For my latest build I decided to try my hand at video creation. The video is nothing fancy, just a simple showcase of the build set to a song from The Sims 4 soundtrack. But I had a lot of fun learning how to do this. It's under 4 minutes long so it won't take up too much of your time to watch. Hope you like it!
I promise, I'm not in the habit of talking to myself, but as I sit at my computer checking my email I can't help mumbling to myself."Junk... Junk... Junk... Oh, here's one from Mom. Let me guess one of my sisters has done something crazy, or cute, or something. I think I'll just read it in the morning... More junk... Hmm... Who is Lazlo Curious?" How can I not be curious over the last name Curious? I click open the message after seeing the subject line: Greetings From Strangetown. Could this be the first message from a new pen pal? Quickly skimming through the message I catch certain words and phrases: Strangetown... message from outer space... When you're finished, send an email... If you DON'T... "A chain letter?! Who forwards a chain letter?!" Just as I can't keep from grumbling to myself I can't prevent the face-palm that comes from my disbelief that someone actually believed this nonsense and sent it on to me. Maybe this is what I get for signing up for that pen pal site. I would get paired up with a nutter. I read through the letter more thoroughly just to enjoy a good laugh:
I take just a moment longer to chuckle over the complete absurdity of the message - an alien from outer space is going to cure this poor guy of being a slob - sure... and I bet I'll stumble into a pile of simoleons after sending on another message to a different pen pal. Riiiiiiight. Without the slightest bit of regret or hesitation, I delete the message from my inbox. When I'm finished sorting through the rest of the junk emails I hear my bedroom door open. "Just got done with my laps. What've you been up to, B?" He asks. "Just clearing out my inbox. And I got a message from my mom, but I didn't read it yet." "Have you told her I'm moving in?" When I sigh heavily he motions for me to sit beside him on the bed. "Come here, I know you're tense." He says as he begins to rub my shoulders. "You've got to tell her eventually, though; I'm not going anywhere." "I know, I'm just worried she'll think we're moving too fast. I'll tell her, I promise, but I don't want to talk about it right now." I say. "So if you don't want to talk..." His voice trails off. "I think I know a few things we could do instead." As we make ourselves a little more comfortable I can't help but admire his washboard abs and the muscles rippling on his arms. I'm also glad that I went with the red blanket. That's much more romantic than the blue I wanted at first. I'm an awfully lucky girl. A hunky boyfriend. And plum colored walls that perfectly complements my red bedspread. Yes, I'm feeling very lucky. Where'd I ever find such a hottie anyway? Sometimes I think he's almost too good looking. Then he wraps me in his arms again. When he does that I just think, Oooo this feels nice, and I pretty much forget everything else I was thinking before. "I love you, B." he tells me. "I love you, too, Brody." Brody... so that's his name. Good to know... But then something really strange happens. Brody grimaces in pain, puts a hand to his head, and seems to almost pass out. "Brody?! Are you okay? Are you feeling faint? Do you need to lie down? And you're starting to look pretty blurry. What's going on? Brody?!" Blurry? Something is clearly not right here. I can feel panic clawing at me from the inside trying to crawl its way out. "What's wrong, Brody?" "What's going on?!" He repeats what I said, but he's not asking me. I can see the accusations in his eyes. "What's going on?!" He repeats again, and he sounds angry, but also more faint- like he's slipping away. "I'm curious...Why didn't you just do what Lazlo said? Would that really have been that difficult, B. Why did you let this happen to me?" Forget crawling its way out, panic has completely burst through me. Panic and confusion. What is he talking about? He isn't making any sense. None of this is making any sense. Then, in the blink of an eye, we're on the patio beside the pool where he swam laps last night. Last night? Or was it just a few minutes ago?... Wait. We have a pool?... I don't know. I'm so confused, but we're there beside the pool. And Brody is no longer looking at me with accusatory glares. And he's not throwing blame at me. Instead he's falling. He's falling fast... onto the hard cement surface of the patio. I hear two last words escape his lips. "Why, B?" It's barely a whisper, but I hear it clearly. Then he is completely still. Lifeless. I find myself doing something I never thought I'd have to do, at least not quite so literally. I beg death to spare his life. But my pleas are useless. Death doesn't care that my heart has been ripped from my chest. He doesn't sympathize with me. And if only that were all. If only he could give me gross indifference. But no, he too tosses the blame my way. "Silly mortal. You should not be surprised. This is your fault after all. You broke the chain. You were warned there would be consequences, mortal. Now be gone. I have work to do." As he brushes me to the side, I scream, "Noooooooo!" ... ... ... I wake up sweating and shaking. It's too dark to see anything, so I reach over and turn on my bedside lamp. Then, I just lay there for a minute trying to catch my breath. There's a knock at my bedroom door. I sit up, and say, "Come in." It's Jaime, my roommate. "I thought I heard you scream, from upstairs in my room. Are you okay?" Then she sees my face. "Bridget, are you okay?" She sasks again, with added concern. I end up telling her what I can remember from my nightmare, but already I've lost most of the details. The only thing really left is the feeling of panic and heart-wrenching sadness. "All of it felt so real, because we were here at the house, but then again everything was... different. I was blond, but I was definitely still me. And I had some surfer-dude type boyfriend --weird right?-- but I loved him... and he died... I feel ridiculous for being this emotional over a silly dream." "Hey now!" Jaime says with a gentle pat on my back."We've all had dreams that leave you with an awful feeling even after you wake up. You'll be okay. Try to get a couple more hours of sleep. Then, we'll do something fun today. It's Saturday, so we have the whole day." But I couldn't get back to sleep, and rather than laying in bed feeling miserable I get showered and dressed much earlier than normal. Then, having some time to kill before I know Jaime will be ready to do whatever we're going to do today, I sit down at my computer desk. I swear I didn't even mean to check my email, I was just going to watch some funny videos on SimTV. But out of habit, or maybe under some other influence, I find myself staring at my inbox. I read several messages from my Mom; these were full of funny cat pictures mostly. Then a new message pops up on screen. I have to swallow a scream when I read the name of the sender: Lazlo Curious. Every detail from last night's nightmare comes flooding back. I can't stop myself from opening the message, hoping that it's not the same from the dream.
This is the exact same message as the one from the dream. I've never been so terrified in my life. How can this be? It takes me several minutes to think things through. Why did my mysterious dream-boyfriend die in the dream? Because I didn't follow the directions from this message. But it doesn't have any warnings of death, just broken pluming. Nevertheless I don't delete the message as I would have before. Instead I get started on completing the list of tasks. I'm not taking any risks, not after that dream. I also decide I'll keep this little project a secret. I don't need my friends and family to think I've become superstitious and paranoid. As far as upgrading the pluming... I did the best I could. I'm not the most handy person with a wrench, but I did manage to fix a few leaky faucets around the house. That counts... I hope. Having a maid over for dinner was the easiest of the tasks. I wasn't about to invite some maid that I've never met that I just spotted walking down the street into my house and have rumors about my craziness spread all over town. But luckily I just happen to be friends with the maid that was just hired by the Landgraabs. Leo doesn't wear a blue dress, but a man-maid is still a maid. I cooked on our grill for the first time ever. It didn't go too well. But luckily Leo knows where we keep the fire extinguisher. This wasn't too tragic of an event. Sure I ruined our grill and the burgers, but I have to admit that Leo looked pretty hot while playing the part of the hero - work uniform and all. We ended up just having the side salad I had prepared, but this still counts as the second task. I guess it's lucky that I don't really ever cook -- unless you count microwaving breakfast pastries. The most difficult task turned out to be growing a trash plant. I had to look up how to do this one. And it was hard to keep Jaime from cleaning up the trash I purposely left on the ground long enough to let the plant start to grow. I think she thinks I'm a little crazy now, but I just checked this morning and I can finally see some sprouts coming up. Ready to have this whole business behind me, I rush to my computer immediately after seeing my baby trash plant growing. I've already lined up a pen pal. All I have to do is hit send, and I'll be done. I'm not sure if my whole philosophy regarding chain letters has changed, but I still haven't been able to shake the feeling I had from that terrible dream. And it's been three days - it took me that long to accomplish everything the message required. Hopefully I'll feel better when I've hit send. There. It's done. I think. Not two seconds tic by from the moment I sent on my message and I hear a knock at the front door. Jaime isn't home, so I go to see who it is. I almost didn't recognize Leo; he is wearing his hair differently today. And after he surprises me with a single, long-stemmed rose and asks me out for a date this weekend, I decide there definitely had to be something magical about that email message. Because I don't know if Lazlo got his slovenly ways cured, but something pretty nice definitely just happened to me. Contributing Author: MsPhy wrote the chain mail message that appeared in this chapter. Check out her blog to read her wonderful stories. MsPhy's Blog: https://msphylegacy.wordpress.com/ View the Table of Contents for the Chain Letter Story. Follow the link for more information on this collaborative project. The Chain Letter: Chapter 2 >
*Chapter 2 is written by, Starwing Many of you have likely seen this new image in the sidebar of the blog here.
Sims Writers is new site that one of the talented members of the Sims storytelling community (Starwing/enkeli63) is working hard to put together for writers and readers alike to enjoy. But the site won't be just for readers and writers of stories. There is room for any and all Sims fans no matter how you play and create and no matter which iteration of the Sims is your favorite. My favorite part of this new site is the sense of community that's being embraced. I have found a network of supportive people through the Sims 4 Storyteller Group that started on the official forums and grew from there. It is this group that is the origin of the new site. Everyone is very friendly, and everyone is welcome. There is always someone will to give advice about writing, blogging, or even just about the game itself. This growing community is filled with countless amazing stories and writers. There are some truly inspiring stories being created right now. Some of these notable writers have been chosen to be syndicated writers at SimsWriters.com. It is my hope to add my name to this list. As a syndicated writer, members of the Sims Writers site will be able to easily see updates from my blog feed. It really a great opportunity for me to become a bigger part of this growing community. The Grand Opening for the site will be on February 1st, so you should definitely check it out. It's going to be awesome. It is my pleasure to announce to all my dear readers the launch of my new centralized blog site. Carewren123 Sim Stories will be the place I host all future stories. After recently joining Simswriters.com I began to see the need for me to have a central blog for my stories. As of right now my plan is to continue to host the stories I've already began (Ana Pringle and Wren's Nest) on their current (and separate sites). I really like having different themes for those stories especially the apocalypse story. I'm also thinking it would be a very time consuming and problematic project to move those stories over to this site. Instead I'm just going to link to those two stories from this site. I will also be adding a button in the side bars of my other sites that link back here. So if you're out perusing one of the other sites then keep an eye out for this image: Wherever that image appears you can click on it, and it will bring you back here to the main blog. This should make it easy for all my readers to find this site and stay up to date with my latest projects.
Happy Simming Everyone!! Hello there! First, let me say that I'm thrilled you've come by to read my blog. To kick of this new site I thought I'd tell everyone a little about myself. I guess the first thing you should know is my name. It's Karen. Can you see where my screen-name comes from? I was born and raised in Georgia, and I'm currently located in Alabama. Knowing that don't be at all surprised if I throw around the word y'all a little. Other than that you'd probably never know I have a southern accent; I don't think I tend to write like I talk. Yep, I do have an accent. I'm a teacher, only part time currently. My area of expertise is middle and high school science, but I have worked in elementary schools too. Truth be told I enjoy working in the field only part time, because I tend to get very stressed and overworked when I am teaching. My usual job is short term positions for teachers on maternity or some other leave. So I am the teacher for a given class only about a month or so, usually. Enough boring talk about work let's talk about something fun. I've played the Sims ever since the original. I never ventured into writing stories to go along with my game play until the Sims 4 was released. I have, however, always had hobbies of the creative variety. I guess I'd say I've sort of been a jack of all crafts. Never settling on just one thing. There's always something new to try. Heck, now that I've mentioned my affinity for crafting let me go ahead and share a few pictures of some of my more recent projects. Now, if you've read this far, the last thing I'd like to share is all of my beloved fur-babies. I live with my boyfriend, and together we have two dogs and three cats. That's right, five pets. Five pets in a very small house, but we wouldn't have it any other way. You see I had the two dogs and he had the three cats before the two of us ever met. When we started dating and eventually moved in together what else would we do besides combine our pet families? It was a lot of work initially. They definitely didn't get along at first. But they all live happily together nowadays. Now prepare to see some of the cutest critters in the world (that's my opinion anyway). |