profile: Summer

Summer Phoenix

Summer was a surprise baby for her parents, who were barely sixteen years-old when she was born. So that her parents could finish high school, Summer was mostly raised by her grandmother, Sophie. Her grandmother provided her a stable home and relatively normal childhood. Summer grew up knowing that Hayden and Rhianna were her parents, though in relation to each other, they acted more like siblings.

When Summer was nine, her parents married and made a home of their own, along with her new baby sister, Ryanne. Rhianna established a toy store, and named it after her, Summer's Place. In her early teen years, Summer also started a young romance with her childhood friend, Tyler.

For that short time, which Summer remembers as their glory years, the young family did fine on their own. Until tragedy struck. When Summer was fifteen, her mother was killed in a car crash that sent her father spiraling into a deep depression. The girls were taken in by their grandmother once again, as they all tried to struggle through the chaos to put their lives back together and find their way forward.

end of days party...

Please stay tuned while we reconfigure the universe.

There are only two full updates left for TS2 (one of which is mostly shot already, and I have one more left to do), so it's almost time, people! I'm excited, lol! I'm not sure if I'm prepared for the switch-over, but I'm totally going to wing it! I have shot one future update in TS3 already, and while it was tricky, and I know I have a lot of things to learn and get used to, I had a lot of fun doing it!

I'm doing a couple of finishing fixes to my LH-test terrain, and then I'm going to start moving some real families in! It's not "finished", and likely won't be really finished for many more months, but I am ready to play it and build on it for real. I'm sure I won't really know what I want from it for sure until I've played on it anyway, which is sort of backwards, but I've always been a build-as-you-go kind of girl! ;)

this is kind of like a break-up...

This is the last bit of decorating that I'll ever do for Sims 2. It's Ryanne's bedroom. I thought I'd share those pics here, because I'm not sure how much of her room will make it into the story shots, or from which angles, and well, you won't ever see it again.

I did have a lot of fun putting a couch through the wall like that, like a little window nook, where a teenage girl might sit and daydream - or in Ryanne's case, angst at the world! They can't actually sit on it though - I tried. I have no idea if I tried the same trick in TS3, if they would be able to sit on it.

happy birthday, dear Ryanne...

January 6, 2084 - Ryanne Phoenix is 13. (Sam Harris is 12.)

Ryanne hates her birthday this year. Because for Ryanne's thirteenth birthday, she's grounded. It's not just that she has - or had - a boyfriend. It wasn't like her dad had forbidden her to date or anything. In fact, she isn't even really sure Angelo Shaw was her boyfriend. They just held hands in school, and used to kiss a little in the utility closet at school, until she got caught doing something else to him in the utility closet, and now she's pretty sure, even if he was in fact her boyfriend, that he wouldn't be allowed to be anymore.

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.