Chilly Cloudy Saturday

Which, I was expecting it to be colder, but NOT cloudy -- the weekend's sole redeeming feature, weather-wise, was that the sun was supposed to be out! What gives, January? But then again, I should NOT complain, as RI has been VERY lucky weather-wise lately, and I don't want to jinx it and end up driving home in a snowstorm or something. *grimaces* Keep your fingers crossed! And while you're doing that, you can read about my day --

Tumblr: This has been a day of tumbling in bursts –

A) Had a bit of a slow, late start to the day (I stayed up WAY too late last night on TV Tropes), but I did at least manage to catch up on the Victor Luvs Alice dash before lunch – and get my pictures for tomorrow’s “Sim Smiler look book” post sorted! Plus the very first of the Chill Save update pictures for this week (Harvestfest on real-world Christmas Eve).

B) Finished off the rest of “Harvestfest” Chill Save pictures after lunch and before actual Simming (SIXTY FREAKING PICTURES – my first six-part update! This save is ANYTHING but Chill).

C) Took a moment to add all the “Valice(r) Calendar” dates to my own calendar on my computer (plus a few others, like Marty and Doc’s birthdays, Future Day/VTMB Day, and Fallout Day – October is BUSY when it comes to my fandoms) – and also took a moment to edit that tumblr post and reblog it because I’d forgotten to put Victor and Alice’s wedding anniversary on it the first time. You know, July 7th? 7/7? Easiest date of the lot to remember? *facepalm* Well, it’s there now!

D) Then, after the YouTubing, below, I answered the ask sitting in the askbox on Valice Multiverse, added a new headcanon to the latest “Valicer headcanons” post in my Victor Luvs Alice drafts (since my Smiler is adopted when they’re human/previously human, I’ve decided that their Sim creation date of 1/8 can also be the day their adoption by the Altons become official), and I’m currently working on the “look book” post for Smiler in honor of that Sim creation date now. Keeping busy!

Sims 4: More “Chill” Save Valicer goodness today, with a touch of prepwork for new mods to start –

A) Spent the remaining few minutes before lunch putting in a couple new Little Miss Sam mods – one for fixing plants reverting to dirt piles (and letting out-of-season trees stay as mature-but-not-fruiting TREES), which has been a real problem in Victor’s greenhouse lately, and one for keeping book progress steady if you travel while a Sim is still writing, which feels like it might be necessary for Alice if she intends to become an author now – and making some quick backups of my “saves” and “Tray” folders. Gotta keep on top of these things!

B) Then it was into the actual game itself to see my Valicer pair and their new pets – and, importantly, get those pets jazzed up a bit in CAS with collars and whatnot! And see what their breeds were – Shadow as it turns out is a Foxhound, while Kelly is a mixed breed cat but looks like a cross between a Sphinx (she’s wrinkly and furless) and a manx (has just a stub of tail). I gave them each three outfits – two different collar types plus a bow tie collar and sweater combo for Shadow, and a plain collar, collar with a sweater, and collar with a taco costume set for Kelly (the last outfit of each being what Smiler dressed them in). XD I also took a picture of Smiler’s main formal outfit (as I don’t think we’ve ever seen it) and gave them a new one based of one of the looks I made for them on Monday (a glittery gold suit with leather gloves). Why not? ;p

C) Okay onto actual playtime – and the pets immediately started misbehaving by getting into the chicken feed, eating and playing with it. Smiler lectured Kelly about eating the chicken food while Victor lectured Shadow about it – don’t think either pet immediately got the message. Smiler did make friends with Kelly, though, distracting her from mischief with a laser pointer. Victor, meanwhile, managed to SUCCESSFULLY make some eco-upgrade parts without being eaten by the Fabricator, then took Shadow upstairs for a bath, while Alice had breakfast, then transformed so she could mark her territory and then have zoomies to keep her Fury down before work. Keeping busy!

D) And then Grim showed up. XD Not for any of the Sims or pets, mind – for the chickens! Yeah, pretty much all of Victor and Alice’s chickens were elders at this point, and over the course of the day, all of them except one elderly black hen, one adult brown hen, and the three chicks (one hen and two roosters) all got taken to those rolling hills in the sky by the Reaper. I suspect egg production is going to go down a bit. XD We’ll have to refresh the coop and bring in some fresh chicken blood soon!

E) However, the Valicer trio were quite busy with other things today and thus couldn’t worry about most of their coop dying off (none of them had ever really bonded with those chickens anyway). Things like Smiler trying to convince Shadow she should NOT drink werewolf pee, and making friends with her after some playtime! Smiler successfully making some more computer chips! Victor getting a comforting hug from Shadow because his PJs were damp! Victor using magic to keep Alice clean after her zoomies! Victor and Alice showering love on Kelly and Shadow respectively! Smiler keeping the pets fed and trying to keep them from fighting over the food bowls! (Fortunately they seemed to get over their disagreements fast and just ate from both.) Alice heading out to work! Victor tending his now revived-by-mods garden! Discovering that Kelly really hates the phonograph downstairs and Smiler having to call her out from under the couch! Smiler having to repair their radio upstairs before making a new inspired vlog (with new and better lights), watched by Shadow! Victor accidentally breaking the coffeemaker and having to repair it, then making himself some absolutely horrible coffee after trying to get Kelly to stop scratching the outside couch! Victor finding Shadow really loves the musical instruments in the study! Victor starting to teach Shadow how to sit! Smiler getting the cat teaser to play with Kelly and finding her atop the fridge! Victor and Smiler doing some flirting while Victor drank his terrible coffee – complete with a “jetpack slow dance” that came with my “converted Sims 3 romantic interactions” mod for some reason and went on for ages despite me trying to cancel it – though it did look kinda cool! Oh, and –

F) Alice coming home with a promotion, maxing out the rabbithole Artist career and GETTING THE NEW BED! :D Which I promptly slapped into her and Victor’s bedroom and sent Victor upstairs to nap on, as the coffee did NOT do anything for his energy, let me tell you. Chose the cool “Van Gogh’s Starry Night” bedspread cover. :D Oh, that was satisfying. I was starting to think she was NEVER going to get promoted. Thanks, Waffles, for giving me more ways to keep her Fury low!

G) Anyway, this still left us with plenty of time in the day to fill – Alice changed into her werewolf form again to have a pee and go on a hunt, while Smiler practiced their guitar (all the way up to level 7) and Victor took Shadow out on a short walk so she could get some exercise and have a poop. (After she and Kelly had a cute moment, aww. :) ) He also tried to lecture her on not barking, but this foxhound wasn’t having it. XD Smiler took a moment to feed the remaining chickens and collect the eggs, then went to tinker on the robotics bench for a bit, while Alice came back from her hunt and scavenged in the yard for XP, finding a time capsule (only had Ol’ Gabby in it, though, which was one they already had) before going to share a few laughs with Smiler.

H) And then I remembered – oh, yeah, Victor has a free grocery delivery coupon! Better use that before it expires! I had Smiler call in the order while Alice went back to herself – one baking skill book, a chocolate egg, some flour and sugar, and a bit of red and white wrapped meat. (Not that they really need the RED meat, given Alice’s hunting skills. . .) The grocery delivery guy showed up just as the specters came out – Victor lectured Shadow for barking at him, then handed over the coupon, but was also sure to tip the guy. Groceries were unloaded, and Victor went to grab some turkey leftovers before heading upstairs to sleep in his new bed. Alice, meanwhile, finished up her latest painting, and played some chess while Guidry and Smiler chatted to her for a bit, and Smiler went upstairs to work on editing and improving their latest vlog, maxing out Media Production skill in the process. Good way to end the day and see in the beginning of Sim Winter!

I) Oh, and it was Neighborhood Brawl today, but I just ended up totally ignoring that, because my Sims never went anywhere (I was BRIEFLY tempted by the Finchwick fair, but by the time Alice got home, she was feeling tense and overworked, Victor was tired and hating his coffee, and it just seemed like a bad idea) and thus never saw anyone, and I didn’t want them to fight each other. Trust me, the Valicer trio didn’t care about the holiday being awful – they didn’t even get sad moodlets. XD

So yeah, pretty productive day on that front, I must say! Always nice to drop in on my OT3. :) Next time I play them, though, I think Smiler needs to host another party and try out their party-bot! And this one will NOT be ruined by Alice turning into a rampaging werewolf. I hope, anyway. XD

Writing: Did this after Sims – second draft of Moose’s gift fic, to be posted on Tuesday! :) I hope you like it, Moose – I personally think it’s very cute! :)

YouTube: Got ALMOST all of the videos I wanted to get watched, watched – didn’t have time for the hour-long OXtra one about them playing what I think is a Garfield kart racer. XD But I got through the rest –

A) Started with a lovely OXBox list – “7 Unlucky NPCs Everyone Always Kills!” Okay, so not THAT lovely. XD But yes, their latest offering was a list of characters who pretty much always end up murdered by the PC – because they’re a mandatory tutorial in attacking (the unfortunate doctor in Saints Row 2’s beginning levels); because they’re so freaking annoying you can’t resist the urge to shoot them (Sticky the recently-mungoed kid from Little Lamplight you’re supposed to escort to Big Town in Fallout 3); or because the circumstances are too perfect and their dialogue too ironically funny (that one guard in Hitman: Absolution’s tutorial level who is leaning out a convenient window you can use to infiltrate the mansion he’s guarding and is on the phone with his doctor, learning he does NOT have prostate cancer, and saying a LOT of lines that make it very tempting to yank him out and send him hurtling over the cliff the mansion overlooks). Pity these poor NPCs, will you? At least for a second before you kill them.

B) Then it was over to the Subs for yesterday’s Call Me Kevin – “The new Pokemon was a disaster, so I played this instead!” AKA Kevin plays Temtem, a technically-multiplayer (Kevin didn’t make much use of that feature, apart from asking for a bit of help on the chat) Pokemon – “rip-off” feels mean, the game itself looks nice and fun, even if it is following Pokemon’s formula of “a kid goes on a grand journey to catch little pocket monsters” very closely. Though in this game, they’re Temtems, they don’t all have evolutions, and you store them in little cards instead of balls. Kevin had a lot of fun playing as “Oldest Man” running around in his underwear, breaking into people’s houses to sit on their furniture while trying to figure out where his quest objectives were and getting annoyed every time he was called to battle because holy HELL there are a lot of scattered trainers and random encounters. XD His starting Temtem was a little emerald turtle thing he called Green Man, and that little guy along with Hat (a very angry duck-like Temtem he caught during his adventures) kind of carried him through the game (along with a pig, a ferret, and a cute platypus he never used but really really liked because of said cuteness). I mean, his Temtems DID end up “fainting” a lot, either from enemy attacks or overexertion (because this game has a stamina system as well as health). . .that being said, Kevin also learned quickly how to turn that overexertion mechanic to his favor, as one of his key strategies was to focus attacks on one enemy Temtem (as you can have two out at a time), and let the other eventually end up hurting itself by doing too many stamina-draining moves. *shrug* Whatever allows you to survive! At any rate, he got through the starting town, caught himself a crack team of Temtems, found his way to the next plot-important area through the dozens of trainers, led a tour group rather incompetently, helped a little kid play pretend Temtems, rescued a surfing Dojo Master from the fort she’d been imprisoned in (though he did have to fight the main boss of the area twice), then defeated her in a painful battle with Green Man before going onto an airship and never returning. XD So yeah, if you’d like a little variation to your Pokemon experience, this might be your game!

C) And finally we had GrayStillPlays and “When you're slapped at lightspeed” – aka Gray plays Slap Kings, a mobile game all about slap fights! Your character must slap his way through multiple levels and multiple opponents (some knock-off characters from other media, some not), chasing that elusive perfect slap as the Slap Power Meter (what I’m choosing to call it) slowly gets faster and faster and your opponents get more and more health and harder and harder hands. :p And, as you level up, you gain new clothes and new Mega Slaps with special advanced animations. Gray got really into the slapping, learning that the trick to winning any fight was to make sure you could survive three slaps, as your opponent will not survive your fourth, and carefully checking out every Mega Slap to see if it was worthy of his attention. He finally got all the way to the end and took the final Mega Slap, and used it on his final opponent. . .and when it proved to be yet another stupid dance move instead of a hovering power hit, he flipped a table. Possibly literally, he certainly made the right noises into the microphone! XD But yes, Gray is now the Slap King, as is his right. At least until Alex slaps him down again in GTA V. XD

Not too shabby, though I kinda wish I'd managed to get up earlier and thus get a better start on tumblr. . .I'll have to remember to hit the sheets sooner tonight! As it stands though, I'm doing the social thing and working on that "look book" post, so I'm gonna head out. Tomorrow -- lots of YouTube, Fallout 4 and finishing up the USS Constitution quest, updating the Playthrough Progression, and hopefully getting in a workout but we'll see if YouTube wins. :p Night all!