Inadvertant Lazy Day
Jun. 18th, 2022 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickI've been having some trouble concentrating, and I suspect I know the cause, since I've also been somewhat more irritable -- hello oncoming PMS! Yeah, my period is due next week sometime, isn't it? Ugh. . . Shall have to brace for that! But yeah, I've been getting distracted a lot by stuff today. And things I've started have taken a lot longer to do than expected. It's just been -- very scattered overall. As my to-do list shall attest to:
1. Edit the gift fic for tumblr friend Nebby's upcoming birthday: Check! Did that this evening – changed the fic from dialogue-only to having some minimal scene-setting with Alice, Victor, and “Hoki,” and cleaned up some phrasing and whatnot. It should be good to go this upcoming – *checks calendar* – Wednesday! Hopefully Nebby likes it. . .I did my best, given I’m not entirely familiar with the “Horned King” as a character! But then, she wanted a reformed version anyway, so a little OOC I think is gonna be acceptable in this case. . .
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, catch up with James Turner and Plumbella: Eh, about 3/4’s check – I’m still behind on James’s stuff thanks to starting the YouTube really late today. Which I blame partially on distraction, partially on me getting worried the videos on Sims 4: Werewolves would reveal Pack Brokenness that would make me mad. At least the majority of it got done –
A) First up was the Plumbella in the Watch Later –
I. “The Sims 4: Werewolves Honest Review” – Plumbella’s review of the version of the pack that she received from the EA Creator Network! A lot of her comments were positive – she likes all the adult CAS items – they’re stylized, but in a good way; the Build/Buy is great and provides some actual cheap-looking furniture options for Sims; the world itself feels bigger than it actually is and looks beautiful; the werewolf aspiration and its unlocked branches are decent; and the gameplay actually has some depth and struggle to it (like her bookworm werewolf developing a temperament that meant his Fury went up every time he read books because his inner wolf brain didn’t like it, leading to more frequent rampages). But she was not hesitant to voice some critiques – there’s not much new for kids and toddlers, and no new traits (I could have sworn there was one in the Livestream! Maybe I didn’t realize that icon was already used); the world IS still pretty small at five lots; you can’t properly create your own pack if you don’t want to join the two in the world (the closest you can come is a werewolf club using Get Together)–
Oh, and the fucking werewolves in their actual werewolf form can be invisible. Apparently because something about the SDX mini-updater doesn’t like them.
Yeah, Plumbella was very clear that you should NOT buy this pack until they release a fix for this issue because we can’t support broken content. Fuckin’ amen, Jesse. And apparently EA DID do some sort of “Day -1” patch on Wednesday in preparation for the pack’s release on Thursday – but they did it through the damn SDX thing, so. . .hmm. Well, the next video covered that. . .
II. “seeing if the patch fixed Werewolves lmfao” – Plumbella took a moment out of her busy “gonna go on vacation to Flamingoland w00” schedule to see if the patch actually fixed the problem of invisible werewolves from her LP! She booted up CAS, chose to add a werewolf in their werewolf form. . .
Visible. Fully visible. Color me fucking shocked after the mess that was getting any sort of fix for My Wedding Stories. And BECAUSE this was the “Day -1 patch,” it means EA did NOT release a broken pack to the public at large, and I can buy the thing without feeling like I’m supporting screwed-up content. Holy crap, is that a weird feeling after MWS and all these damn kits we’ve been getting. . . The werewolf!Alice/spellcaster!Victor/vampire!Smiler polycule looks like it’s on after all! Amazing! Now I can go back to complaining that the “Paint” mode for pets and werewolf coats should be a thing for Sims in general. XD
III. “my Werewolf is so stunningly flawless” – And then we rewound time to Plumbella recording her LP pre-review with her early access version of the pack, and we had the invisible werewolf thing again. Which was apparently even MORE of an issue than I first thought, because the invisible werewolf form meant that you couldn’t actually EDIT anything while they were in that mode – couldn’t even add a name! Sheesh! Plumbella did make it into human-form CAS and was able to create her werewolf “Remus Lupisn’t” (of course) and set him some outfits and such – but then she tried to switch BACK to werewolf form to see if there was anything she could do to get the head and feet to be visible (the hands were fine now that the form was wearing clothes), like drawing on him with Paint mode – but once she went into Paint mode, she couldn’t properly get OUT of it, and basically she had to exit to the main menu, restart, do a speed-run redo of the Sim in human form (now just “Remus Isn’t”), save the family to her Library, and then race straight into Moonwood Mill to set him up on the empty lot with a tent and some other sundries. Sheesh! I don’t know why Plumbella started claiming it was funny after the fact – it’s just SAD. Poor girl shouldn’t have had to go through that bullshit, seriously. *facepalm* Also werewolves just generally howl too much in CAS, but occults doing their occult-specific idles in CAS too often is a known quantity at this point (Smiler was FAR too happy to do the vampire hiss whenever I edited them in CAS, so. . .), so that’s not a game-breaker for me. I guess we’ll see where the LP goes from there!
IV. “The Entire History of Moonwood Mill (there's a LOT)” – And finally, Plumbella took us through all the lore in the new world and its items – and, as indicated by the title, there was a LOT. Not just with the modern bits either, like the whole “the pack leader of the Moonwood Collective is actually the adoptive father of the pack leader of the Wildfangs and they had a falling out over how werewolves should act” – no, there is some goddamn HISTORY here. Apparently the “mooncaster” thing from some of the early teasers was a specific kind of spellcaster who had a canine/wolf familiar, and they ended up merging WITH these familiars to become werewolves to fight back against the vampires, who were attacking the spellcasters and trying to change them all into vampires. The reason the Magic Realm is just a bunch of fractured islands is in fact the result of a spell to try and cure all the vampires in one go that went terribly wrong. And in the comments, apparently one of the underground tunnels you can find, the one smelling of garlic, was used as a prison for Vlad back in the day, but he managed to escape, and vampires THEMSELVES are a result of spellcasters trying to do a version of that “clone yourself” spell that didn’t rely on constant magic use – so instead the clones ended up relying on plasma. . . This pack does a LOT to link together the three big occults in the game, is what I’m saying! Though it does run counter to the Vampire encyclopedias claiming the first vampire was hit by a curse. . .though maybe that’s deliberate. I really want a refresh of both Vampires and Realm of Magic to see THEIR takes on this ancient war and what THEY think really happened. . .
B) Then it was over to one of James’s build videos: “How I hid a Werewolf hangout in The Sims 4 Werewolves!” This is the evolution of the bar lot, which contains not only a bar, but a secret werewolf hangout in the sewers underneath! As usual, we watched James go through the intial rough draft (his original idea for the entrance to the hideout was an outhouse, but he quickly changed it to a bunker half-hidden in the terrain), then all the rounds of changes he did as he got feedback from the Gurus and items were added to his early-release copy! Took until round three for him to get his bus shell for his bar – and the most major change was adding a nice little shed for Sims to party in in case it rained. Gotta be considerate of those with Seasons, after all! It’s pretty fascinating to watch this process, I must admit. Even if the videos tend to be long (hence why I’m having trouble keeping up on all of them).
C) And finally, we had GrayStillPlays with “I busted 100 myths in GTA 5!” AKA, it’s time for Alex and Danny to torture him with weird parkour boards in the game again. XD These ones were specific “myth” challenges centering around stuff that you supposedly can’t do in the game, and forcing Gray to do them. Like “you can’t jump fifteen helicopters on a motorbike, or 30 homeless people on a regular bike” – you can if you know the tricks to make said bikes hover! Or “you can’t skydive through a construction crane and live” – you know how many thumbnail holes Gray has shot himself through at this point? Kill a pedestrian by skydiving onto them from a skyscraper? Gray’s only too happy to! Kill them by pelting them from snowballs from 100 feet away? Let him just find the angle. . . Land a cargo plane on top of a tiny landing pad on one of the skyscrapers? JOKE’S ON YOU, GRAY’S TRAINING TO BE A PILOT – Gray’s training to be a pilot?? Okay, I know he had a life outside of YouTube, but that’s still a bit of an O.o moment. But he still did it, baby! And flew a prop-plane upside-down through a tunnel in Mt. Chilead. I’m looking forward to the comment section insisting on more crane jumps and plane boards now!
3. Play Fallout 4 and get further into rescuing Nick if possible: No check – I put “if possible” on there for a reason, because I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get to the game with all the rather long videos I planned to watch! Though, actually, what ended up killing me in the end was catching up on tumblr and working on the drafts (below). But I fully plan to get to this tomorrow – I want Victor to actually meet Nick already, damn it.
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – FINALLY made a start on that one “Fairy Tale AU” post that I’ve been meaning to do in the Victor Luvs Alice drafts! Took me a while to get going on it, and I haven’t even made it to my plot outline yet, but at least it’s started, you know? Also did the pictures for my next Chill Save update -- looking like this one's a three-parter! Which makes sense, it covers another School Spirit Day and a trip to the romance festival. Lot going on there!
Additionally:
-->Despite cloudy skies, decently-high winds, and rather fall-like temperatures, we did venture out to beanbags! Dad had the best day, while I pulled out a few good shots after the first game was almost nothing but ties, but poor Mom’s back to her losing ways – final scores were me 2-W-3-W-2; Dad W-2-W-2-W; Mom 3-3-2-3-3. Oof. Maybe tomorrow, Mom!
-->Found an e-card for Dad for Father’s Day and got that sent just a little bit earlier! It’s pretty simple, but I hope he finds it amusing regardless. :)
And now I'm juggling multiple social things going on at once. . .really gotta get my focus back for tomorrow. Let's see what I can do vis-a-vis the to-do list:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression
2. Catch up on YouTube Subs, watch Jon's latest Fallout video
3. Play Fallout 4 and get further into rescuing Nick
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Of course, since tomorrow's Father's Day, I gotta make time for any Dad-related activities we may do as well. . .we'll see what gets done and what doesn't. As it stands, I have conversations to keep up with, then bed to get to. Night all!
1. Edit the gift fic for tumblr friend Nebby's upcoming birthday: Check! Did that this evening – changed the fic from dialogue-only to having some minimal scene-setting with Alice, Victor, and “Hoki,” and cleaned up some phrasing and whatnot. It should be good to go this upcoming – *checks calendar* – Wednesday! Hopefully Nebby likes it. . .I did my best, given I’m not entirely familiar with the “Horned King” as a character! But then, she wanted a reformed version anyway, so a little OOC I think is gonna be acceptable in this case. . .
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, catch up with James Turner and Plumbella: Eh, about 3/4’s check – I’m still behind on James’s stuff thanks to starting the YouTube really late today. Which I blame partially on distraction, partially on me getting worried the videos on Sims 4: Werewolves would reveal Pack Brokenness that would make me mad. At least the majority of it got done –
A) First up was the Plumbella in the Watch Later –
I. “The Sims 4: Werewolves Honest Review” – Plumbella’s review of the version of the pack that she received from the EA Creator Network! A lot of her comments were positive – she likes all the adult CAS items – they’re stylized, but in a good way; the Build/Buy is great and provides some actual cheap-looking furniture options for Sims; the world itself feels bigger than it actually is and looks beautiful; the werewolf aspiration and its unlocked branches are decent; and the gameplay actually has some depth and struggle to it (like her bookworm werewolf developing a temperament that meant his Fury went up every time he read books because his inner wolf brain didn’t like it, leading to more frequent rampages). But she was not hesitant to voice some critiques – there’s not much new for kids and toddlers, and no new traits (I could have sworn there was one in the Livestream! Maybe I didn’t realize that icon was already used); the world IS still pretty small at five lots; you can’t properly create your own pack if you don’t want to join the two in the world (the closest you can come is a werewolf club using Get Together)–
Oh, and the fucking werewolves in their actual werewolf form can be invisible. Apparently because something about the SDX mini-updater doesn’t like them.
Yeah, Plumbella was very clear that you should NOT buy this pack until they release a fix for this issue because we can’t support broken content. Fuckin’ amen, Jesse. And apparently EA DID do some sort of “Day -1” patch on Wednesday in preparation for the pack’s release on Thursday – but they did it through the damn SDX thing, so. . .hmm. Well, the next video covered that. . .
II. “seeing if the patch fixed Werewolves lmfao” – Plumbella took a moment out of her busy “gonna go on vacation to Flamingoland w00” schedule to see if the patch actually fixed the problem of invisible werewolves from her LP! She booted up CAS, chose to add a werewolf in their werewolf form. . .
Visible. Fully visible. Color me fucking shocked after the mess that was getting any sort of fix for My Wedding Stories. And BECAUSE this was the “Day -1 patch,” it means EA did NOT release a broken pack to the public at large, and I can buy the thing without feeling like I’m supporting screwed-up content. Holy crap, is that a weird feeling after MWS and all these damn kits we’ve been getting. . . The werewolf!Alice/spellcaster!Victor/vampire!Smiler polycule looks like it’s on after all! Amazing! Now I can go back to complaining that the “Paint” mode for pets and werewolf coats should be a thing for Sims in general. XD
III. “my Werewolf is so stunningly flawless” – And then we rewound time to Plumbella recording her LP pre-review with her early access version of the pack, and we had the invisible werewolf thing again. Which was apparently even MORE of an issue than I first thought, because the invisible werewolf form meant that you couldn’t actually EDIT anything while they were in that mode – couldn’t even add a name! Sheesh! Plumbella did make it into human-form CAS and was able to create her werewolf “Remus Lupisn’t” (of course) and set him some outfits and such – but then she tried to switch BACK to werewolf form to see if there was anything she could do to get the head and feet to be visible (the hands were fine now that the form was wearing clothes), like drawing on him with Paint mode – but once she went into Paint mode, she couldn’t properly get OUT of it, and basically she had to exit to the main menu, restart, do a speed-run redo of the Sim in human form (now just “Remus Isn’t”), save the family to her Library, and then race straight into Moonwood Mill to set him up on the empty lot with a tent and some other sundries. Sheesh! I don’t know why Plumbella started claiming it was funny after the fact – it’s just SAD. Poor girl shouldn’t have had to go through that bullshit, seriously. *facepalm* Also werewolves just generally howl too much in CAS, but occults doing their occult-specific idles in CAS too often is a known quantity at this point (Smiler was FAR too happy to do the vampire hiss whenever I edited them in CAS, so. . .), so that’s not a game-breaker for me. I guess we’ll see where the LP goes from there!
IV. “The Entire History of Moonwood Mill (there's a LOT)” – And finally, Plumbella took us through all the lore in the new world and its items – and, as indicated by the title, there was a LOT. Not just with the modern bits either, like the whole “the pack leader of the Moonwood Collective is actually the adoptive father of the pack leader of the Wildfangs and they had a falling out over how werewolves should act” – no, there is some goddamn HISTORY here. Apparently the “mooncaster” thing from some of the early teasers was a specific kind of spellcaster who had a canine/wolf familiar, and they ended up merging WITH these familiars to become werewolves to fight back against the vampires, who were attacking the spellcasters and trying to change them all into vampires. The reason the Magic Realm is just a bunch of fractured islands is in fact the result of a spell to try and cure all the vampires in one go that went terribly wrong. And in the comments, apparently one of the underground tunnels you can find, the one smelling of garlic, was used as a prison for Vlad back in the day, but he managed to escape, and vampires THEMSELVES are a result of spellcasters trying to do a version of that “clone yourself” spell that didn’t rely on constant magic use – so instead the clones ended up relying on plasma. . . This pack does a LOT to link together the three big occults in the game, is what I’m saying! Though it does run counter to the Vampire encyclopedias claiming the first vampire was hit by a curse. . .though maybe that’s deliberate. I really want a refresh of both Vampires and Realm of Magic to see THEIR takes on this ancient war and what THEY think really happened. . .
B) Then it was over to one of James’s build videos: “How I hid a Werewolf hangout in The Sims 4 Werewolves!” This is the evolution of the bar lot, which contains not only a bar, but a secret werewolf hangout in the sewers underneath! As usual, we watched James go through the intial rough draft (his original idea for the entrance to the hideout was an outhouse, but he quickly changed it to a bunker half-hidden in the terrain), then all the rounds of changes he did as he got feedback from the Gurus and items were added to his early-release copy! Took until round three for him to get his bus shell for his bar – and the most major change was adding a nice little shed for Sims to party in in case it rained. Gotta be considerate of those with Seasons, after all! It’s pretty fascinating to watch this process, I must admit. Even if the videos tend to be long (hence why I’m having trouble keeping up on all of them).
C) And finally, we had GrayStillPlays with “I busted 100 myths in GTA 5!” AKA, it’s time for Alex and Danny to torture him with weird parkour boards in the game again. XD These ones were specific “myth” challenges centering around stuff that you supposedly can’t do in the game, and forcing Gray to do them. Like “you can’t jump fifteen helicopters on a motorbike, or 30 homeless people on a regular bike” – you can if you know the tricks to make said bikes hover! Or “you can’t skydive through a construction crane and live” – you know how many thumbnail holes Gray has shot himself through at this point? Kill a pedestrian by skydiving onto them from a skyscraper? Gray’s only too happy to! Kill them by pelting them from snowballs from 100 feet away? Let him just find the angle. . . Land a cargo plane on top of a tiny landing pad on one of the skyscrapers? JOKE’S ON YOU, GRAY’S TRAINING TO BE A PILOT – Gray’s training to be a pilot?? Okay, I know he had a life outside of YouTube, but that’s still a bit of an O.o moment. But he still did it, baby! And flew a prop-plane upside-down through a tunnel in Mt. Chilead. I’m looking forward to the comment section insisting on more crane jumps and plane boards now!
3. Play Fallout 4 and get further into rescuing Nick if possible: No check – I put “if possible” on there for a reason, because I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get to the game with all the rather long videos I planned to watch! Though, actually, what ended up killing me in the end was catching up on tumblr and working on the drafts (below). But I fully plan to get to this tomorrow – I want Victor to actually meet Nick already, damn it.
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – FINALLY made a start on that one “Fairy Tale AU” post that I’ve been meaning to do in the Victor Luvs Alice drafts! Took me a while to get going on it, and I haven’t even made it to my plot outline yet, but at least it’s started, you know? Also did the pictures for my next Chill Save update -- looking like this one's a three-parter! Which makes sense, it covers another School Spirit Day and a trip to the romance festival. Lot going on there!
Additionally:
-->Despite cloudy skies, decently-high winds, and rather fall-like temperatures, we did venture out to beanbags! Dad had the best day, while I pulled out a few good shots after the first game was almost nothing but ties, but poor Mom’s back to her losing ways – final scores were me 2-W-3-W-2; Dad W-2-W-2-W; Mom 3-3-2-3-3. Oof. Maybe tomorrow, Mom!
-->Found an e-card for Dad for Father’s Day and got that sent just a little bit earlier! It’s pretty simple, but I hope he finds it amusing regardless. :)
And now I'm juggling multiple social things going on at once. . .really gotta get my focus back for tomorrow. Let's see what I can do vis-a-vis the to-do list:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression
2. Catch up on YouTube Subs, watch Jon's latest Fallout video
3. Play Fallout 4 and get further into rescuing Nick
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Of course, since tomorrow's Father's Day, I gotta make time for any Dad-related activities we may do as well. . .we'll see what gets done and what doesn't. As it stands, I have conversations to keep up with, then bed to get to. Night all!
no subject
Date: 2022-06-19 04:03 pm (UTC)Be careful doing the vampire and werewolf thing. I think they're pre-programmed to hate each other because when I introduced my wolf (Virginia Wulfe lol) to the vampire lady Sim whose name I can't recall at the moment they instantly became enemies.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-21 03:45 am (UTC)Ooof -- I was thinking I might have to get a mod to make sure vampires and werewolves don't automatically default to hating/insulting each other. I'm thinking Smiler and Alice already being friends must work against that, but -- hmmm. Well, it's not like I'm not willing to mod this game to get what I want!
no subject
Date: 2022-06-21 02:00 pm (UTC)I was gonna post a screenshot of the backside of one of the Sims wolves and be like "Look at dat ass and tell me it doesn't look weird without a tail" but my ftp isn't working. ^^
Honestly though, there's like a tuft that could be a tail but I think they look much better with the floof.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-22 03:52 am (UTC)LOL, shame, shame. I know that during one of her videos, Plumbella used Paint Mode to ask "where the tail" on a random werewolf she was designing, so. . . XD
Yeah, I prefer them with tails too -- it just feels right to me, you know?
no subject
Date: 2022-06-22 12:35 pm (UTC)Look at dat ass and tell me it doesn't look weird without a tail.
:p ^^
no subject
Date: 2022-06-23 03:44 am (UTC)