llamallagoon

[llamallagoon]

sul sul!

(how original) maybe one day i'll make a cute lil TS4 UI-style intro about myself but for now:

K (or Kim) | she/they | 30yo cis woman | white | autistic (bc i LOVE being able to SAY it!) living on unceded meru land (australia)

im one of those simmers with a love/hate relationship with ts4, and also my gaming laptop has an even more tumultuous love/hate dynamic with the game so there's that.

deeply admire those of you who can play multi-gen saves, complete challenges, create and edit and share sim stories, but i am simply Not one of you. i spend most of my time in cas and then end up unhappy with the results, yay!!! i also like making lists and charts and spreadsheets and family trees, and trying to cram lore and relationships from past iterations of the sims into TS4 without losing my mind~

mod & cc finds @llamallagoonfinds but she's a lil empty and inactive atm

[llamallagoon]

I'm sitting here thinking about a pretty age-old debate on simblr... the race of sims that have black hairstyles, particularly in cc preview pics.

I know it's been talked about repeatedly, but when it comes to cc previews for paid cc I think it's especially worth talking about. Some people say, well, the creator only uses a few different sim models each time, it's not like they're intending to be racist or something. It's just for convenience, because they're busy, they're hustling, they gotta pay their bills. They always use the same sim, so it's fine. But like... isn't that gross to y'all? Someone making money off of black hairstyles, but they can't even be assed to go in cas for 15 mins to make a black sim? Isn't that a prime example of appropriation of black culture for profit? Like the human aspect of us as a person is gone, it's just another part of us being advertised and sold. Black hair makes money, black hair cc is limited, it will sell and nothing else matters. It feels like black hairstyles are some kind of trend with them too, because none of these creators made them before it was possible to profit off of them... back then it was "too hard" just like now it's apparently "too hard" to make a different preview sim.

Also, it's not lost of me that when a creator does make a black sim for their previews, they're as light skinned and white looking as possible. Whether just by skintone, very eurocentric features (like they just gave a white sim slightly darker skin), vitiligo to make most of the skin light, or claiming the sim has albinism. And while some of this I'm sure is just finding that aesthetic more "pretty", I also think this has to do with potential sales. I'm going to be honest... besides engagement by black simblr itself, I've noticed a lot of posts I have get less engagement/reblogs if the sim in question has darker skin and darker hair. It's much more likely to pick up in the mainstream cc finds blogs/YouTube videos etc, if the content is for white sims or the sim has lighter skin and light hair. I don't care about engagement and simply make whatever sim I want to make, and since I do have that variety, it's how I noticed this strange trend. And with the volume of content paywall creators make, I think they noticed this too. Posts with lighter skinned sims get better engagement, and thus, make more money.

Have you ever noticed, even in paywalled cc packs, there will usually be a sort of token effect? One white sim, one ethnically ambiguous sim, one black sim. This is great if you're showing off something that will vary for different skintones- makeup and skin details, for example- but why is it always like this? And why is the variety usually only in previews for cc packs instead of solo items (like hairs)? It feels like it's all to sell better, to appeal to different demographics and say, hey, I didn't forget poc exist! Please pay for my content! It feels disgenuine, and since creators like this rarely engage with the community anymore besides paid content, it's hard to figure out whether they feel this way or not.

Personally, I don't care much what people do in their own games- I might look at them weird for a sec, but I move on, cos it's their issue not mine. But like many other aspects to this community, when it crosses over into paid content, it sparks my interest. It feels like everything, everything, is about maximizing profit now. And for the people that focus on that, that's their prerogative and all, I can't exactly stop them, but. It's just something I observed and wouldn't mind discussing with y'all.

(Note: I don't apply the "profiting off black culture" part to black creators, obviously. Also no hate to any creators that do this stuff. Be reasonable adults, please. I'm just discussing in a constructive criticism type of way.)

[llamallagoon]

me 5 minutes after deciding that TS4 needs more ~Life~ and ~Layers~ and ~Lore~ so i must dredge up as much of the lore, the connections, families, individual sims, and convoluted messes of TS2 & TS3 into the mix

[llamallagoon]

ok ok so.... i MAY have immediately overdone it on the 'follow a bunch of different simblrs to liven up this new dash and to get a feel for who and what's out there!!!' . in general i like to know WHO i am following so i gotta get to know ppl's blogs and general content/themes over time.................................. if i followed you, you see this, then see im not following u anymore, it's not personal, i will likely re-follow in the future, i just gotta do this in phases i think xo

[llamallagoon]

blog still ~empty~ while i figure out how tf i wanna organise things here & on the cc finds sideblog . i just have that Sims Itch but idk what to do with it or HOW exactly im gonna end up utilising this page but. separate simblr account had to be made for my brain (and main dash) to cope