The Liebster Award

Hello, lovely peoples! I'm happy that you've decided to read my blog and I'm even happier to announce that I've been nominated for a Liebster Award, by the lovely and long time supporter of my Sims story blogging endeavors, parabee27, who writes The Vulpasiah Legacy.

 

Now, if you're anything like me, you've been browsing Sims story blogs and you keep seeing posts entitled 'Liebster Award' and you have absolutely no idea what it is. After reading several of these posts and doing some research, er, uh, ehem Googling, I've discovered that 'Liebster' is a German word (ah, yes the German language, the language I have been meaning to learn to appease the maternal Hey-We're-German-We-Live-In-Germany-AND-We're-Bilingual side of my family, but haven't because procrastination) that means favorite, love, pleasant; the award is for blogger's favorite blogs who have under a certain number of followers.

If you're nominated, than you must:

•  Answer the eleven questions your nominator posted for you
• Nominate  five to eleven other bloggers for the award
• Post eleven questions for your nominees to answer

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Now, without further ado, I'll do the first thing on the list and answer parabee27's lovely eleven questions:

• On a scale of 1-10, how often do you experience writer's block? How do you get over writer's block?

Hm... It depends on the story that I'm writing for and how much I connect with the character. I'd say maybe a seven. Whenever I'm suffering from writer's block,  I have the tendency to stop blogging, not forever, just for long enough to enable me to gain a fresh perspective about the story. I'll also read lots of other people's writing, either published novels or Simmy blogs, which I have an equal love for, in order to gain inspiration. If my writer's block persists for too long, I'll start a side project to keep my writing "skills" from deteriorating too much (hence the numerous failed spin-off story blogs I've created)or I'll force myself to sit down at the computer and write a stream of consciousness thing.

• Can you live without Custom Content (CC)?

2013 me, who had no idea how to install .packages would have declared that I definitely could have, 2015 me, on the other hand, probably couldn't since I've developed a love for downloading and using CC. A few months ago I was having a problem where my CC wasn't showing up in game and I was insanely frustrated and couldn't play the game until the problem was resolved.

• On a scale of 1-10, how annoying is it for you to re-install The Sims 3 and all the custom content you used before onto a new computer?
  (If this has never happened to you, feel free to type something saying that it has never happened and move on.)

It's insanely frustrating to me, I'd say an eight in attempt to keep myself from looking impatient and easily agitated, though when I'm actually experiencing it I'd say a ten. I've had tons of tech problems throughout my legacy blogging days and despise having to deal with digital downloads, since they take forever to download for me.

• Again, on a scale of 1-10, how often does your game crash? What do you after it crashes?

Since I switched computers, I've been lucky; the game's rarely crashed, so probably a two. When I had my iMac and all the EPs and lots of CC, probably an eight and when I had my laptop probably a ten.

• Do you listen to music or anything while you play, take pictures or write?

When I play the game and take pictures I listen to iTunes Radio or music on YouTube. When I'm writing I have difficulty when there's talking or the sounds of television in the background, since I'm easily distracted I'll either go and join the conversation or go and watch the TV show, so I don't listen to anything.

• Where do you play Sims? Example: my bedroom, office, etc.

I live in a relatively small space, so I play on my PC that's on my desk that's technically in my dining room/kitchen/living room/office

• Is there a certain time in the day or week when you feel more focused to write?

I feel inspired at the worst times, usually in the middle of the day when I'm busy and won't return home for another four hours or so or in the middle of the night/pre-sunrise morning. As mentioned above, I have difficulty writing when there's noise, so I like writing in the middle of the night/pre-sunrise morning, however I can't sleep in late when I do write at 2 a.m. and I do terrible work when I'm sleep deprived and hyped up on coffee, so I don't really write when I'm the most inspired.

• How long does it take you to write a good quality/satisfying chapter?

I can write a chapter in a few hours when I'm increadibly inspired, usually it takes me a few days, however some chapters have taken me weeks. I cannot stand to re-read what I write, because I tend to be a perfectionist, so if I read it and end up seeing one misspelling or I end up cringing I'll want to delete the entire chapter and start from the beginning, than I'll read what I wrote, end up deleting it; the cycle will continue infinitely, resulting in me never publishing anything, so I guess the amount of time it takes me to write a satisfying chapter is the amount of time it takes me to write a chapter.

• Are any of your real-life friends or acquaintances sims legacy/story/isbi/challenge writers?

Tragically, no. Though, considering that none of my friends play the Sims or know about this blog, it isn't surprising.

• Do you ever base a chapter out of inspiration from a drama/movie/song etc?

I do, though I cannot think of any specific examples right now.

• If you could do whatever you want (date, marry, work with, etc.) any sim you want from any legacy, story, or challenge (even your own), who would you choose? 

I don't know, this is such a good question! There are several sims that I want to know in real life, just so I can scream and or slap them for being terrible towards another sim in that story, haha... Hm... Kiss, marry, kill- Wait, wrong thing, never mind. Honestly, I don't know, my deliberations could take months, so I'm just going to say that there are too many wonderful or horrible sims written by talented people for me to pick just one.

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Now, onto the second step, my nominees. Since this is my second nomination (I'm insanely grateful for TWO nominations, let alone one), I'm going to leave my nominations mostly the same from my other Liebster Award post- lovesstorms who writes The Ramsey Wishacy, a Sims 3 legacy story, and There Goes the Neighborhood, a Sims 4 commentary story, which I highly suggest reading if you haven't had a chance to yet, who nominated me- on The Janes Legacy, though I am going to change two nominations.

• Doors by Hannah (hellohannah2). I binge read this story over Spring break last year and have since fallen in love with all of her characters, as well as her writing style.
• L'amour Vrai by LateKnightSimmer. I love her stories, she has a great style of writing, and I loved Disney princesses as a child, so this story is practically perfect. It's a retelling of various fairytale, currently she's writing the Cinderella inspired portion and it provides a bit of childhood nostalgia for me, yet it also puts an interesting spin on things.
• The Ramsey WIshacy by lovesstorms. (I know she nominated me, but this truly is unbiased, because I love this legacy so much and I was going to nominate her on The Janes Legacy, but I didn't, because she was the one who nominated me, so yeah.) I love this legacy so insanely much, you should go read it, in case you didn't decide to read it when I told you to earlier.
• The Rose Legacy by newoangel. An amusing, amazing, engaging legacy with some rather lovely looking sims.
• Chasing Rainbows by Arrowleaf. There's so much love that I have for this legacy, I discovered her stories by reading the first few chapters of her one hundred baby challenge, than I began reading that legacy. It's humorous and heart breaking and there's just so much love for it.
• I was going to nominate the Serillion Legacy, because I loved it so insanely much, I binge read it, than I forgot to book mark it, spent awhile attempting to track it down, than added it to my favorite stories to ensure I wouldn't lose it again. Tragically, when I visited the blog, the author's apparently deleted it.

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 This is the final step, where I create questions for my nominees. These are different questions from my last post, however if I nominated you on that post, please, please, please know that I'm not expecting you to answer both sets of questions, please, feel free to pick one set over the other, provided that you would like to answer them, also I know some of you've had other nominations, so don't feel pressured to answer these questions.☺

1. Which character in your story do you identify most with?
2. Do you map out how you want the story to go or do you do things based off of the sims' wishes/reactions or do you do a bit of both?
3. What do you like to do when you're not playing the Sims or writing for your story?
4. If you could live in any of the Sims 3 EA worlds (base game, EP, store), which one would it be. Why?
5. Do you have a method for naming chapters? (This may seem like an odd question, but I tend to over think the process. I'll either pick something that's too descriptive, too long, or too short.)
6. Do you play any other games in the Sims franchise?
7. Do your friends/family in real life know that you have a blog dedicated to your sims story?
8. Are there any songs/artists/genres that you're currently enjoying listening to?
9. What's the most frustrating thing you've dealt with when it comes to blogging your sims story?
10. Do you watch Sim Youtube channels?
11. Are there any challenges (legacy, 100 baby, etc.) that you haven't done that you want to?

 xx,
Jill (aka mfb426 on the Sims forums aka TheJanesLegacy on Blogger)