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crossover_chickI believe Phil saw his shadow, so six more weeks of winter -- which fits with tomorrow apparently being cold as balls, so. . . Anyway, today's Covid Update: more improvement, with much less stuffiness as the day went on and a lot fewer throat tickles. Testing again tomorrow morning, and HOPEFULLY it's negative. I haven't exactly HATED my time isolating in my room, but I am feeling a TOUCH antsy here. And I'd like to have the Plague done and over with, please and thank you. Even if it does mean returning to work, meeeh.
Anyway! Stuff accomplished today --
Tumblr: Less productive day on here than yesterday, but still got some stuff done –
A) I did indeed finish up prepping those next Chill Valicer Save pics last night (it did indeed turn out to be 50 in total, so gonna be five posts when I draft it all out).
B) And, right before I went to bed, I was looking through some old Sims 4 screenshots, came across the one of Victor, Alice, and Smiler all reading books in a line in the Moonwood Mill library, and was inspired to make it into a Valicertine! “Sometimes love. . .looks like a study group.” XD So now I have two of those ready for the 14th!
C) Did a dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch, as I do~ Then later answered a question related to my OT3 meme post – though I have some other stuff to catch up on later regarding the people I tagged in the WIP tagging game, so must remember to do that tomorrow!
D) And I just finished doing ask replies for Valice Multiverse – three, a couple of which took a bit of thought as I wasn’t sure what universe to put them in. Figured it out in the end, though!
Gaming: Despite all the Sims content on the YouTubes today, below, I did choose to finish Unpacking for my daily gaming today – mostly because I didn’t want to leave the “Monica” save file stagnating on the final level. Which, of course, took the longest because it’s the biggest house and has the most rooms. Took me a while to get everything just how I wanted it, that’s for sure! But I got it working in the end, and then had to brace myself against the feels while listening to the ending song. Just – damn, they know how to hit you right in the heart with that one.
Writing: Made SURE to get this done today – and it was even actual WRITING, not just futzing around with character sheets! :p Though it was again Blades in the Dark-related – I did a couple of pages on Emily discovering Victor in the brothel, Smiler managing to talk her down from a possibly electric temper tantrum by reminding her humans need to eat, Victor explaining that he’s already engaged, and Nanny dropping the bombshell that, actually, Victoria is already married and Victor wondering how the hell they found a replacement in the single day he’s been gone. Good practice for getting back to my main projects soon, I feel! Plus it’s just fun to play around in this universe. :)
YouTube: Oh man – if yesterday was the day of tumblr, today was the day of YouTube. I had an early start, and just rode that train pretty much all day. Hilariously, the only video I DIDN’T watch was Gray’s GTA V Shorts video in my Subs, aka the SHORTEST one. Ah well, that just makes it easier to catch up on tomorrow. As for the rest of it –
A) Started this morning with – well, when I went to the Sims Community site to check out the latest details, I noticed I was actually up and home in time to catch the premiere of the trailer for the new expansion pack Growing Together! So after brushing my teeth, I went back to the site and checked it out fresh out of the gate! So far it looks good – DEFINITELY gonna be a boon for family players if kids can genuinely now loose teeth and learn how to ride bikes and stuff. And it has the Hopeful Mark Of Sims Expansion Pack Quality – the trailer song, which I believe to be “Ooh La La” by Rod Stewart (the “I wish that I knew what I know now/when I was younger” song), is in Simlish. Just like Seasons and Cottage Living. Keep your fingers crossed people!
B) And THEN I went on one of the blogs I read that posts a lot of Smiler stuff and spotted a screenshot of what looked like a new Alton Towers trailer with a shot of something called “The Smiler Takeover” related to Festival of Thrills, so I promptly had to shoot off to YouTube to look THAT up. Turns out it was a still from the new “A World of Thrilliant Events✨” 30-second spot they put out for all the stuff happening in 2023 – and yes, it appears that part of this year’s take on Festival of Thrills will be The Smiler having their day in the sun for their 10th anniversary. :D (And according to the comments, Th13teen also hits a milestone this year – of being thirteen years old! Isn’t that something? :D) Today was the day of good trailers!
C) Of course, you can’t have trailers without analysis, so after lunch, I ended up watching SimmerErin’s video “This is Important... Growing Together Trailer Analysis/ Reaction” covering her personal thoughts on the new Growing Together trailer. She is – hopeful, but doesn’t believe it’ll change the game as much as people expect. Also she’s not wowed by the CAS items on display so far, BUT sort of considers that a good thing, given how much Sims 4 tends to focus on aesthetics over gameplay sometimes. She WANTS it to be a good pack, and thinks it has some cool features (slumber parties and sleeping bags; treehouses you can build yourself in-game; puzzles and some board game stuff; just in-general better family gameplay), but – yeah. We have been burned before, we can be burned again. We’ll see what the Livestream showing it (and the Infants Update) brings on March 3rd!
D) Then, after Unpacking (and a little time on TV Tropes looking at its page again – did you know the protagonist’s partner is named “Mali” as per the title of one of the in-game themes?), it was time to watch “The Sims added bikes for kids! Growing Together Trailer Reaction” from James Turner! His reaction to the trailer can be summed up as “we’re going to have so many babies.” XD No seriously, he’s actually fairly excited about the gameplay possibilities – though he fully expects both high chairs and carrying infants on your pack in carry packs to become very bugged. XD But he likes what he can see of the Build/Buy, he likes what he can see of the gameplay – he’s excited! He wants it to be good! And also he’s contractually obligated to like this because his girlfriend Deligracy built some of the lots in the new world of San Sequoia, so. . . XD I hope it lives up to your hopes and dreams, James!
E) Then, after supper, we had the latest list from OXBox – “7 Shady Easter Eggs That Roasted the Competition!” Jane, Mike, and Andy taking a look at those video game Easter eggs that poked a little harmless – or not-so-harmless – fun at competitors or specific game-industry practices. Such as Enter The Gungeon having a “Microtransaction Gun” specifically called a “gun that nobody likes.” Or Dying Light 2 killing off expies of Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield during a specific mission in an old broadcast tower (Leon gets to die quietly, Chris is a zombie you have to fight). Or our favorite Doomslayer in Doom (2016) finding a corpse of a certain Skyrim Dragonborn with an arrow in the knee during his travels. . .except, wait, both of those games are made, or at least distributed by, Bethesda. I guess it counts as friendly between-game ribbing, but now I wonder if they’ve ever succumbed to the urge to include a Doom shoutout in Skyrim. . .
F) Then it was onto the Watch Later for a video I had stored in there – “The Alton Towers Iceberg Explained!” By Oilblivion, it’s basically an “interesting facts” video, with the “tip of the iceberg” being the most commonly known stuff, and “the depths” being the least. There was a lot I already knew in there – Oblivion’s Fanta sponsorship disaster; the delays on the Smiler and the unfortunate crash; the overactive marketing on Th13teen making a decent coaster a disappointment because they hyped it up as too scary – but there was plenty of other stuff to keep me engaged. Like a look at a bunch of the older, closed rides, including favorites like The Corkscrew, The Flume, Thunder Looper (the size of which actually prompted the “can’t build above the treeline” restriction for future coasters), and Black Hole! Stories about hauntings at the actual towers (apparently a governess and her old charges might still roam the grounds)! The fact that Alton Towers has its own power plant, the CHP plant, to help serve its power and heating needs and cut down on emissions (and good for them)! Oh, and the fact that Nemesis once set a record for most naked people on a thrill ride. I am dead serious, there was footage of these naked people in the video. XD Like, why is that even a THING? XD Anyway, it was a fun video, and I’m glad I took the time to give it a watch!
G) And after that, another WL video – “Hitman: Freelancer - When Assassins Go Rogue” from Jon of Many A True Nerd! While I’m mainly into his Fallout content, Jon also does some great Hitman stuff – and in this video, he was covering the new “Freelancer” game mode, which I believe is set after the “World of Assassination” trilogy and has 47 and Diana working as a freelance team. The changes to how the game works are numerous – you do “campaigns” which take you all around the world to eliminate targets for money (the symbol of which looks a lot like the symbol for Monopoly money, amusingly); each chapter of a campaign has three locations with targets from a specific organization to take out, which you can do in any order; your payout for doing each assassination depends on completing the optional objectives (such as killing guards with a shotgun, not blowing your disguise, hiding bodies, etc); you can additionally add golden prestige objectives to earn more filthy lucre (such as the traditional “Silent Assassin” rules); you have a limited gear capacity and a VERY limited number of weapons to select from to start; you have to buy more weapons and gear from vendors at your location; you can crack open safes and eliminate couriers at your destination to steal their cash; and the final assassination is always more difficult because you have to figure out who it is from a set of four using the listed tells Diana gives you, and also there may be assassins and bodyguards defending against you. Also, you can have 47 tool around his house and just day-drink wine if you are so inclined. XD
For our amusement, Jon showed off one chapter of a campaign, targeting “The Syndicate” (who do weird occult rituals and such). First assassination was in the Bangkok hotel and required him to be a perfect shot, not blow his disguise, and kill his target with an axe – he arrived as a clown and discovered the target perfectly isolated himself in the kitchen while checking in at the hotel, so he lured a guard into his room and took his disguise, grabbed a fire axe from a nearby box, got into the kitchen, silently murdered the guy, and just walked back out (taking a moment to try and fail to crack the safe in the hotel along the way). Second assassination was two guys in the Berlin nightclub, which involved shotgunning guards, blinding people, hiding bodies, and blowing open a safe – starting on the roof of the biker bar in a dark casual outfit, Jon was able to steal a biker outfit by knocking out a guard, then knocked out two other guards and just shot them to fulfill the “shotgunning guards” objective. XD He was also successfully able to blow the safe with a quiet and nonlethal breaching charge given to him by Diana, which was nice. Unfortunately, he had no way to blind either target, and no way to hide either of them either – his attempts to lure one into a room ended up with him hiding two potential witnesses in the freezer, meaning he couldn’t use it to hide the target; and the other was a security guard on a high bridge surrounded by people, meaning Jon just took the opportunity to steal a handgun from proper security and blow his brains out before making a run for it. Third assassination was in the New York bank and required him to find the leader of the Syndicate from among four suspects – he could also shotgun guards, but he decided not to do that because it’s a small map and not well suited to that. He ATTEMPTED to complete it under Silent Assassin rules, and came really really close – managing to identify the target by watching some bald people with earrings and necklaces eat and drink and seeing who attended a business meeting and accidentally disarming their assassin friend by getting him to slip on a banana peel intended for the target – but in his attempt to get said assassin’s silenced gun, he ran into a restricted area without getting frisked (mostly because said guard had abandoned his post); upset all the guards and caused the target to start fleeing; and died in a hail of gunfire while chasing the target with the nice new combat axe he’d picked up from the local merchant. Mission failed, campaign failed, 47 put his clown outfit back on and started day drinking again. XD It was a very different but very fun take on Hitman, and I look forward to any future videos on the subject! I mean, we have GOT to see how the OXBox team handles a campaign, right? :D
Damn, yes, that proved to be a very YouTube-heavy day! But I don't regret it. :) Means all the longest stuff is cleared from my Watch Later! But I do want to try and focus some more on tumblr tomorrow, reblog some people and clean up some drafts and all that. Maybe try to get back to "The Joker And The Queen" or "Londerland Bloodlines?" Though I dunno if I'm playing Sims 4 (and doing some building) or Fallout 4 (and doing some building). . .we'll see what happens! I'm gonna go chill for a bit, then do the Nyquil and snooze thing. Again, fingers crossed the stupid virus has worked its way out of my system (or is at least working its way out of my system) as of tomorrow's test! Night all!
Anyway! Stuff accomplished today --
Tumblr: Less productive day on here than yesterday, but still got some stuff done –
A) I did indeed finish up prepping those next Chill Valicer Save pics last night (it did indeed turn out to be 50 in total, so gonna be five posts when I draft it all out).
B) And, right before I went to bed, I was looking through some old Sims 4 screenshots, came across the one of Victor, Alice, and Smiler all reading books in a line in the Moonwood Mill library, and was inspired to make it into a Valicertine! “Sometimes love. . .looks like a study group.” XD So now I have two of those ready for the 14th!
C) Did a dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice before lunch, as I do~ Then later answered a question related to my OT3 meme post – though I have some other stuff to catch up on later regarding the people I tagged in the WIP tagging game, so must remember to do that tomorrow!
D) And I just finished doing ask replies for Valice Multiverse – three, a couple of which took a bit of thought as I wasn’t sure what universe to put them in. Figured it out in the end, though!
Gaming: Despite all the Sims content on the YouTubes today, below, I did choose to finish Unpacking for my daily gaming today – mostly because I didn’t want to leave the “Monica” save file stagnating on the final level. Which, of course, took the longest because it’s the biggest house and has the most rooms. Took me a while to get everything just how I wanted it, that’s for sure! But I got it working in the end, and then had to brace myself against the feels while listening to the ending song. Just – damn, they know how to hit you right in the heart with that one.
Writing: Made SURE to get this done today – and it was even actual WRITING, not just futzing around with character sheets! :p Though it was again Blades in the Dark-related – I did a couple of pages on Emily discovering Victor in the brothel, Smiler managing to talk her down from a possibly electric temper tantrum by reminding her humans need to eat, Victor explaining that he’s already engaged, and Nanny dropping the bombshell that, actually, Victoria is already married and Victor wondering how the hell they found a replacement in the single day he’s been gone. Good practice for getting back to my main projects soon, I feel! Plus it’s just fun to play around in this universe. :)
YouTube: Oh man – if yesterday was the day of tumblr, today was the day of YouTube. I had an early start, and just rode that train pretty much all day. Hilariously, the only video I DIDN’T watch was Gray’s GTA V Shorts video in my Subs, aka the SHORTEST one. Ah well, that just makes it easier to catch up on tomorrow. As for the rest of it –
A) Started this morning with – well, when I went to the Sims Community site to check out the latest details, I noticed I was actually up and home in time to catch the premiere of the trailer for the new expansion pack Growing Together! So after brushing my teeth, I went back to the site and checked it out fresh out of the gate! So far it looks good – DEFINITELY gonna be a boon for family players if kids can genuinely now loose teeth and learn how to ride bikes and stuff. And it has the Hopeful Mark Of Sims Expansion Pack Quality – the trailer song, which I believe to be “Ooh La La” by Rod Stewart (the “I wish that I knew what I know now/when I was younger” song), is in Simlish. Just like Seasons and Cottage Living. Keep your fingers crossed people!
B) And THEN I went on one of the blogs I read that posts a lot of Smiler stuff and spotted a screenshot of what looked like a new Alton Towers trailer with a shot of something called “The Smiler Takeover” related to Festival of Thrills, so I promptly had to shoot off to YouTube to look THAT up. Turns out it was a still from the new “A World of Thrilliant Events✨” 30-second spot they put out for all the stuff happening in 2023 – and yes, it appears that part of this year’s take on Festival of Thrills will be The Smiler having their day in the sun for their 10th anniversary. :D (And according to the comments, Th13teen also hits a milestone this year – of being thirteen years old! Isn’t that something? :D) Today was the day of good trailers!
C) Of course, you can’t have trailers without analysis, so after lunch, I ended up watching SimmerErin’s video “This is Important... Growing Together Trailer Analysis/ Reaction” covering her personal thoughts on the new Growing Together trailer. She is – hopeful, but doesn’t believe it’ll change the game as much as people expect. Also she’s not wowed by the CAS items on display so far, BUT sort of considers that a good thing, given how much Sims 4 tends to focus on aesthetics over gameplay sometimes. She WANTS it to be a good pack, and thinks it has some cool features (slumber parties and sleeping bags; treehouses you can build yourself in-game; puzzles and some board game stuff; just in-general better family gameplay), but – yeah. We have been burned before, we can be burned again. We’ll see what the Livestream showing it (and the Infants Update) brings on March 3rd!
D) Then, after Unpacking (and a little time on TV Tropes looking at its page again – did you know the protagonist’s partner is named “Mali” as per the title of one of the in-game themes?), it was time to watch “The Sims added bikes for kids! Growing Together Trailer Reaction” from James Turner! His reaction to the trailer can be summed up as “we’re going to have so many babies.” XD No seriously, he’s actually fairly excited about the gameplay possibilities – though he fully expects both high chairs and carrying infants on your pack in carry packs to become very bugged. XD But he likes what he can see of the Build/Buy, he likes what he can see of the gameplay – he’s excited! He wants it to be good! And also he’s contractually obligated to like this because his girlfriend Deligracy built some of the lots in the new world of San Sequoia, so. . . XD I hope it lives up to your hopes and dreams, James!
E) Then, after supper, we had the latest list from OXBox – “7 Shady Easter Eggs That Roasted the Competition!” Jane, Mike, and Andy taking a look at those video game Easter eggs that poked a little harmless – or not-so-harmless – fun at competitors or specific game-industry practices. Such as Enter The Gungeon having a “Microtransaction Gun” specifically called a “gun that nobody likes.” Or Dying Light 2 killing off expies of Leon Kennedy and Chris Redfield during a specific mission in an old broadcast tower (Leon gets to die quietly, Chris is a zombie you have to fight). Or our favorite Doomslayer in Doom (2016) finding a corpse of a certain Skyrim Dragonborn with an arrow in the knee during his travels. . .except, wait, both of those games are made, or at least distributed by, Bethesda. I guess it counts as friendly between-game ribbing, but now I wonder if they’ve ever succumbed to the urge to include a Doom shoutout in Skyrim. . .
F) Then it was onto the Watch Later for a video I had stored in there – “The Alton Towers Iceberg Explained!” By Oilblivion, it’s basically an “interesting facts” video, with the “tip of the iceberg” being the most commonly known stuff, and “the depths” being the least. There was a lot I already knew in there – Oblivion’s Fanta sponsorship disaster; the delays on the Smiler and the unfortunate crash; the overactive marketing on Th13teen making a decent coaster a disappointment because they hyped it up as too scary – but there was plenty of other stuff to keep me engaged. Like a look at a bunch of the older, closed rides, including favorites like The Corkscrew, The Flume, Thunder Looper (the size of which actually prompted the “can’t build above the treeline” restriction for future coasters), and Black Hole! Stories about hauntings at the actual towers (apparently a governess and her old charges might still roam the grounds)! The fact that Alton Towers has its own power plant, the CHP plant, to help serve its power and heating needs and cut down on emissions (and good for them)! Oh, and the fact that Nemesis once set a record for most naked people on a thrill ride. I am dead serious, there was footage of these naked people in the video. XD Like, why is that even a THING? XD Anyway, it was a fun video, and I’m glad I took the time to give it a watch!
G) And after that, another WL video – “Hitman: Freelancer - When Assassins Go Rogue” from Jon of Many A True Nerd! While I’m mainly into his Fallout content, Jon also does some great Hitman stuff – and in this video, he was covering the new “Freelancer” game mode, which I believe is set after the “World of Assassination” trilogy and has 47 and Diana working as a freelance team. The changes to how the game works are numerous – you do “campaigns” which take you all around the world to eliminate targets for money (the symbol of which looks a lot like the symbol for Monopoly money, amusingly); each chapter of a campaign has three locations with targets from a specific organization to take out, which you can do in any order; your payout for doing each assassination depends on completing the optional objectives (such as killing guards with a shotgun, not blowing your disguise, hiding bodies, etc); you can additionally add golden prestige objectives to earn more filthy lucre (such as the traditional “Silent Assassin” rules); you have a limited gear capacity and a VERY limited number of weapons to select from to start; you have to buy more weapons and gear from vendors at your location; you can crack open safes and eliminate couriers at your destination to steal their cash; and the final assassination is always more difficult because you have to figure out who it is from a set of four using the listed tells Diana gives you, and also there may be assassins and bodyguards defending against you. Also, you can have 47 tool around his house and just day-drink wine if you are so inclined. XD
For our amusement, Jon showed off one chapter of a campaign, targeting “The Syndicate” (who do weird occult rituals and such). First assassination was in the Bangkok hotel and required him to be a perfect shot, not blow his disguise, and kill his target with an axe – he arrived as a clown and discovered the target perfectly isolated himself in the kitchen while checking in at the hotel, so he lured a guard into his room and took his disguise, grabbed a fire axe from a nearby box, got into the kitchen, silently murdered the guy, and just walked back out (taking a moment to try and fail to crack the safe in the hotel along the way). Second assassination was two guys in the Berlin nightclub, which involved shotgunning guards, blinding people, hiding bodies, and blowing open a safe – starting on the roof of the biker bar in a dark casual outfit, Jon was able to steal a biker outfit by knocking out a guard, then knocked out two other guards and just shot them to fulfill the “shotgunning guards” objective. XD He was also successfully able to blow the safe with a quiet and nonlethal breaching charge given to him by Diana, which was nice. Unfortunately, he had no way to blind either target, and no way to hide either of them either – his attempts to lure one into a room ended up with him hiding two potential witnesses in the freezer, meaning he couldn’t use it to hide the target; and the other was a security guard on a high bridge surrounded by people, meaning Jon just took the opportunity to steal a handgun from proper security and blow his brains out before making a run for it. Third assassination was in the New York bank and required him to find the leader of the Syndicate from among four suspects – he could also shotgun guards, but he decided not to do that because it’s a small map and not well suited to that. He ATTEMPTED to complete it under Silent Assassin rules, and came really really close – managing to identify the target by watching some bald people with earrings and necklaces eat and drink and seeing who attended a business meeting and accidentally disarming their assassin friend by getting him to slip on a banana peel intended for the target – but in his attempt to get said assassin’s silenced gun, he ran into a restricted area without getting frisked (mostly because said guard had abandoned his post); upset all the guards and caused the target to start fleeing; and died in a hail of gunfire while chasing the target with the nice new combat axe he’d picked up from the local merchant. Mission failed, campaign failed, 47 put his clown outfit back on and started day drinking again. XD It was a very different but very fun take on Hitman, and I look forward to any future videos on the subject! I mean, we have GOT to see how the OXBox team handles a campaign, right? :D
Damn, yes, that proved to be a very YouTube-heavy day! But I don't regret it. :) Means all the longest stuff is cleared from my Watch Later! But I do want to try and focus some more on tumblr tomorrow, reblog some people and clean up some drafts and all that. Maybe try to get back to "The Joker And The Queen" or "Londerland Bloodlines?" Though I dunno if I'm playing Sims 4 (and doing some building) or Fallout 4 (and doing some building). . .we'll see what happens! I'm gonna go chill for a bit, then do the Nyquil and snooze thing. Again, fingers crossed the stupid virus has worked its way out of my system (or is at least working its way out of my system) as of tomorrow's test! Night all!
