#also hi I'm not dead just still very busy Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[littledesertfox]

A rare photo of Rommel sporting some sunglasses! Personally this is the only photo I've ever seen of him wearing any kinds of glasses, that includes the protection goggles he had attached to his officer's hat, even though he had those with him like all the time. The photo was taken by his friend Fritz Bayerlein and is part of Bayerlein's personal collection of photos from his time in North Africa. This collection was published in the book "The Private Afrikakorps Photograph Collection of Rommel's Chief-Of Staff Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein" (yes that's the entire title). It includes photos taken by Bayerlein himself as well as pictures of him taken by others, often with small annotations to describe the context of events.

In January 1943, when they had a brief period away from battles, Rommel and Bayerlein visited the ruins of the ancient Roman city of Leptis Magna (located in Libya) together. They were accompanied by Rommel's aide (and Bayerlein's close friend) Alexander Hartdegen, as well as probably some other officers who weren't further described. Bayerlein took the above photo of Rommel during their trip there, but also photographed some of the ancient architecture:

[notasapleasure]

Maigret S02E01: Night at the Crossroads (2016)

Rowan Atkinson's 1950s French detective investigates the murder of a Jewish man involved in fencing stolen diamonds.

We're officially waiting for Oscar, but Lucy Cohu's in this episode too so at least even if Oscar-with-no-surname doesn't feature much, hopefully between them I'll be kept happy <3

MARK HEAP IS THE FORENSIC SCIENTIST

"He was killed after midnight. Like all good murders." Wuwwuhwgdjfjfkfkfff

Everybody cheer for a boiler suit!

Oscar Vitanes. You do have a surname! And a beret!

"They're weird over there. House is always dark after nine o'clock. You hear him sometimes shooting his guns in his garden. Not last night." Delights in a bit of Danophobia does our Oscar, but so does everyone else in this episode. Carl the suspected Dane does have a disfiguring facial scar after all....

I'll admit to being sad we don't get un petit accent... He does look good hefting car wheels around though 😏

Now Oscar and his wife Jo (oh hi that's me) run an always-open garage on a busy road where fruit trucks pass by, and the murder happened at the crossroads by the garage under cover of a passing fruit truck. I have no motive yet but I don't think Oscar can be ruled out here...it was a big guy who got in the car with the dead man before shooting him.

Inbred incestuous insane Danish aristocrats! That's certainly a flex.

Maigret is married to Lucy!! Noah fence Maigret but if I was married to Lucy Cohu I would be much happier than you seem to be.

Oooh, mysterious night time gatherings at Oscar's garage? Ah apologies, his wife is JoJo not Jo...who is keeping an eye out for hubby's....illegal bare knuckle boxing club!

I am looking. Not entirely respectfully.

The Paris policeman disapproves but the local policeman persuades him to chill out.

Parisian copper Janvier reports all this to Maigret the next morning of course.

Oscar Vitanes! I think I could have done a better job of photoshopping that... Maigret also peeks at the tins of paint. The dead man's car is notably still missing and it was quite a distinctive blue...

Lucy Lucy loml Lucy

Oh hi Oscar!

Bisexuals are winning in this house tonight!!

Ah, the shifty salesman who has been shifty the whole time goes into overdrive on the shiftiness and the Jewish widow is shot dead outside Oscar's garage while she's surrounded by police! The move of a very stupid man...who was obviously the shifty salesman......who runs, is caught, and it's revealed his gun hasn't been fired. Someone else did the shooting with a sniper rifle! (my money's on the regional police guy who was at the boxing match, who's like the only person not otherwise present)

Oscar is not fool enough to interfere when the regional police chief is busy whaling on a suspect in his home! Maigret: "Get them out of here!"

I reckon it's a whole conspiracy involving the local police, including Maigret's old friend Louis (the regional chief), whose wife thinks is cheating on her again, but he's been gambling and I'm guessing has big debts or some such.

I just wanted to take another screencap of Lucy *chin hands*

She knows people get angry when they're frightened, and Maigret wants her around to drink beer with the boys. I want to drink beer with Lucy Cohu too.

Yup! Local gambling buddies apparently set up Danish weirdo in murder conspiracy :')

Ooh, the Danes aren't incestuous!

Oooooh, Oscar has a history of burglary and Louis Grandjean ~personally~ arrested him for it!

How convenient, Oscar has gone off for the day when Maigret arrives to poke about.

AH!! I wasn't imagining the fact they have him hoiking spare wheels about the whole time - that's how they're smuggling goods!

JoJo doesn't really do much to stop Maigret finding the contraband in the tyres - she says "Oscar will (??) me again", and Maigret responds "I'll make sure he doesn't." It sounds more like 'help' than 'hurt' but eeehhh. Unclear. No subs on the file I downloaded.

Anyway, mad Danish sister who is actually a mad Belgian(?though she does still sound very Danish) prostitute supposedly 'redeemed' through marriage to Carl masterminded the whole thing out of boredom. She was having an affair with regional police chief Louis, who did the killing. And she tries to smother Carl for extra funsies.

Oh you great campy goon :')

He's so happy with his diamonds....thinks about running when he spots the cops, and doesn't get far at all.

Rating

Dead? Nope

Evil? I mean, he's involved in the whole murder conspiracy plot yeah, but is very much not the brains behind the operation. Petty thief who's been taken advantage off by people looking for bigger profits tbh. The likelihood of the line I couldn't hear referring to DV is the main black mark here.

Affects the plot? Only as part of the conspiracy really. But he is adorable when he thinks he's gotten away with it!

Bad Oscar, listen to your wife when she tells you murder is wrong, even when it involves setting up creepy Danes! 3.5/5 - a versatile array of good looks, from the boiler suit to the shirt sleeves to the Parisian fancy gear. And the story, being 90 minutes and based on an actual novel, is much more sophisticated than most of the other procedurals I've been watching. Still never quite shook the weirdness of Rowan Atkinson playing it *so* downbeat and straight though, and Mark Heap was criminally underused. But solidly good, nonetheless.

[macgyvertape]

wwdits s4 thoughts (spoilers)

I didn’t start till October so I knew some stuff through my dash, very glad I saw the post where the interviewers said Guillermo and Nador wouldn’t get together to set my expectations after OFMD

The djinn is a really fun character

Glad The Guide is more of a main character the series needed another female character.

Marhwa is one of the most sympathetic characters in the show, peak she deserves better than this dude

I saw that Guillermo embezzles from the club in a LOT of posts because it was cute to see him take care of his parents. But it’s still heavily implied from this early ep.

The season is really clear in setting up each character's motivation and character arc.

Nadja’s arc has been my favorite. Lmao to the way she said  “kill them all” to solve her workers unionizing.

Lazlo’s struggles of fatherhood where he’s a bad dad in different ways has been my least favorite. But then again I don’t want kids so I’m not interested in parenting subplots.

Guillermo FaceTiming someone twice is notable, only people he pays this much attention to outside of the vamps and family is a potential victim. But this is a very different vibe

Nador vs Guillermo fight is even more tense and charged than last season. Even after rewatching I'm confused at what parts of the fight they were staging for escape versus actually into beating the other

Nadja union busting through narcotic bribery, Nadja’s always been a fuck you got mine "girlboss", especially when her power is being challenged. Nice that it didn't work, workers unite!

The parent interview was just too much cringe comedy for me

Love Guillermo’s jewel tone jacket outfit. Hope there's a post that points out all the designer items

Wedding episode had an ad that I noted down since I was watching ad-free. Clever trick it was for the go flip yourself tv show in universe.

Everyone looks so nice in their wedding outfits. Costuming in this show has always been great and its easy to overlook it

I was trying to pin why Guillermo seems so different this season, and I really think it is that he found confidence and is less desperate . Other characters are respecting him more too.

Nandor made peak cursed wish with “like the same things I like” I was confused until the end of the season if he immediately wasted 2/3 wishes instead of fixing that wish since he obviously seemed so uncomfortable with it

“Because I’m gay” holy shit! Such an emotional moment, yeah the family always knew but still it’s such an impactful moment. The show has had a range of queer characters but it's often more played for laughs while this is more heartfelt. I'm old enough it's also a brief moment of "wow things have come so far"

Lmao at the cliche home renovation episode, I love when a tv show adopts the visual style of another genre of show (like Leverage "The office job"). I deeply enjoy home renovation shows, good or bad they're only reality tv I enjoy. I think it's my favorite episode in the show, and I genuinely wasn't expecting Simon the Devious.

Maybe because I am watching these all at once that the heavy parody parts of each episode stick out. Guillermo being the overworked friend planning the wedding is a romcom classing. The Baron doing the cliche makeover montage.

Wow so Freddie gave the business card as if he's trying to buy valuable antiques from someone he thinks is senile, and Nador is fine cheating and being a home wrecker to meet up. hmm

Wait Marhwa ends that episode overwritten and basically dead in body and mind?! Freddie is a cheater! I feel really bad for Guillermo, ESH but him

Holy shit sunrise and sunset the song from Fiddler. As a theater nerd I know this ep is going to be sad also wow Matt berry can sing

Colin feeding on anger makes sense, I though he was being annoying at times but chalked that up to finding all kids annoying, but you can farm a lot of anger as an annoying kid.

Classic that Nadja got so proud her arrogance led to the club's downfall. Very short-sighted she didn't take the money out before the arson for insurance fraud.

Colin back to himself with no memory nothing changed. Hmm did the experience of being a parent change Lazlo?

Guillermo spent a year of his life devoted to things that as he put it didnt change. The reasons he gave in first episode for not walking out didn't amount to anything in the end

GUILLERMO BUYING HIS WAY INTO VAMPRIISM FUCK YEAH. he's really changed since season 1. The chorus ending is pretty great.

I’d rate it 2nd best season behind last season, major points lost because I liked Marhwa and I’m sad what happens to her. I'm not judging Nandor's actions this season as morally "worse" than the others, but being shitty to your SO is more relatable and personal.

Wow for the first time I’m interested in fanfic for this show starting with “different choices canon divergence” au and “picks up right where season ended” since next season will prob start with a timeskip.

[larrythefloridaman]

Y'all like your deities with or without the shell?

Under the readmore is aaaaaaaaall color god observations and musings based on them, because I am studying to become the world's Premiere Chromatheologian and RGB Understander so under the cut is pretty much Oops! All Spoilers! up to the most recent episode of season 3.

Apparently Universal Color God Attributes:

Damage to their domain hurts them, but fixing the issue, or lashing out by using their powers destructively, can help them to repair the damage.

If they sustain enough damage, it can temporarily paralyze them and send them into a strengthened but 'exposed' state (chartreuse's spirit activation in the last fight of 19) and further damage after that will activate a failsafe, which is unique by domain but seemingly designed to give them the chance to balance things, but can get… very out of hand or backfire depending on circumstances. (see: cobalt’s failsafe sending mark's universe into a never-ending apocalyptic war because word of the cure for death became too widespread for the killing urge failsafe to affectively balance anything because every side could simply revive their fallen.)

Chartreuse's failsafe is something of a stopped time bubble quarantine where processes that require the passing of time cannot complete, allowing her the time to wear down the offending party to beat them to death or plan around finishing them.

Cobalt's is inciting war, the casualties serving to balance the scale. I'm not sure we know Crimson's yet- he's never taken enough direct damage without doing damage to compensate in order to trigger it, although i dont remember season one well enough to recall if any of the universe stuff in it tracks with the pattern bc season one is a bit fucky

Connected in a fashion that allows them to simply Sense the overall status of the others to some extent, although they don't know Why theyre in the state theyre in without asking (chartreuse [and by extension, folk, presumably on her information] confronting crimson via crimsonaut for pretending to be dead, Cobalt confronting both his siblings about how they are handling their duties improperly but not knowing about Folk. He knew about the constants deaths because hes a death god, duh, but he didnt use their names like crimson did, possibly implying they're erased upon death so thoroughly that only crimson and the constants can really recall a shattered constants' existence, not even the other guardians.)

Abilities of the guardians can be replicated by mortals through three apparent methods- through machines (dimensional bus, the time machine, presumably J0hn's part in Sephiroth's resurrection,) simply through advanced enough individual skill (Home MD curing death, potentially Dantoinette's universe portal travel, maybe Genwun's sped up time bubble that evolved them into Genfour? although that could very well have just been an illusion and theyre just like, a fuckin theater kid that was doing pretend character development for the Bit or something given GenFive turned out to be a zoroark) or through stealing some of the power of the relevant god (Dr. Order stealing Chartreuse's power, Dani maybe having stolen some of Crimson's when she beat his ass. Dani's one woman universal travel is like, wicked ambiguous)

Cobalt:

Can seemingly perceive or act through any living material. (The Tree. Cobalt instructed Larry to slap his hand on that tree, that shit glowed and he had a new deal tattoo without Cobalt ever having been physically present)

Can influence the resurrected by giving them a killing urge. Represented by an aberrant brainwave and a ringing in the undead's heads. This doesnt appear to be direct control- as the Grunk could clearly restrain himself from killing people that genuinely didn't deserve it (like nightly and cha cha, who WERE grunk event targets but not fatally so. Nagito was a crimson thing so it really doesn't count here. God poor grunk his life really is just a constant plaything in the hands of the gods huh) and Sephiroth very much had personal motivation to want to kill Folk. failsafe activates this ability on the scale of war.

Deals. The extent of what Cobalt can do with these is unclear but Iggy's god powers were taken from him as his part in the deal so what he can take isn't limited to physical things or things obviously related to his domain.

Weaknesses:

Deals. While this ability is impressive his preference for making deals for those that offend against his domain is potentially very exploitable- Larry's knowledge of the cure for death is, if word of it were to ever get out beyond Larry, wildly dangerous for this dimension, so technically the safest thing for the iron-fisted cobalt to do would be to nip the problem in the bud and get rid of him. But, fascinatingly, that wasn't even put on the table, the first thing Cobalt does is threaten J0hn, prompting Larry to make a deal. While Cobalt enforces death, he also doesn't like unnecessary death, and Larry demonstrably knows how to keep a secret for the good of the world even at great cost to himself and Cobalt is aware of this- easily clarifying to Larry the aberrant thing endangering the universe wasn't his timeloop business. So while he's clearly not letting his resurrection fuckery go unpunished, he's being pretty merciful when he doesn't have to be and from a strictly, brutally pragmatic perspective probably shouldn't be.

His control over the undead manifests as a ringing and an aberrant brainwave trackable by J0hn's equipment, and could probably therefore be accounted for and circumvented? J0hn has, wisely, largely sworn off fucking with people's brains after the sephiroth fiasco went So Wrong, So Very Wrong, Oh God Oh Fuck Someone Cool Almost Died, but if he hadn't, and if J0hn let his dislike for authority and keeping Larry safe outweigh reason like he let safety, spite and comedic value outweigh good ethical sense when reprogramming sephiroth, in theory Mr. 'hacked a time machine for breakfast?' could. y'know. probably do it. what is a god's authority to an anarchist, what better to challenge life and death than the cold and eternal machine, you get the point its a fun scenario

Olive Garden Breadsticks and Small Cute Dogs, apparently

Chartreuse's:

Time Clones: taps into parallel timelines to retrieve alternate versions of herself to utilize.

Time Travel: what it says on the tin. Travel to the past creates painful splits in the prime timeline, but through careful action and traveling back into the past, these can be weaved into a time loop. A split from the timeline is a wound, and a successful timeloop is the surgical scar it can become with attentive care, to use a medical metaphor. Carefully closed and healing. Keeping Folk here is essentially akin to chartreuse pulling out her stitches on the initial incision.

Time Stopping: creates a space wherein things that take time to complete cannot complete, where things can move, but everything within is in a perfect unchanging stasis until the bubble drops. This is the form her failsafe takes.

Timeline Creation: can create timelines from scratch.

Can fuse alternate timeline versions of the same individual to allow them to coexist. (Ryan's confirmed in the discord that Dantoinette experienced both failures in 20, because Chartreuse fused the two instances of her to save the post-raid instance from fading. Could... theoretically do this to Folk and save herself the pain, but while Folk and Therapuppy are the same person, there's seven years and untold amounts of difference deriving from the time and circumstance between them and the inherent cognitive dissonances that would result from attempting that would be wicked fucked up to inflict, and that's assuming there isn't some reason that it wouldn't be possible anyway. while the two Danis had like. A day or so's difference between them, so she could be safely fused with the only dissonant thing being that she remembers both being too slow to prevent order's time escape and beginning to dissipate post-raid, AND losing that fight to her pre-raid. RIP Dani, that perfectionism must be kicking her ass)

Weaknesses:

Unwilling to use her powers destructively in her pursuit of domain repair and thereby much easier to damage to the point of paralyzing her, making her particularly vulnerable to Power Theft

Morally Optimistic. At one point in 19, she briefly justifies Crimson's shitty evil actions to herself after experiencing for herself how Wack the kerfuffleverse is firsthand, ("and all he did was kill a couple people!" Chartreuse. Honey.) and when she fights Crimsonaut she seems to actually believe for a second that he's actually worried about her when Crimson asks if she's okay after he beats her. Additionally, as D+, she concerns herself with trying to understand doctor order's motive, and after Larry defeats Order, he makes a point of confirming she feels no remorse before making his request for what Chartreuse does with her, and appeals to the idea of letting Order fulfill her desire to be a god in a way which isn't a problem for anyone and Chartreuse is more than happy to oblige under these conditions after what Larry's done for everybody. Then immediately threatens to evaporate him for playfully teasing her about having a crush on folk. Fucked up a little bit

Crimson's:

Universe Shifting: Travel between universes.

Universe Correction: appears to replace an aberrant individual with the 'correct' version of themselves for that universe, presumably sending them back to their own. (Mario from super mario was universe corrected, but still seemingly exists in wario form as evidenced by smashup kerfuffle, and was simply temporarily replaced with his corrected universe counterpart. But like. The dimensional bus system is still active crimbo doing the Put That Thing Back Where It Came From Or So Help Me routine aint gonna work if they can come back with a shrug and bus fare. you're fighting the symptoms without treating the problem)

Universal Constants:

Three individuals per universe that serve as the pillars which stabilize said universe, created by absorbing red orbs Crimson creates. Becoming a constant grants power, but also makes the constant fragile, and death wipes them from the face of the multiverse, only crimson, those he's possessed and the other constants seemingly able to recall they ever existed, although some physical evidence is still left behind (Larry's record of Nagito's death, which is just as redacted as everything else relating to him but still is very much something Larry has. Kind of a Voidfish adventurezone type beat ironically enough? Taako really has seen all this shit before no wonder he peaced tf out)

To counterbalance the weaknesses the constants have, they have a sort of spidey-sense to alert them to danger, and an intrinsic bonded connection to their fellow constants, and additionally, Crimson apparently doesn't suffer any pain from the death of constants or the structural instability of a universe.

Possession: what it says on the tin! Seemingly can only be done with permission to living things- none of crimson's direct hosts seem to have entered that agreement unwillingly, Valentine lost a bet, Hamburger and Crimsonaut have been by all evidence intentional allies to Crimson- but electronics are fair game, as seen with The Guy's suit. Kinda curious how that rule applies to bitches that are half and half, like J0hn or the clonebot gang, as its unclear whether The Guy's suit was yoinkable without permission because it was mechanical or because its not sentient. could go either way but if it's the former that's potentially very frightening

Fusion: Two individuals from alternate universes can be fused into one shared body which can take on aspects of either depending on which is currently in control. (possibly allows someone who traveled into a given universe to become a fixed resident there without it being an issue for Crimson, whose job is to prevent interdimensional travel?) Monday Mark and possibly T.O.M. are our main examples.

Corruption:

Unpleasant As Hell and can even kill you instead of changing you if you cant handle it.

turns the corrupted individual into a twisted exaggeration of themself, allows them supernatural control over their shape, and makes them very difficult- if not impossible by traditional means- to kill, based on Garfield.

Subjects them to control by Crimson, but can be exorcised of this influence just like crimson's direct hosts can, although the supernatural changes to their physiology are seemingly permanent, judging from Shantae.

Notable Weaknesses:

Exorcism can be performed to free a possessed or corrupted individual of Crimson's influence. Its unclear how exorcism works/is learned in CPUK, but confirmed exorcists: dantoinette and yung papaya's snake dad, confirmed non-exorcists: folk

The universal constant orbs are physical objects so they are Very Stealable and they grant a power boost so theres literally an Incentive to beat his ass for anybody who wants to be strong and either doesnt know or doesn't care about the whole 'getting erased when you die' part

Crimson has lots of tools to create pawns, but all of them have drawbacks. Corruption could kill a potential pawn, possession generally seems to require permission, and he has no control over the constants' choices and actions

Manipulative bitch's highest stat is charisma and it shows. This motherfucker is selling snake oil. If he was mortal rather than a Whole Entire God he'd make an excellent ineffectual saturday morning cartoon supervillain and i think everyone, including him, would be happier for it, ngl

Something interesting ive realized that likely wasnt fully intentional, is that a lot of Dr. Order's creations, considering her motive, can kind of be sorted by a color god it appears to be a crude attempt at mimicking the abilities of. My Grunk is a poorly executed resurrection, the clonebot gang vs chartreuse's timeclones (this one deserves special mention because Chartreuse used this shitty attempted mimicry to her advantage with D+, very smart and ironic play, excellent job Treusy,) spirits are somewhat similar to universal constant orbs (orbs which can be absorbed to grant power, but which have physical repercussions- key differences being that spirits require activation and grow stronger while attuning to a user without being used, and having far less severe drawbacks, taking a heavy toll on the body, but only once they've worn off and without the risk of wiping yourself from the face of existence,) and she also augmented Perfect Spriteman and Larry, which kind of track as crude imitations of Crimson's corruption!

Garfield was an acerbic cat who loved food and hated mondays, now its an actively malicious ever-hungry amorphous entity whose only weakness is monday and whose only consistency in form is 'cat-like.'

Shantae was (to my extremely limited understanding of shantae,) a friendly heroic type who had to introduce herself often, and she became something akin to a biblically accurate angel that can *only* introduce herself.

The Grunks a tough but sweet and supportive single dad with stage presence and a tendency to fly off the handle when he or his family are slighted, and now he gets so hype in the audience when his son does well that he bursts into flames and ascends and we get random grunk events along with the associated murder charges when he gets mad and the target sucks enough that he doesn't hold himself back from killing them.

Perfect Spriteman and Larry fit the trend of exaggeration of already present traits- Spriteman fucking loves sprite and became something that only thinks about sprite, and Larry the Florida Man, characterized from minute one by unpredictability and who spent his first matches in the series pre-shapeshifter transformation staying alive keeping stocks for Shockingly Long even despite getting seventh, became literally physically random as well as developing the ability to regenerate, albeit with the ability to feel pain normally very much intact, unlike Garfield just... Soaking up damage like its nothing in his pursuit of Jon. The fact that Arbuckle legit defeated Garfield, even temporarily, is terrifyingly impressive honestly that dude is fucking built different for being so chronically bland

i dont think they're actually corrupted in any meaningful way we have to worry about, to be fully clear, Spriteman was cured with fucking antacids, i simply think they could be a fucked up attempt at making something that kind of seems like it from a functional standpoint, from the wannabe god doctor that brought us green clones whose only fundamental association with time was accelerated aging and who thought an actively rotting corpse thats just reanimated enough that it can throw hands was as good as curing death

[dramallamadingdang]

I really like your new hood. What kind of visual editing are you doing? Also, what exactly are the rules of this hood? I tried looking it up with the tags, but alas, it wasn't explained fully. Is this a Zombie Apoc challenge? I'm doing a variation of the one on MTS2, but it takes place in post-War California, circa 1939, if Germans invaded the US. Please let us know your rules for this hood! Thanks! child_of_air

Oh dear, this is going to be really long, sorry. :)

1) The pic-editing. I made a Photoshop action to do that. At first, I was going to edit pics of that neighborhood in a warm, low-contrast sepia-tone. Because I like sepia-tone. So, I fiddled with an existing sepia-tone action I had (one meant for regular photographs) to make it work with Sim-pics. It does everything non-destructively, with adjustment layers, so the original image remains intact "underneath." But then I decided that I wanted SOME color but still low-contrast and matte and kind of grainy. So, on top of the sepia-toning layer group, I plopped down another copy of the original image and set a "Soft Light" layer blend with the layers below to merge it with the sepia-toning. THEN I edited a "film" Photoshop action that I had on hand to make it work better with Sim-pics, then ran THAT on the copy of the original image. Again, it works via adjustment layers, non-destructively. Then I reduced the opacity of the "film" layer group and the second copy of the original image so that the sepia-toning below merged better with the added-back color, resulting in the kind of images I've been posting.

THEN I recorded ALL of the above into a one-click Photoshop action that'll work on most Sims-pics. It'll sometimes need to be further adjusted, especially if the original image is really dark, like an outdoor nighttime pic with little or no light source, but for many pics, it's just one click.

I could share the action, if anyone would be interested in having it or fiddling with it for their own use, but it is still dependent on the other two actions that I edited. I'm not sure how to share all three together since one of the dependent actions is bundled with about a dozen others. I don't know how to extract just the one. I suppose I could just share the whole bundle, though. It's a very nice bundle that offers lots of nice effects, actually! :) I'm pretty sure it's one of the hundreds of free ones my hubby has, since he has the ones he paid for in a different folder on the networked external archive drive... Well, if anyone wants it, let me know, and I'll look into it. :)

Now as for the rules....

There really isn't a hard-and-fast set, I'm afraid. I'm kind of making things up as I go along. Initially, this was SUPPOSED to be just a neighborhood to test out some of Sun & Moon's stuff and some playing ideas prior to using those things in another neighborhood I'm developing but where I don't want to experiment. Then it kind of took on a life of its own. *laugh* It has BACC elements merged with the "backstory" of an Apocalypse that can also easily be a "pioneer" or “homesteading” kind of thing with no apocalyptic undertones. :) There are also some elements of an "integrated" playing style. In its pure form that would mean that everything has to be "built" in-hood, with nothing just appearing out of the air. I don't want to go full-on with that -- too tedious and therefore un-fun, IMO -- but I do have some supply chains. More on that further down.

Basically, it goes like this: The end of civilization was coming (Plague, nuclear war, zombies, who knows? And who cares? :) ), and only one person seemed to realize it. That one person was in college at the time. So, rather than focus on his studies so much -- After all, civilization was ending so there goes that MBA and lucrative corporate career, right? -- he focused on making as many friends as possible and convincing them that, "Hey, world's gonna end, we need to get outta Dodge and make a new world." Slowly, he gathered a group of friends -- people who lived in the dorm, a few professors, hell, even a cheerleader -- who believed him and started to make preparations. Everyone else made fun of them, of course, but who cared about that? They were all gonna die or whatever. After graduation, they left, trekking out into the wilderness with (in my imagination) enough stuff like preserved food and potable water and seeds to plant and candles to burn and shovels and saws and stuff like that, to get them by for a while.

And sure enough, they were right! Civilization collapsed. Infrastructure was destroyed or became nonfunctional. Telecommunications systems were gone even if there'd been electricity to run such devices. This group of 16 is out in the wilderness, and other survivors/escapees/whatever are wandering around, too. But the core group has a collectively-agreed-up mission to work cooperatively to make a new and better and simple-living world: Peaceful, completely egalitarian, communal, a world where money and power neither exist nor are desirable, where everyone works together, willingly, for the good of the collective, a world living in harmony with nature. (Basically, my ideal world. *laugh* I really am a communist at heart, only without the oligarchical totalitarianism that modern attempts at communism have been corrupted by.)

At first, they all lived together in one place, sleeping in quickly-built, rough cabins, doing potty business in bushes, collecting rain water for makeshift showers, and eating food that they brought, that they grew/gathered, or that they caught. All the while, they were busy putting together the "raw materials" they needed to build individual houses to live in, each dedicated to a specific function that benefits the community as a whole, the fruits of which would be shared equally with the entire community. Each time a production goal was reached, one person/couple could move off the communal "raw materials" lot and into the lot that could be "built" from the gathered raw materials. And the community grows from there.

Meanwhile, there are those other folks, wandering around alone and frightened and helpless in the wilderness, having escaped whatever the disaster was that occurred. Sometimes, members of the community meet up with them while they're out scoping out the territory. Those poor souls can be brought into the fold as well, added to the communal lot and becoming contributing members of the community.

And that's as far as the "story" goes for now. :) Bear in mind that my neighborhood is age-modded with this mod, so my Sims have PLENTY of time to live out their lives. Not sure playing this way will really work with the standard-length lifestages. You'd have to figure out ways to speed things up rather a lot, I would think or else your founders will be dead before they can even earn a house, much less reproduce and stuff. :) But anyway, the "rules," such as they are, so far:

1) No careers. No vacations. No Uni after the initial "gather your founders" part, if you do that. No subhoods at all. And no money, so if you want to you can give your households a million simoleons because it simply doesn't matter.

2) No electricity. No indoor plumbing. (I intend to add those things as they are "earned," down the line, but only at the earliest when the first born-in-game generation are adults. Haven't figure out exactly HOW it'll be earned, though.) No phones. No nannies, repair people, maids, gardeners, etc., unless you want to set up some sort of in-neighborhood system for that. (Which is certainly doable; I plan to do it later, once my supply chains are in place and I'm looking for "employment" for new people.) No vehicles except "vehicle horses." (Only once you have a horse farm!) Use candles for light sources. Use only charcoal grills for cooking. (Unless you want to download an historical-type oven, but I'm trying to run this with less CC, not more, and I want there to be some big rewards for earning electricity.) Don't use an electric fridge. (I'm using this one.) Use an outhouse, not indoor flush toilets. Use mods so that water has to be gathered to use to fill bathtubs and sinks. Stuff like that. 

3) I recommend using the Visitor Controller to ban all but playable Sims from every lot. Also ban mail and newspaper delivery. You COULD make the neighborhood from empty templates and no stealth hoods, yes, but then you're going to lose the "meet people by hiking" thing, which is how "new blood" gets added to this neighborhood. That function draws from the NPC household that includes things like the BV tourists/locals and the hobby leaders and stuff like that. If you use empty templates and whatnot, you won't have that.

4) Get yer founders. I did this via sending Komei Tellerman to Uni and having him focus on making friends amongst the dormies, professors, and Uni NPCs so that all the founders would at least have a strong relationship with him, if no one else, but you could just make a bunch in CAS if you’d rather skip that part. Or if you don’t have Uni installed, of course. :)

5) Build an initial lot to dump everyone on. (I teleported them with the Sim Blender, aged them to regular adults, gave them the extra want slots they should have as college graduates, etc., since they weren’t yet playables in Uni.) Include everything they need for basic motive-filling but not much else. (You could put a working stack of books somewhere if you want them to skill, but really? With no careers, skilling isn't really all that necessary.) There will also need to be ways to make/gather raw materials. Here's the layout of the one I made, with some useful links to stuff I used on it. This lot houses the founders, any new members added to the community, and ALL born-in-game Sims once they reach teenhood, until they earn individual lots.

Note: For me, I did not want kids on this lot. They have to wait until they earn an individual lot for that. So the only place to autonomously woohoo is the park benches I used as seating for eating. But, I have ACR set so that woohoo on sofas/park benches requires privacy...which is hard to get on a lot with no real walls and a bunch of other people living on it. :) If you DO want them to have kids, then they could woohoo in the cabin-tents, but ACR doesn't enable autonomous tent-woohoo, so...yeah.

Note 2: I let the communal lot run pretty much entirely on free will, only commanding certain Sims to do certain things at certain times. That way, the residents form their own relationships and either succeed or fail at taking care of themselves. They also develop different sleep schedules, which is nice for the player, less of them to keep an eye on at any given time. :) It's also easier to NOT micromanage 16 or more Sims at once, naturally. But this, of course, would be up to the player and how you like to play.

4) Earning a lot: The communal lot has choppable trees, the mining rocks from Sun & Moon's mining set, and Nixnivis's blacksmith station on it. I have fiddled with the trees and the mining rocks to make them autonomous, and the rule is that Sims can never be commanded to chop trees or mine ore. They must decide to do that themselves, so production is limited by how industrious your Sims are. Further, the mined ore has to be "refined" (into things like nails and other things that go into a house). For this, I use the blacksmith station, just having a person make that object's basic single horseshoe object as as "stand-in." (This isn't autonomous; it's one of the things that Sims can be commanded to do.)

NOTE: I could share the edited autonomized choppable trees if someone wants to use this idea; I don't think Beck would care. But sharing the edited autonomized mining rocks would break Sun & Moon's policy, so if you want that, you'd have to do the editing yourself. It's not hard, if you can run SimPE.

In order to earn each new individual lot, the communal lot must produce 75 bundles of chopped logs and 40 horseshoes. And each horseshoe “requires” 2 buckets of ore, so you need to keep track of how many buckets of ore you have in inventories and subtract out the appropriate number of ore buckets when a batch of horseshoes is made. (Just sell them "to the air;" money doesn't matter. Much of the crafting in this hood will work the same way, too, with "prerequisite" objects that need to be produced somewhere first, so get used to the technique. *laugh*) So to get those 40 horseshoes, 80 buckets of ore have to be (autonomously!) mined first. Once you have the required materials, remove them from inventories and sell them to the air. Then, you can build an individual lot and move whoever you want to own the lot out of the communal one.

(You might want to adjust the requirements needed for how you play. For instance, if you don’t want to go pure free-will, you should probably have much higher requirements. If you don’t age-mod, then you’ll want to adjust simply because you just won’t have time to earn lots with enough time left over for your Sims to have kids to keep the neighborhood going. So, yeah. That’s certainly not set in stone; it’s just what works for my set-up.)

5) Supply chains and stuff: Before you build your first individual lot(s), you're going to want to choose what that lot will be dedicated to, because that will dictate how you build it. My list of possibilities -- so far, that is; it's ever-growing as I get new ideas and figure out how to implement them -- is as follows:

RobotsFlower ArrangingToy-MakingPotterySewingSpinning/KnittingWeavingCattleChickensHorsesPigsSheepGoatsWineryPaintingDog/Cat BreederBeesBakingMarijuanaCandle-makingFishingHayCornMaxis OrchardBasketryHerbs/WildflowersHunting/TanningTrappingApothecary (Plus reagents, if witches)Blacksmithing

Some of those are Maxis things. Some of them are CC. Some of them don't actually exist and I'm using stand-ins instead. (Like, for instance, candle-making. Sun & Moon's beekeeping set produces beeswax as one of its end products, along with honey. They didn't yet make a candle-making station, though, so in the meantime, I'm just gonna use the robot station or something and pretend. They can make toy robots that can be one-for-one "exchanged" for functional candles, which can then be distributed. It's easy to do because money doesn't matter.) Most of them have "prerequisites." I'm not going to go into how all of these will work because I'd be here for days, but I'll give you one example of a supply chain and its prerequisites and stuff.

Let's talk about the sewing supply chain, clothing and blankets and stuff being the ultimate end-products of that supply chain. In order to have new clothing and towels and quilts/blankets and other nice decorative things like that, first, at the very bottom of the "pyramid," you gotta have someone who'll grow hay. Because you can't have sheep (and other livestock) without something to feed them. And you can't have wool without sheep. (Or growing cotton or flax for linen or making silk or something, and if I can figure out how to make THAT happen, I will. I have an idea brewing for marijuana -- think hemp -- but for now...sheep.) And you can't knit a sweater or produce fabric without cleaning and spinning that wool into yarn/usable fiber/thread. And you can't have fabric without someone with a loom to weave it. And you can't have leather (for shoes and stuff) without someone killing some kind of animal (domesticated or hunting wild ones) and tanning the hides. ONLY THEN can you have someone making new clothing. And at each step, there's a kind of conversion. Like "1 spun basket of wool = enough yarn to make 1 sweater." So, you sell the basket of wool (obtained from the sheep farmer) to the air, then "spin" (via a CC spinning wheel plus an invisible sewing machine to make a few potholders or something as a "stand-in" for the process), then you sell those potholders to the air and use Beck's knitting ball to make one piece of clothing which can then be distributed and used to "buy" one sweater or whatever.

That's how everything basically works in a supply chain, some of which have more steps than others. Producing new clothing would be the longest one I've come up with so far. So, when building your lots, if you want to use supply chains at all, you must start out with the "anchors" of the supply chains you want to have. If you don't want to be that complicated, you could just pick randomly or pick whatever appeals to you.

6) Individual lots: Plop down a lot. On that lot, build a house but leave room outside for the lot's function plus the outhouse, the outdoor fridge, a well/water pump and a garden. (Eventually gardens can go away, once you have enough food-producers that can consistently produce enough to distribute amongst the population. But until then, folks will need to grow stuff.) The size of your lots is gonna depend on you and how you play. Me, I like smaller lots and I don't mind cramming large families into small houses...which suits a "pioneer" sort of lifestyle, anyway. So, my individual lots are no bigger than 3x3, and the house itself (they're all the same, just different colors, different furnishings, and oriented differently on the lot), for a child-producing household, is a 9x9 square with a 3-tile deep front porch across the front. Floor plan here.

7) Unlike a BACC where CAS Sims are “earned” by certain events, any new, non-born-in-game Sims have to be met via hiking. (It’s one of the possible outcomes of hiking.) It’s a substitute for being out “exploring” or “looking for wandering domesticate livestock to capture” or whatever. If a non-pet “someone” is met, that person gets added to the communal lot, joining the “queue” for an individual lot. (I just use the Sim Blender to teleport them into the communal lot and add them to the household.) I prefer to age up any children to teen and age down any elders to adults, but that’s up to you, of course.

Annnnnnd that's about it, really. I have yet to figure out exactly how the "economy" is going to run. At the moment, the individual lots are still producing stuff with not enough to distribute yet and I don't have any full supply chains yet...but I need to figure it all out soon. I'm leaning toward just equally distributing end-products in truly communist style, but I'm not sure yet. I could list some more miscellaneous rules...but I think that's enough for now. *laugh*

[morbid-n-macabre]

Robert Blake. This case is not as cut and dry as i originally thought.

Robert "Bobby" Blake was a child actor who played one of the little rascals. He has talked a lot about his father, apparently young Bobby was the one supporting his whole family and though that was his father's doing, dad greatly resented him for it. There was physical abuse aplenty in that home. He moved out at the age of 16 and supported himself from then on. As an adult he did something very difficult- he successfully transitioned from child to adult star. Robert starred in several movies and won an Emmy for his role on the 70's hit tv show Beretta- during this role he also gained the reputation of a hot head. I'm not much of a fan but I gotta admit he's an amazing actor- the problem is you never know when he's acting and when he's not.

Robert was first married to Sondra Kerr in 1961. The couple had 2 children, a son and a daughter named Noah and Delinah Blake. Sondra has reported that Robert was very abusive towards her. They divorced in 1983.

It wasn't until the late 90's when Robert met a younger woman by the name of Bonnie (or Bonny) Lee Bakley. I never speak ill of the dead in my posts, but in this case it's important to tell what kind of person Bonnie really was- it's very relevant that the woman had quite a few enemies. Bonnie's "business" was scamming people. She would place personal ads or respond to ads she read, sweet talk the men she was writing to, and send them Pornography. Bonnie would write a single letter, copy it by hand, and send it to many different men. She'd pretend to be someone other than herself, she kept different mailboxes all over the country. She gave these men sob stories, told them how badly she needed money for this or that tragedy. She made promises to these men, told them she'd come to see them if they'd help her through her problem, financially. Maybe she'd say her car was broke down; or that her kid was sick- she always needed money. Then she'd turn around and blackmail these men with anything she could use against them. If she believed a man was wealthy enough, she actually did meet him- hell some she married. One woman who came forward says Bonnie married her grandfather and took him for 80K. Then she stole the grand daughter's identity and began scamming men using her name- on top of that she absolutely destroyed this woman's credit. Bonnie did this to several women, she kept several different drivers licenses on her. Some men made her beneficiary of their life insurance, others cut their families out of their will and added Bonnie. This is how she supported herself, in the pre internet era she made 300K a year doing this! Bonnie had been in serious legal trouble for her scams, arrested multiple times for drugs, writing checks, and fraud. But her real ambitions went much further than scamming lonely men through the mail. She wanted to be rich and she thought the way to do this was to trap a celebrity. She was known to stalk older celebs, targeted big names such as Frankie Valli, Dean Martin, Gary Busey, among others. She badly wanted to be a part of Hollywood; her close friends say that her goal was to get knocked up by a celeb, and she did just that. More than once, she claimed. The first time was the infamous Jerry Lee. She said he fathered her 3rd child- Jerry's sister says she believes her brother paid Bonnie a settlement. It was determined through a DNA test that this girl did not even belong to Jerry. Later, when she was sleeping with Robert, she was also with Marlon Brando's son, Christian.

Bonnie met Christian Brando while he was in prison for manslaughter- he shot and killed his sister's boyfriend. Bonnie began writing him, chatting him up, sending him porn. When Christian was released, the two dated. Christian thought he and Bonnie were in an exclusive relationship. He was wrong- Bonnie was also sleeping with Robert Blake.

Bonnie told Robert she was on birth control, she could not get pregnant. This was a blatant lie- a friend would later admit she was actually undergoing fertility treatment. When Bonnie became pregnant she told both men that the baby was theirs. Robert did not want another child at all, especially with a woman who had purposely tried to trap him- he knew what she'd done to Jerry Lee. He was pissed, he wanted her to abort the baby. Bonnie originally agreed, but then refused. All along she allowed Christian to believed the child was his, and when the little girl was born Bonnie named her Christian Shannon Brando. Christian bonded with the baby he believed was his. A DNA test was not given until later when Robert saw a picture of the child and he realized she looked just like him. DNA proved that Robert was the father, and baby Christian Shannon Brando was renamed Rose Lenore Sophia Blake- Rosie for short. Christian Brando was understandably pissed, he Is quoted for telling Bonnie, "You're lucky somebody ain't out there to put a bullet in your head".

Once Robert knew Rosie was his, he would've done any and every thing in his power to keep her near. Though it doesn't appear he even liked the woman, Robert married Bonnie- obviously a marriage of convenience. There was an air tight prenup in which Bonnie agreed to give up her "business" of scamming men.

Just a few months after they wed, Bonnie was dead.

May 4th of 2001. On this night, Robert took Bonnie to dinner at his favorite fancy Italian restaurant, Vitello's. After they had eaten, the couple walked out to the car. Robert claims he left Bonnie sitting in the passenger seat of his car after he realized he'd forgotten his gun inside the restaurant. When he returned to the car, Bonnie was bleeding profusely. Though Robert said he thought she'd been beaten up, she'd been shot. She was gurgling when Robert found her; by the time the ambulance reached her she was dead. Bonnie was 44 years old.

By all accounts Robert ran around like a chicken with his head cut off- he went to a nearby residence to ask for help, he then ran back to the restaurant for help. He was screaming, crying, even vomiting- just hysterical. Some say this was his best acting yet.

During a search of Robert's home, Police found 12K cash inside one of his dressers. There was also a box of bullets just like the ones that killed Bonnie- in the 100 count box exactly 3 were missing. That's exactly the amount of bullets that was used in the murder.

Robert did have motive, all the motive in the world. The star had found that Bonnie was still scamming people, which he absolutely despised. Friends say he was very afraid that Rosie was destined to have a horrible life if Bonnie raised her, that she'd become a scam artist like her mother- he expressed concern that Rosie would become a prostitute. But there really wasn't any concrete evidence against the star. It was all circumstantial- like why did he take the woman he hated out to dinner? Why not park closer to the restaurant? His leaving a gun in the restaurant while his wife was shot made him look so guilty. He told police that he was packing heat because there had been threats against Bonnie's life, that there had been attempts to kill her. There was some gunshot residue on him when police tested him that night, and a friend of Bonnie's said that right before her death Bonnie confided she was afraid Robert was going to kill her. Still, he may never have been charged with the murder at all had a couple of stuntmen named Robert Hambleton and Gary McLarty not told police that Robert had tried to hire them to kill Bonnie- and there was proof that Robert had called them. The year after Bonnie's death, Robert was arrested for her premeditated murder.

Of course Robert was wealthy, he could afford the best defense money could buy. We all know that goes a long way in a murder trial. The defense team managed to discredit the stuntmen. About that gunshot residue- I'm not a forensics kind of girl, I enjoy the psychology of murder. But this is how i heard this explained: There was very little gunshot residue on Robert that night- just 5 gunshot particles. But the gun that was used to kill Bonnie, a German WW2 handgun found in a dumpster near the scene, was old and left a lot more residue than usual. The weapon was tested and found to leave 2,440 residue particles when fired twice. So while there was a bit of residue, it wasn't a red herring. The defense claimed that the residue found on Robert that night could've been from handling a different gun, he was a gun enthusiast who had a license to carry. Prosecution claimed he must've gotten rid of it somehow, wiped it off or something.

It's more than likely that some of the jurors thought he probably did it, there just wasn't enough evidence to find him guilty of capital murder- especially in a death penalty case. In March of 2005, Robert was found not guilty of Bonnie's murder.

Just months after the murder trial was over, not unlike OJ, Robert was promptly taken to civil court where it is much easier to be found guilty. In November of '05, Robert was found liable for his wife's wrongful death, he was ordered to pay Bonnie's children 30 Mil- an appeal knocked that figure down to 15 million. After all the lawyer fees and paying Bonnie's family, he was bankrupt. Robert was poor for the first time in his life, depressed, cooped up in his small dwelling where he became a hermit- he spoke to no one. Rosie, who is 18 today, was reportedly raised by Delinah Blake, Robert's adult daughter. They have had zero contact with their father. The latest news on Robert Blake was last year when he filed for a marriage license to marry a long time friend, 55 y/o Pamela Hudak. There's no news on whether the two actually did wed.

Whatever Bonnie did in life does not make her deserving of this ending. Very few people deserve that. I do apologize for trashing her, but it's important to realize how many enemies she had. While Robert had plenty of motive, he wasn't the only one- she had quite a few victims herself. My opinion on this case has changed considerably since i began researching this. If you asked me last week what i thought of Robert Blake, I'd have said guilty. I'm not so sure now. If he did do it, which is very possible, I believe he paid someone. I don't believe he physically pulled the trigger. I do not blame the jury- I doubt I'd have convicted him with the death penalty on the table, either. If they'd have tried him without the death penalty option, he may have been convicted. Maybe he'll make a death bed confession some day. Though that's unlikely- he's too narcissistic. If Christian Brando had a part in this, It's unlikely we will ever know. He's already deceased- as are both stuntmen.

What do you think?