T w e n t y S i d e d

Mr. and Mrs. Smith began their marriage in 1912. By 1915 they had a custom-built house, courtesy of Mrs. Smith’s father. They were allowed to make whatever decisions they liked, even bad ones, to make their dream home a reality. In my mind, I think Mrs. Smith’s father had a building company, which Mr. Smith was working at and intended to take over once her father retired.

This means that Mr. Smith would have lied through his teeth to his father-in-law. Imagine, for a moment, that the two men are speaking about the house plans. Mr. Smith mentions that they want that awful go-nowhere balcony, for the visuals of it. The father-in-law is a builder by trade and knows this is a horrible idea. But, the moment his eyebrow is raised and he is expressing that he is skeptical of the plan, Mr. Smith is shaking his head and laughing, insisting it’s all his idiot wife’s idea and he’s just going along with what she wants. It’s 1913, both of them laugh at the folly of vain women, and the stupid balcony is built. Mr. Smith was who wanted the balcony, he liked the idea of climbing up there to hang Christmas lights. Mrs. Smith hated the balcony because she was worried he’d break his neck up there.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Sims 4 Overthinking: Function Over Fashion”

Bay Jubilee Oldest child of Shamus Young. They/Them

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