Happen considered using Mage Hand to lift the ax and take another swing at the tree (while just BARELY fighting off the urge to protect the tree himself, courtesy of the seed he himself must have swallowed in the soup), but after realizing the ax would be too heavy (aka the players discussed it and realized it would be heavier than ten pounds), instead tried to Web it with the help of his sprites. They did their best, but the tree avoided being webbed and lashed out at the sprites in turn. Fortunately, they were too fast for the tree to actually swat with its tendrils, but the increased agitation from the tree put all the villagers on even HIGHER alert (“breathe too loud and you’re gonna get killed,” as Johnny put it)…

Aaand that’s where I left it! With Happen struggling against the parasitic plant inside him; poor Cressida under its control and running off to help defend the tree; and the others presumably following Cressida to figure out what the fuck is going on. Tomorrow, we should see the big finale of this episode – gonna be creepy, no matter what happens, I think!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – after having been left there over the weekend as I wrote my gift fic and worked on “The Van Dort Vacancy,” Alice finally got to escape the creepy mannequin house today – though she first had to take a creepy phone call, because the place wasn’t spooky enough without someone whispering in her ear about how “wishes and words sprout from the same seed.” XD But yes, she made it out of there in one piece, and was allowed to enter the next part of the maze as a result (the final door in the upside-down hall having unlocked itself at last)! So far, she’s found a very pink hallway, and a bedroom that is mostly-but-not-entirely upside-down. Tomorrow, we see her figure out WHY not all of the furniture in this room is bolted to the ceiling, and find a way to progress even further. She’s gotta get out of this hell maze eventually! If I ever want to post the chapter, anyway...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – and I am pleased to announce that I finally got a chance to watch what is probably Proxy Gate Tactican’s most famous video tonight: “Can You Beat Baldur's Gate 3 As a Cat?” Yes, Proxy did indeed attempt to take on the massive, sprawling RPG that is Baldur’s Gate III with a party full of people wildshaped into cats! House cats to start, with panther and saber-toothed cat forms becoming available as they leveled up. The rules were simple – druid Felix and his party (Shadowheart and a pair of hirelings, all multiclassed/respecced into druids) had to stay in cat form as much as humanly possible! (Uh, pun not intended. XD) The only times they were allowed to be human were if:

I. The game FORCED them back into their human forms, either to facilitate a cutscene triggering or to represent their cat form taking enough damage to “kill” them – in that case, everyone had to shift back either once the conversation was over or once it was their turn again

II. They were in camp and had need of Withers’s services – after all, the hirelings won’t hire themselves, nor the dead resurrect themselves!

III. And, technically, when they physically COULDN’T transform into a cat by virtue of being a level one character – but that only applied to Felix on the Nautiloid, and Proxy didn’t actually show any of that in the video, just saying he speedran it to get to level 2 and his chosen wildshape. The game proper starts on the beach post-crash anyway (at least according to him)!

So yes – with those simple restrictions in play, was Proxy able to beat the game as a cat? Was he able to prove that you don’t have to be human, or elf, or githyanki, or even gnome to defeat the Elder Brain and save Faerun? Was he able to be the fluffiest, cutest savior the city has ever seen?

...not quite. Oh, Proxy gave it his best shot, enduring long hours adventuring without being able to talk to anyone or pick up quests (hell, the only reason he managed to recruit Shadowheart is that she showed up to talk to him during one of the “forced human” cutscenes); figuring out how one actually KILLED people as a weak housecat (traps, basically – meow to get your targets together, then have your other cat friend destroy them with a dropped block of stone or by throwing a candle into some alcohol to trigger an explosion); resorting to using the necromantic powers of Sovereign Glut to make it through the Underdark and kill some duegar for the mushroom-people so he could complete a quest already (and then discovering he couldn’t go kill True Soul Nere for them next because cats can’t float a boat); finding good ways to level up so he could finally get more powerful cat forms (Moonrise Towers in Act II proved especially useful for this, as he could lure guards away from each other into clawed ambushes, which provided plenty of experience); enduring having to drag that damn moonlantern along the ground next to his party so they could go places without being devoured by the Shadow Curse in Act II (because cats can’t carry things – no hands; he loathed THAT by the end of the road, let me tell you); and dealing with the occasional bit of game breakage thanks to his insistence on staying in cat form (like a certain cutscene not playing properly and thus not letting them open a door to confront a certain enemy). And none of that – NONE of that stopped him from staying in cat form. You know what finally made him have to willingly change back into a human (well, half-elf) form?

DOORS. Specifically, the gate that acted as the passageway into Act III, and the door that guarded the key necessary to get to Orin (one of the bosses you have to kill to progress the game). All the other doors, Proxy could find ways to glitch through (either via box towers or by throwing a dead party member in a burning box through a wall to use their corpse to trigger a cutscene – this was actually an Accepted Speedrunning Technique for a while there) or otherwise bypass (using a back entrance into Grymforge to grab more explosives, for example), but these two? These two HAD to be interacted with as a person if Proxy wanted to complete the game. Proxy was very sad about that, as you might imagine. *pats him* But he pressed on, and managed to complete the game having spent MOST of his time as a cat. And having had Shadowheart kill the Nightsong and allied with the Emperor, as he seems to do in most of his challenge runs. XD Like, I want to say that he’s left Dame Aylin alive maybe twice (I’m pretty sure she was key to his “I don’t personally kill anything” run), but otherwise – yeah, it’s all about following Shadowheart’s evil path and allying with the squidboy. XD We’ll see if the pattern holds true for the other challenge videos I still have to watch!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, though only a small one, as I only put one thing in each queue –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I naturally dropped the “Teen Valicer Save” post I was working on previously into the queue to post tomorrow – I worked hard to complete that, and now it’s time to put it into the world!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I hit up “rpmemelibrary” for a meme to chuck in the queue – “Suggest or Submit an Outfit for my Muse to wear and they will react.” Because it might be fun to see if anyone comes up with any particularly interesting or silly outfits for my Valicer trio (or any of my other muses, though it’s mostly the trio these days) to wear. :)

Mmm -- not too bad, I suppose. I would have liked to have put more in my VLA(NS) queue, but I'm having trouble coming up with stuff -- I haven't checked my tracked tags in a while, so my supply from those is depleted. On the other hand, Oxventure: Wyrdwood was definitely a highlight of the day -- I am getting way into these "folk horror" vibes. Looking forward to how the team saves the day tomorrow! :D Anyway -- time for me to hit the sheets and hope that Wednesday is better. Night all!

Current Mood: discontent

crossover_chick

Like, it wasn't fantastic, but it wasn't horrible either. You had ups, you had downs, and overall, it was just one of those days. *shrug* Let me tell you all about it via my usual write-up:

Work – A pretty quiet start to the work week, with not a lot of calls or activity – which is good, because we still can’t process any gifts, and had to tell the couple of people who DID call in with credit card stuff that we’d have to call them back later. I spent the day doing the GL (uh, such as it was – just had the one write-off); helping my supervisor get the audit reports off the file-sharing site and over to Fiscal; doing a few more obituaries; and going over a QC file for the next capital campaign billing. Oh, and looking through the latest batch of exceptions that we got back from our processors at the end of the day...which included more shit than I thought, because they sent back the WHOLE batch from one of the parishes that had a few problem envelopes instead of just, you know, the problem envelopes. *heavy sigh* People sometimes, I swear… We’ll see what we can do with it, and the other exceptions, tomorrow!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again today, and back to Oxventure for some more folk horror D&D with “Oxventure D&D: Wyrdwood | Chapter 2: Rootbound!” When we left our heroes, they were heading northwest on a mission, given to them at Folkmoot (the town that serves as a meeting place for all of Heorth): check on those who lived in Heorth in that direction; seek out oddness and find the cause; and see if they can get ANY hint as to what’s happened to magic to make it so unstable. Accordingly, the first chunklet of the second episode featured:

A) Our heroes making their way through the Wyrdwood, led by Lug (the firbolg barbarian, played by Mike) and Happen (the human “luck pervert” ranger, played by Luke), and with Willowfine (the aasimar cleric, played by Jane), Cressida Blackwater (the half-human half-elf wizard, played by Ellen), and Morven Hellwain (the spirit of an aberrant sorcerer currently sharing a body with Robin Oatcake, human commoner, played by Andy) bringing up the rear. Cressida and Morven in particular were bringing up the rear, as Cressida was unused to walking such long distances and thus wouldn’t stop complaining under her breath, and Morven had been awake for two days straight in a desperate effort to stay in control of Robin’s body and thus was walking a lot slower than normal. Cue Happen murmuring to Willowfine that they basically needed to stage an intervention, and Willowfine trying to talk Morven into getting some sleep because, well, sleep is healthy (and keeps you from getting things like a level of exhaustion that drops all your dice rolls by -2). Morven was VERY reluctant to go to sleep and give up control to Robin (stating if something dangerous happened or they found the answer to what had gone wrong with magic, she wanted to be awake for it), but then Happen pointed out that they could simply knock Robin out if they needed Morven’s talents for anything. Morven liked that idea, and an accord was reached where she’d get some sleep once they found a place to lie their heads, and let Robin do all the boring walking, like Lug suggested. :P

B) The gang coming across the little town (or, at least, a village with notions of being one) Oakburn in the Wyrdwood – so named because the area where it sits was cleared by a fire, leaving the soul rich with nutrients. Everything seemed pretty normal there, with people going about their business (hanging up the washing, fixing a hole in a house roof, banging away at the anvil in the blacksmith’s shop) as they do in every little town, and nothing particularly out of the ordinary happening. Though especial mention was made of their verdant vegetable gardens, with a little patch of brambles and weeds in the corner of each for the “holbans” (little satyr-like imps) to stay in – a symbol of their all-important bargains with the local Wild Folk... Anyway, the group was approached by a helpful man, who – upon hearing what they were up to and that they could use a place to rest – took them to see their “village elder,” Ashling, who greeted them cheerfully and said that, while some strange things had been happening in the village in the wake of the boom, they were doing pretty well, all things considered. But they’d be only too happy to let the group stay for a while and refresh themselves (offering them water and, in Cressida’s case, wine) before they headed off to aid people who needed help more. Hell, she ended up giving them full access to her own house, assuring them that she’d find a place to bunk down, the people here were willing to share. Sounds lovely, right?

Weeeell, not really. A few key things happened while they were talking to the man, and later Ashling at the big communal cottage where she received them before taking them to hers, that made Morven and Happen in particular feel a liiittle on edge:

I. Both the man who originally greeted them and Ashling talked a bit – oddly, at times. They needed a minute to respond to certain questions – and, more noticeably, they were a little TOO cheery about offering their help and homes to the group. Cressida said “no customer service person has ever been that nice to me” – and while that came from the stuck-up city snob of the group, it was still worth noting

II. Morven tried reading the thoughts of the man who initially greeted them, and found only two things going round and round in there – namely, get the gang water from the well, and bring them to Ashling. Very simplistic thoughts, as she noted later!

III. Happen got his ear tugged by his sprites at one point during the meeting with Ashling (thanks to Luke using the Special Luck Die when asked to make a Perception check), a silent urge from them to listen – and when he did, he realized that the sounds coming from outside had mysteriously slowed. And when he peeped out the window to see what was going on, he found the townsfolk (well, the one guy on the roof that he could see) moving in slow motion for some reason. They quickly sped up, and Happen was like “maybe it was just tiredness,” but – yeah. Something was definitely up!

C) The gang discussing how weird the town was, and deciding that, even if it wasn’t strictly MAGICAL in nature (as Morven hadn’t successfully detected magic on anything Ashling gave them), they should probably investigate, which led to the following:

I. Most of the gang taking a lunchtime nap to refresh themselves, with Morven eschewing rest in favor of keeping watch (despite Willowfine’s best attempts to lull them with a lullaby – it got Cressida instead XD) – Morven happened to spot that creepy guy with the hat that was all brim that was at Folkmoot laughing at the chaos in front of the house across from them, but when he motioned her to meet him down a nearby alleyway, she followed him in to find he’d vanished like smoke. Even trying to detect his thoughts didn’t work...though it did let her hear that the only thing the nearby villagers were thinking was “midday meal, midday meal,” adding to the creepy vibes

II. Upon Morven coming back and reiterating how many bad vibes this place gave her, Happen, Willowfine, Cressida, and Morven all ransacking Ashling’s house to see if they could get some clues as to what’s going on – what they mainly found was evidence that the house hadn’t actually been lived in for a while, with Willowfine in particular finding some letters from Ashling’s sister, worrying about her and the village, with the latest one being from two weeks ago and expressing some concern that she never got an answer to her last letter

III. Lug, meanwhile, deciding to go ask the holbans what THEY knew and if they’d be willing to lead him to the village’s secret...only to find in the nearest vegetable bramble patch three dead ones. Slain by some outside force an unknown amount of time ago. :O And when he went to check the goat pen, remembering that Ashling had said they keep goats for milk, he found it completely empty. D: That’s not good.

So yeah – bad shit is going down, and it’s likely linked to those dead holbans and somebody breaking the ancient pacts with the Wild Folk. I left off with Lug arriving back at the house to report his findings to the others, who’d already come to the conclusion they needed to find where Ashling went when she headed off after letting them have the house. Tomorrow, we see if they manage to track the wayward village elder down...and if anything comes of the fact that both Morven and Cressida sipped the town’s well water at their meeting with her...

2. Continue writing “The Van Dort Vacancy”: Check plus tonight, I am pleased to report –

A) First, I got another page done on Chapter 4! Mostly featuring the gang getting a bit more packing done (taking all of Victor’s pictures off the wall and getting his suits and shirts in the carpet bag) while Victor continued to stress out about the fact that he had a lot of clothes and Alice and Smiler reassured him some more that they didn’t feel like he was flaunting his wealth or anything like that. What can I say – after seeing how poorer people live, and becoming friends with two of them, Victor has a lot of unnecessary guilt about the advantages being a Van Dort has given him. Fortunately, Smiler and Alice are willing to say things like “don’t punish yourself for your parents’ sins” and “you’re not spoiled, you’re slightly off at best” until he believes them. And to remind him that he is their friend and they enjoy his company and he makes them happier. :) I ended things with Alice and Victor being playfully snarky at each other – next time, we’ll see about getting the rest of his things packed up!

B) And second, I added two things to the BG3 Master Doc’s section on Smiler that I wanted to make sure got brought up at some point in the future, when I do that “the gang has to take on Dr. Kelman” story:

I. While writing the “don’t punish yourself for parents’ sins” line from Smiler, I got to thinking about how they knew what they were talking about because of Kelman, and their decision to run away from him at age 12 – and then had the thought “what if they had to break out of their room because they’d been locked in? Would explain how they know how to pick locks.” So yeah, I’m retconning in that Smiler was lying when they said they’d never picked a lock before in “A Murder Shared Is A Murder Thirded” – they have picked ONE, the one on their bedroom, to escape the Sanctuary after a bad fight with Kelman. Naturally, since they try to avoid talking about that period of their life whenever possible, they weren’t about to bring it up to their new friends right then! Victor and Alice will have to wait to learn that tidbit…

II. And, inspired by adding that, I finally added a note about someone I’ve been thinking about a bit lately – Smiler’s birth mother. You may notice that Dr. Kelman’s always been a single father whenever he pops up in an AU? Well, the reason for that is because I never gave much thought to who Smiler’s birth mother should be – I was always more focused on their relationship with Kelman. I always figured that she’d probably died or left when Smiler was a baby and thus was never going to be important to an AU…

And then, in the shower a few weeks back, I had an awful idea – what if, after Smiler was born, she started suffering postpartum depression...and Dr. Kelman tried to “fix” her with his horrible brain surgeries? D: Yeaaah, so now Smiler’s birth mother is another one of Dr. Kelman’s failed “experiments,” and there is a non-zero chance the VITD trio will run into her while roaming the Sanctuary. Talk about a gut-punch for poor Smiler! I just need to give the poor woman a name now...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – watched a fun video that popped up in my Recommendeds just today: “FUNNIEST Baldur's Gate 3 Mods | We React to the Most Out of Pocket Mods for BG3” by OXBox! :D Ellen, Mike, and Andy reacting to footage of a bunch of weird-ass BG3 mods inflicted upon them by Jane! Including:

A) Prudence demonstrating the power of the Thomas The Tank Engine summon (complete with glowing red eyes in the character portrait and 69 health)

B) A tour of Baldur’s Gate itself, showing off how all the chairs in the game had been replaced with the cute froggy chair from Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Ellen instantly recognized it and had a squee moment)

C) The reveal that Gale had been shrunk into a halfling...and then having him meet with an Elminster sporting a pair of, uh, “big naturals” (tumblr meme, it means he has amazing, if hairy, cleavage now)

D) Bananastarion (aka a naked Astarion in a large banana with his face, pecs, and ass poking out) braving the Nautiloid and waking up on the beach after the crash (Ellen could NOT stop laughing)

E) Prudence having chats with a “yassified” Shadowheart (think horrible plumped lips and hollowed cheeks), a Joker-ized Astarion (the makeup actually didn’t look half-bad on him), and a Withers with Big Naturals (which everyone concluded that, given the amount of decay, HAD to actually be silicone – Andy was like “correct the mod name mod maker!”)

F) Prudence demonstrating the power of the summoned Shrek (who looked particularly goofy given he lumbered about like any other ogre in this game and had a particularly dead-eyed stare XD)

G) Prudence returning to Baldur’s Gate to show that it had been taken over by giant rabbits (Andy and Mike were concerned, Ellen deeply charmed – and then horrified when Prudence chose to attack one of them)

H) Prudence having a chat with a “handsome” Astarion with a huge nose and cleft chin and even more sunken-in cheeks than the yassified Shadowheart (everyone was horrified by his giant lips – oh, and fun fact? The person who made that mod also made the “Alt Lae’zel Hair For Tav” mod that I used for Smiler’s haircut for a bit)

I) Prudence leading around a bunch of gnome-ified versions of the Origin characters, causing a lot of jokes about her leading kids around on a school field trip (though Ellen wasn’t a fan of Lae’zel having a normal nose in this mode)

J) Prudence leading around Shadowheart, Gale, and Astarion – who kept running around on all fours (Shadowheart constantly, Gale about half the time, and Astarion when the mod remembered – Ellen, Mike, and Andy were like “that’s creepy” and “this is definitely a kink thing”)

K) And someone (Jane insisted it was someone else’s save file) romancing both Lae’zel and Handsome Astarion...as a character whose head was just a throbbing brain (an Elder Brain, according to the mod linked the description) – the trio officially tapped out when Handsome Astarion went in for the kiss XD

Delightful stuff – some of these mods I already knew about thanks to the “Modding Mayhem” short, but others were, uh, very much new. XD Bananastarion was fantastic, and the gnome versions of all the Origin characters were so cute. ...Could have done without seeing the “Elder Brain Head” character, admittedly, but eh. Rest were great! I do love these “react” videos they’re doing now – they find some excellent weird-ass stuff!

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: N/A, as it usually is on Mondays, when I have just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about and no truly pressing drafts to work on. *shrug* Hopefully I can figure out my Wednesday-through-Saturday queue when the time comes tomorrow!

Not bad, I think -- but now I really have to go to bed, as I am TIRED. Night all!

Current Mood: tired

crossover_chick

That I got to experience up close and personal, much to my regret -- I'll tell you all about it in the write-up below:

Tumblr: Another night where nothing happened on Valice Multiverse, but over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), I did successfully finish drafting my “Teen Valicer Save” post before lunch today, yay! I didn’t have that much left to do, admittedly – just had to:

A) Choose two more Aspirations for Alice to complete so she had the same number as Victor and Smiler in their sections (ended up going with The Collector, because there’s a good number of collectibles in Alice: Madness Returns, and Bodybuilder, so she can be as strong and skilled in real life as she is in Wonderland)

B) Add some lines to the “general overview” indicating which aspirations I’ll be having them ALL complete (namely Academic during their college years, and Paragon Partner because it suits them being polyamorous...though I did just realize that I wasn’t thinking about them being a “V” relationship (meaning Alice and Smiler are each romantically involved with Victor, but not with each other) when I picked that...hmm. Well, I suppose I’ve had Alice and Smiler occasionally do romantic things in my fanfics – Alice kissed Smiler in one of my not-incorrect quote collections, in fact – so maybe they can declare themselves partners and we can pretend it’s queerplatonic. (Or...actually, Lumpinou has a mod that makes queerplatonic relationships a thing in the game – maybe we can see if that counts for the aspiration?))

C) Finish off things with a concluding paragraph acknowledging that, for a “less complicated” save file, I have given my Sims a LOT to do (I like having goals!), and talking about how the next step is to actually get the save file off the ground...which would be easier if the game wasn’t so buggy

D) And add the tags, bitching some more about how I’ve had this idea in my head for a while, but it’s been hard to actually get it STARTED thanks to all the bugs (especially from the recent July 1st patch, yeesh) and the other games vying for my attention (such as Baldur’s Gate III, Superliminal – and come December 8th, good old Paralives...)

So yeah – post is all done now, and I should be able to pop it into this week’s queue no problem. :) Figuring out the REST of the queue is left as an exercise for Future Victoria. XD

Workout: Ended up going out and about with my parents early this afternoon, which included a reasonably-extensive walk...which I did NOT dress correctly for, I am sad to report. The problem was, it was cloudy this morning, and stayed cloudy for a while, so I was tricked into thinking I’d be okay in a black t-shirt and a baseball cap – and ended up sweating like a pig throughout the whole trip. Just absolutely MISERABLY hot. *sigh* Very glad that I brought my water bottle to rehydrate...and that I DID think to put some sunscreen on to protect myself from burning after Mom suggested I should. I may have been boiling, but at least I did not also end up as red as a freshly-cooked lobster! Still, I was glad to get home, get in the AC, have some food, and take a nice cool shower. Next time – WHITE t-shirt, Vic. You may only have like two, but they DO exist!

Writing: I got another good chunk of “The Van Dort Vacancy” done today, I’m happy to report. :) Today’s chunklet revolved all around Victor’s closet – specifically, Alice and Smiler getting a look at it while Victor got his carpet bag out and being like “you – you own twelve suits?” (For reference, Alice’s father, a respected educator at Doskvol Academy who lived in Brightstone, had five, with one reserved for special occasions.) Poor Victor was promptly embarrassed by their stunned reaction and ended up asking if they wanted to take any to unstitch and turn into clothes for themselves – cue Alice correctly guessing that this was an offer born out of guilt, and Smiler reassuring him that they weren’t judging him for having more than they did (Alice: “just your parents”), and he didn’t have to “make up” for being rich. Victor relaxed a little after that, but insisted they were still welcome to take some of the suits to repurpose if they wished, and Smiler ended up suggesting he take three that he really wanted, and one that he could stand to see cut up. Because they had all the clothes they needed back at the MOJ, but they knew Alice could use another dress. Alice concurred and said she wouldn’t say no to a repurposed suit – but that she also wouldn’t mind leaving with the servant’s dress she had on, since it was so nice. Victor was like “if you want to, go for it, I don’t mind...just maybe alter it a little so it’s not so obviously from our house,” with Alice replying, “Not a problem, I was already planning on shortening the skirt to my preferred length.” XD I left it with her wondering if her sewing skills were up to moving some of the lace from the collar to the skirt hem, and Smiler and Victor both offering the skills of someone they knew to help her with that if necessary. Tomorrow, Alice will get them back on track with packing (noting that even if Lord Fortescue doesn’t mind being left in the wine cellar, she and Smiler may be missed from the kitchen), and Victor will start grabbing everything he thinks he needs – which might include an old masquerade mask in need of repurposing...

Baldur’s Gate III Planning: Yeah, ended up not having time again to play Superliminal (meaning I’m thinking this upcoming weekend should be Superliminal Collectibles Run Wrap-Up Weekend), so I went back to this instead. And I’m pleased to announce I did make a little progress, specifically on organizing my list of mods I intend to install. Basically, I decided to separate them into subcategories based on function – I now have sections specifically for “Appearance” mods (stuff that makes sure Smiler always looks like, well, Smiler); “Bugfixing” (what it says on the tin – just one mod here, but it’s a doozy, with loads of fixes); “Utility” (for stuff that makes my life easier – better tooltips, the ability to go around with a bigger party, leveling characters up to level 20, etc); and “Equipment & Spells” (again, what it says on the tin). I am also going to make sure I have a link for each mod, plus a note indicating when it was most recently updated and if it has the “Patch 8 Tested” tag or not. *nods* So yeah – once I finalize which mods I’m using, I should have a nice, highly-organized list that I can easily browse to see what I’ve got and what might be causing problems. :) Just gotta get all the mods in it now!

YouTube: Being Sunday, the YouTubery of the day of course consisted of Jon of Many A True Nerd’s latest Fallout-related video: “Fallout New Vegas: You Only Live Once Remastered - Welcome Back To Goodsprings!” Part one of his new F:NV YOLO series, which is a “no healing permadeath” run through the game – that is, he is not allowed to heal any damage he may take over the course of the game, and if he dies, the run just ends right there. I never saw his original F:NV YOLO run, but I did watch and enjoy his Fallout 4 YOLO run with Finn Ally (the woman who went for the Minutemen ending despite doing all the raider stuff in Nuka-World and pissing off Preston), so I’m quite eager to see how this one goes! Here’s what happened today’s brand-new shiny first episode:

A) Jon laid down the rules for this “YOLO Remastered” challenge:

I. No healing, death is the end of the run (as per what we’ve already established – he’s modded out any health regen the game might have tried to foist on him, and is prepared to use console commands to redamage his character down to her “actual” health for those instances where she is fully healed upon entering a DLC land)

II. Game must be played on “Very Hard” difficulty, as the original was played on merely “Hard” (though Jon declined to go all the way into “Hardcore” mode when the game offered it via pop-up right after character creation – the changes it makes to healing and rad removal and whatnot were obviously not applicable to his character, and forcing her to keep up with food and drink meant she would be forced to consume healing items, thus defeating the purpose of a YOLO run)

III. No permanent companions, because otherwise his character could sit back and let Boone handle everything for her (he is apparently a monster)

IV. And the big one – NO. RANGED. WEAPONS. Because Jon remembered that, in his original YOLO run, his character solved everything with either skill checks or sniping, and he felt that the latter made things too easy. So not only is this a YOLO, it’s also a Melee/Unarmed Only run, as Jon is not using any guns, explosives, or throwing weapons! ...Well, except when the game FORCES him to shoot something as part of a quest (like how in Lonesome Road he’s got no choice but to use the Laser Detonator on the warheads to proceed), but fortunately those instances are apparently few and far between. Other than those fleeting moments, NO. RANGED. WEAPONS.

B) Upon waking up in Doc Mitchell’s clinic in Goodsprings after the opening “Benny, aka Chandler Bing [RIP], shoots you in the head” cutscene, Jon designed his character – or, rather, redesigned his former F:NV YOLO Courier, P. D. Shoot! The P. D. stands for “Please Don’t.” XD I don’t know what her stats were in her original adventure, but in this one, the bedraggled Courier had:

I. 7 Strength, 5 Perception, 6 Endurance, 1 Charisma, 9 Intelligence, 7 Agility, and 5 Luck to start (Jon needed the high Strength for Melee and Unarmed attacks; the high Agility for extra AP (action points, necessary for VATS); and the high Intelligence for getting skill points faster to level up her skills sooner – it really hurt him to leave his beloved Luck at solidly average, though. Don’t worry about that 1 Charisma, though – doesn’t mean a thing when you can level up the Speech skill separately :p)

II. Melee Weapons, Speech, and Sneak as her “tagged” skills (I’m not sure what exactly that MEANS, other than them being like “main” skills that get a little bit of a boost at the start – taking Doc Mitchell’s personality test originally got her Survival as a “tagged” skill, but Jon moved that to Sneak because being stealthy is one of the things that will keep P. D. alive

III. And “Skilled” and “Logan’s Loophole” as her traits – the former immediately added +5 to every skill, but caused P. D. to gain 10% less experience going forward, meaning she’d level up more slowly (which Jon was fine with, as that meant enemies would ALSO level more slowly and be easier to deal with), while the latter meant she could never get addicted to chems and they lasted twice as long, but kept her from ever progressing past level thirty (it’s a reference to the movie Logan’s Run, where everyone in a dystopian society is killed at age 30 – Jon was fine with never leveling past 30 as he was pretty sure that, given all the sneaking P. D. would be doing, she wouldn’t have actually gotten much past 30 level-wise anyway, and it was worth it to get the trait’s perks – which were more extensive than you might think...)

A rather interesting build – hopefully it works out for him in this challenge!

C) Once released from character creation (and the endless DLC pop-ups), P. D. went around Goodsprings looting anything that could be helpful to her in the future! The most notable loot included:

I. A weapon repair kit from one house, to keep her melee weapons in good condition

II. A “Chinese Army: Spec Ops Training Manual” (which she immediately read for +3 Sneak skill)

III. A bottle of whiskey, which allowed Jon to explain why he took “Logan’s Loophole” – while the description claims it applies specifically to chems, in reality it applies to ANY consumable, including alcohol. And alcohol boosts Strength in this game when drunk, so P. D. is gonna want to get boozed up if she gets into any fights!

IV. A Wasteland Settler Outfit that gave her a little more protection than her Vault 21 jumpsuit, plus +1 Agility (which boosts her Sneak skill and AP) and +1 Endurance (which sadly DIDN’T boost her health, as that’s calculated solely using her BASE Endurance – did at least increase her rad and poison resistance a skoosh)

V. And a “Locksmith’s Reader” skill magazine in a mailbox (more lockpicking skill, yay)

D) Once she was done looting, P. D. went over to the local saloon and kicked off the opening game quests! Specifically, she met up with Sunny Smiles to do exactly the very first mission of the tutorial (hilariously, also the very first instance where Jon had to break the “no guns” rule because Sunny wouldn’t speak to P. D. until she SHOT the sarsaparilla bottles lined up on the fence instead of knocking them down with a knife stolen from Doc Mitchell’s), then – after ending the tutorial to avoid fighting geckos at the water supply – went to talk to Trudy at the saloon to kick off “Ghost Town Gunfight!” A quest where you must rally the people of Goodsprings to help the caravaner Ringo (who they let lay low in their town after he stumbled in claiming to be the only survivor of an attack on his caravan by a gang) take out the nasty Powder Gangers! Here’s how P. D. handled that whole thing:

I. After learning what was going on from Trudy (and buying some of her skill magazines in exchange for the guns she’d picked up but couldn’t use), P. D. sought out Ringo and offered her help, then went to get Sunny on-side when Ringo said they’d need as much of the town as possible to fight back to have a chance of winning. Sunny happily said yes right away, guaranteeing them at least one ally. P. D. also took advantage of the opportunity to ask Sunny if there was any work in town that would get her some caps – Sunny said no, but said if she wanted to scavenge in the schoolhouse, there was an old safe in there nobody had been able to crack yet (even with dynamite!)…

II. P. D. then went over to the saloon to talk to Trudy and convinced her via her reasonably-high Sneak skill that they could set up some good ambushes near the saloon and general store, if they had the manpower – Trudy thought this was a good idea and said she’d talk to some people, get them to join the little militia P. D. was forming

III. P. D. then went over to the general store next door and convinced Chet, the manager, that the Powder Gangers taking over would be bad for business and he should outfit the citizens – he agreed to spare them some leather armor and ammunition, and even gave some armor to P. D. herself! Which was exactly what P. D. wanted, as she needed an emergency set of good armor to help her take a hit better if and when things started going belly-up. She also mysteriously decided to buy a shovel from him

IV. Having set up a little army with decent ammo and weapons, P. D. then reported back to Ringo, telling him they were ready as Sunny ran in to say the Powder Gangers were on their way –

Aaand then stayed well back out of the fight, watching as the Goodsprings citizens and Ringo took out the Powder Gangers on their own. XD The reason why she didn’t get her own hands dirty? Well, while she was never going to be LIKED by the Powder Gangers for helping set up this ambush, not killing any of them PERSONALLY meant she was merely “Shunned” by the group instead of “Vilified” as per F:NV’s faction reputation system...which mean that the gang wouldn’t shoot her on sight. And as you might guess by her name, getting people NOT to shoot at her is like P. D.’s top priority. XD And it’s not like Goodsprings thought any less of her for not joining in – she is officially “Liked” by the town for putting all this in motion, and Ringo was nice enough to thank her to the tune of 100 caps! So about the only sad thing that happened for P. D. is that she stumbled across the corpse of Sunny Smiles’s dog Cheyenne while looting. :( With her eyes hovering a few inches from her head because New Vegas may be an Obsidian game, but it’s still got that Bethesda smell. XD

E) With the fight over with, P. D. looted the corpses for her first super-weapon – the humble baseball bat! (Plus a cool cowboy hat that gave her a tiny bit of damage protection.) Why is it a super weapon? Well – once you get your Melee Weapons skill up to 50 (which P. D. did after picking a lock to push herself over the threshold to level 2 – she also took the “Intense Training” perk to get her Endurance up to 7 for more health), melee weapons have special attacks unlock in VATS. And the baseball bat gets the “Grand Slam” – an attack that costs more AP than the normal attack, but does double the damage. Which is good, but not amazing –

And THEN Jon explained how, if you get a sneak attack crit on someone, thanks to the various multipliers F:NV adds to the attack, the bat will do like FIFTEEN TIMES its base damage – and against a weak enemy, that is a fucking hell of a lot. Hell, even against a strong enemy, that’s still a pretty damn good hit! And the best way to ensure that sneak attack crit? Use a Stealth Boy, which Joe Cobb, leader of the Powder Gangers, just so happened to have on his corpse. A Stealth Boy that normally lasted two minutes –

But, thanks to “Logan’s Loophole,” would now last four because guess what counts as a consumable? :D Yeah, Jon knew what the hell he was doing when he took that perk!

F) Having obtained her super-bat, P. D. continued looting, heading up to the cemetery with her shove to dig up and loot the graves, then very carefully threading between some rad scorpions and coyotes to reach an unmarked shack to dig out all the guns, ammo, and drugs to sell, and a 9-Iron golf club to take as Super Weapon #2! What makes THAT a super weapon? Simple – as Jon explained once he got P. D. back to Goodsprings via fast travel (and recovered from the game telling him she was in [CAUTION] when she first arrived), the gold club’s special VATS ability is Fore! An otherwise-normal attack –

That knocks enemies flat. Meaning any enemy charging PD can now be knocked down, and thus have to spend precious minutes getting back up while she changes to her bat and wails on them. XD Basically she now has a one-two punch for any enemies who dare try to get in her face while she has the AP to use VATS attacks!

G) And, to close things off, P. D. headed to the schoolhouse to pick the safe inside for its goodies, including a second Stealth Boy! Jon fully expected her to lose some health to the baby mantises inside doing this (and had her wear the leather armor to help minimize the loss), but as it turned out, they were all on the other side of the room, so P. D. was able to sneak in, crack the lock (after one busted bobby pin), get the goods, then SPRINT outside with all of her health. Yay! :D

And that was that! Next week, P. D. ventures out into the wider world to see what is what and figure out how she’s gonna handle everything she needs to do. I’m looking forward to it!

Aaand that, as usual, took way longer than it should have, so I have to sprint to bed now. In my nice cool air conditioned room. Hopefully this upcoming work week isn't too stressful -- night all!

Current Mood: hot

crossover_chick

As you shall see once I present to you today's write-up:

Tumblr: Decently productive day over on the tumbls –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I spent the time before lunch working on the “Teen Valicer Save” post, just like I wanted! Specifically, I made it my mission to finish off the sections covering the individual goals I had for each member of the trio through their teenhood, college years, and adulthood (updating the “general overview” section to match as I went – for example, I took out the line in there about Smiler definitely going to Foxbury for college because I saw some Britechester degrees – Communications and Drama – that might suit them better). I’m pleased to say I mostly succeeded – everyone now has line items talking about what part-time jobs they might get in high school, and what after-school activities they might join; what I’m considering having them study in college, and what organizations they might join; what their occult status will be; what aspirations they’ll be tackling; and what they’ll be doing vis-a-vis careers as once they have their degrees. I just need to finish off Victor and Alice’s sections on their aspirations a bit (I listed four for Smiler to tackle, and I want to make sure Victor and Alice have the same number listed for theirs) and write a concluding paragraph or two (covering the main reasons I haven’t started the file yet – bugs, yo). We’ll see if I can get to that tomorrow!

Valice Multiverse – And over here, I spent some time tonight:

A) Answering an anon ask about how, even if your father embarrasses you, at least he’s never done what Vince McMahon did once and referred to you as “the product of his semen” on TV – I had the Inevitable High School version of the Valicer trio answer, with Victor and Smiler being grateful their dads have never done that, and Alice being like “same – I mean, mine’s dead, but I still don’t think he would have done that if he were alive” XD

B) Having a brief DM conversation with WeirdKev about whether or not it was a good idea for a Kindred to donate blood – my initial thought was “no, because that’s a good way to accidentally ghoul someone” (as I believe you can become a ghoul through injecting the blood, not just drinking it); Kev countered that vitae has some major health benefits, and anyway, doesn’t vitae lose the ability to ghoul/enslave people the longer it’s out of the vampire? I admitted I had heard that and did some research –

Aaand discovered, as per this wiki article (which, warning, has a kind of gory picture front and center), that not only does vampire vitae lose the ability to ghoul within a few minutes of leaving the vampire’s body and being exposed to air, it ALSO stops being vitae and becomes a mix of ordinary blood from multiple different sources. Meaning that, while it wouldn’t be a ghouling risk, it would also be absolutely useless for transfusions. So no, still not a good idea for Kindred to donate blood!

Sims 4: Well – after spending most of the week watching Sims-related videos with my workouts, and spending my pre-lunch time today working on the “Teen Valicer Save” post in the Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts, how could I not jump back into this game for a little more building action? :) Though I forewent downloading any patches in favor of playing offline again – I wanted to keep using the little bit of CC I’d put back into my Mods folder. Mostly because the current build I’m working on is that “Smiler’s Potion Caravan” lot, and I wanted to keep the Crypt-O-Club wallpapers and doors and all that with their bright yellow and blacks in there. They’re just so very Smiler! Even if they aren’t particularly “fantasy,” like the build is supposed to be...eh, I have so little yellow-and-black stuff in this game that really suits them, I think I can forgive these items for not being quite on theme. ;P Anyway – here’s what I accomplished today:

A) First things first – I took out all the furniture currently in the build, then went ahead and removed the columns and spandrel I put in last time to open up the “selling room” bit of the caravan to the outside, replacing them with a regular wall (though I did have to move the roof temporarily to fix a visual glitch that then popped up on the top of said wall). Reason? Well, my original plan for that room was to have the columns and spandrel create a “doorway” into said room, then see what decorations I could use to fake having a pair of big double doors on either side that could theoretically swing shut to cover the gap. But right as I was loading into the game today, it occurred to me that I could, you know, just use a pair of double doors there. XD I needed just the right pair of double doors, though, so (after a brief moment taken to see if I liked the bright yellow Growing Together shingles better on the walls – that was a big fat “No”) I spent some time considering my options and playing around a bit with the wall heights (as for some reason all the Realm of Magic double doors only come in “Medium” or higher, meh). In the end, I decided that the best fit for this particular build was the Horse Ranch Crossbuck Sliding Doors in black (as the yellow swatch was a little pale for my liking). Mostly because they looked like the kind of doors you’d have on a caravan like this, that could be easily slid open and shut depending on the circumstances. There was just one problem with them –

They wouldn’t get along with the stairs. I had to delete the stairs I’d placed for people to walk into the little “shop” room previously to get the doors on the wall, and after I placed them, I couldn’t replace the stairs without deleting the doors. Which, uh, kinda confused me, because the stairs were playing nicely with the OTHER door in the build! Then again, that door is a normal “swing” door, while the Crossbuck doors are sliding, as per the name – maybe the game thinks the doors couldn’t slide over the stair bit? The landing DOES have a bit of a lip on it… Still, I wanted Sims to at least be able to theoretically access the “shop” area (I may want to actually use this build one day, after all!), so since I couldn’t have stairs, I experimented a bit with lowering the foundation instead to make it possible for Sims to step inside without needing the extra help. However, after dropping the caravan down a few notches, I couldn’t help but think that it looked a bit silly on such a low foundation...plus I couldn’t remember if that “if only one step up, Sims don’t need stairs” rule held true for foundations, or only platforms. Like, I was PRETTY sure it works with foundations, since those came first, but I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. So I decided to abandon that problem for a while and turn my attention to the next item on my list –

B) Wheels! Because it’s not really a caravan if it doesn’t have a way to travel around, does it? And I’d recently discovered where I could get some wheels, thanks to this lovely article by Sims Community about cool fantasy builds perfect for the Enchanted By Nature pack! Specifically, the second build on the list, which was the “Tiny Fantasy Wagon” by Devon Bumpkin! As you might imagine, such a build was VERY relevant to my interests, and I’d made sure a few days earlier to pop into the included build video, just long enough to see where he’d gotten the wheels for his wagon. Turned out they were a debug item (the back ones being sized up with the help of the TOOL mod), which meant I could track them down in my own game once I got the debug stuff to show up in Build/Buy! So, after a quick save (because the last time I tried to use cheats in the offline version of Sims 4, the damn game crashed), I opened up the cheat bar, typed in both “bb.showhiddenobjects” and “bb.showliveeditobjects” and began searching! It took me a while to find them, though, and along the way, I came across a couple of contenders from Cottage Living that nearly took the intended wheels’ place – a big old rusty metal wheel with treads, and a pair of wheels attached to a plow-thing that I thought I could hide in the foundation. However, the plow-thing ended up being too narrow to fit properly on my build – and when I put on “bb.moveobjects” so I could resize it, I discovered that trying to size it up made it HUGE. Like, WAAAY too build to use on this build! And while the rusty metal wheels kinda looked cool, I couldn’t get them close enough to the foundation to make them look like they were actually ATTACHED, even with the power of the ALT key. So I ended up going with the original debug wheels I’d seen in Devon’s build/video (a Horse Ranch item, as I’d guessed) – grabbing a set of four once I found them in the rows of items; raising the caravan’s foundation back up a little so the “axle” portion of the wheels would line up properly with the bottom lip of the foundation; then carefully placing them with the help of the ALT key until they were nice and close to the foundation, and all lined up with each other. Had to move the “front door” and attached stairs over a bit to accommodate the first front wheel, and fiddle around with getting them lined up on one of the grid lines so I could mirror them properly on each side, but I got it all to work in the end! And then immediately saved again so I wouldn’t have to do it again. XD So now the caravan has (admittedly small and slightly broken) wheels, yay!

Oh, and as a side note – while I was placing the wheels, I decided to see if having the “move objects” cheat on would allow me to place stairs going into the sliding doors…and it totally did! :) So now I have a set of stairs going into the “shop” room again, yay~ Dunno how functional they are, of course, but we’re not worrying about that right now. XD

C) With THAT done, I turned my attention to another matter – namely, Smiler’s bed. I’d originally gone ahead and thrown the single version of the “Burst of Pride” bed in the nonbinary swatch into the build because, well, they’re nonbinary and it’s very them – but I saw in that “Tiny Fantasy Wagon” build that Devon had chosen to use a loft bed in his wagon build. And I couldn’t help but think that one of the more “rustic” loft beds from Horse Ranch or Werewolves might suit the build a little better AND give Smiler a tad more floor space, if necessary. So I went and looked at my options for both beds. The Werewolves loft bed I quickly eliminated, as it had no good swatches, but I did find a reasonably acceptable yellow bed from Horse Ranch that I thought might work. I stuck that in the room that had previously been the long and thin bathroom (as I was rethinking Smiler having a bathroom in the caravan anyway – make more sense to have to use whatever nature provided outside, right?) to see how I liked it. So far, I’m thinking it’s okay, and I’ve put the “Burst of Pride” bed aside for the moment (along with the Realm of Magic toilet I was using before). I just wish that we could choose the bed frame and bed covers colors separately, like we could in Sims 2 – it would look a lot better if it was a yellow bed with a black wood frame! Meeeh…

D) Speaking of replacing things, right afterward I ended up replacing the Home Chef Hustle food stand with the Jungle Adventures selling table in the build – while I do love the HCH stand, the JA selling table had a smaller footprint, AND a more rustic look that fit the aesthetic of the build better. AND a nice color swatch with a yellow table and a purple blanket over it. :D To my annoyance, though, I still could not fit both the Realm of Magic cauldron and the selling table in the “shop” room, despite the new table being smaller! I mean, yes, I suppose I could have kept “bb.moveobjects on” and placed them like that, but I really wanted to place them without the cheat so I could be at least reasonably sure they were functional. I even tried making the middle room a little bit bigger at one point to see if that helped them coexist – nope, nothing doing. *grumbles* In the end, I decided that maybe the middle room should just be the “alchemy” area – aka where Smiler does all the brewing – and they then take the selling table out and about to sell the results. So the current state of affairs is the cauldron is in the middle room, and the selling table is out near the front of the lot. Loaded up with various potions because, hell, I had the “show debug items” cheat on, and thus they were visible in Build/Buy for the taking. :p Might as well give Smiler some freebies for the aesthetic!

E) While I was trying to figure out the cauldron/selling table situation, I realized that Smiler also needed a mailbox for this to be a functional house. However, since this is supposed to be a “mobile” home, I didn’t want to put down a mailbox on a post, so I went looking for a wall-mounted mailbox that I could stick on the side of the caravan. I stumbled across the one from Snowy Escape first – the Snailbox Mailbox – and took a look at the swatches, looking to see if there was a good yellow or black one –
And stumbled across one that had been painted to look like it had a face! :D I was utterly charmed and – convinced this was a thing Smiler would do – happily put it on the caravan by the front door. I love when I stumble across stuff like that in this game!

F) I also realized that the inside of the caravan needed doors (so you could, you know, move from one room to another) and lights, so I slapped in the “Spoopy Portals Zigzag” and “Spoopy Portals Stripes” doors from Crypt-O-Club’s “Creepy Creations” collab in yellow and black to connect the rooms, and put up some of those Realm Of Magic Totally Lit Buglights (in the purple-winged/yellow-bodied swatch) to help light the place. Though the bug lights ended up being rather too dim to light the areas properly, so I ended up also hanging a Horse Ranch chandelier in each room to PROPERLY light them up. Though I don’t know how smart it is to have OPEN FLAME in a WOODEN caravan like this...on the other hand, the one Realm of Magic chandelier is RIDICULOUSLY big and does NOT size down well, so what is a girl to do? *shrug* If I want to change it later, I can!

G) After finally deciding to just put the selling table outside with all the potions, I decided to get a bunch of items that I thought Smiler would need/want while I got their caravan back in order, including:

I. The Lovestruck acoustic guitar, since that one has the best yellow swatch – it’s currently in the corner of their little bedroom area, ready to be played whenever they feel the urge

II. The Horse Ranch variant of the pee/woohoo bush, for them to do their business out-of-doors (because, again, I’m rethinking them having a toilet inside)

III. The Laundry Day clothesline and washtub, put in the corner of the lot, so they can wash their clothes (I do love inflicting laundry on my Sims)

IV. The “ring of stones” Outdoor Retreat campfire (because I realized this was starting to look a bit like a campsite, and figured they should have a campfire in that case – good way to cook food too, even if I’m letting them keep their kitchen for the moment)

V. And the Life & Death Crowskin journal in the yellow swatch (for writing down their thoughts/alchemy recipes – it’s sitting on their selling table for the time being until I figure out if I can get them a desk)

H) And finally, I decided that I really need to get the floors and walls INSIDE the caravan sorted before I quit for the day. So I went into the wooden flooring section to see what was good there –

Forgetting that I’d previously set up some color filters to look specifically for things that were yellow, black, or purple. Meaning one of the first floorings I saw was the City Living Basketball planks in bright purple. Just for funsies, I picked it and tried it out in one of the rooms –

And was like “shit, I kind of like this. And think it’s in character.” So, uh, yeah, I put it in the entire caravan. XD I’m not ENTIRELY sure I’ll keep it, but for now it was fun, in a very “oh no, why would they do this (but they would totally do this)” kind of way. XD

As for the walls – well, there’s a reason I mentioned wanting to keep Crypt-O-Club’s wallpapers in the game, as I ended up using them here! Specifically, I used the Blank Planked wall – with a yellow paint top half, and a black wood lower half – in the “alchemy” room, the bedroom, and MOST of the kitchen, and the Checkered Planked wall – with a yellow-and-black checkerboard pattern above the planks – behind the actual kitchen stuff. I thought the latter looked good as a “backsplash.” XD Again, I’m not CONVINCED I’m going to go with this for the “final” design (as previously mentioned, it’s not very fantasy), but again, it’s fun for now.

And there I left things! Build is far from finished, but I think it’s starting to come together, at least in a small way. Maybe next time I’ll have a fully-patched game and be able to look at the Gallery again for more inspiration. We shall see!

Writing: Started Chapter 4 of “The Van Dort Vacancy” today, switching back to Victor’s POV as he led Alice and Smiler over to his room so they could pack up his things before starting their assault on the Van Dort vault! Alice and Smiler were like “we knew this place was big, but that was still quite the hike.” XD Anyway, after a bit of banter about the pair being surprised Nell let Victor paint his door blue (instead of sticking with the largely-green color scheme of the rest of the house – Victor figures his father convinced her it would be fine, who would see it), the trio headed inside, with Alice noting with some puzzlement how minimal Victor’s room was (he admitted he was not a collector like his mother); Smiler admiring Victor’s collection of butterfly pictures (Victor told them he’s been drawing them since he was small, so that’s why he’s such a good artist); and Victor IMMEDIATELY reclaiming the wallet and spirit bane charm he accidentally left behind when he left for the fateful wedding rehearsal (he won’t be making THAT mistake again...even if that mistake has had some pretty good consequences for him). I left it with Alice and Smiler taking down his pictures for him while Victor got a bag and figured out exactly what he wanted to pack – tomorrow, Victor goes in his closet to get his bag and some changes of clothes, and Alice and Smiler get to be O.o about how many suits he has. :P Fun!

YouTube: I am happy to report that, despite getting to it a little later than I wanted, I was still able to clear out my Watch Later without issue, yay~

A) First up were our OXBoxtra lists of the week:

I. “7 Annoying Side Quests that Locked You Out of the Main Game” – Ellen and Mike talking about those quests that lock you out of the rest of the main game until they’re done, and sometimes even screw up your carefully-curated build! Examples ranged from genuine side quests (“An Unexpected Journey” in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, triggered by sleeping on the Bloated Float, an inn built into a docked sailing ship – you wake up to find the ship has been taken over by pirates, and have to kill them all and free the crew before you can go back to land and continue your adventures; not a long quest, but apparently a bit of a slog), to DLC quests (“Dead Money” in Fallout: New Vegas, triggered by following a certain radio signal down a bunker – you end up trapped in the very toxic Sierra Madre Casino, forced to obey the whims of Father Elijah or get your head blown off; points to this one for warning you right before you start that it’s going to lock you into a new area until the DLC is completed, though), to actual main quests that apparently had “side quest vibes” and still stuck you in a new location that you couldn’t escape until you completed everything there (the “Guerra” part of Red Dead Redemption 2 – you find yourself stranded with Arthur’s gang on a Caribbean island, far away from the American West, and have to help the people there before you’re allowed to leave; Mike’s main complaints seemed to be “questline is too linear and they won’t let us explore more of the pretty island”). The moral? Be careful when accepting quests – you may find yourself locked into some nonsense you very much don’t like but have to see through to the end! Also, be careful visiting Mike’s friend Martin, the lock on his bathroom might be broken – apparently Mike had to climb out the window at a party once. XD

II. “7 Worst Perks You Must NEVER Take: Commenter Edition” – Andy, Mike, and Jane going through more useless or actively harmful “perks” that you are strongly advised not to take in video games, based on the suggestions from the comments in their last video on the subject! Enjoying having an extra +2 to Intelligence and Perception from “Night Person” in Fallout 4 and think taking Rank 2 would be a good idea? BAM, you’re hit with the fact that crouching gives you “night vision” now, which makes everything look washed out and blurry around the edges, and activates not only in the darkness of the great outdoors, but also WELL-LIT BUILDINGS. Think having the spell “Spontaneous Combustion” will help you against the horrors in Fear And Hunger 2: Termina? BAM, the moment you cast it, you discover all it does is burn you to death. Think the “Poisoned Chalice” trinket in Deathloop is worth taking a risk on, despite it being a gift from the woman trying constantly to murder you? BAM, you – apparently can’t read or are trying a masochistic death run, as it says RIGHT IN THE DESCRIPTION that the only thing it does is drain your health. *shakehead* Sometimes these horrible perks are self-inflicted, I gotta say. But I suppose somebody’s gotta do the challenge runs!

B) And second, fresh off C. M. Alongi’s virtual video presses, we had “CaFae Latte Season 71 - TikTok Compilation!” Gigs warned me this one was going to make me mad, and – well, let me tell you what this one involved:

I. Oscar chatting with Andy/Vet Grampa during his break about the new pastor who visited at the end of last episode (Oscar hoping that he’ll soon get moved or his congregation won’t get big enough to support the church; Vet Grampa not being so sure), which – after Drek took their plates – led to Vet Grampa revealing a pet peeve of his: the younger generation saying “no problem” in response to a “thank you” instead of “you’re welcome.” Nicole, who happened to overhear, took it upon herself to explain “it’s because we’re all riddled with anxiety over being a burden and want to assure others that helping them is not a problem so they don’t feel the guilt over asking us to help” – Vet Grampa was like “awful way to live, but makes sense; thanks for explaining” (Nicole: “No problem.” XD)

II. The ER Nurse discovering that the cafe was closed for Independence Day, and a sign asking customers to donate what they would have spent to the ACLU, or Planned Parenthood, or 180 Degrees, or a local food shelf – she chose Planned Parenthood and headed off to Vet Grampa’s firehouse to see if she could get coffee there, and C. M. put up some text slides asking what everyone’s favorite color is and revealing hers is red (which everyone is surprised by) to make sure the video reached 60 seconds so she could get paid for it :p

III. JC ranting to Cyrus about how they’ll never go back to using the men’s bathroom (because, as they discovered the first time they used it to avoid a line at the men’s during a sports game, the women’s bathroom is cleaner, and the women in it much friendlier and unlikely to give them shit about wearing a skirt or dress than men in the men’s bathroom) as a customer listened in, looking rather confused; JC then asked Cyrus about the knitted flower he was wearing, with Cyrus revealing it was from Yarn Granny and that he got it during the last day of pride. The customer said “makes you look like a girl” – cue Cyrus fluttering his eyelashes and asking if he was a pretty girl, and Rethu showing up, assuring him he was gorgeous, kissing him, then telling the customer in their no-nonsense voice to get out. Customer fled, and JC said “you should really wait until AFTER they give us money to do that” XD

IV. Drek dealing with a very indecisive customer at the counter, who was finally interrupted by the guy behind her being like “let the people who can make a decision go first – I’ll have an Italian Soda, $5, keep the change” and causing her to flounce off to Starbucks; the guy, Conner, sympathized with Drek having to deal with those idiots (Drek revealing that normally he gets to hide in the back, but someone called out sick – cut to Husniya trying to insist she can work and Asif telling her “you have a 104 fever, SIT DOWN”), then asked Drek what was cool in town since he and his dad had just moved here. Drek happily told him about the car shows that turn into riverside concerts, and the game shop down the street that’s an excellent place to play both Magic: The Gathering and D&D – Conner was like “oh, I love Magic, I asked for cards for graduation and now I gotta try ‘em out!” They exchanged names, and Conner promised he’d be back around, leaving Drek to grin after him, awww~

V. Drek approaching JC to ask how you know someone’s into men, and then how to ask them out – JC guessed he was talking about Conner, then asked if the kid had ever dyed his hair or worn Pride stuff that Drek knew of. Drek admitted he hadn’t seen anything like that so far and showed JC Conner’s Instagram… and JC noticed a Bible verse in his bio and went “bad sign.” Drek countered that Oscar, Husniya, and Asif were all religious and queer, but JC said that, in their experience, that was usually an exception, not the rule. Drek replied that Conner was a regular and nobody was hiding anything about themselves, so… JC allowed that, then told Drek that he was probably just going to have to bite the bullet and ask, stressful as that was, pointing out that being blunt was the best way because he’d know right away if he was dealing with a homophobe; a straight guy or someone just not into him; or a potential date.

VI. And Drek lingering near the front counter near the end of his shift to talk to Conner when he came in (with JC starting the dishes for him) – Conner showed up for his usual and a scone for his dad; they talked about the fact that he was applying for a job at Wulver’s Seafood; Conner asked if Bob could put in a good for him, and Drek was like “she’s not a fan of nepotism and also super scary;” Conner admitted he found women who could kill you more terrifying than men who could kill you, maybe because of their beauty; a saddened Drek was like “you prefer women” and revealed he was gay and planning to ask Conner out when Conner was like “you don’t?” –

And Conner revealed he was a major homophobe who was utterly disgusted by the fact that Drek was gay – and by the entire cafe when Drek revealed everyone there was queer. Drek told him he should probably get out until he learned to be nice to his friends, and Conner eagerly left, causing the episode to end on poor Drek crying before going back to tell JC he had the dishes. :( Awww, Drek – he needs all the hugs from his friends! And as the commenters said, it’s worrying that Conner has a name, meaning he might be back for more bullshit...fortunately, the commenters are ALSO mounting an army to take down Conner for making Drek cry, so I think Drek will be fine. :P

So yeah -- some nice Simmy vibes this Saturday! It was fun getting back to the Caravan build, and working on the "Teen Valicer Save" post. :) And now I have to hit the sack -- tomorrow, goals include finishing off that "Teen Valicer Save" post in Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler)'s drafts if I can; either playing some Superliminal or working on getting Baldur's Gate III in shape for my "this is my final attempt at starting a new game I swear" run; working more on Chapter 4 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" getting in a workout; and keeping up with Jon of Many A True Nerd (he posted what the new series is going to be -- a You Only Live Once (aka no healing) run through Fallout: New Vegas! Which is something he's done before, but apparently this is the "remastered" version, which intrigues me...) We'll see what I achieve! Night all!

Current Mood: tired

crossover_chick

Yeah, I was in a not-great state of mind for much of it, I'm afraid. Some of it was annoyance at the weather (which never did get as nice as they said it was -- it was actually pretty humid and cloudy for most of the day!), and the rest -- well, you'll see the reason in the "Work" section below:

Work – Rather quiet end to the work week – mostly because we weren’t processing anything thanks to it being the day they ran the reports for the end-of-fiscal-year audit. I thus did the GL for the last few gifts that were posted yesterday, then spent most of the rest of the day working on obituaries and cleaning up duplicates and other deceased people I found on the system. And fighting with our new online time card system, because apparently our internet protocols were blocking the actual “time card” page. *sigh* Got it working in the end, but it was a bit of a pain in the ass! And then we got a phone call right near the end of the day from a guy saying that he’d just gotten an e-mail that another payment on his pledge had failed, but that he’d already updated the card. And that he didn’t like that our website had forced him to set up another pledge instead of just letting him update the card normally. I told him that I could see the new pledge, paused the old one, and said we’d look into the issue – I think the problem is that he went to our main giving page, when he SHOULD have logged into our online provider’s page. Which, you know what, I don’t know if the giving page or the “hey your payment didn’t go through” e-mails make that clear. *sigh* Gotta talk with the credit card people and my boss about that next week, I think – see if we can make it more obvious where people are supposed to go to make those corrections! But it was a pretty okay day, all things considered –

And then I LEFT work, and things kinda turned to shit as I ran all my errands for the day. To put it simply:

-->getting gas was fine (and I was relieved to see the price at the pump had dropped a little by the time I pulled in to refill)

-->hitting the bank was mostly fine (the teller I was working with got hung up in the middle of one of my transactions by some computer stuff for a bit, and we both had to wait for the OTHER teller to stop yakking with a customer so she could come help, but I transferred the money I needed to transfer from one account to the other in the end, and got some walking-around cash for myself)

-->going to AAA to get an EZ-Pass transponder for any toll roads we encounter when we head out for our vacation in August? Not fully shit, but definitely not fun (Mom ended up taking the long way there because GOD FORBID we brave the main drag, which wasn’t even that busy today; I had to wait longer than I expected to actually get the transponder because it took longer than THEY thought to activate it (apparently a lot of people were in the “activation queue,” so to speak; and there was an issue with my registration that I had to fix when I got home – car IS registered, just some stuff was out of date).

So yeah – that’s why there’s no video game section here at all today – by the time we got home, and I’d spent some time combing through my personal papers and all that jazz, there was simply no time to play anything. Even a level of Superliminal would have taken too long. *sigh* Just – it’s frustrating, you know? Both the “hey there’s surprise shit you have to deal with” and the “no you don’t get any time to play video games on your first half-day Friday.” First world problems, I know, and I can do naught but deal with it, but – still. I was hoping for a much more relaxing Friday. :(

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – my final night on the bike saw me return to The Sims 4 one more time as I pedaled my way through “I Created The Ultimate Supervillain | Super Sim Series 20” by Petey Plays It! The latest entry in the adventures of Tina, Super Sim Extraordinaire, this episode saw her fully embrace being a truly terrible person in her quest to overthrow vampire leader Rhiannon of the Underworld club! (I mean, she straight-up murdered Marley, Rhiannon’s right-hand vampire minion last time, so you wouldn’t think there was much more she could do, but…) Accordingly, this video saw Tina:

A) Give up her villainous “Triple Agent” lifestyle in favor of going back to the Criminal career and making her way up the “Boss” career path to become The Boss (and I gotta say, she rocked the old-timey mobster outfits that career path gave her)

B) Fill up the ranks of the Underworld club with her Grand Master vampire friend Sione (after Rhiannon tasked her with finding a powerful vampire to welcome into the club), her bestie from (some of) her college years Darryl, and – with the help of her mom Sally (more on this in a bit) – Evil spellcaster Dario, thus ensuring she had a solid base of members who were loyal to HER over Rhiannon when it came time to make her move

C) Finish upgrading her Servo Wheelio to Enhancement Level 10 – then tell her that she no longer needed a robot bodyguard, so she wanted to find her a nice apartment to live in (assuring her that she still wanted to be friends, and that if she had a need for her services, she’d call her back in); Wheelio was keen, and after a bit of apartment hunting, she found the perfect place for her and moved in with the help of $60,000 donated simoleons from Tina (proving that Tina CAN still be nice to some people)

D) While apartment hunting with Wheelio, breaking up two more marriages with her powerfully flirtatious ways, finally completing the Villainous Valentine aspiration (Petey was SO happy to be done with that one, given how hard it is to complete!)

E) Use the power of Ghastly Rituals to become a ghost and gain enough experience making messes (that poor Wheelio did her best to clean up, given this was before she moved out) to buy the final remaining evil ghost powers and thus become the Ultimate Evil Ghost, able to curse Sims with the Otherworldly Curse

F) Take a moment to buy more of Trashley’s boxes and complete their counterfeit art collection, because she is a Super Sim and she DOES have to complete every collection

G) Visit her mother Sally mid-episode with a request for Sally to learn and then brew a ton of Potions of Emotional Stability because Tina needed them to be able to steal more often and thus complete the Sticky Fingers aspiration quicker (she was currently limited by an eight-hour cooldown imposed upon her by an exhilarated moodlet she got every time she swiped something); Sally agreed, and we got to follow her adventures as the world’s most erratic spellcaster as she learned the recipe (Caster’s Alley had the tome she needed, fortunately, as experimenting on the cauldron did not work out), got the ingredients, and brewed up a storm! This is also when she met Dario the Evil spellcaster (having been sent to his Chestnut Ridge cottage by one of her colleagues) and pretty much immediately fell in lust. XD The whole reason she invited him into the Underworld club was to spend more time with him and try to convince him to become her husband. XD We’ll see how THAT storyline plays out later! Anyway, she ended up making 33 potions, and gifted them all to her daughter before passing out

H) Use those 33 potions to go on a stealing spree (after picking up the “Shameless” reward trait to avoid getting Embarrassed if she was caught), hitting up a bunch of museums and various mansions around the worlds to snag as many suits of armor and priceless works of art as she could get her hands on! Plus the occasional big-screen TV. Unfortunately, due to her need to drink a potion after every theft, Tina ran out of potions before stealing enough items to get up to the $250,000 necessary to complete the Sticky Fingers aspiration – but she got pretty damn close! Would have taken her a lot longer to get to that point WITHOUT the potions, that’s for sure!

I) Have her final confrontation with Rhiannon – which involved her heading over in ghost form and using her spectral powers to break into her house; stealing a painting right in front of her (finally completing the Sticky Fingers aspiration, yay!); confronting her with a secret she found on an earlier break-in and blackmailing her (which, combined with her sneaking into the Tiger Sanctuary at the start of the episode and finding a Tiger Inspector badge before being escorted out by security, completed the Seeker of Secrets aspiration); hitting her with the Otherworldly Curse; inviting the rest of the club over for a gathering so they’d start breaking Rhiannon’s appliances; challenging Rhiannon to a fight in front of everyone; losing that fight (vampires be tough, yo) and quickly switching tactics to butter Rhiannon up instead; and finally convincing Rhiannon to surrender leadership of the Underworld (completing the Leader Of The Pack aspiration)

J) Flush with victory, and not willing to give up the villain lifestyle yet (despite having completed EVERY “Deviance” aspiration), gather up all her most important items, sell the fruits of her thieving labor, and leave her secret villain bunker behind in favor of a lovely painter’s cabin (well, more of a rustic mansion) on the Crumbling Isle in Windenburg! The reason? She had thirteen Sims (ranging from Bella Goth and Bob Pancakes to Angela Pleasant and Lou Howell) that she wanted to lure to the lot by promising them a relaxing getaway, then take something specific from each of them. What was not revealed, but I suspect that this all has something to do with the Businesses & Hobbies expansion pack…

So yes – very productive, very evil episode for Tina! I am very much looking forward to the next one and the chaos it will inevitably bring. :D

2. Write WeirdKev’s Gift Fic: Check – I wrote up the first draft this afternoon, before my workout! Because I figured, well, if I didn’t have time for video games today, I could at least get a jump on my writing, and I intended to write the damn thing this weekend anyway (given their birthday is the 22nd and I need time for a second draft). WeirdKev requested a sequel to his Christmas fic (where LaCroix faced off against ghoul Zan Owlson, representing the new ghoul union), where LaCroix brought in Owlson’s old boss and nemesis Glomgold to come up with a plan on how to get rid of her and cripple the United Ghouls Of The Camarilla once and for all!

...given Glomgold is the one from the new version of Ducktales (Owlson too), the plan he came up with involved luring Owlson to Anarch headquarters; building a giant Trojan Butt for her to be tempted by; filling it with ghouled sharks (complete with a sprinkler system to keep them wet) to attack her when she opened it up; him and LaCroix standing on a nearby rooftop dressed as Santa Clauses throwing homemade chum down to get the sharks to attack the Anarchs; and then the Sheriff using a giant slingshot to catapult the Ankaran Sarcophagus into the middle of the mess and let the Antediluvian inside clear up the stragglers. With all of this secretly being to demoralize Owlson’s “greatest enemy” Phillianne Tropy (Kev’s OC and Owlson’s girlfriend), take over her holdings, and become the richest man around and finally show up Scrooge McDuck. XD (And I didn’t come up with any of that myself – it was all Kev! Dude knows what he wants.) LaCroix was at first merely perplexed by all this, but the minute Glomgold started talking about launching the Ankaran Sarcophagus off Venture Tower, he nearly got stabby with his letter opener. XD And eventually just ordered the Sheriff to get Glomgold out of his office. Glomgold BRIEFLY tempted him with the idea of using Alice to deliver the Trojan Butt so she too would be eaten by sharks, but LaCroix managed to resist the siren call of the nonsense. XD Fun one to write, I gotta say – hopefully Kev likes the final version!

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – got another OXBox list video out of the Watch Later tonight with “7 Baffling Game Concepts You Won't Believe Are Real!” Andy, Mike, and Jane going through some of the, uh, confusing games out there that got made despite their batshit concepts. Like Gender Wars, a halfway decent isometric shooter with a plot about men and women going to war against each other and all the sexism that implied (in both directions, actually – women were depicted as vapid losers obsessed with shopping, while men were depicted as vapid losers obsessed with beer). Or Forbes Corporate Warrior, a game where you supposedly learn about the stock market while roaming a vast expanse of rusted metal flooring, shooting cash at badly-made polygons that represent your competitors and making sure your reserves don’t run low (yes, for some reason the actual Forbes signed off on this nonsense). Or *deep breath* If Letters Had Pants, Would They Wear Them Like This? What About Numbers? What If They Had Small Shovels And They Dug Stuff Up To Put In A Museum?, a *gasps for air* a puzzle game where you have to find words on a randomized grid of letters to dig into the dirt and locate artifacts for a museum you’re setting up (ranging from crushed soda cans to dinosaur jaws), and every time you complete a level, you are allowed to give some of your letters pants that help increase your combos in some way (this is patently ridiculous and yet it clearly seemed like the most genuinely fun game of the bunch – Jane certainly liked it!) Basically, this whole list was proof that there are some very bizarre games out there – and not all of them are terrible tie-in games for food products! (I mean, some of them are – let’s not get started on the terrible point-and-click adventure game Animal with the old UK mascot for Peperami...)

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – another day with nothing on to do on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler), but I did have one anon ask to put into the queue over on Valice Multiverse – someone talking about the most eldritch creature in their D&D setting: an impossibly wide ape. Like, an ape that is somehow wider than anything else, while all its other proportions remain the same. It is known as – “Wide Ape.” XD I had the Cuddlepile!Valicer trio comment, with Alice saying “I guess that is the most descriptive name – and I name my Wonderlanders things like ‘Hatter’ and ‘Duchess,’ so who am I to judge;” Victor going “I think the wide ape is called whatever it wants to be called;” and Smiler wondering “so is it only impossibly wide from the front view? Or does it change as the viewing angle changes?” (A question I was wondering myself!) We’ll see if we get any more Wide Ape lore after this posts tomorrow!

Other: Just wanted to brag that I managed to win one of the games of Scrabble we played tonight (Mom won the other one, unsurprisingly – she’s quite good at this game). I simply got really lucky with a few of my words, in particularly managing to set up putting “ZEN” on one of the corner triple-world-score places. :) So that was nice, at least!

So yeah -- had some annoying stuff happen earlier in the day, but at least the evening was pretty nice. And now I should really go to bed, as I am QUITE tired. Non-cleaning Saturday tomorrow, woo -- goals include working on my Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) drafts (want to get that post on the Teen Valicer Save done); figuring out what I want to do for video games (play Fallout 4 like I'd originally intended today? Do another level of Superliminal? Risk patching The Sims 4 and do some more building?); either update the FO4 Playthrough Progression or start Chapter 4 of "The Van Dort Vacancy;" and maybe see if I can get the two remaining OXBoxtra lists out of my Watch Later. We'll see what happens. Night all!

Current Mood: stressed

crossover_chick

Not only did it POUR this morning -- like, it was coming down HARD when I woke up, and didn't let up for a WHILE -- the rest of the day was that most horrible of combinations -- cool, but still humid. AKA the kind of weather you can get no relief from, because bundling up just makes you feel icky from the humidity, but AC just makes you cold. *grumbles* It's supposed to warm up again tomorrow, and Dad said it wasn't humid outside when he took out the trash, but -- we'll see what happens. The weather has been a bit unpredictable as of late!

In the meantime, here's how my day went:

Work – Well, I had to brave that absolutely POURING rain during this morning’s commute in (fortunately, while I did face some big puddles near the end, none of them were “attempt to swallow the car” big), but after that, it was a pretty quiet Thursday, all things considered – there was one call from someone who needed to update her card on her pledge, and then I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day working on obituaries, with one small break to help my coworker look something up (apparent duplicate pledge). *shrug* Was a bit bored, but it wasn’t too horrible! And the rain stopped this afternoon, meaning my ride home was nice and dry, yay~ Just five hours left to get through tomorrow – fingers crossed they’re good hours!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – took my penultimate ride on the bike this week, pedaling my way through:

A) The end of “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! The finale of the finale saw our intrepid Simmer:

I. Finish off the basement of the Town Center! Which involved him –

a. expanding the Vault Room so he could stick the “display case” room for the spare Book Of Life (just in case somebody needs their saga recaptured) with its giant window on the side of THAT room to get some more wall space in the “atrium” where the Spares portraits were going to go

b. making a second “display case” room on the other side of the Vault Room for the Plumbite spire that helped keep everyone’s needs up during the tough times (presented tastefully on the tray of the butler statue XD)

c. and deciding to make a separate “Hall of Spares” coming off the end of the main hall after running into one too many problems trying to place things in the atrium because the game kept acting like he was trying to put stuff in the pond that surrounds Sonny’s lot above. :p Could not blame him for that! The new room was thus created, and filled with the portraits of pets, spouses, and kids that Krystoff had painted…

Including both portraits of Kaya, Krystoff’s own dog (as James had him paint her initial portrait against a blue background, before realizing that it should have been red to match Krystoff’s own color). Meaning the two sides were uneven, as there were six pet pictures, but only five spouse/kid pictures. No, he never did notice that he had two pictures of the same dog, much to my frustration (and the frustration of some of the other commenters). I have decided to just assume that Krystoff decided to show a little favoritism to his own pet after painting all those damn pictures (and, admittedly, the portrait with the blue background WAS a masterpiece, so…).

II. Throw a big dinner party to send off the series! Which, in typical Tiny Town fashion, did not go as planned –

a. Very few of the Sims actually ate together at the big tables James set up (though Krystoff at least immediately got the party to Gold by attempting to call everyone to dinner...multiple times)

b. Sonny, frightened of something, screamed at his own siblings when he first arrived before runnig off again (causing James to have a laughing fit)

c. The organist James had Raoul hire for entertainment was a huge victim of townie fashion, sporting some of that awful new pride make-up (James laughed even harder at that)

d. And James’s attempts to wrangle the core Tiny Towners to sit at some temporary picnic tables he placed in the “town square” was beset by constant problems, including both a naked Raoul AND a fully-clothed Camillo getting themselves stranded on Reuben’s balcony (forcing James to teleport them off), Pablo refusing to initially sit down because he was busy talking to Kyra, and the other Sims refusing to sit still for more than like three seconds. James eventually gave up and settled for pausing the game at the point where MOST of them were sitting down and Scarlet was standing at the end of the table –

And then he zoomed out, and found the organist standing in the perfect place to ruin the shot. As James put it, “if that’s not Tiny Town, I don’t know what is.” XD Anyway, he thanked everyone for watching, then unpaused the game and watched everyone get up and leave Krystoff all alone…

And then got up himself and just walked off. XD Perfect ending to the series, frankly! And now I find myself tempted by Tiny Town thoughts again...think of how frustrating it would be to wrangle all those Sims, Vic...

B) The entirety of “Baldur's Gate 3: 20+ Easily Missed Tips (Spoiler Free)” by Proxy Gate Tactician! One of earlier videos, featuring a bunch of tips and tricks for playing the game that he wasn’t sure everyone knew about, but which were super useful! Such tips included:

I. Use the “Mask of the Shapeshifter” or the “Shapeshift” spell to tactically shapeshift – like to make yourself smaller to get into tight spaces, or to use Speak With Dead on a person you murdered (who otherwise wouldn’t be inclined to talk with their killer), or to get a second helping of a healing gruel while at the tiefling camp

II. Use Shift-Click to pick up a bunch of items at once in your inventory to move them to another container; Control-Click to do the same with a specific set of selected items; and the “sort by” button at the top of your inventory screen to sort your items by weight or value and make organizing everyone’s inventories a lot easier

III. Make sure that you tell the game to ask you before using your reactions (things that go off when an enemy does something specific – for example, letting you attack them if they try to sneak past you when too close) so that you don’t use a reaction when you don’t want to (sometimes it’s smarter not to, in fact)

IV. Feel free to pickpocket Withers to get back the gold you pay him for resurrections and respecs – no matter how many times you fail, he’ll never get mad at you

V. And be sure to use the fact that you can click and drag items in the world to do things like block doors and create barriers during fights, because manipulating objects doesn’t cost any action points!

...yeah, GUESS WHO NEVER REALIZED THAT YOU COULD DO THAT LAST ONE. Which is a little sad, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Proxy use this trick in previous videos – it just never clicked with me that it was something ANYONE could do! I think I just assumed that doing that was eating up his character’s movement or something...when I finally get back into the damn game, I am going to have to try that! Sheesh...thanks Proxy!

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice got to brave the creepy mannequin house in the hell maze today! :D Which involved her:

A) Confirming the mannequins were actually THERE, because of course she does hallucinate often and thus can’t always trust the evidence of her own eyes – Hatter assured her that they were (though he did point out in the process that he was a figment of her imagination, so… :P)

B) Getting creeped out by the two sitting rooms full of mannequins and mannequin heads having “conversations” together (wouldn’t you be?)

C) Venturing upstairs to find another pair of mannequins curled up in bed together with a pill bottle and a pocket watch (she took the former after finding out it was morphine, figuring she could sell it to Trip or give it to Mercurio)

D) Turning around afterwards to find – oh, hello, two of the mannequins moved and are now waving at her from the doorway...and, uh, the Wonderlanders are quite insistent they had nothing to do with that

E) Fleeing downstairs, only to find MORE moved mannequins waiting for her – she promptly shouted to Grout that if he was messing with her, she’d slap him no matter what, but got no response

Yeaah, Alice is not having a fun time. I mean, she wasn’t having a fun time before, but she’s having even less fun now. XD I left it with her trying to get to the door, only to hear a mysterious ringing noise – next we work on this, she gets a creepy phone call and has to deal with more mannequin shenanigans before finally getting to flee this terrible place! Hooray! :D

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – went back to C. M. Alongi’s channel tonight to watch “The Witch Who Trades with Death - TikTok Compilation!” A series of TikToks she made as promotional material for her new book, covering:

A) The main character Khana meeting with Death, explaining her shitty situation (concubine of the evil emperor for six years, having to sneak birth control while he tried to get heirs off her; now being threatened with being turned into a zombie slave in his army for killing his favorite mistress for killing her best friend), and Death offering her the power to get out...for a tiny piece of her soul…

B) Khana escaping and arriving in the frozen lands of Pahuuda, meeting her future best friend Haz and immediately taking a food service job because fuck it, her life is already horrible – cut to a few chapters later and love interest Sava revealing that the evil empire is invading, anyone know why? (Khana: mmmnooo?)

C) Someone sympathizing with Khana’s backstory of sexual assault and asking if she wants to get revenge; Khana saying that she doesn’t, both because she doesn’t have a chance in hell at pulling that revenge off and because all she really wants is to never see, hear, or think about him again; Sava showing up to remind everyone that the emperor is invading her new home to track down his traitor concubine; and the other person saying “well now you HAVE to get revenge” – and, when Khana was like “nope just gonna run some more” – “you’re in the middle of the tundra, you’re not going anywhere” XD

D) Neta, Khana’s eventual mentor, also being like “you were a concubine to this evil dickhead for six years?” and offering to teach her how to fight back – and then, when Khana was like “no, and I am still hoping to run to avoid him invading,” pointed out that the Emperor was NOT going to be nice to her new friends in this place...if he let them live at all; cue Khana going “what was that about teaching me to fight?”

E) C. M. talking about how, despite the main pairing being cishet, there was still plenty of queer representation in this book, with Haz talking about being a bisexual disaster and nonbinary character Athicha being revealed to be in a relationship with Neta – only for the conversation to be derailed by Khana asking about Athicha’s muteness, given she doesn’t appear to be deaf. Turns out it was the result of an old battle wound, sustained in the same fight that killed love interest Sava’s girlfriend – Khana offered to try and heal it with her magic, but Athicha signed that the wound was too old and she was doing fine with sign language. Which Neta taught her, apparently, to help her and Sava come out of their respective funks. Which later led to her and Athicha fucking, and Haz deciding he’d heard enough of this conversation XD

F) Haz chatting with Sava about his crush on Khana and how he mentioned that part of his attraction to her was that she was “safe” – after all, she’s a witch who can heal all injuries and has no interest in being a soldier; Sava confirming this and admitting he wished she was a little less scared of her own shadow, at least...and then Khana showing up to reveal that she’d just enlisted to help in the fight against the evil empire invading the land, saying she was done letting fear rule her. Haz gave her a little shit for saying that with an utterly terrified expression, then congratulated her on being a little less scared of her own shadow. XD

G) Khana and Sava both going “it’s not that I’m not interested in you, but I’m dealing with my own trauma, and we’re about to fight a war here, so we should probably put all romantic shenanigans on the back burner until that’s dealt with and we’ve figured our shit out…” and then Khana saying “unless you’re free Saturday” and Sava IMMEDIATELY accepting. XD Haz and Neta were like “straight people” while the evil emperor was like “hello, busy getting ready to invade you” (Sava: “Fuck off”)

H) Haz wondering what his chances are of surviving the book, and Neta asking about the genre – and, upon being told it’s dark fantasy, telling him “I’d keep your will up to date” XD

I) And Haz then realizing “hey, wait a minute Neta, you’re the MENTOR, you have even less chance of surviving than I do!” And Neta going, “I know, now stop being a little bitch about probably dying.” (Haz: “Book hasn’t even come out yet and already I hate it” XD)

Fun stuff! Though I’d like to tell Haz not to worry TOO much, as apparently this book’s got a happy, or at least happyish, ending. That has to up his and Neta’s survival chances, right?

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I didn’t do anything over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) because that queue is set, but over on Valice Multiverse, I chucked my latest set of Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes (about them moving in together – hang on, I never linked those, did I? Here you go) and the “Valicer as text posts” post (For your enjoyment) into the queue! Because I had nothing else going on, and it’s fun to share some of this stuff again on my RP blog. :p We’ll see if anything new pops up tomorrow!

And that is pretty much that! And now I should really head to bed before I succumb to the temptation to look at the official Baldur's Gate III mod page again. XD Tomorrow, my goals after work are a little up in the air because I have some errands to run (get some gas, hit the bank, and buy a transponder for getting through toll booths easier) -- I was going to have a Fallout Friday, but if those take a little too long, I may instead switch tactics and see about instead finishing off my Superliminal Collectibles Run this weekend. I only have three ACTUAL levels to go (the final bit, "Retrospective," is basically just a glorified cutscene), so I might as well, right? We'll see what happens, I suppose -- night all!

Current Mood: annoyed

crossover_chick

Yeah, the humidity let up some today, after yesterday was downright soupy -- I guess the thunderstorm that chased me off the computer last night cleared some of it out! Not enough, though -- it was still sticky enough that it was more pleasant to hide in the AC. *sigh* We're supposed to get some better weather this weekend -- I'm hoping! Would be nice to be able to open my window again if I want.

Anyway -- enough bitching about the weather. Here's the daily write-up:

Work – Well, the morning was a little bit hectic – with me looking up various bits of weirdness that we’d spotted (like someone with a duplicate pledge that needed to be taken off, or someone else with two pledges, and the payments on one were going on the other for some reason), splitting someone’s capital campaign pledge because they were now at a new parish, putting on a late Easter gift, and telling a donor I couldn’t do a credit card payment because we were preparing for the end-of-fiscal-year wrap-up (she said she’d send in a check instead) – but the afternoon was much quieter, with me just marking some people deceased, going through a QC file for the latest pledge billing, and sending a check back to a donor because it was an overpayment on their pledge. *shrug* So I guess it all evened out into a pretty average day by the end. :p We’ll see what Thursday is like!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again tonight, and back with “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Today’s chunklet saw James finish off Scarlett’s section and complete Krystoff’s final tasks – both of which were more difficult than he’d anticipated:

A) First off, when trying to complete Scarlett’s wedding day, not only did James find that Patchy had left the lot, he also found that he could NOT get the actual wedding event to complete – ending it early did nothing, letting it run out on its own did nothing – it was just stuck there, preventing him from accessing the map screen and thus being able to switch Sims! Fortunately, using MC Command Center to send Scarlett to CAS and back finally made the game realize “oh, yeah, wedding’s over,” and gameplay could continue as normal. James hit “Save As” after that, as you might imagine!

B) Then, once it was no longer wedding time, James used cheats to teleport Patchy to Scarlett and add him to the family so, you know, the married couple could actually be together – then attempted to make them have a baby because apparently everybody without a pet needs a child. (Except Pablo, who has both!) Patchy proved unable to “try for baby” in the traditional sense, and Scarlett couldn’t pick him as an option to have a science baby with – fortunately, Patchy could pick HER when he tried it from his phone, and the two ran off for a bit before coming back with a baby boy James named Scott! (Because it was as close as he could get to smushing together “scarecrow” and “Scarlett.” XD) Scott got shoved into a corner of the bedroom, much like Sighlas, though James did make sure that both his parents gave him one good cuddle before their section of the episode ended. Bit sad that Scott will never get to grow up, but then again, given he was made with the genetic material of a scarecrow (who was a decently-attractive Sim under the hood, admittedly – James checked in CAS) who was never supposed to be a permanent family member...yeah, I think aging him up might break this already-glitchy save once and for all. :p Best not to risk it!

C) With all that done, James then proceeded to finish off Scarlett’s section with a couple of upgrades to her house – putting out the green axolotl she found somewhere in Cuidad Enamorada, along with her marriage certificate to Patchy and Scott’s first handprints; scattering fireflies around the lot to make the tree house even more magical; and adding a wishing well! Scarlett’s last act in the save was to wish at said well for money –

And promptly lose $250 before being stung by bees. XD The well must have looked at her and said “you’re the FUCKING MILLIONAIRE, Scarlett – no.”

D) Satisfied with Scarlet, James moved onto Krystoff, who had the important task of finishing off the gallery in the basement of the community center by painting everyone’s partners and pets! James chose to start with the pets (mostly because Krystoff and Raoul have their own dog who needed a portrait) –

Aaand immediately regretted this decision, as he quickly realized that most of the pets would need to be up on a platform of some description if he wanted to get a good picture of them. Cue him spending a LOT of time fucking around with poor Krystoff’s painting studio, creating both raised platforms for the pets to sit on and sunken bits for Krystoff to paint in so everything was at the right angle; using MC Command Center to add the various pets to Krystoff’s family temporarily to make it easier to paint them; and breaking out the “selectable pets” cheat via mods to make the pets sit or stand where he wanted them to (uh, sort of – getting them in the EXACT right position often proved tricky!). It was quite the process, as you might imagine! But happily worth it in the end, as Krystoff did paint some nice (if slightly goofy) pictures of all the pets in Tiny Town – even Pablo’s horse Pecan got a nice portrait! :) Great to see the animals of the town getting some love~

E) With the pet portraits sorted (and all pets returned to their original owners), it was time to paint the remaining spouses and one-non-newborn child (because James had already decided he wasn’t bothering with the babies) in the town! Getting Judith Ward and Kyra to stand for their portraits didn’t prove too difficult – however, James had to use cheats to teleport Patchy to Krystoff for the painting session...and ended up getting THE WRONG PATCHY. Yes, there was a wrong Patchy for him to get! How, I’m not sure – though I do think Scarlett does have a “normal” Patchy SOMEWHERE on her lot, so maybe the game just assumed James meant THAT NPC when he was going through the list of NPCs to teleport. James was like “...screw it, he looks the same as Scarlett’s Patchy,” temporarily added him to the family, and had Krystoff paint him anyway. XD Once that was done (and Patchy had been added to a new household and sent away), James then wrangled Silas M. and got Krystoff to paint him, then temporarily saved and closed the game to get the mod that removes the “painterly” filter from “Paint From Reference” paintings –

Aaand when he loaded up the game again, Silas M.’s portrait had turned blank. For no reason at all. Fortunately, none of the other portraits were affected, so Krystoff only had to do that one over again, but given how annoying it had been to get Silas M. to cooperate the FIRST time, James was very annoyed.

F) And once all the portraits were painted, James wrapped things up officially with Krystoff by painting an unpainted section of his chimney, and fixing a window that was too high up on the front of his house. Just little things, but James was a touch embarrassed by how long everything might have been like that! :P

So yes – very glitchy and difficult, but James got everything to cooperate in the end, more or less! I ended with him preparing to put all the portraits up in the “Hall of Spares” room around the entrance to the vault (and wondering how he was going to fit them all) – tomorrow, we finish things off with the final bit of community center reno, and the big farewell party James wants to throw! :)

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – got another good page done on this, featuring:

A) Alice channeling the cowgirl spirit of the regular Fem!Malkavian Fledgling and her terrible stripper outfit, turning the strap of her bag into a lasso that she then used to snag the lever in the deadly beam of light and yank it up without injury to herself – took her four tries, admittedly, but she did it! Wonderland was dutifully impressed

B) Alice then retracing her steps to try and figure out what the lever did, and finding a door to a courtyard area with a “guest house” of sorts – complete with double doors that had clearly been barred before

C) And Alice entering the house (if not as dramatically as Carpenter wanted) and taking a look around – only to realize that, uh, there are a LOT of mannequins in here. XD Yeah, uh, welcome to the creepiest part of the whole fucking game, Alice – the Mannequin House! Aren’t you glad that I play with the Unofficial Patch + and thus can make you experience things like this? :P At least the true horrors don’t start until tomorrow...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – decided to concentrate on getting some of the stuff out of my Watch Later tonight and thus watched last week’s OXtra list: “7 Villains That Let You Live and Regretted It!” Ellen, Mike, AND Andy going through those villains who either –

I. Decided to let the hero live for no good reason (Pagan Min, who squanders two opportunities to off Far Cry 4 protagonist Ajay before the kid dismantles his dictatorship because he has such fond memories of Ajay’s mom, damn it)

II. Did try to kill the hero but didn’t think to confirm they were dead (Cesare Borgia, Templar and megalomaniac, who gets his Renaissance snipers to shoot Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood protagonist Ezio Auditore off a rooftop while executing Ezio’s uncle – but then just assumes Ezio didn’t survive the fall, which allows the assassin to recover, stop all his evil plans, and eventually shove HIM off a roof, much more fatally)

III. Or actively helped the hero stay alive while doing things to piss said hero off, apparently never guessing the hero would come after them (Lionel Starkweather, who actively guides Manhunt protagonist James Earl Cash through his snuff film set death maze to kill all the other people in it...and also kidnaps Cash’s family and kills them, apparently not realizing this would lead to Cash deciding it would be nice to end the game by murdering him with a chainsaw)

Yeesh. Bottom line – if you have the hero at your mercy, just kill them already! It will dramatically increase your lifespan, and your minions will probably thank you.

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – just Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about tonight, and I decided to use this week’s queue to get some random stuff sitting in my drafts out and about, plus give an old Song Saturday another chance at love:

A) For Thursday, I queued up a photoset of pretty purple iridescent butterflies from “ur-daily-inspiration” (because who doesn’t love shimmery purple butterflies? :D)

B) For Friday, I queued up a set of Severance fanart featuring some of Helly R.’s best moments – like waking up on the conference room table after being freshly severed, and writing “LET ME OUT” across her forearms (because I still very much want to properly watch that show, but until I figure out a way to do so, I shall reblog fanart :P)

C) And for Saturday, I reblogged my old Song Saturday post featuring The Cure’s “Lovesong,” talking about how, yes, I think I’ve figured out how to put a Valicer spin on it (because I was going through the depths of the “#song saturday” tag and realized this particular post never got a note, so I figured I might as well bring it back)

So that’s that sorted for the rest of the week, yay~

Not bad, not bad. And now, even though it is NOT thunderstorming (yet, anyway), I am going to make a concerted effort to get off the computer and go to bed. Night all!

Current Mood: good

crossover_chick

Yeah, one of the hazards of a long weekend -- you kind of forget what day it is when you go back to work. :p But it is indeed Tuesday, and I did indeed get back to the grind, as my write-up shall attest:

Work – A fairly busy first day back at the office – there wasn’t too much to catch up on in regards to e-mails and such, but there was a QC file for the latest thank-you going out that I spent most of the day completing, plus a fair number of phone calls to answer (including one donor trying to sneak in a last-minute pledge online – not happening, sorry – and one donor who needed me to shut down an ongoing gift they’d accidentally made). And a few things to look up for my coworker, who spent most of her day going through all the last-minute checks that had to go on. *shrug* It all made the day go by, that’s for sure! And it wasn’t busy to the point where I left late or felt absurdly stressed, so that was all right too. We’ll see what tomorrow brings!

To-Do List –

1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, another night with “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! James continued the loop around Tiny Town’s residents in today’s chunklet, visiting –

A) Vivienne so he could slap some solar panels on top of her shipping container house (as he’d said he was going to do for ages now – though in order to afford it, he had to have Vivienne grab some cash from the vault, which meant he had to switch to Scarlett briefly so she could OPEN the vault for Vivienne, which ended up in him being unwillingly pulled into an “electrical failure” event on Scarlett’s lot – he eventually got it sorted, though XD); redo her bedroom a little so her bed was better centered with the window on the opposite wall as the commenters wished (which led to him changing the wallpaper in there too when he didn’t like how it looked with the new layout – the lights were in the wrong place on the pattern); and – most importantly – make her Camillo’s mentor so she could help him max out his Writing skill, and thus finally have someone who could record her epic saga in a Book Of Life! Because, as James has complained (rightfully) about in the past, Sims like her with the “Poetic” trait can’t write Books Of Life for themselves – only other people. Bit of an oversight there, Maxis – I think authors would like to be properly immortal too, please! :P

B) Camillo, so he could get the guy to max out the Writing skill and be granted the power of the “Poetic” trait via the magic of cheats, allowing him to bind Scarlet’s life to a book! (James did briefly consider having Camillo complete the Bestselling Author aspiration to get the trait legitimately, but rapidly decided it would take too long). This involved both Vivienne mentoring him at both her house and his, and Camillo briefly getting back into the world of crystal-cutting to make himself a topaz gem to help him learn creative skills faster and avoid burnout to go with the needs-boosting crystal James gave him to keep his needs topped off. The combination of the two gems and Vivienne’s expertise meant that he maxed out his Writing skill (which was already at level 7 when he started) pretty quickly – and once that was done, James gave him the trait, gave him the blank book from Vivienne’s pedestal, and had Camillo bind his half-sister’s life to it! So now everyone has a book that can be used to bring them back to life should the worst happen, yay. :) Granted, Vivienne’s book nearly ended up in a storage bin as Camillo felt the urge to put it away after completing the binding, but James was able to retrieve it without issue. If with a lot of annoyed shouts of “what are you doing?!” XD

C) And Scarlett, so he could finally get her married to Patchy! Which was a bit of a tricky affair – first, James discovered that something had broken in his game so he couldn’t do a “proper” My Wedding Stories wedding (hooray!). Then, Scarlett had to spend the night before the nuptials visiting her various siblings with kids and partners to meet said kids and partners so she could properly invite them to the wedding, after trying to plan a base game affair on her phone and discovering she didn’t know most of them. Then, when she invited everyone to the shindig to celebrate, James discovered that Patchy had never showed up and had to use teleport cheats to get him in Tiny Town in time for his own wedding. THEN, James discovered that Scarlett could only “fantasize about weddings” when he clicked on the wedding arch, so she and Patchy had to get married elopement-style – which they did midway down the aisle, with Scarlett’s various relations gathered around the benches, watching on and cheering. XD And finally, James discovered that Scarlett couldn’t really fulfill any of her wedding goals, as the game refused to properly recognize her marriage to Patchy (they’re listed as “spouses” in the relationship panel, but Patchy didn’t move in when they got married, and the “get married!” goal for the wedding didn’t get checked off), so he had to end the wedding early, at mere bronze level. Sheesh – it’s like the game doesn’t particularly want players marrying their Sims to characters that aren’t real NPCs. XD

So yeah – another set of goals, fulfilled! I left it off with everyone hanging out in the aftermath of the “failed” wedding, with James confirming that guest Domenic was indeed Scarlett’s dad and she was right to invite him – tomorrow, we finish off things with Scarlett and move onto the only resident remaining – Krystoff! Who has a rather important job to do before this series can be marked as “completed…”

2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check plus, as I did a little extra editing today on the series –

A) First, in response to a comment from “LizzieAddamsTookAnAxe” on Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale of Tears,” informing me that newspaper article Bertram Tung finds on the Van Dorts at the end, listing them as the fourth-richest family in the world with 500 million in assets, was BADLY off, as the actual fourth-richest person in the world in 2004 was a Saudi prince who had 25 BILLION in assets, I edited said article to give the Van Dorts a net worth of just over 20 billion instead – and bump them down to seventh place on the list, since that’s where the stats I looked up regarding the richest people in the world in 2004 would put them (among the Walton family). Should have looked that up before, honestly – I keep forgetting that while 500 million is absurdly rich to ME, it’s not rich to the actual ultra rich. Well, it’s fixed now!

B) And second, I edited another page of Alice’s adventures in Grout’s hellmaze in “Downtown Queensland” Featuring Alice finding a pile of ash that used to be a vampire in that beam of killer light coming down from the ceiling; managing to retrieve what was left of the pile of ash’s jacket to check its wallet – and discover it used to be, of all people, Kent Alan Ryan (aka Patty’s missing domitor); discovering that the reason he got ashed was because he was trying to pull a lever that was smack-dab in the middle of the light, which Alice guessed was necessary for escaping; and searching the room to see if she could find anything that would help her pull the lever at a distance, only to come up short. I left it with her preparing to see if she could maybe shoot the lever to activate it – tomorrow, she realizes that the specific type of bag she brought with her actually gives her another option...

3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – popped back onto C. M. Alongi’s channel to watch another one of her older TikTok compilations: “The Witch Who Trades with Death - New C. M. Alongi Novel!” This was a series of TikToks she did to promote the latest novel coming down the pipeline – a stand-alone book featuring a witch who, escaping sexual assault and domestic violence, runs off to another land and starts recovering with the help of a found family...only to find her awful ex is the evil emperor looking to conquer the land she now calls home. (Don’t worry – he apparently gets his.) The TikToks featured C. M. and her books (Blackwing, Citadel, the in-progress at the time Heart Of Iron, and Witch) all chatting with each other, and covered:

A) Witch’s introduction to the group (right after Blackwing and Citadel were complaining about when their sequels were coming out, and Heart of Iron had needled Citadel for not winning the Minnesota Book Award), startling all the other books (and causing Blackwing to bitch she was never going to get any sequels)

B) C. M. explaining why she wrote Witch (she was bored and had some free time in between waiting for edits on Blackwing to be done and Citadel), and the other books learning that Witch was an epic dark fantasy (Citadel was incredulous, given that Witch was wearing a very fun shirt with poison dart frogs piled on an ice cream cone – something Smiler would definitely wear, by the way) about a woman escaping domestic violence, healing with the help of a new community, and then beating the shit out of her abuser, only with more witchcraft and evil empires...and, apparently, “spicy”

C) The other books being shocked that Witch is openly spicy, as on-screen sex scenes are not a thing with C. M. – however, given the HELL that C. M. puts Witch’s main character through, she felt it only right to let the poor woman get laid. Plus the scene is apparently plot-important. The other books were “eh” about this (especially since the main pairing is cishet, and most of them are more queer), but they were pleased to hear Witch got a happy ending where the main character gets sweet, sweet revenge on her abuser. :D Blackwing even told Citadel (which apparently doesn’t end on a very good note) to take notes, causing Citadel to protest that their ending CLEARLY left the door open for a sequel, “you self-published swine” and leading into...

D) C. M. and the other books lecturing Citadel for being a trad-pub snob, with Blackwing and Heart Of Iron saying that being self-published did NOT make a book lesser and that trad-publishing came with all sorts of bad stuff – from the danger of an author/publisher power struggle, to the fact that publishers pay only pennies, to the systemic racism and sexism in the industry. Witch (a trad-pub book in the middle of edits at the time) was VERY nervous about them talking shit like this while she was being edited, but C. M. said that publisher Angry Robot knew what they signed up for XD

E) The books talking about why they were written: Citadel to emphasize the importance of talking to each other and not dehumanizing people; Blackwing to build an audience for Citadel before taking on a life of her own; Heart Of Iron to capitalize on the success of the CaFae Latte series; and Witch because, again, C. M. had some free time and was bored XD

F) Blackwing wondering if all the books have the “strong female character” trope, with Citadel saying that they have properly-fleshed-out female characters if that’s what she means; cue Witch worriedly wondering if the fact that her main female character having sexual assault and domestic violence in her past means she falls down on the wrong side of the trope. Fortunately, the others assured her they had some overused tropes themselves, and were able to ascertain that the assault and violence weren’t just there for shock value, weren’t actually portrayed on screen, and that the victim manages to REALLY get her abuser back at the end, so they were like “yeah, you’ll be fine”

G) Witch wondering if her book has to include social justice themes, because she doesn’t think she has any – the other books were like “hold on, your character goes through sexual assault and domestic violence,” with Witch countering, “Yeah, but that’s just HER experience, I don’t talk much about rape culture or anything like that.” Citadel, in a rare nice moment, said that it was okay if the themes weren’t explicit on the page, it was enough that they were acknowledged in SOME way and got people talking about them…

And then Witch started talking about how the main character bonds with her MALE best friend over their shared experience, and how the best friend’s abuser was exposed but avoided punishment thanks to being rich, and how him being the child of immigrants did NOT help, as the town was rather xenophobic. Heart Of Iron was immediately like “you have social justice issues out the wazoo, girl.” Witch was thrilled. XD

H) And Blackwing asking Witch about her magic system, as she was curious – turns out that witches in that world can suck the life force out of people to power their magic, and make trades with the personification of death (hence the full title of the book), sacrificing bits of their soul for more powers or more life force. It was quite dark, but Blackwing got kind of stuck on the fact that the life drain sounded like vampirism, and that it gave the witches a colorful glowing aura...meaning the book had sparkly vampires. XD Welp, given that Witch replied that “they sparkle with the souls of their murder victims!” I think C. M. trusts she did it better than Twilight!

Fun stuff – and good preparation for me watching the compilation of TikToks C. M. did to help promote the book when it came out in March! :) Hopefully I can get to that tomorrow...

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check and check –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Dropped a pair of posts in the queue for Wednesday tonight – that “Dead Boys Detective Agency as text posts” post I liked earlier, followed by my own “Valicer as text posts” post that was inspired by it. Felt only polite to reblog the original before posting my version! Dunno what I’m going to do for the rest of the week yet, but I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

Valice Multiverse – Ended up with a pair of posts to queue up over here too:

A) An anon ask talking about how they think Therese Voerman is the “the finest thing in Santa Monica since sliced bread” and how no one cares about that fact...or the fact that the fledgling blew up a warehouse – Londerland Bloodlines!Alice, said fledgling, agreed with them that shit was crazy and admitted she was surprised to find someone who preferred Therese – she thought most people liked the more sociable Jeannette more (some people just want ladies who will step on them, Alice!)

B) And a surprise response to my oft-forgot thread with The Coven Wars, with their character Seth asking for help finding his brother Richard after he wandered off in a daze – Forgotten Vows!Alice and Victor are on the case, getting out of Seth that they were near the square when it happened and saying that that’s where they should start. Perhaps this kid will get found after all!

Aaaand now it's thundering outside, meaning those thunderstorms that were supposed to show up earlier (they were TWO MILES away from us this afternoon -- I heard the thunder, but every time I looked outside, it was sunny) have finally arrived, so I'd better get off the computer. Night all!

Current Mood: confused

crossover_chick

And hey, this year I have the perfect icon for this entry! :D Go me and my premium account. Anyway, it was a decent Valicer Anniversary this year -- not perfect, but I managed to hit every goal I set for myself at the end of yesterday's entry in one form or another. Let me give you the write-up:

Tumblr: Only Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about this Valicer Wedding Anniversary, and I had a fairly productive day over there, happily:

A) First, I finished drafting out my “Valicer as text posts” post, explaining how it came to be and thanking the creator of the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post for inspiration (along with the creators of the original text posts). So hopefully I can throw that into this week’s queue!

B) Then, I did some more work on the “Teen Valicer Save” post, writing up the section explaining what I want each individual member of my OT3 to do over the course of the save – like part-time jobs and after-school activities I’d like them to join while in high school, what occults I’d like them to become (or, in Smiler’s case, start out as), and what their ultimate adult career would be. I’m still not quite done – have to finish off the lists for Victor and Alice – but I made some good progress, and I’m that much closer to getting this darn thing posted!

C) And finally, I reblogged my Valicer Wedding Masterpost (a collection of posts I’ve made documenting all the Valice and Valicer wedding stuff I’ve done over the years – includes links to the wedding chapters of “Secundus” and “Fixing You,” along with other wedding-related fic I’ve written in each verse; links to the Newcrest Adventures Valice wedding, and the Chill Save Valice and Valicer weddings; and a selection of pictures from the Chill Save Valice and Valicer weddings, because why not) again, adding links to some of the fics I’ve written so far this year that at least mention weddings (including, yes, the collection of Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes I queued up for last Friday about them moving in together – it did mention at the end Victor not wanting to get married until he could marry BOTH Alice and Smiler), and the pictures I took of the trio in their new potential wedding outfits today in Sims 4! Got it up a bit later than I intended, but it went up, and that’s all that matters. :) Yay~

Sims 4: So – as per the above, I did get to do my desired “new formal wedding outfits” dress-up session in CAS with my Valicer trio this afternoon. And it was fun, and you’ll get to see the results below. It’s just...there was some rather annoying weirdness/glitchiness on the way there that made this all take longer than I wanted. Let me take you through what happened:
( Behind A Cut 'Cause Shit Get Long )

Writing: Got to the writing a bit late tonight, thanks to needing a bit of extra time to finish off both the above write-up on the Sims 4 nonsense AND the latest reblog on my Valicer Wedding Masterpost...but I am very pleased to say that, when I did get to it, I wrote almost two pages and finished Chapter 3! :D Mostly because I really, really wanted to reunite Alice and Smiler with Victor today, given it is the Valicer Anniversary. :p Anyway, the final bit of Chapter 3 consisted of –

A) Kasimir genially confronting Alice and Smiler and asking what their deal was, and them replying “kind of depends on what YOUR deal is, and if it’s going to hurt our friend”

B) The confrontation being interrupted by Barnaby and Victor, with the former cheerfully informing Kasimir that Victor had agreed to help them rob the Van Dort’s vault – both Alice and Smiler were a little ??? over this, as you might expect

C) Kasimir explaining that the reason they’re robbing the Van Dorts is that Barnaby gave half the gang’s Coin to a conman claiming to be setting up a dog-racing track in the city (this is something that’s genuinely in the book – I believe mentioned in the write-up of important things of note in Nightmarket, in fact, but don’t quote me on that), and this was the best way they could think of to get their money back (with Barnaby going on about how the gang needed to be committing more “lovely crimes” anyway :P); and Victor explaining to Alice and Smiler about how his mother didn’t care about his well-being and didn’t believe a ghost would want to marry him anyway before breaking down. :( Alice and Smiler both comforted him, and Victor asked Alice if he could stay with her at least temporarily, since he did not want to live in the Van Dort mansion anymore; Alice agreed, despite the smug coming off Smiler XD

D) And Alice and Smiler confirming to Kasimir that they’re all for helping rob the Van Dorts, and Victor sending Kasimir and Barnaby to wait in the wine cellar while he, Alice, and Smiler went up to his room to get his things (Kasimir and especially Barnaby were very happy to wait down there XD)

So yeah, that’s another chapter in the books, yay! :D Now it’s back to “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” for a few days, and then next weekend, we start Chapter 4!

YouTube: Not a great day for the old YouTubes, given I spent most of the day either working on my tumblr, playing Sims 4, or working on these write-ups. But I got in a few videos, including the clips of Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler that I wanted to watch –

A) First up, as per the “Sims 4” section above, I watched “This New Update BREAKS The Sims 4…” by onlyabidoang right before my playsession this afternoon! Because yeah, uh, looks like the July 1st patch was a lot buggier than anyone thought, prompting Abi taking to the YouTubes to warn his audience not to update their game if they could help it, and to show off as many of the bugs he could in his own game to let everyone know what they might be dealing with. Among the bugs noted were:

I. Being unable to drag dirty dishes into sinks, trash into trash bins, laundry into laundry hampers, and certain collectibles into their display cases

II. Being unable to direct Sims to take a pregnancy test if you had your sims “try for baby” in a bed – and the pregnancy state itself being somewhat broken, with some pregnant Sims not showing their bellies or not being able to progress in their pregnancies

III. Sims and objects disappearing behind curved glass walls (Abi noted that curved walls are buggy as hell anyway, so maybe this should have been expected), and Sims being in rooms with glass walls getting the “Poorly Decorated” moodlet for some reason

IV. Sims coming home from work or school early if another Sim left on the home lot decides to travel

V. Sims with the “Entrepreneurial” reward trait (Abi had some trouble pronouncing that, poor guy) not getting promotions in their careers after a certain point, only raises

VI. And Sims with custom tattoos and pets with custom coats made in paint mode ending up with pitch black skin or fur (I – think I’ve actually seen this in my own game BEFORE this patch, with the Dogmeat who lives with my Valicer trio in the Building Save I use the most often sometimes showing up black in CAS! But apparently the problem’s gotten a lot worse with this patch)

Soooo – yeah. Lot of fun bugs with this particular patch, eh? And everyone was so excited because it finally fixed the “indoor weather” bug… When’s Paralives coming out again??

B) And then, tonight, right after I’d finished talking to my friend Squid, I took a few minutes to watch the following:

I. “Alice: Madness Returns - Launch Trailer” by Electronic Arts (exactly what it says on the tin, the trailer that went out when the game officially hit shelves)

II. “Tim Burton's Corpse Bride – Trailer” by YouTube Movies (the longer of Corpse Bride’s two trailers, with the poem narration)

III. “The Smiler Alton Towers AR Points” by matmi (a look at all the AR points around the park and in newspapers and whatnot that you could scan with your camera to see neat things and unlock goodies in The Smiler Game)

IV. “What Smiler Sounds Like” by docette2015 (aka me – one of two video clips I have of my Chill Valicer Save trio hanging out together (in this case, in Chestnut Ridge to celebrate SimCity Founding), which I recorded specifically so people would know what Smiler’s voice sounds like)

So yeah, I think I got all of my Valicer clips in there. :) Would have liked to have watched more or longer ones, but you have to work with the time you have!

Workout: Hopped back on the bike for another half-hour today, pedaling my way through the beginning of “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Yeah, I know I only just started the Wyrdwood series over on Oxventure, and I am eager to watch the rest of it, but I was also eager to see Tiny Town finally wrapped up after so long. So I decided we’d dedicate this week to the big finale of this series, then continue catching up on all things Oxventure after that. *nods* None of it’s going anywhere, after all!
Anyway – this final episode of Tiny Town is all about finishing unfinished business, making sure everyone is in a good place in their lives, and ensuring the town is in the best state it can be in. James went through the comments on previous videos, made a list of what people wanted to see for each resident, and planned to visit each one in turn to wrap things up for them – starting with the people who had the least “wrapping up” to do, of course. So far, in this first half-hour, he has:

A) Gone by Sonny’s and built a proper nursery for his and Judith’s baby boy, Blue, with some nice plants and a ceiling fan and cute artwork that the baby could definitely not have drawn, but he’ll get there, he’ll get there XD (also, he accidentally built it in “infinite money” build mode because he popped into that mode to fix the roofs and forgot to pop back out again, but James quickly decided he wasn’t going to worry about it because it was the final episode – and besides, Sonny and Judith have their own private vault with half a million in it, so it’s not like it would have been that much of a hit to the finances anyway…)

B) Visited Reuben’s and used the power of “Modify In CAS” to give him a dog, Ruby, because romantic relationships weren’t really his thing but nobody wanted to see him all alone in his house/cafe (the dog is a Vizsla as they are a very orange-furred breed, and she is Active, Playful, and a Hunter – she and Reuben went out on a very long walk as their final act of the episode, during which she somehow learned how to improve a family recipe with a special disease-curing touch. …the Sims 4, everyone)

C) Swung by Pablo’s and widened the “backyard” room in his vault slightly so he could give the guy a swingset (as everyone noticed Pablo loved swinging on Scarlett’s all the time); put a hopscotch board in the hallway for Kyra to play on (so she had something to do in the vault); and stuck Scarlett’s dead cowplant in the desert surrounding the entrance to the bunker (as it was very much more Pablo’s aesthetic than Scarlett’s XD)

D) Hit Silas R.’s with the intent of improving his relationship with his husband Silas M. by forcing them to have a science baby together – only to run into the roadblocks of “they don’t have enough money to have a science baby” and “the game randomly made them kind of hate each other while they were working on breaking into the Community Center vault to get the money for the science baby.” XD I mean, their relationship has always been pretty rocky, but the game had just fixed their compatibility issues by making Silas R. like hardworking Sims like his husband, and Silas M. like lovable rascals like his husband, before suddenly making them fight and tanking their friendship. A very frustrated James thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time forcing them to like each other again (via the means of “going into CAS and getting rid of all of Silas M.’s dislikes so Silas R. couldn’t keep annoying him” and “Silas R. spamming Silas M. with friendly messages over Social Bunny to quickly get up their friendship”) so, you know, they’d want to do the science baby thing together. Happily, he succeeded after not too long, and after FINALLY successfully breaking into the vault and scooping up some cash, the two Silas’s went off to the clinic and came back with their own baby boy – Sighlas. Who does not get his own baby room – he just gets shoved into a nook in the couple’s bedroom. XD Their chunk ended with James forcing them to cuddle their new baby while they were both filthy from slipping in the muddle puddles outside (and in Silas M.’s case, dazed from being hit by lightning), and James saying that Silas R. would not be taking pictures of the completed houses in-game because it was a pain in the ass to set up with the tripod – easier for him to just do it himself.

And there we have it – the first four residents of Tiny Town all taken care of! Tomorrow, we move onto Vivienne, Camillo, and Scarlett and see about getting THEIR lives sorted!

Aaand, as usual, doing all that means I've stayed up too late again. Good thing I'm getting used to that? *strained smile* Anyway, I'm hitting the sack as I do have work tomorrow -- night all!

Current Mood: content

crossover_chick

Though at least it was a very chill one -- er, in every way BUT weather-wise. Weather-wise it was quite hot. XD But I didn't have to deal with that, as we all hid in the air conditioning all day. I dealt with all the following stuff instead:

Tumblr: Pleased to report I had a good time on the tumbls this Sunday –

Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – I managed a pretty productive roughly hour-and-a-half before lunch over here –

A) First up, I went back through my dash and my “tracked blogs” (aka the ones I tend to read separately because it’s easier to keep up with their posts that way) and reblogged three things:

I. A post by “thememedaddy” featuring a screenshot of a post by “CG Drews” (I believe from Twitter/X) being incredulous that some people go to bed and just sleep without doing things like coming up with epic stories in their heads, or bathing in existential dread, or getting a play-by-play of all their mistakes, with a follow-up reblog by “kingkit7734” going “This. Just This.” As I am too one of those who cannot just Go To Sleep unless I am absolutely beyond exhausted, I considered this a Mood and thus had to reblog it

II. A post by “izel-scribbles” consisting of: “first rule of being a rare pair shipper is find a freak or three who can be convinced to enjoy the rare pair as much as you do. second rule is feed each other's insanity” XD As a rare pair shipper myself, this was also a Mood and had to be on my blog – though I did ramble on in the tags about how the freaks more found me in my case, as I never really sought out fellow freaks – I just did my thing, and ended up pleasantly shocked that other people liked it. I even specifically cited how I wasn’t even the one who named the Victor/Alice ship “Valice” – if memory serves me right, that was artist DanyDarkly, who was briefly into it as much as I was and provided some lovely fan art of the ship (one piece of which is STILL my desktop wallpaper – even if I do switch to something more Valicer in the near future, I’ll probably have it cycle between whatever I chose and that piece). Haven’t found as many freaks who like Valicer, but given some friends have asked for it in their gift fics, I know it has some fans. :)

III. And a post by “prokopetz” talking about the history of pinball! Specifically, about how the earliest forms of the game (made in France in the mid 1700s) were strictly games of chance, having the mechanism to launch the balls and all the bumpers and such, but no flippers to allow players to manipulate the ball afterwards, because all the mechanical flippers people tried to add were simply too weak to propel the ball all the way back up the table. They didn’t come into their own until the 1940s, when people started giving the flippers a boost by attaching electric motors to them. However, Prokopetz noted that the technology to boost the flippers was available in the 1880s, and the only reason that it wasn’t attempted was because it was economically impractical (how, he did not specify)...meaning, if you were willing to go a bit alternate history on things, you could have a story where Count Dracula owned a pinball machine (as the book was published in 1897). Cue some follow-up posts where Prokopetz responded to “winduppup” and their tags rambling on about how they want to know more about the eccentric tinkerer who was obsessed with electricity and old-fashioned pinball games and decided to make a pinball machine for Count Dracula by noting that, if you go by the Universal Studios Horror canon, there’s a certain scientist who’s notably obsessed with electricity and apparently hangs out with Dracula a fair bit (aka Dr. Frankenstein); and “do-not-fold-spindle-or-mutilate” running with that by positing a scenario where Dracula is trying to gently turn down another one of Frankenstein’s weird-ass electrical inventions, and Frankenstein (unaware that this looks like flirting) is utterly convinced Dracula will love “the philosophical implications of turning pinball into a game of skill.” XD I found this all very amusing, as you might expect –

But the reason I reblogged it was because my first thought upon seeing the post was “Holy crap, does this mean I could have someone invent pinball in my Valicer In The Dark verse?” And then realizing that, given this is a Blades In The Dark-based world, that probably any pinball machine would be somehow ghost powered...meaning that, if I really wanted, I might be able to have my trio fight a haunted pinball machine. XD Probably have to be a one-off comedy story, but still. As per my tags on the post, I am keeping it in mind! XD

B) Then (with her kind permission), I went ahead and posted Gig’s birthday gift fic (featuring Secundus!Victor meeting the local version of Smiler and helping them avoid getting shut down by the local police for selling their Joy Serum on the street without a permit (learning along the way that he shouldn’t have assumed Smiler was a ‘he,’ but making up for it by letting them know he has a friend, Richard, who doesn’t feel like a man either, proving Smiler’s not alone in feeling like they don’t have a ‘normal’ gender)), along with the author’s notes explaining what this Smiler’s deal is, to my blog as a surprise Secundus Sunday post! ...which involved fixing a few misspellings I somehow managed to miss when I originally posted the fic (also fixed them over here on DW, Gigs!). ^^; But yeah, I just really wanted to share the “Smiler in Secundus” shenanigans over on my main tumblr too – especially since it contains one of my favorite lines for explaining what it’s like dealing with Smiler in full salesperson mode, as per Victor’s thoughts upon first meeting them: Goodness – it’s like being hit in the face by a very cheery sack of bricks. XD Love it.

C) And finally, I did work a tiny bit on one of my drafts over here, cleaning up the text for my “Valicer as text posts” photo set post a little bit and adding a proper link to the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post that inspired me (and provided the actual text posts I used). It’s still not anywhere near DONE, but I DID make progress on it. *serious nod*

Valice Multiverse – And over here – well, it was another quiet night, so I just reblogged the “Smiler in Secundus” fic into my queue and called it a day. :P Nothing too exciting! Though I should mention that I forgot to tell you all about an anon ask I got yesterday, making a joke about how LaCroix said, upon opening the sarcophagus, “I don’t see an Antediluvian, I see four!” Took me a moment to get the joke, but when I did, both me and Londerland Bloodlines!Alice had a good chuckle over it. XD (If you don’t get it – sarcophagus is in fact a giant bomb, wired with C4.)

Baldur’s Gate III Planning: Yeah, this is the bit that I wasn’t very productive on, despite blocking out a pretty decent chunk of the afternoon to work on it. I was hoping to at LEAST figure out my modlist for my next playthrough, even getting a start on what I considered “required” mods (a few cosmetic mods to make sure Smiler looks right, plus one giant bugfix mod that could be considered the games “Unofficial Patch”) –

But, well, every time I start looking at mods for this game – either on the official modding page on Larian’s website, mods.io, or NexusMods – I get caught up in how cool some of the mods are, and think about how I should install them! ...And then I start wondering if I want to go back to the BG3 Mod Manager over just using the in-game mod manager for some of the more complicated stuff. And if some of these mods are even compatible with the mod manager. And if some of them are functional with patch 8. And if Unlock Level Curve is truly fixed – the issues with it SEEM to stem from a problem with the patch to make it compatible with 5e Spells, and I’m happy enough to use Mystra’s Spells instead, but I really don’t want to get caught out by this mod not working and not letting me do my Bardlock build the way I hope! And what’s this about PixellByte’s Adjustable Party Limit causing crashes in Act 2? I was hoping to use that! And should I get the difficulty enhancing mod that goes with it? I honestly think this game will be hard enough for me, the D&D turn-based-game newbie –

Aaand yeah, I think you see the problem. No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself overthinking the mod situation. *grumbles* And going full vanilla isn’t possible just because I need some mods to make Smiler look right...I dunno. I just want to get this sorted so I can just install all the mods at the beginning of my playthrough and hopefully not have to worry about them again. And then get to figuring out how the hell I’m going to make sure Smiler gets Persuasion as one of their first proficient skills… Maybe I can make some more progress next weekend.

Writing: Very good day for the Valicer In The Dark universe writing-wise, I must say –

A) As per the tumblr write-up above, I did in fact add a note about doing a comedy story about the gang having to deal with a haunted pinball machine after an initial attempt to turn it from a chance-driven game into a skill-driven one by adding a ghost to move the flippers goes horribly wrong to my list of score and story ideas in the Valicer In The Dark master doc – because I don’t want to forget it, after all, that’s too good XD

B) And I wrote nearly two pages on “The Van Dort Vacancy” before my workout, featuring Alice and Smiler:

I. Managing to sneak out of the kitchen to chase their mystery man (after Alice had finished slicing her tomatoes and Smiler preparing their cream sauce, of course) on the pretext of getting more vegetables

II. Heading down to the greenhouse, with Alice admitting she felt a little bad leaving all those clearly-overworked people to their cooking (Smiler agreed, but said they’d at least helped in a small way), and Smiler admiring the luxury of the back hallway (which had fish-scale-pattern wallpaper in pale green and silver chandeliers shaped to look like splashing water – gotta stay on-theme)

III. And reacting to the greenhouse when they found it, with Alice initially believing that she’d started hallucinating the Deluded Depths, because why else would she see what looked like a big old slice of the ocean right next to her like that –

Only for Carpenter to set her straight, and Smiler to reveal that, yes, they see it too. Because as it turns out, the Van Dort greenhouse is in fact encased in what is essentially a giant aquarium. With walls and ceiling made of glass and filled with ocean water and a ton of various bizarre fish. Why? Because most of those fish are infused with electroplasm and thus emit “radiant energy,” which allows the plants inside to grow! It’s a concept taken straight from some of the fluff text in the book! Both Smiler and Alice were completely gobsmacked, because they’ve never seen anything like it before (well, sort of – Alice has seen a greenhouse with aquarium walls before, when she was little and her father was visiting a rich patron of the university he worked at, but that one only had two walls worth of fish and wasn’t nearly this big). Though Alice couldn’t help noting that, beautiful as it was, if any of the glass cracked, the Van Dorts were in serious trouble –

Aaaand I left it on a mysterious voice agreeing that the rich never think these things through. Tomorrow, Alice and Smiler officially meet Kasimir, and then Barnaby shows up with Victor in tow to explain “oh hey, we’re robbing the vault!” XD Should be fun! :D

Workout/YouTube: We’re combining these two categories today because I watched the same thing for both my workout and my nightly YouTubery – “Fallout: London - Grand Finale - London Falling” by Jon of Many A True Nerd! Yes, Jon did indeed upload the big almost-hour-long final episode of his Fallout: London adventure tonight – and, luckily for me, did so 32 seconds before I had to choose a video to watch with my workout. So I was able to watch the first half while burning some calories on the bike, and the second half while digesting some calories at my computer after supper! :D Yay~ So allow me to tell you one final time about the adventures of Lady Aria and Mad Jack as they –

A) Went to report back to Smythe after the broadcast they helped set up last week – establishing a fake Angel run by a Russian Frenchman as the “real threat” to London and allowing Smythe to tighten martial law even further – went out! She thanked them for their good work via telephone, as usual, then revealed that there was one last situation that she needed Aria to take care of before their promised face-to-face meeting: a dual assault on Westminster by the remains of Camelot and the Fifth Column! It seemed that, with their leaders dead and Angel now fully in control of Westminster, they’d decided to put aside old differences and join forces to destroy their mutual enemy and wrest back control of London in one last glorious stand. Smythe informed Aria that Camelot had set up a trebuchet by Westminster Bridge to launch an attack (literally) over the river, while the Fifth Column were busy invading Waterloo Station to sneak into “Westminster’s soft underbelly” via the Underground tunnels, and told her that she needed to take out one of these threats so they weren’t fighting a war on two fronts – though Smythe wasn’t picky about which one she handled.

Aria was immediately like “TREBUCHET, PLEASE.” XD Yeah, Jon had been extremely excited to see that thing get built during the brief period of time where he was working with Camelot, and he was NOT going to turn down a chance to see it in person! Even if he was sending Aria there to destroy it before it actually did anything cool. :p Smythe told her that she had a week to finish off any other business before the two sides were ready to begin their assault, wished her luck, then ended the call by letting her know that she should come to the Palace at Westminster once the threat was dealt with, as she had some friends who were just “dying” to meet her. Aria was immediately like “yeah, that’s a trap,” but figured it was still her best shot of getting to her creator, killing her, and then taking over Angel and reforming it into a NICE mad-science-based despotic government. Gotta make sure all the horrors she’s committed could be justified as for “the greater good” after all! XD

B) Waited a week in the chair in the room next to Smythe’s office (because Aria didn’t really have any major sidequests hanging over her head anymore, and Jon was eager to get to the action), then headed over to Westminster Bridge to take out Camelot’s trebuchet! Most of the trip was pretty quiet, with Aria easily making her way through Eastminster and Trafalgar Square, past Waterloo Station (where she was a little concerned to see a bunch of dead Tommies by the entrance – she’d hoped to have their help in the upcoming fights), and through the remains of the London Eye settlement, before finally coming across a shit-ton of Camelot knights on the bridge, guarding the trebuchet on the bank of the river nearby. Aria and Jack cleared out the force, then Aria took a moment to admire the glorious machine before heading down to the riverside, slaughtering the remaining few knights protecting it, and setting it on fire with the help of a nearby sconce. :( Oh Jon...if you’d just gone ahead and kept working with Arthur, you could have probably actually USED that thing instead of just destroying it...

C) Made their way into Waterloo Station to clear out the Fifth Column still lingering there and use the tunnels to get into Westminster proper to join the fight against the insurgents who made it inside the borough! Which, uh, proved to be quite easy, as not only where all the Fifth Column enemies low level and this often taken out in a single shot by Aria’s guns, some proper Angel troops joined them for the slaughter near the end. Jon was a little puzzled as to why these guys were so much easier than the Camelot troops Aria and Jack had fought outside, but ended up just shrugging it off, killing them all, and concentrating on avoiding the water in the tunnels as much as possible to not get super irradiated. :P

D) Made it back into Westminster and joined the fight to take control of Parliament Square! It was a fierce battle, with Angel troops and Tommies fighting side-by-side to fend off the furious Fifth Column and Camelot warriors – but with Aria sniping off people from the back with the lovely Queen’s Gambit sniper rifle she got from Tenpenny, and Mad Jack rushing into the fray with his axe and tanking a LOT of damage from the various enemies, the interlopers were soon defeated. Chalk up another win for the forces of evil – that is, “the greater good.” XD

E) Got a message from a courier (who was VERY upset by the fact that he’d had a BOMB strapped to his chest to force him to wade into the warzone to deliver this message – he quit right after saying his piece, and promptly exploded as he tried to run away) that the remaining insurgents had taken control of 10 Downing Street, Admiralty Arch, and the Broadcasting House (aka the BBM), and headed out to take them back! Which proved to be not very difficult at all, because –

I. Most of the enemies that were spawning were low-level generic scrubs, who Aria could easily take out with her array of high-powered weaponry

II. As she cleared out the locations, more and more Tommies and Angel soldiers joined up with her, until by the time she marched on the Broadcasting House, she was leading her own veritable army! Meaning that she could more or less sit back and let them down most of the hard work of taking down the interlopers, occasionally blasting someone with her sniper rifle or getting in close to build up her crits with Scaramanga. Aria was very happy with this state of affairs. :p

So yeah – with the help of her extremely powerful guns and vast array of minions, Aria easily reclaimed all three locations, taking down the flags of the enemy and ensuring that Angel would truly reign supreme. All for the greater good!

F) Headed over to the Palace at Westminster – specifically, the House of Commons – after a time-skipping fade-to-black for that long-anticipated meeting with Smythe...only to find a lot more Smythe than they bargained for. Because, well, it turned out that Aria wasn’t the only Smythe clone on the block – the entire House was FILLED with clones of the mysterious leader of Angel! All identical to Aria, right down to the scars on her face (though not down to the clothes – which is good, as our Lady Aria probably would have opened fire on anyone else wearing a crown XD). And as it turns out, they were having a meeting about our beloved protagonist, directing her to the dispatch box –

To face off against Opposition Leader Smythe, who promptly declared that she hoped to start a motion to officially confirm Lady Aria as an inferior Smythe! Why? Well, apparently Aria once ended up sacrificing a bunch of one Dr. North’s experiments to “play hero” at some point, apparently with Camelot (I, uh, genuinely don’t recall what this is referring to – it’s been a long series!) –

And she also let a certain giant sapient mittenlurk with a human brain named Reggie escape into the Thames while blowing up the secret Angel lab in the aquarium. Whoops – turns out that action actually had consequences! XD Aria couldn’t defend herself regarding Reggie, not having the SPECIAL stats needed (though she was given the option to start the chant “CRABS ARE PEOPLE!” XD), but fortunately her high Luck allowed her to mount a defense regarding the mess with Dr. North – a defense that consisted of, essentially, “I’ve been in loads of firefights that should have killed me and always walked away without a scratch – why change my strategy?” XD And hilariously enough, that rebuttal, combined with the fact that Aria was basically responsible for them having control over Westminster, and soon the entirety of London, was enough to convince the Opposition Leader Smythe to instead start a motion to have her declared a superior Smythe! The motion carried, and Aria was thus allowed through to meet “the creator” as all the various Smythes sang “For She’s A Jolly Good Fellow” in creepy unison. Jon was quite put off. XD

(Also, bonus fun facts while we’re here – one of the Smythes was wearing a robe and a bucket on her head to represent everyone’s favorite joke politican Lord Buckethead – now Count Binhead due to some sort of copyright concern – and the one non-Smythe member of the House, the robot speaker, was voiced by John Bercow – actual former Speaker of the House of Commons! Sheesh – dunno how the mod creators managed THAT.)

G) Climbed Elizabeth Tower (the tower that houses the clock we all know as Big Ben) to finally meet with Smythe! Aria was unfortunately forced to dump all of her lovely powerful weapons in a big bin before she ascended, but was able to use her final two ever level-ups to boost her Charisma up to 10 in preparation for any last-minute speech checks – and, right before meeting her creator, was able to find a silenced hardened 9mm in a safe (in what looked like Smythe’s personal bedroom, no less) and a pipe wrench lying around on a table. Both kind of shitty weapons, but better than nothing! Not to mention the game just gave her a poison-tipped umbrella right before she confronted Smythe, as if it knew she’d need SOMETHING going forward…

Anyway – Aria met Smythe right behind the clock face for Big Ben, where her erstwhile creator (who also looked just like Aria, down to the scars – Jon, amused, decided that the star-shaped scar must be genetic) finally explained everything. Namely, that she, and Aria, and all the other Smythes were the latest of a long line of clones of the original Ms. Smythe – a pre-War Ministry of Information worker who saw the War coming; attempted to warn various people in government; was ignored and eventually imprisoned for unspecified “activities” (as she admitted to having already gotten the MoI under her thumb, using it to start the organization that would eventually become known as Angel, I think it was that – or perhaps illegal use of cloning technology, as Jon suggested); escaped the day the world burned to the Pindar under the Angel underground station; and started building her empire in the ruins. Most Smythes, or at least the line that runs everything and orders around all the other Smythes, are specially conditioned in their cloning tubes so they have all the original’s memories, plus the knowledge of their predecessors – however, thanks to the Vagabonds, Aria was busted out of her tube before the process was completed, leaving her a blank slate. A shame, because she was supposed to be the replacement for THIS Smythe once she passed on. Aria promptly asked if that was still on the table, and Ms. Smythe told her no – a new replacement had already been conditioned and put into stasis. She in fact expected Aria to simply leave and make her own life, now that her job as an Angel operative was done.

...Aria being Aria, she promptly responded to that with “There can be only one Smythe!” (Literally, that was the dialogue option. XD) Smythe was like “so be it,” and the pair began to duel to the death! Aria quickly learned that Smythe was really fucking tough (even her crits did very little damage!), but fortunately Aria was even tougher, and had her stimpacks so she could heal. The pair thus battled through the tower (with Aria getting in a few shots with her stolen gun and a few whacks with her pipe wrench before switching to using her umbrella), and Aria managed to chip away at Smythe’s health until the woman was ready to be downed in her own bedroom –

Aaaand cue the game teleporting Smythe back up to the room behind the clock face so Aria had to run up there and fight her AGAIN. -.- However, the game had a good reason for doing this, as the SECOND time Aria got her down to no health, Smythe ended up falling off the platform they were fighting on, snagging the (for some reason on the interior) clock hand of Big Ben in a desperate attempt to save herself from the drop! The game then presented Aria with the choice to save her or let her fall –

And Aria being Aria, happily said bye-bye to Ms. Smythe as she plummeted to her death. All for the Greater Good! XD

H) Settled in to watch the ending slides to see what would become of everyone now that they’d taken control of Angel! In short:

I. The remains of the Fifth Column and Camelot were quietly disposed of by Angel troops once their invasion of Westminster was repelled

II. Aria did indeed take control of Angel, and even willingly submitted to the conditioning to get all of her predecessors’ memories

III. The Tommies became the friendly face of the despotic regime under the new leadership

IV. The Pistols of Camden furiously kicked Aria out of their group, and remained independent against the forces of Angel as long as they could

V. Miller’s Men began falling to infighting as they kept to the little chunk of London they called home

VI. The Normans (aka the French ghouls) ended up blowing THEMSELVES up when trying to attack Westminster during the big battle

VII. The Croydonians largely ignored the bridge built into their territory and continued keeping themselves to themselves

VIII. The Briktonians, by contrast, were brought into line with the rest of London by a combination of Tommy and Angel forces after Aria remanned the nearby garrison, ending their dream of being an independent settlement

IX. The Gentry joyously celebrated the defeat of the enemy forces, unaware that they would soon be nothing more but pawns of Angel

X. The Globe Theater ended up closed to all but Aria, who often visited to see the troupe perform the various plays she’d collected for them

XI. The Vagabonds and the Syndicate managed to keep their uneasy peace, with the days of constant warfare soon becoming just a bad memory neither gang wanted to see repeated

XII. The Thamesfolk still had to deal with the occasional disappearance, and continued hiding out from the rest of the world in their own private enclaves

XIII. Archie, having never truly found a place to call home in London, ended up traveling what was left of the world, always chasing that new horizon (what you get for not completing his companion quest!)

XIV. Kiera also ended up leaving London after a few more treasure hunts, deciding to travel and make a name for herself as the most famed adventurer in the world (you go Kiera)

XV. Mad Jack returned to his gym and turned it into a haven for those like himself, the forgotten and left behind of London, teaching them both how to defend themselves and the virtues he learned from Aria (me: Oh no)

XVI. And Arthur managed to hang onto his sanity for a while longer thanks to the experiments of Dr. Herbertson, making up for lost time and helping as many as he could, before finally asking Aria to end his life once his struggle with feralisation finally failed

Yeah, uh, mostly a very dark ending, with a few bright spots (like Arthur getting a good life and Mad Jack turning his gym into a home for others like him). Jon, for his part, was very annoyed Aria got kicked out of the Pistols, as he’d liked them a lot; delighted that the French blew themselves up; very happy Arthur managed to get some extra time thanks to Angels’ terrible experiments; and admitted that securing his own personal theater and Shakespeare troupe IS something he’d do if you gave him absolute power. XD Good to know, I guess. XD

And that was the end of our time with Fallout: London! Jon happily declared it the single best mod he’s ever played, praising the voice actors, the map creators, and everyone else involved highly. Though he also called out the creators for claiming the mod was merely “DLC sized,” stating that was pretty sure what they’d created was bigger than the whole of Fallout 3! I can believe it. This was a hell of a project, and the Fallout: London team should be very proud of themselves. Next week, though, we’re returning to the Mojave and Fallout: New Vegas for something mysterious and special. Hopefully it’s something I can sum up faster than these Fallout: London episodes!

And, as you might expect, it's later than I intended to stay up, so I have to go to bed. Good thing I have tomorrow off, huh? :p Anyway, tomorrow is the Valicer Anniversary (aka the date I generally use for Victor and Alice's wedding, and which will be used for any polyamorous weddings they have with Smiler in AUs that allow for that) -- plans for celebration include watching some Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler-related clips on YouTube; reblogging the Valicer Wedding Round-Up post (and maybe adding a link to the latest Not-Incorrect Quote collection for the Modern AU Valicer trio -- it was technically just about moving in together, but marriage WAS mentioned in the last one!) on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler); playing Sims 4 and doing a bit of dress-up with one of my Valicer trio (I'm thinking some new formalwear outfits, since it is a wedding anniversary :P); and of course working on "The Van Dort Vacancy," a Valicer fanfic. I also hope to maybe get some work done on my other drafts on VLA(NS) (or maybe go through some of my tracked tags again), get in a workout, and see about getting something else out of my Watch Later on YouTube. We will see. Night all!

Current Mood: tired

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Ael

May 2010

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Ael

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Mostly Cleaning And Periody Saturday

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Somewhat Simmy Saturday

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Miserable Weather Thursday

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Back To The Grind Mon -- TUESDAY

Happy Valicer Anniversary!

Maybe Not The Most Productive Sunday

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May 2010

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