#also doing this rags to riches style is challenging but i'm having fun

[galaxsims]

Obsessed with the occult from the time she was small, Gabrielle Winchester has given herself an ... interesting goal: to have a baby with every occult she can find. Why? She wants to understand the inner workings of each occult and what better way to do that than to have a baby who's part of that occult?

Okay, so it sounded better in her head.

Starting with $0 and absolutely nothing other than the clothes on her back, Gabrielle is determined to build herself a gothic mansion for her and her magical babies.

This is The Occult Baby Challenge.

List of occults Gabrielle will be having a baby with:

Vampire

Werewolf

Spellcaster

Mermaid

Alien

Patchy the Scarecrow

The Flower Bunny

Father Winter

Servo Bot

Plant Sim*

Tragic Clown*

Island Elemental*

Ghost*

Wishing Well

Grim Reaper*

[rebouks]

Kittiwake Peak had been sitting on the market for a good few years until Oscar stumbled upon the listing, and by that point it was set to go to auction. Good timing, thought he, sat at his PC sometime around 4AM... He did plan on telling Courtney, but thought it'd be more fun if he kept it as a potential surprise; besides, he didn't want to get her hopes up. There were no guarantees he'd win the damn thing, or scrape enough money together to even consider bidding on it. Several hectic bank trips and two cash loans later, Oscar rocks up at the auction house ready to slap a bitch to get this bloody house-.. except no one seemed interested and he wound up being the only bidder. And that's how Oscar "accidentally" bought a dilapidated mansion within two days of seeing the listing.. but hey! At least he got it dirt cheap :')

Here's a house tour! and Oscar's thoughts upon seeing the pictures.. probably

As a little side note.. I'm not cheating for money or anything whilst doing this house up so Oscar's getting what he wanted; a legit fresh start! 🤭 It almost feels like a bit of a rags to riches type thing 'cause they really have very little to start with, which is super fun for me! Less so for them ahaa... Oscar works as a freelance programmer so he brings in the majority, but Courtney also has a part time job at a garden centre on the edge of town (technically in the gardener career!) I'm having such a good time incorporating more gameplay into this save, I've really missed it and the rags to riches style is one of my fave things to do. If anyone ever read Oscar's gen of the nsb challenge I did, this is very reminiscent of that! Since he gave up everything and started over from nothing too.. hihi

[cigarettesandinevitablebetrayal]

4, 5, and 17 for end of the year fic ask?

4) A fic you wrote this year that was most fun to write?

Probably Ricardo's chapter of Stand Tall to the Beast. I'd been wanting to rewrite the villain debut for Rashad for a while just because I see it happening so differently from how Ryden wrote it and being able to play around in the empty space of a villain named Heartbreak was a lot of fun.

I used to be really bad at writing action, so this chapter in particular was a fun challenge, especially given all Rashad's restrictions (can't rely on telepathy or their old style of fighting due to their HBI injuries). It took me ages, but I had fun the whole time.

5) Weirdest fic you wrote this year?

Probably Unorthodox Strategy for OC Kiss Week. I was running a bit low on ideas and was rifling through my Sidesteps and my friends' Sidesteps and trying to match up a pair that seemed like they'd fit when I decided on @nebuluxx's Damian. Damian and Miro are just a fun pairing given that they're a gay man and a butch lesbian, but they're both kind of dirty fighters so the sparring scene just came together nicely.

17) Two favourite lines/paragraphs/scenes from this year's fics?

The camera flashes have stopped. Figures. It's no longer looking good for him, and nobody actually likes having the footage of a Ranger's murder. He failed. Again. Failed Anathema, failed Herald, and now he'd be failing Rashad again. Ricardo drags in a ragged breath, electrical currents building up in his emitters, and he screams out into the dark as he lets the electricity loose. It explodes out around him in cascades of light. A useless rage against the inevitable. As the streaks of lightning subside, Heartbreak's helmet creeps back into his sight. He stares up at them, snarling through the pain, "You'd better do your worst, pendejo, because I'm never going to stop hunting you down." But Heartbreak doesn't move, like Ricardo expects. They stare down at him with their impassive mask, unreadable to him. "Did you hear me?" He yells again. Let them get angry. What's the worst they could do? He doesn't care anymore. "Finish the job!"

From Beast. I actually wasn't planning this interaction at all. This wasn't the intended ending of the chapter. Ricardo was originally going to just accept the defeat, but it wasn't sitting right with me. I'm not sure where this interaction came from. I just sort of let the character speak through the writing and came out with a significantly more impactful and in character response, in my opinion.

And two paragraphs from Riches and Wonders:

It’s funny how many little things Mortum hadn’t noticed he was missing until Mariana waltzed into his life, filling his lab with sound and light and color that had, unbeknownst to him, long since seeped out between the cracks in the concrete floors. The silence had made it easy to keep focused and now he finds it grates on his nerves, feeling like so much dead air without Mariana’s conversation or soft humming. The endless monochrome of greys feel drab without the pop of Mariana’s merlot dress or cobalt pantsuit. Could he ever really go back to just the smell of detergent after having the lingering scent of her perfume on his lab coat?

I really loved this paragraph (and the original, which was a touch longer before editing down) and how it highlights the differences Marianna has brought to Mortum's life. I like the symbolism used here a lot and the imagery it evokes.

Mariana snorts at that, a most undignified sound from her, but it makes him smile. It’s been a joy to watch her facade drop bit by bit as the time passes. He finds himself doing the same with his own mask, hanging it up beside hers like a coat by the door.

Another really nice indication of the affect Mortum and Marianna have on each other. It also ended up giving my the inspiration for Mateo and Mortum's ship name.

Find More Year End Fic Questions Here!

[limeysims]

✿ Limey | She/Her | 33 | US

✿ WCIF-friendly ♡

✿ TS4 simblr, mainly gameplay and CAS posts.

✿ I use a lot of mods and CC. My style is mostly Maxis Match but some mix ^^

✿ I’m not a storyteller and my gameplay is pretty nonlinear. I'm also not much of an editor but I try ^^ *Just here to have fun and share with other simmers ♡

✿ My gameplay reliably stays PG-13 *I don’t use any mods that add violence/spice/illness/etc ^^

✿ Navigation links for mobile below

Casual Gameplay + Challenges:

✿ Catnip Cottage ✿ Rags to Riches ✿ Serial Romantic / Villainous Valentine ✿ Playing in CAS

Legacy Challenges:

✿ Not So Berry G1: Mint ✿ Rosemary Berry ✿ Beginning | Latest

✿ Just Desserts G1: Blueberry Pie ✿ Airelle Tarte ✿ Beginning | Latest ✿ Quimby Legacy [on hiatus] ✿ Beginning | Latest

✿ My Sims: ↬ My "main" Sims are Fawn and Pumpkin (Eco Robo BFFs)

↬ They have other saves/AU's where they do different things: Horse Ranch: Fawn | Pumpkin Fantasy: Elf Fawn | Witch Pumpkin Their best friends are the

↬ Geek Roommates: Hana | Abbie

Elders: Terry | Bonnie | Rhea

Premades (my Maxis edits): ✿ Erwin in Strangerville ✿ Bob + Eliza Pancakes: Self Discovery ✿ Johnny Zest (more coming soon ^^) ✿ Celene Lopez (ROM + Cottage living casual gp)

Premades (edits of edits/not mine): ✿ Cassandra | Bonehilda

Other links: ✿ Sim Downloads ✿ Ask Box ✿ ✿ WCIF Tag | Answered Asks ✿ Resources Page | Recs | CC finds

last updated 7-12-24

[tuesdaynightmusicclub]

In the first iteration of TNMC, I stumbled into a tradition of posting bleaker selections around the year's end. There's something cathartic in choosing a song that's a bit darker than my usual fare, like letting off a bird out of my hands, setting fears free. It feels like wiping a slate clean, all ready for next year's imminent fouling. In terms of corruption at least, you can seldom do better music-wise than Maxinquaye, a landmark release even in the 1990s, a rich decade for British music indeed.

Having just left the seminal Massive Attack, Tricky managed to create a record even more layered and haunting than MA had achieved with their first 2 albums. Maxinquaye gets under your skin in ways even Protection avoided, with a hazy, almost hallucinatory sound that hums with anxiety. The rough tracks were cooked up in his home studio, and brought to life with Martina Topley-Bird, the fatefully-encountered perfect voice for Tricky's articulated troubles.

There's a fluidity to Maxinquaye, in terms of the musical styles, subject matter and POVs adopted throughout. The songs vary between dub-soaked trip-hop soul and alt-rocking musings on personal and interpersonal dysfunction, urban decline, family history, and troubled introspection. Tricky and Topley-Bird's promotional press embraced a fascinatingly gender-nonconforming aesthetic, alluding to the somewhat genderfluid perspectives not just in MQ, but throughout the rest of Tricky's underappreciated discography. He himself has frequently challenged his press presentation, with music rags opting to portray him as intimidating and unhinged. While those facets can be present in his work, it does him a disservice to focus only on those, particularly at the expense of the haunting vulnerability and creativity he displays on this album.

The crown jewel of MQ for me is 'Hell Is Round the Corner', a track that stands out as seductively sinister even on this record. Literally crackling with subtle tension, the song meanders like a dream through Tricky's past in Southern Bristol, flitting between home environments, gang affiliations, drug use and the everpresent realities of life in the underground. Here, violence lurks in the shadows, in the mind, bomb-like. The laidback menace is belied by a sample from Isaac Hayes, a spoonful of sugar that helps the bitter medicine go down, further aided by Martina Topley-Bird's voice, at once ordinary and beautiful, perfectly complimenting the album's flower on a footpath vibes (the same sample was also memorably utilised on 'Glory Box' by Massive Attack's sonic peers, Portishead). While hardly curative, Maxinquaye, and much of Tricky's later work, offer a useful catharsis. It's certainly one of my favourites.

2024 comes to an end, and with it, almost seven months of TNMC. As noted in previous entries, I'm having more fun doing this than ever before, and I'm already getting excited for picks and theme months in 2025. Very soon I shall kick the new year off with a bang, another tradition I more-or-less started by accident. Look forward to it :3

Tuesday Night Music Club No. 60 - 'Hell Is Round The Corner' by Tricky

[deathbypufferfish]

I was wondering if you’ve got any tips for someone who wants to start sharing their gameplay on their simblr? I always want to start, but getting nothing on my posts is kinda demotivating. Thanks!

I can't give you a guaranteed formula but here are some things I'd suggest. But again it's up to your preference and do what makes your blog reflect the way you play and your interests.

Tag relevantly. People are looking at specific tags for a reason! I usually get an idea of what the tags people commonly use by scrolling through one of them. Like I found out what tags people used for builds by searching the "ts4 builds"

It's fine if your theme or editing style changes. Take time to figure out what you like best for your content. I changed crop style, editing programs, editing style, and a million other things throughout my rags to riches because I was still figuring it out

Engage with the community! This is so important! Look for other new simblrs, do people's ask games, do challenges, reblog, comment, etc. It wouldn't be simblr if we didn't interact :)

Even if it feels like no one is seeing it you should still post. It should be fun for you not a job

If you're not having fun with what you're playing you shouldn't feel obligated because of your blog to keep playing it.

The only technical thing I would recommend for gameplay screenshots is to make your subject clear. Cropping is also a helpful way to do this and I find some pictures are better landscape and some are better portraits. This is a personal preference but I find cropping my landscapes to a 7:5 ratio makes my screenshots fit better to the feed and feel more clear on what the focus is. I also recommend resizing your images if you can. For highly detailed edits you might want to keep it as is but the way Tumblr works is that it will compress large images on your feed and can make them blurry until you click on them. I usually resize my landscape screenshots to 1000x so it still has good quality but doesn't blur as much.

I'm always trying to play around with how I frame a screenshot or position it. So try out low and high angles, exterior shots of where your sims are, ones that aren't necessarily just a head on shot of a sim etc.

Again just do what fits your vision for your blog and engage with the community most of all! It's your blog so don't feel like you have to do what someone else does to the t in order to have a good blog. A good blog is someone doing what makes them happy.