#i mean simblr is MY full time job but that is another story

[stinkrascal]

Gah those who say simblr are dead should go and consume the hundreds of posts by storytellers or game players and get excited or attached so they can look forward to updates. It’s unfair that because new content isn’t being continually uploaded daily it’s deemed as dead. There’s also so many people who post text updates about their days or lives. There’s so much more life in this community besides a new edit being dropped daily to look at! Or go find new blogs! Get out of your comfort zone guys! This community also has waves of activeness and quietness which is normal for the summer time. (Sorry, I’m not ranting at you, I’m hoping that maybe people will realize that this is nothing new and to stop worrying themselves over it.)

i totally agree anon! tbh i do have sympathy for those who say this, because i totally remember having this same concern in earnest years ago when simblr first had a massive dropoff from the activity i was used to seeing in 2018. but it's kinda funny now, after so many years have passed and people are still saying the same things about how simblr is dying when it very obviously hasn't died yet haha. this is just the level of activity it's been at for a while now, but that doesn't mean it's dying, it's just being maintained at a different rate than it was back at simblr's peak activity (which again imo i'd say that was around 2018). there's always people posting on some corner of simblr about something, whether that's story posts, gameplays, edits, or even just answering asks or making text posts abt their days. you just gotta explore your options and follow as many simblrs as you can yk!! it's unreasonable to assume ppl are gonna post "content" every day (remember that this is just our hobby and not a full time job lol), but the community is still definitely here nevertheless

[armoricaroyalty]

@stardrop-sims let me know I was nominated for a simmy award???? whaaaaaat??????

Tumblr is my only social media and this is run on Bluesky, so I completely missed this until now—thank you so much to whoever nominated me, that's so kind of you 😭 (the bluesky acct, the full list of nominees)

In a lot of ways, 2024 was a really challenging year for me, online and off. I'm not one to talk much about my personal life on this blog, but it was one thing after another all year long. I spent more time doubting myself and my story than I did working on it, and I ended the year feeling pretty down on myself because of it. It means a lot that someone took the time to nominate me for a community award, this year of all years.

Thank you to the person (persons?) who nominated me, and thank you to everyone who's ever read or enjoyed this story, whether you're new around here or if you've been following since the prehistoric era of 2020. This story (and the community here on simblr) have been with me for three jobs, two breakups, three moves, a major health crisis, and a thousand other things. In the years since I've started this story, I've gone through tons and tons of growth as a person and a writer, and I'm glad I've been able to share bits and pieces of that with all of you.

While I've got the mic, I wanna give a big shout-out and thank you to the people who step up and act as resources for the simming community. That means moderators on discord and reddit, the people running blogs to share CC and tutorials, the people organizing events for the community. A lot of good comes from people who take it on themselves to make things easier for others, and they don't get thanked enough. Gently encouraging everyone to send a nice ask to your favorite CC finds blog, to the moderator of your favorite discord server, or the person who always answers technical questions and troubleshoots for people who can't get their games running.

Let's all carry that gratitude and community spirit forward into the new year, yeah?

[theageofsims]

Story process asks, no. 10 & no. 12! 😊

Hi, thanks for asking me these questions :)

[TEN] Clearly it would be Makoto so I can just let my cats sleep around with other cats and produce kittens while I don't keep a steady job… and sleep with Judith Ward's mean ass to the point I get her pregnant even though I'm supposed to be a gay man -- LMAO, sorry. I had to once again throw some MAJOR SHADE to Makoto

Honestly? I'd probably want to be Gloria at this point in time because now that I'm a type 2 diabetic, I can't eat fucking cake when I want to eat cake. If I was Gloria I'd have a fridge full of cookies and cakes and pies… not because that's what I ate before I became a diabetic or what made me one, but because now that I am one I can't just eat that stuff whenever my hormones or anger wants me to eat it. THIS WAS A TRIGGERING QUESTION apparently, LMAO!!!! I'm kidding… but also, she's in a serious relationship William fucking Jones now. That's like being involved with Batman… well… maybe not Batman, but Bruce Wayne at least! I should haver probably said Indiana Jones instead, but I'm trying to not mention another Harrison Ford character (that I adore) so… yeah. LMAO. But it would have worked out because Indy is a scientist anyway.

[TWELVE] Being able to have visuals added to stories I would have written elsewhere anyway. I think I've mentioned it at least a couple of times that I've been writing stories my whole life practically. I was about 9 years old when I used those wild colored gel pens my parents bought me for school and all the notebooks to write fan fictions on my favorite musicial artists, made up characters, tv characters, and movie characters. I continued as I got older. Aside from riding bikes outside with my friends, going to the movies and the mall, or just hanging out with them at thier houses or them at mine, in my spare time I would write stories.

One thing I always wanted to do was be able to draw and I can't. I'm really creative in a lot of ways, but I can't seem to learn how to draw no matter what I do.

Anyway, so I spent years writing, but all of the visuals were in my head. I didn't think that I'd ever use the Sims to help me get some of my stories across (I still actively write fan fiction, but I post it on Archive of Our Own and there's no images to go with them) becaus I've been playing the Sims since Sims 1. My first attempt at a sims story and simblr started somewhere in 2014/2015 with the Sims 3, but it never amounted to anything.

I didn't really think I'd end up writing a story that I've stuck with for so long, but there's many factors why that's come to be. It may happen for my other stories as well, I just don't know yet.

I guess a truth, though a unique one, is that I love movie characters a lot and I have my favorite actors/actresses who play a wide range of characters. Clearly Harrison Ford is my most favorite actor for many years now and I've spent a lot of those years writing fan fictions with his characters as well as other characters from other things I love, but also made up characters of my own.

Every time I watch a Harrison movie I always wonder what their lives are like outside of the movie -- or what happens to them at the end of the movie? So that's where fan fiction comes in not just for them, but for all the characters I love. It's like fleshing out their characters even more and giving them a new life or new experiences with different sorts people.

It's just something that comes natural to me as it did when I was writing fan fiction for the tv show NCIS or before that, with The X-Files. All of my fan fiction from age 13 to age 20 had to do with Fox Mulder, Dana Scully, Skinner, Krycek, and everyone else from The X-Files because that was my total jam during that phase of my life (but it will always be one of my most favorite TV Shows) anyway.

So I guess my "simblr story writing process" isn't really a simblr story writing process, but just more of a story writing process but with pictures. I get to see my favorite characters visually unlike I've never been able to see them before and I love that… if that makes sense?

[papermint-airplane]

Just some Simblr updates and *cough* other ramblings. Click if you’re interested. Warning: it is long.

It's 5:30 on a Wednesday evening. I am sitting in an uncomfortable metal chair in a church basement. The air smells of mildew and fried chicken (it's a Baptist church). I'm holding a paper cup full of lukewarm water in both hands. It's still full. The bottom is beginning to sag. I stare at it.

"Laura!" comes a voice from my right. I startle, sloshing my water slightly. "It's your turn to speak," comes the voice again, softer this time.

I look up. A large, tight smile stretches across Shelly's face. She probably means for it to look reassuring but it just looks forced. I swear I can make out the faintest twitch in her right eye. I drop my gaze to my paper cup again. All around me, metal chairs creak out a chorus as the other members of the group shift. I know eight pairs of eyes just turned towards me, though I don't look up to confirm it. It would have been nine if Greg had showed up tonight. Fucking Greg.

I open my mouth, attempting to speak, but all that comes out of my dry throat is a strained "u-uh." I raise the paper cup to my lips and down the water like a shot. Some of it floods into my windpipe. I begin coughing uncontrollably, my body's reflexes desperately trying to save me from drowning myself on dry land. Shelly is still smiling at me.

"Take your time," she says. I continue to choke. Jennifer, on my left, half-heartedly pats my back.

After what feels like an eternity, my airway manages to clear itself and I am no longer dying. I only wish I were.

"Uh," I say again, even more hoarse than before. "I-I'm Laura and I can't--"

"'Don't'," Shelly corrects me. "We don't say 'can't' here."

"Right, uh, I don't finish things," I say. Shelly nods her approval. "Uh..yeah."

"Hi, Laura," eight voices drone in response.

"It's been two weeks since I posted the last part of Denizens of Woeford," I continue. I know that I should--"

"Ah ah ah!" interrupts Shelly, wagging a finger at me. "We don't 'should' ourselves here."

"Right. I know I sh--I mean, I need--I want to post another part but..." My voice trails off. Sentences are another thing I struggle to finish, apparently. Shelly's eye twitch becomes a bit more pronounced. "You know what, I have to go to the bathroom," I blurt out, holding up my empty paper cup as if it is exhibit A in my legal defense.

"Of course," coos Shelly. "We'll still be here when you get back. Unless it's after 6:00, because the ladies have to set up for prayer meeting."

I scramble out of the room as fast as my legs will carry me. To my credit, I do stop at the ladies' room to toss my cup into the wastebin. I flush one of the toilets, hoping the sound will drown out my footsteps as I bolt down the hallway towards the exit. Greg had the right idea ditching tonight. Fucking Greg.

I won't be back.

~~

So. If you’re wondering what that was all about, me too, fam, me too. Ever get a shower thought you can’t shake until you write it down? This was that. I’m so sorry I put you through all that.

That was just my round-about, extremely convoluted way of acknowledging my faults. I have started like three stories on here that I’ve dropped already because I didn’t have time to do a good job or I was bored or *dismissive hand flap* whatever else. I do have a hard time finishing things, I admit that. I have limited time to play because of my full-time job and when I do play, I tend to prioritize my own enjoyment (as I should, as we all should) so if I’m not enjoying something, I drop it. That’s what happened to Bellaverse.

Bellaverse was going to be a multiverse-spanning story about Bella Goth née Bachelor in several different iterations just...just going through it. I actually wrote like 90% of it. All I had left to do was set up pictures for it. Problem was, due to my limited time, I kind of ended up half-assing the pictures in the prologue. I wasn’t really happy with any of them but I didn’t feel like I had the time or attention span to redo them. So I dropped the story rather than putting something out I’m not happy with. Maybe at some point, I’ll take another crack at it. Like I said, I do have most of it written and I don’t want a story to go to waste. 

All of this is to say I feel bad when I drop something else or I don’t feel as excited about something as I once did. And that’s dumb. This is a game that I play for fun on a Simblr I maintain for fun. I shouldn’t be making myself feel bad for only focusing on stuff I enjoy and dropping what I don’t. But, this isn’t really about the Simblr. I have trouble finishing things in other areas of my life, too. I have mental health problems and I tend to put too much pressure on myself and get too overwhelmed and...things just don’t get done. I’m working on it in therapy. My therapist is not Shelly, thank God. He’s actually really good and he’s helping me get over a lot of self-inflicted guilt.

So I’m not dropping Denizens of Woeford. However, I am changing it. 

My original plan was to play every family in Woeford in a rotational save, posting their stories one part per rotation and continuing on like that, tying each family’s story into each other. Ambitious, you say? Nah, not really. The intertwining narratives were always going to happen with what I had planned, so that wasn’t my issue. My issue is this stupid game doing what it does and making life difficult for me. I found Pleasant Sims’ detailed instructions on how to play Sims 3 rotationally and I followed them. to. the. letter. And it didn’t work. Even after I set up castes, even after I added everyone to them, even after I installed a mod to enable Sims 2-style aging, even after I set lifespans on epic, my unplayed Sims decided “hey fuck Laura, let’s just do what we want!” and aged up without my input anyway. It was really annoying trying to focus on one family when I had to go jump into other households real quick to fix people. 

And that’s when I realized, hey, I don’t want to do this. The only households I was really enjoying playing were Aiden’s and Eleanor’s, in that order. So, instead of my grand rotational plan, I’m going to focus just on Aiden and Eleanor. I’m still going to post introductions to the other Denizens of Woeford (because I worked hard on those, dammit), and you’ll still get to see their stories play out, albeit in the background of Aiden’s story. It’s just better for me this way and I think it’s better for anyone who wants to read this mess, too, because not only will it be less confusing, it’ll be more fun. And I’ll be having fun instead of wishing I was playing with Aiden instead of whoever I’m posting about. I know my feelings would show through, and that’s no good for anyone. 

So, Tl; dr, I will be posting Denizens of Woeford once more. I scrapped all my initial plans and screenshots, and moving forward, I’ll just be focusing on Aiden and Eleanor instead of everyone.

More than likely, I am literally the only person on the planet who cares about any of this, but I wanted to get my thoughts out there anyway. If you are reading this, holy shit why?! But also, thank you, and if you learn anything from this, prioritize what you find fun over what you’ve made yourself think you’re obligated to do. Because at the end of the day, nobody is going to care anywhere near as much as you do, so you might as well stop making yourself stress out over nothing. Nobody is forcing you to do anything except you. And maybe Greg. Fucking Greg.

[harmoniouspixels]

As Promised, The Infrequent Update Post

Now that it’s roughly 14 hours later and my head’s a touch clearer, let’s give some updates!

On Simming & This Blog

While I have said previously that I was more active on BoolProp... even that’s tapered off a bit. I think what I’ve realized is that I’ve gone back to enjoying The Sims as a whole by playing off and on like I did before simblr. It’s been nice! Not having to craft whole narratives and just playing the game has made the game fun again. Not that I don’t have any accompanying story to things when I play, but it’s been significantly less stressful than putting out ~content~ here.

That’s to say that I don’t envision popping up here every so often again, or that telling stories with the game on here is bad! I think I finally realized that it wasn’t for me. Although I did enjoy writing the stories I told in this blog’s heyday, I think I want to go back to posting gameplay here and there when I feel like it.

On Real Life (Work & School)

The last time I updated, I mentioned that I had got a new job but it was still part-time. However, like a sim, I got promoted on my first day to full time! Turns out one of the full timers was leaving for another position, and since I had expressed a willingness to go full time in my interview, my boss gave me the job. I’ve been enjoying it a lot! For context, it’s at a university, which has been a blast (meaning I’m using my degree without really using my degree, haha).

Since I now work for a university, one of the perks is that my masters would be covered! If I can get off my procrastination and actually submit my application, I’ll be in a new program in the fall. (Admittedly not my first choice, but when this is free, I’m willing to take it for the sake of having this covered.)

So there you have it! That’s a bit of a brief Update(TM) from me. Still around, hoping to keep popping up here and there like usual.

[murfeelee]

Weekend! Updates! Replies!

Happy July 4th, everybody!

(WTF did Tumblr do NOW? At least X-kit’s still active, thank god.)

I’m still cooped up inside not getting any sleep (effing fireworks) and melting my eyeballs as I try to finish my thesis. I’m nowhere near done yet, this is insanity; I’m scared I won’t be done by September at all. If I do, it’ll be because I rushed through it and did the bare effing minimum. But I might have to at this point, I’m exhausted.

And my next summer class starts next week, and the professor sent us the syllabus and WHAT THE EFF, LADY!? 😠 This is a dinky little summer elective, not a frikkin dissertation, wench, DANG!! 😡🤬

I just wanted something light, so I could coast on through and get my last credits GGEZ & bounce; I’m tired of this place. No, this heifer has to send us a whole TERM full of course material. I am too upset.

I just want my effing degree already. Not that it matters, cuz the economy’s even WORSE now--schools, libraries, museums, galleries, non-profits, etc. all got slammed cuz of quarantine, and they’ll all be busy letting people GO, not hiring. U_U And that’s MY EFFING SECTOR. 😫 I want to WORK. I don’t wanna be stuck in school wasting ANOTHER 5+ years getting some PhD--the pay is peanuts, and I hate school! But if there’s no jobs I’ll do it, at least PhD programs pay YOU to go to school. XD

I’m calling it now: I’ll be reporting to y’all live this time next year working on a effing doctorate, just to have SOME money in my pocket, jfc. 😤

ANYWAY, so that’s me right now.

Sorry for the rant -- I’ve been so angry and fed up with absolutely everything lately.

And I’m really sorry for not being active AT ALL lately; Tumblr & Simblr in particular are my biggest distractions, and if I even take a peek on my dash I’ll get sucked in and get zero work done on this stupid paper.

But trust! In my spare time I’ve been working on new CC & new gameplay! I am so excited to share it with y’all; I’ve been planning this for months, it’s based on one of my alltime favorites. ^_^

REPLIES

descendantdragfi replied to your photoset “3 Favorites Tag!  Rules: A person’s favorite color, favorite animal,...”

Love your favourites! Peacock is magnificent 🦚😁                    

Thanks again for tagging me! ^_^ Oh wow, I didn’t know there was a peacock   emoji; you mean I could’ve been spamming it this whole time!? 🦚 🦚 🦚 🦚

andantezen replied to your photoset “3 Favorites Tag!  Rules: A person’s favorite color, favorite animal,...”

Your love for peacocks is contagious... Since playing with the magnificent CC you made of them, have read more about these birds' symbolism in several cultures... and decided to turn them into an actual character of the story :) thank you!                    

Thank YOU! *hugs* 🦚 Yes, I’m obsessed with peacocks, they’re my favorite animal on earth (dragons are my favorite fanciful creatures). Every time I go to the zoo I’m SO tempted to just steal one; they let them roam around freely, and I just wanna scoop up one of the babies and parkour myself over a fence or something. XD  🦚 I mean look at these frikkin things! 🦚

😍 🦚  😍 🦚 😍 🦚

darkccfinds replied to your photoset “SAKURA - BLΛƆKPIИK INSPIRED BLACKPINK! 지금 내가 걸어가는 거린 BLACKPINK 4...”

Sakura in its purest form!!.. as it should be in black and pink. I love everything about this photo set🤩

*high fives!* :D Thanks so much! Yup, I had to do it. Sakura would totally dye all her money pink and buy a sequins-covered bedazzled military tank, why wouldn’t she? XD Plus, I just LOVE Blackpink’s music videos & songs, so it was a perfect fit, really.

ashuriphoenix replied to your post “Chinese Creatures INSP”

*furiously mashes download button*

I want to make a lot more Pets CC and kemonomini CC, and get back to playing in Green Isle; that was the most fun I’ve had in months!

solori replied to your photoset “Pride 2020: Bartros & Nagron at the LGBT+ Community Center “History...”

♥ ♥

pitheinfinite replied to your photoset “Pride 2020: Bartros & Nagron at the LGBT+ Community Center “History...”

Love how you presented this theme with this positive energy!

If you don’t smile you’ll burst into tears, is how I see it. I needed something bright and colorful and loving, and my Spartacus-inspired gameplay always brings a smile to my face; I love my Nagron & Bartros babies. :3

ohsimtastic reblogged your post and added:

IM SCREAMING !!!!!

Speaking of babies! :D

Happy simming, y’all!

🦚