So, it’s been a while since I posted. Things have been busy – but good. I am well on my way through the first of many challenge updates (which will be all published in January – I have that month set aside for challenge updating!) – I started with Timeline Adventure – and my 6-month post-cancer scan has come back CLEAN!! I realize I’m rather late on the challenge updates from when I originally said I’d start working on them, but… well, life happens, unfortunately.

I just realized I haven’t posted a thing on here about what’s been going on. On December 1, I was diagnosed with both two large kidney stones.. and a tumor on my kidney. (Same kidney, no less).. So I had the kidney stones taken out surgically on December 11th, then had a healing period before they could go in after the tumor. March 13th (two days ago) I had robotic surgery to get the tumor out of there. Dr. says he got the whole thing out, so I should be home free. I will still not know whether it was actually malignant cancer until he gets the results back from pathology, which will be in a couple of weeks. I stayed overnight in the hospital after surgery, but I am back at home, and am doing pretty well. Pain is still higher than I’d like it to be, but that’s how healing works. I will be back to filming my YouTube series by April 1st, and shouldn’t have to miss too much there.. and as for streaming, at this time I’m planning to be back April 1st. But anyway – that’s the main reason there haven’t been any updates on here for a while.

However, What I really did want to mention, is that last week of “vacation” – I’m going to dedicate some time to updating ALL my challenge rule sets and the spreadsheets. So that should be finished before I start streaming again – I hope.

One last note: After much agonizing deliberation, I have pulled the forums down that were on this site. You can still easily contact me via comment or the “send me a message” page – and most of the people signing up for the forums were spam accounts. Which was a real hassle and headache. Finally, I just decided Discord is way easier to police and keep safe for everyone – so if you do want to chat about my challenges, there are channels for each of my challenges there. I apologize, but spending 4-5+ hours a week deleting spam member sign-ups just got old.. fast.

Yes, there’s a little blurb about me at the bottom of every page of this website. No, I don’t NEED to put this page up, but I will anyway. I won’t go into my history with games on this particular page, because I have pages devoted to that – so if that’s what you’re interested in, I would go there first. I’m also not going to give my whole life history. It’s not that I am not okay sharing it, I just feel like the average person probably doesn’t care. If you care enough to ask, I’m happy to talk about it, but be warned, it will probably include lots of horsey anecdotes and silly stories because beyond that was a not-very-happy childhood that I remember little of (thankfully), and a rather misspent youth. I have a long history of mental health issues, and it’s only fairly recently that I’ve found the serenity and competent health care to help me get to a stable place where I can enjoy being who and what I am. I still have rough days, as I think we all do, but for the most part, I’m content being me and I enjoy my life.

I started streaming on Twitch in 2020… and I doubt I’ll be stopping anytime soon. If you’re interested in the videos of me as I was just getting going, 99% of my VOD footage is on my Youtube channel. If you’re more curious about how things are now, feel free to stop in to any of my weekly streams by checking out my schedule on the page below (updated weekly on Sunday).. or just watching the icon in the top right of the website – it will show when I’m live and link directly to my Twitch Channel.

Updated Last: 2/10/2017

Before I do anything else, I figure I ought to introduce myself.  I’m currently 39, and a married mother of one.  I had 9 years as a single mother before finding the right dad and partner for my daughter, and I don’t regret a minute of it.  I tend to have a rather odd sense of humor, as anyone who knows me would attest to – probably rather vigorously.  I come by it mostly honestly – my dad’s family has a wacky brand of humor that is well-known and lamented throughout the family.  The last major family reunion I attended, one of my cousins decided to set up a “talent show” that seemed to rather quickly devolve into silly blonde jokes – most of which were only laughed at by the “born” family members – not the in-laws.  It’s quickly become a family joke about the “Family humor” – at reunions, the family tends to gravitate together in usually-laughing groups, while in-laws congregate in another area.  My mom’s family humor was of a more dry, sarcastic bent..  so my sense of humor became rather warped between the two.  🙂

As I already mentioned, I have one daughter – who is now 17 years old, and I love her dearly.  She’s as silly and opinionated and geeky as me, and proud of it.  She likes horses and pirates and vampires and gaming and reading and art.. much like me.  She’s into all sorts of things… Art is a really big part of her life, and something she plans to stick with. She’s also very much a gamer like me and my hubby.  Being a gaming-type family, we have Xbox360, Playstation4 (and 3 and 2.. and 1), PSP, PSPVita, Nintendo DS, GameCube – heck I even have an old Intellivision game console – that works (not plugged in tho) around here somewhere.  So there’s always plenty of games to choose from.

Let’s see .. life history.  As I mentioned on the home page for this blog, I spent a good portion of my youth writing – and had some rather extensive training into it.  I at one point (ok, probably more like many points) wanted to be a writer for a life career – and that may still come about one day… but I always got pulled back towards my first love – horses.  I started riding at the age of three and a half and rode on a mostly daily basis from then until the time I was 19.. (at which point, life choices sent me far from home into the wilds of attempting to grow up – and couldn’t afford horses then.)  I got back into them a few years later, buying a wonderful horse for myself, and a pony for my daughter (really, miniature horse, she was four .. hehe).  I have since sold the horse – the prices to keep them simply skyrocketed in this area and I couldn’t afford her anymore.  There was also a secondary – probably more primary – issue of the fact that she was simply more horse than I was able to comfortably handle – and fear was becoming an issue.  To allow us to become better partners, I needed to be able to put more money into some professional training/help for the two of us, and I simply couldn’t afford it.  I always planned to get another, calmer, horse, but it simply hasn’t happened.  Not long after selling her, I ended up meeting my husband, and I became far too busy with family life to even have the time to work with horses .. but eventually.. it would be nice to get back into them… I just don’t see it happening any time soon.

Our current family pet is a Beagle/Terrier mix named Cassie that we got from a local no-kill shelter. We’ve had her since the middle of fall after our last dog, Balto, died from cancer. He’s missed terribly, even though we have another cute pooch. Cassie is usually pretty chilled out, and very quiet.. but she loves dinner and playtime (although I think dinner holds the top position in her life). Also recently, our cat Missy crossed the rainbow bridge as well (also due to cancer, unfortunately).

Well, enough babbling.  I may eventually think of more about me to post .. but this will do as an introduction.  *chuckle* .. probably more than most people want to know already!

Hello, and welcome!  You’ve found my sims blog.  I’m known as IllusoryThrall on Sims 3/4 Forums, the gallery, Origin, Twitch, and on Twitter; and Wyldhawke on modthesims.com and boolprop.  Please send me a friend request on any or all of those! 

Over the years, this blog has grown, and it is no longer just used for my Sims challenge attempts and stories, but also the headquarters for info on my streaming on Twitch, and a safe place to keep the challenge rule sets I have either updated or written for Sims 4. To that end, in January 2022 I relaunched this site with a new theme and an entirely new menu structure to attempt to make it easier to find things. Below, you will find snippets of the sections this site contains and links to find out more about them.

Now, in October 2023, my site is again metamorphizing. I am moving to a new webhost, which will allow lots of fun upgrades to the site that I’ve been wanting to implement, but been unable to implement based on where my site was hosted. That being said, this upgrade is thanks to the generosity of a friend’s donation, and it is much appreciated. In conjunction with migrating and re-launching my website, I will also be adding the afore-mentioned upgrades, and a way to donate towards the cost of my website in the future, should you, also, be so inclined. There are a lot more things planned for this Sims 4 website, so stick around! All that being said, feel free to explore, there’s plenty of interesting things here to find!