A Minor Pair of Glitches

It seems Ben Ben the Dog found a way to swim between dimensions. That, or else the floor really is lava. In which case, I don't think he knows how to play the game. 

 

 What is this I don't even.

Sybil and Her Man-thing.

Sybil, the current heir to the Morel legacy,  is an equestrian, like her forebear Mia. She loves her horse Gaucho and had already won several advanced races before she even graduated from high school. However, this has nothing to do with Gaucho. This has to do with the guy she met while in high school named JC Grayson. Now, unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of JC when he was younger, because he was nothing more than your typical awkward teenager - chubby, bad hair, clumsy and unimpressive. Nothing to write home about. One day Sybil came home from school all flushed and excited - JC was now her boyfriend. Again, nothing to be alarmed over, so I didn't worry about taking any pictures.

Until, that is, when JC graduated high school Now he's .... well, let's just say he's interesting. Definitely one of the more colorful figures in town.  He owns the local bar and acts, all of sudden, like he's some cool tough guy. He wears his shirts open, hairy chest and all, and his hair full of grease, and he looks for all the world like some guido. By the way, if you don't know what a guido is and go to that link, definition #3 is particularly fitting, I believe. Too bad sims all have the same relative accent. I'd love to throw a pseudo-newyorker's twang on him. Let's hope he doesn't turn into a raging alcoholic or a wife-beater :( 

He loves working out and messing with cars, and he pretends that he can play guitar. None of those, inherently, are bad things. I'm just wondering if Sybil knows what she's gotten herself into with this one. He's not a bad looking guy, don't get me wrong. I'm actually interested to see what turns up in the gene pool from this. It's just that the family tree hasn't always been as stable as I'd have liked, and there have been several splits when I'd have preferred the couples to stay together.


I know it sounds bad, but while I watched him propose, there was this cliffhanger feeling. I don't know how it's going to turn out for them. There have been lots of times when I thought I had it all in hand for that particular generation, and everything fell apart in the blink of an eye (I'm looking at you, Lily Lassiter). And then there were other times when I was sure things weren't going to work, it was all going to crash and burn, but somehow, they survived, pulled through, and came out okay in the end. Kind of like life, I guess. They say art mimics life, right? Or is it the other way around?

Here's hoping things turn out okay for Sybil and JC.

And that I can actually make it to gen20 without my file corrupting.

Mary Mary, Fey and Fairie

So Virgil finally worked up the nerve to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Mary. He picked a super romantic place to do it, too - in her grandmother's kitchen. Glad she said yes, now it's on with the wedding planning and forward to the next generation! I'm beginning to wonder about this girl, but more on her later.... I'm just not sure she's as top notch as some of the other spousal choices have been.

And how did this happen, you ask, when just the other day I announced how the house was full and there was no room for Mary? Well, about that - Virgil's parents, Aegon and Jodie have gotten divorced and Jodie moved out, taking most of the children with her. Apparently the stress of all those children in the house was too much for Aegon, who basically tossed her out with nothing. Unfortunately it seems he's got more of his father in him than Lily would have liked to see. Here's hoping Jodie's okay.

Virgil and Caesar stayed behind, but Jodie took Caesar's twin sister Sol, and the grade school-aged triplets Ash, Cypress, and Willow with her. Jodie got a house just up the hill, overlooking the legacy house, actually just next door to Aegon's brother Aemon's house. Not sure if the game does that by default, or if that was the only house in the game large enough to hold all those kidlets.

Virgil and Mary had a small wedding on the back patio, by the pool, and I was a bit put off that she didn't even have the decency to wear a dress. What kind of wild child have I brought into the Morel family?

A Simlish Wedding

Yes, I know I haven't posted in a while. Yes, I know no one cares but me.

I've been on a Sims 3 kick lately, maybe because of the new expansion coming out May 23rd, I dunno. Anyways, I have my sim Felurian and her boyfriend Yves, who she met in France. Yeah. I had no idea how accomplished he was when I put them together, but suddenly I realize he's a master cook and gardener and nectar-maker (read, he makes his own wine!) and he can play the piano and ..... swoon. So they fell in love, naturally. It was quite easy. All while she was on vacation in Champs les Sims.

Then, before she had to leave France, they had a fight and broke up. But when she got home, Felurian missed him, so she invited him to visit her, and suddenly, they were getting a long great - so well, in fact, that he moved in with her and never went back to France. Then he planted a garden in her backyard and started making wine in the basement, so I figured, hey, why not get engaged? So they did, and then they started planning their wedding ( <--- read: I started planning their wedding and scouting locations. This would be the first time I had had a real wedding for my Sims, with decorations and guests and whatnot. Every other couple before that had always had private weddings at home).

They had a big fancy wedding at the amphitheater in the park, and I managed to catch some interesting moments. I watched the whole thing with glee, I will assure you :)

This public wedding thing was fun, especially since Yves is a three-star celebrity so there were paparazzi snapping pics everywhere. It felt all glizty and very romantic.

The exchanging of rings.

 

The set up for the wedding. Most of the guests were on the dance floor at this point.

I chose the amphitheater for the wedding because it seemed like a romantic, quiet location. In retrospect, those descending tiers made it impossible to get good shots in or really set up decorations the way I wanted. The next wedding I have I will have to find a better spot - maybe the beach ^_^

Speaking of dancing, from the caption on the previous pic, here are the guests and the happy couple getting down and having a blast. Check out those back-bends Felurian can do. Show-off. Somebody's a bit too limber. Must be all that nectar.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to capture sound in Sims videos! Hooray! No idea what the song was, but it was catchy.

The bartender for the night was horribly deformed and ugly. 

I hired a mixologist (bartender) for the night to help keep the guests happy, and they sure kept her busy. I think half the business came from the bride herself. Apparently, Yves' wine must have spoiled her.

At the end of the party, one last kiss before they head home.

 
 I set up an 'altar' with candles and flowers, the effect was, for the most part, lost during the wedding while the sun was up, but once it got dark it looked rather.... well i was going to say charming, but now that I look at it it almost looks like something from a shrine. 

Someone was in such a hurry to get home she didn't even wait for the taxi.

This is where the camera pans away.....

The Sims 3: Ambitious?

The new Sims3 expansion pack, Ambitions, was released today, and after the UPS man was kind enough to bring it straight to my door, I loaded it up to see what had changed. I mean, after all, with this expansion EA was supposedly finally giving us the option to see our sims while they were at work. We could supposedly have complete and total control over our sims 24/7 - for whatever that's worth, anyways.

After loading the expansion and fiddling about with the new bits for a while on my legacy family, I decided that the family I had been playing had way too many children, and way too many ghosts. I knew it would take forever before I had a sim high enough in the "Ghost Hunter" profession to catch them all and leave my house ghost-free, therefore my only option was to start a new legacy. I'm crazy. I know.

Since I don't play by the official legacy rules (point-keeping, etc) I decided to put my new family in the new city of Twinbrook. Only problem is, they had no money, so they had to buy a cheap house in the swamp on the poor side of town.

To compensate, I had my legacy founder get a career as a stylist at the salon in town. Ooh! One of the new jobs! I can control her at work! One of her first customers was this fellow, who only wanted some new formal-wear to celebrate his recent job promotion. That was it. New suit. I was to leave his horrible hair alone. *shudder* I am beginning to learn, through several botched jobs and unhappy clients, that when they tell you what they want, that is all you are to do. No more, and no less.

When she was not working, my founder would head upstairs to the drafting table and work on new sketches (which so far I have found have absolutely no effect on her abilities/performance as a stylist, but it is a nice touch). It also seems that her artistic abilities have little to do with the outcome of her sketches other than the fact that as her painting skill increases her sketches have moved from pencil/charcoal to colors, possibly paints. I don't know. I think I'm putting way too much thought into this.

I also found that the new careers are salaried jobs, that earn sims a certain amount of simoleons per week (with added bonuses earned per job completed, I suppose as some sort of commission), while the original jobs are still wage jobs, earning per hour. I have yet to determine which is more profitable in the long run.

My founder's husband I had join the Law Enforcement careers, one of the original careers in the game. This, to my disappointment, I saw had not changed at all. Apparently it's only the NEW careers that can be controlled. All the original ones are still off in the land of whoknowswhatsit. And so, for the first time, TS3 falls flat on a promise (that of complete and total control) but I'm sure it's for a reason. I mean, if I had the max limit of playable sims (eight) at a time and was trying to control all of them at work at the same time, each at a different job, I would probably go crazy and quit the game. EA doesn't want me to quit, so I suppose that's why they made the game the way they did.

Work and gameplay issues aside, I am enjoying some of the changes in the home. My favorite, in a sort of ironic way, is the new laundry feature. Before, when sims would change clothes or get in the shower or go swimming or anything, their clothes would magically change to whatever was needed. Now, when they change, there is a little pile of clothes on the floor. Which they then have to pick up and put in the hamper. When the hamper is full, they have to wash the clothes, and then either put them in the dryer or hang them out on a clothesline (gasp! Just like IRL!!!! Only, irl I don't do the laundry, and it just keeps piling up). Of course, the more appliances you have in a house, the more chances there are for things to go wrong, like the little episode pictured above. My poor Sean was trying desperately to keep the thing under control (at one point he actually had the option to "subdue" the washing machine, which required him to then hang onto the thing in terror while it jumped and shook like a thing possessed). 

Most all the other elements of the game remain the same, but then I have still only dabbled at the surface of Ambitions.  Babies still look adorable playing with blocks on the turtle table, and there is still no weather (give me seasons, EA!!!) but I am still just as addicted as ever to the game.



 On a side note, I think the game's randomizer when it comes to generating styling jobs can be a bit too random at times. I received a notice that a Coy Jones-Brown wanted a complete wardrobe do-over to celebrate being hired for a new job. I get to the house of the client, ring the doorbell, and who answers, but this guy, my client.  A child. A very, very, creepy looking child. What kind of town is this Twinbrook, that they hire children? And what is in the swampwater, to make them look like that?