All Right Saturday
Mar. 30th, 2024 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThere were a few frustrating bits (including my parents finding ANOTHER potential leak near the chimney that now needs to be patched up, thanks to all the damn rain), but overall I'm pretty satisfied with how it went --
Tumblr: Maybe not as productive as I might have liked, but I still got the important stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Despite a very late start (I got up later than I planned to, and then had to change my sheets after breakfast – a process that always takes roughly a half-hour at least because of all the plushie wrangling I have to do), I got the initial drafts for the next Chill Valicer Save update (the one covering the rather chaotic Love Day where that guy flirted with Alice right in front of Victor) done! Pictures were all uploaded and starter text copied over from the original Dreamwidth entry before lunch, and the main text all edited and ready to go after lunch.
Valice Multiverse – Nothing happening on here ask-box-wise or thread-wise, so I just chucked another installment of the OT3 Week Valicer fics (the “Nontraditional Soulmates” fic, to be precise) into the queue. *shrug* It’s something!
Sims 4: Well, it took me longer than I wanted (mostly because it took me a bit longer than expected to update a couple of my mods (forgot in which category LittleMsSam had put the two of hers I use, then had to download a new “core library” mod from Lot51 to make one of Waffle’s Mix-In’s werewolf mods (the meditating lowers fury) work, since he changed how it functioned), and of course I had to do the whole “make copies of my saves and Tray folders before adding the mods back in” rigmarole first), but I did indeed make it back to the Chill Valicer Save today! And as it turns out, it was Summer Monday, not Wednesday (aka SimCity Founding), so I figured the best thing to do was to have the gang go and open their store again –
A) But first – when I left it, Victor had just realized that holy SHIT did poor Shadow the dog need a bath. XD So I had him take her upstairs to give her a scrub in the new fancy tub, while Alice (hanging out in Smiler’s room) got send to bed to top up her energy and Smiler finished upgrading their video production station with the “auto-update” upgrade that keeps it from breaking. Nice. :) They then studied the trends and discovered people were interested in tech reviews again, so I had them do a gadget review! To my shock and amusement, the gadget they chose was what looked like an old early 2000s cellphone – you know those “candybar” models that just had all the buttons and the little screen right on the front? That sort of thing. I promptly put “less of a review and more of a history lesson” in the description when they finished. XD
B) While that was happening, Victor finished up Shadow’s bath – and while I was clicking on her to see what I wanted to do next, I realized something: despite Shadow being an Adventurous dog, I had NEVER actually taken her on an adventure! And as Victor was feeling pretty darn good, I decided that 3:30 AM was a perfectly good time for them to dive down the rabbithole. XD Literally – the “go on an adventure” option involves a Sim and their dog disappearing into a rabbit hole and having a little text adventure off-lot. Victor and Shadow thus headed down the front path, where – as per the text adventure – they headed to Brindleton Bay and Whiskerman’s Wharf, where they passed by the still-hopping Salty Paws Saloon before strolling down to the harbor to track the scent that Shadow was following. Turns out she’d smelled something interesting on a boat, but the trail went dead at an empty dock. Victor assured her it was all right, and when they got home, I had him give her a treat for being a good girl. :) It wasn’t anything spectacular, but hey – always good to engage with a part of the game I haven’t really messed around with before!
C) With the adventure over, though, it was time to start getting on with the business of the day! Victor went and hit the bathroom before going to tend his greenhouse (the new set of overgrown crops were looking VERY weedy), while Alice woke up, licked herself clean, then went out onto the front porch to call all their Free-Spirited cats home from their own adventures. And to finally take the cone off poor Surprise. She then set about cleaning the spoiled food out of the fridge before getting herself a plate of berry waffles. Smiler, meanwhile, edited their “tech review” of the candybar phone, then went outside to feed the chickens and clean their coop –
A process annoyingly interrupted by a specter, who caused them to drop their trash in favor of getting sprinkled. *grumbles* Darn distracting blob-ghosts. . . I had Smiler loot the resultant pile for parts, then dropped it in the trash can for them and had them go sort out all the recyclables so the gang didn’t have to worry about anything overflowing any time soon. While they were doing that (and I had to knock Victor out of a perma-weeding loop on a bugged plant so he would tend the rest of the garden), Alice finished her breakfast, cleaned MORE spoiled food out of the fridge (in fact, cleaning spoiled things out of fridges was going to become a theme of the day, as you will find out), then went and fed Toothy the cowplant before going to give the chickens a bit more food (as at least one hen was still starving). As she took care of that, I decided that Smiler should probably clear that specter that was lurking by the front path and being a distraction on the way to the trash can and had them present them with a dark red chatterbot of their own design. To my relief, the specter appreciated the gift, and gave Smiler a glob of wraith wax! :D We do love our sacred candles around here. . .
D) With the specter no more, farm chores could continue – Alice collected the eggs from the chicken coop and chatted with all the chickens (who were glad to talk to her today, hooray), while Smiler went to check on Moory and see how she was doing. The cow wasn’t impressed with Smiler’s initial attempts at conversation, but cheerfully accepted a tipping. Smiler was thus able to successfully milk her for both the standard six regular milk and one enriched milk. :) Good use of 25 simoleons! And, as I continually state, it’s not like the gang can’t afford it. Victor, meanwhile, finished up all the non-buggy garden tending, got the beeswax and the honey out of the beehive, and grabbed himself some banana split waffles to eat – he ran out to have a quick flirt with Smiler in the cow paddock while Alice was once again put on “get all this spoiled food out of the fridge, please” duty (seriously, so much stuff went bad today! This is what happens when you have a lot of produce and dairy products and such and Sims who don’t eat much if at all). I then sent everyone into the greenhouse to harvest a few key plants (Alice got the soy and black beans, bell peppers, and strawberries because she likes them; Victor got the emotional berries off the Tree of Emotions (a full set of all the different ones this time) and some pineapples; and Smiler got their poison fireleaf and noxious elderberries, unfortunately getting a slight rash in the process), then had Victor super-sell everything else. While waiting for him to finish up, I had Alice do a little scavenge in the yard (unearthing an emerald, nice) and sell a painting, and had Smiler brush off Shadow (still hanging out in the front entrance for some reason) – then, once everyone was ready, I dumped the day’s milk and eggs into the fridge –
E) And sent them off to San Myshuno and their grocery store! I had Alice open the place up in the hopes that it would allow her to greet customers (she is bizarrely buggy in that regard), then had everyone change into their hot weather wear since it was pretty warm in the city (well, technically Smiler was ALREADY in hot weather wear, but I decided I wanted them to wear a different set – went with the silly backwards cap and sunglasses XD). There was a brief moment of flirtation on the sidewalk outside their store (Victor and Smiler sharing a kiss, and Victor and Alice holding hands while Smiler looked on with a grin) –
F) And then – RETAIL TIME! Starting with the first customer of the day, Bella Goth! I was pleased to see that Alice WAS able to greet customers this time around and had her go say hi to Bella – a process that took some doing as Bella kept wandering around the store before Alice could reach her, but she got there in the end. Meanwhile, a super-confident Smiler went straight up to visiting Sulanian Ukupanipo (I THINK he’s a mermaid, but wouldn’t swear to it), greeted him, and immediately closed the deal, getting the guy to buy a bag of deodorant gummies for $179. XD Smiler and Victor then proceeded to chat with other customers while Alice kept working on Bella – she eventually closed the deal on her too, though it didn’t result in quite as spectacular a sale – Bella, as it turned out, only wanted a mere jar of meat substitute for $24. Aurelio Robles buying a bottle of milk from the fridges unprompted netted them more profit, as that cost him $25. XD Still, a sale’s a sale! While all this was happening, though, I noticed some displays were looking a bit manky, and prepared to have Victor magically clean them –
G) And then went “WAIT. YOU HAVE BEEN MEANING TO DO THIS FOR AGES, INCLUDING RIGHT BEFORE THEY LEFT FOR THE STORE TODAY. BIND HIS DRAGON FAMILIAR TO HIM FIRST.”
So I did. XD And thus Victor ended up with a very cute dark purple dragon buddy named Darkwing (the pre-generated name, I quite liked it and thus stuck with it) flying behind him for the rest of the day as he did his thing. :) I will always be a bit salty that you can’t do more with familiars than just have them hang around your Sim (and bring them back to life if they overload and die), but they do LOOK absolutely adorable, and I’m glad Victor was able to get the dragon one I so wanted him to get. :) Now if only he could cuddle the little guy. . .ah well.
H) Anyway – back to Retail Time! And to the infamous lag on this lot, unfortunately – based on what I saw today, it seems to be primarily tied to Sims actually BUYING stuff, as it seems to happen most often when people are waiting to be rung up or right after they’ve been rung up and they still need to grab their item. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad, with only a few instances today, but still – meh. But the trio persevered, chatting with various customers and doing their best to get them to buy stuff – and succeeding pretty admirably! Victor talked a guy named Patrick into buying a block of beeswax for $18, then immediately rang up visiting teenager Ren for the same thing, while Smiler helped a kid named Wren buy a small $5 lettuce and some dude named Aarush grabbed an avocado from the veggie stands for $25. Alice, meanwhile, was working over an elder named Samuel – but as he found her unattractive (as per Wonderful Whims), I don’t think her attempts to get him to buy stuff worked very well. :p She instead went to ring up Agnes Crumplebottom for a $68 bag of fresh bread – fortunately distracting the woman from noticing Smiler lay a cute cheek kiss on Victor. XD Smiler then headed to the center aisle and let off a happy blast to try and improve everyone’s moods –
And at this point, everything started getting a little chaotic, as a bunch of people suddenly wanted to be rung up at once! Alice took care of a lady named Giovanna despite the lag’s best efforts, ringing her up for a $70 jar of honey, while Smiler discovered Alice had been more successful at convincing Samuel to buy than she’d realized and rung him up for a box of blackberry jam for $455. They also went around and rung up a kid named Taka for a box of vegetarian MREs for $482 (must be buying them for his parents). Victor, however, was the real winner of the selling spree, managing to sell a Happy Scent perfume to a “loiterer” named Joey (who REALLY had to go to the bathroom) for a cool $1,174! Seems like perfume is probably the biggest ticket item in this shop!
I) With that taken care of (and a lady named Fetia snagging herself a $5 Cereberry in the background), Victor went ahead and did some more Scruberooing of shelves and fridges while Smiler and Alice kept attending customers – Smiler ringing up the kid Pierce for a $206 box of canned green beans, and Alice (after an ANNOYINGLY long wait) teen Sofia for a $517 box of strawberry jam. Alice then headed into the break room to make some hamburger sliders, as she was feeling hungry, and I noticed that Victor kind of needed to pee and sent him into the bathroom –
Only for another wave of “hey I would like to buy things” to hit the store! I quickly had Alice stop her sliders (though she DID insist on taking the cutting board all the way down the stairs. . .then all the way back up again -.-) and Victor stop his attempt to use the toilet and sent them out to help Smiler on the selling floor. Between the three of them, they managed to get Javier a $44 jar of mayonnaise; Liberty Lee an $86 butterscotch cupcake; the returning Ren a $734 chocolate pie; and Makoa a $29 jar of mushroom conserve. Oh, and Aarush came back and bought a plasma fruit for $10. XD Talk about a last-minute rush!
J) And it was indeed the last-minute rush, because I looked over at the retail UI, realized the shop had been open nine hours, and it was probably time to close up. So, after an aborted attempt to get Smiler to befriend a customer so she would let them have her plasma (they now know that Kasandra likes the color green), I had them shut up the shop while Alice went and finished her sliders and Victor finally got his bathroom break. By the time they closed at 6:30 PM in-game, they’d made a nice profit of $4,174 on everything they’d sold! :) Yeah, I know Alice and Smiler can make more than that just in royalties, but it’s still pretty good considering I have everything on sale prices. Anyway, Alice called everyone down to the basement to eat, and she and Victor enjoyed some sliders while Smiler had a plasma fruit and bred some frogs to create an additional plasma pack to drink. Alice then went to clean up her plate –
And for some reason headed upstairs to do so. Following her, I realized that what she was doing was clearing some rotten raw meat out of the “butcher” display – and that a lot of the remaining meat was ALSO going rotten as she did so. Cue me trying to coordinate her and Victor’s efforts to clean up all the spoiled food from both the meat display and the fridges (which lead to a lot of placing a pile of dirty dishes on the nearest consignment shelf) while Smiler went around and removed a bunch of the “out of stock” signs from the shelves. Eventually, though, everything was cleaned up, with Victor and Smiler finishing things off while Alice caught a few winks on the breakroom couch (her werewolf instincts were demanding a nap) –
K) And so the trio were sent home! Where they encountered both freshly-delivered bills (just over $2,000, nothing major), and Mizuki the elderly vampire with the awesome boots who sometimes shows up. I think her intent is to get a drink from Victor or Alice, but she has yet to succeed so far. Victor dismissed Darkwing the dragon for the night (or, well, tried to – I had him do the dismissal, but the familiar didn’t actually go away – it remained stuck on the edge of the lot) and transportalated himself up to bed, with Alice running upstairs shortly thereafter to join him – Smiler, meanwhile, stayed outside, greeted Mizuki properly (instantly making Good Friends with her, as they do), and had a nice little chat before sending her home. They then went and played with Toothy the cowplant –
And then got stuck on “repairing all the wind turbines” duty, because Victor was asleep and couldn’t just Repairio them all. XD Fortunately they did a good job repairing all of them – and even managed to teach Surprise not to eat trash when the cat showed up to nibble at the piles of parts scattered around! :) I was prepared to end the session after that, but then I noticed Alice was up for some reason and went upstairs to discover Shock had woken her – fortunately, one lecture, and Alice had convinced the cat not to rouse Sims from their slumber anymore. :D We do love finally making progress on training these pets!
And so the session ACTUALLY ended on Alice playing Sim Scuffle while all the various pets came in to watch her (with Shock climbing up onto the bed next to Victor at one point – maybe THAT’S why she woke Alice up XD), Victor snoozing away, and Smiler scavenging for parts from the trash piles outside. :) Felt good to get back to my favorite trio – and they are making good progress with the store, I’m happy to say! Shelves are starting to get some seriously big gaps in them again. Though next time I play them, I think I might do another food sale somewhere. Because, well, as this episode proved, they have a LOT of food in their fridge at home that REALLY needs using up. We’ll see what we can do on Monday!
Writing: Got another healthy chunk on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of,” with Smiler having to tell Victor and Alice that the last group of Advocates who got personally blessed by Mar-Mal (having contacted the god before the marmalisation ritual was invented) now no longer eat or drink or go to the bathroom on their own. Because Mar-Mal doesn’t get why “hunger,” “thirst,” and “need to pee” are feelings people need to have. Victor and Alice were naturally a little freaked out, despite Smiler’s assurances that the unfortunates are well-cared-for by the Advocates and that they’re living proof that Mar-Mal can be gentler when bestowing its favor. And that the Advocates are looking for ways to make stuff like “needing to eat” and “needing to sleep” optional so they can eventually send people to Mar-Mal’s dimension directly without killing anyone. XD Fortunately Victor’s now got them back on exploring the house, and while Smiler’s just discovered an empty room, Alice has just found something a bit more interesting. . .
YouTube: Well, I did manage to clear that video from my Watch Later today! I put another one in, but the original one is gone! XD But yes, got that done and kept up on GrayStillPlays, so that was good –
A) First up, that video from Red Plumbob that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while – “♦ Grim Reaper - Evolution ♦ Sims1 - Sims2 - Sims3 – Sims4!” Yes, another one of their lovely comparison videos, this one looked at how the physical manifestation of death has evolved in the game over time, from his look (Sims 1 Grim is easily the creepiest, with his tattered cloak and visible skull head – the look just got gradually more and more cartoony from there), to how he reaps (weirdly enough, only the Sims 4 Grim uses his scythe on the regular – most of the others do special little rituals), to how to defeat him (Sims 3 is the one that allows you to actually play chess with death, if you’re interested), to fun little extras unique to each Grim (like how Bonehilda asks Grim for his autograph in Sims 1 if they’re both on the lot (feels like this could have been brought back in Sims 4 Paranormal Stuff!), or how the Sims 3 Reaper automatically resurrects Unlucky Sims because he thinks it would be a shame to deny others the entertainment of seeing them suffer XD). Good stuff as always – though, ironically, Red Plumbob had to apologize for the video not being as complete as it might have been, as their laptop died while they were making it, and they were shocked they could save any of the footage. Now THAT is irony. O.o
B) And second up, it was over to Subs for GrayStillPlays and “Cars vs Planets in GTA 5!” A double dose of space-themed Alex Torture Boards, this one saw Gray have to take on a couple of truly painful challenges on two different planets –
I. Destroy All 13 Alien Satellites On Uranus Amidst A Gravity Storm – Yeah, Gray couldn’t even finish reading the text at the start of this one because the gravity was so fucked up here. XD Basically, Gray had to somehow navigate the slippery, icy surface of Uranus using either an ATV or a buggy, ramming into or otherwise destroying the satellite dishes scattered around the area – all while dealing with the gravity changing every five seconds. With the options being Low Gravity (standard “make everything float a little bit more” stuff), Inverted Gravity (basically he just went straight up instead of straight down), Intense Gravity (the downforce got EVEN STRONGER, pinning Gray to the ground if he wasn’t in a vehicle), or Sideways Gravity (everything got yanked very hard either left or right). Also there was one alien with an Up-N-Atomizer force gun to torment him atop a pyramid hill, but Gray quickly learned he was meant to kill the guy and steal his gun so he could take out the satellites he couldn’t reach with his car. It took QUITE a bit of doing, what with Gray never able to properly line up a shot thanks to gravity constantly screwing him over and occasionally just straight up murdering him, but eventually Gray was able to destroy all the satellites and enter the script circle that activated the checkpoint! And then take the provided helicopter that spawned in and fly that INTO the checkpoint atop its high platform. Because Alex couldn’t just put it on the ground, no. That’s not his brand. XD
II. Rescue Stranded Austraunats [sic]. Be Aware Of Mars’s Famous Invisible Rocks – Here, Gray was free of the gravity storms (and also good spelling – Alex, please, get a spell checker), but he faced another formidable enemy – timed challenges. Specifically, Gray had to pick a car from the ones available at his base, then roam the Martian landscape looking for stranded astronauts. Once he located them, he had to activate their script circle so they hopped in his car, then get them back to base within however many seconds of oxygen they said they had left. All while avoiding the various Martian hazards – for not only were there invisible rocks and ramps to make Gray’s life harder, there were also sand piles filled with slow-down sticks; a couple of aliens and their spaceship firing on him with their lasers once he rescued one particular guy; and a full-on meteor storm raining down on him once he rescued this other particular guy (AND the alien ship was still chasing him as well). Gray quickly ruled out the Sherp as a viable option for saving people (our favorite box on huge wheels simply was not fast enough), along with one of the spiky armored arena cars (fast enough, but no backseat, meaning for a pair of astronauts with 69 seconds of air left between them, he could only save one) and the motorcycle (it’s a fucking motorcycle, there was NOWHERE for anyone else to sit). And while he had some luck using the six-wheeled truck to save the 69 pair, the nastiness of the Martian terrain meant that there was only one option to save all the others – the WASTELANDER. AKA the car that fears no invisible rocks. XD Though it does fear alien EMP blasts, admittedly. But Gray managed to power through, get through all the hazards, and get the guys safely back to base, after which they all climbed into the back of the Wastelander to join Gray as he ramped through the spawned-in win. And promptly went flying as Gray bailed out and let the truck crash. XD Good stuff, and very unique boards – hopefully we get more trips through the solar system from Alex in the future!
*nods* Yeah, not too shabby -- would have liked to have done a little more on tumblr, but at the same time, it was really nice to get back to my Valicer trio in Sims 4. Even if I had to keep stopping them from serenading each other all the time to make sure they focused on customers. XD Now, tomorrow is Easter Fallout Sunday -- plans are to work some more on my VLA tumblr drafts (gotta start getting tags and image alt text sorted on those Chill Valicer Save drafts); play Fallout 4 and get Victor to the Natick Police Station (might as well pick up some Eddie Winter tapes while he's on his way to the Glowing Sea); update the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; keep up with GrayStillPlays and Jon of Many A True Nerd; and get in a workout. I believe these are reasonable, achievable goals. . .and if not, well, I have an extra day off on Monday to catch up. :p Night all!
Tumblr: Maybe not as productive as I might have liked, but I still got the important stuff done –
Victor Luvs Alice – Despite a very late start (I got up later than I planned to, and then had to change my sheets after breakfast – a process that always takes roughly a half-hour at least because of all the plushie wrangling I have to do), I got the initial drafts for the next Chill Valicer Save update (the one covering the rather chaotic Love Day where that guy flirted with Alice right in front of Victor) done! Pictures were all uploaded and starter text copied over from the original Dreamwidth entry before lunch, and the main text all edited and ready to go after lunch.
Valice Multiverse – Nothing happening on here ask-box-wise or thread-wise, so I just chucked another installment of the OT3 Week Valicer fics (the “Nontraditional Soulmates” fic, to be precise) into the queue. *shrug* It’s something!
Sims 4: Well, it took me longer than I wanted (mostly because it took me a bit longer than expected to update a couple of my mods (forgot in which category LittleMsSam had put the two of hers I use, then had to download a new “core library” mod from Lot51 to make one of Waffle’s Mix-In’s werewolf mods (the meditating lowers fury) work, since he changed how it functioned), and of course I had to do the whole “make copies of my saves and Tray folders before adding the mods back in” rigmarole first), but I did indeed make it back to the Chill Valicer Save today! And as it turns out, it was Summer Monday, not Wednesday (aka SimCity Founding), so I figured the best thing to do was to have the gang go and open their store again –
A) But first – when I left it, Victor had just realized that holy SHIT did poor Shadow the dog need a bath. XD So I had him take her upstairs to give her a scrub in the new fancy tub, while Alice (hanging out in Smiler’s room) got send to bed to top up her energy and Smiler finished upgrading their video production station with the “auto-update” upgrade that keeps it from breaking. Nice. :) They then studied the trends and discovered people were interested in tech reviews again, so I had them do a gadget review! To my shock and amusement, the gadget they chose was what looked like an old early 2000s cellphone – you know those “candybar” models that just had all the buttons and the little screen right on the front? That sort of thing. I promptly put “less of a review and more of a history lesson” in the description when they finished. XD
B) While that was happening, Victor finished up Shadow’s bath – and while I was clicking on her to see what I wanted to do next, I realized something: despite Shadow being an Adventurous dog, I had NEVER actually taken her on an adventure! And as Victor was feeling pretty darn good, I decided that 3:30 AM was a perfectly good time for them to dive down the rabbithole. XD Literally – the “go on an adventure” option involves a Sim and their dog disappearing into a rabbit hole and having a little text adventure off-lot. Victor and Shadow thus headed down the front path, where – as per the text adventure – they headed to Brindleton Bay and Whiskerman’s Wharf, where they passed by the still-hopping Salty Paws Saloon before strolling down to the harbor to track the scent that Shadow was following. Turns out she’d smelled something interesting on a boat, but the trail went dead at an empty dock. Victor assured her it was all right, and when they got home, I had him give her a treat for being a good girl. :) It wasn’t anything spectacular, but hey – always good to engage with a part of the game I haven’t really messed around with before!
C) With the adventure over, though, it was time to start getting on with the business of the day! Victor went and hit the bathroom before going to tend his greenhouse (the new set of overgrown crops were looking VERY weedy), while Alice woke up, licked herself clean, then went out onto the front porch to call all their Free-Spirited cats home from their own adventures. And to finally take the cone off poor Surprise. She then set about cleaning the spoiled food out of the fridge before getting herself a plate of berry waffles. Smiler, meanwhile, edited their “tech review” of the candybar phone, then went outside to feed the chickens and clean their coop –
A process annoyingly interrupted by a specter, who caused them to drop their trash in favor of getting sprinkled. *grumbles* Darn distracting blob-ghosts. . . I had Smiler loot the resultant pile for parts, then dropped it in the trash can for them and had them go sort out all the recyclables so the gang didn’t have to worry about anything overflowing any time soon. While they were doing that (and I had to knock Victor out of a perma-weeding loop on a bugged plant so he would tend the rest of the garden), Alice finished her breakfast, cleaned MORE spoiled food out of the fridge (in fact, cleaning spoiled things out of fridges was going to become a theme of the day, as you will find out), then went and fed Toothy the cowplant before going to give the chickens a bit more food (as at least one hen was still starving). As she took care of that, I decided that Smiler should probably clear that specter that was lurking by the front path and being a distraction on the way to the trash can and had them present them with a dark red chatterbot of their own design. To my relief, the specter appreciated the gift, and gave Smiler a glob of wraith wax! :D We do love our sacred candles around here. . .
D) With the specter no more, farm chores could continue – Alice collected the eggs from the chicken coop and chatted with all the chickens (who were glad to talk to her today, hooray), while Smiler went to check on Moory and see how she was doing. The cow wasn’t impressed with Smiler’s initial attempts at conversation, but cheerfully accepted a tipping. Smiler was thus able to successfully milk her for both the standard six regular milk and one enriched milk. :) Good use of 25 simoleons! And, as I continually state, it’s not like the gang can’t afford it. Victor, meanwhile, finished up all the non-buggy garden tending, got the beeswax and the honey out of the beehive, and grabbed himself some banana split waffles to eat – he ran out to have a quick flirt with Smiler in the cow paddock while Alice was once again put on “get all this spoiled food out of the fridge, please” duty (seriously, so much stuff went bad today! This is what happens when you have a lot of produce and dairy products and such and Sims who don’t eat much if at all). I then sent everyone into the greenhouse to harvest a few key plants (Alice got the soy and black beans, bell peppers, and strawberries because she likes them; Victor got the emotional berries off the Tree of Emotions (a full set of all the different ones this time) and some pineapples; and Smiler got their poison fireleaf and noxious elderberries, unfortunately getting a slight rash in the process), then had Victor super-sell everything else. While waiting for him to finish up, I had Alice do a little scavenge in the yard (unearthing an emerald, nice) and sell a painting, and had Smiler brush off Shadow (still hanging out in the front entrance for some reason) – then, once everyone was ready, I dumped the day’s milk and eggs into the fridge –
E) And sent them off to San Myshuno and their grocery store! I had Alice open the place up in the hopes that it would allow her to greet customers (she is bizarrely buggy in that regard), then had everyone change into their hot weather wear since it was pretty warm in the city (well, technically Smiler was ALREADY in hot weather wear, but I decided I wanted them to wear a different set – went with the silly backwards cap and sunglasses XD). There was a brief moment of flirtation on the sidewalk outside their store (Victor and Smiler sharing a kiss, and Victor and Alice holding hands while Smiler looked on with a grin) –
F) And then – RETAIL TIME! Starting with the first customer of the day, Bella Goth! I was pleased to see that Alice WAS able to greet customers this time around and had her go say hi to Bella – a process that took some doing as Bella kept wandering around the store before Alice could reach her, but she got there in the end. Meanwhile, a super-confident Smiler went straight up to visiting Sulanian Ukupanipo (I THINK he’s a mermaid, but wouldn’t swear to it), greeted him, and immediately closed the deal, getting the guy to buy a bag of deodorant gummies for $179. XD Smiler and Victor then proceeded to chat with other customers while Alice kept working on Bella – she eventually closed the deal on her too, though it didn’t result in quite as spectacular a sale – Bella, as it turned out, only wanted a mere jar of meat substitute for $24. Aurelio Robles buying a bottle of milk from the fridges unprompted netted them more profit, as that cost him $25. XD Still, a sale’s a sale! While all this was happening, though, I noticed some displays were looking a bit manky, and prepared to have Victor magically clean them –
G) And then went “WAIT. YOU HAVE BEEN MEANING TO DO THIS FOR AGES, INCLUDING RIGHT BEFORE THEY LEFT FOR THE STORE TODAY. BIND HIS DRAGON FAMILIAR TO HIM FIRST.”
So I did. XD And thus Victor ended up with a very cute dark purple dragon buddy named Darkwing (the pre-generated name, I quite liked it and thus stuck with it) flying behind him for the rest of the day as he did his thing. :) I will always be a bit salty that you can’t do more with familiars than just have them hang around your Sim (and bring them back to life if they overload and die), but they do LOOK absolutely adorable, and I’m glad Victor was able to get the dragon one I so wanted him to get. :) Now if only he could cuddle the little guy. . .ah well.
H) Anyway – back to Retail Time! And to the infamous lag on this lot, unfortunately – based on what I saw today, it seems to be primarily tied to Sims actually BUYING stuff, as it seems to happen most often when people are waiting to be rung up or right after they’ve been rung up and they still need to grab their item. Fortunately it wasn’t too bad, with only a few instances today, but still – meh. But the trio persevered, chatting with various customers and doing their best to get them to buy stuff – and succeeding pretty admirably! Victor talked a guy named Patrick into buying a block of beeswax for $18, then immediately rang up visiting teenager Ren for the same thing, while Smiler helped a kid named Wren buy a small $5 lettuce and some dude named Aarush grabbed an avocado from the veggie stands for $25. Alice, meanwhile, was working over an elder named Samuel – but as he found her unattractive (as per Wonderful Whims), I don’t think her attempts to get him to buy stuff worked very well. :p She instead went to ring up Agnes Crumplebottom for a $68 bag of fresh bread – fortunately distracting the woman from noticing Smiler lay a cute cheek kiss on Victor. XD Smiler then headed to the center aisle and let off a happy blast to try and improve everyone’s moods –
And at this point, everything started getting a little chaotic, as a bunch of people suddenly wanted to be rung up at once! Alice took care of a lady named Giovanna despite the lag’s best efforts, ringing her up for a $70 jar of honey, while Smiler discovered Alice had been more successful at convincing Samuel to buy than she’d realized and rung him up for a box of blackberry jam for $455. They also went around and rung up a kid named Taka for a box of vegetarian MREs for $482 (must be buying them for his parents). Victor, however, was the real winner of the selling spree, managing to sell a Happy Scent perfume to a “loiterer” named Joey (who REALLY had to go to the bathroom) for a cool $1,174! Seems like perfume is probably the biggest ticket item in this shop!
I) With that taken care of (and a lady named Fetia snagging herself a $5 Cereberry in the background), Victor went ahead and did some more Scruberooing of shelves and fridges while Smiler and Alice kept attending customers – Smiler ringing up the kid Pierce for a $206 box of canned green beans, and Alice (after an ANNOYINGLY long wait) teen Sofia for a $517 box of strawberry jam. Alice then headed into the break room to make some hamburger sliders, as she was feeling hungry, and I noticed that Victor kind of needed to pee and sent him into the bathroom –
Only for another wave of “hey I would like to buy things” to hit the store! I quickly had Alice stop her sliders (though she DID insist on taking the cutting board all the way down the stairs. . .then all the way back up again -.-) and Victor stop his attempt to use the toilet and sent them out to help Smiler on the selling floor. Between the three of them, they managed to get Javier a $44 jar of mayonnaise; Liberty Lee an $86 butterscotch cupcake; the returning Ren a $734 chocolate pie; and Makoa a $29 jar of mushroom conserve. Oh, and Aarush came back and bought a plasma fruit for $10. XD Talk about a last-minute rush!
J) And it was indeed the last-minute rush, because I looked over at the retail UI, realized the shop had been open nine hours, and it was probably time to close up. So, after an aborted attempt to get Smiler to befriend a customer so she would let them have her plasma (they now know that Kasandra likes the color green), I had them shut up the shop while Alice went and finished her sliders and Victor finally got his bathroom break. By the time they closed at 6:30 PM in-game, they’d made a nice profit of $4,174 on everything they’d sold! :) Yeah, I know Alice and Smiler can make more than that just in royalties, but it’s still pretty good considering I have everything on sale prices. Anyway, Alice called everyone down to the basement to eat, and she and Victor enjoyed some sliders while Smiler had a plasma fruit and bred some frogs to create an additional plasma pack to drink. Alice then went to clean up her plate –
And for some reason headed upstairs to do so. Following her, I realized that what she was doing was clearing some rotten raw meat out of the “butcher” display – and that a lot of the remaining meat was ALSO going rotten as she did so. Cue me trying to coordinate her and Victor’s efforts to clean up all the spoiled food from both the meat display and the fridges (which lead to a lot of placing a pile of dirty dishes on the nearest consignment shelf) while Smiler went around and removed a bunch of the “out of stock” signs from the shelves. Eventually, though, everything was cleaned up, with Victor and Smiler finishing things off while Alice caught a few winks on the breakroom couch (her werewolf instincts were demanding a nap) –
K) And so the trio were sent home! Where they encountered both freshly-delivered bills (just over $2,000, nothing major), and Mizuki the elderly vampire with the awesome boots who sometimes shows up. I think her intent is to get a drink from Victor or Alice, but she has yet to succeed so far. Victor dismissed Darkwing the dragon for the night (or, well, tried to – I had him do the dismissal, but the familiar didn’t actually go away – it remained stuck on the edge of the lot) and transportalated himself up to bed, with Alice running upstairs shortly thereafter to join him – Smiler, meanwhile, stayed outside, greeted Mizuki properly (instantly making Good Friends with her, as they do), and had a nice little chat before sending her home. They then went and played with Toothy the cowplant –
And then got stuck on “repairing all the wind turbines” duty, because Victor was asleep and couldn’t just Repairio them all. XD Fortunately they did a good job repairing all of them – and even managed to teach Surprise not to eat trash when the cat showed up to nibble at the piles of parts scattered around! :) I was prepared to end the session after that, but then I noticed Alice was up for some reason and went upstairs to discover Shock had woken her – fortunately, one lecture, and Alice had convinced the cat not to rouse Sims from their slumber anymore. :D We do love finally making progress on training these pets!
And so the session ACTUALLY ended on Alice playing Sim Scuffle while all the various pets came in to watch her (with Shock climbing up onto the bed next to Victor at one point – maybe THAT’S why she woke Alice up XD), Victor snoozing away, and Smiler scavenging for parts from the trash piles outside. :) Felt good to get back to my favorite trio – and they are making good progress with the store, I’m happy to say! Shelves are starting to get some seriously big gaps in them again. Though next time I play them, I think I might do another food sale somewhere. Because, well, as this episode proved, they have a LOT of food in their fridge at home that REALLY needs using up. We’ll see what we can do on Monday!
Writing: Got another healthy chunk on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of,” with Smiler having to tell Victor and Alice that the last group of Advocates who got personally blessed by Mar-Mal (having contacted the god before the marmalisation ritual was invented) now no longer eat or drink or go to the bathroom on their own. Because Mar-Mal doesn’t get why “hunger,” “thirst,” and “need to pee” are feelings people need to have. Victor and Alice were naturally a little freaked out, despite Smiler’s assurances that the unfortunates are well-cared-for by the Advocates and that they’re living proof that Mar-Mal can be gentler when bestowing its favor. And that the Advocates are looking for ways to make stuff like “needing to eat” and “needing to sleep” optional so they can eventually send people to Mar-Mal’s dimension directly without killing anyone. XD Fortunately Victor’s now got them back on exploring the house, and while Smiler’s just discovered an empty room, Alice has just found something a bit more interesting. . .
YouTube: Well, I did manage to clear that video from my Watch Later today! I put another one in, but the original one is gone! XD But yes, got that done and kept up on GrayStillPlays, so that was good –
A) First up, that video from Red Plumbob that I’ve been meaning to watch for a while – “♦ Grim Reaper - Evolution ♦ Sims1 - Sims2 - Sims3 – Sims4!” Yes, another one of their lovely comparison videos, this one looked at how the physical manifestation of death has evolved in the game over time, from his look (Sims 1 Grim is easily the creepiest, with his tattered cloak and visible skull head – the look just got gradually more and more cartoony from there), to how he reaps (weirdly enough, only the Sims 4 Grim uses his scythe on the regular – most of the others do special little rituals), to how to defeat him (Sims 3 is the one that allows you to actually play chess with death, if you’re interested), to fun little extras unique to each Grim (like how Bonehilda asks Grim for his autograph in Sims 1 if they’re both on the lot (feels like this could have been brought back in Sims 4 Paranormal Stuff!), or how the Sims 3 Reaper automatically resurrects Unlucky Sims because he thinks it would be a shame to deny others the entertainment of seeing them suffer XD). Good stuff as always – though, ironically, Red Plumbob had to apologize for the video not being as complete as it might have been, as their laptop died while they were making it, and they were shocked they could save any of the footage. Now THAT is irony. O.o
B) And second up, it was over to Subs for GrayStillPlays and “Cars vs Planets in GTA 5!” A double dose of space-themed Alex Torture Boards, this one saw Gray have to take on a couple of truly painful challenges on two different planets –
I. Destroy All 13 Alien Satellites On Uranus Amidst A Gravity Storm – Yeah, Gray couldn’t even finish reading the text at the start of this one because the gravity was so fucked up here. XD Basically, Gray had to somehow navigate the slippery, icy surface of Uranus using either an ATV or a buggy, ramming into or otherwise destroying the satellite dishes scattered around the area – all while dealing with the gravity changing every five seconds. With the options being Low Gravity (standard “make everything float a little bit more” stuff), Inverted Gravity (basically he just went straight up instead of straight down), Intense Gravity (the downforce got EVEN STRONGER, pinning Gray to the ground if he wasn’t in a vehicle), or Sideways Gravity (everything got yanked very hard either left or right). Also there was one alien with an Up-N-Atomizer force gun to torment him atop a pyramid hill, but Gray quickly learned he was meant to kill the guy and steal his gun so he could take out the satellites he couldn’t reach with his car. It took QUITE a bit of doing, what with Gray never able to properly line up a shot thanks to gravity constantly screwing him over and occasionally just straight up murdering him, but eventually Gray was able to destroy all the satellites and enter the script circle that activated the checkpoint! And then take the provided helicopter that spawned in and fly that INTO the checkpoint atop its high platform. Because Alex couldn’t just put it on the ground, no. That’s not his brand. XD
II. Rescue Stranded Austraunats [sic]. Be Aware Of Mars’s Famous Invisible Rocks – Here, Gray was free of the gravity storms (and also good spelling – Alex, please, get a spell checker), but he faced another formidable enemy – timed challenges. Specifically, Gray had to pick a car from the ones available at his base, then roam the Martian landscape looking for stranded astronauts. Once he located them, he had to activate their script circle so they hopped in his car, then get them back to base within however many seconds of oxygen they said they had left. All while avoiding the various Martian hazards – for not only were there invisible rocks and ramps to make Gray’s life harder, there were also sand piles filled with slow-down sticks; a couple of aliens and their spaceship firing on him with their lasers once he rescued one particular guy; and a full-on meteor storm raining down on him once he rescued this other particular guy (AND the alien ship was still chasing him as well). Gray quickly ruled out the Sherp as a viable option for saving people (our favorite box on huge wheels simply was not fast enough), along with one of the spiky armored arena cars (fast enough, but no backseat, meaning for a pair of astronauts with 69 seconds of air left between them, he could only save one) and the motorcycle (it’s a fucking motorcycle, there was NOWHERE for anyone else to sit). And while he had some luck using the six-wheeled truck to save the 69 pair, the nastiness of the Martian terrain meant that there was only one option to save all the others – the WASTELANDER. AKA the car that fears no invisible rocks. XD Though it does fear alien EMP blasts, admittedly. But Gray managed to power through, get through all the hazards, and get the guys safely back to base, after which they all climbed into the back of the Wastelander to join Gray as he ramped through the spawned-in win. And promptly went flying as Gray bailed out and let the truck crash. XD Good stuff, and very unique boards – hopefully we get more trips through the solar system from Alex in the future!
*nods* Yeah, not too shabby -- would have liked to have done a little more on tumblr, but at the same time, it was really nice to get back to my Valicer trio in Sims 4. Even if I had to keep stopping them from serenading each other all the time to make sure they focused on customers. XD Now, tomorrow is Easter Fallout Sunday -- plans are to work some more on my VLA tumblr drafts (gotta start getting tags and image alt text sorted on those Chill Valicer Save drafts); play Fallout 4 and get Victor to the Natick Police Station (might as well pick up some Eddie Winter tapes while he's on his way to the Glowing Sea); update the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; keep up with GrayStillPlays and Jon of Many A True Nerd; and get in a workout. I believe these are reasonable, achievable goals. . .and if not, well, I have an extra day off on Monday to catch up. :p Night all!
