Happy Valicer Anniversary!

And hey, this year I have the perfect icon for this entry! :D Go me and my premium account. Anyway, it was a decent Valicer Anniversary this year -- not perfect, but I managed to hit every goal I set for myself at the end of yesterday's entry in one form or another. Let me give you the write-up:

Tumblr: Only Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about this Valicer Wedding Anniversary, and I had a fairly productive day over there, happily:

A) First, I finished drafting out my “Valicer as text posts” post, explaining how it came to be and thanking the creator of the “Dead Boys Detectives as text posts” post for inspiration (along with the creators of the original text posts). So hopefully I can throw that into this week’s queue!

B) Then, I did some more work on the “Teen Valicer Save” post, writing up the section explaining what I want each individual member of my OT3 to do over the course of the save – like part-time jobs and after-school activities I’d like them to join while in high school, what occults I’d like them to become (or, in Smiler’s case, start out as), and what their ultimate adult career would be. I’m still not quite done – have to finish off the lists for Victor and Alice – but I made some good progress, and I’m that much closer to getting this darn thing posted!

C) And finally, I reblogged my Valicer Wedding Masterpost (a collection of posts I’ve made documenting all the Valice and Valicer wedding stuff I’ve done over the years – includes links to the wedding chapters of “Secundus” and “Fixing You,” along with other wedding-related fic I’ve written in each verse; links to the Newcrest Adventures Valice wedding, and the Chill Save Valice and Valicer weddings; and a selection of pictures from the Chill Save Valice and Valicer weddings, because why not) again, adding links to some of the fics I’ve written so far this year that at least mention weddings (including, yes, the collection of Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes I queued up for last Friday about them moving in together – it did mention at the end Victor not wanting to get married until he could marry BOTH Alice and Smiler), and the pictures I took of the trio in their new potential wedding outfits today in Sims 4! Got it up a bit later than I intended, but it went up, and that’s all that matters. :) Yay~

Sims 4: So – as per the above, I did get to do my desired “new formal wedding outfits” dress-up session in CAS with my Valicer trio this afternoon. And it was fun, and you’ll get to see the results below. It’s just...there was some rather annoying weirdness/glitchiness on the way there that made this all take longer than I wanted. Let me take you through what happened:
( Behind A Cut 'Cause Shit Get Long )

Writing: Got to the writing a bit late tonight, thanks to needing a bit of extra time to finish off both the above write-up on the Sims 4 nonsense AND the latest reblog on my Valicer Wedding Masterpost...but I am very pleased to say that, when I did get to it, I wrote almost two pages and finished Chapter 3! :D Mostly because I really, really wanted to reunite Alice and Smiler with Victor today, given it is the Valicer Anniversary. :p Anyway, the final bit of Chapter 3 consisted of –

A) Kasimir genially confronting Alice and Smiler and asking what their deal was, and them replying “kind of depends on what YOUR deal is, and if it’s going to hurt our friend”

B) The confrontation being interrupted by Barnaby and Victor, with the former cheerfully informing Kasimir that Victor had agreed to help them rob the Van Dort’s vault – both Alice and Smiler were a little ??? over this, as you might expect

C) Kasimir explaining that the reason they’re robbing the Van Dorts is that Barnaby gave half the gang’s Coin to a conman claiming to be setting up a dog-racing track in the city (this is something that’s genuinely in the book – I believe mentioned in the write-up of important things of note in Nightmarket, in fact, but don’t quote me on that), and this was the best way they could think of to get their money back (with Barnaby going on about how the gang needed to be committing more “lovely crimes” anyway :P); and Victor explaining to Alice and Smiler about how his mother didn’t care about his well-being and didn’t believe a ghost would want to marry him anyway before breaking down. :( Alice and Smiler both comforted him, and Victor asked Alice if he could stay with her at least temporarily, since he did not want to live in the Van Dort mansion anymore; Alice agreed, despite the smug coming off Smiler XD

D) And Alice and Smiler confirming to Kasimir that they’re all for helping rob the Van Dorts, and Victor sending Kasimir and Barnaby to wait in the wine cellar while he, Alice, and Smiler went up to his room to get his things (Kasimir and especially Barnaby were very happy to wait down there XD)

So yeah, that’s another chapter in the books, yay! :D Now it’s back to “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland” for a few days, and then next weekend, we start Chapter 4!

YouTube: Not a great day for the old YouTubes, given I spent most of the day either working on my tumblr, playing Sims 4, or working on these write-ups. But I got in a few videos, including the clips of Corpse Bride, Alice: Madness Returns, and The Smiler that I wanted to watch –

A) First up, as per the “Sims 4” section above, I watched “This New Update BREAKS The Sims 4…” by onlyabidoang right before my playsession this afternoon! Because yeah, uh, looks like the July 1st patch was a lot buggier than anyone thought, prompting Abi taking to the YouTubes to warn his audience not to update their game if they could help it, and to show off as many of the bugs he could in his own game to let everyone know what they might be dealing with. Among the bugs noted were:

I. Being unable to drag dirty dishes into sinks, trash into trash bins, laundry into laundry hampers, and certain collectibles into their display cases

II. Being unable to direct Sims to take a pregnancy test if you had your sims “try for baby” in a bed – and the pregnancy state itself being somewhat broken, with some pregnant Sims not showing their bellies or not being able to progress in their pregnancies

III. Sims and objects disappearing behind curved glass walls (Abi noted that curved walls are buggy as hell anyway, so maybe this should have been expected), and Sims being in rooms with glass walls getting the “Poorly Decorated” moodlet for some reason

IV. Sims coming home from work or school early if another Sim left on the home lot decides to travel

V. Sims with the “Entrepreneurial” reward trait (Abi had some trouble pronouncing that, poor guy) not getting promotions in their careers after a certain point, only raises

VI. And Sims with custom tattoos and pets with custom coats made in paint mode ending up with pitch black skin or fur (I – think I’ve actually seen this in my own game BEFORE this patch, with the Dogmeat who lives with my Valicer trio in the Building Save I use the most often sometimes showing up black in CAS! But apparently the problem’s gotten a lot worse with this patch)

Soooo – yeah. Lot of fun bugs with this particular patch, eh? And everyone was so excited because it finally fixed the “indoor weather” bug… When’s Paralives coming out again??

B) And then, tonight, right after I’d finished talking to my friend Squid, I took a few minutes to watch the following:

I. “Alice: Madness Returns - Launch Trailer” by Electronic Arts (exactly what it says on the tin, the trailer that went out when the game officially hit shelves)

II. “Tim Burton's Corpse Bride – Trailer” by YouTube Movies (the longer of Corpse Bride’s two trailers, with the poem narration)

III. “The Smiler Alton Towers AR Points” by matmi (a look at all the AR points around the park and in newspapers and whatnot that you could scan with your camera to see neat things and unlock goodies in The Smiler Game)

IV. “What Smiler Sounds Like” by docette2015 (aka me – one of two video clips I have of my Chill Valicer Save trio hanging out together (in this case, in Chestnut Ridge to celebrate SimCity Founding), which I recorded specifically so people would know what Smiler’s voice sounds like)

So yeah, I think I got all of my Valicer clips in there. :) Would have liked to have watched more or longer ones, but you have to work with the time you have!

Workout: Hopped back on the bike for another half-hour today, pedaling my way through the beginning of “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! Yeah, I know I only just started the Wyrdwood series over on Oxventure, and I am eager to watch the rest of it, but I was also eager to see Tiny Town finally wrapped up after so long. So I decided we’d dedicate this week to the big finale of this series, then continue catching up on all things Oxventure after that. *nods* None of it’s going anywhere, after all!
Anyway – this final episode of Tiny Town is all about finishing unfinished business, making sure everyone is in a good place in their lives, and ensuring the town is in the best state it can be in. James went through the comments on previous videos, made a list of what people wanted to see for each resident, and planned to visit each one in turn to wrap things up for them – starting with the people who had the least “wrapping up” to do, of course. So far, in this first half-hour, he has:

A) Gone by Sonny’s and built a proper nursery for his and Judith’s baby boy, Blue, with some nice plants and a ceiling fan and cute artwork that the baby could definitely not have drawn, but he’ll get there, he’ll get there XD (also, he accidentally built it in “infinite money” build mode because he popped into that mode to fix the roofs and forgot to pop back out again, but James quickly decided he wasn’t going to worry about it because it was the final episode – and besides, Sonny and Judith have their own private vault with half a million in it, so it’s not like it would have been that much of a hit to the finances anyway…)

B) Visited Reuben’s and used the power of “Modify In CAS” to give him a dog, Ruby, because romantic relationships weren’t really his thing but nobody wanted to see him all alone in his house/cafe (the dog is a Vizsla as they are a very orange-furred breed, and she is Active, Playful, and a Hunter – she and Reuben went out on a very long walk as their final act of the episode, during which she somehow learned how to improve a family recipe with a special disease-curing touch. …the Sims 4, everyone)

C) Swung by Pablo’s and widened the “backyard” room in his vault slightly so he could give the guy a swingset (as everyone noticed Pablo loved swinging on Scarlett’s all the time); put a hopscotch board in the hallway for Kyra to play on (so she had something to do in the vault); and stuck Scarlett’s dead cowplant in the desert surrounding the entrance to the bunker (as it was very much more Pablo’s aesthetic than Scarlett’s XD)

D) Hit Silas R.’s with the intent of improving his relationship with his husband Silas M. by forcing them to have a science baby together – only to run into the roadblocks of “they don’t have enough money to have a science baby” and “the game randomly made them kind of hate each other while they were working on breaking into the Community Center vault to get the money for the science baby.” XD I mean, their relationship has always been pretty rocky, but the game had just fixed their compatibility issues by making Silas R. like hardworking Sims like his husband, and Silas M. like lovable rascals like his husband, before suddenly making them fight and tanking their friendship. A very frustrated James thus spent a not-inconsiderable amount of time forcing them to like each other again (via the means of “going into CAS and getting rid of all of Silas M.’s dislikes so Silas R. couldn’t keep annoying him” and “Silas R. spamming Silas M. with friendly messages over Social Bunny to quickly get up their friendship”) so, you know, they’d want to do the science baby thing together. Happily, he succeeded after not too long, and after FINALLY successfully breaking into the vault and scooping up some cash, the two Silas’s went off to the clinic and came back with their own baby boy – Sighlas. Who does not get his own baby room – he just gets shoved into a nook in the couple’s bedroom. XD Their chunk ended with James forcing them to cuddle their new baby while they were both filthy from slipping in the muddle puddles outside (and in Silas M.’s case, dazed from being hit by lightning), and James saying that Silas R. would not be taking pictures of the completed houses in-game because it was a pain in the ass to set up with the tripod – easier for him to just do it himself.

And there we have it – the first four residents of Tiny Town all taken care of! Tomorrow, we move onto Vivienne, Camillo, and Scarlett and see about getting THEIR lives sorted!

Aaand, as usual, doing all that means I've stayed up too late again. Good thing I'm getting used to that? *strained smile* Anyway, I'm hitting the sack as I do have work tomorrow -- night all!