Sims Eugenics, or, Vlad's Nose (Complete)

[Heart Foam]

Ayaka is in her own little world there. But she can dance if she wants to. She can leave her friends behind...

I can see myself using the not-windows as the outer wall of a covered porch. But even then it's a bit too niche. Most houses would look better with fencing and pillars.

[Heart Foam]

Part 12 - Gordon & Son.



Proof positive Ayaka was an Astronaut. She had quite a battle. Unlike a much parodied popular song of a few years ago, throwing a wish in a well didn't work out this time. She was level 7, I felt her astronauting was taking too long, so Ayaka donated $5,000 to the well. This pleased the well a great deal, and the literature suggests this should almost certainly produce a positive or overwhelmingly positive outcome for a wish. She wished for promotion, and her progress bar was reset to the very start of the level. That seemed unfair. Anyway, after waiting about a day, she donated another $5,000 to once again put the well into festive mood. This would surely get back the lost progress, I just got unlucky last time. That was the hope... until she got demoted. It already felt like too much of a grind before this. Very frustrating.

Moving on. (But really that was awful what happened to Ayaka, and if you move on too quickly then what kind of person are you?)



The drawing room became Fancy! Yes! Antwan even decided to get some culture with a black and white movie. The piano is facing the correct way too. This is a now favourite room for screenshots. Often after work, a sim is told to get left overs and watch something here. Food and fun. And drinks, naturally.

The first baby to hatch is Kelly, who luckily has her father on hand to teach her things. Better CAS pictures are forthcoming, but you can see that mop of hair is Anissa's colour.



Soon after (and don't worry Alyssa did get some real clothes eventually) Quentin hatched. And this is the mystery. I stared in disbelief at that hair. I didn't want two red-heads. I hadn't given Channing much thought, but the fact all his siblings and mother were blonde had created the false impression that Channing was blonde too.



So I looked up his genealogy, and stuck together CAS pictures of him and his siblings. No touch-ups from me, those are green eyebrows. 





You can see why I'm confused by Quentin. It's unexpected. I really thought blonde was a possibility.

So Alyssa invited him over, we turned on cas.fulleditmode and sent someone to a wardrobe. And sure enough, as an adult, Channing has red hair. And his mother is blonde too. I remember Jerrica from when Don invited her over. This red hair rather disappointed me on account of having one red toddler already, and it seems to come from nowhere. So here is the great man, he died of old age a day or two later. But his genes are part of the family now, and his nose is far straighter than Alyssa's.



My bewilderment lasted some real-world time. A minute at least. I admit I was not on best terms with Quentin in his toddlerhood. All along I was anticipating something black or blonde. Sigh. And he only had one living parent now, and she was always out spying, so he didn't get as much attention as Kelly. There's a great pair of pictures (probably next episode) which captures that.

But Kelly had a doting dad, and he was waiting for her at her castle when she first ventured into the Magical Toddler room.



And to finish the update, the toddler portraits.





Quentin got his father's hair, but the eyes are his mother's. Too early to tell about the Vlad / Nick / Alyssa nose.

-----

Next episode: shirtless Antwan eats a burger, princess Kelly looks down on puny Quentin, and Ayaka looks up to the sky

[FrancescaFiori]

I am SO sorry for poor Ayaka, but I'm honestly quite relieved to know it's not just me! The wishing well loves to toy with my emotions, and I've sworn off it unless absolutely necessary from here on out. I think there might be a pattern to the outcomes (e.g. Good, Good, Good, Good, Awful, Horrible, Abysmal, Good again), but it makes me too upset to try anymore and it's so danged expensive! I thought I'd fixed it by deleting my treacherous well and buying a new one, but it turned on me again and now I've thrown up my hands.

I think your pair of redheads is adorable. Of course, it's the nose that interests me most, so I can't wait for them to age up, but I hope they'll have a fun toddlerhood in that wonderful playroom you've made them. The school projects look very nice on the mantle.

The drawing room is fancy, indeed! Though it has a touch of whimsy with the MySims mad scientist trophy. I'm glad it's not taking itself too seriously.

[Heart Foam]

That's for parties when you need to "have 3 sims playful at the same time". Function over form. It has to work as a sims house, not a real one. (So I have no qualms putting an outdoor grill in the kitchen.) There's a lot of amazing build videos in which the amazing houses take themselves too seriously. I want to know where the rocket goes, and where the +3 Inspiration room is, and where the cloning machine goes, or the DJ booth. I think when you can have an alien satellite dish on the roof, and a pointy green sim (dazed from a vampire bite) is watching an alien cooking show... and this is just another totally normal sim day... that there's an uneasy disconnect between the ultra-realism some people strive for in build mode and the tongue-in-cheek, often satirical experiences the game wants the player to have.

I'd guess there's a small random chance each time that a negative outcome happens, but that wishing well pattern was exactly my experience with Ayaka. I did risk it one more time when she was level 9, and that was a good one.

[Heart Foam]

Part 13

Some cute family pictures this time. I'm planning out the pictures so that the wedding can have an episode to itself, because that had plenty of moments. I'm not sure anyone needs this picture of Antwan with his burger, but someone might feel it is nevertheless worth including.



Toddlers! Quentin like a manly man in camo pants.



Singing was added as a group activity - because what's life without whimsy - and Alyssa decided to sing a solo. Rather lacking in confidence by the looks of it.



But she was singing by herself to absolutely no one, so Ayaka was summoned to sing along with her BFF. The spy and the astronaut. Hmm. Both in government agencies. This is the tenth of a second before the karaoke machine bursts into life. I really like Alyssa's pose, hand on hip.



Then... an abduction.



I didn't immediately connect it, but this comes from making all those alien friends at the bar.



And so the astronaut went to space, again.

The dining room got a makeover, and the kitchen got a splash of blue. I don't mind the blue at all, but they're counters and cupboards I've had before. The biggest problem is not having a big window yet. It is a bit dingy in there. We had to do the fireguard upgrade in the new fireplace, which is always a slight annoyance whether swapping out fireplaces or TVs or bathroom plumbing - I do like having everything completely upgraded. Antwan also had high enough handiness skill for the job. Ayaka's "handy" trait wasn't needed because, as an aside, I usually don't do "autolight" and just leave the fireplaces lit because they look pretty.



It changed very shortly after this. I do like that rug, but haven't yet found the right room, or right colour combo or furniture combo to make it work. But it's a rug I go to fairly often in the hope it'll look right. Just in case.



A very quaint picture of Kelly looking down on Quentin (like he's totally inferior -- and girls are just better! you're left on the floor! I don't make the rules, just letting you know how it is!) because we can see the eye contact there, the deep conversational babble they must be having.



And Ayaka looks up! Thinking of aliens. Occasionally, and especially in the morning, sims will autonomously eat in the gazebo.

Her social meter was often on the low side, so one of those Foreign gentlemen was invited for cuddles.



The 1st floor landing was improved with a couch for the kids to crawl onto having grabbed their meal. Mother, father and daughter. We've all seen these things so often, and it doesn't get old. Antwan looks happy. He should be. (His physical dimensions look a bit too cartoonish.) Maybe he's just reminiscing about the burger. Hard to know. It's like... why is the sky blue? What's 2+2? We'll never know.



-----

Next episode: a great visit from Nick including one of my favourite picture from the save, toddler cuteness, another attempt at the dining room!

[FrancescaFiori]

Oh, I think Antwan and the burger is very worthy of inclusion. An excellent shot, indeed! I think my favorite is Kelly lording it over Quentin, though. That's as it should be.

I very much agree with your building philosophy. I see a lot of those builds that are gorgeous but only barely functional and I think they're by players who consider themselves solely builders and don't actually enter Live mode very often. I'm much more impressed by houses that look wonderful and also incorporate useful items and convenient layouts for an actual Sim's life. When I download things from the gallery I often have to delete half the clutter just so my Sims can make a salad. I think that's why I like your house so much. Stunning, but also very liveable.

I like that rug, too. If you ever find a good spot for it, let me know!

Can't wait for the wedding!

[oshizu]

Oh darn! I've felt too guilty to move on from the part about Ayaka's demotion and now 2 days have passed.
I love what's happened to the drawing room. The light-blue accents, white wood, ivory-ish wallpaper, it all goes so well when you do it.

The well is a finicky creature. I save its smiles for whichever sim I'm prioritizing.
When the well's not smiling (and I don't mean that misleading mischievous grin), I send the other sims in the households to make benign wishes until the well's darn mood improves.

Agreed that both toddlers are really cute! And so lucky to have such a spacious playroom!
Oh, the dining room looks so different now! You got tired of the zebra-skin rug and checkerboard parquet flooring? (I loved that look!)

Did I mention that I like Antwan's buns? I mean, his burger?
Can't wait to see what your "favourite picture from the save" is!

[Heart Foam]

Ha! I knew someone would like it. 

Chronologically we haven't got to the zebra rug yet (that's what's coming). Oh that is much better than this effort. This is the intermediate step that I think is worth showing because I'm really like the majority of folk. I never come up with the best design first. Stuff gets chopped and changed and there's a lot of dubious creations along the way.

There's a handful of pictures that stand out, and the one from Nick's visit next update would be in my top 3. Kelly looking down on mere pleb Quentin is so good. I love her expression. I do wish the setting was a bit more remarkable.   

[Heart Foam]

Part 14 - Involving many pictures, so that the next episode is Obvious.



This! With enthusiasm! This is just the luck of pausing at the right moment, because whatever animation Nick is doing, it's probably not to point at the door asking the cute-but-stubborn kid if he can come in. (And she'll think about it.) I've got the exact same moment take from a different angle - to be precise, from inside the house, cutaway walls, with the "camera" facing Kelly. But I think it works better with Nick pointing at the door. A tiny little moment, but one of my favourites. Kelly isn't related to Nick (Nick is Quentin's grandfather), so she's never met this pointy mustachioed man before. And he lived here most of his life! He just wants to visit! Kelly is not having it. Awww.



I think one of the adults was outside and Kelly just wanted to watch them. This is moments after the one above.

This one is for closure, just so you know Nick did make it inside eventually. I also like taking pictures of the posh room. (No surprise to find someone at the bar.)



Nick naturally wanted to see his own grandson... but that's all. He was in his comfort zone to just stand and gawk. 



This is quite the toddler update. Anissa and Kelly dancing to the music. This is reminiscent of Alyssa bobbing and wiggling to the same radio in the same room in her onesie. Which is arguably cuter.



Toddlering continues! Quentin wants to know why he's the pleb and she's the princess.



Because I have a castle! But I'll let you visit. -- Kelly is a good sort. Probably.

A quick break from the kids to bring you BREAKING NEWS:



The moderately okay, satisfactory, nearly adequate DINING ROOM has finally arrived. Moody farplace (in some parts of the world, fire can sound like far) crackles to itself, and Alyssa cuts a lonely figure in the kitchen... looking at a blank wall (but look at me being fashionable, that wall is all brick and whatnot) because the thought of a window hadn't been thought.

Uh. This is the post man walking through the back of the house to get to the mailbox at the front. Because reasons. It wasn't always like that.



... and back to the toddlers.

Anissa and Kelly.



Alyssa and Quentin.



They both got to Happy Toddler, and that was fine. I made a big mistake with Quentin in choosing the "Clingy" trait. I thought it might have some learning boost to offset the negative, and I felt that he did learn some skills a bit faster than Kelly, but in the end having only one parent (who was often away) made clingy a bit of a chore. He often got a sad moodlet. Kelly overtook him in everything because there was always Anissa, and Antwan's pro-athlete career wasn't too demanding either.

I don't think you've seen that outfit for Alyssa. Much more relaxed and homey than her spy dresses. This next shot is taken just after the last one, and I'm including it anyway because... I like it.



One's eye is lead down the passage to the charging toddler. Kelly wants to be where the people are.

They sometimes find their way into this bedroom because there's a flat surface to put an empty plate on. There are obviously better beds with better stats, but this one is just good enough for me to not mind sacrificing a little bit of efficiency for the art deco look. Yeah, the bedrooms are possibly the least photographed rooms.



Some domestic scenes:







Alyssa got tired of her glamorous secret agent life and her glamorous home, and decided what she really wanted was to eat out:





That is the same Christin Matsuura from part 3 (I'll have to check) still being vampirical. I idly thought of curing her and marrying her to some bloke in the family, and I like fixing some of the fashion disasters that these randomly generated sims always are, but it won't happen. Quentin is destined for Kelly.

As I said before, I don't tend to do Social Events. There's usually no gameplay carrot, although a gold wedding does unlock those flower bouquets. But nothing much was happening in the house, and it had been a while since I did a wedding, and by this time I had figured I'd be posting the story here. And it makes the whole thing feel less like a creepy eugenics program!



(Yes, the wedding is next. You know that. Like... I don't have to write a "next time"... because the picture? Right? Awesome.) 

[oshizu]

I love that dining room! I could be chilling there with a glass of cognac (not brandy, silly, the good stuff!).

Though the game doesn't register Nick as Kelly's kin, is he like a great-(half-)uncle or something?
Can Quentin interact with Nick or does he consider Nick a "stranger"?

Ahhh, Kelly and Quentin are destined, huh? If they have multiple children, I'll be curious to see if blond hair makes any sort of comeback...
Looking forward to see a Heart Foam wedding! I'm very excited about that!

[Heart Foam]

Definitely the good stuff would be available. Well I like that room too. And there are lots of day-to-day bits of sim life that happen there. Homework is usually done there. So there's quite a few more pictures, with better or different angles.

I'm fairly sure Quentin and Nick were not strangers, but I can't check and be totally sure. A mild spoiler is that when Quentin aged up his eyebrows didn't match his hair...

[Heart Foam]

Part 15 - An Ideal Husband



Wedding day! Oh I do feel I should've got groom Antwan and bride Anissa hitched a long time ago, I do have that twinge of regret. But we got here. I'm really thinking of splashing out for the next wedding and even having it... away from the home lot. Daring, I know. Ayaka is looking fancy. But the more I look at the dress, the less convinced I am by the pink stripes.

An arch was plopped down at the back of the house, and the bench was moved in case anyone felt like sitting down.





(I do apologize there are no pictures of the couple in full sprint to the arch which is always amusing.)

These events are so rare, that I was very excited and wanted to document it all. Method soon crept into the madness, and so Anissa and Antwan each had a picture with them facing the camera.





"Darling, I'm going to hug you. Fair warning." "Noooooo. Really? Publically? I'm marrying a crazy woman." Antwan seems scared. Ah. Men are great.

Most of the guests, including Alien Man and purple Alien Woman, did arrive. (Very kind of them.) But all did their dance to invisible, inaudible music.



... but Passing Kid was not impressed:



Finally, the exchange of rings.



You can tell from the shadow behind the arch that Passing Kid is still there, but deftly blocked by the arch. The wedding photographer couldn't take more great outdoor shots of this moment  because of a stray arm or leg or raised eyebrow would always intrude.

So the wedding was a great success. The cake was cakey. The gold medal objectives were being completed. Alyssa probably picked the wrong outfit for a wedding, and Anissa is just shoveling the cake in because she's delicate like that. A great day.



And then she died laughing.



She's even trying to calm her hysteria in the mirror. It was triggered by a playful moodlet from clean clothes, and she had an unstoppable tide of happy moodlets from the proposal, wedding, etc that the hysteria was inevitable.   

Yeah, that's the bathroom tucked behind the staircase to the basement level. I know, like, in build mode you think to yourself "these stone walls won't work in a bathroom" but they really do!

[FrancescaFiori]

Yeeesh! Plot twist! I did not see that coming at all . . . which I guess is a theme with me because I never see it coming when it happens to one of mine, either. The poor blushing bride!

At least she died a married woman in an attractive bathroom.

My sincerest condolences to the groom, the baby, and the guest-who-probably-shouldn't-have-worn-white. It really was a lovely ceremony.

[Heart Foam]

@FrancescaFiori I nearly said there was a spoiler on page 10 of the "Share Your Screenshots" thread... but I didn't want to do that until that post had been up for a while.

It's such a memorable, iconic, tragic picture. I certainly intended pleading with Grim, but one can't know for sure how it'll turn out. I started out last night intending to post the whole wedding, but when I got to that moment it felt so dramatic I had to leave it there for a day.

------------------

Part 16. The Importance of Being Earnest

It's not over... yet! Ayaka pleads for Anissa's life. The only flaw in the plan is that they're not exactly friends. They might live in the same house, but had hardly said "hello" to each other. There was hardly any green in the relationship meter, and from what I was reading it seems the chances of a successful plead is affected by the strength of the relationship.



Allie, with her "long lived" trait from her athletic aspiration, is still alive. Not in formal wear. She didn't come for the wedding, just the death. Lovely.

Ayaka then mixes herself a drink. She did what she could.



... and it worked. Welcome Anissa back to the land of the living.



Tough day huh? It's actually the drink Ayaka was making, which she unfathomably gave up on. Still, Anissa needed something Fortifying.

EDIT: I guess I can put the picture here as well even though it has the UI. This is the mild spoiler previously posted in the screenshot thread.



It's a crazy moment. That's little Kelly listening to Grim saying what he thinks about marriage... at wedding... where her mother just died. That won't scar her. He is tactless.

Gold medal was reached, and the guests left. But with all that drama, Antwan hadn't eaten anything and Anissa was peckish too. So the day ended in a rather low-key way. Leftover Italian meatballs in the kitchen.



Antwan still has what I regard as a dumb haircut for an adult. I know that's what footballers like, and he is a pro-athlete, but still.

Kelly as a child. I think the kids aged up the day after the wedding. Quentin would also be a child, but somehow I didn't take a CAS portrait of him.



She had her mother's hair and eye colour.

And obviously the first thing I do with children is get 'em playing chess.



Alyssa being a mum. Quentin being thoughtful.



Then, out of curiosity, I pad a visit to Allie Grim Reaper. There's a whole brood of kids now. Her first child was Colin Grim Reaper. Yes, that's a mailbox. I should fix that.



I love this picture below. There's movement. There's stuff happening. Anissa is measuring something. So both the kids' mothers are here, but one is not quite as involved...



Kelly tells Quentin her deepest secret.



And because Quentin couldn't handle such a revelation (Colin's grandfather is what?) he suggested a game of VoidCritters. One day one of the cards will reach power level 10. Sigh. One day.



-----

Next time! Antwan shows some leg, Antwan experiences a change, Antwan doesn't stay grounded

[oshizu]

Wow, Heart Foam!
I missed your previous update so enjoyed the luxury of reading yesterday and today's update just now.
What a wedding! And what a bathroom!
Hats off to Ayaka for saving the day!!! Still, one wonders why the only adult in the house who wasn't friends with the bride would be doing the pleading.
I had a "goofball" bride die on her wedding night not long after giving birth and, ever since, I've avoided goofball sims like the plague.
Thanks for reminding me that pleading with Grim is an option. Honestly, I've never tried it before.

So glad Anissa survived her wedding! Again, wow!