T w e n t y S i d e d

Finally! Over a month into the project and we’re actually going forward in the years. We started in roughly 1915, with a house built by a clearly upper-middle-class couple of the time. They’ve built it for parties and entertaining, and with all the mistakes a typical couple in their early 20s would make. If we go off of averages for newlyweds of the year, she’s about 21 and he’s 25, her father paid for the house, and they have a cook who they pay very little. Let’s give them a last name to make talking about them easier as the years go on…

Okay, I googled ‘funny last names 1900’ and I got the results one might expect if an 11-year-old was playing mad-libs for the first time. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I can’t seriously write Mr. and Mrs. Assman 60 times. Uhhh…Smith, whatever, they’re placeholders anyway. Mr. and Mrs. Smith it is.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: The Great Depression”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

We’re almost ready to finally start cranking forward the years on this build. I only have two things on my to-do list before we can make that happen; a pantry, and a basement.

Neither of these things are made easy by The Sims 4 build-mode setup. The only closets that EA has given us are for clothes. I could scuff it and put one of those in the kitchen and just pretend it’s full of canned goods, but that isn’t how I roll. I could also, in theory, install a mod to help me out. The Sims 4 has fantastic mod support, which is amazing after the nearly entirely locked Sims 3. The problem is, I don’t like mods in my builds. I have all sorts of mods for my sims themselves, don’t get me wrong. Clothes, makeup, tattoos, it’s all on the table. But no build-mode mods is my general rule, because I like to make my shared content accessible. If I upload my house to the gallery and someone likes it enough to put it in their own world, I don’t like the idea of half the content being inaccessible without a bunch of hoops.

People generally get around this by just putting links to their mods in the description of the build. But, if I’m honest, there is almost no build on earth appealing enough to make me want to spend an hour fighting with Adfly and compatibility issues.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Realism to a Point of Mildew”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

Week three! Finally, we can get the interior shape done and get started on moving forward in the years.

Last week I actually made a mistake Gasp. I know, right? I thought I was the first infallible 24-year-old too. We will have to press on.. I mentioned that my ‘outlet cover’ in the kitchen (pictured below) was deserving of praise from future inhabitants.

Later, the inhabitants will cry because there is only one outlet by the kitchen counters. They should be instead rejoicing that the old homeowners needed a place to plug in the home phone.

My bad. This mistake, funnily enough, came from a childhood memory misfire. I know that home phones didn’t plug into the wall! I might be a zoomer, but I am only a year too young to be a millennial by most accounts. Plus, my dad collected junk electronics and refused to move into the 20th century.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Two, Maybe Three Bedrooms”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

Alright, where we left off two weeks ago, we had just ‘finished’ the house’s facade.

I’ve worked from a few reference images of real-life houses built in the early 1900s, but I’m mostly winging it. Half of the point of this project is to be low-maintenance while I get my bearings, so I suppose I should admit I don’t do a lot of historical research for these projects. It feels a bit dishonest to say ‘let’s go through one of my normal builds’ and then do a ton of research I never do on my own without an audience. Maybe I’ll do some research and disclose it, but if I’m honest, probably not. What I know comes from family, stories, and history I already have.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Wooden Outlet Covers”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

Years ago, I saw a YouTube video of real-life architects reacting to Sims 4 builds.  They mainly had little issues with the builds, IE: You can’t put windows to the east because you’ll be blind in the morning, or, you can’t have a vast open space like that without support beams, etc etc. But the other issue they had really stuck out to me.

Why were these digital builders sticking in the realm of possibility? The individuals reacting to these builds were architects. Building stuff that makes sense in the realm of possibility was their full-time jobs. Why the hell are these gaming dumbasses doing the same crap they have to do for work? At work, they can’t just ignore zoning laws, but these ‘simmers’ can! Why are they building normal stuff?

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Where’s the Plumbing?”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them