Decently Productive Saturday

My parents have gotten Dad's computer at least SEMI-functional by reinstalling Windows (though it's still having problems, and judging by some of the noises it was making, it might be a physical issue with the hard drive, sooo -- yeah, already looking at new computers), so that's something, and the rest of the day was pretty nice and chill for me --

Tumblr: My rhythm was slightly thrown off by lunch being surprisingly early today (we normally eat around 1-1:30 PM, but Mom finished lunch early today (Ethiopian cabbage wat! Very good too) and wanted to just get it done because she and Dad were going out look at laptops; didn't get any because of sticker shock), but I did fully catch up on both dash and tags for Victor Luvs Alice – even put some cool bits of fanart into my drafts for later posting! PLUS I made sure to do all the pictures for the upcoming Chill Save update covering Valicer Vacation Day Two (going to the forest and doing all the fishing, sculpting, and painting) afterward, before I actually played, so that was good. (40 pictures, by the way, which seems to be the new standard for the Valicer household updates.)

Sims 4: Yup – spent a good chunk of the afternoon playing through the third full day of the Valicer Granite Falls vacation! How did it go?

Rainy! As in it rained pretty much all day, no matter where the trio went. I must have picked the wettest three days of summer for them to go to the woods. . .they still had a good time, though –

A) Started off Saturday by having Alice open her time capsules (she got Chef Gino and Poppy), then let out a somber howl to lower her Fury a bit before going to do some painting on the porch – Smiler meanwhile did some yoga, while Victor did a bit of magic practice, hid from his fears (stupid glitched-out moodlet!), and danced a bit.

B) After Victor went to get a book from the bookcase, though, I got an idea and had him purchase a werewolf book for Alice and a herbalism book for himself – the pair read those on the couch while Smiler worked on their Programming skill! Hooray for leveling up skills/werewolf XP.

C) And then a holiday popped up in the corner – Talk Like A Pirate Day! A pretty easy one, all things considered, as not only does the game helpfully relabel some interactions to be piratey, it also relabels some INTERACTIONS – Victor hitting the toilet counted toward completing it as a result. XD

D) Anyway, I wasn’t about to let rain stop my Sims from having a good time, so it was back off to Granite Falls Forest for the trio! They hung out in the little ranger cabin spot for a bit – Alice took a wolf nap, Victor studied more herbalism from his book and attempted to ID a plant (no dice), and Smiler jammed on the guitar for a while. However, my main purpose for bringing them there was to have someone go explore the portal into the Deep Woods, and who better than Smiler? I had them fly their way over as a bat and go through the text adventure (having looked up the best responses to the various questions you might get) –

E) And they successfully reached the Deep Woods and the hermit’s cabin! Aleah Russo in my save. I had Victor and Alice join them there, and Alice transformed into her werewolf form to go hunt up some nice raw meat while Victor and Smiler went to say hi to Aleah (Smiler making instant friends as always), harvest from her garden (Smiler managing to successfully identify chamomile as well, while Victor continued to struggle identifying anything – he eventually successfully figured out fireleaf, though!), and have a chat with some occasional piratey stuff thrown in. Alice spooked Aleah when she came back in full furry mode, but she changed back once she was inside the cabin, and they had a decent chat. Smiler and Aleah eventually made their way around to the fishing hole (Smiler catching a bunch of bass and a cowplant berry), while Alice scavenged the yard for goodies and reread her werewolf book and Victor flew around gathering various unidentified mushrooms. I also at one point had Victor suggest “Heave Ho” to Smiler to work on Talk Like A Pirate Day – only to hastily cancel it when I realized it was WOOHOO. Uh, yeah, I think Aleah would rightfully kick you out for using her bed for THAT, you two!

F) Once I was satisfied everybody’d gotten everything they could out of the Deep Woods, it was back home, where Alice painted some landscapes and pop art on the porch and Victor and Smiler woohooed in their OWN temporary bed, thanks. XD After woohoo, Smiler did some more yoga and programming (working on some mods for Incredible Sports) while Victor practiced his cooking by making Galbi-Jjim, Korean braised beef short ribs. Then it was back to his herbalism studies while Alice (having painted a pop-art masterpiece!) came in and did some gourmet cooking, making – crap, I forgot to write it down. Chicken dish of some description! Victor eventually switched to doing yoga as the setting sun made him energized (how?), and then used his magic to fix the fridge after it broke from getting opened one too many times. Nice!

G) And then I decided it was off to bed for Victor and Alice (the latter of whom was looking fairly Furious again) – Smiler doesn’t sleep, though, and while Victor and Alice had both completed “Talk Like A Pirate Day” (Alice in fact with Smiler shortly before), Smiler hadn’t, not fully. Fortunately, it turned out someone they knew a bit, Tristan, was in the area, so Smiler jogged over to the public bathrooms to say hello and some piratical things, thus completing the holiday! And then it was back home as Fall began to continue modding their game as I checked the calendar. . .

H) And saw that Victor and Alice were due birthdays after Harvestfest.

. . .I’ve gone ahead and turned aging off. XD Screw it, I don’t want them getting any older – I like playing with this trio as perpetual young adults with no kids. Generational gameplay is wasted on me. XD Maybe if I can just make them plain old immortal in-game later, I’ll turn it back on (I mean, Smiler’s set, and I know there’s a werewolf power that can do the same thing for Alice – it’s Victor I’m mainly worried about), but for now. . .I’m having too much fun with the way things are. :)

So yeah – that’s the third day of their vacation sorted! Next time I play (probably Thanksgiving!), it’ll be time to go home, and probably do some more house renovations. . .

Writing: I did indeed get another page on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” but it took some doing – namely because I kept trying to look up people confronting Igor and his gang downtown, but almost EVERY video I picked featured a Malkavian when I was looking for the standard dialogue options! I finally remembered “wait, Helloween did this game twice, and the first time was as a Tremere” and looked at THAT instead – only to find no interesting persuasion option, just a Dominate “you already got your money” one. So I just went with my idea, which was Alice asking if Venus could have a few days’ delay, and one of Igor’s cronies reminding him that Venus could pay the “other way.” *shakehead* Anyway, Alice was allowed to leave safely after promising to pass that on, and she and Venus are now in her office, with Venus giving her the actual mission she wants her to perform – kill Boris, the “king bastard” she had to borrow from to set up Confession, in return for being made a silent partner. Alice is of course going to clarify what that means (money on the regular) and how dangerous Boris is (Russian mafioso), but she’s gonna do it – if only because she already hates the guy for making Venus give him sex whenever she can’t make her payments. And I already know a way I can make the whole thing a little more interesting. . .

YouTube: Got through a bunch of GrayStillPlays today – couldn’t QUITE find the time to watch today’s video, sadly, but I’m all caught up on Subs except for that! And I have to remember that I have a lot of extra free time this upcoming week, so I’ll have even more time to catch up later. . .but in the meantime –

A) First up, the mega compilation of a bunch of his mobile game videos: “I played the top mobile games so you don't have to!” The neck-stretcher, that weird one where you started as a sperm and then played through the life of a horrible child, the first of the many money run games, the stickman that can get both super-tall and super-wide in his quest to drop-kick a giant – they were all represented! Plus we had a bit of new content at the beginning, with Gray playing a game about choices you can make about a seed – I’ve seen Kevin play it, but I forget the name. Gray ended up having a bird eat it, had the bird poop out a giant egg, had a devil eggplant come and poke the egg, then turn the egg into an ice cream shop. Yeah. XD Weird shit is weird, and fits with the rest of these super-weird games.

B) And then, keeping on the crappy mobile game train, we had “When lies cause nothing but pain,” aka a return to Perfect Lie, the game all about coming a terrible Pinocchio. :p And things have just been getting worse as this kid ages up, let me tell you – he went from explaining oversleeping on a school day by pretending to have a tummy ache, to saying knocking an oceanful of water all over the new rug was a new design, to stealing Dad’s credit card to buy a gift for the girlfriend and blaming it on Mom, to telling the girlfriend that the girl kissing him in the park was his COUSIN, to NEARLY BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE while his parents were out and then blaming it on them and their heater, to possibly fatally tasing his coach when the guy got on his case for missing practice. XD And the kid’s now into the 20s (having dyed his hair orange and taken to wearing an Oni mask), so I imagine any future episodes will be even worse. . .

Not bad, not bad at all. Of course, now I have to plan out Sunday and how that is going to work (aka how best to handle the YouTubery and all the other stuff I want to get done). I do know I want to get farther through Fort Hagen with Victor and Nick in Fallout 4 and do the requisite Playthrough Progression write-up, and obviously we have to keep up with Tale of Two Wastelands from Jon. . .just gotta remember not to completely overload my evenings, I guess! And that I can catch up on things over the Thanksgiving weekend. *nod*

But for right now, it's time to keep an eye on the tumblrs and do the social thing with my friend Squid. Night all!