Miserable Weather Thursday
Jul. 10th, 2025 11:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNot only did it POUR this morning -- like, it was coming down HARD when I woke up, and didn't let up for a WHILE -- the rest of the day was that most horrible of combinations -- cool, but still humid. AKA the kind of weather you can get no relief from, because bundling up just makes you feel icky from the humidity, but AC just makes you cold. *grumbles* It's supposed to warm up again tomorrow, and Dad said it wasn't humid outside when he took out the trash, but -- we'll see what happens. The weather has been a bit unpredictable as of late!
In the meantime, here's how my day went:
Work – Well, I had to brave that absolutely POURING rain during this morning’s commute in (fortunately, while I did face some big puddles near the end, none of them were “attempt to swallow the car” big), but after that, it was a pretty quiet Thursday, all things considered – there was one call from someone who needed to update her card on her pledge, and then I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day working on obituaries, with one small break to help my coworker look something up (apparent duplicate pledge). *shrug* Was a bit bored, but it wasn’t too horrible! And the rain stopped this afternoon, meaning my ride home was nice and dry, yay~ Just five hours left to get through tomorrow – fingers crossed they’re good hours!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – took my penultimate ride on the bike this week, pedaling my way through:
A) The end of “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! The finale of the finale saw our intrepid Simmer:
I. Finish off the basement of the Town Center! Which involved him –
a. expanding the Vault Room so he could stick the “display case” room for the spare Book Of Life (just in case somebody needs their saga recaptured) with its giant window on the side of THAT room to get some more wall space in the “atrium” where the Spares portraits were going to go
b. making a second “display case” room on the other side of the Vault Room for the Plumbite spire that helped keep everyone’s needs up during the tough times (presented tastefully on the tray of the butler statue XD)
c. and deciding to make a separate “Hall of Spares” coming off the end of the main hall after running into one too many problems trying to place things in the atrium because the game kept acting like he was trying to put stuff in the pond that surrounds Sonny’s lot above. :p Could not blame him for that! The new room was thus created, and filled with the portraits of pets, spouses, and kids that Krystoff had painted…
Including both portraits of Kaya, Krystoff’s own dog (as James had him paint her initial portrait against a blue background, before realizing that it should have been red to match Krystoff’s own color). Meaning the two sides were uneven, as there were six pet pictures, but only five spouse/kid pictures. No, he never did notice that he had two pictures of the same dog, much to my frustration (and the frustration of some of the other commenters). I have decided to just assume that Krystoff decided to show a little favoritism to his own pet after painting all those damn pictures (and, admittedly, the portrait with the blue background WAS a masterpiece, so…).
II. Throw a big dinner party to send off the series! Which, in typical Tiny Town fashion, did not go as planned –
a. Very few of the Sims actually ate together at the big tables James set up (though Krystoff at least immediately got the party to Gold by attempting to call everyone to dinner...multiple times)
b. Sonny, frightened of something, screamed at his own siblings when he first arrived before runnig off again (causing James to have a laughing fit)
c. The organist James had Raoul hire for entertainment was a huge victim of townie fashion, sporting some of that awful new pride make-up (James laughed even harder at that)
d. And James’s attempts to wrangle the core Tiny Towners to sit at some temporary picnic tables he placed in the “town square” was beset by constant problems, including both a naked Raoul AND a fully-clothed Camillo getting themselves stranded on Reuben’s balcony (forcing James to teleport them off), Pablo refusing to initially sit down because he was busy talking to Kyra, and the other Sims refusing to sit still for more than like three seconds. James eventually gave up and settled for pausing the game at the point where MOST of them were sitting down and Scarlet was standing at the end of the table –
And then he zoomed out, and found the organist standing in the perfect place to ruin the shot. As James put it, “if that’s not Tiny Town, I don’t know what is.” XD Anyway, he thanked everyone for watching, then unpaused the game and watched everyone get up and leave Krystoff all alone…
And then got up himself and just walked off. XD Perfect ending to the series, frankly! And now I find myself tempted by Tiny Town thoughts again...think of how frustrating it would be to wrangle all those Sims, Vic...
B) The entirety of “Baldur's Gate 3: 20+ Easily Missed Tips (Spoiler Free)” by Proxy Gate Tactician! One of earlier videos, featuring a bunch of tips and tricks for playing the game that he wasn’t sure everyone knew about, but which were super useful! Such tips included:
I. Use the “Mask of the Shapeshifter” or the “Shapeshift” spell to tactically shapeshift – like to make yourself smaller to get into tight spaces, or to use Speak With Dead on a person you murdered (who otherwise wouldn’t be inclined to talk with their killer), or to get a second helping of a healing gruel while at the tiefling camp
II. Use Shift-Click to pick up a bunch of items at once in your inventory to move them to another container; Control-Click to do the same with a specific set of selected items; and the “sort by” button at the top of your inventory screen to sort your items by weight or value and make organizing everyone’s inventories a lot easier
III. Make sure that you tell the game to ask you before using your reactions (things that go off when an enemy does something specific – for example, letting you attack them if they try to sneak past you when too close) so that you don’t use a reaction when you don’t want to (sometimes it’s smarter not to, in fact)
IV. Feel free to pickpocket Withers to get back the gold you pay him for resurrections and respecs – no matter how many times you fail, he’ll never get mad at you
V. And be sure to use the fact that you can click and drag items in the world to do things like block doors and create barriers during fights, because manipulating objects doesn’t cost any action points!
...yeah, GUESS WHO NEVER REALIZED THAT YOU COULD DO THAT LAST ONE. Which is a little sad, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Proxy use this trick in previous videos – it just never clicked with me that it was something ANYONE could do! I think I just assumed that doing that was eating up his character’s movement or something...when I finally get back into the damn game, I am going to have to try that! Sheesh...thanks Proxy!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice got to brave the creepy mannequin house in the hell maze today! :D Which involved her:
A) Confirming the mannequins were actually THERE, because of course she does hallucinate often and thus can’t always trust the evidence of her own eyes – Hatter assured her that they were (though he did point out in the process that he was a figment of her imagination, so… :P)
B) Getting creeped out by the two sitting rooms full of mannequins and mannequin heads having “conversations” together (wouldn’t you be?)
C) Venturing upstairs to find another pair of mannequins curled up in bed together with a pill bottle and a pocket watch (she took the former after finding out it was morphine, figuring she could sell it to Trip or give it to Mercurio)
D) Turning around afterwards to find – oh, hello, two of the mannequins moved and are now waving at her from the doorway...and, uh, the Wonderlanders are quite insistent they had nothing to do with that
E) Fleeing downstairs, only to find MORE moved mannequins waiting for her – she promptly shouted to Grout that if he was messing with her, she’d slap him no matter what, but got no response
Yeaah, Alice is not having a fun time. I mean, she wasn’t having a fun time before, but she’s having even less fun now. XD I left it with her trying to get to the door, only to hear a mysterious ringing noise – next we work on this, she gets a creepy phone call and has to deal with more mannequin shenanigans before finally getting to flee this terrible place! Hooray! :D
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – went back to C. M. Alongi’s channel tonight to watch “The Witch Who Trades with Death - TikTok Compilation!” A series of TikToks she made as promotional material for her new book, covering:
A) The main character Khana meeting with Death, explaining her shitty situation (concubine of the evil emperor for six years, having to sneak birth control while he tried to get heirs off her; now being threatened with being turned into a zombie slave in his army for killing his favorite mistress for killing her best friend), and Death offering her the power to get out...for a tiny piece of her soul…
B) Khana escaping and arriving in the frozen lands of Pahuuda, meeting her future best friend Haz and immediately taking a food service job because fuck it, her life is already horrible – cut to a few chapters later and love interest Sava revealing that the evil empire is invading, anyone know why? (Khana: mmmnooo?)
C) Someone sympathizing with Khana’s backstory of sexual assault and asking if she wants to get revenge; Khana saying that she doesn’t, both because she doesn’t have a chance in hell at pulling that revenge off and because all she really wants is to never see, hear, or think about him again; Sava showing up to remind everyone that the emperor is invading her new home to track down his traitor concubine; and the other person saying “well now you HAVE to get revenge” – and, when Khana was like “nope just gonna run some more” – “you’re in the middle of the tundra, you’re not going anywhere” XD
D) Neta, Khana’s eventual mentor, also being like “you were a concubine to this evil dickhead for six years?” and offering to teach her how to fight back – and then, when Khana was like “no, and I am still hoping to run to avoid him invading,” pointed out that the Emperor was NOT going to be nice to her new friends in this place...if he let them live at all; cue Khana going “what was that about teaching me to fight?”
E) C. M. talking about how, despite the main pairing being cishet, there was still plenty of queer representation in this book, with Haz talking about being a bisexual disaster and nonbinary character Athicha being revealed to be in a relationship with Neta – only for the conversation to be derailed by Khana asking about Athicha’s muteness, given she doesn’t appear to be deaf. Turns out it was the result of an old battle wound, sustained in the same fight that killed love interest Sava’s girlfriend – Khana offered to try and heal it with her magic, but Athicha signed that the wound was too old and she was doing fine with sign language. Which Neta taught her, apparently, to help her and Sava come out of their respective funks. Which later led to her and Athicha fucking, and Haz deciding he’d heard enough of this conversation XD
F) Haz chatting with Sava about his crush on Khana and how he mentioned that part of his attraction to her was that she was “safe” – after all, she’s a witch who can heal all injuries and has no interest in being a soldier; Sava confirming this and admitting he wished she was a little less scared of her own shadow, at least...and then Khana showing up to reveal that she’d just enlisted to help in the fight against the evil empire invading the land, saying she was done letting fear rule her. Haz gave her a little shit for saying that with an utterly terrified expression, then congratulated her on being a little less scared of her own shadow. XD
G) Khana and Sava both going “it’s not that I’m not interested in you, but I’m dealing with my own trauma, and we’re about to fight a war here, so we should probably put all romantic shenanigans on the back burner until that’s dealt with and we’ve figured our shit out…” and then Khana saying “unless you’re free Saturday” and Sava IMMEDIATELY accepting. XD Haz and Neta were like “straight people” while the evil emperor was like “hello, busy getting ready to invade you” (Sava: “Fuck off”)
H) Haz wondering what his chances are of surviving the book, and Neta asking about the genre – and, upon being told it’s dark fantasy, telling him “I’d keep your will up to date” XD
I) And Haz then realizing “hey, wait a minute Neta, you’re the MENTOR, you have even less chance of surviving than I do!” And Neta going, “I know, now stop being a little bitch about probably dying.” (Haz: “Book hasn’t even come out yet and already I hate it” XD)
Fun stuff! Though I’d like to tell Haz not to worry TOO much, as apparently this book’s got a happy, or at least happyish, ending. That has to up his and Neta’s survival chances, right?
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I didn’t do anything over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) because that queue is set, but over on Valice Multiverse, I chucked my latest set of Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes (about them moving in together – hang on, I never linked those, did I? Here you go) and the “Valicer as text posts” post (For your enjoyment) into the queue! Because I had nothing else going on, and it’s fun to share some of this stuff again on my RP blog. :p We’ll see if anything new pops up tomorrow!
And that is pretty much that! And now I should really head to bed before I succumb to the temptation to look at the official Baldur's Gate III mod page again. XD Tomorrow, my goals after work are a little up in the air because I have some errands to run (get some gas, hit the bank, and buy a transponder for getting through toll booths easier) -- I was going to have a Fallout Friday, but if those take a little too long, I may instead switch tactics and see about instead finishing off my Superliminal Collectibles Run this weekend. I only have three ACTUAL levels to go (the final bit, "Retrospective," is basically just a glorified cutscene), so I might as well, right? We'll see what happens, I suppose -- night all!
In the meantime, here's how my day went:
Work – Well, I had to brave that absolutely POURING rain during this morning’s commute in (fortunately, while I did face some big puddles near the end, none of them were “attempt to swallow the car” big), but after that, it was a pretty quiet Thursday, all things considered – there was one call from someone who needed to update her card on her pledge, and then I spent pretty much the entire rest of the day working on obituaries, with one small break to help my coworker look something up (apparent duplicate pledge). *shrug* Was a bit bored, but it wasn’t too horrible! And the rain stopped this afternoon, meaning my ride home was nice and dry, yay~ Just five hours left to get through tomorrow – fingers crossed they’re good hours!
To-Do List –
1. Get in a workout: Check – took my penultimate ride on the bike this week, pedaling my way through:
A) The end of “Tiny Town Finale! - Part 30” by James Turner! The finale of the finale saw our intrepid Simmer:
I. Finish off the basement of the Town Center! Which involved him –
a. expanding the Vault Room so he could stick the “display case” room for the spare Book Of Life (just in case somebody needs their saga recaptured) with its giant window on the side of THAT room to get some more wall space in the “atrium” where the Spares portraits were going to go
b. making a second “display case” room on the other side of the Vault Room for the Plumbite spire that helped keep everyone’s needs up during the tough times (presented tastefully on the tray of the butler statue XD)
c. and deciding to make a separate “Hall of Spares” coming off the end of the main hall after running into one too many problems trying to place things in the atrium because the game kept acting like he was trying to put stuff in the pond that surrounds Sonny’s lot above. :p Could not blame him for that! The new room was thus created, and filled with the portraits of pets, spouses, and kids that Krystoff had painted…
Including both portraits of Kaya, Krystoff’s own dog (as James had him paint her initial portrait against a blue background, before realizing that it should have been red to match Krystoff’s own color). Meaning the two sides were uneven, as there were six pet pictures, but only five spouse/kid pictures. No, he never did notice that he had two pictures of the same dog, much to my frustration (and the frustration of some of the other commenters). I have decided to just assume that Krystoff decided to show a little favoritism to his own pet after painting all those damn pictures (and, admittedly, the portrait with the blue background WAS a masterpiece, so…).
II. Throw a big dinner party to send off the series! Which, in typical Tiny Town fashion, did not go as planned –
a. Very few of the Sims actually ate together at the big tables James set up (though Krystoff at least immediately got the party to Gold by attempting to call everyone to dinner...multiple times)
b. Sonny, frightened of something, screamed at his own siblings when he first arrived before runnig off again (causing James to have a laughing fit)
c. The organist James had Raoul hire for entertainment was a huge victim of townie fashion, sporting some of that awful new pride make-up (James laughed even harder at that)
d. And James’s attempts to wrangle the core Tiny Towners to sit at some temporary picnic tables he placed in the “town square” was beset by constant problems, including both a naked Raoul AND a fully-clothed Camillo getting themselves stranded on Reuben’s balcony (forcing James to teleport them off), Pablo refusing to initially sit down because he was busy talking to Kyra, and the other Sims refusing to sit still for more than like three seconds. James eventually gave up and settled for pausing the game at the point where MOST of them were sitting down and Scarlet was standing at the end of the table –
And then he zoomed out, and found the organist standing in the perfect place to ruin the shot. As James put it, “if that’s not Tiny Town, I don’t know what is.” XD Anyway, he thanked everyone for watching, then unpaused the game and watched everyone get up and leave Krystoff all alone…
And then got up himself and just walked off. XD Perfect ending to the series, frankly! And now I find myself tempted by Tiny Town thoughts again...think of how frustrating it would be to wrangle all those Sims, Vic...
B) The entirety of “Baldur's Gate 3: 20+ Easily Missed Tips (Spoiler Free)” by Proxy Gate Tactician! One of earlier videos, featuring a bunch of tips and tricks for playing the game that he wasn’t sure everyone knew about, but which were super useful! Such tips included:
I. Use the “Mask of the Shapeshifter” or the “Shapeshift” spell to tactically shapeshift – like to make yourself smaller to get into tight spaces, or to use Speak With Dead on a person you murdered (who otherwise wouldn’t be inclined to talk with their killer), or to get a second helping of a healing gruel while at the tiefling camp
II. Use Shift-Click to pick up a bunch of items at once in your inventory to move them to another container; Control-Click to do the same with a specific set of selected items; and the “sort by” button at the top of your inventory screen to sort your items by weight or value and make organizing everyone’s inventories a lot easier
III. Make sure that you tell the game to ask you before using your reactions (things that go off when an enemy does something specific – for example, letting you attack them if they try to sneak past you when too close) so that you don’t use a reaction when you don’t want to (sometimes it’s smarter not to, in fact)
IV. Feel free to pickpocket Withers to get back the gold you pay him for resurrections and respecs – no matter how many times you fail, he’ll never get mad at you
V. And be sure to use the fact that you can click and drag items in the world to do things like block doors and create barriers during fights, because manipulating objects doesn’t cost any action points!
...yeah, GUESS WHO NEVER REALIZED THAT YOU COULD DO THAT LAST ONE. Which is a little sad, because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Proxy use this trick in previous videos – it just never clicked with me that it was something ANYONE could do! I think I just assumed that doing that was eating up his character’s movement or something...when I finally get back into the damn game, I am going to have to try that! Sheesh...thanks Proxy!
2. Continue editing “Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland”: Check – Alice got to brave the creepy mannequin house in the hell maze today! :D Which involved her:
A) Confirming the mannequins were actually THERE, because of course she does hallucinate often and thus can’t always trust the evidence of her own eyes – Hatter assured her that they were (though he did point out in the process that he was a figment of her imagination, so… :P)
B) Getting creeped out by the two sitting rooms full of mannequins and mannequin heads having “conversations” together (wouldn’t you be?)
C) Venturing upstairs to find another pair of mannequins curled up in bed together with a pill bottle and a pocket watch (she took the former after finding out it was morphine, figuring she could sell it to Trip or give it to Mercurio)
D) Turning around afterwards to find – oh, hello, two of the mannequins moved and are now waving at her from the doorway...and, uh, the Wonderlanders are quite insistent they had nothing to do with that
E) Fleeing downstairs, only to find MORE moved mannequins waiting for her – she promptly shouted to Grout that if he was messing with her, she’d slap him no matter what, but got no response
Yeaah, Alice is not having a fun time. I mean, she wasn’t having a fun time before, but she’s having even less fun now. XD I left it with her trying to get to the door, only to hear a mysterious ringing noise – next we work on this, she gets a creepy phone call and has to deal with more mannequin shenanigans before finally getting to flee this terrible place! Hooray! :D
3. Keep up with YouTube “Subs”: Check – went back to C. M. Alongi’s channel tonight to watch “The Witch Who Trades with Death - TikTok Compilation!” A series of TikToks she made as promotional material for her new book, covering:
A) The main character Khana meeting with Death, explaining her shitty situation (concubine of the evil emperor for six years, having to sneak birth control while he tried to get heirs off her; now being threatened with being turned into a zombie slave in his army for killing his favorite mistress for killing her best friend), and Death offering her the power to get out...for a tiny piece of her soul…
B) Khana escaping and arriving in the frozen lands of Pahuuda, meeting her future best friend Haz and immediately taking a food service job because fuck it, her life is already horrible – cut to a few chapters later and love interest Sava revealing that the evil empire is invading, anyone know why? (Khana: mmmnooo?)
C) Someone sympathizing with Khana’s backstory of sexual assault and asking if she wants to get revenge; Khana saying that she doesn’t, both because she doesn’t have a chance in hell at pulling that revenge off and because all she really wants is to never see, hear, or think about him again; Sava showing up to remind everyone that the emperor is invading her new home to track down his traitor concubine; and the other person saying “well now you HAVE to get revenge” – and, when Khana was like “nope just gonna run some more” – “you’re in the middle of the tundra, you’re not going anywhere” XD
D) Neta, Khana’s eventual mentor, also being like “you were a concubine to this evil dickhead for six years?” and offering to teach her how to fight back – and then, when Khana was like “no, and I am still hoping to run to avoid him invading,” pointed out that the Emperor was NOT going to be nice to her new friends in this place...if he let them live at all; cue Khana going “what was that about teaching me to fight?”
E) C. M. talking about how, despite the main pairing being cishet, there was still plenty of queer representation in this book, with Haz talking about being a bisexual disaster and nonbinary character Athicha being revealed to be in a relationship with Neta – only for the conversation to be derailed by Khana asking about Athicha’s muteness, given she doesn’t appear to be deaf. Turns out it was the result of an old battle wound, sustained in the same fight that killed love interest Sava’s girlfriend – Khana offered to try and heal it with her magic, but Athicha signed that the wound was too old and she was doing fine with sign language. Which Neta taught her, apparently, to help her and Sava come out of their respective funks. Which later led to her and Athicha fucking, and Haz deciding he’d heard enough of this conversation XD
F) Haz chatting with Sava about his crush on Khana and how he mentioned that part of his attraction to her was that she was “safe” – after all, she’s a witch who can heal all injuries and has no interest in being a soldier; Sava confirming this and admitting he wished she was a little less scared of her own shadow, at least...and then Khana showing up to reveal that she’d just enlisted to help in the fight against the evil empire invading the land, saying she was done letting fear rule her. Haz gave her a little shit for saying that with an utterly terrified expression, then congratulated her on being a little less scared of her own shadow. XD
G) Khana and Sava both going “it’s not that I’m not interested in you, but I’m dealing with my own trauma, and we’re about to fight a war here, so we should probably put all romantic shenanigans on the back burner until that’s dealt with and we’ve figured our shit out…” and then Khana saying “unless you’re free Saturday” and Sava IMMEDIATELY accepting. XD Haz and Neta were like “straight people” while the evil emperor was like “hello, busy getting ready to invade you” (Sava: “Fuck off”)
H) Haz wondering what his chances are of surviving the book, and Neta asking about the genre – and, upon being told it’s dark fantasy, telling him “I’d keep your will up to date” XD
I) And Haz then realizing “hey, wait a minute Neta, you’re the MENTOR, you have even less chance of surviving than I do!” And Neta going, “I know, now stop being a little bitch about probably dying.” (Haz: “Book hasn’t even come out yet and already I hate it” XD)
Fun stuff! Though I’d like to tell Haz not to worry TOO much, as apparently this book’s got a happy, or at least happyish, ending. That has to up his and Neta’s survival chances, right?
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check – I didn’t do anything over on Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) because that queue is set, but over on Valice Multiverse, I chucked my latest set of Valicer Not-Incorrect Quotes (about them moving in together – hang on, I never linked those, did I? Here you go) and the “Valicer as text posts” post (For your enjoyment) into the queue! Because I had nothing else going on, and it’s fun to share some of this stuff again on my RP blog. :p We’ll see if anything new pops up tomorrow!
And that is pretty much that! And now I should really head to bed before I succumb to the temptation to look at the official Baldur's Gate III mod page again. XD Tomorrow, my goals after work are a little up in the air because I have some errands to run (get some gas, hit the bank, and buy a transponder for getting through toll booths easier) -- I was going to have a Fallout Friday, but if those take a little too long, I may instead switch tactics and see about instead finishing off my Superliminal Collectibles Run this weekend. I only have three ACTUAL levels to go (the final bit, "Retrospective," is basically just a glorified cutscene), so I might as well, right? We'll see what happens, I suppose -- night all!
