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Day Six Of The Plague
Feb. 3rd, 2023 11:55 pmToday's Covid Update: Still testing positive as of this morning, though a lot of the stuffiness is gone, I must say. Also the line didn't look nearly as vivid as it did the last two times, which I hope is a good sign. Mom feels like I should be able to go back to work on Wednesday no matter what (because then I'll be out of the ten-day "infectious" period, and I always wear a mask at work anyway), but we'll see how things pan out this weekend -- could go back earlier if I test negative sooner than that. *shrug* Keep your fingers crossed! (For me being negative, not necessarily going back to work.)
However, as stated, still testing positive as of this morning, so I'm still keeping away from everyone and everything except my computer. Here's what I accomplished today:
Tumblr: Had a more productive day on this today, w00 –
A) Caught up on all the dash posts, tags, and other tumblring stuff on Victor Luvs Alice before and during lunch (chicken tenders, om nom).
B) Did the pictures and initial starter text for all five of the Chill Valicer Save posts for next week’s update and the other OT3 meme I did for Valicer in the VLA drafts after lunch.
C) Reblogged the two people who answered my WIP tag game – the one who’s doing that Eldritch Hellworld Valice fic (“Beneath A Broken Sky”), and Ace from FF.net who’s doing a Good Omens fic that’s a crossover with a manga/anime they like, Restaurant To Another World – and left them comments, as is nice and proper. :)
D) And spent some time this evening getting some pictures of Victor, Alice, and Smiler together to make a special extra thing I’m doing for Valentine’s Day/February Polyshipping Day, combining the text of the two “this is what my OT3 is like” posts I’m reblogging into one because I thought it was funny. XD Hopefully people will find it enjoyable when it goes up with the Valicertines!
E) Nothing going on with Valice Multiverse at the moment, btw – though I have some ideas for fandom reblogs before I head off for the night, at least!
Sims 4: Yeah, I was feeling like some building in the old Sims today – specifically, I wanted to take a crack at a version of Elder Gutknecht’s tower, like the one my Blades in the Dark Valicer trio would be using as their lair. I backed up my saves and tray, took out my Mods, opened Origin, let the game patch, booted it up, went to my building save, headed to the blank lot in Forgotten Hollow as that felt like the most thematically appropriate place to build, pulled up a video of Victor and Emily visiting Gutknecht’s place on my phone for the one wide shot of the exterior we get –
And proceeded to spend about two hours fiddling with how to do a tower partially recessed into a building that looks roughly like a right triangle. And do it so I could fit stairs INSIDE instead of outside because weather. XD Trying to make something that looks ROUGHLY right but is functional for Sims is hard, yo! I once again poked at curved walls, and once again decided they weren’t worth the fuss as they weren’t giving me the right “tower” vibes anyway. I FINALLY got something to work with some hexagons and some very careful expansion to get a “continuous” staircase going up that didn’t cut out too much of the floor of the top “library” bit. Though I have to say, sticking a domed glass roof on the top DID give the proper appearance of the “cage” that Gutknecht “lives” in in the actual movie. I also had some trouble with the half-roof that I was using to make the “right triangle” look – I ended up pulling it up and around the middle bit of the tower, so now when you go to that level, there’s a bit of a weird cutaway there. XD But as the middle bit of the tower is just a passageway up and down, I think it’ll still work. I left it with some ideas on how to divide up the “living” area (I need a kitchen, a dining room, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a workshop) and some of the objects I think I’d want/need scattered around the place. I’ll probably get back to that tomorrow and see if I can whip it into further shape!
Writing: Spent a lot of time fiddling with my Blades In The Dark Valicer document (yeah, this has really turned into my “isolation week” project!) –
A) I updated Alice’s backstory to make it so she and her family lived in Brightstone, the second-fanciest district in the game, instead of in Whitecrown, the fanciest one (I felt it SLIGHTLY more believable that Bumby would get away with raping Lizzie and burning down the Liddell family home in that district instead of the island that the damn Lord Governor themselves lives on – Arthur was still a member of the faculty at Doskvol Academy in Whitecrown, though)
B) I also updated Smiler’s character stats to reflect that they’re now primarily a Leech with some Slide characteristics instead of the other way around (though, honestly, what I REALLY ended up doing was just combining the starting dots for both sheets – a Leech gets 2 Tinker and 1 Wreck to start, while a Slide gets 1 Consort and 2 Sway; I threw their final dot into Surveying things)
C) I added a bit more detail to the Beornen/Advocate conflict (Smiler hooked a few Beornen on Joy Serum; Wickerman retaliated by trying to set the Advocates’ headquarters in Silkshore on fire)
D) I filled out the crew playbook some more (fleshing out their various upgrades, like statting Elder Gutknecht up as a proper occult expert for the crew and clarifying that their “prowess training” is actually from the Advocates, instead of being somehow part of their lair; deciding on some ideas for “hunting grounds” (I’d like them to do some saboteur work against the asshole factory owners and workhouse foremen in Coalridge); establishing a contact for them (the Shadows have a tavern owner as a possibility, so I changed it to Ms. Plum of the Ball & Socket, natch XD); and making notes on factions I’d like them to have relationships with (like the Grey Cloaks, disgraced policemen framed for a crime they didn’t commit, who happen to make their lair in Six Towers, and The Lost, former violent thugs seeking to atone by turning that violence on the cruelest and wickedest foremen in Coalridge))
E) And I did a quick outline of what I would need to properly stat up the Advocates as a faction (based on what I saw for the write-ups of the other factions in the book)
Whew – a lot of bouncing back and forth between the book and my document today, cleaning things up and such! But it was fun. Now if I could only decide on a crew special ability for my Valicer trio already. . .
YouTube: Not nearly as busy as yesterday – though, hilariously, I spotted that the OXBox crew did a Livestream on the new Hitman: Freelancer mode today, so that’ll have to be on my “to watch” this weekend. XD But today I focused on the following –
A) First up, the latest AT4W – “Superman vs. Aliens #1!” Yes, turns out that the “Batman Vs Aliens” comics he reviewed a while back weren’t even the first time a DC superhero had tangled with Xenomorphs – Superman actually got that honor! And he even got to fight them in space, with this crossover having him travel to the far-away Kryptonian city of Argos (which found a way to protect itself from planetary destruction when the world blew up) after catching one of their distress beacons crashing to Earth, and discovering that the place is an abandoned wreck thanks to its supplies running out – and also has Xenomorphs infesting it. And while he was JUST about able to go toe-to-toe with the first one he encountered, his powers are slowly draining because Argos is so far away from the sun. . .on the plus side, though, a certain Kara Zor-El is there with a flamethrower to help him out. On the MINUS side, Superman found some survivors earlier and packaged them into the ship he came in (courtesy of LexCorp (currently NOT run by Lex Luthor for complicated continuity reasons in the main books) and its lead space scientist, Dr. Cheryl Kimble – they agreed to let Supes investigate in return for him bringing back alien tech) to try and get them help back on Earth. . .and wouldn’t you know it, they’ve all got chestbursters inside them. So THAT’S not good. Linkara felt the comic was decent, but not quite as good as the Batman one, at least in this first issue. We’ll see how things progress whenever issue #2 graces his screen!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for the Call Me Kevin of the day – “I am Jesus: one of the games of all time!” Yes, Kevin was back to the short form videos today, playing the prologue chapter of I Am Jesus Christ, a game where – well, guess. XD It’s a very bizarre little game – after showing off what is probably the creepiest version of Jesus’s birth thanks to some of the most “uncanny valley” humans I’ve seen in a while, it properly picks up with Jesus turning thirty and being instructed by an angel (who doesn’t respect the “pause” button) to go find John the Baptist and get baptized. Jesus accomplishes this by parkouring all over the marketplace looking for people who know who he is, then after being baptized wanders into the desert to have a forty-day fast, avoid Satan’s schoolyard taunts, and gain various miracle superpowers such as being able to bounce Satan’s fire blasts back at him and use a telekinetic tether to pull him closer so he can’t dodge them. And then he returns to civilization and uses his powers to lure fish to fishermen, do the “water into wine” trick at a wedding (causing the wine merchant to immediately start GUZZLING the stuff), and cure someone’s sick child by astral projecting himself into the kid’s bloodstream and dealing with the viruses personally. ...hey, Jesus, don’t suppose… XD Anyway, Kevin found it a VERY bizarre little game, but had fun doing things like magically creating boxes, breaking “Dark Gems” created by Satan, and dealing with the weird voice acting (or lack thereof – halfway through it went from actual people to text-to-speech). When it comes to blasphemy, you could do worse! XD
C) And finally we wrapped up with a double dose of GrayStillPlays –
I. Yesterday’s Shorts video, “Busting 5 Myths in GTA 5 #shorts!” Yes, more myths to be rapidly busted for our amusement, such as – can you shoot a car door into the water and then ride it into the depths without drowning? Yes, and you can even use your gun against the fish! Can you do fifteen consecutive loops on an ATV in the Penris Monument (a piece of art with a circle inside of it perfect for doing loops)? Yes, though it takes a WHILE. Can you jump the local canyon on a motorcycle? Yes, but only in one particular spot – you have to build up some speed by driving past some pedestrians and leap from a certain overhang to make it across. Can you steal cars that are being transported on a truck? Sort of – Gray’s solution was to steal the truck first, deliberately crash it to knock cars off the bed, THEN steal the cars. Can you stop tanks in the military base from shooting you if you use one of the helicopters there to pick up a car? No – it will take them a while to actually get a bead on you, but they WILL shoot you down eventually. *nods* All good information, Gray, thank you!
II. And today’s actual video, “When you make a fortune online by not working!” AKA Gray plays Streamer Rush, another one of those “run through the course picking up all these good things and avoiding all these bad things” mobile games – this time focusing on becoming different kinds of streamers! You could be a fashion streamer and pick up shoes while avoiding your nerdy enemies trying to beat followers out of you; you could be a photography streamer and pick up cameras while grabbing a robot to twerk with; you could be a gaming streamer and pick up controllers while losing followers for daring to eat your broccoli; or you could be a sporty streamer and pick up, uh, headphones while slapping the bajeezus out of a yeti in a minigame. Your success in streaming determined your final form as a whatever streamer you were and what multiplier you could float down to after ascending the stairs of monetary success, with the best one being on a literal yacht. Also you could spend your money on upgrading your house – Gray chose ketchup-colored walls paired with a bug-eyed bear wall decoration and a cowprint couch with rainbow pillows. XD Keeping it classy! But hey, what do I know – his streamer “plzhelpme” DID reach #1 after changing streaming identities like fifty million times, so. . . XD
And I'm currently working my way through my messages from Moose the other day, yay! So yeah, if nothing else, I'm keeping up very well on the old YouTubes and doing pretty good at keeping up on the tumblr drafts too. :) Sucks to be sick, but nice to have some free time!
And now, I am doing the social thing, so I must be off. Glad it's not a Cleaning Saturday tomorrow, at least! Though I do have to change my sheets. . .but there should still be time for hopefully watching the Hitman: Freelancer OXBox video, doing some more Sims 4 building, and working a bit more on all the BitD stuff! And maybe getting another Valicertine or Valicetine done, though I still got another week on that. Still, never hurts to be prepared. Night all!
However, as stated, still testing positive as of this morning, so I'm still keeping away from everyone and everything except my computer. Here's what I accomplished today:
Tumblr: Had a more productive day on this today, w00 –
A) Caught up on all the dash posts, tags, and other tumblring stuff on Victor Luvs Alice before and during lunch (chicken tenders, om nom).
B) Did the pictures and initial starter text for all five of the Chill Valicer Save posts for next week’s update and the other OT3 meme I did for Valicer in the VLA drafts after lunch.
C) Reblogged the two people who answered my WIP tag game – the one who’s doing that Eldritch Hellworld Valice fic (“Beneath A Broken Sky”), and Ace from FF.net who’s doing a Good Omens fic that’s a crossover with a manga/anime they like, Restaurant To Another World – and left them comments, as is nice and proper. :)
D) And spent some time this evening getting some pictures of Victor, Alice, and Smiler together to make a special extra thing I’m doing for Valentine’s Day/February Polyshipping Day, combining the text of the two “this is what my OT3 is like” posts I’m reblogging into one because I thought it was funny. XD Hopefully people will find it enjoyable when it goes up with the Valicertines!
E) Nothing going on with Valice Multiverse at the moment, btw – though I have some ideas for fandom reblogs before I head off for the night, at least!
Sims 4: Yeah, I was feeling like some building in the old Sims today – specifically, I wanted to take a crack at a version of Elder Gutknecht’s tower, like the one my Blades in the Dark Valicer trio would be using as their lair. I backed up my saves and tray, took out my Mods, opened Origin, let the game patch, booted it up, went to my building save, headed to the blank lot in Forgotten Hollow as that felt like the most thematically appropriate place to build, pulled up a video of Victor and Emily visiting Gutknecht’s place on my phone for the one wide shot of the exterior we get –
And proceeded to spend about two hours fiddling with how to do a tower partially recessed into a building that looks roughly like a right triangle. And do it so I could fit stairs INSIDE instead of outside because weather. XD Trying to make something that looks ROUGHLY right but is functional for Sims is hard, yo! I once again poked at curved walls, and once again decided they weren’t worth the fuss as they weren’t giving me the right “tower” vibes anyway. I FINALLY got something to work with some hexagons and some very careful expansion to get a “continuous” staircase going up that didn’t cut out too much of the floor of the top “library” bit. Though I have to say, sticking a domed glass roof on the top DID give the proper appearance of the “cage” that Gutknecht “lives” in in the actual movie. I also had some trouble with the half-roof that I was using to make the “right triangle” look – I ended up pulling it up and around the middle bit of the tower, so now when you go to that level, there’s a bit of a weird cutaway there. XD But as the middle bit of the tower is just a passageway up and down, I think it’ll still work. I left it with some ideas on how to divide up the “living” area (I need a kitchen, a dining room, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a workshop) and some of the objects I think I’d want/need scattered around the place. I’ll probably get back to that tomorrow and see if I can whip it into further shape!
Writing: Spent a lot of time fiddling with my Blades In The Dark Valicer document (yeah, this has really turned into my “isolation week” project!) –
A) I updated Alice’s backstory to make it so she and her family lived in Brightstone, the second-fanciest district in the game, instead of in Whitecrown, the fanciest one (I felt it SLIGHTLY more believable that Bumby would get away with raping Lizzie and burning down the Liddell family home in that district instead of the island that the damn Lord Governor themselves lives on – Arthur was still a member of the faculty at Doskvol Academy in Whitecrown, though)
B) I also updated Smiler’s character stats to reflect that they’re now primarily a Leech with some Slide characteristics instead of the other way around (though, honestly, what I REALLY ended up doing was just combining the starting dots for both sheets – a Leech gets 2 Tinker and 1 Wreck to start, while a Slide gets 1 Consort and 2 Sway; I threw their final dot into Surveying things)
C) I added a bit more detail to the Beornen/Advocate conflict (Smiler hooked a few Beornen on Joy Serum; Wickerman retaliated by trying to set the Advocates’ headquarters in Silkshore on fire)
D) I filled out the crew playbook some more (fleshing out their various upgrades, like statting Elder Gutknecht up as a proper occult expert for the crew and clarifying that their “prowess training” is actually from the Advocates, instead of being somehow part of their lair; deciding on some ideas for “hunting grounds” (I’d like them to do some saboteur work against the asshole factory owners and workhouse foremen in Coalridge); establishing a contact for them (the Shadows have a tavern owner as a possibility, so I changed it to Ms. Plum of the Ball & Socket, natch XD); and making notes on factions I’d like them to have relationships with (like the Grey Cloaks, disgraced policemen framed for a crime they didn’t commit, who happen to make their lair in Six Towers, and The Lost, former violent thugs seeking to atone by turning that violence on the cruelest and wickedest foremen in Coalridge))
E) And I did a quick outline of what I would need to properly stat up the Advocates as a faction (based on what I saw for the write-ups of the other factions in the book)
Whew – a lot of bouncing back and forth between the book and my document today, cleaning things up and such! But it was fun. Now if I could only decide on a crew special ability for my Valicer trio already. . .
YouTube: Not nearly as busy as yesterday – though, hilariously, I spotted that the OXBox crew did a Livestream on the new Hitman: Freelancer mode today, so that’ll have to be on my “to watch” this weekend. XD But today I focused on the following –
A) First up, the latest AT4W – “Superman vs. Aliens #1!” Yes, turns out that the “Batman Vs Aliens” comics he reviewed a while back weren’t even the first time a DC superhero had tangled with Xenomorphs – Superman actually got that honor! And he even got to fight them in space, with this crossover having him travel to the far-away Kryptonian city of Argos (which found a way to protect itself from planetary destruction when the world blew up) after catching one of their distress beacons crashing to Earth, and discovering that the place is an abandoned wreck thanks to its supplies running out – and also has Xenomorphs infesting it. And while he was JUST about able to go toe-to-toe with the first one he encountered, his powers are slowly draining because Argos is so far away from the sun. . .on the plus side, though, a certain Kara Zor-El is there with a flamethrower to help him out. On the MINUS side, Superman found some survivors earlier and packaged them into the ship he came in (courtesy of LexCorp (currently NOT run by Lex Luthor for complicated continuity reasons in the main books) and its lead space scientist, Dr. Cheryl Kimble – they agreed to let Supes investigate in return for him bringing back alien tech) to try and get them help back on Earth. . .and wouldn’t you know it, they’ve all got chestbursters inside them. So THAT’S not good. Linkara felt the comic was decent, but not quite as good as the Batman one, at least in this first issue. We’ll see how things progress whenever issue #2 graces his screen!
B) Then it was over to the Subs for the Call Me Kevin of the day – “I am Jesus: one of the games of all time!” Yes, Kevin was back to the short form videos today, playing the prologue chapter of I Am Jesus Christ, a game where – well, guess. XD It’s a very bizarre little game – after showing off what is probably the creepiest version of Jesus’s birth thanks to some of the most “uncanny valley” humans I’ve seen in a while, it properly picks up with Jesus turning thirty and being instructed by an angel (who doesn’t respect the “pause” button) to go find John the Baptist and get baptized. Jesus accomplishes this by parkouring all over the marketplace looking for people who know who he is, then after being baptized wanders into the desert to have a forty-day fast, avoid Satan’s schoolyard taunts, and gain various miracle superpowers such as being able to bounce Satan’s fire blasts back at him and use a telekinetic tether to pull him closer so he can’t dodge them. And then he returns to civilization and uses his powers to lure fish to fishermen, do the “water into wine” trick at a wedding (causing the wine merchant to immediately start GUZZLING the stuff), and cure someone’s sick child by astral projecting himself into the kid’s bloodstream and dealing with the viruses personally. ...hey, Jesus, don’t suppose… XD Anyway, Kevin found it a VERY bizarre little game, but had fun doing things like magically creating boxes, breaking “Dark Gems” created by Satan, and dealing with the weird voice acting (or lack thereof – halfway through it went from actual people to text-to-speech). When it comes to blasphemy, you could do worse! XD
C) And finally we wrapped up with a double dose of GrayStillPlays –
I. Yesterday’s Shorts video, “Busting 5 Myths in GTA 5 #shorts!” Yes, more myths to be rapidly busted for our amusement, such as – can you shoot a car door into the water and then ride it into the depths without drowning? Yes, and you can even use your gun against the fish! Can you do fifteen consecutive loops on an ATV in the Penris Monument (a piece of art with a circle inside of it perfect for doing loops)? Yes, though it takes a WHILE. Can you jump the local canyon on a motorcycle? Yes, but only in one particular spot – you have to build up some speed by driving past some pedestrians and leap from a certain overhang to make it across. Can you steal cars that are being transported on a truck? Sort of – Gray’s solution was to steal the truck first, deliberately crash it to knock cars off the bed, THEN steal the cars. Can you stop tanks in the military base from shooting you if you use one of the helicopters there to pick up a car? No – it will take them a while to actually get a bead on you, but they WILL shoot you down eventually. *nods* All good information, Gray, thank you!
II. And today’s actual video, “When you make a fortune online by not working!” AKA Gray plays Streamer Rush, another one of those “run through the course picking up all these good things and avoiding all these bad things” mobile games – this time focusing on becoming different kinds of streamers! You could be a fashion streamer and pick up shoes while avoiding your nerdy enemies trying to beat followers out of you; you could be a photography streamer and pick up cameras while grabbing a robot to twerk with; you could be a gaming streamer and pick up controllers while losing followers for daring to eat your broccoli; or you could be a sporty streamer and pick up, uh, headphones while slapping the bajeezus out of a yeti in a minigame. Your success in streaming determined your final form as a whatever streamer you were and what multiplier you could float down to after ascending the stairs of monetary success, with the best one being on a literal yacht. Also you could spend your money on upgrading your house – Gray chose ketchup-colored walls paired with a bug-eyed bear wall decoration and a cowprint couch with rainbow pillows. XD Keeping it classy! But hey, what do I know – his streamer “plzhelpme” DID reach #1 after changing streaming identities like fifty million times, so. . . XD
And I'm currently working my way through my messages from Moose the other day, yay! So yeah, if nothing else, I'm keeping up very well on the old YouTubes and doing pretty good at keeping up on the tumblr drafts too. :) Sucks to be sick, but nice to have some free time!
And now, I am doing the social thing, so I must be off. Glad it's not a Cleaning Saturday tomorrow, at least! Though I do have to change my sheets. . .but there should still be time for hopefully watching the Hitman: Freelancer OXBox video, doing some more Sims 4 building, and working a bit more on all the BitD stuff! And maybe getting another Valicertine or Valicetine done, though I still got another week on that. Still, never hurts to be prepared. Night all!
