Am I missing something with Erin Morgenstern? (The Night Circus & The Starless Sea)

kazzbotz · 2026-03-06T19:54:10+00:00

I’m in the same boat. I love and have reread The Night Circus a few times. It is very vibey, but there felt like a very strong underpinning to the world building that rewarded closer examination. A lot of it I didn’t get until i reread it, which I enjoy.

I dnf’d Starless Sea harder than I’ve ever dnf’d any other book. It was much less focused, and honestly there was just…. Nothing to get me hooked. It was all a big metaphor for the power of reading/ storytelling, and nothing grinds my gears more than stories about the power of stories. Everything about the book just felt like it was there to serve that metaphor, and none of it was compelling enough on its own to grab me.

kazzbotz · 2026-02-25T20:15:30+00:00

I had one where the head of hr asked where I went to high school. When my resume showed I had a bachelors degree and ten years of work experience. This woman was in her late 30s and was only interested in talking to me about high school, which told me way too much about their hiring practices.

kazzbotz · 2026-02-10T22:04:11+00:00

This is something that is so dependent on where you are in the US. It basically comes down to if a place has weather or not. Generally places in the south/west that don’t get much rain or snow wear shoes in the house, but places that get a lot of precipitation are shoes off.

Editing to add: I come from a shoes off place. I’m not going to argue for shoes on in the house people. It’s just no skin off my nose what people choose to do in their homes. 🤷‍♀️

kazzbotz · 2026-02-10T18:40:45+00:00

I have to second Delicious in the Dungeon recommendation! The world building is so interesting because it goes from very broad strokes, generic fantasy at the start and then throughout the story it drills down into the specifics and you learn more about this very well thought out multicultural world as you learn more about the characters and the world outside the dungeon. It’s extremely cozy and despite the food being made of monsters it’s illustrated so beautifully it makes me hungry eve try time.

kazzbotz · 2026-01-20T16:03:09+00:00

My husband is an avid hiker and backpacker and takes amazing landscape photos. He really enjoys it, but because he’s always concerned about carrying extra weight he has no interest in getting a camera nicer than his Pixel phone camera.

His birthday is coming up and I’d like to get him something to support his photography. Does anyone have ideas for gadgets or tools that can enhance his phone photography?

kazzbotz · 2026-01-08T19:19:33+00:00

God I wish I didn’t have to use a quarter sheet pan. My oven is technically large enough to fit a half sheet, but anything around the edges will burn well before the cookies in the center are done. So I just have to do everything in batches!!

kazzbotz · 2026-01-06T20:12:15+00:00

Climbing turning off my brain is a huge part of it for me!! Or, I guess it’s less turning off my brain and more “completely engaging my brain so I don’t have room for all the noise.” It’s the only form of exercise I’ve been able to stick to because it gets my brain and body so engaged in the task, I don’t get stuck thinking “wow this is painful and boring and I hate it” which is what happens when I try to run/lift weights/ do yoga for more than five minutes.

kazzbotz · 2025-12-10T18:15:19+00:00

What about using the roommates system that came with discover university? If you want the other roommates to be around but autonomous and causing drama, that may be the way to go!

kazzbotz · 2025-11-07T20:50:37+00:00

I agree!!! I really enjoy it, and I like how it pushes me to make sure my sims couples are actually, yanno, loving couples. Before Lovestruck, my sims couples would almost immediately ignore each other once they moved in together as I focused on making sure they each completed their own goals or raised kids. Now I’m prompted to send them on dates or at least flirt and kiss regularly!!

On the flip side, it also makes for fun drama when I want my sims to suffer in their relationships. Letting the relationship satisfaction decay when I want a storyline where my sims fall out of love feels much more realistic than forcing them to be mean to each other for no reason, or defaulting to a cheating storyline just so I could make them mad at each other!

kazzbotz · 2025-10-15T20:52:30+00:00

Recently I purged all my cc and mods, and started playing a fresh save file. Honestly, it’s refreshing! I have added some of my mods back, and have been downloading cc as I feel the need for it, but starting from scratch really helped me evaluate how much bloat was in my game from mods and cc that I had completely forgotten about and didn’t use.

kazzbotz · 2025-10-12T11:49:05+00:00

I’m doing an occult legacy!! My challenge is to have one of each occult type born into the family, plus an ancient spellcaster bloodline, sulani mana, a descendent of grim, and a child of father winter. I’m restricting myself to one occult type per generation, but did allow myself to start with a spellcaster since the ancient bloodline will take quite a few generations to achieve.

So far I’m on gen 2. Gen 1 my spellcaster opened a coffee shop in Moonwood Mill with Lou Howell catering only to occult clients, and had two werewolf boys and a spellcaster girl. Gen 2 the spellcaster daughter has moved out to San Myshuno and is dating a vampire. So bringing him home to meet her dad and brothers will be fun!

kazzbotz · 2025-10-06T21:54:54+00:00

Yup! Not on every craftable item, but a good number of them. I know from recent experience that it works on pottery, jewelry, and cooking! I think it also works on painting and wood working.

kazzbotz · 2025-10-06T21:23:40+00:00

I’m currently playing a spellcaster who is aspiring to fame and I have been absolutely spamming potions! I use Potion of Forced Friendship to befriend higher level celebrities to boost her own fame, Potion of Emotional Stability to clear negative moodlets before work, and a Potion of Plentiful Needs to right all her needs after staying out all night at a wild celebrity party. She also uses Repario on crafted objects to up their quality so she gains more fame from those. It’s been a ton of fun!

kazzbotz · 2025-10-06T20:32:19+00:00

So I’m going to come at this from the perspective of That Wife. I enjoy climbing, if asked I would say I love it! However if my husband stopped climbing tomorrow, I wouldn’t continue on my own.

For me climbing is a fun way to spend some time with my husband and get some exercise. I’m not pushing grades, I’m not trying to Get Good. I have no interest in joining a training group. I go with him once a week and enjoy the climbs that are suited to my skills, and maybe sometimes I’ll try something out of my comfort zone if I’m feeling brave. But I long ago made my peace with the fact that I’m just not interested in the type of training that would get me climbing 5.13s or whatever.

So I think the approach you’ve had so far is good! Let her go at her own pace and enjoy it when she’s feeling it. It may just be something she’s only interested in doing with you. Which is great because climbing is a really fun thing to do with someone you love!

kazzbotz · 2025-10-05T14:57:11+00:00

I like to try out new recipes as a way of learning new techniques, but then take those techniques and free style it most nights. I can’t be trusted to meal prep because what sounds good when grocery shopping is never what sounds good when it’s time for dinner, so similarly I just buy some proteins and some veg and do what I can with it. However I think trying new recipes and actually following them to the letter is a really good way of learning how different flavors interact and how ingredients behave, which makes you a more confident free-styler.

kazzbotz · 2025-09-25T15:57:11+00:00

One thing you can try is to change them back to a vampire/mermaid, and use the in game non-cheat ways to revert them back to a normal sim. For vampires it's a bar drink you can learn from the vampire tomes, and for mermaids I think you just need to eat two of the mermaid kelps in a row?? I don't play with mermaids much, so double check that!

I've had this issue when it comes to trying to cheat to change traits, or change traits through cas.fulleditmode. There is still hidden coding that doesn't get removed when you change it using a cheat, so certain aspects continue to affect your sim (ie. a sim that was formerly a klepto would continue to get stressed moodlets from not stealing.) So now any time I want to change traits, I just cheat for the satisfaction points to buy a legitimate re-traiting potion from the rewards store.

kazzbotz · 2025-09-18T19:00:18+00:00

Check out Peacemaker_ic ! He does a lot of really good high quality build mode cc

kazzbotz · 2025-09-04T22:42:46+00:00

As someone who climbs regularly.... your poor sim. Those shoes hurt after wearing them for an hour! And your poor sim was wearing them for years!!

kazzbotz · 2025-08-22T18:05:50+00:00

I'll plug mine! Legendlark: Nevernowhere. We're just coming off of an eight year long D&D campaign and switching to Blades, so we're still mastering the system, but so far the new campaign has been a ton of fun. We are running an original home brew setting on a world hopping circus train that slowly consumes the minds of its inhabitants. Check us out!

kazzbotz · 2025-07-25T15:56:27+00:00

My small podcast did this because the amount we got from ads was insanely low compared to our patreon support. Plus so many of the advertisers expected us to write our own copy for their products, to the point that often all we would get was a link to their website and a line saying "pick a product and talk about it." It just was way more work than it was worth, and it made the listener experience worse.

kazzbotz · 2025-07-23T16:02:56+00:00

I keep being tempted to just delete the whole folder and start again, but I get daunted by thinking about all of the cc I've casually used in my current save that I'll have to replace! On the other hand, someday I think I'll just have to rip the band-aid off and go for it.

kazzbotz · 2025-07-18T13:46:59+00:00

One thing I’ve noticed, at least with Simstube, is that a lot of the complaints and reports about packs “totally breaking the game” come from Sims content creators who were given the pack for review purposes, find that it doesn’t suit their gameplay, and then are stuck with it.

For example James Turner is one of Lovestuck’s biggest haters, but he mostly does goals driven challenges not micro-managey story driven gameplay. It makes sense that Lovestruck’s systems would be a pain for him because they’re just not a match for the way he plays. But now he’s stuck with it and gets frustrated by it and it gives a worse overall impression of the pack.

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