#lazy geoff

[lightningzbolt]

Sims 2 CC Mega Post

I say 'mega' but there really isn't a whole lot, I just didn't wanna split it up. Anyway, yeah, I mostly and normally and prefer to make Sims 4 stuff, but I made some Sims 2 stuff for me last year and this and I figured, may as well share it. Most of these require outside meshes so keep that in mind, Sims 2 CC downloading is a bloody nightmare.

Alex Skin

So I made a custom skin with tattoos for Alex as it seemed simple enough to do. Ain't gonna look perfect, but it looks fine from a distance, same resources I used for my Sims 4 versions, so I did vector the rose and skull. I based the skin off these default replacements. You don't NEED these, but they make it so that everyone matches. Yes that site requires an account and login, it's NSFW, it has body hair and works with nudity. Because obviously I play with mods like that. I made the skin look right for Fit/Thin/Fat but I didn't bother with any age but adult nor did I bother with female, because, idc. I THINK this is Alex's hair mesh, but idfk, I have so many that look like this.

It also works in Castaway Stories, as does all of these, because I used them in it too. :> That made Alex the palest guy on the island as all the skin tones in Castaway Stories were shifted to one tone darker per. I manually put my replacement skin in that too, but I didn't have the darkest, so no body hair to them.

Streaked Jack Hair

You need this mesh to make this work. I made this for myself as I didn't really like anything else I had for him, and this is Sims 2, so I went with earlier hair, and I liked how this mesh looked. Loosely based on like this hair. I didn't bother with other ages beyond adult again. I would have if I decided to de-age him and send him to university, but I did that with Otto instead.

Again also works in Castaway Stories, as I used it, again. It's easy to import Sim's faces from 2 into the stories games.

Awsten Tricolor Hair

Awsten Red Hair

You need this mesh to make this work. The bright green in that is also great and I used that for him at first. These are his eyes too, or rather his right eye. No screenshots of the red hair, but it's just a bright plain red in case you prefer it. I made this hair as it looked okay with the colors kind of being randomly spread around the mesh. This is his outfit btw. Again only works with adult as far as I'm aware.

BONER Shirt

R&R Shirt

NoRegRetsShirt

JALEXShirt

BMTHShirt1

BMTHShirt2

BMTHShirt3

BMTHShirt4

You need this mesh to make these work. All of these are Everyday fashion only by account of only the Everyday category having the option for separates and these are all tops. Don't ask me what pants I use, I have so many downloaded, but these work with all of them.

As it turns out I didn't take screenshots of all of these ingame, but maybe these help with that.

PTV Hoodie

DropDead Hoodie

You need this mesh for the PTV hoodie. I don't THINK the DD hoodie needs anything external, I compared it to a vanilla mesh and it seemed to line up. I don't know, I made it last December and I didn't log everything I did. Like the shirts above, Everyday category only as they are tops.

As a bonus, here's some misc Sims 2 screenshots to hit the image limit, including this stuff and with no context to my game. I know most people on modern computers play with The Ultimate Collection, but I installed it via discs, and a few ISOs as I didn't feel like spending $30+ for a few missing stuff packs on eBay. :) Pretty sure those ISOs are why my game is British and I have to always manually set the clock and a few other small things every time I load it. Not a big deal to me, just felt I'd mention for clarity. Castaway Stories is from an ISO too as have you SEEN those prices on eBay?! I have Sims 3 on Disc too, 100%, never made any CC for it tho. I love how Sims 2 was out at the peak of, ahem, mid to late 2000s culture so a lot of CC for it is of it's time in the best possible way. I kept this theme going with adding in custom music that ONLY existed from before 2009 (so 2008 is my cut-off date) and it's fun only hearing music of the era ingame. :) I DID make stuff for Sims 1 too years ago but I don't know how I even really did it so idk how to make more and also I don't care that much. I wanted to try playing with Alex and Jack in Sims 1 too but I kept getting fucked up files that didn't work or look right and I didn't know what I needed to do to make it right and I didn't wanna waste more time than I already did trying to make their faces. I do have semi-not ugly faces and outfits for a couple others tho.

Oh yeah, all this stuff is made in the Body Shop and GIMP for textures.

Whole SimFileShare Folder

[unholyverse]

waterparks // rock sound 25 icon issue

(full text under cut)

ROCK SOUND 25 ICON

WATERPARKS

WATERPARKS HAVE NEVER BEEN A BAND THAT ARE HAPPY TO SIT AROUND AND WAIT FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN, RELEASING FIVE STUDIO ALBUMS IN THE LAST SEVEN YEARS WHILE CONTINUING TO GROW THEIR INCREASINGLY AMBITIOUS LIVE SHOWS. AS THEY ACCEPT THEIR ROCK SOUND 25 ICON AWARD, FRONTMAN AWSTEN KNIGHT TALKS US THROUGH THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BAND IN HOUSTON, TEXAS AND WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR THE TRIO.

WORDS: JAMES WILSON-TAYLOR PHOTOS: JAWN ROCHA

"NO MATTER WHAT, ALL THOSE ALL THOSE BANDS LIKE GOOD CHARLOTTE, GREEN DAY AND BLINK, THEY'RE STILL GOING TO BE IN THE BONES AND FOUNDATION OF WHAT WE'RE DOING."

Let's start at the beginning - what are your earliest musical memories?

Alright, so you can start the article with this - as I crawled out of my mother, my dad made sure the first song I ever heard was 'Wouldn't It Be Nice? by The Beach Boys. The other day somebody asked me what would be the last song I wanted to hear if I knew I was gonna die. I mean, I have death songs, don't get me wrong. I've got songs that I would choose to die to, some Death Cab and Motion City Soundtrack. But I think because I love bookends and I love like tying things together. I would have to listen to 'Wouldn't It Be Nice?'.

He took you to a lot of The Beach Boys shows when you were growing up too right?

I do remember those. It would always be on the Fourth of July. How were they always in Houston? He'd also be listening to stuff like Van Halen. My mom really liked Prince. My dad didn't like my mom's music; she liked Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan. But I remember watching TV getting dressed in the mornings, VH1 and MTV, and being so afraid of Mudvayne. They would film it at that frame rate that's the same as 28 Days Later and they had the devil makeup on. So I remember music scaring the shit out of me.

Do you remember the bands and music that you first connected with?

I heard 'Fat Lip' by Sum 41 on the radio in fourth grade. We were in my dad's Honda Civic and I was like 'What is this?' Then I saw it on TV later. Then that got me into Green Day, Good Charlotte, Blink-182. It helped that MTV actually played those things so I could find them. So that was the first stuff that I really gravitated towards in fourth, fifth, sixth grade. Then in sixth and seventh grade, that's when I started getting more into what nerds would be mad at me calling emo like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, From First To Last. A few years ago at my parents' house, I found these mix CDs and they had Linkin Park, Chronic Future, that song 'United States Of Whatever', Bowling For Soup. That's when I was buying stuff. Basically once I heard 'Fat Lip', I was just like, 'well, now I'm going to hear all of the songs like this'.

You were lucky to grow up at that time where this kind of music was more easy to discover because it was everywhere in pop culture. That is partly why those bands are still so influential.

I feel like no matter what, all those bands like Good Charlotte, Green Day and Blink, they're still going to be in the bones and foundation of what we're doing. I can still explore as much as I want with production and go do weird shit and try and push things forward as much as possible, because that should be your job as a musician, at least partially. But at the end of the day, the house was still built on that.

As you started playing in bands and playing shows yourself, what did you make of the local scene in Houston?

I started playing shows when I was 13. I've done my 10,000 hours. I remember when I was in seventh and eighth grade; there were some punk bands in the Houston scene that I remember seeing all the fucking time. I still have all these flyers still. But the vast majority, I'd say 85% of the bands, were mainly hardcore. That's mainly what the Houston scene was. So I remember my friends and I would just spend every day at local venues. When you're young, you absorb things better and you learn more. I think that's why when kids start piano when they're three, they can be prodigies, you know what I mean? But I feel like I got that with music that ultimately wouldn't help me very much in the future. I could still list 100 bands from Houston that those people have probably forgotten that they were in by this point. But we would just hang out and if a local band somehow didn't pull through, they would let us go take their spot. I was probably in eight different bands over the course of like three or four years. Whoever I was with, we would just go play the shows. We'd make some songs up, we played covers sometimes. We covered The Used and Motion City Soundtrack, Scary Kids Scaring Kids.

Your first couple of Waterparks' EPs were self- made and self-released, keeping in that DIY spirit. Yet it still felt like you were ambitious and aiming high even back then.

Can I tell you the difference between then and now? See, I don't advertise this information but I don't even listen to that much music now. I'm trying to be better about that and I've got certain friends that will give me stuff to immerse myself. But I've gotten maybe a little bit frustrated. There's so many times where I keep finding cool people on Tik Tok when I finally do go looking for new music, and I'll talk to them for a second and maybe see if they wanna open up for us on tour but they can't because so many fucking people are just quiet signed to major labels. It irritates the shit out of me and the reason they're hiding it is because everybody is so obsessed with authenticity, which they have the right to be, you want your shit to be organic, homegrown, free range, cruelty free, all that shit. But everything that I look at is just a fucking marketing trick or ploy. What is the equivalent of me just being in my fucking room at my parents' house?

"I FEEL MORE LOOSE AND I FEEL LIKE EVERY TOUR I GET BETTER AS A SINGER."

In terms of your attitude back then, you were just treating those self-releases as if you were already on a major label. It didn't feel less legit to you.

Day and night, you're working on those things. It was very real. We're about to get to the point of this conversation where we start trying to quantify success and what it means and it's intangible, we can't do it. But what I do know is you can easily get tricked and be like, 'Oh, my Tik Toks are getting millions of hits' and then draw 20 people to your show. I've seen it happen. So I just care how many people ride with you and will leave their home to come see you play. I don't care how many fucking playlists you bought, I don't care how many ads you run on your Spotify, I don't care if YouTube picked you up on their fucking algorithm - good for you because they've never done that for us - but I want to know how many people fuck with you.

With your own live show, when did you feel like it clicked for Geoff, Otto and yourself? When did you first feel like you understood what a Waterparks show should be?

Maybe 'Fandom'. I didn't start taking vocal lessons till 2021. I feel like that's the first time where I look back and it's not just us playing a song and then stopping and then playing the song and then stopping. It's where we actually built a show. That's when we had 'Double Dare 2019' and 'Entertainment 2019' where we were playing for eight minutes straight and made me feel like fucking Green Day. Like some like 'Jesus of Suburbia', 'Bullet In A Bible' type shit. That's not me saying I thought we sucked during 'Entertainment'. That's not what it is at all. We did cool shit. We did Reading & Leeds main stage on 'Entertainment'. But I just feel like things clicked more on 'Fandom'. I feel so much more comfortable onstage every single tour. I feel more loose and I feel like every tour I get better as a singer. I better not get fucking worse. As long as you're continuing to practice and improve. I need to go fucking play tennis and boxing and all this other shit to be at my best when we're touring, you know what I mean? As long as I'm not fully just lounging and then going straight to the stage, I should, in theory, be a better performer.

You mentioned Reading & Leeds, which was one of many milestone moments you've had in the UK. How do you reflect on your relationship with the fans over here?

I give the UK a lot of shit for their food and everything but truthfully, those are my favourite shows in the world. They've always given us the most love and I just feel like the UK appreciates bands more. You know what I mean? I wonder if it's because the BBC still plays guitars? Or maybe they just care about rock culture more.

So to jump back a little, when you were making 'Double Dare', what aims did you have? What was on your to-do list around that time?

I could tell you the list. A big bucket list. I don't erase things when I complete them, I just add on. (Looking through his computer) Let's see…I can tell you one of the things it says here is 'A Rock Sound cover'. I tried to fill it out as much as I could with the knowledge that I had because sometimes you don't know what goals you can ask for. You know what I mean? I put 'Have a Top 10 album' and then you get to mark that off. 'Headline Reading and Leeds', not marked off. 'Have a music video on TV. Get shirts in Hot Topic. Play a show with Kesha. Get an apartment. Get a music video with 100K views. Record an album.' I got to mark that one off. There's a ton. I think when you're making that, you also have to look big. You have to project and manifest big shit. When I was in my parents' house thinking about 'Crave' with $0 to my name, I was thinking about playing that in arenas. We hadn't played a show to more than 500 people at that point. So yeah, I think it's always just pretending you're Coldplay. That kind of doesn't change. I mean, I guess until you become Coldplay, and then you're like 'how do we be as big as God?'

“AT A CERTAIN POINT, THERE ARE THINGS THAT YOU DEAL WITH THAT THERAPISTS DON'T UNDERSTAND. SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO ACCEPT THOSE THINGS."

You've been very fortunate to have some mentors help guide you towards those goals with Joel and Benji Madden and Mikey Way all there to give advice from early on.

So as we said earlier, we didn't have anyone in our corner when we were doing 'Airplane Conversations', 'Black Light' and writing 'Cluster'. Nobody was around; it was just us at home. Joel and Benji both reached out quickly after the other. They were the first people to ever give us the good shit. 'Hey, we see what you're doing. It's cool'. They were the first established people to ever reach out and give us props. I was babysitting and our fucking first label we had just signed with was like, 'Hey, what are you doing tomorrow?' I'm like, 'Oh, just probably babysitting, teaching guitar lessons'. And they're like, 'Well, do you want to come to Los Angeles and have lunch with Benji and Joel?' Then I'm hitting up Geoff and Otto and we come out and we talked about our goals. Fast-forward, they're like 'You want to do some co-writes?' I wanted to be a team player about it because back then especially, I was like 'nobody touches our shit, we don't get help from anybody, we are DIY'. I was so fucking close-minded punk about it. But when they heard all the demos, they went 'Oh, wait, you already have all these. Do you want to use these?' So that's 'Cluster'. That's when Mikey came through and was listening to us. He was always just so nice. He's like 'I'd love to play on it'. So I'm sitting there showing him the bass parts, and he's getting it fucking immediately. It was so weird. I felt like I could be arrested any second and just immediately sound like a crazy person. 'No, no, no, I was talking to My Chemical Romance and Good Charlotte's my friend'. At a certain point, there are things that you deal with that therapists don't understand. Sometimes it's hard to accept those things. Let's say I'm on a tour, which is already a scary thing. You're in a van, you're not fucking sleeping. You have no fucking money. Part of your team is trying to go back on the already shitty contract you have and you're getting fucking cheated on and you're doing just a bunch of crazy shit. You can't call a therapist for that shit. So I would talk to them, especially Joel. I would save those conversations, because I would have to go back to them so much. His time is valuable. It's almost like a cheat sheet in a way. It doesn't perfectly tie up all those bad things but those are probably the best answers I'm gonna get.

Let's talk about playing Warped Tour. You did it a few times in those early years and it must have been a pretty good learning process on how to grow your fanbase.

All 2016 we toured on 'Cluster'. 'Stupid For You' didn't come out until November that year. The reason I think I'm so good at marketing is because I had to do fucking all of it for four years straight. I was talking to somebody about this the other day where they were like, 'Oh man, if you guys ever opened for Taking Back Sunday, you'd fucking kill it. You'd get so many fans'. No, we wouldn't. And I can say this confidently, because I've promoted outside of three of their shows and I can tell you, those people did not like us. There's always the exception that proves the rule, but for the most part, I can tell you where we will and will not thrive because I've promoted to every fucking fan base. So Warped wasn't really different. Based on what shirts they were wearing at barricade or certain age ranges; I have a good meter of who will fuck with it and who will not. A Sleeping With Sirens fan would fucking love us, a Bayside fan would fucking hate us. You get what I mean? Paramore fans would fucking love us. An Alkaline Trio fan would fucking hate us. But the thing is, at Warped, you're kind of forced to exercise that muscle because all of those people are walking by. I wasn't shy on stage or anything but I think that could be one of the reasons I'm really good at crowd work. There's been a lot of bands we've toured with who say 'I don't know how you just talk to them for fucking five minutes between songs about different shit every night'. I don't know how you don't.

"IF IT'S NOT GOING UP AND GETTING BIGGER AND BETTER, I DON'T REALLY WANT TO DO IT."

Once you got to 'Fandom' and 'Greatest Hits', you were far more comfortable with experimenting musically and on the production side too. Did you feel a change in your confidence levels when you reached that era?

Confidence wise, yeah, but I think I'm too close to really see how big of a difference there is on certain things. I always wanted to be able to do 'Fandom' and even on the first EP with songs like 'Fantastic' or 'Silver', we are adding a weird synthy thing or vocal cuts. I was trying to explain that to this kid in the garage in the middle of fucking redneck nowhere woods, Texas. He just cut the voice and I'm like 'pitch it up and drag this one there'. Or bringing a weird, syncopated piano thing into the outro. I tried to make sure of that early on because I've always been such a fan of so many things. I just wanted that to come across even on album one. 'Crave' was a fully electronic thing, 'Territory' I wanted that to be an indie kind of vibe and then 'Mad All The Time' I wanted to be more industrial, kind of like Linkin Park with those weird, major melodies. 'Take Her To The Moon', full fucking pop song then throw 'Dizzy' in there with cut up shit and trappy drums. Then album two, we're gonna go fucking hard as hell with it on 'Tantrum'. I always felt like we were doing these things. But then I heard those albums the way I hear demos, where I think I hear kind of what they are in my head, what they could or should be. I remember when I showed the 'Fruit Roll Ups' demo to Travis (M. Riddle). He didn't really like it that much. It had all the same parts, all the same chords, vocals, the synth outro and the solo and all this stuff. But then when he heard the final one, where I went in with Zakk (Cervini, producer), and we beefed it up and added more stuff, he was like 'I love this one now so much'. But it's the same song. So when those first albums aren't seen as eclectic as the albums starting at 'Fandom', it would confuse me because I always felt like things were diverse. It really might just come down to the production.

One thing that certainly did change was how open you were in your lyrics. They were always honest but now they became a lot more specific over time.

Pete Wentz is my favourite lyricist and I love things just sounding as pretty as possible, trying to word things that people feel but in ways that they've never heard it described. You take a feeling like love, something that everybody fucking knows, and then just say it in a way with a combination of words that nobody has used yet. That was the goal for so long, but then I remember something kind of clicking when I was so mad and made 'Tantrum'. There was something that felt so much more cathartic. It actually gave me adrenaline and I wanted to chase that. That felt so good. There were certain songs like 'Reboot' or this demo called 'Play'. I wouldn't let a song go if it didn't give me chills. Certain lines like 'you're gonna be just like your mother', that's gonna make someone in real life so mad. So I think that's where that came from. Then songs like 'Turbulent' happened - 'you had your own Pete Wentz and Patrick combined' - and that's the start of the song. Are you kidding me? Who in the music sphere is going to hear that and not have some kind of reaction? And I just wanted a reaction. I could start 'Sleep Alone' and it doesn't have to elicit the same thing, but something as strong. They shouldn't elicit the same exact feeling, but they should elicit that dynamic level of emotional response.

“IF WE NEVER GET TO DO THIS AGAIN, I WANT TO GIVE THEM THE COOLEST SHIT POSSIBLE WHILE WE GET TO BE IN THIS SPOT."

As you mentioned earlier, it is hard to quantify success. A good example is the way 'I Miss Having Sex But At Least I Don't Wanna Die Anymore' became your most streamed song, largely due to a TikTok trend you had very little to do with.

I didn't even know it was happening. Now, there's so many viral songs that the cycle is quicker. Somebody can have a song that bangs on Tik Tok for two weeks and then it's done. But this was so early on. It wasn't a single; it was a deep cut song on the album. It still doesn't have a music video. Neither does 'Turbulent'. It's just so odd because it also makes you a little mad. But then it's also a little humbling in a way. Things are out of your control, but they'll be okay.

You are still touring your most recent album 'Intellectual Property' so it is probably too early to fully analyze it but, now that we are nearly a year on from its release, how are you reflecting on what you achieved with that record?

I've told you this before but if it's not going up and getting bigger and better, I don't really want to do it. I don't want to spin the tyres in fucking mud. If it's not happening, then I'm not gonna do the trap where things start downgrading and we have to play old albums. It's not what I want. I'm good enough at other things to figure something out but preserve that legacy. But 'Intellectual Property' charted higher than any of our fucking other albums, first Top 10 in the UK. We've sold more tickets to the 'Property' tour than the 'Fandom' tour and the 'See You In The Future' tour combined. I'll say that one more time - we sold more tickets to the 'Property' tour than the entire 'Fandom' tour and the entire 'Greatest Hits' tour if you put them both together and add them up. That's the indicator to me. That's what matters to me. I did say at the top of the cycle in such a simple way that I want one of the red songs above the green songs. That's literally what I told Fueled By Ramen. So that didn't happen because the Tik Tok lords did not mysteriously bless us in our sleep. We still sold more. We got more real people in real seats. More was accomplished and it was bigger and better.

It feels like you have the same aim with each tour too - growing and building on what came before. Yet, again, you have always had those bigger ambitions for the show even when you were in slightly smaller rooms.

Dress for the job you want. With all the rooms we did on the 'Property' tour, they're the same ones that we would do for 'Greatest Hits', right? So it's like, okay, we did it. We conquered those rooms. Now we have to move up. Shit. Because otherwise, you just keep doing victory laps forever in the same rooms. So some of them, there's no fucking chance in hell we're gonna sell these out. But it's cool to try. And the thing is, it's still selling on par with the 'Property' tour. Part of me is like, damn, I wish we could have as many sold out things but there are already more people going to this show than the previous sold out one. So I pick my battles. Yeah, you could go play to 1300 people in New York again or you could try and do the fucking big ass thing. So that's kind of where it's at now. You want to build a fucking real show. On the 'Property' tour, we actually got to build shit for the first time. We built a set and this time it is just a bigger version of that. It's just bigger and with more changes. It's not even a spoiler because that's so fucking vague, but to have the show and set change as the set goes on, it's fucking cool. Sometimes I see people who are doing these same size rooms (so this isn't remotely punching down, we're doing the same rooms) and they'll just have a banner. Give them more. Give them a show. I'm so grateful to actually get to be in these rooms finally that if we never get to do this again, I want to give them the coolest shit possible while we get to be in this spot.

"NO PART OF ME IS INTERESTED IN JUST REPEATING THE CYCLE OVER AND OVER AND OVER."

Speaking of bigger shows, you got to play in arenas for the first time when you supported My Chemical Romance. Given what a huge fan you are of that band, it must have felt quite surreal.

Dude, it was so weird and so cool. Every night, the first song scared the shit out of me and then you kind of get the rhythm of it. It's just so weird. Sometimes between songs, I just had to look and take a mental picture. I saw My Chem when I was younger in an arena and I could see the seats I was in, you know what I mean? I could see people in them. You get to a certain point where stuff doesn't blow your mind as much but that blew my fucking mind every day. I remember the first time we ever got to go in a bus. It was so exciting. Now, when I get in the bus, I'm like, 'Okay, but where's the charger in the bunk? Where's the air? Is it just gonna freeze my feet?' It's not to say I'm ungrateful it just becomes more normal. If you go to the best pizza spot every day, after years of having it, it's just a good pizza spot. But getting to go open for My Chem and everything around it and all the details of it, I just never got used to. We'd go to the catering room and we'd sit down and there's Frank and there's Ray. We were in this hockey arena in the locker room and I had all my outfits, planning them out, and at one point, Gerard came through. I was showing him the fits and everything and he was like, 'Oh, you have great style'. I don't think you can get used to that. It's crazy. Maybe My Chem is used to it because they've been playing arenas for years and years and years, maybe that's the standard now. But God, that blew my fucking mind every day.

As you start to think about wrapping up this era, what are the goals as you move forward?

I just want to go places that we haven't been because that's what makes me feel excited. Like with playing in an arena for the first time, anything that is a huge dynamic change. That's all I'm looking for. I just want to feel excited. The people who like us, I appreciate them because we're so lucky enough to be in a place where we don't have to tour into the fucking ground if we don't want to just to survive. No part of me is interested in touring into the ground this year. I feel like we've been on tour for the last two and a half years straight. 2022 was preparing for this album, 2023 was promoting this album. One thing I enjoyed about 2019 was that we only did a short opening run, early in the year, and then we did the 'Fandom' tour at the end of the year. But that whole spring, summer and fall, we were just making cool shit. That made me feel excited. We made so many music videos and just did a lot of cool shit. We got to focus on the creative. I never would have been throwing around Sunny D in my apartment bathroom taking pictures of it for the 'Fandom' album cover if I had jetlag. No part of me is interested in just repeating the cycle over and over and over. I want to just do things that we haven't done yet and make stuff for everyone. Because if we go play in Copenhagen, Waterparks is for Copenhagen that day. But when I'm home and we're operating at full mental capacity and everything, we can make things for everybody. At the end of the day, I never want to fall into a pattern and repeat myself and do the same shit. I want to expand and see what we can do, what our capabilities are like. Do something that somebody hasn't done yet. I want to rent a movie theatre and do a fucking real premiere. I don't want to give a bunch of shit away but there's a lot of things that are always in the works. As Awsten, the guy steering the ship on fucking Waterparks, whatever's going on I just want it to be new and cool and feel fulfilling. If we had some fucking tyrant label that was like 'We need an album now' I could go 'There's fucking 100 songs on here. Go fucking make your album, pick them. Go have Zakk mix them'. But it's just not what intuitively feels right and I want to follow that intuition. I keep looking back at the 2019 year map as kind of a blueprint. That's not to say I'm gonna stay home all year. But it's just gotta be new. I want that feeling of getting in the bus for the first time.

[mamawasatesttube]

i feel like ppl push back against geoff's narrative by claiming he was the first to posit kon being actually kryptonian but this is just not true............. sb94 itself and wf3 both heavily imply/outright state that kon is a clone of superman with a small amount of stabilizing dna from paul westfield. this is an internal inconsistency with his established intro in rots and adventures of superman, but it's still like. in text stated. just look at hypertension arc. black zero talks explicitly about all the kons across the timelines being clones of superman who simply haven't grown into their full powers yet. geoff isn't the originator of this idea y'all he just retconned the human dna donor into lex instead of paul.

[anthonygreen-uterus]

How would yall feel if i made a thursday redacted account?? Like we dont have one yet and we need it??

[omgneptunee]

AHHH

SOOO i did a redraw oops the first one is from 2019:3

[smallgodseries]

Words mean things. This is unquestionable, incontrovertible, uncontroversial. Words mean things, or what’s the point in having words? They may mean different things in different languages, but when people are speaking the same language, they should be able to comfortably assume they’re understanding one another. That the words they use, identical and clear, should mean the same things.

Enter Geoff.

Geoff, who will be happy to offer you a delicious treat, still steaming and warm from the oven, soft as a promise, enchanting as a sigh…if you’re only willing to call it by the proper name. Thank Geoff for the biscuit, get showered in sugary joy. Thank Geoff for the cookie, find yourself unfed and uncontented. Because some gods are very regional in their delights. Some gods exist within the lee of a single meaning.

Some gods hold no truck with blue fuzzy monsters, and don’t understand why anyone would choose to do so. “Biscuit is a satisfying word,” says Geoff.  “It has snap and crunch. It feels delicious in the mouth. What is ‘cookie’? ‘Cookie’ is mush, it’s mostly vowels, the consonants it has are all doing the same job, it’s a lazy word. Leave it be, and come and have a biscuit with someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

Geoff is always glad to offer you a biscuit. Just not a hot, fluffy, buttermilk one. Those are for other gods and other hands, and less complicated culinary linguistic climes.

[eccedente]

SIM DUMP 1

About 90% of my sims are just gathering dust in my library. It’s a legitimate trash bin of sims so I’m going to start dumping them. Sims have everyday wear only, makeup category applied to all outfits, & traits are randomized they might have the bodybuilder aspiration as well because it’s the easiest thing to click and I’m lazy

Download: SFS DB ( CC included ) 

Left to right: Geoff, Darren, Parker, Marc, Lincoln, Louis

CC credit goes to all creators. If any creators wish to have their content linked, send a message and I can add them. I will not link to perma-paywall content.

Feel free to use how you like, modify whatever you want etc. Reuploaded and/or paywalled excluded for obvious reasons. 

* Color slider mod used to achieve certain shades for skin details and hair.

[nress]

Duncan and geoff sitting in a tree

im convinced dungeoff is a cursed thing to draw bc I either give up or start dying case and point: I'm sick

also ignore the colors I got lazy and the hands and Duncan's legs and-

[monarchisms]

I hate that the f**kface lets play video is already 100k views in a day cuz the loser "old" fans are gonna think they're proven right that "old ah is better" but also it is gonna give such an ego boost to ramsey that we might see a 4th podcast in the making

💀💀💀💀💀

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

i'm never not thinkin about the meta stuff in tlog's apocalypse cos like... if we ignore the very last scene (the bit with the tails lol), it effectively ends with the characters being finally free from their writers (who all just end up fucking dead lol)... the idea that the characters have been given a chance to be more than their series counterparts, that they can make their own decisions untethered by sitcom tropes... like yeh it's weird that herr lipp ends up adopting a bunch of kids when he knew he buried a boy alive in the series, but the point is that that herr lipp in the series and the film ARE two different characters right?

proven by the fact ALL tlog characters in the film, within the narrative OF the film, aren't being written by the writers from the start... like they were already writing themselves and they had no idea lol

and then it all comes crashing down in the specials when the writers take hold again and the characters forced back into the roles that they were written for... i'm no great fan of the specials, i'll be honest (i think that a lot of the gags felt even more tired and lazy than the ones made in the 90s which is kinda impressive in itself pfft) but i DO love that we get several story lines of characters being trapped and unable to change or grow... pauline at the hospital, geoff making the same mistakes over and over, ollie's dream, charlie and stella's... everything lol, etc etc...

idk i just find it so interesting that the concepts in tlog's apocalypse aren't the same as smth like the never ending story, where an outside force will believe/speak a story into existence, but INSTEAD the idea that stories and characters actually live apart from the creators or the fans and only in those separate worlds do they have free will...

(side note, i'd honestly say the only character that maybe ? gets to have free will in the specials is les... we see him finally get the glimmer of success that he's wanted for so long only to just... say no. he walks away, no longer wanting to be the sad trope that he was defined by... it's honestly kinda the perfect end to his character even if it is pretty sad lol...)

+ then you look at how all of this relates to plodding on (which i know much smarter people than me have already talked about at length pfft) and this whole idea of endless cycles and doomed narratives as how it pertains to the character of the writer's themselves... the way reece and steve, like every one of the character's they've written before and will write since, are also kinda trapped in the tropes of their own making... idk

[tddott]

Some Gwuncan HCs I'm too lazy to write:

-Their favorite dates are urban exploration, especially abandoned malls.

-Duncan has a graffiti tag he draws everywhere, he taught Gwen how to draw her own (she caught on rather quickly) and she often tags under his. It's become a little game between the two to find each other's tag to mark

-Duncan learned how to do stick n poke tattoos in jail. When he got out one of Gwen's first tattoos was one done by him (it's matching dots they have on their hands. It was done at one of Geoff's house parties)

-hear me out but I think if Duncan couldn't own insects (mostly his tarantulas) he would be a bird or reptile person. Both of them have a collection of unconventional pets, ranging from snakes to rats to even birds such as pigeons and maybe even a parrot.

(Gwen thinks dogs are lame and cats are "predictable" and Duncan never got over his dog)

[magebunkshelf]

Gonna have to have a long hard talk with Geoff the bathroom spider. Lazy bastard has let two mosquitoes into my bedroom.

I allow your continued existence in my presence for one purpose, Geoff.

[justplainwhump]

Just A Fling: Apology

For "A for Apology" for this month's @alphabetofwhump Alphabet of Whump event. (It's in fact "a very Dany apology", as Vic called it). Also, inspired by a prompt I was sure I still had open: "In a friend's bed", for these smut places asks.

[Just A Fling Masterlist]

This is set before the events of 'that night'. Geoff, Peyton and all characters except Dany belong to the wonderful mind of @wildfaewhump.

Content/warnings: noncon filming, slightly obsessive whumper, creepy whumper, extramarital (consensual) affair, (mostly implied) consensual sex.

Geoff Cortlandt's smile is lazy and dangerous, and for a moment, Dany wonders if coming to meet him in his office was the right call.

Geoff takes a slow sip of water, lets his gaze wander over her body, before he finally - finally - speaks up. "Given how… intimately our lives are intertwined, it's a surprise you come visit me that late, Ms Hammond."

She can't stand him. Yup. It's confirmed.

Dany lifts her chin, counts to five in her head, before she exhales. "I'm sorry Geoff. We made a mistake."

"It's fine," Geoff says mildly. "I understand how it could happen. I talked to him. We're very close, Peyton and I, you know. It's alright. We're all good."

His lip twitches the slightest bit, and the pitch dark dread spiraling out in Dany's stomach tells her that no, this situation is anything but.

---

Before

Michael Cortlandt's birthday party is exclusive and what most people would call 'magnificent'.

It's also superficial and loud and pretentious in a way that makes Dany's fingers curl up tightly around her elegant purse.

She's come as her father's plus-one; she intends to leave as Peyton Montgomery's, and the latter is the only reason she's still here. They haven't seen each other in weeks. She's been on the far coast for business in one of their new container ports, while Peyton has had to pull severe overtime over the financial contracts in a high profile takeover by his parents' company.

It's not like Dany hadn't found a man to share her bed with in the meantime; but she'd shamefully come to realize that flirting with Peyton gave her something these casual hook-ups with strangers just couldn't any longer.

Every inch of her body craves for Peyton. And judging by the texts he's sent her, the feeling is mutual.

She just has to find him.

Glass in hand - a champagne flute, ironically enough, she hates its bubbly texture - she roams the mansion.

He's not in the huge living room, where most of the sofas are occupied with the heads of the town's family companies politely talking about hostile takeovers, and some drunk plus-ones are trying to gather a crowd to dance to the low electronic music. He's not on the terrace, which seems to be the preferred spot of the lazy second and third born teenage offspring, gathered between pool and champagne coolers, showing off perfectly sculpted bodies and wildly expensive designer swimwear. The generation in between - the one she's probably looking for, Peyton's clique of decadent firstborns - is further out in the garden, at the tennis house. She sees Valerian first, their perfect platinum blonde hair shimmering as they toss back their head in an exaggerated laugh. She grimaces, takes a big sip of the disgusting bubbly champagne. Of course, Peyton had conveniently failed to mention that his spouse would be here as well.

Geoff Cortlandt, tonight's host, tall, dark and surprisingly enough, smiling, is the second familiar face in the group, his Romantic companion in a revealing black dress clinging to his arm. Not the same one she's seen him with before, she thinks, even though the similarity of their features is striking.

Another sip of champagne.

Dany can't stand that pet system. She can't stand knowing that more than half of the guests here literally own other people. That Peyton does, too.

She clicks her tongue, tries to ban the thought. Great job, ruining her own night. After all, she knows Peyton isn't a great human being. It's not like she wants him for his character. She wants him for -

A hand grabs her arm and yanks her behind one of the garden bars. Her shoulders are pressed against the metal of a huge fridge, and every last thought she's just had dissolves, when Peyton's hands bury into her hair and he pulls her into a passionate kiss.

"Fuck, Dany," he mumbles against her lips, before kissing down her neck. "We need to get out of here."

"Valerian is here," she reminds him. Still, she lets get head fall back against the fridge, offering her neck to Peyton's caresses. "Can you leave without them?"

"Mmmhh no, but we can -"

Behind Peyton shoulder, a server appears, making himself known with a polite hem. "Madam, Sir, could you -"

"Shut up," Peyton says, retreating from her only to fold some bills and stuff them into the server's chest pocket. "Go find another fridge for the next ten minutes, alright."

"Ten minutes?" Dany lifts a brow teasingly, as the server retreats. "I was expecting more than that."

Peyton wiggles his fingers. "Oh, Dany, There's a lot these hands can achieve in ten minutes." He holds her gaze, as he slips a tentative hand under her dress. An amused chuckle escapes his lips, when his fingers graze her panties. "Especially when it seems you've come prepared."

"Sir," someone else says, voice more urgent than the server's. "Mr Montgomery. I know you're a family friend, but we need this bar up and running and we need this fridge. Please consider relocating to a more… private area?"

Peyton rolls his eyes dramatically, but steps back. "Fine", he huffs, takes Dany's hand, fingers easily interweaving with hers. "Follow. I've got just the place on my mind."

He peeks around the corner to where Valerian and their friends group had been standing. "Introducing Geoff's new Lourdes to the gang, huh? They'll be busy out here for a while."

Dany's lost her glass somewhere. She'd have finished it in one go, otherwise. It's better for the mood not to think about what he's referring to, she's pretty sure. Neither does she think about, where he's taking her.

She focuses on other things, instead. On the way his boyish giggle rings in her ears, when he navigates her towards the mansion's service entry. On the smell of his cologne, wafting over her, mingling with that of the Cortlandts' rose garden. On the firm hold of his hand around hers. On the shape of the muscles in his shoulders, perfectly highlighted by the cut of his white shirt.

Next to the huge service kitchen, a small door leads to a stairway, and Peyton pulls her upstairs.

"There's security on the main stairs," he whispers. "But none here. Staff don't come into the private area at this time. And the Cortlandts are just so busy entertaining."

He opens the narrow door on top. Their feet sink into the thick carpet on a wide corridor. Family portraits line the walls, almost like they're looking at the intruders disapprovingly. Peyton is still giggling like a schoolboy.

She all but groans. "Fuck, Peyton. Are you high?"

"What else should I be, looking at someone like you?", he counters and winks at her. His eyes are bloodshot. His smile makes her knees weak. "We're there."

Peyton leans against a door and pushes down the handle, swaying into the room as the door swings open.

She doesn't know why she's expected him to lead them into some sort of broom closet.

This sure as hell isn't one.

It's the entrance to a suite, open door to a huge bedroom in front, closed doors to smaller rooms off to the side. Faint music from the garden dances through the air.

Before she can ask him, he's pressing her against the wall, pinning her hands over her head. "You're thinking too much," he whispers. "Don't."

"Is.. Is this Geoff's space?"

"Really?" He kisses her. "I've been yearning for you for weeks, and you're thinking about Geoff right now?"

"We can't -"

"Shhh." He shifts to pin her wrists up with one hand, his other hand slipping between her legs. "Geoff loves me. He won't mind. And even if he did - sure as fuck I'm not going to tell him."

He knows her body as well as she knows herself, she realizes, as he rubs at her clit through the lace of her panties just right. She can't fight the soft moan his touch elicits. His gaze sinks into hers, blown pupils so deep she wants to drown in them. "So." Peyton hums, slowly nudging her away from the wall and backwards into the darkened main room, until the backs of her legs hit the bedframe. "You want to go on thinking about him, or are you ready to forget Geoff Cortlandt and making this about what really matters?"

"Huh." She lets herself fall back on the soft covers, frowning up at him in the room's dim light. "And what would that be?"

The bed dips, when he follows her and spreads her legs open gently. "You, Dany," he mumbles, shoving her dress up to her hips, before he dips down to kiss her through her sheer panties. "I want to make it about you."

---

"Is there anything else?" Geoff asks, with feigned innocence.

"The tape," Dany says flatly. "The camera in your bedroom."

Geoff grins and leans back in his chair, lounging comfortably. "Ah, that, yeah. Funny Peyton forgot I had it installed, isn't it? Anyway. I gave him a copy. Made one for you, too." He pulls a USB drive from his desk drawer and looks at her from hooded eyes. "We can watch it together, if you like."

"Oh, fuck, no." Dany's hands clench around the arm rests, as she keeps her voice professionally steady. "This wasn't for you."

His eyes harden. "My bed isn't for you either, Ms Hammond. Peyton isn't for you. Nothing of that seems to inhibit you in any way." He taps the flash drive on the heavy wooden desk tentatively. "You really don't want it?"

She exhales sharply. "No."

"Your call." He takes his time looking her down, eyes mapping her body. She feels naked suddenly. In a bad way. "I think you could've seen it as a training experience. I certainly had some notes on your performance while I watched."

"My performance was exclusively for Peyton. And as I have no doubt you're aware of, we both were very satisfied." Dany's jaw is set. "Sorry, Geoff. Wasn't aware you'd feel excluded."

His eyes are hard, as he drops the drive back into the drawer. "I think this conversation is over. You're not sorry, Danielle. I can see that. You're far from it." His hands clasp on the table as he looks her down once more and purses his lips. "You should be." He gestures to the door. "Bye, Dany. Close the door behind you."

-

---

Dany tag list (let me know if you wanted to be added or removed, or just not in it for this AU): @whumplr-reader @whumping-on-the-ridge @queenofthenoobs @ocean-blue-whump

[japarty]

Some doodles that is made this week or past week

Tw: Blood (It looks like Brody was cutted in half but nope, i was so lazy to end this sketch + I made a new oc)

Also, Geoff as Heather! 😆

[greatwyrmgold]

In a recent bout of malaise, I binge-watched Geoff Thew's worst anime (plural) of the year videos, and have thoughts about his picks for each year's worst anime (singular).

2018: My Sister My Writer

A good start for the series. I mean, it's not a good anime; those have no place in these videos. It's a brother-sister incest anime with countless technical failures in its artistry. But Geoff isn't just picking this anime because it's gross and incompetent; it also half-asses the incest, and Geoff makes a point about how that makes it even worse than normal gross incompetent anime.

Conception at least commits to its bit so that people who, for some reason, want to watch an anime about magic threesomes can kinda enjoy it. But My Sister My Writer wants to have its cake and eat it too, to "be trashy without being seen as trash". This alienates the people who actually like that flavor of trash, while still indulging in the trashiness enough to alienate people who don't. It's "an anime for no one," which makes it worse than other bad anime almost by default.

2020: Gibiate

(I will get to 2019 later)

In contrast to prior years, there's not really a "point" to highlighting Gibiate as the worst anime. It's a massive failure of plot construction and technical artistry and showrunning, but not in any way unique to Gibiate. All four of the other anime on Geoff's list were bad in distinctive ways; Dragon's Dogma's clumsy political screeds, Peter Grill's entire premise, Shiraneko Project's homeopathic pacing. Even Hatana Illusion's lazy character writing and sloppy worldbuilding stand out more than anything Gibiate does wrong.

Gibiate is just poorly constructed. It's a high concept with bad animation and a worse script, but they're bad in ways that a lot of animation and scripts are bad, just more so. Its most distinctive mistake was hiring Yoshitaka Amano as a character designer, but most of its problems are unrelated to that mistake.

I kinda wish Geoff let his grudge against Hatena Illusion's phantom-thief bait-and-switch overwhelm his objectivity that year. In principle, there's nothing wrong with highlighting an all-around stinker, but it seems a bit silly when it would be so thoroughly eclipsed right after Geoff aired that video.

2021: Ex-Arm

"Some things are obvious because they are right."

—Lanipator

On paper, Ex-Arm has a stronger story than most of Geoff's Worst Anime winners, which might be the faintest praise I've ever damned something with. Its story is not good; by all accounts, it's just a narrative framework for cyborg combat, ecchi, and half-remembered philosophy borrowed from better science fiction. But that mediocre, derivative story deserved better than this.

Visual Flight, the studio who adapted Ex-Arm, had effectively zero relevant experience. A live-action TV director was handed a company that did some outsourced model work for From Software and decided that he had a team capable of "declaring war on all the science fiction series of the world." If you're reading this post, you probably know he lost that war without fighting a single battle.

On one hand, Ex-Arm's flaws are almost purely technical in nature; its narrative is weak in ordinary ways. On the other hand, those technical flaws are without peer; its bad animation is some of the worst animation in the industry, its bad storyboards stem from production woes few anime can survive, its bad compositing is almost imperceptible next to those other flaws, like the dark mirror of great compositing.

The sheer hubris of Ex-Arm's creative leads turned mere technical flaws into an object lesson on hubris.

2022: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer

Geoff doesn't bury the lede about the very personal reason why LBH was both the Biggest Disappointment and the Number One Big Kahuna Worst Anime of 2022 (there was a format change that year). It has bad pacing and worse visuals, but Geoff was mostly pissed that one of his favorite stories ever was turned into an animated piece of garbage.

I don't mind Geoff ranking anime according to his personal taste, but in this case his anger eclipses any discussion of what actually makes the Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer anime so bad. He briefly describes what makes the manga great, briefly describes the most unremarkable set of complaints you could make about a bad anime adaptation, and goes on an unhinged AVGN rant.

2023 part 1: Kizuna no Allele

(Due to a format change, in 2023 Geoff separately named a "worst" and a "most cursed" anime. Also "best," but that's not what this post is about.)

Kizuna no Allele is the only anime on this list I've seen a single episode, and I agree with Geoff's critiques. It's utterly devoid of substance, its style is incoherent at best, and it shills NFTs. But aside from the NFT thing, it's bad in ways that make Gibiate's failures look unique. If it wasn't for the NFT thing and the baffling way it decides to advertise Kizuna Ai (by barely including her in the show), I doubt Geoff would have enough critique to fill an "honorable mention" sentence.

Dull anime make for dull roasts, which might be part of why Geoff did a new format for 2023.

2023 part 2: My Life as Inukai-san's Dog

Geoff Thew identified this as the "most cursed" anime of 2023, and I sincerely hope it deserves that title.

You know what I said about My Sister My Writer not committing to elements that alienate ordinary audiences? This anime doesn't have that problem. I regret finding out this anime exists, and will not force this cursed knowledge on anyone who doesn't seek it out. Google at your own risk.

2019: High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even In Another Life

If I was gonna rank Geoff's picks for the worst annual anime, this would be my top pick.

As you might have noticed, his worst anime picks from 2020 onwards were mostly just bad in normal ways. Leave out the personal despair of L&BH or the...everything of Inuskai-san's Dog, and you've got a handful of anime from different genres with very similar failures.

Almost uniquely out of Geoff's "worst anime of the year" contenders, High School Prodigies Have it Easy Even In Another Life has a strong enough story for its themes to be criticized. And those themes are what Geoff tears into.

HSPHIEEIAL (pronounced hsfeeeal) is about a bunch of high school prodigies (natch), including "the world's greatest politician" and a top-tier businessman (both seventeen years old), getting isekai'd into and fixing a dystopic fantasy empire. That's a potentially interesting premise; I picked up the first volume of How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom because of how interesting that concept is. But HSPHIEEIAL handles that concept even worse than either of the Realist Hero chapters I bothered reading.

The Freyjagard Empire isn't a messy tangle of institutions entangled not just with each other but with the means of production which make Freyjagard's society possible. Ending its reign of terror doesn't require understanding how the different loci of power interact and intersect, or cautious political maneuvering, or even a few instances of surgically applied force.

The politician uses his politician power of "shooting people" to shoot the evil ugly emperor, the businessboy uses his capitalist power of wealth accumulation, and they start working with the nobles who worked for the emperor to build a new utopian society. The implication, intended or thoughtless, is that the Empire was only bad because the guy in charge was an inherently evil dude, and now that inherently good teenagers are in charge, the lackeys and organizations that served the evil emperor can be trusted to work for the greater good?

Anyways. That utopia, which our prodigies create with their prodigious skills and modern technology out of the canvas of a world whose institutions had to be razed to the ground before starting over, is "just another modern capitalist democracy". They were inventing a new society for a world where democracy was a foreign concept, and they didn't reach any higher than the status quo.

Between this high-level overview and some details I've left out (especially the businessboy's part in the plot), it does kinda seem like the story sees institutions of any kind as a morally neutral tool that leaders use to shape society in their own image. Democracy is not good because it empowers the common people or incentivizes certain types of behavior in its elected officials; it's good because it lets people choose inherently good people to be their leaders instead of being stuck with whichever royal brat happened to be born first.

That's not just bad politics; it's mundane bad politics in a context where you could get away with writing just about anything. To quote Geoff:

While other anime [in 2019] have been uglier, and boring-er, and at times even more rage-inducing-er, none of them come anywhere near being that existentially depressing for me. To think that an artist could go to the lengths of constructing out an entire anime fantasy world, and writing out a grand, serialized epic about its utopian evolution...only to end up saying "Eh, this is as good as it gets," because for all that imagination they've failed to dream up anything better... That kills me a bit inside.

Do you see what I'm saying? HSPHIEEIAL is bad in a unique way. An interesting way. To quote Geoff again, just moments later:

The real point [of the video] is for all of us to have some fun at the expense of anime with problems that I think are funny, and given how my brain works, this is the one that gave me the most to make fun of, by far.

I don't want to say that was lost in Geoff's later "Worst Anime of [Year]" videos; 2020's silver-medal loser, Hatena Illusion, gave Geoff a lot of distinctive failures to make fun of. But it's the silver-medal loser, and it lost to Gibiate, a series that just has a derivative nonsense plot and mediocre production quality. It looks bad, but it's not Ex-Arm bad, you know? It's not bad in a way that you can roast it for twenty minutes, twice in separate videos, and have new stuff each time.

Gibiate is, by my reckoning, ordinary bad. Not "4/10" ordinary, but "bad in the ways many 4/10 anime are, just not all at once". Same with L&BH, aside from Geoff's love of the source material. Same with Kizuna no Allele, aside from that one time it shilled NFTs. Honestly, mostly same with Inukai-san's Dog if we include 4/10 hentai.