On request from pennysims, we're posting some of our pictures from our BACC... I say "some", because there was over 2000 pictures in that folder, and even with just flitering out the best there's still a lot. :p

These are from the beginning, so there's not so much a "city" yet... more like a big plain open landscape with a single house in it.

'Hood is called 'Simtopia City'. ...We're not terribly creative with neighbourhood names.

( Cut for 39 pictures... )

I'm aware I've been pretty quiet again for a while. Silly me, thought that holidays would mean more time to sim and work on my story. Well... there's been some simming, but the BACC is just so much fun! Other than that, we've been in London for three days and this week we're cat-sitting at my parents' house, so there's little access to sims, unfortunately.

At least I've started to THINK about the story again, so that's an important first step. I haven't forgotten about it and have no intention of abandoning it, so close to its completion, so I just wanted to reassure you about that... in case anyone was worried. :)

I WILL be updating my story soon. Promise. Life has just been busy. D: June has about a billion birthdays in my family, including my own yesterday, and work is kinda hectic now too, plus it's also SUMMER and outside is nice (when it doesn't rain).

But yeah, I haven't forgotten about the story and I have pictures ready and everything, I just need a couple of hours to myself and some inspiration.

It's been a while since I posted a chapter now. Time moves by too quickly! But I finally got most or all of the pictures for the next chapter taken... so it shouldn't be TOO far off.

I realised that I'm actually nearing the end of the story too, at least... the end of the big main storyline. I'm still not sure how to wrap it all up, but the end is in sight, for sure.

I'm wondering if I should make some small epilogues afterwards... Little short stories. Maybe. Or maybe just a bunch of baby spam once I can breed them all freely. We shall see.

I kinda miss the megahood, though I didn't quite like the path it took the last time... but I'm resisting the urge to start something new AGAIN. Why do I have such Sims-ADHD? There's just something about starting a neighbourhood over, opening new possibilities... yet I've never actually gotten past generation two in any Maxis-premade hood. D: Gah. I'm hopeless, I am.

Me and my husband have been working on a Build a City Challenge for a while, and that's fun... It's taking up most of my playing time, actually. There's some Maxis sims in there, too - Ramaswamis, Ottomases (Ottomi?), Larsons, Chester Gieke... We've gotten pretty far! (We've adapted some of the rules, some of them are a bit too insane - and really, I don't WANT fifteen shopping districts.) We also have a fresh Veronaville with ALT university attached to it... Not quite sure what to do there yet. And then there's my storyhood, which I would like to keep playing normally once the story is done. So why do I still have urges to keep fiddling with MOAR new Maxis hoods? Gah.

In other news, I'm not especially excited about The Sims 3 anymore. I will play it, I'm sure, but right now I can't see myself quitting TS2 for it. Not at all.

Biggest annoyance yet: the TS3 genetics appearently suck. According to experiments at MATY: Make a black-haired and a blonde-haired parent couple in CAS. Move them in, change their hair to green and blue in mirror. Have baby. Baby's hair colour will be green or blue. WHAT IS THIS BULLSHIT, EA? Hair dye is genetic now? Gah! That's thoroughly disappointing, I LOVE the genetics of TS2 and seeing the outcomes of breeding my sims. :( I expected the genetics to work BETTER in TS3, not worse. All eye and hair colours are now the same level of dominance - or lack thereof. Oh, and dyed hair highlights can be inherited too. Great. Facial traits are taken directly from one parent or the other, and the different female and male facial structures are seemingly not taken into account anymore, so you end up with a bunch of girls with man-chins. Still not sure how the skin-tones work, but since that too is a colour-wheel now - and you can have green and blue sims and such - it wouldn't surprise me if they got lazy and made that a one-parent-or-the-other deal, too. :/

Also, sims you made yourself - re: playables - can move out of town while you're not playing them. Essentially they will be deleted from the neighbourhood. Sims not currently played will also magically spawn babies with no second parent while you're not looking. Whoever thought these things were good ideas need to be fired.

But enough about Sims 3. Like I said - even if I play it, I'll be sticking with Sims 2 - where genetics make sense, sims aren't randomly deleted and can't reproduce asexually.

Just wanted to say thank you to the people who backed me up yesterday, and inspired me to go ahead and write the next chapter as soon as I could. :) This one is for you.

Just sharing some pictures of the bestest couple in Pleasantview - Benjamin Long and Goopy GilsCarbo. :D

( Pictures under cut... )

Hello. :)

Chapter 12 is on its way, should be up this week, but in the meantime, here's some extra pictures which won't make it into the story.

The neighbourhood consists of Pleasantview + Strangetown + La Fiesta Tech, and not all the playables feature heavily in the story, some not really at all. So I figured I'd do some little extra posts and show off the rest of the crowd. This post has the Moonbeams in it - Blossom Moonbeam's adoptive parents. They live in one of those little white palm tree houses, next to Don Lothario's old house.

They've redone it in their own style, though...

( After all, they are old hippies... )

I've had a bit of a break in my writing, but the next chapter is forming in my head now so it shouldn't be too long...




(  Meanwhile, isn't stuck face animations fun? )