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Kind Of Distracted Friday Night
Aug. 12th, 2022 11:52 pmI had focus earlier, but it seems to have gone walkabout now -- I'm managing the social stuff well enough, I suppose, but my brain keeps trying to pull me in other directions. . . Fortunately I already have my to-do list all typed up!
Work – *waggles hand* We figured out what was going on with some of the credit card nonsense, and some of the stuff that was posted in the wrong place was fixed, but I also had a call that revealed MORE nonsense like a half-hour before I was to leave, soo. . . At least the GL was easy and I got most of what I wanted to get done, done! Just glad to be out again for the weekend.
Beanbags – Check – a MUCH drier day meant heading out to the backyard! Though we only ended up doing three rounds – usually when I have more free time, it’s a fiver. *shrug* Mom ended up having an excellent day for the first two games, while Dad kept having last-minute chokes and I was able to sneak by him for the win on the third. Final scores were me 2-3-W; Dad 3-2-2; Mom W-W-3. I’ll take that!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, but tonight instead of the Oxventure, I was instead with James Turner! Yes, having dropped him from my Subs list, I figured that my workout time was a good opportunity to check up on some of his videos that I’d missed. Like the very first episode of his High School Years Rags to Riches, featuring the returned-to-teenhood Reginald Bigwallet! He’d been given some appropriate pack clothes, an empty lot by Plumbite Pier in Copperdale, and the Overachiever and Socially Awkward traits and told to go forth and make some cash!
He promptly overloaded himself with stuff to do thanks to James picking the “do all the things” teen aspiration (I forget the name of it, but it encourages after-school activities, making money with side hustles, and getting good grades) – after a trip to ThriftTea to see if he could get started putting together outfits for Trendi (he could not), he instead decided to get a part-time Barista job in the mornings, and then join the Cheer team in the afternoon! Which means he has like, uh – two hours to himself before he has to go to sleep? *shrug* If James thinks he can handle it. . . Anyway, Reginald headed over to the school to take advantage of the cheer mat there to practice his first routine ahead of his first meet, before heading down to the pier to try and meet people, do homework, and steal unattended boba teas. And make cringy social media posts, as all teens do. :p He’s not really having much luck making friends thanks to his Socially Awkward trait – seems like it’s a lot easier for people to hate you and everything you do when you have that, oof – but he kept up on his homework, found a bench to sleep on, and got to work mostly on time (in James’s defense, he had NO idea where the despawn point was). And then it was time for the pack’s big selling point – active school!
. . .it’s just like every active career, in that I can see this getting real old real fast. I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced there’s enough different stuff to do every day to personally hold my interest – I have complained before about the active careers (PARTICULARLY “Detective” from Get To Work) all ending up samey after a while, and this just looks like the same deal. Especially since “active classes” are just going to the class and watching your Sim listen to the teacher and maybe take a few notes. Meeeh. And then the after-school activities are just the same rabbit holes as ever – which feels weird to complain about after complaining that “active school” looks samey, but I feel like if you’re gonna have these things in a school-related pack, there should at least be the OPTION to do them at the school. You’re already there, after all! Like, look, you get the option to “join” or “send alone” for school itself – the after-school activities should be the same! Just – options. Choice. Give it to me.
But yeah, Reginald’s first couple of days in Copperdale haven’t yielded much in either simoleons, grades, or friendship yet. Nothing for it but to keep trying, though! And given that most of these episodes are roughly the length of one of my workouts, I think watching this series alongside Oxventure is a good idea. :) Good way to catch up without having to worry about working it into the rest of my free time!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check! Made some good progress today, with Victor explaining more about how Corpse Bride went down in this universe – the initial Ball & Socket scene has ended up mostly the same, up until the moment at the end of “Remains of the Day” where Bonejangles threw Victor in to dance with Emily. That’s the point where this Victor snapped and yelled that he hadn’t meant to promise anything to anyone, this was all a mistake. He admitted he did think about running like canon!Victor, but – well. This one wasn’t even seriously practicing his vows, he was just out there running through them to get them out of his head after Pastor Galswells interrupted his date. Makes sense he might panic in a different way. He and Emily still made it to the lookout point from the film, though – just without a big chase sequence, as instead Victor asked if they could talk privately so he could get to know her better after explaining the circumstances of his “proposal.” And he’s still gonna find his dog up there – which is going to please Alice quite a bit, as that means Dinah’s probably in the afterlife as well. :) Rather fun to get this to all come together at last!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – three in, three out this evening –
A) Started with a quick one before my workout – the latest Fun With Shorts, “Pottery Making!” A quick look at a potter at her craft – making a vase on her table, and then firing it in the kiln with a bunch of other stuff. Nothing spectacular, but Josh’s riffs definitely made it better – particularly when he mocked the narrator for constantly pronouncing “kiln” as “kil.” XD
B) Then this evening we moved onto Call Me Kevin and “I was forced to fix the worst Universities ever created,” aka another round of challenges from Two Point Campus! Yes, the creators of this game are still paying him, RTGame, Anna_Chess, and now The Spiffing Brit to cycle through various universities they have created (to be utter horrors) and complete various challenges. Kevin’s challenges today were –
I. Happiness First, Grades Second – time to maximize happiness on campus! A bit of a difficult prospect when the person before you (I think it was Spiffing) has put a hot dog stand and the only bathroom in the middle of a giant hedge maze. With a label reading “GET BONE ZONED.” XD Kevin, unused to FIXING things in these videos, did his best to start making things better – starting with building a dormitory with plenty of beds and owls, putting a smiley face into the dance floor, starting up Clown College classes (never mind his only student just left), throwing down loads of nice plants, booking cool bands to play in the student union, and creating multiple student lounges with loads of refrigerators, arcade machines, toy boxes, and other fun amusements! Oh, and he eventually built another bathroom that the students could actually reach. XD All his hard work paid off, though – while the college was far from making a profit, the students actually were genuinely quite happy with all the stuff he had provided, and were even getting okay grades! C+s for the most part – amazing! XD Even Anna was shocked that everything was actually working reasonably well when Kevin passed the campus over to her. XD
II. SPEND THAT MONEY – okay, THIS was a challenge more in line with how Kevin does things – he had to spend as much money as humanly possible on his campus and worry about the budgeting later. I’m not sure who he received this university from, but I suspect it was Spiffing again because there was another hedge maze (though no bathroom in it this time) and mysterious signs reading “POO” and “RRICH.” XD Kevin promptly jumped in and started wasting money as quickly as possible – hiring all staff who applied, no matter how incompetent; increasing the student intake while reducing tuition fees down to zero; and getting HEAVILY into marketing. Like, he created a whole separateprison BUILDING just for marketing offices and hired as many teaching assistants as he could to fill them. Add in some researching about bars, a giant dig pit for the archaeology students (and little walled-off “boxes” to put all their treasures in instead of selling them), more expensive furnishings and plants, and more cool bands to entertain the masses as they blew all their money, and it wasn’t long until Kevin drove the school straight into bankruptcy. XD Hey, at least he earned the “Student’s Choice” award before the place closed down! And I discovered that apparently the OX team got their own rug in the game! O.o It was all over the place in the student lounge. I’d say how weird, but I’m pretty sure Jane’s been streaming the game for the creators, so. . . Where’s Kevin’s special piece of in-game merch, guys? :p
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When cops get an unlimited budget” – aka, Gray plays Traffic Cop 3-D! Another silly little mobile game, this one about being a traffic cop on the beat, using your lasers to read license plates and determine who to pull over, who to let go, and who to RAM WITHOUT MERCY. You can guess which option Gray picked as soon as it was available. XD Hilariously, though, he didn’t always ram without reason – he actually spent a decent amount of time looking for actual criminals to take down. I mean, not to say he didn’t pull over the occasional innocent person, but it was usually just to annoy them for a little while before letting them go. Except for the guy who was driving a Lamborghini right after he’d picked up one as his new cop car. That guy had to go for copying Gray’s style. XD He also rammed a guy with a new car without a scratch on it; let a barista driving dangerously and a guy he mistook for the original Superman (Christopher “Reed” instead of “Reeve”) go, and didn’t even attempt to catch a serial killer, instead pulling over an ambulance. XD And in the “story levels,” he saved a person from a car accident via TASERING THEM so they’d get up and run away, and completed a traffic stop by shooting out a guy’s tail light so he could ticket them for it being broken. He also accepted bribes until he’d literally unlocked everything in the game, to the point where he confused the game by refusing one. :p Typical GrayStillPlays mobile nonsense!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – muddled my way through a response to my friend’s starter (based off of Stranger Things, which I’ve never watched, but I’m doing my best with what I know!) despite feeling a bit scattered and distracted tonight. But it’s there, and hopefully she likes it!
5. Play Superliminal: Check – I have started Challenge Mode! Which is not a series of discrete challenges, as I expected, but instead just playing the game over again, only this time certain puzzles have click and jump limits – like, in the first stage, when you get past the initial chess piece blocking your way, you can see that the room beyond has a limit of two clicks to manipulate things, and you aren’t allowed to jump at all. So you have to figure out what to do within those limits to solve the puzzle. Most of the puzzles are the same as they were in the original game, though I’ve definitely come across one that was altered – what was normally a simple “put the chess piece on the button” puzzle was made more “interesting” by the addition of a short pane of glass in front of the button, which fucks with your perception and means you’re going to put the piece either in front or behind the button unless you know the trick. Which, I admit, I had to look up. Had to look up a handful of puzzles as I went along, honestly – I like puzzle games, but my brain can get jammed up and not see obvious solutions. Like substituting one thing you can click for another thing you can click in one particular room, or forgetting I can rotate objects to help myself out. And some of the others are just FIDDLY – you have to get them the EXACT right size at the EXACT right spot before they’ll work. Ugh. But I’m doing all right so far, having gotten through the first two levels again. AND I discovered that clicking missed fire alarms and fire extinguishers for achievements does NOT count against any particular challenges click limit! :) So that’ nice. Plus I finally found my way up to that little side hall in the second “Optical” level and got the achievement for that, so that’s nice. :) So I guess “Challengeliminal” will be my Fridays for the next few weeks!
Not too shabby. . .AND it's worth noting I had a fun idea for Smiler's Blades in the Dark backstory at work that I made a quick note of in that document when I got home. :) So that's a bit of extra writing fun! But for now, let's make up the Saturday to-do list:
1. Continue writing "As Long As You Love Me"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, plus the Plumbella and James Turner videos in my Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and actually play the Valicer trio in their new house
4. Work on tumblr drafts
I think that should work out nicely for a non-cleaning Saturday. Now to get back to doing my best to focus on messaging tumblr friends. . . Night all!
Work – *waggles hand* We figured out what was going on with some of the credit card nonsense, and some of the stuff that was posted in the wrong place was fixed, but I also had a call that revealed MORE nonsense like a half-hour before I was to leave, soo. . . At least the GL was easy and I got most of what I wanted to get done, done! Just glad to be out again for the weekend.
Beanbags – Check – a MUCH drier day meant heading out to the backyard! Though we only ended up doing three rounds – usually when I have more free time, it’s a fiver. *shrug* Mom ended up having an excellent day for the first two games, while Dad kept having last-minute chokes and I was able to sneak by him for the win on the third. Final scores were me 2-3-W; Dad 3-2-2; Mom W-W-3. I’ll take that!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – another night on the bike, but tonight instead of the Oxventure, I was instead with James Turner! Yes, having dropped him from my Subs list, I figured that my workout time was a good opportunity to check up on some of his videos that I’d missed. Like the very first episode of his High School Years Rags to Riches, featuring the returned-to-teenhood Reginald Bigwallet! He’d been given some appropriate pack clothes, an empty lot by Plumbite Pier in Copperdale, and the Overachiever and Socially Awkward traits and told to go forth and make some cash!
He promptly overloaded himself with stuff to do thanks to James picking the “do all the things” teen aspiration (I forget the name of it, but it encourages after-school activities, making money with side hustles, and getting good grades) – after a trip to ThriftTea to see if he could get started putting together outfits for Trendi (he could not), he instead decided to get a part-time Barista job in the mornings, and then join the Cheer team in the afternoon! Which means he has like, uh – two hours to himself before he has to go to sleep? *shrug* If James thinks he can handle it. . . Anyway, Reginald headed over to the school to take advantage of the cheer mat there to practice his first routine ahead of his first meet, before heading down to the pier to try and meet people, do homework, and steal unattended boba teas. And make cringy social media posts, as all teens do. :p He’s not really having much luck making friends thanks to his Socially Awkward trait – seems like it’s a lot easier for people to hate you and everything you do when you have that, oof – but he kept up on his homework, found a bench to sleep on, and got to work mostly on time (in James’s defense, he had NO idea where the despawn point was). And then it was time for the pack’s big selling point – active school!
. . .it’s just like every active career, in that I can see this getting real old real fast. I’m sorry, but I’m not convinced there’s enough different stuff to do every day to personally hold my interest – I have complained before about the active careers (PARTICULARLY “Detective” from Get To Work) all ending up samey after a while, and this just looks like the same deal. Especially since “active classes” are just going to the class and watching your Sim listen to the teacher and maybe take a few notes. Meeeh. And then the after-school activities are just the same rabbit holes as ever – which feels weird to complain about after complaining that “active school” looks samey, but I feel like if you’re gonna have these things in a school-related pack, there should at least be the OPTION to do them at the school. You’re already there, after all! Like, look, you get the option to “join” or “send alone” for school itself – the after-school activities should be the same! Just – options. Choice. Give it to me.
But yeah, Reginald’s first couple of days in Copperdale haven’t yielded much in either simoleons, grades, or friendship yet. Nothing for it but to keep trying, though! And given that most of these episodes are roughly the length of one of my workouts, I think watching this series alongside Oxventure is a good idea. :) Good way to catch up without having to worry about working it into the rest of my free time!
2. Continue writing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check! Made some good progress today, with Victor explaining more about how Corpse Bride went down in this universe – the initial Ball & Socket scene has ended up mostly the same, up until the moment at the end of “Remains of the Day” where Bonejangles threw Victor in to dance with Emily. That’s the point where this Victor snapped and yelled that he hadn’t meant to promise anything to anyone, this was all a mistake. He admitted he did think about running like canon!Victor, but – well. This one wasn’t even seriously practicing his vows, he was just out there running through them to get them out of his head after Pastor Galswells interrupted his date. Makes sense he might panic in a different way. He and Emily still made it to the lookout point from the film, though – just without a big chase sequence, as instead Victor asked if they could talk privately so he could get to know her better after explaining the circumstances of his “proposal.” And he’s still gonna find his dog up there – which is going to please Alice quite a bit, as that means Dinah’s probably in the afterlife as well. :) Rather fun to get this to all come together at last!
3. Keep up with YouTube Subs: Check – three in, three out this evening –
A) Started with a quick one before my workout – the latest Fun With Shorts, “Pottery Making!” A quick look at a potter at her craft – making a vase on her table, and then firing it in the kiln with a bunch of other stuff. Nothing spectacular, but Josh’s riffs definitely made it better – particularly when he mocked the narrator for constantly pronouncing “kiln” as “kil.” XD
B) Then this evening we moved onto Call Me Kevin and “I was forced to fix the worst Universities ever created,” aka another round of challenges from Two Point Campus! Yes, the creators of this game are still paying him, RTGame, Anna_Chess, and now The Spiffing Brit to cycle through various universities they have created (to be utter horrors) and complete various challenges. Kevin’s challenges today were –
I. Happiness First, Grades Second – time to maximize happiness on campus! A bit of a difficult prospect when the person before you (I think it was Spiffing) has put a hot dog stand and the only bathroom in the middle of a giant hedge maze. With a label reading “GET BONE ZONED.” XD Kevin, unused to FIXING things in these videos, did his best to start making things better – starting with building a dormitory with plenty of beds and owls, putting a smiley face into the dance floor, starting up Clown College classes (never mind his only student just left), throwing down loads of nice plants, booking cool bands to play in the student union, and creating multiple student lounges with loads of refrigerators, arcade machines, toy boxes, and other fun amusements! Oh, and he eventually built another bathroom that the students could actually reach. XD All his hard work paid off, though – while the college was far from making a profit, the students actually were genuinely quite happy with all the stuff he had provided, and were even getting okay grades! C+s for the most part – amazing! XD Even Anna was shocked that everything was actually working reasonably well when Kevin passed the campus over to her. XD
II. SPEND THAT MONEY – okay, THIS was a challenge more in line with how Kevin does things – he had to spend as much money as humanly possible on his campus and worry about the budgeting later. I’m not sure who he received this university from, but I suspect it was Spiffing again because there was another hedge maze (though no bathroom in it this time) and mysterious signs reading “POO” and “RRICH.” XD Kevin promptly jumped in and started wasting money as quickly as possible – hiring all staff who applied, no matter how incompetent; increasing the student intake while reducing tuition fees down to zero; and getting HEAVILY into marketing. Like, he created a whole separate
C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When cops get an unlimited budget” – aka, Gray plays Traffic Cop 3-D! Another silly little mobile game, this one about being a traffic cop on the beat, using your lasers to read license plates and determine who to pull over, who to let go, and who to RAM WITHOUT MERCY. You can guess which option Gray picked as soon as it was available. XD Hilariously, though, he didn’t always ram without reason – he actually spent a decent amount of time looking for actual criminals to take down. I mean, not to say he didn’t pull over the occasional innocent person, but it was usually just to annoy them for a little while before letting them go. Except for the guy who was driving a Lamborghini right after he’d picked up one as his new cop car. That guy had to go for copying Gray’s style. XD He also rammed a guy with a new car without a scratch on it; let a barista driving dangerously and a guy he mistook for the original Superman (Christopher “Reed” instead of “Reeve”) go, and didn’t even attempt to catch a serial killer, instead pulling over an ambulance. XD And in the “story levels,” he saved a person from a car accident via TASERING THEM so they’d get up and run away, and completed a traffic stop by shooting out a guy’s tail light so he could ticket them for it being broken. He also accepted bribes until he’d literally unlocked everything in the game, to the point where he confused the game by refusing one. :p Typical GrayStillPlays mobile nonsense!
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – muddled my way through a response to my friend’s starter (based off of Stranger Things, which I’ve never watched, but I’m doing my best with what I know!) despite feeling a bit scattered and distracted tonight. But it’s there, and hopefully she likes it!
5. Play Superliminal: Check – I have started Challenge Mode! Which is not a series of discrete challenges, as I expected, but instead just playing the game over again, only this time certain puzzles have click and jump limits – like, in the first stage, when you get past the initial chess piece blocking your way, you can see that the room beyond has a limit of two clicks to manipulate things, and you aren’t allowed to jump at all. So you have to figure out what to do within those limits to solve the puzzle. Most of the puzzles are the same as they were in the original game, though I’ve definitely come across one that was altered – what was normally a simple “put the chess piece on the button” puzzle was made more “interesting” by the addition of a short pane of glass in front of the button, which fucks with your perception and means you’re going to put the piece either in front or behind the button unless you know the trick. Which, I admit, I had to look up. Had to look up a handful of puzzles as I went along, honestly – I like puzzle games, but my brain can get jammed up and not see obvious solutions. Like substituting one thing you can click for another thing you can click in one particular room, or forgetting I can rotate objects to help myself out. And some of the others are just FIDDLY – you have to get them the EXACT right size at the EXACT right spot before they’ll work. Ugh. But I’m doing all right so far, having gotten through the first two levels again. AND I discovered that clicking missed fire alarms and fire extinguishers for achievements does NOT count against any particular challenges click limit! :) So that’ nice. Plus I finally found my way up to that little side hall in the second “Optical” level and got the achievement for that, so that’s nice. :) So I guess “Challengeliminal” will be my Fridays for the next few weeks!
Not too shabby. . .AND it's worth noting I had a fun idea for Smiler's Blades in the Dark backstory at work that I made a quick note of in that document when I got home. :) So that's a bit of extra writing fun! But for now, let's make up the Saturday to-do list:
1. Continue writing "As Long As You Love Me"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, plus the Plumbella and James Turner videos in my Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and actually play the Valicer trio in their new house
4. Work on tumblr drafts
I think that should work out nicely for a non-cleaning Saturday. Now to get back to doing my best to focus on messaging tumblr friends. . . Night all!
