@sarabeth2984 Thank you, I have such a large, extended, Sims family now that I've had to resort to mods to be able to invite the entire family to anything. Name wise a majority of them are related to gods or deities associated with things like death, the underworld, night, the moon, or folkloric/literary type creatures. I must admit though I am starting to run out of names for all them, and have randomised some of the latest names for the Reaper grandkids.
Occult Simmer (All Occult All The Time)
Female Simmer from Australia (she/her)
I had one of my Sims marry the Grim Reaper & now they have a lot of kids.
I stumbled across the pond from get famous while trying to decorate above my undergrounds crypt. Added some fairies to it. Cute and fun. Sim's mom dies so he's down in the crypt crying and I notice the pond has the option to "jump in" and it's winter and I think "cool, new swimmable water" so I click "jump in" and then get distracted by some Sim doing something stupid inside the house and then "Surprise!" my other sim is outback drown in the pond. So that's a thing I didn't know could happen. I was annoyed but also liked it because you don't get a whole lot of surprises deaths in this game. Most people who die you have to work at it or specifically stop your sim from putting out another sim that is on fire.
Today I adopted a cat and a dog from Pets. One guy belongs to the army and so I got him a nice big, active hunter Great Dane. I love collections so whenever he goes out to find things, Duke can come with for the adventure. I also have a Spellcaster so I got a clever Bombay Cat. She can get the feather collection.
They came in on a thunderstorm so unsurprisingly everybody was too scared to do training. Pets don't get scared but they get tense. We really ought to have a Scared Petting like we have a Tense Petting.
I have an idea for my army guy to be going to Granite Falls for a few days. He can spend some time training and getting the Outdoor Retreat Achievement there. And of course there's going to be lots of time spent in Selvadora.
Prepping a list of mods to add after Infants are placed into the game. Because real life isn't 'nice'.
Hey everyone. Dipped into my game to play for a bit. And several awful things happened. I’m devastated
I lost 2 of my favorite sims just out of the blue. One of those weird game things that decide to kill off one of your played sims in another household for the Death and Mourning moodlets to throw a wrench in your gameplay
Trigger warnings. I just posted pics of sims crying.
First I was playing with one of my college students in a second household. They were in San Myshuno eating dinner at one of the festivals. I saw Vincent Fontenot eating pufferfish nigiri he bought at one of the sushi stands. And he keeled over from poisoning. My sim (it was Parvati) begged Grimmy to bring him back but no luck. Parvati collected up his grave marker and brought it to his family. No screenshots of that
Vincent Fontenot left his widow Joanna with 4 small children
They had a funeral at my cemetery lot in Oasis Springs
It was raining heavily, late in the evening and cold. Kind of fitting for a funeral really.
It was kind of sweet, because Joanna’s father Harry and oldest brother Griffin stopped in almost immediately to visit.
I had them travel as a group to place Vincent’s tombstone in the cemetery.
Here’s a screenshot tribute under the spoiler
Vince and Joanna met for the first time at a bar and grill. They were best friends for the longest time
Joanna was one of my few sims to spontaneously propose to Vince
They had a very geeky cosplay wedding at Geek Con lol
Vincent holding his son Colton for the first time
I was so shocked I had to dip into another household. I decided to play Rocky Beauchamp for a while to get him settled into his new household, when he got a call from Simeon Silversweater. His older sister Rachel died by freezing to death. She’s one of my random joggers and it's winter. I found her gravestone by the roadside. I had been trying out the new Snowy Escape pack and she got a little too cold up on the slopes. I guess her moodlet didn’t go away and carried over.
Simeon took her grave marker and the family had a little funeral early the next morning. It was lightly snowing. I caught a picture of the moon as it was setting and the sun was just peeking over the horizon
They were able to appease her spirit with a sugar skull
Here’s a few screenshots of her in happier moments
Authenticating an artifact the museum sent her
Tending her garden
Giving her son Picard a bath
Sledding with Simeon
LARPing in the park with Simeon
Adventures in Selvadorada
@sarabeth2984 , so sorry.. now I feel bad of hitting the "awesome"
My love, my love, my fearless love, I will not say goodbye..
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
Hey everyone, I hope everyone's staying safe! My first post here in a few months and I can't wait to read all your posts! I made some new sims that I wanted to show off a bit
This is Nora and Damion! Since Snowy Escape was loosely based on Asian culture it inspired me to try my best to make an Asian sim and thats what I tried with Nora (I feel like this game makes it kinda hard to make minorities but whatever)
With Damion I tried to make a sim who looked more Middle Eastern because I feel like they're really under represented everywhere and I thought it'd be something fun to try
@O-meezy so good to see you! Damion is awesome. Where I work is where the largest concentration of Arabic / middleeastern background people live in our city - and I swear no one would blink twice if he walked down the street. He is perfect, especially that second shot with him wearing that jacket.
Nothing much happened for my game because I was trying to finish my build entries for the month. And I am back to work tomorrow so less playtime and forum time for me I am not really upset about going to work per se because I know how precious having a job is in these times.
Gardens take forever!!
I want this pool.
It was fun to build.
and I added a sauna for once - I always forget they are in the game.
Today I was preparing for ww2 or better, for the aftermath of it. I still need to finish the bunker but the rest of it is good enough for me. I was thinking to use the new haunted lot type, but I found that thought too creepy and decided against it.
@sarabeth2984
First, answer to your comment on page 825 that I did not see at first because I didn´t get a notification about it. Happens every once in a while:
yes, Covid continues to be a major plum. Scary, how it will already be a year since it started, I barely have an idea where all that time has gone.
Sergio has his uses, but I too prefer Joaquin. Spoiler: he and Luna recently had another kid, a son whose name I already forgot. I have far too many toddlers in my game
I see you continue to have fun with your aliens. I am yet to try playing with one, though I am considering adding some to my game as townies to freshen things up, it´s getting boring seeing same old faces everywhere.
pg 828: I was laughting too. I had to change Salim´s outfit, because Esme would set him on fire if she ever catches him walking around Forgotten Hollow at night dressed like a clown. She has veryu strong opinions about which color scemes are befitting to a vampire and which are not and mixing bright red and yellow is a certain no. Technically Max is the new ruler of Forgotten Hollow, but he allows Esme to do the scaring people into submission part, partly because he couldn´t be bothered and partly because he may be a bit scared of her too, because being a vampire witch, Esme knows more tricks than he does.
Love your boarding school, really interesting idea. Susan really loves those knives, doesn´t she?
pg 829: Wow, that´s a lot of death and tragedy packed into one update. I feel so sorry for everyone, these deaths really came out of blue.
@Becka28
pg 825: Thank you for your good wishes. I think I am starting to like Rohan because of you, in my own game he has done nothing but annoy me. In my current save, he is married to Alice Spencer-Kim and they have a cute son together (MCCC had Alice and Eric get divorced, Eric is currently married to Penny Pizzazz. Poor Olivia got left alone with her grandpa to that huge house). Nice to see Max happy, I have always had a certain fondness for that demon spawn.
This Paris mod you use looks really good. I have no use for Magnolia Promenade as it is now, so maybe I´ll give it a try.
pg 827: I´ve had more than 1 sim graduate at once and they got their pictures, so it looks like a recent glitch. It was a pain, though, since everyone kept trying to wander off, instead of patiently waiting for graduation ceremony to start like good little sims.
pg 828: Congrats for Quin and Rohan for getting engaged at last!
Well, as I mentioned in my last post it's portrait season in my game. I try to take them often enough to get the younger generation in every stage of life, but this time I'm a little late and Darius never got a teen portrait. I'm going to be a little self indulgent and give you recaps of the family stories as I go. Partly because I have a large rotation and a lot of people may not remember some of the sims I haven't played in a while, but mostly because this week is roughly the second anniversary of this save. I got Seasons for Christmas in 2018 and after burning out on Horizon Zero Dawn (my other Christmas gift) I started up a new save with Athena Andreas, a single sim in San Myshuno with the Serial Romantic aspiration and the Detective career.
I originally planned to do a rotational variation on an alphabet legacy, where Athena would have two children and the first would have a name that started with B and move out and the second would have a name that started with A and be the heir... but when A turned out to be twins I threw the plan out the window and Athena had 9 children with five different fathers, ending with Father Winter. I still created a family rotation, I just got from A to I in one generation. I kept the birth rate down with her children, so the spares among her grandchildren are only creating J-N.
Later I also added several occult households, which will be Households R-Y eventually, and a retirement village which I call Household Z.
So here are there stories:
Family A for Andreas, San Myshuno
Amelia Andreas was two days from her YA birthday when her parents got married. She had several younger siblings with different fathers, but it was her father that ended up marrying her mother in the end. Amelia, a romantic at heart, had always hoped for this outcome, so she did not move out when her twin sister did after their birthday. She stayed and started her Food Critic career while helping with the cooking for her younger siblings. She had a very slow romance with Pierce Delgato. They were a little flirty in high school, but he was hesitant to settle down too soon and kept her at arms' length for a while. As Amelia suspected, however, they were indeed meant to be and eventually he also fell in love (in real life this would sound like she's a stalker but in reality it's just me forcing relationships even if they start with rejection because I am a bossy watcher).
Sadly, Amelia's father Arthur died on a camping trip at around the same time she and Pierce became official. Pierce moved in to help her out, and then after they got married they just continued to live with Amelia's mother. Their first and only child, Adam, was born about the same time his youngest two aunts moved out. Athena retired then, and was a big help with the toddler. The family, which had always lived in apartments, moved to the Old Salt House after Arthur's death and stayed there for the rest of Athena's life. Athena and her second spouse, Geeta Rasoya, passed within a day of each other shortly after Adam became a teen. By my estimates Athena was about 105-110 when she died.
After her death, Amelia and Pierce and Adam moved to the big three story apartment in Uptown. There Adam met a teen girl named Yuki who lived in Windenberg but attended private school in the city. She was very excited to get involved in the opportunity to vote on the community space that replaced the gym in Uptown, and Adam was very excited to do anything to get her to notice him. So he's going to be campaigning for what Yuki wants in that space when their house comes up in rotation, which is going to ignite his interest in politics which will be his eventual career.
Amelia is at the top of the Food Critic career and has almost completed the Soulmate aspiration. She writes the occasional non-fiction book about dining and/or drinking and/or karaoke in the city. Her primary hobby is singing and she has won a couple of karaoke contests. Pierce got stuck on the City Native aspiration because Old Salt House is not an apartment so he couldn't give an apartment key until they moved, but I'm sure he'll progress quickly now. He's working towards the Space Ranger job in the astronaut career. His hobbies are all related to his career requirements - working out, playing chess, and building a rocketship in the backyard. Said ship is currently in storage until they make their next move to a penthouse with a big enough balcony.
Below the spoiler, the recent portrait of Amelia and Pierce, and Adam's teen portraits. They are all a little dark because I didn't adjust the lighting on that lot until later and I'm too lazy to redo them because they're not quite that bad.
This one of Adam is cropped to closer to what the in-game portrait looks like.
These are screenshot versions of alternate poses.
Oh, and today I learned that photos can be put on the display things for paintings, so I totally plan to save all of my family portraits into a museum lot when I get around to building one. The Andreas family museum. Maybe Adam should create that when he's maxes out the politician career. Anyway, while experimenting I took this picture of the two portraits of Amelia and Pierce, as Adults and as YAs.
I've just decided this is going to take forever if I write this much for each family. I am going to go ahead and split this over multiple posts.
OK that last post got me way too nostalgic so I now need to walk you all down memory lane with me. I didn't take screenshots regularly until shortly before Athena's wedding to Arthur, so I don't have any actual screenshots of most of her children when they were young. But I did age all of them down in a test save for fun and this is Amelia and Cordelia... but I don't remember which is which. Most likely Cordy's in red and Amelia's in pink.
This is definitely Amelia as a child, except I can't remember what she actually wore or what her hairstyle was. This is my aged down version.
Cordelia I do remember, this is really what she looked like.
This is my only picture of Amelia and Cordelia as teens in their everyday look. Amelia's the one in purple. Also Gillian as a child, and Derrick and Erick as teens in the background.
This is their selfie in formal wear from their parents' wedding.
Amelia being embarrassed by her teenage brother on vacation.
Decorating a tree with her mother and sisters. Amelia in pink at the top, counter-clockwise Holly, Athena, Gillian and Ivy.
Amelia and Pierce's wedding.
I will now stop for the sake of people's loading time. Sorry, I am just feeling really attached to my sim babies right now.
Edited to add: BTW Adam in profile looks exactly like Pierce in that wedding photo, but with Amelia's hair color and skin tone. I love that he so obviously has some of both.
Also, does anyone else see Athena side-eyeing the camera in both of the screenshots she's in?
Okay, now that I am hopefully through with midterms for this semester, back to updating. Then perhaps I will eventually get to the point where I can tell what really happened in my game today, because right now I am still posting about stuff that took place at summer.
Lets move to Sulani, where we find Jolene. Jo and Kurt say hi Despite being family, they didn´t really met for various reasons until they were both young adults and moved to Sulani on separate occasions. Currently they are neighbours, so they hang out a lot, much to Marisol´s dismay who feels that Jo stole her brother (as noted in my previous update, Marisol has some issues with her family)
Once upon a time, Jo used to have a husband, but she grew bored of him after few weeks and sent him packing, so she is currently single and ready to mingle.
Emilia Charm invited Jo to lounge for some celebrity-seeing. Who apparently decided that the best way to catch attention is to pose naked
Never thought that there will come a day when I see Don Lothario faint upon seeing a naked woman
Some random spellcaster dude was rude to Jo, so she duelled him to show who´s boss. That she wasn´t born a witch does not mean that she doesn´t know her craft
Her cooking will need some more practice, though
Guess who showed up? Emmanuel! He and Jolene are old friends, so they were both thrilled about being reunited. Emmanuel shared the latest gossip he had learnt upon befriending Laena and Laenor, Jo found it hilarious that this world´s version of her biological mother (Cassandra) was dating the son (Laenor) of this world´s version of her Step-father. (In the alternative reality both Jo and Emmanuel are originally from, Morgyn and Cassandra are married to each other, making Morgyn Jo´s step-father, though she doesn´t consider him such, as she was abandoned by Cassandra shortly after birth and has no relationship with her. As far as Jolene is concerned, Lucille and Gideon are her parents)
Few words about Emmanuel, who is not exactly who he appears to be. As far as his friends know, Emmanuel is a spellcaster and same age as he and Laena, both statements which aren´t entirely true. Emmanuel was born a spellcaster-mermaid hybrid and befriended the twins at first to spy on them on Esme´s order, who was sure that any offspring of her father must be up to no good (She was right about Laena, but Laenor is as sweet and harmless as a teddy bear)
Jolene met a seemingly nice guy
Paka´a even autonomously asked her to be his girlfriend
...right in front of his wife, who was not happy
Before things got even uglier, they were distracted by others, who also thought it was a fight night
Jolene decided to start flirting with Emmanuel to get back at Paka´a for failing to mention that he already had a wife. She had just moved to Sulani, how was she supposed to know?
They got a bit carried away...
Emmanuel was happy about the news, I think. It´s sometimes hard to tell with merpeople and their idle movements
Kurt surely was
Umm, maybe you shouldn´t be getting all flirty with your niece´s boyfriend?
Luckily Emmanuel only had eyes for Jo
Some long-distance hugging
Why Christmas parties are a dangerous thing
Jolene decided to throw a Christmas party for those few members of her family who are comfortable with both spending time in the sun and eating human food. She got four: Kurt, her sister Christine who was one of extremely rare cases of vampires born with immunity to sunlight, and her human uncles Gunther and Dominic.
It was a nice evening, untill Gunther had a little too much fun, so much that he dropped dead
Jo tried to plead with Grim, who wasn´t happy about being called to work on Christmas Eve and denied her request.
"Are you for real? I am 8 months pregnant and you tell me no?"
Jo went to call Esme, while Kurt and Dominic cried over their brother´s urn
At nightfall, Esme arrived to collect her husband
Being who she was, she was less heartbroken over Gunther´s deceased state and more intrigued about the possibility of woohooing with a ghost.
I had to put a bed outside for Gunther, because it literally did not fit into Jo´s house. Why do ghosts even need to sleep?
When she wasn´t busy woohooing him in every possible location, Esme tried to bring Gunther back to life with magic, but failed to do so. Being a half-breed, her magic was strong enough to kill, but not to restore life. As Hermione was nowhere to be found and they were unwilling to mix outsiders into their family matters, the task fell upon Jolene.
Yay! (Poor Jo was having a really bad time, being both hugely pregnant and still devastated about Gunther´s death)
After some practicing, she was finally ready to cast the spell. There was no time to waste, since she wanted Gunther out of her house before the baby was born.
Tadaa! As good as new!
Back to Jolene
Jolene ended up having triplets, first I´ve ever had without using any fertility traits. Paka´a must not have gotten a hint about Jo avoiding him for the last year, because he showed up at her door right after she had finished giving birth. So Jo had no choice but to spell it out to him: they were never, ever, getting back together.
Jo thought that it was the end of it, but Paka´a returned the next day while she was busy taking care of her babies and let himself in
He started yelling at her and calling her names,
so Jo, who was already under enough pressure did what every witch would do upon being attacked
and set him on fire
"Final warning. If you ever come near me again, I will have my sister kill you. Get it?"
The triplets aged up to toddlers. They are identical
(I aged one up in CAS out of curiousity and they are 100% gender-flipped versions of Jolene, with no imput from their father. She might have as well created them by herself.)
Jo and Emmanuel went on a date, mostly to woohoo in the restaurant´s closet in peace
As it happens. they were caught by no other than Laenor and Cassandra, who found the situation very amusing. Laenor wondered why Emmanuel had never mentioned that he has a girlfriend
Since neither of them knows how to use protection, Jolene ended up getting pregnant again.
Kurt was understandebly a little concerned, since she had no money and her house was a mess
Emmanuel moved in with her to help with kids and got a job to support his growing family
A moment of peace
Jolene went to museum one day, where she ran into Alexander Goth
...who proceeded to get very handsy with someone he had met five minutes ago.
Gunther, who happened to be also visiting the museum, saw that and got mad at Alexander for being a creep. (Alexander is not a creep, he is just lacking social skills, so he becomes obsessed with whoever is nice to him.)
I was lucky, just one baby this time
It took me a while to recall who he might have inherited his green eyes from, since neither Jo or Emmanuel, or even the parents of either have green eyes. Who did have green eyes? Emmanuel´s grandfather Don Lothario.
Next time we´ll be reunited with Esme and learn what happened with Salim after turning into a vampire.
Nearly lost interest with the challenge since not much was happening, just raising the kids and all.
The next generation is where things get real interesting and has more story and more characters.
Sorry about my absence. I finally have Ember aged up to teen and the Earth Elementals are no longer toddlers!
Updates are on there way, and I shared the toddler home as well as the current Zalrian household.
It took way to long to do everything I managed to pack into 28 sim days. Some of it bled into winter.
Because I needed to age up Juniper and Jade before I could focus on Ember, Ember's Cycle will be in the winter season she was born in. Jade and Juniper will be put on hold until I return to the Zalrian Household in the rotation cycle. As toddlers, they sorta took over in every other rotation within the Zalrian Household.
Plant Sims are not a permanent life state, so Juniper will be another merman 🧜🏼♂️ in the household.
Also, a new rotation cycle.
Zalrian (4 Rotations)
Calum and Arihi
Dylan and Zephyr
Ember and Rocky, her pet cat.
Jade and Juniper
The Mua Pel'am Pod
The Mua Pel'am Merfolk
Kealoha
Boria
Goth
Elderberry
Munch
Finley
Galleon
Sol
Galen
Ningyo
The Darkfins
Morbius
Kailani
For the Kealoha, I want to create a multi-generational home.
Munch and Goth happened to include Alexander and Lucas who became associated with Ember, potential love triangle or just friends, don't know.
Elderberry will be just for fun, but I might have been inspired to see what happens in my game because of this thread. Anyways, My primary rule for this rotation is that I have to go with whatever whims come to Rohan's mind, and I have to allow any random interaction he has with another sim.
As promised, we´ll be reunited with Esme.
As his death had erased their marriage, Gunther proposed to Esme again
They both have a bedroom and a perfectly good bed, but naturally they just had to go and celebrate in Dominic´s bed. Bonus level of creepy: the pictures of Dominic´s ex-wife Hermione, also known as Esme´s twin sister, that he still keeps in his room, even though they divorced years ago
Yes, that´s what the mysterious, missing, possibly dead Hermione looks like
Dominic likes to tell the sad story of his short marriage, but he usually leaves out the part why Hermione left him
Oliver and Hela aged up
Esme continued to be, well, Esme
Isn´t it nice when food shows up to your door?
"Well, even if I messed up the potion, it matches nicely with the wallpaper."
As her career wasn´t advancing as fast as she had hoped, Esme decided to go to university to further her education.
Mommy and daughter homework time
Making a new friend. Unlike Caleb, Lilith found Esme lovely and not creepy at all
Dominic found love
Hello, Dominic, why are you standing in the rain naked?
One night, Dominic ran into Lorelai Ember, who liked what she saw, as he was considerably less weird than folks generally wandering around Forgotten Hollow after nightfall
Few days later, she called and invited him on a date to celebrate the Love Day
They got along surprisingly well, considering that Lorelai is unflirty loner.
So they went to another date, which went even better
As Dominic´s friend, Eva felt it to be her duty to warn him about Lorelai. Did he even know who that girl´s family was? They were bad news, all of them.
But Dominic reassured her - his own family wasn´t perfect, either, so it was hardly anything he hadn´t encountered before. Eva had no reason to worry about him.
Dominic had a birthday and is now an adult. Esme baked a cake - her first - and was very proud with herself for not burning it
A random family photo to celebrate the occasion
Training regime from hell
Salim appared at Esme´s door one evening, much to her disappointment, as she had been hoping for someone edible
"Drugs. Drugs are an answer to all of your problems. All I ask in exchange is your soul."
"Who needs a soul anyway?"
"Good choice. You are mine now. Let´s get to training - I can´t have myself being associated with some weakling."
Gunther: "Isn´t my wife lovely?"
Christine: "That looks painful."
Also Christine: "Did you had to go so hard on him? The poor thing´s been a vampire for what, a year? You are going to scare him off."
Esme: "if he can't keep up with me, that's his problem, not mine."
Salim: "Please save me, good lady. I may have made a mistake."
Christine: "May? You are the biggest idiot I have seen since the one that fathered me. I am mildly impressed you´ve survived for that long."
Esme wasn´t happy, but in the end, she agreed to surrender Salim to Christine. She had better things to do than fight with her sister over some stupid newbie vampire who was terrified of her and would not hunt for food. If Chrissy wanted a pet, she can have him.
Esme and Gunther got married
Time to celebrate! It was rainy outside and poor Gunther kept falling to the mud
Washing myself and my clothes
Esme got pregnant
Welcome, Jamie and Lucie
Bonus: Oliver and his unusual ways of holding a book
Next time we´ll learn more about Christine and reach the events that took place at autumn
Well shucky ducky, my first post of the year! 27 days in....I would say 2020 got off to a bad start because we kicked off the year with the passing of one of our good friends, Bruce.
But luckily, I see 2021 being a much better year in general. I mean, what could possibly happen that can start this year off on the right foot?
Phone: "Hey Grim, just calling to let you know that Uncle Satan just died."
Grim: "Oh no, not Uncle Satan. I liked that guy."
Well maybe 2022 will be a better year. RIP Uncle Satan.
Meanwhile, young Dave Reaper was busy tearing the house apart.
Sabrina: "Do you mind? I'm trying to play with my toy here!"
So instead Dave went outside to build a snowman.
Grim: "Out of my way, I'll show you how a TRUE pro builds a snowman!"
Whatever, Dave will just tear the kitchen apart instead.
It's been a while since Grim practiced his saber skills, might need to work on that before he gets too rusty.
Grim: "Ah, the training droid shot me!"
Grim: "You're going to the scrap heap!"
Training Droid: "Try me, loser."
Just a wonderful day for Grim, nothing else will surprise him today.
Anakin: "Hey dad, can you buy me a car?"
Grim: "Wait a minute, how did you get tall?"
Anakin: "I aged up!"
Grim: "Impossible, you were a kid like 12 minutes ago!"
However, the magical picture frame doesn't lie.
Oh look, Anakin's older sister came to visit. She's also surprised to see that Anakin isn't short anymore.
And what a good kid Samara is, shoveling the backyard! How uselessly useful.
Speaking of Anakin, his childhood friend Blanca came to visit....She has also aged up.
Just gotta say, I think she had more character back when she was the kid wearing a leather jacket. This look does not do much for her at all.
Oh well, when she and Anakin get married she will get a new leather jacket.
Later that night at Satan's funeral.
Anakin: "This is stupid, I want to go home and play video games."
Grim: "You will pay your respects for Satan and you'll like it!"
Meanwhile, Grim went to go work the bar.
But at least we have the Ghost of Luke Skywalker on the Piano.
Sabrina: "Sorry for your los-Hey why are you wearing white at a funeral?"
Elle: "Didn't you get the memo? My dad specifically wanted people to wear white at his funeral."
Oh, looks like Grim's clone still exists....and he's catering the funeral.
Grim's Clone: "Oh.....it's you......Wait, where did your shirt go?"
Grim: "Good question."
Meanwhile, Grim Sr just wants to go to bed but there's just too many people partying downstairs.
Octavia: "Well thanks for coming to the funeral, Grim."
Grim's Clone: "Clone."
Also, I got to see what the fear emotion looks like.....Not impressed.
Meanwhile, Jewel's just sad about the dollhouse being destroyed again.
The next day, Grim confronted his clone. Telling his clone that it's time to stop existing.
Clone: "But I don't want to stop existing."
Grim: "Well if you don't want to stop existing then I have another alternative."
Grim: "That's right, a lightsaber duel to the death!"
Good thing is they're evenly matched.
But you just can't top the real Grim.
And so now I imagine the Grim clone wishes he stopped existing so he wouldn't experience this pain.
Grim: "Ah, first murder of the new year."
Grim Sr: "But seriously, you killed your clone?"
@DoodlyDoofus , Anakin reminds me of my favorite character at your story Must be the hair
My love, my love, my fearless love, I will not say goodbye..
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
OK I'm going to try to get in a couple more branches of the family now. This post will feature pictures taken in two photo studios made by @AlwaysAsking. I'm having some trouble with photo studios right now, which are also happening in the ones I've made myself except for the one I put in Magnolia Promenade when Moschino first came out.
The trouble is this - if I try to "Take photo of" or "Take photo with" a sim, they will not stand in front of the camera. Leaving more space in front of the camera doesn't seem to help. So they will never pose in front of the backgrounds I want them to. If I use the subject marks, the game will focus the photo on the subject mark even if it's directly behind the camera, so I can easily put a camera in the middle of a room and take photos with the subject marks in every direction (which is how @AlwaysAsking has designed her studios). If they aren't pointed directly at the camera the sim won't do the poses towards the camera, which sometimes makes for some interesting variations. But another problem is that two sims on adjacent subject marks will not interact in their poses if I use the "Take Picture of Sims on Subject Marks" command. So to take pictures of couples I either have to hope they'll stand somewhere that doesn't look bad, or have them stand next to each other and pose separately in the same photo. When you have as many families as I do to photograph, the latter actually does give some added variety since there are so few couple poses anyway, so it's not horrible.
Anyway, if any of you know what magic spell I used to make the sims stand in front of the camera in my original photo studio even without the subject marks, please remind me! In the meantime all of the above is my excuse for why my sims are sometimes not posed as couples and/or facing the usual way.
Family B for Bateman, Brindleton Bay
Athena's oldest child was Bruce, the son of her first boyfriend Akira Kibo. In the spirit of my last nostalgic post here are my aged down photos of him from my test save.
(His son looked so much like that last one as a teen!)
And this is the first picture I took of Bruce in my actual game, from Athena and Arthur's wedding.
Anyway, Bruce was a teenager before Athena had any additional children, so he spent most of his childhood as an only child. Akira never lived with Athena (why move in a jealous boyfriend while pursuing the serial romantic aspiration?), but he did get invited over for all the holiday dinners when Bruce was a child. Athena was able to keep her girlfriend and the affair with her boss from Akira for a long time, but when she decided to have the boss's child it was time to acknowledge that she and Akira wanted different relationships and they broke up.
Bruce is bi like his mother, but that has never really been obvious because almost as soon as he aged up to YA he was in love with one sim - Walker Bateman. Walker was a townie that Athena didn't hit it off with but I thought was cute, so I saved him for Bruce. Originally I planned for them to move to Brindleton Bay and be pet parents for a while before adopting a child later in life. They did the first part, but one day, probably a week or two before I would have had them adopt, Walker had a glitch that made him roll the want to try for a baby with Bruce. And since he was kind of my favorite at the time I went into CAS and changed the settings so he could get pregnant. They had twins, who were born while I was playing another household and the game named Maximilian and Bo. Since I needed the heir to have a B name and hadn't decided what I was doing with spares yet, I kept the names. Now the name Beau I would automatically have assumed was male, but since I had at that point only seen the spelling Bo with the little girl in the movie Signs and Bo Derek, I wasn't sure. It took me a little while to get back to their house, and by then I'd gotten used to not knowing and Bo has been non-binary ever since.
Walker is family oriented and childish, which have combined to make him one of my favorite fathers in the game. Bruce is a geek, so family video game tournaments were a big thing. They were also really into water slides, but in their new house they have a pool instead. Akira moved in with them for a while (they had three pets plus twins and needed the help!), but later was turned into a vampire by Bruce's sister and moved to the hollow.
Over the last few rotations, Max moved to Sulani and got married, and I call that household Family K now. Bo stayed with their fathers and opened a veterinary clinic in Brindleton Bay. One of the first customers was Liberty Lee, whom I had given a cat named Justice. After a sweet geeky courtship, Bo and Liberty were married. When I get to this household in the current rotation I plan to have them start a family.
Bruce and Walker started out with a dog and a cat from CAS and adopted a stray cat, then after those died I created another dog and cat in CAS and they adopted a stray dog. Currently the only living pet in the house is Justice. Their last cat had two kittens when she was an elder, which have been given to Bruce's nieces in the Goth family. I plan on giving them another dog soon, and then filling up the household with a couple of children rather than a third pet.
Walker and Bo both have the Friend of the Animals aspiration. Walker retired from the top of the stylist career. Bruce is soon to retire from the top of the Mixologist career. He has the Bestselling Author aspiration and has written several sci fi and fantasy novels aimed at teens. Liberty has the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration and is in the author career. She aspires to be the sims version of Steven King, living in New England and writing horror novels.
I love a few of their portraits so I'm going to use a spoiler for them.
Bruce and Walker are in the posing separately on the subject mark situation. This one is my fave.
These are the runners up.
Bo had even more problems. For some reason they would not show up in the popup to choose who to photograph, even when standing on the subject mark. This appears to be a glitch in my game because they didn't show up in the choose who to travel with popup either. So I had them stand on the subject mark and photographed Liberty on an adjacent one. It turned out ok, I suppose. I can't decide on a favorite between these two.
Since I'm doing the nostalgia thing, here are their first ever portraits, with the GTW photo booth, from the week where the fathers aged to Adult and the twins aged to child.
Bo had the long hair.
Family C for Caliente (eventually), Forgotten Hollow
Cordelia is the twin sister of Amelia from family A. Their father was Athena's boss at the police station for many years, and after he retired they got married. Cordelia was happy enough for them, but too obsessed with her vampire research to stick around the way Amelia did. Cordelia had been fascinated with spooky things most of her life. When she was a teen, her mother's ex boyfriend introduced her to his stepson, Wolfgang Munch. They hit it off immediately, and from the time they both became YAs they have been inseparable.
Cordelia moved to Forgotten Hollow after reading about it in her vampire tome (the night after she moved out a vampire broke into their apartment and bit Amelia, which was funny). She very quickly was able to meet Vlad and befriend him (polite introduction is handy). Vlad promised her that she and her husband (she was sure she and Wolfie would be married soon) could live independently as vampires in his territory if she turned four others to serve him in his mansion. She accepted. Unfortunately Wolfgang was abducted on his YA birthday and came back with an extra passenger, so he had to wait until after the birth to be turned. They didn't wait for other things so the two of them got married while both of them were pregnant. Wolfgang's alien son Klaatu was a day older than Cornelius, the vampire son Cordelia carried. A week later they added a daughter, Charlotte.
Cordelia went on to turn Ulrike Faust, Maaike Haas, Raj Rasoya, and an elder Akira Kibo, all of whom moved into Straud manor. This helped her to complete the Vampire Family aspiration, and Vlad transferred 50000 simoleans into their household as a reward as well.
Klaatu grew up and moved in with another alien born in the game to form Household X. Cornelius and Charlotte are both young adults, but neither has moved out. Cornelius grew up with empathy, emotional control and conflict resolution in the red, as well as the mean and evil traits. At the moment he hasn't been truly evil yet, he's biding his time until he can choose the Villain branch of the secret agent career and until I have things set up for his personal evil storyline. He has the Master Vampire aspiration. Charlotte grew up with all character values in the green, and the good trait. She is working towards the Diamond Agent branch of the Secret Agent career, and the Good Vampire aspiration.
Wolfgang has recently been promoted to the top of the criminal boss career. He has the public enemy aspiration, but he's mean rather than evil so I'm probably going to put off witnessing a death until Cornelius can make it happen for him. Cordelia is a freelance artists and takes a lot of forgery jobs. I think of the two of them as more chaotic neutral than good or evil.
Charlotte recently got engaged to Katrina Caliente, who I had aged down to YA. Katrina and her daughters, aged down to toddler, just moved in and are included in the portraits.
Cordy and Wolfie did the not standing in front of the camera thing, but at least they stood in front of *a* background, even if not the one I chose.
I love this pose with the hat.
Charlotte and Katrina were on the subject marks. Sometimes this leads to clipping.
But sometimes they almost seem to be trying to do the same thing.
When I took them separately Katrina wasn't facing the camera and I love a couple of these.
Whew! What a chaotic weekend for the Hargroves! I can’t believe they made it through still smiling.
First, Dad Simon graduated with honors with a computer programming degree. Not that he needs it, as the family has millions. But he wanted to give a good example for when his kids eventually enter college.
The family decided to celebrate by taking a break from snowy Willow Creek by vacationing in El Selvadorada for the first time.
It wasn’t a disaster... at first. They stayed a night in a nice vacation house.
Next, they did some sightseeing and grabbed some supplies in the marketplace.
They decided to camp out before going exploring the next day. That’s when the animal attacks started.
Bees.
Spiders.
Bats.
A constant barrage of critters attacked them, plus swarms of bugs. But they kept a brave face and still tried to have a good time.
They even entertained each other with a few good-natured jokes for Prank Day.
But then the fireflies attacked poor little Soraya! With no fire quencher or water, and her parents ahead on the path, she had to have her older sister extinguish her flames and save her life. Dad was just teleporting in when the fire was extinguished. Thus ended the worst vacation the Hargroves have ever taken. Kali called it quits and sent them all back home to the familiar comfort of Willow Creek.
Tested out a new pose pack and I have to say these family pics are too cute!
Marie and her siblings**
The whole family in front of the mountain of gifts on Winterfest. I'm still on a long lifespan with 28 day seasons so my last family photo was taken the week before Winterfest.
**Maggie becomes a child in three days, which means I'm starting Legacy Day with a birthday! Legacy Day is the first day of Spring because that's when I started the save.
Origin ID HillyPlays P.A.C.E- Positive Attitude Changes Everything
Finished surveying my game for damage after the update. I have something going on with Granite Falls rentail lots, as they no longer register as such. Oddly enough, the ones at Selvadorada are fine.
Comments
Meanwhile a random dog wandered through the house and out the backdoor. Grim tried to make contact with it, but it disappeared before he had time.
Grim tries to teach Mordecai with flash cards, Mordecai is trying to work out why his Dad has black smoke billowing out of him.
That Saturday night, Dullahan invites everyone over for a formal dinner and house party.
There's an ulterior motive though, because he surprises the guests with an impromptu marriage proposal and wedding to Shana
Enjoying their first night together as husband and wife.
Female Simmer from Australia (she/her)
I had one of my Sims marry the Grim Reaper & now they have a lot of kids.
Female Simmer from Australia (she/her)
I had one of my Sims marry the Grim Reaper & now they have a lot of kids.
Today I adopted a cat and a dog from Pets. One guy belongs to the army and so I got him a nice big, active hunter Great Dane. I love collections so whenever he goes out to find things, Duke can come with for the adventure. I also have a Spellcaster so I got a clever Bombay Cat. She can get the feather collection.
They came in on a thunderstorm so unsurprisingly everybody was too scared to do training. Pets don't get scared but they get tense. We really ought to have a Scared Petting like we have a Tense Petting.
I have an idea for my army guy to be going to Granite Falls for a few days. He can spend some time training and getting the Outdoor Retreat Achievement there. And of course there's going to be lots of time spent in Selvadora.
Hey everyone. Dipped into my game to play for a bit. And several awful things happened. I’m devastated
I lost 2 of my favorite sims just out of the blue. One of those weird game things that decide to kill off one of your played sims in another household for the Death and Mourning moodlets to throw a wrench in your gameplay
Trigger warnings. I just posted pics of sims crying.
First I was playing with one of my college students in a second household. They were in San Myshuno eating dinner at one of the festivals. I saw Vincent Fontenot eating pufferfish nigiri he bought at one of the sushi stands. And he keeled over from poisoning. My sim (it was Parvati) begged Grimmy to bring him back but no luck. Parvati collected up his grave marker and brought it to his family. No screenshots of that
Vincent Fontenot left his widow Joanna with 4 small children
They had a funeral at my cemetery lot in Oasis Springs
It was raining heavily, late in the evening and cold. Kind of fitting for a funeral really.
I had them travel as a group to place Vincent’s tombstone in the cemetery.
Joanna was one of my few sims to spontaneously propose to Vince
They had a very geeky cosplay wedding at Geek Con lol
Vincent holding his son Colton for the first time
Simeon took her grave marker and the family had a little funeral early the next morning. It was lightly snowing. I caught a picture of the moon as it was setting and the sun was just peeking over the horizon
They were able to appease her spirit with a sugar skull
Tending her garden
Giving her son Picard a bath
Sledding with Simeon
LARPing in the park with Simeon
Adventures in Selvadorada
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
HillyPlays
P.A.C.E- Positive Attitude Changes Everything
This is Nora and Damion! Since Snowy Escape was loosely based on Asian culture it inspired me to try my best to make an Asian sim and thats what I tried with Nora (I feel like this game makes it kinda hard to make minorities but whatever)
With Damion I tried to make a sim who looked more Middle Eastern because I feel like they're really under represented everywhere and I thought it'd be something fun to try
Nothing much happened for my game because I was trying to finish my build entries for the month. And I am back to work tomorrow so less playtime and forum time for me
Gardens take forever!!
I want this pool.
It was fun to build.
and I added a sauna for once - I always forget they are in the game.
First, answer to your comment on page 825 that I did not see at first because I didn´t get a notification about it. Happens every once in a while:
yes, Covid continues to be a major plum. Scary, how it will already be a year since it started, I barely have an idea where all that time has gone.
Sergio has his uses, but I too prefer Joaquin. Spoiler: he and Luna recently had another kid, a son whose name I already forgot. I have far too many toddlers in my game
I see you continue to have fun with your aliens. I am yet to try playing with one, though I am considering adding some to my game as townies to freshen things up, it´s getting boring seeing same old faces everywhere.
pg 828: I was laughting too. I had to change Salim´s outfit, because Esme would set him on fire if she ever catches him walking around Forgotten Hollow at night dressed like a clown. She has veryu strong opinions about which color scemes are befitting to a vampire and which are not and mixing bright red and yellow is a certain no. Technically Max is the new ruler of Forgotten Hollow, but he allows Esme to do the scaring people into submission part, partly because he couldn´t be bothered and partly because he may be a bit scared of her too, because being a vampire witch, Esme knows more tricks than he does.
Love your boarding school, really interesting idea. Susan really loves those knives, doesn´t she?
pg 829: Wow, that´s a lot of death and tragedy packed into one update. I feel so sorry for everyone, these deaths really came out of blue.
@Daravi
I love your historical challenge!
@Becka28
pg 825: Thank you for your good wishes. I think I am starting to like Rohan because of you, in my own game he has done nothing but annoy me. In my current save, he is married to Alice Spencer-Kim and they have a cute son together (MCCC had Alice and Eric get divorced, Eric is currently married to Penny Pizzazz. Poor Olivia got left alone with her grandpa to that huge house). Nice to see Max happy, I have always had a certain fondness for that demon spawn.
This Paris mod you use looks really good. I have no use for Magnolia Promenade as it is now, so maybe I´ll give it a try.
pg 827: I´ve had more than 1 sim graduate at once and they got their pictures, so it looks like a recent glitch. It was a pain, though, since everyone kept trying to wander off, instead of patiently waiting for graduation ceremony to start like good little sims.
pg 828: Congrats for Quin and Rohan for getting engaged at last!
I originally planned to do a rotational variation on an alphabet legacy, where Athena would have two children and the first would have a name that started with B and move out and the second would have a name that started with A and be the heir... but when A turned out to be twins I threw the plan out the window and Athena had 9 children with five different fathers, ending with Father Winter. I still created a family rotation, I just got from A to I in one generation. I kept the birth rate down with her children, so the spares among her grandchildren are only creating J-N.
Later I also added several occult households, which will be Households R-Y eventually, and a retirement village which I call Household Z.
So here are there stories:
Family A for Andreas, San Myshuno
Amelia Andreas was two days from her YA birthday when her parents got married. She had several younger siblings with different fathers, but it was her father that ended up marrying her mother in the end. Amelia, a romantic at heart, had always hoped for this outcome, so she did not move out when her twin sister did after their birthday. She stayed and started her Food Critic career while helping with the cooking for her younger siblings. She had a very slow romance with Pierce Delgato. They were a little flirty in high school, but he was hesitant to settle down too soon and kept her at arms' length for a while. As Amelia suspected, however, they were indeed meant to be and eventually he also fell in love (in real life this would sound like she's a stalker but in reality it's just me forcing relationships even if they start with rejection because I am a bossy watcher).
Sadly, Amelia's father Arthur died on a camping trip at around the same time she and Pierce became official. Pierce moved in to help her out, and then after they got married they just continued to live with Amelia's mother. Their first and only child, Adam, was born about the same time his youngest two aunts moved out. Athena retired then, and was a big help with the toddler. The family, which had always lived in apartments, moved to the Old Salt House after Arthur's death and stayed there for the rest of Athena's life. Athena and her second spouse, Geeta Rasoya, passed within a day of each other shortly after Adam became a teen. By my estimates Athena was about 105-110 when she died.
After her death, Amelia and Pierce and Adam moved to the big three story apartment in Uptown. There Adam met a teen girl named Yuki who lived in Windenberg but attended private school in the city. She was very excited to get involved in the opportunity to vote on the community space that replaced the gym in Uptown, and Adam was very excited to do anything to get her to notice him. So he's going to be campaigning for what Yuki wants in that space when their house comes up in rotation, which is going to ignite his interest in politics which will be his eventual career.
Amelia is at the top of the Food Critic career and has almost completed the Soulmate aspiration. She writes the occasional non-fiction book about dining and/or drinking and/or karaoke in the city. Her primary hobby is singing and she has won a couple of karaoke contests. Pierce got stuck on the City Native aspiration because Old Salt House is not an apartment so he couldn't give an apartment key until they moved, but I'm sure he'll progress quickly now. He's working towards the Space Ranger job in the astronaut career. His hobbies are all related to his career requirements - working out, playing chess, and building a rocketship in the backyard. Said ship is currently in storage until they make their next move to a penthouse with a big enough balcony.
Below the spoiler, the recent portrait of Amelia and Pierce, and Adam's teen portraits. They are all a little dark because I didn't adjust the lighting on that lot until later and I'm too lazy to redo them because they're not quite that bad.
This one of Adam is cropped to closer to what the in-game portrait looks like.
These are screenshot versions of alternate poses.
Oh, and today I learned that photos can be put on the display things for paintings, so I totally plan to save all of my family portraits into a museum lot when I get around to building one. The Andreas family museum. Maybe Adam should create that when he's maxes out the politician career. Anyway, while experimenting I took this picture of the two portraits of Amelia and Pierce, as Adults and as YAs.
I've just decided this is going to take forever if I write this much for each family. I am going to go ahead and split this over multiple posts.
This is definitely Amelia as a child, except I can't remember what she actually wore or what her hairstyle was. This is my aged down version.
Cordelia I do remember, this is really what she looked like.
This is my only picture of Amelia and Cordelia as teens in their everyday look. Amelia's the one in purple. Also Gillian as a child, and Derrick and Erick as teens in the background.
This is their selfie in formal wear from their parents' wedding.
Amelia being embarrassed by her teenage brother on vacation.
Decorating a tree with her mother and sisters. Amelia in pink at the top, counter-clockwise Holly, Athena, Gillian and Ivy.
Amelia and Pierce's wedding.
I will now stop for the sake of people's loading time. Sorry, I am just feeling really attached to my sim babies right now.
Edited to add: BTW Adam in profile looks exactly like Pierce in that wedding photo, but with Amelia's hair color and skin tone. I love that he so obviously has some of both.
Also, does anyone else see Athena side-eyeing the camera in both of the screenshots she's in?
Lets move to Sulani, where we find Jolene. Jo and Kurt say hi
Once upon a time, Jo used to have a husband, but she grew bored of him after few weeks and sent him packing, so she is currently single and ready to mingle.
Emilia Charm invited Jo to lounge for some celebrity-seeing. Who apparently decided that the best way to catch attention is to pose naked
Never thought that there will come a day when I see Don Lothario faint upon seeing a naked woman
Some random spellcaster dude was rude to Jo, so she duelled him to show who´s boss. That she wasn´t born a witch does not mean that she doesn´t know her craft
Her cooking will need some more practice, though
Guess who showed up? Emmanuel!
Few words about Emmanuel, who is not exactly who he appears to be. As far as his friends know, Emmanuel is a spellcaster and same age as he and Laena, both statements which aren´t entirely true. Emmanuel was born a spellcaster-mermaid hybrid and befriended the twins at first to spy on them on Esme´s order, who was sure that any offspring of her father must be up to no good (She was right about Laena, but Laenor is as sweet and harmless as a teddy bear)
Paka´a even autonomously asked her to be his girlfriend
...right in front of his wife, who was not happy
Before things got even uglier, they were distracted by others, who also thought it was a fight night
Jolene decided to start flirting with Emmanuel to get back at Paka´a for failing to mention that he already had a wife. She had just moved to Sulani, how was she supposed to know?
They got a bit carried away...
Emmanuel was happy about the news, I think. It´s sometimes hard to tell with merpeople and their idle movements
Kurt surely was
Umm, maybe you shouldn´t be getting all flirty with your niece´s boyfriend?
Luckily Emmanuel only had eyes for Jo
Some long-distance hugging
Why Christmas parties are a dangerous thing
It was a nice evening, untill Gunther had a little too much fun, so much that he dropped dead
Jo tried to plead with Grim, who wasn´t happy about being called to work on Christmas Eve and denied her request.
"Are you for real? I am 8 months pregnant and you tell me no?"
Jo went to call Esme, while Kurt and Dominic cried over their brother´s urn
At nightfall, Esme arrived to collect her husband
Being who she was, she was less heartbroken over Gunther´s deceased state and more intrigued about the possibility of woohooing with a ghost.
I had to put a bed outside for Gunther, because it literally did not fit into Jo´s house. Why do ghosts even need to sleep?
When she wasn´t busy woohooing him in every possible location, Esme tried to bring Gunther back to life with magic, but failed to do so. Being a half-breed, her magic was strong enough to kill, but not to restore life. As Hermione was nowhere to be found and they were unwilling to mix outsiders into their family matters, the task fell upon Jolene.
Yay! (Poor Jo was having a really bad time, being both hugely pregnant and still devastated about Gunther´s death)
After some practicing, she was finally ready to cast the spell. There was no time to waste, since she wanted Gunther out of her house before the baby was born.
Tadaa! As good as new!
Back to Jolene
Jo thought that it was the end of it, but Paka´a returned the next day while she was busy taking care of her babies and let himself in
He started yelling at her and calling her names,
so Jo, who was already under enough pressure did what every witch would do upon being attacked
and set him on fire
"Final warning. If you ever come near me again, I will have my sister kill you. Get it?"
The triplets aged up to toddlers. They are identical
(I aged one up in CAS out of curiousity and they are 100% gender-flipped versions of Jolene, with no imput from their father. She might have as well created them by herself.)
Jo and Emmanuel went on a date, mostly to woohoo in the restaurant´s closet in peace
As it happens. they were caught by no other than Laenor and Cassandra, who found the situation very amusing. Laenor wondered why Emmanuel had never mentioned that he has a girlfriend
Since neither of them knows how to use protection, Jolene ended up getting pregnant again.
Kurt was understandebly a little concerned, since she had no money and her house was a mess
Emmanuel moved in with her to help with kids and got a job to support his growing family
A moment of peace
Jolene went to museum one day, where she ran into Alexander Goth
...who proceeded to get very handsy with someone he had met five minutes ago.
Gunther, who happened to be also visiting the museum, saw that and got mad at Alexander for being a creep.
I was lucky, just one baby this time
It took me a while to recall who he might have inherited his green eyes from, since neither Jo or Emmanuel, or even the parents of either have green eyes. Who did have green eyes? Emmanuel´s grandfather Don Lothario.
Next time we´ll be reunited with Esme and learn what happened with Salim after turning into a vampire.
Nearly lost interest with the challenge since not much was happening, just raising the kids and all.
The next generation is where things get real interesting and has more story and more characters.
Update: Epilogue
Updates are on there way, and I shared the toddler home as well as the current Zalrian household.
It took way to long to do everything I managed to pack into 28 sim days. Some of it bled into winter.
Because I needed to age up Juniper and Jade before I could focus on Ember, Ember's Cycle will be in the winter season she was born in. Jade and Juniper will be put on hold until I return to the Zalrian Household in the rotation cycle. As toddlers, they sorta took over in every other rotation within the Zalrian Household.
Plant Sims are not a permanent life state, so Juniper will be another merman 🧜🏼♂️ in the household.
Also, a new rotation cycle.
Zalrian (4 Rotations)
Calum and Arihi
Dylan and Zephyr
Ember and Rocky, her pet cat.
Jade and Juniper
The Mua Pel'am Pod
The Mua Pel'am Merfolk
Kealoha
Boria
Goth
Elderberry
Munch
Finley
Galleon
Sol
Galen
Ningyo
The Darkfins
Morbius
Kailani
For the Kealoha, I want to create a multi-generational home.
Munch and Goth happened to include Alexander and Lucas who became associated with Ember, potential love triangle or just friends, don't know.
Elderberry will be just for fun, but I might have been inspired to see what happens in my game because of this thread. Anyways, My primary rule for this rotation is that I have to go with whatever whims come to Rohan's mind, and I have to allow any random interaction he has with another sim.
As his death had erased their marriage, Gunther proposed to Esme again
They both have a bedroom and a perfectly good bed, but naturally they just had to go and celebrate in Dominic´s bed. Bonus level of creepy: the pictures of Dominic´s ex-wife Hermione, also known as Esme´s twin sister, that he still keeps in his room, even though they divorced years ago
Yes, that´s what the mysterious, missing, possibly dead Hermione looks like
Dominic likes to tell the sad story of his short marriage, but he usually leaves out the part why Hermione left him
Oliver and Hela aged up
Esme continued to be, well, Esme
Isn´t it nice when food shows up to your door?
"Well, even if I messed up the potion, it matches nicely with the wallpaper."
As her career wasn´t advancing as fast as she had hoped, Esme decided to go to university to further her education.
Mommy and daughter homework time
Making a new friend. Unlike Caleb, Lilith found Esme lovely and not creepy at all
Dominic found love
One night, Dominic ran into Lorelai Ember, who liked what she saw, as he was considerably less weird than folks generally wandering around Forgotten Hollow after nightfall
Few days later, she called and invited him on a date to celebrate the Love Day
They got along surprisingly well, considering that Lorelai is unflirty loner.
So they went to another date, which went even better
As Dominic´s friend, Eva felt it to be her duty to warn him about Lorelai. Did he even know who that girl´s family was? They were bad news, all of them.
But Dominic reassured her - his own family wasn´t perfect, either, so it was hardly anything he hadn´t encountered before. Eva had no reason to worry about him.
Dominic had a birthday and is now an adult. Esme baked a cake - her first - and was very proud with herself for not burning it
A random family photo to celebrate the occasion
Training regime from hell
"Drugs. Drugs are an answer to all of your problems. All I ask in exchange is your soul."
"Who needs a soul anyway?"
"Good choice. You are mine now. Let´s get to training - I can´t have myself being associated with some weakling."
Gunther: "Isn´t my wife lovely?"
Christine: "That looks painful."
Also Christine: "Did you had to go so hard on him? The poor thing´s been a vampire for what, a year? You are going to scare him off."
Esme: "if he can't keep up with me, that's his problem, not mine."
Salim: "Please save me, good lady. I may have made a mistake."
Christine: "May? You are the biggest idiot I have seen since the one that fathered me. I am mildly impressed you´ve survived for that long."
Esme wasn´t happy, but in the end, she agreed to surrender Salim to Christine. She had better things to do than fight with her sister over some stupid newbie vampire who was terrified of her and would not hunt for food. If Chrissy wanted a pet, she can have him.
Esme and Gunther got married
Time to celebrate! It was rainy outside and poor Gunther kept falling to the mud
Washing myself and my clothes
Esme got pregnant
Welcome, Jamie and Lucie
Bonus: Oliver and his unusual ways of holding a book
Next time we´ll learn more about Christine and reach the events that took place at autumn
But luckily, I see 2021 being a much better year in general. I mean, what could possibly happen that can start this year off on the right foot?
Phone: "Hey Grim, just calling to let you know that Uncle Satan just died."
Grim: "Oh no, not Uncle Satan. I liked that guy."
Well maybe 2022 will be a better year. RIP Uncle Satan.
Meanwhile, young Dave Reaper was busy tearing the house apart.
Sabrina: "Do you mind? I'm trying to play with my toy here!"
So instead Dave went outside to build a snowman.
Grim: "Out of my way, I'll show you how a TRUE pro builds a snowman!"
Whatever, Dave will just tear the kitchen apart instead.
It's been a while since Grim practiced his saber skills, might need to work on that before he gets too rusty.
Grim: "Ah, the training droid shot me!"
Grim: "You're going to the scrap heap!"
Training Droid: "Try me, loser."
Just a wonderful day for Grim, nothing else will surprise him today.
Anakin: "Hey dad, can you buy me a car?"
Grim: "Wait a minute, how did you get tall?"
Anakin: "I aged up!"
Grim: "Impossible, you were a kid like 12 minutes ago!"
However, the magical picture frame doesn't lie.
And what a good kid Samara is, shoveling the backyard! How uselessly useful.
Speaking of Anakin, his childhood friend Blanca came to visit....She has also aged up.
Just gotta say, I think she had more character back when she was the kid wearing a leather jacket. This look does not do much for her at all.
Oh well, when she and Anakin get married she will get a new leather jacket.
Later that night at Satan's funeral.
Anakin: "This is stupid, I want to go home and play video games."
Grim: "You will pay your respects for Satan and you'll like it!"
Meanwhile, Grim went to go work the bar.
But at least we have the Ghost of Luke Skywalker on the Piano.
Sabrina: "Sorry for your los-Hey why are you wearing white at a funeral?"
Elle: "Didn't you get the memo? My dad specifically wanted people to wear white at his funeral."
Oh, looks like Grim's clone still exists....and he's catering the funeral.
Grim's Clone: "Oh.....it's you......Wait, where did your shirt go?"
Grim: "Good question."
Meanwhile, Grim Sr just wants to go to bed but there's just too many people partying downstairs.
Octavia: "Well thanks for coming to the funeral, Grim."
Grim's Clone: "Clone."
Also, I got to see what the fear emotion looks like.....Not impressed.
Meanwhile, Jewel's just sad about the dollhouse being destroyed again.
The next day, Grim confronted his clone. Telling his clone that it's time to stop existing.
Clone: "But I don't want to stop existing."
Grim: "Well if you don't want to stop existing then I have another alternative."
Grim: "That's right, a lightsaber duel to the death!"
Good thing is they're evenly matched.
But you just can't top the real Grim.
And so now I imagine the Grim clone wishes he stopped existing so he wouldn't experience this pain.
Grim: "Ah, first murder of the new year."
Grim Sr: "But seriously, you killed your clone?"
Sea may rise, sky may fall, My love will never die..
My heart, my heart, My drowning heart, Oh all the tears I've cried
Oh I may weep forevermore, My love will never die..
The trouble is this - if I try to "Take photo of" or "Take photo with" a sim, they will not stand in front of the camera. Leaving more space in front of the camera doesn't seem to help. So they will never pose in front of the backgrounds I want them to. If I use the subject marks, the game will focus the photo on the subject mark even if it's directly behind the camera, so I can easily put a camera in the middle of a room and take photos with the subject marks in every direction (which is how @AlwaysAsking has designed her studios). If they aren't pointed directly at the camera the sim won't do the poses towards the camera, which sometimes makes for some interesting variations. But another problem is that two sims on adjacent subject marks will not interact in their poses if I use the "Take Picture of Sims on Subject Marks" command. So to take pictures of couples I either have to hope they'll stand somewhere that doesn't look bad, or have them stand next to each other and pose separately in the same photo. When you have as many families as I do to photograph, the latter actually does give some added variety since there are so few couple poses anyway, so it's not horrible.
Anyway, if any of you know what magic spell I used to make the sims stand in front of the camera in my original photo studio even without the subject marks, please remind me! In the meantime all of the above is my excuse for why my sims are sometimes not posed as couples and/or facing the usual way.
Family B for Bateman, Brindleton Bay
Athena's oldest child was Bruce, the son of her first boyfriend Akira Kibo. In the spirit of my last nostalgic post here are my aged down photos of him from my test save.
(His son looked so much like that last one as a teen!)
And this is the first picture I took of Bruce in my actual game, from Athena and Arthur's wedding.
Anyway, Bruce was a teenager before Athena had any additional children, so he spent most of his childhood as an only child. Akira never lived with Athena (why move in a jealous boyfriend while pursuing the serial romantic aspiration?), but he did get invited over for all the holiday dinners when Bruce was a child. Athena was able to keep her girlfriend and the affair with her boss from Akira for a long time, but when she decided to have the boss's child it was time to acknowledge that she and Akira wanted different relationships and they broke up.
Bruce is bi like his mother, but that has never really been obvious because almost as soon as he aged up to YA he was in love with one sim - Walker Bateman. Walker was a townie that Athena didn't hit it off with but I thought was cute, so I saved him for Bruce. Originally I planned for them to move to Brindleton Bay and be pet parents for a while before adopting a child later in life. They did the first part, but one day, probably a week or two before I would have had them adopt, Walker had a glitch that made him roll the want to try for a baby with Bruce. And since he was kind of my favorite at the time I went into CAS and changed the settings so he could get pregnant. They had twins, who were born while I was playing another household and the game named Maximilian and Bo. Since I needed the heir to have a B name and hadn't decided what I was doing with spares yet, I kept the names. Now the name Beau I would automatically have assumed was male, but since I had at that point only seen the spelling Bo with the little girl in the movie Signs and Bo Derek, I wasn't sure. It took me a little while to get back to their house, and by then I'd gotten used to not knowing and Bo has been non-binary ever since.
Walker is family oriented and childish, which have combined to make him one of my favorite fathers in the game. Bruce is a geek, so family video game tournaments were a big thing. They were also really into water slides, but in their new house they have a pool instead. Akira moved in with them for a while (they had three pets plus twins and needed the help!), but later was turned into a vampire by Bruce's sister and moved to the hollow.
Over the last few rotations, Max moved to Sulani and got married, and I call that household Family K now. Bo stayed with their fathers and opened a veterinary clinic in Brindleton Bay. One of the first customers was Liberty Lee, whom I had given a cat named Justice. After a sweet geeky courtship, Bo and Liberty were married. When I get to this household in the current rotation I plan to have them start a family.
Bruce and Walker started out with a dog and a cat from CAS and adopted a stray cat, then after those died I created another dog and cat in CAS and they adopted a stray dog. Currently the only living pet in the house is Justice. Their last cat had two kittens when she was an elder, which have been given to Bruce's nieces in the Goth family. I plan on giving them another dog soon, and then filling up the household with a couple of children rather than a third pet.
Walker and Bo both have the Friend of the Animals aspiration. Walker retired from the top of the stylist career. Bruce is soon to retire from the top of the Mixologist career. He has the Bestselling Author aspiration and has written several sci fi and fantasy novels aimed at teens. Liberty has the Fabulously Wealthy aspiration and is in the author career. She aspires to be the sims version of Steven King, living in New England and writing horror novels.
I love a few of their portraits so I'm going to use a spoiler for them.
These are the runners up.
Bo had even more problems. For some reason they would not show up in the popup to choose who to photograph, even when standing on the subject mark. This appears to be a glitch in my game because they didn't show up in the choose who to travel with popup either. So I had them stand on the subject mark and photographed Liberty on an adjacent one. It turned out ok, I suppose. I can't decide on a favorite between these two.
Since I'm doing the nostalgia thing, here are their first ever portraits, with the GTW photo booth, from the week where the fathers aged to Adult and the twins aged to child.
Bo had the long hair.
Family C for Caliente (eventually), Forgotten Hollow
Cordelia is the twin sister of Amelia from family A. Their father was Athena's boss at the police station for many years, and after he retired they got married. Cordelia was happy enough for them, but too obsessed with her vampire research to stick around the way Amelia did. Cordelia had been fascinated with spooky things most of her life. When she was a teen, her mother's ex boyfriend introduced her to his stepson, Wolfgang Munch. They hit it off immediately, and from the time they both became YAs they have been inseparable.
Cordelia moved to Forgotten Hollow after reading about it in her vampire tome (the night after she moved out a vampire broke into their apartment and bit Amelia, which was funny). She very quickly was able to meet Vlad and befriend him (polite introduction is handy). Vlad promised her that she and her husband (she was sure she and Wolfie would be married soon) could live independently as vampires in his territory if she turned four others to serve him in his mansion. She accepted. Unfortunately Wolfgang was abducted on his YA birthday and came back with an extra passenger, so he had to wait until after the birth to be turned. They didn't wait for other things so the two of them got married while both of them were pregnant. Wolfgang's alien son Klaatu was a day older than Cornelius, the vampire son Cordelia carried. A week later they added a daughter, Charlotte.
Cordelia went on to turn Ulrike Faust, Maaike Haas, Raj Rasoya, and an elder Akira Kibo, all of whom moved into Straud manor. This helped her to complete the Vampire Family aspiration, and Vlad transferred 50000 simoleans into their household as a reward as well.
Klaatu grew up and moved in with another alien born in the game to form Household X. Cornelius and Charlotte are both young adults, but neither has moved out. Cornelius grew up with empathy, emotional control and conflict resolution in the red, as well as the mean and evil traits. At the moment he hasn't been truly evil yet, he's biding his time until he can choose the Villain branch of the secret agent career and until I have things set up for his personal evil storyline. He has the Master Vampire aspiration. Charlotte grew up with all character values in the green, and the good trait. She is working towards the Diamond Agent branch of the Secret Agent career, and the Good Vampire aspiration.
Wolfgang has recently been promoted to the top of the criminal boss career. He has the public enemy aspiration, but he's mean rather than evil so I'm probably going to put off witnessing a death until Cornelius can make it happen for him. Cordelia is a freelance artists and takes a lot of forgery jobs. I think of the two of them as more chaotic neutral than good or evil.
Charlotte recently got engaged to Katrina Caliente, who I had aged down to YA. Katrina and her daughters, aged down to toddler, just moved in and are included in the portraits.
I love this pose with the hat.
Charlotte and Katrina were on the subject marks. Sometimes this leads to clipping.
But sometimes they almost seem to be trying to do the same thing.
When I took them separately Katrina wasn't facing the camera and I love a couple of these.
Charlotte was more traditional.
Cornelius showed off his fangs a couple of times.
But these two win.
And then Nina and Dina.
Toddler photo outtakes:
First, Dad Simon graduated with honors with a computer programming degree. Not that he needs it, as the family has millions. But he wanted to give a good example for when his kids eventually enter college.
The family decided to celebrate by taking a break from snowy Willow Creek by vacationing in El Selvadorada for the first time.
It wasn’t a disaster... at first. They stayed a night in a nice vacation house.
Next, they did some sightseeing and grabbed some supplies in the marketplace.
They decided to camp out before going exploring the next day. That’s when the animal attacks started.
Bees.
Spiders.
Bats.
A constant barrage of critters attacked them, plus swarms of bugs. But they kept a brave face and still tried to have a good time.
They even entertained each other with a few good-natured jokes for Prank Day.
But then the fireflies attacked poor little Soraya! With no fire quencher or water, and her parents ahead on the path, she had to have her older sister extinguish her flames and save her life. Dad was just teleporting in when the fire was extinguished. Thus ended the worst vacation the Hargroves have ever taken. Kali called it quits and sent them all back home to the familiar comfort of Willow Creek.
Marie and her siblings**
The whole family in front of the mountain of gifts on Winterfest. I'm still on a long lifespan with 28 day seasons so my last family photo was taken the week before Winterfest.
**Maggie becomes a child in three days, which means I'm starting Legacy Day with a birthday! Legacy Day is the first day of Spring because that's when I started the save.
HillyPlays
P.A.C.E- Positive Attitude Changes Everything