Just started a second run of Belladonna Cove, and it's turning out very Peyton Place-y. Carlos Contender wants to make love to every woman he meets, and even some of the guys want him. :-) (They're outta luck, he's so str8 you could use him for a ruler.) Ana Patel had her baby, a little girl named Aliya. (I promptly put her on birth control to forestall what happened on the last run, which was, she immediately got pregnant again. There's barely room in that apartment for one baby, let alone two.) Gabriel Green got a nose job, which improved his self-confidence somewhat. Kimberly Cordial has her intentions fixed on Armand DeBateau, but her twin sister Samantha isn't sure whether she wants him, or Conor Weir, or Gabriel Green (she has First-Kissed both of the latter and done First Woohoo with Conor, in a photo booth yet!), or whoever. :-) They have both met their respective Witches, but neither sister has Turned, yet. (The Witches had a face-off in the newly added Downtown, which ended when the Good Witch sent the Wicked Witch packing and then cast "Beautificus Locus" to undo whatever she had done.)

Geoff Rutherford and Conor Weir, as housemates, are very much an Odd Couple (Geoff is 100% gay, Conor 100% str8) but they get along well anyway.

Running the gender randomizer led to shocking results with the Clevelands - Marissa is Jason's beard as well as his wife. (He came up gay, I changed him to bi because of son Justin, but he still leans more toward men.) [There's some borkedness with the family description - she's misnamed "Martha", and Geoff (Rutherford) is her little brother, thus "uncle" only to Justin.] I wound up tweaking their settings so that Jason will cheat on Marissa if he gets the chance, while she may or may not cheat on him. (The situation being what it is, neither is allowed to be Jealous.)

Sofia Baldwin got into Private School, and her baby brother Marcus grew into a child and will be going to Private School also. Isabel and Benjamin aren't ready for more children...yet...but they both would like at least one more. Someday.

Chastity Gere is, of course, misnamed. (I changed her hairstyle to one of the ponytails with little braids, because I absolutely hate mohawks. She looks a lot better that way too.)

Haven't made a lot of other changes, besides changing Heidi Bradshaw's hair to brown and putting it up in a tight braid - two ponytailed blondes on the same lot is one too many. She also got a facelift but is still no beauty.

Cleaned up the "slums" and the trailer park (this might have been problematical except that the "must download" files had been included without notice), and upgraded the Central Parks with Catherine's redos. Changed the outdoor ice rink to a roller rink, at least until winter comes (has anyone made a rink that auto-converts when the seasons change?). Outdoor ice in the summertime? Not unless it's"fake ice", and that stuff is not as nice to skate on.

Restarted the uberhood with Emerald Heights and Widespot. Most of the sims are being intensely their usual selves. Coca Panowski met Consort Capp and Malcolm Landrgraab at the Dancing Flamingos club. Both are wealthy fortune sims, and very attractive to her broke fortune sim self, and in a rare simmy display of good sense, she decided that the gentleman unencumbered by grand children, family drama, etc., and of her own generation, was the more attractive gentleman, and proceeded to ask Malcolm on a date. Malcolm is intrigued by this woman who is so different from his normal associates. Cola, however, hooked up with Sebastian Rafferty (she's also pregnant with Sebastian's little half-sibling). This may be an effort to get the baby Sebastian's name on his/her birth certificate, which will make the baby one of several in the neighborhood, and much less . . . notable, or it may just be romance sims finding attractive dates.
I had what seems like a brilliant idea, and made Beulah Land and Cherry Wood sisters, with their children all being cousins. This gives Holly a potential place to go AND Mary a potential place to go, (Holly would benefit from Beulah and Homer's more . . . less parental ego invested in young adults' lives parenting style, and Mary might need to get out of Widespot) and if Dixie decides the big city lights are shinier, she might also go to the Woods for a while. If nothing else, Ash and Birnam appreciate very much having the cousins and aunt and uncle over, and keeping their folks out of their business and hair for an evening because the cousins have So. Much. Business. to opine on. Ash got a job in Culinary: he's old enough he's graduated high school and isn't interested in college.
Caesar Rafferty had all the politician sims and their spouses over for a party. Judith talked to Shonda a bit, then went and hid with her books. Sebastian bought the Way Out Inn, set it for Romance and Pleasure sims only, and added a bed. (I wish there were a way to set the number of sims higher for an owned business like this: gaining stars takes too long, and Seb only cares about romancing.)
Shonda Watson's focused on her career and has decided she needs to apologize to Caesar. She can't move up in politics with an enemy like that in the way! And Ramir Patel should have a more attractive wife than that Ana. (Shonda, you wouldn't like him if you did get him, hon, you need to find a man with ambitions that don't include a big family.)
The Blacques did work stuff and reconnected emotionally.
Seamus Coppersmith also focused on work. He's ready to re-enter the dating scene but hasn't spotted anyone interesting yet. (He often hits it off with Coca, but see above.)
Wentworths: Everyone worked. Linnea and Hadley both popped. Cecily appreciated the merits of Seb's new club, oh yes, indeed she did. Vera would like a boyfriend, Delany would like a girlfriend, alas, that did not happen this round.
Steele: Lianne got promoted, Cole took care of the house and Magnolia, Rob skilled.
DeShong: Corina got a job and a promotion. The rest of the family had everyone over. Merle made friends with Magnolia. Corina also met an older boy, Ash Woods, whom she really, really likes. But she's a lot younger than he is. Sigh. Corina doesn't realize how much she is like April: both want to marry off six kids. Though Corina is much more . . . home making oriented than April is. (I think I'll probably have them adopt: April's too old to pull this off otherwise unless she has multiples, and they seem like the sort of family who would.)

Rocker sisters Leather, Heather and Weather Knowles, who live together in a big shambly house with their guys. all rolled baby wants ... on the same day! Weather already has a kid (Random), but she's the only one with a family aspiration. Leather and Heather are more into chasing money, but they already have tons, so I guess it's that time. Leather had to adopt, and got a little girl, Margaret, who is turning out really fine so far. Everyone is still waiting for Heather and Weather to pop. These will be all 4th generation babies.

Trying something new. For a long time now, I've been wanting to create this small town I've envisioned with my own characters, but when I put them all in straight out of CAS, I have a hard time getting engaged because they don't have any outside relationships and all their wants are so generic, and I end up abandoning it before I get very far. I could put them into a Maxis neighborhood, but I've played the Maxis premades so often that the stories are pretty much set for me and it's hard to do anything different with them. I also find that the premade families tend to dominate and don't really get involved with new families to the extent I would like.

So I decided to download a prepopulated neighborhood from here with a small number of families that I could try to integrate my families into. I chose Bayside Flats because there are only six households there, and three of them are singles. There's also a bit of a plot going on, which I decided to subvert. There have been some deaths, and a detective has arrived in town to investigate, but he's not really that great a guy, and the killer is going to seduce him into not giving her away. They may even enter a life of crime together! This neighborhood had some nicely furnished empty houses, so I created four families to fill them and flesh out what a small town would need.

I made:
- The Olsen family, who have deep roots in the community and are also a bunch of busybodies (Popularity aspiration). The elderly father is the local sheriff, his son runs the newspaper, and his daughter-in-law is the schoolteacher. They have three children.
- The Armstrong family, new money who have swept into town and taken over. The father is the mayor and Romance aspiration, and his wife is unemployed and Pleasure aspiration. They have a huge house that is set up for throwing lavish parties, so I see them as schmoozers who need to be the big fish in a little pond. They also have three children.
- The Hayward family, who are younger and don't have very much money but are good, solid, family-oriented people who help keep the town running (Family aspiration). The father runs the post office, and his wife is a substitute teacher. They have two young boys.
- The Chapel family, a family I have made a couple of times before. There are two parents, nearly elders, and their five daughters, all named after flowers. They were inspired by a gothic novel I read recently. The father has been very successful at business (Fortune) and has moved to the country to shelter his daughters and protect them from the dangerous outside world. His wife is a bit neurotic, a loner who is obsessed with seeing ghosts (Knowledge). The daughters of course all have their own ideas about what to do with their lives, and all will have different aspirations. In the book, the daughters meet tragic ends, but maybe things will be different for this family.

I've played everyone enough to get their careers and stuff set up and let the welcome wagon come so everyone knows one another. I'm pleased with how this has been set up, so here's hoping I actually stick with it this time. I have plans for some of the kids to move downtown when they grow up and some to stay in the small town and start to expand its businesses.

I played a lot with Bayside Flats, it's one of my favorites ^^ Although I couldn't figure out who the murderer is...

So when I was setting up, I read all the bios, including for the ghosts, and came to the conclusion that the murderer is

Totally, I also thought about that sim.