Hello, Fellow Simmers, Readers, and Friends!

This is Valerie Landgraab. If you haven’t met her acquaintance yet, please do so. She’s a lot of woman but one who’s been down on her luck, some of her own making and some not her fault. She’s worldly, streetwise, and has a certain kind of animal attraction. The life of the party, she knows how to have a howler of a great time, but that has gotten her into a few undesirable scrapes. Most of the time, she knows what she wants and goes after it. She can be an amazing ally, but don’t get on her bad side or things might get a little…hairy.  Oh yes, everyone, this is Valerie.

But this is also me channeling Valerie at the moment. Why, you ask? Well, here’s the deal.

See, it frustrates me to no end but saddens me, too, because stuff for Sims 3 is becoming more and more nonexistent. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of CC and believe it or not, there are creators who are still making CC for us Sims 3 Simmers to use. What I’m mostly referring to is poses. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve downloaded a crap-ton of pose packs and can usually come up with something doable to illustrate my chapters. It’s a good thing I downloaded it when I did, as many creators have gone in other directions and some in this category have, sadly, taken down their sites and deleted all their creations. The reality of it is that certain things just aren’t readily available anymore. Now, if I did my stories in Sims 4, I’d have no problem finding everything I’d need. But I’m still very much a Sims 3 loyalist. At some point, I might diddle around with Sims 4, starting off with some short stories and such, But you all know I absolutely love my Supernatural characters and storylines, and, IMO, they’re simply not as doable in Sims 4.

One of my favorite creators who has also made some request poses for me has, apparently and so very unfortunately, closed up shop. The blog hasn’t been updated in around two years, so I think the playhouse curtains have closed for good. 🙁 Some of you might remember BlamsArt from You Name It, I’ll Pose It  . I love these poses and feel it’s such a shame that we’ve lost yet another Sims 3 pose creator. My hope is that we will see them again one day. At least we can still enjoy all the wonderful pose packs already made and available to us for download. Such a talent I will greatly miss.

So, the big thing this post is about is, yeah, you probably already guessed it. Do we still have Sims 3 pose creators out there, and are any taking requests from the handful of “oldsters” that are left? For about two days now, I’ve scoured the Internet in search of a some specifically themed poses that would be perfect for some future chapters with no luck. Oh, I think I find exactly what I’m looking for and get all excited…only to find out it’s for Sims 4. Dammit, Google! I search for Sims 3 NOT 4. *sigh*

Sometime back, I’d been playing with Blender, which is a software used to make poses. I messed around with it for a while after watching some tutorials. Ladies and gents, it’s hard and I totally suck at it. I kid you not! For example, I was messing with the rig’s fingers and oh, what a mess I made! Every finger was splayed out in a different direction! :O I’m telling you, it was creepy. That poor hand looked like it had been hit several times over with a mallet and none too gently either. Bottom lime – it takes talent (and practice) to make usable looking poses. There are folks out there who definitely can do it a lot better than I’d ever be able to, even if I practiced day and night for three months straight.

Anyway, if anyone knows of any Sims 3 pose makers who would be willing to have me hire them for some pose work, please let me know. I’d really appreciate it. I’m certainly willing to offer compensation for the work, and credit would certainly be given where credit is due. But if not, well, I reckon we’ll see how crafty and creative I can get using what I do have available to me. Whichever way the wheel turns, I’ll find a way to make it work. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?

Now for just a quickie update. 🙂

My next Forever in Time chapter is written, but I need to do a little more editing and get the screenshots. My plan is to release it tomorrow. I also have some CAS work to do, and hopefully, my game will cooperate.

I do have a few other goodies I’ll be posting. I’m just about ready to add a couple more characters to the Cast of Characters section, which I hope to get to early next week. I love the little interviews and plan to do a few more of those. I feel it really helps to get to know the characters a little more and adds a bit more material to what their backstories were. Question – do you like the Diary of Sims short stories? For those who might not have read any of those, they are written as diary entries for Sims I play in my personal gameplay or feature in my YouTube videos, Sims I don’t feature in my stories. Would you like more of those?

I still have more of my lore to fill in as far as other Supernatural beings go. I’m ironing out a few kinks and will hopefully finish up that section before the major heat of Summer kicks in. It takes a lot of thought and planning to put it together, and I want to be really happy with it before it goes up.

My SimLit Legacies blog will also be updated soon. Because I have a crossover story with Forever in Time that is located over there, I need to make sure I have everyone pretty much on the same timeline so I don’t get too ahead of myself and end up possibly making a continuity oopsie. If you haven’t done so, please feel free to navigate to that blog and follow me there as well as here. You can find the link to that blog on the top menu of this page.

On a final note, if you have followed me from Blogger over to here and are a bit familiar with my original writeup of Forever in Time, I ask you to please keep reading here. I’ve done a lot of reworking when I decided to revamp the story and spruce it up when I decided to migrate here. Some of the core events are the same, but there are character and plot differences. A prime example is Valerie’s role in the kidnapping and imprisonment of Lenora. Her character and outlook is very different than the original and, IMO, is much, much more multi-dimensional. The family’s history has changed quite a lot as well, and the lore has been added to. Basically, there’s a lot more world building I did for the revamp. There is a lot more story to tell which wasn’t in the original work. Just a FYI, the original work on Blogger has been locked and is no longer viewable. The posts have been reverted to Draft status, I having done that when I migrated here. As the author, I still have access to a chunk of the original in case there’s something I need to grab. However, as I rewrite posts and add new elements, I find that not much of the original remains. So, the long and short of it is that any reader, longstanding or a new follower/reader, would benefit by going through the chapters and familiarizing yourself with the story as it stands on here. With all the new details, you’ll have missed a lot if you have glossed over a chunk of chapters. The format has also changed. The original started out as a Legacy but has been reworked so it’s more like an ongoing soap opera kind of story. With so many characters, immortal characters, and new characters being added, I feel this is a better format because it gives a character or group of characters more screen time. You’ll notice that there is one main family and everything a characters does effects the entire main central family. Whew, I hope all that makes sense. 🙂

I hope you all are having a great Thursday. Happy Simming, everyone, and as always, thank you for supporting and hanging in with me, even through my little rants such as this. I can’t tell you enough how much I love and appreciate each and every one of you.

With love always and lots of virtual hugs,

Sharon, aka: Sweet Nightingale