#Residential Real Estate Closings

[attorneyreal]

[closingqueeen]

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[hairyjocktf]

The New Cub

Jaden was a real estate agent in Denver, and quite a good one at that. He prided himself on that fact, having been the top agent at his firm for four years running. He was only 27 too, having gotten his license after high school with ease. Once he got that first commission check he never looked back. This had been a big week for him, closing a deal on a multi-million dollar house that was netting him a nice bonus. It’d taken a lot of work and effort, but as he walked into his apartment just hours after the signing he breathed a sigh of relief. He’d planned to take a few days off as a reward, some time to pamper himself like he deserved. He walked into his room, stripping off the well fitted blazer before undoing the buttons on his shirt. Water gushed from the faucet as he filled his tub with a warm bath and opened the windows, letting in that cool fall air. His belt and pants fell to the floor next as he admired his slim body in the mirror. 

Jaden was the ideal twink, with a tall and thin form that he kept supple and hairless with a meticulous daily routine. He slowly rubbed his hands down over his tight stomach, feeling the smooth skin he loved before sliding off his underwear. The warm water bubbled as he stepped in, sliding his body below the surface as water cascaded across his shaved legs. The tension in his shoulders melted away, the water sapping away the stress of the week. Birdsong echoed in through the open windows, and Jaden entered a state of pure relaxation. For all of five minutes, at least. Unable to be alone with his thoughts for too long, his long, near skeletal arm reached from the tub and grasped his phone. This may be his vacation but he sure wasn’t going to spend it at home relaxing.

He quickly opened up grindr. He glanced at the dozens of messages from the last few days but didn’t open a single one, opting instead to scroll and scroll, unsure of what he was actually looking for. Every few seconds he would get a tap or message, he knew his profile worked. It had for years, with his perfectly smooth and slim body appealing to a wide audience. He normally went for the tech guys who were in perfect shape, but that didn’t seem appealing today. Neither did a younger twink. He was about to put the app down when he got a message from what looked to be a guy in his late 30s, but in great shape. Good definition, and fully shaved, he noted.

“Afternoon gorgeous,” the message said, “got any weekend plans? Been looking for a handsome man to spoil a bit.” Jaden paused. Normally he didn’t care for offers like this, but he’d been unsatisfied from anything else so far. Plus, this was his weekend to spoil himself, why not let someone else help out? He typed out a response.

“Hey there :) Would love to be treated nice this weekend, what do you suggest?” He read it and deleted it all in disgust. “Thanks babe, I’d say I deserve a bit of spoiling this weekend, what's your offer?” he typed again, and then sent. A few seconds later a reply had already shown up.

“I’ve got a nice house with a mountain view, and I can promise the best meal of your life and the best sex you’ll ever have. Your choice for the details, of course,” the man said with a winky emoji. Not having to cook dinner was pretty appealing, and if it turned out to be mediocre he could always leave. It was just the first night of his time off after all. 

“Sounds lovely,” Jaden sent back, “Where’s this beautiful estate of yours?” A location appeared just seconds later. It was out in the western fringes of the city, a hefty drive. He knew the neighborhood though, and it was a nice one. Couldn’t hurt to give this guy a shot, he thought, rising out of the now lukewarm tub waters.

After a lengthy session of getting ready, Jaden set out for this luxury evening he’d been promised. The sun was already beginning to dip in the sky, promising a lovely sunset over the mountains. He pulled off the highway after about thirty minutes, navigating the twisting residential roads before finally arriving at a slightly secluded house at the top of a ridge. His first reaction was to how beautiful the property was, being a realtor and all. The view the man had offered seemed to be true, now he just had to test the rest of it. He checked himself in the rear view mirror, making sure his hair was tufted just right before stepping out into the cool evening air. He walked up the steps to a heavy oak door and rang the bell, hearing it echo inside. Heavy footsteps shook the ground as they approached, the door unlocked, and Jaden’s eyes went wide.

The man in the doorway was not the man he’d seen on grindr. This guy was a full-fledged daddy bear, older, fatter, and much, much hairier. He answered the door in just his tight underwear, showing off his large body that was completely coated in hair. Numerous tattoos were buried under the fur, barely recognizable. A thick salt and pepper beard adorned his face, which wore a wide grin.

“Well look at you kiddo, glad you showed!” the man said with a deep, smoky voice.

Jaden was taken aback, he’d never been in this situation. It wasn’t like the photos he saw were just a little out of date, this was an entirely different guy! At a loss of what to say, all he managed to get out was, “You… you’re not the guy in the pics!”

The man laughed, “Oh those photos, they were of my last project, don’t worry about them. Name’s Glenn. Why don’t you come in?” He took a step forward and reached out his hand.

Jaden’s brain was on red alert, he’d been catfished, lied to, and he needed to leave immediately. The old man in front of him was not at all what he was into, but that was the least of his concern at this point. What did he mean by ‘last project’? Why would he use pics that weren’t him? 

But suddenly, as Glenn stepped forward, a warm air washed over him coming from inside. It was smoky, almost rustic, but also smelled strongly of sweat and musk. His numerous trains of thought came to a screeching halt. He took a deep inhale through his nose, the smell dulling his senses in a way he couldn’t possibly notice. The outstretched hand looked so welcoming suddenly, and hadn’t he been promised dinner? The worries about the man were quickly fading, replaced by feelings of comfort. He took Glenn’s hand and stepped through the doorway without another thought. 

The inside of the house was larger than he’d expected, decorated almost in the style of a mountain cabin. It was cozy, with lots of bookshelves and wood paneling that had fallen out of style among his customers, but he strangely liked it here. Glenn led him through multiple rooms until reaching a large patio overlooking the mountains, the sunset still gaining colors in the background. Glenn sat him down on a large sofa.

“Make yourself comfortable, I’ll be right back with some food,” he said before trotting back into the house. Jaden stared out over the vista, wondering briefly why he’d said yes, before that thought too fell out of his mind. His mind was relaxed, yet a little foggy, almost similar to the feeling of poppers. He slouched further into the cushions waiting for Glenn to return with whatever feast he’d prepared. He caught himself even drooling at the thought, which shook him somewhat out of his daze, he couldn’t be acting like that. Just then Glenn walked back out with a huge plate of lamb chops, still sizzling. He set it down on a nearby table and motioned for Jaden to join him.

He sat down at the table and looked over the spread Glenn had prepared. The man hadn’t lied, it was an impressive feast. Jaden usually didn’t eat red meat but something about tonight felt different. As soon as Glenn sat down that same strong scent returned. This time it was more pungent, more reminiscent of the smell of sweat, and it made that foggy feeling return stronger than it’d initially been. But Jaden forgot about it when Glenn looked over with a smile.

“I think you’ll like this, son, it’s a tried and true family recipe after all!” he exclaimed before digging in. The word son rang in Jaden’s ears for a moment before he too dug into the food.

Despite his previous aversion to red meat he scarfed it down; it was absolutely delicious. He barely had time to speak in between bites, but Glenn didn’t seem to mind, watching Jaden devour the meal he’d prepared. Soon enough, his plate was empty, and Glenn admired the bulging stomach he could see pressing against Jaden’s tight shirt.

“Fuck, that was amazing,” Jaden said between burps. What was going on with him? First eating all that food and now burping like some degenerate caveman? But he was far past caring, already entering a sort of food coma. Glenn got up and went back to the couch, gesturing for Jaden to follow. He did so eagerly and tucked himself under Glenn’s open arm. Jaden would have never previously hooked up with a bear, but he was surprised to enjoy the feeling of a large furry body embracing him. Even more surprising was how obviously his dick sprang to life in his pants when Glenn’s hand dipped under the fabric. Glenn pulled Jaden closer to him, smiling at him as he stealthily attached a testosterone patch on Jaden’s back. It was time to see how far he could take this one.

The combination of Glenn’s powerful musk and enormous meal had Jaden completely subdued, ready to accept anything. His thick hands glided over Jaden’s smooth skin, sending shivers through his body. No other guy had been this effective with just his hands. Glenn ramped it up from there, kissing up and down Jaden’s body, feeling him shudder with pleasure. He rubbed his own hairy body against Jaden’s hairless one, subliminally inflicting him with desires yet to be realized. He couldn’t wait to see what Jaden would become. The next few hours were a blur as the sun fell below the mountains and the stars lit their passionate embrace. Glenn edged Jaden for hours, keeping him on the brink of ecstasy. He could feel the prickle of hairs as they began resurfacing in Jaden’s shaved groin. Finally after hours he let Jaden finish, spraying cum all over his slim body. Glenn massaged it into his skin as they cuddled, and Jaden passed out shortly after. That was just the beginning, Glenn thought to himself as he applied another patch to the sleeping Jaden’s body. 

Jaden arose the next morning to the smell of breakfast in the making; Glenn was preparing another feast for him. His body was still sore from the night before, causing him to groan as he got out of the bed. Glenn poked his head into the room.

“Morning, handsome,” he said with a chipper voice, “food’s almost ready!”

“I appreciate it but I should probably head out,” Jaden replied, looking for his clothes on the floor.

“Naw, what’re you sayin’ that for? We’ve got plenty more time,” Glenn assured him, stepping further into the room. That same familiar musk washed over Jaden again, and just like that he was more agreeable.

“You’re right, and I’m starving,” he said with renewed energy. Glenn came back moments later with a platter stuffed with waffles, bacon, what must have been a dozen eggs, and more. The urge to stuff himself again took hold of Jaden, who tore his way through the breakfast. Glenn watched with a grin, seeing Jaden’s belly puff out just a little more than the night before. They spent the rest of the day cuddling, making out, having more sex. Jaden was in heaven, not noticing when Glenn applied new patches to his back after the first ones had fallen off. His thoughts about getting back to his apartment faded while Glenn’s thick scent fogged up his head. It all felt so good, why would he want to leave?

That evening they showered together, Glenn’s sweat covering Jaden along with his own cum. He sensually washed Jaden’s body with his custom soap, scented like pine and infused some ingredients to encourage hair growth. He felt up and down Jaden’s body, noticing some areas that weren’t quite so smooth anymore. Hairs had begun to surface not only in his groin, but across his thighs, and even on his chest. Just small pinpricks for now. As they were drying off afterward Glenn placed another patch under Jaden’s shoulder blade. He also noticed how Jaden’s previously boney frame had softened just a tad. 

The days continued to pass in a similar manner, Glenn and Jaden spending every moment intertwined as Glenn slowly but surely molded Jaden. He was changing day by day from the definition of a twink to something else. Brown stubble sprouted sparsely across his chin and lip, his chest had begun to push out into soft pecs adorned with their own fuzz. His previously shaved armpits had stubble pushing out, with new hairs joining each day. His similarly shaved pubes were returning with a vengeance, growing in quicker and spreading further than they ever had before. Fat was clinging to his thin frame, he was filling out. 

As Jaden’s body hair started coming in, Glenn would spend more and more time rubbing his hands through it. It was an electric feeling for Jaden, he’d never known it could feel that being hairy. And he was slowly craving it more and more. Glenn continued putting testosterone patches on him as well as a number of other products he’d tried with other guys before. He wanted this cub to be perfect. Jaden’s vacation had long passed but he was oblivious, forgetting more and more each day about his previous life as he dedicated his new one to Glenn. Every day he rubbed against Glenn’s weathered, hairy body and desired it all for himself. He loved the attention, being spoiled and cared for. He didn’t even notice that every meal was huge to ensure he packed on the pounds quickly. 

Days turned to weeks, as Jadens body continued to mold to Glenn’s form. Glenn decided it was time for more progress, and introduced Jaden to his home gym. He slowly introduced a routine before pushing Jaden harder than he’d ever exercised in his life. Glenn took pride in having some strength under his gut, and he wanted his cub to have some solid muscle too. That’s when the testosterone patches turned to injections. Stronger and more effective, Glenn was pushing his cubs transformation into full gear. 

The thin wisps of hair that dotted his chest thickened and multiplied, with larger pecs pushing out as well. The chest hair spread out from his nipples and up towards his neck, and even out towards his shoulders, connecting with the pit hair that had really started to sprout. What had once been a smooth shaven pit was now erupting into a forest. The hairs darkened, grew coarse and wiry, and really began to hold his sweat in. Between that and the workouts Jaden was starting to produce his own sweaty musk at a rapid rate. His beard also grew denser and darker, peach fuzz flooded with testosterone until it became real fur, pushing out of his face. Every day the hairs grew longer, darker, and Glenn was there to feel it all, stroking his cub’s growing beard as it came in.

Each day for Jaden began to follow a pattern; he ate plenty, worked out for hours, and was intimate with Glenn for the rest of it. He would do daily testosterone injections and used Glenn’s hair growth wash. He had grown to love what was happening to him, with continuous positive reinforcement from Glenn, who would comment on his progress. He would point out during sex how much larger his cock and balls had gotten, immediately giving Jaden an erection. It was true though, what had once been a thin six inch cock was now pushing past eight and as thick as a beer can, with balls the size of lemons dangling below. 

His pubes had hit the same growth spurt. What had once been a small shaven patch had erupted into a verdant jungle of hair. Over the weeks they had pushed out slowly, growing darker and curlier, tangling together as more and more hairs pushed through the skin and sprouted out. The bush spread out from the base of his cock, coating his entire groin and reaching up to his stomach and out onto his thighs. His massive balls received their own dense fur coat; the wiry hairs so thick you could barely see through the forest. Hairs had even started climbing up his shaft, giving it an almost animalistic look. Glenn loved this, edging Jaden for hours every day playing with his thick pubes and enormous balls. The hairs blended seamlessly up to the rug on his chest, coating his continually growing belly in more and more hair. 

Jaden had put on so much size that his clothes no longer fit. Glenn of course supplied him with everything he could want, though he rarely wore more than just underwear. He loved the way a tank top looked while working out, his gut pressed tight against the fabric while still showing off his hairy chest and shoulders. His forearms grew thick with muscle as fur coated them as well. His thick thighs met the same fate, with hair sprouting all the way down to his feet. His beard thickened further and spread higher up his cheeks, leaving him with a dense covering that tangled with Glenn’s own when they kissed. His body had doubled in size, with those workouts giving him a solid muscular frame. Glenn made sure that was still softened by plenty of chub though, stuffing his cub at every meal. 

Fall changed to winter, and Jaden was nearing perfection as Glenn’s cub. They were inseparable, spending every day together as Glenn pushed the cub to be the best he could be, perfected for his own enjoyment. Jaden was enamored with his daddy bear, aware of the changes he’d undergone but not worried about his past self. As snow began to fall outside, his new mass and fur coat kept him warm even when outside, since he rarely cared to put on a coat. It was even better for snuggling by the fire with a full fledged bear, one who promised to only make Jaden more and more like himself. Jaden was now a true cub, in love with his daddy bear and looking forward to a life of growing. 

[phoebejaysims]

Real Estate Mod - DOWNLOAD

Jump into the world of buying and selling. You can now play as an active real estate agent, selling properties to sims throughout the town.

As is my style, this mod is made with rotational play in mind, so there are unique interactions for both buyers and sellers, if you want to play both sides.

Become an estate agent and choose from residential and valid community lots to list for sale. You can appraise residential lots, edit the details of lots, and gain a rating that will unlock more interactions.

Buyers can put in offers for properties, visit listed lots to check them out and get information about houses from both estate agents and sellers.

Once offers have been accepted, close on the property, pay up, and do with it what you wish! Move in, fix it up and re-sell it, rent it out...

Realtors will get a nice commission with each sale and you can track your sales to see your stats.

Recommended accompanying mods (aka optional):

Missy Hissy's Real Estate Career

Roommates and Apartments Fix Mod

My Social Clubs mod

NRaas Tagger

Please see the included documentation for more information on why these are recommended.

Compatibility:

This is a module for my Go To Court mod, so that's required for this mod to work. See mod requirements there.

Made on version 1.67.

Thanks to:

Big thanks to @aroundthesims for allowing me to use her objects in my mods. All credit for the objects goes to her.

Thank you to @desiree-uk for testing the mod with me and for contributing ideas that I put into the mod.

Shout out to the Sims 4 Rental mod by SimRealist as I looked at this page for ideas: Rental Lot Mod For Sims 4: How to Rent & Own Lots (snootysims.com)

Questions:

Check the Q&A part of the documentation, I may have already answered your question!

Download Here (simblr.cc): Simblr.cc - Real Estate Mod - Become an active realtor!

Please enjoy the mod! If you'd like to donate anything as thanks, you can do so at my Ko-fi.

Thanks!!

Phoebe.

[blueiscoool]

Three Roman Graves Uncovered in Portugal

Three burials dating to the 5th or 6th century AD have been unearthed in the ancient Roman city of Ossónoba in Faro, southern Portugal.

The Ossónoba’s first archaeological evidence dates back to the 4th century B.C., when the Phoenicians settled in the Western Mediterranean. The city was then called Ossónoba From the 2nd century B.C. until the 8th A.D. the city was under Roman and Visigoth dominance being afterwards conquered by the Muslims in 713.

A team of archaeologists from ERA Arqueologia discovered ancient Roman structures and the remains of a man, woman, and child while conducting excavations over a 5,000 square meter area that will eventually house a real estate development.

The excavations, which took place before a construction project, revealed the grave of a man whose skeleton was complete and who would have been between 39 and 45 years old, as well as a young woman under the age of 25, and a baby who would have been no more than six months old, according to archaeologist Francisco Correa.

Francisco Correia, the project’s head archaeologist, said in a statement that the discoveries were made in an old truck repair workshop and are believed to date from the 5th or 6th century.

The tombs appear to have been looted in the past to steal “small bracelets, necklaces, and rings,” according to anthropologist Cláudia Maio. The tombs indicate that the people may have had “some economic status” as they were not simply placed in open graves but instead buried in carefully built graves.

The proximity of the three people’s graves seems to indicate that they were family members, though the team cannot be certain of that. “But we cannot say anything for sure,” the anthropologist said.

To learn more, the researchers hope to be able to provide more precise answers through DNA tests and isotopic analysis techniques used to determine population movements and dietary habits from chemical traces in ancient human remains.

This latest archaeological discovery did not come as a surprise to archaeologists, who had already led similar works which resulted in the discovery of a Roman game artifact believed to date back to the first century AD in 2020.

“We know that we are in an area with archaeological potential where there is a 17th-century convent (of Santo António dos Capuchos) to the west, and to the east lies the area where the mosaic of the Ocean God (Deus Oceano), now a national treasure, was found,” he said.

What did come as a surprise to archaeologists was the location of the tombs.

“Based on previous studies, this would have been an area that was possibly residential or more linked to industrial activities. There are many traces of salterns. Largo da Madalena would have been the entrance to the urban area of the city of Ossónoba. The identified graves are in the Figuras area, near Teatro Lethes, close to the Ermida de São Sebastião and the Pavilion of Escola D. Afonso III. This area is almost within the urban fabric,” the archaeologist explained, adding that this illustrates both the “growth and decline of Ossónoba.”

The graves of the man and the woman “were sealed with limestone slabs,” believed to be reused parts from “some of the most emblematic buildings that would have been here in the area,” he believes.

According to the project manager of ERA Arqueologia, who was co-responsible for the work, in addition to the graves, hundreds of small pieces were also discovered which suggest that there may also have been a mosaic there.

The researchers also recovered Roman artifacts in the area, including ceramics, bone dice, nails, pins, a spoon, possible evidence of a dye factory, and coins minted during the reign of Constantine the Great, between A.D. 306 and 337.

Cover Photo: Roman mosaic of the god Oceanus, part of the ancient city of Ossónoba, the modern town of Faro, in Portugal.

By Leman Altuntaş.

[juliasgoodusername]

Sometimes a girl has to go a little crazy. Sometimes a girl has to make a book-accurate floorplan for 300 Fox Way. These things just happen, sometimes.

Obsessive annotations under the cut ✨ but be warned, there's a LOT

Exterior

Okay first of all, I'm no architect, and my only knowledge comes from work experience in the real estate industry + a lot of Sims. The style is sort of neo-rural French colonial. I didn't set out to adhere to that standard so much as I made an amalgamation of homes in Blue Ridge Mountains-adjacent towns in Virginia. Specifically, my headcanon Henrietta template is Orange, VA (I'll save that explanation for another post) so I took inspiration from real estate listings from there.

Alright alright I know there is supposed to be one bathroom, but I simply can't tolerate that in a house with 6+ residents. I can't. There was a possible contradiction in the descriptions of "the single shared bathroom" that I used as an excuse to add a 3/4 bath, and I threw in a powder room for free. Because technically there is still only one full bathroom! But seriously with that many women over 30 most of them probably have IBS or chronic constipation and I'm not making them all share a toilet.

Officially we only have 4 bedrooms listed in text: Blue's, Persephone's, Maura's, and Calla and Jimi's shared one. Everyone else gets rooms that don't qualify as bedrooms via Virginia residential building codes (such as the attic, obviously, which falls below the combined ceiling height and square footage requirements). That really just leaves Orla unaccounted for but I'll get to that later. Other aunts and friends seem to visit during the day and live somewhere else, because in The Raven King only Jimi and Orla were described as needing to move out of the house during the demon stuff.

I designed the entire interior floorplan before I even touched the exterior, so there's a few issues, like how I'm totally missing shutters on the windows that functionally need them most. 🫶 I didn't feel like making the windows smaller to fit them, and I could have added faux-shutters but I think those are stupid. 😘

First floor

"This house is lovely. So many walls. So, so many walls," Malory said as Blue entered the living room a little later.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Chapter 30

Right off the bat, we have an insane number of doors and walls. Old colonial houses are pretty much the opposite of open concept. Functionally I believe that's because it's easier to control heat with closed off rooms, but Virginia is not particularly cold so idk. As for the number of doors, I mean....😤😤😤 I prefer archways/doorless frames in small high-traffic spaces, but every time I thought I could get away with it Maggie would specifically describe doors opening and closing (For example BL,LB Ch 41 gives the reading room double doors, and even the living room gets one in Ch 11. What kind of living room needs a door???). I'm actually missing one of the doorways described in canon, but if you know which one I'm talking about I DARE you to find a place to put that thing!! But I digress.

“Mom," she said as she jumped down the crooked stairs.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

I'm liberally using "crooked" to establish the corner turn stairs. Blue steadies herself on the stair railing when she identifies Gansey for the first time (TRB Ch 15), so I wanted the stairs to have good visual access to visitors. It also sort of has a feng shui-ish effect of separating the public and private energy zones in the house. If that statement made zero sense, I think one of us doesn't know enough about feng shui 👀 and it might be me.

I'm also using that quote to establish Maura's room downstairs, if Blue generally expects to find her mother there, but mostly because everything else was upstairs and it was getting hard to fit. Granted, at one point Blue leads the boys "up the stairs to Maura's bedroom" (TDT Epilogue) but since they were just arriving at 300 Fox Way those stairs could easily be the outdoor ones. There's a handful of little things to support me here, such as Adam grabbing a scrying bowl from Maura's room to use in the reading room (BL,LB Ch 41) implying that her room was the closest place to find one. And speaking of Maura's room-

Calla was overwhelmed by how much shit Maura had in her room at 300 Fox Way, and she told Blue this.

... The mess was taking years from her life. ... Maura liked chaos.

... The psychic hotline rang in the room next door. Calla's concentration fluttered away.

- Blue Lily, Lily Blue, Prologue

Maura is my favorite hypocrite. She claims to detest clutter (TRB Ch 34) and yet her room is literally described as chaos. She probably treats her room like a college student and moves the furniture every time she gets bored/stressed. Thus, I gave her the most insane furniture configuration I could think of while still matching all the contents described.

The phone ringing next door might imply that she neighbors the phone/sewing/cat room, but that area is pretty well described and Maura's room is never mentioned there in any other instance. That leaves us with the kitchen phone (TRB Ch 27) which I put in the hallway with kitchen access as a compromise so it would technically still be in a room next to Maura's.

In the reading room, the man looked around with clinical interest. His gaze passed over the candles, the potted plants, the incense burners, the elaborate dining room chandelier, the rustic table that dominated the room, the lace curtains, and finally landed on a framed photograph of Steve Martin.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 13

There are so many quotes about the reading room that I just don't feel like citing them, but other details include the mismatched chairs, the shelves, doors etc. It's also described specifically as Maura's "front room" (TRB Prologue) so it's one of the cornerstones that I designed the rest of the layout around. Because of the plants, it makes sense that this room would be south-facing too. (Although idk how much light they get with the wraparound porch awning in the way. Oops lol!)

The outside suddenly seemed vivid in comparison to the dim kitchen. The April-bright trees pressed against the windows of the breakfast area, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue Stormed into 300 Fox Way's kitchen and began a one-sided interrogation with Artemus, who was still hidden behind the closed storage closet door.

- The Raven King, Chapter 9

Likewise, I'm using the particularly dim kitchen to place it on the north side, where we also know there's trees in the backyard.

I'll say the kitchen layout is weirder than it strictly needed to be because in the Virginia homes I referenced I adored all the strange kitchens, especially with old timey 'servants area' vibes where laundry kitchen and pantry are all connected. Instead of a kitchen island, they get one of those rolling kitchen carts which I doubled as a bar cart for the drinks they have in the living room.

The kitchen has a doorway to the hall (TRB Ch 13) and the living room is within view when Blue's on the kitchen phone (Ch 27).

Speaking of chapter 27, that's when we get the description "The morning light through the windows turned the drinks a brilliant, translucent yellow." So I put the living room on the east side of the house, where the rising sun would cast really strong light like that.

Second Floor

When she woke up, her normally morning-bright room had the breath-held dimness of afternoon. In the next room over, Orla was talking to either her boyfriend or to one of the psychic hotline callers.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 3

Blue headed toward the red-painted door at the end of the hall. On her way, she had to pass the frenzy of activity in the Phone/Sewing/Cat Room and the furious battle for the bathroom. The room behind the red door belonged to Persephone, ...

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 11

Blue's room and the Phone/Sewing/Cat room are our cornerstones for this floor. In several examples we know that the Phone/Sewing/Cat room faces the street and has a window (TRB Ch 15, BL,LB Ch 4). While Blue's room is "morning-bright," we also get descriptions of guests at the front door "backlit by the evening sun," (TRB Ch 15) so once again we're probably talking about south windows if it's sunlit at both times of day.

Adam sat awkwardly on the edge of Blue's bed. It felt strange to have so easily gained access to a girl's bed- room. If you knew Blue at all, the room was unsurprising - canvas silhouettes of trees stuck to the walls, leaves hanging in chains from the ceiling fan, a bird with a talk bubble reading WORMS FOR ALL painted above a shelf cluttered with buttons and about nine different pairs of scissors. Against the wall, Blue self-consciously taped up the drooping branch on one of the trees.

- The Dream Thieves, Chapter 49

We get some great descriptions of Blue's room (especially TRB Ch 43), although the above one is my favorite (#wormsforall). Every piece of furniture is accounted for exactly as described except the desk which I added because it seemed practical, and Blue is nothing if not practical™.

Persephone's room is also very well-described, all the way down to the furniture and lighting placement (BL,LB Ch 4 and TRB Ch 11) and it's surprisingly similar to Blue's room, if not a bit smaller. Her room gets strong afternoon sunlight, so I put it on the south too (BL,LB Ch 43).

Calla and Jimi share a room that's also upstairs (TRK Ch 16). Because they are the only two who have to share a room, I have justified that it must be the "master bedroom" (sorry for using that term) and is far bigger than the other bedrooms. I managed to fit two queen beds in there, but some scholars [me] would argue that Jimi and Calla might also share a bed because they are in love. Can you prove me wrong? No, you can't.

As for the bathroom, remember when I mentioned a possible contradiction? Famously, Maura draws the ley line symbol in the steamed up shower door (TRB Ch 1). However, much later we get Maura, Orla, Calla and Jimi all sitting in the bathtub for some kind of ritual (TRK Ch 9). No matter how I picture it, I can't put 4 full grown women in a bathtub together without someone partially sitting on/spilling over the side. But that would be impossible in a combo bath/shower enclosed by glass doors!! Thus, I gave The Bathroom a nice tub and put a small shower in the en suite of Jimi and Calla's room. I know this is a stretch but I don't really care.

Attic

Blue had never been a big fan of the attic, even before Neeve moved in. Numerous slanting roof lines provided dozens of opportunities to hit your head on a sloping ceiling. Unfinished wood floorboards and areas patched with prickly plywood were unfriendly to bare feet. Summer turned the attic into an inferno.

... In one of the narrow dormers, two full-length, footed mirrors faced each other, reflecting mirrored images back and forth at each other in perpetuum.

- The Raven Boys, Chapter 34

Trying to fit the attic access in after everything in the second floor was my biggest challenge, because stairs normally take up a lot of space and you have to be careful about head room. I'm the end, I decided it was one of those fold out attic doors that you have to reach from the ceiling of the hallway. We might get a lot of instances of the attic door being opened (😤 seriously, Maggie... 😤) but technically a trap door in the ceiling is still a door!

Dormers pretty much cemented the French colonial style for me. And you know the drill by now: a hot room probably means a lot of sun, which means I give it a south facing window!

Mud Room/Cellar/Basement

This cellar has absolutely zero mention in the text, but my justification is based in the architecture. So far we've got a funky old colonial house, built without a garage, lots of walls etc. Especially in a low-income/semi-rural area, it's not crazy to assume that 300 Fox Way was built before most residents had refrigerators (1930s-40s). Besides iceboxes, a major way to keep food fresh was root cellars. Modern renovations for old homes convert these to concrete basements, but that's why the basement is so small and connects to the kitchen.

My headcanon is that Orla originally shared a room. Pick whoever you want: Maura, Blue or Persephone, any of them would easily be such a chaotic roommate that Orla snapped and in a fit of teen girl rage moved herself down to the crummy dark basement. Over time, she made efforts to glamorize it, such as a vintage dressing screen to hide the flood drainage pump. The privacy also allows her to bring boyfriends over, even sneaking them through the mud room.

This is really just my artistic license, but I swear it makes a surprising amount of sense in context. There's cases of Orla sneaking into the kitchen (easier if she has a back entrance) and she's almost always using the phone upstairs or in the kitchen (because a basement would get bad reception) even though her calls get kinda ~intimate.

Aaaaaand I think that's everything. Sorry it doesn't look like the photo from the wiki at all, but I couldn't find a source for it and Victorian style wasn't super common in the areas I researched. Let me know if I missed anything major! I'll probably cry myself to sleep if so.

[prettiestboytoy2]

You know what is hilarious? Pretty much since Covid there is silent crisis in commercial real estate. Those are offices and shops mostly.

In most metropolitan areas vacancy of those spaces is either close to 50% or already exceeded them. Despite that, prices of those spaces somehow increased and despite falling demand keep rising.

Such scenario is only possible due to the fact that people who own and menage those spaces, think that "Price-Demand" relationship should only apply to poor people and by that they mean that you should work for less when times are hard (they are one's causing hard times). Those particular landlords have no way to terrorize thier customers the way regular landlords do because thier customers are other corporations and companies.

This crisis could be solved overnight by decrease in price but this simply does not register to those people as an concept because they've been raised to belive that thier profits and assets can only go up and everyone but them should take a hit. But now economy is booming while they are left behind. Many urban areas in USA are becoming commercial deserts because no one can afford rent there.

And what is arguably even worse is that there are usually multiple regulations in place to prevent anyone from changing those office spaces into residential ones to prevent prices of housing from going down too.

If you noticed push by corporations to "bring workers back to the office", its because shareholders who are often balls deep in that commercial real estate make it happen. Hoping for increase of demand. Not realizing thier entire business model is completly outdated (and parasitic). So they keep accumulating the debt instead of lowering the prices because they will go bankrupt before they allow anything to become more affordable.

[racefortheironthrone]

Re zoning regulation reform: could you go into detail as what that would look like in terms of wiping the slate clean. I feel like it would be better to go the houston route and just be zoning free

You do not want to go the Houston route.

Houston may claim to be "zoning-free" - and to be fair, it doesn't have some of the more common regulations on land use, or density, or height restrictions (more on this in a minute) - but the reality is far more complicated and the status quo is not one that's friendly to the interests of working-class and poor residents, or to the possibility of sustainable urbanism.

The answer to NIMBYism isn't to abolish all regulations and let the free market rip, it's to surgically target zoning, planning, and litigation that is used against affordable housing, public/social housing, mass transit, clean energy, and walkable neighborhoods, and to replace it with new forms of regulation that encourage these forms of development.

So let's take take these categories in order.

Zoning

As I tell my Urban Studies students, zoning is both one of the most subtle and yet comprehensive ways in which the state shapes the urban environment - but historically it has been used almost exclusively in the interests of racism and classism. Reforming zoning requires going over the code with a fine-toothed comb to single out all the many ways in which zoning is used to make affordable housing impossible:

The most important one to tackle first is density zoning and building heights limitations. The former directly limits how many buildings you can have per unit of land (usually per acre), while the latter limits how big the buildings can be (expressed either as the number of stories or the number of feet, or as both). Closely associated with these zoning regulations are minimum lot size regulations (which regulate how much land each individual parcel of real estate has to cover, and thus how many how many housing units can be built in a given area), and lot coverage, setbacks, and minimum yard requirements (which limit how much square footage of a lot can be built on, and what kinds of structures you can build).

the other big one is use zoning. To begin with, we need to phase out "single use" zoning that designates certain areas as exclusively residential or commercial or industrial (a major factor that drives car-centric development, makes walkable neighborhoods impossible, and discourages the "insula" style apartment building that has been the core of urbanism since Ancient Rome) in favor of "mixed use" zoning that allows for neighborhoods that combine residential and commercial uses. Equally importantly, we need to eliminate single-family zoning and adopt zoning rules that allow for a mix of different kinds of housing (ADUs, duplexes and triplexes, rowhouses/terraced houses, apartment buildings).

finally, the most insidious zoning requirements are seemingly incidental regulations. For example, mandatory parking minimums not only prioitize car-dependent versus transit-oriented development but also eat up huge amounts of space per lot. The most nakedly classist is "unrelated persons" zoning, which is used to prevent poorer people from subdividing houses into apartments, which zaps young people who are looking to be roommates and older people looking to finance their retirements by running boarding houses or taking in lodgers, as well as landlords looking to convert houses from owner-occupied to rental properties.

So I would argue that the goal of reform should be not to eliminate zoning, but rather to establish model zoning codes that have been stripped of the historical legacies of racism and classism.

Planning

Similar to how zoning shouldn't be abolished but reformed, the correct approach to planning isn't to abolish planning departments wholesale, but to streamline the planning process - because the problem is that right now the planning process is too slow, which raises the costs of all kinds of development (we're focusing on housing right now, but the same holds true for clean energy projects), and it allows NIMBY groups to abuse the public hearings and environmental review process to block projects that are good for the environment and working-class and poor people but bad for affluent homeowners.

As those Ezra Klein interviews indicate, this is beginning to change due to a combination of reforms at both the state and federal level to speed up the CEQA and EPA environmental review process in a number of ways. For example, one change that's being made is to require planning agencies and environmental agencies to report on the environmental impact of not doing a project as well, to shift the discussion away from petty complaints about noise and traffic and "neighborhood character" (i.e, coded racism and classism) and towards real discussions of social and environmental justice.

At the same time, more is needed - especially to reform the public hearing process. While originally intended by Jane Jacobs and other activists in the 1970s as a democratic reform that would give local communities a voice in the planning process, "participatory planning" has become a way for special interests to exercise an unaccountable veto power over development. Because younger, poorer and more working class, and communities of color often don't have time to attend public hearing sessions during the workday, these meetings become dominated by older, whiter, and richer residents who claim to speak for the whole of the community.

Moreover, because community boards are appointed rather than elected and public hearings operate on a first-come-first-serve basis, an unrepresentative minority can create a false impression of community opposition by "stacking the mike" and dialing up their level of militancy and aggression in the face of elected officials and civil servants who want to avoid controversy. (It's a classic case of diffuse versus concentrated interests, something that I spend a lot of classroom time making sure that my students learn.)

Again, the point shouldn't be to eliminate public hearings and other forms of participatory planning, but to reform them so that they're more representative (shifting public hearings to weekends and allowing people to comment via Zoom and other online forums, conducting surveys of community opinion, using a progressive stack and requiring equal time between pro and anti speakers, etc.) and to streamline the review process for model projects in categories like affordable housing, clean energy, mass transit, etc.

Litigation

Alongside the main planning process, there is also a need to reform the litigation process around development. In addition to traditional tort lawsuits from property owners claiming damage to their property from development, a lot of planning and environemntal legislation allows for private groups to sue over a host of issues - whether the agency followed the correct procedures, whether it took into account concerns about this impact or that impact, and so forth.

As we saw with the case of Berkeley NIMBYs who used CEQA to block student housing projects over environmental impacts around "noise," this process can be used to either block projects outright, or even if the NIMBYs eventually lose in court, to draw out the process until projects fall apart due to lack of funding or the proponents simply lose their patience and give up.

This is why we're starting to see significant reforms to both state and federal legislation to streamline the litigation process. The categorical exemptions from review that I discussed above also have implications for litigation - you can't sue over reviews that didn't happen - but there are also efforts to speed up the litigation process through reducing what counts as "administrative record" or by putting a nine-month cap on court proceedings.

Again, this is an area where you have to be very surgical in your changes. Especially when the politics of the issue divide environmental groups and create odd coalitions between labor, business, climate change activists, and anti-regulation conservatives, you have to be careful that the changes you are making benefit affordable housing, clean energy, mass transit and the like, not oil pipelines and suburban sprawl.

[attorneyreal]

[sirdolraan]

Investments

(( DWC August 2024 Day 6, Corruption/Fulfillment, CW: None; @daily-writing-challenge ))

"Alright, here's your thirty healing potions, twelve mana potions, twenty anti-toxins, three invisibility potions, and the 12-phial variety pack, freshly mixed and guaranteed potent!" Bindle's smile gleamed in the morning sun peaking over Dalaran's walls as he handed the crate over to Dolraan.

"You're in an awfully chipper mood, considering that it looks like we're going into another war against the forces of evil, Bindle. Business is booming, I gather?" Dolraan asked, hefting the crate of valuable supplies.

"I suppose you could say that, but the potion making business isn't what has a smile in my face and a gleam in my gold fillings my dear man. I suppose it might even be fair to warn you that you might be needing a new supplier, as I am about to be a -very- rich goblin!" Bindle replied, pulling out his suspenders with his big green thumbs and rocking on his feet.

"Oh Bindle, please tell me you haven't gone all in on some cockamamie investment scheme again." Dolraan sighed. "Don't you remember the every other time you've tried to step away from what you're really very, very good at and tried to get rich quick?"

Bindle shook his head and tutted Dolraan. "Tsk tsk Sir Sa'naan, you are speaking to a goblin's goblin, and while I may have had a few stumbles here and there in the world of business, I know a sure thing when I see it!"

"Like that time you got the exclusive trading rights to Nethergarde Keep three days before the Iron Horde opened the portal and sacked it?"

"I was able to recoup a bit of investment by selling rubble pieces!"

"How about the time you blew your savings setting up that bootleg arcwine network right before the Arcan'dor bloomed and saved the Shaldorei from their addiction?"

"Hey, that still makes a hundred gold a year, it's not nothing!"

"The Silithus Tour Association?"

"How was I supposed to know that everyone would declare the area off-limits to tourists just because of a big sword?!"

"The 'Visit Lovely Teldrassil' tourist thing right before the War of the Thorns? The warehouse full of "I Heart My Banshee Warchief" merchandise? And let us not forget the attempt to sell anima to the living, when it loses potency as soon as it crosses the planar boundary!"

"I wanted to promote peace, the fact anima is so valuable there and so worthless here is stupid, and SHE SEEMED BULLET PROOF!" Bindle started to shout, exasperated.

"Bindle, you're a friend, so please understand this is coming from a friend, you are a -fantastic- alchemist and spellcaster, you can get rich doing that, but not if you keep spending your money like this, you have worse luck than Janosis for Light's sake!"

"I don't want to be alchemist rich, I want to be investor rich, it's different! You wouldn't understand, holy boy. We'll see who has the last laugh, because it's too late for you to get ahead of me on this one. Like you said, there's a war brewing, and Dalaran's gonna be in the middle of it! Predicting this, I have spent the last several years quietly acquiring real-estate in this glorious city! You are looking at the owner of twenty-two percent of the commercial and residential real estate in the magical city of Dalaran, and when the gold starts flowing in, plenty of it's coming my way, or my name isn't Bindle Glintgold!"

Dolraan closed his eyes for a moment, saying a prayer in his mind. "I hope for all our sakes you're right. I should get these potions where they need to be."

"And warn the council of yet another portent of doom to toss on the pile," he thought to himself, leaving Bindle to preen in the street about finally being in position to get what's coming to him.

[thesimscurator]

For Rent Update to Career World is Live!

The For Rent update to Career World is here! Before I link it, though, a quick:

CAUTION: There is a serious bug in the game right now that causes irreversible save file corruption. The causes of it are unclear, but it seems to have something to do with residential rentals. I actually GOT this bug while doing this update, and had to scrap two weeks’ worth of work on the update and start over completely from scratch by downloading the previous version of Career World from my own Tumblr—because once it’s in, it can’t be fixed. Luckily, I did not get it on the second attempt (I checked obsessively as I was going), but I don’t know: A) why I got it the first time, B) why I didn’t get it the second time, or C) how to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Because of this, I have not opted to overwrite the previous version of the save file with the new version as I usually do. Until this bug is fixed (please go click “Me Too” on the bug report, it’ll encourage the devs to give this more attention), I want people to have the option to play with or without rental residential lots, knowing that there may be more risk of save file corruption by playing the version with rental residentials. To be clear: neither of these two versions of Career World is currently corrupted. I have uploaded clean saves for you to download. But since I don’t know what triggers the bug, the save may become corrupted as you play, and it looks like this is marginally more likely to occur in the version that has been updated to incorporate For Rent. You will know you have triggered the corruption if you begin to see exclamation points over lots instead of the usual lot identification symbols.

If you get this bug as you play, do not save your game! And perhaps even more importantly, do not close the save you were just playing and click into another; exit the game entirely. There is some evidence that this can spread from one save file to another if you play several save files in the same session. There is, I repeat, no fix for this. The only thing you can do with a corrupted save is restore old versions until you find one that doesn’t have the corruption yet. In the case of Career World, you can always come back to this page and re-download a clean copy from this website.

That was the important info for everybody, but for a few players, I must also give the usual . . .

IMPORTANT MOD NOTE: If you use Frankk’s Language Barriers mod, you must download and install the latest version of that mod before opening the save file in order to retain language data for Tomaru, the newest language.

OK, now that we’ve covered the important need-to-knows, here are links to:

Career World updated for For Rent

Career World only updated as far as Horse Ranch—i.e. without any content from For Rent

Both are also now linked in the main post.

Phew! Alright, now we can get to the details of:

What’s New?

Rental residentials, of course! The thing to know about them first off: there is another, far more minor bug in the game right now that hard-codes the names of all rental residential lot types as whatever EA originally called the lot rather than any new names the player might have given that lot. So, many of the existing apartment buildings—which used to have names that told you what they were, like “Sunny Retirement Village” or “FutureSim Employee Housing”—have reverted to having unchangeable informationless names, or worse: misleading and defunct names, like the house with a basement rental in Britechester that has gone back to being called “Pepper’s Pub” even though I moved Pepper’s Pub and it already has that exact name on a totally separate lot (ditto for the now-duplicated “Thebe Estate”). This is a mess. I will fix it if they ever change this bug/feature/whatever it is, but at the moment, please know that rental residentials have weird names that I can’t change, and the real identity of the building is probably buried several clicks deep in the unit descriptions.

In order to combat this somewhat for players who are willing to read these Tumblr updates, here’s a list of rental residentials with specific gameplay identities that I think should be more obvious than they are with the locked lot names:

Special Rental Residentials:

1) The apartment building on the FutureSim campus (Mirage Canyon) in Oasis Springs is employee housing for employees of FutureSim Labs (the scientist career employer), or its subsidiaries Obscure Logistics (the engineering employer) and Rainy Day Entertainment (the tech guru employer), and their families. If you do not have a scientist, engineer, or tech guru in the family, you are not eligible to move into these apartments.

2) The trailer park in Bedrock Strait in Oasis Springs is a retirement community. We don’t want any young whipper-snappers here, nor any of these go-getter old folks who still work and will just remind us of the daily grind we’re trying to forget. Don’t even dream of moving here unless you are 1) an elder, and 2) retired. And no live-in children or grandchildren, either! If you can’t remember the golden age of landlines, find somewhere else to live!

3) I did a little playtesting of the solar farm in Oasis Springs for this version of the save file, and discovered that A) you couldn’t even get to any of the solar panels to maintain them the way this was originally set up, and B) it wasn’t actually possible to make money from selling electricity—the lot value was too high relative to the payback from the solar panels. But, I discovered, it is possible to have the electric payback exceed your bills if the lot is changed to a rental residential with the living quarters set as the one and only unit and the solar farm itself as common area. So that’s what I did: I fixed the solar panels so you can access them, and set the place as a rental with only one unit. You can now functionally play as a solar plant operator. And of course, the Landgraabs are your landlords. They do own the whole electric utility, after all. (This is also now true for the power plant in Evergreen Harbor and the hill house/micro wind farm in the Windslar neighborhood of Windenburg.)

4) The cluster of huts at the top of the hill in Sulani’s Ohan’ali Town is an eco-living commune that blends traditional Sulani ways of life with new green technologies. Residents live in separate off-the-grid huts with little more than bedrooms and kitchens, powered by the commune’s on-site solar panels, windmills, solar hot water heaters, and dew collectors. In the collective space, however, you’ll find a thriving taro patch, a communal art studio, game tables, a full bar, a small basketball court, chickens and insects to raise, a roadside stand for selling the commune’s produce and crafts, and lots of opportunities to interact with fellow members of this intentional community. One of the huts is generally reserved for students on study abroad who have come to learn about Sulani culture through this communal living experience—see the List of Study Abroad Opportunities (now updated for Tomarang!) for details.

5) The defunct motel in StrangerVille was bought for an almost-literal song by an eclectic throuple of artists who are very flexible about making changes proposed by tenants. Currently, all the former hotel rooms are just in the state they were when the place was a hotel, but if you move in here and want to—say—combine two units into a larger, single unit like they have done with their own, they’d be open to that. If you want to add a rooftop space to your top-floor unit, or even create some kind of wonky townhouse by linking two units that are directly above one another with a rooftop space, they’re open to that, too. If you want to install blackout curtains over all the windows, paper the walls with conspiracy-theory notes, and run secret experiments in your former hotel room, go nuts! They’ll really let you do just about anything. All you need to do is play as the owners for a minute to change these things before moving your sim in.

6) The big house where Pepper’s Pub originally was in Britechester is just that—a big house. They rent out their converted basement to university students, but this isn’t really an apartment building. The understanding with this one is that whoever lives in the above-ground house portion will always be the property owner and not just a renter—and in order to make this true, I have had to add an owning family to that section of the property, which means the college administrator Jade Rosa has been house-sitting for all this time has returned! You now have the option to dive right in to professoring or college administration with the new family that now lives there (thanks to Ivelle_creates for making the couple).

7) Both the large piazza in Tartosa where the Thebe Estate used to be, AND the apartment building at Ro Kaya Rockside in Tomarang, are mixed-use areas with commercial establishments on the ground floor (and sometimes into the upper floors) with apartments above. This is not exactly possible yet in The Sims 4, but several of the businesses are still usable—you can buy wedding dresses off the mannequins in the Tartosan bridal shop, for example, because that gameplay is tied to the mannequin object and not the lot type. Mostly, however, these commercial areas are designed with gameplay as their associated workers in mind, allowing you to live in an apartment but do work tasks in one of the on-site businesses (EX: be a cosmotologist who works in the on-lot salon).

(And a quick sidenote on the piazza in Tartosa: there is the potential for A TREMENDOUS NUMBER of apartment units on this lot. I have only designated the three that are occupied as actual units for now, because I was already running up against the per-save-file unit limit, but if you want to move your own sim in, just pick whichever of the many empty spaces suits your fancy, create the perfect apartment for your sim, and designate it as a new unit. Or, if you are really into furnishing/interior decoration and you want to turn this into basically an entire town, you can just bulldoze the existing rental residentials in other worlds, use the bb.increaserentalunitcap on cheat to allow yourself all the space you need, and go to literal town.)

8) Tam Nang Sands in Tomarang is a resort hotel. The place is set up for short-term rentals only, and is really meant to be played from the property owner perspective, to create a faux active career as a hotel manager. While it is possible to play from the tenant perspective and “stay here” on “vacation,” the game does not register it as a vacation and will make you sell your current residence in order to move here. I don’t really recommend doing that unless you live with someone else and are planning on going on vacation without them; then you can use the “split household” feature to send part of your household for a temporary stay while the other part of the household holds down the fort. If the Sims team ever release an honest-to-goodness hotel system, I will update this, but in the meantime this is better played as the manager.

9) Isda Riverfront in Tomarang is the site of the Linh family compound. While most Tomarani people have abandoned this traditional mode of housing the entire extended family in a walled compound with central courtyard and a special family spirit house, the Linh family is determined to stick to it, no matter how many foreigners marry in. And that, of course, means that unless you’re marrying in, you may not move here. Marry in or be born in, that’s the deal.

10) The colonial mansion on the former site of The Screaming Gecko in Tomarang has been set “for rent” so it can be used as a private second home by a wealthy sim. One of the new and unique things the rental system now allows us to do is have sims own multiple homes and just swap between them at will; all you have to do is set all the homes you want to own as residential rental lots, assign all the rooms to a single unit in each, and then buy all the homes as a property owner. Since property owners pay no rent to live in a property they own, voila! You can live that snowbird life and just move to Tomarang when you get tired of winter, then move back to your original house (or any other vacation homes you own) when you need a change of scenery. I seriously considered having Judith Ward buy this house, since there is text in the tiger sanctuary about her having a particular connection to it, but ultimately decided I wanted you, the player, to have the opportunity to buy this with whatever sim you’re playing—whether Judith Ward herself or any other. And bonus, you can actually use this method to play out tax-evasion-by-the-wealthy storylines, because the property taxes on a big, expensive mansion that you own outright are astronomical, but taxes on “rental” properties you “manage” is just a flat $50 per unit per day, which is often far less than what you would have been paying on an owned house. This pack introduced lots of new paths to crime, for rich and poor alike!

All in all, there are 22 rental residentials in the save file now, with a total of 90 units (so you have 10 to play around with still!), the overwhelming majority of which are just empty and waiting for you to select and move your own sims in. If you choose to live in one of these buildings and want to have more neighbors, just move a few in from the gallery or elsewhere in the save.

And a quick note about a choice I didn’t make: I have not split any of the boarding houses in Copperdale into separate units for different students, because having a whole bunch of high school students with common interests in the same household is what allows you to control them as a group at the school and have them engage in active club activities together. This was half the point of creating the boarding-house system for Copperdale in the first place, so they are always going to be giant, unwieldy households full of sims. Embrace the challenge! You can play single high school students in any old save file. The same goes for the three movie set households added in the last update: all those sims need to be in the same household and simultaneously controllable for the gameplay to function correctly, so they have not been subdivided.

Tomarang Makeover:

As with some previous worlds, I’ve tried to lean in to the differing neighborhood identities by making Morensong bustling, crowded-together, modern, and rundown, while Koh Sahpa has a much more chill, spread-out, traditional, and upscale vibe. Morensong is overrun with street cats (i.e. it has “cat hangout” as a neighborhood trait), while Koh Sahpa has “peace and quiet” as its neighborhood trait. Both neighborhoods of Tomarang, however, have “mold” as a world challenge, because the air is just so heavy with moisture—the only exceptions to this are lots with absolutely no indoor space whatsoever, and therefore sufficient airflow to prevent mold growth. But if there’s an interior, there’s going to be mold.

The limited number of lots presented a challenge for filling Morensong with businesses and activities, but I think I did pretty well, considering. Its four lots are split half-and-half between residential and community, but one of the residentials is a mixed-use building with businesses on the ground floor, including a functional street market where you can play as a vendor if you’re living in the building. And I managed to pack quite a lot into the two community lots, as well! The one currently set as a thrift and bubble tea shop can have its lot type changed to karaoke bar, bar, lounge, or nightclub at will, depending on which spaces you want to focus on, what events you’d like thrown there, etc. And for the other lot, simmers made so many wonderful and creative alternatives to the bland national park that I couldn’t pick just one, so I picked four. I have turned this into one of the Eco Lifestyle four-in-one community space lots, with each of its states a completely different venue by a different simmer. If you want to keep it as a botanical garden, just leave it on the “community garden” state and you will have a fuller version with actual plants for your sims to tend (all flowers and tropical plants), spirit houses, and a picnic area—great if you’re playing as a botanist or a florist. If you’re some kind of vendor who doesn’t live at Ro Kaya Rockside and you want a more playable version of the night market, just set it to “marketplace” and now you’ll have easily editable stands at which to sell your wares. If you want a community center with tons to do, set it to “makerspace,” and if you’re looking for a non-rabbit-hole temple / Tomarani wedding venue, set it to “community space.”

In Koh Sahpa, I played around a bit with the new career and lifestyle possibilities unlocked by the new rental residential venue type. Three of the five lots out here are rental residentials, but none of the three are classic apartment buildings or townhouses like you’ll find in Morensong. One is a luxury hotel, where playing as the property owner means keeping the guests happy and the place in tip-top shape with very short leases and lots of rules. Another is a traditional family compound, where your “tenants” (or your “landlord,” depending on which household you’re playing) are actually your family members, and the point is to do lots of gathering and socializing in the common space, throw potlucks every night to represent big family dinners, and all pitch in to help when a maintenance or emergency event hits. In this “rental,” there are no rules and the leases are basically forever. The final “rental” is only marked as a rental residential to enable you to buy it as a second home—once you’ve purchased it, all you have to do is turn your own home into a rental residential and you can move between your two houses at will. In addition to these rental residentials, a straight-up vacation rental and a spa round out the primarily vacation-oriented neighborhood of Koh Sahpa.

Of course, this is a career-focused save, so a lot of the choices I made with Tomarang’s lots—like the ones described above—were career driven. But identifying careers for Tomarang was a bit tricky. For Rent certainly came with new ways to make money, a new part-time career, and several interesting gameplay features that fold particularly well into existing careers . . . but interestingly, none of these new features were particularly location-specific. You can be a landlord or a handyperson anywhere, and the same goes for blackmail or break-ins. So while I made many additions to the Career Chart as a result of this pack, none of these new career options are limited to Tomarang. Instead, Tomarang has joined the lists of especially good places to pursue several other pre-existing careers, like fisherman (I mean, those waters!).

That said, I did make Tomarang an especially great spot to pursue anything that jives well with vending your wares at the Night Market (and the many extensions to it I added), so being a freelance crafter, artist, food stall owner, fisherman, gardener, florist, jeweler, or anything else that consists primarily of making or collecting small items to sell will be particularly rewarding when playing in Tomarang. I had also listed a new ministry of labor career as a masseur back when the Spa Day refresh came out, but never had much of a dedicated space for it. Now, with Tomarang, I decided to lean into the well-regarded tradition of Thai massage by including three different venues of varying quality where your masseur sim can give commercial massage in this world: a seedy downmarket massage parlor on the Ro Kaya Rockside lot, a mid-tier venue at the historical spa in downtown Koh Sahpa, and an upscale open-air massage area at the four-star Tam Nang Sands Resort Hotel. Plus, there’s a private massage room in the colonial mansion, so if you’re playing as a massage therapist and someone moves in there, feel free to invite yourself over and charge them for private massage services.

On the subject of things at Ro Kaya Rockside being seedy, I chose the building I did for that lot because the builder, eenitmartini (Matinee on YouTube—go check her out!) made this absolutely fantastic criminal lair/hideout/underground nightclub as part of her building, so all credit to her for the fact that there is now an “Illegal Gambling Ring” club in this save file, hosted at Ro Kaya Rockside and open only to criminals, secret agents, and undercover cops. This means that, while not exclusive, Tomarang is also now an especially good place to be a criminal—which is great, because the For Rent pack enabled me to create a plethora of new specialties within the criminal career, including things like “B&E specialist” and “blackmailer” (see the Career Chart for details).

As usual, I have also used the T.O.O.L. mod to add extra activities to the open parts of the world—most notably, I added several extra stalls to the night market, so you can play there as a vendor. You’ll note that most of them do not have sales tables/food stalls at the front of the tent; this is because, as I was testing, I discovered that you can’t actually sell anything using these objects unless the game knows you own them, so you’ll have to bring your own and place it from your sim’s inventory for these spaces to be functional. There are two that are already complete: Alon Sadya’s food stall in the main part of the market, and Chánh Linh’s fish stall on the other side of the buildings, over near the public toilets. These stalls are completely functional for these individuals, but will not be for anyone else unless you have the owners remove those key objects so you can replace them with others that belong to your active household.

Townie Updates:

Vanesha Cahyaputri, poster child for the pack and model landlord, is now running a four-star hotel in Koh Sahpa! She has quite the job trying to keep her little sister from breaking into people’s hotel rooms to snoop, in addition to keeping the buffet table stocked with local delicacies, making drinks for guests and offering them massages when they emerge from their rooms, and of course keeping up with maintenance and bookings.

The extended members of the Linh-Sadya clan now live in a traditional Tomerani family compound that has allowed me to split them into three households instead of two. They routinely throw big potluck-style family dinners in their shared courtyard. The elder patriarchs have both retired from their more demanding careers and are now in relaxing part-time jobs that cater to their interests—namely, fisherman for Chánh (complete with functional night market food stall!) and handyperson for Arturo. Their elder daughter Liên and her husband Alon both work in Morensong, where Liên makes over sims at the salon at Ro Kaya Rockside and Alon runs a night market street grill. Auntie Thi is still a secret agent, but as part of her work she has now infiltrated an illegal gambling ring in Morensong and is trying to uncover secrets at their weekly poker night. She also adopted a new cat, Bub II, a toyger who is a smaller, more approachable version of the tigers that are Tomarang’s special animal. All members of the extended Linh family now know learnable recipes for Vietnamese and Selvadoradian dishes, reflecting their mixed heritage.

The Bun Ma family have established themselves as fixtures at Ro Kaya Rockside, Morensong’s shadier district. Bua runs a hole-in-the-wall noodle soup place, Nin gives massage at various locations around Tomarang, and Kasem runs the illegal gambling ring under the building that Thi has infiltrated—in between break-ins and expert hacking of various trust funds. Yes, you wouldn’t expect it from the sweet-faced young father of an adorable toddler, but that’s part of what makes him such an effective criminal.

But wait, there’s more! A few sims outside of Tomarang have also been updated:

Eliza Pancakes has become much more investigative since becoming a cop. Some people might even call her nosy. Kasem had better hope she never uncovers any of his secrets.

Katrina Caliente took the scads of money she has gotten from selling expensive Selvadoradian artifacts to museums, bought the other three condos in her building, knocked the whole building down, and built a modern desert villa for herself, her two daughters, her dog, and whatever boy toy she’s currently entertaining (still Don, at the moment). She was tired of sharing space, and there are more than enough apartments in Oasis Springs, anyway.

Geoffrey Landgraab got tired of playing secret agent and has returned to what he really always has been: an electric company mogul who owns and operates power plants around the worlds. It’s up to him to fill job vacancies in these plants by “hiring” onsite managers, keeping them happy, and handling maintenance on the plants. What is more, at the same time that he realized he was only fooling himself about the secret agent thing, he also realized he was only fooling himself about being family-oriented, because let’s face it: he disowned one of his sons, the other one is evil, and his wife is a criminal. Instead, he has decided to focus his love and attention outward to the world by re-branding himself as a generous philanthropist. He now regularly attends charity benefit parties, gives to online charities, says yes to anyone who calls him asking for a donation, volunteers his time, and will even go on sprees where he goes around just handing money to random sims on the street. Good thing he has so much that he could live off just investments for the rest of his life.

SimTube star Dustin Broke is running out of material. His jokes, memes, and dances have gotten a little dated. Over time, he has become—well—cringe.

Judith Ward has adopted a tiger (and given a boatload more money to the tiger sanctuary, besides!), as per her lore in the new pack. Her in-house handyman is also now in the actual handyperson career. It’s good to be the queen!

The university administrator who had Jade Rosa house-sitting for so long has returned from the family vacation she took to Tartosa to show her kids their father’s homeland. The family is now happily reinstalled in their big fancy Britechester home, back to work as Dean of Admissions and adjunct art professor, respectively, at the University of Britechester, and back to charging Jade rent for her basement apartment underneath their house. If you’re looking to play either of the advanced branches of the Education career, they are now an option.

The group of salarypersons I downloaded originally as unhoused NPCs in order to give Kado Akiyama some co-workers to do karaoke with have now moved into houses on his own street! While I left most units empty in the places I converted to rental residentials, I did feel kinda weird about leaving an entire street’s worth of stand-alone houses empty except for the Akiyama family—it was just a little too post-apocalyptic for my taste. So since I already had this Mt.Komorebi-based club, I figured I’d turn its other members into neighbors and integrate them into the community a little more.

For users of Frankk’s Language Barriers mod, which is a supported mod in this save file, I have updated the native languages of some previously-existing townies for the new inclusion of Tomaru. Before this pack came out, I used Komorebigo as the stand-in for all languages originating from Eastern Asia writ large—now, I have separated it out into Komorebigo for East Asian languages (not only Japanese but also Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Mongolian, etc.) and Tomaru for Southeast Asian languages (Vietnamese, Thai, Tagalog, Malay, etc.). So now, for example, the Filipino sim Jules Rico, who shipped with the Eco Lifestyle expansion, is natively bilingual in Simlish and Tomaru (previously, I’d had him set as natively bilingual in Simlish and Komorebigo). So there have been a few alterations to townies like that. I hope to get to do more updates like this in the future as the Sims team diversifies the worlds on offer and Frankk—who absolutely makes my game with this beautiful mod—continues to expand the language offerings of the Sims universe.

Other stuff that has changed:

I took that excellent new object that looks like a “for sale” sign and stuck it outside every unoccupied house in this save file. I just thought it was a nice touch.

While I was working on this update, I saw a YouTube video that reminded me what a great object the photo booth from High School Years was, and realized I was under-utilizing it. I have now gone back and scattered several more of these around, ensuring that each world has at least one photo booth somewhere. Thanks, lilsimsie!

Pressure cookers and kettles have been strategically added in places where I thought they were needed.

A few of the more run-down houses have the new “maintenance” lot challenge—and some have mold, as well!

I realized there was nowhere to get nectar in Tartosa (a serious oversight), so I scattered a bunch of bottles around the public areas of the large piazza that is the local rental residential in Porto Luminoso. They are just debug bottles and nothing special—for that, you’re going to have to help Hugo Villareal restart Tartosa’s defunct nectar-making business. I’m sure his bottles will be better than the debug ones.

All this updating took me into spring, so seasonal lots (including prom!) have been updated.

That’s it for this update! When you don’t randomly get the corruption bug, it’s actually quite enjoyable. I had a ton of fun doing all the building conversions and playtesting, and I hope you’ll have fun playing, too!

Download now: Career World For Rent update

[beardedmrbean]

One of the world’s biggest botnet networks, responsible for stealing close to $6 billion (£4.7bn), has been shut down following an international effort from law enforcement agencies.

The US Justice Department, which led the operation, said the 911 S5 botnet comprised more than 19 million hijacked devices, which were being used to facilitate cyber attacks, large-scale fraud, bomb threats and even child exploitation.

Chinese national YunHe Wang, 35, was arrested on 24 May on suspicion of creating and operating the 911 S5 botnet from his home in St. Kitts and Nevis.

“This Justice Department-led operation brought together law enforcement partners from around the globe to disrupt 911 S5,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland.

“This case makes clear that the long arm of the law stretches across borders and into the deepest shadows of the dark web, and the Justice Department will never stop fighting to hold cyber criminals to account.”

The FBI said the 911 S5 botnet infected computers in nearly 200 countries around the world, which were then controlled through 150 dedicated servers allegedly set up by Mr Wang.

An indictment unsealed on 24 May claimed that malware was used to infect and compromise millions of residential computers between 2014 and 2022, forming the botnet that was then able to carry out the cyber crimes.

Mr Wang allegedly sold access to the botnet to criminals, who then used it to bypass fraud detection systems in order to steal billions of dollars from financial institutions.

One target was reportedly a pandemic relief program in the US, which saw the botnet used to fraudulently make insurance claims from the hijacked IP addresses. More than half a million false claims resulted in losses of $5.9 billion for the programs, according to the FBI.

“Working with our international partners, the FBI conducted a joint, sequenced cyber operation to dismantle the 911 S5 Botnet – likely the world’s largest botnet ever,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“We arrested its administrator, Yunhe Wang, seized infrastructure and assets, and levied sanctions against Wang and his co-conspirators... We will work tirelessly to unmask and arrest the cybercriminals who profit from this illegal activity.”

Mr Wang made around $99 million by selling access to the botnet, according to the indictment, which he used to purchase real estate in the US, St. Kitts and Nevis, China, Singapore, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates.

Other assets subject to forfeiture are two BMWs, a Ferrari, a Rolls Royce and several luxury wristwatches.

“The conduct alleged here reads like it’s ripped from a screenplay: A scheme to sell access to millions of malware-infected computers worldwide, enabling criminals over the world to steal billions of dollars, transmit bomb threats, and exchange child exploitation materials – then using the scheme’s nearly $100 million in profits to buy luxury cars, watches, and real estate,” said Matthew Axelrod of the US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security.

“What they don’t show in the movies though is the painstaking work it takes by domestic and international law enforcement, working closely with industry partners, to take down such a brazen scheme and make an arrest like this happen.”

Mr Wang faces a maximum penalty of 65 years in prison if convicted.

[ubsvillasblog]

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[simsfaq]

Become an estate agent and choose from residential and valid community lots to list for sale. You can appraise residential lots, edit the details of lots, and gain a rating that will unlock more interactions.

Buyers can put in offers for properties, visit listed lots to check them out and get information about houses from both estate agents and sellers.

Once offers have been accepted, close on the property, pay up, and do with it what you wish! Move in, fix it up and re-sell it, rent it out...

Realtors will get a nice commission with each sale and you can track your sales to see your stats.

Recommended accompanying mods (aka optional): - Missy Hissy's Real Estate Career - Roommates and Apartments Fix Mod - My Social Clubs mod - NRaas Tagger

Please see the included documentation for more information on why these are recommended.