#ngl this was more difficult to do since there are specific objects i wanted but couldn't have

[satohqbanana]

Emoji Summary

You know those comments wherein OP just smashes emojis together to tell the plot of an anime or manga series? Here we go for the first part of Arcanium:Magia:

🧍‍♀️🧍‍♂️🧍💫🚪💎🧾📦🐀‼🥊💥🧹📑😭🐑🧰🔴💫📚📔🚫😥😭😫🟠🤩📝💫❓👀🔎💎🔮💎🔍🐭‼🕷🤯🕸✋🔥🔥💥💫🐭🙅‍♀️🙆‍♂️🙆🤦‍♀️🚨🚨😨💫⬛

New tag game? Yeah sure why not. This is a free tag.

[lowpolyshadow]

okay here's my final horizons review that nobody asked for :) the short summary is an overall like 8/10 personally with high highs and low lows to average it all out there, but like . god those highs are high

speaking of i played on hard mode for the entire thing and did not change it a single time so this also influences my perception but like im a loser tryhard sweaty gamer so that probably just added to the positives for me ngl JGKLASDFJL;KS okay anyways

amy gameplay 8/10, tails gameplay 8/10, knuckles gameplay 6/10

i am SO FUCKING SERIOUS WHEN I SAY KNUCKLES WOULD BE LIKE 9/10 IF HE HAD FREE CLIMBING AND WASN'T LIMITED TO THE RED SPOTS like it makes sense in this scenario since he's literally free dlc and like the game wasn't really made with knuckles in mind therefore if he was given free range to climb and shit like SA2 it might be weird or just lead to things you super weren't intended to do etc. BUT like. im just saying. in a perfect world he would be able to climb on all surfaces and that would be more than enough for me to forgive his glide's super wide turns (i already forgive it because it makes sense it's just like. from a player feel perspective)

i can't forgive some of those awful camera angles though it's the same issue i have with sonic when he wall climbs, wall climbing just has bad camera angles that i greatly dislike u__u also i think i was most looking forward to playing as knuckles so i was just kinda disappointed he isn't more punchy i want PUNCHY

amy was super fun to play and would've been a 9 but i am in fact a hammer believer, i know they like at least bring it up in game why she doesn't hammer more but i AM a hammer enjoyer and i think if she had more swingy hammer movesets it would be like. chef's kiss i love her floatiness and tarot cards

tails is tails he's so broken LMAOOOO and the wrench attack shit is genuinely really good and so funny, his entire thing fits perfectly with the fact that he's like, not really a Fighter fighter guy and matches with previous tails gameplay .... but i do still want a homing attack for specifically objects not enemies or something. idk that'd be hard to handle sometimes but that's my single grievance i thought tails was really good he's so cute :)

in general i wish all 3 had more combat options but again. it's free dlc. in the future if they do like sonic adventure 3 or whatever then i'll be more harsh for not having more moves for them like sonic but this is free dlc

sonic gameplay 8.5/10

i'm crazy and i thought the towers were a lot of fun, my favorite WOULD'VE BEEN tower 2 except the pink squares not respawning is genuinely like girl what's wrong with you + tower 5 eked out being my favorite anyways in the end

my favorites in order were 5, 2, 4, 1, and 3 (3 was by far the easiest but also like . i am so not into the wall climbing camera JGKALSDJFKLASDJ and also i had the funny glitch where the boostpad clipped me out of the tower which like, funny but now i have to climb the tower again) i thought these were super fun platforming challenges with the only grievance being they're literally WAY more difficult than anything from base game and so the sudden jump is like actually insane expecting little timmy to play frontiers on like hard mode which is very easy, and then doing this

the combat trials were disappointing bc like. .. the first one had some difficulty to it and then the rest were snzzzz and then suddenly MASTER KING KOCO BABYYYYY but again im insane. and deranged. i thought a time/ring limit boss rush was sick as fuck and perfect parry is what i wished the actual base game parry was so like. yeah. but again the boss fights weren't Made for perfect parry so especially wyvern, figuring out was like harder than necessary since this is something they throw at you with no warning or prior practice in the base game or anything

i had fun though. i had gamer fun and joy. so like <- sick in the head i just felt the thrill of battle and violence and any time i figured out the parry timing/got consistent with it and i was like being the ultimate speedrun gamer it's like. YIPPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! also kellin quinn's vocals carried me because god the music never gets old dude that shit pumped me up (helps i only had to fight knight twice and the problem child was just wyvern lol)

AND THE FINAL BOSS .... supreme still lowkey is a very very very very mid boss. and the new THE END doesn't change it a Ton because like after you see the sickass cutscene and stuff, it becomes kind of a mid boss again but with really hype animations and all .... like it's not a hard fight. it's just ... jank .... the controls feel kinda wonky when you're trying to target the tube .... the camera is weird because it's so easy for sonic to not be visible from all the trees, so while parrying the meteors isn't hard it's just like ... why would you do this to me

final boss fight itself is like 7/10 carried by the visuals and setting, but then the end of the boss fight is like WHOOOOOOOOOOO FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH FUCK YEAH LETS GOOOOO I FUCKING LOVE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG YYEAHHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHHHHH so like overall good dlc imo

[deaddoveadventures]

⋆ NAME?: Dove / Ev

⋆ PRONOUNS?: he/him but I'm not outed irl.

⋆ MOST ACTIVE MUSE(S)?: Curumë but tbh also Raistlin but I am too nervous about getting him wrong and thus shy away from writing more for him

⋆ RP PET PEEVES?: Roleplay Answers that don't have any hooks in them and thus don't drive the story forward. Give me something active to work with, there are only so many times I can come up with everything on my own. Don't just make your character react, make them act! (Or add Environmental and Atmospheric cues that my Character can react to)

⋆ EXPERIENCE / HOW MANY YEARS?: I lost count. I've been rping since I was 11 and I am now over 30.

⋆ FLUFF, ANGST, OR SMUT?: I am an Angst whore! But I want Fluff in between to make the Angst hit harder and to actually build character relationships. Depends on the muse, however. I also love Whump. I don't care much about smut, and I suck at writing it. But if it fits into the story I will write it.

⋆ PLOTS OR MEMES?: Both! Sometimes Memes can be really good Ice breakers. And plot can come second to see where it should go! Or sometimes you want / need to plot first because else interaction might be difficult. I guess the mix does it.

⋆ LONG OR SHORT REPLIES?: Length is not as important as content. You can give me 3 pages of just describing one single object and it will do less than 2 paragraphs of describing what your character does, says, feels, and what the mood of the room is, and then I can actually work with it! My own replies vary as well. I suffer from always feeling like I need to match my partner or feeling that I write too little, though, for myself.

⋆ TIME TO WRITE?: The night, after midnight. Sadly I can't always do it because of work.

⋆ ARE YOU LIKE YOUR MUSE(S)?: So in all honesty, yes and no. For both of them. Curumë specifically actually incorporates a lot of my personality traits and traumas. He (originally) was based on my Tav in BG3. BG3 was my coping game while dealing with the aftermath of an extremely toxic relationship and breakup. BG3 turned out to be about the abuse cycle in its essence and thus made me obsessed. And I put a lot of needs and wants and wishes of what I should have done into Curumë. The theme of Freedom and the fight against being controlled is a huge part that both haunt/ed me (and him). It also made me vibe hardcore with Astarion, but I shy away from writing him because it feels like a competition. And also Curumë is more personal, more catered to what I personally experienced.

I write him like an Asshole because that is the part that is the opposite of me. But it is - sometimes - what I wish I had done, instead of people pleasing and being a "I can Fix him" person. Anyway, this got a bit personal I am sorry.

As for Raistlin sadly he is also a lot like me. But also not. I actually want to rp and write for him because he is so relatable. I started out reading the books dealing with his character development specifically and it was scary how someone could put some of my own experiences as a (constantly rejected) disabled person with a nondisabled sibling into one character so well. I'd say Raistlin is someone I could have become if I hadn't gone to therapy and decided to deal with my inner demons. The biggest difference between him and me though is the hunger for power, because I don't have that. I do have a need for adoration though, ngl.

Tagged by: @windwithinmyveins thank you so much!

Tagging: @astralfox0893 @springvaletales

Bonus, my desk:

As you can see, I suck at keeping my place tidy. Also, yes, the wig is there because I am working on a Raistlin Cosplay irl.

[skinks]

hey so IN YOUR OPINION is eddie aware that he's gay? like does he know and just choose not to do anything about it, or has he pushed it down so far that he just sees richie for the first time in 27 years and is like 'ah, ok, he's just so objectively attractive that i, a straight man, want to lick his tonsils. in a totally heterosexual way.' because as a disaster lesbian i spent a long time assuming that everyone just agreed that women were hot, and he seems like a kindred spirit lol

khkgdkg good question!!! Sorry in advance for me not shutting up about this!! IN MY OPINION Eddie’s not fully, One Hundred Percent aware he’s gay, no, not until during or after reckoning with It the second time. But it’s a little muddier than just knowing and choosing not to do anything about it?

I think that because of his mother’s all-encompassing manipulation and emotional abuse, Eddie has trouble interpreting things about the world and about himself without someone else to tell him. That’s why he can be a little more naive and gullible than the others sometimes. 

I think... he’s particularly scared of the psychosexual components of Its terrorizing specifically because he knows there’s something lurking under the surface of his day-to-day existence that he doesn’t yet understand, and doesn’t have the internal language to describe. There’s a couple of lines when he’s remembering the hobo/leper scenes that go:

Come back here, kid, the hoarse voice whispered. I’ll blow you for free. Come back here!

No, Eddie moaned at it. Please, go away. I don’t want to think about that.

With a gay reading of his subtext you can interpret this (as I do) as Eddie literally refusing to acknowledge what it means for him to have been propositioned by a man for a homosexual act. I think Eddie’s powers of belief manifestation are stronger than most because he’s been so sheltered, that’s why his battery acid trick works so well. It’s why he’s so susceptible to placebos. It then works in direct opposition too -  if he denies something hard enough it will cease to be real. By appearing as a leper that resembles the hobo who offered to fellate him, Pennywise is targeting something Eddie’s only vaguely aware of in the moments he might look too long and too differently at the boys and men in his life. 

I think he’d gain A TON more self-awareness after the events of their first Enclownter, to the point where he would understand he likes boys. Much like your experience, I think he might still assume those feelings are universal. Especially since Derry fosters such an outwardly homophobic environment, and since this is either the 50s or the 80s, he’d probably think that because he’s not an effeminate stereotype then he couldn’t possibly be gay. 

Then he regresses after leaving Derry and the Forgettening happens. He loses his ties to the people who helped him be more self-sufficient and able to process his own thoughts/feelings without manipulation. 

He enters a relationship with Myra almost identical to the one with his mother in terms of, like, decision-making and lack of autonomy. And maybe he feels stirrings when he thinks about men at the gym, or at college, or scruffy comedians on TV, and he knows what that means on some level. Eddie’s not stupid, but he has fallen back into the rut of shutting down his true feelings for the good of the stability of his marriage, his image, his own comfort. He uses prescription drugs to cope! Again, if he denies and represses this fundamental part of himself hard enough, it can’t be real. It can’t infect and ruin things. It can’t get him.

This is all why it’s such a huge fucking deal for him to come back to Derry and realise, oh shit. These are the people who didn’t tell him what to do or eat or like or think, the people with whom he was free enough to feel his feelings at their greatest capacity. Feelings like his stomach somersaulting out of his dick when he play-wrestled with that same scruffy comedian back in 1992, and actually understanding what that meant for Eddie’s life before he was taken from that life and transplanted, adrift, in a new one with no map.

Ngl i find it kind of difficult to understand this part of Eddie’s character. I’ve known and understood I was bisexual from a really young age, and I find it very hard to grasp how someone can’t know something so big about themselves, especially as an adult. Though it does help to delve into how he grew up and how it affected his thought processes. Like what a mess 😬

It’s interesting though because I think Richie develops in direct contrast to Eddie - Richie is the master of self-perception and uses it as a tool to get ahead in life.

Richie knows (well enough) what all of his various issues are, including the fact that he’s gay. He’s the one who knows and chooses not to do anything about it and to consciously live a lie. It’d make for some REAL JUICY CONFLICT for them to address that difference in a fic (I actually wrote out dialogue months ago for a massive argument about this topic and I’d like to use it in a story one day... some day...)

Anyway, tl;dr I don’t think Eddie Kaspbrak is fully, consciously aware of his sexuality as a gay man until after he returns to Derry and remembers why he is the way that he is, and why he thinks the way that he thinks. He is an anxious and confusing little puzzle and I love him and can’t stop talking about him, thank you

[alatismeni-theitsa]

answering LO/anti LO asks:

(1) Let’s also not kid ourselves, it’s creepy Smythe imagines the majority of her female characters as “PoC” and they only exist to be sexualized, infantilized, and be props for the male characters (Persephone is Hades’ prize, Psyche is a prop for Eros, Aphrodite is a literal sex object, Minthe is nothing but Evil incarnate, etc). As a person of color myself and as a woman, I do not feel represented, I feel insulted and mocked, though I’m sure her lily white self thinks she’s a beacon of progress!

(2) Did you read today episode of Lore olympus? It was so creepy. Hades watched on a tape how few years earlier teenage (around 15-17 years) persephone was sitting NAKED on him when he was drunk. Then he rells demeter about amazing pink goodess and how he wants to ask zeus is she available. Demeter freaks out and wants to get him more drunk so he wont remember her. And he is mad about that demeter protect her teenage doughter from a wine addicted old man.

Oh and also fandom didn't see anything wrong with moment when persephone ended up naked in front of him (and at that time she was an teenager) and they were like oww so cute he acted like an gentelmam and i was like bitch were? And level of oversexualization persephone in this episode was highlike showing her butt when she run or many svenes when she was nacked and this wouldnt be bothering me if the fact that in this episode pernephone was teenager. It was sick

(3) I don't think anyone can deny LO made Webtoons a big platform in the West but at this point they're big enough to let LO fend for itself and start promoting other works to get more people reading, especially now as LO is getting more criticism that Rachel won't listen to and dropping numbers. It'd be like Netflix only promoting Stranger Things or Amazon only promoting Ms Maisel. It's rude to the other series that are better in views/numbers but also isn't a good business practice either.

(4) I’m so glad i found your blog and the anti lo tag, everyone seems to love this comic... granted i’m not overly familiar with greek mythology but i know a bad story when i read one. Persephone really gives Bella Swan a run for her money in stupidity. She’s just such a bad character.

(5) I don't agree with the WHAT ABOUT THE KIDS! take that video took since i don't think young women are just that dumb to be manipulated by a comic, but the rest was on point. Smythe can't take criticism, she openly lies about her storytelling, she botches what could be interesting elements, Hades is downright creepy, the relationship is horribly toxic/imbalanced and he's aware/seems to relish in it, the teenager is way too hypersexualized, etc. Wish Webtoons would promote other comics...

(6) OOOF that video was rough to watch but way too true. I really never noticed how damn near father/daughter-like Smythe made her version of HxP be (&the power imbalance) and framed it as the only healthy relationship in story & claims its "supposed to be uncomfortable". Why would you want your audience to be uncomfortable supporting the main relationship? Though it was funny that the commentator said she obviously has a fetish for older men. He must not know she's pushing 40.

____________________________________________________________

(1) As I said in another answer, I am not sure if she imagines them as poc? She had casted White and Black people for most and maybe they wants to say some of the characters have “Black vibes“??? (which is weird ngl) Honestly, I don’t know. Plus, you cannot make a person Black in a predominantly White area and not talk about their experience or their different culture. Persephone made it a big deal that she was from a different area (Sicily) but she never mentioned she looked different than the locals.

I think if anyone from the main cast, someone on our screens most of the time, was Black or generally not looking like the average Greek we would know it because of references. So maybe Smythe just wants the African American and/or Black vibes for her characters and not actual Blackness. Everyone is like “deities can be whatever race you like“ and they forget that many times being a specific race gives you unique experiences, as well as advantages and disadvantages.

Psyche has probably an African mother and, unfortunatelly, she wasn’t depicted very respectfully.

I am Greek and not even I feel represented by any of those characters even those who are clearly white and old deities of my culture. (That is because they are just “White” and not “Greek” culturally). Smythe doesn’t know how to write cultures...

As a PoC, do you feel like we have any indication that certain characters (except Psyche) are not White? Because I haven’t seen such a thing. As I mentioned, I don’t even think they even act like Greeks but that’s another story xD Because of the setting, I see them as charicatures of White Americans who don’t even have the white American culture.

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(2) Yesss I read it!! And I hadn’t thought that she was so young back then! Jeeeez!! Smythe sexualized her even in the episode where she was barely legal!

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(3) That’s probably a good idea. More works need to be advertised so everyone getst an equal chance. Betting only on one horse won’t give profit to Webtoons.

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(4) Welcome!! Here, take some tea with salt!

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(5) It’s true that young girls are not going to be influenced only by this comic and then go ruin their lives with abusive men. It’s just that there is this general culture of women having more value the younger and more innocent they are, while for the men it’s the opposite. This comic and other works are part of a bigger problem which tells girls it’s ok to meet this behavior in an older man and you should want to be with such a man when you are 19. Again, it’s not only about this specific comic. But we have to start fixing this culture by beginning from something, right?

I am glad that you agreed with the rest of the points. That means the youtuber says what most of us think and want to express - but we don’t dare because the LO fandom will eat us alive.

                                                          ✷✷✷

(6) I wanted to hear someone else talk about the problems of LO but at the same time it made me uncomfortable because it talks about difficult issues. There are some dynamics appropriate for certain ages. You CAN write about unhealthy relationships and leave the reader decide for themselves but now when your audience also has teenagers and when the HxP relationship is presented as the GOOD relationship in the story. Smythe went as far as to have the storyline with Apollo so we can see how Good Hades is in comparison.

Ah yes, she just likes men her age! But I think he was kinda correct on the “Daddy and Little“ kink xD Especially after I took a glimpse of that NSFW picture from her patreon with the spanking.

[theeeveetamer]

I'm pretty sure my computer would burn and die if I tried to play the Sims 4 but tell me anyway which packs are the best to buy!

Sims 4 is actually easier to run than Sims 3! Especially if you only have a few packs and no mods installed! They designed it for longevity, and it initially came out in 2014. There’s even a laptop mode designed specifically for people with lower end systems.

And, fun fact, you can try it for free! Origin allows a free trial for the Sims 4, so if you’re worried it won’t run or you’re worried you won’t like it you can always download the trial and test it out! That’s actually how I got into the game.

Though I will note before getting started: Some of the newer packs require a 64 bit operating system or a Metal-supported Mac system. Anything released after October 2019 cannot be played on a 32 bit/non-metal system.

Though at the moment that basically just excludes you from the University pack.

Also note! Different people like different stuff out of their Sims game, so if it sounds interesting don’t worry if I don’t rate it highly. I tend to play with a more realistic slant, and for items I tend to like more modern aesthetics when it comes to clothes and items. With that in mind, let’s get to the list! I’ve divided them up by pack type (Expansion, Game, or Stuff).

Expansion Packs:

1) Seasons: Must Have

I will always, always, always shill for the seasons EP of any Sims game. Frankly, I am of the opinion that it should just be base game, but whatever. It adds dynamic weather and, well, seasons which are two things that will affect your game no matter how you choose to play.

Sims 4 is rather unique from previous sim games in that it adds a calendar system and holidays. Not only can you celebrate holidays, you can actually create your own and freely edit or move them around! I’m not kidding, you can get pretty wacky. Like, worshiping garden gnomes and punching each other in the face wacky. Or you can be a loser like me, make every single Three Houses character, and make them all have a lovely Christmas together because they deserve it :x

2) City Living: Good to Have

This one is down to personal taste. I love the city aesthetic, and the apartments are pretty fun to play around with. City Living also adds some interesting festival activities and four unique city districts. Another boon, if this is something you’re interested in, is cultural diversity! Sims 4 has been making a concentrated effort to include more diversity in their games, and a lot of outfits and objects in this pack reflect that!

All of the festivals and events will still occur regardless of if you live in the city or not, so you don’t have to miss out on all of the features even if you don’t choose to use the apartments 100% of the time. Though the bulk of the new game-play really is in the city neighborhood.

3) Discover University: Good to Have (Note: This is one of those 64 bit packs)

I admittedly haven’t played around with this one extensively since it just came out, but I think it’s great fun! I put Sim Sylvain, Sim Felix, Sim Dimitri, and Sim Dedue through college and it was a struggle (in the best of ways). Dorm life, subsisting exclusively on Ramen, and staying up until 2 am working on that term paper that’s due tomorrow... What’s not to love? I’m always a big fan of University packs because, again, I like to play pretty realistically. With mods I managed to get them into a collective $80,000 of college debt and can you tell that I’m an American yet? 

Plus, this one added the teaching, law, and engineering professions to the game and I will never not enjoy making Dimitri a psychology professor for the irony.

University isn’t really necessary to your sims’ lives, but it certainly does help them out along the way. You can choose to ignore it if you want to, but I don’t really see myself doing that when I play, which means this pack will get a lot of use from me personally.

4) Cats and Dogs: Good to Have

If you’re really into the whole rustic aesthetic then this is definitely the pack for you. The town they added is very cute and one of my more well used towns (currently the residence of all of my Blue Lions Sims). If you want your Felix sim to have 6 cats then this is also the pack for you, because you can’t have pets otherwise.

You can also create your own veterinary clinic, which is a feature I’ve barely touched but I’m sure someone will get a kick out of! It’s similar to running a business or owning a restaurant from some similar packs.

God, and you can do some crazy fuckin things to these pets. You can basically cross breed to your heart’s content, so you can get some weird ass combinations. There’s also a paint tool, so you can have dogs with rainbow fur and cats with green paws. Oh and you can have pet foxes and raccoons, but they basically function as dogs and cats respectively.

All in all a fun pack, even if I don’t use all of its content 100% of the time.

5) Get to Work: It’s Alright

Here’s where I start getting a little lukewarm. Get to Work added three active careers (Doctor, Scientist, and Detective) as well as the ability to own and run your own retail store. And these features are fun! ... If you use them.

With the way the Sims 4 is built, having a Sim in an active career and a Sim family with more than one or two sims can be difficult to manage. You can only load one lot at a time, so if you follow your sim to work then you can’t play your sims at home and vice versa, you have to load through every time you switch. There are no “home businesses” either, so your sim either has to live “off lot” and travel (aka you have to sit through a loading screen) tp the retail store every time you do business, or you build a living space on the retail lot and try to wrangle the game into working. This means you have to manually bring your sims “home” to the store every day, and it causes some issues.

Personally, I don’t like being minorly inconvenienced, so after the novelty wore off I barely touched these features again. Most of the CAS and Build/Buy items are career or retail focused too, so I can’t say it has any must have items. I’m putting it at #5 though because I know many people love these features and happily play around the limitations.

6) Get Famous: It’s Alright

I’ll admit, I had a lot of fun with this pack when it first came out! It adds a lot of really cool stuff, like the reputation system, fame, and what is essentially a YouTuber career. There’s also another one of those active careers (actor/actress) if that’s your thing.

Fame also works in a very interesting way in this pack, too. There are “perks” and “quirks”, so your sim can have their own celebrity brand and hordes of followers, but have extremely volatile emotions or a fear of being touched. Kind of an interesting reward/drawback system that hasn’t been present in previous sim games.

Personally though, this pack doesn’t have much longevity to me. Just like Get to Work it was fun for a little while, but I don’t particularly like playing “famous” sims so many of the pack’s features go unused. The town, Del Sol Valley, is pretty underwhelming with only a handful of lots, and kind of a sunny desert-y aesthetic. Which doesn’t pair well if you like the rain and snow from Seasons like I do.

7) Island Living: It’s Alright

This pack is great if you love island-aesthetic items and clothes, tropical islands, and/or mermaids. Personally? I love all three of those things. I’ve been using quite a few of the outfits and objects and roleplaying them as “Duscur themed” for my Dimidue family. I mean, we have no idea what Duscur actually looked like, but the items are distinct enough from most of the typical items in the game that it kind of works?

Anyways, the reason this is so low is because there’s just not much to do in this pack. Mermaids and swimming and that’s basically it. There’s only one new career (conservationist) and three part time careers (diving, fishing, and life-guarding, which I kind of thought were going to be full time careers when I bought the damn thing...)

I’ll talk about this later, but the mermaids are by far the least interesting altered life state/occult in the game. Vampires (and I believe witches) have skill trees of powers and drawbacks, similar to those celebrity perks and quirks I talked about before. Mermaids have nothing like that, so they get boring to play with rather quickly. Watching their tail flop out while they’re in the bath is kinda fun though NGL.

The town is really cool though. I love basically all the pre-built lots and I love the items, but again if you like snow this probably isn’t a world you’re going to be using much. That, and to use many of the new features (like boats and ocean swimming and building houses out over the water) you must be in this world.

8) Get Together: Skippable

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seriously used any of the features from this pack aside from the town. The build/buy is a lot of Tudor style stuff, which I don’t tend to use, and a lot of the clothing is weirdly ugly clubbing clothes.

The clubs are really the big feature of this pack. Similarly to the holidays from Seasons, you can create clubs of sims that will get together and do activities. Basically any action in the game can have a club associated with it (from cleaning to “woohoo”) and you can have club perks that make your club more powerful, and sometimes infamous!

My main issue: If you aren’t actively using this feature it doesn’t really do anything. It just kind of exists as an extra sim panel in the bottom right corner of your screen. And I didn’t use it. Like, at all. That said, I know a lot of people find it very fun! I’m just not sure it’s worth spending $20-$40 of your money on.

Game Packs

I’ll just say right off the bat, I’m not going to talk about Realm of Magic. It adds wizards and wacky magical hijinks, but I bought it at the same time as University and I haven’t gotten around to playing it much yet. I will say, they added a ton of really cool objects and outfits! Especially the rugs. God, the rugs are to die for.

1) Parenthood: Must Have

Two words: Teen Angst. This pack fleshes out a lot of the younger life states. It adds teaching moments, punishments, “character value” traits such as polite or irresponsible, curfews, volunteering, sibling rivalries, mood swings, phases, etc. You want your kid to come home dressed like a bear randomly one day? This is for you.

I admit, I find a lot of the younger life stages in this game boring to play without this pack. I don’t think I could ever go back to vanilla sims after having used it, I find it that essential to my play style. Keep in mind though, this pack will only give you good mileage if you play families with sims of all ages.

2) Dine Out: Good to Have

You can own and operate a restaurant, which functions similarly to the retail stores and vet clinics I mentioned before. However, if you don’t want to own one then you can still plop them down in your town and your sims can travel there for dinners and such.

It’s really good for role playing dates and family nights out and such, but if that’s not your thing and you don’t care about owning one then this is not the pack for you.

3) Vampires: Fun, if You’re Into It

I actually played around with Vampires a lot when the pack first came out, which was honestly just a result of my life circumstance at the time (I was taking a literature course about vampires so I had vamps on the brain).

The vampire skills and vampire banes are pretty fun to mess with, and you can create a lot of pretty unique bloodsuckers. I had a Leo and Takumi sim, and the former was extremely weak to the sun and the latter could walk around in it no problem. Made for some fun role playing.

My two criticisms:

Vampires live forever, which means you’ll eventually get bored of playing the same sims.

Vampires don’t really sleep. They only sleep to recover their vampiric energy, which is only expended through the use of powers. It does not deteriorate naturally, so your vampire could be awake 24/7 for several sim days. Thing is, that just leaves you with too much time to do stuff. They’ll max their skills pretty quickly and then what do you do? Nothing.

Oh, and if you’re in to gothic-style stuff this is a must have for you.

4 & 5) Jungle Adventure and Outdoor Retreat: They’re Alright

I’m putting these in the same slot because they basically serve the same function: Vacations. One involves diving into ruins and hacking your way through jungles, the other is camping, but they’re both basically sim-vacations.

This is another one of those pack types where either you use it or you don’t, and if you don’t it doesn’t really do anything for you. Most of the game packs are like that, actually. Personally, I don’t take my sims on sim vacations very often so I mostly keep these packs around for the items.

Though I will say Outdoor Retreat added a ton of plaid so if that’s your aesthetic then go for it.

6) Spa Day: Skippable

This one basically just allows you to place and build “spa lots” in the world. It added the wellness skill, which ties into the meditation and yoga activities. There’s also saunas and massage tables, but I have rarely if ever placed them in a home lot for personal use.

Another use it or don’t kind of thing. I don’t even have a spa lot placed on my current world, so that just goes to show you how much I use this pack.

Some of the items are cool. Unless you really like those I’d say pass.

7) Strangerville: Honestly It Just Doesn’t Make That Much Sense As a Sims Pack?

Strangerville basically added a story and quest line to the game. I hear it’s pretty fun, but I don’t really play Sims for stories and quests, I play it as a sandbox game. So although I have the pack I’ve never actually played the “story” of it. It’s really not the best Game Pack to get as an entry to the series since it’s such a departure from the typical sims experience.

The town is alright, but again another desert so forget it if you like rain and snow. Unless you really really want the military career or you like the outfits and objects then I wouldn’t personally recommend. Especially for newer players to the series.

Stuff Packs

Honestly there are waaaaaay too many of these for me to rank and I wouldn’t really describe any of them as “must haves”, so instead I’m just going to put down my five favorites. But it’s really up to you to look at the items and decide if it’s worth your $10. Each pack adds a new “game-play” feature, though they’re very small and can be lived without pretty easily.

1) Laundry Day Stuff

This entire pack was actually voted on and “created” by Sims players so that’s a huge plus! More rustic-style items, and the game-play feature here is, obviously, laundry. Since I like playing more realistically, adding another chore was actually worth the money for me lmao. Plus all of the clothes are cute and comfy looking!

The Sims Team also has an amazing sense of humor and named an entire set of the items “Wicker Whims” after the WickedWhims sex mod for the game. Which, honestly? When a dev interacts with players like that it’s always really endearing to me.

2) Movie Hangout Stuff

The aesthetic of this pack is Boho-chic for some reason, so if you like that this pack delivers! The new game-play feature is popcorn and watching movies which can be fun for roleplaying families.

3) Kids Room Stuff

Another one that’s only useful if you play families, but it did add a cute little trading card game for kids. They can collect cards and battle them, similar to Pokemon. Unfortunately, adults can’t play, but I’m sure there’s a mod out there for that somewhere. A lot of the items look really good too, and I use them all semi-frequently. Kids tend to get the short end of the stick when new packs come out, so getting a bunch of hair, outfits, and items for them fills a good niche.

4) Perfect Patio Stuff

Lots of outdoorsy type items, as the name implies. Wicker chairs and outdoor counter tops and the like. This bad boy also brought the return of hot tubs (which probably has the cutest woohoo animation in the game, just saying).

5) Moschino Stuff

The items have a mostly modern, sleek aesthetic, and it adds the freelance photographer career to the game (which is currently what Sim Sylvain is employed as). I basically recommend it on those merits, because the clothes it added are godawful ugly and I’m otherwise not a huge fan of brand-sponsored packs. They’re nothing really new for The Sims, but luxury brands with hideous overpriced clothes aren’t really my thing.

Some Other General Advice for Starting Out

I covered some of this stuff further up but I’ll repeat in case people just skimmed this really long post.

I will warn everyone stay away from “My First Pet Stuff”! You are basically required to own Cats and Dogs to make use of a good chunk of its items, so you might just be wasting your money.

You can get a trial of the game for free if you just want to test it out to see if you’ll like it or if your computer will run it.

Never buy a pack at full price. I’m not kidding when I say they have sales for this game every couple of months. Even if there isn’t a sale there is a bundle option, which is significantly cheaper than buying individual packs! Discover University was $40 at full price. I purchased a bundle with Discover University, Realm of Magic, and Moschino Stuff for $50. Had I bought them separately it would have ran me $70.

In fact sometimes they give the base game out for free! I know they did a promotion like this this past summer. Sims really makes their money from Expansion Packs, so one of their marketing strategies is to give the base game out for free to entice you to play. Even if it’s not free, it’s always steeply discounted during sales. I believe you can get it for $6 right now. I have 1000+ hours in this game, so six dollars is pretty cheap for that much entertainment.

You can see every single item and outfit in a pack before you buy it. So if you’re not sure if it’s for you, just look! The items are listed right there on the Origin store page.

Mods are amazing. Custom content is amazing. If anyone is curious I can create a list of the mods I use/Custom Content I use for my various Fire Emblem sims.

[paradoxnbstuff]

okay so i need to talk about this for a minute

because usually i can find some shit about this on youtube or a transition blog somewhere but i cant for some reason this time? and its one of those difficult things to think about that I’ve been putting off for like years. so. anyways. top surgery stuff.

so first of all I have this habit of mine that’s taken a while and lot of shit to notice. it was probably a left over from growing up with my abusive dad and trying to survive that. but basically I’m very good at putting something aside in my head and so thoroughly convincing myself it’s not something that’s bugging me (subconsciously) that when it comes time to actually think about it I legitimately cannot tell how I feel about it. I’m talking about sitting and thinking about it for hours, plus research, and actively taking stock of my reactions as they happen to try to just. logically deduce what’s actually going on in my brain based on physical symptoms of emotional reactions I can’t actually feel. and obviously anyone can see how that would be incredibly useful in a situation like my parents where I had no choice in the matter for 18 years, and i could either constantly wallow in misery and agony and hurt and stress and confusion and terror at just living in my house 24/7, or i could section it off. and create like. a new baseline for myself. ex my baseline became that state and then went up or down based on negative or ‘positive’ things that happened from that baseline. looking at it objectively it was all obviously still horrible and stressful and traumatizing but i wouldn’t have been able to get through it if I was consciously aware of that the whole time. So that’s where that developed.

But weird backstory aside this has carried over to certain things in my life on my own since I moved out too. It’s why it took me so long to figure out gender shit and why I still haven’t figured out my sexuality even though I don’t lack the vocabulary or even really experience to. it’s affected my relationships with people, but I’ve been practically religious about trying to make sure I identify it when it happens and dedicating a lot of time and thought to unraveling whatever’s going on and stopping it, because fuck that I refuse to let it mess with the people I care about. There’s certain markers but it’s not like most things where you experience negative emotions and there’s a natural pathway from point a to point b. the markers are me having to stop and look at the past few months or longer and pick out patterns of times when i acted illogically in similar way, and cross ref it to see if it came with a feeling of abstractness where i couldn’t identify what emotions i was feeling. but like. its like trying to identify nothing. anger or happiness or w/e is easy like hey im feeling that but trying to notice when you’re feeling nothing or something unquantifiable? much fucking harder. and the trigger for me to start wondering if something is going on is when it starts to impact my quality of life negatively in some way. so. a really fucking stupidly difficult logical approach to untangle some very complicated emotions. which is sadly necessary.

so that’s the method I use to realize when this is happening. hasn’t really gotten any easier but i can do it i guess. and this is what’s happening now with me and top surgery? it happened with the decision to start testosterone, (’but im happy with how i look and sound!’ god no ur not u fucking disaster ur brain just didn’t want you to be miserable 24/7 and tricked you into thinking u were) and i think it’s the same thing with this. but i don’t. know??? for sure???? so I’m having to figure out this incredibly difficult and emotional decision with only purely factual patterns to go on and my emotions, which im not sure are fake or not, plaguing me every step of the way. so im just gonna fucking write em down and hope it helps.

fact 1: i never wear a bra. ever. it’s always either a binder or binder-adjacent like a sports bra. it’s been like that for 3 ish years now and it’s not stopping any time soon. i’m violently uncomfortable wearing a bra. 

fact 2: i dont like touching my chest or nipples. (tmi ish warning w/e) when I’m having sexual relations with another person im again, violently uncomfortable with the other person touching my chest. i will repeatedly redirect or say no if they start to with absolutely no doubt about it.

fact 3: i don’t like wearing tight clothing if i can’t bind. when I go to the gym and work out I wear a sports bra and wearing tshirts that show that fuckin. again feel nearly ill.

fact 4: i don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror? like. I have/had a lot of dysphoria about my body, specifically my hips and the kinda hourglass dip in between ribs and hips and the way e gives fat distribution around the upper hips around the waist and thighs and butt. that’s mostly gone now due to a combination of T and working out, but I still don’t mind seeing my chest in the mirror. that’s possibly because I’m literally like 3/4 of an A cup at max but. yknow. this is also one of those things that is COMPLETELY based on feelings. and it feels suspiciously like when I’m trying to gauge my reaction and get ‘yeah I feel neutral about this actually’ but is really just very skillful repression. and I can’t tell. so. that’s great. it is a subjective fact, as opposed to the previous 3. 

fact 5: if i stretch my arms up it looks like i have a flat chest (bc i i have like no boobs to begin with) and the reaction I get to that is a definite. reaction. it’s an adrenaline based one. but another issue i’m working on is i can’t tell the difference between happy excited adrenaline and panic adrenaline and therefore when i feel happy excited about something i start fear panicking instead and it sucks but yknow. so I get an adrenaline thrill. that I can’t identify as fear or excitement. so that’s. there? fuck

fact 6: i’m not male. I figured that out a long time ago but it’s become important again recently that I am n o t a trans man. I’m solidly nonbinary. T was and is the right decision for me. So is building muscle. So is my decision now to grow out my hair again. So is my clothing that is decidedly not masculine fairly often and my makeup (that can be either to help with the masc or just to make me feel hot, or feminine sometimes). But this is something that’s....like. It would make me look a lot more masculine. like a lot. like it would be looking in the mirror and seeing that (without the big scars you see a lot underneath, i wouldn’t have that) and I don’t know if that’s something I want. but at the same time, that’s what I want to look like in clothes. I don’t fucking know.

fact 7: i know there’s probably some underlying fear in there of like societally ingrained disgust for non-cis bodies. and I know for a fact I’m attractive as a feminine person. and doing this means that I’m committing myself to a permanent non-cis state. I’m in no way saying there’s anything actually wrong with that, I’m saying that I know there’s things in the way I’ve been raised that inherently shy away from that still. It’s not something I want and it’s something I have to deal with but it probably is playing a part in my fear in this.

fact 8: currently, my main reason for tentatively starting the application process is my health. I love being active and healthy and exercising and I know that binding long term hurts your ribs and lungs, and I also know that I’m not going to stop binding any time soon if I don’t have top surgery. And getting it just for health reasons is a perfectly valid reason to do it. And if I am actually neutral about my chest and not just tricking myself? I’m totally happy with this being the deciding factor.  

anyways. yeah. the problem with dismantling a mental block you’ve set up for yourself is it involves actively unlocking self hatred and pain that you can’t put back in the box once you’ve opened it until it’s dealt with. so there isn’t a ton of incentive to. ngl it didn’t happen with testosterone fully until after I’d been on it for a few months and realized how fucking desperately I needed this to be happening. but I don’t think that’s how I want it to go with top surgery. I want to know before I go through with it what I’m feeling and what I want. and it is. VERY fucking difficult. god. yeah. anyways. that’s where I’m at. thanks for coming to my ted talk.