Parental Return Wednesday
Jun. 14th, 2023 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYes, they're back, having arrived home at about 4 PM, with a vase, a panda statue, and stories about how they ate at a really shitty restaurant and pretty much all the antiques places they wanted to hit were closed. So not a GREAT trip for them, sadly. Ah well -- hopefully future excursions will go better!
As for myself, I had another pretty nice, chill day, getting everything I wanted to get done on my to-do list done --
Tumblr: Did another round of dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning (with a VTMB fem!Malkavian gifset and a Corpse Bride “Victor and Emily going from the Land of the Dead to the Land of the Living” gifset making into my drafts for later), then hopped into said drafts and finished off another post on the “Valicer in the Dark” AU, with a few tweaks I’d like to make to Alice’s and Smiler’s playbooks, some worldbuilding for my Duskwall, and some example scores for the gang, all before lunch. :) And then, tonight after YouTube, I reset the queue speed to one and set up my Song Saturday – which is more “Movie Clip Saturday” this week, given what I’ve put up is the parade scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. XD What, I’m posting my “Smiler Alton’s Day Off” AU tomorrow, so I had to do it! But yeah, all set with the queue for the rest of the week, and with three out of the four posts I had rough drafts for in my, er, drafts fully completed! Not bad for two days off. :)
Sims 4: I did indeed end up doing both of the things that I said I was likely to do yesterday – some building, and saving a particular version of the Valicer trio in my game to my Library! :D Let me tell you exactly what that entailed:
Building – Guess what – I’m still working on the Tranquil Circle Spa! XD On the plus side, though, I made some good progress today, and I would say I’m 99% done with the build at this point! Highlights of today’s session included:
A) Adjusting the ceiling fans and lights in the two massage rooms back to being in line with the massage tables (they must have gotten shifted when I was playing with the sizes of the rooms) and adding some decorations – specifically, I still had a few shelves with decorative soap dispensers on them from when I was redoing the rooms to my liking, and so I shucked one in each room and recolored them appropriately to match the color palettes. *shrug* Just another thing to have on the wall!
B) Painting the walls of the interior loop hallway, and the interior walls of the meditation garden – took me a bit to find a pattern I really liked for the garden, as I wanted it to look at least vaguely natural, but fortunately Growing Together added a nice new stone/masonry wall that I thought looked good in there. :) I also put those long wall strip lights on every “wall junction” in the interior loop (you know, where one wall meets another wall perpendicularly – basically every spot where two rooms were side-by-side), though I had to cheat it slightly on on the join between the bathroom and shower room doors – couldn’t QUITE go in the right space!
C) Doing the makeover room! Now it’s more than just two makeover chairs in a blank space! XD I decided I wanted it to have “hair salon” vibes, so I put some counters in front of the mirrors I’d set up on the – I guess front wall, since you come in from the back – and covered them with bits of appropriate makeover clutter (though it took me ages to find the one particular bit of clutter I wanted that included a hair dryer!), then – after some thought – ended up putting a chair on either side of the door with end tables containing Moschino Stuff magazines for Sims who might be waiting. :) Put some shelves above said end tables with appropriate clutter (though it annoys me how much stuff LOOKS like it could go on the “Immaculate” shelf but just doesn’t fit), put up a couple of paintings, and did the walls and floor in appropriate Spa Day tiles – though I couldn’t resist making the wall behind the mirrors that weird glowing “wallpaper” that was included in the pack. XD What, it was the best spot for it, and it’s a lot of fun if you know how to use it!
D) Cleaning up all the other spare decorations I had hanging around – some flower-themed wall decorations went in the lobby and on the wall on either side of the doors into the meditation garden, and I sold the rest once I determined I had no place to put them (this place has enough candles and weird square end tables in it!).
E) Finding an appropriate siding for the outside after playing around with a couple of different options, and setting up some fun sun-themed flower planters in the front. :) Now the outside isn’t just plain sad drywall while all the rooms inside are fun colors!
F) And, finally updating the mud bath rooms – after determining that all the items I picked had the swatches I needed for their black-and-white themes (with one leaning more toward black and the other more toward white), I eventually decided that I might as well see if I could fit a toilet and a sink in there for Sims who might need them (since I already had the shower in there) – currently I’ve got them in a sort of “cubby” in the corner of the room, behind a privacy wall but otherwise open to the room. Probably gonna wall those off in their own little rooms, but leave the shower outside? Or maybe I’ll make a privacy wall for the shower and keep the toilet and sink behind that. . .I’ll figure it out! Next time we get a big patch and I’m in a building mood. XD
But yeah, this darn spa build is almost complete at last! I just have to finish up what I’m doing in the mud bath rooms, make whatever last tweaks I wanna make to the other rooms, make sure all the walls are painted and suchlike, and see what I want to do with the roof (other than the big glass pyramid over the meditation garden). Like I said, I’ll return to it the next time we have a big patch and I’m waiting on mod okays to play my main save file. And then I can put it up on the Gallery and you can all see what I’ve been yammering on about. XD
Valicer Trio – So, you may be wondering what I meant by “saving a particular version of the Valicer trio in my game to my Library,” given that most of you are probably only aware of one – the one in my Chill Valicer Save, where everyone is a cottagecore occult. Well, all the way back in January, I was experimenting with ways to try and make a human Smiler in case I wanted a non-vampire version for a save at any point. After my initial attempt at an in-game curing led to a Smiler who had a natural eye color and thus looked weird, I discovered that curing Smiler with MC Command Center allowed them to keep their glowing yellow “usually-only-for-vampires” eyes. That Smiler I had moved into a house with a Victor and an Alice sitting in my Library in one of my “testing” saves – and THAT was the trio I wanted! Visited them right before I started building and used “Manage Households” to drop them into CAS – I wasn’t allowed to change their traits or anything right then and there, but I COULD then save them to my Library, which I did. Hooray, I have a trio of Victor, Alice, and Smiler Sims where they’re all human, hooray!
Except – I HAD wanted to make a few other tweaks to them while I was at it. So, after I was done fiddling with the Tranquil Circle Spa for the day, I pretended to make a new family and then overwrote that Sim with my newly saved trio and did the tweaking I wanted – namely, changing out Smiler’s Erratic trait for the Geek trait (because I no longer feel Erratic truly fits them, and also it’s rather annoying sometimes), and using the new birthmarks added into the game by the Infants patch to simulate burn scars on Alice’s shoulder and leg (I would have used the Werewolves-added body scars, but those are all pretty clearly scars one got from being clawed or bitten – the birthmarks, with the right colorations, look a lot more like the burn scars I was picturing)!
. . .and then I got caught up in making some new looks for everybody, namely because I’d given Smiler a “Valicer In The Dark”-inspired new main outfit and that made me want to try out some new clothes on them, and then Victor, and then Alice. . . XD And hilariously, while The Sims 4 is usually pretty damn sure to prioritize female-coded clothes over male-coded ones, in this instance I found it harder to dress Alice than Smiler (non-binary but generally dresses in a masculine way) or Victor. Mostly because a lot of the more Victorian-esque outfits hide her key necklace, and I want that to be visible, damn it. Maybe it’s time to start relying more on CC. . .as it was, though, I had fun making and adjusting some new looks for everybody, particularly Smiler. XD Still need some tweaking, but given that we’re nearly into the two glorious months of the year where I get half-day Fridays. . .
Writing: Got another chunk written on “The Joker And The Queen” – Air just upgraded into Galactica! Which, in the context of the fic, means that she can now open portals to space (or at least a similar dimension where everyone can still breathe and all that) and use it as a shortcut to teleport between two areas. Everyone was – very surprised but very enthused by this development, though none more than Galactica herself. XD So, after a dip in the space soup, they’re safely out of the hallway and ready to connect with Alice! Kelman, as you might imagine, is not going to be happy about ANY of this. XD
YouTube: Managed to get in all the videos I wanted to watch today, yay! Really makes a difference when you’re not trying to figure out what to watch with your parents when you eat –
A) Started with an old OXBox video over lunch – “Resident Evil Quiz: So You Think You Know Resident Evil?” My friend Squid recommended this one to me purely on the basis of “one of the rounds has a LaCroix from VTMB line in it.” XD The quiz was done in honor of the RE2 Remake coming out, and had Andy quizzing Jane and Mike about their Resident Evil knowledge, handing out literal gold stars for right answers in honor of the STARS team. XD The rounds were Name That Save Room Music (both of them did okay, though they struggled to identify RE4’s actual save theme – I personally actually smashed this one because I really like the save room themes and have listened to a couple of compilations a LOT); What Happens Next (Mike utterly dominated Jane with his talents for predicting what happened next in these games – I think she may have only gotten “Nemesis smashing through a wall” for an RE3 clip); Match The Virus To Its Debut Game (Mike only knew the first two games, Jane got them all (mostly because she scribbled out an early mistake) – if you’re curious, RE0 is Progenitor, RE1 is T, RE2 is G, RE5 is Oroboros, and RE6 is C); Alternate Costumes: Odd One Out (which was trying to figure out which of a ninja outfit, sailor outfit, kimono outfit, all-over zebra print outfit, and a leather-studded harness outfit were NOT alternate outfits for Chris Redfield throughout the series – both wrongly picked ninja, but it turned out to be a trick question, as Chris has had them ALL over all the various games he’s been in); Urban Legend: True or False (figuring out what urban legends about the game were fact or fiction – clean sweep from both of them, and I learned that if you find the right springy panda ride in a playground in RE6, Chris WILL play on it); and finally Wesker or Vampire (the round that got me to watch this video, with the pair having to guess if a given quote was Wesker or a video game vampire – Jane knew more than Mike (and Mike got the LaCroix quote wrong! Oh Mike). Final scores were Jane 21, Mike 19 ½ (the ½ being for saying Chris punched a boulder APART in RE5 in “What Happens Next” – Chris does infamously punch a boulder to move it, but it doesn’t shatter). So congrats to Jane as the Major-Sergeant-Admiral-General of the RE franchise, though also good job to Mike, who apparently had only played two RE games at that point! Not a bad score at all under those circumstances!
B) Then, this evening, we had the Josh Way I skipped yesterday to start – “089 SKETCHY Hollow Knight Grub!” Which was Josh drawing one of the little collectible grubs in a jar you can find and set free during the game (though the way he talked around what happened afterward, I suspect it might have been better to leave them trapped), and talking about how Hollow Knight is one of those hard-as-balls games that he usually ignores because he is not a player who enjoys punishing difficulty, but the game itself and its story was good enough to keep him engaged all the way to the end. Good stuff, cute art, and I look forward to seeing him draw more and talk about video games more!
C) And finally, we had the GrayStillPlays of the day – “Every Car vs Reverse Speed Bumps in GTA 5!” Guess what time it is – that’s right, Alex Torture Board time! :D And this one was interesting – Alex had set up a roadway that contained, in pairs, speedbumps and their reverse (that is, a hill, then a pit). We started off simple with “Reverse Speedbumps That Never Hurt Nobody” (a few starter bumps and dips to get Gray used to the concept), then moved rapidly into pain with “Reverse Speedbumps With a 69 KD Ratio” (much larger, steeper speedbumps and dips, including a gigantic hill and then a valley that went straight into the river the course was built over); “Closing Reverse Speedbump” (a dip with a perfectly-fitting “puzzle piece” bit of road that kept moving in and out of it – the trick was to get through the dip before the piece moved back in and kicked you off the course); “Tube Reverse Speedbumps” (speedbumps and dips made of tubes, ending on a pair made from the TOP of the tube – that is, a circular cross-section instead of your standard bump and dip); “Pharaoh Reverse Speedbump” (a giant pyramid and reverse pyramid – and if you got stuck in the reverse pyramid, you’d either bounce forever (as a human) or just get stuck with no traction (as a vehicle)); “Football Reverse Speedbumps” (a pair of soccer-themed speedbumps and dips – one a regular green hump and pit, the latter with a ball inside; then a conglomeration of metal that I assume was supposed to be like a stadium and its reverse, with balls blocking the sides); and finally the “Reversin’ Reverse Speedbump” (a rotating half-pipe where you had to PERFECTLY land in it, do a loop-de-loop with the help of the boost, but then go just fast enough to make it around the loop and up to the other side of the gap without falling out). Gray, as usual, tried out a variety of cars – he had high hopes for the motorcycle until it flooded out in the water; he was able to cheat part of the board with a little square box on giant wheels since it floated so well (he just dumped it in the water and motored his way over to the giant dip), but then couldn’t get up the other side with it; the super car made it almost all the way through the tubes, but was stymied by the circular wall bump – but in the end, only one vehicle could be victorious – our beloved Wastelander! Here sporting a purple frame no less. :D That rustbucket of a truck can seriously do anything if you try hard enough! Which really makes it the perfect Gray car. :)
Workout: On the treadmill today for a change (every so often I like to mix it up), continuing with the Live Oxventure “Grad Attitude!” We picked up with Dob making the quaggoth that just got eaten taste of earwax, so that the quaggoth that ate it would throw up – and succeeding, with the quaggoth stuck holding it in until the beginning of its turn. Merilwen got to go next, and decided to cast Confusion on the quaggoth, specifying that she’d be making it see nice things – it failed the saving throw (though, fortunately, after Merilwen realized “Oh shit this is a radius spell and Dob’s in range,” Dob smashed his by being a little naturally confused all the time (aka rolling a nat twenty) – see, that’s what it’s like from the OTHER side, Merilwen), and found itself looking confusedly at a beautiful glade while its favorite song played in its head. Jonathan hit it with his longbow for a whole three points of damage (everyone cheered him to give him positive feedback), and Egbert threw the net over it, trussing it up like a particularly well-done ham on a great Dex roll. Basically, this quaggoth was the most incapacitated creature EVER by the time its turn came around. XD By that point, Corazon had already left, and Prudence moonwalking out of range of quaggoth vomit prompted the others to realize, “Oh, yeah, Corazon got the other quaggoth eyes, we can just leave.” XD And so they did, though not before Dob patted the vomiting quaggoth on the head and thus got vomit all over his trousers. Whoops. XD Anyway, the gang caught up with Corazon on the road, where he rather clumsily got the corneas off the eaten quaggoth’s eyes – a bad roll meant that he chipped them in the process, but at least they didn’t shatter! He presented them to Jonathan, and Dob began cheerfully recapping the list – wrestling a lion, done. Destroying the eels, done. Getting the corneas of a crystal quaggoth, done! That left only two items –
Beating a god in a game of chance and killing a great demon! Everyone was a bit like “seriously, Jonathan?” XD However, they were in it now, so they started brainstorming. There was some talk of trying to combine the two tasks into one, but Prudence didn’t think she could summon a Greater Demon so great it could be considered a god. Corazon and Dob suggested that she summon Cthulhu, as an Elder God, to maybe bet on the fight or something, but Prudence was like “I can’t do that!” And when Dob was like “well, this relationship with Cthulhu seems a bit one-sided to me,” Cthulhu possessed Corazon (presumably taking advantage of the fact that Corazon looked into the void once) to inform him that he was busy, darn it, and backhand him for talking smack about his relationship with Prudence. XD A suggestion to maybe fake it by calling Dob a “god of music” was shot down by Jonathan himself –
But hey, there is one other god they know, and he’d likely be more chill about things than Cthulhu – La Vache Mauve, Egbert’s god! Egbert agreed to ask LVM if he’d be up for a game of roll-off or something, and LVM was like “sure, I’ve got nothing on right now – I shall reveal myself to the boy BY WHICH I MEAN MAKE MYSELF VISIBLE TO HIM.” XD Yeah, Johnny pretended to walk off the stage in shame over that one, and Andy briefly stole their DMing chair. XD Anyway, terms were agreed on – it would be a roll-off with a six-sided die each, and if La Vache Mauve won, Jonathan would have to join Egbert’s order; if Jonathan won, he wouldn’t. Egbert eagerly started making up new member cards. XD Jonathan rolled his die, while LVM rolled a giant six-sided boulder – LVM got a four –
And Jonathan a five! Well then! LVM was a good sport and reascended into the sun, sharing a long and loving goodbye with Egbert, and Jonathan was left staring in shock at his die. Pumped up by this success, he agreed to make out with Egbert (as the Oxventurers had previously tried to add “get first kiss” to his list), just for his own pleasure. Johnny told the audience they’d have to imagine that one, though, as they and Mike were both in committed relationships (Luke said “what they’re saying is, don’t draw it” *wink*).
And so, with that done in the theater of the mind’s eye, the group moved onto the last item in the list – kill a greater demon! Dob prepared a pentagram with candles and blood while trying to talk Jonathan into considering an internship with the Oxventurers over going to the knight school – Prudence was pleased to have an assistant getting the place ready for her summoning, at least until it was discovered the candles weren’t human tallow, but non-organic beeswax. XD Anyway, she asked Jonathan if he had a specific demon in mind, and he admitted to dreaming occasionally of this weird teal-and-orange ape-like demon, which was apparently a balgura, a real thing! Egbert informed Jonathan that if he was dreaming of it, then the demon was probably trying to get him for whatever reason, which, maybe not the best thing to say before the big fight. XD Prudence got her summon on and asked in the demonic planes if there was a balgura eager to fight a Jonathan Bennet, and one indeed came crashing through –
And promptly rolled a one in the initiative order, meaning that it went dead last. XD The other Oxventurers were told that they only had to help out if they thought Jonathan was getting his ass kicked, and were welcome to do nothing on their turns, but that’s no fun, is it? And so Corazon started the party off by casting Grease, causing the balgura to slip and end up mid-air mid-fall, where Merilwen promptly smacked the creature with lightning. XD Dob gave Jonathan a pep talk that was a mixture of Bardic Inspiration (no, he still doesn’t remember what that does, prompting Johnny to comment “five years. . .” – it adds a D8 to the attack roll, if you’re interested) and Calm Emotions and made sure he had his sword in hand while Prudence nailed the balgura with some Eldritch Blast, sending it spinning in mid-air. Jonathan did some flailing with his sword and managed to knock eight points off its health (everyone applauded), and then Egbert hit it with Turn the Faithless (no, he doesn’t remember if Johnny has to roll a saving throw – “five years”) to make it want to run away. I left it with Johnny reporting that the balgura had absolutely stacked it into the grease (unsurprising) and ten minutes left to go on the episode – we’ll see how this all wraps up tomorrow!
So yeah, pretty productive day overall! :) It's nice to just have a bunch of time to myself to do the stuff I wanted to do the most! And now it's time to head to bed. . .and wow, this is the earliest I've managed to complete one of these entries in a while. O.o Not used to that anymore. . .still, probably should take the opportunity to try and get some extra sleep! Got two days of work to get through now! Night all!
As for myself, I had another pretty nice, chill day, getting everything I wanted to get done on my to-do list done --
Tumblr: Did another round of dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice this morning (with a VTMB fem!Malkavian gifset and a Corpse Bride “Victor and Emily going from the Land of the Dead to the Land of the Living” gifset making into my drafts for later), then hopped into said drafts and finished off another post on the “Valicer in the Dark” AU, with a few tweaks I’d like to make to Alice’s and Smiler’s playbooks, some worldbuilding for my Duskwall, and some example scores for the gang, all before lunch. :) And then, tonight after YouTube, I reset the queue speed to one and set up my Song Saturday – which is more “Movie Clip Saturday” this week, given what I’ve put up is the parade scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. XD What, I’m posting my “Smiler Alton’s Day Off” AU tomorrow, so I had to do it! But yeah, all set with the queue for the rest of the week, and with three out of the four posts I had rough drafts for in my, er, drafts fully completed! Not bad for two days off. :)
Sims 4: I did indeed end up doing both of the things that I said I was likely to do yesterday – some building, and saving a particular version of the Valicer trio in my game to my Library! :D Let me tell you exactly what that entailed:
Building – Guess what – I’m still working on the Tranquil Circle Spa! XD On the plus side, though, I made some good progress today, and I would say I’m 99% done with the build at this point! Highlights of today’s session included:
A) Adjusting the ceiling fans and lights in the two massage rooms back to being in line with the massage tables (they must have gotten shifted when I was playing with the sizes of the rooms) and adding some decorations – specifically, I still had a few shelves with decorative soap dispensers on them from when I was redoing the rooms to my liking, and so I shucked one in each room and recolored them appropriately to match the color palettes. *shrug* Just another thing to have on the wall!
B) Painting the walls of the interior loop hallway, and the interior walls of the meditation garden – took me a bit to find a pattern I really liked for the garden, as I wanted it to look at least vaguely natural, but fortunately Growing Together added a nice new stone/masonry wall that I thought looked good in there. :) I also put those long wall strip lights on every “wall junction” in the interior loop (you know, where one wall meets another wall perpendicularly – basically every spot where two rooms were side-by-side), though I had to cheat it slightly on on the join between the bathroom and shower room doors – couldn’t QUITE go in the right space!
C) Doing the makeover room! Now it’s more than just two makeover chairs in a blank space! XD I decided I wanted it to have “hair salon” vibes, so I put some counters in front of the mirrors I’d set up on the – I guess front wall, since you come in from the back – and covered them with bits of appropriate makeover clutter (though it took me ages to find the one particular bit of clutter I wanted that included a hair dryer!), then – after some thought – ended up putting a chair on either side of the door with end tables containing Moschino Stuff magazines for Sims who might be waiting. :) Put some shelves above said end tables with appropriate clutter (though it annoys me how much stuff LOOKS like it could go on the “Immaculate” shelf but just doesn’t fit), put up a couple of paintings, and did the walls and floor in appropriate Spa Day tiles – though I couldn’t resist making the wall behind the mirrors that weird glowing “wallpaper” that was included in the pack. XD What, it was the best spot for it, and it’s a lot of fun if you know how to use it!
D) Cleaning up all the other spare decorations I had hanging around – some flower-themed wall decorations went in the lobby and on the wall on either side of the doors into the meditation garden, and I sold the rest once I determined I had no place to put them (this place has enough candles and weird square end tables in it!).
E) Finding an appropriate siding for the outside after playing around with a couple of different options, and setting up some fun sun-themed flower planters in the front. :) Now the outside isn’t just plain sad drywall while all the rooms inside are fun colors!
F) And, finally updating the mud bath rooms – after determining that all the items I picked had the swatches I needed for their black-and-white themes (with one leaning more toward black and the other more toward white), I eventually decided that I might as well see if I could fit a toilet and a sink in there for Sims who might need them (since I already had the shower in there) – currently I’ve got them in a sort of “cubby” in the corner of the room, behind a privacy wall but otherwise open to the room. Probably gonna wall those off in their own little rooms, but leave the shower outside? Or maybe I’ll make a privacy wall for the shower and keep the toilet and sink behind that. . .I’ll figure it out! Next time we get a big patch and I’m in a building mood. XD
But yeah, this darn spa build is almost complete at last! I just have to finish up what I’m doing in the mud bath rooms, make whatever last tweaks I wanna make to the other rooms, make sure all the walls are painted and suchlike, and see what I want to do with the roof (other than the big glass pyramid over the meditation garden). Like I said, I’ll return to it the next time we have a big patch and I’m waiting on mod okays to play my main save file. And then I can put it up on the Gallery and you can all see what I’ve been yammering on about. XD
Valicer Trio – So, you may be wondering what I meant by “saving a particular version of the Valicer trio in my game to my Library,” given that most of you are probably only aware of one – the one in my Chill Valicer Save, where everyone is a cottagecore occult. Well, all the way back in January, I was experimenting with ways to try and make a human Smiler in case I wanted a non-vampire version for a save at any point. After my initial attempt at an in-game curing led to a Smiler who had a natural eye color and thus looked weird, I discovered that curing Smiler with MC Command Center allowed them to keep their glowing yellow “usually-only-for-vampires” eyes. That Smiler I had moved into a house with a Victor and an Alice sitting in my Library in one of my “testing” saves – and THAT was the trio I wanted! Visited them right before I started building and used “Manage Households” to drop them into CAS – I wasn’t allowed to change their traits or anything right then and there, but I COULD then save them to my Library, which I did. Hooray, I have a trio of Victor, Alice, and Smiler Sims where they’re all human, hooray!
Except – I HAD wanted to make a few other tweaks to them while I was at it. So, after I was done fiddling with the Tranquil Circle Spa for the day, I pretended to make a new family and then overwrote that Sim with my newly saved trio and did the tweaking I wanted – namely, changing out Smiler’s Erratic trait for the Geek trait (because I no longer feel Erratic truly fits them, and also it’s rather annoying sometimes), and using the new birthmarks added into the game by the Infants patch to simulate burn scars on Alice’s shoulder and leg (I would have used the Werewolves-added body scars, but those are all pretty clearly scars one got from being clawed or bitten – the birthmarks, with the right colorations, look a lot more like the burn scars I was picturing)!
. . .and then I got caught up in making some new looks for everybody, namely because I’d given Smiler a “Valicer In The Dark”-inspired new main outfit and that made me want to try out some new clothes on them, and then Victor, and then Alice. . . XD And hilariously, while The Sims 4 is usually pretty damn sure to prioritize female-coded clothes over male-coded ones, in this instance I found it harder to dress Alice than Smiler (non-binary but generally dresses in a masculine way) or Victor. Mostly because a lot of the more Victorian-esque outfits hide her key necklace, and I want that to be visible, damn it. Maybe it’s time to start relying more on CC. . .as it was, though, I had fun making and adjusting some new looks for everybody, particularly Smiler. XD Still need some tweaking, but given that we’re nearly into the two glorious months of the year where I get half-day Fridays. . .
Writing: Got another chunk written on “The Joker And The Queen” – Air just upgraded into Galactica! Which, in the context of the fic, means that she can now open portals to space (or at least a similar dimension where everyone can still breathe and all that) and use it as a shortcut to teleport between two areas. Everyone was – very surprised but very enthused by this development, though none more than Galactica herself. XD So, after a dip in the space soup, they’re safely out of the hallway and ready to connect with Alice! Kelman, as you might imagine, is not going to be happy about ANY of this. XD
YouTube: Managed to get in all the videos I wanted to watch today, yay! Really makes a difference when you’re not trying to figure out what to watch with your parents when you eat –
A) Started with an old OXBox video over lunch – “Resident Evil Quiz: So You Think You Know Resident Evil?” My friend Squid recommended this one to me purely on the basis of “one of the rounds has a LaCroix from VTMB line in it.” XD The quiz was done in honor of the RE2 Remake coming out, and had Andy quizzing Jane and Mike about their Resident Evil knowledge, handing out literal gold stars for right answers in honor of the STARS team. XD The rounds were Name That Save Room Music (both of them did okay, though they struggled to identify RE4’s actual save theme – I personally actually smashed this one because I really like the save room themes and have listened to a couple of compilations a LOT); What Happens Next (Mike utterly dominated Jane with his talents for predicting what happened next in these games – I think she may have only gotten “Nemesis smashing through a wall” for an RE3 clip); Match The Virus To Its Debut Game (Mike only knew the first two games, Jane got them all (mostly because she scribbled out an early mistake) – if you’re curious, RE0 is Progenitor, RE1 is T, RE2 is G, RE5 is Oroboros, and RE6 is C); Alternate Costumes: Odd One Out (which was trying to figure out which of a ninja outfit, sailor outfit, kimono outfit, all-over zebra print outfit, and a leather-studded harness outfit were NOT alternate outfits for Chris Redfield throughout the series – both wrongly picked ninja, but it turned out to be a trick question, as Chris has had them ALL over all the various games he’s been in); Urban Legend: True or False (figuring out what urban legends about the game were fact or fiction – clean sweep from both of them, and I learned that if you find the right springy panda ride in a playground in RE6, Chris WILL play on it); and finally Wesker or Vampire (the round that got me to watch this video, with the pair having to guess if a given quote was Wesker or a video game vampire – Jane knew more than Mike (and Mike got the LaCroix quote wrong! Oh Mike). Final scores were Jane 21, Mike 19 ½ (the ½ being for saying Chris punched a boulder APART in RE5 in “What Happens Next” – Chris does infamously punch a boulder to move it, but it doesn’t shatter). So congrats to Jane as the Major-Sergeant-Admiral-General of the RE franchise, though also good job to Mike, who apparently had only played two RE games at that point! Not a bad score at all under those circumstances!
B) Then, this evening, we had the Josh Way I skipped yesterday to start – “089 SKETCHY Hollow Knight Grub!” Which was Josh drawing one of the little collectible grubs in a jar you can find and set free during the game (though the way he talked around what happened afterward, I suspect it might have been better to leave them trapped), and talking about how Hollow Knight is one of those hard-as-balls games that he usually ignores because he is not a player who enjoys punishing difficulty, but the game itself and its story was good enough to keep him engaged all the way to the end. Good stuff, cute art, and I look forward to seeing him draw more and talk about video games more!
C) And finally, we had the GrayStillPlays of the day – “Every Car vs Reverse Speed Bumps in GTA 5!” Guess what time it is – that’s right, Alex Torture Board time! :D And this one was interesting – Alex had set up a roadway that contained, in pairs, speedbumps and their reverse (that is, a hill, then a pit). We started off simple with “Reverse Speedbumps That Never Hurt Nobody” (a few starter bumps and dips to get Gray used to the concept), then moved rapidly into pain with “Reverse Speedbumps With a 69 KD Ratio” (much larger, steeper speedbumps and dips, including a gigantic hill and then a valley that went straight into the river the course was built over); “Closing Reverse Speedbump” (a dip with a perfectly-fitting “puzzle piece” bit of road that kept moving in and out of it – the trick was to get through the dip before the piece moved back in and kicked you off the course); “Tube Reverse Speedbumps” (speedbumps and dips made of tubes, ending on a pair made from the TOP of the tube – that is, a circular cross-section instead of your standard bump and dip); “Pharaoh Reverse Speedbump” (a giant pyramid and reverse pyramid – and if you got stuck in the reverse pyramid, you’d either bounce forever (as a human) or just get stuck with no traction (as a vehicle)); “Football Reverse Speedbumps” (a pair of soccer-themed speedbumps and dips – one a regular green hump and pit, the latter with a ball inside; then a conglomeration of metal that I assume was supposed to be like a stadium and its reverse, with balls blocking the sides); and finally the “Reversin’ Reverse Speedbump” (a rotating half-pipe where you had to PERFECTLY land in it, do a loop-de-loop with the help of the boost, but then go just fast enough to make it around the loop and up to the other side of the gap without falling out). Gray, as usual, tried out a variety of cars – he had high hopes for the motorcycle until it flooded out in the water; he was able to cheat part of the board with a little square box on giant wheels since it floated so well (he just dumped it in the water and motored his way over to the giant dip), but then couldn’t get up the other side with it; the super car made it almost all the way through the tubes, but was stymied by the circular wall bump – but in the end, only one vehicle could be victorious – our beloved Wastelander! Here sporting a purple frame no less. :D That rustbucket of a truck can seriously do anything if you try hard enough! Which really makes it the perfect Gray car. :)
Workout: On the treadmill today for a change (every so often I like to mix it up), continuing with the Live Oxventure “Grad Attitude!” We picked up with Dob making the quaggoth that just got eaten taste of earwax, so that the quaggoth that ate it would throw up – and succeeding, with the quaggoth stuck holding it in until the beginning of its turn. Merilwen got to go next, and decided to cast Confusion on the quaggoth, specifying that she’d be making it see nice things – it failed the saving throw (though, fortunately, after Merilwen realized “Oh shit this is a radius spell and Dob’s in range,” Dob smashed his by being a little naturally confused all the time (aka rolling a nat twenty) – see, that’s what it’s like from the OTHER side, Merilwen), and found itself looking confusedly at a beautiful glade while its favorite song played in its head. Jonathan hit it with his longbow for a whole three points of damage (everyone cheered him to give him positive feedback), and Egbert threw the net over it, trussing it up like a particularly well-done ham on a great Dex roll. Basically, this quaggoth was the most incapacitated creature EVER by the time its turn came around. XD By that point, Corazon had already left, and Prudence moonwalking out of range of quaggoth vomit prompted the others to realize, “Oh, yeah, Corazon got the other quaggoth eyes, we can just leave.” XD And so they did, though not before Dob patted the vomiting quaggoth on the head and thus got vomit all over his trousers. Whoops. XD Anyway, the gang caught up with Corazon on the road, where he rather clumsily got the corneas off the eaten quaggoth’s eyes – a bad roll meant that he chipped them in the process, but at least they didn’t shatter! He presented them to Jonathan, and Dob began cheerfully recapping the list – wrestling a lion, done. Destroying the eels, done. Getting the corneas of a crystal quaggoth, done! That left only two items –
Beating a god in a game of chance and killing a great demon! Everyone was a bit like “seriously, Jonathan?” XD However, they were in it now, so they started brainstorming. There was some talk of trying to combine the two tasks into one, but Prudence didn’t think she could summon a Greater Demon so great it could be considered a god. Corazon and Dob suggested that she summon Cthulhu, as an Elder God, to maybe bet on the fight or something, but Prudence was like “I can’t do that!” And when Dob was like “well, this relationship with Cthulhu seems a bit one-sided to me,” Cthulhu possessed Corazon (presumably taking advantage of the fact that Corazon looked into the void once) to inform him that he was busy, darn it, and backhand him for talking smack about his relationship with Prudence. XD A suggestion to maybe fake it by calling Dob a “god of music” was shot down by Jonathan himself –
But hey, there is one other god they know, and he’d likely be more chill about things than Cthulhu – La Vache Mauve, Egbert’s god! Egbert agreed to ask LVM if he’d be up for a game of roll-off or something, and LVM was like “sure, I’ve got nothing on right now – I shall reveal myself to the boy BY WHICH I MEAN MAKE MYSELF VISIBLE TO HIM.” XD Yeah, Johnny pretended to walk off the stage in shame over that one, and Andy briefly stole their DMing chair. XD Anyway, terms were agreed on – it would be a roll-off with a six-sided die each, and if La Vache Mauve won, Jonathan would have to join Egbert’s order; if Jonathan won, he wouldn’t. Egbert eagerly started making up new member cards. XD Jonathan rolled his die, while LVM rolled a giant six-sided boulder – LVM got a four –
And Jonathan a five! Well then! LVM was a good sport and reascended into the sun, sharing a long and loving goodbye with Egbert, and Jonathan was left staring in shock at his die. Pumped up by this success, he agreed to make out with Egbert (as the Oxventurers had previously tried to add “get first kiss” to his list), just for his own pleasure. Johnny told the audience they’d have to imagine that one, though, as they and Mike were both in committed relationships (Luke said “what they’re saying is, don’t draw it” *wink*).
And so, with that done in the theater of the mind’s eye, the group moved onto the last item in the list – kill a greater demon! Dob prepared a pentagram with candles and blood while trying to talk Jonathan into considering an internship with the Oxventurers over going to the knight school – Prudence was pleased to have an assistant getting the place ready for her summoning, at least until it was discovered the candles weren’t human tallow, but non-organic beeswax. XD Anyway, she asked Jonathan if he had a specific demon in mind, and he admitted to dreaming occasionally of this weird teal-and-orange ape-like demon, which was apparently a balgura, a real thing! Egbert informed Jonathan that if he was dreaming of it, then the demon was probably trying to get him for whatever reason, which, maybe not the best thing to say before the big fight. XD Prudence got her summon on and asked in the demonic planes if there was a balgura eager to fight a Jonathan Bennet, and one indeed came crashing through –
And promptly rolled a one in the initiative order, meaning that it went dead last. XD The other Oxventurers were told that they only had to help out if they thought Jonathan was getting his ass kicked, and were welcome to do nothing on their turns, but that’s no fun, is it? And so Corazon started the party off by casting Grease, causing the balgura to slip and end up mid-air mid-fall, where Merilwen promptly smacked the creature with lightning. XD Dob gave Jonathan a pep talk that was a mixture of Bardic Inspiration (no, he still doesn’t remember what that does, prompting Johnny to comment “five years. . .” – it adds a D8 to the attack roll, if you’re interested) and Calm Emotions and made sure he had his sword in hand while Prudence nailed the balgura with some Eldritch Blast, sending it spinning in mid-air. Jonathan did some flailing with his sword and managed to knock eight points off its health (everyone applauded), and then Egbert hit it with Turn the Faithless (no, he doesn’t remember if Johnny has to roll a saving throw – “five years”) to make it want to run away. I left it with Johnny reporting that the balgura had absolutely stacked it into the grease (unsurprising) and ten minutes left to go on the episode – we’ll see how this all wraps up tomorrow!
So yeah, pretty productive day overall! :) It's nice to just have a bunch of time to myself to do the stuff I wanted to do the most! And now it's time to head to bed. . .and wow, this is the earliest I've managed to complete one of these entries in a while. O.o Not used to that anymore. . .still, probably should take the opportunity to try and get some extra sleep! Got two days of work to get through now! Night all!
