Aug. 1st, 2021

crossover_chick: Doc snoozing on his couch (BTTF: exhausted)
Yeah, the second day of my period is always the toughest, simply because it has the heaviest flow and is the most energy-sapping. Just getting up and getting moving is something of a chore. *sigh* Good thing I didn't really have anything I had to do! Well, besides the following:

1. Work on the Sims 4 Challenges, or any other light writing I feel I could do: Check! Actually managed to start giving the Bloodlines-themed challenge a go today, writing-wise – wrote up the premise and the first bit of the rules for making your “Fledgling” Sim, yay. :) I do intend to keep working on my actual stories this week, but I’m probably going to try and build in time to keep working on this and the Fallout 4-themed challenge too – they’ve been on my mind!

2. Watch the three Atop The Fourth Wall episodes and Jon's FO4 YOLO episode -- if possible, also keep current on YouTube Subs: Full check, yay! :D Was able to clear out everything, which made me very happy –

A) Started with James Turner, as today’s Sims 4 video intrigued me – “I tried to play The Sims with every single lot challenge enabled.” As in, James took his self Sim and moved him into a house that had EVERY residential lot challenge (aka, all the things that make things more difficult on a lot) enabled – Creepy Crawlies (bugs will randomly appear and attack), Cursed (lots of shit goes wrong, including more fires), Filthy (things get dirty faster), Grody (Sims get nauseous after certain activities), Off-The-Grid (no power or water except what you produce yourself), Quake Zone (random earthquakes), Volcanic Activity (random lava rocks spewing from the sky), Gremlins (if you’re asleep at midnight shit just breaks), Spooky (wandering ghosts appear on the lot at night), Reduce and Recycle (makes outdoor bins not bottomless and trash a constant thing to deal with), Simple Living (can’t cook unless you have all the ingredients), and Wild Foxes (wild foxes roam around being a nuisance). Buuuut, on TOP of that, he ALSO made the lot itself a Haunted House Residential (meaning it spawns specters and cursed items), and later added the lot traits Cat Hangout (so lots of stray cats come around), Dog Hangout (so lots of stray DOGS come around), and Vampire Nexus (so in theory we should get vampires hanging around). Oh, and all this is taking place in STRANGERVILLE.

As you might expect, Sim!James is NOT living his best life. In fact, he is most assuredly living his WORST life. All of his shit keeps breaking, and he ends up regularly dazed trying to fix it; he’s trying to produce his own power and water, but almost never has enough to cover his power needs (admittedly, James was trying to make things harder by not using items that are guaranteed to work off-the-grid – he finally snapped and replaced the kitchen items at the end of the episode); his neighbors are weird and his only regular social contact is Guidry the ghost; he has to go to Sulani to shower (though just getting away from that miserable lot seemed to really improve his needs O.o); and basically his lot is always filled with specters and strays. Though, amazingly, despite all that, he has gotten ONE promotion at his Secret Agent job. Go Semaj. XD James asked if anyone wanted to see more at the end of the ep, and the consensus seems to be “yes” – someone even said they’re doing something similar in the comments, with the goal of removing the challenges via completing aspirations. Seems legit to me!

B) Then it was onto the AT4W Marathon! In order, we had –

I. “Hush,” a Batman series introducing a wild new mystery involving lots of key members of Batman’s rogue gallery and apparently setting up the return of Jason Todd as a creepy new villain. . .only for the real villain to be Rando McNewGuy with a shitty “I WANTED TO BE A RICH ORPHAN TOO” backstory. Also this is the reason Jason Todd as Red Hood exists, which I imagine is fairly divisive on its own. On the other hand, it does have some wild action scenes, and a much better twist at the end for the real mastermind, but – well. I think you REALLY need to be a Bat-fan to appreciate all of this. It’s linked a LOT into the Batfamily and Batman’s complicated relationship with Catwoman, and involves a SUPER-obscure character as a surprise twist at one point. I enjoyed the review, all hour-and-16-minutes of it (Linkara’s good at making stuff interesting, and he had a speech about how, as a paragon, Batman can’t really defy his moral code simply because of the power the citizens of Gotham invested in him – if he proves he’s not worthy of that power, it taints the character – that I found intriguing), but whew! That was a lot.

II. “Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger Ep. 15-16” – another review of a couple of episodes of a pirate-themed Sentai show (aka the shows that are adapted into the various shows of the Power Rangers franchise over here), featuring the backstory of that shows “red ranger” pirate captain, the introduction of a new villain (a former friend who had betrayed him who is named Bosco and has a logo cooler than he is), and a few fight scenes against fake “sixth rangers” to show off all the acrobatic cool stuff the shows are known for. Good, but nothing particularly special, and nothing I personally am that invested in, because I only ever watched the original Power Rangers show and am not particularly interested in the Japanese originals. Also, there was a “Contest of Champions” storyline update (I guess another champion defeated the giant monster champion Linkara was expecting to go up against), but I think these days I’m even LESS invested in that, soooo. . .

III. “Mr. T and the T-Force #6” – and the annual Mr. T-related review to stop everything going to shit (as jokingly pointed out by Linkara in the past, the one year he didn’t review one of Mr. T’s comics, was 2016 – aka the year Trump took office). This one had Mr. T escorting a boxer to the ring and helping him defend himself from the reining champ's rather over-enthusiastic (and violent) fans (hilariously, the champ actually WON in a fair fight once they let him into the ring); helping a woman whose welfare checks kept getting stolen by gang members, and getting help beating up said gang in return from the two boxers who were grateful for his assistance earlier; and beating up some drug dealers pulling guns on him while trying to help the grandson of one of his tenants get out of that life. Just some good, clean, simple fun featuring everyone’s favorite A-Team member. XD

C) Then, this evening, we started with Call Me Kevin (freshly moved to Spain!) and Bee Simulator – his answer to people trying to get him to play the Bee Movie game. XD This looks to be a game that is supposed to teach people about bees and help encourage us to save them from colony die-outs and the like, where you play as a random worker-bee and do things like collect pollen and fight wasps in mini-games. Kevin, naturally, did things like flying around stinging random people and landing on their lollipops while they’re trying to have a good time in the park. XD Who cares that the plot seems to be that the hive’s tree is going to be cut down soon – we have deer to harass and racing mini-games to complete! Let no child be unstung!

D) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays for more Minecraft abuse! Specifically, it was time to play with the axolotls again! Gray this time had them on a slightly more conventional upgrade path – only instead of upgrading them via judicious use of gold, diamond, and netherite, they upgraded via THE FLESH OF THEIR DEFEATED ENEMIES. No, seriously – Gray turned fish into axolotls via cobblestone, then had them kill things until they upgraded into bipedal ripped monstrosities that flung anvils and cod at people to kill them and just – constantly blew up the landscape. Like, seriously, CONSTANTLY. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were continually buffing Gray, the fact that they kept knocking him into lava should have ended this episode WAAAY early. They were the death and destruction of everything around them, to the point where they basically exploded the ENTIRETY OF THE STRONGHOLD AROUND THE END PORTAL. It was amazing to see Gray, as usual, struggle to get anything done in the face of his own hubris – and then give up and just go into “Creative” mode to watch 100 fully-upgraded axolotls just destroy the Ender Dragon. XD Just another Sunday on the channel!

E) And at last, it was time for Jon’s FO4 YOLO episode with Miss Finalley in Far Harbor! Another under-an-hour episode, which I think is speaking to Jon’s nerves about this DLC and how Finalley could be so easily taken out by anything if she’s not careful. But she survived today’s episode, which was all about joining up with the Children of Atom! We started with the trek from Acadia to the Nucleus, which was – well, not quite as quiet as Jon would have liked. Avoiding a Legendary Angler in one direction nearly got him mauled by a bear he thought he had killed in the other – fortunately Finalley was able to take it out before it got to her. Then there was the Fog Crawler fighting the Angler at the place where he hoped to cross over the river to get to the sub base – fortunately, after winning the fight, the Crawler wandered off and Finalley was able to sprint over. Other than that, though, there were no problems, mostly because Finalley stuck largely to high ground and sharp cliffs where enemies fear to tread (because of bad pathfinding).

Of course, getting to the Nucleus is one thing – getting inside is another. Namely, it involves having to take a fixed, cannot-be-reduced-by-any-means hit of 150 rads from a spring so you can have a vision quest and pick up an item that will get the cult to accept you. Suddenly I see why Jon was happy to do this DLC now, when Finalley has a lot of empty space in her health bar. . .anyway, Finalley cautiously made her way there, drank up (going from 231 rads to 383, ooouch), and then followed the Mother to the holy site, with Jon constantly reminding himself that none of the creatures along the way were real enough to actually worry about. Apparently you can’t be attacked so long as you’re following like a good little Child, so that’s exactly what he did.

Once you reach the Holy Site, of course, that’s a different story, with ghouls all over the shop. Fortunately none of them noticed Finalley, and she was able to clear them out without any issue, get the password to the computer, open up the little area, and grab the icon. Another anxious trip back to the sub, and she was able to drop it off and actually get inside to meet High Confessor Tektus and get access to DiMA’s memories! The plot continues to advance!

But first, sidequests! Because the Children of Atom have a couple that occur solely inside their base and can be done quick and easy for more XP (not that Finalley needs it just at the moment, having just hit a level-up from a lucky trigger of Idiot Savant at the end of the opening quest for the Children). Finalley investigated Sister Aubert for Tektus (taking advantage of the fact that the key you can use to get into her locker is a guaranteed spawn in the same place every time), and used her Charisma powers to convince Brother Devin she was a messenger from Atom to get him to eat some food and take some rad meds. Nice little bit of XP, and a unique item that she can’t use but is fun to have.

And then it was time to stop screwing around and go into the Command Center, aka Jon’s worst nightmare because it involves lots of robots, including a Legendary Assaultron with cloaking – aka, it’s initially invisible. Finalley can at least ditch the power armor in there to get her usual bonuses back, but there’s a good chance she WILL die in this area, sadly. But if she doesn’t. . .well. We’ll see how it goes next week – and, if she survives, how she’ll be handling the ending to Far Harbor. Apparently Jon has two potential end games in mind. . .

3. Either properly play some Sims 4 or figure out what other games I would like to play this vacation week: Check – given my fuzzy brainstate, I decided one of the other games I would like to play this weekend? Some more Untitled Goose Game! I believe I mentioned before it’s pretty low-stakes fun? I gave one of the “complete the standard to-do list quickly” challenges a try because I was behind the pub and a couple of those tasks go a lot faster once you can go in and out the back gate, but didn’t manage it, so instead I focused on completing the rest of the “as well” list – “score a goal” was arguably one of the hardest, though that soccer ball is NOT as hard to manipulate as a cabbage! Being able to bat at it with your beak makes all the difference. . .and it turns out that you don’t have to scare the boy to trap him in the garage – just steal his plane and lock him in there. So all those extra tasks are complete! We’ll see if I return to Sims 4 tomorrow, or go to something else.

4. Get in a workout: No check, and you can blame my period. It’s very hard to want to go work out when you’re a) feeling tired thanks to hormones and waking up earlier than you wanted and b) you’re already sweating because your internal temperature likes to fluctuate weirdly when you’re on the rag. (For example, I woke up early this morning because I was cold and had to cover myself with my blanket – and then woke up super-hot later on, when I finally got back to sleep.) Sorry, Miss Jon – I’ll see you tomorrow, after catching up with Miss Finalley!

Additionally:

-->Had a much better game of beanbags today (even with me sweating on a reasonably-cool day for the start of August because, as stated, my temperature regulation on my period sucks) – Dad wasn’t in a mood and actually trying, so winning felt like it meant something. And we all had a win in the end – I got W-3-W-3-3, Dad got 3-W-3-W-2, and Mom 2-2-2-2-W. Good to know I can still pull out some excellent throws even when I’ve got the period brain!

So yeah, not bad! Feel SLIGHTLY bad for missing my workout, but hey, I'm on vacation, I'm on my period, I think I can be forgiven. And I should be over the worst hump tomorrow, so that's good.

Okay, time to wrap things up -- while I'm not going to bed EXACTLY the same time that I normally would on a weekday, it's definitely going to be earlier than my usual weekend time, simply because I don't want to TOTALLY fuck up my sleep schedule. I'm aiming for around 12:30ish, with a wake-up time of around nine, so. . .and I still have to find something to put in my queue for Valice Multiverse because it is dead over there. O.o I mean, that's a good thing, given my current brain state and the time, but -- yeah. So let me get on that and get the to-do list for tomorrow set up:

1. Edit some more on "Londerland Bloodlines," and/or continue working on the VTMB Sims 4 Challenge

2. Clear as much of the Hitman 3-related content out of my Watch Later and keep up with YouTube Subs

3. Play either Sims 4 or Bloodlines

4. Get in a workout

Reasonable? Reasonable. Night all!
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