Happy Festival Day!

[crossover_chick]

The day of the famous (or possibly infamous) Hill Valley festival to dedicate the new clock tower! You know, where we discovered the Doc can dance and Marty is a hell of a shot with a pie tin. XD I kitted myself out in some BTTF gear -- my "Save the Clocktower" shirt (which I only now realize was super appropriate) and my BTTF Part II character socks (I would have worn Part III ones if they'd made them!). My favorite BTTF shirt from Universal Studios gets saved for Monday. :D

As it stands, I have to say, I had a pretty decent Saturday!

-->Yeah, most of my day was taken up with cleaning -- got my usual 11:30 start, and finished up around 3:40 -- though admittedly, that includes a long break for lunch and playing the bean bag game. But it's done for another fortnight, and this particular weekend I get an extra day off to make up for lost time today, so yeah.

-->Speaking of the beanbag game, we played five rounds instead of our usual three. Dad won two, Mom won one, and I won two! I just had some REALLY solid throws today. XD Poor dad can attest to that, especially when it came to the game Mom won -- I basically massacred him at the last second with a couple of lucky shots through the holes. XD Ah, that was fun. :p

-->Still found time for some (mostly) Sims-related YouTube:

A) This one's actually from early this morning, as I decided to end my time online with a TED-Ed riddle video. . .and ended up staying up until 2 AM to try and actually work it out. It was a logical puzzle based on off-brand Hogwarts, where the character got a special challenge from the sorting hat – the school had eight founders, who founded four houses. Can you figure out, given a few clues, which founders created which houses? Aaaand, can you guess what the name of the secret fifth house is? I managed to get the first half (mostly by typing up all the possibilities and doing some logical elimination), but the second eluded me. Hey, it WAS 2 AM – I think I did pretty good!

B) At a somewhat more reasonable hour, we had Plumbella taking us on a tour of Batuu! Which, as stated before, is mostly just shells and whatnot. There's one truly interactable lot per neighborhood, and the rest are either decoration or rabbit holes. I am not impressed. :( I mean, I think I understand why a couple of lots are rabbit holes – according to the pop-up menus for buying things from them, there was no way they could make the proprietors as actual Sims – but still. Poor Plumbella ran out of things to say about nine and a half minutes into an eleven-and-a-half minute video, and had to fill the time with screenshots. This is definitely a pack for Star Wars superfans and no one else (*cough* James).

C) On a more positive note, onlyabidoang had a short video detailing some of the changes and fixes in the new patch that dropped on Thursday – notably, the ability to stack up to four windows on a section of wall, and the ability to use the interaction "elope immediately" on engaged couples on a vacation (they can't get married the normal way still, but this is something, I guess!).

D) Also on a positive note, I caught up on the second and third episodes of James's Journey to Batuu early access mini-LP with Trash!

1. Episode 2 saw her attempt to infiltrate the Resistance camp, only to get on the bad side of a member by trying to check her ID, promptly lose a fight to said member, and get escorted out. XD So yeah, she went full First Order after that, helping set up surveillance and arresting Resistance sympathizers (said mission has you use a TIE Fighter to take them to a Star Destroyer, which leads to a short text adventure like you might see in Jungle Adventures, dodging an X-Wing intent on making an example out of you. Hey, I'm just glad it's not just "disappear for a while, then come back!") She also met and befriended Kylo Ren (he even accepted a hug!), and bought her first droid, an R-series James named I-CUP (sound out the letters individually XD).

2. Episode 3 saw her going almost full stormtrooper (just minus the helmet) and had her FAIL her first mission (namely, by losing a fight to a criminal she was sent to apprehend, and the guy running off while she was dazed) and having to report her failures to Kylo Ren personally. Kylo gave her a chance to redeem herself with another mission installing more surveillance in the main Outpost area, which she managed successfully, phew. And then she was tasked with convincing a scientist to work for the First Order. . .and it turned out to be that guy she'd just fought. And who hated her. Fortunately, taking fifteen million pictures of a person makes them like you lots, so she just did that and convinced him to work for the First Order easily. XD She also visited the Resistance Camp again, using I-CUP to shock a few people before getting mind-tricked by Rey herself out of the place, and bought her own lightsaber (green – she has to unlock a red one). It's at least fun when you're watching someone else play it! But even James, who loves this sort of thing, admits the replayability is not great and it would have been better as a full spin-off game.

-->I also played Sims 4 -- not that it was easy. I was expecting a delay to my start because of the new patch needing to be installed -- I did not expect it to take as bloody long as it did to install. I don't know where the problem was -- Origin? My internet connection, which has been going out every so often these days? My computer, doing that thing where it occasionally ends up going SUPER SLOW these days? -- but it took FOREVER to download the patch. I ended up restarting my computer before actually PLAYING to avoid a situation like that one time I played Fallout 4 and the game was chugging so badly I was afraid my newest mod had completely wrecked things. Ugh. . .

Once I got in, though, things went pretty smoothly. Chell and Wheatley spent the day at her bakery, baking cakes and other treats and selling them to a variety of NPCs! Including, uh --

Chell.

Yeah, I'm serious -- CHELL showed up as a customer at her own bakery. In fact, hang on a second, I will give you picture evidence:



Now, you can see that the two Chells aren't identical -- beyond the Chell I'm playing sporting her new custom content outfit (thanks Satterlly!), actual!Chell is a lot buffer, and I BELIEVE a skintone shade darker (I changed this at one point after thinking my original version was a little too white). Also, the Chell who shopped at the bakery (and bought some plain muffins) still had the last name "Redacted." I'm THINKING that what might have happened is that the game, in looking for customers for the bakery, pulled my original version of Chell from my Library to serve as an NPC. Which is -- just weird, but I guess not game-breaking? Because they're two different Chells? I mean, my played Chell successfully spoke to original flavor Chell and my game doesn't seem to have exploded as a result. . . Still, makes me glad I grabbed a back-up of my saves before installing this patch!

-->And after all that, I've spent most of my time catching up on stuff and doing the RP thing over on Valice Multiverse (also getting a report from my Alice-loving friend Marie on tumblr that American McGee apparently has a terrible idea for how to start his potential Alice: Asylum game). Gotta get my progress report for Secundus Sunday into the queue on Victor Luvs Alice too, and answer my DW comment. Tomorrow -- mini-marathon of Yandere Simulator videos from Jay (apparently Osana is OFFICIALLY IN THE GAME, meaning it IS a game -- who saw that coming?), more Fallout 4, and more "Secundus 2." In the meantime, I will attempt to not stay up until 2 AM with riddle videos. XD Night all!

Comments

[whitedove01s]

Reality never matches expectations. My expectation of what walking a dog would be like, based on media, was that I would walk back and forth in front of the house and the doggo would just happily follow along until we got tired. Interspersed with curbing the dog for potty business.

Reality? The dog spends half the time on her back in the ditch, wriggling. My best guess is ditches give good scritches.

[crossover_chick]

*snork* That's my best guess as well. I guess every dog has their own ideas on how a walk should go!

Just caught up with your entries, by the by. Your mother remains a blight on this planet, but I am amused that the Big Five of your Mosiac are your Cabbage/Lettuce Patch Dolls. (Genuinely horrible about what happened to your toys, though. I'm in my thirties and I don't know what I'd do if my collection of stuffed animals and such were suddenly disappeared on me.)

[whitedove01s]

Heh, yeah. Jeannie's bosses are a pile of cabbies. And probably just as close to being 'adults' for whatever they are. Someday I need to finish the outfits I want to do for them and take a nice group picture.

I managed to hold onto a surprising number of them via creative hiding spots once I realized what was happening, but there were still casualties. And I never did find all the transformers I hid in the attic insulation, or figure out how to retrieve anything I dropped down in a hole in the wall in the back of my closet. And my grandfather sold the place, so those are beyond ever retrieving now.

[crossover_chick]

At least that means they're good for hugs. :p Heh, that would be cute -- I hope it comes to fruition!

:( That sucks, I'm sorry. I'm glad you were able to save the ones you did, at least. (Maybe someone else found them and gave them appropriate amounts of love.)

[whitedove01s]

Yes, yes they are.

And I just posted the long ramble of the start of the beginning from the other side of the fourth wall, which shows the level of "oops" that got things rolling. And just where you can spot Jeannie's bosses in other stories...

[crossover_chick]

Heh :)

Yeah, I saw just now -- whew! That's a lot for even beings like them to go through -- and oof, so that's how the whole mess started with the broken realities. . .whoops. I suppose it's appropriate, given the real-world counterparts, that it all started with kids just wanting to play. . .

[whitedove01s]

Yeah, that was long, but typing it out helped me make sure I didn't have too many more plotholes in it somewhere. Honestly, given that most of the time disruptions were part of the canons involved, the timelines most likely would have eventually broken anyway. They just would have stayed in stasis or something until someone filled the hole in the story, because finishing the story was the only thing holding them together. A lot of what has gotten termed "Unresolved Bubbles Of Spacetime" in my notes are like that (mostly tabletop scenarios and RPG games where the main chara has no name or backstory... or is variable enough it could be just about anyone.)

Good thing they've gotten a smidge older and are responsible (and attached) enough to turn playtime into a massive art/construction project. (Tho making things can be fun too.) Which spills over into me having art projects. I got the paint pens mostly to make it easier to put the stars in the in-progress galaxy map...

[crossover_chick]

Yeah, that's good -- the last thing you need is more plotholes. And yeah, I sort of see that from your latest post. Everything's sort of hanging around this one character, and once their quest is done. . .boom. At least they have the Five to help clean things up and make something better out of the pieces! And LOL, I see -- that's nice! :D I hope it goes well!

[whitedove01s]

Especially helpful when cause doesn't always come before effect due to time-and-reality-bending. Like with Jeannie herself, really. They were looking for someone who would have the skills and mindset to help with people for this, and sorting through bits and probably complaining about how badly some realities screwed people over when they found that fragment where Jack (temporarily sane due to Martian Manhunter's interference) wished for help while holding a reality-bending macguffin. They probably had a bit of a deeper look and tried to see if they could fix anything while things were still in pieces... which explains why Jeannie's "force herself back into the story" abilities are so similar to theirs. They were the ones who changed her to be a little more like what they are. (Tho without Jack making the wish they wouldn't have been able to do anything from outside of the story themselves.), and in closing the backwards Cause-Effect loop they "unlocked" exactly what they were looking for...

Yeah. Unresolved Bubbles Of Spacetime are like reality ghosts that just need to get their unfinished business done. The five have been setting a lot of them to the side in case Jeannie can use them for therapy purposes somehow.

It should... it turns out the known sections of Star Trek space fit fairly well on the nearly-blank side of the Star Wars galaxy map, and Mass Effect should slot in fairly well as well. I may have to wiggle a few systems around so none of the sectors are too crowded. And then work in any other worlds from other realities, as those three are the most space-heavy in the lists so far. Stargate would count as space-heavy too, but there are no real official maps or locations for the worlds (and the one time there was they contradicted it between the two mentions, so just going to throw that out), so those worlds can basically be plopped wherever I have space on the map.

[crossover_chick]

I see -- that's interesting. So they basically helped create their own ideal therapist! (With Jack providing the spark, of course.) That's one way to find what you're looking for while trying to create a whole new reality. :p

Essentially, yeah. And that makes sense -- I remember your earlier talks about sending some of the Hellraiser people through one of those adventures. . .

Aw, nice. :D And yeah, space is supposed to be big -- I'm sure you'll find plenty of room for everything eventually! Even if things must be wiggled.

[whitedove01s]

Yeah, everyone got what they really wanted/needed/wished for.

Yep, or rather through a whole campaign built out of Ravenloft modules, with an additional endgame the setting never intended you to be able to do. XD I'm pretty sure I still have all the notes somewhere, just still wading through the soup...

Given there are 528 sectors to the map with 4 quadrants each, there'd better be room. XD Wookiepedia lists a bit under 200 entries in Category:Planets, so I might make it.

[crossover_chick]

Hooray! Rare enough that happens.

LOL, yes, true. You had a pretty epic journey planned to get them all the help they needed! I hope you do -- but yeah, I imagine they're hard to find in all that text file nonsense. Ooof. . .

*snork* Really. And ooh, wow -- there you go! Sounds like a bustling chunk of space.