Day Nine Of -- Oh Wait A Minute
Feb. 6th, 2023 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickToday's Covid Update: Guess who finally tested NEGATIVE this afternoon! :D What a freaking relief. . .I'm still staying home tomorrow to make sure of it (and yes, a little bit because fuck work, work is the reason I got the stupid plague in the first place), but it is good to feel like I'm finally THROUGH this mess. I have enjoyed the time off, but I would have enjoyed it more without the illness. Meeeh.
But yes, finally the end is in sight, and the normal routine is looming. With that in mind, here's what I accomplished today:
Tumblr: Had a VERY productive day on Victor Luvs Alice! Not only did I catch up on my dash and tags and all that before lunch, I also drafted out two “not-incorrect Valicer quotes” posts I’d had sitting in outline form in there for ages! One with a “clothing (and the removal of same)” theme before lunch, and one with a “meet the parents” theme after lunch! :D So that was satisfying!
And then, after Sims 4 below and doing my negative test, I finally made my final Valicertine! Yeah, one of the shots from my upcoming latest Chill Valicer Save update (the one where they go to the Humor and Hijinks festival) appealed to me, so I turned it into a Valicertine. Just wish I’d framed the shot a little better now. . .ah well, it does the job. :) So I have the Minimum Required Three to queue up for Valentine’s Day next week, yay! Plus the “Inspired By These two OT3 Posts” picture for the official PolyShips day. It’s gonna be really Valicer next Tuesday! XD
And THEN, just now, I did the initial draft of this week’s Song Saturday post, featuring a song I found on AO3 and really enjoyed – “Love Is Easy” by McFly (yes, I do like that band name XD). So THAT’LL be all set for later this week! :) The queue is VERY well sorted lately, I must say.
Sims 4: Well, I did a quick check of my mods after finishing up my “not-incorrect quotes” above, and a few key ones are still listed as “Unknown” (specifically the one that lets Outdoor Retreat bugs spawn in different places and the one that gives Sims a huge upper limit on preferences to allow for loads of likes and dislikes), so it was back to building on “Gutknecht Bend” today! And after some time spent mentally arguing with myself over whether I wanted to do a “nice” version with good furniture and the like, or a “wrecked” version more akin to how my Blades in the Dark group would have originally found the damn thing, I decided I was more into doing the “nice” version at the moment. (Though I am still tempted to do a “wrecked” version. . .maybe later. Should save the lot to my Gallery for just that purpose!) With that in mind, I –
A) Decided to update the kitchen to be a little more colorful – specifically, a little more yellow (deciding that Smiler got the chance to paint it). Added some cabinets and a range hood and some curtains too.
B) Found a nice long table for the dining room with some red-and-blue staining and ended up going with a vague blue-and-red theme for it – including turning the fireplace more of a blue color. XD I also added a chimney to the roof above where the fireplace is for some verisimilitude. :p
C) Decided that, since one of Victor’s goals in the “Valicer In The Dark” AU (yes, that is what I have decided to call it) is to set up some sort of community greenhouse (“powered” by his radiant insects once he discovers how to infuse them with electroplasm) where they can grow food, that the place should already have a greenhouse attached! So I added it around the back of the house and put a door in. I am still in the process of fiddling with it, though – the problem is, the two best window types for a greenhouse (the Eco Lifestyle thin windows and the Moschino Stuff window set) don’t really fit the aesthetic I’m going for – ESPECIALLY after I decided I wanted to have a door going outside into the yard, and found a very cute Cottage Living door for that purpose. I’ve currently got the Eco Lifestyle windows in, since that’s what I started with, but maybe I should look up older greenhouses and see what’s what. (And maybe make the walls lower, since they’re all at medium wall height. But then again, I actually rather like the taller look for this house. . .) At any rate, I found a nice brick wallpaper and crumbly stone flooring for the place, put in some of the more makeshift Werewolves planters, a wood-working bench, and a juice fizzer. Not looking too shabby!
D) Also ended up putting a chicken coop outside (since chickens ARE canonically part of the setting of Blades in the Dark; they’re mentioned in some of the fluff text) and making a little fenced-in area for them (with the cool rickety Werewolves fence – though I had to use a Cottage Living gate, since for some reason it doesn’t COME with a gate). Fenced-in area also has a laundry line and bucket (and as it turns out, I didn’t TECHNICALLY need a hamper in my camper build, as just having the laundry bucket will prompt laundry to happen – it is NEATER with a hamper though, so. . .) and the Werewolves telescope, since that looks more hand-made. :)
E) Gussied up the bathroom a little with a counter that at least somewhat matched the furnishings and some clutter – soap, toothbrush cup, mirror, bath mat, toilet paper, that sort of thing.
F) Also got a start on the bedroom – I couldn’t resist using the fancy Realm of Magic canopy bed and pairing it with one of the dressers and rugs from that same pack, though the standing mirror is currently from Outdoor Retreat. A lot of things in this house are VERY mismatched, I gotta say. XD
G) And, because I usually FORGET them, a lot of this particular building session was spent looking at rug options. The woven ones from Cats & Dogs are very nice if you want a cheap-but-good-looking rug, I must say! I also threw rose petals under the easel because I couldn’t find anything else that looked like “paint splatter.” XD Look, they do the job!
So it’s coming along, and I am having fun with it. Dunno if it’ll make it onto the Gallery or not (at least, in this form – if I do make the “wrecked” variation, I’d probably upload that as a simple shell for renovation purposes, much like how I uploaded the “abandoned” version of the Chill Valicer Save’s farmhouse for people to play with), but even if it doesn’t, I’ve done plenty of builds just for fun, sooo. . .
Oh and because I never remember to do THIS either, I uploaded the pictures from the latest play session so you can actually SEE what I’m building:
Writing: Slowly getting back to a normal routine, so I’m going back to my normal writing, starting with “The Joker And The Queen!” Finally got into the next Alice, Victoria, and Emily section, with Alice trying to explain to the girls what her deal is (without doing the whole long spiel about her history; I assume she gave them the pertinent details off-camera this time) and how being a holistic assassin works. During this, however, she noticed they were low on gas, and so they’re now parked at a gas station. A station that is in the process of being robbed after two assholes murdered the guy behind the counter. . .yeah, it’s sort of a play on a similar incident from the first season of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, where Bart explained HER deal to Ken while killing some robbers at a gas station. Only this time, Alice is going to have some surprise help from Victoria and her sewing needle. . .
YouTube: Another trio of videos this evening to keep me entertained –
A) First up, another video from SimmerErin – “Growing Together- New Gameplay Details (Twitter Q&A and Blog Post Analysis- Sims 4 2023)!” Since neither Sims VIP nor Sims Community was giving me what I wanted when it came to gathering up information that might only be on twitter, I turned to Erin here. There doesn’t seem to be that much yet – the bulk of the video was Erin talking about the blog posts about Infants and the upcoming expansion – but it looks like the “splash pad” that’s part of the new world is in fact an object (or maybe multiple objects) that you can build with, which is nice – can design my own water park! :D The treehouse is also apparently more complex than it first appears, which I am intrigued by. Erin is still hopeful, as she likes all the stuff about infants and toddlers having new “quirks,” the addition of new gameplay for kids and elders, the “milestones” system (which feels a bit like a version of a memory system?), and the possibility of SOME sort of “attraction” system (though she’s starting to wonder if it’s just a system for determining relationships between Sims who are actually RELATED, instead of something for any two Sims on the street), but she doesn’t want to get too excited. After all, we’ve had plenty of updates in the past that promised more depth for the game that didn’t REALLY deliver. She thinks the team seems way more excited for this than they did for, say, My Wedding Stories, though, so – good sign? *fingers crossed*
B) Then it was over to the Subs for the latest from Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Sylvan Thatch - Some of My Original Characters!” Yes, Josh showing off some of the model sheets (or at least model heads) he made for some of the characters from his old abandoned webcomic “Sylvan Thatch” – just a slice of life thing about a little town and one of the families that lived there, with maybe a touch of magical realism here and there. The characters – main family Mom, Dad, and Gilly, Gilly’s friend Pix, and the family cat (who doesn’t have a name) – were all inspired by Disney characters as that’s the vibe Josh wanted go for with the art, with the strongest influences being Roger from 101 Dalmatians for the Dad (Josh literally drew over a picture of Roger to get the dad’s basic silhouette), Wart/Arthur from The Sword In The Stone for Gilly (gender-flipped, of course), and Thomas and Duchess from The Aristocats for the cat (along with Josh’s own long-haired cat Dink). It was a pretty cool video, with Josh talking a lot about how he loves drawing and wouldn’t MIND doing a webcomic again – he just can’t do the actual writing part of it because he burns out really quickly if he’s responsible for art AND story. So if anyone wants him to ILLUSTRATE a story they have in mind, he’s available! :p
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When physics make no sense,” aka Gray plays Super Hero Driving School! Another “jump the car to the target over a series of ridiculous obstacles and stack up the loot from your spectacular crashes” mobile games – in fact, after Gray had done a few of the levels, I think a lot of the level design was copy-pasted from a different “jump the car” mobile game he’s played in the past. That last level in particular looked VERY familiar. . .they did, however, give it a new coat of pain with a “super hero” theme and some interesting new rides, including an overly-muscled wrestler-type dude clinging to a mini-rocket (who proved to be vital to Gray finding a way to earn almost infinite money from bouncing on a trampoline just shy of the target in one board), a literal spider-car with moving legs for their discount Spider-Man, and a school bus with a cape on it. XD But none of them compared to the absolute wonder of the car that Gray dubbed Aquaman’s ride – a glittery greenish-blue vehicle with two wing-fins on the side and a red laser trail that just BLASTED through boards at the speed of light. Apparently all of Aquaman’s real powers are contained within his car, given how Gray was able to use it to beat every board he was having trouble with. XD The worst one was one where he had to fly through a number of tunnels, dodging wind turbines and other dangers, before bouncing off a bunch of spilled shipping containers to land in a flying plane – he kept going off to the side and overshooting the plane itself. Even Aquaman struggled with that one before he FINALLY got the height right by pulsing the boost. And the ending portal board, even if it was a repeat, was still a kick in the teeth because Gray was trying to do it right this time and couldn’t touch ANYTHING if he didn’t want to completely spin out. He did it in the end, though – because he’s GrayStillPlays, baby. XD
And now I'm going to finish up my final message to Moose and head to bed, because I'm trying to wrench my sleep schedule back into shape and that means getting up earlier again tomorrow so I'm prepared to go back to getting up at 7 AM on the regular. Bleeh. *sigh* Still, I had to head back to work again sometimes, and it's another sign that I've finally made it out the other side of this whole thing, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Night all!
But yes, finally the end is in sight, and the normal routine is looming. With that in mind, here's what I accomplished today:
Tumblr: Had a VERY productive day on Victor Luvs Alice! Not only did I catch up on my dash and tags and all that before lunch, I also drafted out two “not-incorrect Valicer quotes” posts I’d had sitting in outline form in there for ages! One with a “clothing (and the removal of same)” theme before lunch, and one with a “meet the parents” theme after lunch! :D So that was satisfying!
And then, after Sims 4 below and doing my negative test, I finally made my final Valicertine! Yeah, one of the shots from my upcoming latest Chill Valicer Save update (the one where they go to the Humor and Hijinks festival) appealed to me, so I turned it into a Valicertine. Just wish I’d framed the shot a little better now. . .ah well, it does the job. :) So I have the Minimum Required Three to queue up for Valentine’s Day next week, yay! Plus the “Inspired By These two OT3 Posts” picture for the official PolyShips day. It’s gonna be really Valicer next Tuesday! XD
And THEN, just now, I did the initial draft of this week’s Song Saturday post, featuring a song I found on AO3 and really enjoyed – “Love Is Easy” by McFly (yes, I do like that band name XD). So THAT’LL be all set for later this week! :) The queue is VERY well sorted lately, I must say.
Sims 4: Well, I did a quick check of my mods after finishing up my “not-incorrect quotes” above, and a few key ones are still listed as “Unknown” (specifically the one that lets Outdoor Retreat bugs spawn in different places and the one that gives Sims a huge upper limit on preferences to allow for loads of likes and dislikes), so it was back to building on “Gutknecht Bend” today! And after some time spent mentally arguing with myself over whether I wanted to do a “nice” version with good furniture and the like, or a “wrecked” version more akin to how my Blades in the Dark group would have originally found the damn thing, I decided I was more into doing the “nice” version at the moment. (Though I am still tempted to do a “wrecked” version. . .maybe later. Should save the lot to my Gallery for just that purpose!) With that in mind, I –
A) Decided to update the kitchen to be a little more colorful – specifically, a little more yellow (deciding that Smiler got the chance to paint it). Added some cabinets and a range hood and some curtains too.
B) Found a nice long table for the dining room with some red-and-blue staining and ended up going with a vague blue-and-red theme for it – including turning the fireplace more of a blue color. XD I also added a chimney to the roof above where the fireplace is for some verisimilitude. :p
C) Decided that, since one of Victor’s goals in the “Valicer In The Dark” AU (yes, that is what I have decided to call it) is to set up some sort of community greenhouse (“powered” by his radiant insects once he discovers how to infuse them with electroplasm) where they can grow food, that the place should already have a greenhouse attached! So I added it around the back of the house and put a door in. I am still in the process of fiddling with it, though – the problem is, the two best window types for a greenhouse (the Eco Lifestyle thin windows and the Moschino Stuff window set) don’t really fit the aesthetic I’m going for – ESPECIALLY after I decided I wanted to have a door going outside into the yard, and found a very cute Cottage Living door for that purpose. I’ve currently got the Eco Lifestyle windows in, since that’s what I started with, but maybe I should look up older greenhouses and see what’s what. (And maybe make the walls lower, since they’re all at medium wall height. But then again, I actually rather like the taller look for this house. . .) At any rate, I found a nice brick wallpaper and crumbly stone flooring for the place, put in some of the more makeshift Werewolves planters, a wood-working bench, and a juice fizzer. Not looking too shabby!
D) Also ended up putting a chicken coop outside (since chickens ARE canonically part of the setting of Blades in the Dark; they’re mentioned in some of the fluff text) and making a little fenced-in area for them (with the cool rickety Werewolves fence – though I had to use a Cottage Living gate, since for some reason it doesn’t COME with a gate). Fenced-in area also has a laundry line and bucket (and as it turns out, I didn’t TECHNICALLY need a hamper in my camper build, as just having the laundry bucket will prompt laundry to happen – it is NEATER with a hamper though, so. . .) and the Werewolves telescope, since that looks more hand-made. :)
E) Gussied up the bathroom a little with a counter that at least somewhat matched the furnishings and some clutter – soap, toothbrush cup, mirror, bath mat, toilet paper, that sort of thing.
F) Also got a start on the bedroom – I couldn’t resist using the fancy Realm of Magic canopy bed and pairing it with one of the dressers and rugs from that same pack, though the standing mirror is currently from Outdoor Retreat. A lot of things in this house are VERY mismatched, I gotta say. XD
G) And, because I usually FORGET them, a lot of this particular building session was spent looking at rug options. The woven ones from Cats & Dogs are very nice if you want a cheap-but-good-looking rug, I must say! I also threw rose petals under the easel because I couldn’t find anything else that looked like “paint splatter.” XD Look, they do the job!
So it’s coming along, and I am having fun with it. Dunno if it’ll make it onto the Gallery or not (at least, in this form – if I do make the “wrecked” variation, I’d probably upload that as a simple shell for renovation purposes, much like how I uploaded the “abandoned” version of the Chill Valicer Save’s farmhouse for people to play with), but even if it doesn’t, I’ve done plenty of builds just for fun, sooo. . .
Oh and because I never remember to do THIS either, I uploaded the pictures from the latest play session so you can actually SEE what I’m building:
Writing: Slowly getting back to a normal routine, so I’m going back to my normal writing, starting with “The Joker And The Queen!” Finally got into the next Alice, Victoria, and Emily section, with Alice trying to explain to the girls what her deal is (without doing the whole long spiel about her history; I assume she gave them the pertinent details off-camera this time) and how being a holistic assassin works. During this, however, she noticed they were low on gas, and so they’re now parked at a gas station. A station that is in the process of being robbed after two assholes murdered the guy behind the counter. . .yeah, it’s sort of a play on a similar incident from the first season of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, where Bart explained HER deal to Ken while killing some robbers at a gas station. Only this time, Alice is going to have some surprise help from Victoria and her sewing needle. . .
YouTube: Another trio of videos this evening to keep me entertained –
A) First up, another video from SimmerErin – “Growing Together- New Gameplay Details (Twitter Q&A and Blog Post Analysis- Sims 4 2023)!” Since neither Sims VIP nor Sims Community was giving me what I wanted when it came to gathering up information that might only be on twitter, I turned to Erin here. There doesn’t seem to be that much yet – the bulk of the video was Erin talking about the blog posts about Infants and the upcoming expansion – but it looks like the “splash pad” that’s part of the new world is in fact an object (or maybe multiple objects) that you can build with, which is nice – can design my own water park! :D The treehouse is also apparently more complex than it first appears, which I am intrigued by. Erin is still hopeful, as she likes all the stuff about infants and toddlers having new “quirks,” the addition of new gameplay for kids and elders, the “milestones” system (which feels a bit like a version of a memory system?), and the possibility of SOME sort of “attraction” system (though she’s starting to wonder if it’s just a system for determining relationships between Sims who are actually RELATED, instead of something for any two Sims on the street), but she doesn’t want to get too excited. After all, we’ve had plenty of updates in the past that promised more depth for the game that didn’t REALLY deliver. She thinks the team seems way more excited for this than they did for, say, My Wedding Stories, though, so – good sign? *fingers crossed*
B) Then it was over to the Subs for the latest from Josh Way – “SKETCHY: Sylvan Thatch - Some of My Original Characters!” Yes, Josh showing off some of the model sheets (or at least model heads) he made for some of the characters from his old abandoned webcomic “Sylvan Thatch” – just a slice of life thing about a little town and one of the families that lived there, with maybe a touch of magical realism here and there. The characters – main family Mom, Dad, and Gilly, Gilly’s friend Pix, and the family cat (who doesn’t have a name) – were all inspired by Disney characters as that’s the vibe Josh wanted go for with the art, with the strongest influences being Roger from 101 Dalmatians for the Dad (Josh literally drew over a picture of Roger to get the dad’s basic silhouette), Wart/Arthur from The Sword In The Stone for Gilly (gender-flipped, of course), and Thomas and Duchess from The Aristocats for the cat (along with Josh’s own long-haired cat Dink). It was a pretty cool video, with Josh talking a lot about how he loves drawing and wouldn’t MIND doing a webcomic again – he just can’t do the actual writing part of it because he burns out really quickly if he’s responsible for art AND story. So if anyone wants him to ILLUSTRATE a story they have in mind, he’s available! :p
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When physics make no sense,” aka Gray plays Super Hero Driving School! Another “jump the car to the target over a series of ridiculous obstacles and stack up the loot from your spectacular crashes” mobile games – in fact, after Gray had done a few of the levels, I think a lot of the level design was copy-pasted from a different “jump the car” mobile game he’s played in the past. That last level in particular looked VERY familiar. . .they did, however, give it a new coat of pain with a “super hero” theme and some interesting new rides, including an overly-muscled wrestler-type dude clinging to a mini-rocket (who proved to be vital to Gray finding a way to earn almost infinite money from bouncing on a trampoline just shy of the target in one board), a literal spider-car with moving legs for their discount Spider-Man, and a school bus with a cape on it. XD But none of them compared to the absolute wonder of the car that Gray dubbed Aquaman’s ride – a glittery greenish-blue vehicle with two wing-fins on the side and a red laser trail that just BLASTED through boards at the speed of light. Apparently all of Aquaman’s real powers are contained within his car, given how Gray was able to use it to beat every board he was having trouble with. XD The worst one was one where he had to fly through a number of tunnels, dodging wind turbines and other dangers, before bouncing off a bunch of spilled shipping containers to land in a flying plane – he kept going off to the side and overshooting the plane itself. Even Aquaman struggled with that one before he FINALLY got the height right by pulsing the boost. And the ending portal board, even if it was a repeat, was still a kick in the teeth because Gray was trying to do it right this time and couldn’t touch ANYTHING if he didn’t want to completely spin out. He did it in the end, though – because he’s GrayStillPlays, baby. XD
And now I'm going to finish up my final message to Moose and head to bed, because I'm trying to wrench my sleep schedule back into shape and that means getting up earlier again tomorrow so I'm prepared to go back to getting up at 7 AM on the regular. Bleeh. *sigh* Still, I had to head back to work again sometimes, and it's another sign that I've finally made it out the other side of this whole thing, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Night all!
