undignified

Widows and orphans - we need more of them.

[twentyfourfirst-sims]

Garden of Shadows: a preservation effort

Like many of us, I grew up with Garden of Shadows. To me, it was more than just a forum. It was a place I could ask for help, learn new skills and, best of all, find amazing content in any style I could possibly want. I loved the board names, the people, the themes; everything, really.

And I admit I was more than a little heartbroken to find it gone.

After mulling it over, I decided that I wanted to preserve what I possibly could. I spent a few hours yesterday running through strategies and ideas about how to best go about it, and the best I could come up with was, well, exactly the same.

So, here it is: the Garden of Shadows mirror forum.

I've only just started, but I hope to add a little bit to it every day. The primary focus will be on preserving all the knowledge and custom content. I'm tackling it myself, but if you feel so inclined, you're more than welcome to join in.

--

PS. I am not here to offend, break Terms of Use, or to step on any toes. This is simply an effort to preserve content and knowledge for a game I have played and loved for over twenty years. Thank you ♥

[simnostalgia]

Simscave 01 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

SimCave

The news of what happened to GOS makes this a good time to mention, probably, something that I didn't mention earlier because of the hate I received when I scraped GOS.

But I also scraped SimCave.

[somedaythesun]

TS2 Default: AL heavy metal chairs

The Apartment Life heavy metal barstool and dining chair are another eyesore set in the game: they look promisingly grungy, but IMO end up too cartoony for good dive bar vibes. So I've made an alternative!

Worn polyester seats that will definitely stick to the back of your sim's legs.

I borrowed the metal frame from Misty-Fluff's Resident Evil 7 chair and then meshed the cushions myself. I stretched and rearranged the texture mapping so the chairs would have some scuff marks and look as lived-in as the originals.

Now the set is a better fit for your gas stations, your laundromats, and your biker bars :D

Enjoy, and let me know if there are any issues!

Download

[taraxippos]

There is definitely a phenomena where people try SO hard to avoid anthropomorphism they end up looping around into this quasi-religious stance that humans have some essential non-biological quality that sets us apart from other animals. Like being so cautious about how you describe emotion experienced by a nonhuman animal that you go "that animal is not 'happy' it's just demonstrating a response to positive stimuli and receiving chemical reward signals" as if that's not also what human emotion is at the fundamental level.

[simnostalgia]

Garden Of Shadows - All Custom Content

I've successfully scraped all of the available Custom Content that was linked on GOS from Mediafire, Box, and SimFileShare. (Mirrors on 4shared not included)

Of course, I can't go back in time to retrieve things that are already long gone but here's a .zip of 49 GBs of content. This is everything from the beginning of GOS to September 2023.

Garden Of Shadows (CUSTOM CONTENT SCRAPE - SEPTEMBER 2023) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

This is the entire site's worth of custom content scraped. There are a few things that you need to know.- This is not checked to see if depe

[simstationdance]

hey remember when some guy (cant remember the name) scraped gardenofshadows to preserve its contents and everyone got really unreasonably angry about it on HL's behalf and on the behalf of creators that haven't been active in decades, and HL said 'don't do this it costs me sooooo much moneyyyy and if i were going to shut down the site i'd make an announcement'

and then 3 years later HL shut down the website with absolutely zero prior warning whatsoever and casually announced that they just stopped paying for hosting in an mts thread

fucking lmao

[girlballs]

the princess is tired

[captain-price-returns]

[transmechanicus]

Revealing the ignorance of my youth here, but who is this and what is she known for?

[boybeetles]

Anita Sarkeesian, feminist who interpreted media under a feminist lens. She did a series about video games and she was the subject of targeted harassment. That was the start of gamergate

[flurrin]

Minor correction, the start of gamergate was based around a different reporter, Zoe Quinn, but they were both absolutely violently threatened over their involvement in video game criticism and development. A hate campaign was started by Quinn's ex-boyfriend when he wrote a post falsely accusing them of dating video game journalists in order to receive positive reviews on their own game, Depression Quest, which led other bad actors to accuse all women in the industry (Zoe identified as female at the time) of perceived sexual immorality. Anita Sarkeesian's brilliant Youtube series Tropes vs Women in Video Games (which everyone should watch, right now) sparked a particular nerve for criticizing popular games of killing and/or victimizing any important female character (there is a CHILLING bit that borders on ludicrous where she describes the plots of a seemingly endless parades of games as "In [title], [male player character's] wife dies, and you then have to rescue [his] daughter."). That series did actually make a huge change in the industry, especially when touted by progressive legacy developers like Tim Schafer (Monkey Island, Psychonauts), who went on to expand hiring in his company to front women and minority voices, but the shift didn't really show for a long time and echoes of the sexism that plagues the industry at its core are still rampant.

[crazy-pages]

In all seriousness, if you live in the US and you aren't familiar with the misogynistic harassment these people in the game industry faced during Gamergate, you need to watch this series right now.

This was the beggining of the current form of the US fascist movement and it underpins the entire thing about it to this day. If you live in the US and Gamergate isn't familiar to you, you're missing critical history to understanding US fascism. I'm not joking even a little bit here, you will understand modern United States fascism so much better if you are familiar with Gamergate.

[bennetsbonnet]

Pride and Prejudice (1995) + Text Posts (5/?)

[kindaorangey]

very soon the entirety of the tumblr dashboard will be consumed by insane people being insufferable over AMC's interview with the vampire. fortunately i am one of those insane people

[7777777awawawa7777777]

[lamare-sims]

Sinks Don't Disappear from Counters

You may know how sinks get wiped from counters if you put some clutter in their corner slots (usually with moveobjects) and went to Live mode. I fixed that!

Download

Let me know if you still experience sink disappearance with this file, I have an alternative solution and I will share it, if this one won't be enough

[lacetulle]

Joli Poli Couture

[badmoonraisin]

I am reading an essay called Male-Male Desire in Pharaonic Egypt (by Alex Clayden) which is actually pretty good

but

I just need to draw attention to this little gem of a pick-up line

[avatar-dacia]

Attention, followers: you now know how to write “nice ass” in hieroglyphics.

[autisticthassarian]

all i ever wanted out of life tbh

[causticgrip]

[abuu2go]

(via 「思わず二度見する不思議さ…」タトゥー風の足を持つ猫:らばQ)

[witchwardian]

Words cannot express the loathing I have for parents who bring their babies and toddlers on planes. That person has no idea what's happening, can't calmly express their distress, can't understand your explanations. Your baby does not need to go to Orlando on a red eye, your baby needs to go to bed.