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Hey, This One Is Actually Saturday!
Dec. 24th, 2022 11:46 pmChristmas Eve Saturday, no less -- I hope you've all had a good one! Can't really complain about mine, I must say, even if I am rather busy right at the moment --
Tumblr: Did the Victor Luvs Alice dash-and-tags catch-up before lunch, then finished off the draft of the “reblogging my Four Victorians On A Roller Coaster Multi-Fairy-Tale AU post with some new information that I’ve come up with” post! w00, I have made progress on my drafts, yay~
And THEN, this evening, I had two ask replies for Valice Multiverse (one that actually had me going through the aforementioned multiverse to get an answer from each one I have listed), and I’m currently working my way through the seven Christmas fics that need to be queued up on tumblr (six tumblr friends, one FF.net friend who is also technically a tumblr friend but I mainly talk to them on FF.net). The two for Dreamwidth friends will be posted here tomorrow, of course. :) But yeah, keeping busy this Christmas Eve with that!
Sims 4: Got through another day in the Valicer household, yay! Though it took a bit to get there, and a bit to get through it all –
A) Started off with some pre-playing set-up – namely, I got all the pictures for the next Chill Save update on Wednesday done so I’d know what was coming up on Victor Luvs Alice. It’s another pretty big one at 50 pictures, though this update WAS played over multiple days thanks to the house renovation, and features Smiler starting their first real robot and getting into media production, Victor and Alice making friends with Shadow the dog and Kelly the cat, and some cute OT3 moments. But yeah, that helped remind me where I am and how far ahead I’m getting with my playsessions – I want a buffer, but I don’t want to be so far ahead I forget where I am!
And then, just as I went to play, I also remembered “Oh yeah, I wanted some of Waffle’s Mix-In’s werewolf mods” and popped back online to grab three – the one that forces werewolves to stay at work if their Fury maxes out (which would have been helpful LAST time), and two that offer more Fury-reducing activities – meditating (and I did add a stool for that in the séance room!) and zoomies (though you can only start it, not control how long it goes on for). Hopefully that’ll make Alice’s werewolf experience better!
B) Anyway – made some quick back-ups of my saves, THEN hopped into the game and decided I wanted to play Valicer Harvestfest! Alice was currently in werewolf form and had that super-Fine moodlet that allows you to surge your emotions, so I had her go back to normal and surge some inspiration to go paint a reference painting of her Izzy Fabulous Simmie in its little box shelf; Smiler still had their “Fear of Death,” but the want to clear it had popped up and local ghost Guidry was around, so I had them go over to chat about their fears; and Victor had just gotten up, so I got him to start searching clothes piles for cash and then collect them all to take to the laundry (as the hamper had filled up).
C) Cue Temperance showing up to freak everyone out. *sigh* Fortunately, all it took to make her go away was to drag the bizarre idol from the séance room to the study so it could repel her like all good idols do. :p Victor managed to overcome his fears to do the laundry, then went and found a specter to give the painting he’d recently done on the sketchpad to. The specter liked it and gave him an ectocake in return, nice! I put that in his inventory for later, then had him find Smiler (in the living room listening to music) and give them a Scruberoo (as they were a bit smelly after standing out in the rain).
D) And, while all that was going on, Alice finished her painting – and it turned out to be a masterpiece, finishing off the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration! :D Fantastic! I swapped her aspiration over to the Bestselling Author one, then – seeing that she had some Fury build-up – sent her upstairs to try out the “meditating lowers Fury” mod.
E) Only for the damn house to freak out both her and Victor with creepy voices (Smiler was heading into the barn at the time to make more mechanisms and was unaffected), leaving them cowering on the second floor landing. *grumbles* However, this annoying situation rapidly turned sweet as I had them turn to each other for encouragement, which turned into them doing a lot of autonomous flirting. :D Yeah, I’ll take some straight-up cute Valice stuff! :) I need screenshots for Valicetines, after all. :P
F) Anyway, Alice eventually made it to the meditation stool, while Victor hid under the covers to clear the rest of his fear as the holiday proper started! Which, of course, meant that gnomes started appearing everywhere! Including a lady in a bathing suit right by Victor and Alice’s bed. Victor tried giving her some coffee, and she accepted, fulfilling the tradition for him, yay! With THAT sorted, I sent him down to tend to the chickens, while Smiler finished up their mechanism (no zappage, shockingly), and then went around to the front porch to give the gnome there (nothing special about him except looking cute) a bit of pie. This was also accepted, and Smiler, quite pleased with themselves, went and put up some decorations to get THAT portion of the holiday sorted – some nice bunting on the fences, and flags on the eaves. :) And then went and fixed the washing machine because it had broken and Victor was busy tending his plants in the greenhouse (both manually and with a bit of Florilorial) and suffering from that damn glitched-out “Fear of the Dark” moodlet. :p Alice, for her part, cooked the grand meal after she was done meditating (which did indeed lower her Fury a bit) – a lovely turkey! Got up to Cooking level 9 too from it. :) She’d just set it out when –
G) Too late, I spotted Victor eating his ectocake WHILE ON THE TOILET. Dude! I stopped him and took it away to put in the fridge, but the damage was done – he wasn’t really hungry anymore. And I wanted the gang to eat supper together (well, as much as possible, given Smiler CAN’T eat), so I had to put the pause on the meal for a while. Ah well, not to worry – Victor went back to weeding his greenhouse and encouraging crop growth for his new oversized crops, while Alice set the table (hey, it’s a holiday!), changed into her werewolf form, and then had zoomies (which, uh, looked like her just having a jog, but okay). This kept her busy, gave her a nice work-out, and kept her Fury levels reasonable. Smiler, for their part, chatted to the chickens and hatched the latest chick in the coop –
H) And then I noticed the state of the wind-and-water farm around the back of the barn, which was HORRENDOUS. All the turbines had broken, and one of the water collectors was busted as well! (The other, I believe Guidry repaired the other day.) I had Smiler go and repair a few and scavenge the resultant junk piles for parts, then sent Victor over to Repairio the rest once he was done with his plants. Happily, all this spellcasting got him up another rank – he’s now an Adept Spellcaster! I grabbed for him “Practiced Practicality” (Practical spells now NEVER fail so long as he’s in a normal charge state) and “Spectral Reach” (he can cast spells from farther away and people he cast spells on don’t necessarily know it’s him) with his talent points, as those seemed the most useful.
I) Alice came back from her zoomies as Victor and Smiler were finishing up – seeing the gnomes gathered around the couch, I realized she hadn’t appeased one yet and had her give a future cube to the alien gnome, which I already knew was a winner. I then had her change back into her human form while sending Victor and Smiler manually to the general area around the kitchen, pulled the turkey out of the fridge –
J) And had Alice call to meal! Which did lead to Smiler grabbing a very unnecessary plate, but I stopped them eating more than one bite so they didn’t get sick on the holiday. It was a very pleasant meal, with Smiler telling some dramatic stories and everyone being thankful for each other. :) Good stuff, and good pictures! :)
K) With the meal having basically fulfilled the holiday for everyone (Smiler, fortunately, was already guaranteed a good result with having just three out of the four traditions complete), everyone started doing their own thing again. Victor went back in the greenhouse to spray his oversized mushrooms for bugs, fertilize all the oversized crops, harvest everything available to harvest, make some more pear-flavored fizzy juice, and another chrysanthemum arrangement (getting him up to level three of flower arranging). Smiler put away the leftovers and flew over to the local fishing spot to do some fishing and maybe get a few more plasma packs – using the trash they’d picked up fixing the wind turbines as bait, because apparently you can do that. XD They got some good stuff, though – catching a goldfish (plasma pack), a sturgeon (worth about $156 – THAT got sold), a llamacorn toy, a tuna fish (surprisingly worth less than $50, so it became a plasma pack), and a Gummie Guppie (yes, apparently this is a fish in the game, and it is what it sounds like – a living gummy fish. THAT one went in the fish tank with Victor’s rainbow fish – I had Smiler name it “Chewy”). They also met and befriended the visiting Kakaru, and got a drink off them, nice. And Alice cleaned up the dishes, transformed back into her werewolf form for a bit, went outside to mark her territory and have a wolf nap, then went human again and headed upstairs to meditate some more, which got her a few levels of Wellness skill and REALLY helped lower her Fury. :) I think I’ve got it under control now!
L) What I do not have under control – the fabrication machine. Once Victor sold his flower arrangement, I had him try to make some eco parts, only for the machine to go haywire and nearly drown him in 3-D printing fluid! Poor guy. . .I sent him back to the greenhouse to get his PearFizz and practice some magic instead, and he got CopyPasto before needing to hit the sack, nice. :)
M) Smiler, for their part, came back home and managed to finish ANOTHER mechanism without being zapped, then came up to check on their Gummie Guppie in the tank before doing some dark meditation and heading back to their room to answer viewer comments, check trends, then do a gadget review of the future cube as their next video. And Alice, for her part, moved from meditating to book-writing, doing a fantasy called “Cat Lord, Cat Counsel” (picked by the game, but I thought it was funny and ran with it). She finished it shortly before I stopped, and it’s already bestseller quality! Which makes sense, as she IS up to Level 8 Writing skill already. . .
And THAT was my very busy day in Sims, as you can see! Whew, that’s sure to be another long update. . .this is why I need to stop calling this particular save “Chill.” XD But yeah, very satisfying day overall. Next time I play them, I think they’ll be going back to Brindleton Bay to try and find Kelly and Shadow again so they can make friends and adopt them. :)
Writing: Did that right after writing up that monster up there – and, as you might expect, I did some Valicer content! Specifically, I wrote a bit more on a previous hypnokinky snippet where Smiler got to demonstrate an instant induction (of the “interrupted handshake” variety) on Victor, with them deepening his trance and Alice joining in. Just pretty sweet stuff with Victor getting his hair petted and his back rubbed as he ended up sandwiched between them. :) It’s the kind of thing that makes ME happy, anyway. :)
YouTube: Soooo – GrayStillPlays uploaded a compilation of Happy Wheels today, which is an hour and a half long, and Call Me Kevin uploaded his personal “Rewind” compilation, which is almost five hours long. I have decided I don’t care about catching up on today’s YouTube uploads! XD Granted, I may try to watch the GrayStillPlays one tomorrow, but Kevin’s? Okay, I was already planning on taking a break from Oxventure for my next set of workouts, and now I know what I’m watching, because FUCK ME, Kevin, I know you went longform but holy SHIT. So yeah, concentrated on other stuff today on the old Tubes –
A) Okay, I don’t usually list what I listen to while changing my sheets on Saturdays, mostly because it’s generally just some songs I like or something I’ve watched a bunch of times before *cough*2013AltonTowersfireworks*cough* but today I tried something new while swapping to some flannels – the 2022 Alton Towers Fireworks show! Specifically, “Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular 2022” by Theme Park Worldwide. While a bunch of the firework shows have stories of some kind, this year was just a straight-up celebration of their big seven coasters – Nemesis, Th13teen, Rita, Oblivion, Galactica, Wickerman, and The Smiler. It was an awesome show, and I personally really liked the remixes – Th13teen getting a slowed-down creepy version of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” may have given me a new headcanon about my own personal version of her, and I was very happy to hear a couple of songs from the 2013 fireworks for Oblivion and The Smiler come back. And holy shit, the section for The Smiler! It was freaking incredible! :D And of course it ended on a celebration of the towers themselves, and the iconic “Hall of the Mountain King” that the park uses as a theme tune. Great stuff, and went STRAIGHT into my “Smile Always Alton Towers” YouTube playlist. :D
B) Then, after dinner tonight, we started the YouTube proper with “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 15! Windjammers 2 Frisbee Royale Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022 FINAL!” Yes, we had the finale of OXmas tonight, with Mike versus Luke in Windjammers 2! What is Windjammers 2? Well, from watching the gameplay, it is basically virtual air hockey that is styled to look like Frisbee. Mike and Luke came in evenly matched due to Jane’s upset at Pokemon yesterday, and the challenge was all to play for – whoever got to five wins first got the final Christmas point and became Christmas Champion! And no, that’s not best out of five, that’s five wins TOTAL. And each match was three rounds, with best of three winning in that case, so – yeah, the boys had a LOT of Windjammers 2 to play to figure out who would be Christmas Champ!
And play a lot of Windjammers 2 they did, because while Mike absolutely loves the game, Luke had a lot of beginner’s luck on his side – specifically, he was able to get in a lot of “slams” (grounding the Frisbee so the other player couldn’t catch it) and chip away at Mike’s leads that way. They worked their way through each different arena type, with Mike messing around with a lot of different characters and Luke alternating between two he liked, learning the rules and trying their best to bounce that Frisbee past the other’s defense. The first few matches were close, but went to Mike; then Luke rallied and won two in a row; then Mike came back and won another; then LUKE came back and won another, and at four-four, it all came down to whoever managed to do the best in the “Casino” level – which had RANDOM points assigned each time the Frisbee was tossed out, meaning you could get a goal for one point on one throw and EIGHT points on the next one. It came right down to the wire, with each winning a set, but in the end –
BEGINNER’S LUCK WON OUT! Luke managed to use his slams and slip past Mike’s defenses just one time too many, and – exhausted, with the blood pooling in his legs (his words) – he took the Christmas point and thus became Christmas Champion! :D A fantastic finish to this year’s Tournament of Champions! No, seriously, that was LOADS of fun and I’m happy they did a version where it was all five competing against each other. It’s always great to see the five of them bouncing off each other and just being the silly friends they are. :D
C) Then it was over to the Subs to start catching up on yesterday’s videos, starting with Josh Way and “My Favorite Games of 2022!” Which, as you might imagine, was a list of the favorite games he played in 2022, on the Switch and the Steam Deck (grouped by which handheld he used). I recognized exactly two titles on that list – LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. XD Yeah, I’m not much of a gamer, it must be said. . . Anyway, Josh likes best games that he can pick up and just play easily, and he prefers easier games (or games that you can MAKE easier) to hard ones, though he’ll suffer through a hard one if it’s good enough. He’s also a fan of the Metroidvania genre, if not its name – it’s a bad portmanteau, he had to point out. XD But it was an interesting list, and a look at a lot of games that never even crossed my radar because of my own fairly laser-tight focus on the few games in my own library. And he’s promised more videos on more obscure stuff and accessibility in games and whatnot, so I’m quite curious about those!
D) And finally we had GrayStillPlays’s offering from yesterday – “When you upgrade to GOD PUNCH in break the sun!” Break The Sun being a strange mobile game in which you control a man whose only goal in life is to karate chop ALL the things – starting with the standard boards and bricks, moving up to chunks of concrete and other constructiony things, before finally smashing apart whole buildings and PLANETS. Before, eventually, yes, breaking the sun. Along the way, you upgrade your man from a noodly human to a strange alien beast, and give him better headbands and a nicer glove on his choppin’ hand. Gray found the whole thing to be ridiculous and wonderful, and even found a way to glitch out the extra money that it offers you for watching an ad thanks to said money cycling through some weird super-big numbers before settling on the actual amount. XD We do love our infinite money! Even if money is no good to us now that this jerk’s chopped through Earth itself. XD
Other: Had a cup of Mom’s hot chocolate (with homemade whipped cream) with the parents for dessert, and opened my Christmas Eve present, randomly selected from the gift pile – proved to be the new, bigger water bottle I asked for! As my small one is good (I like it has its own carry case), but it just doesn’t have enough water, you know? This one is nice and big and purple and should carry me through a workout just fine. :)
Whew! Yeah, as usual, the Simming took more time than I expected. . .but those mods were a good addition, and I'm not sorry to have lots of cute shots of Victor, Alice, and Smiler around the dinner table and suchlike. :) And having both of today's Subs uploads be way too long to even consider was weirdly freeing in a way -- as was deciding I'll watch Kevin's over workouts. XD I mean, seriously, it's four hours and forty-four minutes, that's a LOT. Even if I only watch it this week (Mon-Fri), I can nip two and a half hours off it! That's not nothing!
Anyway -- still working on getting all those gift fics queued, and trying to do the social thing and answer Moose's latest messages, so I'd best be off. Night all!
Tumblr: Did the Victor Luvs Alice dash-and-tags catch-up before lunch, then finished off the draft of the “reblogging my Four Victorians On A Roller Coaster Multi-Fairy-Tale AU post with some new information that I’ve come up with” post! w00, I have made progress on my drafts, yay~
And THEN, this evening, I had two ask replies for Valice Multiverse (one that actually had me going through the aforementioned multiverse to get an answer from each one I have listed), and I’m currently working my way through the seven Christmas fics that need to be queued up on tumblr (six tumblr friends, one FF.net friend who is also technically a tumblr friend but I mainly talk to them on FF.net). The two for Dreamwidth friends will be posted here tomorrow, of course. :) But yeah, keeping busy this Christmas Eve with that!
Sims 4: Got through another day in the Valicer household, yay! Though it took a bit to get there, and a bit to get through it all –
A) Started off with some pre-playing set-up – namely, I got all the pictures for the next Chill Save update on Wednesday done so I’d know what was coming up on Victor Luvs Alice. It’s another pretty big one at 50 pictures, though this update WAS played over multiple days thanks to the house renovation, and features Smiler starting their first real robot and getting into media production, Victor and Alice making friends with Shadow the dog and Kelly the cat, and some cute OT3 moments. But yeah, that helped remind me where I am and how far ahead I’m getting with my playsessions – I want a buffer, but I don’t want to be so far ahead I forget where I am!
And then, just as I went to play, I also remembered “Oh yeah, I wanted some of Waffle’s Mix-In’s werewolf mods” and popped back online to grab three – the one that forces werewolves to stay at work if their Fury maxes out (which would have been helpful LAST time), and two that offer more Fury-reducing activities – meditating (and I did add a stool for that in the séance room!) and zoomies (though you can only start it, not control how long it goes on for). Hopefully that’ll make Alice’s werewolf experience better!
B) Anyway – made some quick back-ups of my saves, THEN hopped into the game and decided I wanted to play Valicer Harvestfest! Alice was currently in werewolf form and had that super-Fine moodlet that allows you to surge your emotions, so I had her go back to normal and surge some inspiration to go paint a reference painting of her Izzy Fabulous Simmie in its little box shelf; Smiler still had their “Fear of Death,” but the want to clear it had popped up and local ghost Guidry was around, so I had them go over to chat about their fears; and Victor had just gotten up, so I got him to start searching clothes piles for cash and then collect them all to take to the laundry (as the hamper had filled up).
C) Cue Temperance showing up to freak everyone out. *sigh* Fortunately, all it took to make her go away was to drag the bizarre idol from the séance room to the study so it could repel her like all good idols do. :p Victor managed to overcome his fears to do the laundry, then went and found a specter to give the painting he’d recently done on the sketchpad to. The specter liked it and gave him an ectocake in return, nice! I put that in his inventory for later, then had him find Smiler (in the living room listening to music) and give them a Scruberoo (as they were a bit smelly after standing out in the rain).
D) And, while all that was going on, Alice finished her painting – and it turned out to be a masterpiece, finishing off the Painter Extraordinaire aspiration! :D Fantastic! I swapped her aspiration over to the Bestselling Author one, then – seeing that she had some Fury build-up – sent her upstairs to try out the “meditating lowers Fury” mod.
E) Only for the damn house to freak out both her and Victor with creepy voices (Smiler was heading into the barn at the time to make more mechanisms and was unaffected), leaving them cowering on the second floor landing. *grumbles* However, this annoying situation rapidly turned sweet as I had them turn to each other for encouragement, which turned into them doing a lot of autonomous flirting. :D Yeah, I’ll take some straight-up cute Valice stuff! :) I need screenshots for Valicetines, after all. :P
F) Anyway, Alice eventually made it to the meditation stool, while Victor hid under the covers to clear the rest of his fear as the holiday proper started! Which, of course, meant that gnomes started appearing everywhere! Including a lady in a bathing suit right by Victor and Alice’s bed. Victor tried giving her some coffee, and she accepted, fulfilling the tradition for him, yay! With THAT sorted, I sent him down to tend to the chickens, while Smiler finished up their mechanism (no zappage, shockingly), and then went around to the front porch to give the gnome there (nothing special about him except looking cute) a bit of pie. This was also accepted, and Smiler, quite pleased with themselves, went and put up some decorations to get THAT portion of the holiday sorted – some nice bunting on the fences, and flags on the eaves. :) And then went and fixed the washing machine because it had broken and Victor was busy tending his plants in the greenhouse (both manually and with a bit of Florilorial) and suffering from that damn glitched-out “Fear of the Dark” moodlet. :p Alice, for her part, cooked the grand meal after she was done meditating (which did indeed lower her Fury a bit) – a lovely turkey! Got up to Cooking level 9 too from it. :) She’d just set it out when –
G) Too late, I spotted Victor eating his ectocake WHILE ON THE TOILET. Dude! I stopped him and took it away to put in the fridge, but the damage was done – he wasn’t really hungry anymore. And I wanted the gang to eat supper together (well, as much as possible, given Smiler CAN’T eat), so I had to put the pause on the meal for a while. Ah well, not to worry – Victor went back to weeding his greenhouse and encouraging crop growth for his new oversized crops, while Alice set the table (hey, it’s a holiday!), changed into her werewolf form, and then had zoomies (which, uh, looked like her just having a jog, but okay). This kept her busy, gave her a nice work-out, and kept her Fury levels reasonable. Smiler, for their part, chatted to the chickens and hatched the latest chick in the coop –
H) And then I noticed the state of the wind-and-water farm around the back of the barn, which was HORRENDOUS. All the turbines had broken, and one of the water collectors was busted as well! (The other, I believe Guidry repaired the other day.) I had Smiler go and repair a few and scavenge the resultant junk piles for parts, then sent Victor over to Repairio the rest once he was done with his plants. Happily, all this spellcasting got him up another rank – he’s now an Adept Spellcaster! I grabbed for him “Practiced Practicality” (Practical spells now NEVER fail so long as he’s in a normal charge state) and “Spectral Reach” (he can cast spells from farther away and people he cast spells on don’t necessarily know it’s him) with his talent points, as those seemed the most useful.
I) Alice came back from her zoomies as Victor and Smiler were finishing up – seeing the gnomes gathered around the couch, I realized she hadn’t appeased one yet and had her give a future cube to the alien gnome, which I already knew was a winner. I then had her change back into her human form while sending Victor and Smiler manually to the general area around the kitchen, pulled the turkey out of the fridge –
J) And had Alice call to meal! Which did lead to Smiler grabbing a very unnecessary plate, but I stopped them eating more than one bite so they didn’t get sick on the holiday. It was a very pleasant meal, with Smiler telling some dramatic stories and everyone being thankful for each other. :) Good stuff, and good pictures! :)
K) With the meal having basically fulfilled the holiday for everyone (Smiler, fortunately, was already guaranteed a good result with having just three out of the four traditions complete), everyone started doing their own thing again. Victor went back in the greenhouse to spray his oversized mushrooms for bugs, fertilize all the oversized crops, harvest everything available to harvest, make some more pear-flavored fizzy juice, and another chrysanthemum arrangement (getting him up to level three of flower arranging). Smiler put away the leftovers and flew over to the local fishing spot to do some fishing and maybe get a few more plasma packs – using the trash they’d picked up fixing the wind turbines as bait, because apparently you can do that. XD They got some good stuff, though – catching a goldfish (plasma pack), a sturgeon (worth about $156 – THAT got sold), a llamacorn toy, a tuna fish (surprisingly worth less than $50, so it became a plasma pack), and a Gummie Guppie (yes, apparently this is a fish in the game, and it is what it sounds like – a living gummy fish. THAT one went in the fish tank with Victor’s rainbow fish – I had Smiler name it “Chewy”). They also met and befriended the visiting Kakaru, and got a drink off them, nice. And Alice cleaned up the dishes, transformed back into her werewolf form for a bit, went outside to mark her territory and have a wolf nap, then went human again and headed upstairs to meditate some more, which got her a few levels of Wellness skill and REALLY helped lower her Fury. :) I think I’ve got it under control now!
L) What I do not have under control – the fabrication machine. Once Victor sold his flower arrangement, I had him try to make some eco parts, only for the machine to go haywire and nearly drown him in 3-D printing fluid! Poor guy. . .I sent him back to the greenhouse to get his PearFizz and practice some magic instead, and he got CopyPasto before needing to hit the sack, nice. :)
M) Smiler, for their part, came back home and managed to finish ANOTHER mechanism without being zapped, then came up to check on their Gummie Guppie in the tank before doing some dark meditation and heading back to their room to answer viewer comments, check trends, then do a gadget review of the future cube as their next video. And Alice, for her part, moved from meditating to book-writing, doing a fantasy called “Cat Lord, Cat Counsel” (picked by the game, but I thought it was funny and ran with it). She finished it shortly before I stopped, and it’s already bestseller quality! Which makes sense, as she IS up to Level 8 Writing skill already. . .
And THAT was my very busy day in Sims, as you can see! Whew, that’s sure to be another long update. . .this is why I need to stop calling this particular save “Chill.” XD But yeah, very satisfying day overall. Next time I play them, I think they’ll be going back to Brindleton Bay to try and find Kelly and Shadow again so they can make friends and adopt them. :)
Writing: Did that right after writing up that monster up there – and, as you might expect, I did some Valicer content! Specifically, I wrote a bit more on a previous hypnokinky snippet where Smiler got to demonstrate an instant induction (of the “interrupted handshake” variety) on Victor, with them deepening his trance and Alice joining in. Just pretty sweet stuff with Victor getting his hair petted and his back rubbed as he ended up sandwiched between them. :) It’s the kind of thing that makes ME happy, anyway. :)
YouTube: Soooo – GrayStillPlays uploaded a compilation of Happy Wheels today, which is an hour and a half long, and Call Me Kevin uploaded his personal “Rewind” compilation, which is almost five hours long. I have decided I don’t care about catching up on today’s YouTube uploads! XD Granted, I may try to watch the GrayStillPlays one tomorrow, but Kevin’s? Okay, I was already planning on taking a break from Oxventure for my next set of workouts, and now I know what I’m watching, because FUCK ME, Kevin, I know you went longform but holy SHIT. So yeah, concentrated on other stuff today on the old Tubes –
A) Okay, I don’t usually list what I listen to while changing my sheets on Saturdays, mostly because it’s generally just some songs I like or something I’ve watched a bunch of times before *cough*2013AltonTowersfireworks*cough* but today I tried something new while swapping to some flannels – the 2022 Alton Towers Fireworks show! Specifically, “Alton Towers Fireworks Spectacular 2022” by Theme Park Worldwide. While a bunch of the firework shows have stories of some kind, this year was just a straight-up celebration of their big seven coasters – Nemesis, Th13teen, Rita, Oblivion, Galactica, Wickerman, and The Smiler. It was an awesome show, and I personally really liked the remixes – Th13teen getting a slowed-down creepy version of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” may have given me a new headcanon about my own personal version of her, and I was very happy to hear a couple of songs from the 2013 fireworks for Oblivion and The Smiler come back. And holy shit, the section for The Smiler! It was freaking incredible! :D And of course it ended on a celebration of the towers themselves, and the iconic “Hall of the Mountain King” that the park uses as a theme tune. Great stuff, and went STRAIGHT into my “Smile Always Alton Towers” YouTube playlist. :D
B) Then, after dinner tonight, we started the YouTube proper with “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 15! Windjammers 2 Frisbee Royale Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022 FINAL!” Yes, we had the finale of OXmas tonight, with Mike versus Luke in Windjammers 2! What is Windjammers 2? Well, from watching the gameplay, it is basically virtual air hockey that is styled to look like Frisbee. Mike and Luke came in evenly matched due to Jane’s upset at Pokemon yesterday, and the challenge was all to play for – whoever got to five wins first got the final Christmas point and became Christmas Champion! And no, that’s not best out of five, that’s five wins TOTAL. And each match was three rounds, with best of three winning in that case, so – yeah, the boys had a LOT of Windjammers 2 to play to figure out who would be Christmas Champ!
And play a lot of Windjammers 2 they did, because while Mike absolutely loves the game, Luke had a lot of beginner’s luck on his side – specifically, he was able to get in a lot of “slams” (grounding the Frisbee so the other player couldn’t catch it) and chip away at Mike’s leads that way. They worked their way through each different arena type, with Mike messing around with a lot of different characters and Luke alternating between two he liked, learning the rules and trying their best to bounce that Frisbee past the other’s defense. The first few matches were close, but went to Mike; then Luke rallied and won two in a row; then Mike came back and won another; then LUKE came back and won another, and at four-four, it all came down to whoever managed to do the best in the “Casino” level – which had RANDOM points assigned each time the Frisbee was tossed out, meaning you could get a goal for one point on one throw and EIGHT points on the next one. It came right down to the wire, with each winning a set, but in the end –
BEGINNER’S LUCK WON OUT! Luke managed to use his slams and slip past Mike’s defenses just one time too many, and – exhausted, with the blood pooling in his legs (his words) – he took the Christmas point and thus became Christmas Champion! :D A fantastic finish to this year’s Tournament of Champions! No, seriously, that was LOADS of fun and I’m happy they did a version where it was all five competing against each other. It’s always great to see the five of them bouncing off each other and just being the silly friends they are. :D
C) Then it was over to the Subs to start catching up on yesterday’s videos, starting with Josh Way and “My Favorite Games of 2022!” Which, as you might imagine, was a list of the favorite games he played in 2022, on the Switch and the Steam Deck (grouped by which handheld he used). I recognized exactly two titles on that list – LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. XD Yeah, I’m not much of a gamer, it must be said. . . Anyway, Josh likes best games that he can pick up and just play easily, and he prefers easier games (or games that you can MAKE easier) to hard ones, though he’ll suffer through a hard one if it’s good enough. He’s also a fan of the Metroidvania genre, if not its name – it’s a bad portmanteau, he had to point out. XD But it was an interesting list, and a look at a lot of games that never even crossed my radar because of my own fairly laser-tight focus on the few games in my own library. And he’s promised more videos on more obscure stuff and accessibility in games and whatnot, so I’m quite curious about those!
D) And finally we had GrayStillPlays’s offering from yesterday – “When you upgrade to GOD PUNCH in break the sun!” Break The Sun being a strange mobile game in which you control a man whose only goal in life is to karate chop ALL the things – starting with the standard boards and bricks, moving up to chunks of concrete and other constructiony things, before finally smashing apart whole buildings and PLANETS. Before, eventually, yes, breaking the sun. Along the way, you upgrade your man from a noodly human to a strange alien beast, and give him better headbands and a nicer glove on his choppin’ hand. Gray found the whole thing to be ridiculous and wonderful, and even found a way to glitch out the extra money that it offers you for watching an ad thanks to said money cycling through some weird super-big numbers before settling on the actual amount. XD We do love our infinite money! Even if money is no good to us now that this jerk’s chopped through Earth itself. XD
Other: Had a cup of Mom’s hot chocolate (with homemade whipped cream) with the parents for dessert, and opened my Christmas Eve present, randomly selected from the gift pile – proved to be the new, bigger water bottle I asked for! As my small one is good (I like it has its own carry case), but it just doesn’t have enough water, you know? This one is nice and big and purple and should carry me through a workout just fine. :)
Whew! Yeah, as usual, the Simming took more time than I expected. . .but those mods were a good addition, and I'm not sorry to have lots of cute shots of Victor, Alice, and Smiler around the dinner table and suchlike. :) And having both of today's Subs uploads be way too long to even consider was weirdly freeing in a way -- as was deciding I'll watch Kevin's over workouts. XD I mean, seriously, it's four hours and forty-four minutes, that's a LOT. Even if I only watch it this week (Mon-Fri), I can nip two and a half hours off it! That's not nothing!
Anyway -- still working on getting all those gift fics queued, and trying to do the social thing and answer Moose's latest messages, so I'd best be off. Night all!
