Strangetown, Here We Come.

Inspired by the disjointed conversation of Tumblr (and worry about annoying people with lost of text posts while attempting to have one, and so on...), I'd like to try to have a conversation here. What are you excited for in TS4 from what we've seen so far? The return of rotational gameplay? The breastfeeding option? The awesome cat vest?! Are you worried about the sim count and lot limit? Do you love or hate the style? Or are you over it all already? Let's hear it! :)

I'm not around as often as I used to be, so please talk amongst yourselves here as much as you like! I do get windows of time to participate (usually with a sleeping, teething baby worn on me in a carrier, or when my toddler wants to watch "the YouTubes"), so I will jump in whenever I can.

Also, hi! It's been a while. :) I miss this.

I'm back from my holidays. Did I miss anything exciting in the sims community? Any juicy gossip or amazing cc I should check out? I've already been catching up on the GoS Xmas in July posts—Wow! So much awesome. If there's anything you'd like me to check out from the past little while, please do tell.

I've been grappling with my next story update again. I loaded up a lot I've been working on, a scene in Faerie using that lot with the grain silo/tower in the field, but I got discouraged when half the plant cc I had placed was showing up as basegame replacement objects. I guess I'll need to relocate an older downloads folder with more plants in it until I finish that chapter. While I'm at it, does anyone have any other faery forest appropriate cc they'd like to recommend?

I'm finding I really don't have any patience for building sets anymore. The writing side of it seems to be coming back to me, but working with the game to make the scenes is harder. In my last short story, I avoided it altogether by going more abstract with them and taking the background entirely out, but I can't do that for the story proper. It's strange. I really want to work on the story, but the idea of setting up the images is just exhausting right now. Has anyone else gone through spells like that? Any tips?

I think the thing that really stands out for me now that I'm seriously considering my Maxis character shipping preferences is how I do not see either Dirk/Lilith or Angela/Dustin working out in the end. I never really have. Well, actually, I did have an early notion, when I first started to sim in Pleasantview, that Angela WOULD marry Dustin and live a terribly dissatisfying life of semi-poverty (Broke-style), with a criminal husband and a yard full of scary domerman pincers. (Have I mentioned my active imagination? This was way before I had any concept of sim storytelling for others. Just myself.) But now I just see Angela moving on to greener pastures, leaving Dustin to find someone else (Ginger Newson being my favourite contender at this point, given her parallel to Brandi, which is a life he knows all too well.)

I can't ever stop seeing Dirk eventually cheating on Lilith with Angela, causing a huge rift there. In my game, he always, always cheats on her, in fact. Usually with Angela, but sometimes with someone else, and often without any input from me. I don't know if he ends up with Angela, or if he eventually reconciles with Lilith, but somehow that HAS to happen for me. Lilith is all over the place for me. She nearly always gets tangled up with Don Lothario at some point in my game (*lowers voice* sometimes even while still a teen... Oh Don, you're just... yeah), and then I just see her as this amazing free spirit who maybe stays single forever. You know those amazing old ladies who were movie stars or artists or musicians, who were lovers to many famous people over the years (mostly men, but there were some exceptions, if you believe the rumours), but always stayed true to themselves and didn't settle down? Yeah, that's how I see Lilith Pleasant.

Also, Tara Kat/Chester Gieke is the nerdiest couple EVER, by far. Geeky nerds trump bookish nerds any day of the week. (That's one of mine, by the way, from my uberhood. The red hair is a bonus, but they also remind me of my cousin and her husband in an uncanny way, right down to the cat lady-ness and the too geeky/socially awkward to live hardcore videogame geek factors. I am so sold on that pairing. I've seen its proven results in RL, people! XD)

So, I'm opening the floor to other shipping chit-chat here. Please try not engage in any full-on shipping brawls, but if you feel the need to pen an impromptu shipping manifesto, then who are we to stop you? :D Go on and share your insights, amusing pairing stories from your game, and so on.

Man, it's been a while since I've been so involved in a discussion in simsecret (about warnings for gay content, and how this contributes to homophobia vs. it being a legitimate warning for the "genre" of slash). I don't always jump into the fray of these debates, but gender and sexuality are the topics where I can't help but suit up and yell, "Okay, let's play ball!" :P Yes, you could say they are my pet isms, in the sense that they are the ones I am mostly tuned in to.

If anyone wants to toss out their two cents (or more) here, we can continue the chat. Feel free to discuss and debate among yourselves. Just keep it clean, folks.

ETA: After using the sports metaphor above, I ended up with Centerfield by John Fogerty in my head. Argh! It's like I'm stuck at a family wedding back home in The Cove (name of hometownvillage has been changed to protect the guilty). :P

And I've added a music suggestion to hopefully lighten the mood (and because my SO has amassed something of a Big Fat Gay Music Collection).

Given that this Sunday, May 17, is the International Day Against Homophobia, it's interesting that I was recently called out for being heterosexist. To my face, by a lesbian. I was pretty embarrassed. (Not that it would be any better to have this pointed out in another way, but I felt pretty careless.)

( Details and some discussion ahead... )

Writing a chapter for The Round Robin Legacy has been an interesting challenge. I have so much respect for story legacy writers now. It's hard to take all the nonsense that can go on in a sim generation, and the mundane routine of it all, and spin it into a coherent and interesting narrative. I'm curious to hear about the working methods of other legacy writers, since I know a few of you who follow my story write one. Do you impose a story on your sims, and direct them in certain ways? Do you add more story details later, about things that didn't even really happen that way? Or is it all straight delivery of the facts, but through a narrative lens? 

( Some more thoughts on legacy writing... )

On a completely unrelated note, I had about about six inches of my hair cut off today. I went from long, flowing hair to a short, blunt-cut bob. I look a lot younger. Like I'm fifteen, but in a good way. I really like it.