Eva

Also just passed a post that said "see the problem is i hate going to sleep but once i am asleep i love staying asleep. inertia is a property of the me"

we finally moved on bc it was a meeting where we had to do other things, but his closing statement was essentially ai does so many things that are so much worse, so why waste energy debating if ai art is actually art.

The premise of this challenge is that each generation is confronted with a “fatal flaw” that they either decide to overcome or revel in. The reason I wrote this challenge was because I realized that the sims I enjoyed playing most were ones with “negative” traits. I had a lot of fun writing this, so I hope at least one other person has fun playing it :) 

The only generations that really require an expansion pack are gen 4: squeamish, because that particular trait comes from outdoor retreat and gen 7: lazy, because it requires you to adopt animals.

Google Doc Link

Notes:

This challenge is greatly improved by any mods that make actually traits matter, e.g. personality please, roburky’s meaningful stories.

This challenge is more story-based than game-play based, though there’s elements of both

You don’t need to complete the aspirations! They’re only meant as a guide + are also there for the sake of the aspiration trait.

You don’t need to complete the careers either, unless its a gen that specifically requires it.   

Feel free to go to university any generation if you feel like it suits your sim’s story/you want to.

Generation One: Mean

you didn’t grow up in the happiest or most functional of households. and so you moved out as soon as you could. now it’s just you, your dog, and your shitty job. you’re kind of an asshole, but you can’t help it – it’s a deep-seated defense mechanism from your past. other people can’t hurt you if you hurt them first, right? but as you grow older, you start to realise that, more than anything, you want the loving family you never had. if only you could find someone who could make it past your terrible social skills in order to see the big heart you have hidden underneath.

traits: mean, dog lover (base game: loyal) + family orientated (YA)

aspiration: big happy family

career: retail + can pick another part time career as an adult on top of that (optional)

rules

start the generation as a teen on an empty lot.

drop out of high school using a mod, or just simply don’t go.

make money from the retail career + dumpster diving, fishing, collectibles, anything, just never get a proper full time job. you never finished high school, after all.

when you age up into young adult, meet and woo a sim of your choice (optional: they have the good trait.)

be mean and rude to everyone come across until you fall in love with your future spouse. 

have at least three kids and become at least ‘friends’ level relationship with all of them.

Cats and Dogs: have a dog with the friendly trait, become companions with them.

Parenthood: if you want an extra challenge, age up from teenager to have the insensitive trait from negative empathy.

it’s not that i know how to cook. it’s that the biggest christmas present i got was a little plastic kitchenette i never used except to climb on. it’s that my brother used it more, his hands ghosting over pink buttons and yellow dials. it’s that when my work needs cake for a birthday, they turn to me. i get it from costco. i don’t even like cooking. a boy burns popcorn in the dorm microwave and laughs. a week later, i do the same thing, and he snorts at me, “just crossed you off my wife list.” it’s that i had heard something like this so many times before that i laughed, too.

it’s not that i don’t love being feminine. it’s that i came home with bruises from trying to be a trick rider on my bike and heard the word “tomboy,” felt my little mouth say, “but i’m not a boy, i’m a girl”. it’s that they laughed. it’s that until i was sitting in my pretty dress and smiling with a big pretty smile and blinking my big pretty eyes, i wasn’t given back the title “girl”. it’s that until i wore makeup and styled my hair i was bullied; it’s that when i don’t wear makeup i’m a slob, that my mental health diagnosis hangs on the hook of being dressed up. it’s that my therapist sees me returning to bright red lipstick and tells me i am looking happier and i have to explain that i am more sad than i have ever been. it’s that i dress myself in as many layers as i can every time i ride a train because it’s better to be laughed at than harassed. 

it’s not that i know how to clean, it’s that my brother’s chores were outside where i wanted to be, and mine were inside. it’s that i would have weeded the garden better than he did if they had just let me. it’s that i am put in charge of fixing other’s messes, expected to comply without complaint.

it’s not that i can’t open the jar. it’s that you ask my brother first every time. it’s that i am pushed into docile positions, trained to believe that my body when it’s strong and healthy is ugly, trained into being less, weaker. it’s that the jar is also science, is also engineering, is also every job, every opportunity. it’s that you laugh faster when he tells a joke, that you take him seriously but wave off me, that when he raises his voice he’s assertive but when i do i’m hysterical. the jar is getting into a car with a stranger as a driver and wondering if this is our last ride. the jar is knowing that if something happens to us, it’s our fault. 

it’s that i’m weak and i don’t know if it’s because i just am or i was trained to be. it’s that we need to sit pretty with our pretty smiles and our pretty words trapped pretty and silent in our throats, our hands restless but pretty when idle, our bodies vessels for nothing but a future white dress. it’s that we are taught someone else needs to open the jar for us.

Like, I'm not entirely sure I want to bring additional life into the world with its current state, but I do know I want to be a parent if I feel that the world is a safe enough place for that.

Now, whether or not I'm actually physically birthing a child is another thing, but I'd like to have the option. Not everyone does. Hell, I might not. Don't know yet.

Oh, I don't disagree with what you mean! But I personally deliberately shy away from applying moral labels to aesthetics in every area I catch myself doing it. So when I say it can be beautiful, that's not a compliment or endorsement of its use. It's part of the problem. The really unconvincing stuff is less threatening.

God, trap card. Please, I need to vent and you gave me a really good opening. Hang on. Thank you. I've been waiting for an excuse, I got so mad about this last year and have seethed ever since. I'll show you what I actually do find threatening.

Beautiful images are kind of eating my favorite hobby alive.

Look at this puzzle:

It is beautiful, and if I knew a human had done it I would say that person was VERY proficient. I am an artist and I sure couldn't have done it. Could I fix the bits that are not quite right? Yes. But I couldn't have just...done this. This is so pretty and I am so deeply upset and frustrated by that.

That company must have, I don't know, well over a dozen puzzles like it, beautiful stained glass kitties, probably more. I would buy them all if they weren't what they are! I'm sure the company commissioned all of them for less than the price of paying someone to do just one like it with a more traditional workflow.

That's the threat. The part that scares and upsets me.

The puzzle company charges the customer the same, and someone who likes the image and can't tell what it is will look at the others and be absolutely delighted there is more of the same and buy more. That's how puzzle lines within brands work.

What happens when it gets so good I can't tell? Because that probably is already happening and will doubtless happen more and more often.

What happens when a program can convincingly imitate my favorite puzzle artist's work? What if the company she works with drops her in favor of a larger line that costs them less? Where will she go and where will I get her stuff?

Ugly stuff would never be able to displace her, or have me buying it. I wish it was ugly. I could stop feeling like it was any sort of threat.

I'm not picking on you, though.

A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, “a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.” The group’s goal is to protect one of the world’s largest repositories of information from the same kind of misleading AI-generated information that has plagued Google search results, books sold on Amazon, and academic journals. “A few of us had noticed the prevalence of unnatural writing that showed clear signs of being AI-generated, and we managed to replicate similar ‘styles’ using ChatGPT,” Ilyas Lebleu, a founding member of WikiProject AI Cleanup, told me in an email. “Discovering some common AI catchphrases allowed us to quickly spot some of the most egregious examples of generated articles, which we quickly wanted to formalize into an organized project to compile our findings and techniques.”

9 October 2024

If you wanna watch it I cannot recommend it enough; I just warn that it covers a LOT.

Big Boner Down The Lane Rug