Reasonably Good Saturday
Aug. 24th, 2024 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickThere were some not-great vibes this morning -- I thought something was wrong with the toilet this morning, but it turned out to be Mom cleaning the washing machine, and Dad seemed grumpy (I don't think he's getting much in the way of sleep at all lately) -- but they cleared up as the day went on, and I got a good amount of stuff done! All the important bits, anyway --
Cleaning & Laundry: Well, got started a little later than I might have wanted, but other than that it was a pretty typical Cleaning Saturday for me – began the clean shortly before 11 AM, and ended it right after 1 PM, just in time for lunch. Laundry, as usual, took longer (partly because Mom wanted to wash her and my sheets together), but I got my blankets back by a little after 3 PM, and my sheets back by – well, I picked them up from the dining table in the living room at 6:30 PM, but I think they were ready before then. :p So yeah, not much to complain about on that end! At least it’s all done again for another couple of weeks!
Tumblr: As expected for a cleaning Saturday, I didn’t do much over here, but I did get the pictures for my upcoming post on my Ministry of Joy nightclub build on Victor Luvs Alice sorted – eleven pictures showing off the building at various angles. We’ll see about getting that post sorted in the drafts tomorrow morning!
Sims 4: I did indeed end up hitting the building save today (after getting all my cleaning done and catching up on my online usuals, I didn’t feel like going through all my mods and cleaning THOSE up as well – next weekend!) – though I ended up doing a little bit of CAS fun as well as building! Because hey, I do have a convenient Valicer trio there to play dress-up with should I so desire… Let me bring you up to speed –
A) First things first – upon entering the save and heading to Windenburg, I hit up the Hill Valley Courthouse museum lot to make a few final tweaks! Namely, moving and straightening a bit of the art around in the office “pit” area, and adding a pile of presents to the “wedding” room so Sims can give themselves wedding gifts if they so desire. I considered adding a vending machine too, but decided against it – it didn’t quite fit the vibes. I then renamed the lot “Hill Valley Courthouse M” (for museum) and saved it to my library for later. :)
B) With that sorted, I then popped into the Tiny Fandom Town lot to update that and get it ready for saving to my Library! Here’s what I did there –
I. I rotated the lot 180 degrees so that the entrance to the lot now faces the interior of the island, instead of facing out over the edge of the cliff/castle ruins the lot is built on and toward the ocean. I felt like turning it made more sense – you’d naturally have the entrance to your town facing the path you use to get to it! And you still get the great view, you just have to look the other way. :p
II. I added Lot Challenges and Lot Traits! The Lot Challenges for this lot include Creepy Crawlies (forces the Sims to occasionally suffer dangerous Jungle Adventure bug and bat attacks), Simple Living (forces the Sims to actually have food in the fridge before they can make meals), Off The Grid (forces the Sims to find ways to collect their own water and produce their own power), Reduce & Recycle (forces the Sims to clean up their own garbage), Wild Foxes (forces the Sims to deal with wild foxes wandering onto the lot and harassing any chickens they may have), and Wild Prairie Grass (forces the Sims to deal with wild prairie grass growing all over the place...which is actually a good thing because you can get all sorts of shit when you hack the grass down, so…). The Lot Traits include Natural Well (meaning the Sims are above a natural water source, so collecting water won’t be so hard), Geothermal (meaning the Sims are above a natural heat source, which will keep pools warm and help with power generation), and Sunny Aspect (the beautiful views can produce Inspired, Happy, or Energized moodlets at sunset). I felt like all of these fit the “abandoned island” aesthetic I was going for with this lot, while also making sure any Sims living there didn’t have to suffer TOO much from not having any power or water. And got to enjoy the great views, as EA intended. :p
III. I opened up the front of each little mini-plot in the tiny town by deleting a chunk of fence, then set up the pee bush, tent, and cooler in convenient places near the new entrance in each! Just so everything looked nice and neat, you know? I also recolored the clothesline to a nice light wood and put it and the wash basin near the front of the “first” mini-plot so it would be convenient for the first resident of the tiny town to use. :) I then popped out to the Map screen to check on the total value of the lot –
And found that it was $24,032. AKA about $4,000 more expensive than I wanted it to be, because my goal with this Tiny Town lot was to make it one that you could buy without having to use money cheats. Which mean I had to remove a bit more value from the lot so it would come down under $20,000 (aka the starting funds for a single Sim).
IV. So I went back into the lot, got out the terrain paint tool, and painted the interior of each mini-plot on the lot with the Smarter Starter Soil dirt to help define it, before removing almost all of the fencing I’d put around each mini-plot, leaving only the corners. This dropped the lot value a LOT, meaning when I went back out to the Map screen, the lot was now only $17,536! Pleased, I headed back into the lot to see if there were any last-minute landscaping touches that I wanted to make…
VI. And then was like “hang on, this lot is going to be SO DARK at night – what do we have for off-the-grid lighting options?” After a little poking around, I found a halfway-decent lamp hanging from a natural stick that was only $90, so I put seven of those on the lot, one for the “front” of each mini-plot. This raised the lot value, but only up to about $18,166, so I figured it was fine. :p I then saved it to my Library –
And uploaded it to the Gallery! :D Yes, it is now available for download if you so desire, under the name of “Tiny Crumbling Isle Town.” Because I wanted to give the people some more options for their Tiny Towns, damn it. :p Here’s a picture of it in its current form –
Not too shabby, right? I think it works very well as a starting tiny town. :) Hopefully others agree with me!
C) And with that sorted, I made sure everything was saved, then headed back to Brindleton Bay to put my Valicer trio there into CAS and make up a couple of formal outfits for them! Because I was in that sort of mood. :) I tried out two options for everybody during my poking – here’s what I got –
Victor:
First up, a full-body outfit that I believe is from Get Together that made me pause when I clicked on it – mainly, because my first thought was “wow, this is awfully baggy on Victor...hang on, is this a sack suit??” A sack suit, for the uninitiated, is a baggy suit that was one of the first mass-produced pieces of menswear to be created for anyone to wear – I downloaded a CC version of one to try out on Smiler a while back, so I’m a little surprised that there was apparently one already in the game! Or at least something with a very similar style… Anyway, it looked all right on Victor, but I think I prefer him in more fitted clothing.
Case in point, here is Victor in a much more fitted dark blue suit that I THINK is base game – I’m sorry, I didn’t keep detailed notes on where I was getting the clothes this time around. But yeah, a tighter fit suits him much better – even if I’m not sure about that open neck on the shirt. Would have thought that would have made this much too casual for a “formal” outfit! And the waistcoat looks maybe slightly too short? *shrug* I dunno, I’m not sure where it’s SUPPOSED to land on the frame. I do like the color on Victor, though – he always looks good in a nice dark blue. :)
Alice:
Took me a while to find stuff that I really liked on Alice for formalwear – some of what shows up in that category for feminine Sims feels much more like casual wear to me! But while scanning the various dresses, this one with a sort of polka dot pattern caught my eye, and once I recolored it to the light blue swatch, I thought it looked rather nice on Alice. :) Paired with a nice pair of white stockings and a pair of gray-and-black lace-ups, she’s on-point for a nice night on the town!
As for shorter dresses, I tried this wrap-around ruffly one out on Alice and decided I liked the look of it – no good blue swatches, though, so she’s in green instead. Hey, it’s fine to mix up the colors sometimes! This one is paired with those nice high diamond-patterned socks from Crystal Creations (still love the clothes from that pack), plus a pair of gray strap shoes. Though maybe I should have gone for pure black...or gold, to match the belt buckle on her belt. *shrug* Eh, it looks good enough!
Smiler –
Smiler can be another hard Sim to dress, given that they have a very distinct color scheme that I’ve been trying better to stick to – but I stumbled across this suit while checking out full-body options, and while there were no good yellow swatches, I think you’ll agree that dark purple suit jacket suits them nicely! :) Inspired, I went looking for formal shoes with purple in, and found these dark gray ones with a purple middle, which I thought worked very well indeed. (And if you look verrrry closely, you’ll be able to see some of Smiler’s trademark yellow-and-black in their socks XD)
And finally, here is an outfit I assembled after, having been unsuccessful in finding many good formal TOPS in yellow, I moved over to the pants and was shocked to immediately find a great pair in yellow (Get To Work pants, I believe). So I slapped those on them, went back to tops and instead searched black, and found this nice number. I like the patterned black vest, and the purple scarf is a nice extra touch. I do think it’s maybe a little casual for a “proper” formal number, but honestly that seems to be the theme here with these outfits. XD And Smiler is the type to do a more casual formal anyway, so win-win! :p
So yeah, that was my Simming for the day! Very enjoyable, and I’m glad to have gotten my Tiny Town lot up on the Gallery. :) Next weekend, though, definitely heading back to the Chill Valicer Save – especially since it’s Labor Day weekend, so I’ll have an extra day to play. :) Gotta finally get through Harvestfest and the gang’s next food sale! And then I have an idea for a vacation they can all take together...
Writing: Got another page or so done on “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” – the trio have made it to the top of the tower, and have found it to be a glass-roofed library absolutely bursting at the seams with books. They have also found the ghost Victor was sensing before – one Theodor “Elder” Gutknecht, former Whisper who was so intrigued by ghosts that he created his own ritual to leave his body and travel as they do. I left it off with Victor going “wait, are you still ALIVE then??” – next time, Gutknecht has to explain that no, he IS dead, he just died in a slightly-weird way. XD Coming up on the end of this chapter, so you should see it soon!
YouTube: Well, it was pretty tight, but we did get in our new usual Saturday Two –
A) First up, we had the GrayStillPlays offering of the day – “Testing RC cars vs impossible obstacles!” A ranked challenge torture board specifically for the two vanilla RC cars – the Bandito mini-monster-truck and the RC tank – and three custom monstrosities – a LEGO RC car that looked like a colorful box; a LEGO Technic RC “car” (which looked more like a bent elbow – Gray called it the RC Macaroni), and a janky pile of shit that was possessed by the devil. XD These brave contenders had to fight for points and superiority in the following four challenges –
I. Gray’s Room Speedrun – The RC cars had 39 seconds to get through an obstacle course that included a boomerang whipping around, a spinning coffee cup, a beer bottle spitting out very powerful water spouts, a bunch of deconstructed burgers on the floor, a chip can firing chips, and finally Gray’s mouse on its mousepad (which was also a slowdown circle), all in the name of going through the “Join” button on Gray’s YouTube Channel. The winner here proved to be the LEGO Box RC car, which drove roughly like the Bandito but had a loooot more speed, meaning it was the only one able to make it through the nonsense in time.
II. Traction Torture – The RC cars had to fight their way over a path made up entirely of Yeeters, who yanked the cars back and forth as they punched out with their hydraulic presses. Oh, and there was a jump midway through, with a Yeeter ready to take Gray out if he timed things wrong. The winner here was the RC Tank, which kept doing 360s on the spot from the force of the yeets but managed to stick to the ground a little better than the LEGO Box and the Bandito. At the very least, it got to the end of the challenge and the checkpoint after only half a million tries. XD
III. Stepping On LEGOs Stairs – The RC cars had to climb a staircase made of various LEGOs – first regular blocks that got steeper and steeper, then a couple ramps (the second of which was apparently upside-down, as the cars landed in what was clearly the UNDERSIDE of the block), then a very sheer rounded block, then basically a straight-up wall made up of those weird blocks with bumps on all sides (they use ‘em for car headlights a lot). The winner here was the RC Macaroni mobile (aka the weird triangle of LEGO Technic), because for some reason it had the ability to just Spider-Man its way up any surface with impunity. Comments suggest this thing was based on a real climbing machine, just boosted by the devil. XD
IV. RC Car Demolition – The RC cars were tasked with joining an RC demolition derby (complete with loads of other RC cars running around, a hidden pit in the middle, and a giant spiky ball of death bouncing about), with the goal of eliminating the three pink cars within a 69-second time limit (this was not made explicit in the board itself, Gray and his editor only found out after they timed it XD). I think the IDEA was that Gray would use C4 to destroy the cars, but – well, Alex gave him a tank. XD So Gray just hopped in that and used that to shoot the cars dead. Took a couple of tries, but he got there in the end, yay! So it seems the RC Tank is the car you want when taking on an Alex board! I – don’t think any of us are that surprised! XD
B) And second up, we had Jon and “Fallout: London - Part 5 - Beyond the Beefeaters!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Lady Aria taking on threats that are WAAAAY beyond her current level, like damn. XD Specifically –
I. She crossed Tower Bridge, despite being told “hey, you don’t NEED to cross Tower Bridge, it’s full of cannibals” just because the cannibals were Beefeaters and thus might have nice hats – fortunately for her, the ones on the bridge were mostly melee and able to be taken down without TOO much trouble. Unfortunately for her, they were mostly the lower ranks and thus had no fancy hats – just cannibal hoods. One DID have a nice Beefeater outfit, but it offered less damage protection than what she was currently wearing, so she had to leave it be.
II. Midway through the Tower Bridge crossing, though, she ended up doubling back because Jon spotted the old City Hall nearby and decided it might be worth raiding to see if there were any ridiculous mayor wigs or outfits inside. Instead, she found a Legendary Womble on the second floor – a creature that is supposed to be a cute and cuddly thing from a children’s cartoon, but in THIS universe is the local equivalent of the deathclaw. After getting trapped in an office by it for a while, Aria managed to escape past it down the lift shaft…
And then spotted a ledge where she could shoot it in relative safety and thought “okay, never mind that the game is warning me it’s far above my pay grade, let’s kill this thing.” XD To her credit though, between abusing the ledge in the lift and then the side office where she was trapped before (which the Womble couldn’t get into), she did manage to kill it! And got a TWO-SHOT crude gun off the corpse! Sadly, it couldn’t be combined with her crude rifle, and the accuracy on it was garbage, but Aria kept it as a good close-up weapon. And changed her sniper over to .303 ammo so she didn’t have three guns sharing the same ammo type.
III. After crossing Tower Bridge, she decided her next goal would be to get into the Tower of London, walking all around it looking for a way in (because OBVIOUSLY the tourist trap in the real world would have something cool going on in it, right?). Along the way, though, she found another group of Beefeaters – and to her delight, not only did one of them have the proper fancy hat she was looking for, another had a separate ruff that she could wear as its own item! She promptly took both and dressed herself up NICE and proper. XD
IV. After that, she resumed her attempts to figure out a way into the Tower of London – only to get distracted again by a distress signal on her Pip-Boy from a girl named Georgia, asking for help, that came from the nearby Sky Garden tower. Aria went to investigate, even though Jon felt like she was walking into a trap –
And found herself on the wrong end of the “Gatherers” faction, which dresses a bit like the Children of Atom, which is concerning. Aria managed to fight her way through them, though, and get to the top of the tower, where she found a bloody skeleton next to a radio – and when she approached, ANOTHER Legendary Womble dropped from the ceiling. Aria was promptly like “screw this” and booked it with Churchill as fast as she possibly could.
V. After another side jaunt into the nearby Tower Hill tube station (a tiny station with some more Beefeaters inside, nothing of particular interest in there beyond a few tickets and a lot of gore bags), Aria resumed her attempts to get into the Tower of London AGAIN...only to find herself trapped in an unending battle against the strangest, evilest enemy she’d come across yet. A foe who looked so simple and innocuous, but who proved to be utterly immune to everything she threw at it. A foe simply known –
As the Post Boxer. As in, a post box that is actually a robot with a circular saw, and for some reason took no damage when Aria started shooting it in the, well, post box. This thing was straight out of Doctor Who, I swear. XD Anyway, Aria attempted to run away from the post box to avoid its unending rage, but not only did it chase her, she ended up running around the front of the tower and getting shot to pieces by the turrets that were set up there! Well then. Lesson learned. Don’t fuck with the post-nuclear Royal Mail.
VI. One reloaded save later, Aria returned to the front of the Tower of London (giving the Post Boxer a WIIIIDE fucking berth) and attempted to take out the turrets there – only to have to flee in terror as Beefeaters spawned in from nowhere to wreck her shit. Fortunately she was able to run away to a better position (finding The Ferryman’s Dockhouse, aka where the hell she was supposed to go anyway for the main quest, in the process) and take out the ones chasing her, but we nearly had ANOTHER reload right after the previous one! Yeeps! But as stated, Aria did win against the Beefeaters, and thus trekked back to the Tower of London –
Only to find the front gates of the place Master-level locked. And Aria has absolutely no Lockpicking at all (yet, Jon has made it clear he intends to take some with his next level-up because most of the reward chests he’s been finding are locked just above her level too). So the episode ended with an annoyed Aria slogging her way reluctantly back to the main quest location to meet up with Archie and The Ferryman and, you know, actually progress the storyline and figure out her whole deal and all that. Not as appealing to her as getting some sick-ass hats, I know, but still. XD So we’ll see more of that next week! Fun times!
Not bad, not bad. And now I really need to head to bed -- tomorrow's goals include working on my MOJ post in my tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice; FINALLY getting back to Fallout 4 and starting The Trip Across Boston; updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; getting in a workout; and keeping up with Gray and Jon for the Sunday Two. All achievable goals -- so long as I get enough sleep, of course. Night all!
Cleaning & Laundry: Well, got started a little later than I might have wanted, but other than that it was a pretty typical Cleaning Saturday for me – began the clean shortly before 11 AM, and ended it right after 1 PM, just in time for lunch. Laundry, as usual, took longer (partly because Mom wanted to wash her and my sheets together), but I got my blankets back by a little after 3 PM, and my sheets back by – well, I picked them up from the dining table in the living room at 6:30 PM, but I think they were ready before then. :p So yeah, not much to complain about on that end! At least it’s all done again for another couple of weeks!
Tumblr: As expected for a cleaning Saturday, I didn’t do much over here, but I did get the pictures for my upcoming post on my Ministry of Joy nightclub build on Victor Luvs Alice sorted – eleven pictures showing off the building at various angles. We’ll see about getting that post sorted in the drafts tomorrow morning!
Sims 4: I did indeed end up hitting the building save today (after getting all my cleaning done and catching up on my online usuals, I didn’t feel like going through all my mods and cleaning THOSE up as well – next weekend!) – though I ended up doing a little bit of CAS fun as well as building! Because hey, I do have a convenient Valicer trio there to play dress-up with should I so desire… Let me bring you up to speed –
A) First things first – upon entering the save and heading to Windenburg, I hit up the Hill Valley Courthouse museum lot to make a few final tweaks! Namely, moving and straightening a bit of the art around in the office “pit” area, and adding a pile of presents to the “wedding” room so Sims can give themselves wedding gifts if they so desire. I considered adding a vending machine too, but decided against it – it didn’t quite fit the vibes. I then renamed the lot “Hill Valley Courthouse M” (for museum) and saved it to my library for later. :)
B) With that sorted, I then popped into the Tiny Fandom Town lot to update that and get it ready for saving to my Library! Here’s what I did there –
I. I rotated the lot 180 degrees so that the entrance to the lot now faces the interior of the island, instead of facing out over the edge of the cliff/castle ruins the lot is built on and toward the ocean. I felt like turning it made more sense – you’d naturally have the entrance to your town facing the path you use to get to it! And you still get the great view, you just have to look the other way. :p
II. I added Lot Challenges and Lot Traits! The Lot Challenges for this lot include Creepy Crawlies (forces the Sims to occasionally suffer dangerous Jungle Adventure bug and bat attacks), Simple Living (forces the Sims to actually have food in the fridge before they can make meals), Off The Grid (forces the Sims to find ways to collect their own water and produce their own power), Reduce & Recycle (forces the Sims to clean up their own garbage), Wild Foxes (forces the Sims to deal with wild foxes wandering onto the lot and harassing any chickens they may have), and Wild Prairie Grass (forces the Sims to deal with wild prairie grass growing all over the place...which is actually a good thing because you can get all sorts of shit when you hack the grass down, so…). The Lot Traits include Natural Well (meaning the Sims are above a natural water source, so collecting water won’t be so hard), Geothermal (meaning the Sims are above a natural heat source, which will keep pools warm and help with power generation), and Sunny Aspect (the beautiful views can produce Inspired, Happy, or Energized moodlets at sunset). I felt like all of these fit the “abandoned island” aesthetic I was going for with this lot, while also making sure any Sims living there didn’t have to suffer TOO much from not having any power or water. And got to enjoy the great views, as EA intended. :p
III. I opened up the front of each little mini-plot in the tiny town by deleting a chunk of fence, then set up the pee bush, tent, and cooler in convenient places near the new entrance in each! Just so everything looked nice and neat, you know? I also recolored the clothesline to a nice light wood and put it and the wash basin near the front of the “first” mini-plot so it would be convenient for the first resident of the tiny town to use. :) I then popped out to the Map screen to check on the total value of the lot –
And found that it was $24,032. AKA about $4,000 more expensive than I wanted it to be, because my goal with this Tiny Town lot was to make it one that you could buy without having to use money cheats. Which mean I had to remove a bit more value from the lot so it would come down under $20,000 (aka the starting funds for a single Sim).
IV. So I went back into the lot, got out the terrain paint tool, and painted the interior of each mini-plot on the lot with the Smarter Starter Soil dirt to help define it, before removing almost all of the fencing I’d put around each mini-plot, leaving only the corners. This dropped the lot value a LOT, meaning when I went back out to the Map screen, the lot was now only $17,536! Pleased, I headed back into the lot to see if there were any last-minute landscaping touches that I wanted to make…
VI. And then was like “hang on, this lot is going to be SO DARK at night – what do we have for off-the-grid lighting options?” After a little poking around, I found a halfway-decent lamp hanging from a natural stick that was only $90, so I put seven of those on the lot, one for the “front” of each mini-plot. This raised the lot value, but only up to about $18,166, so I figured it was fine. :p I then saved it to my Library –
And uploaded it to the Gallery! :D Yes, it is now available for download if you so desire, under the name of “Tiny Crumbling Isle Town.” Because I wanted to give the people some more options for their Tiny Towns, damn it. :p Here’s a picture of it in its current form –
Not too shabby, right? I think it works very well as a starting tiny town. :) Hopefully others agree with me!
C) And with that sorted, I made sure everything was saved, then headed back to Brindleton Bay to put my Valicer trio there into CAS and make up a couple of formal outfits for them! Because I was in that sort of mood. :) I tried out two options for everybody during my poking – here’s what I got –
Victor:
First up, a full-body outfit that I believe is from Get Together that made me pause when I clicked on it – mainly, because my first thought was “wow, this is awfully baggy on Victor...hang on, is this a sack suit??” A sack suit, for the uninitiated, is a baggy suit that was one of the first mass-produced pieces of menswear to be created for anyone to wear – I downloaded a CC version of one to try out on Smiler a while back, so I’m a little surprised that there was apparently one already in the game! Or at least something with a very similar style… Anyway, it looked all right on Victor, but I think I prefer him in more fitted clothing.
Case in point, here is Victor in a much more fitted dark blue suit that I THINK is base game – I’m sorry, I didn’t keep detailed notes on where I was getting the clothes this time around. But yeah, a tighter fit suits him much better – even if I’m not sure about that open neck on the shirt. Would have thought that would have made this much too casual for a “formal” outfit! And the waistcoat looks maybe slightly too short? *shrug* I dunno, I’m not sure where it’s SUPPOSED to land on the frame. I do like the color on Victor, though – he always looks good in a nice dark blue. :)
Alice:
Took me a while to find stuff that I really liked on Alice for formalwear – some of what shows up in that category for feminine Sims feels much more like casual wear to me! But while scanning the various dresses, this one with a sort of polka dot pattern caught my eye, and once I recolored it to the light blue swatch, I thought it looked rather nice on Alice. :) Paired with a nice pair of white stockings and a pair of gray-and-black lace-ups, she’s on-point for a nice night on the town!
As for shorter dresses, I tried this wrap-around ruffly one out on Alice and decided I liked the look of it – no good blue swatches, though, so she’s in green instead. Hey, it’s fine to mix up the colors sometimes! This one is paired with those nice high diamond-patterned socks from Crystal Creations (still love the clothes from that pack), plus a pair of gray strap shoes. Though maybe I should have gone for pure black...or gold, to match the belt buckle on her belt. *shrug* Eh, it looks good enough!
Smiler –
Smiler can be another hard Sim to dress, given that they have a very distinct color scheme that I’ve been trying better to stick to – but I stumbled across this suit while checking out full-body options, and while there were no good yellow swatches, I think you’ll agree that dark purple suit jacket suits them nicely! :) Inspired, I went looking for formal shoes with purple in, and found these dark gray ones with a purple middle, which I thought worked very well indeed. (And if you look verrrry closely, you’ll be able to see some of Smiler’s trademark yellow-and-black in their socks XD)
And finally, here is an outfit I assembled after, having been unsuccessful in finding many good formal TOPS in yellow, I moved over to the pants and was shocked to immediately find a great pair in yellow (Get To Work pants, I believe). So I slapped those on them, went back to tops and instead searched black, and found this nice number. I like the patterned black vest, and the purple scarf is a nice extra touch. I do think it’s maybe a little casual for a “proper” formal number, but honestly that seems to be the theme here with these outfits. XD And Smiler is the type to do a more casual formal anyway, so win-win! :p
So yeah, that was my Simming for the day! Very enjoyable, and I’m glad to have gotten my Tiny Town lot up on the Gallery. :) Next weekend, though, definitely heading back to the Chill Valicer Save – especially since it’s Labor Day weekend, so I’ll have an extra day to play. :) Gotta finally get through Harvestfest and the gang’s next food sale! And then I have an idea for a vacation they can all take together...
Writing: Got another page or so done on “Start At The Beginning...Sort Of” – the trio have made it to the top of the tower, and have found it to be a glass-roofed library absolutely bursting at the seams with books. They have also found the ghost Victor was sensing before – one Theodor “Elder” Gutknecht, former Whisper who was so intrigued by ghosts that he created his own ritual to leave his body and travel as they do. I left it off with Victor going “wait, are you still ALIVE then??” – next time, Gutknecht has to explain that no, he IS dead, he just died in a slightly-weird way. XD Coming up on the end of this chapter, so you should see it soon!
YouTube: Well, it was pretty tight, but we did get in our new usual Saturday Two –
A) First up, we had the GrayStillPlays offering of the day – “Testing RC cars vs impossible obstacles!” A ranked challenge torture board specifically for the two vanilla RC cars – the Bandito mini-monster-truck and the RC tank – and three custom monstrosities – a LEGO RC car that looked like a colorful box; a LEGO Technic RC “car” (which looked more like a bent elbow – Gray called it the RC Macaroni), and a janky pile of shit that was possessed by the devil. XD These brave contenders had to fight for points and superiority in the following four challenges –
I. Gray’s Room Speedrun – The RC cars had 39 seconds to get through an obstacle course that included a boomerang whipping around, a spinning coffee cup, a beer bottle spitting out very powerful water spouts, a bunch of deconstructed burgers on the floor, a chip can firing chips, and finally Gray’s mouse on its mousepad (which was also a slowdown circle), all in the name of going through the “Join” button on Gray’s YouTube Channel. The winner here proved to be the LEGO Box RC car, which drove roughly like the Bandito but had a loooot more speed, meaning it was the only one able to make it through the nonsense in time.
II. Traction Torture – The RC cars had to fight their way over a path made up entirely of Yeeters, who yanked the cars back and forth as they punched out with their hydraulic presses. Oh, and there was a jump midway through, with a Yeeter ready to take Gray out if he timed things wrong. The winner here was the RC Tank, which kept doing 360s on the spot from the force of the yeets but managed to stick to the ground a little better than the LEGO Box and the Bandito. At the very least, it got to the end of the challenge and the checkpoint after only half a million tries. XD
III. Stepping On LEGOs Stairs – The RC cars had to climb a staircase made of various LEGOs – first regular blocks that got steeper and steeper, then a couple ramps (the second of which was apparently upside-down, as the cars landed in what was clearly the UNDERSIDE of the block), then a very sheer rounded block, then basically a straight-up wall made up of those weird blocks with bumps on all sides (they use ‘em for car headlights a lot). The winner here was the RC Macaroni mobile (aka the weird triangle of LEGO Technic), because for some reason it had the ability to just Spider-Man its way up any surface with impunity. Comments suggest this thing was based on a real climbing machine, just boosted by the devil. XD
IV. RC Car Demolition – The RC cars were tasked with joining an RC demolition derby (complete with loads of other RC cars running around, a hidden pit in the middle, and a giant spiky ball of death bouncing about), with the goal of eliminating the three pink cars within a 69-second time limit (this was not made explicit in the board itself, Gray and his editor only found out after they timed it XD). I think the IDEA was that Gray would use C4 to destroy the cars, but – well, Alex gave him a tank. XD So Gray just hopped in that and used that to shoot the cars dead. Took a couple of tries, but he got there in the end, yay! So it seems the RC Tank is the car you want when taking on an Alex board! I – don’t think any of us are that surprised! XD
B) And second up, we had Jon and “Fallout: London - Part 5 - Beyond the Beefeaters!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Lady Aria taking on threats that are WAAAAY beyond her current level, like damn. XD Specifically –
I. She crossed Tower Bridge, despite being told “hey, you don’t NEED to cross Tower Bridge, it’s full of cannibals” just because the cannibals were Beefeaters and thus might have nice hats – fortunately for her, the ones on the bridge were mostly melee and able to be taken down without TOO much trouble. Unfortunately for her, they were mostly the lower ranks and thus had no fancy hats – just cannibal hoods. One DID have a nice Beefeater outfit, but it offered less damage protection than what she was currently wearing, so she had to leave it be.
II. Midway through the Tower Bridge crossing, though, she ended up doubling back because Jon spotted the old City Hall nearby and decided it might be worth raiding to see if there were any ridiculous mayor wigs or outfits inside. Instead, she found a Legendary Womble on the second floor – a creature that is supposed to be a cute and cuddly thing from a children’s cartoon, but in THIS universe is the local equivalent of the deathclaw. After getting trapped in an office by it for a while, Aria managed to escape past it down the lift shaft…
And then spotted a ledge where she could shoot it in relative safety and thought “okay, never mind that the game is warning me it’s far above my pay grade, let’s kill this thing.” XD To her credit though, between abusing the ledge in the lift and then the side office where she was trapped before (which the Womble couldn’t get into), she did manage to kill it! And got a TWO-SHOT crude gun off the corpse! Sadly, it couldn’t be combined with her crude rifle, and the accuracy on it was garbage, but Aria kept it as a good close-up weapon. And changed her sniper over to .303 ammo so she didn’t have three guns sharing the same ammo type.
III. After crossing Tower Bridge, she decided her next goal would be to get into the Tower of London, walking all around it looking for a way in (because OBVIOUSLY the tourist trap in the real world would have something cool going on in it, right?). Along the way, though, she found another group of Beefeaters – and to her delight, not only did one of them have the proper fancy hat she was looking for, another had a separate ruff that she could wear as its own item! She promptly took both and dressed herself up NICE and proper. XD
IV. After that, she resumed her attempts to figure out a way into the Tower of London – only to get distracted again by a distress signal on her Pip-Boy from a girl named Georgia, asking for help, that came from the nearby Sky Garden tower. Aria went to investigate, even though Jon felt like she was walking into a trap –
And found herself on the wrong end of the “Gatherers” faction, which dresses a bit like the Children of Atom, which is concerning. Aria managed to fight her way through them, though, and get to the top of the tower, where she found a bloody skeleton next to a radio – and when she approached, ANOTHER Legendary Womble dropped from the ceiling. Aria was promptly like “screw this” and booked it with Churchill as fast as she possibly could.
V. After another side jaunt into the nearby Tower Hill tube station (a tiny station with some more Beefeaters inside, nothing of particular interest in there beyond a few tickets and a lot of gore bags), Aria resumed her attempts to get into the Tower of London AGAIN...only to find herself trapped in an unending battle against the strangest, evilest enemy she’d come across yet. A foe who looked so simple and innocuous, but who proved to be utterly immune to everything she threw at it. A foe simply known –
As the Post Boxer. As in, a post box that is actually a robot with a circular saw, and for some reason took no damage when Aria started shooting it in the, well, post box. This thing was straight out of Doctor Who, I swear. XD Anyway, Aria attempted to run away from the post box to avoid its unending rage, but not only did it chase her, she ended up running around the front of the tower and getting shot to pieces by the turrets that were set up there! Well then. Lesson learned. Don’t fuck with the post-nuclear Royal Mail.
VI. One reloaded save later, Aria returned to the front of the Tower of London (giving the Post Boxer a WIIIIDE fucking berth) and attempted to take out the turrets there – only to have to flee in terror as Beefeaters spawned in from nowhere to wreck her shit. Fortunately she was able to run away to a better position (finding The Ferryman’s Dockhouse, aka where the hell she was supposed to go anyway for the main quest, in the process) and take out the ones chasing her, but we nearly had ANOTHER reload right after the previous one! Yeeps! But as stated, Aria did win against the Beefeaters, and thus trekked back to the Tower of London –
Only to find the front gates of the place Master-level locked. And Aria has absolutely no Lockpicking at all (yet, Jon has made it clear he intends to take some with his next level-up because most of the reward chests he’s been finding are locked just above her level too). So the episode ended with an annoyed Aria slogging her way reluctantly back to the main quest location to meet up with Archie and The Ferryman and, you know, actually progress the storyline and figure out her whole deal and all that. Not as appealing to her as getting some sick-ass hats, I know, but still. XD So we’ll see more of that next week! Fun times!
Not bad, not bad. And now I really need to head to bed -- tomorrow's goals include working on my MOJ post in my tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice; FINALLY getting back to Fallout 4 and starting The Trip Across Boston; updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression appropriately; getting in a workout; and keeping up with Gray and Jon for the Sunday Two. All achievable goals -- so long as I get enough sleep, of course. Night all!
