i hoard these asks like crazy (sometimes i just need a little pick-me-up and these are just the thing!) -- these screenshots are from mobile so you can’t see just how long ago some of the timestamps are 🙈
for @andtheorphanmakers 5 things that make you happy ask--
little asks like these! even though they’re copy-paste-and-pass-it-along, there’s never enough positivity and getting these always puts a smile on my face! :)
my job -- even though i’m working absolutely bonkers hours right now and have been for the past 3 months now since i started this new adventure, i’m excited to go to work every day and see the coolest kids on the planet and work with the most amazing people!
getting to do creative things -- between 12-hour workdays, i don’t have a ton of time in the evenings to do fun and creative things (like simblr stuff) but when i do, it feels amazing, and i’m very glad to be back in a place where i want to be creative and share content with y’all again!
vine compilations (rip). tiktok is also fine.
last but (certainly) not least, all my talented and wonderful simblr and discord friends 🥺 coming back to simblr after being gone for so long is a little intimidating tbh and i’m SO BEHIND on literally everything, but i’m very excited to be back and so glad i’m coming back to such wonderful friends!!!
so thank you @bumblingbunny, @bountifulberries, @siminycricket, @1o8percent, and @andtheorphanmakers for sending a little brightness and positivity to my inbox! 💖 💖 💖
I hope this is okay for me to ask, but do you have any tips for someone who wants to start writing a Sims story with many characters? With MV you have many storylines but they are all so well-developed and interesting. Do you let the sims’ in-game actions drive the story at all or do you have everything plotted out in advance? Thanks for your time & excellent stories!
Ohh my gosh, this is absolutely more than okay to ask, and I hope I can give you a helpful answer!! Thank you so much for reading my silly little sims story!!
I got kind of long-winded, so my answer is below the cut -- if I didn’t quite answer your question, please feel free to send another ask or IM me!! (Or if you’re on Discord you can always send me a DM there!!)
I joke a lot that I mostly fly by the seat of my pants -- and that’s really only half a joke. When I started MV, I had four characters in mind -- Taz, Adia, Gretta, and Sforz. They were the four main characters from a story I’d written 8 years before, and when I set out, I’d intended on just kind of playing TS4 and seeing what happened (with a loose framework for the story I wanted to tell in mind -- that is, Taz having a romance with both Gretta and Adia, and having a baby with Gretta).
About a month or so later, I’d given up on actually “playing the game” and started staging screenshots and telling the story. (Obviously Sforz didn’t make the cut to stay relevant; whoops!) Cadence and Nick’s romance in Gen 2 was as far as I’d planned “ahead” -- which is to say, I knew I wanted Cadence and Nick to have a romance, but not exactly sure how I’d wanted it to play out. Since about January 2017, I’ve been just kind of “planning” what I want to happen in fragments, jotting down ideas or snippets of dialogue, and going from there. So, to answer part of your question -- I plan things out and write them rather than letting my sims drive the story. I honestly don’t remember the last time I just opened my game to play it -- a lot of what you see on my blog is staged and posed screenshots. Even if I’m using in-game animations, I’ve learned which animations will give me the facial expressions/reactions I want to use in my screenshots.
As far as organizing the story and keeping track of the different plot lines -- THIS (Google Sheets) is how I organized my timeline towards the beginning. It’s sort of an interpretation of how JK Rowling organized her outline for Order of the Phoenix that worked for me -- that is, each character has their own personal column/timeline, so I could keep track of how everyone’s story lined up with everyone else’s.
Obviously in some time periods I got very detailed with what was happening (generally the points where lots of people were together at the same time and lots of things were happening at once), and other places were more vague -- ultimately this system got overwhelming for me (and Google Drive) as I continued adding characters, so I switched to a much more streamlined method to keep track of things.
(I’m always on the lookout for other ways to keep track of various characters, their plot lines, and the passage of time -- currently Plotist seems to be a fairly decent way of keeping track of things? There’s a bit of a learning curve, but it’s free and definitely worth a look -- I’m still learning it myself, but I’m definitely willing to share what I’ve learned if you’re interested!)
My new system (Google Sheets) relies a lot on me knowing or remembering when certain events that aren’t births or deaths happen -- and a little bit of retroactive guess-timation. I have a few notes off to the side about particular (recent) events, but generally I retroactively fill in the dates of things in my head, and I won’t lie -- the ambiguous TS4 seasons helps a lot with this. (I’m more than happy to talk about this some more -- just send another ask!!)
Most of my plots tend to be more “sequential” than “simultaneous” (that is, Character A’s plot happens before Character B’s plot, rather than Character A and Character B’s plots happening at the same time), so I tend to keep up with “milestones” to keep track of time -- specifically births, weddings, deaths, and maybe a few others, depending on context. But if you want to talk strategy about planning out some simultaneous plots, hit me up and we can chit-chat!!
I feel like I don’t have anything else to add other than that without getting horribly off-topic and rambling!! But basically -- I wouldn’t say I plot everything out “in advance,” but everything you see is “scripted.” Anything posted on my blog is typically “planned” approximately 48-72 hours in advance on my morning/afternoon commute to/from work -- enough time for me to get in-game, take screenshots, batch edit them, and queue them.
Every now and then inspiration will strike and I’ll get enough screenshots/plot to write out enough posts to queue for more than a few days at a time (especially since my queue only posts 3/day) -- but that hasn’t happened in a while!!
Anyway, I hope this answered your question and helped at least a little!!
TL;DR -- figure out a system for yourself that lets you keep track of where everyone is and what they’re doing!!
just wanted y’all to know that i see these messages and i silently hoard them, and i am forever flattered and grateful to everyone that sends these 🙈 i am literally the worst about passing them on, but know that i appreciate all of these more than i can say ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
Okay so for the Drabble list thing! I know I'm probably being greedy. But I was wondering if you would do 1 and 8? Or yah know, if that's too many pick your favorite 😄
I’m pretty sure @asimlishpixel asked for three different prompts the first time around, so no worries about being greedy! 😂 (I’m also highkey obsessed with these kinds of writing prompts so I’ll take as many as you want to throw at me haha)
Any particular character(s)/couple you had in mind?
once you get this you have to say five things you like about yourself, publicly, and then send it to ten of your favourite followers!
ahhhh thank you! 🙈
1. I think I’m hilarious (even if no one else does)2. I’m objectively really smart (like, “gifted” smart)3. I really like the things I write?4. I’m smol (5'1"), which I used to hate but now I’m good with it5. I genuinely love my job? Does that count?
This has been going around for a while, so I don’t know if I’ll actually send it to anyone, but if you haven’t done this yet, consider yourself tagged!
They’re from @notegain -- I use both the regular elf ears and sad elf ears!
And for toddlers -- I use @selaronosims‘s conversion of the sad elf ears. (I haven’t stumbled across a conversion of the regular ones for toddlers yet, but I’m sure there’s one out there.)
My onion is you should do a random legacy because they're really fun (in my opinion) and the generational requirements help you with story and such
ah yes thank you for your onion
i ended up deciding to do a wishacy for now because i wanted something low maintenance as far as story goes (read: no story just screenshots and captions lmao)
but delvin keeps rolling boring wishes and wants nothing to do with anyone else, so a random legacy might not be too far in the future lolollolol
surprise beautiful person! once you get this, you must share 5 random facts about yourself. then, pass this on to 10 of your favorite simblrs ( ˊᵕˋ )♡.°⑅
aww, thanks! <3
i won’t pass this along again since i just sent it to a bunch of y’all last night, but i’ll throw out a few more facts--
i graduated from auburn university (twice) with zero student loans!
i double majored in psychology and french in undergrad
i’ve got a master’s degree in applied behavior analysis
before i decided to become a behavior analyst, i wanted to be a clinical psychologist
before i wanted to be a clinical psychologist, i wanted to be an english teacher
