In general, my biggest flaw when staring anything (sims ‘hoods, writing project etc.) is either that I a) have too many plans that I want to work on all at once or b) that I don’t have detailed enough plans for the things I AM doing.

I am trying to keep myself at bay this time, but it’s easy to see a farm at MTS2 and go “oooh, I really want to start with farmers”, you know?

Thing is; I already have my families planned out, heck, I’ve created all of them and they’re in the family bin! All eight of them! (families that is, not sims) And I won’t go adding people until I’ve gotten these guys settled (and moved in) because my “to-do” list will just grow, and grow and grow! And I’ll never get anywhere.

I’ll be posting quick intros (family picture, name, ages, quick backstory maybe (if I have any)) now and then as I move people in and build things, I’ll also post neighbourhood shots for that matter, but only as I actually have houses down etc.

Until then however, my farmers, my working class, my lower classes and my poor will have to wait. Why? Because I usually start going from the bottom to the top, this time I’m going from the middle. Sure, some of these guys are lower middle class or lower class even, but there’s aristocrats, nouveau rich families and several middle class families.

This doesn’t mean that I’m a) ignoring the working man or b) being unrealistic. It just means I wanted to have these kind of families in the ‘hood before I began playing. From here on (except if a ROS happens) anyone else (townies, npcs etc) will be lower-middle class or lower. This also goes for townies that fall in love and so forth.

I just know that if I HAD to start with say, 3-5 working families and almost no middle class families I’d go nuts. I like my middle class, they’re comfortable enough to do things, but not so comfortable that they can afford to sit still for too long.

This (somehow) also reminds me that I do need to create some ROS scenarios regarding aristocrats and their wealth, after all in the 19th century these families (if not all, several conservative families at least) were losing money and finding themselves with money issue as industry grew. Which in turn moved several new families up the ranks and established the middle class, lower-middle class and the working class further.

The second thing (which I’m not quite sure how to do) is to add a few ROS’ regarding gambling, particularly horse races (flat races and national hunt) as this was something they did in their freetime (”they” being the men).

On the topic of men, I do think there might be a suffragette popping up now and then, not one I’ve created but I think it might be a ROS (or basically, where Laura has her ROS about people moving to Flordia, mine will focus on girls that are teens or adults and will basically involve them getting involved in the movements and moving to the city). They’ll still live, but as suffragettes weren’t exactly treated nicely, I’ll have to roll some “danger” ROS’ now and then regarding whether or not they’ve been imprisoned, died, gotten sick, lives on the street etc. etc.

As for the city, I’m planning on creating that as well, as it’s where my lower-middle class – royals will be having their seasons, balls, not to mention that the house of lords and house of commons would be there as well (speaking about that, I’ll likely go with a bastardisation of the houses opposed to having to deal with actual parliaments, at least at first (I only have eight families after all!)). So the suffragettes will have somewhere to be, as will any farmers who escaped to the city to work in factories etc.

However, the city will wait a bit as I need to get everything else settled first!

See, this is what I mean by having too many plans! XD

I’m really not the most focused person in the world, or, I am but most of the time I have 300+ things all trying to get my attention which results in me paying nothing attention at all. Currently there’s quite a few victims to that curse, my uni-reading being the most stressful one, writing being the second and simning being the last if only because it doesn’t really leave my mind the way the other stuff does.

I haven’t a clue when the “new” project will be up, as it is I’m taking my time and trying to figure out what I want to do and such before I go ahead with anything. I do like it though, it very much suits my general needs though exactly how often I’ll play and update I’ve no idea (which reminds me, I really should cut back on work or something <_< Blergh.) but I’ll figure it out as I go I guess.

Anyhow, I wanted to give a quick update just to keep myself in the “mode” I guess, even if there’s no pictures or anything else I do like rambling about sims anyhow <_< Even if only for my own enjoyment.

But yeah, right now everything is stretched between uni and work, both which take up a lot of time and make me very tired (I really need to cut back, working 3 days one week which adds up to 18,5 hours is just too much for me. I can deal wit 5-10 hours, but not 18,5! I don’t have many lectures, but I have 300+ pages to read for each lecture and I’m already behind /rant)

*Cough* Back to sims, current project is humming along. It’s Victorian based (not in London though, I prefer to keep things fictional, less pressure to be exact about the streets etc.) and I already know (and have created) how many families I have etc. what I need most is houses, community centres etc. I’m trying to be good and building first, but I really really hate it so we’ll see how many houses I build before I cave!

The second, very much on the backburner, is present-day Victorian ‘hood, that is Rotham (the name of the Victorian based ‘hood) in our time, with the descendants of the families from Victorian-Rotham and such. However I need to finish and play (but not finish playing the ‘hood, that’d take ages!) the Victorian ‘hood first, but I’m kinda-sorta working on the modern ‘hood now and then too.

As for how it’ll work, I’ve basically decided that the Victorian ‘hood will only impact modern ‘hood up until a certain point (thinking  up to 1900-1910) after that I’ll likely just let the Victorian ‘hood move through time without anything really impacting the modern ‘hood. But as I’m starting in 1830 this isn’t really something I have to be dead certain about just yet.

A part of me did wonder about letting the ‘hood move through time naturally, but a) that’d be a lot of CC to download as time went by, not to mention removing some of the older CC as it would no longer be used and such without making entire houses go blue and b) I’m an impatient creature who’d like to play in the modern age without having to play my way up until the modern age.

We’ll see how it goes as the Victorian ‘hood falls more into place, everything else is still up in the air I guess.

I know I’ve been pretty absent for awhile (not just from here but from a lot of blogs), partly this is due to the computer crash I had a few months ago (didn’t have access to sims and I felt kinda gloomy looking at what everyone else was doing), as well as starting uni agan, and getting my first job and trying to figure out how to structure it all (still working on that) so I won’t fail or get fired etc.

Yeah, I really do like biting over more than I can chew it seems. Still, I should be able to work things out.

Harrington however, is gone. I got my computer back, but with a whole new hard-drive so none of my old content is there anymore. I could’ve asked them to try and get it back, but it would’ve been 100+$ which I didn’t really have at the time (poor student, that is me).

So yeah… Second time in a pretty short timespan that it’s happened. Beginning to wonder if perhaps this is a sign and that I should stop blogging about sims I’d have preferred less… Bothering ways of getting hints, like the game disk not working compared to having to get a whole new hard-drive (even if it was for free).

I haven’t started the big re-install-a-thon (anyone who’s ever re-installed sims 2 knows it’s a pain in the neck, I have 8 EPs and 8 SPs to install… I suppose I’ll be getting my uni-reading done in-between at least) just yet, but I’ll get to it later this evening and hopefully get it done before tomorrow (which is my big read-a-thon-so-we-can-get-back-on-track-with-studies day) and then we’ll see.

I do have an idea, or two, but I’ll have to look at schedule/studies etc. and see how I can work around it all without driving myself up the wall. An idea Laura offered back when Vivienne went bottoms up popped into my head, albeit somewhat differently, so I’m going to attempt to work that out and hopefully that’ll be my new project.

Until then this blog will likely remain as quiet until I decide where to go from here.

That said, I have sim-blogs to catch up on and eventually a whole lot (not just sims) stuff to re-install. Oh joy.

I know! These were supposed to be out ages ago! Still, now is better than never, right? Because they’re a bit late, I haven’t managed to one last test on them, but I’m 99,9% certain they’ll work just fine (tomorrow family is coming to visit, friends the day after that and then there’s my birthday so I wanted to get these out now), but if you have problems please leave a note here and I’ll see what I can do

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Want to take a guess at who’s writing yet another post that have absolutely nothing to do with Harrington? It just might be me, but this time, I feel very justified (I did last time as well, but shhh xD). You see, a certain someone (that’d be me!) have been fiddling with things. Well, not just any thing but the dreaded Milkshape and came to the conclusion that, hey! I want to try something, what something? Well, you’ve either guessed by the preview picture, or you’re about to find out Read more »

I’m testing out a new writing style, so we’ll see how it goes!

2014-2015: Raiden Aspen is 33, Celia Garnet is 31

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Although neither one of us are all too stretched for cash (though Raiden recently changed careers, he can still support himself just fine) Raiden and I figured that’d it’s save us some expenses to live together. And besides, we used to share a dorm at university so it’s not very different, well, we get to decide what colours are rooms should be this time around! It took us awhile to settle on an apartment, we didn’t want to live on top of each other, but we also didn’t want to go over our budget. In the end we found a rather nice (and large!) apartment with two bedrooms and enough space for the both of us. The landlord seemed nice enough, though I admit, I winced when I saw how she styled her hair, it’s fine to do that for renfairs and conventions and what have you, but I’d have thought that a landlord might wear her hair more… Traditionally.

Oh well, on the bright side of things, I did get some shopping done at the new clothing store, Velvet. I should try to coax some of the more… interesting looking inhabitants of Harrington down there.

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I’ve been thinking a little about changing my defaults lately, the thing that’s kept me from it is that some of my sims use geneticized eyes/skins and so I’d have to make sure that they’d get a similar looking pair of eyes/skin if I did. However, testing would mean that they’d all end up with the wrong skin and well, I’m not in the mood to boot up my game only to test skins then turn it off again so I can play with my proper skins and eyes.

So, I decided to use the magic of Bodyshop to give me an idea of how it’d look if I changed, normally, I would skip showing off, but I’m proud of myself for being very good about remembering which content was used with each image. So, show off time!

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I’ve added a couple of new pages;

Regulations – a page with the general rules for Harrington as far as marriage, tax, university etc. goes, it’s still in development so I might shift things around as I try them out. Its content is heavily based on Lakeside Heights and Sullivan Sims (especially the latter), with some influences from the Build a City Challenge and me.

Stats – a page for well, stats, it’s horribly barren right now but that’s partly because I couldn’t come up with much to add and partly because Harrington is still a small hood. I’ll change as I go I guess

Custom Content – you probably figured that one out, but yeah, links to some of the custom content I use, it’s pretty much ripped from Vivienne Hamlet, but I’ll update it sometime soon (it’s still pretty darned accurate in some aspects)

Hacks – this too, is ripped from Vivienne Hamlet, though it’s pretty much exactly the same hack cocktail that I have now save a few newbies that I’ll get around to adding

You may, or may not, see a few pages dedicated to the various Households and their stats popping up soon, I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do it. (If I do, it’d sort of be like Sullivan Sims’ sim profiles, only it’ll be separated by households as I doubt I’ll like the thought of maintaining individual sim pages).

I am however going to implement the season system that Sullivan uses, it’s easy enough for me to do without getting too detailed. It also allows me to keep track of birthdays if I want to. I won’t be able to put this into motion until I’m done playing this round though. If you’re curious these are the households I have left to play for this round: Enthycia-Gale, Eldon-Sweet and Mungo. I’ll hopefully get some playing done tonight and/or get the Aspen-Garnet update up.  Either way, it’s only three households and shouldn’t take me too long, after that Harrington will officially have a sensible season-centered system.

It took awhile, but finally there’s another post for Harrington!

2014: Baptista is 33, Clary is 32, Jared is 7 and Jaden is 4.

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They referred to it as “the incident” and for a few days after it happened, they spoke nothing of it, pretending that it never happened and trying to go about their lives as best as they could. If either Jaden or Jared picked up on anything, they never said anything to let their parents know. It was an odd sort of quiet between them, a space that hadn’t really existed before. To Clary, it should have been obvious that she wouldn’t go back to Arthur, and as she sat, trying to get a hold of the budget for her store, she kept an eye on him as he sat on the couch. As he moved to get up, her stomach clenched and she wondered if this would be the time when he finally spoke to her about what had happened. Instead he went for a walk and she sighed, she dreaded the conversation simply because she wasn’t sure if Baptista actually believed that she would go back to Arthur, and if he did, she wasn’t sure if she could trust him to know her. At the same time though, she wanted it over with, whatever happened it would be better than the uneasy quiet that was between them and the unsaid rule about distance. Depending on who worked the latest, she sometimes ended up on the couch, careful to get up and ready before the kids noticed where she’d slept.

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Horrible, horrible title I know, don’t sue me, please?

So, I’ve been gone/dead/away for awhile, I went into part “goodness I am sick of sims” and part “oh god, university, oh god” moods which is a good recipe for “nothing gets done” as far as I’m concerned. University is going fine, exams soon *stress* and some second-thoughts I’m not sure what to do with. Hence, I returned to simming because between that, roleplaying and general writing I should be able to have some retreats and have some things that’ll function as carrots in order to make me read and such.

Photobucket chewed on my pictures and made them ewww, but I’ve uploaded them to my domain and replaced them so they should be back to normal now. Let me know if they aren’t though! Updates are (believe it or not, coming) I missed my simmies and have been wondering about them since I took a break. Sims 3 just isn’t for me, so, Harrington is perfectly safe.

Now I’m going to eat my late-at-night dinner, re-read some things and then things should get back to, er, whatever the state was before “long ass hiatus of d00m” <_<

I’m also getting back onto the blog wagon, might take awhile to catch up with some guys since I’ve been semi-reading, but then I love catch-up reading (yes, I’m odd, I know) so I’ll be enjoying it anyhow XD

See you!