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Eli | 30+ queer enby | they/them | PNW | gallery id: itsonlythee

Artist & gamer slowly making Maxis Match build-buy cc and learning Blender. I like being helpful.

■ NAVIGATION ■

ABOUT

⭐ MY CUSTOM CONTENT ⭐- original cc & recolors

MY CC IN USE - wow, people are using stuff I made!

WORK IN PROGRESS - help, i keep starting new projects

SCREENSHOTS - ts4 gameplay screenshots

MY BUILDS - things I’ve built - rooms, houses, lots

MY SIMS - pics of my sims in game and in CAS

CC FINDS - my cc finds blog

OTHER GAMES - general game screenshots, not just Sims 4

ANIME - general anime ts4 content I've made

RESOURCES

⭐ Buy me a coffee ⭐ Check out my art shop ⭐

■ TERMS OF USE ■

Please do:

always include credit

tag me if you use my stuff (I’d love to see!)

share my work if you enjoy it

respect other makers’ ToS

link back to me & tag me if you use my cc!

Please don’t:

reupload my work (or put it behind a paywall)

claim my work as your own

monetize any of my content or include it in mod folders

share anything on Simsfinds or Simsdom

put anything I've created anywhere near any AI tools

#simblr #pinned post #itsonlythee-sims #ts4 #maxis match simmer

radicalgraff

"It doesn't have to be like this. We could have it so much better"

Calligraffiti in Chicago, Illinois

I've been spending some more time with Paralives and it's still very unfinished, but I also joined the official discord server and I've been hanging out in the modding channel and contributing to discussions in there. People are cooking up some neat things and the level of excitement is much higher than the general vibe around TS4 (to be expected). I've been having a lot of fun chatting over there and there's a really interesting mix of gamers and modders coming from the Sims as well as other gaming scenes entirely (Roblox, Webfishing, I made friends with someone who's worked a lot with level design for Source engine games), and a broad range of experience levels from absolute beginners opening Blender for the first time to people who work games industry or adjacent jobs. It's been nice to 'talk shop' with others as we're figuring out this new game together and really exciting being here for the beginning of a modding scene. I need to figure out the 'legalities' of it but I've begun repainting game textures to replace English words with stylistically matched Simlish - a lot of work but fun work. Lemme know if you wanna see some progress shots of that.

I'm also finding myself more frustrated with people not reading back in a chat before talking, not using the search function in discord (unlike Google search, this one still works decently). There's currently a major bug affecting mods loading correctly and people are popping in every few minutes to say "is it just me or are mods broken?" and this could be helped at least a bit by pinning a message about it or having some auto-reply function but this isn't at all unique to this game. I'm not used to the frequency I guess - my main Sims modding haunt isn't super active (especially now that there's a new game in town).

I do hope people start to temper their expectations for Paralives - I've been seeing a lot of (at this point) unearned glazing of the game for features that are hinted at but not actually functional (relationships, things to actually do on community lots (restaurants and shops have the bare minimum of functionality rn), emotions, etc) and the things that do exist need a lot of work - builds are precarious because you can accidentally remove all the floors or all the walls in a way that undo can't recover. I get the frustration, I get how jaded people feel over the state of TS4 and the larger Sims series, and I understand how exciting it is to have something new that could (maybe, someday) unseat The Sims as THE lifesim that scratches that itch of ts2+ts3+ts4 combined, but we're very much not there yet. I want people to be more honest with the game as it is and not confuse it with what it could be some day. I worry that these sky high expectations combined with ever shorter attention spans will lead people to try to speedrun what little content there is (like people are doing with Tomodachi Life) now and declare the game trash or a cashgrab and not the work in progress it clearly states itself as.

Idk if that made any sense, I wrote this while I was waiting for a dentist appointment this morning.

#eli words #ts4 #paralives

theartistrans

#not sims #body autonomy for everyone

Paralives EA review

Just posted a review to Steam, posting here as well cuz why not.

Recommending with caveats. The game is really rough but also really promising, so don't buy in at this point unless you understand this and can be patient and willing to laugh things off as you submit bug reports.

If you have the money to spare and wanna support a legitimate competitor in the Life Sim space as it develops, you should pick up Paralives during the EA period. It is absolutely a work in progress and really rough in a lot of places (some basics are super under-developed, some other parts are unique innovations of their own with a lot of potential) but it's also got a HUGE amount of potential and I'm very excited to see where things go from here. There's obvious passion here and you can also see the influence other games have had on the features and direction of the game.

There's a lot of potential and flexibility in build mode. Not being limited to 3 floors is awesome, the way that rooms cut into steep terrain is neat, 3d terrain paint is sick as hell (3d grass!). Parametric controls on most of the furniture and building tools is really cool. Being able to make custom color palettes or change out materials is really cool. While the number of assets to work with currently is a bit limited, there's still a ton of stuff that can be built and the system seems flexible enough to accommodate a lot of custom content as well. Paramaker mode is also super flexible. Gender and body type being disconnected is great and I love that you can pick between having breasts or pecs and feminine or masculine hips. Custom colors on hair and clothes? Also great.

I spent like 6 hours just looking at everything in the Paramaker yesterday and what is there currently is pretty astonishing. There's also a huge amount of potential for modding between what parameters are exposed to us to tweak in the Control Panel (most? all of it?) and I spent a while going through that and unrolling different options. People who are already familiar with modding for Unity games will probably have an easier time figuring this stuff out. I was trying to add some custom patterns yesterday and crashed the game a few times which was annoying - modding documentation could use some fleshing out. I've been reporting bugs and making suggestions as I hit issues and the bug reporting flow is very easy. I hope the team has a good method of wrangling and organizing all that data (off topic but I think this is a good usecase for LLM tool assistance that reduces labor without replacing jobs).

The negatives: Performance needs a lot of tuning (the game makes my fans run pretty hard but I don't think anything is particularly taxing so it might be the draw distance and possible lack of LODs so everything onscreen is being rendered at all times? just guessing here). I think the gameplay is still very underbaked (understandably) but the character creation and build mode are complex enough to make up for that, and this is fine for me as someone who primarily makes characters and builds in other games of this kind anyway. Camera control and movement need a lot of work and getting the camera to stay on the right floor with you is tricky, lots of bouncing out of place. Terrain cutting seems to just fail sometimes - my paras were eating together at the dining table, next thing I see is the terrain is now halfway into the room and the para closer to the wall is now standing on top of the terrain and still talking to the other sitting para. There doesn't seem like a lot To Do in live mode currently. Fires can start but there's no way to really deal with them outside of using a cheat. If your motives are critically low, you get blocked from even doing anything to resolve that. Routing is buggy as hell, objects are missing collisions (a para will stand inside of a bookshelf as they're reading, autonomous pushups clipping halfway out the wall), NPCs don't seem to have a lot to do and seem to just stand around for you to talk to them, group behavior is odd (tell a para to use the toilet and everyone else in the group will also try to use a toilet). Lighting needs work, especially interior lighting. I'm glad that ceilings were added as a toggle to keep rooms from being lit by the sun but placing lights is odd and they don't always turn on. Materials seem to be missing bumpmapping and specular/roughness and look very flat currently, out of place next to the relatively detailed paras.

I need to spend more time in live mode to really get a feel for it but I like what I've seen otherwise. I have been playing the Sims games since 2000 and I really want other games to succeed as well.

-----

Anyway, Paralives is REALLY rough right now but there's a ton of potential and I think it can eventually be something really good. I think if the team is able to keep on task, get their priorities right, & are truly open to feedback and players can keep their expectations fair and honest, Paralives could be really awesome in a couple of years. Buying the game in early access is an investment in that future potential and not something I do often (I do recommend picking up Fields of Mistria for anyone who likes Stardew Valley, super solid in spite of also being early access).

#paralives #life sim #eli words #paralives review #early access #sims adjacent lol #other games

opalescenteel

trans/it joy

a mini market in Seattle on Sunday, March 29th

(howdy howdy)

Next Sunday (3/29) I'll be tabling at Crow's Nest Comics (formerly Outsider Comics) in Seattle at a mini-market with @kamiupdog and @romecartoons. Come support queer arts, independent comic stores, local queer orgs, and the light rail expansion next week. Masking required (a rarity, yay!). We'll be there from noon to 6pm.

In June, I'll have a spot at Seattle Pridefest in Cap Hill - this'll be my first time doing a big Pride event and I have no idea what to expect.

Hope to see you there!!

itsonlythee-sims

Over in meat world, I'll be tabling at a small market in a Seattle comic shop! It'll be a bit more pared down than my usual offerings (smaller table) but it's also an explicitly queer show (and masking is required!).

I think I'll bring my queer pinback buttons with me this time, it's been a while since they've made an appearance.

#seattle artists #opalescenteel #seattle events #trans art #not sims

staceart

mARTch day 1 - self portrait [Alt text in photo but also will share it here since there are some details hard to see. Alt ID: "A blue marker drawing of the artist within a hand mirror. The artist purposely only drew a portion of their face, with their eyes as the focal point. They have messy hair and glasses. The mirror is being held up in a pencil bag. Written around the mirror's border in small dark font that nearly blends into the border is "i'm tired i don't want to do anything any more" with a rounded arrow pointing to the next sentence "i need to do something i can't waste my life" with another arrow pointing to the original sentence."]

#friend art #staceart #not sims

afloweroutofstone

The United States government is the world’s greatest threat to peace and stability.

itsonlythee-sims

Picking this up again (don't think I shared a preview of this one before on tumblr but I did share it on discord). I modeled this a year or two ago to walk someone through how to make a heart shaped pot without needing a billion polys and liked it enough, I mostly finished it but it was too late to share for Valentine's day. If I don't take too long, I might have this ready to share within the next few days.

itsonlythee-sims

Some more detail

itsonlythee-sims

Sooo I'm not done yet but I'm very happy with how the enamel looks and I got the embossed bits on top looking really good. I'm away from my desk today but I'm hoping I can share this tomorrow, fingers crossed. I think it's gonna look very nice in game (also this is about 500 polys, it was like 1400 before I had to rework the UVs).

I spent most of yesterday organizing my Substance files instead of making progress on this but I did learn some new things about the program.

#my wips #wip #substance painter #ts4 cc wip #itsonlythee-sims #3d art #progress update

itsonlythee-sims

Some more detail

#wip #my wips #blender wip #substance painter #ts4 cc wip #itsonlythee-sims

watchpoob

poob will be the new pdf

watchpoob

poob will be the new adobe animate

watchpoob

poob will be the new tumblr servers

watchpoob

poob will be the new discord

#wip #my wips #blender wip #substance painter #le creuset #valentines cc #ts4 cc wip

thedishranawaywithmyspoons

Now is the time for left-leaning people in the US to wrap your heads around the fact that the government has been lying to you about COVID.

You know they've been lying about Epstein. You know they've been lying about ICE. You know they've been lying about racial equality and capitalism and fairness under the law and imperialism and climate change and so many other things.

THEY'VE BEEN LYING ABOUT COVID TOO.

Yes, even the scientists at the CDC. Yes, even the "good" politicians. Yes, even the well-meaning healthcare and public health professionals. Yes, even the corporate media.

COVID is an inconvenience to the people in power, because they need us to pretend everything is "back to normal" so we will continue to uphold the structures that make money for them.

You already know this. It's nothing they haven't done before. It's exactly what they're already doing with climate collapse, human rights violations, creeping authoritarianism, etc. etc. etc. You already accepted that. You just need to accept that they're doing it with COVID too.

Now is the time to accept that what you're being told to believe about COVID is also propaganda with a goal of keeping you complacent about suffering and death, in service of preserving the wealth and power of very few people. It's not really a stretch. And the research is there to prove it.

You've already done the work to learn about the rotten systems that have gotten us here. All you need to do is apply it to COVID.

I know the implications are overwhelming. You don't have to face them alone. But you do have to face them, right now. Because just like with the other large, societal issues we're grappling with, we can't make progress until we accept the full scope of the problem. And we can't do that until more good, justice-minded people do the work on this.

COVID is still killing and disabling people on a mass scale in 2026. It's not "just a cold." It never was. We cannot continue to let it rip through our communities unchallenged, without any mitigation efforts and very few effective treatments. We don't deserve to be lied to, and we don't deserve to be subjected to unnecessary suffering and death because powerful people don't care if we live or die as long as the stock market does well.

You already know they're not telling the truth about so many things. Why would COVID be any different?