Imperfect But Still Fun Thursday

Yeah, I'm becoming a lot more aware of the days of the week as we rush toward the end of my time off. . . Anyway, the round-up for today --

Tumblr: Did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice, then got my next couple of posts to queue – a Poets of the Fall Song Saturday (featuring their song “Stay Forever,” as I hadn’t listened to that one in a while or ever reblogged it before) and a Fic Resolutions Sunday for the new year (goals are to finish the first draft of “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland,” post the full version of “As Long As You Love Me” and finish the first draft of its sequel “The Joker And The Queen,” and get the damn Secundus drabbles I wrote up) – into said queue before lunch, yay! :) Then, after Sims, I jumped back into the drafts for a bit to make some updates on a future “Not-Incorrect Quotes” post I have there (which is probably going to be split into two, as I now have a handful that are related to clothing (and lack thereof), and a handful related to meeting parents/guardians) and get that sorted. And then, later this evening (when it became obvious I wasn’t gonna get any “official” writing done, see below), I went back to do some refining on one of my headcanon posts (actually still working on that now). Trying to get ahead on this stuff! And I threw one ask reply into the queue on Valice Multiverse, so that’s something over there too.

Sims 4: Did both some building and some CASing today in Sims 4 – let me tell you all about it –

A) Started off by hitting my build save and finishing up my “converted camper” build on Slip 42 in StrangerVille! This involved quite a lot of fiddling with decorations and trying to figure out lights (I was TRYING to go for an “off the grid” theme, but so many of the lights either didn’t fit on shelves or just looked weird, so I settled for the tiny versions of the ceiling saucer lights) and realizing at the last minute “hang on, I never put a dining table in here,” but I got it working in the end! Or, at least, the “nice” version of the lot, as I have plans for an “evil” version too. XD But yes, this initial version is a starter micro home, called “Camper Slip 42,” and costs around $14,783 furnished. I gave it the “Sunny Aspect,” “Homey,” and “Natural Light” traits, and it includes a solar panel roof; a water collector; a woodworking bench; a small telescope; a couple of outdoor vertical planters; a laundry line with bucket; a cheap kitchen at the “front” of the camper with a pub-style table and two stools; bunk beds; a tiny bathroom with an in-wall shower; a bookcase shelf; and an easel shoved next to the bathroom. Oh, and a pee bush in the corner of the lot. XD Be kind of ideal for one or two Sims JUST starting out in life who could use the bonuses from a Micro home! I even bring a few images for you to click on:



It’s not up on the Gallery just yet because I’ve still got my mods in, and one of those is the “Bugged Out” mod that makes it so all lots can spawn Outdoor Retreat insects – once we get a patch and I have to take them out for a bit, though, I’ll pop in and upload a “Gallery-ready” version, as I shouldn’t have any other CC in it!

B) And then, once that was all sorted, I went back to Manage Worlds, dithered for a bit – but then decided that, yes, I did want to try something. That something being “making a regular Sim version of Smiler.” Because while I obviously love my original vampire Smiler, I do kind of regret making them a vampire right off the bat. What if I want them to be something else instead in a different save? So I saved a separate version of the household under the “Smiler Alton” name, moved them in with the Victor Van Dort I’d put in there ages ago (when I was working on upgrading someone’s take on the Sole Survivor’s house in Fallout 4 – that particular Victor has been mostly naked for ages due to having a custom content vault suit as his main outfit, meaning when I took out my mods and CC for the first time and went into that save to do building things. . .), found a room on the Gallery that had the vampire cure, plopped that in the backyard, and had Smiler drink it.

Cue their eyes going from yellow to brown.

Yeah, uh, THAT wasn’t ideal! I was hoping that, despite the yellow eyes being a vampire CAS thing, they’d stay anyway since I put them on in Smiler’s regular form. But nope! I tried going straight to “Manage Worlds” without saving, but the damage had been done – still had a cured Smiler in there. So I decided that, at the very least, I could give them the RIGHT “natural” eye color that I’d decided on a while back and opened up the household in CAS through “Manage Households” so I could fix up Smiler’s eyes. Found a shade of hazely-green I liked and set that as their new eye color. . .

And then figured, “I’ve also wanted to figure out an outfit that would feel right for them for my Blades in the Dark AU for a bit now” and went ahead and fiddled with another look for them while I was there. Found a nice yellow checked vest with a purple pocket square that I paired with a pair of black pants, black shoes, and a nice black cap to get roughly the right look for them. (Also gave that Victor a similar outfit with a black vest so he wouldn’t be nakey anymore.) It’s a nice look (even if it’s the most subdued Smiler look I’ve ever done), but – it’s so BIZARRE for me to see them with any eye color other than the yellow! (And I would SWEAR something changed just slightly about their skintone too, but that might just be my brain playing tricks on me.) It doesn’t feel right! *shakehead*

So yeah – it seems that if I want my proper yellow-eyed Smiler, I have to keep them as a vampire. Or find some custom-content yellow eyes that normal Sims can have. Or POSSIBLY change them to human using MC Command Center, because I haven’t tried that yet. Might be an experiment to run on Monday? We’ll see. . .

Writing: Unfortunately, I had one of my “distracted” days and thus didn’t get anything done on this front. :( Well, okay, I wrote all of THIS *waves at the actual to-do list* and surely doing the drafts over on tumblr counts as a form of writing, but I like to do something more FORMAL, you know? Maybe I can double up a bit tomorrow, since I made such good progress on the tumblrs today. . .

YouTube: I cleared out the Watch Later and kept up on my Subs, hooray! :D Nice to have that all sorted as I go into the final four days. . .here’s what we watched –

A) Started with the latest from Red Plumbob – “♦ Hamsters (and such) ♦ Sims1 vs Sims2 vs Sims3 vs Sims4!” A look at small pets (hamsters, guinea pigs, etc) throughout the series. Basically everything gets more expensive and bigger as you go through the series – but then again, even hamsters and rats need their fair share of room, so that’s actually a good thing! The ones in Sims 4 arguably have the most personality (in fact, they may have too much personality if you don’t like your pets launching random rockets or NUCLEAR BOMBS – fortunately there’s a treat to stop that), meaning it’s a REAL SHAME that someone upstairs decided they needed to be split into their own openly-money-grabbing stuff pack instead of coming with Cats & Dogs. *sigh* Good thing I can live without them! My Sims don’t need the danger from “rabid rodent fever” anyway.

B) Then it was onto today’s OXBox video – “Game of the Year 2022: JANE, MIKE AND ANDY DECIDE | Day 2!” Time for the OXBox team to deliver their verdicts on their games of the year! Which were all along the lines of “I would have said Elden Ring IF LUKE HADN’T CALLED DIBS, so instead. . .” XD Andy’s was relatively predictable – Return To Monkey Island, the latest in the series of puzzle games he has a lot of nostalgic fondness for (art style took a bit of getting used to, and he didn’t feel like it needed a framing device of Guybrush telling the game as a story of him finding a special treasure to his kid, but overall it was a solid puzzle game with solid writing – short but sweet) – but Mike and Jane were both curveballs, with Mike choosing Gotham Knights (with Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, and Red Hood all investigating a mystery surrounding Batman’s death; he admits it’s flawed and probably won’t make back its budget, but as a guy who likes the Batman universe and the city of Gotham as a place to explore, he found it had a solid story and enough fun mechanics carried over from stuff like the Arkham series to keep him engaged), and Jane choosing Marvel Snap (a MOBILE CARD BATTLE GAME I’d never heard of where you try to control two of three “lanes” with a variety of superhero trading cards; she liked it because it was easy to pick up during a busy time of year, matches were short, and it made her feel like she was better than she really was at it). So yeah, that was unusual! But funny, especially when they made Mike explain why he hadn’t picked a driving game (apparently the three released this years all had one big enough fault, like a broken economy that meant he couldn’t afford the cars he really wanted to drive, that knocked them out of the running). XD

C) And finally it was over to the Subs for Call Me Kevin’s video of the day – “I Learned to Skateboard with No Experience!” Kevin gave himself a challenge to learn the basics of skateboarding and maybe a simple trick or two over seven days, practicing both in his own back garden (on the grass and the patio) and on public bike lanes and suchlike before heading to a skate park at the crack of dawn to try his luck there. There were many ups and downs – it took him a while just to get used to standing on the board; he got constantly nervous about people seeing him when he practiced in public; he got really happy when he managed to do a simple “flip the board over and jump onto it” trick at home, only to hit an anxiety wall the next day (when he and Anna had planned some cool drone footage of him practicing – fortunately they were able to get it on Day 6 instead); and his attempt at doing a very shallow practice half-pipe (which requires you to stomp on the front of the board to get the balance correct) led to him falling down and bruising his hip. But he did successfully do some skating, and he learned a few things – namely, that he likes the cruising aspect of skateboarding, but not so much the trick part. So he’s switched to longboarding instead, which is all about the cruising, and he’s quite enjoying that! So yeah, it was a good bit of personal growth on his part, and a fairly amusing video – at the very least, it’s always fun to watch him bounce off of Anna. XD

Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with the Call Me Kevin “Rewind 2022” video! I got through the “Kevin Plays Games Incorrectly” section today (including wasting all his Pokeballs on purpose in that Pokemon game I don’t know the name of; refusing to ride a horse anywhere in Red Dead Redemption 2; and his first attempts to be a good student in Bully), and into the “Sometimes Games Are WEIRD” section (featuring so far Kevin’s look at Goat Simulator 3 and his second attempt playing Road 96 without getting shot). Just about halfway through this monster now! :D

Not too shabby -- wish I'd done better on the writing front, but at least I got plenty of other stuff done! Especially with tumblr drafts -- having posts either ready to go or just needing a bit of revision will be REALLY handy once I go back to work. Gotta make the most of these final few days off! (Well, except Saturday, which is New Year's Eve and thus movie day, sooo. . .)

And with that in mind, I shall be off! At least tomorrow I'm guaranteed to get in some writing, thanks to the FO4 Playthrough Progression. . .though I have to remember Mom wants a game night tomorrow night, so that'll definitely impact my evening. . . *shrug* I'll figure it out! Night all!