the liebster award!

what it says on the tin. can y’all believe that? o__o i can’t.

thank you so much to the lovely makplays, who nominated me for this award (over here)! i’m honestly bewildered considering how few posts i have, but the faith and interest means so much. ❤

here’s the ruleset for the award that i found:

• Thank the person who has nominated you for the award.
• Answer the eleven questions the person has asked you.
• Nominate people and notify them. (i think in previous versions there’s been some restrictions on how many followers nominees are meant to have, but i can’t find a consensus, so we’re just gonna fudge it a little bit.)
• Ask the people you have nominated eleven questions of your own.

thanks again, makplays! ❤ here are the questions i was asked, and my (very, very rambly) answers:

1. Why did you decide to start writing SimLit?
hmm.. i first started my legacy challenge back in july of last year, on a whim – but i don’t think i really considered trying to blog about it until i binge-read ThePlumbob‘s the bloomer legacy (my first experience with simlit and one i still love a lot!) in november. 🙂 the more i thought about it, the more it sounded like a good idea; i am a writer and artist already, and i wanted to get away from the stress of certain fandom environments and industry jobs. my legacy was trundling along into generation three or four by that time and i was still invested, so it was a good fit! (although i didn’t work up the courage to start posting until april of this year (thanks in large part to @CathyTea, @LadyLobster, and other forum friends).

2. What’s the funniest mishap or blooper moment that’s happened in your game?
aahaha – well, for my legacy save, i’m afraid the mishap i think of right away is a spoiler, so that’ll have to wait! 😉 as far as other saves go, i had a groom (my favorite sim, in fact, as he’s based off an original character i’ve been developing for a long time) nearly die of hysteria literally at his wedding, which was a heart attack and a half.

oh! and my damn legacy sims can’t go a generation without having at least one alien child, which has made for some SERIOUS hijinks. (they don’t like to let me relax.)

3. What’s one fun fact about yourself?
oh, hmm. i guess, right now, it’s that i’ve been super into vinyl. 0: my roommate and i picked up a turntable for our apartment and we’re slowly collecting more records for it. i’m pretty much the opposite of a Music Snob, so it’s not something i thought i would appreciate, but i really dig it!

4. Does anyone you know offline know that you play sims?
does my roommate count? 😀 we both play, though i’m much more anal about logging, screenshots, writing, etc. i also have friends from college who know about my exploits with the game! (they mostly chirp me for “making my own fandom,” lol.)

5. What’s your favorite part about the simming community?
man, honestly, everyone is so welcoming! i mentioned needing to get away from some more toxic fan communities for a while, and the sims creative community is such a refreshing change of pace. folks are, largely, more supportive and collaborative over here than i’ve seen in other fandom spaces in YEARS. good job, guys!

6. What’s one thing that always makes you smile?
too many to count! i consider myself very lucky to have a great roommate (and a great cat), good friends all over the world, and some opportunities to create stuff i’m really passionate about. ^^ i’m serious. i’m grateful for anything from good tea or a nice day.

7. Favorite expansion/game/stuff pack (this can be from any sims game you’ve played)?
so i kind of love every expansion and game pack we’ve gotten so far (i’m mostly a ts4 player, and ts2 before it – i didn’t have access to a computer around ts3 time so it kind of passed me by!) – but is it sacrilege to actually name a couple of stuff packs for this? i’m pretty sure movie hangout stuff and romantic garden stuff make up like half of all my sims’ wardrobes. especially the latter – they’ve got everything for the floral queer man on a budget!

if you mean separately: i think my favorite expansion is city living, easily (there’s so much to do, and it’s a huge chunk of what allows for such diverse character design). for game packs, i really love dine out still! 😀 i’d love to explore it more on my blog somehow, but i’m just still impressed with how intricate and fun it is.

8. What’s your favorite dessert?
hard to say… but i LOVE candy, especially fruit candy, so maybe that? i’m not big into really fancy desserts, so i like smaller, cheaper sweet things. c:

9. Favorite color?
lime green! (it’s a specific shade of lime green, which actually isn’t too far off from the iconic plumbob green now that i’m looking at it. welp.)

10. Favorite memory?
this is really hard for me – i feel like i’ve gotten to experience a lot of things that are special to me, and most things stand out to me in SOME way or another. i think my favorite recent memory was getting to meet a voice actor i really love – one of my heroes, in fact – just last month! it was an incredibly cool experince for me to finally meet him in person, and it’s inspired me in a big way.

11. What’s something about yourself that you’re proud of?
this is a tough one too, but i think i’m proud of what i create that lasts. ❤ i’ve been a storyteller for a long time, and i feel like these past couple of years especially, a lot of doors have opened to me to work out what my favorite ways to tell stories are – from simlit to comic books to game development. i’ve been very lucky to get to try a bit of everything, and i think i’m proud that i’ve been able to make the most of a lot of opportunities in lasting ways! 🙂

my nominations for the award, with hopes i’m not breaking any rules, are: LadyLobster’s fangs for the memories (sometimes NSFW), Thymeless’ #buildnewcrest legacy challenge, & CathyTea’s goofy love legacy (here!) and other stories. 🙂 i know there are only three blogs, but they’re the simlit i’ve been most invested in since joining the community, and i’d like to show off their hard work!

here are the eleven questions for my nominees – i’m sorry they’re so… involved! i guess i’m just very curious. 😀

1. let’s get right into it: why do you do it? what draws you to writing simlit, however you write it? do you have other creative projects? if so, how does writing simlit differ from those in a way you enjoy enough to balance it?
2. how long have you been writing simlit? what originally piqued your interest about the medium?
3. you’ve all written a LOT, and in a short time. what motivates you to get up and do it as often as you do? if you get writer’s block, how do you work through it?
4. whether you’re writing game-driven or plot-driven simlit, sometimes the characters get finicky, and don’t always do what you expect. who’s one sim from your story or stories who has surprised you? either with how much you love them, what reader response has been, or how they’ve developed over time?
5. how much does setting factor into your story? this can mean set building, or simply the space(s) your sims occupy. do you find you have an idea of the space’s “personality” and how it develops the same way you do your sims?
6. if you had to assign yourself three traits like we do our sims, which ones would they be, and why? do you think others would assign the same traits to you?
7. another in that vein: if you had skill levels the way sims do, which skill do you think you would max out first?
8. the sims is a storytelling platform – but it’s also a game! c: what other games are you drawn to, or what genre? what’s one you’ve played recently and enjoyed?
9. i know these can be fighting words, but i have to ask: what potential functionalities of the game in the future are you most excited about, from a storytelling perspective?
10. what’s one game mod or piece of custom content you love, and why? if you don’t play with mods/CC, why not? do you think your experience has been different to people who broaden the game with mods/CC?
11. in honor of pride month! ❤ do you have any LGBT/queer sims in your stories? if you do, share some information about them – what are they like, and why do you like them? how does their queerness factor into who they are and how you play the game/tell their story?

so that’s that! c: OH, and before i forget: i’ve had a pretty busy (and admittedly sombre) few months, but i did manage to finish playing through to generation seven of the velasco legacy, which means the writing now begins in earnest! but, erm.

see those folders on the left? yeah, that’s… that’s all this generation. and they really do all have, on average, 100 screenshots per folder. so an update is forthcoming, but. um. i’ve got my work cut out for me!!

thanks again, friends! ❤