Pretty Shitty Saturday
Feb. 10th, 2024 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, it's been -- a time, today. Woke up way earlier than I wanted because I had to use the bathroom and couldn't get back to sleep; came into the kitchen to discover my parents in a bad mood because their printer had quit on them, necessitating that they both get a new printer AND figure out what to do with the ink they just bought; had a bit of a rough time with the cleaning (see below); parents had trouble setting up the new printer because printers always have to be little shits; nearly soaked myself in pickle juice trying to put the pickles away before dinner because Mom hadn't put the lid on correctly; and had to rewash a dirty dish I found in the dish drawer before I could have my ice cream tonight. *grumbles* All of which was made a lot worse by the fact that I'm PMSing and thus extra-grumpy -- hell, I had to double-check that my period hadn't snuck up on me early right before starting this entry. Would have been the perfect shitty end to this day!
However -- despite all the bullshit that made up today, I still managed to get pretty much everything I wanted to get done, done --
Cleaning: As you might have expected, despite me getting up earlier today, this still ended up taking longer than it should have, due to various interruptions (my parents going out to get the new printer, me going downstairs to get the laundry out of the dryer once I’d gotten dressed, putting the new plates and Mr. Fusion decal on my car. . .). Started ROUGHLY around 10:30 AM, didn’t finish until about 2:30 PM (with a lunch break around 1 PM). Laundry got rolled into the stuff my Mom was doing and finished up in the early evening – I got the last of my blankets back around 5:45 PM. At least it’s all done again for a couple of weeks, but bleh – would have preferred to get it all over with a lot sooner!
Tumblr: Not a lot happening over here, as is generally the case on cleaning Saturdays, but I got a bit done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Kept up on the dash as best I could, and just now got the initial drafts for my Valicertines and bonus image (see below) started, so I can pick up on those tomorrow!
Valice Multiverse – Nothing happening over here, so I just put the post with my Duskwall slang in the queue. *shrug* I’ll just keep doing this until I run out of shit to do there!
Valicertines: One of the actually fun parts of the day, I’m pleased to say – I now I have a full set of three Valicertines, plus a bonus “OT3 Math” image that I was inspired to make after looking at last year’s “Ideal OT3 Build” bonus image. XD This is how it went down:
A) First Valicertine was one I’d been planning for ages – using the picture of Alice smiling at Victor and Smiler as they went in for a New Year’s kiss (I actually have this as my phone background). The text is “COMPERSION! It’s pretty awesome” – “compersion” being the term for the feeling of joy you get seeing a loved one interact with someone else they love (in this case, Alice is getting it from seeing Victor with Smiler). Like the perfect Valentine for a V-shaped OT3. :)
B) Second one was an idea I came up with a little while ago – combining two pictures of Victor being romantically separately with Alice and Smiler into one image. My original thought was to use pictures from the New Year’s trio date and have the text “Two partners means twice as many New Year’s kisses” – but then I was like “hang on, this is Valentine’s Day, I should use Love Day shots!” So instead I went with Victor, Alice, and Smiler’s trip to Copperdale one Love Day, with Victor and Alice dancing in the ThrifTea store and Victor and Smiler snuggling on one of the picnic benches on Plumbite Pier, with the text being “Two partners. . .means having two Valentines!” *shrug* I thought it was cute!
C) And I came up with the idea for the third one while I was scrolling through my many, many Sims 4 screenshots looking for inspiration – basically, I thought, “Okay, the third one HAS to have something to do with the Valicer wedding I had last year.” So I found my way to that particular batch of pictures and started looking through all the trio shots I took once I discovered those were an option if you used the tripod. . .
And I stumbled across them doing one of the “fashion” group poses. Which looked so delightfully silly I immediately HAD to use it. Figuring out the text was a snap too: “Get yourself a polycule that can look THIS FINE~” XD Sometimes, you just gotta embrace the goofy.
D) As for the “OT3 Math” bonus image. . .well, as stated, I was looking at last year’s Valicertines while finishing up this year’s set (adding borders to text boxes and whatnot) and happened across the “Ideal OT3 Build” image I made last year (in response to the “inspiration” prompt for one of the “polyam shipping days” one of the poly shipping blogs I occasionally look at does for the 14th of each month – it was inspired by two tumblr posts I’d recently reblogged about OT3 set-ups). And, spur of the moment, I had an idea for another, similar image – this one of me doing “Alice X Victor X Smiler = OT3,” basically. I quickly decided that the “Alice X Victor X Smiler” bit should be the official A:MR box art, the official Corpse Bride poster, and the official Smiler logo – and, to my delight, I had all three of those already in my Pictures folder! (Though I actually ended up going with the “A Grave Proposal” CB poster showing Victor on his own holding the ring rather than the most well-known one, as I didn’t want to confuse things by including Emily in my OT3 math. She’s part of the OT5. XD) Once I had all of those sized and set up the way I wanted against my white background, I added in my Xs and = sign, then decided to use a picture of my Chill Valicer trio as the “OT3” result of the math. And I knew just what set of shots I wanted to use – the pictures they took in front of their grocery store once it was fully stocked and ready to open, as that featured Smiler in their “The Smiler” hoodie, Alice in her famous blue dress, and Victor in the suit that was as close as I could get to his canonical look at the time! So I headed over to that section of my screenshots –
And discovered a problem. Namely, that none of those shots had the trio in the right Alice-Victor-Smiler order. She was either off to the wrong side doing her thing, or standing in the middle.
Now, MOST people would have just gone “well, them’s the breaks” and either just used one of the images regardless, or adjusted the order of the “times” portion of the image. But I really wanted to keep the three in the Alice-Victor-Smiler order, because Victor is the “hinge” of their particular polycule – Alice and Smiler are both romantically involved with him, while they consider each other friends (or possibly something queerplatonic? It gets a little harder to slap a label on their relationship when they don’t do any romantic stuff together but happily team up to lovingly dominate Victor XD). And I really wanted to have a trio shot of them in the right order, wearing the right clothes.
So guess who booted up her Sims 4 Chill Valicer save, turned off free will, assembled her OT3 in Smiler’s party barn, got a suitcase so I could change Victor’s “suit” everyday outfit to the new CC suit that looks the most like his actual movie outfit (with the right color waistcoat and pants) without sending him back to the bedroom, put everyone in the right outfits, decided that actually the second floor hallway would be a better spot to gather for a photo, had everyone travel THERE, set up Alice’s tripod and camera, and did a ten-shot photoshoot of the trio, cycling through the poses until I had a couple to pick from where they were all in the right order? XD I’m a NORMAL PERSON who does NORMAL THINGS, I swear! Anyway, I got my shots, let poor Victor and Alice go to the bathroom, and shut down my game so I could go look at my screenshots –
And ran into another problem where I couldn’t decide between three poses – two flirty poses (one with Victor standing in the middle looking proud while Alice looks adoringly at him and Smiler makes eyes in the background; and one with Victor and Alice looking adoringly at each other while Smiler presses their hands against their heart lovingly in the background) and one goofy pose (with the three of them in silly poses and making faces at the camera). So I ended up just using all three, framing the goofy shot with the two flirty shots. XD And then added “It’s Just Math.” under the pictures. XD So, yeah, that’ll be my “bonus” image for Valentine’s Day on Wednesday! Or, well, one of them, because I’m thinking of doing a “friendship is important too” valentine with Smileon my Smiler bear and Us. XD Well see what happens!
Writing: Started Chapter 4 of “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of!” We opened with Smiler finishing up explaining what happened to Sergeant Tannen of the Bluecoat squad that just came upon them – Tannen considered it a “fucking strange story,” but Alice and Victor backed them up. Tannen was just saying that they had to come down to their station for a bit to give their statements before they could go about their business (and making fun of Alice for her previous stint in the cells of Bow Street), when one of his squad members called for his attention. . .yeah, things are about to kick off as we move into my “Accused” snippet, where the trio get, well, ACCUSED of murder. Time to clean up that chase sequence I’m actually quite proud of a little bit more! :D
YouTube: Started later than I intended because of getting wrapped up in my Valicertines, but I did get two videos out of the Watch Later, so mission at least partly accomplished!
A) First up, from the Watch Later, the OXBoxtra content of the evening –
I. “7 Most Kick-Ass Intro Cinematics That Didn’t Need to Go This Hard” – Luke and Ellen of OXtra take us through some of their favorite awesome intros to video games! From the shockingly-well-rendered opening cinematic of the original World of Warcraft (with character designs and graphics that hold up in 2024, over a decade later), to the beloved zoom-out showing off the city of Midgard in the original Final Fantasy VII (which was re-rendered as an example of what kind of graphics the PS3 could support shortly before that came out), to the solemn voice of Ron Perlman informing us once again that “War. . .war never changes” over the rubble in the opening of Fallout 3 (marking the franchise’s turn into fully 3D), these intro cinematics stay with you. And given everyone gushing about their personal favorites in the comments, I fully expect to see a “Commenter Edition” on this soon enough. Looking forward to it!
II. “7 Non-Romanceable Characters That Thirsty Fans Simply Won't Give Up On” – Andy, Mike, and Jane taking us through the unromanceable characters that the fans will do whatever they can to find some way to romance! Whether that’s simply making wistful fan art (Takemura from Cyberpunk 2077), sending angry petitions to the developer demanding that the character be made romanceable (Raphael from Baldur’s Gate III), or taking matters into their own hands with mods (Nick Valentine from Fallout 4). Might I also recommend the “make Sims of them and your player character” method to soothe people’s thirsts? I mean, it’s worked wonders for my OT3. :p
B) And then it was over to the Subs for the GrayStillPlays video of the day – “Long Cars vs Stairs in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this put the longest vehicles in the game against another one of his Patented Evil Stairs Variety Packs, featuring –
I. Crumbling Snow Stairs – a set of stairs made up of snow blocks, some of which would melt, and some of which would fall out from under the vehicle as it attempted the climb. Fiendish in its simplicity!
II. Sloping, Spinning, Rainbow Stairs – a set of stairs made up of rotating rainbow-colored tubes, with the occasional conjoined-twin tube showing up to create a spinning road block of sorts. Without traction, Gray wasn’t going ANYWHERE on these.
III. Downward Snake Staircase – a set of large stairs that snaked first to the right, then to the left in a couple of fiendish curves designed to send cars skidding off the edge – and this particular challenge was timed, giving Gray a mere twenty-six seconds to get to the bottom. I mean, Gray got to the bottom of the platform a lot, does that count? :p
IV. Vibing Stairs – a set of stairs pulsing a variety of different colors and moving back and forth in a circle – that is, it would come forward, then pull away, tracing a circle with its bottom stair. This proved to be the most fiendish of all, because as Gray ascended, he had to learn the pattern of when he could go and pick up a bunch of stairs, and when he had to stop because otherwise he’d slide off the board as it circled out from under him. And because the stairs were moving at different speeds as they went around and around the circle. . .yeah. This one took a while.
So, which long car won? Well, the rent-a-bus couldn’t get past the first few steps of the snow stairs by virtue of smacking its back end into the concrete and being unable to move; the snow-covered “SIBERIA” plates SUV naturally made it up the snow, but couldn’t get past the spinning cylinders; my beloved Wastelander brute-forced its way up the Sloping Spinning Rainbow Stairs, only to constantly skid out and fall off those damn snake stairs – meaning the winner was, of all things, the big rally sports box truck with the Globe Oil branding! This is the MTL Dune, according to gtabase.com website, and according to Gray it has wheels of dark matter, as it sticks to FUCKING EVERYTHING. Like, it took out the first three challenges no problem – it didn’t even drift the tiniest bit on the Snake Staircase. It DID have some trouble with the Vibing Stairs, but that wasn’t its fault, it was the fact that those stairs were designed by the Devil. XD So yeah, looks like we have another one to add to the roster of “cars we want in the post-apocalypse” – especially if you’re going downhill on a curve in a hurry!
So yeah -- good portion of the day sucked, but Valicertines, writing, and YouTube were fun. And now it is time for me to head to bed and see if I can actually get enough sleep this time. . .with this PMS, I doubt it. >( Tomorrow -- well, the only things I KNOW I'll be doing is some tumblr catch-up and getting those drafts ready for my Valicertine's Day update on Victor Luvs Alice on Wednesday. And keeping up with GrayStillPlays and Jon. Oh, and getting in a workout, of course. Haven't decided yet if I'm firing up Fallout 4 and continuing my travels from the Cambridge Police Station back to Sanctuary and the Red Rocket, or clearing more videos from my Watch Later. (Baldur's Gate III isn't getting considered as there's a patch coming out next week -- in fact, there's a good chance it'll be on Valentine's Day as one of the updates is to kissing animations -- and I want to get past that before I consider touching the game again.) We'll see how I feel tomorrow, honestly. *shrug* Night all!
However -- despite all the bullshit that made up today, I still managed to get pretty much everything I wanted to get done, done --
Cleaning: As you might have expected, despite me getting up earlier today, this still ended up taking longer than it should have, due to various interruptions (my parents going out to get the new printer, me going downstairs to get the laundry out of the dryer once I’d gotten dressed, putting the new plates and Mr. Fusion decal on my car. . .). Started ROUGHLY around 10:30 AM, didn’t finish until about 2:30 PM (with a lunch break around 1 PM). Laundry got rolled into the stuff my Mom was doing and finished up in the early evening – I got the last of my blankets back around 5:45 PM. At least it’s all done again for a couple of weeks, but bleh – would have preferred to get it all over with a lot sooner!
Tumblr: Not a lot happening over here, as is generally the case on cleaning Saturdays, but I got a bit done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Kept up on the dash as best I could, and just now got the initial drafts for my Valicertines and bonus image (see below) started, so I can pick up on those tomorrow!
Valice Multiverse – Nothing happening over here, so I just put the post with my Duskwall slang in the queue. *shrug* I’ll just keep doing this until I run out of shit to do there!
Valicertines: One of the actually fun parts of the day, I’m pleased to say – I now I have a full set of three Valicertines, plus a bonus “OT3 Math” image that I was inspired to make after looking at last year’s “Ideal OT3 Build” bonus image. XD This is how it went down:
A) First Valicertine was one I’d been planning for ages – using the picture of Alice smiling at Victor and Smiler as they went in for a New Year’s kiss (I actually have this as my phone background). The text is “COMPERSION! It’s pretty awesome” – “compersion” being the term for the feeling of joy you get seeing a loved one interact with someone else they love (in this case, Alice is getting it from seeing Victor with Smiler). Like the perfect Valentine for a V-shaped OT3. :)
B) Second one was an idea I came up with a little while ago – combining two pictures of Victor being romantically separately with Alice and Smiler into one image. My original thought was to use pictures from the New Year’s trio date and have the text “Two partners means twice as many New Year’s kisses” – but then I was like “hang on, this is Valentine’s Day, I should use Love Day shots!” So instead I went with Victor, Alice, and Smiler’s trip to Copperdale one Love Day, with Victor and Alice dancing in the ThrifTea store and Victor and Smiler snuggling on one of the picnic benches on Plumbite Pier, with the text being “Two partners. . .means having two Valentines!” *shrug* I thought it was cute!
C) And I came up with the idea for the third one while I was scrolling through my many, many Sims 4 screenshots looking for inspiration – basically, I thought, “Okay, the third one HAS to have something to do with the Valicer wedding I had last year.” So I found my way to that particular batch of pictures and started looking through all the trio shots I took once I discovered those were an option if you used the tripod. . .
And I stumbled across them doing one of the “fashion” group poses. Which looked so delightfully silly I immediately HAD to use it. Figuring out the text was a snap too: “Get yourself a polycule that can look THIS FINE~” XD Sometimes, you just gotta embrace the goofy.
D) As for the “OT3 Math” bonus image. . .well, as stated, I was looking at last year’s Valicertines while finishing up this year’s set (adding borders to text boxes and whatnot) and happened across the “Ideal OT3 Build” image I made last year (in response to the “inspiration” prompt for one of the “polyam shipping days” one of the poly shipping blogs I occasionally look at does for the 14th of each month – it was inspired by two tumblr posts I’d recently reblogged about OT3 set-ups). And, spur of the moment, I had an idea for another, similar image – this one of me doing “Alice X Victor X Smiler = OT3,” basically. I quickly decided that the “Alice X Victor X Smiler” bit should be the official A:MR box art, the official Corpse Bride poster, and the official Smiler logo – and, to my delight, I had all three of those already in my Pictures folder! (Though I actually ended up going with the “A Grave Proposal” CB poster showing Victor on his own holding the ring rather than the most well-known one, as I didn’t want to confuse things by including Emily in my OT3 math. She’s part of the OT5. XD) Once I had all of those sized and set up the way I wanted against my white background, I added in my Xs and = sign, then decided to use a picture of my Chill Valicer trio as the “OT3” result of the math. And I knew just what set of shots I wanted to use – the pictures they took in front of their grocery store once it was fully stocked and ready to open, as that featured Smiler in their “The Smiler” hoodie, Alice in her famous blue dress, and Victor in the suit that was as close as I could get to his canonical look at the time! So I headed over to that section of my screenshots –
And discovered a problem. Namely, that none of those shots had the trio in the right Alice-Victor-Smiler order. She was either off to the wrong side doing her thing, or standing in the middle.
Now, MOST people would have just gone “well, them’s the breaks” and either just used one of the images regardless, or adjusted the order of the “times” portion of the image. But I really wanted to keep the three in the Alice-Victor-Smiler order, because Victor is the “hinge” of their particular polycule – Alice and Smiler are both romantically involved with him, while they consider each other friends (or possibly something queerplatonic? It gets a little harder to slap a label on their relationship when they don’t do any romantic stuff together but happily team up to lovingly dominate Victor XD). And I really wanted to have a trio shot of them in the right order, wearing the right clothes.
So guess who booted up her Sims 4 Chill Valicer save, turned off free will, assembled her OT3 in Smiler’s party barn, got a suitcase so I could change Victor’s “suit” everyday outfit to the new CC suit that looks the most like his actual movie outfit (with the right color waistcoat and pants) without sending him back to the bedroom, put everyone in the right outfits, decided that actually the second floor hallway would be a better spot to gather for a photo, had everyone travel THERE, set up Alice’s tripod and camera, and did a ten-shot photoshoot of the trio, cycling through the poses until I had a couple to pick from where they were all in the right order? XD I’m a NORMAL PERSON who does NORMAL THINGS, I swear! Anyway, I got my shots, let poor Victor and Alice go to the bathroom, and shut down my game so I could go look at my screenshots –
And ran into another problem where I couldn’t decide between three poses – two flirty poses (one with Victor standing in the middle looking proud while Alice looks adoringly at him and Smiler makes eyes in the background; and one with Victor and Alice looking adoringly at each other while Smiler presses their hands against their heart lovingly in the background) and one goofy pose (with the three of them in silly poses and making faces at the camera). So I ended up just using all three, framing the goofy shot with the two flirty shots. XD And then added “It’s Just Math.” under the pictures. XD So, yeah, that’ll be my “bonus” image for Valentine’s Day on Wednesday! Or, well, one of them, because I’m thinking of doing a “friendship is important too” valentine with Smileon my Smiler bear and Us. XD Well see what happens!
Writing: Started Chapter 4 of “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of!” We opened with Smiler finishing up explaining what happened to Sergeant Tannen of the Bluecoat squad that just came upon them – Tannen considered it a “fucking strange story,” but Alice and Victor backed them up. Tannen was just saying that they had to come down to their station for a bit to give their statements before they could go about their business (and making fun of Alice for her previous stint in the cells of Bow Street), when one of his squad members called for his attention. . .yeah, things are about to kick off as we move into my “Accused” snippet, where the trio get, well, ACCUSED of murder. Time to clean up that chase sequence I’m actually quite proud of a little bit more! :D
YouTube: Started later than I intended because of getting wrapped up in my Valicertines, but I did get two videos out of the Watch Later, so mission at least partly accomplished!
A) First up, from the Watch Later, the OXBoxtra content of the evening –
I. “7 Most Kick-Ass Intro Cinematics That Didn’t Need to Go This Hard” – Luke and Ellen of OXtra take us through some of their favorite awesome intros to video games! From the shockingly-well-rendered opening cinematic of the original World of Warcraft (with character designs and graphics that hold up in 2024, over a decade later), to the beloved zoom-out showing off the city of Midgard in the original Final Fantasy VII (which was re-rendered as an example of what kind of graphics the PS3 could support shortly before that came out), to the solemn voice of Ron Perlman informing us once again that “War. . .war never changes” over the rubble in the opening of Fallout 3 (marking the franchise’s turn into fully 3D), these intro cinematics stay with you. And given everyone gushing about their personal favorites in the comments, I fully expect to see a “Commenter Edition” on this soon enough. Looking forward to it!
II. “7 Non-Romanceable Characters That Thirsty Fans Simply Won't Give Up On” – Andy, Mike, and Jane taking us through the unromanceable characters that the fans will do whatever they can to find some way to romance! Whether that’s simply making wistful fan art (Takemura from Cyberpunk 2077), sending angry petitions to the developer demanding that the character be made romanceable (Raphael from Baldur’s Gate III), or taking matters into their own hands with mods (Nick Valentine from Fallout 4). Might I also recommend the “make Sims of them and your player character” method to soothe people’s thirsts? I mean, it’s worked wonders for my OT3. :p
B) And then it was over to the Subs for the GrayStillPlays video of the day – “Long Cars vs Stairs in GTA 5!” Another Alex Torture Board, this put the longest vehicles in the game against another one of his Patented Evil Stairs Variety Packs, featuring –
I. Crumbling Snow Stairs – a set of stairs made up of snow blocks, some of which would melt, and some of which would fall out from under the vehicle as it attempted the climb. Fiendish in its simplicity!
II. Sloping, Spinning, Rainbow Stairs – a set of stairs made up of rotating rainbow-colored tubes, with the occasional conjoined-twin tube showing up to create a spinning road block of sorts. Without traction, Gray wasn’t going ANYWHERE on these.
III. Downward Snake Staircase – a set of large stairs that snaked first to the right, then to the left in a couple of fiendish curves designed to send cars skidding off the edge – and this particular challenge was timed, giving Gray a mere twenty-six seconds to get to the bottom. I mean, Gray got to the bottom of the platform a lot, does that count? :p
IV. Vibing Stairs – a set of stairs pulsing a variety of different colors and moving back and forth in a circle – that is, it would come forward, then pull away, tracing a circle with its bottom stair. This proved to be the most fiendish of all, because as Gray ascended, he had to learn the pattern of when he could go and pick up a bunch of stairs, and when he had to stop because otherwise he’d slide off the board as it circled out from under him. And because the stairs were moving at different speeds as they went around and around the circle. . .yeah. This one took a while.
So, which long car won? Well, the rent-a-bus couldn’t get past the first few steps of the snow stairs by virtue of smacking its back end into the concrete and being unable to move; the snow-covered “SIBERIA” plates SUV naturally made it up the snow, but couldn’t get past the spinning cylinders; my beloved Wastelander brute-forced its way up the Sloping Spinning Rainbow Stairs, only to constantly skid out and fall off those damn snake stairs – meaning the winner was, of all things, the big rally sports box truck with the Globe Oil branding! This is the MTL Dune, according to gtabase.com website, and according to Gray it has wheels of dark matter, as it sticks to FUCKING EVERYTHING. Like, it took out the first three challenges no problem – it didn’t even drift the tiniest bit on the Snake Staircase. It DID have some trouble with the Vibing Stairs, but that wasn’t its fault, it was the fact that those stairs were designed by the Devil. XD So yeah, looks like we have another one to add to the roster of “cars we want in the post-apocalypse” – especially if you’re going downhill on a curve in a hurry!
So yeah -- good portion of the day sucked, but Valicertines, writing, and YouTube were fun. And now it is time for me to head to bed and see if I can actually get enough sleep this time. . .with this PMS, I doubt it. >( Tomorrow -- well, the only things I KNOW I'll be doing is some tumblr catch-up and getting those drafts ready for my Valicertine's Day update on Victor Luvs Alice on Wednesday. And keeping up with GrayStillPlays and Jon. Oh, and getting in a workout, of course. Haven't decided yet if I'm firing up Fallout 4 and continuing my travels from the Cambridge Police Station back to Sanctuary and the Red Rocket, or clearing more videos from my Watch Later. (Baldur's Gate III isn't getting considered as there's a patch coming out next week -- in fact, there's a good chance it'll be on Valentine's Day as one of the updates is to kissing animations -- and I want to get past that before I consider touching the game again.) We'll see how I feel tomorrow, honestly. *shrug* Night all!
