Avoiding The Sun Saturday
Aug. 12th, 2023 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickBecause obviously I didn't want to irritate my sunburn (though it's already fading, fortunately, especially on my arms). The weather actually made this easier by, after being bright and sunny and beautiful most of the day, clouding up and looking like it was going to start raining in the mid-afternoon, causing my parents to take our beanbag game inside and us not to play. And then it cleared up again, too late for us to take it back out. :p Tomorrow is genuinely supposed to be rainy, though, with possible thunderstorms in the AM, so unlikely we'll play then either. . .ah well, gives my sunburn more time to heal and me a little more time to do computer stuff. Speaking of which, let's cover today's to-dos --
Cleaning: Pretty typical cleaning Saturday – started with dusting around 10:40 AM, and finished with vacuuming around 1:10 PM, meaning everything got done before lunch (though, admittedly, lunch was a little late today). Laundry got folded into the stuff Mom was doing, and she was hanging stuff out on the line to take advantage of the continuing nice weather, so that took a little longer to get back to me, but the last load was ready by 4 PM, so we’re all good now! All done for another two weeks, yay!
Tumblr: Didn’t get much done on here, but –
Victor Luvs Alice – I did get most of the draft done for this week’s “Latest Sims 4 Build” update this Wednesday, showing off the Tranquil Circle Spa – all the pictures and most of the text! Just gotta finish off those last few paragraphs and the tags tomorrow! Nice to have a short one occasionally. . .
Valice Multiverse – No activity on here (well, no thread or ask replies – somebody DID go through a bunch of old posts and liked them), so I have chucked my original explanatory post on the Valicer In The Dark AU into my queue to see if any regular partners might be interested in playing with that version of my Valicer trio. We’ll see what happens!
Sims 4: As I indicated I would yesterday, I did another round in CAS today, working on some of my other Coaster Crew OCs – completing Th13teen and Galactica, and starting Wickerman and Nemesis! :D Here’s how it went –
A) Th13teen’s face proved to be easier than expected, as the game generated an Asian Sim for me to start with, and as I based my Th13teen’s looks on the quarter-Chinese, quarter Malaysian, half-English Jane Douglas of OXBox (I think I’ve mentioned before her Oxventure character Prudence was a major inspiration for my Th13teen’s personality), all I had to do was pull up a few images of Jane on my phone and make the necessary adjustments to the base face to match hers a little better. Though I did end up making Th13teen’s eyes green instead of brown – the coaster’s themeing involves a haunted forest, so green is one of Th13teen’s key colors. *nods* Finding good outfits for her, by contrast, proved a bit of a challenge – I wanted her aesthetic to be “future spooky ghost girl in a tattered white dress,” and the game doesn’t really have anything like that. I did find a dress that worked well ENOUGH in the end, along with a Halloween costume I decided she’d probably wear as just a regular dress for an alternate everyday look, but dang. Highlights that I could probably use some more CC clothes!
B) Galactica’s face, by contrast, I struggled a bit with, as the one in my head is a transwoman, so my initial thought was that I should try working with a more masculine frame. . .but that just did NOT give me the look I wanted, so I switched back to a more feminine one. *shrug* It’s all relative, right? I did stumble across the perfect hairstyle while looking for one that I only half-remembered, though. And finding good clothes for her proved to be pretty darn easy in the end, so – I guess it all works out! :P
C) As for the other two, I’ve got Wickerman’s face and body down (including an appropriately “unnatural” eye color, as for some reason reddish eyes are available to plain human Sims, and given his coaster’s whole thing is “throwing people into the sacrificial flames. . .”), along with some everyday outfits, and I’ve selected a Chihuahua model for Nemesis and played around a bit with coat colors in paint mode (namely, making said Chihuahua a lot more pink XD). I don’t have pictures of the doggo yet, but I do have shots of the others:
So far, I think I’m happiest with Rita and Galactica’s looks – the others might still require a bit of tweaking. And obviously I’ve got to finish up getting Nemesis’s coloration just right. . .we’ll see if I decide to do that on Monday, or if I head back to the Chill Valicer Save for a few last-minute shenanigans there first. :p But this is a good start – at least now I feel like I’ve got proper FACES for everybody, should I want to reference them in fics and such!
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” today, and – ouch. Because today was the day where I had to write Alice actually escaping Grout’s mansion, and, as you might expect, that was a time. Poor Alice had to jump off Grout’s balcony into a room full of flame; then run through that into another room just starting to catch on fire; discover that the hallway leading to two ghouls she’d hoped to save (the ones she met in the first of the mirrored rooms, 6768 and 6789) was already completely alight, meaning they were almost certainly already dead; continue her escape through another door, up a set of stairs, through a hallway full of smoking doors, and onto the balcony Bach had been standing on (overlooking the previous room full of flame); flee that through another hallway full of doors while chasing the rare panicked Cheshire; and then finally follow him into a side room and throw herself out a window there onto the only bits of roof not completely engulfed by the conflagration so she could finally leap into the front yard and to safety. All with both the screams of the ghouls burning alive and her long dead-family echoing in her ears. *wince* Yeeeeah, is it any wonder I ended the scene with her curling up into a ball in the front yard and crying? :( Seriously, worst night of her vampiric existence ever. And it’s not even over yet – though, by the time of the NEXT scene and her arrival back at Venture Tower, she has moved from “traumatized” to “done with all of LaCroix’s bullshit. . .”
YouTube: Kept up on my single Subs video, no problem. . .but as it felt a bit weird to have just that and nothing hanging over me in the Watch Later, I made sure to get in a bonus video as well –
A) First up, from onlyabidoang, “The Sims 4 High School Years: 10 NEW FEATURES You Might Not Know!” I spotted this in my Recommendeds today and was like “Oh yeah, I never watched that because I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get the pack or not – well, I own the pack now, so. . .” And, as usual, it was a very good video, teaching me a few things about the pack that I didn’t know – like, in addition to the usual Career Day replacing afternoon classes, the high school can also have a random fire drill where everyone has to evacuate! Also, there’s some cross-pack integration with the skills teens can learn in their classes – like, social studies will teach Selvadoradian Culture and Archeology skills if you have Jungle Adventures! And if your teens are good enough to graduate early, they can actually apply to and start attending university still as teenagers if you have Discover University! That’s pretty cool. :) The video also covered death by stink bomb capsules and urban legends (beware pranking other Sims too often), how broken Trendi really is when it comes to making money (you can sell the stupidest shit for the stupidest prices), and the power of the Entrepreneur skill (if you’re in the right careers, anyway – business plans are the province of Simfluencers and Video Game Streamers, it seems). Good stuff, even if I don’t play in a way that makes it likely I’ll be using any of this information. XD Maybe if I ever get that “long haul” save off the ground. . .
B) And then it was time for GrayStillPlays and “Cars vs Giant Cereal Bowl in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this time themed around jumps that were both difficult and just plain WEIRD. As if you’ve ever put a normal obstacle in Gray’s way, Alex. XD At any rate, Gray had to find the right car that could make it over the Cereal Bowl Jump (the giant cereal bowl from the title, complete with violent “fruit loops” (inflatable rings) shooting into the sky), 25 Immovable Grays Jump (a long jump between two “goal posts” with 25 Gray models – as in the real person Gray, not his Florida Man character, Alex must have gotten his hands on a picture of him – standing on the narrow platform in the middle, completely immobile and ready to fuck things up), the Taco Jump (consisting of a ramp made of yellow discs, the “tacos”, leading to a giant jump over a tall stack of taco trucks and onto a raised platform on the other side), the “Don’t Play With Gasoline Kids” Jump (a long jump over a LOT of explosive barrels and tankers – hit one and you’d be lucky to outrun the explosion), the “Florida Happy Meals Be Like” Jump (similar to the Taco Jump, only this one was a red-and-yellow ramp up to an even TALLER burger tower), and the Fast & Furious Jump (a jump where Gray had to time his leap so he could go through the giant flaming hoop atop a continually-taking-off plane, hit the teleporter checkpoint to get teleported onto the runway platform, and THEN hastily get out of the way of the plane as it respawned so he could finally get to the win at the end of the runway). The quad could barely make it past the cereal bowl (and then only if Gray wall-rode inside said bowl to get the momentum he needed); the Boars-baseball-team-themed car made it to the taco stack but couldn’t QUITE get over; the F-1 made it to the burgers but couldn’t get the height needed; and the green super-car ALMOST did the plane jump first try, but then got shoved off the runway by the respawning plane. XD But after a reload and learning from his mistakes, Gray was able to take that car to the end and leap into the winning circle. And then into the water to go drown himself. :p Just be grateful THIS board didn’t have stalking windmills or lasers, Gray!
*nods* Pretty full day -- though I noticed I started feeling much more distracted as the day went on, with some periods where it was really hard to focus. And as it IS coming up on when I expect to get my period. . .yeah, I think I'm gonna have to watch out for that during these last three days of freedom! Hopefully I don't have any unpleasant surprises coming up, since I haven't been PMSing like I usually have. . .
But that's a worry for later! Right now, I need to wrap things up with my hoped-for activities for tomorrow! And as it is Fallout Sunday, that means playing Fallout 4, clearing out the Shamrock Taphouse, and finding Drinking Buddy; updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression with same; keeping up with GrayStillPlays and Jon of Many A True Nerd; catching up some on my Victor Luvs Alice tumblr; and getting in a workout and maybe starting the next episode of James Turner's HSY LP. We'll see how much of this gets done! Night all!
Cleaning: Pretty typical cleaning Saturday – started with dusting around 10:40 AM, and finished with vacuuming around 1:10 PM, meaning everything got done before lunch (though, admittedly, lunch was a little late today). Laundry got folded into the stuff Mom was doing, and she was hanging stuff out on the line to take advantage of the continuing nice weather, so that took a little longer to get back to me, but the last load was ready by 4 PM, so we’re all good now! All done for another two weeks, yay!
Tumblr: Didn’t get much done on here, but –
Victor Luvs Alice – I did get most of the draft done for this week’s “Latest Sims 4 Build” update this Wednesday, showing off the Tranquil Circle Spa – all the pictures and most of the text! Just gotta finish off those last few paragraphs and the tags tomorrow! Nice to have a short one occasionally. . .
Valice Multiverse – No activity on here (well, no thread or ask replies – somebody DID go through a bunch of old posts and liked them), so I have chucked my original explanatory post on the Valicer In The Dark AU into my queue to see if any regular partners might be interested in playing with that version of my Valicer trio. We’ll see what happens!
Sims 4: As I indicated I would yesterday, I did another round in CAS today, working on some of my other Coaster Crew OCs – completing Th13teen and Galactica, and starting Wickerman and Nemesis! :D Here’s how it went –
A) Th13teen’s face proved to be easier than expected, as the game generated an Asian Sim for me to start with, and as I based my Th13teen’s looks on the quarter-Chinese, quarter Malaysian, half-English Jane Douglas of OXBox (I think I’ve mentioned before her Oxventure character Prudence was a major inspiration for my Th13teen’s personality), all I had to do was pull up a few images of Jane on my phone and make the necessary adjustments to the base face to match hers a little better. Though I did end up making Th13teen’s eyes green instead of brown – the coaster’s themeing involves a haunted forest, so green is one of Th13teen’s key colors. *nods* Finding good outfits for her, by contrast, proved a bit of a challenge – I wanted her aesthetic to be “future spooky ghost girl in a tattered white dress,” and the game doesn’t really have anything like that. I did find a dress that worked well ENOUGH in the end, along with a Halloween costume I decided she’d probably wear as just a regular dress for an alternate everyday look, but dang. Highlights that I could probably use some more CC clothes!
B) Galactica’s face, by contrast, I struggled a bit with, as the one in my head is a transwoman, so my initial thought was that I should try working with a more masculine frame. . .but that just did NOT give me the look I wanted, so I switched back to a more feminine one. *shrug* It’s all relative, right? I did stumble across the perfect hairstyle while looking for one that I only half-remembered, though. And finding good clothes for her proved to be pretty darn easy in the end, so – I guess it all works out! :P
C) As for the other two, I’ve got Wickerman’s face and body down (including an appropriately “unnatural” eye color, as for some reason reddish eyes are available to plain human Sims, and given his coaster’s whole thing is “throwing people into the sacrificial flames. . .”), along with some everyday outfits, and I’ve selected a Chihuahua model for Nemesis and played around a bit with coat colors in paint mode (namely, making said Chihuahua a lot more pink XD). I don’t have pictures of the doggo yet, but I do have shots of the others:
So far, I think I’m happiest with Rita and Galactica’s looks – the others might still require a bit of tweaking. And obviously I’ve got to finish up getting Nemesis’s coloration just right. . .we’ll see if I decide to do that on Monday, or if I head back to the Chill Valicer Save for a few last-minute shenanigans there first. :p But this is a good start – at least now I feel like I’ve got proper FACES for everybody, should I want to reference them in fics and such!
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” today, and – ouch. Because today was the day where I had to write Alice actually escaping Grout’s mansion, and, as you might expect, that was a time. Poor Alice had to jump off Grout’s balcony into a room full of flame; then run through that into another room just starting to catch on fire; discover that the hallway leading to two ghouls she’d hoped to save (the ones she met in the first of the mirrored rooms, 6768 and 6789) was already completely alight, meaning they were almost certainly already dead; continue her escape through another door, up a set of stairs, through a hallway full of smoking doors, and onto the balcony Bach had been standing on (overlooking the previous room full of flame); flee that through another hallway full of doors while chasing the rare panicked Cheshire; and then finally follow him into a side room and throw herself out a window there onto the only bits of roof not completely engulfed by the conflagration so she could finally leap into the front yard and to safety. All with both the screams of the ghouls burning alive and her long dead-family echoing in her ears. *wince* Yeeeeah, is it any wonder I ended the scene with her curling up into a ball in the front yard and crying? :( Seriously, worst night of her vampiric existence ever. And it’s not even over yet – though, by the time of the NEXT scene and her arrival back at Venture Tower, she has moved from “traumatized” to “done with all of LaCroix’s bullshit. . .”
YouTube: Kept up on my single Subs video, no problem. . .but as it felt a bit weird to have just that and nothing hanging over me in the Watch Later, I made sure to get in a bonus video as well –
A) First up, from onlyabidoang, “The Sims 4 High School Years: 10 NEW FEATURES You Might Not Know!” I spotted this in my Recommendeds today and was like “Oh yeah, I never watched that because I wasn’t sure if I was gonna get the pack or not – well, I own the pack now, so. . .” And, as usual, it was a very good video, teaching me a few things about the pack that I didn’t know – like, in addition to the usual Career Day replacing afternoon classes, the high school can also have a random fire drill where everyone has to evacuate! Also, there’s some cross-pack integration with the skills teens can learn in their classes – like, social studies will teach Selvadoradian Culture and Archeology skills if you have Jungle Adventures! And if your teens are good enough to graduate early, they can actually apply to and start attending university still as teenagers if you have Discover University! That’s pretty cool. :) The video also covered death by stink bomb capsules and urban legends (beware pranking other Sims too often), how broken Trendi really is when it comes to making money (you can sell the stupidest shit for the stupidest prices), and the power of the Entrepreneur skill (if you’re in the right careers, anyway – business plans are the province of Simfluencers and Video Game Streamers, it seems). Good stuff, even if I don’t play in a way that makes it likely I’ll be using any of this information. XD Maybe if I ever get that “long haul” save off the ground. . .
B) And then it was time for GrayStillPlays and “Cars vs Giant Cereal Bowl in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this time themed around jumps that were both difficult and just plain WEIRD. As if you’ve ever put a normal obstacle in Gray’s way, Alex. XD At any rate, Gray had to find the right car that could make it over the Cereal Bowl Jump (the giant cereal bowl from the title, complete with violent “fruit loops” (inflatable rings) shooting into the sky), 25 Immovable Grays Jump (a long jump between two “goal posts” with 25 Gray models – as in the real person Gray, not his Florida Man character, Alex must have gotten his hands on a picture of him – standing on the narrow platform in the middle, completely immobile and ready to fuck things up), the Taco Jump (consisting of a ramp made of yellow discs, the “tacos”, leading to a giant jump over a tall stack of taco trucks and onto a raised platform on the other side), the “Don’t Play With Gasoline Kids” Jump (a long jump over a LOT of explosive barrels and tankers – hit one and you’d be lucky to outrun the explosion), the “Florida Happy Meals Be Like” Jump (similar to the Taco Jump, only this one was a red-and-yellow ramp up to an even TALLER burger tower), and the Fast & Furious Jump (a jump where Gray had to time his leap so he could go through the giant flaming hoop atop a continually-taking-off plane, hit the teleporter checkpoint to get teleported onto the runway platform, and THEN hastily get out of the way of the plane as it respawned so he could finally get to the win at the end of the runway). The quad could barely make it past the cereal bowl (and then only if Gray wall-rode inside said bowl to get the momentum he needed); the Boars-baseball-team-themed car made it to the taco stack but couldn’t QUITE get over; the F-1 made it to the burgers but couldn’t get the height needed; and the green super-car ALMOST did the plane jump first try, but then got shoved off the runway by the respawning plane. XD But after a reload and learning from his mistakes, Gray was able to take that car to the end and leap into the winning circle. And then into the water to go drown himself. :p Just be grateful THIS board didn’t have stalking windmills or lasers, Gray!
*nods* Pretty full day -- though I noticed I started feeling much more distracted as the day went on, with some periods where it was really hard to focus. And as it IS coming up on when I expect to get my period. . .yeah, I think I'm gonna have to watch out for that during these last three days of freedom! Hopefully I don't have any unpleasant surprises coming up, since I haven't been PMSing like I usually have. . .
But that's a worry for later! Right now, I need to wrap things up with my hoped-for activities for tomorrow! And as it is Fallout Sunday, that means playing Fallout 4, clearing out the Shamrock Taphouse, and finding Drinking Buddy; updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression with same; keeping up with GrayStillPlays and Jon of Many A True Nerd; catching up some on my Victor Luvs Alice tumblr; and getting in a workout and maybe starting the next episode of James Turner's HSY LP. We'll see how much of this gets done! Night all!
