#i had to hunt down a bunch of CC

[ohhiplumbob]

🧟‍♀️🦇 Monster Tea Party ☕💀

[lucienarcheron]

SJM Live Event 9.26.2023

This was so fun! I loved the questions and rapport between Christian Lauren and Sarah. Below is a recap of what was discussed :)

She looks great!

They met years ago when SJM was still writing TOG (on book two)

COURTOFMASS helped narrow down the questions so AYY fandom

CL likes to see when people try to summarize the SJM’s books so they asked SJM to summarize CC

SJM’s palms were sweating (LOL) and she summarized it as “a mix of urban fantasy, fantasy, fantasy but modern world - kick ass snarky heroine who goes on a journey of self-discovery and healing with hot ass dudes and hot sex”

“Doesn’t look any family members in the eye” because of her smut (lol)

SJM doesn’t look at any theories. “I say no in the most loving way”

She doesn’t have social media on her phone so she’s not lurking around on the internet. She just wants to stay in her creative bubble. Every now and then a friend will send her something “lol look at this crazy theory” 

Creating CC / what was that like? 

It was a year-long process and ongoing as she was writing it. She’s back living in NYC and growing up in the city inspired a lot of this book. The idea came to her on a plane while on tour (possibly HOF) and she heard a piece of music, and saw Danika’s voice reaching out to Bryce. It’s when she burst into tears and Bryce came to life (she’s told us this before). She kind of worked in reverse as it unraveled in her mind. It’s something she thought about for years and it was her “fun” / side project. Over the course of a bunch of years, until TOG was starting to wrap up, she kept coming back to it. 

This was the story she wanted to tell because she loved Bryce and Hunt so much by that point. It was over the course of years daydreaming about this story and peeling away the images of the story. She had a lot of fun writing this book.

How does she keep track of the worlds she creates?

Publisher has an official bible which they constantly reference and she has an awesome editor that remembers all the important stuff and small moments/lines. She has a terrible memory in real life but SJM keeps all her stories occupied in her brain. Also keeps a bunch of notebooks.

We don’t know much about Hunt’s origin so are we going to find out about his parentage and background in the next book? 

We will learn more about Hunt in the next book. As for his well-being, “I make no promises. I’m not saying anything about anything.” LOL. “I will say that when I was working on HOSAB my editor and I were thinking about what was the most horrible thing that could happen.” Originally she considered him getting his wings chopped off again but her editor was like “what can be worse” and it’s the slave tattoo again. A new level of trauma for him to unload in the next book. “He has a lot of room to grow and shit to deal with it. Poor Hunt, he’s in for a journey coming up.” 

Will we find out more about the Autumn King? Does he connect to the Autumn Court?

Yes, we will learn more (about him not necessarily yes to the Autumn Court connection). “He’s not a father in any way.” In the process of writing and editing, he’s become one of her favorite to write because he’s so horrible and terrible. He’s capable of doing the right thing but doesn’t. He’s just a fucked up, horrible person. It’s a lot of fun to put opposing characters in a room to see what happens (bryce vs autumn king). It’s so satisfying for her to see a woman get one up on a douchey asshole.

Ruhn question - Some headcanon in the SJM fandom (that I didn’t quite catch but it made them all laugh) Something about Ruhn and vibrators? Sarah nearly fell down the stairs laughing about this. Now that she’s thinking about sweet Ruhn and where he is, she feels bad. (SARAH NO).

Talked about her writing process - Sometimes she will write a whole draft and realize it’s not what she wants. When she was working on HOFAS, she was going through some shit (didn’t want to elaborate) and she wrote the whole thing but then she didn’t like it. She was “meh” about it. She knew she hadn’t found the right story and it wasn’t good enough. She is very intense about her writing and wants to put her very best writing out there. 

There’s a little bit of an extra gap between the books because she had her baby but also she went through the first/second round of edits with other things going on that she wasn’t in the right space. She felt like she needed to throw out the whole thing and start over. She wrote a brand new draft in 4-5 weeks and then she found the story. A couple of scenes stayed from the first draft but almost of it is new. She never wants to put out any work she doesn’t believe in. “You can’t fix a blank page.” so it’s all part of the writing process for her. 

For example, the book she’s working on now - spent the whole day writing a scene but she doesn’t like it and it’s part of the process. 

What it was like waiting for readers to get to the ending of HOSAB / Another author asked about when she decided to crash her worlds together the author can’t fathom that Sarah didn’t plan this out from the beginning so when Aelin went through the worlds and Rhys sees her - “Are you some crazy genius where all these little breadcrumbs come into your brain or was it intentional?” 

Not a genius in any way. Talks about her son and how he says “I’m Sarah J Mask” - her kids keep her humble (lmao). Her son is obsessed with Taylor Swift so it doesn’t matter what she does, she’ll never be Taylor Swift so she’ll never be cool (lol). She loves Taylor and has so much respect for her and now she knows all her songs because they only listened to her in the car. She has the little golden book of TS for her son (LOL). In the eyes of her son, TS is the only creative genius and she is all for it. 

When it comes to the ending of this book, she knew for a while and knew these worlds overlapped before she started working on KOA. She knew Aelin was going to crash through these worlds and had already started daydreaming on CC. When she wrote that scene of Aelin, she wanted her to go through the ACOTAR world and see Feysand then had her go through the CC world. When she was really working on CC officially, while daydreaming about it, she got into this idea of the worlds and how they’re all technically connected. She remembered having this “what the fuck” moment of HOSAB’s ending. “I don’t know what’s happening to my body” and everything clicked in. While working on CC1, she was able to plant some seeds.

When she finally wrote the end of HOSAB with Rhys, she cried. Things had just completely gone to shit in CC and “my wonderful Rhys” comes in. One of her favorite parts that she’s ever written. 

Will we see ACOTAR characters coming in/having POVs? - “I’m not saying anything about anything.”  We will see some of the ACOTAR world. It basically picks up close to where we left off.

Is Dankia really dead - “Um, yeah.” LOL “She is dead and as much as I wish was miraculously living, she’s dead.”

Is Connor really dead - “Yes?” LOL

Does Emil really have no powers? - Passed on answering this. “I like it.”

With magic being weaker in the modern world, do mates mean the same thing in the fantasy (ACOTAR/TOG) as they do in the modern world? - Pass because (they started speaking over each other here but I assume it will be because we will understand more of this in HOFAS). 

Is Hunt really Bryce’s mate - “Am I going to destroy some kind of theory?” She answered, “YES, HE IS HER MATE.”  She talked about how she’s changed the LI in her other series (the FMC’s first LI not being her last one) but with CC she kept the same LI from the beginning to the end -  “If they both make it to the end.” (she’s so mean for this LOL)

When the first ACOTAR book came out, it was hard for her to keep Feysand a secret because people would tell her how much they loved Tamlin and she had to just smile awkwardly about it (lolol).

How much of Bryce’s power has she accessed? - We’ll see in the next book!

They talked a little about parenting and their kids aging and personal stories for a bit. 

CL mentioned SJM previously saying that people won’t need to read ACOTAR to read CC and vice versa. Is that statement still true? - “You should read ACOTAR and if you haven’t read ACOTAR and get to HOSAB, it’ll make you want to read it.” She had them put an AD in the back of HOSAB for people to read ACOTAR. She then said, “I do not stand by that statement. I renounce this statement. Read ACOTAR first.” (👀)

Discussed the cover of HOFAS and whether the cover has a dragon head - “I am not saying anything. There are always easter eggs.”  She added, “We made sure there were many easter eggs.”  It’s probably her favorite cover. It came together so beautifully. 

Did she write HOSAB in order? - She’s always super pumped to write her endings. She has to write in a linear/chronical fashion and she dangles the ending as motivation. She was powering through the rest of the book so she could get to writing the endings of HOSAB. It was the same with ACOSF with Nesta in the Blood Rite and saving Feyre. 

What were some of the most fun/favorite/hardest scenes- In HOEAB, when Hunt discovers Bryce’s unicorn collection. Sarah has collections of My Little Pony and has been in bidding wars for them. She loves them LOL.  Another scene will always be Bryce and Danika doing the drop. She still cries thinking about it. “Call me sentimental, cheesy, or whatever - I believe in our darkest moments we aren’t alone.”  That scene means a lot to her. 

In HOSAB - she loved the opening of the book where they’re basically at a frat party “Wonder where the inspo for that came from” LOL / She loves the little moments of them living their lives and getting to be themesleevs in between disasters. She loved it when Ruhn was super stoned lmao. She also loved the scene with The Hind and Ithan in the bar as well as the end of HOSAB with the Hind revealing herself to her Ruhn; she cried a lot while writing those scenes. 

She gets so emotionally involved with her books/characters. Most of the book is what she loves. She needs to be obsessed with her book because she has to read it over so many times and stay in love with it as she rereads it.

She remembers seeing tear stains on copies of her manuscripts. She loves all her characters so much and they make it worth it across all the series. They feel real to her.  She’s getting to see them in all aspects of their lives. 

Three Bigger Questions - 

One of the reasons they clicked as friends is because they have the same fangirl heart - CL loves her passion for things. How does it feel to have this fandom follow her the way she follows her favorites? Sarah mentions how she was a fangirl of CL first. 

It feels weird to even say fandom for her books. It’s beyond anything she’s ever hoped for herself. There’s no ego here but she grew up as a fangirl for so many things so it blows her mind that people connect with these characters and worlds and that they mean something to them. She also has a profound sense of gratitude that she gets to do what she loves because of the people who read her books. She’s deeply appreciative of the joy and enthusiasm we bring to the books. It’s a very humbling and moving thing to inspire someone. 

Every time she sees someone reading her book, she walks up to them and talks about it apparently! One girl on the street walked by her and Josh and they saw a tattoo of the mountain with three stars and they wanted to ask her about it. Sarah sent Josh to ask her about her tattoo. “He wasn’t cool about it, he just blurted it out.”  She then introduced herself but the girl didn’t seem to believe her HAHA. “No makeup and in regular street clothes. I think she thought I was a lunatic on the street. I don’t think she left the encounter believing it was me.” “I’m going to be quiet and not scare people anymore.” 

She saw a guy on the subway reading ACOMAF “Is he reading some sexy ass stuff on the subway?” but he was reading it because his gf was reading it.

It blows her mind seeing people read her books in real life just like seeing her book on shelves never gets old. 

Now that CC3 is done, what are you working on now? 

Currently working on/drafting the next ACOTAR novel! That’s all she will say. She has become so focused and excited writing this book. She described it as the feeling when you’re first obsessed with someone and all they’re thinking about. For the next god knows how many months or “a million years”  LOL

[misc-obeyme]

I'M ALIVE (BARELY) !! Work is kicking my ass. Also, lots of things went wrong for me this morning, but they all worked out in the end ?? Like I forgot to set my alarm, had to bring my mom's phone to her job bc she forgot it, my bus ended up running late because the doors would get stuck at stops. But I woke up on time, caught the bus after taking the phone, and made it early to work because the bus forgot to take the detour? My luck is insane (thanks Mammon.)

ANYWAY, i can no longer contain my thoughts about Mammon x Solomon x Mc. I'm just imagining my mc and Solomon who are both very curious, and love messing around with potions at purgatory hall, and finding alternatives to rare ingredients. This has definitely gone wrong a bunch of times (most days without a potion incident: 4)

and I'm imagining Mammon tagging along bc he misses mc and is jealous that Sol is taking up their time, but denies all claims - "I'm assigned to protect ya, ain't I?" "From Solomon?" "W-Well, he's a shady sorcerer!"

He sits on the floor by mc's feet, and will fetch them things because he can't say no to them. But he spends so much time listening to them brainstorm, he starts learning and will chime in randomly. Mc and Sol who are stuck on what to add, Mammon drops something in there, and they're both horrified until they realize the potion is perfect now. He just has a little database in his mind of what to add to something, and rare ingredients that the two wish they could get their hands on.

Thinking about Mammon doing a favor for a witch and she tells him to pick anything in her collection since she's low on money. He was about to be angry when he saw an ingredient that they've both been complaining is rare and hard to find. He asks the witch for that and then brings it to the two. He acts all nonchalant about it, trying to brush it off. Mc tackles him, meanwhile Solomon is in awe and staring with a twinkle in his eye.

Now Mammon starts requesting trades with witches, for a lower portion of grimm. Gets ingredients he knows they dream about, because the way mc and sol will get all giddy after he presents them with his earnings makes his stomach flip (he will never admit this)

"This is missing something" Solomon

"Yeah but I can't figure out what" MC

"Have you tried *insert seemingly common ingredient that doesn't work for most things*" Mammon

"But no one uses that, it's why we're always stuck with it" MC

"Couldn't hurt to try. See, watch." Mammon.

"WAIT, MAMMON DON'T- ... IT WORKED!?" Mc/Sol

----

"MAMMON HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET THIS, IT ONLY BLOOMS ONCE EVERY 100 YEARS" mc

"Dunno, got it from a random witch. Said she didn't need it. *spent two hours haggling with said witch*"

"...am I in love?" Solomon, reevaluating life

"Eh? What are ya mumbling about? If you're gonna thank me, I want it loud and clear!"

my crack ship <3 they mean everything to me. I caved and hunted down the plushies of them on ebay too. ALSO I GOT TWO OF MY COMMISSIONS BACK AND I'M 😭 they're perfect !!! I'm so so happy with them. Literally the lock screen is beautiful bc it's me and mammon cuddling (HIS MUSCLES CC!! IM DYING) and it looks like it was taken by like asmo or something who walked in to wake us up.

i think I'm also a hopeless romantic, I'm just scared of confronting my feelings lol (you're right in that it is worth it, I just need to figure out how to be brave </3). I throw myself into romance books and fanfics. Vaguely related, thinking about coffee shop au with barista!Mammon and college student!Solomon.

OKAY SORRY IM DONE RAMBLING 😭 HAVE A GOOD DAYYYY

- ✨ anon

Wow that does sound like a crazy morning!! I'm glad it all worked out, though~ Mammon is totally watching out for you!

OKAY but all of that sounds exactly like Mammon! I mean, he's super smart, he just doesn't usually bother to apply himself to anything. So it totally makes sense that he'd just pick up things because he's spending time with MC and Solomon. And then of course he's gonna end up seeing rare ingredients and being like, okay yeah I'm taking that. That all sounds absolutely adorable~

I'm curious about whether or not Solomon and Mammon would make a pact in this situation? I mean, if it's both of them and your MC that are in the relationship, do you think they would? Do you think Solomon would move past his obsession with getting a pact with Lucifer and end up in one with Mammon instead?

I always felt like Solomon doesn't really get Mammon, you know? But that doesn't mean he can't learn. And oh man, Solomon is such a tease and Mammon is so not good at being teased lol. That idea is giving me so many entertaining images, I can't even handle it.

Anyway, I'm totally here for it! It sounds really cute~

I'm so glad you're happy with your comms!!! They sound amazing!

And don't worry, you'll figure it out. I don't know how old you are, but I suspect you have plenty of time! It's a balancing act, you know? It's important to be honest with yourself about your feelings without letting them control you. But it's easier to decide what to do about them if you know what they are. Anyway, not to get all philosophical over here lol. I think the key is to find someone you want to be brave for, you know?

AUGH I love coffee shop aus sooooooo much!!! I was very obsessed with the idea of barista!Mammon for a while, mostly because of a daily chat where he was working at a cafe and then got into a fight with customer. He's good at finances, so I think he could be pretty business minded if he wanted to be. So I was thinking about a situation where he owns his own cafe, but when the customers get rude with one of his fellow baristas, he gets into a fight with them lol. I hadn't really considered who that other barista was, but it could be MC.

Anyway, I could ramble about coffee shop aus all day because I love them aklsdlkfjdfjkl

I hope you have a lovely day/night, too!!

[amphiptere-art]

I'm going to smack out this idea before I forget it.

Everybody loves a good old blood moon pack. And I basically had a dream / idea Wear a blood moon pack existed and was overruled by... Well I never really got the look of the third one down in my brain. It was either a solar model or a lunar model. Kept switching up in my head. I thought it was a bunch of... Well I can only describe it as CC werewolves but much smaller. They looked like a bunch of cats or foxes. Although of course DCA looking. But it was four of these little guys and one big guy. The little guy were pretty familiar looking other than maybe one or another being more spiky or fluffy. But the middle one was more humanoid and normal looking. It was like a hunter and his pack of dogs. Just kind of walking around hunting whatever and whoever. It was fun if not terrifying.

I'll have to figure out the confines of this pack. But it's a fun idea and I'm definitely sticking the characters in Arcade somewhere.

[acourtofthought]

SJM LIVE

Please excuse the formatting and spelling, I was typing as fast as I could

CC Overview: 

 

Mix of Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, Fantasy World but in a Modern World 

Kick ass snarky heroine who goes on her own journey of discover and healing and self love 

SJM doesn’t look at theory’s, not lurking around on the internet, tries to stay in her creative bubble. 

 

Every now and then a friend will text her with crazy theories 

 

On tour for Heir of Fire and listening to music and it gave her inspiration for CC 

 

The vision was of Bryce, a best friend named Danika who was dead and a hot angel dude almost dead 

Something she thought about for years afterwards, her project for fun 

 

Her publisher has an official Bible of all her books and character info that they frequently reference. Blessed with an editor who is a genius and remembers detail and lines 

 

You touched on Hunt a little bit, we don’t know a ton about Hunts backstory. A bunch of readers want to know if we’re going to find out about his parentage.  

 

Will learn more about Hunt in the next book. As for his wellbeing, I make no promises. I’m not saying anything about anything. I will say that when I was working on SAB and my editor and I were thinking about what the most horrible thing that could happen to Hunt, I originally had him getting his wings chopped off again. What's even worse than that? Getting the slave tattoo put on. He has a lot of room to grow and lot of shit to deal with. A lot of emotional repercussions  

 

Poor Hunt, he’s in for a journey coming up. 

 

Will learn more about the Autumn King. I knew who Bryce’s bio father was but in the process of editing these books, he’s become one of my favorite characters to write because he’s so horrible and he’s someone who is capable in some small way of doing the right thing but he just doesn’t. He’s a fucked up horrible person. And pitting him against Bryce and against Ruhn, it sounds strange to say it’s fun for me to do that but as a writer it’s fun to put characters who cause each other such trauma and see what happens. But I love when Bryce really sticks it to him in SAB. It’s so satisfying to see a woman get one up on a gross ass dude. 

 

There is a headcannon that when they make the drop they can choose how the light is used and Ruhn would use it to power vibrators since he loves women, can you confirm or deny?  

 

She hadn’t thought of it, she loves the idea.  

 Now she feels bad about where Ruhn is, she's thinking about sweet Ruhn. 

 

Going through FAS and was going through some shit and she turned in a draft and knew she hadn’t found the right story yet. Wasn’t good enough and as much as she talks about being a lazy person, she’s very intense when it comes to her writing and she won’t put it out if it’s not best possible work. Threw that one in the trash.  

 

They did one or two rounds of edits, it wasn’t coming together and she had other things going on and wasn’t in the right space and she threw out the whole thing. Started over again. Sat down, tuned out the world, over the course of four or five weeks she wrote a brand new draft and was in the zone and she finally found that story. She knew what she wanted to happen in the book all along but until that moment she hadn’t figured out how it would come together. A couple scenes stayed but most of it was brand new and she remembered crying when her agent called and told her that her editor said “this is an SJM book that came in”. 

 

She never wants to put a book out there that she doesn’t believe it, she has to love it.  

 

You can’t fix a blank page, you’ve got to write it and figure it out. 

 

The book I’m working on right now, I spent the whole day writing a whole scene and it was 20 pages and by the end she said it was dumb. She deleted it. She saved it but doesn’t think it’s good enough for bonus material. 

 

Question from Jodi Piccoult regarding the ending of CC2:

“I want to know if SJM knew she was writing towards it all along and if so, I can’t imagine she didn’t plan it from the get go” 

 

When Aelin closed the Wyrdgates, she got glimpses into different words. 

 

Was it intentional all those years ago?  

 

When it comes to the ending of CC2, she’s known for awhile, she knew the worlds overlapped before she was working on KoA because she daydreamed about the ending of KoA for awhile and she knew Aelin would crash through the worlds and she had already begun daydreaming about CC. When she got to writing KoA, she knew she wanted her to go through the ACOTAR worlds and just as a “cool” moment, she had her go through the CC world. When she was working on CC, she really got into the idea of the worlds being connected. Out of the blue she had the idea for the end of CC2.  

Burst into tears when she wrote end of CC2 because she’d been daydreaming about it. Things have just completely gone to shit in CC world but here’s my wonderful Rhys. Burst into tears as soon as she wrote that. Still one of her favorite parts ever that she’s ever written.  

 

Can we expect to get additional POV? ACOTAR POV? I’m not saying anything about anything. You will see some of the ACOTAR world, I’m not telling you..... It’ll pick up where it ended. Not exactly in that scene but. 

 

Is Danika really dead? Said nothing for a minute then she said “yeah” but she was weird about the response. Then said she is dead, as much as I wish she could be living, no, she is dead and the loss of that beautiful life in Bryce’s light...it would feel cheap to Bryce’s suffering to have her alive 

Is Connor really dead - “yes” again, weird face 

Does Emil really have no powers – not answering that 

We know that magic is weaker in the modern world, does the mating bond mean the same thing in CC as ACOTAR books – I'm going to pass 

 

Is Hunt really Bryce’s mate – “Am I going to destroy some kind of theory or excitement? Yes, he is her mate. I realize how ACOTAR and TOG were organic romances with multiple love interests but for this one I wanted to do a real doozy on everyone. She said she was going to have the love interest here at the start to be the one at the end “if they both make it to the end”. 

 

The secret of Feyre and Rhys and Tamlin was so hard to keep. People would come up and kindly, sweetly say “I love Tamlin so much” and her voice went up ten octaves trying to agree. That was the hardest secret for her. 

 

How much of Bryce’s power has she accessed – you will see in the next book 

Talked about working on a book recently  

 

I remember you saying once before, people did not have to read ACOTAR before reading CC. Do you stand by that? I mean, I guess you should read ACOTAR. I would hope if you haven’t read ACOTAR and you get to the end of SAB, I made sure they put an add in the back of the book to read ACOTAR. I do not stand by that statement 

 

Who is on the cover of CC3? Is it a dragon? I’m not saying anything, there’s Easter Eggs in the cover. We made sure there were lots of Easter eggs in this one. This is her favorite cover. The nails are amazing.  

 

You said that your favorite, you cried when you got to the end of book 2. Did you wait to get to that to write it? What has a whole in the series has bene your favorite? Yes, usually the endings of all my books are ones I’m super pumped to write so I dangle them like a carrot, I write in a chronological fashion and use as motivation. For SAB, this was the thing I was powering through to get to writing this scene. Same with SF, with Nesta and the Blood Rite and saving Feyre. Most fun, there are so many different categories. In HOEAB, I had so many different, when Hunt discovers her My Little Pony collection. SJM collects vintage My Little Pony’s, she’s been in bidding wars so Bryce got that obsession for her. Bryce doing the drop makes her cry, thinking about it with Danika. She believes in our darkest moments we’re not alone and the people we love who aren’t here with us are looking out for us.  

In SAB, she loves the opening when they’re at a frat party. And she loves those little moments when they’re living their lives and getting to be themselves. Loves when Ruhn is super stoned. Loves the first scene with the Hind when she’s playing poker in the bar. At the end of SAB the moment when the Hind, she loves that moment.  

Cried when the Hind revealed herself to Ruhn. Feeling Lidia’s sacrifice and her love for Ruhn. Bryce running down that hallway from Rigelus, she loved that whole scene. Most of the book is stuff she loves.  

 

One of the reasons the three of us clicked is we all sort of the same fangirl heart, we get obsessed with it and research it, that’s something I’ve always loved about you. How does it feel to have this fandom that have fallen in love with you? SJM thinks they are phenomenally talented writers. In terms of the fandom, it feels weird to say that word because it’s so beyond anything that I ever hoped. She was a nerd in high school when it wasn’t cool to be a nerd, it blows her mind that people connect with her characters and worlds, it means something to them. The worlds mean everything to her. And she also has a profound sense of gratitude that she gets to do what she loves for a living because of the people who read her books. Appreciative of the joy we all bring to these books, it’s a humbling, moving thing to know your books inspire someone. It never gets old for her, whenever she sees people reading her books around the city she goes up to them and probably scares them when she’s not wearing makeup. One girl on street walked by her and she saw the NC insignia, so she made Josh ask her if that’s what it was. So this strange man (Josh) stops her and asks her and she looked confused so SJM went up and she told the girl she wrote the books and she doesn’t think the girl believed her. Saw a guy on the subway reading MAF and her first thought was “is he reading sexy ass stuff on the subway”. He was reading it because his gf was a big fan of the series, that’s a good boyfriend. 

 

Now that CC3 is done, what are you working on now? I am working on the next ACOTAR novel. I’m drafting it and that’s all I will say. She’s become so focused and obsessed with this book. Working on for the next god knows how many months, a million years. 

[rockethorse]

Someone mentioned here the other day about how TS2 lots these days tend to be mostly CC-free, which I’d pretty much agree with; and how interesting that is to compare with how CC-heavy lots used to be, and how that was often viewed as a good thing - something I’d also agree with. And it got me thinking, about the shifting state of the Sims 2 community, and of the Internet & fandom spaces in general, so, I thought I’d muse with the rest of us oldbies.

Years and years ago, I felt that CC-free lot which utilised a bunch of different EP/SPs were less useful than basegame-compatible lots filled with CC, because if I wanted the CC-free lot exactly as it appeared, then all I had to do was download the CC*. Conversely, requiring me to own a bunch of expensive EP/SPs to play the lot felt way less accessible.

(*Listen, let’s just ignore the paid-CC issue for now, lol. Ignoring how I feel about either of them, paid CC is a different conversation to pirated DLC.)

But nowadays, most people have all the EPs/SPs, one way or another- whether that’s because you just slowly collected them all on disc over the years (like me), because you got the Sims 2 Ultimate Collection when it was made free, or because it became easier to teach yourself how to access them via other means. So using multiple EP/SPs is no longer the barrier it used to be.

At the same time, decent CC used to be quite rare. The post I saw mentioned that downloading lots was often something we relied on to find new CC in the first place, and I definitely remember that era - being so excited to get a house full of shiny new goodies you’d never seen anywhere else before. But now, with the advent of Sims communities on social media with a faster, more accessible, and more personal turnover rate than the old Sims forums, it’s become easier than ever to discover, share, hunt down, and catalogue old Sims 2 CC. In addition, as the community still dedicated to the Sims 2 grows a bit older and wiser, we’ve learned how to make the new CC we’ve always dreamed of - TS3 and TS4 provided/are providing us with a constant stream of new material via conversions, more people are learning to make new content by piecing together existing TS2 meshes and textures, and some are branching out into making completely new meshes from scratch.

So not only do most of us have access to all TS2 EPs/SPs these days, but CC no longer feels as scarce as it used to. Random CC packaged with a lot no longer feels like the jackpot it used to.

With all that in mind - I can’t speak for anyone else, but personally, when I make my lots CC-free, it’s not because I presume other people don’t want to download custom content. In fact, it’s almost the opposite - I know most people’s downloads folders are already bursting at the seams, and I don’t want to contribute more CC to that, or force people to go through and remove/replace a million ming vases either.

I think all of us have curated our own personal preferences and standards for the CC we use in our game, and I think we enjoy personalising the lots we download like this, whether they’re CC-free or not. So if we all do it anyway - swapping out certain items for the bespoke alternatives we prefer - I think it’s easier on people to download a CC-free lot and only replace the objects that jump out at them, happily leaving everything else EAxis or letting default replacements handle the rest, than having to comb through a lot for every instance of missing CC.

And it’s interesting how even though my attitude towards CC in Sims 2 lots has flipped, I find myself in the exact same position I was in years ago now with TS4 instead. While I enjoy building in TS4, I don’t find myself coming back to it for the gameplay, so I don’t really want to spend money on any DLC for it since I won’t get my money’s worth. So while I make my own TS4 lots CC-free so I can put them on the gallery, I’m back in the position of preferring people would just use CC that I have the option to hunt down and download for myself than to require I own a bunch of overpriced EPs and SPs to play their lot.

Time is a flat circle, I guess!

[enneamage]

your SBI post made me realize something, which is that the insistence on anything only ever being exactly what you say it is and nothing more, in the context of fanfiction, shipping, porn, etc. ie: "it's platonic cuddling, you're the one making it weird!" functions on the same principle as the mcyt fandom approach to politics does. saying the right thing is valued above all else, discourse begins and ends at nit-picking language, and you're discouraged from going out and doing external research instead of "listening to (x) voices," in other words, folding to public opinion (see: the ranboo racism apology phenomenon). The end result being that calling out racism, homophobia, transphobia, and so on, is constantly used as a convenient cover for a secondary goal. for example, ranboo fans recently digging up stuff to get mad at matpat for while in reality, they're just pissed off that he called ranboo an ex-dsmp member… but if you try to say they don't actually care, it makes you seem callous to bigotry (SO YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT RACISM? vs SO YOU'RE MAKING THE HAND-HOLDING WEIRD, CREEP?) obviously, unknowingly participating in a kink community is a lot more overtly dangerous, but it's the same tendency in a different context: if you actually interrogate the political issues you're discoursing about, you don't get to use them whenever it's convenient anymore. if you actually consider whether you're writing kink fanfiction and call it what it is, you either don't get to write that kind of fanfiction anymore OR you don't get to participate in "polite society" anymore. the obsession with lists of boundaries and either badgering the CCs about them or piecing them together wholesale if they don't already exist, which is what creates the "but it's Platonic cuddling, kissing, BDSM, and marriage, i promise!" excuse in the first place, is another fixation on precise language...

(if my phrasing here is a little convoluted it's because i'm posting in Tired Mode, and you have to forgive me.)

To be fair, there are a lot of fandoms that go way back that have co-opted social justice causes to try and get what they want. This goes back at least a decade, this corner of the streamer sphere is just the most recent and pointed example because you can directly address one cc and get a response really quickly compared to a showrunner or team of people. In a lot of ways social justice language is some of the only power people (especially young people) will have online when it comes to getting what they want, so I understand why nobody wants to let it go or frame it differently even when it’s a personal beef or self-interest.

It’s not like these people are never right, this is a Youtube/Twitch/gaming space and it’s loaded with bad behavior that I would rather people be mindful and aware of. The issue is as you said, you can usually track a secondary goal underneath the callout, and it’s rarely as clean as it’s presented as. For whatever baffling reason Ranboo had a bunch of racist people defending him and he’s had to try and find ways to get that to stop, and that continues to be very real, but people were also pissed off at Ranboo for a bunch of other reasons that went unspoken.  

In some ways this situation is the child of black-and-white thinking, something is either absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and by extension people are either absolutely right or absolutely wrong. People are very afraid of being absolutely wrong themselves, so they hunt down specific permissions to do things, and then use the letter of the law to protect themselves when someone says “hey this is kinda off.”  

[valoisfulcanellideux]

I've been playing Sims 3 this evening, and decided to create Paix's quarters in the castle at A'lumiya (the Ancient Capital), from my story These Stones Remember (link in my pinned post). And then, of course, I had to create Paix and Mhenheli.

A few shots of them, followed by a few interiors of the quarters, and finishing with the saddest one of all. If you've been reading the story, you'll know what's going on there.

Clothing choices in Sims 3 are limited (and I didn't want to go hunting down a bunch of clothing and hair CC) so Mhenheli's not in his black robes; rather he's wearing a similar thing to Paix. but I did what I could :)

(Yes, I know that's not a sha' pot and cups. Hush, you. Like I said, I did what I could - lol)

[ajcgames]

Sounding performant

I had a late night last night tweaking things and getting a bit carried away with all-things audio.

There's quite a lot to cover from those developments, and there's some nerdy performance-related discussion later further down - so skip past all that if it's of no interest!

For now, here's a quick look at some of the work done on the audio system:

Now with sounds and music!

I spent a while working on the audio system for the game. This included setting up a bunch of initial sound effects for various things. Chief amongst these are the UI sounds - something I'm always really keen on getting right (I haven't yet added any audio to main menu screen yet though).

I've always been a fan of more understated audio feedback. Whilst it's nice to have solid, heavy-sounding call-to-action feedback in certain games, for games like this where you're continually interacting with the UI, I prefer to aim for very short clicks and pops.

I also wanted to get two other main things sorted out - the ambient background loop and some sort of music jukebox of sorts (nothing the player can see, this is an internal thing). The ambience is a kind of airy, factory-esque soundscape I discovered whilst hunting for loops, and I trimmed out a nice portion for a continual ambient loop.

How did I make a non-looping sample loop?

I discovered a neat trick some years back to loop any audio sample seamlessly. It's a similar trick to how you create seamless repeatable textures (in a weird kind of way).

Open up the sample in your program of choice. In this example I'm using Audacity.

2. Cut the sample in half from somewhere near the middle, and paste it onto a new track. Move the first half you just cut to begin almost as the second part ends (below they're arranged so that the first part begins about 1 second before the last part ends).

3. Fade-in the first part, and fade-out the last part by as much as the overlapped section (in my example they overlap by about 1 second, which is what I set both their fade in/out durations to):

And that's it! A perfectly looping sample! You can move the first track to start a bit earlier if you want to make the blend between them a little more balanced. For me, this strategy has worked countless times.

Music management

I discovered some nice royalty free, CC BY-SA licensed audio and music which I can attribute in the game's credits screen. I set up a background music randomiser so that it'll shuffle all the audio tracks and play them in order at a fairly low-key background volume.

The game has four primary audio mixers - effects, ambience, music, and master. The latter controls all the others, but having separate channels for each audio lane will let me add sliders that the players can control the levels of each. Something I'm sure players appreciate for their specific tastes.

Beyond this I had to spend some time setting up a global audio singleton (for easy reusability elsewhere in the game), and a lot of time in Audactity trimming and normalising a bunch of sound effects. The net result of all of this is in the video I linked earlier.

The big performance discussion

A few posts ago, I talked about the importance I attached to making sure the game was performant. In games where you allow the player to effectively build whatever they want in moreorless unlimited numbers, performance becomes a tabled issue before too long. It's also something worth considering as a matter of principle when developing a game, because not everybody will share the same specifications of your development machine.

I'm developing this game on a PC with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 and an nVidia 2070 Super. Not exactly 'prime gamer' specs, but maybe a bit higher than some folks who might want to play the game. Therefore, shooting for a decent level of optimisation is an important element for me.

I'm not trying to run the game on a potato or anything, but I'd like to ensure I'm making some basic optimisations if nothing else.

Stress testing

One of the best ways I've found of testing the game under load is to simply scale everything up. More objects, more running logic, more rendering. The works.

To this end, I created a stress testing class which I can just switch on in the project.

I've found that my current default map size of 40 allows for a pretty big factory, though the player may have to work up to that size initially. 40 feels like a good maximum, but why stop there? I want the ability to test the game at an arbitrary size - even far exceeding what I ever envisage it to be used for.

I find that the more you scale up, the easier it is to spot glaring problems in either the code or the rendering. To this end, I decided that the main likely culprit of code slowdowns would either be my belt logic, or my machine loop code.

To get started, I first needed a benchmark to test against.

Here is what the game runs like with absolutely nothing loaded into the level. Predictably, with no loaded machines or belts, and no logic being processed, it runs pretty fast as an empty level:

The test structure

When you enable the stress test, the game doesn't load a previous level, but instead lays out a level structure in an algorithmic format, following some layout rules and placement logic.

I first create a routine that adds an extractor against the edge of the level, then places down the maximum density of belts to reach the other size of the map - which is a zig-zag pattern. In order to get a couple of machine's worth of processing out of this layout (and to make sure it actually functions as a factory line), I drop an Analyzer on the end of it.

It looks something like this:

Then, I simply repeat this for every odd-numbered column in the level, and you then end up with this monster:

That is moreorless the maximum number of things you can put in a 40x40 level. Rather a lot.

Crucially though, this is where I can start looking at the raw numbers and see where my performance bottlenecks are.

Immediately I can see several problems.

There are way too many Batches being handled, along with a ludicrous number of Shadow casters. The render time of 11.6ms is both unsurprising and a little disappointing.

But this is without any optimisations having been made. So I can move straight on to the obvious things: static meshes.

There's thousands of items in this stress test, all being updated. But lots of things (machines & belts) never move and never rotate during the game once they're placed. You can combine these into static meshes to improve draw performance, along with allowing their materials to be GPU instanced to combine them together into single draw calls for each shared material object.

The effect is immediate, and almost doubled the average FPS available in this stress test.

I continued on, tweaking things like shadow complexity and removing them completely from some objects that didn't need to cast shadows at all. After a bunch of optimisations I had managed to get a stabilized average frame rate of around 180 fps.

There are definitely logic improvements I could make, but after running a lot of profiling on the game I was starting to make only tiny sub-millisecond improvements to the frame time.

After all my tweaks, I decided to go all-out and double the stress test map size.

I was plesantly surprised at how well it ran. If nothing else, it showed how well the belt code was working under such immense load.

Again, I should stress that there is no way there will be a need for 80x80 factory sizes, at least not in my current plan for the game. But it's nice to know that I'm still getting over 60 fps even at that extreme level.

Going above and beyond 80x80 footprints for a level would likely require some re-thinks about how I collate and render the level entirely. I'm convinced I can still do a lot of work about these shadow casters, but I'll need to do some research there. Shadows are notoriously expensive in graphics processing, so I'd like to fully understand what's going on there and mitigate it as much as possible. I expect I can make some additional gains to the FPS when I do so.

Anyway, that's about all I have for this one. I hope you enjoyed if you made it this far, and sorry it was such a long one. Hopefully you have a great day, wherever you are!

[uncertaininnit]

(otterverse recap, 2/3)

now it's time for my personal favorite season of the otterverse, season 2! if season 1 is where the joke became a bit, then season 2 is where the bit became a roleplay, and also the last season where the tumblr inbox itself is referenced as part of the plot/world they live in.

it starts, as many things do, in a wendy's. c!otter (she/they/rain/star/paw, played by @leonardoturtle) is vibing, until a bunch of eldritch fellas and other weirdos essentially show up to start bothering paw.

notable here are lung anon, blood anon, tin star anon, and raccoon anon (i believe they were all played by the one the only @donatelloturtle, all they/them since anons), who are. actually i dont remember much abt tin star and raccoon other than they were in gay love but blood and lung anons? yeah those guys were on some tma shit. also, there was pedant anon (played by me, they/them, kind of an asshole but had some funny moments), wendy's employees #1 and 2 (different anons, one played by me and the other by @wallace-marte), a few failed ARG anons that never quite got off the ground, and pink text anon (played by @wisp-exe). out of these, lung anon, pink text anon, and the wendy's employees are the most important, despite what pedant anon would have you think, with lung and blood especially aiming for the annihilation of the world and all of reality (the other anons all made fun of them for it).

for a while, it's just a lot of ominous muttering and vague joke-making, as we the rpers try to get something fun off the ground (we didn't really start properly communicating behind the scenes until mid-s3)- and then in rolls pink text anon, the bitch-ass motherfucker themself. they taunt and threaten every otterverse participant i know of- even me. (this was the birth of c!gumy, btw! she used she/xe and will be important later!)

c!otter gets attacked by an apocalyptic eldritch flesh creature (later retconned to be a tbh creature), and harbinger anon (played by @harbinger-anon, whose main i can't remember) saves star by destroying the messenger.

pink text anon! introduces themself to otter as rains "guide," and starts pushing star to do things and "follow their lead," ominously and vaguely talking about the end of days and whatnot. what really makes them different is that they go into other ppl's askboxes and pull them into their story- namely, me and felix (cc!felix, to be clear. we all are/were mcyt fans we use c! and cc! a lot bc all of our characters have/had the same names as us lmao). pink text told felix to "protect the sea" and me (c!gumy) to "trick the sea". c!gumy resented being manipulated, and vowed to hunt down and reveal pink text anon.

sadly, c!gumy never got the chance, because less than an hour later pink text tricked c!otter into pulling a lever that brought about the apocalypse that lung and blood anons were talking about. tbh creatures appeared Everywhere, and the RP part of this story really kicked into high gear. pink text also revealed themself to be c!wisp (y'know, that guy! you remember disc!), and gave a whole villain monologue abt being wronged and getting revenge and stuff.

c!gumy... did NOT take this well. she kinda did a triple cannonball backflip into the deep end and swore revenge against c!wisp. u know how it is.

however, after the initial moment of panic- c!wisp seemed repentant, at least somewhat, and guided c!otter to pull the lever again and possibly end the annihilation.

so, the group heads back towards the lever, all while being attacked by monstrous tbh beasts. several characters die at this point (pedant dies offscreen lmao what an L), most importantly c!gumy (tackled c!wisp to the ground and got them both mauled), c!wisp (who lasted long enough after that to fight off one more beast, and also got hit in the head by a pebble thrown by c!gumy in xir final moments), and c!otter, who sacrificed herself for c!felix, dying in front of xem.

the apocalypse was stopped, but the damage is done- the old world is gone, and while there aren't any more new monsters coming in, there's still thousands roaming the streets. even so, there's still hope, as the wendy's employees (who have at this point fallen in gay love) have survived the carnage and start working to build a new future for themselves. their names are daisy cabiosas (they/them, played by me), and carmin aloys (he/him, played by wali), and since they wanted to unionize back when capitalism was a problem, their new settlement is called Union.

and that's otterverse season 2!

The Wendy’s employees 😭🏳️‍🌈🫶 love stays winning I giess

At this point who isn’t a former mcyt watcher

How did you guys keep any track of the anons. Also this is so unlike season one it’s hard to believe they’re the same universe

[tau1tvec]

Hello again! I downloaded the WINGDEER HAIR COLLECTION (which is literally massive so thats why im not sure its even from this mod. But I believe its the only hair mod I have in game. Sorry it wont let me link it. But it's just called the WINGDEER HAIR COLLECTION on google

Oh ok, I’m using like one hair from the pack, and it’s working fine for me, so lemme ask another question… did you install all the hairs in the pack?

Bc a lotta the issue with how modded hairs work in Cyberpunk 2077 is that as of rn, they can only replace what’s already in the game, so you’ve gotta be super careful about what you install bc using two modded hairs that replace the same in game hair will cause all kinds of conflicts ( even CTD’s ), and with a pack this huge I would suggest only installing a few at a time. Usually the mod author will put the number of the in game hair it replaces in the file name, or mod description, this essentially means that slot is taken, and any other hair you add will have to use another number.

I do also remember them possibly mentioning that some of the hairs might be a bit buggy, but they couldn’t find the time to fix them, so if you go into the bugs section of the download page you might be able to hunt down the problem hair.

Now, I will say… that I think the one time I had this issue it didn’t have anything to do with any hair in particular… but it turned out to be something conflicting with the patch update that added a bunch of new hair colors, eyelash colors and other CC assets. So I basically uninstalled and updated all of anything I could to do with hair ( including edited hair colors ) makeup, eyes and lashes, and that seemed to sort it out.

Hope this helps!

[duskroots]

So uh... I might have thought earlier today while playing around in the CC (as you do) “Oh you know what would be hilarious? If Snargle was a divorced dad who had a moody teenage daughter who ends up hunting him down all the way to Cantha because he’s late on his alimony payments, and shenanigans ensue.” and now I’m literally obsessed with Snargle’s middle-aged human husband and their 16-year old charr daughter.

So meet Penelope “Penny” Goldfang. She’s lived with her human papa in Lion’s Arch ever since her dads got divorced when she was ten, and only occassionaly sees her charr dad, most of the time only when he happens to be in town to promote his latest books. 

That’s only one of the reasons why their relationship is... strained, to say the least. Not like she cares, of course! She thinks her old man is annoying and embarassing anyways.

She’s also going through a bit of an identity crisis, poor bby - you see even though she’s a charr, she knows next to nothing about actual charr society since she grew up in Lion’s Arch among mostly humans, mostly raised by her human papa, and with mostly human friends. While she identifies strongly with the human culture she grew up in the fact remains though that she is a charr, and while she sticks out like a sore thumb among her friends she sticks out among fellow charr just as much - making it hard for her to feel like she belongs anywhere. And maybe there is resentment towards dad Snargle too in that regard, since he never really made an effort to share their heritage with her either (considering Snargle doesn’t seem to really fit into charr culture either you can hardly blame him but she is still mad.)

Luckily she finds a (questionable?) Charr role model in @sylvari-bouquet’s Rulla eventually, who saves Penny from a bunch of Unchained in New Kaineng and ends up becoming her necromancy mentor, and while Penny initially doesn’t realize what she’s gotten herself into she does end up getting real fond of Rulla because at least she feels like she’s being taken seriously for the first time ever.

Because NO, DAD, necromancy is NOT A PHASE!! UGH!!!

(Also human dad’s name is Brutus and he’s an ex bookstore employee turned lionguard captain, which in Penny’s eyes makes him a boring stickler for rules but at least he’s a doting dad and always there for her - unlike SOME people....)

[jilliannotfound]

cc!tommyinnit x reader of them calling him cute pls ty have a lovely day

ℂ𝕦𝕥𝕖

TommyInnit x GN!Reader

Summary: Request

Warnings: Language

A/N: Hi! This fic is incredibly British lmao, I took inspiration from Tommy’s actual stream on the origins smp. It’s a bit short but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless!

���

Although Y/N wasn’t a streamer, it wasn’t rare to find them playing with friends that streamed. Today was no different as they were playing on the origins smp with a bunch of the members as they all explored their new abilities, hopping around different vc’s making their appearance in everyone's streams.

Y/N had chosen the phantom origin with Wilbur so they were working on their phantom haunted mansion together while Niki, Tubbo, and Ranboo built their own houses around each other.

They had gone on the hunt for supplies for themself and Wilbur when they stumbled upon buried treasure while mining some sand.

“Oh!” they exclaimed, opening the chest seeing the riches they had just earned.

Y/N has made the advancement [Diamonds!]

“Already?” Wilbur asked, seeing the achievement in chat.

“I found buried treasure! Oh my... Tommy is going to be so happy! I found a disc!”

<Y/N> Tommy

<Y/N> Where are you

<TommyInnit> No

<Y/N> I’m going to stream snipe you dickhead

They pulled up his stream on their other monitor and saw that he and Jack were scaling a mountain nearby and decided to mess with them.

Y/N fazed through the mountain making sure to avoid the lava and hit both parties, confusing them.

“Ahh, there’s ghosts! We’re being haunted Jack!” Tommy screamed with a thicker accent than normal as Y/N hid invisibly following them.

When Jack stopped to place down a furnace, Y/N opened it and waited for the first piece of mutton to cook, instantly taking it and going underground to eat.

“They’re stealing me lamb chops! That was for me roast, me Sunday bloody roast!” Jack exclaimed in an exaggerated accent.

“Fuck your lamb chops, we’re out.” Tommy said and they headed to spawn, finding an open area and building up to place his bed.

Y/N continued invisibly following them, listening to their conversation through Tommy’s stream.

They punched Jack off of the tower as soon as he right-clicked the bed and then joined the call to be greeted with Jack yelling as he fell to his death.

“You’re fucking lucky I set me spawn or we’d be havin’ a brawl.”

They laughed at how insane he sounded and as the sun faded away they turned off ghost mode, finally being seen by their two friends.

“Why did you build this tower?” They asked.

“Have to sleep in the sky, I do.” Tommy said, continuing with the accent.

“I have a gift for you!” They said crouching in front of his character and throwing the blue-centered disc at him.

A gasp left his mouth and they looked over at the now muted stream to see his face.

“Thank you!”

“Oi how come you threw a fuss when I gave you a disc?” Jack questioned.

“It was a shit disc, mate.”

“Hey! It is not a shit disc. You’re just happy about this disc because of who gave it to you…”

“N- no, I just, I really like this disc.” Tommy stuttered and Y/N saw him blushing on stream.

“You’re so cute!” They said and he instantly became flustered.

“Shut up.” He said trying to divert the conversation.

It was funny to make him flustered like this and they’d definitely make sure to call him cute more often.

[inkformyblood]

in these bodies we will die

Commander Cody Week Day 04: Post-Order 66 @commandercodyweek

Pairing: Codywan, QuinObi, Cody x Obi-Wan x Quinlan Summary:  Cody knows something is going to go wrong when he wakes up on a mission to execute a Jedi. But that is also just a matter of perspective. Most days, the trooper wakes up and finds that he is still CC-2224. The world around him is sharp and dark: the purple crackle of his electrostaff mingling with the steady beat of his heart which remained as rhythmic as a march, until it blotted out everything else. He is nothing but a weapon, and he waits patiently for his orders, whatever they may be. 

On those days, he knows his place in the durasteel universe, following his Lord and enacting his will. The sneers — openly worn and honed to a razor’s edge — from the Brothers and Sisters that made up the Inquisitors didn’t impact him in the way they were hoping, because why would they? He is a weapon, one of a few who had been gifted beskar by their Lord, and who served at his convenience. 

“Trying for a saber of your own?” Ninth Sister spat one day as she stormed from the throne room, her anger rolling from her like lightning and breaking harmlessly on the impassive countenance of CC-2224. “Trying to be a Brother, clone?”

“I’m already a brother,” CC-2224 tells her, but he doesn’t know why. She turns on her heel and leaves in a swish of black fabric, and he returns to waiting for his next order. He listens to the rumbling breaths from Darth Vader, the slight mechanical click between each hissing exhalation adding to the reflexive count in his head. 

When Cody wakes on the transport, he knows that something has gone horribly wrong.

The floor shuddered beneath his feet with each roar of the massive engines, but the room is eerily silent. Before… Before when he was— Cody cut the thought off before it could travel any further. His mind felt fragile, as if it was constructed from freshly spun glass, and he knew that if it broke, he didn’t know how long it would be before he was able to pull control back again. Or even if he would want to.

Bile rose in his throat, hot and thick and acrid, and his shoulders contorted with the effort of keeping the scream trapped in his throat. He had woken up as Cody before but never prior to a mission. Never held the ability to escape, or to die, as closely as he did now. 

He could remember, beneath the dark edges of the Executor and the constant hiss-click sound of the man who had once been Anakin Skywalker, a single moment of clarity as he knelt in front of the shell that hid his rotted carcass. Cody had been holding a lightsaber, the edges of it scorched and warped, and the scent of iron lingered in the air from the blue blood that had seeped into the handle. For a moment, his thumb had twitched over the ignition switch that could have been his salvation or his doom, but then Cody was gone once again as Darth Vader raised his chin with one gloved finger. 

“Well done, Commander. I am glad to see I chose correctly.”

Cody had to hold on. Eyes squeezed tightly shut, he blindly ran a hand over the wall, fingers splayed until he found the recess, pulling the datapad free. 

For an instant, before the screen activated, Cody caught sight of his reflection in the tinted transparisteel and felt the world threaten to fall away from him once more, nothing but the void waiting to consume him utterly. 

 What had Anakin done?

Obi-Wan — traitor to the Republic, good soldiers follow orders, no! — hadn’t spoken about Anakin’s past, but a trooper would have had to be blind to not see the marks that his past had left on him, the anger that burnt low in his eyes and caused his mouth to twist whenever someone mentioned the troopers being owned. Cody had seen the scar on Anakin’s arm from his tracker removal, straight and well-healed compared to the now-ruined tapestry of scars that had covered his back. 

Cody’s fingers didn’t tremble as he raised his hand to his face, trailing a line from scalp to chin. He couldn’t feel anything different, a few new minor scars here and there pitting his skin like the surface of a moon, a far cry from the whorled raised scar that curled around his left eye. But that didn’t subtract from the new knowledge he carried: that Anakin had branded him like property with a red tattoo that would mar his skin forever. 

Focus.

Breathe in, then out.

(I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.)

Cody focused on the datapad, reading over the minimal briefing he had been given, doom slipping over his shoulders like a shroud. He had been sent to hunt a Jedi, to track the whispers of a survivor and kill them. 

Laughter, harsh and uncaring, bubbled up in his throat, trapped behind the cage of his teeth. What was one more when Cody had killed one of the men he loved with barely a second thought?

⁂

Cody felt himself slip partially beneath the waves of his consciousness the moment the trooper stepped outside the ship, hiding away from the first flicker of unspeakable terror that passed over a civilian's face at the sight of him. 

The CC-2224 knew the motions, just as well as Cody did. Alpha-17 had vanished into the wind, from what little he had managed to find out from scraps of rumors, but he remembered his, and the other trainers, words well. 

Move quick, strike hard, complete the mission. 

Salt clung to every visible structure, encrusted pillars that distorted the shapes of the shipping crates and barrels into hunched figures as CC-2224 stepped into the warehouse. His electroshock baton lit up with a hiss, bathing the room in a vibrant purple, and the trooper took a step forward. The floor crunched beneath his boot, grinding down the patchwork of salt as he slowly followed the faint trail of footprints, head tilted to one side as he listened. 

The Jedi — the traitor, no, all of them, traitors — was cornered with nowhere to run and had never been more dangerous.

He saw the flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and he is turning before the trooper can even think, but it is Cody who shouts, his voice tinged with a desperation that could have ripped the stars from the sky at a word. “Quinlan!”

The man stumbled, caught off guard for only a moment, before he turned, igniting his lightsaber. The green blade stole Cody’s breath away, Quinlan’s lips drawn back in a snarl as he shifted into the beginning position of Ataru, the muscles in his legs visibly bunching as he prepared to jump.

Cody knew what he would do. He had seen it so many times before; a deadly dance made beautiful by the care and precision behind it: a single leap and twist, with the blade following barely half a second behind, leaving nothing but death in its wake. 

His helmet clattered to the ground, the air biting at the tears that rolled down his cheeks. Then, the hiss of Quinlan’s blade stopped as the Jedi deignited it, stumbling forward half a step before he caught himself, hurt emblazoned across his face.

Cody was struck by how different he seemed now to their last parting. Before, where Obi-Wan had been the rising sun and Cody was moonlight, Quinlan was the midday sun, bright and vibrant and intoxicating. He had curled into Cody’s side, one leg thrown across his hip to prod at Obi-Wan, who was motionless, except for the faint rise and fall of his chest. His breath still held the sweetness of the wine from the previous evening, part celebration and part regret at having to be parted once more even as the war slowly drew to a close.

Extracting himself was a journey in parts as Quinlan slowly worked his way free, every movement languid and tinged with a deep melancholy. 

“You don’t have to get up with me,” he whispered, cupping Cody’s face with one battle-worn hand, his thumb smoothing over the jut of his cheekbone. Quinlan’s eyes slipped out of focus for a moment, warm brown no longer studying every inch of Cody’s face, but between one blink and the next, a warm grin spilled across his face. “But it is good to see you both.”

“It’s good to see you too,” Cody replied. It felt like a paltry offering compared to the roaring fire that rekindled itself in his chest for sustenance at the mere thought of the other men, but Quinlan only laughed, low and deep, before kissing him again.

“When the war is over—“ Quinlan cut off Cody’s attempt at protest with another kiss, infuriating and effective all at the same time before he continued, intent on daring the universe to defy him. “When the war is over, we will be together again.”

Cody tasted the promise like caff on his tongue, hoping with every shattered piece of him that Quinlan was right. His hands were steady as he untied the small token — a nondescript twist of metal with the edges worn smooth through the Force — from the leather tie around his neck, and pressed it into Quinlan’s hands. 

The man stepped backwards, a chill settling in the space between them, and closed his eyes. Cody settled back into the warmth of Obi-Wan’s embrace, watching the peace settle across Quinlan’s face, the edges of his grin softening. 

“Beautiful.”

“How?” Quinlan demanded, his voice harsh and broken, ripping Cody from the memory. “Why?” 

Cody’s hands spasmed around the handle of the electro baton, the urge to ignite it almost overwhelming. Quinlan was close, too close.

“Didn’t— Couldn’t—“ The words would choke him before he could speak. His free hand shook as he raised it, signing a single clumsy message as he trembled with the effort. 

He still tried to flinch away from the blow that Quinlan landed, the heavy hilt of his lightsaber thinking against his temple, then Cody was gone once again. 

When he woke, it could have hours, days, weeks, years later. But he was Cody, settling into the body it felt like he had borrowed, with a slight shift of his shoulders as he tested the restraints. 

He knew that he was on a ship, could feel the floor vibrating beneath him through the thin padding of the cot he was lying in. His stomach twisted and rolled as the autopilot shuddered into life, and then there was nothing to do but wait.

Pain pulsed through his head like a second heartbeat, blurring his vision when his eyes slipped open in coordination with the door. 

“Morning, Cody. Have I ever mentioned how blood-soaked is a very attractive look on you?”

“That makes three times now.” The words clawed up his throat as he spoke, dried blood flaking from his face with every movement. “And you were even stone-cold sober for one of them.”

“Such a liar,” Quinlan teased, his laugh choked and distorted by the tears that ran down his cheeks. The soft sound of metal clinking together followed him as he walked across the room, and Cody caught sight of the countless mementos strung across his chest on a sturdy chain.

“I can’t untie you,” Quinlan said, his voice heavy with regret as he sat on the edge of the bed. “After the first time, when you woke up and you weren’t you—“ He broke off with a grimace, the action mirrored by Cody.

He could barely breathe, regret and hope he thought he had killed long ago wrapping around his throat like a noose. “Are you okay?”

Quinlan laughed, the sound a distant echo from the rich timbre Cody remembered, leaning forward to press their foreheads together in Keldabe. “I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’m notoriously hard to kill, which I guess is lucky for us both.”

As if sensing the dark direction Cody’s thoughts were starting to spiral in, Quinlan moved closer and kissed him gently, blotting out the universe for everything but soft warmth and the bite of salt and iron.

“I know about the chip. I can’t destroy it, cyar’ika.” 

Sorrow ripped through Cody’s chest like a blaster bolt. The memory of teaching Quinlan ‘cyar’ika’ each mumbled repetition punctuated with a kiss until it seemed to fill his very soul couldn’t stand against it, and Cody pulled away from the Jedi, curling in on himself as much as he could.

“I’ll hurt you. Eventually, I’ll slip back under, and I’ll kill you. Please, Quin.”

Quinlan shook his head, his jaw set in sly determination. “I can’t remove it. It’s too Dark for me to distinguish it from myself. But I know someone who can.

“You’re not a killer in the way you think you are, Cody. Obi-Wan is still alive. And he’s going to be so happy to see you.”

“Alive?” Cody felt as if the floor had fallen away beneath him, but he was still here, still in control. “He’s alive?”

Quinlan nodded, and Cody finally allowed himself to weep, pressing his face into the crook of Quinlan’s neck as the other man hugged him tightly, trying to hold his shattered pieces together for a while longer.

[alienpod]

Hi! With the reupload, I would say it's bc the girl that put it together intentionally disregarded people's terms of use and, in at least one case, had multiple replacements for the same item. The tone in the post was rude, saying things like 'I didn't default some items because the options were bland or low quality' (which was changed to 'worse than the original', ugh).

I understand better now, thank you anon. I wasn't trying to say that others shouldn't be upset or that the download shouldn't be taken down. I was saying that I wasn't upset and that I didn't care if my files were taken down or not.

I also wasn't certain if the uploader deserved some of the harshness I saw. To me it just seemed like someone from a different community talking to their own community and oblivious to how the Tumblr community works and that we'd be interacting with the post. Which yeah, yikes, awkward faux pas, pretty clueless of her, but not much more than that. I for sure think to myself "this is worse than the original" a lot of times when I see default replacements. I'm not gonna act entitled and broadcast it, especially when taste is so subjective, but if I thought I was just talking to my own friends or detached little group I might. And even then I still see people in the Maxis Match community (which is most of what I surround myself with) taking jabs at photoskinned or alpha CC; communities within communities.

I remember years ago before Discord was a thing that some of us from Tumblr would gather in uhh what were those called again? Tinychats? to talk for a bit. I remember this one situation where a bunch of us were saying that we really loved fakepeeps7 from MTS' meshes but couldn't stand her textures, and until someone called us out for it I never considered that 1) she could be there, 2) she could hear from someone else what was being said, 3) that she might even care. She wasn't on Tumblr and I wasn't on MTS so she wasn't someone I interacted with, and to my self from god knows how many years ago she could very well be a Maxis employee due to how BIG of an impact she had in the Sims 2 community. We just criticized her hard work as if she wasn't a real person but instead some content machine that worked for free, for us.

So having played the role of the asshole before maybe I can empathize with this uploader a bit better and can see how maybe they didn't do it in bad faith just for the fun of being an asshole.

And again, I'm not trying to speak for anybody else or saying people don't have the right to their own stuff or a right to be upset. I was notified of my CC being used and was expressing how I felt about it. I've got no attachment to it, everything to my eyes is kind of ugly and buggy and badly executed and definitely not original; I'm not proud of anything. Like throw it in the garbage, fine by me, but I would never try to dictate how others should feel about their own creations, especially when we got super talented people 3D modeling, hand texturing, recoding the entire game for us. D: I just didn't want the thing to turn into a witch hunt.

[storiesbyjes2g]

I won’t have footnotes for all these sims, so I’ll just take this moment to mention something I’ve been working on.

I make a looooooot of sims...if you haven’t noticed lol. Most of them sit in my library waiting for MC Command Center to import them into my worlds as cute, fashionable townies. But sometimes the sim has its own story to tell that is unfolded as I’m making them. Like Amina! I’ve had her for like two years lol. I knew she was special from the moment I laid eyes on her, and her story and attitude was so clear to me. But she didn’t fit into any of the stories I had going on—at least not how she deserved. And honestly, I wanted her to have her own thing, but I had too much going on to start something new. So she sat in my library, waiting for her moment. Finally, aDOLTing was born! But not every sim is so lucky. I make plenty of sims that come with their own backstories that go to waste. I rarely share my sims because I use a lot of cc and am too lazy to hunt down cc links every single time, and y’all get funny about not crediting creators. But I’ve finally figured out a way to share these sims in a way that’s satisfactory to me and doesn’t create a whole bunch of extra work because that is the fastest way to ensure I start resenting this hobby. More on this project to come!