Reading of the impending demise of Drama Acres brought tears to my eyes. I guess the corruption must be pretty unbearable for you to stop playing it. I know you play other 'hoods, but I always think of Drama Acres as your real game. Reading about the Sims who live there has often inspired me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Losing a neighbourhood that you've put so much of yourself into must be a big wrench -- almost a bereavement. So I'd just like to express my sincere sympathy. I'm sure that many of the characters you met in Drama Acres will always live in your memory. :lovestruc


News from Veronaville (and its Environs)

I'm continuing to catch up with various families and households not played since 2015. These are the latest ones:

Siddons (37 Mendoza Lane, Downtown Veronaville)
Jamie Siddons and Jihoon LeTourneau are two teenage schoolboys, who live independently in a little house on Mendoza Lane, Downtown. They're friends, not lovers --indeed Jihoon is gay but Jamie is straight.

Friday is a school day, so both boys had to go to school. They ate cereal together before leaving. After 1 p.m. they came home on separate school buses. Jamie had no homework. Jihoon spent much of the afternoon talking to various friends on the telephone until he left for work about 5 o'clock. But Jamie knew he had to do something about his love life. It was one thing for Juliette to want two steady boyfriends, and later two husbands, but Jamie knew he'd never be happy in that arrangement. He knew he never wanted to be some sort of Lord of the Manor at Capp Manor. He's a city boy, and he likes nothing better than entertaining friends at his little house in Mendoza Lane. So he invited Juliette round, and when she arrived immediately asked her to join him on an outing to dine at Londoste. The fact that Juliette was thinking about babies when she arrived there with him, was not at all what he wanted. He just wanted them to go back to being very good friends again, and stop being lovers. This whole "love" thing had only started because Juliette wanted a slow dance at a teenage club, and Romeo wasn't there. So Jamie, as a good friend, said he'd give Juliette the dance that she wanted. But once they were dancing close, hormones got the better of both of them. Hermia didn't exactly help -- she found the whole thing highly amusing, and took great pleasure in leaving Juliette and Jamie together whenever possible.

Now Jamie just wanted out of this "love" thing, and wanted to go back to being friends. The Londoste host (Craig Livingston) showed them to a table for two. Then, as they ate their favourite foods, he began to earnestly tell her that, much though he wanted her friendship, he knew he'd never be happy as her second husband, sharing Capp Manor with her and Romeo. Passionate though she is, Juliette has a very wise head on her young shoulders. Much though she loved Jamie, and felt she had the capacity to love both him and Romeo at the same time, she felt she couldn't force him to stay in a relationship where he was unhappy. So reluctantly she agreed -- they would go back to being very good friends. In truth she too liked to drink coffee and chat with teenage friends at Jamie's little downtown home, and she couldn't hold him as a "captive" at Capp Manor against his will.

Truly Veronaville is fortunate in having such a wise young girl as its head of state. (For Veronaville is shortly to become a Grand Duchy, with Juliette as its constitutional Grand Duchess.) After the meal, they went back to Jamie's house and drank coffee together. As they drank, they were aware of a hissing sound coming from the bathroom. When she went onto the bathroom to wash her mug, Juliette found the tap broken and water gushing all over the floor. Somehow she still managed to wash the mug at the broken sink, but Jamie knew he had to fix it. With not much knowledge of plumbing, that took him quite a long time. When Jihoon got home from work, he rang up Romeo and asked him round. But when he arrived, it was Jamie who went out to greet him. Jamie wanted to be friends with Romeo again. After a brief chat in the street, . . . Jamie invited Romeo to join him in the hot tub. As they soaked and chatted, the relationship between them, which had been strained when they were both in love with Juliette, slowly improved. Meantime Jihoon played chess with Juliette.


Capp (Capp Manor)
Tybalt has left school, but isn't quite sure what he wants to do next, other than get married to Lexie Kauker. Consort is madly in love (or infatuated) with Romance ex-townie April Hutchins. Juliette and Hermia are still at school.

Hermia got up early on Thursday morning and made breakfast for herself. Still hungry after that, she made a second breakfast for the whole family (which seems to include April most of the time these days). The girls went to school. Consort took the day off work and stayed in with April. He couldn't stop thinking about her. They goosed, they kissed, they danced, they smooched and they made out. They never got dressed all day.

Tybalt invited his friend Milburn Pennybags over from Monopolis. Despite the difference in their age, Tybalt and Milburn get on very well together. They had a pillow fight on the street! Later in the afternoon, Tybalt invited his girlfriend, Lexie Kauker round. Lexie lives in the downtown Teen Townie hostel, and still goes to school. When he succeeded in getting her alone, Tybalt gave her a beautiful diamond engagement ring. Lexie went and excitedly told Consort, her grandfather-in-law to be, about the ring.

Val Briggs, Milburn's head of planning in Monopolis, had also dropped by, and the two of them were several times seen chatting together, no doubt discussing future planned developments.

After she'd done her school homework, Juliette found time to sit and chat with both April and Lexie. She feels that, since both are likely to join her family shortly, she really should get to know them.

Around 11 o'clock the various visitors began to make their excuses and leave. Even April had to go home for an hour or so. But Consort missed her, and rang her to invite her back. Then, still dressed only in the yellow-trimmed Calvin Klein briefs he had been wearing all day, he went out to the front gate to greet her with a passionate kiss. Of course they again spent the night in bed together.


Larson (25 Toboggan Way, Bluewater)
By popular request (!) Jodie and Jason moved in on Monday morning. Jason greeted the paper girl Katherine Rauscher, and chatted with her in the street outside. He also invited Gilbert Jacquet, who happened to be passing to come in. Otherwise Jason and Jodie spent the morning learning to cook.

About midday their nearest neighbours arrived to welcome them to the street. They were Miriam Hunter and her lodger Nicholas Watson from across the street, and Malcolm Landgraab from round the corner in Gondola Way. Jodie actually served up a hot meal for her guests -- grilled cheese sandwiches!

Malcolm left soon after lunch, but Miriam and Nicholas really made themselves at home, and had a pillow fight in the kitchen. Eventually Jodie offered the guests spaghetti for tea. Gilbert made his excuses and left, but the two lovers from across the road stayed and ate. Jodie and Jason chatted a bit, but Jason seems to feel some resentment towards his twin sister. Possibly he feels she's pressurising him to go into business with her. After the last two guest left, the twins took showers and went to bed. They have cheap twin beds downstairs in their rather unusual little house. It has no door on the ground floor. You have to go up an external staircase to reach the first floor, where the kitchen-cum-living room is situated. To reach the sleeping area and bathroom, you have to go back down an internal staircase.

Realising that they still don't have enough to start a business, both Jodie and Jason have taken reasonably well paying jobs in the politics career. Besides the money, getting involved in local politics might bring them useful contacts to Sims with influence.

Priya Ramaswami gave birth to a little boy, Tarun. That makes eight consecutive male babies/plantbabies in Riverblossom Hills, plus Jack Sharpe, who was born on campus but lives in the Hills.

I exited the Ramaswami house and noticed a plumbob over what used to be Patricia and Cleo's house. Weird. Patricia moved out several rotations ago and Cleo just moved in with Leod McGreggor, so there shouldn't have been anybody there. I checked, and although the family photo showed both Sims, only Patricia was there; the house was empty of furniture (as it should have been after Cleo moved out) and Patricia was standing by the mailbox as if she'd just moved in. I checked the McGreggor house, and Cleo was where she should have been; checked the O'Mackey house and no Patricia - her thumbnail was gone. I figured since it was only Patricia at the old house I could just move her back in with Gabe, so tried that and . . . it was Cleo, not Patricia, who appeared! I tried to moveobject-delete her and the game froze so completely that I had to do a hard reset on the computer. Ran the Hoodchecker; it removed a boatload of invalid Sim references and everybody seems to be back where they should be - well, Cleo is still showing up in the O'Mackey family picture, but I'm hoping that will resolve itself when the puppies grow up and change the picture. Phew! For a few minutes there, I really thought the hood was toast.

I've been playing through Veronaville and let the maxis storylines play through. I've just sent Mercutio and Tybalt to college, as they're the oldest teenagers--except, I gave it a twist. I put them in the same dormitory, with the plot being they didn't know the other would be staying there until they saw each other standing in front of Romara Hall.

I've been trying to get them friendly (and possibly into a relationship) but with my style of playing, where I let free will do its thing half the time, they autonomously fight all the time. It's taken the whole of freshman year to get them to a point where they can hang out with each other, though their lifetime relationship (on each side) is still < -80. What's interesting is that Tybalt's daily relationship with Mercutio is 100, but Mercutio's is only around 50. It's actually time for me to rotate to another family but I'm having too much fun seeing their relationship develop.

I don't download that type of custom content into my game, but thanks for the idea. Maybe I'll have him buy Lucky Shack Cards and Drink downtown! Malcolm seems like the kind of sim that wouldn't mind taking advantage of those that sit at those card tables too long for their good.



I'm interested as well! Though it may take me 2-3 rotations years to find out. Guess I'll just have to keep playing!

I am about to Start a Challenge, this is the first ever Challenge that I have attempted.
Here are the rules https://hexagonal-bipyramid.tumblr.com/SOD-Rules

I decided to have Dudley Landgraab as my Ghost with these Sims in the Challenge. In the Screen Shot from Left to right: Max Toane, Paisley Rainbow, Mimi Landgraab, Randy Hart and Goldie Toane. I have Created all of these Sims based on The Sims Bustin' Out as this console game is the game that got me started playing Sims.

I will post more on the Challenge as my game progresses.

Edit: Played most all of today and I discovered that this is a very hard challenge. At least it is for me. I have been playing this Challenge for the better part of the entire day and I have tried it several times and then I have started again. So far I Can't get past the Sophomore year at this point. I intend to try to do it for a few more days, I don't know if I can do this or not. I think It is very hard challenge. Right now I have 3 Sims left alive in their Sophomore year and I just don't know if I can get any Sims to graduate. Tried 4 times and failed, on my 5th time now.

Right now I have decided that I am going to try this challenge for 2 or 3 days more.

Teen Katerina Kozlov had the want to get her first kiss. I switched over to Alexi Una's household to get him grown up from child to teen so he can ask Katerina on a date and fill her want. While I was playing the household his mom reached her LTW. The day that Alexi grew up to a teen a burglar visited them after everyone went to bed. After he got home from school I had him ask Katerina on a date. Katerina's big sister Larisa showed up in the background of the lot I sent them to for their date. Larisa was standing right next to her sister while she was interacting with Alexi and she was standing next to them in the first kiss cut scene. I'm not sure if Larisa herself decided to tail her sister during her date or if her family Sim father asked her to trail Katerina on her date. They had a dream date despite her sister.

After far more crashes than anyone needs, Lira Munny, Ernest and Sage Ann's third grandchild and the first girl in the Munny line since Ernest's baby sister Lira died on That Day, has grown to toddler.

The neighborhood is moved to an external hard drive and renamed so that I never accidentally delete it.

I have extracted toddlers, some children, and some teens, so I can remake them and perhaps put a few up for download. Pictures will be posted eventually in the proper places.

Drama Acres is not dead, for it lives on forever in my heart. And neither Ernest nor Sage Ann ever had to live a day without the other.

Oof, it's sad to read that Drama Acres has come to an end. Your posts about it were some that I tended to look for when visiting the thread. Thank you for sharing them with us, Peni! It'll be interesting if you decide to move the extracted sims to their own hood and start new stories with them.

I went back to Loste for a bit since the pace at Maclandon is a bit slow.

Beaker
It always amazes me to see the Beakers at home as slightly older parents of young children. Toddler Hephaestian (I know his name should be Hephaestus, but it's too late to change it now.) and his baby sister Freya are the heart and soul of the drafty manor house. The yellow pastel nursery holds both infants since Loki is paranoid, and the rest of the house isn't really suitable for babyhood yet. Toys litter the stuffy, stately, fussy front room, and smelly bottles cover the kitchen floor. The place was made for children with a bath in every bathroom, and baby gates cordoning of the couple's makeshift laboratory. Loki has big plans for the newly announced city of Medway. He plans to get in on the ground floor so-to-speak, and I may let him do it. He's actually a brilliant father. He's attentive, and smart about feeding and changing schedules. Circe couldn't have managed without his help since the kiddies are so close in age. She's made it to her third trimester and is roly-poly and waddling. This third child will be welcomed with as much enthusiasm as the first two, and will most likely be the couple's last. I was resetting their ages every so often (they're not on same age scale as my other sims being townies) but I won't again. I'm worried that they might not last for their children, but Loki's baby sister Erin would always be willing to adopt her niece and nephew.

Beaker-Loner
Erin and Ajay's daughter Savannah has reached a year old. She remains her parent's only child. There's no pre or post natal care in Loste yet since there's no hospital or birth clinic, and all the children are born at home. The new city of Medway means that Erin and Ajay might be able to have a sibling for little Savannah. I would like them to of course - Erin's quite young having been aged down and then back up at the beginning of the game. She's in her mid 20s now, and I think she and Ajay have had a beautiful first child. They have such nice, regular features - but if it doesn't happen, Savannah is spoiled for love and attention unlike mama Erin's frienemy Kristen Grunt.

Grunt
Kristen has her hands full. She's got her daughter Missy-Anne, who is the most spoiled little girl in Loste right now. As the only girl out of a passel of FIVE boys, she's got a houseful of brothers who are happy to give her whatever she wants. She's got her mother's steely stubbornness too. Twins Chip and Arty also reached their one -year landmark, and that was exciting only because the noise level dropped slightly. Poor Buck is lost in the shuffle. His father is a busy - but happy - man. The General has yet to retire, despite being a grandfather for the first time. Buzz was overjoyed to hear about Tank's little boy Torrence, and is eager to meet him and Tank's fiancee Klara. Buck was shocked to hear the news that he's now an uncle on top of everything else. Buck turned 15 on this round, and I can't believe how fast he's grown up. He's so grown up, that he's decided to opt out of school work. Buck was never the sharpest of the Grunt boys, a thing he shares with Tank, but he's now failing, and after getting a note home declaring him the lowest ranked student in school, his competitive (but tired) papa forced him to get some make-up work done over summer break. Hopefully it helps, but I've never had a teenage sim so hard to pin down that does so little. A musician to his core, his one true love is the piano. His father and Kristen gifted him one for his 14th birthday, and in the space of a year he's learned enough to be rather proficient. It's all he wants to do besides date Jill Smith. Ripp came home for Buck's birthday. It's the first time he's been back in a year, but he and Buck have always been close. He wasn't especially civil to their old man, and left shortly after the cake was cut. It's not likely that he even knows about his elder brother's fiancee and his nephew.

Curious-Spectre
I skipped the Smiths last night to get to Pascal and Nervous. I had to know how the twins were doing. My first pair of half-alien half-sim twins born in game has finally reached childhood. Nebulae and Andromeda are very cute (if slightly fishy) looking kids. Andromeda is a genius. She's inherited the Silaxian intellect from her nameless Birth Queen mother, and has already almost maxed her logic skill - no small feat at the age of four. Her brother Nebulae is... not quite so lucky. He grew up poorly, apparently appalled at his own lack of intelligence (he didn't get the skillpoints he wanted in time). He is however, a gifted artist. No one is sure what to make of it really. Nebulae is an art prodigy... but he's no where near as mathematically intelligent as his sister who makes up complex equations for fun to her fathers' shared delight. As a scientist himself, Pascal can't help adoring his little girl - and she's his only girl too. The other pair of half-alien twins, Sigund and Albrig are toddlers going through a very terrible twos stage. It's not really their fault. Their biological father Vidcund well and truly abandoned them. He didn't come to Nebulae and Andromeda's birthday, and the Curious clan is starting to wonder what on earth is happening to him. He bought a mysterious plot of land well outside the city boundaries (if you can call it a city) and seems to be living on it in a trailer. Nervous is a night guard at the prison - a role he excels in for some reason. He adores being a father, and adores Pascal, and is the happiest I've seen him. Nebulae and stubborn Sigund are his favourites, while Albrig and Andromeda are Pascal's. The twins aging up has stretched the little house to it's maximum capacity. Pascal is insisting that Andromeda should have her own room, while Nervous feels like she and Nebulae ought to share for a few more years yet - if only to give the family some space to breathe and get the younger set of twins old enough to not need sleepy mats anymore.

Well the last few weeks have been fairly eventful for my Sims.

Malcolm Landgraab and Cassandra had their second child, a son (naturally named Malcolm) and just like his older sister is pale and blond like their father, little Malcolm looks very much like Cassandra. Kind of neat symmetry there.
The family is living in an extensively remodeled version of the Monty Ranch, and I only just finished furnishing it to an, at least, acceptable level. But I'm not quite satisfied with it yet.

The second grandchild of Andrew and Joy Oldie was born, the first (and probably only) child of their oldest son, Keith and his wife, Gerogiana (Kaylynn Langerak's cousin). It's a boy named Lance, and he has red hair like his grandfather (the parents both have brown hair).
Their second daughter, Kate, has also just graduated from college and moved into the Pleasantview Condos. She has aspirations of becoming a lawyer and currently has her choice of two love interests; Dorian Bachelor, a divorced single father of one, or Dirk Dreamer.
However, both those men are also connected to her next-door neighbour, Dina Caliente; Dorian is her ex-husband, and Dirk is also her new love interests.
Let's see how that turns out.
Also I have noticed that all the men Dina Caliente is involved with have a first name that starts with "D" (just like her): Dorian (exhusband), Don and Dirk (love interests). That wasn't even planned. Dina apparently just really likes the D...

Dorian's two older brothers, both of them Warlocks (Infallibly good Orfeo and atrociously evil Zephyr) have recently slain one another in a wizard duel. That means the zombies Zephyr called forth have peacefully returned to their graves and the male line of spellcasters descended from Simis Bachelor is officially extinct, since Dorian never was a warlock (the female line descended from Jocasta is still around in Bella, Cassandra, and Cassandra's daughter Bella Landgraab)
However Orfeo's three daughters, Titania, Artemis and Galadriel, are still alive and the youngest has just turned into a teenager, so, since three is a magic number, I decided to turn them into witches as well and made it a rule that, whenever one of their descendants has three children who are either all girls or all boys they will be witches/warlocks.
But I think after the unfortunate events with Orfeo and Zephyr the remaining witches will focus mostly on potions, rather than risk another confrontation between spellcasters.

I'm trying to break myself of being a serial hood restarter. It's not that I get terribly bored of the hoods I'm playing, but that I got into the bad mindset of thinking of them as 'temp hoods' while I build up the perfect Downloads folder. Of course, such a thing isn't really possible when there are new (or new-to-me) mods and content that catch my attention all the time . I would sometimes start up a new hood to test them or a new idea out... and the next thing I knew I had five or so different hoods in varying states of play that left me feeling overwhelmed. Now, I've whittled things down to two hoods, one is populated by a small set of playables based on RP characters and the other is a very loose sort of BAC.

I've been focusing on the latter recently and have just started the third round of rotations. The hood started by being settled by the sim bin families: Ottomas, Newson, Roseland, Picaso, Cooke, Goodie, Gavigan, Ramaswami, and Traveller (I think that's all of them). Rather than pull from my lot catalogue, I decided to build each of their lots from scratch and have built most of the community lots as well. I think I'll try to post about each of them as I finish off their third week in residence. The first being the Ottomas clan.

The Ottomas family usually goes one of two ways for me: they either pull together competently or become a complete trash family. In this hood, they've definitely gone the second route. Samantha seems more enamored of being pregnant than caring about the resulting children. She had a brief spurt of wanting to learn parenting and rolling wants to teach one of the first set of twins, but has since stopped. Peter kind of just floats in the middle of it all, occasionally autonomously interacting with the children while no longer rolling any wants for them. In the beginning, Dora did her level best to keep the household running and teach Tommy (and later the twins) their toddler skills.

John and Carla were born in the first week, spending their infancy with the wrong names because I apparently got the naming boxes mixed up . I considered leaving them 'as is' but ultimately didn't feel like it fit Peter or Samantha to have gone that route in naming. Tommy got taught to potty, walk, and talk between the various adults. Carla, I believe, was taught one or two skills by Samantha because she actually rolled the wants. John was seen to by Dora. Neither of them learned to talk. Fortunately, they had access to toddler toys and rolled enough wants to learn skills that they still aged up well when the time came. Sharla and David both learned to study. In the chaos of new babies in the house, David brought Ginger home from school a few times and they snuck upstairs to have their first woohoo together.

Samantha ended up pregnant again by either the very end of the first week or the very beginning of the second. Dora, sadly, did not live to see her next grandchild born and so died not having reached her LTW. Her grave was put out in the backyard until her ghost spawned. The Gypsy dropped off a lamp but no one rolled any want to resurrect the dear granny. Her tombstone was eventually moved to the graveyard at St. Michael's church (one of the few downloaded lots in the hood and originally from here, I believe). They did, however, name the newest girl Dora after her. Her death also had the silver lining in that the insurance payout was just enough money for David to move out once he aged up to YA. He took up residence in The Cottage Estates and has been doing college work through the local Learning Center. He made it through his Freshman year and has been living a mostly quiet life. During a trip out to Main Street, he met up with Ginger. As she was still a teen, he asked her on an outing and they bummed around for a bit, having some fun before they both had to go home. He harvested the communal garden at the apartments, opting to give the produce to his parents as it wouldn't fit in his mini-fridge. He later harvested seedlings to also give them, so they could start their own garden in the Spring. Other than that, he's been making nice with his neighbors, though he doesn't spend too much time in the community building as three of them seem to be constantly getting into fights with each other.

Samantha became pregnant again either at the very end of the second week or very beginning of the third week. Without Dora Sr., however, the house and children are just not getting consistent attention. Even after the birth of Terri and Cherri, Dora aging up to toddler (and looking like she's going to take after her namesake) and John and Carla aging up to children, neither Samantha nor Peter have rolled more wants to teach them. Only to have 10 kids! At this rate, I doubt Dora, Terri, or Cherri will be taught any toddler skills. If they're lucky at all, they'll roll wants to learn skills from their toys and might yet escape from growing up poorly. Sharla aged up to teen in the middle of all this mess and took the Popularity aspiration. She's taken over her grandmother's slightly larger room and Tommy has taken over David's old one. Though with the birth of Terri and Cherri, the house just isn't big enough. The family finally has some money saved up, so I think it's about time to do a little expansion. I'm also keeping an eye on Peter, who at least once rolled the want to fall in love with his friend from work, Priya Ramaswami. The family somehow managed to avoid small outbreak of flu that was going around the first and second week. Probably a good thing, as Samantha has been having trouble keeping her needs up!

The lamp, meanwhile, sits unused, mostly because I haven't decided how to handle it. I'm thinking that only someone with a high level of interest in the Paranormal (or perhaps a witch/warlock) would know or even consider the lamp contains a genie. Anyone else would consider it junk, throwing it out, selling it off, or perhaps passing it along to someone else.

Back in my "regular" Widespot, Junior is living in The Enclave in Bigg City, in a half-finished house to which he plans to bring Candy (oh, and their son Arden, too, sure) as soon as he talks her into marrying him. He had a job in a law office and it was looking good!

Till he got fired on a chance card.

To cheer himself up he threw a party, inviting Candy, Rich, River, Delta, Goldie, Woody, Sandy, Hamilton, Virginia, Penny, Rhett, and a couple of other people. His father started poking Candy before they even got into the house, and Rich and Sandy had two all-out fights, both of which Sandy lost. (No, I don't remember why Sandy and Rich don't like each other.) Then Junior's maid Christina crashed the party, tracked him down, and picked a fight with him! It's probably puddle rage, since she has to clean up after him in the bathroom. He ordered pizza, and the guests also raided the fridge. Hamilton went around teaching everyone to thump their chests. It was universally acknowledged to be a good party.

When Aaron let Riane out of her crib, all her needs were full except Fun and Bladder. I told him to potty train her. Bladder need satisfied, Riane asked her dad for attention. Given that her Fun need was low, she was probably hoping to be tickled or tossed in the air a few times. Instead, Aaron changed her diaper - and her Hygiene promptly shot way down!

I can only assume he took off a clean diaper and replaced it with one of the many dirty ones he's left lying around the lot.

I'm taking a vacation from regular play by making my sims go on vacation. No jobs, no school, no aging, just having my sims chillax and roast marshmallows because I madeover all my three lakes lots. Three lakes is the hot spot to be at in my game!

Beginning of Pleasantview — Round 14

Goth:
Gunther Goth is now an Elder. Which is odd because his parents are still alive and well. Gunther works for the SimCity police, and probably won’t be able to run the Goth Estate fully since Victor is still alive. Victor hates Gunther and thinks the best thing that came from him was his highly intelligent Grandson, Mortimer. Victor is going to give Mortimer the Estate when he becomes an adult. Before the round ended, Mortimer Goth went to university. He got 4 scholarships. He doesn’t need them, but his family wanted him to apply for them, so he did. I except Mortimer to do very well at university and be the first sim in Pleasantview to graduate.

Bachelor:
Michael Bachelor plans to meet his best friend Mortimer Goth at university. I think I’m going have them move in together in a home, instead of a dorm. Mr. & Mrs. Bachelor marriage is unofficially over. Simis was caught flirting with another woman at a party last round. He and Jocasta have fought but are civil now. However, the is no love between them. Simis rolls wants to be with other women, and Jocasta just act like Simis doesn’t exist. I plan on divorcing them next round if they keep it up.

Bella has grown into a pretty teenager.



She’s a fitness freak but refuses to be seen walking around in tennis shoes with an athletic bra. So, she wears makeup and a dress to impress. I can’t wait until she’s an adult, she’s going to cause soooo much trouble.

I finally felt more "me" enough to play Sims yesterday!

It took me about half an hour to locate my tablet with all my notes on about where I was upto on my rotation, but when I finally did - turns out I was in Desiderata Valley. So much of this rotation to go and so many interesting households.

Last rotation, Monica Bratford-Beare had a miscarriage - she was crying about it in the bathroom when I entered the household yesterday and I felt so bad for her, being that she had nearly carried to full term, so I used the bio clock to make her pregnant and give birth straight away. She had a daughter, Ramona. Adding to the 2 daughters she already has - Tracey and Jolyne, and Kevin's daughter with his ex, Ellie. It's a household of blonde haired girls. Ellie is off at uni at the moment though, so I ended up redecorating her bedroom for Tracey, as today Jolyne would become a child and be kicked out of the Nursery room for Ramona. Jolyne grew up adorably (she has such an outgoing/active personality, and I've made sure her appearance reflects that!), although I really want to see more variation in Ramona - being that Tracey looks just like Monica and Jolyne looks just like Kevin.

In the Hart household, I made the mistake of leaving my computer for a moment and when I came back all the kids were being taken by the soical worker because Purple, one of their daughters, had heatstroke. I quit without saving, because I'm not that mean and it was my fault. When I re-entered the household, it was chaotic as usual with their youngest 6 children running around the place. I've finally redone the boys and girls bedrooms, but hadn't yet assigned beds it would appear - so they all kept falling asleep on the sofas/floors. Love is their oldest in the household, since his 2 older siblings have moved out and got married. They'll be expecting grandbabies soon... I hate to imagine how many Hart's will be running around the neighbourhood in the future, being that there's already so many of them, most of them are family Sims, and a lot of them have married other sims with 'big' families. I'm expecting most to have atleast 3-5 children... that's... 30-50 grandchildren for Matthew and Sarah, and that's hoping none of them take after their parents and have 10 themselves. Anyway, Love had a day off work so he mostly made meals and looked after his younger siblings. Gabriel-John, the youngest, became a child. So the Nursery because a much needed 2nd bathroom.

Over in Riverblossom Hills, Abiah Goodie (grandchild of the Goodie's) is struggling to maintain a farm. Both his pigs died. I don't know how... to be honest I barely know how to look after the animals I download, I should really learn. I think it's because they went a few hours without water because they died of starvation even though they had food. Who knows. I just bought more and that was that. Danny and Sarah Crittur's first litter are turning into elders. Abiah still has his eyes on Prudence Martin, the daughter of Jules and Andrew Martin but they're not engaged yet as both are still in school for another rotation or two.

Over in the Burb household, Ryan Burb (later in life baby of John and Mary (Gavigan)) brought home Gabriel-John Hart from school, which was brilliant because I really want him to marry Adriel Burb eventually. Adriel became a child today too, she's pretty average looking and I don't really remember what clothes I even put her in or what her personality was like. Either way, Gabriel-John mostly played with the chickens and payed no attention to Adriel. So by the end of the evening, they hadn't even met!

The other households I played were all fairly boring, as they were newly adult couples moving into their first home. Lester and Dottie Una got a genie lamp and used it to get enough money to build a second story to their 1 bedroom house. I left the upstairs fairly blank though because I'm not sure when they're going to have kids so it might become a pottery room for now. Maybe.

So, I finally continued my rotation in the main „city“ of my Uberhood, Veronaville.

Miranda Capp lives with her younger sister Desdemona Capp whose husband is a remade cashier from the original name with the fitting name Othello in the old villa of the Summerdreams. The three will soon be four, since Desdemona is in the third trimester. I was a bit worried about Miranda, but she wasn’t very affected by the death of one of her many lovers the round before, Marla O’Feefee (née Biggs), even though it was her own cow plant! She was rather busy hitting on the fake Bella from Strangetown on Othello's party.
Miranda's younger brother Hal Kirschfink enjoyed a quiet day with his wife Pandora (Townie Kendra McCarthy) and their son Prometheus. They are saving money for a bigger house at the moment, so nothing much to redecorate there. And on the other side oft he street on the Old silo farm, the youngest of this branch of the Capps, Elvira Wolosenko gave birth to a baby girl I named Ariel after the original name of her mother. The father is her college sweetheart and husband Claudio (Orion Teens).

As for the rest of the Capps, Tybalt and his wife Beatrice (née Monty) threw a big birthday party for their younger child Amadeus, leaving his toddler years behind. He has brown hair like grandfather Antonio and a similar face like his grouchy father, whereas bigger sister Senta comes after her mother. The proud parents tried for another child (thank you ACR!) but no chimes. I'm not sure how I would feel about that, them having both family as a second, but no rolled wish for a third one. Hermia and her CAS-husband Lysander had other worries than saving money or throwing parties, since he was abducted and started this round in his third trimester. It was the first time ever I got alien twins! Two girls, Maia and Angelia. (Mother and a rather unknown daughter of the Greek god Hermes, because the character Hermia in the play was named after him, and the names from „a midsummer night‘s dream“ stay in the Summerdream family.)

Speaking of Hermia, she shared an akward moment with her ex Puck on his lot, when his wife Sharla (née Ottomas) was at work and his son Robin played inside: They kissed and I let them have it, I bet there are still some old feelings around and their spouses wouldn't mind, they are both very open-minded pixels with their jealousy turned off, plus Lysander has his focus on the newborns and Sharla on her career, being a fortune sim from head to toe. ^^
Titania and Oberon adopted another kid in my game, Woyzeck, who married Melody Tinker and took her name. Although they live in Bluewater village (like Hermia & Lysander, btw), I play the „old clans“ from VV always first before the rest of the uberhood. So, those two are saving money for a bigger house too, but being both family sims after college, they are very happy that she is pregnant since the last hours of their round.

The other adopted child of the old families (adopted by Isabella and Patrizio Monty), Juan, divorced his wife Zoe Zimmerman and moved away from Downtown to Strangetown. They were still friendly around each other, but he met a strange alien woman to whom he is way more attracted to than to his wife, and he wanted to end things before a baby is on the way or the affair was getting serious. He lives now broke in a small cottage in the dessert, but is happy in a relationship with Chloe, who still lives with Erin and Chrystal Vu. His ex-wife Zoe is fine too, she found a job in her dream career (law) and met a handsome student named William Williamson on a party of her old frat, so who knows how long she stays single?

Othello Capp's big sister and heiress of the MacBeth clan, Walburga (this cashier ), wouldn't fulfill my soap opera-ish plan to revive the clan with three children from three different fathers, since she got pregnant again from husband Mitch (née Indie), who wished for a baby so badly and won’t get abducted. Their son Banquo had his birthday and became a child. Meanwhile, Walburga was hitting on their butler when her family-oriented hubbie was not around, being a knowledge/romance-combo, so maybe child number three will have another father.

The kids from the „old families“ who are in college (all at ALT) had all a romantic time. The adopted son of Reagan and Cornwall Capp, Hamlet (renamed Tommy Ottomas), ended his third year in the old house of Roxie, Edwin and Jonah. He had his girlfriend Ophelia Nigmos over and things look good for those two, he rolled the wish to getting engaged to her after exams. His younger brother Opal finished his first year and fell in love with his roomie Klara Vonderstein, they hooked up a lot the semester before but now they are getting serious.
(And it is so cute watching them! :lovestruc It is one of those pairings where the chemistry is so high, they started to flirt on their own. I love it when they choose for themselfes, being it with ACR or rolling wants; it is the reason why for example Tybalt of all Capps married a Monty, and Pascal Curious is engaged to a Downtownie who stole is first kiss without my doing, but more from Strangetown when it’s their time. )

Back to topic: The oldest of Kent and Bianca Monty, Dalek, had a dream date with Martin Ruben, and I plan those two to ending up with each other, but they both have two years ahead (two rotations, but much can happen!)
So, first part of the rotation is over, next stop: Pleasantview! :D

PS: I'm sorry for any mistakes, English is not my native language.

An addendum to my previous post, it seems I hadn't finished my Ottomas rotation as I thought. There were a few days left (I think they were on Thursday). Would anyone like to guess in what state I found Samantha? She has to be the most fertile and lucky (or unlucky) sim. She can't possibly be trying, because I've edited the Try For Baby tuning in ACR to have pretty heavy penalties for young children in the household. And I've had sims of similar age/reported fertility who had unprotected woohoo that went blithely on not getting pregnant. Since I tend to play for wants, I don't put a sim on birth control if they have an active want to have a baby. Both Samantha and Peter have been regularly rolling wants to have a baby and even have 10 kids. The ironic thing was that, of course, they both finally decided to roll wants to teach toddler skills. I had assigned Peter a Family secondary a while and it seemed to assert itself at the worst possible time. This left me having to choose between the teaching wants and the have baby wants. I eventually decided to lock the teaching wants. I believe it was Terri who got heavily favored, with both parents wanting to teach her to potty, talk, and walk. Samantha rolled one want to teach Cherri to walk while Peter rolled none about her. Dora Jr. has been completely overlooked by them. Sharla took it upon herself to potty train Dora (more for my convenience I admit) but she can't possibly play mother to her and all the other younger kids while keeping up with her schoolwork.

I had another decision to make as to whether to stick with the original number of expected babies or take a risk to end the baby train. If I had counted correctly, they stood at eight kids. They needed two more to prevent any more 10 kid wants and, potentially, the want for any more babies at all. But ACR kept reporting the expected number as 1. I could either wait to see if the Super Fertility trait would kick in at the last second for twins... or hit Random on the Trips & Quads dialogue. While I could choose specifically for twins, that felt a bit too cheaty. I had to take what was given When the time came, I chose to hit Random. Peter and Samantha were subsequently blessed with triplets: Paul, Mark, and Martha. They both immediately rolled wants for 20 grandchildren. Sorry for them, but that's not how it works! Their kids have to be the ones to want to have kids of their own. Now, hopefully, the two will be satisfied and not roll any more baby wants. The next big project will be making room for everyone!

-

After the chaos of the Ottomas household, it was nice to move on to Cyd Roseland. He and Porthos live in an old, kind of rundown trailer just down the street from the big brood. I usually find Cyd to be a nice though somewhat bland sim. In previous plays with him, I would stick in the Medicine career, as he would usually have a want to get a job in it. This time around, he decided to show his true colors. After spending most of his money on the trailer and pickup truck, he was left with a pitifully small amount of simoleons. His reaction to that was not to roll a want for a job, but to make quick cash through things like playing for tips, hustling pool, and... oh yeah... counterfeiting money. As his LIfetime Want is to be a Criminal Mastermind, I decided to roll with it. Unfortunately, he didn't have quite enough aspiration points to get a counterfeiting machine. However, he did inspire me to outfit one of my Main Street buildings as a shady bar. The downstairs has the bar counters and a tv, plus a guitar outside the front door for busking. The next floor up has two poker tables and a mahjong table. I tried to have a pool table up there so he could do the hustling, but there just wasn't enough room for sims to play effectively. The third floor remained walled off for the time being. As neither the busking (due to low skill) or the hustling (due to lack of space) worked, Cyd got a job as a bagman.

Things went pretty quietly for the first two weeks. Cyd seemed content to live on his own with Porthos. He made his way up to Bookie, which inspired me to return to The Green Stripe and finish up the third floor. It came to house what I deem to be Cyd's unofficial office (or perhaps just an office which the city criminals use). It has a counterfeiting machine, the lie-detector, the spy machine, and a desk with laptop. Since the lot is unowned, I can't lock the doors but most visitors don't go up there anyway. I did test out the counterfeiter to see if he would actually get the money and he did, though it was a small amount for the work put in. The way he laughs as he does it is fairly amusing, at least! At one point I bought him an easel, both to gain him a creativity point and to boost his Arts & Crafts hobby enthusiasm as it is his predestined one. The man decided to be entirely contrary after he gained the point, rolling a want for a robot station instead. So he bought one. He got promoted to Con Artist and started making toy robots, which he turned around and hawked to passersby on the sidewalk in front of his trailer. Not super lucrative, but it brought in some extra cash.

The third week was when things really started to get rolling. He made enough toys to move on to HydroBots and CleanBots. He also had enough benefit points to give him a secondary aspiration. I went with Fortune. With that, he turned more of his attention to gaining skills. He managed to sell off the one HyrdroBot and CleanBot he had made, though some glitch kept bumping the HydroBot up to a ridiculous amount ($920!). I had to take it off sale and put it back on before a more reasonable price stuck. Once he sold them off, however, he seemed to lose interest in keeping up with making them. So he focused on the skills he needed to get promoted, instead. Rather than skill at home, I sent him out. He took a slight detour to The Green Stripe for some relaxation and testing. He had a short game of poker, walking away with $170 in pure winnings before spending a little upstairs with the counterfeiter, the lie-detector, and the spy machine. He also finally showed a small spark of interest in another sim, that being Christian Love who... hoo boy that's a story for later. But it wasn't a strong attraction and Cyd soon left to visit The Red Brick Plaza.

His truck disappeared as he arrived and he climbed out of thin air. Thinking it was a visual glitch, I didn't worry too much about it. Instead, he tested out the hot dog cart for me, then settled in for a chess game with Peter Sims. He had both a friend want and logic skill want, this would kill two birds with one stone. Now that he had shown some attraction to someone, I clicked around to see if he showed any hints of attraction to other visitors. No luck there, no little bolts on the interactions. He got the skill point but failed to gain enough relationship points with Peter before the other left. A greet interaction queued up with the Unsavory Charlatan. Amused at the thought of a conman getting conned, I allowed it to go through. Poor Cyd didn't quite catch on to the game, giving the Charlatan an opportunity to dip his hands in Cyd's pocket. I decided to have some pity on him, though, giving him a chance to win it back via fisticuffs. Alas, Cyd didn't have the body skill necessary to beat the dashing crook. His only other option for revenge was to report the incident. It was in debating whether he should do so or not that I realized his truck vanishing earlier wasn't merely a visual glitch. There was no go home interaction on the public phone, only Report Foul Play. I did have him do the report, just to see if it would do anything but it simply made the phone unclickable. The Walk To Lot interaction was also gone from his menu. I suppose I could have tried to force error the public phone or seen if clicking on another community lot would work, but at that point I was a bit worried and chose to exit to neighborhood. I loaded Cyd's lot back up, finding both him and his truck safe and sound.

Wanting to test to be certain it wasn't a constant glitch with the plaza, I sent Cyd back there in the truck. This time it parked properly in the street. It seemed Fate had some plans for him. After downing another hot dog, he went back toward the chess tables where he met Ryan Wheeler. The two hit it off grandly, having a brief chess game before Ryan decided to do some Networking. He gave Cyd a 'sample product' which turned out to be the insanely expensive wall tv! I have the mod for networking gifts, so it's pretty rare now for anyone to get something that expensive! After some extremely light flirting (mostly Cyd giving Ryan a backrub), they became friends. Once Cyd had the needed logic skill, I decided to send him on home. Ryan seems pretty taken with Cyd as he showed up to visit the day. Though they spent some time together and had their first kiss, he left without either of them having gotten a crush. Still, perhaps they're simply the sorts to take it slow! By this time, Cyd's rotation was over, so he was off to bed.

I was starting pairing up my next generation of adults (getting married, choosing a new place) but I realised their parents have still quite few days each. Since it's a group of 8 SIms (3 couples and 2 widows), I decided to build a retirement home for all of them, so they can spend their last days with company meanwhile, I got rid of some of their money (among 14 household, the poorest were the Stings, with "only" 200k left, imagine the others) and atm I miss just the bedrooms... It would have been so much quicker downloading this lovely bijou...

Beginning of Pleasantview — Round 14

Oldie:
The Oldies’ moved from their small 3-bedroom home, into a 3-story home on the hilltop of Pleasantview. Herb’s father, Myron work as a Hall of Famer paid off as he was able to save more than enough to move the family next to the Goths’. After settling in, Coral, who’s infertile, contacted SimCity’s adopted services. She wanted a child. And a child she got. A few days later a little toddler named Mary-Sue, joined the family. Coral and Myron intermediately warmed up to her.

Danders/Pleasant:
After a hard pregnancy, Diane Pleasant gave birth to Daniel Pleasant. Daniel is a brown-haired version of his father Jeff. Diane is currently pregnant with her second child. I thought that Daniel’s birth would be the only thing exciting for this round, but the game threw me a curveball. Last round, I noted that Diane and Jeff's parents were on their way to Sim Heaven. A few days into this round, their age bars went backwards, so I thought “Nevermind, no one is dying.” WRONG! Marshall Danders, my favorite out of the elders in the family, died. I was so mad because the game lied to me.

Dreamer:
Darren Dreamer and Darleen Matipin were born. They both were born with brown eyes, black hair and S4 tone. They look like siblings, but they’re super cute. Their parents and grandparents were driving me up the wall with constantly wanting to tend to them. I had put something in front the cribs to block anyone from interacting with them. I don’t understand why Sims are soo obsessed with babies. I can’t wait until they become children, so my nerves can be calmed.

There are mods to help with Babies and Toddlers.
These are from BoilingOil
BO - Curb All Auto Read-To.package
BO - Feed Baby - Main - special.package
BO - Feed Baby - Nursemaids H&F.package
BO - Less Feed Baby.package
BO - Less Toddler Annoyance.package
BO - No Lecture Baby.package

From Inge Jones:
ijCribGetOutAll.package
NoEmptyPot.package

From Squinge at InSimenator:
TeachToddlerFun.package
ToddlersBathFun.package

Here you go: https://simfileshare.net/folder/48900/

EDIT: this post doesn't make much sense with the preceding one deleted. Drew was asking if there was a folder depth limit on SFS.

The next person up the road from Cyd Roseland is David Ottomas, though I've mostly told his story in the huge lump with the rest of his family. I forgot to mention the one exciting thing that happened, though. He got burgled! Sometimes I teleport the burglar away, because they have a habit of showing up at the worst possible time for me as a player. Usually on the last night of the rotation, when I'm just waiting to hit 5 am and save. This time it went through and David lost his tv. Well, his landlord's tv. He rented the small studio cottage furnished. Still, the $200 insurance money wasn't enough to pay for a replacement. For the rest of his time, he went without. He did, however, trade the murphy bed for a foldout loveseat which gave him space to put in a table with chairs.

-

Up a street and further into town is the Gavigan family. Their home is an older ranch style house that had an extension put on to it (so I suppose it's no longer ranch style, heh). Much like Cyd, they've had a relatively quiet time. I was ready for some drama, should it happen, but things went smoothly. Nathan Gavigan and Trent Traveller almost always end up in the Adventurer career together and seem to have a fondness for bringing each other home. Anyone who has played the two families together probably knows of the three-bolt chemistry between Trent and Mary Gavigan. In spite of Mary's swooning every so often, she held firm and they haven't done anything questionable. Then again, she was pregnant and they were in the presence of both husband and son. Mary and Nathan decided to expand their family, having twins Thomas and Ruth. While they didn't roll any teaching wants, I don't see them as particularly neglectful, so they taught the twins whatever the toddlers themselves wanted. Isiah, in the meantime, brought many of the other hood kids home and made friends with them. Mary remained a stay-at-home mom while Nathan has been working his way up in his career.

They had a brief brush with the flu outbreak, as Trent was patient 0. Trent... who stubbornly refused to get healthy during his own rotation, in spite of my efforts, finally shook it off... but not before he got Isiah sick. Fortunately, since Mary is a Family sim, she cooked up a batch of comfort soup and no one got re-infected. The third week had both Isiah and the twins aging up. Isiah took on the Popularity aspiration. When he next brought Sharla Ottomas home from school, they were both teens and quickly found they quite liked each other. They had their first kiss, swiftly going through crush and love as they flirted during the evening. When he later had a want for a party, he invited Sharla, plus Tina Traveller, and Gabriella, Garret, and Georgia Newson. The latter three were still kids, so he did some introductions between them and his younger siblings. Gabriella, who was also a teen now, snagged a first kiss from him. Since no one is Family or committed, he dodged any possible complications! Thomas, who is super outgoing, kept trying to engage the other kids in things they weren't ready to accept. I had to slow him down with some directions to joke and talk, instead. His sister Ruth, on the other hand, did not like being directed to entertain the guests. Yet she's the one harboring a friend want and not Thomas! Also, I have never seen a kid react negatively to snow until her. It was kind of funny to see her stomp her foot! She was much happier after the party, when I had her clean the bathroom. That was about it for them.

I haven't played TS2 in years but I just spent a 3 day weekend doing nothing but reliving the ol' TS2 glory days. I never played the Burb family as a child so I made sure to move them into Pleasantview and they were my second to last family before the new rotation. Jennifer wanted to have 5 top-level businesses so I decided to start a home bakery with her. I never had OFB as a kid either so I thought it would be a fun new experience. Got her a thinking cap and had her study cooking, set up the business downstairs, sent her to make crepes for the first time, and she burst into flames. John was at work and Lucy at school so, yeah. She died. My fun business plan was short lived. I was already having a hard time deciding who to pair up but now that John is a widower family sim, my decision got a little harder.

A burglar just broke into one of the residents' houses in Wonderland. After the cop whooped her ass (it was basically a girl fight), the burglar after losing the fight turned to wave goodbye to the lady resident before shortly being cuffed.