Langurd Birthday Bash Extravaganza! Part One

Before you read: Overkill is my middle name. That is all.

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Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday to you,

Happy Birthday, dear http://www.domesticshenanigans.wordpress.com

(BREATHE)

Happy Birthday to yooooouuuuuu!

*confetti*

My little blog turns three today! If it were a sim, it would look like this.

That’s Tewl as a toddler, yes. A fine candidate for the Secret Block Society.

Well, what are we waiting for? Throw on this Langurd-themed playlist in the background and let’s get this party started.

(Note: These songs are hand-picked from post titles and in-chapter references, which means they’re a solid mix of the best of the best and the worst of the worst with some token “wtf even is this.” Listen at your own risk, but just remember whose blog you’re reading. This ain’t no fine-dining experience.)

A little nostalgia to whet your appetite.

(I just told you to put on two YouTube videos simultaneously, didn’t I? I should not be an event planner.)

I’m eager to get going, but let’s be real — parties are more fun when you have to sit through useless tedium first.

I definitely do not speak from experience.

Anyway, to maximize excitement levels, I want to start this party with some thoughts on my blogging journey so far. I have to be somewhat srs for this part, so I apologize.

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DA REFLEKSHUNS:

When will dey show who we r inside?

*ahem* Right. Serious.

WHEN I STARTED THIS LEGACY, I WAS…
19 years old.
Just out of my first year of university.
Living with my parents.
Working in fast food.
Growing out the most awkward bangs.
Just out of my first relationship, totally fine with it, and realizing what a stone-hearted son of a bitch I am.
Pretty much resigned to not having friends because I was so bad at talking to people.
Wearing an orange tank top layered with a white lacy one. Why I remember this, I do not know.

SINCE THEN, THESE THINGS HAVE HAPPENED…
https://prezi.com/embed/wgqbcdpu71iy/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=0&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&landing_data=bHVZZmNaNDBIWjNxWlNQcmg2RlRPRkRDK3JmWmU3a0E2U2NKU2xQV2xhaUJSVVROeTJPU2UzUGMxbWZ6RUl3UVZCRk9Ld3NVd1BGV2dRYXYzdHQz&landing_sign=5CcnV-u297xzZ7SAPJhOC0kyDyBfcupUZ-XESH7HIw4#

Congratulations, you have just experienced the worst Prezi ever.
P.S. I collected these stats yesterday so they’re not entirely accurate.
Aren’t I doing a great job of this so far? 😀

THREE YEARS IN, I AM…
22 years old.
Just graduated from university.
Unemployed.
Thinking about getting bangs again (oh dear).
A little less jaded about people and relationships.
Learning how to say things in social situations!
A proud beater for a quidditch team full of weirdos who are also impressive athletes.
Living independently with my best friend, a chaser for said quidditch team.
Wearing leggings and a “Snitch don’t kill my vibe” brotank, in case you were wondering.

I HAVE LEARNED THESE THINGS…
1) Writing a legacy can be really easy or really hard, and you get to pick.
The great thing about this challenge is that it plays itself to some extent. You can legitimately just press “C” a lot, put your screenshots in the writer, and add some notes about jobs and births and deaths and weddings and wettings (of the pants). OR you can make things really complicated for yourself. You can start caring about your stupid Sims and worry if you’re doing justice to their character development. You can pause every half-second to try and catch the most compromising moments from every angle under the sun, and then concoct bizarre explanations that have nothing to do with what is actually happening in the picture. You can spend hours picking the best shots out of seven times as many outtakes. You resize and sharpen and colour-adjust, and you can rearrange the order and pick exactly the right gifs and memes to put in between. You can sit there for three hours trying to come up with an original caption for that picture of a toddler with a xylophone. (And then you can ask yourself what your life has come to.) You probably thought this paragraph was going to advocate the “really easy” option, but fuq da police. Making things difficult actually makes them way more fun.

2) Writing funnies can make you funny IRL too.
I’m not saying I’m ready for stand-up comedy (oh dear lord), but when you spend your waking hours penning the comedic banter of an entire family, you exercise a certain muscle. Your brain is constantly challenging itself to come up with a faster, wittier response to what you’re presented with. Usually my jokes only come to me like three days after the conversation has passed, but lately I’ve begun to experience the pleasure of actually making people laugh when I’m trying to. And then I’m too stunned to keep it up, so I go back to being mute.

3) The Sims community is kind of amazing.
The last fandom I was a part of that hated its baby more than the haters did, was Glee. (Damn you, Troll Murphy! #stillgonnawatchScreamQueens) The Sims community is kind of like that. Most of us are hating on EA and threatening to rage quit half the time, but you know we’d never follow through on it. Even when your game crashes twelve times because you moved the mouse too fast or something idk, or if your heir is blocked out of all romantic interactions with the PERFECTLY CHOSEN legacy spouse, or if your textures aren’t rendering for no reason at all, or if you get Error Code 12 and flip your desk and throw your computer out the window and then throw yourself out the window after it — even after all that, you eventually cool off and come crawling back. I think that’s why EA gets away with having such terrible tech support — because they know their hook is that good. What was my point? Oh yeah, even when EA “experts” are too dumb to get us out of a problem they created in the first place, you can always count on an unpaid simmer somewhere in the world to solve it and share their findings with the rest of us. To use a crappy metaphor (apologies to my English profs): we’re all up shit creek without a paddle, and the person who stole our paddle is laughing at us from the dock, but there’s always somebody willing to jump out and swim in the shit to give the boat a push. And did I mention our longevity? I know simmers who have been not just playing, but blogging for ten-odd years. Not solidly, but still. We just KEEP COMING BACK. Like a yo-yo. Or like that really resilient guppy in the fish tank that’s supposed to have like a year in it but somehow it lives for six and it one day it disappears for a long time and you think this is it, the poor guy finally got sucked into the filter or eaten by the big fat speckled molly but — oh wait, THERE HE IS AGAIN! What even are my metaphors today?

4) And Sims blogging isn’t “a waste of time you could be putting into real projects.”
It’s actually a really cool storytelling medium, and I’m surprised the greedy, greedy world hasn’t capitalized on it yet. I touched on this in one of my Liebster posts, but I’ll say it again: How do you even describe this? It’s like part picture book, part TV script, part machinima, part soap opera, part magazine caption contest? And then there’s the scale of it. (For novels, 100,000 words is the maximum that most publishers will take from first-time writers. This legacy is already 150,000 words.) Then there’s the weird question of how much you’re writing the story and how much the game is writing the story for you, and how your story feeds the game and the game feeds your story and yikes, I’m so deep I can’t even see myself. Someone send a rope down please?

5) Finally, I should probably have chosen a more, uh, digestible title and URL.

And for that I am deeply sorry. Mind you, these are valiant efforts.

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Now back to the good part!

Are you ready for a party like no other? Ready for cake and confetti and route fails? Ready to dance and cry and laugh and have a really really really good time? Ready to learn the true meaning of “no boundaries”? To be personally violated on every level?

Simselves: Uh what, this doesn’t sound fun anymore—

Sam: Oh? Well that’s unfortunate, ‘cause you signed the waiver and…

Simselves: We didn’t sign a—

Sam: …and that means I can do whatever I want with you. Haha, suckers!

Which, for the most part, isn’t so bad. I mean, just look at the venue I picked for the party!

I built this beach house for some Sims I made with my roommates. Looking at it now, I realize the back should probably be facing the water. Oh well.

The usual tenants are Flalice Montgolfiere, Hannahanna Hogswall, and Roger That (all female), but they don’t need it right now, so it’s all ours!

Stephanie: I still don’t feel comfortable with this.

Kayla: So about this party, huh?

You’re right, I’m stalling more than a teenager on a stickshift…

…but only because it takes a while to set things up. I started with a household of eight simselves, and I added another eight with MasterController. The second bunch had to sail across the deep blue sea from their temporary place of residence.

Heather decided to block the doorway for a really long time.

Heather: This town ain’t big enough for the both of us.

SOME PEOPLE had trouble with the ocean journey and decided to loiter on sandy hills in the middle of nowhere.

Livy: I’m having my own party here. It’ll probably be better than yours.

😥

Audrey: Wowee, all this hotness in one room!

I know, we simselves are a steamy bunch. 😉

My simself and Sammy Sama came from the same lot, and they both arrived with this moodlet. Looks like somebody took pre-drinking to new heights.

I made the mistake of turning on autonomy before I’d rallied them all in the party room. It was semi-disastrous.

Tam: You going up?

Kayla: Nah.

Hmm, I wonder if someone is, dare I say…

LOITERING??

Livy: Oh hey, what’s up?

Tam: Personal space. Invaded. Boom.

Livy: Trust falls?

Tam: NO WAIT I—

Anyway, eventually I got everyone bumbling in the right direction. There was only one room I couldn’t lock them out of, but hey, most of us are introverts—we’ll probably need a rest zone.

Joey: Computer games!

Some of us sooner than others, apparently.

Laura’s one-track mind was on a different track.

Sadly, the Clumsy trait does not mix (harr harr) with mixology.

Laura: Am I going to have to drink it from the bottle? Because I’m willing to do that.

Stephanie: Help me, why I am I attracted to everyone?

Yeah, there was a lot of heart-farting. I was going to include pop-ups, but it just felt weird…

Nate: So wait, exactly how long do I need to stay at this thing?

Nate was not a happy camper from the get-go. It could be that one of his traits is Loner, but that’s just a hunch. 😛

Sam: ONE KEGSTAND! TWO KEGSTAND! THREE KEGSTAND!

Naturally, my simself took it upon herself to get everyone drinking.

Sam: FOUR KEGSTAND! Oh my god, she is SO heavy!

Uh, no she’s not?

Sam: Crap!

Heather: I’m like a bird, I only fly away…

Heather: Aaaand we’re down.

Sam: I am SO sorry!!

Heather: Don’t even. I’m so not reading your blog anymore!

Sam: GASP!

Seeing that Laura couldn’t handle her booze, Samali appointed herself bartender and did a remarkably better job. What is your secret??

Samali: Well you see, you lift it, you tip it, and you pour it. Throwing it in the air is not actually a part of the standard process.

Fascinating!

Salome was weirdly stuck in some other part of the house, so she turned up fashionably late.

Salome: Alright, losers. The party starts now and not a minute sooner.

To be honest, things were already in full swing. Julia and Joey heart-farted each other and promptly started a game of tag, which didn’t work on account of being locked inside.

Julia: You’re it.

Joey: Game over.

They’re so matchy, they should be the new duo on Sesame Street or something. XD

Then, Heather came over to interrupt.

Heather: Hey, we’re not gonna read Sam’s blog anymore. Pass it on.

Julia: Hahahahaha, what a great birthday present! You know I’m already bringing down the legacy from the inside, right?

For a while, there was this small gathering of stragglers just inside the entrance who couldn’t seem to figure out what to do.

Tam: Is it okay if I, like, dance?

Michelle: Who picked the most awkward place to stand? I DID, yeaaaahhh!

Stephanie: Um, is it true you know the answer to all the troubleshooting questions ever?

Echo: Quite possibly.

Stephanie: Wow.

This is how we break the ice.

Alternatively, you can pour alcohol over it. (Clearly what my simself would advocate.)

Audrey: More fish!

Samali: Audrey I think that’s enough fish now—

Audrey: MORE FISH!

Sammy heartfarted some guy across town, and then I realized I hadn’t seen her in a while, so I had to check what she was up to.

Sammy: Real people are lame.

First person to run out of introvert energy? We have a winner!

Sam: Welcome to my drinking circle.

All I can say is Sims have impressive booze stomachs.

Tam finally took the dance floor’s virginity (haha sorry Tam) and Salome thought about maybe doing the same.

Salome: Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

Kayla: Hey, know what’s fun to do at parties?

Stephanie: Oh wow what’s that on the wall over there?

Echo: Oh, are we gazing in weird directions? That’s fun.

Stephanie: If I tell her, Kayla hates me. If I don’t, she hates me. How do I win???

The socially awkward defence mechanism: universal avoidance!

Kayla: Gotcha!

Echo: HOLY—! Why would you not warn me about that??

Stephanie: Echo? Where did you go I can’t see you

It was only a matter of time before some of this started.

Laura: Oh dayum! How are you going to caption this shit?

Laura: WHHAAA JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!

Easy, I’ll caption you instead. 😀

Tam: Look, guys! Laura created a new dance move! JESUS TAKE THE WHEEL!

Stephanie: I’ll pass.

Salome: Me too…

I’m pretty sure Salome has been standing on that same square since she got here.

Periodically, Kayla goes and stands next to her but doesn’t really make any effort to cheer her up.

Salome: Does anyone here do anything besides dance and drink?

Kayla: LOL nope!

Tam: Still goin’ strong, baby!

These two finally snapped out of it.

Michelle: That was fun, see you later.

Nate: I AM IN A GLASS CASE OF EMOTION

And of course my simself is still drinking.

Michelle: Who invited the boyband poster?

Nate: Don’t you realize what this party is doing to us??

Michelle: Ease up, it’s called autonomy!

Livy: Yeah, it lets you walk through walls! *bonk* Oh wait, that’s not right.

Nate: Do I really have to be here?

Poor Nate. I know this feeling all too well, and the parties I go to are nowhere near this convoluted.

More heart-farting in the living room.

Heather: You two kooky kids have fun now, you hear?

Echo: Yes, Mom.

Once again, I realized Sammy was AWOL. So I sent an envoy.

Sam: Aren’t you going to come join the party?

Sammy: I’m all partied out, remember?

Sam: Ohhh yeah. Goodtimes.

Stephanie: Haha… oops? Please tell me that didn’t land in the fish tank.

Fish: Looks like we gettin’ crunk tonight, boyz!

Samali: Haven’t I taught you guys anything? Leave the mixing up to me!

The next visitor to the Introvert Safe Room was a bit of a surprise. What kind of host goes and stares out the window at her own party?

Sam: It’s the view, man.

I know it is… I’ve been staring at this screenshot for ten minutes (which is too meta for me to handle).

Julia: HAHA, good one! You’re so hilarious!

Salome: I just don’t get why everyone is laughing and having a good time!

Meanwhile, Tam has officially become one with the dance floor.

Tam: Part of the crew. Part of the ship.

This is what you get when you invite a bunch of simmers to a party. Now it’s Livy at the computer, playing video games.

Which must mean…

That’s the spirit, Sammy!

Sam: ONE KEGSTAND! TWO KEGSTAND! THREE KEGSTAND! FOUR KEGSTAND!

Just don’t drop another reader, please…

Nope, that’s a stuck landing, folks!

Sam: TWENTY-FOUR KEGSTAND! Unbelievable!

Julia: Well don’t drink ALL of it.

I daresay, this party is shaping up to be a pretty solid one.

Kayla: In your dreams. Where’s the cake?

Ah, yes, well, I did perhaps forget about that one thing…

Samali: No cake? Are you serious? That was the only reason I came!

Laura: Me too.

Echo: Me three. And now the drinks are gone, too. This blows.

Sam: I know what’ll make everyone feel better! ONE KEGSTAND! TWO KEGSTAND!

Oh dear. Maybe try a different tactic?

Sam: Are you having fun?

Julia: *fart noise*

Sam: Cool.

Sam: Are you having fun?

Kayla: THERE IS NO CAKE.

Sam: Right then.

Kayla: What, you’re just gonna walk away?

Sam: Are you having fun?

Nate: Get out of my bubble.

Susan: Why do I feel as if a centipede just crawled down the back of my shirt?

Tewl: Dang gurl, you’s lookin’ fine tonight.

Well, I’ll be damned.

Tewl: Did ya miss me, bitches?

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To be continued…

Because I need to get this up before midnight and I’ve forgotten how to meet deadlines. D:

If you have any complaints about your simself’s portrayal and such feel free to voice them, but keep in mind I’m treating this very much the way I treat my regular chapters. Following the action, not what I actually think of you guys as people. ❤ All in good fun.

Next time, the second (bigger, better, weirder!) half of the party.

See you soon!

-Sam