After the Calling

Nor have I updated, or given any explanation as to why I’m not updating, and have allowed people to assume that I was dead, without actually thinking that anyone would assume that I was dead, and I totally suck ass for that, and I’m terribly sorry.

I have been avoiding this blog like all-get-the-fuck-out for reasons that I will list for you, starting now:

a) Apparently posing is a skill, and if you do not cultivate that skill you lose it. Being that I have not gotten past neighborhood view in a year and a half (because I look at all my lots, all my sims, and all my old notes, get completely overwhelmed, and shut down the game without doing a thing), I have mostly forgotten how to do it, that which was and is an enormous aspect of my site and my story.  I made such a big stink out of posing that me not being able to pose became the major bane of any effort I might have been willing to make toward an update. I simply would not accept posting something that didn’t live up to past hype, despite the fact that I don’t have the time or the interest to dedicate to posing like I did 3 years ago. Even so, I didn’t want it to look like I was half-assing, when I had spent years putting my whole ass forward. So instead, I just pulled up my pants and walked away from the whole thing.

b) Writing is also a skill, and if you don’t cultivate that shit, you lose it too!  I’ve been putting a lot of energy and creativity into other projects and stories, but a bit of life upheaval has caused my overall writing ability to falter a bit. This has been extremely frustrating for me, and in trying to put things back together, I just couldn’t find the time and motivation to put the same effort into writing AtC among all the other things that I’ve been pushing myself to find time and motivation for.

c) The idea of editing pictures is balls. Almost as much balls as actually editing pictures. The feeling of not wanting to cull and edit the literally hundreds of pictures that are sitting and waiting for me from sim sessions of yore has totally, TOTALLY, slowed me down on the updating front.

d) Guilt. FUCKING GUILT. Every time I looked at this blog, I would feel guilty for not working on updating. So, to avoid the guilt, I just wouldn’t look at the blog, resulting in my rhyme-less, reasonless disappearance from the sims 2 community.  But fuck guilt. And fuck a, b, and c.  They’re all excuses, and I should have just owned up a year ago and said that it was no longer fun for me and I didn’t want to commit to this blog anymore, It would have made everything a lot simpler, and it would not have resulted in people thinking that I had died. That was so fucked up on my part, and I’m sincerely grateful and touched that there are people out there who care and are looking out for me.

All of this said, I will be, at some point in the very near future, shutting down the majority of this blog.  I haven’t deleted the blog because I still get feedback for the posing without poseboxes tutorials.  I am crazy surprised that people are still getting use out of them, but since that is the case, I’m not going to remove them. I will, however, be taking down the AtC story. It’s presence is… delaying… further processes… that are vague and not at all close to completion… mostly because my act is totally not together right now… but just know that while it is coming down, the story won’t disappear until the last possible moment of… vagueness. When that moment arrives I will link you to less vague information of other goings-on, and all will be grand.

I want to thank every single flipping one of you for supporting me, and supporting this story, and supporting the sims 2 community.  It was A BLAST, and I can’t express my appreciation for the cohesion that grew from this unlikely medium. It lent me access to meet some of the most amazing, talented, creative people, and make friends with one of the sweetest, funniest women I have ever met in my life, the fabulous Penelope of Dragging Blue Lake, as well as the new (and super freaking pretty) Tower of the Vessel Merchant.

Thank you times a billion. I wish you all the most of the best of the greatest of the world.

Veron

Hey, remember my little character study side story experimenty strangeness from a year ago? One of them was a Jax-Chloe-Origins Story, called Youth. Well, here is Part II. Excuse the pictures. There are points where they don’t match up well with the writing. And they also vary in quality and size. Some were taken with another computer eons ago, and were complicated enough for me to be lazy about retaking them.

I’ve sort of given up on warnings, but this one definitely has parts to it that aren’t nice.  It’s also longish.

This has been sitting on the site for a few days now because I was hoping to post it with Betray V, but I’m abroad and my computer is acting like it’s more jetlagged than I am.  Once it stops complaining, Betray V will be up. In the meantime, accept this humble offering.

1) I have acquired a computer with a graphics card situation that will punch the sims 2 in the throat.

2) I think (read: I have no idea, but I’m confident) that I have my sims and can get them into said throat-punching computer with relative ease.

3) Pen is making me finish AtC or risk attack by homo-erotic mermaid christmas ornaments on a scale of wrongness that will haunt future generations long after I’ve met my doom. It’s pretty serious.

Carry on.

There is a lot of crazy shit happening in my life at the moment. My sims (and like 200 frickin’ pictures) are trapped on a broken computer. I’m about to get them out, but for the moment, we are separated and that is going to further delay things. Also, due to some awesomely ridiculous circumstances, I have to move out of my house pretty abruptly. I’m lucky in that I can set up shop elsewhere temporarily, but that is going to help set some things back. And then, there are other less crappy but more definitive things happening that I’ll eventually explain, but the situation isn’t conducive to my continuing AtC. So, I’m going to make it official and say that we are in the last chapter of AtC. Betray All will close us out, with maybe a small epilogue and a couple of side stories. Granted, due to all the loose ends, Betray All still has some ways to go. I’m seeing about 12 (insanely long) parts in my head, so that would mean we still have 9 parts to go! I will try not to disappear again, and keep the site on the up and up. Thank you all for your patience.

I know. No really, I know. I know.

I do, I know.

I’m handling it.

Really.

Because I know.

Sorry.

Happy B-Day to one very talented writer who can drop your jaw with her prose, is always there to remind you about subordinate and main clauses, has phenomenal taste in clothing, and can make you choke on your own tongue from hysterical laughter. Oh, and people across the world count down the seconds to her birthday and then party like it’s new years. Because people all over the world know she’s awesome. 

HAPPY B-DAY PEN!

I’m not able to update for a little bit, so I thought I’d check the search engine terms, and… *sigh* positively ridiculous.

Search Engine Terms of the Month:

webbed cocooned erotic spider stories (8 times. One of you is fucking with me.)

puncture marks in crack head arms (fair)

bass ackwards on a chair (possible)

sad sticks (hehehe, what?)

i am amused (so am I)

bear sitting on a hammock (Because of course you would click on me)

pissing desperations japan (pardon?)

praying romantis (*shiver*)

air bed betrayal (…)

am i annoying? (oh, I annoy myself all the time, don’t worry about it)

supernatural demon eye contacts (edit: okay, I just realized that this isn’t weird, I am. I actually offer enayla’s demon eye contacts for download. I forgot.)

And there were also a couple of really not safe for work or for eyes or ears or mental health. Stuff about “unespecting” girls having bad things done to them with dirty pillows. And that one got me two hits. 

Odes to my storytelling comrades… in the strangest ways possible:

goodbye_sun tarantuala

penelope 3-d unity

and in quotations, meaning at some point, I actually typed these phrases…

“just take what you need from me”

“across the knee”

…maybe in innocent context, but my brain consistently dives head first into the gutter.

So for a full explanation on what the balls this is, you can check out the last post. All these thingys will be up on the Chapter Page at some point. Like now.

This is my couple’s study for Mickey and Chauncey around the time where Chauncey was kind of set on letting his aura kill him. And Mickey was set on not letting that happen.

I was planning on having more stuff done this week, but this update was particularly difficult for me, and took up a lot of my time. I’ll try to get back on it.

And wordpress was being such a bag of chickens, I have to thank Penelope for staying up until the ass crack of dawn bitching at this blogging buttface. Fellow wordpress bloggers, avoid the autoupdate feature. Tis’ a whore.

Sorry for the disappearance! Life. This is probably the worst time to put anything up, but I wanted to get this out before Thanksgiving. And 5 in the morning the day of still counts as “before”. Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate and a happy Thursday to those who don’t .

I’ve been really trying to get into different past events to help explain the characters a little bit more, although I’ve totally stalled on the background stories and while I’m working on Ten Years, I’m doing it at a snail’s pace. But one thing I’ve really wanted to do were couples studies… sort of. They probably fit in with the background story idea, but they’re longer and they aren’t necessarily in a familiar POV. And they aren’t focused on psychic ability… not extensively… a little bit… depending. And they’ll be based mildly on themes: youth, need, convenience, fear, understanding, and other stuff. Maybe.

There are only four that I have any interest in. Jax and Chloe and their youthful beginning… so they’ll be “youth”. Chauncey and Mickey (as if we haven’t heard enough from them) around the time that Chauncey was a smidge suicidal, and they’d be “need”. Loris and Arden, who weren’t a romantic couple, but a couple none the less, they’d be “convenience” . And Hadrian and Troy, right before Hadrian jacked Aeryn’s shit and was basically trying to get out of dodge before he did just that. And before Rowanne found him and killed everyone. I think they’d be “fear”. I don’t know, they’re the only one I didn’t write yet.

I’m playing around with doing one on Harper and Troy basically showing how they got together, but the vague idea in my head might not flesh out. I was also thinking of one on Sirian and Kensee, because, something came out of that, although not quite romantically. I can’t believe that I fell in the “romance me male vampire *swoon*” trap, without even realizing it (!), and I wanted to get into my one female vamp/non-vamp relationship (Rowanne and Nyxon don’t count, that shit wasn’t love, that shit was ridiculous). But Kensee and Sirian’s roles in the story are shady enough, and while it might help explain them a little bit, their relationship was short in that Sirian died and Kensee spent most of it asleep. Soooooo, yeah, gonna probably stick with three or four. Or I might only do just what I’m posting today. I don’t know, I’m lazy.

These vignettes would be set during times that would not fit in either the main time frame or the Ten Years Prior time frame.

Right now I’m posting the first of two parts of Jax and Chloe, and I’ll try to follow it up with Part II, but I might put up Mickey and Chauncey first. Don’t be frustrated if that happens. OR, I might even update my regular story, instead of continuing to indulge my random forays into… randomness and ellipses. Tommorrow, I’m not doing poo but driving around and eating food, so if I end up on a computer, I’ll put my procrastination energy into finishing pictures.

ANNNND to say that there are sexual themes in all of them is like saying this is the internet.

Annnnnnd thanks to Penelope for letting me whine to her about Jax and making me giggle uncontrollably over his birth name.

AND! Pictures are now correctly linked.

Before I ask the question, I just wanna mention that I’m traveling for work right now, but I will be posting tommorrow hopefully eventually start giving myself realistic deadlines. (Got back home later than I thought. More tired that I thought.)  Not for the chapter unfortunately, but something you might otherwise enjoy. Or be annoyed with, I can’t judge. But thank you for your patience with me.

Okay, I don’t want anyone to take this question to mean a damn thing, NOT A DAMN THING (Penelope), it is just a question. For writers and readers alike.

When is it okay for the protagonist to die?

“Okay” Meaning, you feel the story would lose nothing/resolve conclusively/ remain enjoyable/not make you want to sit in your bathtub with gallon of gasoline and a lighter, if the protag dies.

Please