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Not The Most Relaxing Saturday
Apr. 30th, 2022 11:42 pmWhich is mostly down to my parents doing some minor house renovation (they're putting up wallpaper and bead board in the hallway to make it look nicer, and the process is taking some time because it's gotta be the right weather to paint everything and all that) and Mom doing a ton of cooking and baking this morning and everyone getting stressed out at having to juggle things, which in turn stressed me out. Also didn't help that I woke up with a bit of a neck-ache from sleeping funny. *sigh*
Still, even with that, I had a productive day as per the to-do list:
1.Either write more of "As Long As You Love Me" or do a Free Writing Day: Check to the latter – I ended up wanting to do more Valicer stuff, and wrote a follow-up scene to the previous one that I was working on (Victor getting hypnotized by Smiler while Alice sits and observes), where the three talk about what happened the other day and Alice blows Victor’s and Smiler’s minds by telling them that she doesn’t mind if they want to form a polyamorous relationship. Because she has no particular desire to be exclusive, she loves Victor and really likes Smiler, she wants them both to be happy and not stress about her feelings. . .oh, and she actually quite enjoyed what happened yesterday and wants it to happen again. XD I’m enjoying this new strange threesome I’ve got here – gonna keep revisiting them when I have the urge.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, including WSP: Check – cleared out the Subs today, and even got in one bonus from the Recommendeds –
A) Started this afternoon with the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast, on the fourth Tiffany Aching book, I Shall Wear Midnight! Which – I’ve always had a bit of an odd relationship with. Because, as the podcast crew said, it is a pretty good book (though more for individual good scenes and themes than the overall plot, which they found a touch flimsy – and, in fact, had an interesting idea for changing the main villain’s avatar. The Cunning Man, spirit of all witch-hunts and witch-hunters, takes over a random hardened criminal in the book – they felt it might have been more thematically appropriate for him to take over Mr. Petty, the abusive lowlife whom Tiffany has to save from a mob after he beats his daughter for getting pregnant out of wedlock by telling him to get out of town, because it would keep the action closer to home AND give the guy some better comeuppance), and I do like stuff like the return of Eskarina Smith (from Equal Rites!) and Tiffany’s relationship with Preston. . .but as someone who really liked her and Roland’s relationship in previous books, seeing them essentially “break up” off-screen, and Roland have a lot of his memories wiped, was unpleasant to say the least. I could have taken them not getting together – as said, I like her new relationship with Preston – but I felt it could have been done better. *shrug* What can you do. Besides bitch about it in YouTube comments. XD
B) Then, this evening, we started with Plumbella’s latest – “how fast can i w໐໐h໐໐ sims in every game?” Another comparison video where she made two Sims in CAS, plopped them down in a house, then checked to see how long it took to get them to woohoo after moving in. The stats were as follows:
Sims 4 – A mere two hours was all it took to get the pair into bed! A little light flirting got them to first kiss, and from there, straight into the bed (just as the welcome wagon showed up too XD).
Sims 3 – This one required a little more work (and an available bed – Plumbella thought they could do it in the shower, but no), but was still quite fast – from move-in to woohoo was just four hours total.
Sims 2 – NOW Plumbella had to put in the effort, making sure their needs were satisfied as well as their relationship. The option doesn’t even UNLOCK until they actually fall in love, and that didn’t happen until day two thanks to them actually needing to do things like eat and sleep. All in all, it seemed to take one entire day from move-in to woohoo (that is, they woohooed the morning of the day after they moved in).
Sims 1 – You want relationship problems? Go back to the original game. Plumbella could barely get these two to hold a conversation, let alone woohoo! She had to resort to the “delete and restore the Sim” cheat to keep their needs up enough to get them to interact without hearing the “failure” horns. It took at least two in-game days and a lot of falling in and out of love before they would consent to “play” together in the heart-shaped hot tub (as that’s what any sexual content was called in this generation). Though, hilariously, Plumbella had them kissing so much that they actually HAD A BABY before they woohooed! (Yes, that’s how it works in this game.) Plumbella called the resultant daughter “Byproduct” and went ahead and grew her up to a child to end the video.
So yeah – final verdict? If you want easy woohoo, go for the newest generation; want hard? Go back to The Sims and wonder how you ever played that game as a child, the Sims are so freaking NEEDY. XD
C) From there it was into the actual Subs for some Call Me Kevin and “This Minecraft mod makes the stone age 99.92% harder!” Yes, it is Minecraft mod time, with a mod that puts you in the Stone Age and gives you lots and lots of complicated recipes to make everything you need. Kevin’s goal was to get as many of the items as he could to make a proper crafting bench, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. You start off with a crappy flint grid to make crappy flint knives and such, then slowly move on to making bone items, then stone, then finally iron. Kevin spent most of his time trying to figure out what each item needed to actually be crafted and how to get it – like, a bone axe requires not only bone for the blade and a stick for the handle, but dried grass to tie it all together, and you need bone shears to get the grass, and a drying rack to dry the grass and – is it really any wonder that he spent most of his time running around killing deer in a fury? And then running in terror from the animals that could fight back? Including the most dangerous animal, some form of colorful duck? XD I mean, the dude spent an hour figuring out how to make proper fire so he could light a torch made from a stick and animal fat. And even THAT was just a plain fire on the ground that went out quickly – he needed to search out actual COAL to make a proper campfire! He lucked out in that there were plentiful deer around for meat, and an abandoned little camp on a mountainside with some of the stuff he needed (including a tanning rack for leather and a grass bed), but it still took him the better part of two hours and multiple consults of the recipe book to actually get all the wood and stone slabs he needed for the workbench, leaving him with just wool and bread to find, which he decided was good enough, especially since by that time he was crafting his first iron tools. Damn. . .mods like these are fun to watch, but they also confirm that I want to keep any game that has crafting in it “realism-lite” for my own sanity. XD
D) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and more fun with GTA V and Fiverr: “$1 vs $1000 Water Slides in GTA 5!” With the interesting twist of someone actually submitting the $500 board ahead of time via Gray’s e-mail! But the rest were legitimately bought on Fiverr, so here we go:
$1 – the creator admitted they couldn’t figure out how to make Gray actually slide down the water slides, so the trick was to jump from a crane onto the slide to complete the board. Took Gray two tries to make it onto the slide, but from there it was just a quick slide into the pool. Done!
$10 – Danny returns in his new position, with a series of giant sky slides that, because he can’t make waterspouts, are full of wind turbines ready to smack Gray into the stratosphere. Gray suffered many an unintended flight (including one where he glitched out and started walking on air), but EVENTUALLY he managed to get the timing right and slide down to the end. Great work Danny!
$100 – The creator of this one apparently went to Alex (who made the last $1,000 tightrope board), got his game files, and turned that tightrope between two mountains into a series of waterslides, with teleports in-between! So now Gray had to SLIDE past the wind turbine, the rock fall, and the log fall, before ending by doing a thumbnail hole slide through one of the gondolas to win. He did the first two pretty easily, took a couple of tries to get through the log fall, then really struggled to make it through the gondola – only once both people inside were dead and he could finally line himself up properly with the open doors was he able to make it. But make it he did, yay!
$500 – the pre-submitted one by our friend Darkshadow! Which was a series of waterslides in the sky – that pulsed in and out of existence, meaning Gray had to fall at just the right times to slide down each one as it came in so he could keep up his speed to make it to the dome with the win. This took MANY tries, as of course he just kept falling faster and faster as he dropped from one water slide to the next and kept spinning off to the side and falling to his death. But eventually he got the pattern, did some sick quadruple-axles, and made it to the dome! w000!
$1,000 – And look at that, Alex is back! With what is technically another tightrope board, though Gray did get onto it via waterslide. The goal here was to make it to the end through all of Alex’s ridiculous obstacles – waterslides shooting giant soccer balls at Gray as he attempted to jump gaps; waterslides shooting CARS at him (when they didn’t all crash into each other and get tangled up) while he tried to climb a teleporting block over a wall without getting teleported off the course with it; two pulsating cylinders that he had to get through (one pulsed slowly and had a spinning fan thing inside he had to ride to the next part of the beam; the other pulsed fast and was simply an obstacle he had to run through at the right times); and finally one final waterslide shooting SATAN RIDING JETSKIS (and occasionally Meaty Bits the deer doing the same) at Gray as he sprinted to the end to dive into the finish. Again, navigating this nonsense took up most of the video, with Gray getting smacked to hell. Beautiful. I want Alex and Danny (and maybe Darkshadow) to collab if at all possible. XD
3. Play Sims 4 and do some building/save renovation: Check – though what I mostly did was save all of the lots I’ve downloaded and updated to my liking from the Chill Save into my Library, so if I do decide in future to make another save, I have them all there and ready to go. :) I did download two new lots, though:
Pectoral Fitness Refurb by Maydussa, to finish out the renovation of Del Sol Valley’s sad downtown area! This is a great update to the gym, with some added spa elements (there’s even a glass-roofed meditation area up top). My main adjustments were replacing some of the spa stuff with a few of the updated objects from the Spa Day refresh, adding the rock climbing wall from Fitness Stuff to the main workout area (had to adjust the wall height to fit it, but worth), and changing one lot trait from “Peace & Quiet” to “Geothermal.”
Elixirs and Brews Reno by AbyArashi, to update Glimmberbrook’s one extremely sad bar. Her update looks SO much better, and actually had some life to it, with a nice fountain out front and a fake stable out back. There’s even a campfire! My only updates were to switch out the decorative well with the Wishing Well from Romantic Garden Stuff (if ANY neighborhood should have a lot with one of those on it, it’s Glimmerbrook) and add some lot traits (“Homey,” “Sunny Aspect,” and “Convivial”).
So yeah, not bad! Perhaps I’ll take Smiler by one of these places next time I play them. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Finished off a couple of future Thursday posts for Victor Luvs Alice before lunch – the traditional “now that I’ve completed this story, here’s a link to the full version from the beginning” link for "Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica's Vale Of Tears" for this upcoming Thursday, and a ranked list of Alice versus Fire in “Londerland Bloodlines” as a whole for a future Thursday. So that's something!
Not too shabby, no. And I'm glad to have all those lots in my Sims 4 Library now -- ready when I need them! We'll see when that is, of course. . .in the meantime, time for Sunday to-dos:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's Fallout Sunday video
3. Play Fallout 4 and continue on with Piper
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
We'll see if I manage all five -- you lot know that I've been a little off with the workouts on weekends lately. But maybe! As it stands, I'm doing the social thing, and I want to see about getting the next set of Smiler Always pictures sorted for the Wednesday Chill Save update on Victor Luvs Alice. . .night all!
Still, even with that, I had a productive day as per the to-do list:
1.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, including WSP: Check – cleared out the Subs today, and even got in one bonus from the Recommendeds –
A) Started this afternoon with the latest Wyrd Sisters Podcast, on the fourth Tiffany Aching book, I Shall Wear Midnight! Which – I’ve always had a bit of an odd relationship with. Because, as the podcast crew said, it is a pretty good book (though more for individual good scenes and themes than the overall plot, which they found a touch flimsy – and, in fact, had an interesting idea for changing the main villain’s avatar. The Cunning Man, spirit of all witch-hunts and witch-hunters, takes over a random hardened criminal in the book – they felt it might have been more thematically appropriate for him to take over Mr. Petty, the abusive lowlife whom Tiffany has to save from a mob after he beats his daughter for getting pregnant out of wedlock by telling him to get out of town, because it would keep the action closer to home AND give the guy some better comeuppance), and I do like stuff like the return of Eskarina Smith (from Equal Rites!) and Tiffany’s relationship with Preston. . .but as someone who really liked her and Roland’s relationship in previous books, seeing them essentially “break up” off-screen, and Roland have a lot of his memories wiped, was unpleasant to say the least. I could have taken them not getting together – as said, I like her new relationship with Preston – but I felt it could have been done better. *shrug* What can you do. Besides bitch about it in YouTube comments. XD
B) Then, this evening, we started with Plumbella’s latest – “how fast can i w໐໐h໐໐ sims in every game?” Another comparison video where she made two Sims in CAS, plopped them down in a house, then checked to see how long it took to get them to woohoo after moving in. The stats were as follows:
Sims 4 – A mere two hours was all it took to get the pair into bed! A little light flirting got them to first kiss, and from there, straight into the bed (just as the welcome wagon showed up too XD).
Sims 3 – This one required a little more work (and an available bed – Plumbella thought they could do it in the shower, but no), but was still quite fast – from move-in to woohoo was just four hours total.
Sims 2 – NOW Plumbella had to put in the effort, making sure their needs were satisfied as well as their relationship. The option doesn’t even UNLOCK until they actually fall in love, and that didn’t happen until day two thanks to them actually needing to do things like eat and sleep. All in all, it seemed to take one entire day from move-in to woohoo (that is, they woohooed the morning of the day after they moved in).
Sims 1 – You want relationship problems? Go back to the original game. Plumbella could barely get these two to hold a conversation, let alone woohoo! She had to resort to the “delete and restore the Sim” cheat to keep their needs up enough to get them to interact without hearing the “failure” horns. It took at least two in-game days and a lot of falling in and out of love before they would consent to “play” together in the heart-shaped hot tub (as that’s what any sexual content was called in this generation). Though, hilariously, Plumbella had them kissing so much that they actually HAD A BABY before they woohooed! (Yes, that’s how it works in this game.) Plumbella called the resultant daughter “Byproduct” and went ahead and grew her up to a child to end the video.
So yeah – final verdict? If you want easy woohoo, go for the newest generation; want hard? Go back to The Sims and wonder how you ever played that game as a child, the Sims are so freaking NEEDY. XD
C) From there it was into the actual Subs for some Call Me Kevin and “This Minecraft mod makes the stone age 99.92% harder!” Yes, it is Minecraft mod time, with a mod that puts you in the Stone Age and gives you lots and lots of complicated recipes to make everything you need. Kevin’s goal was to get as many of the items as he could to make a proper crafting bench, and let me tell you, it wasn’t easy. You start off with a crappy flint grid to make crappy flint knives and such, then slowly move on to making bone items, then stone, then finally iron. Kevin spent most of his time trying to figure out what each item needed to actually be crafted and how to get it – like, a bone axe requires not only bone for the blade and a stick for the handle, but dried grass to tie it all together, and you need bone shears to get the grass, and a drying rack to dry the grass and – is it really any wonder that he spent most of his time running around killing deer in a fury? And then running in terror from the animals that could fight back? Including the most dangerous animal, some form of colorful duck? XD I mean, the dude spent an hour figuring out how to make proper fire so he could light a torch made from a stick and animal fat. And even THAT was just a plain fire on the ground that went out quickly – he needed to search out actual COAL to make a proper campfire! He lucked out in that there were plentiful deer around for meat, and an abandoned little camp on a mountainside with some of the stuff he needed (including a tanning rack for leather and a grass bed), but it still took him the better part of two hours and multiple consults of the recipe book to actually get all the wood and stone slabs he needed for the workbench, leaving him with just wool and bread to find, which he decided was good enough, especially since by that time he was crafting his first iron tools. Damn. . .mods like these are fun to watch, but they also confirm that I want to keep any game that has crafting in it “realism-lite” for my own sanity. XD
D) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and more fun with GTA V and Fiverr: “$1 vs $1000 Water Slides in GTA 5!” With the interesting twist of someone actually submitting the $500 board ahead of time via Gray’s e-mail! But the rest were legitimately bought on Fiverr, so here we go:
$1 – the creator admitted they couldn’t figure out how to make Gray actually slide down the water slides, so the trick was to jump from a crane onto the slide to complete the board. Took Gray two tries to make it onto the slide, but from there it was just a quick slide into the pool. Done!
$10 – Danny returns in his new position, with a series of giant sky slides that, because he can’t make waterspouts, are full of wind turbines ready to smack Gray into the stratosphere. Gray suffered many an unintended flight (including one where he glitched out and started walking on air), but EVENTUALLY he managed to get the timing right and slide down to the end. Great work Danny!
$100 – The creator of this one apparently went to Alex (who made the last $1,000 tightrope board), got his game files, and turned that tightrope between two mountains into a series of waterslides, with teleports in-between! So now Gray had to SLIDE past the wind turbine, the rock fall, and the log fall, before ending by doing a thumbnail hole slide through one of the gondolas to win. He did the first two pretty easily, took a couple of tries to get through the log fall, then really struggled to make it through the gondola – only once both people inside were dead and he could finally line himself up properly with the open doors was he able to make it. But make it he did, yay!
$500 – the pre-submitted one by our friend Darkshadow! Which was a series of waterslides in the sky – that pulsed in and out of existence, meaning Gray had to fall at just the right times to slide down each one as it came in so he could keep up his speed to make it to the dome with the win. This took MANY tries, as of course he just kept falling faster and faster as he dropped from one water slide to the next and kept spinning off to the side and falling to his death. But eventually he got the pattern, did some sick quadruple-axles, and made it to the dome! w000!
$1,000 – And look at that, Alex is back! With what is technically another tightrope board, though Gray did get onto it via waterslide. The goal here was to make it to the end through all of Alex’s ridiculous obstacles – waterslides shooting giant soccer balls at Gray as he attempted to jump gaps; waterslides shooting CARS at him (when they didn’t all crash into each other and get tangled up) while he tried to climb a teleporting block over a wall without getting teleported off the course with it; two pulsating cylinders that he had to get through (one pulsed slowly and had a spinning fan thing inside he had to ride to the next part of the beam; the other pulsed fast and was simply an obstacle he had to run through at the right times); and finally one final waterslide shooting SATAN RIDING JETSKIS (and occasionally Meaty Bits the deer doing the same) at Gray as he sprinted to the end to dive into the finish. Again, navigating this nonsense took up most of the video, with Gray getting smacked to hell. Beautiful. I want Alex and Danny (and maybe Darkshadow) to collab if at all possible. XD
3. Play Sims 4 and do some building/save renovation: Check – though what I mostly did was save all of the lots I’ve downloaded and updated to my liking from the Chill Save into my Library, so if I do decide in future to make another save, I have them all there and ready to go. :) I did download two new lots, though:
Pectoral Fitness Refurb by Maydussa, to finish out the renovation of Del Sol Valley’s sad downtown area! This is a great update to the gym, with some added spa elements (there’s even a glass-roofed meditation area up top). My main adjustments were replacing some of the spa stuff with a few of the updated objects from the Spa Day refresh, adding the rock climbing wall from Fitness Stuff to the main workout area (had to adjust the wall height to fit it, but worth), and changing one lot trait from “Peace & Quiet” to “Geothermal.”
Elixirs and Brews Reno by AbyArashi, to update Glimmberbrook’s one extremely sad bar. Her update looks SO much better, and actually had some life to it, with a nice fountain out front and a fake stable out back. There’s even a campfire! My only updates were to switch out the decorative well with the Wishing Well from Romantic Garden Stuff (if ANY neighborhood should have a lot with one of those on it, it’s Glimmerbrook) and add some lot traits (“Homey,” “Sunny Aspect,” and “Convivial”).
So yeah, not bad! Perhaps I’ll take Smiler by one of these places next time I play them. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Finished off a couple of future Thursday posts for Victor Luvs Alice before lunch – the traditional “now that I’ve completed this story, here’s a link to the full version from the beginning” link for "Londerland Bloodlines: Santa Monica's Vale Of Tears" for this upcoming Thursday, and a ranked list of Alice versus Fire in “Londerland Bloodlines” as a whole for a future Thursday. So that's something!
Not too shabby, no. And I'm glad to have all those lots in my Sims 4 Library now -- ready when I need them! We'll see when that is, of course. . .in the meantime, time for Sunday to-dos:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's Fallout Sunday video
3. Play Fallout 4 and continue on with Piper
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
We'll see if I manage all five -- you lot know that I've been a little off with the workouts on weekends lately. But maybe! As it stands, I'm doing the social thing, and I want to see about getting the next set of Smiler Always pictures sorted for the Wednesday Chill Save update on Victor Luvs Alice. . .night all!
