First "Saturday" Off

Yeah, thanks to how my time off usually works, pretty much every day of this vacation except the last one is going to to feel like a Saturday. It's a good thing we have two major holidays, my birthday, and my usual YouTube routines to keep me at least SOMEWHAT anchored to what day it is! XD As it stands, though, I had a pretty good first day off, starting with actually getting eight hours of sleep for a change! Isn't that a shock. . .as for the rest of it:

Tumblr: Didn’t really get anything done on Victor Luvs Alice today, but I did keep up with the Valice Multiverse queue, at least – two ask replies, nothing major. Tomorrow I hope to do a little more with this!

Sims 4: Got my playsession in almost right after lunch, and while it was mostly a good day at the Valicer household, I did encounter one truly frustrating thing – let me take you through it –

A) Started with Smiler working on video edits to their beauty tips vlog, and Victor and Alice being woken from sound sleeps by the house making spooky noises. As Victor was a bit hungry, I sent him downstairs to drink some pear fizzy drink for breakfast, while Alice used the toilet, and then got naked to shower in the rain – only for the interaction to be short-circuited by Victor trying to talk to her. XD I sent them both upstairs to bed for a bit more sleep while Smiler finished adding transitions to their video, uploaded it, had a plasma pack, then did a funny vlog because they were feeling playful. :)

B) While all this was going on, there was a MASSIVE thunderstorm raging on outside – including multiple lightning strikes! Most of them were harmless, but one of them, ironically, took out the weather machine I’d just gotten the gang! Hmph. Good thing Victor knows Repairio and was able to fix it!

C) Once she’d gotten a little more energy, I had Alice get up, put on clothes, go mop some mysterious symbols, and do some painting, while Smiler finished their vlog and practiced their programming – which allowed them to regain their Techie lifestyle, nice! Though, for some reason, Alice got the People Person lifestyle while doing her painting – which I’d done to help her enjoy some alone time. In fact, I think fulfilling her “I’d like to be alone for a bit” Loner-related want TRIGGERED the People Person lifestyle. o.O Sims, seriously? Well, she had more than enough aspiration points for a Lifestyle-Go-Poof potion, and I got rid of that right quick.

D) Since Smiler was feeling so technical, I sent them down to the robotics bench to try and finish their party-bot while Victor got up, got dressed, and cleaned out the chicken coop. To my shock and delight, they actually managed to complete it! So now they have a bot named “Party Time” in their inventory for the next time they have a party. :D I then had them try to make some mechanisms, but that resulted in the usual zappage, so I had them go back to their media production desk to answer comments about their new video and work on editing the funny vlog they’d made.

E) While all this was going on, Alice went to work, and Victor headed out into the greenhouse! He tried out his new Floriolorial spell on a plant that had weeds, evolved a bunch of them, sold some of his hive’s honey, did some watering, and got up to Gardening level 7 from harvesting all his plants! And, because he’d found another vitality fertilizer in the chicken coop while cleaning it out, I FINALLY had him go ahead and plant all his oversized crops! He fertilized them all up (with the ones at either end getting the best fertilizers – I believe that’s the lettuce and the mushrooms), then took a moment to get up his Herbalism skill by brewing some Deodorizing Cream! (Which, uh, he left on the ground randomly – maybe I should put a counter in there for him.) And then it was back to the oversized plants to chat with them – gotta keep ‘em healthy, and it’s probably good for his social need. XD

F) You know what’s good for Smiler’s social need, though? Angela Pleasant! She came over randomly for a visit – I had Smiler fly down to say hello, chat a bit, and then get a drink from her wrist as they were feeling the thirst. A very productive visit indeed –

G) And then the frustrating thing happened. You see, Alice had been having a very good day at work – she was working hard, she’d gotten a pop-up about which outfit to wear to an important interview (a palm tree outfit as it was for something island-related, or just a nice dress shirt and slacks – I chose the latter, and she did well and got a small performance gain), and she was on track to get a promotion and FINALLY claim that bed I’ve been waiting for –

But. She was also rapidly gaining in Fury the whole time she was at work. And right as Smiler was finishing up with Angela, I got a pop-up about Alice coming home early. Because she was so Furious she’d tipped over into RAMPAGE! mode. And I couldn’t actually CANCEL her coming home early, because clicking “no” made no difference, she was already home. She missed an hour and a half of work, and the performance hit from THAT cost her the promotion. *heavy sigh* You know, I thought I could live with the Fury gain as it is in vanilla, but THAT pissed me off, so I guess I’m getting a mod that alters it! God damn it. . .

Oh, and hilariously? Not only did she not actually transform properly when she came home (she was still in human mode, just full of Fury), I was able to have her regain control IMMEDIATELY. *facepalm* Oh Alice. If only I could have just sent her back!

H) Welp, nothing for it – as Alice had lost the promotion and wasn’t going to have an opportunity to gain it back until the weekend (have I mentioned she only works three days a week?), I gave up and had Victor upgrade their current bed. I mean, I sold their shower after upgrading it during my renovations, so why not? Victor needs the handiness anyway. . . Alice, for her part, got a PROPER transformation and got sent out to hunt for food as she was peckish. Might as well put her inadvertent early day to good use! Smiler, for their part, upgraded the camera on their media production station and added a nice ring light, then flew down to stop Harley the fox from tormenting the chickens, gave them some feed, and gathered the eggs before going back to adding transitions and everything to their videos and playing some chess. I also made sure to have them regain their passion for work so they could clear their “Fear of a Dead-End Job” that evening.

I) After upgrading the bed, I had Victor grab the Digitalistic Sketch Pad I’d gotten him and do a painting (about time), then sent him to check the spiritual volatility of the house at the séance table (it’s good – and got him Medium level 2, meaning he can now lead group seances), before sending him down to make a chrysanthemum flower arrangement (came out well, sold for $90). Alice, meanwhile, returned from her hunting trip and had some meat, then I had her sort out the trash for recyclables and compostables, Howl Somberly to keep her Fury down, and do a bit of scavenging (didn’t find anything, sadly), as well as get in a wolf nap.

J) It was around this time that the rain started back up – Alice turned back into human as to not scare the passing Ian Moody (who was honestly more distracted by playful specters) and started doing more paintings (she is just REFUSING to paint a masterpiece at this point), while Victor had supper, used the toilet, and lurched off to the now much better bed and Smiler headed off to work. I ended up having Alice go wolf again for more scavenging and whatnot (and more painting), while Smiler came home with a nice raise and the “Fear of Dead-End Job” conquered! And the want to clear their “Fear of Unfufilled Dreams” – fortunately, they had an easy want to fulfill (Listen Deeply to Music), so I had them do that, then talk it out with the still-wolf Alice. Two fears down, just the Fear of Death to go!

And that’s it for the playsession! Very productive, especially in Victor’s greenhouse, but DAMN am I annoyed by missing out on Alice’s promotion. >( If she’d just been able to hold out until the end of the workday. . . At least I know where to look when it comes to Fury-reducing mods – Waffle’s Mix-Ins, I’m coming for you! If I remember to install this before my next play session, anyway. :P

Writing: Got another page done on “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” – Alice has made it back to Venus’s and let her know the plan to fake her death to get some cash off of Boris, and Venus has told her all about the fake blood and the baseball bat she has in her office. . .this brought me to a mid-chapter break, so that’s where I’m gonna leave it for a bit. Thinking I might do some one-off scenes and the like around Christmas – after so much time writing gift fics, it’ll be nice to do some stuff that’s just for me. :)

Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with the Live Oxventure “Wedded Redemption!” I picked back up with Corazon and Prudence getting a new lead from Featherby’s business partner – specifically, that if Featherby was in danger from poison wine, the poisoner was almost certainly his personal sommelier, Chase. The partner couldn’t give them a GREAT description because Chase is “the help,” but he was able to say Chase had an aquiline nose, a side part, and a name tag. XD And he’s always nearby Featherby, ready to give him wine –

Which made everyone realize that Featherby is still VERY MUCH IN DANGER from poisoning. The three sprinted back to the dining hall, with Prudence sending a message ahead to the others about Chase. Merilwen, of course, was still in the isolating corridor with Henry, but ended up abandoning him in the fog to get back to the dining hall; Egbert was still caught up in talking to the kids; and Aubrey –

Well, Aubrey TRIED to figure out who Chase was, but was unable to pick him out from all the other servants wandering around. He managed to extract himself from Fortescue’s service for the moment (the guy apparently having had enough of bisque) and instead looked for Viscount Featherby, who was trying to locate his goblet for more wine. Thinking fast, he used Minor Illusion to conjure up a fake cup on the table – and sure enough, when Viscount Featherby spotted it and called for it to be filled, a guy with an aquiline nose and a nametag stepped up and poured wine all over the table. Wine that ate straight through the tablecloth and began dissolving the varnish. A panicked Chase quickly hid the bottle behind his back as the others arrived. The business partner literally RAN DOWN THE TABLE to try and kick the goblet away to save Featherby, but as it was just an illusion, he just bowled himself over and knocked himself unconscious. *wince* The others quickly huddled to see how obvious they wanted to be about catching Chase, with Prudence pointing out things had already gotten pretty obvious –

And then Johnny called for Wisdom/Perception rolls! Prudence rolled badly and got rather involved in sketching out potential plans of attack in gravy on the tablecloth; Aubrey and Corazon rolled well and noticed that, suddenly, Aubrey was nowhere to be seen; Merilwen, who rolled AMAZINGLY, spotted him ducking into a secret corridor behind a bookcase. And Egbert?

Well, on a crit 1, which is in fact a crit zero with him, he suddenly spotted that his juice box of Paladin Punch had been pilfered by one of the children – and it was the last one! Cue him chasing the child in laps around the table, and then making a strength attack to get it back from him – and getting a nat 20. Fortunately he clarified he wasn’t using his mace or anything – he just tore the child off the juice box and flung them against a wall! XD Where they proceeded to flop down like one of those sticky men you can fling at hard surfaces to watch them slinky down. He was at least nice enough to also cure the child’s wounds. XD Your cow god forgives a lot, don’t they, Egbert?

ANYWAY – while all that was going on, Merilwen loudly pointed out the secret bookcase door to the others. Aubrey, having an idea, cast Slow in the area that they presumed Chase was in to halve his speed and turn him into, essentially, a buffering YouTube video. Also all the other people in the general area at the head of the table. XD Johnny allowed this as it was a cube “area of effect” spell that ignored walls, though, as it was a concentration spell, Aubrey was unable to keep up his Alter Form spell and thus turned back into himself from Henry. Fortunately no one seemed to notice, probably because of all the other bullshit that was going on. XD (Johnny took a moment to assure everyone the brides were still having a FABULOUS day.) So yes, Chase was successfully slowed, but the group still had to get through the door itself! Corazon began scanning all the book titles on the bookcase, looking for door-related puns –

Merilwen, having learned her lesson from the last adventure and not wanting Johnny to come up with any puns better than hers, Stoneshaped the wall next to the door at the exact awkward angle needed to get into the secret corridor. Johnny nearly left. XD Corazon, annoyed that Merilwen was being smug about this solution, insisted on trying to find the secret mechanism to open the door, tossing aside all the books. A decent roll got him to the mechanism, a lion’s head with teeth that could be pushed in – bu then a bad roll meant he chose the wrong tooth and got his hand stuck in the lion’s mouth. He cast Grease to free himself, and suffered two points of degloving damage. *wince* I think that means he still HAS some skin on his hand, but YIKES. At least he got inspiration for then looking at Merilwen’s door and declaring that obviously this was the secret door he’d opened by playing with the lion. XD

And so everyone (including Egbert, now that he’d had his juice box) piled into the corridor to get after Chase! Which was really easy with him being slowed and all. Merilwen successfully rugby-tackled him at Egbert’s suggestion, somehow managing to fold him in HALF, then tied him up well enough for interrogation purposes. Corazon stole the guy’s shoes while Prudence went through his pockets, then tried to get him to talk by loudly hinting for Egbert to use Zone of Truth. Egbert, however, found that boring, and instead threatened the guy with his mace – and when he didn’t speak up, smashed the guy’s little finger. Johnny asked him to roll a D6, and Egbert came up with a six.

Now – to be fair to Egbert, I too initially thought that a six meant that he’d managed to absolutely SMASH that finger. And it’s true that Egbert does have TWO maces. But! But. If Johnny asked Egbert to roll a D6 – that means that Egbert just used the Wabbamace. The one that occasionally RANDOMLY TURNS PEOPLE INTO OTHER THINGS. You know. On a roll of six.

Cue Chase becoming (after getting the letter “P” from Aubrey and doing a quick roll) a Piercer – a kind of sentient stalactite monster that impales people. And that can’t talk. Corazon was VERY ANNOYED. XD He put a cork on the growling Piercer so it couldn’t hurt anyone while Prudence went through what she’d gotten from the guy’s pockets while he was still human – a bulging purse full of silver, and a piece of paper with mysterious residue on it which she figured was poison. Corazon wanted to do a full chemical analysis, but first had to invent chemistry – but got a three, and thus only invented homeopathy. XD He then tried looking at it through his spyglass, and rolled a TOUCH better – still couldn’t fully ID it, but suspected he didn’t want to try inhaling it or anything. So he tried to feed it to the Piercer, who tried to wiggly-inflatable-man away from it. Corazon was convinced that this proved it was poison, but pointed out the full purse of silver meant that Chase had been PAID to carry out the hit, so there was someone else who was the true mastermind. Someone whom they could have asked Chase about if he could TALK, Egbert. Egbert decided the best way to fix this situation was to hit the Piercer with the Wabbamace a few more times and try turning it into something else that could talk.

Three hits later, Chase was now a troglodyte, which meant he could speak THEIR language at least. Corazon cast Comprehend Languages and asked Chase who had paid him to poison Featherby – Chase said it was hard for him to say, both because his intelligence and wisdom stats had taken a healthy hit by the transformations, and because the guy was so utterly unremarkable. About the only thing Chase recalled about him was that he was a human.

Egbert came to the same conclusion I had – Norman was the mastermind behind all this! And, as he was the observer of this adventurer exchange program, he was even there to interrogate! Corazon went up to him and attempted to put him in a headlock, but a bad roll meant that Norman easily slipped out of it. Corazon then went in for a punch, and actually rolled really well – but then rolled poorly on the damage, meaning that while he connected with the hit, it didn’t actually DO anything to Norman. So he just accused the guy of having set this all up, and when I left off, Norman was having him “show his workings.” XD Yeah, I’d actually suspected when it was confirmed Chase had been paid to try and kill his employer that Norman might be behind this, just to make sure they had a quest to do together. . .I guess we’ll see if I’m right tomorrow!

YouTube: Well, I’m MOSTLY caught up on Kevin now! Got two out of the three videos I wanted to watch. Granted, now I have to catch up on SKETCHY, but. . .anyway –

A) Started before my workout with the latest from OXmas – “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 13! Pro Gymnast Simulator Ow My Bones Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” This one was Ellen vs Luke in Pro Gymnast Simulator, a silly physics game where you have to take a gymnast through a course and stop them ragdolling all over the place, apparently. Their chosen course was “Roller Coaster” on Venice Beach, where the gymnast was require to wiggle and glide her way through some floating tracks that went up and down like a roller coaster (it even had a lift hill of sorts) while clinging to a bar, before leaping off at the end onto a hanging rope. The actual challenge? Complete the course in as few tries as possible, because – well. Being a silly physics game, it is VERY EASY to fall off this course because a bad flip cost you all your momentum, or the character refused to grab the next “gliding bar” or whatever you want to call it, or the physics thought you were looking at them funny. XD Ellen went first and took 31 (or possibly 32, I think one restart MAY have gone unnoticed by Official Counter Andy) tries to finally complete the course, leaping from the first track to the second, riding the little “lift hill”, and then sliding down the third track to the final rope. The controller was then handed to Luke, who said, essentially, “watch, I’ll get this on the 30th try perfectly.”

GUESS WHAT HE DID. No, seriously, after like TWENTY-NINE tries of just flopping and flailing and not even making it to the SECOND part of the course, let alone the third (and attempting to worm his way to the end on the ground only to knock his gymnast out), with a small tip from Ellen about NOT wiggling when he slid down the first big hill to get enough height to reach the second set of tracks, a handy flip to help him get on the CORRECT side of the “lift hill” bar when he landed on the wrong side, and a lot of luck, he successfully completed the course on his 30th go and got the Christmas point. Ellen and Luke’s reactions were PRICELESS, with Ellen pretending to attack him before going in for the hug and Luke actually crying a little bit and saying he felt like he’d actually completed in the real Olympics. XD And then he and Ellen stole Andy’s two-pound coin to go buy Christmas treats. XD So yeah, Luke takes the point, and as per the comments, it’s basically between him and Mike now! The final two match-ups should be Mike/Jane and Mike/Luke, and while Jane can’t win, she MAY be able to force a tie. . .we’ll see!

B) And then it was time for a bit of catch-up on Call Me Kevin! While I wasn’t able to get to today’s upload, I was able to get to the other two:

I. “The B&B simulator where you are a bear” – Kevin plays Bear & Breakfast, which is a game about a bear who stumbles into an old broken down B&B shack and decides to renovate it and start running it for guests to bring people back to the valley he and his animal friends live in! This involves getting a carpenter beaver to fix up the buildings and build him the rooms he needs; convincing a raccoon (named Took) to sell him decorations in exchange for junk; aiding a human with some buses by delivering a letter so the human will help him fix up bus stops for fast travel; and ignoring his poor mother entirely because she sent him out to get alligator weed at the beginning of all this and he got distracted by capitalism. XD The bear can also go to new locations (after getting a compass from a friendly park ranger, the recipient of the letter) and open up new B&Bs in these areas, basically revitalizing the town that used to exist there! It’s good, silly fun that Kevin played in his usual weird way – making the “entrance hall” of his first tiny cabin B&B a bedroom, for example, and then setting up the rest of the bedrooms like prison cells to maximize guest capacity. He would have just dug a hole outside for them to poop in if the game hadn’t insisted on functional bathrooms. XD But he seemed to quite enjoy it, and the guests did too, curiously enough. Perhaps they know that usually when you’re a “guest” in a Kevin game, you’re trapped in a basement painting for Jim Pickens, and are just grateful to only be dealing with a bear in cargo pants. XD

II. “Red Dead 2 but every 45 seconds brings chaos” – Kevin plays Red Dead Redemption 2 with its version of the Chaos Mod on! As you might imagine, things got very weird, very fast. XD Here Arthur was, trying to do normal outlaw things like rob a train, steal somebody’s cousin’s belongings, rustle a herd of sheep, and get involved in various gang wars in the Old West (and occasionally even do nice things like help a woman get a letter to her beau, or get the rats out of some guy’s saloon), and the universe kept turning him into random animals (usually a turtle or a rat, though he got to be a pig and a duck at least once – and the duck could fly, so that was cool), or setting him randomly in canoes, or having it rain horses, or having it rain MINECARTS (Kevin got very scared of that one), or having him do random kickflips (him AND his horse), or making him tiny, or making everyone else huge, or spawning in giant cops with really glitchy beards that turned into horrific Playmobil things when you got far enough away that the textures stopped rendering, or – you get the picture. XD I mean, every so often it would do something nice – spawn in some random companions for Arthur to tool around with (like his buddy Lenny in a dress, or Bertram, who was good for fighting the law), or teleport him to a waypoint, or give him a random rifle – but usually it was doing things like teleporting all nearby props on top of him and killing him, Or having him fall asleep and wake up in the RDR2 version of the Skyrim opening (seriously, the screen would go black, and then Arthur would wake up in first person in a wagon full of prisoners). Or having him kidnapped by pig farmers while the other NPCs did nothing. About the only part that Kevin truly enjoyed was when the game spawned in a cannon for him to use in a town, and then gave him a zombie apocalypse to use it on. XD He said he’d buy that DLC, and I’m surprised it apparently doesn’t already exist, given the FIRST game has one. . .ah well, at least Kevin got a taste of it! Right before the vampires that kept spawning in got a taste of HIM. XD

Other:

-->Got Mom’s Christmas present all sorted in a bag, and organized the rest of my remaining presents from yesterday – all the candy is now in one box, the socks are in my closet, and the head massager thing in a drawer because I don’t particularly like it. XD I’ll figure out what to do with later.

-->Got that PM from Ace over on FF.net answered at last, yay! Goes with completing their gift fic yesterday, I suppose. :p

So I got most of what I hoped to get accomplished today done! Not too shabby. Tomorrow, I'm gonna make an effort to get caught up on Victor Luvs Alice dash and tags properly again; play Fallout 4 and hopefully get Victor and Nick back to Diamond City to advance "Reunions" some more (and update the Playthrough Progression appropriately); catch up on YouTube Subs as best I can; and finish off "Wedded Redemption" with my workout. *nods* I feel like these are achievable goals. So long as the power doesn't go out from that storm we're getting, anyway. . . And so I'm off to muck around for a final half-hour before heading to bed. :p Night all!