From The Shane Family by daillestqt

1. User-designed walls, skins, tiles, etc. must be used in moderation. They cannot overwhelm your story. One character in a garish red t-shirt that says Simburgers is OK if the focus is on the burgers, or one character in a burglar mask is OK, but sixteen superheroes with purple hair and alien baby faces landing on a lawn in an alien spaceship are disqualified unless they're only there to water the flowers.

Note that Amber's halter above is so shockingly pink that the user hasn't *said* Amber is popular, she's *told* us so! And bombarded our senses further with the shag rug and trendy rags! Is this story about Amber or her clothes? Change the caption to "I've just discovered a cure for cancer" (top) or "Romper Stomper Bomper Boo," (bottom) and we'd have a budding Siminalist! But we don't here. We have a Maxisalist.

And watch the noise at your block parties!

2. The Family Album must tell a story. Stills of naked Sims with the caption "Look at my butt!" or fancy buildings with the line "here's my kewl house" are disqualified. A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. It has a plot, a theme, characters, Simbols, Similes, and other literary devices. Five frames of stalker-kam or automatically generated images from default events like "A baby is born!" "A burglar has come!" "The social worker has come!" cannot be accepted as a story and should be used sparingly.

"Or they can take a refreshing dip in the Huge indoor pool!" caps Kein4 in Snooty Patooty Family Album. We count at least three Academy code violations here: 1) STO (stating the obvious; remember, "Every Story Tells a Picture Picture" as our founder says!) 2) user-designed brothel-red walls clash with Basic Sims spanish stucco tiles; 3)THREE fish tanks? What were you thinking of? Didn't you read the manual? How are you going to keep them fed?1

Out here, the icebergs could get as big as refrigerators and the ice turned an eerie green in the frigid Atlantic...Suddenly ice splinters showered the deck.

3. Action and agency must come from the user's imagination, not from downloaded skins, objects, and so on. IOW, a guinea pig cannot be used to make a Sim sick; a Voodoo doll's action cannot be used as the plot of a story; military school cannot be a central plot theme; etc. Instead, agency must be depicted with such devices as a flamingo which kills a lawyer; a bathroom-tile ship which crashes into a refrigerator iceberg, and so on.

This item from LL is absolutely verboten, boys and girls! No, no, no!

4. Creative responses to the exigencies of Sim game play and valiant surmounting of game-generated obstacles are highly valued. For example, if you can figure out how to portray a woman clenching her knees together with a toilet balloon over her head as a nun saying the Angelus so that a new toilet will be donated to her orphanage, or if you can show that a man holding a can of ill-prepared stinking Sim food is actually relishing a mug of steaming coffee, you have understood the essence of Siminalism.

J.P. clung helplessly to the smoke stack as the giant iceberg came hurtling toward him. The Simtanic was going down!

The nice man at the Woolworth's on First Avenue had donated to the orphanage three chests filled with rolls of woolen fabric after Johnny Wannaker's store went under. Sr. Rita had cheerfully sewn all the uniforms and jackets for the children, and had long grown used to the smell of simmering wool and urine in the overheaded classroom in the winter.

Mrs. Pentland finally came to adopt Lucy and take her home. Sr. Rita sadly dressed her in the only outfit she had ever known.

(cafitz1 "The Orphan Kids Family")

Single Mom wondered whether the eggshell off-white of her Slimline phone really matched the urine-etched lavender of her patio tiles. Had she woken Gayres?