Reasonably Productive Saturday

Indeed, I did quite well on the old to-do list today --

1. Continue writing "As Long As You Love Me": Check – we have gotten further into the “Not Your Murder Buddy” snippet, with Alice admitting that the way she feels when looking at Barkis isn’t quite the same as the one she gets when she looks at most of her other marks – she can tell the guy needs to DIE, but. . .not necessarily by her hand. But she couldn’t puzzle out why he felt different, so she went down to kill him regardless – and got a shovel blade to the shoulder for her trouble. Ooh boy – and things are just gonna get worse from there, at least for Victor. . .

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and the Sims videos in my Watch Later: Six-seventh’s check – I got through everything but today’s GrayStillPlays. But that was still a hefty number of videos –

A) First up from the old Watch Later was a return from Red Plumbob: “♦ Werewolves - Evolution ♦ Sims1 - Sims2 - Sims3 - Sims4 (Part 1)!” A quick look at werewolves throughout the series, starting with the “just a costume” option from The Sims, all the way to the dedicated game pack full-occult in The Sims 4. It’s interesting to see how far we’ve come with these occults! Sims 2 and Sims 3 werewolves have some fun interactions, but do prefer the look of Sims 4 werewolves (even with the “feet” issue – but modders are on the case with that, at least), and I think they probably have the best perks and abilities. . .we’ll have to wait until Part 2 to be sure of that, though!

B) And then we had a pair of Plumbellas:

I. “Surviving an entire Sim week by only using aspiration rewards” – the title is slightly misleading, as the actual aim of the video was for Plumbella to find out if a Sim could survive a week using only aspiration rewards (potions and traits) bought by fulfilling wants and clearing fears. She wasn’t even ALLOWED to do actual aspiration stuff! She also wasn’t allowed to place or use any objects unless the Sim had a want for them, so it’s a good thing that low needs trigger reactionary wants to fulfill them. XD That being said, the video didn’t go the way she intended right from the word go – in addition to having to turn off her mods, she accidentally accepted the quiz to design her Sim through CAS Stories and went “fuck it, okay, here we go” and tried to design a chaos gremlin. The resultant vampire, Sufa Ring, was Evil, Hates Children, and a Geek, had the “Beach Life” aspiration, and bought an empty lot in Henford-on-Bagley. Plumbella got her settled in and started her challenge –

And cue Sufa insisting on a repeating cycle of crushing the dreams of toddlers, being mean to children, AVOIDING children, being mean to explicitly Good Sims, and making enemies, with occasional moments of wanting to talk about TV shows and playing video games. Yeah, the new wants in this game are a bit – repetitive. Plumbella ended up sending her around the Del Gatos, the Goths, and the Landgraabs in a semi-continuous loop, tormenting them all as best she could, with a brief stop by Vlad’s house in Forgotten Hollow to shower because the only reactionary want to a low need she got was Hygiene, and placing a shower/tub on her own lot was – well. Vampire with no level-ups versus sunny day in the English countryside. Yes, her thirst got low too, but vampires who don’t have “Tamed Thirst” just randomly attack Sims to fill that once it gets too low, so. . . Plumbella, a bit bored and finding the whole thing too easy, ended the challenge early, and I don’t blame her. Sheesh. She might try it again in “let’s do the challenge across all four mainline games” format, though, which should be interesting. . .

II. “A completely ordinary build that you do NOT need to worry about :)” – another video where the title is not exactly indicative of the content – I was expecting a fun “secret murder house” build, I got “Jesse has been feeling depressed so she built a house all in shades of gray.” Admittedly, her intention going in was to do something cute and pretty, and she just kinda stumbled into the monochrome vibe as she went. And to be fair, the house itself turned out pretty nice – small, but with a lovely little kitchen and a fun “gamer girl” bedroom. And a bathroom she actually enjoyed designing, which is rare because she hates them. :p I just – couldn’t fully get into it because of the color scheme, honestly. Playing with Smiler has made me really appreciate builds with fun wallpapers and lots of color more, and – yeah, monochrome just not for me at this point in time.

C) Then, this evening, it was into the Subs to start catching up with that, starting with a slightly-late Fun With Shorts – “Fish Is Fish!” Five minutes of a story about a fish who befriends a tadpole, watches the tadpole become a frog and hop away, listens to the frog’s stories about the surface world when it comes back, and then tries to see the world itself, has to be rescued by the frog, and decides its own world is best and he shouldn’t look for more. As Josh pointed out, it’s very easy to read a “don’t befriend anyone different and don’t look for anything more out of your life than what you already know” moral in this story! At least the riffs were good.

D) From there it was over to Call Me Kevin for “This game makes you the leader of a cult!” AKA, Kevin finds his niche with Cult of the Lamb, a brand-new game where you, as a lamb in a world of funny animals who worship horrible bloodthirsty eldritch abominations, get saved by a particular eldritch abomination from being sacrificed and tasked with becoming the leader of his new cult! You are guided by a rat person who I guess is just there to help new cult leaders, and you start off by saving a fellow sacrifice, indocrinating them into the cult, and then start building up your base and venturing out into the world to kill monsters, get blessings, and get more materials and followers to make yourself a proper temple (to give sermons and perform rituals in) and whatnot. As you might imagine, Kevin was all over this. XD His first recruit was “Shitface McGee,” a donkey who was his fellow sacrifice, and Kevin quickly fell in love with him with how happy and eager he was to help with building stuff. He was followed by “lumpy,” a lumpy-headed bison who was previously a boss fight (I think transformed by one of the other gods, Leshy), “A FECKING SNAKE,” a little pig-guy who snuck into the cult as the rat-guy’s chosen to show off how they could give you power by worshipping your statue, “..........” a wolf-guy Kevin picked up after he committed mass murder and turned into another pig; and “the 5th one idk” for the second boss fight monster (not sure what he was). Kevin gave them sermons to increase his own health, cooked them meals so they wouldn’t starve, gave McGee gifts so his loyalty would max out and he’d give Kevin more power, planted a little berry farm, and tried hard not to die fighting monsters. He even led the gang in a little sing-along that was a parody of Hozier’s “Take Me To Church.” XD Good stuff, and I’m hoping that he’ll favor us with another episode! Dunno what I need to worship to make that happen, but. . .

E) And then it was time to wrap up things with yesterday’s GrayStillPlays – “Upgrading to the STRONGEST MAN in level up runner!” Gray has found another “race down the course picking up the items to increase an attribute” game – Level Up Runner, where you’re picking up boxing gloves and punching through the people in your way so you can face off against the boss at the end of the course and smash them through walls for gem multipliers. Also you may wear silly hats and boxing gloves made of watermelons or cheeseburgers. Also also you may boost your starting level to ridiculous proportions if you have enough money – and Gray is so skilled at these kinds of games now that he MORE than had enough money. XD He was just cruising down each course, through the “Desert of Power,” the “Forest of Might,” and the wonderfully Floridian “Punch Islands,” knocking down all people in his path with his food-gloves and reaching ridiculous levels of punch power (when he was able to resist eating the evil cake placed in his path, anyway). Video ended with him managing to get to over 10,000 punch power by the end of one of the bonus levels. It’s the simple things that give you joy. :)

3. Play Sims 4 and see about either turning Victor into a spellcaster or Alice into a werewolf: Check, though thanks to the timing of my game and when we played beanbags (below), my playsession ended up split into two parts:

Before Beanbags – Mostly just domestic stuff! Smiler finished up their homework for their first day of classes, practiced guitar a bit more (up to level 3), and attended said first classes; Alice cleared some eerie hands that had popped up (now that the house is, you know, actually haunted) and had her first day of work, where she came up against the Appraiser-Bot (tried the free demo, got a bad review, fortunately nobody was looking); and Victor puttered around in the greenhouse, started juice-fizzing with some strawberries, and repaired all the broken wind turbines (and six WAS the way to go, as they now have a MASSIVE power surplus to pull on).

After Beanbags – This is when things got more interesting. First things first, Victor had to collect his strawberry fizzy juice, while Smiler took on the task of repairing ANOTHER turbine and collecting some garbage, and I bought the gang a recycler machine (plus another water collector, just because more is better) and had Victor try it out with his inventory garbage. With that sorted, though, it was time for the gang to head out –

To the Moonwood Mill Library! Why? Because it allowed them both to mingle with werewolves AND do some working out (though I had to add a treadmill to the gym area to allow them to work on cardio too). Alice went for a run while Victor and Smiler lifted weights, then (after Smiler got in a shower) everyone settled in with some books – Victor got the regular “Gutton Spiel,” while Alice and Smiler both tried out some werewolf books. Smiler then got the notification about their job starting soon, so I had them eat a plasma fruit and let them head out, while Victor and Alice hung out a little longer – both of them playing chess (Alice won), Victor going for a run of his own, and Alice exploring the underground tunnels (got nothing more than a lonely howl – she tried howling back, but no response). And with THAT all sorted –

It was off to Glimmerbrook because god damn it I was turning Victor into a spellcaster today! He and Alice went to the empty lot then headed over to the portal and the Magic Realm – I had Alice set up her easel and do a couple of paintings while Victor sought out Simeon Silversweater, chatted to him for a bit, then asked how one used Magic. After assuring Simeon that he was BORN ready to become a spellcaster, Simeon bestowed upon him the mote vision spell, and Victor went out, collected the motes, and received the Rite of Ascension! Officially a spellcaster! :D It was getting on into Wednesday then, but I had them stick around just long enough for Victor to practice some practical magic and pick up the Repairio spell! And then use it to improve the quality of his “StrawFizz” up to excellent. XD Ended it with everybody back home on the farm (with Smiler having gotten a raise too). :) Next time, I think we’ll follow Smiler for a bit so they can do some more Spirit Squad stuff, have Victor practice some magic, and maybe see about Alice becoming a werewolf! :D

4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – did a dash-and-tags catch-up this morning on Victor Luvs Alice (including finding some posts of someone’s liveblog of their first time playing Fallout 4 in full, and choosing to turn their female PC, Cat, into an OSHA inspector who really just loathes the Old World’s miserable disregard of safety standards and whatnot), and shucked a few things from there into my drafts – some really cool A:MR fanart of Alice in the “paper theater cutscenes” style (complete with an animated version) and some neat-looking houses that I am tempted to recreate the facades of at some point in Sims 4.

Additionally:

-->As stated above, my Sims session was cut in twain by a game of beanbags – it was just nice enough to go out and play (though it proved to be a bit stickier than any of us liked by the end). It was kind of a weird day, with all of us throwing all over the place, and the only constant being that, if you got a six on your starting throw, you were going to win the game. (Except in the fourth game, where the highest score was a four from Dad, and he won). We all won at least once, though, and I didn’t acquit myself too badly – final scores were me W-2-2-2-3; Dad 2-W-3-W-2; Mom 3-3-W-3-W.

And I'm currently doing a bit of the social/RP thing while working my way through all the messages that landed themselves in my inbox. Productive indeed! :) Nice to get caught up on stuff and get things done. . . Hopefully I can keep the train rolling on Sunday --

1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Jon's Fallout: The Board Game final episode, and "Legendary Roulette"

3. Play Fallout 4 and get Finch Farm to my liking before heading toward Fanueil Hall

4. Work on tumblr drafts

5. Get in a workout

Pretty standard Sunday stuff! And hopefully all achievable. *nods* Now, back to the grind -- night all!