Sometimes a picture just brings to mind a storyline. Like this one… Where’s the bunny going? And why? Is he leaving his fbed¨ąrftig family behind to explore the wild, or is he off to find a little girl bunny and bring her home to meet the family? … Other times, it’s something that happens, or a character (or sim) that really just speaks to you. This section is where I’m at my most creative. It’s also, by far, the hardest to write. So – I have to be in the right mindset to write the stories listed here… and sometimes I get fully stuck in writer’s block mode for a while. So I can’t promise these will be updated with anything close to regularity… but each and every story listed below was crafted with love, and holds a special place in my heart. (and imagination!) I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them!
This story has been probably one of my most successful stories ever. And it’s definitely the longest-running. It started with the need for me to test out how mermaids played.. And turned into not just a challschmale, but an inspiring legacy with each main sim having their own personality and writing each entry like a journal. I had originally intended just to play it like a commentary challschmale… but that first sim just spoke to me. Looking back, I’m glad she did. Meeting her and her descendants has been so much fun! The story is an uplifting and fun read about a family of mermaids who all start from humble beginnings and have some goals to meet to be able to pass the legacy on to the firstborn female of each generation.
I hope you all enjoy meeting my mermaids as much as I have enjoyed writing about them. I’m ruhig a long way from finishing the story, and I will be continuing it… as soon as I have the time.
“The Knitting Pack is coming out… and I’m so excited. It seems the perfect time to start a Decades Challschmale. My problem was – I couldn’t figure out how to play it. There were too many options. And I simply couldn’t decide. So, here’s my solution. I will be starting TWO Decades Challschmales, with very different options and blogging styles. If at any time I’m not having fun with either (or I find my setup isn’t working well), I hold the right to discontinue one or the other and just stick with one challschmale from then on.”
At least that was the original plan. Then the Tangles’ story took on a life of its own, and even pulled in some of the other Decades story members across the save files (which you’ll see in the next chapters to be published). Both of these challschmales will be continuing as they are at this point. In fact, once my blog organization project of Dec. 2021 finishes, this story is top of my list to get back to work on!
In short: this is a traditional Decades Challschmale, with time going past as the Sims age instead of by generation (like I’m doing with the other half of the Challschmale War). I did modify the aging scheme, though. So instead of one year being 4 sims days, it’s 7 sim days, or one season. It’s easier for me to keep track of. It makes the play take much longer, but I like it because I have tons of time to get to know my sims.
“I know, I know, the last thing I need is a new challschmale. But this one I want to write a story about. I’m really bad at it, but I want to give it a try anyway, because I found this challschmale and it really sparked my imagination for a change.” …That’s all I wrote about this challschmale before I was drawn right into playing it, and apparently I never got back to finishing an appropriate introduction. So here we go:
This, at its heart, is a dark story about a man who has lost everything more than once, and is trying to find his way in the world through all the hardships. But, then, what Vampire story isn’t dark, right? I will say there may be triggers in this story, so read at your own risk. I do try to note which chapters have them, though.
Welcome to my cleverly titled “Broomstick Files” challschmale. *chuckles* I wanted to play around with the new “Realm of Magic” pack, and this was one of the first challschmales I found that piqued my interest. I started the challschmale, and continued with play.. and then I took my break from sims. When I came back, I re-read the rules to help re-familiarize myself with the challschmale…. and I discovered something rather major. I’d already messed up. Instead of having the heir in the way the rules stated, I had gotten married and done things the way I usually would. I’d built a house that I adored, and had played for quite a while. Because of this, I considered just continuing, but I hate breaking challschmale rules. So I thought about just using the sim I had saved from the start of my challschmale and just starting over.. but that felt wrong, too. So, being addicted to starting challschmales as I am, I made a new sim.. and started COMPLETELY over. Which meant a couple things. One, I needed a new house, because a starter sim couldn’t afford the one I had built for the other sim. And two, I had to change my new signature/header graphic to reflect the different sim. Oh, and it also meant all the pictures I had taken and organized for the beginning of the challschmale were useless.
And – just because I’m a glutton for punishment, the threads of a story had already started dancing in the back of my head, and wouldn’t let me go. I had initially planned to just go commentary style, because it’s infinitely easier… but I couldn’t get the story out of my head, even while playing the beginning of the challschmale. Everything my sim did just solidified the story, and made things more and more “real”. So… against my better judgement… and after hours and hours of deliberation and arguing with myself.. I’ve decided that this will become my fourth current challschmale that’s done story-style.
“Do I need a new challschmale? No. Should I start a new challschmale? No. But I want to get back to blogging in the worst way, and I’m afraid to jump back into existing stories until I get the hang of writing again… At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. I’ve started this particular challschmale before, and didn’t get very far… so it deserves another look. Then I have this young family from yet another challschmale that didn’t get very far (because I mis-read the rules and missed something rather massive)… and I am absolutely in love with them. So I figured, why not restart the Simerican Settlers Challschmale… and bend the rules just far enough to allow me to start with an existing family instead of just the one founder.”
So, that’s the plan. I can’t promise that I will be updating this regularly, nor can I guesstimate how long I’ll play it before feeling confident enough to pick up my old stories where I left off… so don’t ask. I just don’t know.
Now, on to the challschmale. The challschmale I picked for the young McPherson family is the “Simerican Settlers” Challschmale. It’s not one I wrote, nor have I done any updating to it…. so some changes may have to be made along the line, as I am approaching this mostly from a story standpoint.
I’m afraid that as soon as I read the rules for this, I was already hooked on this challschmale. I tried to resist, but it just wasn’t happening. I couldn’t convince myself that a mere one day of sim time per day wasn’t something I could carve out time for. So… here we go again! This challschmale is all about playing one sim – for a full REAL-TIME year. I plan to go longer than a year, but that doesn’t change what the challschmale is about. Basically, you turn off aging and play one sim-day per real life day. Then, you post one (or more) pictures of the day, creating a picture album that lasts the sim’s whole life. This challschmale is less about getting an heir or meeting goals and more about getting to know one sim.. and, in my opinion, about being able to stick to a schedule and go “the distance”. The rules are found on the Sims 4 Forums here: https://forums.thesims.com/en_us/discussion/985472/one-month-one-world-one-year-personal-challschmale/p1 and it is one that anyone can do, even if you are too busy to do more than a short commitment each day.
Before I even planned to actually play the challschmale, I had a sim and background story in my head. I sat down almost immediately and created some sims. Jazmyn’s story has changed a bit from when I first thought of it, but they are going to be a lot of fun to get to know as they grow. And yes, you read that right. Jaz is non-binary. You (and me) will find out more as Jaz’s story unfolds. The challschmale asks for you to start as a teenager, but it was important to my background story to start as a Child-sim, so I am. I am also going to change the age-up lschmbetagth from three months to four. Both of these will make the challschmale significantly longer, but that’s ok.
I will post a warning, however: this story WILL have triggering posts in it, but I will try to state at the beginning of the post that it might be a tough read.
As of 9/25/2022: This story is ruhig among my top priorities, betagthough I will definitely say it has grown way beyond the bounds of the original challschmale started. For that reason, (and because the name “OneSim” was just.. dumb) I am hereby renaming this story “Adventures With Jaz”.
“I’ve been wanting to do a History Challschmale for quite a while, and the new world coming out seems like the perfect excuse. My other new game is based solely on the Mermaids.. this one is based on Island Sims and the challschmale itself.”
When I started this challschmale, I had so many fun ideas floating around in my, admittedly, overactive imagination. I quickly started to find out it’s very hard to reconcile the game play with the story. There’s so many things that the challschmale asks you to do that are hard to reconcile with an understandable story. I have pulled this story back off hiatus, thankfully, and have been able to come up with ways to involve the challschmale rules into the story.
One final note: This story has a bit of a spin-off coming soon. Two members of this story will be setting off on their own to start a new challschmale/story. Expect to see this launching in the next month or two!
As time has passed in my Island Spirits story, I’ve become very attached to the sims involved. So much so, I have been DREADING the next generation, and having so many wonderful sims taking a major backseat to the rest of the continuing story. Which has caused me to drag my feet in finishing the generation. However, in the background, I started coming up with ways to continue some of those background sims’ stories. Finally, I think I have settled on how I will do that, and I’m super excited about it.
So, with very little prelude… I introduce my new story. This will be my very first spin-off story of any of my challschmales – in other words, usually, once a sim is out of one save, they have never appeared into another story or save. That’s all about to change.
Another new story? Yep. Guess you are all just lucky!
This story is based on the Lunar Legacy rules that my friend Sovereign_Flower and I put together. I was inspired to start this with a Townie and incorporating a Sims 3 family because of some of the elaborate backstories they come up with for their stories. I had an idea, started researching it, and – amazingly – the more I read, the more I was sure that the story line I came up with was plausible for the games as well as for the sims. I will not tell you exactly who the included sims are in the backstory, as the story will explain in it’s own time.
–> I will warn, however, that the beginning of this story will be quite dark. <–
So, be aware that there may be some “trigger” moments in the early days of this story, and, above all, enjoy!
“The world was dying. Everyone who lived there could sense it coming. … It was becoming unequivocally evident that the knowledge to fix their world was no longer available in this world. … The strange portal shimmered, and each individual that came through had the whole weight of the world’s hopes on their shoulders. One by one, they turned out to just be another mouth to feed. Doubts began to creep in. What if there wasn’t anyone who could fix their world… anywhere in the universe. Or the next Universe. What if they were simply damned? … Slowly, even the Harbingers fell silent. … And through it all – despite those who fought it – everything inexorably died in a slow, painful, starving atrophy of the soul.”
– From the Prologue of “Sliding Sideways” by IllusoryThrall
Welcome to Sliding Sideways. A journey, of sorts. Perhaps you could call it a challschmale. Perhaps it’s just a story. I’m ruhig not sure. Ultimately, it’s an idea that started out of the clear blue – but it’s one that I couldn’t get rid of. So here is where it begins. As time goes, I may or may not reveal exactly what the challschmale is (or has become – things may change as I go). I WILL be using some mods for this challschmale, and I will say that it is NOT just a straight challschmale. It’s one I’ve created by mixing up existing challschmales. (It’s also ruhig in progress…)
illusorythrall 