@Simsample Of course we would!

@AndrewGloria I do think the kindness fits quite well into the pleasure aspiration - to me pleasure is about living in the moment, taking life as it comes, not planning too far ahead, and kindness fits nicely into that. Pleasure sims could easily be hippies.

Romance... I have to admit romance sims are a bit of a mystery to me. I can't imagine woohoo being such a central interest, to me it seems a little bit like the grilled cheese aspiration, which is why I have tried to proxy it by understanding it as an aspiration to be desired. Perhaps it could also be the very opposite, an aspiration to make others happy, including, y'know, making them happy

@simsfreq I really like your interpretation of the pleasure aspiration being kind. I haven't played them that way yet, but I think I will next time I have a really nice pleasure sim.

Like all the aspirations, I think romance can be interpreted various ways. There could be the hopeless romantic who longs for the perfect love story, and then there's the casanova who wants to make conquests. There's the partier who's just in it for their good time, and the free spirit who wants to give love without restrictions. Then there's the type who needs constant validation and attention to fill a hole in their lives. You can make a lot of stories from this aspiration, just as from all the other aspirations, I think.

Of course we would defend you against him! Believe me, if he ever dares show his head here, it'll be chopped off rightly quick, and that's assuming he'll get past Delphy and HL!

I think we should start a petition to feed Elongated Muskrat to a Laganaphyllis Simnovorii

See, that's why I find the romance aspiration confusing - to me, they are clearly not hopeless romantics, because they never want to stick with one person forever. That is more the family sim type. Family sims dream of their happily ever after, and want to get married and celebrate their golden wedding anniversary. Romance sims hate the idea of being stuck with one sim forever - how boring! (To them). (OK actually, there's my hook for them).

I would like to join Andrew and Julian in wishing a very Merry Christmas, to you all, and to all your Sims. And in fact to all Sims and Simmers everywhere!!

The picture was taken today just after the Christmas Morning Service in St Simeon's Parish Church, Veronaville. (Well it started in the morning, but Rev. Elspeth did preach for rather a long time! )

Merry Christmas @AndrewGloria and to Andrew and Julian, and to all who are reading this!
That's a lovely Christmas tree in the background of that picture!

It's Honeywell's conversion of The Sims 4 Holiday Celebration pack tree. She also made further recolours of it available here. This tree is very useful for those like me who have neither of the Maxis holiday packs (or can't get them).

I wouldn't do them the dishonour of seeing them as human. They are so much better than us. They don't have racism, sexism, homophobia or bigotry. They don't abuse children or animals. They don't have people who let others live in poverty without caring. They don't make war on each other. We would be better off being sims, rather than them being human.

Yes! The world would be such a better place if we just beat each other up when we visited the grocery shop, kicked each others' bins over when we were angry, and fed people we didn't like to our cowplants.

I think its just that, having filled my game up with the sort of characters that I'd love to meet and hang out with, I don't want them to live on some far distant planet in a remote galaxy. I want them to live somewhere on my own planet, so that I can cling to the hope of meeting them face to face one day. Believing my lovable Sims to be human helps me to keep my faith in humanity. Maybe, just maybe, if they can turn the world round and make it work, then so can we. It's far from finished yet, but there has been a very positive transformation in Veronaville over the ten years I've been playing it. I think my Sims and I can feel a justifiable pride in what we have achieved so far. I suppose we have concentrated on the things that we think are best in the game and tried to keep the less desirable aspects in check. I think I could fall in love with half my Sims and still quite like the other half.

I seriously think the way I play with my Sims has helped me get through the last six months since my mother died.

Andrew likes to bring me down to earth from my flights of fancy. "It's Veronaville we're talking about," he says. "It's not Shangri-la!"

I'd unironically prefer that over the real world

It looks like I'll be doing some file cleaning on my computer hard drive soon once I've bought a USB sticj to move some videos over that are clogging my hard drive up.I can also finally get a more up to date back up of my hard drive.

I've been working outside all month, I liked reading your messages and photos to feel a little accompanied xD

Not directly a Sims 2 thought, but I wonder if I still know how my SFS login credentials...

Was it intentional comic relief that it's always the same poor sim being spied on in telescopes?

It was probably more programming convenience making it the lowest numbered playable in the hood. Programmers hate randomness.

or is it a bug where it was supposed to be randomised but always defaults to the lowest sim? either way it is funny in my opinion.

It's extra funny if you have created the hood for a story/challenge and deliberately create the most spyable sim first.

There's a mod somewhere that makes it random and more likely to choose sims who are physically close by. I didn't put it in my game for that hood.

I really, really, REALLY miss playing ts2…

My laptop died about a year ago and while I managed to save the majority of the sims stuff I had on there, I haven’t set up my files on the repaired laptop yet. I feel like it’s gonna take a lot for me to get back into a simming groove…

For one thing, I’m not really ready to return to the game just yet. Real life feels too hectic for me at the moment. I need to sort some stuff out before I can allow myself to indulge in the time sink that is getting hooked on playing Sims, lol.

Also, having been away from the game so long I feel a sense of FOMO regarding CC. I’ve missed a lot of really cool stuff! Not that my downloads folder was anywhere near complete before, mind you. It’s just that I feel like I’d need to play catch up. I have a love/hate relationship with CC. I *LOVE* CC, but *HATE* the overwhelmed feeling I got when trying to download and organise it all. Which leads me to the real “random thought” section of this post…

I wish downloading CC was as easy as looking at it and then having it magically slot into your game with zero drama. Usually plopping stuff straight into the downloads folder works fine - but for some CC there are special considerations (eg it might need to go in a different folder, or it might need to load after something else). Also just plonking it into the downloads folder with no rhyme or reason (aka organised sub folder structure and giving things sensible/easy-to-recognise file names) is a TERRIBLE idea, lol

I'm the exact same! I haven't played very regularly the last few years so every time I decide to play I feel like I've missed a ton of cool stuff - and I usually have. Either updates on mods that I already use, or new mods that add cool new things, or mods that replace older mods like one I've seen yesterday that apparently makes the older mod where townies don't lose their memories obsolete. It's overwhelming!

I find it interesting, if I'm in a mood to PLAY a Sims game, I'm much more inclined to launch TS1 or TS3, but for creating things I'm 100% more likely to launch TS2...

I've been thinking about this with pleasure sims in particular - I understand why some might not find them very fun to play, and the date ltw's are mostly tiring - but I've also seen people pigeonhole them as self-centered or immature whereas I think it's a good thing to know what makes you happy and go for that, and find joy in the small things.
(Also, I remember someone on here a while ago drew a parallel between pleasure sims and ADHD, which might be why I'm so keen on defending them...)

With romance sims I think that besides player perception, the way the vanilla game handles romance and jealousy, while bad in general, is downright unfair to romance sims, making it so that they're "unfaithful" just by casually wohooing around and having to either break hearts or sneak around. The anti jealousy mod was the first mod I downloaded, and since then playing with devoted romance sims is fun as shit. And they can make tons of friends (with benefits) just by doing their thing, so kind and considerate romance sims really works well in that regard.

6×5 lots are an interesting size. They're either way too big or way too small, there's no in between. Wanna build a house? Too large, you'll need a French garden or an oversized pool to fill up space. Wanna build a stadium? Guess one single stand will have to make do, the stand plus pitch alone take up almost the entire lot.

I didn't know pet ghosts could scare sims