Red Curse Wednesday
Mar. 30th, 2022 11:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickFortunately it was one of my "polite" periods and didn't properly start until I'd woken up and actually gotten to the bathroom. Still tired and grumbly, but at least I didn't ruin another pair of panties. And hooray hooray, the shower freaking works again, so I didn't have to worry about THAT either. Sponge bath not really feasible today!
Anyway, let's have the usual to-dos:
Work – A fairly quiet day with some busy bits – I’m still working my way through checking old write-offs (particularly anything paid online) and calling people about credit card stuff and whatnot. Few phone calls about people’s pledges (canceling payments and whatnot), but a lot of it was “people above me should probably handle this.” *shrug* We’ll see how things go tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – as stated, shower has been repaired, so it was back on the bike today, and back to the Oxventure “Faire Trial” – where, if you remember, Egbert must take the Paladin Trials again because he forgot to file the correct paperwork regarding his new order for his cow god. After fussing over the horses in the stables (and hearing the grunts of another beast in the tent beside) and taking a moment to regain his eyesight in the Ferris Wheel respectively, Merilwen and Egbert joined back up with the others, and Egbert headed over to the registration desk, to learn that his first trial was a jousting tournament! He told the others that he was rather out of practice since, you know, he only learned he had to go through these the other day, so they offered to help him train a bit – Corazon even getting a tripe-leather toy lance (the equivalent of foam for this setting) in case he wanted to use it. He and Dob elected to just run at each other instead, and Egbert just full-on body-checked Dob, send him sprawling (and losing Prudence ten gold, as she’d foolishly decided to bet on the outcome with Corazon). Egbert was feeling rather more confident after this. XD Didn’t stop his “charismatic cheat friends” from trying to come up with a way to help guarantee victory – namely, replace his opponent’s lance with the tripe-leather one. Egbert told them “no, stop, I want to do this legitimately,” then went off with Merilwen to see about renting a horse (approving her idea of giving it a pep talk, but shooting down Dob’s idea of her finding his opponent’s horse and telling it to throw the match).
Egbert’s disapproval did not stop the Charismatic Cheat Friends wanting to cheat at all, of course. XD They decided the best course of action was to head to the jousting ground to see who Egbert’s opponent even was – turned out to be a fellow by the name of Cedric All-Bright, he of the golden flaxen locks and dashing good looks and fawning entourage. Yes, this man is a douchenozzle – Johnny later confirmed that Cedric actually used to bully Egbert back when they were younger. Corazon, Prudence, and Dob decided that the best way to get this guy alone for any lance-switching or other shenanigans would be to prey on his vanity and pretend to be reporters for a magazine – “Knights Nightly” is the name they chose, with Corazon playing “Scoops” the reporter, Prudence “Sketchy” the sketch artist, and Dob “Bod” the general bag-carrying lackey. A crit on a Charisma roll by Corazon made Cedric only too happy to go with them to his private tent (dragged around on its own deck with wheels), and on the way they discussed plans – should they just swap the lance, OR should they knock the guy out and have Corazon disguise himself as Cedric to throw the match? Decisions, decisions. . .
Meanwhile, over at the stables, Egbert asked for the “horse menu” from the stablehand in charge of renting out steeds. XD (Luke made a “renting a la cart” joke and ended up getting everyone inspiration as Johnny felt like all of their pun games so far had been amazing. XD) After confirming that Egbert didn’t want a horse to eat, the stablehand told him that there was no need to rent a horse for the joust – the griffons were already provided! Yeah, turns out they’d changed the steed type after declining audience numbers. . . A mildly-terrified Egbert and Merilwen headed to the jousting grounds and were directed by the registrar there to his steed – a fortunately very chill griffon. Merilwen couldn’t use Speak With Animals on him, sadly, but she could convince him to accept some chin scritches (beak scritches?), and Egbert with some petting got the griffon to let him on. It took a little bit to get acclimated (Egbert still looking for “horse bits” to work with – steady), but after a few minutes on the griffon’s back, he was feeling better about life.
Meanwhile, back over with the Charismatic Cheaters, they decided to go with “substitute Corazon in as fake Cedric” because Corazon knows all about riding horses from his previous rich boy life! XD They managed to get Cedric squirreled away in his tent, with Dob casting Sleep while Corazon distracted him with a rude question. Corazon then proceeded to tie the guy up, steal his clothes and whatever valuables he could, and magic himself up into a Cedric replica, while Dob asked Prudence if she’d like to do something mean (she would!) and set up basically a “bee bomb” in the tent by putting her bee balloon over a candle. XD I guess he just felt sorry she didn’t get to do more violence?
And then the Geth equivalent of a tannoy came on, and informed everyone to go mount their GRIFFONS. The Charismatic Cheaters were like “wtf” – and then things got worse when it was revealed by the fawning entourage that Cedric has a PERSONAL griffon, Percy, who managed to clock that Corazon was NOT his owner. Fortunately, letting Percy sniff Cedric’s stolen clothes was enough to get Percy to let Corazon mount him – just in time for the bee balloon to go off, as represented by Johnny’s little timer. XD We will see how the actual joust goes tomorrow – remember, Corazon, it’s actually BETTER if you suck!
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – Alice has just had her freakout about the fact that she made a ghoul without even realizing and asked Tung for his help in tracking him down. And fortunately, she had the perfect payment – the Cathayan’s laptop. Tung was only too happy to get Knox to look for “tall, dark, and English” for THAT. XD We’ve just about wrapped up there – just a bit more with Alice, then a brief POV-change to Tung to finish off this chapter and this story. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – only two today thanks to one long one in the Subs, but they were both good –
A) Started with James Turner and – oh no: “No packs AND I can't gain skills but have to make $400,000 Simoleons” AKA he played the “No Skills, No Problem” scenario BASE GAME ONLY. I had no idea how he was going to do ANYTHING for monetary gain with this version of Semaj (Loner, Loves Outdoors, Cheerful, aspires to be Fabulously Wealthy, lives in Willow Creek). I mean, what can you even do with a skill-less Sim?
GARDENING, that’s what. Oh, Semaj did a few other things on the side – a couple levels of the Tech Guru career (you don’t need skills for that FIRST promotion), fishing, digging up collectibles, frog breeding – but gardening proved to be the real money-maker, simply because he had access to a high-value plant right in Willow Creek – lilies! After starting out with some random other produce, he eventually transitioned to a full lily farm, even paying a gardener to help him take care of them all. He also did the Grilled Cheese aspiration just for the points, as that one didn’t require him to learn any skills. No, not to make excellent quality grilled cheese sandwiches (just get a better stove and fridge); nor to eat one in space (you can BUILD a rocket with no Rocket Science skill, you just can’t upgrade it beyond some stabilizers); nor even to discuss grilled cheese with the Grim Reaper (though that one did require him to off someone – bye Mortimer Goth!). Still, things were progressing a bit slowly, and James was pretty sure this episode was going to be a multi-parter, what with Semaj only earning about $360 per lily plant. . .
And then he discovered two things in a row: One, that when you “harvest” plants by having them pop into the household inventory (like, say, putting some flooring over them), their produce – flowers in this case – sells for MAXIMUM VALUE ($180 a pop! Meaning he could get like $72 grand with 400 flowers on 40 plants!).
Two, if you do this BETWEEN five and six AM, when the plants are in their “growing” state, then put the plants back – they’ll almost-instantly respawn as many flowers as possible up to the maximum of ten. Meaning you can do this MULTIPLE TIMES.
Yeaaah, James exploited the HELL out of that once all his lilies were fully grown. A few very carefully timed harvests on the final day, and he not only completed the scenario, he actually made a straight million! How wacky is THAT?! The only issue was having to put every plant back individually after wiping them out with a bit of floor, so yeah, not something I think he’ll be doing on the REGULAR. . .but much more fun than just typing “rosebud” into the console repeatedly, right? And it only took Semaj 16 in-game days, nice. I have suggested collectibles for his next attempt – dig up enough good gems and fossils, and you’re bound to get a good payday, right? Maybe not as good as THIS, but still. . .
B) And then, speaking of wacky things, it was time for more GrayStillPlays versus Happy Wheels! Started with Bike Mom getting a chance to do a bottle flip where the goal was to get the FULL LIQUOR BAR (preferably while NOT losing your feet), then moved onto a roof escape from the celestial being whom you owe money (which involved dodging a lot of meteors, axes, and a wrecking ball – celestial justice is painful); Bike Dad doing some boss fight “parkour” trying to earn the money to unlock part of the board (there are only four out of five coins, and you must fight the world’s shittiest giant snake and your whole family to get them before winning); a bottle run ramp going straight up to the smoothie maker (as someone who has always wanted to know if a bottle run loop-de-loop was possible, this made me happy); a joke board that pretended to be a spike fall but was actually just a run along some invisible platforms (didn’t stop Gray from panicking when he saw the fake spike wall coming toward him, of course); an “escape the chain before the homing mines get you” board (it cost Gray his arms but he did it); a rainbow ball rope swing (where Gray ALMOST did it first try – only to get himself stuck in the rope that’s supposed to bounce you onto the win platform); another death parkour course with arrows and a meteor (after a bad start, Gray just zipped right through second go); a hard bottle run with a fake secret area full of crushing meteor (and a finish line with all the spikes – but fortunately Gray hit them wheels first and won); and finally the Meat Swing by Yeetolism, where Nixon went into the butchers and had to find a way to swing on ham bones, through round eye stakes and bacon, to find the most delicious bit of NY strip steak! WITHOUT being filled full of cleavers or ground down into the daily special. Took Gray a few meaty tries, but he got there in the end! XD Ah, you really gotta respect the love that’s put into some of these boards. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, at least in the sense of “I reset the queue speed to one for the next two days of Victor Luvs Alice.” *shrug* The Wyrd Sisters Podcast tumblr hasn’t put up the latest episode yet, and I like to reblog from them when I can, so. . .we’ll see if it’s there tomorrow!
Not too shabby, especially for the first day of the red curse. At least now I know I'll be well out of it when I finally get my long weekend. . .as it stands, though, it's time to head to bed and get some sleep. Two more days this week, with a non-cleaning weekend at the end of it, yay~ Night all!
Anyway, let's have the usual to-dos:
Work – A fairly quiet day with some busy bits – I’m still working my way through checking old write-offs (particularly anything paid online) and calling people about credit card stuff and whatnot. Few phone calls about people’s pledges (canceling payments and whatnot), but a lot of it was “people above me should probably handle this.” *shrug* We’ll see how things go tomorrow!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – as stated, shower has been repaired, so it was back on the bike today, and back to the Oxventure “Faire Trial” – where, if you remember, Egbert must take the Paladin Trials again because he forgot to file the correct paperwork regarding his new order for his cow god. After fussing over the horses in the stables (and hearing the grunts of another beast in the tent beside) and taking a moment to regain his eyesight in the Ferris Wheel respectively, Merilwen and Egbert joined back up with the others, and Egbert headed over to the registration desk, to learn that his first trial was a jousting tournament! He told the others that he was rather out of practice since, you know, he only learned he had to go through these the other day, so they offered to help him train a bit – Corazon even getting a tripe-leather toy lance (the equivalent of foam for this setting) in case he wanted to use it. He and Dob elected to just run at each other instead, and Egbert just full-on body-checked Dob, send him sprawling (and losing Prudence ten gold, as she’d foolishly decided to bet on the outcome with Corazon). Egbert was feeling rather more confident after this. XD Didn’t stop his “charismatic cheat friends” from trying to come up with a way to help guarantee victory – namely, replace his opponent’s lance with the tripe-leather one. Egbert told them “no, stop, I want to do this legitimately,” then went off with Merilwen to see about renting a horse (approving her idea of giving it a pep talk, but shooting down Dob’s idea of her finding his opponent’s horse and telling it to throw the match).
Egbert’s disapproval did not stop the Charismatic Cheat Friends wanting to cheat at all, of course. XD They decided the best course of action was to head to the jousting ground to see who Egbert’s opponent even was – turned out to be a fellow by the name of Cedric All-Bright, he of the golden flaxen locks and dashing good looks and fawning entourage. Yes, this man is a douchenozzle – Johnny later confirmed that Cedric actually used to bully Egbert back when they were younger. Corazon, Prudence, and Dob decided that the best way to get this guy alone for any lance-switching or other shenanigans would be to prey on his vanity and pretend to be reporters for a magazine – “Knights Nightly” is the name they chose, with Corazon playing “Scoops” the reporter, Prudence “Sketchy” the sketch artist, and Dob “Bod” the general bag-carrying lackey. A crit on a Charisma roll by Corazon made Cedric only too happy to go with them to his private tent (dragged around on its own deck with wheels), and on the way they discussed plans – should they just swap the lance, OR should they knock the guy out and have Corazon disguise himself as Cedric to throw the match? Decisions, decisions. . .
Meanwhile, over at the stables, Egbert asked for the “horse menu” from the stablehand in charge of renting out steeds. XD (Luke made a “renting a la cart” joke and ended up getting everyone inspiration as Johnny felt like all of their pun games so far had been amazing. XD) After confirming that Egbert didn’t want a horse to eat, the stablehand told him that there was no need to rent a horse for the joust – the griffons were already provided! Yeah, turns out they’d changed the steed type after declining audience numbers. . . A mildly-terrified Egbert and Merilwen headed to the jousting grounds and were directed by the registrar there to his steed – a fortunately very chill griffon. Merilwen couldn’t use Speak With Animals on him, sadly, but she could convince him to accept some chin scritches (beak scritches?), and Egbert with some petting got the griffon to let him on. It took a little bit to get acclimated (Egbert still looking for “horse bits” to work with – steady), but after a few minutes on the griffon’s back, he was feeling better about life.
Meanwhile, back over with the Charismatic Cheaters, they decided to go with “substitute Corazon in as fake Cedric” because Corazon knows all about riding horses from his previous rich boy life! XD They managed to get Cedric squirreled away in his tent, with Dob casting Sleep while Corazon distracted him with a rude question. Corazon then proceeded to tie the guy up, steal his clothes and whatever valuables he could, and magic himself up into a Cedric replica, while Dob asked Prudence if she’d like to do something mean (she would!) and set up basically a “bee bomb” in the tent by putting her bee balloon over a candle. XD I guess he just felt sorry she didn’t get to do more violence?
And then the Geth equivalent of a tannoy came on, and informed everyone to go mount their GRIFFONS. The Charismatic Cheaters were like “wtf” – and then things got worse when it was revealed by the fawning entourage that Cedric has a PERSONAL griffon, Percy, who managed to clock that Corazon was NOT his owner. Fortunately, letting Percy sniff Cedric’s stolen clothes was enough to get Percy to let Corazon mount him – just in time for the bee balloon to go off, as represented by Johnny’s little timer. XD We will see how the actual joust goes tomorrow – remember, Corazon, it’s actually BETTER if you suck!
2. Continue editing Chapter 6 of “Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica’s Vale Of Tears”: Check – Alice has just had her freakout about the fact that she made a ghoul without even realizing and asked Tung for his help in tracking him down. And fortunately, she had the perfect payment – the Cathayan’s laptop. Tung was only too happy to get Knox to look for “tall, dark, and English” for THAT. XD We’ve just about wrapped up there – just a bit more with Alice, then a brief POV-change to Tung to finish off this chapter and this story. . .
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – only two today thanks to one long one in the Subs, but they were both good –
A) Started with James Turner and – oh no: “No packs AND I can't gain skills but have to make $400,000 Simoleons” AKA he played the “No Skills, No Problem” scenario BASE GAME ONLY. I had no idea how he was going to do ANYTHING for monetary gain with this version of Semaj (Loner, Loves Outdoors, Cheerful, aspires to be Fabulously Wealthy, lives in Willow Creek). I mean, what can you even do with a skill-less Sim?
GARDENING, that’s what. Oh, Semaj did a few other things on the side – a couple levels of the Tech Guru career (you don’t need skills for that FIRST promotion), fishing, digging up collectibles, frog breeding – but gardening proved to be the real money-maker, simply because he had access to a high-value plant right in Willow Creek – lilies! After starting out with some random other produce, he eventually transitioned to a full lily farm, even paying a gardener to help him take care of them all. He also did the Grilled Cheese aspiration just for the points, as that one didn’t require him to learn any skills. No, not to make excellent quality grilled cheese sandwiches (just get a better stove and fridge); nor to eat one in space (you can BUILD a rocket with no Rocket Science skill, you just can’t upgrade it beyond some stabilizers); nor even to discuss grilled cheese with the Grim Reaper (though that one did require him to off someone – bye Mortimer Goth!). Still, things were progressing a bit slowly, and James was pretty sure this episode was going to be a multi-parter, what with Semaj only earning about $360 per lily plant. . .
And then he discovered two things in a row: One, that when you “harvest” plants by having them pop into the household inventory (like, say, putting some flooring over them), their produce – flowers in this case – sells for MAXIMUM VALUE ($180 a pop! Meaning he could get like $72 grand with 400 flowers on 40 plants!).
Two, if you do this BETWEEN five and six AM, when the plants are in their “growing” state, then put the plants back – they’ll almost-instantly respawn as many flowers as possible up to the maximum of ten. Meaning you can do this MULTIPLE TIMES.
Yeaaah, James exploited the HELL out of that once all his lilies were fully grown. A few very carefully timed harvests on the final day, and he not only completed the scenario, he actually made a straight million! How wacky is THAT?! The only issue was having to put every plant back individually after wiping them out with a bit of floor, so yeah, not something I think he’ll be doing on the REGULAR. . .but much more fun than just typing “rosebud” into the console repeatedly, right? And it only took Semaj 16 in-game days, nice. I have suggested collectibles for his next attempt – dig up enough good gems and fossils, and you’re bound to get a good payday, right? Maybe not as good as THIS, but still. . .
B) And then, speaking of wacky things, it was time for more GrayStillPlays versus Happy Wheels! Started with Bike Mom getting a chance to do a bottle flip where the goal was to get the FULL LIQUOR BAR (preferably while NOT losing your feet), then moved onto a roof escape from the celestial being whom you owe money (which involved dodging a lot of meteors, axes, and a wrecking ball – celestial justice is painful); Bike Dad doing some boss fight “parkour” trying to earn the money to unlock part of the board (there are only four out of five coins, and you must fight the world’s shittiest giant snake and your whole family to get them before winning); a bottle run ramp going straight up to the smoothie maker (as someone who has always wanted to know if a bottle run loop-de-loop was possible, this made me happy); a joke board that pretended to be a spike fall but was actually just a run along some invisible platforms (didn’t stop Gray from panicking when he saw the fake spike wall coming toward him, of course); an “escape the chain before the homing mines get you” board (it cost Gray his arms but he did it); a rainbow ball rope swing (where Gray ALMOST did it first try – only to get himself stuck in the rope that’s supposed to bounce you onto the win platform); another death parkour course with arrows and a meteor (after a bad start, Gray just zipped right through second go); a hard bottle run with a fake secret area full of crushing meteor (and a finish line with all the spikes – but fortunately Gray hit them wheels first and won); and finally the Meat Swing by Yeetolism, where Nixon went into the butchers and had to find a way to swing on ham bones, through round eye stakes and bacon, to find the most delicious bit of NY strip steak! WITHOUT being filled full of cleavers or ground down into the daily special. Took Gray a few meaty tries, but he got there in the end! XD Ah, you really gotta respect the love that’s put into some of these boards. . .
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check, at least in the sense of “I reset the queue speed to one for the next two days of Victor Luvs Alice.” *shrug* The Wyrd Sisters Podcast tumblr hasn’t put up the latest episode yet, and I like to reblog from them when I can, so. . .we’ll see if it’s there tomorrow!
Not too shabby, especially for the first day of the red curse. At least now I know I'll be well out of it when I finally get my long weekend. . .as it stands, though, it's time to head to bed and get some sleep. Two more days this week, with a non-cleaning weekend at the end of it, yay~ Night all!
