happy new year, 2084!

New Year's Eve, 2084 - Stephanie Day is 24, Justin Kim is 23, Sophie Phoenix is 61.

Soundtrack: "Drown," by Smashing Pumpkins.

Plenty of people are hosting New Year's parties this year, every year, all over the world. Aunt Sophie is hosting the usual party, and Stephanie's parents will be there, but instead Stephanie is here with Justin's parents. Because Justin's mom makes regular platters of food, sausage rolls in biscuits from the grocery store, nothing imported, nothing strange and gourmet like her Aunt Sophie serves. Stephanie is here because Aunt Sophie's house is always too crowded and noisy, because Corbin has a date which left Justin alone. She considered that they could spend New Year's in the quiet of her empty house, but she decided against it. Alone has grown on her, grown into her bones. But not tonight. She knows Justin doesn't like that much quiet.

Stephanie wonders how they're celebrating on base, or if they're even celebrating at all. Out there, tonight is just another date, a point on a calendar that's only significant to us because we make it so. Outside the Earth's spinning clock, a year means nothing. Out there, their ships whiz through the blackness and time is irrelevant except to their little electronic clocks, keeping home time like nostalgia.

commence babble!

I should be ready to start work on the next update sometime in the next few days, but for now, I wanted to announce my new babble blog! For those who followed the VSS LH Babble thread, this blog will replace that thread. Babble will continue as usual, just in a different place ;)

And I wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to Blackcat (who writes the brilliant Richmond story) for showing me how to import all of my archives over there!

And thank you to everyone who's listened to my nonsense chatter over the years! I hope it was interesting enough, lol! :)

experiments in social media...

I'm going to call this practice in using social media in a professional light, and I could use your help.

You can now "like" Lakeside Heights on Facebook!



If at least twenty-five of you lovely people decide to "like" it, then I can pick a custom domain for the page *wink-wink* ;)

prequel stories #10: wedding pictures

I actually don't know why I had this post saved up in my drafts for so long. But I'm kind of under the weather this weekend, so I think I'll post this up to pacify you all so I can slack off on the next update for a couple/few more days ;)

Be warned, these are very old pictures. And this was long before I learned to download much proper CC, so some of these outfits are truly terrible, lol!

sneak peek: the terrarium

I know this is far too lame to be considered an update, but some people wanted to see my start on the terrarium, so here it is! ;)

extras, little bit of a teaser: the observation deck

This isn't exactly an update - but this was an excerpt I used for my 52 weeks project this week, and it's something you guys haven't actually seen yet, so I guess that makes it a bit of a teaser ;)

A taste of stories to come! Enjoy!

2083, postcards from the edge, and December extras...

All work and no play for me these past couple weeks. But I do happen to have some funny gems saved up in my screenshots folder, so I thought I'd appease you all with some extras, outtakes, and updates from our supporting cast! ;)

And because you know you can never have too many pictures of angry Vicky! lol!

in case any of your husbands are tricksters like mine...

Check this out.

this is why I've got nothing...

Such a pretty hair for such a very angry girl! ;)

Vicky is wearing Carla's retextured Nouk Tommie hair, and I just love them! So if you haven't already, head over there and pick that up!

The first month of my year has been amazingly productive, full of creativity and more ideas than I know what to do with. Unfortunately, all that good work is wreaking havoc on this blog, lol! Please bear with me. I don't have Matt's story ready - I haven't even started it, to be honest, and there's a novel chapter I want to finish before I turn my focus to anything else. But there are a couple things I want to tell you about first! :)

shameless self promotion?

I am allowed to do that on my own blog, right? lol!

views on sex: a study on fictional nookie

* warnings: pics are marginally NSFW, and plentiful discussion of a wide variety of sex ;) *

Okay, first of all, I have no idea why I was so compelled to do this study, lol! But since I couldn't think of a fictional Christmas gift to you all, I decided to give you a character study on fictional sex!!! :D

Of course, just the very reason I'm exploring my characters' views on sex at all has to be inspired by Lunar's profiles for Ruin. I've always felt (and I think she would agree) that you can tell a lot about a character based on how they approach their sexual relationships. This became even more apparent as I write my characters' current relationship ordeals, seeing how each of them view love and sex so differently.

extras, friendship picspam

Friends is the picture theme over at N99 this week, and I spent a bit of time putting this together, so I thought I'd share it here too so that you all could see it. Some of these friendships go back so far, and when you look at it all in sequence, it kind of even tells a story.

If I get around to doing some other groups of friends, I'll share those here too. I'd definitely like to get around to doing my Tyler/Beau/April/Summer/Lucy/Dallas group too, but I know I have many others as well.

extras, birthday spam

Just a few extras and outtakes from setting up Stephanie's birthday party. I found this bunch surprisingly photogenic while I was working on them, and I ended up with a lot more pictures than I could actually use.

happy birthday, dear Stephanie...

December 16, 2083 - Stephanie Day is 24, Willow is 16 months. (Justin Kim is 23, Lily is 10 months, Corbin Gray is 32.)

Stephanie turns twenty-four today. Her parents have spent the majority of the week packing and unpacking, making the 20-minute drive from here to the LCU campus several times. Her mother got the School Board President job, and she starts immediately following the holiday break. But she did make some time to take Stephanie out for a new haircut and a pedicure, to brighten her spirits, and then they met her dad for lunch.

Her mother also arranged for some help around the house. "You'll have a housekeeper once a week," she said to Stephanie. "And call your uncle over if you need snow shoveled. The mortgage is paid, and you have Jeremiah's stipend for groceries. Your father will bring over more, if you need it. So all you have to do is take care of Willow. You can handle that, can't you?"

Stephanie handles Willow just fine, and Justin's daughter Lily sometimes too. So she isn't sure what sticks more, the emphasis on "all," or that it's even a question?

time in a bottle, revisited

* Sorry, this is going to be unbelievably long and rambly! *

not really a prosperity blog, or anything like it, anymore...

It's been a long time since I wrote that post on time and aging, and a lot of things have changed in the almost-three years I've been writing this story. So if this opens a new era in the keeping of LH time, then it's something that actually happened quite a while ago. If you compare my rounds 2076/78 to rounds 2080 and especially 2082, I'm sure you'll see the huge difference ;)

I don't play/write my families in anything resembling equal turns. In fact, I rarely get the chance to really and truly "play" my families at all anymore. I'm fine with that, by the way. I have just as much fun using the game to tell my story as I do playing it for fun. And in the midst of posing, I do try to steal a couple minutes to just "play" them like the little pixel dollies they are. If I do manage to take any cues from gameplay anymore, it'll be found in these little 5-minute play sessions.

This story (and all of its story parts) has plenty of momentum, for the next two rounds, and into the spin-off even after the Lakeside Heights portion of the story is finished. So I thought we could talk about the way things started here, and what things have become. And I'll go ahead and finally say out loud that we're leaving that "prosperity blog" structure, which in honesty, we left quite a while ago.