#i'm serious that's one of my nose presets

[kashisun]

Her nose is perfect cause i made it <3

[simlicious]

OMG I thought I was just really crazy because I was in such a bad mood in general yesterday and thought my mood was clouding my inZOI experience. I felt really let down by how little you can actually edit. You are really dependent on the preset you choose. We know how much photoskinned skins can alter the look of a Sim and the same is true for the ZOIs. They use very different skins and it absolutely influences the look, but you can only change the skin type by choosing a different preset, there is no way to select or edit skins otherwise, only the tone and shine are editable. There is blush that adds freckles and moles but it's blush with added moles or blush with added freckles, they do not have standalone moles and freckles. I wish they would have their own category. Also missed birthmarks, blemishes, and scars, but maybe I overlooked something. I was frustrated with eyebrows being way too dark for blondes or redheads even at lightest settings, how the eyebrows are all very long horizontally on the face and very bushy/thick and there is no thick/thin slider. The curly hairstyles department is a serious letdown (where are medium-tight curly styles?). Hopefully they will add more.

A thing that drove me insane is that every time you select another hairstyle the color reverts back to the default color of that new hairstyle. Having to recreate the color every time got old really fast.

You can upload your own patterns for some clothes (it basically lets you open the file editor and pick any pattern from your drive), but there is no way to adjust the color in the game. I found that the UV mapping does look kinda distorted in the elbow bend which was very obvious and unsightly for me (maybe it's just the one sweatshirt though, I have not tested more).

I was hoping for a pattern system with vector-style graphics that lets you recolor certain elements in it, or at the very least some contrast, hue, and saturation sliders to adjust your custom texture, but no such luck. There are no premade patterns at all. The AI pattern designer is the worst crap ever, it does not resemble any patterns at all. I tried to make a floral allover pattern and it gave me weird-looking blob shapes. Oh, and the output does not tile properly, even if you add "seamlessly tiling" to the prompt. On the body, I wasn't able to create truly small boobs (the smallest size seems at least a B-Cup to me). I'm flat as a pancake so I want that representation.

In terms of clothing, there are some very intricate and detailed styles, and this might be ZOI's greatest asset. But most are very trend-oriented and "street style on the runway"-like. It's hard to find truly basic outfits. I worry that the styles may age really badly because of that though. But then, I'm sure there will be tons of CC later on to fix that.

The body and detail of the meshes and textures are really stunning, and wrinkles and age look very convincing. The smiles seem pretty fake/plastered on, but maybe that would be better in the animations themselves, than in the static poses. The eyelash styles really look like they have mascara on (slightly clumped styles available), but I wish there was more variety with stuff like eyebrow styles and lashes which does not offer a lot of variety even for a base game (though it is still in development so this could change). I do like how you can customize things like eyeliner, lipstick and eyeshadow, but I wish that level of detail was not just for selective features like that but that the level of customizability in general would be higher, especially the ability to sculpt the face more dramatically, have presets for eyes, noses, etc. which I have not seen. It seems there are only presets for the entire face.

And if you do not mind working off face presets this might work, but the sliders and ways you can adjust the Zois do need a lot more to be truly great and useful.

Seeing there are limited presets, I think you could really easily hit the limit on what kind of ZOIs you could make. I suspect that after a while, they will all look alike. Remembering all the slider options that Life by You had makes me sad that we are not even getting close to that degree of customization here.

A small thing that I was surprised to be annoyed about is that you have to enter the full name of the ZOI before you make it. It sucks, I choose the name based on the look of my Sim, not the other way around. There is not even a name randomizer?!

The character creator feels like an AAA RPG creator, not fleshed out enough for a life sim.

I really hope this is a very early look into the character creator and it will hopefully change drastically (but my hopes are not very high at this point).

Well... Character Creation in InZOI isn't as pleasant as in Sims (especially Sims 3 hehe). It may be a fun addition in Steam library but it won't replace Sims in any way. I don't feel any connection with the characters at all and editing them (because you use already existing presets) is somehow a tiring task. Also, too few long hairstyles!

[i-can-get-extra-with-my-ships]

A Slice Of My Love. Chapter 6. Wait, You Don't Think I'm Insane?

Sup children!! (No clementine my brother did not hack onto my Tumblr and write me a whole fucken chapter.) We be existing on the bean bag again. 

The farthest you will most likely see me venture is to my bed. Or a hotel. It depends how long this book goes for. I mean, we’re almost at 10 chapters. I said like 20-30 most likely. Holy shit. I’m almost ½ to ⅓ done with this book. Moving on before I go on more of a tangent than I already have!!

Pairings: Mentions of the glasses gays (it's toned down for this chapter and in chapter 7 it will be turned up to 11), Prinxiety but it’s best friend mode™ that has been preset to 11

Tw: Cursing, Fourth wall breaks (they be back, but not as bad this time), Virgil being insane, Virgil and Roman being both shippers and BFFs, the lack of sleep finally catching up to Virge, Vee thinking he has just proved a major point.

Virgil’s POV

----

Assuming that you’ve read this whole book, you already know that Pat has been overtaken by the powers of the boop™ and has gone upstairs with Logan. Logan never came back downstairs.

Roman was thinking about something. Well, I knew what that something was. You only have to be best friends with Princy for a year and a half to know what he wants to ask you.

“You wanna ask me about Alonso, don’t you?” Roman looked up at me. Then he went back to thinking.

“You know that as long as you don’t accuse me of being insane, you can ask me whatever the fuck you want.”

He looked at me again and then sat down at the table with a bowl of cereal. “Taking advantage of the fact that dad’s upstairs huh?”

The fuck? Dude, we’ve been best fucking friends for over a year now!! If you’re trying to ask me something just ask me!!

“No shit Sherlock.”

He gasped in fake surprise. “How DARE you!! I hate to inform you, but I am the prince, hence I am royalty. You do not speak to royalty in such a crude manner!!”

So the Roman stans are taking mild offense right now. I’m gonna tell you this once and once only. THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BEST FRIEND MODE™ HAS BEEN TURNED UP TO ITS PRESET NUMBER OF 11!!

Anyways, Roman stans aside, I laughed hysterically at Roman’s mocked offense. He does a really good impression of what I’d like to imagine offended Roman stans to sound like.

Ok, we’re gonna chuck the Roman stans out a window so I can actually move on from them. I decided that I was going to help Princey away from the conversation that He was trying to move away from. (I was really tempted to say spared.) The extra bitch hasn’t left yet, has it Em? (We are NOT doing this now.) Fine.

“Seeing as you’re trying to change the subject, Pat and Lo earlier.”

His face lit up at the mention of the glasses gays, as we’ve dubbed them.

“Looks like someone needs to get more sleep.” Ro did a crappy impersonation of Lo. I laughed some more.

“And don’t forget the boop™”

Roman started snickering “How did I forget the boop™? Uhh… Well, I only have 2 weaknesses: self-deprecation and affection.”

Roman was crappily imitating Pat now. I knew where Roman was going. I jumped up from my chair and ran over. Then I slowly walked by him and booped his nose.

Roman snickers turned into a bit of giggling, then he continued with our inside joke. “Never mind. I have 3 weaknesses: self-deprecation, affection and whatever Logan just did.”

I laughed even more at Roman’s shitty impression job. “Ok, you’re purposely sucking. I have accepted this challenge of sucking at doing impersonations for this joke.” I cleared my throat for the shittiest Logan Sanders impression in the history of the universe. I heard Roman mumble “Oh god” underneath his breath.

Good. You better be bracing yourself for this shitshow Princey.

“Patton, I believe that Roman and Virgil would call that a” I searched through imaginary vocab cards “boop™.”

We looked at each other and then laughed hysterically. I somehow ended up falling over in our laughter. We stopped for a moment and looked at each other again. Then laughed again, only harder this time.

Through my laughter, I managed “Stop laughing and help me you, stupid bitch!!”

He looked at me in disbelief. “You’re sitting there, on the floor, laughing, but I can’t laugh with you?” He lectured me while still giggling.

“I’m laughing at my own stupidity. Only I can laugh at myself.”

“Whatever. I thought I was supposed to be the dramatic one!”

The laughter had died down quite quickly after that. Roman helped me up off the floor. We walked to the couch and sat down.

Well… more he sat down, I lay down, and he was my footrest. It’s an us thing.

“Do you always have to put your feet on me, Virge?”

I scoffed and looked at him in disbelief. “Do I have anywhere else to put my feet? No. Do I want you to sit on my feet? No. Do I want to sit up? No. Do I want to move to the other couch? No. Are you my prisoner now? Yes.”

He laughed a little more. I could tell that he was thinking that I stole his job of being the dramatic one.

We sat there in comfortable silence. The only thing keeping it from being awkward was the light and playful atmosphere. I have no clue about you guys, but with a best friend that you’re almost always loud with, silence is just weird and awkward. (This is a thing with me and my best friend. Normally we just randomly quote Charlie the Unicorn at that point.) 

I decided that I needed to bring up the inevitable.

“You gonna ask me about Alonso any time today? I already told you. You can ask me. I trust you.”

He thought for a moment. “Umm…. Well…. What does he look like?”

I snickered a little bit. “Wow. You’re THAT scared that you’re going to offend me?”

He didn’t share my laughter.

“Oh, umm…. Kinda like Remy, but without the stupid sign that says sleep. But like Remy mixed with someone else. I can’t put my finger on who though.” Roman hummed in response. Then he got a mischievous grin on his face.

OH SHIT!! ROMAN DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE.

He dared though.

“So is he hot?”

I looked at him with my most serious “Bitch what the fuck?” face and asked him a simple question: “Roman, you’re my best friend and I love you (platonically), but why are you like this?”

He looked back at me with a “Bitch what the fuck?” face as well. “Because I’m the literal embodiment of Thomas’ romance. And as your best friend, I want you to find love.”

“That wasn’t cheesy at all Ramen.” I snickered a little bit at the Ramen part. Roman absolutely HATES the nickname Ramen. But he’s still Ramen.

“Don’t think Ramen’s going to get a reaction out of me. It’s not. I’m totally fine with that nickname now.”

My mind went to Someone Gets Hurt Reprise from Mean Girls as soon as Ro Ramen said fine. “REALLY FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!! GO BE FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEN!!!”

Roman picked up on the reference and finished the song. “And I want my pink shirt.”

I joined him for the extra part that we add every time we sing/listen to that song.

“HE BROUGHT UP THE PINK SHIRT!! AND YOU KNOW THAT SHIT HAS HIT THE FAN ONCE YOU BRING UP THE PINK SHIRT!!!” We laughed hysterically once more.

Once our laughter had died down again, Roman got serious again. Ish.

“Are you gonna tell me if Alonso is cute or not?”

I couldn’t escape this conversation now. “I don’t know. I guess? You know that this isn’t really my department. It’s like 110% yours.”

He snickered a little bit. “So like, when did you notice him?”

I told him the story. “So Pat was lecturing me about how I should be sleeping and all that bs. I wasn’t really listening because of the hypocrite card. I was staring at the counter and he was just sort of chilling there. Existing.”

I looked at Ro to see his “Vee you’re insane” face but it never came, so I continued.

“Then after Pat went upstairs to get Logan. Alonso, at this point in time I didn’t know his name so I was just referring to him as ‘the counter guy’ in my head, started talking to me by quoting Heathers. I was quoting the scene that he started when Pat and Lo came downstairs. They told me that I was being crazy and that there was only a piece of bread. That’s why I thought that you’d think I’m crazy too.”

Roman looked at me. No discernible emotion could be seen on his face. It was kinda scary. He just told me “I don’t think you’re crazy.”

It took me a moment to comprehend that. “You don’t?”

“At least I think that.”

I didn’t fully think out what I was about to do before I did it. That’s very unusual for me. Might I remind you that I was running on two cups short of a full pot of coffee (Pat and Lo drank them) and like 2 hours of sleep?

I lept off the couch, grabbed Roman’s hand and dragged him up the stairs. Once I got to Pat’s room I kicked the door down. We were greeted with the sight of the glasses gays cuddling on Patton’s bed watching a movie.

After I kicked the door down they looked up at me in shock. Still cuddling though, so that’s a bonus.

Pat spoke first. “Virgil, please tell me why you just kicked down my door.”

I could hardly contain my excitement. I moved to the side a little bit and pulled Roman forward. “RoMaN sAyS i’M nOt CrAzY!!!”

Logan looked at Roman “Roman, please explain.”

Roman looked down at his feet. “Well, do I have a story for you guys.”

----

This chapter is the longest by far. The actual chapter part went over 3 pages. That’s a first.

Anywho. I really liked this chapter. It was quite fun to write. However, the next one will be even more fun to write. The glasses gays turned up to 11. God am I gonna have a ball with the next one.

Chapter 7 will most likely be next week. We’re going to Chicago and it’s a 3-hour drive there and back. I write on my laptop which will be left at home, and I don’t have a phone to write on soooo….. I get to listen to Heathers and Mean Girls mass amounts of times though.

                                            The existing internet writing human,

                                                              Em

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