#because i have to spend the little money i have on stuff like this that is way more expensive than it would be if i could drive!!

[uncleasriel]

THANK YOU. This helped articulate a lot of my misgivings with this multimedia franchise that have swirled in my head for a long while.

So many of my misgivings this truly does boil down to "overabundant, easy consumerism" and "paucity of depth in the immediate source material". I'm not beyond consumerism - I have a wall of out-of-print books and DVDs for all sorts of weird stuff - but the need to spend money on every damn thing that bears the sigil of That Thing I Love is in complete opposition to my own sense of aesthetics.

I still have a slight mistrust of the Star Wars bandwagon, for similar reasons: I thought those movies were also the coolest shit when I was 8, but don't feel the pressing need to have my entire kitchen suite remodeled to look like the Death Star. But while I would look askance at someone who had that kind of zeal for Star Wars, I could at least have some interesting discussions with them their thoughts on the differing canons, the case for whether Yazhun Vhong were compelling villains, or why The Revenge of the Sith novelization was more compelling than its source material gave it a right to be.

With Harry Potter, all we get are a series of books and films that work well as self-contained adventures, but the scope of which feels pretty local, and is best suited for individual discussions about "that development with Character A sure was something,huh?" It would be like folks discussing Star Wars going "wow, that twist about Luke's father was one helluva doozy!" And Star Wars is a much bigger setting than that. Does Harry Potter have any thing of that scope?

I I think the reason I'm writing so much about a franchise I'm so indifferent to is because it's so utterly pervasive in the modern media landscape, and on an animal level, I can't quite grasp why. The books were fine! The movies were good, even! But I don't see why some people have to make their entire personalities and personal brand. I don't see why they need to inculcate their children into that brand, especially when said brand was designed to age with the demographic at the time when they were published, and tonally transformed as they aimed at a different reading and maturity level.

I try not to get judgemental about what people like. I'm wholly indifferent to My Little Pony, but when people I know gush about how they loved the show in its heyday, I just smile in delighted befuddlement and let them carry on. Someone in 2025 still using the label of "brony" is gonna raise a question or two, but I don't feel any the need to write several essays about it - I'll just give a simple "glad you like it" before moving on. I feel don't like it when people turn a something someone likes into a target of derision. Sure, there are some parts of the fanbase that get cringeworthy, and some parts of it are even vile, but the same can be said of any similarly sized IP, be it Star Wars, Disney Animated Series, and yes, even Harry Potter. The mystery about why I feel a little defensive over someone shitting all over a brony but a bit of glee over attack Harry Potter is one that I had to crack, so I thank you @galileosballs for helping me tease this out. It's good to get at the root of one's more vicious impulses, and this certainly helped tease out a lot of my reasoning.

for the record even if we lived in a universe where jk rowling wasn't a fundamentally evil person, and every dollar spent on harry potter merchandise wasn't being funneled directly into anti-trans causes, I would still think grown ass adults who are unable to help themselves from purchasing every possible thing from a mediocre childrens book franchise are extremely pathetic people

[mmso-notlikethat]

Okay, spreading some positivity!! And feel free to send this to other folks too 🥰 What is your goofiest BuckTommy headcanon?

Hehehehe i love this! Wait i have two 👀

Tommy gets ridiculously competitive while doing small mundane things without noticing. One time, he and Buck were folding laundry together, and Tommy turned it into a full-blown competition: "Whoever folds the most wins!" Buck, confused and amused, playes along until Tommy dramatically threw the last folded towel down and shouts, “Victory!”. But Buck points out that Tommy folded one of the towels inside out. Tommy immediately tries to fix it, but Buck snatches it away, “Disqualified! I win!”.. Tommy spent the next hour pouting, claiming he didn't actually care.

Tommy is actually isn't that responsible as he seems to be, he isn't good with money (he just somehow have a lot of it which he spends on stupid stuff) "come on Evan, I already have a house let me enjoy a little.".. It got to the point where Buck had to confiscate Tommy's credit card during Christmas because Tommy kept ordering "small, meaningful" gifts like designer watches and tailored jackets. Tommy tried to argue, "It's not even that much, Evan!" Buck, holding up an invoice, replied, "This says four digits, Tommy!" Tommy just grinned, grabbed Buck's hand, and said, "Well, I spend it on the things I love. And that includes you, so stop complaining." Buck sighed but secretly found it sweet... and then promptly added "budget management" to his list of responsibilities.

[weedgator-mommy]

I'm a fowl mouthed, unfiltered, speaking her mind kind of gal from the west (worken' on that) guns? nah I like punchn' shit

Originally hired to be a train conductor at Feeco. I dipped duties to become an over night airship pilot on the life or death request of an old friend ( shit ain't the same as a train change my mind)

Most landings end in crashes or shit getting blown up , fuckn manual was half burnt shut it.

If it hadn’t been for the intervention of mah friend's request I’d still be workn' for some bigwig dipshit or spending a lot of time looking at noodies.

Got an old ass pet slog named muffy who’s a bit brain damaged and missing a leg

clothes don't fit much and often times explode in mah arm areas, kinda sucks.

Ol Wheeze has been a long time friend going though a lot it seems most days Worked as a classy bartender somewhere in the east in a big ol industrial city for most of his early life. Probably started drinking around that time and hasn't stopped much Used to be a lot smaller and walked on his hands back then ( didn't even think he had arms?) Now works with some western Doc doing crazy medical shit. Still does that bartending thing as another job I guess to keep up what ever life was lead before he and his miss started running

Wheeze's little miss Hūwata She always seems jumpy and scared of nothin but I guess some past shit happened to make her an anxious mess Works as a bank teller in a local small town we're buffing it out proooobably money laundering but eh it's what ever She dresses like a fancy dude like she's worth somethin' but what do I know

These bastards are nuts and probably leaders of some kind of cult because Jesus Christ the shit that walks out of this guy's office is the shit of nightmares Doc. Phil is usually on heavy drugs because that's all he accepts as payment, if not then maybe it's probably the lobotomy marks on the side of his head that makes him this way I guess the twig leg dude Steve who work's with him is supposed to be some assistant but the bastard has a record of being illegally higher then me (I'm gonna killm' for that) Seen Phil in local knitting groups from time to time so uhhhh good for m'

I heard these critters go for a lot on the market and taste pretty good but didn't have the heart to kill this one due to the little dude with her She just wanders from town to town with him and I guess the kid has a hell of a twang in his voice. Don't get too near her cus she is one mean ass mama if you mean that little guy harm. --------------------------------------------------------- Welp there you go some characters I've come to know over the years Probably more stuff about them I could write about but I'm old and forget most the time. More critters to come but now on to some crazy ass stories

[icewindandboringhorror]

sometimes looking at like Self Help Strategies lists for the symptoms I'm having is always just like:

thing that I already do

thing I have tried 10 times

thing I already do

thing that I don't have the money to do

thing I already do

thing I've been doing since I was 10yrs old to no avail

thing that is impossible given my situation

thing that doesn't apply to me

thing that I already do

thing I have already tried

hrmm, oh wait, maybe finally- OH, yeah.. okay. thing that I already do but it was just phrased slightly differently

thing I have already done

[kyouka-supremacy]

---

[copper-sands]

starting to think that maybe it's a good idea to stop forcing myself to create and take a break actually

[itspileofgoodthings]

you know what I’ve realized lately? that’s really helped? the axiom: it just doesn’t really make that much of a difference. Or at least it doesn’t when you’re talking about good things and not, like, doing good vs. doing evil. Big choices, little choices, decisions, decisions —it’s not just that they don’t matter in the grand scheme of things—because they do! —but just. It won’t make that big of a difference. Life will continue to be wonderful AND difficult, fascinating AND hopelessly mundane, full of roses AND thorns and all the other cliches whether you walk down one road or another. And you’ll get used to the joys and sick of the sorrows whatever they are, and you’ll be ungrateful and bored and dissatisfied in some measure some of the time and you’ll have to work on all the things you have to work on anyways and just. Yeah! It doesn’t make that big of a difference! Even the biggest things!

[bedforddanes75]

they should just give me pretty things so i can look at them

[krawdad]

I think it was Gabe Newell who said something to the effect of "okay you made it more realistic, did that make it more or less fun?" And it's like yeah why aren't people getting asked that more.

[coffeeworldsasaki]

I'm still rotating in my mind the idea of selling stuff I make but well. I do a lot of different stuff through different fiber crafts and I have no idea if it would help or not to have so much stuff instead of one precise direction

[brittlebutch]

actually, having a kind of revelatory moment here of if HRT was something i have been considering for this long, but has remained inaccessible to me, then that means i Do actually have opinions about my appearance/presentation, so just because i can't take That Particular step doesn't mean that there aren't plenty of other avenues i could be pursuing (ie, clothing/accessories/etc.) that i just haven't let myself up until this point. like i don't have to shove it All aside just because there's one thing i can't get -- I'd probably still wind up a lot happier if I took those other steps I've spent all these years ignoring

[sonknuxadow]

mannn what the hell the new lps are on the target website now so i was thinking about just ordering them there since target seems to be the main place people in the us are finding them and the only one anywhere near me still doesnt have them and even if they did i cant go right now for various reasons. but they literally refuse to sell them to you online unless you spend 35 dollars or more? hello ive never seen an online store do anything like this before thats so weird

[funshinebf]

one thing i hate about not being able to drive is that like. being so reliant on doordash when we dont have the kinds of groceries i can eat is SO evil. buying 3 donuts from a store five minutes away costs me 13 fucking dollars. when if i was able to get there myself the order would be like 6 bucks instead. its so upsetting to me. and no i cant just walk over there instead because 1) severe chronic fatigue and pain 2) middle of summer and my meds give me heat intolerance and 3) all of the roads between my house and the donut place are either super busy main roads or side roads that have no sidewalks, so walking them would be difficult and potentially hazardous. its so fucking frustrating all the time

[victorluvsalice]

Welcome to another episode of "I have decided to upgrade the Valicer farmhouse!" It's been a while since Victor, Alice, and Smiler's home got a refresh, and this particular one was prompted mainly by the following two facts:

A) Thanks to all their various side hustles (Victor selling the produce from his greenhouse and occasionally licensing songs, Alice writing books and selling paintings, and Smiler making SimsTube videos), plus the profits from their grocery store and Alice's brief career as an official Artist, the gang had LOADS of money to spend on new furniture and the like

B) My parents agreed as a birthday present to buy me 100 bucks worth of Sims 4 packs, and I spent a good chunk of that on them purchasing Horse Ranch and Home Chef Hustle, so I had some new Build/Buy items to play with!

So yeah -- figured it was time to upgrade some furniture and add some new fun stuff for the trio to use in their daily lives! Let's take it room by room:

Smiler’s Party Barn – This space was pretty much all about the furniture upgrades -- I updated the couch by the stairs to the most expensive and comfortable one (in of course the most wild swatch I could find – purplish-pink with zebra print details on the frame); changed out the chairs around the games table to more expensive and comfortable ones from that actually matched the puzzle table and were still just as colorful; and updated Smiler’s bar to a bigger one (it’s now a three-tiler, black with glowing yellow lights along the bottom -- aesthetic!) and got the most expensive and comfortable barstools to go along the front. Gotta make sure the guests are comfy! :D Even more importantly, though, I ended up changing around a bunch of the pictures and posters – the two sky prints the trio’s picked up from observatory visits are now behind the bar with a couple of space-themed posters; the DJ posters previously behind the bar are now above the ottomans on either side of the karaoke machine; a cute purple painting of a woman previously above the bar is now over the stairwell; and the big portraits of the Valicer wedding (Victor and Alice kissing and Victor and Smiler kissing) are now by the ping-pong table, in a collage with the two biggest pictures of the trio posing in their swimsuits on their honeymoon. :) But where did the other pictures of the wedding and honeymoon go? I’ll tell you shortly...

Cow Paddock – But first, let’s go outside and around to the back of the barn to Moory’s pen! Where, with the power of Horse Ranch, I added some patches of prairie grass and a proper water trough for our cow (moving the CC bucket fountain from "Cottage Garden Stuff" by @plumbobteasociety I was using to represent a source of water for Moory over to the corner of the pen for decoration purposes...though it occurs to me it might be nice to put in the chicken pen to pretend it’s now a drinking fountain and bath for the chickens). The water trough is probably just going to be for decoration (it’s intended for the horses that came with Horse Ranch and I’m not sure other animals can drink out of them), but the prairie grass actually serves a purpose – I know from seeing the option grayed out on the shed previously that you can refill a cow or llama’s feed with the stuff! So that’s cool. :) (And yes, I saw that option BEFORE I owned Horse Ranch, so, uh, great job Sims team.)

Living Room – I changed out the rug under the couch, coffee table, and TV stand for one of the new colorful Horse Ranch ones (doesn't it look cool?), and upgraded the couch and the two chairs in front of the fireplace into more expensive and comfortable models (though I made sure to keep the bright and wacky colors -- the Get Famous and Growing Together furniture have really good swatches in this regard, I'm pleased to report). Again, though, the big change was updating all the stuff on the walls -- mostly because I absolutely had to clean up all the photos around the house so I actually had room for NEW snaps. Plus I'd started looking at some of the photo collections and going “Do we really need this many pictures of you guys in front of your house at the family reunion?” XD I mean, I like them, but maybe some variety would be a good thing. And look a little less self-important. XD So what I did was remove the four-picture collage of the gang doing various poses in front of the house at the family reunion from one side of the TV, grabbed one medium-sized photo out of the set to keep, sold the rest (and the frame), and moved into its place the picture of everyone posing in front of the store that was upstairs by Smiler’s room previously. And THEN I moved the collage of photos of them on their honeymoon that was previously in the little notch next to the kitchen (which no longer exists as I made the kitchen bigger -- more on that later) over to the corner by the phonograph! So it’s right near the other big wedding collection. :) So THAT’S a little better!

Study – Mostly more picture rearranging in this room, though I did upgrade the chess set and chairs on the left wall to fancier versions – and discovered that the black and red chessboard also has black and red pieces, so I decided to go with that as a color theme. *shrug* If I can’t have white and red, I’ll go with black and red! Anyway, over the chess table, I stuck four of Victor and Alice's original Selvadoradan honeymoon snaps into one of the four-photo collage frame sets I unlocked, then arranged the remaining two photos on top of them in a way that made them look like part of the set (you can tell they're not because the frames aren't as thick, but still works). Then, over by Smiler's guitar, I got two more three-frame collage sets, put the photos from the trip to Granite Falls in those, and arranged them appropriately behind the rug, next to the window. The picture Alice painted of Smiler playing their guitar and the the one she painted of the Granite Falls ranger station sign then went up on the side wall next to the rug (because Victor has the picture Alice painted of him playing piano next to his piano, so I wanted Smiler's portrait to be next to THEIR instrument). After that, I moved the picture of Alice scratching herself that Victor did on the Valicer Honeymoon out of there and upstairs to the attic rec room (I couldn't bring myself to delete it, it amuses me too much XD), then moved the sketches and fancy light Alice unlocked from the Artist career over a little, into that space. Making room for a little photo collage of sorts next to her fancy easel -- the photo of her painting at their old house that Victor took on the top, one of the photos she took of Rory to become friends and get her to turn her into a werewolf on the bottom –

And one of those Moschino Stuff slideshow photo frames in the middle! Because I've been meaning to start using those for AGES now. This is where a bunch of the smaller photos went – I put all the little photos of the wedding from the party barn, one of my favorite little photos from the family reunion, a snap of them posing in front of the store, and a snap from their New Year’s Eve trio date into there and turned on the frame to display them as a slideshow, changing once per hour. :D So now I have a spot to keep tiny photos that I may like, but don’t have room for on the wall! Yay! :)

First Floor Hallway – Bunch of little changes here -- first up, I made the washer and dryer brighter colors (because why wouldn't I?) and put the MySim trophy of Yuki Alice found recently on top of them – turns out that WASN’T a duplicate after all! Nice! Then I got one of the three-photo-frame collage sets I unlocked with the family reunion, put the best three photos of the scenery around their honeymoon island in it (and sold the fourth, which was of a rainy miserable day anyway), and slapped the set up next to one of the windows beside the study. Wasn’t sure where else to put them, and they looked good there! And finally, I grabbed myself the egg-shaped decorative egg display shelf I downloaded from @somecreativecc (seriously, if you need displays, they are the place to go) and slapped it up where the previous hanging shelf with all the eggs had been (right by the entrance to the kitchen and the cats’ downstairs scratching post), moving all the eggs (with the help of “moveobjects on” to access all the slots) onto there! So now all ten eggs fit properly on those shelves, and there’s a dedicated space for the remaining two that need to be found, yay.

Downstairs Back Entrance/Mudroom – I had to move one of Alice’s paintings out of here into the kitchen, and rearrange the boots so they were along the wall next to the coat rack – reason being, the room is now smaller! And why is it smaller?

[fortes-fortuna-iogurtum]

hey why is trying to book a flight so weird and anxiety-inducing. couldn't they think of my poor nerves.

[daforged]

i work really hard to not compare myself to others but it’s so bizarre to me to see other people my age like. going out all the time or travelling or even just living on their own. what do you mean all your money goes to just your own living expenses & your own fun and you aren’t the financial backbone of your family. every time i take vacation days a coworker will ask me if i’m going somewhere and its like no lmfao do you think im made of money. i dont think about it much because it doesn’t really do anything but upset me but deep down im so resentful of every other young adult who doesn’t have to pay their parents bills and just gets to blow their money on whatever the fuck whenever the fuck