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.

Once again I found myself working almost every hour of the day (I enjoy it a lot!), so I haven't been playing much in the past month; in fact, nothing at all in the past week. It might be time to share some photos of what's happened in my round so far

Imogen Capp had an at-home-date with pizza deliverer Brenda Sims. Much like the other lady pizza deliverer, Brenda was very open to talking to Imogen about grilled cheese, which makes sense.

Horatio Monty (Mercutio's son) and Solinus Summerdream-Capp (Hermia's and Puck's son) got married. Luckily, Titania got to be at the wedding before passing away later in the round. I wanted the Summerdreams to be buried at the Summerdream house, so Solinus came over and awkwardly took the urns of Titania and Oberon while Hippolyta, the late couple's youngest daughter, sobbed away. Later, she moved to another house on the Monty side, a small one that the family who had lived in it before had outgrown.

Aemelia Capp grew up from toddler to child. Other than the Capps, both Beatrice and Benedick Monty were present too since Benedick is best friends with both of Aemelia's dads, and Beatrice with one of them. Aemelia's grandmother Regan had taught her the nursery rhyme, so a bunch of guests came to sing with her, while some spent most of the time standing in a group trying and failing to steal the garden gnome. At Benedick's house later in the round, his daughter Iris invited Aemelia home from school.

Hal Capp went to the Veronaville Market and started talking to Kendra Monty, which his mother Goneril clearly seemed to disapprove of. Then Goneril's sister Regan came by and as the two are enemies, a fistfight soon erupted on the sidewalk. Really, who even needs feuding with the Montys when the Capps are so good at making enemies among themselves? But, at the very least, behaving like this in public should be absolutely unacceptable for a Capp, so Hal did something he'd never even considered doing before: he gave his mother a stern talking to (Regan, the winner of the fight, had already gone her merry way).

Well, ever since I accidentally ruined the secret society for my university, I've been looking for a way to have some socialization opportunities in my uni hood since I now have ~35 young adults at uni at any given time and I want easy ways for them to make new friends outside their existing social circle without me having to create and maintain a bunch of Greek houses.

I already have a few lots in my main hood full of skilling objects where I use visitor controller to ban everyone except certain careers- Hans Talent Corp, Oresha General Hospital, City Hall, Sims Gone Wired News Network, SimSanto Laboratories. I figured I would do something similar with the majors and create little 2X2 lots for different majors- School of Business, School of Government, School of Performing Arts, Science Labs. And as a bonus, none of the undeclared townies showing up so I'll just get the playables.

Since last night, I've built the political science, economics, and literature buildings. Poli Sci like a city hall with a speech podium onstage at the center of a rotunda, with a library and other skill objects upstairs. Economics is kind of a gentleman's club vibe with lots of gaming objects (pool, poker, chess) and the charisma putter out back. The Literature building is a lowkey adaptation of the Admont Abbey Library in Austria. Next is probably going to be performing arts and I'll probably build a theatre/performance space.

Currently the decoration is a bit paint by numbers for me, but I'll figure it out as I go. The downside is I just finished my uni rotation and I can't send anyone to test the spaces without screwing up their timing.

Many of us would like the ability to build so quickly! xDD

Flabio has been working out in quest of his ballet career. Looking fitter!

As a result, his superficial fiancée Dot threw a wish to have a wedding party (didn't happen when he was still chubby ), and once the guests were invited she gave him a rather charming gift, a little waterfall:

Played the Tinker family. It was dramatic:

- Melody Tinker was abducted by aliens while her parents were out on a Nightlife outing. When she turned up pregnant, her parents obviously didn't believe that she hadn't woohoo'd with anyone and got furious. Faced with this affront to her dignity, she moved out (taking the family kitten with her) and moved to an apartment downtown.

- By selling her paintings and receiving child support from the Extraterrestrial Reparations Fund (yup, the aliens play child support), Melody actually did quite well for herself. However...



The name of the boy? Brent.

- Meanwhile, Stephen Tinker put a mortgage on the house so he could buy the Inner Child Toys & Gifts. The big ticket item here is the model train table - many many townies were pressured into buying it. Stephen himself also ended up getting one:



- Wanda Tinker got pregnant. She went to the Jacquets' bakery and got a cheesecake.

- At some point during all this, Melody Tinker started calling her parents just to chat, slowly repairing their relationship.

- Wanda gave birth to the twins, Darryl and Dawn.

Here's the crazy part though-- at some point after Melody had given birth, I was messing with I decided to test out the death by childbirth mod in a test hood, setting the BCONs for a 100% chance of death (easiest way to check that it worked ). Then forgot to swap back the original file. Wanda gave birth, and Grim promptly showed up for her.

I paused the game for a long time, deciding whether to reload or not. I decided against it.

Oh no! I would have replayed for sure (although I dread playing toddlers ).

BTW I can't see one of your pics. Can now!

I fixed it - I forgot the '/' on the img tag.

I used shell buildings, so that helped save time

Don't forget to grab the Simwardrobe mod which stops the model train set from catching fire! Though I just changed it in my game to have a much lower chance, and am currently testing this. The 2% chance per use is ridiculously high. I changed it to 0.02% (I think). I would have added some kind of check to make it more flammable if a sim with low mechanical skill had improved it, and much less flammable if a sim with high mechanical skill had done that, but I couldn't figure out a way to do that and I didn't want to link it to the current sim's mechanical level since surely the flammable risk is supposed to be to do with the amateur electronics? (I am not actually sure. I mean, are home model train sets generally known for bursting into flames??)

You'll have to change his name now lol.

Do people normally give wedding gifts or is that a mod?



Does being abducted by aliens count as a first woohoo memory? :O

Love when a name has meaning

I had twins born during a kitchen fire in my ToT hood, I named them Ember and Cinder.

I need one that's funny because of his height, he's one of the shortest (so far) sims in the hood!


I use this one:
https://modthesims.info/d/644070

Don't be mean!

They still look very creative! Especially the tall shelves and the room with the podium. I loved it

I achieved Kristen Loste Grunt's want to be abducted by aliens! And as a bonus, the very next day, she was promoted by a lucky chance card. I also got her five best friends. She is killing it.

After having the fountain stolen, Dot made herself late for work the next day by obsessing over the loss.


Poor Dot! She seemed very upset. The memory of her wedding day was sullied by the intrusion of that sneaky burglar.

Evan Morgan went to college. He had scholarships, but his mother Vicki figured he needed some more help to acquire critical scholastic supplies: things like bubbleblowers and drumkits. (Hey,that's how Vicki rolled at UNI.) So she bought a Gray Lady sculpture and gifted him.

Here's the kicker. Vicki got the sculpture for $5750, thanks to reputation discounts. Evan flipped it for list price of $8G. A real sweet profit.