Pets. I don't know why, but pets in this game are so cute! It's kind of the reason almost half of my neighbourhoods' population is, well, cats or dogs. Especially when a Sim is sitting on a couch, and a cat goes up on the couch as well, and the Sim pets it!

You can do that?!

I love the animations that differ for sims based on personality. I think my favorites are the way shy sims dance or how they handle romantic socials.

And the way cats will curl up and sleep on the open half of a double bed (or either side if no one else is using the bed), unless they have been explicitly trained to "stay off Sims beds" (which I will not do for cats, because it's contrary to cat nature). With a certain mod, cats can also get up on a bed that a child is sleeping in, and curl up and sleep at the foot of the bed (I think this also works with dogs).

Note: With boolprop controlpets on, you can tell the pet to do this. (I have that and petactioncancel true in my userstartup.cheat file, first items in it.)

My simcats never seem to do that autonomously. Actually, they avoid sleeping on couches too, so they never snuggle up next to a sim watching TV.

You can! I dont know if its something with personality, but my Sim cats do it almost all the time.
Edit: Here's a picture of a Sim petting a cat on the couch.

Mine do it whenever they get the chance. Perhaps they're trained not to sit on furniture?

I've never tried to train them like that. Hope I don't have a mod interfering. I can direct them to do it, but they don't stay there.

They don't always stay, but not that they get up and get down immediately. Check if their needs are low.

Hmm, maybe if I train them to be on sim stuff more they'll do it. But then again, my cats' comfort never seems to be low. They don't seem to be interested in butterflies or fireflies either.

If you use custom sofas, a lot of them are not enabled for pets, which might also affect things.

I was thinking about this the other day when something was happening in my game, and it just made me go awww and reinforced how special this game is. One of my university students, Palmer Hogleg, is super attracted to another one, Daisy Simnitch, and always wants to be around her, but he never has expressed his feelings. Daisy decided to try out the piano, and she was playing very badly--like hands over your ears, complaining bad. But Palmer was right there beside the piano, and even though she was so bad, he kept cheering her and dancing. It was honestly so sweet that it melted my heart--and quite out of character for Palmer, who was the local bully as a teen. I decided right then and there that Palmer would get to marry Daisy someday, even though she is "supposed" to be with Arty Loste. And while I was playing today, Palmer got up his nerve, told Daisy how he felt, and proposed--and she accepted!

It's just these special little details that really help to make the story in my head come alive that make me love this game.

The fortune teller lady showing up at a community lot and ringing the doorbell on a toilet door never gets old.

She just wanted to make sure noone was already using the facilities. XD

Yeah, very considerate of her. Though I can only imagine the jumpscare if one were using the loo and suddenly a doorbell rings inside. xD

At least you can't pee yourself lol.

Sometimes I think I like all the things that other people hate, judging by the WCIFs I see from people wanting to mod them out!

Like Smefanye, I love to see children running to hug their parents coming home from work. I also love to see teens running to answer the 'phone. I even love Andrew's obsessive bedmaking -- because he's right: we should make our beds, and we should make them properly like he does. (When I throw mine together, if I bother to make it at all, I can hear him muttering over my shoulder, "Just like a lazy slob Sim! Do it properly!") I also rather like his obsession about not using public toilets, though I have tried to tell him that, if you use a urinal rather than a stall, you don't actually have to touch anything!

I like the Welcome Wagon; I love to see who will turn up to welcome newcomers to the town. And, of all the things that came with University, my absolute favourite is pillow fights. When the participants are scantily clad (as many of my Sims are) they can be quite erotic. My Sims often finish off by smooching, making out or more! I love it when children wipe their lips after kissing. They do it even they're the one who initiated the kiss! I also love to see two children playing Mary Mack. I think it must be an ancient children's game passed down through the generations. (My mother taught me an old Scots tongue-twister song/rhyme that goes, "My mither's makin' me marry Mary Mack, and Mary Mack's mither's makin' Mary marry me." I suspect they're singing the same rhyme in Simlish.) I also love the dramatic way they "die" when they're playing cops and robbers.

sturlington's story about Palmer and Daisy reminds me of Joseph Lambert playing his first hopeless faltering notes on his new piano. Ravi Bertino was with him, just making encouraging noises as he listened to Joseph's terrible playing. Having read about Palmer dancing, I'm now wondering if Ravi was trying to sing along. In Ravi's case, unlike Palmer, it was completely in character. Ravi has a beautiful nature -- a Pleasure Sim who loves to give pleasure to others. And he had every reason not to be so supportive. The piano was a date gift to Joseph from Jack Gill, given after a first or second date. But Ravi is Jack's long term live-in boyfriend. They've had lots of dream dates together. And in all that time Jack has never given Ravi anything more than a bunch of flowers. So Ravi had every reason to resent that piano. But not a bit of it. Ravi is just pleased to see Jack give such a nice present to a mutual friend. In fact he's eternally grateful to Jack for taking him in off the street, and inviting him to share his house and his comfortable bed.

Yes, even bad Sims can be very likeable. (And I'm not just talking about Jack Gill being a lovable young rogue. I have a lot of time for General Buzz Grunt. I just accept that he's a much better soldier than he he is a parent. He's a soldier's soldier -- someone you'd want to have beside you when you're in a foxhole under fire.

But I think my all-time favourite must be something I've seen only once, and it was over eleven years ago. It was Andrew and Julian's clumsy, fumbled, failed first kiss. I remember that I could really feel Andrew's fear of rejection as he went in for that first kiss. I think he thought the ground would open up and swallow him for having the temerity to try to kiss another boy, and his best friend at that. But the kiss wasn't rejected. It was clear that Julian wanted to kiss him too. But both boys were so gauche, naïve and inexperienced, that they just didn't know how to do it. Or perhaps a kiss between boys was just too far outside the bounds of normality, that they couldn't quite manage it. I know I couldn't have done it at Andrew's age. Though I'm not sure how I'd have reacted if a boy I really liked had tried to kiss me. I might have reacted similarly to Julian. More likely I'd have rejected the kiss, and then regretted rejecting it. I'm still not sure how I'd react to this day. Maybe it's just easier to live my love life vicariously through my Sims. Anyway, I'm glad that Andrew had more courage than I'll ever have. He took the fact that the kiss wasn't actually rejected as encouragement, and he tried again. And this time we got the cutscene video! It was a day that I'm sure neither Andrew, nor Julian, nor I will forget till we die. Quite honestly, I think it helped me to come to terms with who I am.

I think it was a beautiful piece of animation -- absolutely right for two schoolboys tentatively and cautiously beginning to explore their sexuality. I've never seen it since. Possibly I'm now too good a player. I've never since led a Sim into a first kiss as naïvely as Andrew and Julian went into that first one. I feel profoundly grateful to them for helping me to understand myself better. And I am extremely grateful to MTS for providing a place where I feel safe to share my own vulnerability, with only the flimsy protection of a user name and avatar.

My favorite is when pets react to their reflection, it always makes me laugh.

I've actually come to learn to love the "welcome wagon" since my sims usually inherit or move into someone else's home. I actually had a few sims move into "brand new homes" and enjoyed seeing who popped up later

I enjoy watching Sim conversations. Especially when they get excited and do a little clap. (I don't know whether I love angry or excited Sims more!) If it's about music, they'll play some air guitar. For food they'll do a little stirring animation and chef's kiss.

The first-night downtown outing, too. I still get a giggle out of the time that the game decided to spawn every single inmate from my asylum challenge household. (To make it funnier, they were all Charlatan clones.)

Accidentally setting the overhead light for sale and wondering why it got so dark.

I love that CC-free lots seem to be very much the thing these days, at least here on MTS.

I like CC lots. Why does everyone avoid them so much? XD

I'm 50-50 on CC/CC-free lots. For homes I've found I prefer CC-free, or mostly/only EAxis-furnishings, or at least light on CC, maybe also sparsely decorated (no decorations or anything on OMSPs) but with a simple furniture outlay, so I can get some inspiration but at the same time put my own spin on them.

For other types of lots I don't mind them CC-heavy, because it makes decorating a bit easier. If I want a police station or a cafe, I may not want to hunt down all the necessary CC, and it's often the decorating I like, rather than an empty non-decorated shell or just EAxis furniture.

--

My favorite is babies in TS2 - they're the perfect amount of cute and cuddly, especially when playing in the baby toys, and the funny face they make when being bottle-fed.