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Sims Swallowing Up My Day Again
Apr. 7th, 2023 11:51 pmAs will become obvious when I unleash the to-do list upon you --
Tumblr: Did a little catching up on the dash this morning on Victor Luvs Alice, but main accomplishment was starting an “AU Friday: Valicer In The Dark – Character Playbooks” post in the drafts detailing the stats, special abilities, and equipment for the Valicer in the Dark AU versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler (both individually and as part of their crew, the Three Pillars) after lunch. It’s not done yet – I only finished Victor and Alice’s playbooks – but it’s in pretty good shape for a draft, and I can work on it more during the second half of my mini-vacation! I WILL at least be ready with this and the Soulmate AU post next week!
As for the actual QUEUES – put a reblog of the old Song Saturday post for “Love Me Like You Do” by Ellie Goulding in the Victor Luvs Alice one, and an ask reply (of the Wonderlanders having a guessing game) in the Valice Multiverse one. So I’m all set for tomorrow, at least!
Sims 4: I have lost all sense of time management when it comes to my Sims – basically, I started too late and ran longer than I expected because of – well, here, let me tell you what happened –
A) Got into the save early Monday morning after taking a moment to bulldoze the Old Salt House in San MyShuno (and evict the person living there, sorry) to put in the Van Liddelton grocery store, with Victor enjoying the unearthly glow of the sacred candles and Smiler trying out some new yoga poses – when all of a sudden the damn lights go out. Turns out that the gang finally ran their electricity surplus dry, possibly as a result of having the new more expensive appliances and whatnot. A broken turbine in the wind farm probably didn’t help either. . .I sent Smiler to repair it, then recycle all the family’s trash while Alice wolf-napped outside and Victor chilled in the rocking chair in the séance room –
B) And I decided, well, if the lights are off, that’s a good time to hold a séance, isn’t it? So I had Victor lead a group séance with Smiler and Alice (still in her werewolf form). I even dragged the sacred candles in there to provide the right lighting for the whole experience. Victor is now a good enough medium that he levitates whenever he does a ceremony. XD But it turned out well – not only did the séance work and increase the spiritual serenity of the house, it even gave the wind turbines time to gather some electricity and turn the lights back on!
C) For five minutes, and then they were right back out again. -.- “All right, time to get some more turbines,” I thought, and headed into Build Mode to mount like five on the roof of the barn. I also took the opportunity to quickly build a chimney on the back of the farmhouse, to go with the fireplace that’s in the living room – after seeing James do it for his houses, it only felt right! But yes, plopped the turbines on there, let Smiler get a drink from Alice as the lights came back on, then had her get in another nap while Smiler went downstairs to jam on their guitar and Victor worked on his latest song (after eating the last of the ham dinner Alice made for Winterfest and rejecting the game asking if he wanted to get the “Paranoid” personality trait – new self-discovery system, reacting to the fact that he lives in a haunted house and thus gets scared a fair bit) –
D) And the lights went out again. Cue the lights coming on and going off throughout the rest of the day as the turbines all struggled to keep up with demand. *sigh* I seriously don’t know what happened between the last time I played and today! Yes, okay, they have a new fridge and stove and whatnot, but surely they can’t have been running at THAT much of a deficit! How big do I have to make this wind farm?? Do they need solar panels too? But I don’t know how often the sun actually comes OUT in Henford-On-Bagley. . .ugh. The trials and tribulations of playing “Off The Grid!” (Oh, and did I mention yet that it was thunderstorming most of the day? Aaargh. . .)
E) Anyway – with New Skill Day having ended successfully for all of them, it was time to move onto Egg Day! Just in time for actual Easter around here, amusingly. I sent Alice off to have some zoomies to keep her Fury at reasonable levels during a break in the rain (which she followed up by hunting for food – fair play, she was hungry) while Victor took a shower and Smiler looked for eggs and decorated (fun pastel lights and spring-like bunting – I also changed the card displays on the coffee table appropriately :p). Smiler found a couple of eggs in the porch couches, and another in the kitchen cabinets – all dupes of ones they already had, sadly, but still, tradition fulfilled. After Victor got out of the shower, I had him search the bathroom for eggs, where he found one decorative egg –
And one orange chicken egg, and one rainbow chicken egg. O.o Yeah, apparently if you have Cottage Living, you can find chicken eggs instead of decorative eggs during egg hunts! I never knew that before! How weird. O.o Finding regular eggs still fulfilled the tradition, though, and that’s what really counts!
F) With eggs found, I had Victor and Smiler adjourn to the greenhouse to do some gardening to fulfill THAT tradition – Smiler picking the latest crop of plasma fruit and doing some weeding while Victor sprayed the bugs on the oversized crops. Alice joined them after finishing her hunt, returning to human form and helping encourage the oversized crop growth. Everybody handily fulfilled the tradition, and Victor even managed to max the Gardening skill! :D (Though he had to reject another “Self-Discovery” that would have changed his “Clumsy” personality trait to “Perfectionist” – I’m seriously thinking of turning that off if it’s only going to target him, and only offer personality traits I don’t want.) All while the chickens dealt with foxes – they successfully fended off one elderly one called Phantom, but another, Rusty, got away with an egg. Damn foxes!
G) No time to worry about that now, though – there were still Egg Day traditions to fulfill! Alice went on her own egg hunt while Victor harvested the greenhouse (she found a regular chicken egg, another orange chicken egg, and another decorative egg that was a dupe of one they already had), while Smiler shared the Egg Day spirit with the visiting Flower Bunny! But there was something even more important than succeeding at Egg Day that I wanted to do with the trio. . .
H) And that was buy Van Liddelton Groceries! I had Victor purchase the store after he finished clearing out the greenhouse (and drank a Potion of Plentiful Needs), and the game immediately took him over there to have a look at the place – I brought Smiler and Alice along to hang out with him, transferred $45,000 from the household funds for building purposes, and set to work!
I – did not get as much done as I expected! Mostly because I’m not sure how I want to set up the shelves with stuff for sale – I downloaded some CC “consignment shelves” for the store, and while there’s PLENTY of room for the normal produce, they don’t hold the flower arrangements (I had Victor make one to see) or the oversized crops (at least at medium size; small might be okay!) But the oversized produce does fit in the refrigerated displays, and I’m wondering if those would be better as “produce bins. . .” (I tried downloading some empty displays from “Around The Sims,” but they’re just decoration, not shelving. :( ) I DID, at least, get a few “aisles” set up, find some nice display shelves for the flower arrangements, put away some eggs and produce that I had the gang bring with them, and get the whole place properly painted and floored and whatnot (used some of the new floors and wallpapers that came with Growing Together and High School Years, no less!). So it at least looks better than it did when they first arrived! I’m sure I’ll make it all work eventually. :)
I) While I agonized over how to set up the store, my trio themselves kept busy – Smiler took their new quadcopter toy out for a spin while Alice went and watched a nearby protest, then flew over to try and befriend one of the protesters for a drink (they succeeded at the former but not the latter). Alice got a poster from one of the utility boxes and check out a mural while Victor and Smiler hung out near the store and did store stuff, then I sent everyone down to the nearby waterfront area to do a bit of fishing. Alice didn’t catch anything, so I had her settle in for a wolf nap instead, while Smiler managed to catch a goldfish, a yellow perch, and a very nice tuna, and Victor got a tetra and a bass. Everything except the tuna got turned into plasma packs for Smiler – THAT got put into the fridge once they got home!
J) Once back home, I started concentrating on other stuff – for example, Alice was very close to getting another werewolf point, so I had her do a bit of howling and talk about her experiences with Smiler to push it over the edge. Dumped the resultant point into “Enhanced Smell,” as that seemed like a good way to earn XP and more consistently find treasure while scavenging! She then went upstairs to do some more meditation to lower her Fury, while Smiler headed upstairs to practice their comedy a bit and Victor continued working on his song – at least, until the house started making freaky noises again. *sigh* Thus interrupted, Victor AGAIN rejected an “offer” to become a “Paranoid” Sim and started using his magic to Repairio all the stuff ruined by lightning strikes, while Alice did some Gourmet Cooking (tuna sushi, I believe, fortunately not interrupted by the power continuing to flicker), while Smiler tended Snappy the Sixam Mosquito trap plant and TRIED to upload their latest gadget review while the power was still on – never managed to finish the interaction, though. *grumbles* At least I was able to get them to jam on their guitar and get that skill up to level 8! And Victor managed to get Shadow (playing on the obstacle course) to stop drinking from puddles, so there’s that. *nods*
And so the day ended with me desperately policing Alice and Smiler to stop them trying to shower in the thunderstorm. Particularly Smiler, who will drop their clothes at the drop of a hat. *sigh* Everyone did have an awesome Egg Day, so I’m glad of that, at least, but DAMN. Lot of Sim-wrangling today, and lot of me looking at a build and going “what the hell do I want to do here?” Not to mention the damn power issue. . .I mean, I suppose I could reconnect them to the grid, but I rather like that they make their own power and collect their own water and all of that. Hmmm. I’m gonna have to think about what I want to do with this lot the next time I play! How do we get another surplus going again. . .
Writing: Made sure to get another Valicer Polyship Week prompt done right after game night (“Sequence” – Mom kicked our asses four times in a row before Dad managed to win the fifth game) – the Day Two prompt, “Huddling For Warmth,” as I was in a Valicer In The Dark mood thanks to the tumblr post I started. Gang just huddling together wrapped in a big blanket (my big blanket, in fact), trying to get warm on a chilly night in their lair. And talking about the potential for a mushroom farm in the sewer outside and how Victor doesn’t have an ounce of body fat on him. XD They so silly sometimes, I swear. . .
YouTube: Well, as stated, my time management skills are not good, so all the OXBox stuff in my Watch Later remains for Later. I did keep up with GrayStillPlays in the Subs, at least, with “When you swallow the earth,” aka Gray plays Tasty Planet Forever! This is a game that’s kind of in line with that worm game he played a while back, where you have to eat lots and lots of different things in order to grow bigger and thus eat bigger and bigger things to lay waste upon humanity. Gray played the “Octopus World” section for this video, where he was a tiny octopus so fed up with humanity polluting the ocean, he learned how to eat can tabs and cigarette butts so he could grow bigger and bigger and destroy everything. “Everything” including such things as old cans and bottles; other fish; red-footed boobies (seagull models with the feet colored red); old mattresses and toilets; oil barrels; tiger and whale sharks; scuba divers; helicopters; tourist boats; shipping containers; shipping container boats; and finally actual buildings. XD Gray had an absolutely DELIGHTFUL time just devouring it ALL. He particularly enjoyed being able to eat the toilets. XD You gotta love when he’s really enjoying a game – he sounds so happy when he’s laying waste to everything in sight. XD
Workout: Final night on the bike this week, watching another episode of James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic – Part 30, “Moving house!” As you might expect, the bulk of this episode was spent on James moving the Bigwallet family over to a new house – just down the street, in fact, right in front of the pier. The new place is THEORETICALLY bigger than the old one, but there’s more rooms that are small in general than what they had before, so James actually had a bit of a time trying to fit everyone and all their stuff inside. He managed it, but gutting the house and redoing the floorplan (or just taking it down to the foundation and rebuilding it altogether) is still in the cards! But yes, everyone got moved over safely, and James promptly set about getting Addison and Breanne skilled up as much as possible! Addison only has until Sunday to enjoy being a kid, after all – he’s gotta make some progress on these skills! And Breanne’s probably gonna age up from a toddler before then. . .they’re both doing pretty good, though – Breanne’s already maxed out Imagination, and she’s doing pretty well with Thinking and Potty, and Addison is improving steadily at school and keeping up with his homework and all that. He even had Hilary over after school his first full day in the new place! James got a puppet theater so he could entertain her. XD It’s very sweet, honestly. Stuff like this makes me wonder if the Valicer trio shouldn’t have a kid after all. . .and then I remember how hard it is to wrangle just the three of them and I’m like “no, I’m good.” XD
So -- reasonably productive day (though I have just found out the Valicer In The Dark Playbook Post draft has some formatting issues. . .need to go through that and fix things up), though I do wish I'd managed to get Sims over with a bit sooner! And of course, tomorrow morning I have to do a room clean, meaning I won't have any time on the computer until after lunch. . .perhaps I'll take a day off gaming altogether to get some other stuff done. I dunno yet. Trying to make plans, especially Sims-related plans, does not seem to be working out that well for me. As it stands, I've gotta get to bed already -- night all!
Tumblr: Did a little catching up on the dash this morning on Victor Luvs Alice, but main accomplishment was starting an “AU Friday: Valicer In The Dark – Character Playbooks” post in the drafts detailing the stats, special abilities, and equipment for the Valicer in the Dark AU versions of Victor, Alice, and Smiler (both individually and as part of their crew, the Three Pillars) after lunch. It’s not done yet – I only finished Victor and Alice’s playbooks – but it’s in pretty good shape for a draft, and I can work on it more during the second half of my mini-vacation! I WILL at least be ready with this and the Soulmate AU post next week!
As for the actual QUEUES – put a reblog of the old Song Saturday post for “Love Me Like You Do” by Ellie Goulding in the Victor Luvs Alice one, and an ask reply (of the Wonderlanders having a guessing game) in the Valice Multiverse one. So I’m all set for tomorrow, at least!
Sims 4: I have lost all sense of time management when it comes to my Sims – basically, I started too late and ran longer than I expected because of – well, here, let me tell you what happened –
A) Got into the save early Monday morning after taking a moment to bulldoze the Old Salt House in San MyShuno (and evict the person living there, sorry) to put in the Van Liddelton grocery store, with Victor enjoying the unearthly glow of the sacred candles and Smiler trying out some new yoga poses – when all of a sudden the damn lights go out. Turns out that the gang finally ran their electricity surplus dry, possibly as a result of having the new more expensive appliances and whatnot. A broken turbine in the wind farm probably didn’t help either. . .I sent Smiler to repair it, then recycle all the family’s trash while Alice wolf-napped outside and Victor chilled in the rocking chair in the séance room –
B) And I decided, well, if the lights are off, that’s a good time to hold a séance, isn’t it? So I had Victor lead a group séance with Smiler and Alice (still in her werewolf form). I even dragged the sacred candles in there to provide the right lighting for the whole experience. Victor is now a good enough medium that he levitates whenever he does a ceremony. XD But it turned out well – not only did the séance work and increase the spiritual serenity of the house, it even gave the wind turbines time to gather some electricity and turn the lights back on!
C) For five minutes, and then they were right back out again. -.- “All right, time to get some more turbines,” I thought, and headed into Build Mode to mount like five on the roof of the barn. I also took the opportunity to quickly build a chimney on the back of the farmhouse, to go with the fireplace that’s in the living room – after seeing James do it for his houses, it only felt right! But yes, plopped the turbines on there, let Smiler get a drink from Alice as the lights came back on, then had her get in another nap while Smiler went downstairs to jam on their guitar and Victor worked on his latest song (after eating the last of the ham dinner Alice made for Winterfest and rejecting the game asking if he wanted to get the “Paranoid” personality trait – new self-discovery system, reacting to the fact that he lives in a haunted house and thus gets scared a fair bit) –
D) And the lights went out again. Cue the lights coming on and going off throughout the rest of the day as the turbines all struggled to keep up with demand. *sigh* I seriously don’t know what happened between the last time I played and today! Yes, okay, they have a new fridge and stove and whatnot, but surely they can’t have been running at THAT much of a deficit! How big do I have to make this wind farm?? Do they need solar panels too? But I don’t know how often the sun actually comes OUT in Henford-On-Bagley. . .ugh. The trials and tribulations of playing “Off The Grid!” (Oh, and did I mention yet that it was thunderstorming most of the day? Aaargh. . .)
E) Anyway – with New Skill Day having ended successfully for all of them, it was time to move onto Egg Day! Just in time for actual Easter around here, amusingly. I sent Alice off to have some zoomies to keep her Fury at reasonable levels during a break in the rain (which she followed up by hunting for food – fair play, she was hungry) while Victor took a shower and Smiler looked for eggs and decorated (fun pastel lights and spring-like bunting – I also changed the card displays on the coffee table appropriately :p). Smiler found a couple of eggs in the porch couches, and another in the kitchen cabinets – all dupes of ones they already had, sadly, but still, tradition fulfilled. After Victor got out of the shower, I had him search the bathroom for eggs, where he found one decorative egg –
And one orange chicken egg, and one rainbow chicken egg. O.o Yeah, apparently if you have Cottage Living, you can find chicken eggs instead of decorative eggs during egg hunts! I never knew that before! How weird. O.o Finding regular eggs still fulfilled the tradition, though, and that’s what really counts!
F) With eggs found, I had Victor and Smiler adjourn to the greenhouse to do some gardening to fulfill THAT tradition – Smiler picking the latest crop of plasma fruit and doing some weeding while Victor sprayed the bugs on the oversized crops. Alice joined them after finishing her hunt, returning to human form and helping encourage the oversized crop growth. Everybody handily fulfilled the tradition, and Victor even managed to max the Gardening skill! :D (Though he had to reject another “Self-Discovery” that would have changed his “Clumsy” personality trait to “Perfectionist” – I’m seriously thinking of turning that off if it’s only going to target him, and only offer personality traits I don’t want.) All while the chickens dealt with foxes – they successfully fended off one elderly one called Phantom, but another, Rusty, got away with an egg. Damn foxes!
G) No time to worry about that now, though – there were still Egg Day traditions to fulfill! Alice went on her own egg hunt while Victor harvested the greenhouse (she found a regular chicken egg, another orange chicken egg, and another decorative egg that was a dupe of one they already had), while Smiler shared the Egg Day spirit with the visiting Flower Bunny! But there was something even more important than succeeding at Egg Day that I wanted to do with the trio. . .
H) And that was buy Van Liddelton Groceries! I had Victor purchase the store after he finished clearing out the greenhouse (and drank a Potion of Plentiful Needs), and the game immediately took him over there to have a look at the place – I brought Smiler and Alice along to hang out with him, transferred $45,000 from the household funds for building purposes, and set to work!
I – did not get as much done as I expected! Mostly because I’m not sure how I want to set up the shelves with stuff for sale – I downloaded some CC “consignment shelves” for the store, and while there’s PLENTY of room for the normal produce, they don’t hold the flower arrangements (I had Victor make one to see) or the oversized crops (at least at medium size; small might be okay!) But the oversized produce does fit in the refrigerated displays, and I’m wondering if those would be better as “produce bins. . .” (I tried downloading some empty displays from “Around The Sims,” but they’re just decoration, not shelving. :( ) I DID, at least, get a few “aisles” set up, find some nice display shelves for the flower arrangements, put away some eggs and produce that I had the gang bring with them, and get the whole place properly painted and floored and whatnot (used some of the new floors and wallpapers that came with Growing Together and High School Years, no less!). So it at least looks better than it did when they first arrived! I’m sure I’ll make it all work eventually. :)
I) While I agonized over how to set up the store, my trio themselves kept busy – Smiler took their new quadcopter toy out for a spin while Alice went and watched a nearby protest, then flew over to try and befriend one of the protesters for a drink (they succeeded at the former but not the latter). Alice got a poster from one of the utility boxes and check out a mural while Victor and Smiler hung out near the store and did store stuff, then I sent everyone down to the nearby waterfront area to do a bit of fishing. Alice didn’t catch anything, so I had her settle in for a wolf nap instead, while Smiler managed to catch a goldfish, a yellow perch, and a very nice tuna, and Victor got a tetra and a bass. Everything except the tuna got turned into plasma packs for Smiler – THAT got put into the fridge once they got home!
J) Once back home, I started concentrating on other stuff – for example, Alice was very close to getting another werewolf point, so I had her do a bit of howling and talk about her experiences with Smiler to push it over the edge. Dumped the resultant point into “Enhanced Smell,” as that seemed like a good way to earn XP and more consistently find treasure while scavenging! She then went upstairs to do some more meditation to lower her Fury, while Smiler headed upstairs to practice their comedy a bit and Victor continued working on his song – at least, until the house started making freaky noises again. *sigh* Thus interrupted, Victor AGAIN rejected an “offer” to become a “Paranoid” Sim and started using his magic to Repairio all the stuff ruined by lightning strikes, while Alice did some Gourmet Cooking (tuna sushi, I believe, fortunately not interrupted by the power continuing to flicker), while Smiler tended Snappy the Sixam Mosquito trap plant and TRIED to upload their latest gadget review while the power was still on – never managed to finish the interaction, though. *grumbles* At least I was able to get them to jam on their guitar and get that skill up to level 8! And Victor managed to get Shadow (playing on the obstacle course) to stop drinking from puddles, so there’s that. *nods*
And so the day ended with me desperately policing Alice and Smiler to stop them trying to shower in the thunderstorm. Particularly Smiler, who will drop their clothes at the drop of a hat. *sigh* Everyone did have an awesome Egg Day, so I’m glad of that, at least, but DAMN. Lot of Sim-wrangling today, and lot of me looking at a build and going “what the hell do I want to do here?” Not to mention the damn power issue. . .I mean, I suppose I could reconnect them to the grid, but I rather like that they make their own power and collect their own water and all of that. Hmmm. I’m gonna have to think about what I want to do with this lot the next time I play! How do we get another surplus going again. . .
Writing: Made sure to get another Valicer Polyship Week prompt done right after game night (“Sequence” – Mom kicked our asses four times in a row before Dad managed to win the fifth game) – the Day Two prompt, “Huddling For Warmth,” as I was in a Valicer In The Dark mood thanks to the tumblr post I started. Gang just huddling together wrapped in a big blanket (my big blanket, in fact), trying to get warm on a chilly night in their lair. And talking about the potential for a mushroom farm in the sewer outside and how Victor doesn’t have an ounce of body fat on him. XD They so silly sometimes, I swear. . .
YouTube: Well, as stated, my time management skills are not good, so all the OXBox stuff in my Watch Later remains for Later. I did keep up with GrayStillPlays in the Subs, at least, with “When you swallow the earth,” aka Gray plays Tasty Planet Forever! This is a game that’s kind of in line with that worm game he played a while back, where you have to eat lots and lots of different things in order to grow bigger and thus eat bigger and bigger things to lay waste upon humanity. Gray played the “Octopus World” section for this video, where he was a tiny octopus so fed up with humanity polluting the ocean, he learned how to eat can tabs and cigarette butts so he could grow bigger and bigger and destroy everything. “Everything” including such things as old cans and bottles; other fish; red-footed boobies (seagull models with the feet colored red); old mattresses and toilets; oil barrels; tiger and whale sharks; scuba divers; helicopters; tourist boats; shipping containers; shipping container boats; and finally actual buildings. XD Gray had an absolutely DELIGHTFUL time just devouring it ALL. He particularly enjoyed being able to eat the toilets. XD You gotta love when he’s really enjoying a game – he sounds so happy when he’s laying waste to everything in sight. XD
Workout: Final night on the bike this week, watching another episode of James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic – Part 30, “Moving house!” As you might expect, the bulk of this episode was spent on James moving the Bigwallet family over to a new house – just down the street, in fact, right in front of the pier. The new place is THEORETICALLY bigger than the old one, but there’s more rooms that are small in general than what they had before, so James actually had a bit of a time trying to fit everyone and all their stuff inside. He managed it, but gutting the house and redoing the floorplan (or just taking it down to the foundation and rebuilding it altogether) is still in the cards! But yes, everyone got moved over safely, and James promptly set about getting Addison and Breanne skilled up as much as possible! Addison only has until Sunday to enjoy being a kid, after all – he’s gotta make some progress on these skills! And Breanne’s probably gonna age up from a toddler before then. . .they’re both doing pretty good, though – Breanne’s already maxed out Imagination, and she’s doing pretty well with Thinking and Potty, and Addison is improving steadily at school and keeping up with his homework and all that. He even had Hilary over after school his first full day in the new place! James got a puppet theater so he could entertain her. XD It’s very sweet, honestly. Stuff like this makes me wonder if the Valicer trio shouldn’t have a kid after all. . .and then I remember how hard it is to wrangle just the three of them and I’m like “no, I’m good.” XD
So -- reasonably productive day (though I have just found out the Valicer In The Dark Playbook Post draft has some formatting issues. . .need to go through that and fix things up), though I do wish I'd managed to get Sims over with a bit sooner! And of course, tomorrow morning I have to do a room clean, meaning I won't have any time on the computer until after lunch. . .perhaps I'll take a day off gaming altogether to get some other stuff done. I dunno yet. Trying to make plans, especially Sims-related plans, does not seem to be working out that well for me. As it stands, I've gotta get to bed already -- night all!
