The Grouch's Trash Pile [Baldur's Gate 3]

I also did a week of the Abandoned/runaway kids, which turned out... kind of underwhelming. Giving them a tent, a cooler, and a potty chair for the baby made things too easy, even though I only got them the two-person tent.



On the left, we have Minuet (the teenager) and Madeline (the baby), and on the right, Meryl. Since they're remakes of some sims 2 sims I tried to match their personalities, so Minuet is good, neat, and insecure (a custom trait that's about as close a match to shy as I can find), Meryl is erratic, athletic, and outgoing (she should be clumsy, but children can't be clumsy in this game??? what.) and Madeline is independent.

Minuet not being able to go to school because they have to look after Madeline has had no repercussions other than his responsibility character value going completely into the red. Meryl goes to school and generally finishes her homework and looks for collectibles. They had a few days of particularly easy going because Olivia Kim-Lewis invited Meryl over, so they all freeloaded for a few days and no one seemed to care. I moved them on after that because it was too easy and kind of boring, but even shuffling them around from community lot to community lot wasn't that bad. The worst part was watching Minuet or Meryl route all the way around to where Madeline used to be, despite me canceling the action, then have to run back to her because she'd already tried to toddle to them. Next round I'm going to sell their gear and have it so that they have to change lots every 24 hours. Madeline will be grown up to child so Minuet will be able to go to school and work, and her and Meryl will be able to... look for collectibles, I guess? :/ It's amazing how much children aren't allowed to do unless they have child-specific objects, even though they can be left alone and roam around as much as they want. I have a few mods that allow them to garden and take odd jobs, but... giving them child-specific skills that only unlock 'real' skills once maxed was a mistake, imo.

Next up will by the 100 baby household, when I get around to it.

 

I was just thinking about how incredibly tedious school is for children in Sims games -- they go for 7 hours a day 5 days a week, return home with homework that takes them 2ish hours, and get almost nothing for it. In Sims 4 they don't build any skills at school (you have to grind those in the kids' scant free time), they don't make friends unless you intentionally nerf their performance, they don't get any item rewards. All you get is them off the lot for 7 hours and a grind to micromanage when they're back, in return for some 'responsibility' character value if you have the right pack, and being able to start a career at a slightly higher level... which is damn near pointless with how easy the low level promotions are to earn.

It feels, uh, kind of damning of the American school system that it's portrayed this way in an American-made life sim. It's just useless busywork, right up through university -- which in Sims 4 takes literally their entire young adulthood.

 

I think I'm going to disband my reality tv house -- they'll be interesting for 2, maybe 3 days, then as more of their needs drop into the orange they start doing a lot of idling. It seems like that instead of dropping a necessity from their queue when they find it occupied, they stand around waiting for it to be freed up, and will wait a very long time before dropping the command entirely. They only drop it in a timely manner if the object is broken. But they also sometimes just seem to get locked into an activity for no reason -- I had Selwyn gardening, and wanted him to stop to answer the door, but the command just kept popping back up right where it was, not queued up, and to make matters worse, he started standing around for a long time between each plant he gathered.

They might be more entertainingly chaotic if I removed some mods, but they might also have even worse simulation lag. And, honestly, a bunch of smelly, annoyed sims aren't that fun to watch. It might be more interesting if Selwyn wasn't afflicted with the same queue lag problem and had a chance of herding the more effectively. Overall, though, I think sims that can take care of their needs have more opportunity to be entertaining weirdos than ones that are suffering. (And Selwyn, dear that they are, just... isn't that interesting. Guysbert would have been a much more interesting controllable sim.)

The Abandoned Kids household I'm going to freeform. I should have kept them to one neighborhood in the first place, not given them any items, and had them move lots every day, but that might have ended up more tedious than challenging. As it is, though, Madeline has grown up to child so Minuet can go to school now, if I don't just have them quit via mods. He got into a relationship with Jeb Harris, so I'm going to have them visit and crash there, and once they've made friends with the family, move in (assuming MCCC doesn't go "Whoops, the mom is preggers, no home for you!").

The relationship developing was interesting -- Jeb rebuffed Minuet's attempts at flirting even after he flirted with Minuet, and Wicked Whims gave me a message that he finds Minuet unattractive... right before he flirted a bunch and then kissed them. Okay??? He found Minuet asking him to be their boyfriend afterward appealing enough. (You'd better not be just settling and on your way to greener pastures in adulthood, pal, because Madeline is going to become a witch later and she WILL curse your balls off.)

My anglerfish mermaid, however, is going swimmingly (heh), despite some difficult situations. Lokelani is appealing enough according to WW's attraction system that she had no trouble luring in a plethora of prospective mates; the first was a married man (a Gallery dl that I placed in Sulani) who, despite his initial embarrassment at having a quickie with a stranger, got over it fast. Too bad for him that now that he gave her a baby she's not all that interested in him anymore! Her next partner was a very pretty fellow mermaid (and another Gallery dl) who is an annoying snot... but the risky chances worked out in her favor and now she never has to talk to him again. 8)

HOWEVER, she has like... no money. Even her empty shell house was expensive, even though it hardly has anything in it -- a twin mattress, a toilet and sink, a counter, and a trash bin, and a grill outside. Money was tight enough that I didn't pay her bills thinking eh, it's off the grid anyway, she doesn't need power or water, not realizing that Sims 4 still has a repo man. Oops. He wasn't interested in her pleas to not take her bed and toilet... so later I'm going to have her seduce him (esp. if I can do it with her modded mermaid powers), get pregnant, and then drown him! 8D

But for now that leaves her with two babies, one almost a toddler, and almost no money for toddler necessities. The gardener career doesn't pay much and even though she has a lot of produce growing, that's not worth a lot. She has a woodworking bench, but the items aren't worth much (I may need to trade it in for an easel). So... it's time to slow down on the babies for a little bit. I have to temper her popping them out as fast as possible with not making things annoying/frustrating for myself. Since I hat the school system (and why would a mermaid bent on overtaking the islands send her children to school anyway) I'm going to change the criteria for aging kids up early to something skill-based, and maybe keep teens around for a little longer still to earn money for the household. Whatever ends up most fun.

I'm also going to have to let myself play less of Sims 4 in general, because it tends to eat my brain even if I'm not really having fun, and that's really not good.

 

Oh, right, pictures of Lokelani Iona --

Human form:





and anglermaid form:




I couldn't make her mouth as alarmingly wide in mer form as I wanted, but rest assured, she does have appropriate teeth.

 

Why's it gotta be conjunctivitis o'clock :(

 

Ugh, and I have some kind of crud on top of that. Fucking HOW??? Is my immune system just throwing another dumb tantrum again?

 

Application of hot compresses regularly through the day yesterday helped my eye a lot. It's not all better, but it doesn't hurt now, my eye is much less pink, and my eyelid is less swollen. My other eye was feeling iffy last night, but it's also better today.

I also feel tentatively better after yesterday's "wtf is this respiratory fuckery?". I have no fucking clue what was going on there??? All I can figure is that I've become particularly weather sensitive, since it was really stormy (J just told me a big low pressure front is moving through the area), and one of my ears was also giving me grief until the weather started letting up in the evening.

 

Ugh, and now my 'good' knee is decidedly not anymore. It'd started making soft crackly noises when I did squats like... last year sometime? It took me a while for me to realize it wasn't the ancient linoleum. Lately it's started to hurt like my left knee (the one with the luxating patella) did when it started to get really unstable, and tonight when I had to bend down to get something I heard it creak. Not felt it, heard, like a muffled door hinge -- that has a bug caught in it, because there's a long crrrrrunch at the end.

I'm used to my body emitting various crackles and pops -- I'm middle aged and sit too much -- but this is a big old WHY. I think my days of doing squats are over, though :(

 

Ever since I played FF15, almost every evening when I start wrapping up for the night I hear Noctis's "It's bedtime" in my head.

Eye is doing better, knee is doing better. For a while my eyelid was swollen enough I looked like Quasimodo, which does nothing for my self-esteem. It's mostly de-puffed now, thankfully. Knee... now I can sit down and get up without having to ease into it! There's still Something Wrong that feels (and sounds...) like it's permanently wrong, but I'm not housebound-level of hurt. It's something to bring up to a doctor, at any rate. My mother reminded me that osteoarthritis runs in the family, so that might have something to do with it. :/

 

Managed to drag myself, kicking and screaming, into doing some of my much-neglected Python coursework. My huge hangup has been being bored stupid by having to go over all the basics of a new language, again. I finally managed to tell myself "jfc stop being a big baby and just skim the reading before doing the assignments, the assignment pages have a widget you can pull the text up on while you're doing them" and that worked. I also made myself stop after about an hour and a half to go take a walk even though my brain was MUST DO MORE because trying to do as much as possible all at once never ends well.

Like yes, this is an ADHD problem, but it's also a self-discipline problem in a 'yes you gotta make yourself do shit sometimes' way but also a 'yes you do have to use specific strategies' way. I'm confused and annoyed at WHY I'm so resistant to using specific strategies when I know I like structure, I thrive with structure, I know certain strategies work for me, but my brain is all "waaaah boohoohoo I don't WANNA and you can't MAKE ME" about it when it's not externally enforced. I need a strategy to get my brain to go along with following strategies. :|

 

ADHD fistbunp of solidarity and commiseration

 

"Always use space bar to indent source code in Python." ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

it ditched brackets for this picky bitch bullshit? ugh

 

I don't have any reason not to use IDLE at this point, so it can handle that fussy business for me, but seriously? Seriously.

 

There are so many better ways than typing each individual space ffs.

I use Python in my day job. Have for three years now. I have never, never typed the spaces like that. I usually use an IDE that handles it, but even if I'm in vim I have it configured to convert tabs to spaces. Because no thank you.

 

This class text is very. Hmm. I suspect it's pretty old and has only been updated in pieces; it talks about how the Python Imaging Library hasn't been migrated to Python 3 yet and has a link to the now-dead site. :X But it's still on offer as an actual course for actual credits, so...

 

PIL? I use Python 3.6 for all my image processing stuff, and PIL is the backbone of everything I do. So yeah, it works with 3.

 

ROFL yeah I looked it up after I clicked the dead link and was like, "Just how old is this course material???"

 

I also use IDLE because I think more intense UIs are confusing and made to annoy me, and I do not have any particular feelings about space bars. This is what I do for fun and did for a grade, so if it were that big a deal to use tab or space exclusively, as long as everything lines up, I think I would have noticed? I'm pretty sure I use tabs.

 

The class text suggested sticking with IDLE because it just kind of hands that by default.

I really wonder about the wording though... it made it sound like people are going around doing their coding in MS Word or some shit.

 

New icon of Iolis courtesy of @Enzel !

I saw the ones they posted on their bloggette and was immediately like, "TAKE MY MONEY O_O". I could not resist.

I also commissioned one of Yisun:


And I've been busy going around changing my avatar various places to one of the two.