Ooh! Cool. I totally hear you on the Weenie Roasts.
I can tell already from your summary that this is going to be an interesting story. I'm excited!
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I went into this dynasty with an insanely complex concept that turned out to be pretty much impossible to implement while getting goals done. So getting to write that is my reward for if I finish instead.
But I'm having fun with some summaries too!
Solitude Glaise: A Retrospective
Who Is She?
No, look at the camera!
Hey there Solitude. Enjoying the view from the Von-Windenburg Estate lot, hopefully. It has my personal favorite views out of any of the potential dynasty lots, and the Villareals only mildly hated her for kicking them out!
At birth, she was neither a "Solitude" nor a "Glaise". But that is a complex matter to save for an actual story. Her new surname came from translating her maternal grandpa's surname, and Solitude referred to her Loner trait, but she wasn't blessed with much of her namesake. It
is a dynasty where you end with a house full of people, after all.
In a perfect world, she would have a fleshed-out story from the get-go to star in. Solitude would tackle complicated issues of being stuck between two worlds. Being half of an immortal energy being from the orbiting bodies of Antares, and being half of a fleshy human from the third planet from Solaris.
Alas, all she did was found a dynasty.
Cookin' Up a Dynasty
Maybe I went into this thinking "I'm totally going to use a different skill set for my founder other than a culinary one, lest I just start out repeating the Waverlys (a.k.a. my TS3 Immortal Dynasty family)." But as Solitude learned, I didn't want to have to train more than one expert chef. Cultivating death flowers and catching angelfish is easier than slaving over a stove.
Solitude's requirements that related to cooking therefore made sense. Cooking and Gourmet Cooking would constitute two of her required skills, her career, and one of her aspirations.
I waited way too long to settle on a second aspiration for Solitude. I contemplated something as anti-social as her, but she still had a giant relationship panel.
Friend of the World? Yep, Friend of the World.
You can tell I haven't really been playing TS4 for long. Would not recommend skilling up charisma in the mirror. She got better results by setting up a club for her best friends ("Solitude's Besties") and getting the charisma skilling perk as soon as she could, while spamming her friends with charisma-raising socials.
Solitude took out a whole lot of loans.
Parties were...I hated only the Weenie Roast. Dinner and House Parties did take me two tries to get right, but at least things didn't, I dunno,
catch on fire.
And I wish I had cool-looking parties, but alas:
Not even a house could save them!
Solitude floundered with a lot of things. I had it in the back of my mind to have her collect frogs, but forgot in spite of her living right near frequent frog spawners. Her career and aspirations took forever, and even babymaking did. But if you see that wedding picture, you can easily guess why.
Close Friends of Solitude GlaiseObviously, she was not going to do this alone. But I wasn't going to do any ordinary spouse and helper hunt.
Her first and primary targets were the "Free Spirits", better known as Maaike Haas and Ulrike Faust of Windenburg. I've seen Ulrike used
once for a dynasty, with poor Maaike forgotten. But who needs to listen to the majority? Solitude latched onto Maaike hard and fast! And flirted with Ulrike a bit too, but I had too much of a dynasty to run to get deep into a polyamory subplot.
With Solitude as our cook and a lot of gardening duties handed off to a rotating pool of elderly pollinators (at least one was a Professional Gardener, so the rest followed suit), the matters of fish fell into Maaike's hands. Her aspirations of being a Bestselling Author would just have to wait.
Ulrike, on the other hand, got to be herself. Paintings could rake in a decent amount of extra money, she starts out highly skilled in it, and a part of me is still used to the grind of museum artists from TS3.
Solitude did not have much spare time. So I ended up sneaking kisses for her and Maaike in the oddest of places.
And Solitude pulled out a ring right after Maaike was done fishing.
"First vow is to let me do the jumping, okay love?"And considering that is was an easy (for real; the only other party I got Gold on the first try with was a date) way to fulfill requirements, a wedding was on!
"You think I can bounce this ring off your lips?"
"Maaike, you tease!"
The wedding made them happy and that's all I needed. But when it came to making an heir, well...using the gender and sex customization options would have been
too easy.
