crossover_chick: Doc looking very sarcastically over his shoulder (BTTF: in a sarcastic mood)
[personal profile] crossover_chick
Not EXCESSIVELY annoying, just -- stuff like having to put away laundry while also making my bed, dealing with the usual speeding idiots on the road during my commute, worry about my Mom's cold (she did test, it's not The Thing) and Dad's toothache, learning that The Sims 4 has a fun new save bug if you have certain bits of the new Neighborhood Stories thing active or use wedding cakes in the new pack. . .it's been not-great. Though as you can see, there was some good stuff in the to-dos:

Work – Quiet day except for one big payment phone call, but one full of little annoyances (like actually getting to go to the bathroom, or accidentally clicking something I didn’t mean to click). And, as stated, that means I’ve been in a pretty bad mood all day. Suspect I'm PMSing, in fact. *sigh* At least talky coworker left early. . .and it is the weekend. Something!

To-Do List

1. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike for another thirty-odd minutes with the Oxventure “Exhibition Impossible,” Part II! Team Coin, having located the coin, was trying to figure out the best way to steal it, and Corazon was extremely suspicious of the apparent lack of traps, given he’s heard plenty of stories about how hard it is to steal from this place. Dob, over in the musical instruments section, decided to try and be helpful and get the skinny on the defenses from a curator, pretending to be super interested in this one strange instrument that was long and skinny with lots of holes, a trumpted end, and a white mouthpiece. . .yeah, Johnny made him super-intrigued by a fucking recorder. XD But to be fair, he got the job done – he asked the guy about the defenses, and the curator ended up telling him that it’s all done with pressure plates and suchlike – you move the glass, it sets off a silent alarm, security is dispatched. (No word yet on what this means for Prudence’s Puzzle Palantir, though I imagine being full of evil magic, it may have had its own ways around this.) Dob thanked the man for his help and – in typical Dob fashion – totally overtipped him. XD Which ended up working out even BETTER for him, because the guy, thrilled with the extra cash, immediately asked if Dob wanted a go on the displayed recorder, instead of waiting for the hands-on session with the replicas, and showed that he knew how to disable the pressure plate! (Dob even used Prestidigitation to conjure up an illusory mirror to take a better look at how he did it!) Dob took his go on the recorder (it was awful), thanked the guy, let him reset the display, and took his information back to the others.

Not a moment too soon, either, as Corazon, frustrated, was about to go for the smash-and-grab. XD Dob relayed the thing about the pressure plates, and Corazon took found the panel to pop open and have a look at the mechanism – unfortunately, it was so complicated that Johnny warned it would take a natural twenty to pull off. So Corazon decided against fiddling with it, and so started Bad Plan Theater, with Dob suggesting to his friends that a) he try to take something in a different part of the museum while they take the coin, thinking security would all rush to him; b) they just hide in the walls until it’s night and then steal it when there’s less people around, thinking that this will somehow cause people to ignore the silent alarm (because it’s silent!); c) they jam something in the mechanism, take the coin, he uses Prestidigitation to fake the coin in its case, and when security comes they blame the faulty mechanism (Corazon brought up his magic hand, and Dob said that they could also blame that for setting off the alarm – “I’m sorry, I’m still learning magic and sometimes the magic hand just comes out!”). Prudence, of course, was all for just violently kidnapping Dob’s new friend and forcing him to turn off the alarm – she was talked down to at least attempting to Charm the guy first, and Dob ended up staying behind because he couldn’t bear to see the guy kidnapped, and instead prepared a nice kidnap cupboard for him to be stored in later. Which he rolled a twenty on (complaining “this could have been the Prestidigitation twenty!”), meaning it was a kidnap cupboard so nice that maybe you want to be kidnapped for the opportunity to stay in there. XD Corazon and the others found the curator enjoying the latest batch of people to try the replica recorders, and Prudence (after making Corazon sweat a little) turned on the Charm.

The curator resisted her. Seriously – he had to get over a sixteen to resist its effects, and he rolled an eighteen. The man has eyes only for recorders. XD Corazon promptly pulled out his knife and proceeded with a violent-if-stealthy kidnapping, and they brought him back to the coin room, where the poor guy recognized Dob and begged for help.

Dob cast Sleep on Corazon. XD He didn’t roll well enough to actually knock Corazon out, luckily or unluckily depending on which side of the interaction you were on. He promptly said that he’d go for help and left, if only to not have to look at this nonsense, and the others put the curator on disabling the mechanism. Which he said was rather more complicated than the ones he was used to, but in the interest of not being knifed, he’d give it his best shot. . .

Cue a “kachunk,” a security door slamming down on the exit (full-on trapping Dob outside), and a security system telling them that unless they input the right code, the room would be FLOODED WITH ACID in three minutes. Yeah, the cool watery effect in the room is in fact the sun shining through A GIANT TANK OF ACID. So – that is happening.

While all this was going on, Egbert was upstairs having a very nice glass of brandy and a chat with Victor Dietrich about his new order and his cow god and all that fun stuff. Victor was very intrigued and willing to put some of Egbert’s stuff in the museum – Egbert, seeing an opportunity, asked if he could get something in return. Victor offered money, but Egbert wanted something more symbolic of the evil he and his new order were trying to contain, like, say, a cursed coin? Victor confessed to having one, as the pride of his maritime trade exhibit, but was very much unwilling to give it up. Egbert argued that having it in his possession meant that someone was suffering under the curse (Victor himself apparently being immune because the coin was ALREADY stolen when he got it), but Victor was like “I know there is a history of colonialism inherent in my artifacts but they’re in my museum now and everyone will just have to be content with coming to look at them for free when I’m dead.” AKA, he is basically the personification of the British Museum and its attitude toward its stolen antiquities. XD And then, before Egbert could push the point, he distracted him by saying he WAS willing to give him a fun smiting weapon! Egbert consented to see it, and Victor brought out a big mace, explaining that it was cursed, but in a fun way! You see, randomly every time you hit something or someone with it, something random might happen! Like, one time he used it, a bandit he was fighting became a chicken.

Those of you who have played Skyrim are probably going “oh NOOOO” right now. XD Hell, even those of us who haven’t are doing that, because if you’ve heard of Skyrim, you’ve probably heard of the magical chaos weapon that is the WABBAJACK! And now Egbert has it. Oh dear. XD That started off Part III, in fact – and there is now a non-zero chance of me working out tomorrow just to see the end of this adventure! I’m INVESTED!

2. Continue the final posting edit of Chapter 5 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check! Alice has successfully defused the situation at the diner by pointing out to the thugs that the cops around Santa Monica are miiiighty twitchy thanks to that killing on the docks; gotten the phone call from Therese and Jeannette about their latest fight; realized what Cheshire and the others meant by calling them the “Daughters of Janus” all the time; and burst on in the sisters’ in their office, learning some of their horrible backstory and trying to get them to, you know, not kill each other. Bit of an interesting night, no? It’s a really good thing Alice has a surprise talent for persuasion. . .

3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check! Four in, four out, as usual for a Friday –

A) Started with this week’s Fun With Shorts – “The Bully!” Which – I would SWEAR Josh has done before? Or at least somebody’s done it. . .anyway, it’s about a class of faux-teenagers dealing with a guy who likes to bully younger students into doing nasty stuff for him, and how they supposedly keep him from ruining a class picnic (by changing the location. . .and then sending him a note midway through letting him know where they are when he’s already riled up). Good riffs, as always, even with the sense of deja-vu – but then, it’s not exactly hard to mock these late-40s/early-50s disasters. XD

B) Then it was onto James Turner for another Scenario video – his take on the “Too Many Toddlers” challenge! This involves having at least three toddlers and one adult Sim, and the goals is to get three toddlers to level 3 in four skills. The game claimed this was an “Intermediate” challenge.

James busted it out in two in-game days, and that probably only because the Sims had needs to attend to. He used Semaj not only for the adult Sim, but also the three toddlers, because he’s weird like that. XD Adult Semaj got the Super Parent aspiration and the traits Family Oriented, Cheerful, and Childish; the toddlers were randomized to be Fussy, a Charmer, and Silly, and he nicknamed them by their haircuts – Bowl for a bowl cut, Bussin’ for a fancy pompadour-lite, and Bald for – well, bald. XD He sent them all to live in Evergreen Harbor and set up a toddler wing on the starter house with three beds, three large stuffed toys, a play tent, and two potties. Reason? Talking to the large stuffed animals is the best way to raise Communication skill, and the play tent from Dream Home Decorator is the best way to raise Imagination skill! James promptly started a rotating schedule of two toddlers in the tent, one toddler on the potty to raise those skills – then, as the three got Imagination up to level 3, sent them each to chat with their stuffies. They pretty much all had Imagination 3 and Communication 3 by the end of the first day! And Thinking, as it turns out, is pretty well sorted by just having toddlers “Watch” anyone around them, so they were doing pretty well in that too. Looking at their skills, it was decided that Bald and Bussin would focus on upping Thinking and Potty, while Bowl would get up his Movement, since he’d been playing with Semaj and already had that up. Some breakfast, some potty-training, and some playtime later, and they were all sorted. Two days, twenty-minute video, scenario done. “Intermediate” my ass. XD But it was still a lot of fun, and if I do end up doing anything with kids again, this is good information to know.

C) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin for a trawl through some of the trending games on Steam, because why not? In order, he at least clicked on:

Come Home – This very rapidly proved to be a porn game that he had to censor the trailer of – his embarrassed “oh shit” reaction was very amusing.

Electrician Simulator: First Shock – Basically what it says on the tin – it’s a simulator game, and you’re an electrician! Specifically, you’re an apprentice working out of your dad’s Phasmophobia garage after the obligatory “clean up your place of work” portion, doing things like repairing an old man’s broken bathroom light switch and checking all the outlets in someone’s new house. Kevin had his guy spend a lot of time just shocking himself before exiting out. XD

Eraser – A fun 3-D platformer with a cool “stick figure in a flat drawn world” aesthetic. However, when something is listed as being “similar to Elden Ring” as a reason it’s being recommended to you. . .yeah, it’s cool, but it’s hard. You gotta have VERY precise jumping and timing to get anywhere. Kevin did his best to climb the sketch tower, but one too many times being knocked down to lower levels by cannonballs and paper airplanes made him quit around the 14.5% mark. XD Still, if you like tough platformers, this seems to be the guaranteed “good game” of the video.

Stumble Guys – Literally just knockoff Fall Guys with maybe slightly different levels and fewer rounds to crown the winner. And no way to exit the game except Alt-F4. Kevin got second place because he didn’t realize that the third level was the “get the win” level, unfortunately, so he only gave it a six in his review. XD

Orc Massage – Stumbled across another porn game! Kevin’s embarrassed, horrified laughter is great. XD

Golden Light – A baffling horror game that Kevin just did not understand. You start in a pretty field apparently on a picnic with your wife – and then, once you pick her a rose, a giant hand reaches out of a sudden pit and snatches her up, and you find yourself in your standard Scary House With Occasional Meat Walls. To Kevin’s horror, he discovered you could eat your map. Literally – apparently you can eat LOTS of things in this game. Including your weapons, though Kevin didn’t manage it with the ax he picked up. Instead he went around killing strange flesh creatures and carrying around some weird eye-and-finger totem. No idea what was going on, but I was intrigued. XD Always good to see something a little different on the channel!

D) And finally, we had GrayStillPlays and more GTA V! This time with a five-part parkour course in vehicles of increasing resale value – well, before Gray got his hands on them, at any rate. We had the toilet “car” with the cat on the cistern, boogie-boarding through the sewers and dodging all the glitchy scenery (pulsating objects seems to be the new “Gray Torture Tool”); the hobby horse “motorcycle” with puppy in the back and chicken on the front, which had to go down the – not sure what you call it, but that run-off area with the water, dodging through a literal wind turbine maze (and getting knocked off the course a lot); an actual nice car that got boosted into a wall-ride loop-de-loop (simple but a classic); a Flappy Bird-themed car, playing the world’s hardest game of Flappy Bird (boosting yourself through the pipe gaps is hard enough without wind turbines and other spinny things – or glitching pipes that constantly change position); and finally a really sporty car that Gray had to wall-ride along a BRIDGE and zoom around in a circle to launch himself through the wind turbine to victory in the river! XD These boards are just getting weirder and weirder and I love it. XD

4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – got Newt’s story into my Victor Luvs Alice queue right after regular writing, yay! Set up to fire in the morning, and then the fireworks show will come in the afternoon. :)

So at least I was productive, got my queue sorted, and got a bunch of great YouTube videos in, yay. :) And now it is the weekend, so time to set up the Saturday to-dos:

1. Clean my room and do the end-of-month laundry

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and the OXBox list video in my Watch Later

3. Play Sims 4, TURN OFF NEIGHBORHOOD STORIES FOR THE CHILL SAVE, then get back to Smiler Always

4. Work on tumblr drafts

5. Either get in a workout or just watch the final episode of "Exhibition Impossible"

I think this will do, yes. Hopefully cleaning doesn't take too long. . .and fingers crossed just shutting off "story progression" entirely will do the trick. *sigh* I remember when I used to be excited about game updates. . . Ah well. Night all!
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