The Return of Sunday Picspam - It Lives Again
It's been a long time since I did a big picspam or even a state of me post. It's silly to have been so long since I still check LJ several times a day. I think it's a combination of procrastination and apathy, both of which I've been trying to change.
First off, state of me. I am coming up on the end of two weeks off from work due to getting my gallbladder taken out. It started giving me issues right before Labor Day and after some tests, it was determined that it was full of stones and should come out. At first I didn't think too much of this. Sure, get the damn thing out so I don't have to be super careful about what I eat. Unfortunately, the closer it got to the date of the surgery, the more I started freaking out. It was minor freaking out to be sure, but it got harder and harder to focus on things I wanted to take care of without this constant buzz of worry cropping up in the back of my mind.
As I told a good friend who also games, "They're going to be going into my body and removing an organ. I've seen horror games start with a more innocuous scenario than that!"
Regardless of my worry, the day came and the surgery went off without any problems. I was home that night and back on my computer in a very drugged state. The folks I chat with regularly would tell you that I was very amusing that evening. I was definitely sore afterwards and for a couple of days it was painful to get up or down, but it was minor, all things considered.
Right now, I'm still sleeping about ten hours a day, but beyond that, I'm feeling fine. If the doctor gives me the okay on Monday, I'll be returning to work on Tuesday. I don't see any reason why they won't give me the go-ahead for that.
So now that the general life tl:dr is over, let me get into the sims related tl:dr…
One of the side-effects of stressing out about the surgery was that any forward momentum I had on working on 4.16 went out the window. Every time I sat down to work on the next update (and final one of Chapter Four), I found I couldn't concentrate. This meant that my goal to have it out before the surgery went out the window.
Once the surgery was over, I still wasn't up to concentrating on the update, but I still wanted to do something productive. This is why I can present to you PSEUDO SIMS! The info/download site for all things related to my sims from Pseudo.
Click on the Image
Beyond that, I've been slowly playing the Fall rotation through my hood. This means many sims are headed off to college, including one particular heiress.
Louise is liking this whole Young-Adult thing. She's being the antithesis of a Knowledge sim with her wants, but she's still enjoying the whole thing so far.
As I said in the last update, some sims had already headed off to college. I've got them kind of clumped into groups. There probably should be more time between them in uni considering their ages, but I'd rather play them closer together so the uni-years get time mushed a bit.
The first group and the pair that should have already graduated long before now are Alpha and Beta Toyanaga. For reference, they are the twins of Comet Thompson Toyanaga, Charlie's alien baby.
My original intention was to hold these two back so if they were compatible with any of the younger girls, I could hook them up. This didn't really work as well as I would have liked. After all, these two left for college when Chastity first became a child. Neither was really keen on waiting for girls (or boys in Alpha's case) that might be compatible.
In Beta's case, he really just doesn't want to settle down. He is a lazy Knowledge/Romance sim and is happy just sitting on his ass or playing the field. The dormie slapping him is named Rose and also happens to be a family sim that doesn't quite understand that she's dealing with half a romancer. This is the second time she caught him cheating on her. My gut instinct is that Beta will end up in a party house. He just doesn't seem to favor any one girl over another. We shall see.
Alpha ended up finding Carolina LongassnameIwillquicklyforget. No, it really is an awful last name. She will become Carolina Toyanaga when he graduates and gets married.
Carolina may look a little familiar. She's the rebuilt hood's version of Allyn Barrett, the downtownie with the cowboy hat that Kirstial killed back in 4.8. When I built the new hood, I couldn't bear to kill her, so I just gave her a makeover. She had a new name after all.
Alpha thinks she's awesome. They shall make me pretty babies with awesome cheekbones.
The next wave consists of only one sim. Charlotte Thompson. She's the oldest child of Sophie and Orlando Thompson. Before I had moved her into a dorm, I had taken all of the SSU bin sims and turned them into dormies. When she moved in, Jared Starchild was one of her dormmates. The two hit it off and are nearly inseparable.
So, when Louise and her crew started, Charlotte was a Sophomore and Alpha and Beta were almost to their senior year.
Louise's group will consist of her, Star, Jacob and Caleb Thayer, and Raleigh and Savannah Thompson.
Technically, Star should be older than Jacob, but through the vagaries of me switching up my house order every rotation, Jacob ended up going to college before all of the rest of them. That's him on the left. Caleb is on the right.
I'm currently assigning dorms randomly, with all of the first circle kids moving to the Greek House after their freshman year. The dorm Caleb got is also where Charlotte is. For some reason, these two guys got a big hate on for one another. There is more hate stalking going on there than any love stalking.
Speaking of stalking...
Raleigh and her sister Savannah are in the dorm I have come to call the 'Woohoo Dorm'.
Raleigh is CONSTANTLY being stalked by anywhere from 3-5 sims. I mean, to the point that they follow her into the bathroom and stand there as she pees or showers. It's insane how bad the stalking is. She absolutely loves it.
(Most of these dormies are unrecognizable because I spawned some new dormies to add variety to the mix. I think almost all of them ended up in this dorm.)
Last, but certainly NEVER least, is Star.
Star is definitely enjoying being a Young Adult, though she's been a little more low key about it than some of the others. This is probably because she's been her own person for so long, she doesn't need to become even more crazy than she already is.
It took me a while to decide on how to dress her. There's an outfit I've been thinking of hers for a very long time, but I wasn't quite ready to put her in it just yet. This top with a pair of jeans seemed like a good compromise.
One thing I HAVE given her, though, is her first tattoo. I've had the tattoo boxes for quite some time, but really only gave them a work-out when I was doing the non-BC thing for Archie. Mostly I didn't have anyone in Gen Four I felt needed one and most of Gen Five was too young.
Now that Star is old enough, she definitely would get herself inked. Hell, she'd do it beforehand if she could. ;)
While not technically part of the wave, one other sim got to go to Uni with this batch. George is now happily set up at SSU as a dormie and no longer has to work a cash-register. Yay for scholarship programs!
My standard procedure with townie and other teens I want to grow up is to get them to Uni through the standard method, then turn them into dormies. This way I don't have to worry about playing them, but they're available to graduate and move home with the sim they're interested in. This worked very well for both Meadow Thayer and Orlando Centowski.
This generation, George McCarthy will be going, along with two or three downtownie teen girls. Amar Hamilton, the vacation teen, was being considered for this particular scholarship program for a while, but I get the feeling that he's not really a one-girl kinda guy. He's been a gypsy date drop for three of my pleasure girls so far.
The next wave will consist of Noah and Aaron Thayer, Chastity, Oz, Mercedes, Hugh, Moon, and Austin Thopmson. Each of them will go while I play their house in the fall. The previous wave will all be sophomores (or higher) when they get in, and I should be getting Lou and Star settled into the greek house at that point. Right now, most of them are just getting moved into their dorms and given makeovers.
These two are Noah and Aaron Thayer, the first set of twins by Meadow and Jeremiah (yeah, I'll get to the second set in a bit).
With these two comes the second of the teens being moved up to Young-Adult hood. This lovely lady is Jenna Perry, the downtownie teen in the white jacket and the wild hair. She's also the same sim as Dicreasy's Carmen Legacy. She is awesome and Noah worships the ground she walks on.
It's funny because Noah definitely has Micah's goofy gene, but Jenna seems so serious all the time. Something about the two of them just clicks, though. My only regret is that they're far enough from the main line that I can't justify focusing on them in the story. Maybe if I find time, I'll do a sideline with them.
Next to make it to uni is Austin Thompson, youngest brother of Charlotte, Raleigh, and Savannah. He also has had, by far, the worst grow-up-outfit of them all. Some had outfits that didn't fit their character, but no one can work old-man-shorts in college unless it's maybe Halloween.
Austin is much happier now that I've given him a makeover! I think that hair looks fantastic on him and the glasses add that something extra. He's one of my sims this generation that's probably going to end up in a party house. He's a pleasure sim who hasn't really shown any interest in any one person, so... why force it.
I still haven't decided quite how I'm going to handle a party house for this generation. There's not enough of them to justify having a house for the girls and a house for the boys, so I may just combine them and deal with any proximity hook ups as they come.
Finally, the last one to make it to uni so far is Chastity Thompson. Besides Lou and Star, she's probably the best known of the sims that have made it so far, and that's because of her friendship with Oz, Hugh, and Moon.
Despite her closeness with the first circle, she will not be living in the Greek House. I expect she'll be around quite a bit, but she will not be living there.
Of course, with the playing of the rotations, this means the younger sims are also growing up. What I THOUGHT were my last two sims of the generation had finally made it to teen.
Zephyr turned out as fantastic as I was hoping. Anyone who's seen Katy's 'I Love Lucy' bc would know that Zephyr grew up to be a Romance sim. What they didn't know (and I didn't know until he actually rolled it) is that he would be a good boy and give me the LTW I was hoping for. Yes, it involves a number and an abundance of googly-eyed purple hearts. We're gonna have fun with that one.
Little Sam also grew up. She is probably the prettiest sim of the generation. There's just something about the combination of features she got from her parents that combines beautifully. The green skin and red hair are also a rather striking combo, but I think she'd be gorgeous no matter what her coloring.
Sam's popularity. I can't recall her LTW at this point, but it really isn't that important. For the most part, I just keep the LTWs in the background. Occasionally I let them guide how I deal with a sim, if it seems appropriate, but otherwise it gets fulfilled and then ignored.
THIS is where my sims decided to throw a few wrenches into my plans. As I said, I had assumed that Zephyr and Sam were the youngest of the generation. THEY had other plans.
I'm not going to go into too many details here about Miranda and Dean, but suffice it to say that the first circle just got bigger.
Of course, the next rotation, Meadow and Jeremiah were NOT to be out-done. They were the family sim power duo, so there was no way they were going to let anyone else come close to beating their child count.
And to think, I changed Meadow's LTW because I wasn't going to give her six kids.
*sigh*
Their timing was actually perfect too. Initially, I was only going to play them long enough to get Noah and Aaron off to college, but within moments of opening up their house, they gave me an unexpected lullaby. This meant that by the end of the rotation, they would not only have a baby, they'd have a toddler.
Of course, that wasn't quite good enough for them.
Yeah, the twin benefit kicked into overdrive. Thank god these two are too old to get pregnant again, because I have a feeling they would.
So, I'd like everyone to meet Rebekah and Reuben Thayer.
They're actually really adorable, and while I'm going to regret the population explosion that's going to come next generation, I can't regret letting them have the kids. Rebekah actually looks a lot like Meadow, while I think Reuben is the spitting image of Jeremiah.
BEST. GRANDFATHER. EVER.
This I the other reason I can't regret letting them have a couple more. Micah won't get a chance to really know them that well, but while he was there, he doted on both of them.
As a final comment, let me just say that population control will be employed much more seriously next generation.
I.. I'm really not sure what to say about this picture other than it's too.. something to not include.
(My simself's cats, Malakhi and Pashenko, who are sim versions of my two beasts.)
It's been so long since I did a picspam, I'm not going to go into details on all the houses, but I did play through the summer rotation with everyone and started the fall rotation. There were two rather incendiary events though, I should mention.
First, there was a thunderstorm at my simself's lot. As usual, a tree caught fire. As not so usual, the rain stopped almost immediately and left the tree burning away.
At first, I didn't realize it was still burning. It wasn't until the tree was already gone that I realized exactly what was happening. At this point, the dog house was on fire and it was headed towards Nate's little green house.
Nate was already out there panicking (which is how I realized what was going on), so I had him call the fire department.
The boys in yellow and blue realized it was a bigger than normal fire, so sent two guys to put it out. Does this make it a two-alarm fire?
Eventually they got the fire out, leaving several smoking piles of ash. Nate's neatness then kicked into gear and he began cleaning up all the ash piles. I thought this was probably the biggest fire I've ever had in my game.
Then I happened to be playing the Legacina lot and noticed that buy-mode was grayed out. Huh. It was thundering, so there must be a tree on fire somewhere, right? I've got the lot fairly wooded, so I started looking around to try and find the fire. It took me a little bit to realize that the fire wasn't outside.
Note to self: Don't leave the Bigfoot alone with a train set without giving it a sprinkler system or a fire alarm.
I almost lost Steve here. He was seriously close to dying, but with the help of the firelady Maura and Elijah and Shelby armed with fire extinguishers, they got the fire out.
There is now a fire alarm installed in the attic.
And so, there you have it. I'm alive, I'm playing my game, I'm still hoping to have an update out soon, and my sims like to foil my plans.
While it's a bit premature, it's very awesome to be moving gen 5 into college. I've been waiting for this moment for so long. Chapter 4 is almost done and I can get started on telling the stories for the current gen.
First, though, the finale of chapter four...
Until then... :)
First off, state of me. I am coming up on the end of two weeks off from work due to getting my gallbladder taken out. It started giving me issues right before Labor Day and after some tests, it was determined that it was full of stones and should come out. At first I didn't think too much of this. Sure, get the damn thing out so I don't have to be super careful about what I eat. Unfortunately, the closer it got to the date of the surgery, the more I started freaking out. It was minor freaking out to be sure, but it got harder and harder to focus on things I wanted to take care of without this constant buzz of worry cropping up in the back of my mind.
As I told a good friend who also games, "They're going to be going into my body and removing an organ. I've seen horror games start with a more innocuous scenario than that!"
Regardless of my worry, the day came and the surgery went off without any problems. I was home that night and back on my computer in a very drugged state. The folks I chat with regularly would tell you that I was very amusing that evening. I was definitely sore afterwards and for a couple of days it was painful to get up or down, but it was minor, all things considered.
Right now, I'm still sleeping about ten hours a day, but beyond that, I'm feeling fine. If the doctor gives me the okay on Monday, I'll be returning to work on Tuesday. I don't see any reason why they won't give me the go-ahead for that.
So now that the general life tl:dr is over, let me get into the sims related tl:dr…
One of the side-effects of stressing out about the surgery was that any forward momentum I had on working on 4.16 went out the window. Every time I sat down to work on the next update (and final one of Chapter Four), I found I couldn't concentrate. This meant that my goal to have it out before the surgery went out the window.
Once the surgery was over, I still wasn't up to concentrating on the update, but I still wanted to do something productive. This is why I can present to you PSEUDO SIMS! The info/download site for all things related to my sims from Pseudo.
Click on the Image
Beyond that, I've been slowly playing the Fall rotation through my hood. This means many sims are headed off to college, including one particular heiress.
Louise is liking this whole Young-Adult thing. She's being the antithesis of a Knowledge sim with her wants, but she's still enjoying the whole thing so far.
As I said in the last update, some sims had already headed off to college. I've got them kind of clumped into groups. There probably should be more time between them in uni considering their ages, but I'd rather play them closer together so the uni-years get time mushed a bit.
The first group and the pair that should have already graduated long before now are Alpha and Beta Toyanaga. For reference, they are the twins of Comet Thompson Toyanaga, Charlie's alien baby.
My original intention was to hold these two back so if they were compatible with any of the younger girls, I could hook them up. This didn't really work as well as I would have liked. After all, these two left for college when Chastity first became a child. Neither was really keen on waiting for girls (or boys in Alpha's case) that might be compatible.
In Beta's case, he really just doesn't want to settle down. He is a lazy Knowledge/Romance sim and is happy just sitting on his ass or playing the field. The dormie slapping him is named Rose and also happens to be a family sim that doesn't quite understand that she's dealing with half a romancer. This is the second time she caught him cheating on her. My gut instinct is that Beta will end up in a party house. He just doesn't seem to favor any one girl over another. We shall see.
Alpha ended up finding Carolina LongassnameIwillquicklyforget. No, it really is an awful last name. She will become Carolina Toyanaga when he graduates and gets married.
Carolina may look a little familiar. She's the rebuilt hood's version of Allyn Barrett, the downtownie with the cowboy hat that Kirstial killed back in 4.8. When I built the new hood, I couldn't bear to kill her, so I just gave her a makeover. She had a new name after all.
Alpha thinks she's awesome. They shall make me pretty babies with awesome cheekbones.
The next wave consists of only one sim. Charlotte Thompson. She's the oldest child of Sophie and Orlando Thompson. Before I had moved her into a dorm, I had taken all of the SSU bin sims and turned them into dormies. When she moved in, Jared Starchild was one of her dormmates. The two hit it off and are nearly inseparable.
So, when Louise and her crew started, Charlotte was a Sophomore and Alpha and Beta were almost to their senior year.
Louise's group will consist of her, Star, Jacob and Caleb Thayer, and Raleigh and Savannah Thompson.
Technically, Star should be older than Jacob, but through the vagaries of me switching up my house order every rotation, Jacob ended up going to college before all of the rest of them. That's him on the left. Caleb is on the right.
I'm currently assigning dorms randomly, with all of the first circle kids moving to the Greek House after their freshman year. The dorm Caleb got is also where Charlotte is. For some reason, these two guys got a big hate on for one another. There is more hate stalking going on there than any love stalking.
Speaking of stalking...
Raleigh and her sister Savannah are in the dorm I have come to call the 'Woohoo Dorm'.
Raleigh is CONSTANTLY being stalked by anywhere from 3-5 sims. I mean, to the point that they follow her into the bathroom and stand there as she pees or showers. It's insane how bad the stalking is. She absolutely loves it.
(Most of these dormies are unrecognizable because I spawned some new dormies to add variety to the mix. I think almost all of them ended up in this dorm.)
Last, but certainly NEVER least, is Star.
Star is definitely enjoying being a Young Adult, though she's been a little more low key about it than some of the others. This is probably because she's been her own person for so long, she doesn't need to become even more crazy than she already is.
It took me a while to decide on how to dress her. There's an outfit I've been thinking of hers for a very long time, but I wasn't quite ready to put her in it just yet. This top with a pair of jeans seemed like a good compromise.
One thing I HAVE given her, though, is her first tattoo. I've had the tattoo boxes for quite some time, but really only gave them a work-out when I was doing the non-BC thing for Archie. Mostly I didn't have anyone in Gen Four I felt needed one and most of Gen Five was too young.
Now that Star is old enough, she definitely would get herself inked. Hell, she'd do it beforehand if she could. ;)
While not technically part of the wave, one other sim got to go to Uni with this batch. George is now happily set up at SSU as a dormie and no longer has to work a cash-register. Yay for scholarship programs!
My standard procedure with townie and other teens I want to grow up is to get them to Uni through the standard method, then turn them into dormies. This way I don't have to worry about playing them, but they're available to graduate and move home with the sim they're interested in. This worked very well for both Meadow Thayer and Orlando Centowski.
This generation, George McCarthy will be going, along with two or three downtownie teen girls. Amar Hamilton, the vacation teen, was being considered for this particular scholarship program for a while, but I get the feeling that he's not really a one-girl kinda guy. He's been a gypsy date drop for three of my pleasure girls so far.
The next wave will consist of Noah and Aaron Thayer, Chastity, Oz, Mercedes, Hugh, Moon, and Austin Thopmson. Each of them will go while I play their house in the fall. The previous wave will all be sophomores (or higher) when they get in, and I should be getting Lou and Star settled into the greek house at that point. Right now, most of them are just getting moved into their dorms and given makeovers.
These two are Noah and Aaron Thayer, the first set of twins by Meadow and Jeremiah (yeah, I'll get to the second set in a bit).
With these two comes the second of the teens being moved up to Young-Adult hood. This lovely lady is Jenna Perry, the downtownie teen in the white jacket and the wild hair. She's also the same sim as Dicreasy's Carmen Legacy. She is awesome and Noah worships the ground she walks on.
It's funny because Noah definitely has Micah's goofy gene, but Jenna seems so serious all the time. Something about the two of them just clicks, though. My only regret is that they're far enough from the main line that I can't justify focusing on them in the story. Maybe if I find time, I'll do a sideline with them.
Next to make it to uni is Austin Thompson, youngest brother of Charlotte, Raleigh, and Savannah. He also has had, by far, the worst grow-up-outfit of them all. Some had outfits that didn't fit their character, but no one can work old-man-shorts in college unless it's maybe Halloween.
Austin is much happier now that I've given him a makeover! I think that hair looks fantastic on him and the glasses add that something extra. He's one of my sims this generation that's probably going to end up in a party house. He's a pleasure sim who hasn't really shown any interest in any one person, so... why force it.
I still haven't decided quite how I'm going to handle a party house for this generation. There's not enough of them to justify having a house for the girls and a house for the boys, so I may just combine them and deal with any proximity hook ups as they come.
Finally, the last one to make it to uni so far is Chastity Thompson. Besides Lou and Star, she's probably the best known of the sims that have made it so far, and that's because of her friendship with Oz, Hugh, and Moon.
Despite her closeness with the first circle, she will not be living in the Greek House. I expect she'll be around quite a bit, but she will not be living there.
Of course, with the playing of the rotations, this means the younger sims are also growing up. What I THOUGHT were my last two sims of the generation had finally made it to teen.
Zephyr turned out as fantastic as I was hoping. Anyone who's seen Katy's 'I Love Lucy' bc would know that Zephyr grew up to be a Romance sim. What they didn't know (and I didn't know until he actually rolled it) is that he would be a good boy and give me the LTW I was hoping for. Yes, it involves a number and an abundance of googly-eyed purple hearts. We're gonna have fun with that one.
Little Sam also grew up. She is probably the prettiest sim of the generation. There's just something about the combination of features she got from her parents that combines beautifully. The green skin and red hair are also a rather striking combo, but I think she'd be gorgeous no matter what her coloring.
Sam's popularity. I can't recall her LTW at this point, but it really isn't that important. For the most part, I just keep the LTWs in the background. Occasionally I let them guide how I deal with a sim, if it seems appropriate, but otherwise it gets fulfilled and then ignored.
THIS is where my sims decided to throw a few wrenches into my plans. As I said, I had assumed that Zephyr and Sam were the youngest of the generation. THEY had other plans.
I'm not going to go into too many details here about Miranda and Dean, but suffice it to say that the first circle just got bigger.
Of course, the next rotation, Meadow and Jeremiah were NOT to be out-done. They were the family sim power duo, so there was no way they were going to let anyone else come close to beating their child count.
And to think, I changed Meadow's LTW because I wasn't going to give her six kids.
*sigh*
Their timing was actually perfect too. Initially, I was only going to play them long enough to get Noah and Aaron off to college, but within moments of opening up their house, they gave me an unexpected lullaby. This meant that by the end of the rotation, they would not only have a baby, they'd have a toddler.
Of course, that wasn't quite good enough for them.
Yeah, the twin benefit kicked into overdrive. Thank god these two are too old to get pregnant again, because I have a feeling they would.
So, I'd like everyone to meet Rebekah and Reuben Thayer.
They're actually really adorable, and while I'm going to regret the population explosion that's going to come next generation, I can't regret letting them have the kids. Rebekah actually looks a lot like Meadow, while I think Reuben is the spitting image of Jeremiah.
BEST. GRANDFATHER. EVER.
This I the other reason I can't regret letting them have a couple more. Micah won't get a chance to really know them that well, but while he was there, he doted on both of them.
As a final comment, let me just say that population control will be employed much more seriously next generation.
I.. I'm really not sure what to say about this picture other than it's too.. something to not include.
(My simself's cats, Malakhi and Pashenko, who are sim versions of my two beasts.)
It's been so long since I did a picspam, I'm not going to go into details on all the houses, but I did play through the summer rotation with everyone and started the fall rotation. There were two rather incendiary events though, I should mention.
First, there was a thunderstorm at my simself's lot. As usual, a tree caught fire. As not so usual, the rain stopped almost immediately and left the tree burning away.
At first, I didn't realize it was still burning. It wasn't until the tree was already gone that I realized exactly what was happening. At this point, the dog house was on fire and it was headed towards Nate's little green house.
Nate was already out there panicking (which is how I realized what was going on), so I had him call the fire department.
The boys in yellow and blue realized it was a bigger than normal fire, so sent two guys to put it out. Does this make it a two-alarm fire?
Eventually they got the fire out, leaving several smoking piles of ash. Nate's neatness then kicked into gear and he began cleaning up all the ash piles. I thought this was probably the biggest fire I've ever had in my game.
Then I happened to be playing the Legacina lot and noticed that buy-mode was grayed out. Huh. It was thundering, so there must be a tree on fire somewhere, right? I've got the lot fairly wooded, so I started looking around to try and find the fire. It took me a little bit to realize that the fire wasn't outside.
Note to self: Don't leave the Bigfoot alone with a train set without giving it a sprinkler system or a fire alarm.
I almost lost Steve here. He was seriously close to dying, but with the help of the firelady Maura and Elijah and Shelby armed with fire extinguishers, they got the fire out.
There is now a fire alarm installed in the attic.
And so, there you have it. I'm alive, I'm playing my game, I'm still hoping to have an update out soon, and my sims like to foil my plans.
While it's a bit premature, it's very awesome to be moving gen 5 into college. I've been waiting for this moment for so long. Chapter 4 is almost done and I can get started on telling the stories for the current gen.
First, though, the finale of chapter four...
Until then... :)