Stickied: Vampiric Powers

Well, this isn’t really required reading, but I figured it might be a good idea to share my little list.

Stickied: Supernatural Hierarchy

A print screen of my spreadsheet is the best I can do I’m afraid.

Stickied: The Blood Rites

Pasha mentioned in the Prologue that his sister was almost old enough to take “the blood rites”.  I decided that its one brief mentioning needed further explanation, seeing that it was never going to be explained in any actual chapters (and someone asked about it).  It won’t ever crop up again, because Adelaide never learned its meaning and therefore none of her heirs will ever participate in this ancient vampiric ritual.

Yes, it’s another one of ~those~ posts…

… meaning it’s another “I’m still way behind on Chapter 6, don’t expect it out any time soon, but I’m still alive and please don’t forget about me!” posts.  You guys must be so sick of these.  Crap – I know I am, and I’m the one who posts them!

I know I’m behind on reading some of my favorite Sims stories, responding to comments here and at Boolprop, and pretty much everything else related to my activity in the community.  I’ll get around to catching up on all of these, I ~almost~ promise!  LOL  Between laying around with morning all day sickness and the flu (even though I had both of my flu shots dammit) on top of that, it’s a wonder I get anything done.  But I did manage to read the most recent WoT book (MiEhrynn: I’ve been meaning to PM you to see if you’ve read it/finished/would like to discuss) as well as The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.  So at least I’ve done something… right?

In the meantime, I was wondering… would anyone be interested in some (if I can get the damn things to work) Default Replacement witch and warlock hats to match the wonderful DR sets at Garden of Shadows created by Ja and Epiphany?  I love these two sets, but it riles me to see the EAxis colored hat.  Things must match!  I’ve gotten the recolors themselves to look how I want, now it’s just a matter of binning them/making them DR.  That might take a bit of hair pulling on my part (I tried binning the hats already but apparently I played around with the settings too much because they are still custom, and I’ve never made DR hair before), but if I get them to work, I will definitely share them. 

It’s just a little something I’m working on while I wait to feel good enough to fire up the game to take pictures.  I’ve played some certain minor-character families (*cough* a certain house full of vampires with one zombie and an ~unrevealed~ supernatural as well as the household of an OMG-new! character *cough*) to a good saving point, so at least there’s that.  But I just haven’t taken any non-extras pictures yet.  I’d love to go ahead and share the extras I have, because they are pretty freaking funny, but several of the pictures are a spoiler, so I can’t.  Dammit.  LOL

So, what’s the hold up this time?

Well, if you haven’t noticed, I have not updated with Chapter 6… and I was really hoping to get it out in time for Halloween.  So, what have I been doing?  I haven’t really been working on the chapter.  I have played Sims a few times, and yes, one of those times was involving the legacy folks.  But mostly I have been doing something that has been very physically draining but also very important…

Generation 2 Heir Poll [Poll Closed]

Here’s your opportunity to have a say in who you think should be the Generation 2 heir(ess) for Shadows and Blood!

Chapter 5 Outtakes – Spoiler Warning

As promised, here are the outtakes for Chapter 5!  Once again, be aware that if you haven’t read the corresponding chapter, these outtakes may contain spoilers!  There are a lot of pictures (this was a long chapter, not only in the amount of time it took to write, but the number of pictures it contained) as well as hover text for almost all of the pictures (only a couple don’t have it).  As usual for the outtakes, the description text is above the pictures.

Enjoy!

Shadows and Blood: Chapter 5

Chapter 5 is ready and is Twilight-bashing free (about freaking time, right?)!  In all honesty though, I didn’t really bash it in Chapter 4 (in case any one was offended – if you were, I’m sorry). I read those books and they certainly weren’t the worst thing I’ve ever read (I only truly hated, loathed, and detested the last one).  But come on, you know if an honest-to-God fry-in-the-sun vampire were to read those books they would probably have the same reaction Roger did.

Also, there are a lot of Point-Of-View changes in this chapter.  I couldn’t give each POV a new subpage because I would have ended up with something like 13 sub-pages (I’m just guessing here – I never did count the number of POV changes but trust me, there are a lot), and some of them would have only had two or three pictures (which is something I’m trying to avoid).  The sub-pages do separate points of view, as do the “***“.  I hope all the switching back and forth doesn’t confuse anyone too much!  If anyone does get too confused, please let me know if you have any ideas on how I can avoid it next chapter (assuming Chapter 6 has as many POV changes as Chapter 5 – I don’t know if it will yet because… I’ve not started on it yet).

And while I’m at it, how is the site loading for everyone?  Has anyone noticed if the layout looks any different?  Are any of you getting the dreaded horizontal scroll bar of doom?  Sean and I recently worked on the code for this blog, changing a few subtle things here and there.  We hope the new coding we implemented makes the blog shrink or grow depending on your screen resolution… we’re wondering if it worked.  So, if anybody has encountered any problems let me know and we’ll see what we can do. 

The outtakes for this chapter will be up sometime in the next few days – I really wanted to go ahead and get the chapter published considering I’ve been working on it since March.  Yikes.  I will also put up an heir poll when I publish the outtakes.  I haven’t decided yet whether I’m going to put up an heir poll at boolprop.com.  I don’t really want people voting for who they think should be heir if they don’t read the story, and I think that happens a lot over there (people just want to vote for a pretty Sim, they aren’t voting for the character).  Plus… I’m drifting away from that site more and more.  Maybe I’ve outgrown it.  I don’t know.  But now is not the time or place to discuss it. 

Finally (and back on subject – the chapter itself), please take note that the language warning for this chapter has been bumped up to “coarse”… a certain Sim likes to curse… a lot.  It’s not just the amount of curses, but the severity of the words used.  For the record, I would never write anything I wouldn’t feel comfortable with my mother reading, because she does in fact read this!  LOL

I hope you enjoy it, and as always, feel free to leave me some feedback!

WARNINGS: coarse language, sexual situations

Climbing Up the Walls…

Okay, so I know I should be working on Chapter 5, but I got a whole lot written the other night before WordPress crashed (and actually some while WP was crashing… I lost several pictures’ worth of text because the crash happened while I was saving… of course).  When I’m not working on it, I’ve been amusing myself by decorating/continuing to build the house I plan to move the Carmichaels into at some point.  I got a boost of creativity when it came the color scheme of the playroom, and decided to exit the game and make the wall I had in mind.

Just checking in…

Hello?  Is there anybody out there? 

Ummm… yeah

Well, let me tell you – the face of the Earth is a hell of a place to fall off of.

I don’t know how many (if any) of you have been wondering where the heck I went to but I do want to apologize for my extended absence.  I’ve been going through a lot of personal issues, and helping some of our dear friends in their own time of need.  Joey and Lee are staying with us temporarily and so I haven’t been at the computer as much as I used to be.  In all honesty, I really needed a break from the whole internet thing.  Eventually I’ll be back (fully) and with the long-awaited Chapter 5 and some hair retextures.  In the meantime we’ve been playing a lot of Guitar Hero World Tour and Rockband 2 (it’s nice with them here because Lee plays drums – very well I might add – he and Joey used to have a band back in the day – Joey sings, I play bass and Sean plays guitar ; we have a whole freaking band).

I know I have a lot of explaining to do (here as well as at boolprop – I’ve pretty much abandoned the place) but today isn’t the day to do that.  Today just isn’t a good day for me at all.

Sooo… how’s everybody?  Are you guys still out there?  I just wanted to let everyone know that I’m not dead and that Shadows and Blood is not dead.  Well, as not dead as a story about vampires can be.

Happy Birthday Henry!

“Henry Puff” is a year old today!  That means we now have five full-grown, mean-ass stinkin’ cats, rather than four full-grown, mean-ass stinkin’ cats and one cute and cuddly, snuggly-sweet kitten.  *sigh*  I guess he had to grow up some time.  LOL

No “first year” cake pictures to share because I haven’t baked it yet. 

Indecision: Thy Name is Skintone

So… I was playing around in the game the other night, adding some new YA townies, and I realized why I don’t have that many Skintone 4 Sims: horrible, disfiguring, DO NOT WANT pixelation.