#a book I'd buy

[episims]

What We Need Is... More Books

After long last I realized that instead of battling with the constant urge to swap my book defaults, I could just give my sims more books to read.

This mod combines both of mine + iSimChi's book defaults and makes the game randomize between those for each genre. So instead of 7 books, there are 21 ✨

I made my older covers use the pages of my newer ones since they have more details.

The mod also fixes the following book behavior:

Books placed outside of bookshelves will no longer turn upwards when a lot is loaded

The 'read to sleep' interaction (that was added in Apartment Life and appears on minors who are in bed but haven't yet fallen asleep) will use children's books instead of the skilling one

This mod consists of two files. In addition to the mod file, there's a texture file that includes the needed book defaults.

If you want to use the mod with some other defaults, simply replace the textures from the texture file. You can also use that file as a base for making your own default set of 21 books.

📚 Download (SFS) (alternate)

Free Time is required. Conflicts with other book cover default replacements, remove those before using these. Also conflicts with ftminifixes by Pescado, if you want to use both make my mod load last (you'll lose the golden book that ftminifixes brings back to the reward bookcase since this mod randomizes textures for that bookcase too).

⚠️ A replacement for novel icons isn't included. You'll probably want to get the one from my newer defaults, as those covers will be used for the novels with the included texture file.

Many thanks to @isimchi for the permission to use their awesome textures 💜 for full credits, please see the original posts.

Update (11.11.2024): The covers are now also randomized for the bed/hammock reading interactions and for the film & literature reading while walking hobby idle. For all of these, sims can now also pick books other than skilling and will show an individual taste in books based on the sim's interests, hobbies, and aspirations, as well as on 3t2 traits* if those are used.

*Includes trait checks for bookworm, computer whiz, dramatic, hopeless romantic, natural cook, and perceptive.

All the books have 512x512 textures and use a 64x64 specular map. The mod file includes improved material definitions that also fix some lighting issues for the drama and the scifi books.

[bonefall]

the worst parent poll made me realize just how many ppl in the fandom are willing to jump straight into abuse apologia. bc on one hand you have ppl dumbing down crow's abuse to "him just being mean" and on the other end you have ppl saying that curlfeather didnt abuse frostpaw because she sacrificed herself and frost + her siblings love her so she couldnt possibly be an abuser. truly mindboggling stuff take these serious topics away from the fandom asap.

Part of me feels like it's because many in this fandom have a feeling that if a character's actions are abusive, it means you're "not allowed" to like them. Like there's an impulse where if you liked a character, it MUST mean they weren't THAT bad, because you'd personally never like "an abuser."

As if it reflects poorly on your own morality, as a person, that you connected with An Abuser. Understood them, even. Even if it was just a character.

If it's immoral to Like Abusive Characters, of course your reaction is going to end up being abuse apologia. To enjoy something isn't logical, it's emotional, so you will get defensive about it when questioned. When you do, it's not going to be based on logic because you didn't reason yourself into that position in the first place. It's an attack on you as a person.

I feel like that's often the root of abuse apologia in this fandom, and sometimes the world at large; "If I admit that this character/person IS abusive, it means I was doing something bad by liking them, so I have to prove to everyone else that they weren't or it means I'm bad too."

And to that I say... That's a BAD impulse! Grow up and admit you resonated with a character that did a bad thing! If that's an uncomfortable thought, sit with it!

Sometimes abusers are likeable! They usually DO think they're justified in their actions, or doing it for "a good reason," or were just too preoccupied to care. MOST of the time, people who commit abusive actions are also hurt or traumatized in some way. You might even empathize with them. None of this means their actions have to be excused or downplayed.

"Abusers" aren't a type of goddamn yokai, they're people just like you and me. You don't help victims of abuse by putting the people who hurt us in an "untouchable" category.

In fact, all it does is make you less likely to recognize your own controlling behavior. You're capable of abuse. People you love are capable of it, too. People who love YOU can still hurt you.

In spite of how often people regurgitate "It's Ok To Like A Character As Long As You're Critical Of Their Actions," every day it is proven to me further and further that no one who says it actually understands what that means.

All that said; I think it's no contest which one's a worse parent, imo.

They both mistreated their children, but Curlfeather did it through manipulation without verbal or physical abuse. She politically groomed her into a position of power so that she could use her as a pawn. It can be argued if this counts as child abuse-- but it's firmly still under the broad category childhood maltreatment, which is damaging.

(though anon I'm with you 100% at seeing RED when "but she sacrificed herself" is used as an excuse. Curlfeather's death does NOT CHANGE what she did to Frostpaw in life. I think it's a valid point to bring up when comparing her to another terrible parent for judgement purposes, such as in the context of this poll, but I really hate the implication that redemption deaths "make up" for maltreatment.)

Crowfeather, meanwhile, is textually responsible for putting Breezepaw through verbal AND physical abuse, as well as child neglect. His motivations include embarrassment from a hurt ego, revenge on his ex, and being sad because of a dead girlfriend. This abuse drives Breezepelt towards radicalization in the Dark Forest.

You could argue Curlfeather is a worse person for Reedwhisker's murder, but as a parent? It's not even a question to me. Crowfeather's one of the worst dads in WC.

[mirai-e-jump]

Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger Photo Book: ~King of Kings~ Character Bromides

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

I think it's a rumour started by a parody joke account, but the way we all heard a variation of "F1 driver Franco Colapinto hits it off with Norwegian Princess" and immediately went:

[baiyubai]

that time Lord Guardian of Haixing and Black Cloaked Envoy of Dixing went grocery shopping

[anne-bsd-bibliophile]

The Demon of the Lonely Isle by Edogawa Ranpo

Whatever challenge or hardship we face, it is never as dreadful as that which we are able to imagine.

- Edogawa Ranpo, The Demon of the Lonely Isle

Our youthful spirits were still capable of enjoying such adventures and thrilled at keeping secrets. Added to this, the type of relationship that existed between Michio and myself meant we were more than just 'friends'. Michio's affection for me was atypical - although I didn't really comprehend how he felt, I understood it on an intellectual level - and like any normal romantic sentiment it wasn't necessarily unwelcome, so when we were face to face, there was a kind of sweet sexual tension in the air. This tension perhaps made our 'game' all the more pleasurable.

- Edogawa Ranpo, The Demon of the Lonely Isle

Nobody can see the plight we're in, we can't see each other's faces. After we die, our bodies will lie here undiscovered for eternity. But just as this place has no light, it has no laws, no morality, no customs. It is another world, where humanity is extinguished. In the short time we have left, I want to disregard all such formalities. We need not feel embarrassment or jealousy, or hide behind good manners or put on a show anymore. We're like two newborn beings, the only living creatures in this primordial darkness. - Edogawa Ranpo, The Demon of the Lonely Isle

A little bit of darkness and people fall to pieces. Get a hold of yourself. Where there's life there's hope.

- Edogawa Ranpo, The Demon of the Lonely Isle

Fun Fact:

Ranpo's friend and fellow detective writer Yokomizo Seishi (1902-81) wrote, 'the love for the same sex, which had been a long-standing desire of the author [sakka no hisashiki ganbō de atta dōseiai], had finally been incorporated into this novel.' An insert to another multivolume collection of Ranpo's works published in 1938 and 1939 emphasizes in boldface type that Kotō no oni is 'a work in which the author dealt with the topic of same-sex love.'

- Jeffrey Angles, Writing the Love of Boys pages 14-15

[justvea18]

2023 me: goddamn iliad has 24 books?! How do you expect me to study that shit😭

2024 me: hahahaha........

[aerisan-ace]

I'm so normal about this musical

[salvadorbonaparte]

Americans, especially New England residents: if I had roughly $600 each month for groceries and other activities (rent, utilities, internet and phone contract would already be paid) would that be enough to survive on

[gothicprep]

i'm currently reading a book called "you are what you watch" by walt hickey. the chapter i'm on right now is called "commerce and culture and commence", and what hickey is describing in this chapter is something similar to a flywheel – the idea of a book or movie or tv show leading to people buying merchandise, which in turn leads to them going to amusement parks. he's zeroing in on a very specific part of pop history that i had completely forgotten about, the warner brothers' studio store. it's discussed as the missing link between the entire history of pop culture before the 90s and everything that's followed since then.

hickey explains that, before the wb store was innovated, pop culture merch was for children. tv shows about batman, for example, didn't lead to adults wearing shirts about batman. it was all targets to kids. disney locked in on this idea of connecting merchandise to films very, very early. the empire strikes back was the one that really capitalized on this in particular, but star wars in general realized again that you can sell toys to children based on the thing they'd seen. but the thing that warner bros studio store did is that they tapped into the aging boomer audience that had money and were nostalgic. bear in mind, this is 1991, so boomers at the time would have been in their 30s and 40s.

after batman came out in 1989, it was the biggest movie of the year, so wb produced a little bit of adult merch for it, and it sold out almost immediately. then they quickly realized that there was a big demand for batman pins and memorabilia from those boomers. this wasn't just nerds in fandom spaces, these were genuinely mainstream individuals. again, this was the biggest movie of the year.

if you look at the warner brother's library, it's not the cuddly mickey mouse stuff. it's the snarky looney tunes stuff. so wb thinks to themselves, "hey, we're in the 90s. this could work." hearing the people interviewed in the book talk about the development of the store is so interesting because they immediately realized where their strengths were – ignore kids entirely, try to poach people from department stores and design studios instead, and make the kinds of things that people will want to actually buy, except it has daffy duck on it.

what really jumped out to me was that the pop culture artifacts became representations of identity, and wb basically discovered this accidentally. there's a moment in the book about the specific looney tunes characters being targeted to specific groups of people. the consumers didn't want all the looney tunes on their shirt, they wanted one specific character. they had no idea this identity component even existed until they started selling stuff.

the architect of this was a woman named linda postell, who's interviewed in the book. she mentions that, early on in development, all the men who would buy foghorn leghorn stuff would all basically look the same. if they bought harley davidson, they were a taz guy. etc.

there are a lot of looney tunes characters, and wb mined their archives to appeal to more people. before the store concept, marvin the martin was only in about 20 minutes of the cartoon in the aggregate. they slap him on merch, and suddenly, the IT guy has him on his mug because he's persnickety. within a few years, marvin is refereeing space jam. the people who pulled this off were fucking geniuses. you're not only evoking memories of someone's childhood, you're doing it in a way that articulates something about that person in the process.

i'm a millennial, and my generation sorted itself into one of four hogwarts houses. we had that burst of post-apocalyptic fiction that required people to sort themselves into one of five classes. there was star wars and their weird "are you the light side, or the dark side?" campaign. this strategy has been employed by people in the entertainment industry where content design is all a downstream of this.

this next bit isn't in the book at all. it's just my hot take. but i feel like this has been actively destructive to the world of culture criticism, consumption, and enjoyment in very real and specific ways. in what we see in so many of the arguments over things like star wars, there's this thing that's like "star wars is my identity, so i have to defend what i believe to be the correct version of star wars". or, "marvel is my identity, and i can't stand dc people". or vice versa, "dc is my identity. i love zack snyder movies. these marvel movies are trash. put them on the curb". the adaptation of culture around this tribal behavior, imo, has made it very difficult to actually make culture that's resonant while also not allowing itself to give in to that competitive nature.

if you were to consider the release pattern and the mentality around the snyder cut, it becomes difficult to disentangle it from this. there was an underdog perception around it, despite the fact that these are fans of one of the two biggest comic book universes in the world. "i have been wronged. i have ought to be compensated for this in the form of a film made to my specifications."

there are elements of it that, ugh, good isn't the word... i guess allowed us to understand a deeper reason why some things resonate with us and others don't. with sitcoms and relating to a specific character, rather than the entire ensemble cast, is sometimes how people get clued in on a specific show. that was the case with friends and cheers. having on-ramps into pop culture for different people isn't the worst thing in the world. and understanding that people do take this seriously enough that they can articulate an element of their identity through it is not bad.

that being said, these are publicly traded corporations that have a fiduciary obligation to shareholders to maximize value. as a result, sometimes we're gonna get things that play off this instinct in a way that are unhealthy for pop culture and culture as a whole.

so, impressive as the development process was was, they were cracking something open there in the desert that cannot be put back.

[strqyr]

what i would give to know what cinder's backstory would have looked like if they'd managed to do it in V5 like they originally intended.

like. i don't think it would have been drastically different—all the pieces like being adopted, working in a hotel (or some other establishment), being trained by a huntsman, etc would likely still be there—other than taking place fully in mistral instead of switching over to atlas, but also how it would have been tied into the rest of the volume? the implications, parallels?

there are still plausible leftovers that i can see in V5, so the possibilities of what it could have looked like in full interests me so, so much.

[improbable-implosions]

A little mend here that I was pleasantly surprised worked, I fixed the fraying bits on my book-shaped wallet! Figured that red thread works quite well with the themes of War of the Worlds.

First up, we've got some simple stitches perpendicular to the edge of the wallet, think a blanket stitch but the thread doesn't run through the loop created. Honestly, there are probably more complex ways I could have stitched that vinyl "leather" back onto the fabric and cardboard of the book structure, but I figured these simple stitches would be faster, and work just fine.

Second, on a slightly larger tear on the "spine" corner, I did some randa stitching! This actually draws from a style of embroidery I'm almost completely unfamiliar with, most popular in Brazil, so I may be labeling it wrong. If you know better, let me know! It's a sort of baseball-stitching like process, I was roughly following this video as a tutorial: https://vm.vxtiktok.com/t/ZT8TNMKw9/

and also this one to understand how to get started: https://vm.vxtiktok.com/t/ZT8TNrMML/ (Excuse the tiktok links, but I am not immune to the allure of short video on occasion! I even have posts of my own, every now and again)

I actually need to do similar rim-lining on the other three corners, as the adhesive is starting to come off, and that'll hold it still enough to solve the problem.

Also, some miscellaneous adventures in hemming patches properly! A process that proved MUCH simpler once I found my rolled hem foot. These two patches came out quite good, actually! straight stitching, for the most part, and relatively even folds.

It was much simpler to get the hems just so on a larger patch like this one, thankfully! I'm actually really pleased with the way this one in particular came out, and hopefully, I can make something pretty with it on the thigh of the jeans it goes with. (yes, that's why the patches are numbered, so I can keep track of where they go in the stack!)

Even despite how well things went overall with the patches, I still fumbled, got a bit hasty in trying to get the corner of one of the later patches through the machine. Said haste had me trying to shove shove, cram cram the fabric through the foot to get it hemmed, turns out, don't do that! Results in bending the needle on my machine! Oof!

Luckily, the machine came with some spare needles, so it only slowed me down a little bit!

[coquelicoq]

kim dokja is fantastic bisexual rep. some of us are nonpracticing yet uninterested in vows of celibacy because we like to leave our options open. some of us are aro. some of us are idiots. some of us are all three. WE EXIST

[klapollo]

need a swear jar technique where for every horrible feminism take i see on this site I buy a new book for the Woman Books Pile

[viaalterego]

To all the fanfiction writers...

Has writing fanfiction made you seriously consider a career in writing or at least turning one of your fics in to an original work?

[etirabys]

IT'S STEPHEN KING SHAMING HOUR