Laura. Wife, mom, author, creative distraction, tired old forest witch. TS4, mostly. Hugs and kisses, drama, swoon. Sims behaving badly. Gameplay notes. // Sometimes Final Fantasy, No Man’s Sky, Minecraft, Cities Skylines. // Saucy sim dramas and gameplay shenanigans at: Postcards From Sierra Nova (TS4), Lakeside Heights (TS2) // @lauraraeamos is my main // Do you like love stories? Do you like complicated relationship dramas? Go here → lauraraeamos.com
Please join me in the madness of my long-running pixel-illustrated-storytelling obsession, spanning various game versions, fifteen years, and 250-something sims. All stories exist in the same world and share the same timeline. These stories are written by an adult for adults. 18+ please.
Between story chapters, there will also be gameplay shenanigans, storytelling babble, sim-tracking dorkery, and rotational TS4 play. Also, occasional quick flings with other favorite games: Paralives, Minecraft, Manor Lords, and Cities Skylines.
@lauraraeamos is my main.
story archive on Blogger
chat on Bsky
Boxes and Squares is an ensemble drama series about a wandering group of misfits trying to live their lives boldly, no matter the consequences. Jordan wants to escape, Maria just wants to love him, Colette wants to crucify him, and Ingrid is just playing games… probably. New friends and lovers enter the picture, highlighting the messy and beautiful connections between imperfect people as they search for adventure, love, belonging, forgiveness, and what it means to be home.
content warnings: NSFW as marked, domestic verbal and emotional abuse, death and grief, depression
you can never go home, a rotational short story:
story index: Tumblr // Blogger
status: stories resume in July
characters: Dallas, Lucy, Delphie, Dakota, Karla, Andre
about: Still reeling from surviving Earth’s first extraterrestrial war, the Deppiesse family embraces the future as they attempt to plant roots somewhere new.
Karla, a new girl in town, gave up more than she could ever explain so she could follow her soulmate home to his hometown. When her arrival lands a little rougher than she expected, she seeks community in some new friends who know what it feels like to be different.
content warnings: the aftermath of war, mild xenophobia
unexpected unlife, a casual gameplay story:
story index: Tumblr
status: totally not abandoned, we will finish this someday! 😭
characters: Robert, Cynthia, Justin, Stephanie
about: (casual gameplay/dark humor/drama)
Robert Kim suffered a quick and unexpected death at the age of 54, just as he was looking forward to easing back into an early retirement with the love of his life, in the house they bought down the road from his son and three lovely grandchildren. He wasn’t ready for death, but somehow he isn’t quite prepared for what to do with this surprise afterlife, either.
content warnings: death, grief
real music, a story about love, hate, and music:
story index: index of story links
status: complete as a sims story, continuing in gameplay
characters: Vale, Vicky
about: (music/romance/enemies to lovers)
Vale is a quickly rising electronica star and epic turd, and Vicky is a prickly and stubborn nobody with an ethereal singing voice. They can’t stand each other, but they also can’t leave each other alone. They want nothing to do with each other, except maybe they might need each other. What do you do with that?
content warnings: NSFW as marked
drown, falling in love at the end of the world:
story index: Blogger only for now
status: complete!
characters: Justin, Stephanie, Keri, Jeremiah
about: (sci-fi/romance/drama)
Earth has been pulled into its first extraterrestrial war. Justin and Stephanie are two childhood friends who begin to see each other in a new light as the world around them falls apart.
content warnings: NSFW as marked, war, alien invasion, adultery, domestic abuse and violence, graphic violence, traumatic childbirth, depression
gameplay families:
Akiyama-McCarthy family gameplay (tag)
index
other games:
minecraft adventures
manor lords
paralives
also loved FFXV so much!
some other fun tags to browse:
sad stories that have no ending // sim storyteller problems // sims being sims // random townies being random // sims are being too real life // sims are funny // sims are crazy
As we said, Kyle and Carly have $243 in their bank account (minus $55 for that dinner, which was not bad at all for a night out at the hottest new restaurant in town!). They have an entire nursery to put together in the next few months, so let's get Kyle back to work.
Carly is keeping her distance from the paint fumes and power tools, so her home renovations business is on hold. She'll help out her hubby at his brand new tattoo shop (purchased on loan, of course, because $243!), also because TS4 sims can only play one active business at a time! 🤪
Kyle has been employed at many tattoo shops over the years, but this time he will own his own studio. Downstairs, they gutted the thrift store, but kept the boba, because who doesn't like boba while you're waiting to get inked?
Upstairs, they will keep the quiet little dance studio. Neither Kyle nor Carly are dancers, but Kyle does love music of the loud type. Does headbanging and moshing count as dance? That's probably not what the locals are looking for, but he has a feeling they'll adore this space. He will put an ad out for any local dance teachers who might be looking for work.
Customer #1 is eager to start. And then looks like he is instantly regretting his decision.
(I will be leveling Kyle up in his tattoo skill after these are done. He was a tattoo artist since TS3 days, so he's no newbie, but I do want to get a peek at these funny low-skill animations first. Because, lol!)
Lady with the boba tea is maybe his girlfriend? Coming over to check up on him and all those worrying groans? Or just coming over to gawk at a complete stranger in agonizing pain like that’s not weird at all?
While she's waiting, Carly takes the opportunity to interest her in a kitchen remodel. "We're very busy right now and booking nine months out. (No she's not, she's just pregnant...) Yes, very highly sought after. My client list is miles long. But I have some availability next fall. I can take your deposit today to hold your spot."
Pretty sure this lady lives in the townie bin and doesn't even own a kitchen. Or a house.
Tattoo success. Customer #1 is happy with the work and leaves a good review.
Another customer floating around is Melissa!
I do like the idea of her wanting a tattoo, but she's a legacy sim and I'm about to play her household soon, anyway. I'd like to send her back in with friends, because that's such a fun thing to do when you're twenty-two and in uni!
Instead, she painted a lovely mural for us, and we’ll give her and her friends a discount on some ink if they come back.
Customer #2: this angry lady, who is apparently pregnant and absolutely will NOT be getting a tattoo.
Sorry, lady, we didn't mean to offend you!
(Also, another pregnant townie floating around? What is wrong with my game???)
Customer #3 is another one of my uni kids, Josie from Britechester. Last seen fighting with her boyfriend on his birthday.
At first you might not think she's the type to get a tattoo, but I could see her wanting to defy her uptight, proper boyfriend before breaking up with him and moving across the country to take an orchestra job in Seattle.
She is a violinist and wants a dainty and respectable little treble clef on her wrist. She even has a picture of what she wants and she shows it to Kyle, while venting about the woes of her troubled three-year relationship, and she should probably break up with him, right? It's probably unsalvagable, right?
And, like, we are SOLD on this story. She should totally get the dainty little tattoo and dump the boring boyfriend and move out west to play violin in the orchestra! Totally!
But she said no.
She said no three times. 😂
She's still thinking about it. She wants to consider all of her options.
It's okay, Josie, you can think about it. Keep it in mind and we'll check in with you later.
Finally, customer #4 is another winner! This time we try the custom tattoo option. (That was fun! I could see myself using those a lot!) You can't see the tattoo in any of her outfits, and but she likes it. And she paid us and left a good review. That's all that matters.
Oddly, the math is not really mathing. But in a good way. We had $243, minus dinner, plus 9 tickets sold, 2 successful tattoos, and a dozen or so boba teas, and our bank account ends at $1882 somehow. I don't know, but we'll take it. That'll buy some baby furniture for sure!
Maybe Carly's client did put down a deposit for that townie bin kitchen, after all? 😂
I expect something like this from a free-to-play game, but we paid money for this game! Quite a lot of money, for most of us! I didn't pay money to get advertised to! 😡
A little afternoon delight, and then he falls asleep. Carly can't sleep. The bed is too hot, too soft, and the sheets are too itchy. She's twelve weeks pregnant and perpetually annoyed by everything.
She's growing a whole baby and she's hungry! She's bored and wants dinner at that new Japanese steakhouse downtown. She's annoyed that she can't order sushi. She's annoyed that she can't take any decorating gigs because paint fumes and heavy lifting, and she's annoyed at all those home renovation shows on HGTV that always have some pregnant woman painting and heavy lifting anyway. She's annoyed that he's snoring, and she's gonna break her eyeball sockets trying to peek if he's waking up yet. He's not.
She's not going to poke him with her knitting needles. She's not.
Don't do it, Carly, that's spousal abuse!
With only $243 in their account, dinner out is a questionable choice. But it sure does make Carly happy. Especially because he didn't order the sushi and eat it in front of her.
Kyle knows better than that.
[sleeping overrides]
Also out for dinner tonight:
- Jack & Nessa. He looks so happy, and she looks so preoccupied with work. Pay attention to your hubby, Nessa. The hustle can take a break!
- And Violet's face! 😂🤣😂 She's like, "Who are you?!?"
She and Orion don’t know this girl at all!
It actually scared me for a minute, because remember way back when Dine Out first released, and the game would spawn a married couple with a child. If they didn't have an eligible child, the game would just create one and add it to the family. 😱 I checked their household and this girl wasn't added, so I wonder where she came from? 🤣
We have another healthy baby coming this summer, and this one will make first-time parents out of Carly and Kyle. For these newlyweds, we get a baby boy!
Unlike Leilani, Carly does have an adorable little first-trimester bump and Kyle can't keep his hands off it! She assures him it's probably too early for him to feel baby flutters—she's only twelve weeks along—but that won’t stop him from connecting with his son. "Can we play music to him in there? If we get him started on the good stuff now, maybe in fifteen years we can start a band!" 🤘
While they're in the neighborhood, just a quick little romantic stroll through this peaceful hospital park that nobody ever gets to visit. They steal a couple of kisses and some cuddles under the stars. You gotta do what you have to do to keep that romance meter up when your watcher brutally neglects your household for TEN WHOLE MONTHS. 😩
Don't worry, once this baby is here, this little family will get plenty of attention!
Back at home, Carly is quick to start gushing about decorating ideas for their little boy's room. She has color schemes and theme ideas for a precious little boy. Do they want to do nautical, safari, forest, space??? She has stacks of magazines to flip through. She's already started a mental vision board.
Carly is an interior decorator by profession, and this is going to be the BEST NURSERY EVER!
But Kyle stops her right there, reminding her that their bank account only has $243 in it. (I guess you have to actually play these sims for them to have any money to spend. 😂🤣😂) They spent the summer renovating the rest of their house, including this gorgeous bedroom, and then they enjoyed a lavish belated honeymoon in Tomorang, and now their bank account is feeling a little skinny.
"Credit cards?" Carly suggests. For Carly, credit cards are never a bad idea.
"Let's see if I can pick up a few extra clients first," Kyle says.
His watcher did promise him some tattoo shop gameplay from that business & hobbies pack we've barely touched! And we better let him try, because he knows better than to tell Carly Cook that she can't go shopping!
But she will give him a couple weeks head start. She needs to be sure of her theme and colors, after all!
episode: “we have waited so long for this day” (year 3, day 4)
Then one day, this screaming floor baby turned into a toddler tornado, taking after her daddy with a moppy head of curls and fast little legs that promised to keep her parents on their toes.
Good thing Daddy has extra energy as an energetic para. Mommy plans to let him do most of the chasing around here.
Oh, but Cassia is glad! She so looked forward to finally being able to play with her daughter. To really talk with her, to laugh with her, to teach her. To let those fast little legs run to the potty all by herself. Screen time to entertain her so they could take a damn minute. Yes!
Is this good? They know toddlers come with more demands, but also they come with more independence. Worried as they may be, they think this stage will be really fun!
Granted, they still would love a carrier or stroller. But Adrian can skip sessions at the gym for having to carry an even heavier baby all around town all the time. He should get fitness points for this workout!
Ah, the good para life.
Isabelle plays happily on the deck while Cassia closes her eyes and Adrian grills dinner. Then Cassia carries Isabelle to bed and she falls asleep beautifully. She sleeps like an angel, and she sleeps through the night, so that her parents can enjoy a peaceful dinner and a quiet night outside.
“This is good,” Cassia says. “This is so much better, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, much better,” Adrian agrees. “So does that mean you want another one?”
Cassia laughs. “Hey, now, don’t get too crazy! Maybe let’s just enjoy this for a little while first.”
Just a little while, she keeps to herself. Not too long. Soon, she’ll be ready to do this again, like a little checklist was just etched into their future. She can feel it.
Just after Isabelle aged up, now we find these little chalk drawings on the street outside their house! 🥰
notes: a good spot to rest? This will be the last little update for this family for a few weeks. I finally feel my TS4 simmies calling, and I want to give them a little attention too before we're off for the rest of June. Hoping July brings this game some more bug fixes and new goodies to play with!
We went shopping in Paramaker for a new dress. We put on makeup. We put on high heels. We paid the babysitter. And we went out with our handsome hubby on an actual date in an actual restaurant with actual food that somebody else cooked.
(Please never mind that they could not be made to sit at the same table on their date, because early access 🫠 )
But, she's too tired to really enjoy it. Motherhood is too damn real in this game!
But that's okay. Adrian thinks the night was perfect just as it was. Short, but sweet. And actually, taking his lovely wife home to change into pajamas and crawl into bed sounds pretty good, too.
episode: “nobody’s gonna steal Sofia’s man in this save!… not before I get some para bubs out of them, anyway.” (year 2, days 2-3)
We already met Jason, the tall hunk of meat that Adrian befriended at the gym.
Jason is obviously hot. Some of the novelty of this situation relies upon knowing the overwhelming community sentiment that EVERYBODY breaks up this premade couple to steal Sofia’s smoking hot man.
But we are gonna be the only save on the planet who will not break up this sweet couple. Adrian chose Jason as his first friend in town, and he seems like a pretty cool guy. And Sofia is amazing! She’s beautiful, she’s caring, she loves music but put aside her musical dreams because caring for people as a nurse is so important to her! She's good at romantic relationships, so she's gonna be the best wifey ever!
And we need them to get married and have a baby so Isabelle can grow up with a friend! 😁 They are also energized, social paras and we’re gonna go on double dates and have backyard barbeques in our houses next door to each other and raise our families together!
The only problem... their relationship is bugged all to hell in my game.
Oh, to live with such a fine fine man and you climb into bed together to… just sleep.
They cannot "get intimate" with each other, or try for a baby, despite their high relationship and being romantic interests/lovers/engaged and having both agreed that they wanted to try for a baby. We even eloped in our underwear to see if that would fix things, but nope, it didn't.
The deep dark secret? Jason is big and tall and strong and has a tragic case of ED. Poor Jason. Poor Sofia. There will be no baby-making in this bed tonight.
But Sofia is sweet and kind and devoted. She's committed to this now.
While he waits for the developers doctors to cure his condition*, we’re gonna cheat that baby.
[*In my game, ALL premade couples are unable to "get intimate" with each other, while new couples, or premades in brand new relationships are fine. I'm assuming it's a bug that will be fixed at some point in the future.]
Boop. Done. The wonders of medical science. We might imagine they had Para-IVF or something.
Her pregnancy was healthy and normal, lasting the intended 6 days. Then it's go time!
Another labor in jeans? Nope, this time I figured out how to change her into something more comfortable to labor in. Lucky girl.
And where is Jason, you might ask? We did wake him up so that he might attend his wife's labor and at least stand there looking concerned, the best a father can do in this game. But he was tired. 😒 He wanted to go back to bed. 😒 And after the fourth time chasing him down the stairs, we just let him stay there. 😒
Do better, Jason.
[And then here things got a little wonky. Her cheated labor completed, but no baby appeared. What?!? So I assumed the cheat didn't work, got frustrated, and popped into Paramaker to roll a baby for them. Oh... but wait, when I came out of Paramaker, it seems the cheat did work, actually, it just took a few extra hours in-game for the baby to pop up. Now we have TWO babies. Oops, lol! I guess that often happens in IVF, so we'll run with it.]
Welcome babies Reece and Nadia. Isabelle will have two friends to grow up with!
I don’t even mind that they have twins now, because I will not be playing their baby stage, anyway! We will rotate back to them when they are toddlers. 😁
^ from Better Lifespans mod. And how it looks on my gameplay timeline.
Uh oh, I have a timeline spreadsheet! We're serious, folks. (Serious in a casual way, of course.)
Each full week is a YEAR of life for my paras, with the Better Lifespans mod and on extra-long, and that's really so different from how I have usually played my sims. My TS4 sims live 112 days for each year, so their timeline is 16 times slower! (And often, even slower than RL time, lol!)
But I'm enjoying that difference for my Paralives gameplay. And maybe I might even get through a couple whole generations in this game! Maybe (gasp!) I might even see some of these paras have grandchildren and then great-grandchildren and then even eventually DIE!?! 😱
Like, the idea of that for my sim babies makes me very sad. But for my paras, let's go! 😂
Maybe I'll feel differently about that after I grow more attached.
But I would love for this timeline to keep chugging along fast enough that I can't even get bogged down in story, which is good because that's not what I'm looking for from this game at the moment. It's truly not even ready for that level of involvement yet, even if it is fun to play as a game.
And that difference will be what makes it perfect to continue playing both games alongside each other. They each serve such different purposes for me.
Sorry, I'm not making a separate blog for my Paralives gameplay. Just as I don't have a separate blog for Minecraft or Manor Lords or Cities Skylines, when I'm in those moods. Nope. Not doing it. You get all of my pixel madness all in one place. 🤪
But everything will be tagged accordingly if you want to follow and/or block certain things.
And I'm still not sure yet about what kind of posting schedule might be best, so we'll probably experiment with what feels best as we go. When I am in sims story mode and have a chapter running, I would like for those updates to keep their usual daily/every-other 6pm-ish release time.
The first day of spring at Coolidge House Country Inn. Jordan promised his boss a spring festival, but all he's managed so far is to install this lovely new fountain. Which functions exactly like the old fountain did, except prettier.
Nice spot to take a short break with his sweetie who stopped by to grab some lunch from the hotel kitchen.
Maria doesn't work here anymore. But if she doesn't stop bothering the employees, Sharon is gonna give her some work to do!
No story, just checking in on my sweeties. And I had to log in to grab this fountain, which was one of the things I really wanted from this log-in event.
What happened to my swans? Did the update make them fly south for the winter? 😂🤣😂
In Melino, we go garbage picking on Mondays at sunrise. While Cassia and Isabelle are still fast asleep, Adrian heads out out early to get the good stuff before everyone else does.
Because the water bills in this game are super bugged and we're broke af. (Fixed in the most recent patch finally, but that’s in the future for these guys here.)
But look, it's an easel. Cassia has mentioned wanting to learn to paint, because she's a jack-of-all-trades para, and she needs to TRY ALL THE THINGS!!!
But money is tight, so we're gonna bring our woman home a freebie easel. Totally not broken. Not even dirty! As a struggling young family on a teacher and part-time museum tour guide's salaries, that's practically romantic!
"Thank you," she says, "I love it so much."
(I thought we had a picture of her using the easel, but now I can't find it, so you'll have to trust me that she loves it. ^ And they're slow-dancing here, which is such a cute but rare interaction that I always pick it, whenever it comes up, but it always comes up when they're in such an awkward space, like the slim unroutable strip between the wall and the bed. 😆)
Then, just a little kitchen refresh for these guys. We needed clutter and color. These two are way too silly and energetic for such a drab kitchen! And some unwashed dishes clutter, because they have a new baby in the house.
And a view of the lighthouse from their kitchen window!
Then later that night...
Let's bring this strange thing home, too. Let's grab it with our bare hands like it's totally not smoldering and radioactive at all!
Pray for me! I can hear my mods folder crying! 😭😭😭
Also, OMG over 4k hours! That's not weird, right? Over ten years of gameplay, right? 😬
edit: And done! It wasn't that bad! I think because I tend to use less (but bigger) mod packages these days, instead of many small individual mods. Then I only need to update 5-6 things instead of hundreds! 😱
The problem is, both Cassia and Adrian are very social paras. They want friends, but they never got around to making any before they dove head-first into a very abrupt parenthood. (Thanks a lot, Watcher! 😒)
Isabelle is a super sweet baby. So adorable. The best! But Cassia is restless and lonely. She doesn't really want to be a full-time stay-at-home mom.
So she browses the job listings and finds a tour guide position in the evenings that will work nicely with Adrian's work at the elementary school. They'll only need to have Isabelle in daycare for a couple hours!
Her new job won't start until Sunday, but that's too far away. She's growing a little stir-crazy, and she needs to get out of this house!
She doesn't have a baby carrier or a stroller, so she'll just carry Isabelle in her arms. While she runs around town. Without being able to multitask, she can't even read this sign board while she holds her baby, so the only thing to do is to put the baby down on the ground.
This outing isn't going very well, so she heads back home to wait for Adrian's arrival.
Finally, at long last, hubby is home.
"I missed you so much," Cassia squeals, hugging her man. "Here's the baby. There's a bottle ready in the fridge. I signed up for yoga on the mountain tonight. Love you, bye, see you later."
Exhale. That was the best escape yoga she ever did.
New parenthood is isolating and exhausting for these two, but they're making it work, and their marriage still mostly fine. They still like each other. But babies are pretty tedious, and there's not very much to do. But they think it might be kind of cool if their Watcher rotated households for a few days, like maybe until Isabelle's toddler birthday???
Sunday arrives and Cassia finally gets out to start her new job as a tour guide at the museum. She used to be a hairdresser for a minute, but she won't return to that line of work. (Because we totally forgot that she ever used to do it...) And anyway, this uniform is super adorable on her!
In her absence, Adrian discovers just what Cassia already knew—having a baby in this game makes you feel a little bit stir-crazy.
So, let's go to the gym.
In real life, some gyms have those nifty childcare rooms to drop off your kiddos while you work out, but this one does not (maybe we can edit the lot to add one???), so Adrian does what we do with babies in Paralives. He sets her on the floor.
But it's good to get out of the house and make some new friends. Adrian meets a fellow gym-rat. His name is Jason and we hear he's a very popular guy. Adrian feels a little intimidated. At six feet tall himself, he feels like a shrimp next to this guy!
No worries, though. Jason is cool. But he does have a question. "Hey, is that your baby over there on the floor?"
"Yeah, totally," Adrian says. "But it’s cool. She’s happy. She has her rattle!"
Isabelle is thinking: Hey, Dad, this concrete is kind of hard and cold. At least, like, put a rug down or something?
notes: I really like the age spans mod I chose. It's really nicely balanced in all the life stages, and the extra long splits everything into tidy weeks and makes the paras lifespan long enough, but not ridiculously long. My only complaint is that they gave babies two weeks! 😱 One week would have been perfect, but two is a little much with so little to do!
That's okay, we'll just rotate around town for a bit until she's due to become a toddler! 😆
Depending on your sim's mood, the sleep pose could change from arm under pillow (Happy, Embarrassed, Sad, Shy, Silly, Bored, Depressed) to arms stretched out (Passionate, Dazed, Furious, Flirty, Angry) They can do the same sleep pose if their moods are similar.
DO NOT use this if your sim uses those beds where the blanket doesn't cover your sim. You will be horrified.
Sleeping Animation by Zlostudio: Sleeping Pack
Arm Under Pillow Pose by @herecirmsims: Sleeping Ugly Pose Pack
✨Pillow Talk Override ✨
I really liked this kiss animation by Igor_Santos_Adonai, so cozy after a steamy night. And also Cuddles On The Couch By d'Violet, cute and comforting after giving up the goods.
*Its not perfect but I tried my best with overriding this*😭 (Vid shows both animations)
🚨Take out any other pillow talk mod mod you have if you wish to see theses animations🚨
