Somewhat More Irritating Boxing Day
Dec. 26th, 2020 11:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickMy parents had to go food shopping today, which is never great for the old Anxiety (tm), and compounded on that was my parents having more problems with the local post office (packages are just not going out, which is Not Good), and the need to do laundry (end-of-month full bedding wash). Add on that I got to bed a little later than I should have and woke up earlier than I wanted, aaaand yeah. Been a little more stressful today. Not a complete horror show, far from it, but -- I've had better Saturdays.
All right, let's see how I did on the old to-do list:
1. Watch all Sim-related content in my Subscriptions and Watch Later on YouTube (James Turner, Red Plumbob, Plumbella): Check! In order –
A) Started off with the first episode of James’s new LP, “3 Brothers!” This follows the three kids from the end of Ambrose’s “Rags to Redevelopment” LP – Isaiah, Brodie, and Candle – who have moved to Mt. Komorebi to pursue their dreams. Currently, said dreams are “cure my vampirism” for Isaiah, “become a snowboarder” for Brodie, and “get good grades and go to university” for Candle. While it’s not REALLY a “Rags to Riches,” James DID start them off with no money, and while they have a roof over their heads, it’s a grody roof – James grabbed his “every room is one tile bigger” house and made it over as an awful starter home for them, complete with terrible lot traits like “gremlins” and “filthy.” XD Not too much happened in this first part – Isaiah and Brodie have part-time jobs now, and Brodie’s started learning snowboarding – but it was fun to see James try and set everything up for them, and get confused about what the hell was going on with some of the other residents (everyone was wandering around the mountain area in their swimwear. I mean, granted, James chose the Onsen bathhouse as his destination lot, but still). I get the feeling this is gonna be a long and potentially frustrating LP for poor James. . . XD
B) Then it was over to the Watch Later and The Red Plumbob for an across-the-series comparison of dating! I was surprised and amused to learn that it is very hard to have a bad date in Sims 4 because even TERRIBLE interactions (like fighting or even breaking up) will raise the meter if it falls into one of the “goal” categories (fighting is still socializing!). General consensus from Red Plumbob and the commenters is that Sims 2 did it best, with a meter that was dependent on what your date actually wanted, instead of preplanned goals, and the personal touch of Sims dropping off the date rewards instead of them just appearing in the inventory. Seriously, if Sims 4 is kind of “Sims 1 redone,” the hypothetical Sims 4 needs to be “Sims 2 redone.”
C) Then it was time for the two Plumbella videos!
1. Plumbella finished up her “LP” of The Sims 2 with a look at Apartment Life! Said look consisted of her making herself and a bunch of her Simmer friends as sisters; renting out half a nice townhouse and setting it up with both nice (their workspaces with desks) and goofy (the bedroom had PARTY LIGHTING) elements; going out to the coffee shop and her Simself getting booed for reciting poetry (then forcing her other friends to sing or try stand-up comedy to see how they like it); going to a store and learning how to break dance; and her Simself trying to chat up a guy, only for her friend Kayla to swoop in, leading to them getting into a fight (Kayla won). It was very random and chaotic, as all her Sims 2 stuff has been. XD And she seemed genuinely upset it was over! Me too, bitch – between you and Red Plumbob, I’m missing that installment of the series. :(
2. Plumbella did the “random palette” challenge – use a color generator to make a palette, then use only those colors to build and decorate a house. Plumbella used Coolors and got a palette of green, blue, white ("Alice Blue" on the actual thing, but it was so light she decided it might as well be white), purple, and black. The build process proved to be very complicated and chaotic, with Plumbella starting in Brindleton Bay before moving to Mt. Komorebi and TRYING to take over the Onsen lot for the snow (turns out it’s, uh, hardcoded to be treated as a bath house?), constantly getting distracted by creating new architectural details, and trying to create the perfect Sims bed by layering three on top of each other. XD After all that, though, the house – actually looked pretty good! I mean, I admit I’m biased – purple is my favorite color – but the bedroom was really nice, and she did a decent job with the rest of the house too! You go, Plumbella. :D
2. Play Sims 4 (Newcrest Adventures file): Check! And, happily there was no drama between Victor and Alice this time. Possibly because everyone was too distracted by SimCity Founding! Yes, in this save file, we were celebrating Sim Fourth Of July, which I chose to do by having Emma make a BBQ pit feast at the house, then sending everyone to the fancy beach (Sand Simoleon, on the “rich person” island) to swim, chat with the locals (who were – aggressively social), play with the bonfire, and light off some fireworks! The latter almost didn’t happen, though – I couldn’t find a way to buy any either through the phone menu or through the various other ways to get supplies. I simply lucked out in that Alice already had two in her inventory from previous adventures. And even THEN, one was a dud. Fortunately the other lit and everyone ended up having a great holiday. :) I left Victor and Alice fishing their little hearts out to get trophies and plasma packs. They head back home next playsession – I’ll have to arrange for something else interesting to happen. Date, perhaps?
3. Get in a workout (I've skipped the past couple of days because holidays): Check! Went for a somewhat more intense than usual bike ride. And, of course, that means more of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I finally finished off those final minutes of episode 33 with him killing the ghouls that had been locked up in that side office (along with a few more radroaches), picking up some “meh” gear off the Legendaries and deciding that, after all that excitement, he needed to head home to rest, eat, and drink. Episode 34 started with him, having done all that, working on the (I believe) Unyielding Raider Chest Piece to try it out, and (having foolishly summoned a vertibird before remembering he wanted to look at it, wasting a grenade once it peaced out without him) modifying the Lucky Gamma Gun he picked up to see what it could do. And then one of his settlers informed him of a kidnapping in the settlement, directing him to Back Alley Apparel, so Jon decided to try the new gun out there.
New gun really, REALLY hurts raiders. And their turrets. XD Jon was quite impressed at the damage, given it’s supposed to be irradiating them and thus not really doing any DIRECT damage to their health (just chopping off good chunks of the health bar), and thinks it might be a viable weapon for tougher enemies in good armor. He rescued the settler and brought her home – and then was informed by the same settler that raiders were about, apparently threatening Taffington Boathouse, and that Jon needed to swing by BADTFL to kill them. Jon said he’d do that when he felt like it and vertibirded over to the beach to resume his previous adventures, FINALLY making it to Reeb Marina!
Where he found the Brotherhood already there, killing Super Mutants and blowing up things. Jon joined in for a bit, then found himself the Courser he was meant to kill and one-shotted him in the head. Hilariously, the Courser called in some Gen 1 synths as he died – but as he was dead before they arrived, they weren’t hostile to Jon, which he appreciated. He then started going through the little story there, about feuding brothers trying to set up a birthday robot ambush on each other –
And then the game crashed. Fortunately, Jon had dropped a save at a sleeping bag back on the boardwalk, so he just had to hike back to the Marina – where, this time, the Brotherhood and the Courser had briefly teamed up to take out some Rust Devil robots. I left Jon murdering the Courser for killing a friendly guard dog. XD I do love his playthroughs; they’re so much fun! And sometimes I even learn things. :D
4. Find something to do on the writing front (even if it's just revising my rules for those personal challenges I'd like to do eventually) . . .eh, minor check -- I guess writing up this thing counts, and I DID take a look at that challenge doc I made and make some notes on how I feel the Fallout 4-themed challenge should work (basically, like building a settlement in the game), but I wish I could have done more. But it was kind of a distracting day, so. . .not gonna beat myself up over it.
And in the category of Other:
-->Answered that FF.net PM from my friend (involved reading the latest chapter of her fanfic, so I had to take a little extra time to get it done); but it’s all sorted now, yay~
-->Watched the “OXBox X-Mas Challenge” tiebreak! The “Gang Beasts Boxing Day Beatdown!” Three matches of Mike against Jane (with Andy refereeing), best out of the three won! Round One, in the subway station, started out very chaotically (with both Mike and Jane turning on poor Andy and stealing his hat), but eventually ended in some very complicated wrestling where Mike was able to turn Jane’s attempt to throw him in front of a train into HER getting yeeted! Round Two was on ice floes surrounding a buoy – after a prolonged chase (and Andy accidentally drowning himself as he tried to follow), Jane was able to drown Mike and emerge victorious! Round Three took place in a giant vent of some kind with a giant fan that could send all the competitors – and parts of the stage – flying. Andy again accidentally killed himself by falling down a hole – but there was nothing accidental about Mike flinging Jane into the unforgiving blades! So Mike is post-Christmas champion, yaaay~ XD I mean, I try not to pick favorites, but – just for his Hitman stuff, Mike’s my favorite. XD Yay Mike!
-->Parents and I finished the latest puzzle! It was a Norman Rockwell one, showing off a babysitter having a bad day. Now that that's sorted, we need to move onto the puzzle my aunt gave Mom, which has 2,000 pieces. . .once we figure out where to put it, of course.
-->Currently doing a bit of the RP/messaging thing, as I usually do on Saturdays -- I did answer three asks and a thread on Valice Multiverse, and now I'm about to answer another DW comment. That has to count toward list item #4, right? :p
Anyway -- tomorrow's my birthday, so I'm not making any formal to-do lists. I'm gonna do solely what I want to do, without worrying about anything I feel I need to do. I have Monday for that. XD I do intend to watch some more Fallout 4 videos -- maybe some of Oxhorn's lore stuff, or another speedrun. "tomatoanus" has plenty, after all. :p And we have the latest Big Fat Quiz Of The Year for lunch and dinner tomorrow, and of course I have some presents to open. . .plus cake. :p Just hoping it's a good day! Keep your fingers crossed, everyone! Night all!
All right, let's see how I did on the old to-do list:
1. Watch all Sim-related content in my Subscriptions and Watch Later on YouTube (James Turner, Red Plumbob, Plumbella): Check! In order –
A) Started off with the first episode of James’s new LP, “3 Brothers!” This follows the three kids from the end of Ambrose’s “Rags to Redevelopment” LP – Isaiah, Brodie, and Candle – who have moved to Mt. Komorebi to pursue their dreams. Currently, said dreams are “cure my vampirism” for Isaiah, “become a snowboarder” for Brodie, and “get good grades and go to university” for Candle. While it’s not REALLY a “Rags to Riches,” James DID start them off with no money, and while they have a roof over their heads, it’s a grody roof – James grabbed his “every room is one tile bigger” house and made it over as an awful starter home for them, complete with terrible lot traits like “gremlins” and “filthy.” XD Not too much happened in this first part – Isaiah and Brodie have part-time jobs now, and Brodie’s started learning snowboarding – but it was fun to see James try and set everything up for them, and get confused about what the hell was going on with some of the other residents (everyone was wandering around the mountain area in their swimwear. I mean, granted, James chose the Onsen bathhouse as his destination lot, but still). I get the feeling this is gonna be a long and potentially frustrating LP for poor James. . . XD
B) Then it was over to the Watch Later and The Red Plumbob for an across-the-series comparison of dating! I was surprised and amused to learn that it is very hard to have a bad date in Sims 4 because even TERRIBLE interactions (like fighting or even breaking up) will raise the meter if it falls into one of the “goal” categories (fighting is still socializing!). General consensus from Red Plumbob and the commenters is that Sims 2 did it best, with a meter that was dependent on what your date actually wanted, instead of preplanned goals, and the personal touch of Sims dropping off the date rewards instead of them just appearing in the inventory. Seriously, if Sims 4 is kind of “Sims 1 redone,” the hypothetical Sims 4 needs to be “Sims 2 redone.”
C) Then it was time for the two Plumbella videos!
1. Plumbella finished up her “LP” of The Sims 2 with a look at Apartment Life! Said look consisted of her making herself and a bunch of her Simmer friends as sisters; renting out half a nice townhouse and setting it up with both nice (their workspaces with desks) and goofy (the bedroom had PARTY LIGHTING) elements; going out to the coffee shop and her Simself getting booed for reciting poetry (then forcing her other friends to sing or try stand-up comedy to see how they like it); going to a store and learning how to break dance; and her Simself trying to chat up a guy, only for her friend Kayla to swoop in, leading to them getting into a fight (Kayla won). It was very random and chaotic, as all her Sims 2 stuff has been. XD And she seemed genuinely upset it was over! Me too, bitch – between you and Red Plumbob, I’m missing that installment of the series. :(
2. Plumbella did the “random palette” challenge – use a color generator to make a palette, then use only those colors to build and decorate a house. Plumbella used Coolors and got a palette of green, blue, white ("Alice Blue" on the actual thing, but it was so light she decided it might as well be white), purple, and black. The build process proved to be very complicated and chaotic, with Plumbella starting in Brindleton Bay before moving to Mt. Komorebi and TRYING to take over the Onsen lot for the snow (turns out it’s, uh, hardcoded to be treated as a bath house?), constantly getting distracted by creating new architectural details, and trying to create the perfect Sims bed by layering three on top of each other. XD After all that, though, the house – actually looked pretty good! I mean, I admit I’m biased – purple is my favorite color – but the bedroom was really nice, and she did a decent job with the rest of the house too! You go, Plumbella. :D
2. Play Sims 4 (Newcrest Adventures file): Check! And, happily there was no drama between Victor and Alice this time. Possibly because everyone was too distracted by SimCity Founding! Yes, in this save file, we were celebrating Sim Fourth Of July, which I chose to do by having Emma make a BBQ pit feast at the house, then sending everyone to the fancy beach (Sand Simoleon, on the “rich person” island) to swim, chat with the locals (who were – aggressively social), play with the bonfire, and light off some fireworks! The latter almost didn’t happen, though – I couldn’t find a way to buy any either through the phone menu or through the various other ways to get supplies. I simply lucked out in that Alice already had two in her inventory from previous adventures. And even THEN, one was a dud. Fortunately the other lit and everyone ended up having a great holiday. :) I left Victor and Alice fishing their little hearts out to get trophies and plasma packs. They head back home next playsession – I’ll have to arrange for something else interesting to happen. Date, perhaps?
3. Get in a workout (I've skipped the past couple of days because holidays): Check! Went for a somewhat more intense than usual bike ride. And, of course, that means more of Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! I finally finished off those final minutes of episode 33 with him killing the ghouls that had been locked up in that side office (along with a few more radroaches), picking up some “meh” gear off the Legendaries and deciding that, after all that excitement, he needed to head home to rest, eat, and drink. Episode 34 started with him, having done all that, working on the (I believe) Unyielding Raider Chest Piece to try it out, and (having foolishly summoned a vertibird before remembering he wanted to look at it, wasting a grenade once it peaced out without him) modifying the Lucky Gamma Gun he picked up to see what it could do. And then one of his settlers informed him of a kidnapping in the settlement, directing him to Back Alley Apparel, so Jon decided to try the new gun out there.
New gun really, REALLY hurts raiders. And their turrets. XD Jon was quite impressed at the damage, given it’s supposed to be irradiating them and thus not really doing any DIRECT damage to their health (just chopping off good chunks of the health bar), and thinks it might be a viable weapon for tougher enemies in good armor. He rescued the settler and brought her home – and then was informed by the same settler that raiders were about, apparently threatening Taffington Boathouse, and that Jon needed to swing by BADTFL to kill them. Jon said he’d do that when he felt like it and vertibirded over to the beach to resume his previous adventures, FINALLY making it to Reeb Marina!
Where he found the Brotherhood already there, killing Super Mutants and blowing up things. Jon joined in for a bit, then found himself the Courser he was meant to kill and one-shotted him in the head. Hilariously, the Courser called in some Gen 1 synths as he died – but as he was dead before they arrived, they weren’t hostile to Jon, which he appreciated. He then started going through the little story there, about feuding brothers trying to set up a birthday robot ambush on each other –
And then the game crashed. Fortunately, Jon had dropped a save at a sleeping bag back on the boardwalk, so he just had to hike back to the Marina – where, this time, the Brotherhood and the Courser had briefly teamed up to take out some Rust Devil robots. I left Jon murdering the Courser for killing a friendly guard dog. XD I do love his playthroughs; they’re so much fun! And sometimes I even learn things. :D
4. Find something to do on the writing front (even if it's just revising my rules for those personal challenges I'd like to do eventually) . . .eh, minor check -- I guess writing up this thing counts, and I DID take a look at that challenge doc I made and make some notes on how I feel the Fallout 4-themed challenge should work (basically, like building a settlement in the game), but I wish I could have done more. But it was kind of a distracting day, so. . .not gonna beat myself up over it.
And in the category of Other:
-->Answered that FF.net PM from my friend (involved reading the latest chapter of her fanfic, so I had to take a little extra time to get it done); but it’s all sorted now, yay~
-->Watched the “OXBox X-Mas Challenge” tiebreak! The “Gang Beasts Boxing Day Beatdown!” Three matches of Mike against Jane (with Andy refereeing), best out of the three won! Round One, in the subway station, started out very chaotically (with both Mike and Jane turning on poor Andy and stealing his hat), but eventually ended in some very complicated wrestling where Mike was able to turn Jane’s attempt to throw him in front of a train into HER getting yeeted! Round Two was on ice floes surrounding a buoy – after a prolonged chase (and Andy accidentally drowning himself as he tried to follow), Jane was able to drown Mike and emerge victorious! Round Three took place in a giant vent of some kind with a giant fan that could send all the competitors – and parts of the stage – flying. Andy again accidentally killed himself by falling down a hole – but there was nothing accidental about Mike flinging Jane into the unforgiving blades! So Mike is post-Christmas champion, yaaay~ XD I mean, I try not to pick favorites, but – just for his Hitman stuff, Mike’s my favorite. XD Yay Mike!
-->Parents and I finished the latest puzzle! It was a Norman Rockwell one, showing off a babysitter having a bad day. Now that that's sorted, we need to move onto the puzzle my aunt gave Mom, which has 2,000 pieces. . .once we figure out where to put it, of course.
-->Currently doing a bit of the RP/messaging thing, as I usually do on Saturdays -- I did answer three asks and a thread on Valice Multiverse, and now I'm about to answer another DW comment. That has to count toward list item #4, right? :p
Anyway -- tomorrow's my birthday, so I'm not making any formal to-do lists. I'm gonna do solely what I want to do, without worrying about anything I feel I need to do. I have Monday for that. XD I do intend to watch some more Fallout 4 videos -- maybe some of Oxhorn's lore stuff, or another speedrun. "tomatoanus" has plenty, after all. :p And we have the latest Big Fat Quiz Of The Year for lunch and dinner tomorrow, and of course I have some presents to open. . .plus cake. :p Just hoping it's a good day! Keep your fingers crossed, everyone! Night all!
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Date: 2020-12-27 07:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-28 03:58 am (UTC)