A Clean And Cold Saturday

Another windy day out there, with highs in the low 40s but wind chill in the low 30s -- glad I didn't need to go out anywhere! Instead, I had my to-dos, which I did REASONABLY well on --

1. Clean my room and do the monthly Big Laundry Pile: Check – got an early start on the room clean at 10:45 AM, and was done by 1 PM, just before lunch! :) Laundry naturally took longer, but everything was cleaned and dried by early evening, and that works for me. :)

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, watch the next Oxventure: Check! Happy to report that, thanks to getting most other stuff out of the way first, I was able to fit in the Oxventure, plus other stuff –

A) Actually started with Plumbella taking on a shell challenge from FakerGamerGirl, a fellow Simmer – the shell was deliberately terrible, with spiky bits and everything, but Plumbella thought, “you know what, this reminds me of some of the play areas I used to go to as a kid” and thus set about making just that with the help of a bunch of debug objects. There was much frustration and whatnot as she tried to make everything look the way she wanted it to look, but in the end she really had something cool! There was a “Beauty And The Beast”-type rotting castle area for kids who wanted to read and anyone who wanted to get a coffee; a space-and-superheroes-themed science play area (with a secret gaming and karaoke room on top); an upstairs “Alice In Wonderland”-themed garden; an AWESOME pirate-themed play area, complete with a fake half-sunken pirate ship with a pool and fountains and bubbles; and her own personal favorite, a “Toy Town” made of scaled-down debug houses and scaled-up toys. XD It was truly amazing, and I kinda want to recreate her pirate ship as the centerpiece of a water park in the game. :D

B) Then it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin and a look at a Minecraft mod that makes the game look like other mining and exploration game Terraria! As he just did a “never leave your spawn” challenge in the former and just started the same in the latter, this feels appropriate. XD And it’s really well done, too – the creators have done their best to translate all the different Terraria mechanics into Minecraft! The caves are all deeper and have different loot; there’s slimes everywhere that you can fight; the crafting works differently (you need furnaces AND anvils to make stuff, for starters); you can carry more – it’s all pretty darn wild! Kevin had an excellent time exploring his little world, building himself a house on the side of a crevasse (and getting a surprise roommate named Brett), going exploring in a variety of caves, killing a bunch of slimes and some zombies that spawned at night, checking out a creepy crimson biome and a snow biome (and killing some penguins in the latter), and going fishing at the edge of the ocean! It looks like a hell of an extensive mod, and I wouldn’t mind him doing another video with it! (But then again, I never mind when he returns to a previous game he’s done, since they’re pretty much all a lot of fun.)

C) Then we had GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! Started out with a bottle flip where not only were most of the little areas were either hidden or locked, you only had sixty seconds to unlock the win (via answering “yes” to the question “Is GrayStillPlays the best?”) – then we had an epic rope swing that STARTED with you being shot out of a volcano, and proceeded through going around two pulleys, swinging on a rope made of candy and walnuts, going down the snoot of a Peashooter from Plants Vs Zombies, and finally being launched into space; a freeze wall challenge where, roughly halfway through, Gray ditched his bike and ended up CRAWLING to the end after somehow always getting a gap he could squeeze Bike Dad through on the walls (and not exploding his head by being yeeted into them); a dive through stationary balls and rotating children onto a pile of alcohol (Gray got minced the first time, but survived the second); a ride through the world’s deadliest construction site with harpoons, arrows, and a falling ceiling just to make life difficult; a harpoon dodge with various terrifying laser patterns (the one at the end did not look survivable, but Gray ended up with nothing worse than a broken pogo stick); a yeet tunnel designed to kill all comers with boosts (Gray won because while Bike Dad got torn in half, he was still alive when he brushed over the winning area); and finally the eyeball obstacle course from hell – wait too long at the start and an eye will crush you! Try to go over the rotating floor of eyes and you’ll slam your head into some spikes! Try to find your way past the eyeball of axes and you’ll probably end up with a split head! Try to leap over some eyeballs and get a harpoon up your butt! Try to ride over another eyeball floor and watch it drop out from under you! Try to win and find it’s a fake and you have to dodge an eye being shot out of a cannon! Try to fly over a ramp of eyes and get impaled on some spikes! Gray had to try SOO many times to get past just the first couple of obstacles, it wasn’t even funny. Except it totally was. XD Ah, they’re getting wise to your tricks, Gray! I remember when you could do like ten boards in one fifteen-minute video. XD

D) And then, after supper, we had our Oxventure – “Quiet Riot!” This is the one where the gang come across a band of traveling minstrels who have had their wheels stolen off their carriage-bus, so they can’t enter the town of Inkwater, which has been taken over by the Sacred Order of Keeping It Down, a religious order all about silence that has oppressed the townspeople into being quiet all the time. Because either there was an owlbear in the area that they caught or they brought one along that was asleep, and they needed everyone to be quiet all the time to stop it waking up and wreaking havoc. Naturally, the gang doesn’t find out about the owlbear until AFTER they’ve already started making lots of noise and killing lots of the guards of the order to get them to piss off and let the townspeople make noise again. This happens to be the one where The Protagonists Kill Loads Of People – specifically, it’s the one with the infamous “Merilwen’s Meat Grinder,” where a combination of magically-conjured grease from Corazon combined with a bunch of spikes laid all over the floor by Merilwen basically SHREDS a bunch of guards they’ve tricked into coming into an abandoned church via Egbert slamming the bell with his mace. Not to mention:

I. Egbert, after the gang sneaks in pretending to be some of the returning guards (Merilwen, Corazon, and the jester Flannery who tagged along on the adventure) having captured some prisoners (Prudence, Dob, and Egbert) getting the commander of the order to shout at the top of his lungs “I LOVE MY JOB!” with paladin-granted mind control, forcing the guy to call for his other guards (via banners) and go down into the cells

II. Corazon bluffing everyone into doing what he suggests when it comes to getting as many of them into the cells as possible (with the help of Prudence, able to communicate via magical whispered messages, causing a scene to pretend to knock them out so more guards will get her, Dob, and Egbert into the cells) – up until he tries to headbutt one of his fellow guards XD

III. The gang absolutely DESTROYING most of the guards via literally slicing them into three pieces with their rapier (Corazon), TURNING INTO A BEAR AND CLAWING THEIR HEAD OFF (Merilwen), flash-frying three into ASH with fire breath after a “disappointed paladin” speech (Egbert – one made his saving throw and was able to throw himself to the side – however, he was so crisped that Corazon was able to finish him off with one stab of his rapier), charming one with a little ditty into STABBING HIS FRIEND IN THE NECK, then later getting him to dance into a jail cell, lock himself in, and swallow the key (Dob), and then MELTING THE COMMANDER AND THE REMAINING GUARD WITH A MOONBEAM SPELL THAT CREATES GHOSTLY FLAMES OF SEARING PAIN (Merilwen again, she leveled up into the scariest member of the team). To their credit, they did end up healing stabbed guy, and they let him and his charmed buddy help fight the owlbear when it woke up

IV. . . .Only they didn’t fight the owlbear because Merilwen cast “Animal Friendship” on it, and it was JUST dumb enough for it to work (it fails on animals with Intelligence 4 or above, owlbears have Intelligence 3). So the owlbear became Merilwen’s buddy, and everyone else (including Johnny) was furious they didn’t get to fight it (though Andy did point out later on that it was probably a good thing, as Corazon only has 21 hit points). After much debate about selling it to the minstrels to start a menagerie, they finally agreed that Merilwen would be upset if they did that and let her let it go

V. Also the traveling minstrels were all a pun on the Vengabus, aka that song that Dob constantly plays because they all think it’s funny that’s his sister’s lullaby. XD Everyone was very upset except for Johnny. XD At least they got the gold plating off the carriage’s wheels as payment for their services!

So yeah, very fun episode! :D I really do love these campaigns – I should probably start watching THEM again with my workouts. I think I’d be more inclined to keep up with Oxventure than L.A. By Night, given I like the characters and plots of this thing a LOT more.

3. Play Sims 4 and do some more with the Chill Save: Check – went back to the Victor and Alice of that save and had them head over to Darby’s Den (the University of Britechester) commons for the day! They hung out, did their homework, attended classes – Victor met a new potential friend in fellow student Siya, and Alice got a chocolate croissant at one of the food kiosks because the darn food counter vendor couldn’t be bothered to do his job before she went to class. >.< Fairly quiet day for the two of them again, though they’re doing well in their classes and keeping up on their homework. Next day in the line is Harvestfest, though, and that should be a little more interesting. . .

4. Free Writing Day – maybe some more "Fallout of Darkness" snippets: Hmmm – half-check, as I ended up doing some more organization for my “Fallout of Darkness” master document, cleaning up some headings and adding a few things to Victor’s timeline (including a new headcanon I had about William supposedly trying to buy Victor’s way out of the Army and failing – turns out he was FINE with Victor getting “toughened up,” he just didn’t want his son to see too much combat). Planning on consolidating a personality meme I did for Victor and Alice separately into one and putting that in its own section with other memes. . .also have to make a section for Alice as this universe’s Malkavian Fledgling. So much to do, so much to do. . .

5. Get in a workout: No check – though admittedly, I didn’t give myself great odds on getting this one done. I’m too used to skipping a workout when it’s a cleaning Saturday. I’ll get myself back on the metaphorical horse tomorrow, and we’ll go from there!

So yeah, very good on the first three items, fell down a bit on the last two. *shrug* Holiday weekend, feeling a bit distracted, what you gonna do. Besides keep an eye on RP stuff happening and prepping Sunday's to-dos:

1. Start asking about gift fic ideas from people

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and watch Jon's FO4 YOLO episode

3. Play Fallout 4 and at least clear out the Red Rocket's mole rats

4. Get in a workout

5. Work on tumblr queues

Should be able to manage THAT, I think. And the first one's important, as tis the season and I gotta start getting a jump on those. *nods* Night all!