That's basically the approach I've been taking! And aside from the University, which I eventually want to upload as a whole neighborhood, these aren't so much big single "projects" as they are "ways of organizing my projects" lol... I realized a while back that trying to piece together a whole city, and then eventually a whole world, actually gave me MORE inspiration for new creations, rather than feeling limiting. I actually have done the same with my more epic fantasy lots, though that crosses over with a D&D game I'm running for some friends lol...

After watching Donnie Darko, Social Bunny freaks me out... it even has the missing eye and everything... Who knew it was inspired by something so not kid friendly! I never wanna see him again XD

Singapore?

For the look at me, there's now also a Sim Turner by picknmix that gives you more options than the 4th wall hack. It's a little disco ball thing, and it comes with a bunch of options, including looking at camera, or looking at the object, or looking away from, or a certain angle. It's super useful, definitely recommend to anyone that's posing stuff. I did not know about it until I saw Charmful using it, now I use it all the time

And in regards to freezer clock, it can definitely get better with some simple TTAB edits. If you aren't comfortable, Charmful shared her edited one that you can get here, it enables ages and also visitors, which is handy as some forms of making a Sim controllable won't work for using the freezer clock

It takes up WAY less space and doesn't have the annoying route failure if you place it diagonally. Sims will walk through it though, if that bothers you. You could always place it on a walk around me block, I suppose?

How do you spin it around reliably? I know you can sometimes turn objects by placing them into a slot, but a multi-tile doesn't go into slots. I noticed that toddlers stand awfully far from single user toys too (like the logic blocks). Their body appears on the tile where the toy is, but they're actually occupying a neighboring tile and have "animated/snapped" forward.

Look at this employee who is focused on the task of cleaning up a food dish. If they are well paid, they don't seem to exit for motives where normal people would have exited. After she is done, she can't clean anything though because she has Hurry Speed from the fire, and every object kicks her out.

I sent my sim to a premade downtown lot, got really confused because I was 99% sure I had renovated it, then realized I'd actually renovated it in another hood.

I use the 45-degree cheat always turned on and the < > keys.

I see. I didn't know about this cheat.

Put this in your UserStartup file:
boolProp allow45DegreeAngleOfRotation true

And depending on your keyboard outlay, either use the <> keys or , . keys to rotate the item. Gives you 45 degrees in addition to 90 degrees.

Some multi-tile objects will on a diagonal temporarily seem to act as 1-tile items, at least the green "grid", when placed (but won't place on OMSPs or anything like that).

Oh yes, sorry, I forgot about them not going onto OMSPs so the walk-around block won't work.

But yes I turn them using the 45 degree angle cheat, which is in my user startup cheat file so always turned on.

I'm so close to the testing stage with my Hogwarts lot, there's really just two rooms (one in each half of the castle) that I'm stuck on- they're both kind of odd shapes, too big to be closets, too small to be classrooms, and everyone already has an office who should have one! I've literally combed through the Harry Potter wiki and honestly I've included just about everything already, so it's just such a sticking point now and I want to finish this!

If any place has a couple of weird, apparently not used for centuries, strangely furnished rooms, then it's Hogwarts!

Broom storage? Potions repository? Extra bathroom?

How about long-forgotten or hidden rooms of old manuscripts, spell-books, reagents and other detritus from earlier times?
A cloak room or a forgotten professor's office?

How about deleting one wall and placing decoration there?

House elf break rooms

I find the angry yowling noises cats make while shredding the furniture to be inordinately funny.

A cat becomes a weapon of mass destruction, lol.

I increased the population limit on a community lot when an Electrono Ticket Machine is active to be similar to downtown, between 7 and 11 visitors. Now nobody ever leaves anymore. They sleep, they get coffee and keep paying. They're supposed to check every hour On Timer with "UpdateBandatronCustomer" to decide whether to sign up another hour or leave. That doesn't even consult the population limit. There is some motive and loyalty stuff inside. I removed modifications for the Electrono Ticket Machine, and visitors still don't leave.

I saw a walkby child come and sign up to a nightclub. Without a stepping stool. I didn't even think they could do it. He left for being a child.

I had this idea that I would push them to leave at inherited priority first. And after one hour I would push them at maximum priority. That seems sound, but they never leave in the first place like they had mixed a love potion with snapdragons and the oil from the bubble blower.

They have some weirdness with double beds. They refuse to sleep next to another person, complain about it to the camera, and leave the bed blocked. I never had more than 1 or 2 visitors sleeping before, and the problem didn't show.

Why is the Electrono Ticket Machine called a "bandatron"? Does it mean something? It looks like the panel where you get a queue number (without paying). Those seem to be everywhere now, and customers no longer need to line up and ask "who is last".

If you google the word 'bandatron' you get mostly Sims 2 results, lol. There's a few results for the band Atron.

Here's one thread trying to speculate on the etymology: https://modthesims.info/t/513282

It's a word that the developers have invented.

Except in-game it's the Electrono-Ticket Machine. For some reason the players started calling it the bandatron.

That is the technical name of the object. It is usually different from the catalog name, without creative writing and jokes.

My IRL job has a lot of digital file management that I have to keep track of and so there's all sorts of naming conventions for managing hundreds and hundreds of active files that let you know what to find quickly, and for some reason it annoys me to realize that I've started doing more and more of that same thing with my Sims project files too, even though it makes just as much sense!

Funny background events: A cat shredding up a sofa while two Sims have their first kiss.