The Nice Weather Finally Returned
May. 25th, 2026 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickGranted, this morning was pretty freaking miserable and rainy, but by lunchtime the clouds were lightening, and by the afternoon the sun was out and it was in the 70s. :) Hooray, the entire weekend wasn't a bust weather-wise! I'm sure everyone with plans this Memorial Day was thrilled to get like five good hours. XD But it was nice to open the windows and get some fresh air -- and tonight, I've got my window fan in, so my room is cool enough that I should hopefully get a decent night's sleep. Fingers crossed!
As for what I accomplished today -- well, it was honestly pretty busy, all things considered:
YouTube: I got in one YouTube video today by virtue of watching it this morning before starting anything else – “Paralives - Launch Trailer” by, well, Paralives! Because of course I had to watch the launch trailer the day the game launched. :p It was a cute little thing that started with “You live and then you die,” before following it up with “But at least…” and various ways Paras could “do it” in the game. Like in a nice house with their friends! Or with serious style thanks to all the customization in the Paramaker! Or in a good job that they can upgrade as they go! Or with creativity thanks to the advanced building tools! Or with love...if your love interest doesn’t reject you. Or with bugs, because this game very much is in Early Access! XD It was just – heartfelt, is the best way I can think of to put it. You can tell the team is very proud of what they’ve created so far. And they should be. Even if people sometimes get stuck inside fire hydrants when they’re walking around town. XD
Tumblr: As it was Monday, I just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about – and despite another late start, I did get some stuff done –
A) First, I straight-up reblogged a pair of posts I found on my dash:
I. A multi-part post by gandalfsbignaturals talking about how “learning to notice an absence of people of color is crazy” and how it starts to really stand out how so many silly memes and humanizations of inhuman characters/concepts/objects/whatever and other little innocent things like that feature exclusively white people because the creators, knowingly or unknowingly, make that choice. And how posts like this really make the racists come out and get mad. *nods* Reblogged because it’s an important thing to be aware of, so you can see yourself slipping into it and try to make better, more representative choices. (Note to self: maybe make the two guys who hire the Three Pillars in “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” non-white; there’s no reason for them not to be Severosi or Iruvian or from the Dagger Isles!)
II. And a multi-part post from faggotisaacfloofs giving people instructions on how to help someone who has fallen out of their wheelchair (inspired by how someone helped them in the exact way they wanted to be helped when they fell out of their chair), including “always ASK the person first if they need help, and feel free to leave them if they say ‘no, I’ve got it,’” what sorts of things they may need you to do (fetch a runaway chair, hold the chair steady so they can get in, offer an arm as a support, etc.), and how to engage the brakes on a manual wheelchair so the owner can get in; ghost-in-a-pinata screenshotting an additional comment from bug-jelly about how, unless the person is in immediate danger, you should NEVER move someone who has fallen to the ground and is unresponsive, because you might make things worse (especially if they have a neck injury) – instead, just stabilize them as best you can and call in the trained professionals; and aangel-biites providing a text ID for the above screenshot because ghost-in-a-pinata didn’t alt-text the image. Seemed like good, useful info for people to know in case they ended up in that situation – here’s the post if you want to read it and learn a thing too!
B) Then, I spent the rest of the time before lunch, and a bit of the time after it while waiting for my new game to download and install (see below), working on my “Valicer Headcanons: Your Name is WHAT???” post, which covers how Victor and Alice (and other members of larger polycules) learn that Smiler’s birth name is “Marmaduke.” This is a post that I’ve been meaning to make ever since hinting at it in the tags of my Easter Collection of Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, and as its rough draft was a lot closer to being done than the “Valicer Eats God” one, I decided to focus on it and see if I could get it ready for posting this week in anticipation of Smiler’s birthday next Sunday! And I’m pleased to say I ALMOST finished it – all of the write-ups for the various universes are done (ranging from “Smiler’s parents’ asshole neighbor lets it slip when Smiler makes him get his dog before it bites Victor” in the Modern AU to “Victor and Alice knew Smiler as Marmaduke FIRST as both Innies and Outies, with Innie!Smiler coming up with the name later after getting everyone to decorate the cubicles with Post-It notes, and Outie!Smiler only getting to correct the Outie!Victor and Alice when they got stuck in the elevator together” in the Severance AU – there were also two “Honorable Mention” write-ups for verses where Victor and Alice find out Smiler is Mar-Mal instead of Marmaduke), and I’ve linked almost all of the relevant tags for all of the verses. Just gotta finish up those, do any last-minute edits, and complete my tags, and this should be ready to chuck in the queue later this week!
C) And finally, a little earlier tonight, I reblogged a lovely piece of Discworld fanart from songthursh (which she did with stupidlynx) featuring Vimes and Vetinari meeting in the cemetery surrounded by lilacs on the Glorious 25th Of May from the end of the novel Night Watch (which is commonly considered to be the peak of the series). Because I didn’t want to miss the Important Discworld date and it WAS a beautiful piece of fanart. :)
*nods* Good productive time over here! I’m quite glad. :)
Paralives: Oh yes – as of today, I am officially the proud owner of the Early Access version of the newest life sim to hit the market! They tempted me into a launch day purchase with their sly wiles and cute art style and 10% discount for buying right away. XD (Discount available through June 1st, if you’re curious!) After installing, I played a short “getting my feet wet” session this afternoon, focusing on getting through the tutorial and about a day’s worth of Live Mode with my chosen premade family. How did it go?
Bit awkward and glitchily. But then again, Early Access title, so what the hell did I expect? :p More specifically –
A) My first act upon opening the game for the first time was to go into the settings and have a poke around there to get a feel for the defaults and see what I wanted to change. I ended up enabling edge scrolling for the camera (as I like having that, makes it easier to pan around) and lowering the background music to about half volume (because after dealing with the background music being waaaaay too loud at the start of Fallout: New Vegas, I wanted to preempt any problems here!) Just figured I’d get a few quality-of-life things out of the way before diving into the tutorial – but as I would later learn, I probably should have also fiddled around with the mouse sensitivity settings…
B) Having adjusted the settings, I then chose to start a new game in the main town of Melino – and, after a rather long loading screen with a cute animation of a drawing of a seed being planted in a pot, being watered, and growing into a little leafy plant in the corner (at least it was something to look at) – I was transported into the tutorial! Which takes place on a train going to Melino, happily chugging along the rails over bridges and through the countryside:
Isn’t it cute? I very much approve of this as a way to get someone used to your game. :D Anyway, I was introduced to the conductor, Roberto, and walked through some of the basic camera controls – how to pan left, right, up, and down (WASD or arrow keys); how to rotate the camera (right click and drag); and how to zoom in and out (scroll wheel) – before being directed to send Roberto into the next carriage (via the classic point-and-click “Go here” method). The second carriage contained all the premade Para families that you could start off with if you were so inclined hanging out in the seats doing their thing, along with a button to let you make your own household if you wished – as I knew deep in my soul that recreating my beloved Valicer OT3 was probably going to be a multi-hour, if not multi-day, affair in the Paramaker, I went with the premade couple the Darciers – consisting of the energetic, loves-cute-things-and-pink Solene and the gloomy, loves-dark-things-and-metal Kian – instead. The tutorial then took me through:
I. How Paras gained emotion cards from their current circumstances (Solene, for example, was inspired by the train ride), and how you could click on them to “pick a reaction” and give the Para a related want, which would remain until they went to sleep unless you pinned it (the tutorial one was “eat a snack”)
II. How to multiselect Paras (you basically click on the floor near them and drag out a big rectangle to select all the Paras you want to be in a group – those paras will then go places and do things together; the game had me select Solene, Kian, and Roberto, send them into the dining car, chat for a while, then eat some sandwiches on the snack counter)
III. How conversations work and how to pick new topics for Paras to talk about (basically, when Paras chat, a bar at the side fills up, and when it’s full, a “!” appears at the top to prompt you to pick a specific social interaction for one of your Paras to do – can range from just introducing a new conversational topic to trying out a kiss to all sorts of other stuff)
IV. How to keep an eye on Para needs (they currently only have four – hunger, bladder, hygiene, and tiredness – though as I understand it, depending on your Para’s personality, more specific ones might pop up) and what to do to fulfill them (such as “eat sandwiches” when they’re hungry)
Before ending by asking me to select my “storyteller,” who determines the save file’s difficulty and does things like provide special “together” social cards and nightly “chance” cards of a sort (where you can select new “life goals” for Paras to complete or things to happen to them the next day)! I went with Maxence, as she was supposed to be “Medium” difficulty and thus was probably about the level of micromanaging I’d come to expect from The Sims 4 (there’s also Stella the dog if you want the easiest experience, and Ricardo Castello III if you want a real challenge). *nods* All very interesting stuff – and a decent way to come to grips with some of the controls and what sort of systems are present in the game. *nods*
C) Once I’d gotten through the tutorial, the game went through the opening cinematic showing me the town and the train arriving in it (which was very nice – Melino is a REALLY well-designed place full of interesting architecture and places to visit and stuff to look at), then prompted me to buy a house for my couple. After looking through the options to see what they could afford (and giggling over the fact that the cheapest option was a tiny little alley in between another house and the local pharmacy), I decided to avoid throwing myself full-on into Build Mode for the time being (as I suspected I would end up wasting a lot of time in THERE too) and went with a nice little one bedroom, one bathroom apartment in the upper portion of a brick-and-plaster multifamily house for $24,848, which would leave them some money that they could use to, you know, live. The game then deposited them and me in front of their new digs and informed me that the pair had the life goal to “Settle Home,” which included such things as “get a job” (which both of them already had checked – Solene is a florist, while Kian is a chef), “buy a decorative item for their house,” and “cook a meal.” These seemed like reasonable goals to me, and I attempted to get them into their apartment so I could start fulfilling them –
And that is when things started to go a little screwy. Part of it was my fault, I admit – when I first arrived on the lot, I’d unthinkingly used the “change level” tool to go down a level to be on the same level as my Paras...forgetting that their apartment was on the SECOND floor. So when I tried to get them into their new digs, I was a little confused as to how to get in there at first until I remembered that. But part of it was also because the game didn’t immediately point out how to do certain things – for example, change the walls from “walls up” to “walls down” to “walls cutaway” mode. I had to stumble across it while poking around the UI at the top, wondering why I couldn’t see into their apartment even after returning to the correct level. And while doing all that and getting used to the camera controls, I discovered that the camera was pretty damn bouncy (though that MIGHT be a consequence of the apartment being on/near a hill, I admit), and the mouse pretty damn sensitive (I ended up flying all over the place). Eventually though, I figured out how to actually look inside their apartment, got them inside their new bedroom, and let them chat in there while I prepared to get them a nice decorative item from Build Mode –
Only to discover that, uh, I had no idea how to get into Build Mode. Because that hadn’t been pointed out either. *shifty eyes* Yeah, bit of an oversight, that! Baffled, I abandoned that idea for a bit to try looking at the newspaper, which had some new life goals I could give my Paras (to explore the town), and an article about the upcoming meet-up of the astronomy club, with a button to see where they’d be meeting. Which I foolishly clicked –
Leading to me getting catapulted over to a nearby park to see the spot. With me going “?! How do I get back to my Paras??” *facepalm* I really should have taken a bit at the beginning to check out the keybinds and some of the other controls more thoroughly. Fortunately, I was able to scroll back to the apartment, but THEN, while trying to pause time to get my bearings, I discovered that the [P] key is not pause – instead it opens the in-game photo mode. Which is fine, good to know, but not what I was looking for. (In case you’re wondering, the spacebar is what you hit to pause time.) And then when I tried to get out of THAT mode –
I somehow ended up in Build Mode??? I’m still not entirely sure WHAT I hit just then, just that it must have been a shortcut of SOME kind. O.o Yeah, I need to look at the controls for this game MUCH more thoroughly...
D) Still, Build Mode was where I was trying to go in the FIRST place, so I took the opportunity to get the pair their desired decorative item, deciding on buying them some cheap floral curtains for their bedroom windows (they don’t have a lot of money – Paradimes, if you’re curious – right now, so I didn’t want to do anything TOO expensive). I played around with how you can stretch and squash Build Mode items a bit, fitting the curtains to the windows a little better, then changed the swatches to a nice pink to suggest that Solene was the one who picked them out. :) Shortly thereafter, I figured out the CORRECT way to swap between Build Mode and Live Mode – the picture of a house in the bottom left corner, next to the portraits of Kian and Solene! Somehow I’d managed to completely miss that was there! *shakehead* This is why you need to highlight these things, Paralives – some of your players are NOT paying attention. XD
Now feeling rather more in control of the situation, I decided to have Kian go cook some instant rice, as I’d give him a want to do so earlier from feeling kind of stressed and it would fulfill the “cook a meal” goal of them settling into their new house. The pair thus headed over to the kitchen, Solene lingering by the fridge for a moment while Kian got his rice and put in the microwave –
And then Solene chose to sit down at the dining table. Which proved to be the worst idea she could have ever had, because the minute she sat down, she suddenly started glitching wildly between the seat and a spot in front of the fridge, bouncing back and forth super-fast. Kian was fine – he ate his rice without issue – but Solene could not be knocked out of her glitchy state. Not even pausing the game by going into the main menu could stop it!
As you could imagine, the game did not like one of the Paras constantly trying and failing to occupy two spaces at the same time, and its performance really started to chug as I tried to figure out what to do. Fortunately, not only does the game have a button you can click to pop out of the game and onto the web to file a bug report at the official Paralives site (which I did, complete with including the above screenshot), the main menu also has an “unstuck” button to fix Paras who might be stuck in an odd location or in a bad animation loop or something similar. And as Solene was definitely stuck, I hit it –
And she and Kian were immediately teleported back to the front of their house. With Solene no longer trying to glitch all over the place. Whew! Thank you for including that, Paralives team!
E) With that sorted, it was time to continue actually, you know, playing the game. As both Solene and Kian were a bit stressed, I gave them both the want to watch TV for a couple of hours and sent them to do that – though, unfortunately, I didn’t notice that the TV only had a single-seater chair in front of it, meaning that Solene sat in the bad chair at the dining table (which made me very nervous for a minute) and really just listened to the TV. At least she didn’t start glitching out again! Fulfilling that want coupled with the XP they’d earned completing the “Settle Home” life goals gave Kian enough XP to get a personality upgrade – the game gave me a few options of ways to improve his Cooking Talent further, and I went with adding “Inspiring Cook” to his roster, meaning he can now cook meals that help Paras skill up faster. *nods* Always useful! After that, I had Solene read an art book to fulfill her want of leveling up her Art skill two more levels, and had Kian read a repair book with her to level up his repair skill, which seemed like a smart thing to do:
No, I don’t know why they chose to stand in front of the bookcase instead of sitting in the chairs, but given how glitchy sitting was earlier, perhaps that was for the best. *nods* After that, I had them chat for a while to fulfill Kian’s want to spend two hours with Solene (focusing on friendship stuff for the most part because I’m still getting to grips with how the socializing system works in this game right now – and because Solene had a want to level up her friendship with somebody; not sure how much friendship stuff you have to do before you level up though), then sent Kian to go use the toilet because his bladder need was low and Solene to go get some sleep because her energy meter was draining (possibly because she’d used her own energetic nature to boost Kian’s energy meter a bit during the conversation). Kian joined her after flushing the toilet and washing his hands (both of which I had to tell him to do – you’re a CHEF, Kian! You should know to keep your hands clean!), and I hung out watching them sleep until the storyteller chance card thing popped up in the middle of the night (right around midnight, in fact). The game encouraged me to take the middle option of giving one of the Paras a new life goal, and thus Kian ended up with the goal to make a Level 3 friend. Again, don’t know how much friendship stuff you have to do to get to that point, but I guess we’ll eventually find out!
F) And with that, I ended my playsession with a final trip to the settings menu, where I turned the sensitivity on everything relating to the camera and the mouse down to 45 (which hopefully will help some of the camera bounciness and flying around issues), checked out all the key bindings so I had a better idea of which keys controlled what, and switched the 24-hour clock to a 12-hour one because I don’t particularly like 24-hour clocks. 12 is what I’m used to! *nods* I then shut down the game, went back to Firefox to finish my bug report from earlier (I’d swapped back into the game to make sure I could get the screenshot and to try the “unstuck” button), and gathered all my screenshots from Steam –
And noticed that, apparently, the game was still running. Which I found very confusing because, well, I’d just shut the damn game off, and I couldn’t see any indication of it still running in the background. I ended up stopping the game via the “STOP” button on its profile, and even THEN it took a good few minutes for it to actually properly shut down! *frowns* That’s concerning – I don’t like it. We’ll see what happens when I next boot it up!
So yeah – I’d say the game has good bones so far, but there are DEFINITELY glitches that you gotta watch out for, and it might not be the best optimized at the moment judging by that long shut-down. *shrug* What are you gonna do? I’ll continue poking at it as the Early Access period continues and see how things go! Maybe next time we’ll see about building something, get used to those controls...
Workout: Back on the bike again tonight – but rather than back with The Adventures Of Doc Mitchell In The Post-Post-Post-Apocalypse in Jon of Many A True Nerd’s “Fallout: New Vegas – Dust” series, I chose to instead watch the first half-hour of James Turner’s “Let's play Paralives for the first time! Full Build & Gameplay!” Because today was Paralives Day, as you have already seen, and I very much wanted to watch James play the game. Both because I was sure it would be a lot of fun, and because watching him play would probably help me come to grips with some of the controls and what was possible in Build Mode and all that going forward. As you probably saw above, I need all the help I can get. XD The first half-hour of his dive into Early Early Access (AKA, he got a code from the developers so he could play it before the official launch date) covered –
A) James diving into the Paramaker during the tutorial train section to recreate Semaj Renrut, his selfSim, as a selfPara in this game, and showing off all of the available age groups and a BUNCH of the customization options – including:
I. Flipping the order of your Para’s name around if you’re from a culture that puts the last name first
II. Indicating if your Para identifies as male, female, or nonbinary, with the appropriate pronouns (though there’s no option to add custom pronouns yet – hopefully at some point!)
III. Using the color wheel to adjust your skin tone or hair color until it’s just perfect – and having the option to adjust individual bits of each (like shadows on skintones, and highlights in hair)
IV. Using toggles to give your Paras mismatched earrings, or maybe a hearing aid on just one side
V. Molding Paras with the help of LOADS of little sculpting points you could push or pull to your heart’s content
VI. Layering clothing to create the perfect Para outfit
VII. And layering various skin details and moving them about the body (like putting a mole in just the right spot on your leg – there’s options for scars too, which will hopefully be handy when designing Alice...)
Like, yeah, maybe we currently don’t have many hairstyles or tops or shoes as we did in Sims 4, but there’s still LOADS of ways to make Paras look unique and get just the vibe you want.
B) James also showing off how you build a Para’s personality:
I. First, you get seven points to spend between your Para’s four main attributes – Physique, Mind, Creativity, and Charisma – each of which can be given a maximum of three. Semaj, for example, got one in Physique, and two in Mind, Creativity, and Charisma (it was going to be three in Creativity and one in Charisma, but James decided not to be mean to his new Para-self)
II. Then you choose your Para’s Vibe, which affects how they see the world and what emotions help them thrive the most – Semaj got Overjoyed, which meant he gets happy easily and likes to spread the joy around (hello, Smiler vibe!)
III. Then you choose their Social Perk, which dictates what kind of person they are when it comes to other Paras – Semaj got “Good At Making Friends,” which is what it sounds like on the tin (other options were “Good At Being Alone” and “Good At Cooperating”)
IV. Then you choose their Talent, which gives them a skill they’re best at – unless you say they’re “Good At Nothing,” of course… Semaj got “Technology,” which makes sense, given James is a Let’s Player
V. And finally, you can choose their Lifestyles – which currently include whether or not they’re a vegetarian (Semaj isn’t); if their sleeping habits make them an Early Bird, a Night Owl, or neither (Semaj got Night Owl), and if they’re Neat, Sloppy, or just average when it comes to cleaning (Semaj got left at Normal). I know there’s also a section to customize how they handle jealousy (AKA, if they’re at least somewhat poly or not), but I think that’s back in the same section where you customize their gender identity.
*nods* Not too shabby! I would appreciate maybe another core attribute or some more vibes or skills you could be talented in, but – Early Access. We’ll see how fine-grained it gets later!
C) James completing the tutorial after making ParaSemaj and going through all the stuff I went through above – how emotions and picking wants for your Paras works; how to multiselect people; how conversations work; and picking his storyteller! James wanted a challenge, so he went with Ricardo, which was interesting – we’ll see how challenging life with that guy in charge of the story really is!
D) And James watching as Semaj arrived in town before trying to pick a house for him so this didn’t turn into a building video...and then, after all of the houses for sale proved to be pretty expensive, buying that tiny plot of land between a town house and the pharmacy (the one that’s only $664) and turning this into at least partially a building video. Because building is what James does, damn it. XD To be fair, he was able to show off some cool stuff as he started building Semaj’s house, such as –
I. How you can build walls straight into hillsides in this game, and the game will automatically cut out the terrain for you
II. How you can use invisible separators to turn chunks of walls into separate “rooms” so you can paint them individually (as currently the paint-and-wallpaper tools only allow you to do an entire wall or an entire room, not individual wall chunks)
III. How easy it is to replace chunks of wall with a fence or a half-wall, in case you want to make a little balcony on the second story of your house
IV. How you can change not only the colors, but the textures of things like doors (Semaj’s front door could have ceramic textures if he wanted, which James admitted didn’t make much sense but looked very cool)
V. And, of course, all the fun stretching-and-squashing you could do, from pulling walls up to raise their heights to squashing windows down to give yourself some privacy on the street
Sure, some items weren’t quite finished – roofing tools are currently VERY simple, and James avoided using curved walls in the house he was building because you currently can’t place windows or doors on them – but there is still a lot to play with if you’re a builder! I think James is going to be very happy in this game indeed. :) I left off with him securing the downstairs windows with decorative bars and preparing to add a door onto the balcony – tomorrow, we’ll see the rest of the house take shape and how Semaj handles Live Mode! Hopefully better than I did!
Writing: I did get in my hoped-for writing session on “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” this eve after supper, adding a little over a page to Chapter 1! Said page-and-a-bit covered –
A) Alice leaving Knox and taking a quick look around the club to see if anyone was interested in propositioning her so she could use them to get a drink...only for no heads to turn in her direction. Which she allowed was a problem, as she wasn’t sure how to go proposition anyone herself without looking like a creep. The troubles of being extremely demisexual when you’re a vampire and your preferred method of getting blood is drinking from people trying to get you to have sex with them because then it’s at least somewhat consensual. :p
B) Alice being interrupted in these thoughts by the sudden appearance of a Jeannette in front of her, who noted she looked deep in thought, then allowed that she probably had reason to be, given all the trouble going on Downtown that she seemed to be in the middle of. Alice informed her it was not by choice and that if she’d had her way, Nines and LaCroix would still just be glaring at each other instead of one trying to actively kill the other – but as all ways Downtown were LaCroix’s ways… Jeannette agreed and asked if she’d heard the scoop about Therese becoming the Prince of Santa Monica and her getting a Baronship from the Anarchs – Alice confirmed she had –
Then admitted she was surprised that the sisters hadn’t chewed each other’s heads off, letting slip how she’d visited Mercurio earlier and mentioning how he’d been quite startled to see the two sisters apparently getting along despite being on opposite sides now. Jeannette picked up what she was putting down and commented that she’d have to do something to really piss off Therese – perhaps an Anarch rager in her club – and thanked Alice for the head’s up. *nods* Gotta keep in these ladies’ good graces – it will definitely pay off later!
C) Alice assuring Jeannette it was no problem, then asking her where a girl might be able to get a drink around here – Jeannette giggled and noted that the drinks generally came to her, then pointed out a girl at the bar she was familiar with named Kate, assuring Alice that if she said Jeannette sent her, Kate should be open for at least a nibble. “Just remember to save some for me!” Alice told her she’d never dream of denying her a chance to add a name to her little black book and thanked her for the tip – Jeannette thanked her again in turn, noting she’d been very helpful, and mock-reluctantly passed on some regards from Therese as well before telling her to hop along and flouncing toward the elevator to scheme with her sister. Alice noted as she left that she’d become rather more tolerable after making up with Therese – Caterpillar informed her that was because some of her previous behaviors were put-ons designed to deliberately get up Therese’s nose, so now that they were working together, she had less need of them. Hooray!
D) And Alice going over to Kate to see what she was up for – Kate was initially like “what’s your deal?” but the minute Alice said Jeannette had told her she might be up for a little bit of fun, she immediately switched gears, eagerly asking if Alice could do the same thing with her teeth Jeannette did, and practically dragging Alice off to the bathroom when Alice said she’d do her best and asked if she knew of a more private spot. As you might imagine, Alice was slightly put off by this, wondering if it was possible for mortals to become addicted to the Kiss (yes, it is – they’re called “blood dolls”) and resolving to find out so she knew to spread them out a little more often. Sorry Alice – couldn’t resist throwing a bit more worrying weirdness your way! But at least you’re getting a meal out of it and thus will be well-topped-up when you reach Hollywood.
Not bad at all, I think! Tomorrow, we’ll see if I pick up with Alice returning to the cab, or if I skip straight ahead to her and Victor entering Hollywood. I think there’s something to be said for a short cab scene, but I doubt I want to write out the whole ride...
Whew! Yeah, that was a solid day, productivity-wise -- which is funny, because my body started giving me warning signals about upcoming period tonight. I guess I should just count myself grateful that I was spared too much brain fog today! But now it is time for me to hit the sheets -- got work tomorrow, and I'm in the front by myself thanks to my coworker taking another day off. Night all!
As for what I accomplished today -- well, it was honestly pretty busy, all things considered:
YouTube: I got in one YouTube video today by virtue of watching it this morning before starting anything else – “Paralives - Launch Trailer” by, well, Paralives! Because of course I had to watch the launch trailer the day the game launched. :p It was a cute little thing that started with “You live and then you die,” before following it up with “But at least…” and various ways Paras could “do it” in the game. Like in a nice house with their friends! Or with serious style thanks to all the customization in the Paramaker! Or in a good job that they can upgrade as they go! Or with creativity thanks to the advanced building tools! Or with love...if your love interest doesn’t reject you. Or with bugs, because this game very much is in Early Access! XD It was just – heartfelt, is the best way I can think of to put it. You can tell the team is very proud of what they’ve created so far. And they should be. Even if people sometimes get stuck inside fire hydrants when they’re walking around town. XD
Tumblr: As it was Monday, I just had Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) to worry about – and despite another late start, I did get some stuff done –
A) First, I straight-up reblogged a pair of posts I found on my dash:
I. A multi-part post by gandalfsbignaturals talking about how “learning to notice an absence of people of color is crazy” and how it starts to really stand out how so many silly memes and humanizations of inhuman characters/concepts/objects/whatever and other little innocent things like that feature exclusively white people because the creators, knowingly or unknowingly, make that choice. And how posts like this really make the racists come out and get mad. *nods* Reblogged because it’s an important thing to be aware of, so you can see yourself slipping into it and try to make better, more representative choices. (Note to self: maybe make the two guys who hire the Three Pillars in “They Would Have Done It For An Ottoman” non-white; there’s no reason for them not to be Severosi or Iruvian or from the Dagger Isles!)
II. And a multi-part post from faggotisaacfloofs giving people instructions on how to help someone who has fallen out of their wheelchair (inspired by how someone helped them in the exact way they wanted to be helped when they fell out of their chair), including “always ASK the person first if they need help, and feel free to leave them if they say ‘no, I’ve got it,’” what sorts of things they may need you to do (fetch a runaway chair, hold the chair steady so they can get in, offer an arm as a support, etc.), and how to engage the brakes on a manual wheelchair so the owner can get in; ghost-in-a-pinata screenshotting an additional comment from bug-jelly about how, unless the person is in immediate danger, you should NEVER move someone who has fallen to the ground and is unresponsive, because you might make things worse (especially if they have a neck injury) – instead, just stabilize them as best you can and call in the trained professionals; and aangel-biites providing a text ID for the above screenshot because ghost-in-a-pinata didn’t alt-text the image. Seemed like good, useful info for people to know in case they ended up in that situation – here’s the post if you want to read it and learn a thing too!
B) Then, I spent the rest of the time before lunch, and a bit of the time after it while waiting for my new game to download and install (see below), working on my “Valicer Headcanons: Your Name is WHAT???” post, which covers how Victor and Alice (and other members of larger polycules) learn that Smiler’s birth name is “Marmaduke.” This is a post that I’ve been meaning to make ever since hinting at it in the tags of my Easter Collection of Not-Incorrect Valicer Quotes, and as its rough draft was a lot closer to being done than the “Valicer Eats God” one, I decided to focus on it and see if I could get it ready for posting this week in anticipation of Smiler’s birthday next Sunday! And I’m pleased to say I ALMOST finished it – all of the write-ups for the various universes are done (ranging from “Smiler’s parents’ asshole neighbor lets it slip when Smiler makes him get his dog before it bites Victor” in the Modern AU to “Victor and Alice knew Smiler as Marmaduke FIRST as both Innies and Outies, with Innie!Smiler coming up with the name later after getting everyone to decorate the cubicles with Post-It notes, and Outie!Smiler only getting to correct the Outie!Victor and Alice when they got stuck in the elevator together” in the Severance AU – there were also two “Honorable Mention” write-ups for verses where Victor and Alice find out Smiler is Mar-Mal instead of Marmaduke), and I’ve linked almost all of the relevant tags for all of the verses. Just gotta finish up those, do any last-minute edits, and complete my tags, and this should be ready to chuck in the queue later this week!
C) And finally, a little earlier tonight, I reblogged a lovely piece of Discworld fanart from songthursh (which she did with stupidlynx) featuring Vimes and Vetinari meeting in the cemetery surrounded by lilacs on the Glorious 25th Of May from the end of the novel Night Watch (which is commonly considered to be the peak of the series). Because I didn’t want to miss the Important Discworld date and it WAS a beautiful piece of fanart. :)
*nods* Good productive time over here! I’m quite glad. :)
Paralives: Oh yes – as of today, I am officially the proud owner of the Early Access version of the newest life sim to hit the market! They tempted me into a launch day purchase with their sly wiles and cute art style and 10% discount for buying right away. XD (Discount available through June 1st, if you’re curious!) After installing, I played a short “getting my feet wet” session this afternoon, focusing on getting through the tutorial and about a day’s worth of Live Mode with my chosen premade family. How did it go?
Bit awkward and glitchily. But then again, Early Access title, so what the hell did I expect? :p More specifically –
A) My first act upon opening the game for the first time was to go into the settings and have a poke around there to get a feel for the defaults and see what I wanted to change. I ended up enabling edge scrolling for the camera (as I like having that, makes it easier to pan around) and lowering the background music to about half volume (because after dealing with the background music being waaaaay too loud at the start of Fallout: New Vegas, I wanted to preempt any problems here!) Just figured I’d get a few quality-of-life things out of the way before diving into the tutorial – but as I would later learn, I probably should have also fiddled around with the mouse sensitivity settings…
B) Having adjusted the settings, I then chose to start a new game in the main town of Melino – and, after a rather long loading screen with a cute animation of a drawing of a seed being planted in a pot, being watered, and growing into a little leafy plant in the corner (at least it was something to look at) – I was transported into the tutorial! Which takes place on a train going to Melino, happily chugging along the rails over bridges and through the countryside:
Isn’t it cute? I very much approve of this as a way to get someone used to your game. :D Anyway, I was introduced to the conductor, Roberto, and walked through some of the basic camera controls – how to pan left, right, up, and down (WASD or arrow keys); how to rotate the camera (right click and drag); and how to zoom in and out (scroll wheel) – before being directed to send Roberto into the next carriage (via the classic point-and-click “Go here” method). The second carriage contained all the premade Para families that you could start off with if you were so inclined hanging out in the seats doing their thing, along with a button to let you make your own household if you wished – as I knew deep in my soul that recreating my beloved Valicer OT3 was probably going to be a multi-hour, if not multi-day, affair in the Paramaker, I went with the premade couple the Darciers – consisting of the energetic, loves-cute-things-and-pink Solene and the gloomy, loves-dark-things-and-metal Kian – instead. The tutorial then took me through:
I. How Paras gained emotion cards from their current circumstances (Solene, for example, was inspired by the train ride), and how you could click on them to “pick a reaction” and give the Para a related want, which would remain until they went to sleep unless you pinned it (the tutorial one was “eat a snack”)
II. How to multiselect Paras (you basically click on the floor near them and drag out a big rectangle to select all the Paras you want to be in a group – those paras will then go places and do things together; the game had me select Solene, Kian, and Roberto, send them into the dining car, chat for a while, then eat some sandwiches on the snack counter)
III. How conversations work and how to pick new topics for Paras to talk about (basically, when Paras chat, a bar at the side fills up, and when it’s full, a “!” appears at the top to prompt you to pick a specific social interaction for one of your Paras to do – can range from just introducing a new conversational topic to trying out a kiss to all sorts of other stuff)
IV. How to keep an eye on Para needs (they currently only have four – hunger, bladder, hygiene, and tiredness – though as I understand it, depending on your Para’s personality, more specific ones might pop up) and what to do to fulfill them (such as “eat sandwiches” when they’re hungry)
Before ending by asking me to select my “storyteller,” who determines the save file’s difficulty and does things like provide special “together” social cards and nightly “chance” cards of a sort (where you can select new “life goals” for Paras to complete or things to happen to them the next day)! I went with Maxence, as she was supposed to be “Medium” difficulty and thus was probably about the level of micromanaging I’d come to expect from The Sims 4 (there’s also Stella the dog if you want the easiest experience, and Ricardo Castello III if you want a real challenge). *nods* All very interesting stuff – and a decent way to come to grips with some of the controls and what sort of systems are present in the game. *nods*
C) Once I’d gotten through the tutorial, the game went through the opening cinematic showing me the town and the train arriving in it (which was very nice – Melino is a REALLY well-designed place full of interesting architecture and places to visit and stuff to look at), then prompted me to buy a house for my couple. After looking through the options to see what they could afford (and giggling over the fact that the cheapest option was a tiny little alley in between another house and the local pharmacy), I decided to avoid throwing myself full-on into Build Mode for the time being (as I suspected I would end up wasting a lot of time in THERE too) and went with a nice little one bedroom, one bathroom apartment in the upper portion of a brick-and-plaster multifamily house for $24,848, which would leave them some money that they could use to, you know, live. The game then deposited them and me in front of their new digs and informed me that the pair had the life goal to “Settle Home,” which included such things as “get a job” (which both of them already had checked – Solene is a florist, while Kian is a chef), “buy a decorative item for their house,” and “cook a meal.” These seemed like reasonable goals to me, and I attempted to get them into their apartment so I could start fulfilling them –
And that is when things started to go a little screwy. Part of it was my fault, I admit – when I first arrived on the lot, I’d unthinkingly used the “change level” tool to go down a level to be on the same level as my Paras...forgetting that their apartment was on the SECOND floor. So when I tried to get them into their new digs, I was a little confused as to how to get in there at first until I remembered that. But part of it was also because the game didn’t immediately point out how to do certain things – for example, change the walls from “walls up” to “walls down” to “walls cutaway” mode. I had to stumble across it while poking around the UI at the top, wondering why I couldn’t see into their apartment even after returning to the correct level. And while doing all that and getting used to the camera controls, I discovered that the camera was pretty damn bouncy (though that MIGHT be a consequence of the apartment being on/near a hill, I admit), and the mouse pretty damn sensitive (I ended up flying all over the place). Eventually though, I figured out how to actually look inside their apartment, got them inside their new bedroom, and let them chat in there while I prepared to get them a nice decorative item from Build Mode –
Only to discover that, uh, I had no idea how to get into Build Mode. Because that hadn’t been pointed out either. *shifty eyes* Yeah, bit of an oversight, that! Baffled, I abandoned that idea for a bit to try looking at the newspaper, which had some new life goals I could give my Paras (to explore the town), and an article about the upcoming meet-up of the astronomy club, with a button to see where they’d be meeting. Which I foolishly clicked –
Leading to me getting catapulted over to a nearby park to see the spot. With me going “?! How do I get back to my Paras??” *facepalm* I really should have taken a bit at the beginning to check out the keybinds and some of the other controls more thoroughly. Fortunately, I was able to scroll back to the apartment, but THEN, while trying to pause time to get my bearings, I discovered that the [P] key is not pause – instead it opens the in-game photo mode. Which is fine, good to know, but not what I was looking for. (In case you’re wondering, the spacebar is what you hit to pause time.) And then when I tried to get out of THAT mode –
I somehow ended up in Build Mode??? I’m still not entirely sure WHAT I hit just then, just that it must have been a shortcut of SOME kind. O.o Yeah, I need to look at the controls for this game MUCH more thoroughly...
D) Still, Build Mode was where I was trying to go in the FIRST place, so I took the opportunity to get the pair their desired decorative item, deciding on buying them some cheap floral curtains for their bedroom windows (they don’t have a lot of money – Paradimes, if you’re curious – right now, so I didn’t want to do anything TOO expensive). I played around with how you can stretch and squash Build Mode items a bit, fitting the curtains to the windows a little better, then changed the swatches to a nice pink to suggest that Solene was the one who picked them out. :) Shortly thereafter, I figured out the CORRECT way to swap between Build Mode and Live Mode – the picture of a house in the bottom left corner, next to the portraits of Kian and Solene! Somehow I’d managed to completely miss that was there! *shakehead* This is why you need to highlight these things, Paralives – some of your players are NOT paying attention. XD
Now feeling rather more in control of the situation, I decided to have Kian go cook some instant rice, as I’d give him a want to do so earlier from feeling kind of stressed and it would fulfill the “cook a meal” goal of them settling into their new house. The pair thus headed over to the kitchen, Solene lingering by the fridge for a moment while Kian got his rice and put in the microwave –
And then Solene chose to sit down at the dining table. Which proved to be the worst idea she could have ever had, because the minute she sat down, she suddenly started glitching wildly between the seat and a spot in front of the fridge, bouncing back and forth super-fast. Kian was fine – he ate his rice without issue – but Solene could not be knocked out of her glitchy state. Not even pausing the game by going into the main menu could stop it!
As you could imagine, the game did not like one of the Paras constantly trying and failing to occupy two spaces at the same time, and its performance really started to chug as I tried to figure out what to do. Fortunately, not only does the game have a button you can click to pop out of the game and onto the web to file a bug report at the official Paralives site (which I did, complete with including the above screenshot), the main menu also has an “unstuck” button to fix Paras who might be stuck in an odd location or in a bad animation loop or something similar. And as Solene was definitely stuck, I hit it –
And she and Kian were immediately teleported back to the front of their house. With Solene no longer trying to glitch all over the place. Whew! Thank you for including that, Paralives team!
E) With that sorted, it was time to continue actually, you know, playing the game. As both Solene and Kian were a bit stressed, I gave them both the want to watch TV for a couple of hours and sent them to do that – though, unfortunately, I didn’t notice that the TV only had a single-seater chair in front of it, meaning that Solene sat in the bad chair at the dining table (which made me very nervous for a minute) and really just listened to the TV. At least she didn’t start glitching out again! Fulfilling that want coupled with the XP they’d earned completing the “Settle Home” life goals gave Kian enough XP to get a personality upgrade – the game gave me a few options of ways to improve his Cooking Talent further, and I went with adding “Inspiring Cook” to his roster, meaning he can now cook meals that help Paras skill up faster. *nods* Always useful! After that, I had Solene read an art book to fulfill her want of leveling up her Art skill two more levels, and had Kian read a repair book with her to level up his repair skill, which seemed like a smart thing to do:
No, I don’t know why they chose to stand in front of the bookcase instead of sitting in the chairs, but given how glitchy sitting was earlier, perhaps that was for the best. *nods* After that, I had them chat for a while to fulfill Kian’s want to spend two hours with Solene (focusing on friendship stuff for the most part because I’m still getting to grips with how the socializing system works in this game right now – and because Solene had a want to level up her friendship with somebody; not sure how much friendship stuff you have to do before you level up though), then sent Kian to go use the toilet because his bladder need was low and Solene to go get some sleep because her energy meter was draining (possibly because she’d used her own energetic nature to boost Kian’s energy meter a bit during the conversation). Kian joined her after flushing the toilet and washing his hands (both of which I had to tell him to do – you’re a CHEF, Kian! You should know to keep your hands clean!), and I hung out watching them sleep until the storyteller chance card thing popped up in the middle of the night (right around midnight, in fact). The game encouraged me to take the middle option of giving one of the Paras a new life goal, and thus Kian ended up with the goal to make a Level 3 friend. Again, don’t know how much friendship stuff you have to do to get to that point, but I guess we’ll eventually find out!
F) And with that, I ended my playsession with a final trip to the settings menu, where I turned the sensitivity on everything relating to the camera and the mouse down to 45 (which hopefully will help some of the camera bounciness and flying around issues), checked out all the key bindings so I had a better idea of which keys controlled what, and switched the 24-hour clock to a 12-hour one because I don’t particularly like 24-hour clocks. 12 is what I’m used to! *nods* I then shut down the game, went back to Firefox to finish my bug report from earlier (I’d swapped back into the game to make sure I could get the screenshot and to try the “unstuck” button), and gathered all my screenshots from Steam –
And noticed that, apparently, the game was still running. Which I found very confusing because, well, I’d just shut the damn game off, and I couldn’t see any indication of it still running in the background. I ended up stopping the game via the “STOP” button on its profile, and even THEN it took a good few minutes for it to actually properly shut down! *frowns* That’s concerning – I don’t like it. We’ll see what happens when I next boot it up!
So yeah – I’d say the game has good bones so far, but there are DEFINITELY glitches that you gotta watch out for, and it might not be the best optimized at the moment judging by that long shut-down. *shrug* What are you gonna do? I’ll continue poking at it as the Early Access period continues and see how things go! Maybe next time we’ll see about building something, get used to those controls...
Workout: Back on the bike again tonight – but rather than back with The Adventures Of Doc Mitchell In The Post-Post-Post-Apocalypse in Jon of Many A True Nerd’s “Fallout: New Vegas – Dust” series, I chose to instead watch the first half-hour of James Turner’s “Let's play Paralives for the first time! Full Build & Gameplay!” Because today was Paralives Day, as you have already seen, and I very much wanted to watch James play the game. Both because I was sure it would be a lot of fun, and because watching him play would probably help me come to grips with some of the controls and what was possible in Build Mode and all that going forward. As you probably saw above, I need all the help I can get. XD The first half-hour of his dive into Early Early Access (AKA, he got a code from the developers so he could play it before the official launch date) covered –
A) James diving into the Paramaker during the tutorial train section to recreate Semaj Renrut, his selfSim, as a selfPara in this game, and showing off all of the available age groups and a BUNCH of the customization options – including:
I. Flipping the order of your Para’s name around if you’re from a culture that puts the last name first
II. Indicating if your Para identifies as male, female, or nonbinary, with the appropriate pronouns (though there’s no option to add custom pronouns yet – hopefully at some point!)
III. Using the color wheel to adjust your skin tone or hair color until it’s just perfect – and having the option to adjust individual bits of each (like shadows on skintones, and highlights in hair)
IV. Using toggles to give your Paras mismatched earrings, or maybe a hearing aid on just one side
V. Molding Paras with the help of LOADS of little sculpting points you could push or pull to your heart’s content
VI. Layering clothing to create the perfect Para outfit
VII. And layering various skin details and moving them about the body (like putting a mole in just the right spot on your leg – there’s options for scars too, which will hopefully be handy when designing Alice...)
Like, yeah, maybe we currently don’t have many hairstyles or tops or shoes as we did in Sims 4, but there’s still LOADS of ways to make Paras look unique and get just the vibe you want.
B) James also showing off how you build a Para’s personality:
I. First, you get seven points to spend between your Para’s four main attributes – Physique, Mind, Creativity, and Charisma – each of which can be given a maximum of three. Semaj, for example, got one in Physique, and two in Mind, Creativity, and Charisma (it was going to be three in Creativity and one in Charisma, but James decided not to be mean to his new Para-self)
II. Then you choose your Para’s Vibe, which affects how they see the world and what emotions help them thrive the most – Semaj got Overjoyed, which meant he gets happy easily and likes to spread the joy around (hello, Smiler vibe!)
III. Then you choose their Social Perk, which dictates what kind of person they are when it comes to other Paras – Semaj got “Good At Making Friends,” which is what it sounds like on the tin (other options were “Good At Being Alone” and “Good At Cooperating”)
IV. Then you choose their Talent, which gives them a skill they’re best at – unless you say they’re “Good At Nothing,” of course… Semaj got “Technology,” which makes sense, given James is a Let’s Player
V. And finally, you can choose their Lifestyles – which currently include whether or not they’re a vegetarian (Semaj isn’t); if their sleeping habits make them an Early Bird, a Night Owl, or neither (Semaj got Night Owl), and if they’re Neat, Sloppy, or just average when it comes to cleaning (Semaj got left at Normal). I know there’s also a section to customize how they handle jealousy (AKA, if they’re at least somewhat poly or not), but I think that’s back in the same section where you customize their gender identity.
*nods* Not too shabby! I would appreciate maybe another core attribute or some more vibes or skills you could be talented in, but – Early Access. We’ll see how fine-grained it gets later!
C) James completing the tutorial after making ParaSemaj and going through all the stuff I went through above – how emotions and picking wants for your Paras works; how to multiselect people; how conversations work; and picking his storyteller! James wanted a challenge, so he went with Ricardo, which was interesting – we’ll see how challenging life with that guy in charge of the story really is!
D) And James watching as Semaj arrived in town before trying to pick a house for him so this didn’t turn into a building video...and then, after all of the houses for sale proved to be pretty expensive, buying that tiny plot of land between a town house and the pharmacy (the one that’s only $664) and turning this into at least partially a building video. Because building is what James does, damn it. XD To be fair, he was able to show off some cool stuff as he started building Semaj’s house, such as –
I. How you can build walls straight into hillsides in this game, and the game will automatically cut out the terrain for you
II. How you can use invisible separators to turn chunks of walls into separate “rooms” so you can paint them individually (as currently the paint-and-wallpaper tools only allow you to do an entire wall or an entire room, not individual wall chunks)
III. How easy it is to replace chunks of wall with a fence or a half-wall, in case you want to make a little balcony on the second story of your house
IV. How you can change not only the colors, but the textures of things like doors (Semaj’s front door could have ceramic textures if he wanted, which James admitted didn’t make much sense but looked very cool)
V. And, of course, all the fun stretching-and-squashing you could do, from pulling walls up to raise their heights to squashing windows down to give yourself some privacy on the street
Sure, some items weren’t quite finished – roofing tools are currently VERY simple, and James avoided using curved walls in the house he was building because you currently can’t place windows or doors on them – but there is still a lot to play with if you’re a builder! I think James is going to be very happy in this game indeed. :) I left off with him securing the downstairs windows with decorative bars and preparing to add a door onto the balcony – tomorrow, we’ll see the rest of the house take shape and how Semaj handles Live Mode! Hopefully better than I did!
Writing: I did get in my hoped-for writing session on “Londerland Bloodlines: Hollywood’s Deluded Depths” this eve after supper, adding a little over a page to Chapter 1! Said page-and-a-bit covered –
A) Alice leaving Knox and taking a quick look around the club to see if anyone was interested in propositioning her so she could use them to get a drink...only for no heads to turn in her direction. Which she allowed was a problem, as she wasn’t sure how to go proposition anyone herself without looking like a creep. The troubles of being extremely demisexual when you’re a vampire and your preferred method of getting blood is drinking from people trying to get you to have sex with them because then it’s at least somewhat consensual. :p
B) Alice being interrupted in these thoughts by the sudden appearance of a Jeannette in front of her, who noted she looked deep in thought, then allowed that she probably had reason to be, given all the trouble going on Downtown that she seemed to be in the middle of. Alice informed her it was not by choice and that if she’d had her way, Nines and LaCroix would still just be glaring at each other instead of one trying to actively kill the other – but as all ways Downtown were LaCroix’s ways… Jeannette agreed and asked if she’d heard the scoop about Therese becoming the Prince of Santa Monica and her getting a Baronship from the Anarchs – Alice confirmed she had –
Then admitted she was surprised that the sisters hadn’t chewed each other’s heads off, letting slip how she’d visited Mercurio earlier and mentioning how he’d been quite startled to see the two sisters apparently getting along despite being on opposite sides now. Jeannette picked up what she was putting down and commented that she’d have to do something to really piss off Therese – perhaps an Anarch rager in her club – and thanked Alice for the head’s up. *nods* Gotta keep in these ladies’ good graces – it will definitely pay off later!
C) Alice assuring Jeannette it was no problem, then asking her where a girl might be able to get a drink around here – Jeannette giggled and noted that the drinks generally came to her, then pointed out a girl at the bar she was familiar with named Kate, assuring Alice that if she said Jeannette sent her, Kate should be open for at least a nibble. “Just remember to save some for me!” Alice told her she’d never dream of denying her a chance to add a name to her little black book and thanked her for the tip – Jeannette thanked her again in turn, noting she’d been very helpful, and mock-reluctantly passed on some regards from Therese as well before telling her to hop along and flouncing toward the elevator to scheme with her sister. Alice noted as she left that she’d become rather more tolerable after making up with Therese – Caterpillar informed her that was because some of her previous behaviors were put-ons designed to deliberately get up Therese’s nose, so now that they were working together, she had less need of them. Hooray!
D) And Alice going over to Kate to see what she was up for – Kate was initially like “what’s your deal?” but the minute Alice said Jeannette had told her she might be up for a little bit of fun, she immediately switched gears, eagerly asking if Alice could do the same thing with her teeth Jeannette did, and practically dragging Alice off to the bathroom when Alice said she’d do her best and asked if she knew of a more private spot. As you might imagine, Alice was slightly put off by this, wondering if it was possible for mortals to become addicted to the Kiss (yes, it is – they’re called “blood dolls”) and resolving to find out so she knew to spread them out a little more often. Sorry Alice – couldn’t resist throwing a bit more worrying weirdness your way! But at least you’re getting a meal out of it and thus will be well-topped-up when you reach Hollywood.
Not bad at all, I think! Tomorrow, we’ll see if I pick up with Alice returning to the cab, or if I skip straight ahead to her and Victor entering Hollywood. I think there’s something to be said for a short cab scene, but I doubt I want to write out the whole ride...
Whew! Yeah, that was a solid day, productivity-wise -- which is funny, because my body started giving me warning signals about upcoming period tonight. I guess I should just count myself grateful that I was spared too much brain fog today! But now it is time for me to hit the sheets -- got work tomorrow, and I'm in the front by myself thanks to my coworker taking another day off. Night all!
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Date: 2026-05-28 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-28 03:44 am (UTC)