Household Skills Project Mk 3

[Magpie2012]

In all my years of playing TS3, I don't think I ever got all the after school trophies. I know I never got the cupcake painting. I would remember that for sheer ick value alone lol

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[hazelnut]

I love that picture of the afterschool club trophies - I don't think I've seen them all together before. I'd forgotten quite how nauseating the cupcake painting is

In all my years of playing TS3, I don't think I ever got all the after school trophies. I know I never got the cupcake painting. I would remember that for sheer ick value alone lol

Revolting, isn't it?

I've had all of the high-school rewards quite a few times (although possibly not all in the same game before) but Damien's my only Sim child to have got the scouting badge and this is the first time since the Life States that anyone's had the 'Quest for the Lead' opp and won the ballet shoes.

Nice zombie mastering, Jon! Does the Reanimation Ritual not count for the LTW?

Yes, it does.  I was planning to use the ritual (and for Jon to max the spellcasting skill).  The elixir was only intended to be used as a back-up in case of a shortage of tombstones, which is why there were only three or four bottles in the chest.  Jon was learning spellcasting very slowly - he had a late start through being at boarding school and then concentrating on his career but I wonder whether he had a skilling glitch as well.  He'd been on level 5 for ages when I sent him to the park to practise and after two solid days of casting spells (abusing the Moodlet Manager to keep at it around the clock) he only just reached level six.  I think the Reanimation Ritual is a level nine spell, so it seemed likely that he'd die of old age before he learned it, particularly if spellcasting follows the usual pattern for skills and each level takes longer than the one before.

[hazelnut]

House 18

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Davina arrived at her new lot and immediately invited over one of her old classmates.

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There had only been two boys in her class at school and, funnily enough, both were bald.  Bryant Akins (which I kept reading as ‘Bryan Atkins’) was a babysitter and therefore a likely prospect as a spouse.  He and Davina had been good friends as teens but had only kept in touch by phone since, because I was worried about the glitchy fast ageing that often affects babysitters and newspaper deliverers.

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Once he was back in her life in person, their relationship developed rapidly…

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…and they were engaged before the end of the day.

Bryant was considerably improved by being popped into CAS and given some powerful hair restorer.

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He wanted to be a Star News Anchor and, as a friendly, charismatic bookworm, would have been well suited to journalism.  Unfortunately, Gwennie did that wish and career ages ago.  On the other hand, the two studenty LTWs from UL were still free and Bryant seemed likely to do well at uni.  So, after a couple of hours of rushing around town fulfilling wishes, he got out his phone and enrolled for the first term of a science and medicine degree.

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Research online suggested that going straight to university, without taking the aptitude test, gives the best chance of getting Perfect Student to register – which didn’t stop the stupid game from insisting that Bryant was missing out in a big way by not taking it.  He and I ignored the advice.

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Unlike other recent Haskill students, Bryant largely avoided the social life on campus and concentrated on his studies.  By the end of the week, he had enough happiness points to change his lifetime wish and was already on his way to becoming the most highly-skilled member of the family since Blake.

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I’d been trying and failing to build a suitable house for a family of inventors, so Davina was quite literally camping out at her new place.  At least the family still had Marco’s luxury tent.  Bryant stayed there overnight and, completely unexpectedly, graduated from high school the following morning.  (He was Most Likely to Write a Bestselling Novel.)

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As soon as he’d finished enjoying the confetti and diploma-tossing, I packed him off to university again, this time for two weeks and with a full timetable (he’d only taken twelve units in his first week).  I totally failed to get any screenshots – but it was just more of the same, anyway.  More classes, more study, more skilling.

At midnight on the second Friday, Bryant became my first ever Perfect Student.

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An hour or two later, he also became the first Sim in this game to reach level 10 of inventing.  (Davina hadn’t even started on her new skill yet.)  He was still in the library when the results letter arrived.  Given that there had been all that business with the big numbers and the music, I don’t know why he was looking so worried.

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Yes!  (Duh  !)

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Davina turned up for his graduation but went into the sports hall before Bryant had even arrived on the lot, and then wandered out again and disappeared about halfway through the ceremony.  Well, she is eccentric.

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She did partially make up for it by spontaneously congratulating him when he arrived home, so I forgave her.

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I finally gave up on the house.  I’d been going for a vaguely steampunkish style and had made a start on an ornate Victorian factory conversion but it was threatening to turn into an epic build and the finished result wouldn’t really suit this game anyway.  So instead I downloaded sionelle’s delightfully odd The Gilded Lily from MTS.

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Once they’d moved in, Davina and Bryant threw a combined housewarming and wedding party.  Unusually for Midnight Hollow, the wedding day was brilliantly sunny (and most of the screenshots came out horribly overexposed as a result).  Asa was one of the first guests to arrive…

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…and I made sure that the bridegroom threw an elixir at him on his way over to the wedding arch.

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For some reason, being cured of his zombiism turned Asa into a normal human Sim, so I edited him back into a genie in CAS.  A human Asa’s nearly as wrong as a zombie one.


Watched by the small number of friends and family members who’d bothered to turn up, Davina Haskill and Bryant Akins were married.

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(Jon also got edited in CAS – his formal clothes as an elder were awful.)

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While everyone was sitting down to eat the wedding cake, I noticed for the first time that there was a mood lamp on the outside table.  For some reason, I’ve never got around to buying one.  Pink lighting seemed appropriate for the occasion.

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Maxine arrived just too late to grab a slice of cake.  I was pleased to see that the toadification had worn off but either that or the mood lamp had dyed her skin pink.  I couldn’t edit her clothes either  .

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She was closely followed by Elf, who had to be sent home almost immediately to stop him scratching the furniture (he was never that badly behaved in the old house).

Even though I’d forgotten to buy Legendary Host for Davina, the party was a great success and it was well into the evening before everyone left.  The bride and groom summoned their new maid to clear up the mess…

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…and were left alone together at last.

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[Alex]

Oh, I miss university. Congratulations Bryant on being a perfect student! Bizarre, isn't it, that that wish punishes you for having been a perfect high school student and therefore doing well on the aptitude test?

I love their wedding clothes. So pretty, and yet so very eccentric.

If it was a potent cure elixir, it's supposed to cure occults of being occults, but otherwise, what a weird bug . Glad Asa's back to being a genie at last - poor thing must be so confused.

[hazelnut]

Oh, I miss university.

Me too - I think Major Master would probably be my lifetime wish

Congratulations Bryant on being a perfect student! Bizarre, isn't it, that that wish punishes you for having been a perfect high school student and therefore doing well on the aptitude test?

It is.  I assume the credits from the aptitude test are coded as being somewhere below an 'A', like the honorary degree only being at a 'B' grade.  I'm not sure how well Bryant would have done - I don't think he had any skills at that point but his traits ought to have earned him some credit.  Maybe I should go back to an earlier save and find out.  There was someone saying they'd got Perfect Student with 6 credits from the aptitude test but it seemed safer to start from the beginning.

I love their wedding clothes. So pretty, and yet so very eccentric.

Thank you.  I did spend quite a while putting them together, so I'm glad they were appreciated .

If it was a potent cure elixir, it's supposed to cure occults of being occults, but otherwise, what a weird bug . Glad Asa's back to being a genie at last - poor thing must be so confused.

Oh, of course!  Yes, it was a potent cure - they didn't have any plain ordinary cure elixirs stockpiled.  He's essentially back to normal, although I don't think I got the colours of his clothes quite right.  I suppose it might have reset his ageing, too.  Since genies have longer lives anyway, I wonder whether he'll be around for the rest of the time in Midnight Hollow?

[hazelnut]

Davina started learning inventing and Bryant tried putting his book-learning to practical use.

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It didn’t go all that well…

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…for either of them.

Bonehilda was turning out to be something of a mixed blessing: she was great at tidying up (sometimes too good – she kept putting Davina’s horrific attempts at cooking away in the fridge before I could bin them, and for some reason Davina and Bryant kept getting them back out and eating them in preference to his high-quality meals).  She was pretty effective against burglars. too – but then, so was Davina.  On the other hand, she kept rushing in to mend plumbing and appliances the moment they broke, which stopped Bryant from fixing them.  Since he was very close to finishing the plumber challenge and was generally handier than Bonehilda, this was pretty annoying.

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And she had no concept of privacy.

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They ended up dismissing her back to her coffin/house until the next generation was definitely on the way.

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Davina saw no reason to give up dangerous hobbies just because she was pregnant.

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Becoming increasingly stranded-whale-like seemed to annoy her and inventing was apparently a good outlet for all that pent-up aggression.  Wisely, given his wife’s uncertain temper, Bryant spent most of his time out in the garden.

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Labour clearly came as a shock to Davina.

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It’s been a while since a Significant Family Event happened in a bathroom, although, come to think of it, it’s quite an appropriate birthplace for an eccentric loner.

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Bonehilda proved to be even more of a nuisance around babies than she’d been for the newlyweds.  She kept standing uselessly in front of Frank’s cot and stopping his parents from responding to his cries.  So she was sent back to her box again.  Maybe it’d be OK to let her out once he was at school.

While we were all waiting for Frank’s first birthday, Davina took the opportunity to max painting.

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Sim babyhood always seems to take forever but at last Frank aged up.  I think the Haskill red hair has finally disappeared .

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That stare of his is disconcerting.  I’ve only seen expressions like that from evil toddlers before now.  Maybe he was just worried about that grating sticking through the padding on the floor of the playpen.  Fair enough, I suppose  .

He spent most of his time in the workshop.  Not the most toddler-friendly environment but space in the house was limited and there was usually at least one parent in there to keep an eye on him.

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At least he had a generous supply of toys, thanks to the toy-making machine and Davina’s inventions.

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And eventually, I got around to extending the house and Frank had his own room at last.

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Less than halfway through the toddler stage, he’d learned all of the skills he needed and was ready for an early cake.  It was a Saturday, so he’d be able to get a good start on his skills before his first day of school.

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Davina seemed shocked that he was growing up so quickly.

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Bryant started tutoring him and I discovered that, despite having maxed the pegbox skill, Frank still had to start logic from the beginning.

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That’s the second time that’s happened recently and I’m pretty sure both were in this game file.  I think the Haskills are going to get a factory reset at the next house move.

Once Frank was safely on a B grade, he joined his mother in the workshop.

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Oh dear .

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And I’d forgotten to replace his cot with a bed.  Sorry, Frank  .  The following day, he turned his hand to inventing and the blocks table, with much more success.

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Then, while he was having a well-earned playtime with his non-educational toys, Davina reclaimed the inventing bench – and finished off her lifetime wish.

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[hazelnut]

Frank had a birthday…

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…and so did Davina .

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I had to get rid of Bonehilda at this point – shy Frank was terrified of her.  He’d seemed to be OK as a kid but maybe she'd only come out while he was at school.  Now, though, he had a permanent scared moodlet.

Bryant was still in early adulthood – babysitters’ odd ageing seemed to have worked in reverse in his case.  Not that he let his wife being nearly a whole life stage ahead of him get in the way of romance.

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Most of their time, though, was spent drilling for treasure.  Now that they’d both made miners, that seemed like the best option for replacing the heart-cut pink diamond that had gone missing (well, become invisible, which amounted to much the same thing) in Bridgeport.

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After a week of fruitless mining, Davina adopted Fido as a back-up and started training him to hunt.

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Naturally, Bryant unearthed a pink diamond the following day  .

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With the dog-training relegated to the ‘nice to have’ category, Davina looked around for other ways to pass the time – and rediscovered the Cloud-inator 9000 she’d bought as one of her unique rewards.

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Poor Frank!

Asa had also grown old.  Bryant ran into him on one of his daily visits to the consignment store and I took the opportunity to pop him into CAS and restore his genie clothing.

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After a surprisingly uneventful couple of weeks as a teenager, Frank aged up to YA.

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He graduated in absentia, which must have been pretty inconvenient for the school, given that he was valedictorian.  Finishing his first time machine was more important.

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I’d been hoping that he’d be voted ‘Most Likely to Motive Fail’ (which would have been a first for me), given that he was a shy, unlucky loser and loner, but he was another ‘Most likely to Burn Down His Own House’.   Oh well, at least that’s a few more traits crossed off the list.

Despite a few setbacks, including his first bum-fire (I thought, as an unlucky Sim , he’d have had several by now)…

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…he reached level 10 of inventing a day or two after his birthday.

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And then it all went buggy.  Not that I realised at once.  Frank duly received the SimBot opportunity chain, made two ‘bots (a rather overpriced heart-cut pink diamond turned up at the consignment store with perfect timing), bought another and completed his lifetime wish while still less than halfway through young adulthood.  And then the lagging and freezing started.  Everything I did to try and improve things only made it worse.  The coup de grâce was Master Controller’s ‘Reset Everything’, which stopped the lagging at the expense of turning poor unlucky Frank into a pet.  I have no idea why, but his lifetime wish panel suddenly changed from completed Monster Maker to a pawprint.  After a lot of experimenting, I  decided it would be safest to return to just after his birthday, move the save and world files into a new folder and perhaps take his wish more slowly, to annoy the file as little as possible.  Also, maybe I’d do things differently this time…


Shortly after the restart, Frank was at the junkyard, blowing most of it up, when a random townie walked up and started chatting – and I suddenly remembered the potions in one of the chests back at the house.  Would it work?

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It certainly changed the chatty neighbour into a SimBot but it didn’t register towards Frank’s lifetime wish  .  (And, on the subject of lack of synergy between expansions, Nadia Cho the zombie vampire didn’t register as Doubly Dead either.)

The next significant event in the replay was as unpleasant as it was unexpected.  Davina had still been very much alive and kicking well past a hundred in the first attempt.  This time, she only made it a few hours into her 94th day.

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I’d recently been reminded that mummies also count towards Monster Maker, so thought I’d give it a go.  After all, the family had been lugging quite a few of Marco’s relics around from town to town.

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After a few false starts, I worked out that Frank needed to have the canopic jars in his personal inventory and he successfully summoned a mummy.

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Well, I wasn’t expecting that  .  Wasn’t she a little old for him?


And a random screenshot to finish with.   Most of my inventors have accidentally created loads of gnomes.  Frank got to level ten without making a single one but then really started making up for lost time.  For a while, it was quite hard to get him to make anything but gnomes.  They seemed to get along really well with Fido.

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[hazelnut]

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Lamosis Custerolopoli, the rather oddly named mummy, settled uneventfully into the household.  There was no way I was going to let someone so flammable do much in the way of practical inventing, so she spent a lot of time at the library.

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Then I got seriously frustrated by her incredibly slow walking pace, so sent Frank off to the bookshop to buy her the two higher-level inventing books.  Lamosis might be learning more slowly at home but the saving in travelling time more than compensated.  I don’t remember Ama being quite so snail-like.

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Maxing inventing gave Lamosis enough happiness points to change her lifetime wish.  I didn’t fancy trying anything too ambitious with a mummy – and, to be honest, I was getting fed up of having her around.  The easiest wish in the game, Animal Rescuer, was still free, so she made the first of several calls to the animal refuge and adopted a puppy, Lassie.

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A couple of days and several phonecalls later, she achieved her lifetime wish.

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Lamosis and most of her pets moved out, although Lassie, who had thoroughly settled into the household, stayed behind with her best friends Frank and Fido.

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Frank decided it was time to make some more progress on his own lifetime wish and bought himself a best friend.

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While Irvin the SimBot was visiting the library in his turn, learning inventing and whatever else took his fancy, Frank plugged away at the inventing bench  He’d received the SimBot opportunity chain (again) and was keen to construct the Mystery Invention.

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Before long, he’d achieved his LTW.

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Yet again, Frank was attracted to a non-human female.  I can’t help feeling that this doesn’t bode well for the future of the Haskills.

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The two SimBots rapidly reached level 10 of inventing and, like Lamosis, changed their lifetime wishes.  Irvin started zooming around the town with one of the family’s collection helpers, looking for small pets, while Roberta, who was a natural cook, stayed in the library reading cookery books.

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And then things got sad again.  First one of the Mysterious Mr Gnomes died, mourned by all of Frank’s inventing gnomes.

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Then, later the same day…

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Rest in peace, Bryant Akins/Haskill.  You were a delight to have in the household and I wish I could have played you for longer.

[hazelnut]

I have supermaxed inventing before once or twice, but only as a secondary aim.  Getting though it with poor, accident-prone Frank was beginning to seem quite daunting.  And then he became a full adult, well short of either maxing his career or supermaxing the skill.

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Lassie also had a birthday.  Wonderfully, she grew up looking quite collie-like.

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Irvin became a Zoologist (and I nearly missed yet another significant screenshot)…

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…and Roberta became a Culinary Librarian.

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The SimBots could have moved out at this point but Frank’s supermax was proving to be so boring that I kept them around for light relief.  Anyway, their friendship was already showing signs of turning into romance.

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I encouraged it.

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Frank, who had finally polished off Master Inventor and Widget Wonder, took some time out from his career to blow up a lot of cheap appliances.

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And, at last:

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Unusually, no aeroplane sculptures were harmed during the achievement of this supermax.

By now, Roberta had restocked the fridge with enough high-quality foods to last Frank well into old age.  It was time for the SimBots to get on with their own lives.

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And so, yet again, the heir was left on his own in the house.  Well, not quite alone this time – he still had Lassie and Fido for company.

Frank turned out a few more time machines and became a Fourth Dimensional Architect.

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Then he and the two dogs piled into a taxi and set off for their new home.

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I’d have liked Frank to stay in Midnight Hollow until he’d got all of inventing career rewards but he was already a week into adulthood and couldn’t spare the time.  Hopefully he’ll be able to complete the set in the next town.

He left behind a number of graves in the grounds of the family home, since the town's graveyard was far too crowded for so may additional tombstones.

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  Cecilia and Jamaal; Max, Jon, Tom and Asa; Davina and Bryant.  (Tom was the one who didn’t quite make it to a large tombstone.)
                 Octavia, Quatorze, Quince, Baker, Sestina and Dodeca - most of the cats seem to have gone missing again.


House 18 summary
Skill: inventing

Davina
Supermaxed sculpting; Level 10 photography, painting and inventing
LTW: Descendant of da Vinci
New photo collection: Ambitions

Bryant Akins
(Traits: friendly, charismatic, bookworm, family-oriented, kleptomaniac) – plus loves the outdoors (science & medicine degree) and born salesman (nerd influence)
LTW: Perfect Student
Supermaxed gardening and handiness; level 10 charisma, inventing and fishing
Quite a few other challenges completed, including all three for consignment.

Frank
Traits: eccentric, loner, unlucky, shy, loser
Career: inventor
LTW: Monster Maker
Supermaxed inventing
Building/property: Fledgeling Fishing Pond
Unique rewards: Efficient Inventor, My Best Friend

Lamosis Custerolopoli
Life state: mummy
(Traits: excitable, daredevil, frugal, ambitious, angler)
LTW: The Animal Rescuer
Level 10 inventing

Irvin
Life state: SimBot
(Traits: couch potato, brave, bookworm, hydrophobic, kleptomaniac)
LTW: The Zoologist
Level 10 inventing

Roberta
Life state: SimBot
(Traits: brave, natural cook, workaholic, hydrophobic, angler)
LTW: Culinary Librarian
Level 10 inventing


Sybil started a collection of music boxes way back in Moonlight Falls and had almost completed the set by the end of her life but the social bunny was proving elusive.  I’d sent various people to the consignment store since to try to find the missing member of the set and eventually Bryant succeeded.

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                                                                                    The Music Box Collection

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                                                                                 The self-employment rewards

(With the exception of the inventing rewards, since I’m still hoping for the last one.  The screenshot also includes Ken’s fox statue, Jo’s Sports Agent trophy and the last skull-cut gem, fluorite.)

[hazelnut]

House 19

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Frank, Fido and Lassie arrived in Lucky Palms and moved into a new house on the outskirts of the town.

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Frank immediately set about making a new friend… quite literally.

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Of course, Frank being Frank, it went wrong.  His supposedly identical twin turned out to be brave and flirty.  Frank II despised his shy, loser loner of a progenitor and left as quickly as possible, while poor Frank I retreated to the basement and his inventing bench.

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At least the dogs were happy in their new home.

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The following morning, Frank set off on a tour of the town, looking for friendship – or even romance – and, surprisingly found both in the shape of the tattoo artist, Claudia Parsons.  Her traits (great kisser, never nude and athletic) didn’t seem an obvious match but she was clearly fascinated by the new arrival in town.  Completely autonomously, they spent the whole day chatting outside the salon.

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Since it had become obvious that Claudia was The One, I got Frank to invite her round after she’d finished work and they put her great kisser trait to good use.

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By the end of the day, Claudia Parsons had joined the household and had a limited makeover.   The Diesel clothes seemed to suit her.

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Frank was soon ready to make things official.

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She said yes.  Thank goodness.  I was worried that his traits might lead to a failed proposal.

In between romantic interludes, they’d both been skilling and Frank had been churning out floor hygienators, partly to place strategically around the new house and partly in an attempt to get his final career reward.

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it worked.  He now had a complete collection (albeit slightly damaged by one of the dogs).

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It was time to start working on the skill for this house.  Claudia went out into the front garden and investigated the strange glowing portal that had appeared shortly after Frank moved in.

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After helping Emit with his repairs, Claudia and Frank were ready for their first trip into the future.

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Emit gave Frank a jetpack, which he enjoyed using…

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…until it all went wrong.

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(Since Frank’s an unlucky loser, I’m happy for him to play with dangerous objects.  So far, though, all of his crashes have been non-fatal.)

They spent a couple of days exploring future technology and helping Emit with his research…

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…before getting on with important personal matters.

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The private rooftop wedding was immediately followed by a trip to the hospital (not quite your conventional wedding celebration  ).

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They were both now homesick for Lucky Palms but they might as well take advantage of Oasis Landing’s advanced technology to get their family off to the best possible start.

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That evening, they left the hospital with their precious new blue bundle.  Inevitably, the baby was named Gene in honour of his unusual conception.

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And then the Haskills returned to the present day.


I’d been intending to play Frank as either a single parent or half of a gay couple (possibly with his Clone Drone doppelgänger) but, as so often happens, the game didn’t cooperate.  Frank was determinedly heterosexual and the Clone Drone potion was a minor disaster.  And then he met Claudia – definitely one of the game’s better curveballs.  Not at all what I’d planned but I’m delighted to go along with it.

[hazelnut]

Claudia had arrived with the Tinkerer lifetime wish, which was still free, although I was trying to save it for later.  Now she had enough points to change it, she became my first Sim to try an ITF wish: Making the Most of her Time.  She spent her son’s babyhood interfering in the future, with some help from Emit…

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…and then visited the dreary place that Oasis Landing had now become.   She only stayed for a day or two before escaping thankfully back to the present day.

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She immediately set about undoing all of her meddling – but maybe she should take a break and think carefully about what she was doing before she next talked to the time traveller.  Meanwhile, her small son needed her attention.

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Gene grew up with the red hair and green eyes that his parents had picked out, although they looked a little odd with his dark skin.  (Incidentally, I wish custom colours were available for genetically engineered babies’ hair and eyes.)

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As a genius, Gene picked up his toddler skills quickly – and also showed an early interest in science and logic.

The dogs had also been working on expanding the household.

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The puppies were born in Frank’s underground laboratory/workshop.  He and Claudia didn’t seem too happy about it.

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I’d been hoping that Fido would earn enough lifetime happiness points to buy a clone voucher, since I’m trying to use all of the permitted LTRs in this game.  He’d been close for ages but was rapidly running out of time.  Fatherhood really suited him, though.  He had a flurry of puppy-related wishes and, only a day and a half later, Fido II left the science centre with his clone-father.

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The two were inseparable.  I kept finding them snuggled up together.

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With Gene heading towards childhood, Claudia summoned Emit again and, following his instructions, started experimenting with vials of dew.

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She was astonished when Emit met her as she emerged from the military base after persuading the air force to seed the clouds with dew.  He told her she’d been proclaimed the Time Keeper and been honoured with a statue in the future.

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I was surprised, too.  I thought Sims had to be best friends with Emit to get the legacy statue and Claudia was only just good friends with him.

She rushed home and jumped into the rainbow glow that was now filling the Time Portal…

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…and her lifetime wish completed as she arrived on the roof of the community centre.  Again, I was taken by surprise: I was expecting her to have to change the future once more before it triggered.

Claudia went straight to Legacy Park to admire her statue…

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…before returning to base to chat with Emit and see what delights this colourful new future held.

Um, did I say ‘delights’?  'Claudia wonders why it got dark all of a sudden.'

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A direct hit on the roof.  Excuse me, game, isn’t this supposed to be utopia?  It seemed to me that a swift return to the present day was called for.

(I have now confirmed online that persistent meteors, even in the alternative timelines, are a known bug after triggering the dystopian future.  Very irritating.  I wonder why the Flowers didn’t experience it?)

Back home, it was time to try something else new: another way of producing a child.  Even though I’ve had Lucky Palms for a while, I’d not tried out the wishing well before this game.  A trial run in a parallel file convinced me that Frank the unlucky loser was not the Sim to use for this: after many unsuccessful attempts, he eventually ended up with a kitten and, much later, a puppy.  Surely Claudia ought to do better?

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Maybe not.  Her first wish for a child produced exactly nothing.  She chucked in another coin.

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What on earth was that?  It looked like black flames coming out of the water.  Frank’s two sort-of-successful attempts had been accompanied by a ball of bright white light.  This was almost the opposite.

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Oh.  'Claudia notices there is something evil about the child coming out of the Wishing Well...'  Didn't know that could happen.

The Evil Child floated across the well…

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…and landed next to Claudia, looking perfectly friendly.

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Well, at least until she rolled her first ever wish: to mock her mother.

They stopped off at City Hall to change the newest Haskill’s name from Tania to Aurelia (after the gold coins in the wishing well) and then returned home together.

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Aurelia is frugal as well as evil (and also brave).  I know exactly what her future holds…   

(I’d assumed, by the way, that wishing for a child wouldn’t be so literal.  I’d expected it to result in a baby rather than a school-age child.  Oh well.  Time to re-jig my plans again.)

It was a busy night for ageing up.  Aurelia had just finished planning her new wardrobe…

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…when Gene also became a child.

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An hour or so later, Frank also had a birthday  …

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…and then, as the sun was rising, Grim came for Fido I  .

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[hazelnut]

Leaving the children and dogs at home, Frank and Claudia took another trip to the future…

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…and, despite his high advanced technology skill, unlucky Frank managed to acquire a dose of time sickness.

Nevertheless, he was keen to make the most of their family-free time, trying out the romantic possibilities of the jetpack…

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…and dream pod.

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Was that a chiming sound?

After taking himself off to the hospital for a cure, Frank chatted to the other occupants of the community centre, working on his charisma and advanced technology skills.

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(The after-effects of the meteor strike were still obvious.)

Claudia preferred to spend time on her own, working out in the gym or chatting to her pet sprite, Arthur.  Even though she wasn’t trying as hard, she managed to beat Frank to level 10 of advanced tech, largely because of her head start from Emit’s opportunities.

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She was interrupted by a spin into a different outfit and hurried off to give Frank the good news.

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They both wanted a daughter, so Claudia toured Oasis Landing in search of ripe watermelons.  She found some in the cemetery, but then…

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Not again!   

Fortunately, she narrowly escaped a direct hit, although she was singed.

The rest of her pregnancy was spent quietly indoors at the community centre.  I asked Frank to take her to the hospital for the delivery but Claudia insisted on driving.  Maybe she didn’t want to leave an unlucky loser in charge of a hover car – not that her own luck had been that startlingly good recently.

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They made it to the hospital safely and, a few hours later, emerged with their new baby girl.  I briefly considered naming her Meteora, in memory of her mother’s eventful pregnancy, but eventually settled on the rather more sensible Halley.

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The Haskills bought their own house in the future and converted one of the bedrooms into a nursery.  Since I wanted her to catch up with her older siblings, Halley had her first two birthdays in Oasis Landing.  She grew up into a toddler with a disconcerting stare.  (Are Jamaal’s genes still making their presence felt?)

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Claudia stayed at home teaching Halley her toddler skills and early logic, while Frank looked for Voltron gnome parts at the crash site and worked on his own advanced technology skill.  (Typically, I took a lot of photos of his progress bar at level 9.99 but had the camera elsewhere when he finally made it all the way to 10.)

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Halley had an early cake after two or three days of toddlerhood…

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…and I was surprised by a rapid series of pop-ups as she immediately maxed advanced technology.  I’d read that that was supposed to happen for kids born in the future but since Gene and the Flower children had grown up without the Future Sim trait, I’d assumed it had been patched out.

As soon as Halley had chosen clothes and a hairstyle, the family returned home.

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Frank had another bad trip – but at least he can’t get present-day-sick.


Over the next couple of days, the puppies grew up.

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It always looks to me like a painful process – or are those expressions supposed to be surprise?  Since the house was now full of almost indistinguishable dogs, Trixie and Shep had makeovers to resemble the real-life dogs they’re named after.

At least Fido I is easily identified.  Not that he does much - since his death, he’s always either in his urn or snoozing.

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Soon after the last house move, I’d placed the family’s collection of space rocks around the garden, hoping to attract aliens.  Quite a few had turned up – but only to stare at or chat with the earthlings.  I’d long ago given up hope of an alien baby and kept meaning to pack the rocks away again in the family inventory, ready to try again in another house.

So this was completely unexpected:

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As was this:

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Frank was 86, for heaven’s sake!  I sent him straight off to the spa for their most expensive package.

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It was a difficult pregnancy.  Maybe he should have had a few other beauty treatments and possibly a hospital check-up.  At last, almost at the end of his expected lifespan, Frank gave birth to the last Haskill of this generation.

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He named her Xenobia.


As you may have noticed in that picture of Frank's unexpected weight gain, I've started moving dogs out of the house.  The human Sims are taking up most of my attention, so the dogs with lower hunting skill are being put up for adoption, while I concentrate on the Fidos, Shep and Trixie.

[hazelnut]

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Gene and Aurelia became teenagers – and Aurelia rolled a wish to pull a prank even before she’d visited the dresser and mirror .  The following day was Frank’s 90th.  Unlucky to the last, he only made it a few hours past midnight.

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He begged for more time – none of his kids had grown up yet and his strange little green daughter was still a baby.

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But Grim was as unforgiving as always.

Later that day, Halley and Xenobia had birthdays.

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Of course, I’d forgotten that Frank was the one with the Fireproof Homestead reward  .

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I do love brave Sims.  Thank you, Aurelia.

That same night, there was a burglary.  Aurelia to the rescue again!

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A few days later, Claudia aged up to elder.  She chose a distinctly odd location for her birthday.

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I’d been assuming she’d need resetting but she somehow made it back to dry land on her own.

After a few days of blessed peace, Xenobia became a child.

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Apart from a few (well, quite a few) pranks, life remained pretty uneventful.  Then there were more birthdays.  First, Gene and Aurelia…

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…and, a few hours later, Halley (who gets far more cakes than anyone else in the current family).

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They all graduated together.  Aurelia was Most Popular, Gene was Valedictorian and Most Likely to Become a Sports Star (yay! another new ribbon!) and Halley was Most Likely to Take Over the World.  Aurelia seemed to think she should have got that one.

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As soon as they were home from the ceremony, Gene and Halley set off for the future.

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I was about to send Halley straight over to Base Camp to pick up a jet pack and complete her lifetime wish when I noticed that non-resident Sims couldn’t pick up stray items.  OK, then, let’s go into Buy Mode and get one.  Still no music.  What?

Oh! Somehow, the windcarver she’d had from childhood had disappeared from her inventory.  After buying a replacement, she got her wish.

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Gene and Halley both joined the Astronomer career.

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Between shifts, Gene worked on his skills and Halley pursued her supermax.

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It wasn’t exactly glitch-free.  She suffered a permanent personality change from dreaming in the pod and I broke one of my own rules to let her reset it with a midlife crisis once she had the points to spare.  And then she dreamt about the supernatural and woke up toadified…

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I hadn’t tried out the Toad Kiss interaction before.  It worked like, well, a dream…

…and Halley became my first Sim to supermax advanced technology.

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(Future) time passed and first Gene and then Halley reached the top of their careers.  Gene was really happy about it; Halley didn’t seem all that bothered…

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…and they returned home to present-day Lucky Palms.

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While her children were growing up, Claudia had been busy with dog training.  All of the remaining dogs became skilled hunters and Trixie, true to her name, mastered all of the dog tricks.  I was hoping to supermax hunting with Fido II but progress was so slow that it was beginning to look as though a dog supermax was right up there with Home Design Hotshot for near-impossibility, so I gave up.

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I’d been hoping to keep the dogs around for a few houses and to establish a canine dynasty alongside the human one but the game was becoming too hectic to be fun to play.  So, reluctantly, I put the remaining dogs up for adoption.

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                                                     The dog collectables (including the worthless ones!)

[hazelnut]

Halley had visited the town hall in Oasis Landing to check the lottery records and went to the supermarket to buy a few tickets almost as soon as she’d arrived back home.  Her insider knowledge didn’t seem to help much – she did win but not an enormous amount.  On the other hand, the Haskills were obscenely rich – they could afford to donate large sums to charity anyway.   So Halley did.

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Xenobia aged up to teen…

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…and consumed her first space rock.

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She signed up as an alien test subject at the science lab and, thanks to her new workaholic trait and intensive tutoring from Halley, she’d both maxed her career and reached an A in school within a few days.  I’d been expecting her to have plenty of time to work on skills now that she’d come into her alien powers but it turned out that she still needed to sleep.  I thought abduction babies always had 100% alien DNA but it looks as though she’s a hybrid.  So she, Halley and Gene took another trip to the future to give her more school-free time.

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While they were there, Halley went off to admire her Renowned Philanthropist statue and all three of them spent many hours stargazing at the observatory.  Halley tutored the other two to level 10 of advanced technology, picking up Teacher Extraordinaire along the way, and then turned to logic tutoring…

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…and Gene achieved his lifetime wish.

Xenobia discovered the Galaxa spacecar that one of the family kleptos had stolen a long time before and started tinkering with it.

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It turned out to be trickier to drive than a car but she eventually got the hang of it, with only minor damage to the local trees.

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Then she tried out the laser cannons at the park.  I was surprised no-one had turned out to watch but then noticed a group of people across the road.  A considerably larger group than it appeared from a distance, in fact.

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At last, they untangled themselves and ran over to stare at the UFO.  Halley took a few potshots but it wasn’t as much fun as she’d been expecting.

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She gave up, went home and replaced the laser cannons with the capacity for space travel – although it turned out that she couldn’t use it in Oasis Landing.  Some kind of force shield around the town, maybe.  So the three siblings returned to Lucky Palms, Xenobia took a quick trip to Sixam to meet her other family and then had a birthday cake.

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She was already close to maxing both logic and handiness, so The Tinkerer was the logical lifetime wish.  A few hours in the library and some more tutoring from Halley completed it.

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And suddenly it was moving time again.  Halley and Gene bought not-quite-houseboats opposite each other at the end of the pier, which reminded them of their home on Oasis Landing.

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Xenobia moved to a house at the far end of town, where her UFO was less likely to frighten the townsfolk.

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Claudia chose a luxury retirement home just down the road…

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…and Aurelia stayed behind to round up the gnomes, repack the chests and think about the best way to achieve her lifetime wish.


I’m not sure whether this is the complete set of space paintings – I couldn’t find a list anywhere – but it’s not bad.

The Astronomy Collection

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Mysterious Constellation   Universe’s End         Shooting Star          Gamma Ray Sunburst       Populated Exoplanet
                                                                    The Event Horizon              Asteroid Belt                                                Distant Planet
       The Diva   Approaching Singularity                                                Journeying Comet            Spiralling Galaxy

           Dark matter on the end table and stardust on the floor in front, collected by Gene on his trips into space.


House 19 summary
Skill: advanced technology

Frank
Supermaxed inventing; level 10 handiness and advanced technology

Claudia Parsons
(Traits: great kisser, never nude, athletic)
 LTW: Made the Most of My Time
Level 10 handiness, advanced technology and athletic

Gene
Traits: friendly, genius, ambitious, athletic, workaholic
Career: Astronomer (Space Explorer)
LTW: Perfect Mind, Perfect Body
Level 10 advanced technology, athletic and logic

Aurelia
Traits: (brave, frugal, evil), charismatic, unstable
Career and LTW to be started in the next house
Level 10 advanced technology
Building/property: Perfect Paradise Pool
Unique rewards: trait chip bundle, hover bed

Halley
Traits: genius, loves the heat, can’t stand art, eco-friendly, ambitious
Career: Astronomer (Astrophysicist)
LTW: High Tech Collector
Supermaxed advanced technology; level 10 logic

Xenobia
Traits: genius, disciplined, bookworm, workaholic
Career: alien test subject (part-time)
LTW: The Tinkerer
Level 10 advanced technology, handiness and logic

The Dogs
Fido reached level 10 of the dog hunting skill.
Lassie, despite having the hunter trait, only got to level 3 before she left the household.
Shep: level 8
Trixie: level 10 (and all dog tricks learnt)
Spot: level 1
Fido II: level 10

[hazelnut]

House 20

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For an evil gold digger, Aurelia was a remarkably mild-mannered Sim.  Most of the time, she acted as though her lifetime wish was Super Popular instead.  Marrying a rich man and then offing him really wasn’t her style.  Was there another way to do this?

Research at the mausoleum turned up the story of Rico Lancaster, a man who’d been unlucky in love – and whose main aim in life had been to acquire the kind of wealth that the Haskills took for granted.  Maybe they could help each other to achieve their dreams.

As soon as she'd moved into her new house, Aurelia retrieved the family's Philosopher's Stone from storage and bound Rico's ghost to the household.

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As he materialised, Rico realised that he had somehow achieved his lifetime wish in death.  Never one to waste time, Aurelia hurried after him and put the rest of her plan into action.

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The traditional bathroom flirtation was quickly followed by a proposal, which Rico, still in shock from his sudden revival and happier than he'd ever been in his life, unhesitatingly accepted.

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They were married the following morning in a private ceremony at the park...

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…...and Aurelia's lifetime wish was also complete.

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The newlyweds left for Oasis Springs immediately after the wedding and both signed up for jobs at the Bot Arena.  Progress was slow at first: that career seems to be affected by the no-promotion-after-midnight bug even more than the music and criminal jobs.  For a while, life was limited to work, sleep and skilling, with little time to enjoy each other's company.  Hardly a dream honeymoon.

The monotony was briefly interrupted by an attempted robbery...

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...and Rico, evidently deciding that plumbots held more possibilities than he'd realised, rolled a wish to create one of his own.

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The ’bot, unoriginally named Plummy, wandered around the house doing as she pleased until Rico had developed his skills enough to give her some useful functions.

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She was particularly fond of diving, which looked pretty odd given her lack of legs.  Evidently her circuits were waterproof.


Once her working hours had moved back into the evening, charismatic Aurelia started to make rapid progress as an event promoter and reached the top of the career shortly after her adult birthday.

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She celebrated by making a start on the next generation of Haskills.

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Rico, who had spent some of his happiness points on rebel influence and become a workaholic as a result, wasn't far behind.  A few hours before the baby was due to arrive, he became a Senior Engineer.

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He followed up his promotion with a wish to finish reading the last bot-building textbook...

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...and only just made it to the hospital in time to see Ross M enter the world.

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