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Brain-Breaky Saturday
Apr. 6th, 2024 11:55 pmWell, the PMS was not kind to me today, I am sad to report. My best-laid plans ended up going out the window when I was distracted by -- well, hey, you'll see for yourself in the write-up below --
Cleaning/Laundry: As per usual, this took up most of the day, especially since today was Everybody’s Laundry day, not just my own (the hamper was full to bursting) – started my dusting around 10:30 AM (after settling on what I wanted to listen to while I cleaned – ended up listening to my Poets of the Fall YouTube playlist on my phone, which was nice :) ), stopped just shy of being done for lunch around 12:45 PM, picked it back up around 1:45 PM after getting my blankets into the wash and bringing up everything that needed folding, finished with the vacuuming around 2:15 PM, and brought up the last of the laundry just after 4 PM. Whew – but at least it’s all done for another two weeks!
Tumblr: Didn’t get a single thing done on here – which wasn’t a big deal for Valice Multiverse, which was quiet as ever, but I have an ask from someone asking about if I ever came up with a way to get Smiler into the Forgotten Vows Verse (I have, or at least a variant of same), AND someone’s (extremely long, admittedly) reblog to reply to on Victor Luvs Alice, so – my focus coming back from the war would be kind of appreciated, brain!
Sims 4: Well, I DID end up playing the game for a very short while – just over half an hour – because while I was waiting for the laundry to finish up, I ended up thinking about how, after my last Valicer In The Dark-themed CAS lookbooks for Victor, Alice, and Smiler, I wanted to get some more Victorian-esque CC for Alice. Which led to me searching for Victorian clothes for Sims 4 again, and ending up on a bit of a trawl through various tumblrs and Patreons looking at outfits. XD What can I say, I really like looking at historical Sim outfits! Though I ended up only getting four things – a set of “New Woman” tops and skirts from Gilded Ghosts’s patreon (1890s, which pretty late in the time period – but then again, Alice’s “working girl” set from Vintage Simstress is from that time period too I believe); a men’s sack suit from pandorasimsbox’s patreon (for North American Victoriana – thought it might be good for Smiler); a “bespoke corset” from dzifasims’s tumblr (so Alice has a less sexy variant to wear as underwear); and “Solardius’s outfit” from LonelyBoy’s patreon (I saw it as part of a CAS lookbook on tumblr as “1850s” wear and really liked the look of it – not sure who Solardius is, but he has good taste in clothes). Oh, and I picked up Twisted Mexi’s ModGuard mod while I was at it – the Sims community has had a few problems with assholes hacking people’s pages and putting malware on mods, so that’s designed to guard against unwanted files. *nods* Just smart to have! But yes, after picking up said items, I naturally wanted to see what they looked like in-game. So I hopped on, fired up the old building save and pretended to make a new household so I could open up my saved VITD-themed trio in CAS, and started playing around a bit with the new CC (plus checking out all the new items from Horse Ranch and Home Chef Hustle, of course). And, of course, that meant taking some pictures, soooo:
First up, we actually have something that I downloaded from someone’s lookbook post for their Alice Sim – a conversion of Alice’s London dress from Alice: Madness Returns! As in, one Mimoto-Sims ripped this dress straight from the files of that game (along with a bunch of others) and turned it into an outfit in Sims 4! :D I’ve been looking for this for a while, and I’m quite pleased with it, though it is a little weirdly shiny – and if you think Alice suddenly looks a LOT thinner than usual in this dress, she is. Apparently I didn’t make my Sims Alice underweight enough! I think I prefer my Sims 4 version having a waist that doesn’t look like it could snap in half at any moment, though. XD
Okay, onto the CC I actually downloaded today, with Alice modeling the Ever Elegant Blouse v2 and the Rather Ravishing Skirt v2 from Gilded Ghost’s New Woman set! I ended up pairing these two together because, with the apron, I thought this made another good “maid” Alice outfit – though she looks like she’s working somewhere fancier than Houndsditch in this set, that’s for sure. (Now I’m tempted for her to somehow get her hands on a maid’s outfit from the Van Dort estate when her and Smiler’s attempt to return Victor to his parents ends up in them robbing them for being shitheads who don’t care about their son. . .) But it’s a nice look for her, and I am THRILLED that this and the other tops from that set worked with her necklace! :D Seriously, so many outfits hide that necklace, and given that it’s suppose to be her wearing Lizzie’s room key, I’d like it to be visible more often than not!
Case in point, the necklace is also visible in this outfit, which is Alice wearing the Jacket Jubilee top with the Perfectly Plain skirt from the New Woman set. This set I just thought looked nice on her, and made a nice – semi-formal? This feels fancier than casual, but not fancy enough to be formal. Like, maybe this is something she’d wear if the gang were heading to the Golden Plum for a nice dinner, or to a park for a trio date. That sort of thing. Not “fancy neighborhood” wear, but a step above hanging around the house.
By contrast, Alice is definitely not leaving the house in this outfit. XD This is dzifasims’s Bespoke Corset, paired with a plain Get Famous skirt that I thought looked like a shift or underskirt (I thought the corset CAME with one, but apparently I was bamboozled). It’s nice to have a plainer corset that doesn’t look like it was bought for sex purposes, unlike the base game one. Though I do like the “bought for sex purposes” one too. XD Alice probably prefers this one, though – it’s more her style, and I think it makes good underwear for her.
Onto the masc stuff, with Smiler showing off pandorasimbox’s Azariah’s Sacksuit. I have mixed feelings on this – the basic shape of the suit is okay, and I liked pairing it with the bowler, but as per usual this suit did not have any of the right swatches I needed for Smiler. The problem is, people do a lot of muted colors for Victorian-style clothes, and even the ones that include brighter swatches tend not to do a lot of yellow. Meaning I often end up with poor Smiler wearing beige because that’s as close as I can get. *sigh* I mean, I do rather like the look on them – they kind of look like they’re auditioning for a Charlie Chaplin movie – but it’s gotta be BRIGHTER, you know? *sigh* I gotta learn how to recolor clothes. . . (Also, amusingly, the boats are actually from Moschino – they actually look Victorian enough when you cover up the tops with a long pant.)
Fortunately, while [LonelyBoy]’s TS4 Solardius Outfit doesn’t have a yellow swatch, it DOES have a black swatch with gold decorative details, and that I can work with – especially when paired with the High School Years shoes I love so much for Smiler in the “black with yellow stitching” swatch. :) Not sure how much I like the high collar on Smiler, but this is certainly not a bad look for them!
And it CERTAINLY isn’t a bad look for Victor, who suits that high collar much better. XD As you can see, Victor got the nice dark blue swatch with the red tie, which is kind of the inverse of his tie/vest color scheme in the movie. XD But it suits him, and again, this seems like a nice, semi-formal outfit he might wear for an outing with his partners where he wanted to look a little more put together. :)
And there you have it – me playing with my favorite trio like dolls again. XD What can I say, it’s fun to dress them up in new outfits! And these particular sessions help inform me of what I’d like my trio to wear in the Valicer In The Dark universe. Since, you know, I’m pretty well obsessed with that these days. XD So don’t @ me, downloading CC is writing research, okay? XD
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of,” with Smiler discovering their new love the Fox-Lloyd chemistry bench. And then the Lumiere tinkering bench nearby, thanks to Alice. Prompting Smiler and Victor to start talking tinkering, and Alice to playfully accuse them of being ready to move in. XD Well, hey, all their favorite hobbies are being represented here! There’s just the little matter of the ghost on the top floor of the tower to investigate first. . .
YouTube: Welp, thanks to getting onto YouTube later than I intended, I had to skip the OXBox list of the week, but I managed to get through the other stuff in my Watch Later and my Subs, so I’ll still call this a win –
A) First up, we had the video I’ve been trying to watch for the better part of a week – “I Completed All 8 Child Aspirations On A Normal Lifespan | Super Sim Series 4” by Petey Plays It! This video focused on Petey’s efforts to make sure his Super Sim Tina stayed Super in her childhood days by completing all eight aspirations, getting an A grade at school, maxing out all her childhood skills, and working on all her character values to try and max them out positively. Which was not easy as Tina and her mother Sally were always riding the ragged edge of bankruptcy thanks to Sally not having a regular job. Fortunately Tina learning how to garden and using her Gift Of Sulani trait to both improve the plants and summon volcanic bombs to crack open kept them just about afloat – though Sally did lose her bed and another kitchen counter so Tina could have a telescope to complete an aspiration. XD At any rate, Petey heavily abused the club system, forced Tina and Sally to ignore their bad needs as much as possible, bought bunches of stuff with aspiration points to make Tina even more effective at gaining skills, and braved glitches (like Sally reverting to infant crouching to fart) to get all eight aspirations done, all four skills maxed, an A grade, and the Responsibility character value maxed before Tina became a teenager! Though for some reason he insisted on doing each aspiration one at a time instead of switching between them, which nearly cost him when the Social Butterfly aspiration began insisting that Tina make three NEW child friends with only three days to go in her childhood (fortunately, the game DID eventually realize that she already had the required number of friends – though only after Tina kicked her friend Elsa out of her homework club). But he still managed it, and Tina is still on-track to become the most super of Super Sims. Next time, we’ll see how her teenage days go! Probably chaotically, given her newly-Erratic mother and her own new Paranoid trait. XD
B) Then it was time for the OXtra list of the week – “7 WTF Godzilla Cameos We Cannot Explain” – Luke and Jane discussing odd Godzilla cameos in video games that just make no sense (except some higher-up at the company thought throwing the kaiju in would get them some sweet dosh somehow). Godzilla being the focus of a Minecraft DLC with four mini-games ranging from monster beat-em-up to defending a city from the Big G? Sure! Godzilla costumes being available for a short time in Fall Guys? Why not! Godzilla being an unlockable “spirit beast” and his castle being available for players to earn in Evony: The King’s Return, an awful mobile Civilization knock-off with pin-pulling puzzles for extra pain? ...oooookaaaaaay, don’t know why the Godzilla people thought partnering up with THEM was a good idea, but sure. Fine. At least gives the people who chose to play that something new to look at.
C) And finally, it was over to my Subs for the GrayStillPlays video of the day – “$1 vs $10,000,000 Cars vs Stairs in GTA 5!” Now, this wasn’t one of his “I play people different amounts of cash to make me boards and we see how weird things get” videos – rather, Alex (and company, as Gray kept referring to “they” – maybe he’s hired some more GTA creators behind the scenes?) worked up a board with cars ranging from a $1 cardboard car (seriously, it looked like it was made of cardboard) to a $10,000,000 monstrosity with giant crystal spikes and such all over it, and put them up against his favorite torture device – stairs! Specifically, they went up against –
I. Wet Icy Stairs – three sets of, well, wet icy stairs that Gray had to mount – BUT it wasn’t just getting up the stairs that was the problem. The real problem was that Gray had to race the nearby train up the stairs, because Alex had tied both the starting wall AND the ending bridge to items the train would knock over as it passed by the board. Thus if Gray didn’t beat the train, his only way of getting to the next challenge would disappear. As you might imagine, given the slipperiness of the stairs, this was tricky as fuck.
II. Pumpkin Stairs With Extra Pumpkin – a big set of stairs made entirely of bins filled with pumpkins, with a few extra jack-o-lanterns thrown on top for funsies. Gray was very satisfied with these stairs and getting to spray pumpkin all over the place. XD The trick here was that Alex had dropped an orange slow-down circle in front of the stairs, meaning – unless you went around it – you couldn’t build up a lot of speed to go up the stairs and thus could get stuck with your tires spinning uselessly in pumpkin. Which, admittedly, just created more satisfying pumpkin spray, but Gray DID have to get to the next challenge eventually. . .
III. Shrugging Neon Stairs With Blue Balls – the only timed challenge, this was a set of stairs made out of – I’m really not sure what the asset is, it looks a bit like those hand squeezer things you use to build up grip strength? *shrugs* At any rate, they all “shrugged” up and down constantly, causing the stairs to rock and become very uneven. There were also a pair of blue balls at the top that would gradually tumble down a short ways, then teleport back, forcing Gray to dodge them lest he get crushed. Gray had 22 seconds to get up this mess, and let me tell you, it was a THING. Very hard to steer when you’re being constantly slightly bounced and having to watch out for your blue balls!
IV. Rotating Stairs But Every Next Stair Rotates Faster – the final challenge, and it was a doozy – a long set of tightrope stairs made up of floating platforms, with every other stair rotating on its center axis. And, as promised, the rotation got subtly faster and faster as Gray proceeded up the stairs, meaning it got easier and easier to mistime going across them and slide off to his doom. Basically, this is a challenge that required Gray to go slow and have a lot of patience – AKA, two things he is NOT good at. XD
So, which of the cars actually won? Well, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the $1 cardboard car couldn’t make it past the first challenge. . .but it might surprise you to learn that the $10,000,000 car with all its crystals and diamonds and such ALSO couldn’t get past the Wet Icy Stairs. It kept bottoming out at bad moments, and it simply didn’t have the speed necessary to make it to the bridge in time. The $1,000,000 car with its multiple wings actually managed to beat those stairs, and the pumpkins, but failed on the shrugging stairs because it didn’t have the speed or the turning. Meaning the ultimate winner was the gold-plated $5,000,000 car! A fast boi that Gray was able to take all the way to the end – after failing on the second step of the rotating stairs on his first attempt. XD So yeah, if you need a car to get up bullshit stairs, now you know to go for the SECOND most-expensive option instead of the first. :p
So -- yeah. Got the writing done, got MOST of the YouTube I wanted to watch watched, and I don't regret giving Alice more pretty clothes to wear, but. . .damn it, I just wanted to do MORE, you know? And my stupid brain just wouldn't cooperate. Ugh, I hate the time right before my period. . . Which means I don't know how tomorrow is going to go either. *grumbles* Okay, so, I DEFINITELY have to get some stuff ready for this week's tumblr queue on Victor Luvs Alice (and fortunately I do have some ideas in mind), along with answering that ask already and doing what I can to answer the reblog. I also have to keep up on GrayStillPlays and Jon and get in a workout. As for the rest of it -- if I do end up playing Fallout 4, the goal will be to get to Natick Police Station and recover the Winters tape there before moving onto the Edge Of The Glowing Sea (yes this is a specific marked spot on the map), then updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression accordingly. If I don't, I'll instead watch the OXBox list I missed and do some Valicer In The Dark worldbuilding stuff. *nods* Okay, have a plan for both possibilities, now I can go to bed. Night all!
Cleaning/Laundry: As per usual, this took up most of the day, especially since today was Everybody’s Laundry day, not just my own (the hamper was full to bursting) – started my dusting around 10:30 AM (after settling on what I wanted to listen to while I cleaned – ended up listening to my Poets of the Fall YouTube playlist on my phone, which was nice :) ), stopped just shy of being done for lunch around 12:45 PM, picked it back up around 1:45 PM after getting my blankets into the wash and bringing up everything that needed folding, finished with the vacuuming around 2:15 PM, and brought up the last of the laundry just after 4 PM. Whew – but at least it’s all done for another two weeks!
Tumblr: Didn’t get a single thing done on here – which wasn’t a big deal for Valice Multiverse, which was quiet as ever, but I have an ask from someone asking about if I ever came up with a way to get Smiler into the Forgotten Vows Verse (I have, or at least a variant of same), AND someone’s (extremely long, admittedly) reblog to reply to on Victor Luvs Alice, so – my focus coming back from the war would be kind of appreciated, brain!
Sims 4: Well, I DID end up playing the game for a very short while – just over half an hour – because while I was waiting for the laundry to finish up, I ended up thinking about how, after my last Valicer In The Dark-themed CAS lookbooks for Victor, Alice, and Smiler, I wanted to get some more Victorian-esque CC for Alice. Which led to me searching for Victorian clothes for Sims 4 again, and ending up on a bit of a trawl through various tumblrs and Patreons looking at outfits. XD What can I say, I really like looking at historical Sim outfits! Though I ended up only getting four things – a set of “New Woman” tops and skirts from Gilded Ghosts’s patreon (1890s, which pretty late in the time period – but then again, Alice’s “working girl” set from Vintage Simstress is from that time period too I believe); a men’s sack suit from pandorasimsbox’s patreon (for North American Victoriana – thought it might be good for Smiler); a “bespoke corset” from dzifasims’s tumblr (so Alice has a less sexy variant to wear as underwear); and “Solardius’s outfit” from LonelyBoy’s patreon (I saw it as part of a CAS lookbook on tumblr as “1850s” wear and really liked the look of it – not sure who Solardius is, but he has good taste in clothes). Oh, and I picked up Twisted Mexi’s ModGuard mod while I was at it – the Sims community has had a few problems with assholes hacking people’s pages and putting malware on mods, so that’s designed to guard against unwanted files. *nods* Just smart to have! But yes, after picking up said items, I naturally wanted to see what they looked like in-game. So I hopped on, fired up the old building save and pretended to make a new household so I could open up my saved VITD-themed trio in CAS, and started playing around a bit with the new CC (plus checking out all the new items from Horse Ranch and Home Chef Hustle, of course). And, of course, that meant taking some pictures, soooo:
First up, we actually have something that I downloaded from someone’s lookbook post for their Alice Sim – a conversion of Alice’s London dress from Alice: Madness Returns! As in, one Mimoto-Sims ripped this dress straight from the files of that game (along with a bunch of others) and turned it into an outfit in Sims 4! :D I’ve been looking for this for a while, and I’m quite pleased with it, though it is a little weirdly shiny – and if you think Alice suddenly looks a LOT thinner than usual in this dress, she is. Apparently I didn’t make my Sims Alice underweight enough! I think I prefer my Sims 4 version having a waist that doesn’t look like it could snap in half at any moment, though. XD
Okay, onto the CC I actually downloaded today, with Alice modeling the Ever Elegant Blouse v2 and the Rather Ravishing Skirt v2 from Gilded Ghost’s New Woman set! I ended up pairing these two together because, with the apron, I thought this made another good “maid” Alice outfit – though she looks like she’s working somewhere fancier than Houndsditch in this set, that’s for sure. (Now I’m tempted for her to somehow get her hands on a maid’s outfit from the Van Dort estate when her and Smiler’s attempt to return Victor to his parents ends up in them robbing them for being shitheads who don’t care about their son. . .) But it’s a nice look for her, and I am THRILLED that this and the other tops from that set worked with her necklace! :D Seriously, so many outfits hide that necklace, and given that it’s suppose to be her wearing Lizzie’s room key, I’d like it to be visible more often than not!
Case in point, the necklace is also visible in this outfit, which is Alice wearing the Jacket Jubilee top with the Perfectly Plain skirt from the New Woman set. This set I just thought looked nice on her, and made a nice – semi-formal? This feels fancier than casual, but not fancy enough to be formal. Like, maybe this is something she’d wear if the gang were heading to the Golden Plum for a nice dinner, or to a park for a trio date. That sort of thing. Not “fancy neighborhood” wear, but a step above hanging around the house.
By contrast, Alice is definitely not leaving the house in this outfit. XD This is dzifasims’s Bespoke Corset, paired with a plain Get Famous skirt that I thought looked like a shift or underskirt (I thought the corset CAME with one, but apparently I was bamboozled). It’s nice to have a plainer corset that doesn’t look like it was bought for sex purposes, unlike the base game one. Though I do like the “bought for sex purposes” one too. XD Alice probably prefers this one, though – it’s more her style, and I think it makes good underwear for her.
Onto the masc stuff, with Smiler showing off pandorasimbox’s Azariah’s Sacksuit. I have mixed feelings on this – the basic shape of the suit is okay, and I liked pairing it with the bowler, but as per usual this suit did not have any of the right swatches I needed for Smiler. The problem is, people do a lot of muted colors for Victorian-style clothes, and even the ones that include brighter swatches tend not to do a lot of yellow. Meaning I often end up with poor Smiler wearing beige because that’s as close as I can get. *sigh* I mean, I do rather like the look on them – they kind of look like they’re auditioning for a Charlie Chaplin movie – but it’s gotta be BRIGHTER, you know? *sigh* I gotta learn how to recolor clothes. . . (Also, amusingly, the boats are actually from Moschino – they actually look Victorian enough when you cover up the tops with a long pant.)
Fortunately, while [LonelyBoy]’s TS4 Solardius Outfit doesn’t have a yellow swatch, it DOES have a black swatch with gold decorative details, and that I can work with – especially when paired with the High School Years shoes I love so much for Smiler in the “black with yellow stitching” swatch. :) Not sure how much I like the high collar on Smiler, but this is certainly not a bad look for them!
And it CERTAINLY isn’t a bad look for Victor, who suits that high collar much better. XD As you can see, Victor got the nice dark blue swatch with the red tie, which is kind of the inverse of his tie/vest color scheme in the movie. XD But it suits him, and again, this seems like a nice, semi-formal outfit he might wear for an outing with his partners where he wanted to look a little more put together. :)
And there you have it – me playing with my favorite trio like dolls again. XD What can I say, it’s fun to dress them up in new outfits! And these particular sessions help inform me of what I’d like my trio to wear in the Valicer In The Dark universe. Since, you know, I’m pretty well obsessed with that these days. XD So don’t @ me, downloading CC is writing research, okay? XD
Writing: Got another chunk done on “Start At The Beginning. . .Sort Of,” with Smiler discovering their new love the Fox-Lloyd chemistry bench. And then the Lumiere tinkering bench nearby, thanks to Alice. Prompting Smiler and Victor to start talking tinkering, and Alice to playfully accuse them of being ready to move in. XD Well, hey, all their favorite hobbies are being represented here! There’s just the little matter of the ghost on the top floor of the tower to investigate first. . .
YouTube: Welp, thanks to getting onto YouTube later than I intended, I had to skip the OXBox list of the week, but I managed to get through the other stuff in my Watch Later and my Subs, so I’ll still call this a win –
A) First up, we had the video I’ve been trying to watch for the better part of a week – “I Completed All 8 Child Aspirations On A Normal Lifespan | Super Sim Series 4” by Petey Plays It! This video focused on Petey’s efforts to make sure his Super Sim Tina stayed Super in her childhood days by completing all eight aspirations, getting an A grade at school, maxing out all her childhood skills, and working on all her character values to try and max them out positively. Which was not easy as Tina and her mother Sally were always riding the ragged edge of bankruptcy thanks to Sally not having a regular job. Fortunately Tina learning how to garden and using her Gift Of Sulani trait to both improve the plants and summon volcanic bombs to crack open kept them just about afloat – though Sally did lose her bed and another kitchen counter so Tina could have a telescope to complete an aspiration. XD At any rate, Petey heavily abused the club system, forced Tina and Sally to ignore their bad needs as much as possible, bought bunches of stuff with aspiration points to make Tina even more effective at gaining skills, and braved glitches (like Sally reverting to infant crouching to fart) to get all eight aspirations done, all four skills maxed, an A grade, and the Responsibility character value maxed before Tina became a teenager! Though for some reason he insisted on doing each aspiration one at a time instead of switching between them, which nearly cost him when the Social Butterfly aspiration began insisting that Tina make three NEW child friends with only three days to go in her childhood (fortunately, the game DID eventually realize that she already had the required number of friends – though only after Tina kicked her friend Elsa out of her homework club). But he still managed it, and Tina is still on-track to become the most super of Super Sims. Next time, we’ll see how her teenage days go! Probably chaotically, given her newly-Erratic mother and her own new Paranoid trait. XD
B) Then it was time for the OXtra list of the week – “7 WTF Godzilla Cameos We Cannot Explain” – Luke and Jane discussing odd Godzilla cameos in video games that just make no sense (except some higher-up at the company thought throwing the kaiju in would get them some sweet dosh somehow). Godzilla being the focus of a Minecraft DLC with four mini-games ranging from monster beat-em-up to defending a city from the Big G? Sure! Godzilla costumes being available for a short time in Fall Guys? Why not! Godzilla being an unlockable “spirit beast” and his castle being available for players to earn in Evony: The King’s Return, an awful mobile Civilization knock-off with pin-pulling puzzles for extra pain? ...oooookaaaaaay, don’t know why the Godzilla people thought partnering up with THEM was a good idea, but sure. Fine. At least gives the people who chose to play that something new to look at.
C) And finally, it was over to my Subs for the GrayStillPlays video of the day – “$1 vs $10,000,000 Cars vs Stairs in GTA 5!” Now, this wasn’t one of his “I play people different amounts of cash to make me boards and we see how weird things get” videos – rather, Alex (and company, as Gray kept referring to “they” – maybe he’s hired some more GTA creators behind the scenes?) worked up a board with cars ranging from a $1 cardboard car (seriously, it looked like it was made of cardboard) to a $10,000,000 monstrosity with giant crystal spikes and such all over it, and put them up against his favorite torture device – stairs! Specifically, they went up against –
I. Wet Icy Stairs – three sets of, well, wet icy stairs that Gray had to mount – BUT it wasn’t just getting up the stairs that was the problem. The real problem was that Gray had to race the nearby train up the stairs, because Alex had tied both the starting wall AND the ending bridge to items the train would knock over as it passed by the board. Thus if Gray didn’t beat the train, his only way of getting to the next challenge would disappear. As you might imagine, given the slipperiness of the stairs, this was tricky as fuck.
II. Pumpkin Stairs With Extra Pumpkin – a big set of stairs made entirely of bins filled with pumpkins, with a few extra jack-o-lanterns thrown on top for funsies. Gray was very satisfied with these stairs and getting to spray pumpkin all over the place. XD The trick here was that Alex had dropped an orange slow-down circle in front of the stairs, meaning – unless you went around it – you couldn’t build up a lot of speed to go up the stairs and thus could get stuck with your tires spinning uselessly in pumpkin. Which, admittedly, just created more satisfying pumpkin spray, but Gray DID have to get to the next challenge eventually. . .
III. Shrugging Neon Stairs With Blue Balls – the only timed challenge, this was a set of stairs made out of – I’m really not sure what the asset is, it looks a bit like those hand squeezer things you use to build up grip strength? *shrugs* At any rate, they all “shrugged” up and down constantly, causing the stairs to rock and become very uneven. There were also a pair of blue balls at the top that would gradually tumble down a short ways, then teleport back, forcing Gray to dodge them lest he get crushed. Gray had 22 seconds to get up this mess, and let me tell you, it was a THING. Very hard to steer when you’re being constantly slightly bounced and having to watch out for your blue balls!
IV. Rotating Stairs But Every Next Stair Rotates Faster – the final challenge, and it was a doozy – a long set of tightrope stairs made up of floating platforms, with every other stair rotating on its center axis. And, as promised, the rotation got subtly faster and faster as Gray proceeded up the stairs, meaning it got easier and easier to mistime going across them and slide off to his doom. Basically, this is a challenge that required Gray to go slow and have a lot of patience – AKA, two things he is NOT good at. XD
So, which of the cars actually won? Well, it probably won’t surprise you to learn that the $1 cardboard car couldn’t make it past the first challenge. . .but it might surprise you to learn that the $10,000,000 car with all its crystals and diamonds and such ALSO couldn’t get past the Wet Icy Stairs. It kept bottoming out at bad moments, and it simply didn’t have the speed necessary to make it to the bridge in time. The $1,000,000 car with its multiple wings actually managed to beat those stairs, and the pumpkins, but failed on the shrugging stairs because it didn’t have the speed or the turning. Meaning the ultimate winner was the gold-plated $5,000,000 car! A fast boi that Gray was able to take all the way to the end – after failing on the second step of the rotating stairs on his first attempt. XD So yeah, if you need a car to get up bullshit stairs, now you know to go for the SECOND most-expensive option instead of the first. :p
So -- yeah. Got the writing done, got MOST of the YouTube I wanted to watch watched, and I don't regret giving Alice more pretty clothes to wear, but. . .damn it, I just wanted to do MORE, you know? And my stupid brain just wouldn't cooperate. Ugh, I hate the time right before my period. . . Which means I don't know how tomorrow is going to go either. *grumbles* Okay, so, I DEFINITELY have to get some stuff ready for this week's tumblr queue on Victor Luvs Alice (and fortunately I do have some ideas in mind), along with answering that ask already and doing what I can to answer the reblog. I also have to keep up on GrayStillPlays and Jon and get in a workout. As for the rest of it -- if I do end up playing Fallout 4, the goal will be to get to Natick Police Station and recover the Winters tape there before moving onto the Edge Of The Glowing Sea (yes this is a specific marked spot on the map), then updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression accordingly. If I don't, I'll instead watch the OXBox list I missed and do some Valicer In The Dark worldbuilding stuff. *nods* Okay, have a plan for both possibilities, now I can go to bed. Night all!
