the vacation ends :(

Yes, today is the final day of my long chunk of time off -- tomorrow, it's mostly back to the usual work grind. (I say "mostly" because it is a short week and I still have half-day Fridays for another four weeks.) Meeh. But it's been a good vacation for the most part, and I can't complain about ending on an Unofficial BTTF Day -- happy 8/8! XD And now that I've gone ahead and started this update early, let's take a look at the old to-do list:

1. Either continue writing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" or do some more Blades in the Dark stuff: Check to the latter – spent various little chunks of time throughout the day nailing down point spreads (Alice’s focus is Prowess – she’s good for prowling, skirmishing, and wrecking, with a bit of studying, attuning (to ghosts), and commanding on the side; Smiler’s is Resolve – they’re great at commanding, consorting, and swaying (people), with some surveying (the situation), tinkering, and finessing on the side; Victor took a WHILE to fully nail down but ended up with a focus on Prowess as well, with his strengths being finessing and attuning, with a bit of prowling, studying, and tinkering on the side) and did some notes on personal histories (I figure the events of AMA and A:MR can go pretty much how they did in canon for poor Alice, though Bumby may die of something other than being shoved in front of a train, then she spends some time playing bodyguard for Nan Sharpe and her prostitutes; Victor’s Corpse Bride experience is now him being dragged into the “ghost field” echo of the city by Emily, a half-feral ghost obsessed with marriage – I have not yet landed on if he even met Victoria or not in this version; and Smiler is the biological child of Dr. Kelman, but ran away as soon as they were able and ended up being adopted by Matthew and Carol Alton of the Advocates cult, who taught them about spreading joy and encouraged them with their alchemist leanings). Their crew is going to be Shadows (thieves) with some Hawkers (selling stuff) activities on the side (because I imagine one of the ways they make coin is through Smiler’s Joy Serum sales). Slowly but surely this is all coming together! :)

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – easy two-in, two-out –

A) First up, Call Me Kevin with “What the feck is Dinkum?” Well, as it turns out, Dinkum is essentially “Animal Crossing in Australia only all humans and the local wildlife CAN kill you.” XD Kevin created his new settler, Shit Bro, and sent him with old lady Fletch to start a little tent town on the coast! What followed was Shit Bro trying to come to grips with the land and how to live off it – or, rather, how to earn the points to buy licenses from Fletch so he could live off it. Because you can’t mine without a mining license, you can’t farm without a farming license, and don’t even think of picking up a shovel without a digging license. Kevin immediately thought he was being scammed. XD But he did pretty well for himself nonetheless – sure, he was sleeping OUTSIDE of his tent instead of inside it (inside was for his box of important stuff – plus a roo poo to put potential thieves off the scent); constantly setting himself on fire every time he left traveling trader John’s tent because he put the campfire right outside of it; and nearly died to shark and crocodiles. . .but he ALSO earned enough points from setting himself on fire constantly (there’s a “damage sponge” achievement that awards them) to buy his licenses for mining, fishing, hunting, logging, and farming; successfully killed a shark and a CASSOWARY (if you don’t know what that is, it is a devil bird down in Australia, and Shit Bro turned it into drumsticks); and convinced John to stay on the island permanently and built him a shop! Not that he was HAPPY about that, pointing out that everything about this scenario seemed designed to keep him permanently in debt, but still. Accomplishments! And he did it all while dressed in nothing but his underwear, some “ear hats” (earmuffs), and a pair of space shoes. Because he sold his old clothes to John. XD I’d be happy to see more of this weirdness should he wish to play it!

B) And second up, we had GrayStillPlays and “I survived 100 years in happy wheels!” Yes, Happy Wheels is back! :D Starting with the traditional bottle throw (featuring such things as “piza,” “very difficult” and its mirror image “tluciffid yrev,” and an invisible “WHAT?!” platform, all of which Gray got), then followed by a Segway run over snapping ropes (which broke faster and faster the farther along he got); a very brief look at “Pogo Fight Hard Cubed” (which would have been a difficult fight against many opponents if Gray hadn’t spotted the mine to catapult himself across the level without having to do a single thing); a chaos board full of rockets and a greeting from Satan should you go down the secret gap (Gray managed to get both the Satan win and the regular win); a very short board where Gray had to choose watermelons or winning (being Gray, he chose watermelons first); a slot machine board where you could win such prizes as pineapples, a new car, or death by butcher cleaver butterfly (Gray got them all by hitting the JACKPOT!); another village wrecking board (which Gray was uncharacteristically apologetic about); a “don’t move” table run board (where even though Gray didn’t even touch the controls, his guy still ended up with a table leg through his trachea); an “Only One Master” pogo obstacle board full of invisible platforms (and even more invisible gaps), crossbows, spikes, and rockets trying to keep you off the win (easily the board Gray struggled the most with); a glass break board in a beautiful meadow (which Gray kept disemboweling himself on); a garbage dodge with Pogo Man in a sewer (in which he was saved by having his legs chopped off early so some of the higher hazards couldn’t get to him); and finally “The Portal,” a story board where Gray and Tom Hardy went through some guy’s laser beam portal and got teleported across a number of different levels, including a bottle run, a faux ball fall, and a weird neon elevator, before returning and finding the guy dead and his body decayed into a skeleton, with the portal blasting another hole in the wall for them to escape through (surprisingly well made for a Happy Wheels level). Ahhh, it’s good to see Gray return to this classic. :D

3. Play Sims 4 and finish off decorating the new Valicer house (and hopefully actually play the trio a bit): Check on decorating the house, but not on anything else – I booted the game up shortly after 2:30 PM, started dragging items out of everybody’s inventory to put in the house – which led to me:

A) Rearranging and embiggening the greenhouse to accommodate all the new plants and suchlike I was going to have the trio grow – the gang now has “Orchard Row,” a bunch of in-ground garden patches for all the normal fruit trees; two special Werewolves planters for the special fruit trees (Smiler’s plasma fruit tree and the yet-to-be-planted moodberry fruit tree); and all the regular planters for flowers, fruit, veg, and herbs; plus the bees. The Sixam Mosquito Trap plant got moved into a separate pot and put into Smiler’s room as a pet (they’re calling it “Snappy”).

B) Spending some time going through all the photographs in everybody’s inventories, selling the worst duplicates and trying to figure out where I wanted to put the nice ones – there is now currently a “Victor and Alice’s Jungle Adventures honeymoon” wall in the study, the new Festival of Snow Valicer selfies in the living room, and the spare Festival of Snow picture Alice took in Smiler’s room! Oh, and Victor and Alice’s graduation photos and diplomas are on either side of their bed. :)

C) Making sure that everything that should be displayed got put out properly – all the mounted fish went around the top of the kitchen (we have a lot of them!); the decorative eggs and Alice’s Izzy Fabulous Simmi went in the study (I had to get some extra shelving for the overflow eggs, but as Egg Day is actually on Monday in Sims world, they would have needed that extra space anyway – the Simmi got its own little house shelf), as well as Victor’s termites on the big insect display shelf (which I AM thinking of moving to the barn, honestly, simply as it is HUGE); and I got a big display for Victor and Alice’s Selvadoradan treasures (though some of their stuff has to be sent away for authentication before it can be put in there).

D) Making sure they had a bunch of starting activities to work with on their new lot – namely, Smiler now has a yoga mat in their room instead of a bed (they Darkly Meditate for their vampire power – why not add actual meditation and yoga?) and a guitar in the study (I actually headcanon them as knowing guitar and drums in appropriate AUs, so about time they started learning in this save file); and the gang in general has a chess table in the study and a whole bunch of crafting benches in the barn (the juice fizzer, the candle-making station, the woodworking bench, and the flower-arranging bench) because my goal is for them to make all sorts of stuff to sell from home! Or in the town square with a selling table. :)

E) Making sure the place had a few nice homey touches – namely, putting curtains on as many windows as I could (and recoloring them to be fun), and adding a bit of clutter here and there (like laundry detergent on top of the washer and dryer).

And then I looked up and it was like 4 PM. XD I did have them at least get inside the house and start on a few activities – Smiler’s finishing off their final bits of homework for the semester; Victor’s working on a song; and Alice put away all the spare books cluttering up the coffee table. They’re a bit short on loose cash at the moment, but Alice will be getting her artist job once I start playing them in earnest again, which will help. Also hopefully their windmills start producing some power for them soon, otherwise they’re not gonna have any lights or computers for a while. . .

4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – did the usual morning dash-and-tags check on Victor Luvs Alice, then finished off the text on the Chill Save update posts! And got my Song Saturday for the week all sorted too – since we have the massive “Valicer finally together in one house” update from my Sims 4 game this week, I did one of the latest songs I associate with Valicer now – “Boom Clap” by Charli XCX. It’s just got the right fun vibes. :) Put up the “All Occults Coffee Shop AU” post on Thursday and that reblog on how OTPs should be gremlins together on Friday, and I should be all set for my first week back at work!

5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, to finally start the 2020 Oxventure Christmas Episode, “Silent Knight!” Which, as I half-guessed upon seeing the name, is not just a pun on “Silent Night” the song title, but also a sequel to the early Oxventure “Quiet Riot,” in which the gang had to stop The Order of Keeping It Down from basically enslaving a town to silence, and in the process invented Merilwen’s Meat Grinder. XD Also, the intended boss fight against an owlbear never happened because Merilwen cast Animal Friendship on it. XD Having taken a bit of a break after deposing two kings in one day in their last adventure (well, deposing ONE king, making Corazon king instead, and then Corazon resigning because he hated the town), the gang found themselves on the eve of Sun’s Turn (the Geth equivalent of Christmas/Solstice) summoned back to the town in “Quiet Riot,” Inkwater, by a mysterious note signed only “a friend.” Upon their arrival, they were astonished to discover a number of the villagers dressed up like them – it seems that, in Inkwater, the Oxventurers are considered genuine heroes and people to emulate! This is a twist. XD Of course, this also meant that the adventurers were actually mistaken for people in costume themselves when they arrived. Corazon tried to turn this into an opportunity for money by asking if there was a Corazon costume competition with a big cash prize –

There was not, but there was an opening for the “official pirate” of the children’s entertainment! Egbert and Dob immediately volunteered Corazon for the role. >D The festival greeter, Beryl, took them around to the church to show them what they would be doing – to everyone’s shock and hilarity, it seems that they have turned Merilwen’s Meat Grinder into a children’s slide. The kids wait in the church where the whole mess happened (and which does still have a few off-color stones on its floor), then are taken outside, pushed down a hill made slippery with all sorts of grease by the townsfolk by the Official Corazon and – if they can’t keep their footing – into a “tickle pit” full of friendly villagers, before being hoisted out by the Official Merilwen, asked if they’ve been good, and given a sweet. XD Corazon jokingly told Merilwen not to grow any spikes and kill any children, while Merilwen tried to remind him of his culpability in the whole mess by covering the floor with grease so all those paladins went into the spikes at speed. Beryl remarked to Prudence that they were wonderfully in-character. XD

Of course, before Corazon could take his rightful place as the Official Corazon, there was the matter of the previous Corazon player, Bill. Bill being a large man with a large gut, a pitchfork, a tankard, and a shirt riding up above his belly. Who thought Corazon was named “Carl.” Corazon was naturally livid that this guy had been chosen to play him, but Dob stepped in as his “agent” and managed to explain to Bill that Corazon would be taking over the role, but they weren’t firing him, they were just – releasing him to other opportunities. And then, to keep the guy mollified after he started complaining that he’d cleared his schedule of getting drunk behind the barn for this, he offered him a role as the co-executive producer, complete with just a small donation up-front. One Charisma check (and a free cigar) later, Bill (who’d rolled VERY poorly against Dob’s very good 22) was completely on board with all this nonsense. XD The gang figured that, as long as they had him around, they could also ask him if he recognized the handwriting on the note they’d received – he said that it looked like that of “The Stranger,” the only unknown in the village before they arrived. He agreed to lead them over to the tavern to meet them, as his tankard had run dry anyway. Before they left, though, Beryl asked if they could help with something else after the slide was done – seemed that they had some fake paladins filled with sweets for the kids to shove into spikes and burst open to get at the goodies inside (yes, they were called Paladinatas) as a special surprise, and Beryl needed some assistance wrangling them into the right spot. The group agreed to help – and Corazon then asked if Egbert, being a paladin himself, was full of sweets. Egbert said yes, for the particulars of dragonborn anatomy are very strange –

Cue Dob promptly smacking him with a large stick to try and dislodge some. The first smack didn’t QUITE make it through Egbert’s armor, but the second one did, and Corazon caught a whole bunch of boiled sweets as they flew out of Egbert’s mouth. XD Prudence decided they were like candy bezoars (those stones you find in a goat’s stomach that are supposed to be good for poison) and might be useful later, while Merilwen was like “they’re probably horrible and covered with stomach acid??” And Egbert was just cheerfully resigned to all this – I guess when one of your compatriots has joked more than once about eating you once something else kills you. . .

ANYWAY – off to the local tavern! Which was called “The Tasteful Nude” and, hilariously, had a tasteful nude of Dob (with his meat and two veg concealed by a grape vine) on the sign. Dob had to check his pants to make sure everything was as he expected down there after seeing it. XD The tavern was largely empty (doing all its business by delivery this night), but there was one table occupied – by a mysterious, severe woman, and –

ALFRED STRANGETIDE! :D Everyone’s favorite “I’m supposed to be an academic in my 30s but thanks to the Oxventurers treating me like a small child I have sort of become a bright toddler” NPC! :D The gang was actually genuinely thrilled to see him, with Dob giving him a hug and Corazon dandling him on his knee. :) Alfred discussed how he’d made a bit of a prat of himself in the early days, mistaking all the costumed people around for “my Dob,” causing Dob to declare that he’d found his Dob again – and then try to take him out of the tavern because obviously he’s underage. Alfred was able to point out they had a kid’s menu first, though. XD Talk turned to their last parting, and Alfred said it had hurt to see them go, but after wandering around a bit himself and coming to Inkwater, he understood their need to adventure around and help people. In fact, he’s sure it’s wonderful to be treated like this in all the various towns and villages they’ve visited! Cue some awkward silences and “Well, if the town is still standing. . .” XD

However, it seems like Inkwater might not be standing in the near future – the town is under threat from mysterious forces! Alfred’s companion, Marisa, is about to fill them in – that is, if Luke and Ellen can stop giggling over her official job title being the “chandler” (she makes candles, for your edification). I have to admit, I didn’t get this one at first – but then again, I’ve never actually WATCHED Friends, so. . . XD Well, we’ll see what she has to say about the threat tomorrow!

Not bad, not bad at all. :) Feel like I'm in a good position for the week to come -- well, except for the fact that I'm PRETTY sure I'm gonna end up with my period before the week is out. I feel more tired than I think I should right now. . .then again, I kinda woke up earlier than I wanted to today, so. . .we'll see. I'm gonna wrap this up and start doing some of the social stuff. Night all!