Merrick Legacy Spares, gen 2
May. 27th, 2013 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
napoleonherselfI've been meaning to get to this post, about which nobody will probably ever care except for me, for like six months.
Go go holiday weekend action!
Note: this is the spares update for, and should be read after, generation 2.
General warning: sometimes I swear.
The heir for generation 2 was Ruthie, the spouse was jerkface Derek, and the mainline kids were Cassandra; triplets Jeremy, Michael, and Duncan; and triplets Tiffany, Crystal, and Knute. This is the spares update, with Ruthie's siblings and their offspring. Most of it was written as I was playing, some months ago.
And so:
So first, there's Eula and her wife Brandi, who happily settle down into a life of matching undies, in a house not too far from the main Merrick manse.
...although if I were Brandi, I would be a little more disturbed by Eula's makeout face.
Here's the house. It's one of several I've built based on old house designs.
On the first floor are a couple of bathrooms, Eula and Brandi's room, and the living/dining/kitchen area.
On the second floor is a landing and two other bedrooms (though there were three small ones at one point).
I neglected to get pictures of the kids *as* kids, but here they are as teens...
Victoria was Eula's Uni pregnancy. She's a Knowledge sim whose LTW is to top the criminal career.
Hannelore is one of the triplets (THANK YOU FOR HAVING TRIPLETS, EULA, REALLY, I ENJOYED FITTING FOUR KIDS INTO YOUR HOUSE). She's Romance, with a LTW of having 20 simultaneous lovers.
Marigold is another of the triplets. She's a Pleasure sim, and her LTW is to have 50 first dates. This is one of the most annoying LTWs in the game, in my 'umble hopinion.
Marten is the last of the triplets. He's a Popularity sim, and I think his LTW is to have 20 best friends.
Hanners is an amazingly nice combo of her moms, Marigold is a Brandi clone, and Marten and Vicky are moderately unfortunate in appearance. In fact, Marten is positively batrachian about the mouth.
Now you might ask, "Jenny, how can Victoria have blonde hair? Her moms have brown and black hair, and while Eula could have passed down a blonde gene from Titania, Brandi is a Maxis-generated dormie, and therefore can only have black hair genes!" Well, here's the thing. Genetically? Brandi's a redhead. Apparently she was just dyeing her hair all through college. So Vicky must have gotten a red gene from Brandi and a blonde gene from Eula, and expressed the blonde. All the other kids got red from Brandi and brown from Eula, and brown beats red, so they're all brun(ette)s.
Don't you feel better knowing that?
Eula's adult look is identical to her YA look.
Brandi is pretty much the same as in Uni, except now I can actually give her the clothes I want her to wear.
Yes, The Sims 2 apparently has a "Me So Sexy" emitter. I don't know what that actually is either.
Growing up apparently gave Marigold a bad case of explosion mouth!
Everyone gets a bit older, and then we have...
adult Victoria;
adult Marten (dig that cheekbulge!);
adult Marigold;
and adult Hannelore.
Then there's elder Eula
and elder Brandi.
Here's a comparison shot of both moms with Hannelore. I seriously love how her genetics turned out; Eula inherited Hayden's very broad features, and Brandi has a face so sharp you could cut glass with it, and they met somewhere in the middle for Hanners.
Eula is Captain Hero. Say hello to jerkface Derek's opposition!
I'm not sure why I took this screenshot; the filename is firsteverdatewant.bmp. I do know that I was amused at the fact that he's touching her boobie, but your guess is as good as mine as to what that has to do with the name.
Marigold: Nice hair.
I pick wrong on a chance card, and Eula is fired. There is no more Captain Hero. jerkface Derek's reign of terror is now unopposed. :(
Marigold runs through a lot of matchmaker dates because of her stupid Pleasure LTW. At one point she gets this charming mutant fellow, and pretty much immediately decides to sleep with him.
o/~ Over my shoulder goes one care, over my shoulder go two cares... o/~
Marten and Victoria roll the want to move out once they become adults, so I move them into Edda's house, which you'll see shortly. At Edda's place, I give Marten a party with his various friends, the better to make them best friends so they help with his LTW. I forget that he's attracted to two of them, though.
Filename: thisisawkward.bmp
Fun fact: Marten's professor boyfriend there is Professor Reed something. Marten and Reed. Unfortunately, he's more attracted to the bartender than the professor, which totally destroys my OTP.
From Eula's little household, we now move halfway across town to the monstrosity where Edda and Mark live. I call it Casa De Spare.
Edda: O hai! I had your baby btw.
Michael: :O
After she has Michael's baby -- the same one she was pregnant with in Uni, who turns out to be a boy I name Tip -- she gets knocked up by Joel, the guy whose Uni baby she lost. That one turns out to be a girl named Sweetheart.
Sweetheart: Lady, what's with your wrist?
Mark teaches Sweetheart all the important things. Like dancing.
Ball Of Stink comes to visit for a while!
You know it's a wild party when one guy is cheerfully walking around naked, and everyone else is shielding their eyes while trying to remember what they did and with whom.
Here's Tip as a teen -- he's a Romance sim with a LTW to top the culinary career. He's basically a faceclone of his dad.
Sweetheart is a Fortune sim, and her LTW is to top the business career. I have her go goth as a teen just because I think the black hair looks awesome with her pale skin, and then I leave her goth as an adult because she really wanted to go to college only I didn't let any of the sparespares go to college so I figure she has a lot of angst to work out. She's basically a faceclone of Edda.
Edda has one more kid with Tip's dad -- this is Nick, a Knowledge sim whose LTW is to top the science career. He's a faceclone of his dad and brother.
Yes, Edda gave me three for three on clonekids. :/
Family time!
Sweetheart cheats at chess, like, all the time. She and Nick both need a lot of logic for their LTWs, so they play a lot together, and she cheats constantly. And he falls for it, every time.
One of Mark's many girlfriends is a vampire, and at one point she turns him. I am distressed by the amount of sparkling involved in this process.
After Mark is inducted into the armies of the night, becoming an immortal being of immense cunning and mysterious allure, what do he and his sire do? They have a pillowfight. Of course.
I don't know how this even works.
Mark and Countess Facefulloffeathers go downtown, and he completes his LTW by banging her in a photobooth. Unfortunately, this act is witnessed by the same girl whose heart he broke back in college by kissing someone else after they'd been on one date together. She slaps him.
So I have him follow her around blehing her until she wets herself.
...what? I'm easily amused.
Back at Casa De Spare, Tip is gossiping with his date.
Oh man, so you know my mom?
She lost her baby back in college!!!
Yes, random townie teenager, that's my reaction too. Your mom goes through something like that and you figure it's gossip to impress the ladies with? Eesh.
Casa De Spare has it all: sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. At least when the Romance sims are around, it does.
And, as is traditional, nobody likes Edda.
The extra female elder, who was also in the last screenshot, is Mark's wife. As he neared elder, he kept rolling wants to marry this professor he'd been banging, and then she rolled a want to marry him even though she was a Romance sim just like him. So I figured, why not. Tip was dating her at the same time, but Mark's response to another man making out with his wife is always to Approve, so it works out.
I don't have adult screenshots for Edda and Mark, but I think I basically kept their YA looks forever. Here, though, is
Edda as an elder, and
Mark as an elder.
When Mark was a vampire, Nick had a want to become one himself. So I vamped Nick, cured Mark, and now Nick is a vampire probably forever. I cheated his age up so he could be an adult forever instead of a teen, though.
This is what his wants panel looked like after he aged up -- according to him, everyone in his family should be a vampire.
At first I typed "family" as "fampire", which is probably what Nick intended all along. Sneaky bastard.
This is what it looks like inside the coffin. You're welcome!
Load screen with Mark's wife Lakshmi, vampire adult Nick, and moved-in-from-Eula's-place Victoria. Tip is classy.
As of this point in my game, six gen 3 kids are/were living at Casa De Spare -- Victoria and Marten from Eula's household, and Ruthie's kids Tiffany, Crystal, Knute, and Jeremy -- but most of them don't show up in the load screen.
Lakshmi starts out an elder, and I never get her to her LTW, so she dies pretty quick. And she picks one of the most inconvenient places in the house to do it -- a tiny hallway at the stair landing.
Lakshmi: Oh sweet death, take me now!
Yeah, because it's THAT awful having Mark AND his nephew Tip AND your college-age lover Phillipe attend to your every Romance-sim desire.
Mark: DAMN, my wife is hot when she's dying!
Me: >:|
I worry about this family sometimes.
No, I mean, I REALLY worry about this family sometimes.
Lakshmi's college-age lover Phillipe is the only one to really react appropriately. The others keep getting distracted by shiny things, or toilets, or not being able to work stairs.
Mark: Damn, what was IN that chili?
Sometime after the gen 3 spares move into Casa De Spare, I take house tour screenshots. Here's the house in all its monstrous exterior glory. I had to use cheats to allow building up enough floors to fit all the rooms I wanted.
The first floor has, clockwise from bottom left: living room; Tip's bedroom next to two bathrooms; a nursery and a third bathroom; the kitchen; and the dining room in the bottom right. The brown central area is a hallway, and the whole house is surrounded by a large roofed porch.
Second floor has, clockwise from bottom left: Edda's room; Tiffany's room; a fourth bathroom; Marten's room; and Mark's/Lakshmi's room on the bottom right. The brown area is the hallway again. You can see through to the first floor at the bottom of the picture, since I didn't floor the area around the stairs at all.
Third floor is a sort of finished attic area. Clockwise from bottom left again: landing/ladder area; Knute's room; Sweetheart's room; Crystal's room.
Finally, the fourth floor is a rather-less-finished attic area. Clockwise from bottom right are Victoria's/Jeremy's room (they're cousins, and Victoria is a lesbian + Jeremy loves only his sister Crystal, so it's okay); ladder/landing/storage area; a random junk room that holds extra desks and the culinary career reward for now; and an actual full-of-junk attic area that totally does not at all hide a mysterious surprise.
See? This is what you see when you look in the door to that junk area. Just some random crap, nothing worth investigating further.
Just ignore that peculiar door. (And pretend like it doesn't have a face on it, because a locked door was the only way I could keep everyone else from sleeping in Nick's coffin.)
In the hidden back room, the windows are boarded over for maximum vampire comfort. This is where Nick sleeps; the roses were given to his sire, Mark, by Mark's sire, Countess Whatsherface. I think her name is Nikki. That is like the least vampiric name ever. And it's actually extra-funny to me because I know a Nikki at work and she is the least vampiric *person* ever.
PILLOWFIGHTS EVERYWHERE SRSLY.
Although given how many Merricks are in this house, it's not too surprising to see two or even three pillowfights going on simultaneously. Work days are happy days at Casa de Spare.
Time passes at Casa de Spare, as it is wont to do, but some things are eternal. Sweetheart and her uncle Mark remain best buds, for instance.
Ageless vampire Nick spends his nights skilling and his days working his way up the science career. He keeps going days at a time with his job performance nearly maxed out but still no promotion. My assumption is that his employers are prejudiced against the undead.
Tip... well, Tip doesn't do much these days, because he's perma-plat and I ignore all the perma-plats except to keep them out of everyone else's way. But he's still rockin' that dress.
And Edda has survived every chance card the Celebrity Chef position can throw at her, and is at the age of 79 still doing... whatever it is that people do on cooking show things. I've never watched one.
Here's the thing about time passing, though... eventually it's past.
As it is now for Edda.
This is probably her reaction to the fact that none of her closest family members are in attendance at her death. :/ Her brother Mark's at work; her son Nick's sleeping because it's daytime; her other kids Tip and Sweetheart both managed to get distracted by the telephone.
Oh, well, at least she gets booze.
And some of her nieces/nephews care!
Whoops, poor Nick. Being a vampire who's constantly skilling can be bad for your relationships.
Marten is the only one who cares enough to do any more than cry briefly. He also had a fear of Edda dying, so he briefly lost his permaplat.
Hopping from there back across town to Eula's house, we find that she and Brandi apparently have self-esteem issues.
Marigold, meanwhile, wants to get engaged to the grocery delivery guy, who in turn wants to get engaged to her.
Shinies trump Romance aspirations, apparently.
Oh, and here are Eula and Brandi autonomously woohooing! Why this gets a picture is my elders NEVER autonomously woohoo. EVER. Titania+Hayden never did; Ruthie+jerkface Derek never did; Mark+Lakshmi never did. Not once. I was starting to think my ACR was broken for elders.
After getting engaged to grocery dude Mitch, Marigold rolls the want to marry him. So they have a lovely ceremony which is witnessed by the mailbox.
And about four days later, they have a baby! This is Wil, who inherited his grandma Brandi's eyes, his dad's hair color, and a medium-ish skintone.
I realize that this image, with its walls-down-itude, is so horrible that it simultaneously kicked your puppy, punched your grandma, AND stole candy from an orphan, but: I found the multitude of happy baby memories amusing.
Hanners, asleep upstairs, couldn't care less.
The next day, Marigold has a blind date, because she's been having dates all the time she and Mitch have been married, the better to reach her LTW. And even though Mitch didn't mind Corwin, Joel, Bjorn, Gregg, Mayhew, or the excellently-named Facem06... he flips out when Mare flirts with Randy, here. Maybe he just doesn't approve of Randy's missing hair.
He does, however, approve of his own putting the moves on his wife's sister while said wife sleeps. This was his doing, not mine -- while I'd love the lovely dark skintone I could get out of a MitchxHanners baby, I'm not going to force the issue.
Oh, and Mitch also checks out of his own son's birthday to watch TV. :/
NO. BAD GYPSY.
Buh -- what the -- BAD RICK! You're not supposed to find your cousins attractive!
Rick's mom is Crystal (he gets born in the spares 3 update, coming eventually); Crystal's mom was Ruthie; Ruthie's sister is Eula; Eula's daughters are apparently hot enough that Rick is willing to overlook social mores.
Sigh. This is definitely my household for teh dramas.
Marigold: Hold on, sweetie, mommy has to go kick daddy's cheating ass. [forced smile] [gritting teeth] [planning where to hide body]
So now Marigold hates both her husband and her sister; Mitch, meanwhile, was actually done hating Marigold for dating that guy earlier, although he's still furious at her. And after being slapped around by Mare, Hannelore is also furious. This can't end well... oh well, at least Wil hasn't noticed anything yet.
This is an excellent environment in which to raise a child.
See? You have Hanners around to keep Wil as far from his feuding parents as she can get him, and everything!
Wil seems to be a pretty good mix of his parents, for the record. Marigold's eyes, mouth and chin; Mitch's cheeks and nose. Not sure whose forehead or ears he got.
Marigold achieves her LTW of 50 first dates! Maxis fails on counting. Also, I get a kick out of her memories. There are about three screens' worth of "yay I cheated on Mitch!" alternating with "first date with Foo".
Apparently Marigold and Mitch have forgiven each other now.
Marigold: Hey, remember when I cheated on you?
Mitch: Um... yes.
Wil gets along famously with his... um... I don't even know what relation they'd be. Marigold is Wil's mom; Eula is Marigold's mom; Ruthie was Eula's sister; Cassandra is Ruthie's daughter; Cass has two sons (spares 3 update, coming eventually), and Wil made friends with both of 'em. He brought this one home on the bus.
Eula dies on a Thursday afternoon, surrounded by all her children, her one remaining sibling, and her one grandchild.
It's a touching scene, everyone gathered around to mourn as the Grim Reaper lifts his arm to welcome her home...
...not one of the assembled group able to keep a dry eye in the face of...
...of...
Mitch: I hope they shut up soon.
Dammit Mitch.
Sorry I didn't get you into platinum aspiration before you died, Eula.
Oh hey, Hannelore is pregnant! I wonder who the father is?
Oh. It's Mitch. OF COURSE.
Anyway, they have a baby girl named Tai.
It's actually a pretty busy day at 7 Belknap Court.
Grim's stepping on the baby...
The baby's being scarred for life already at the tender age of about 12 hours...
NO SHE'S BUSY THX.
Oh, and Mitch is an uncaring ass, as always.
Tai: My life is suffering :|
Tai looks to be pretty much a clone of her dad once she grows up, and by the time I decide the household is played through enough, Mitch has cheated on Marigold with Hannelore and gotten her furious at the both of them yet again. Damned Romance sims.
So back on over to Casa de Spare and...
Mark dies! Guess who noticed it happening?
Nobody. Nobody noticed it. Not even me. Oops.
Since the bodies are starting to pile up, I build a nice little family cemetery at the back of the property. Spots are currently allocated for Mark and his wife Lakshmi (both deceased), and for Edda (deceased) and her three children. The green carpet is supposed to be, like, astroturf or something, marking off the place where Nick would be someday buried if he weren't ~~immortal~~.
That's the end of generation two at Casa de Spare, really. Mark and Edda are gone; Edda's kids are left to scamper around doing simmy things.
Elder Tip doesn't wear a dress anymore, because I don't have any elder male dresses. But he'll survive.
Elder Sweetheart, I decide, has probably gotten over her angst at never getting to go to college -- after all, she's been perma-plat for sim-years. So she leaves the goth look behind.
Nick, who will never be an elder, does eventually top the science career despite all that anti-vampire prejudice. The 10PM-to-2AM hours are great for someone who will asplode if he goes out in the sun.
As for Eula's kids who came to Casa de Spare... Victoria is an elder now, and the only one who didn't achieve her LTW. She wanted to top the criminal career; she was all ready to do so, her skills high enough, I think one step from the top, and then, on her last day of adulthood, I chose wrong on a chance card. So she was fired. And neither the newspaper nor the computer had a criminal job for her. So she'll never top the career... which is why I gived her all the wrinkle makeups. I just wish I could find more for download that weren't obviously designed with only light-skinned sims in mind. (I actually did eventually find a bunch, but that didn't help Victoria.)
Marten pissed me off by woohooing with a townie teenager even after I cancelled the action (because adult two days from elder + teenager = eww), so I decided that he had knocked her up, gave them a shotgun wedding, and kicked them both off the property. I'll build them a crappy little house, cheat away most of their money, and remove Marten's perma-plat.
And that's it for the generation 2 spares and their kids! I keep playing some of them, especially the people in Casa de Spare once the gen 3s take over, but none of that goes here.
Next time: I don't know! Maybe the generation 3 spare update, which is also pretty ridiculously long.
Go go holiday weekend action!
Note: this is the spares update for, and should be read after, generation 2.
Previous entries:
Preamble + 1.1
2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5
3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.5 | 3.6 | House tour
4.1 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.4
5.1 | 5.2
Preamble + 1.1
2.1 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 2.4 | 2.5
3.1 | 3.2 | 3.3 | 3.4 | 3.5 | 3.6 | House tour
4.1 | 4.2 | 4.3 | 4.4
5.1 | 5.2
General warning: sometimes I swear.
The heir for generation 2 was Ruthie, the spouse was jerkface Derek, and the mainline kids were Cassandra; triplets Jeremy, Michael, and Duncan; and triplets Tiffany, Crystal, and Knute. This is the spares update, with Ruthie's siblings and their offspring. Most of it was written as I was playing, some months ago.
And so:
So first, there's Eula and her wife Brandi, who happily settle down into a life of matching undies, in a house not too far from the main Merrick manse.
...although if I were Brandi, I would be a little more disturbed by Eula's makeout face.
Here's the house. It's one of several I've built based on old house designs.
On the first floor are a couple of bathrooms, Eula and Brandi's room, and the living/dining/kitchen area.
On the second floor is a landing and two other bedrooms (though there were three small ones at one point).
I neglected to get pictures of the kids *as* kids, but here they are as teens...
Victoria was Eula's Uni pregnancy. She's a Knowledge sim whose LTW is to top the criminal career.
Hannelore is one of the triplets (THANK YOU FOR HAVING TRIPLETS, EULA, REALLY, I ENJOYED FITTING FOUR KIDS INTO YOUR HOUSE). She's Romance, with a LTW of having 20 simultaneous lovers.
Marigold is another of the triplets. She's a Pleasure sim, and her LTW is to have 50 first dates. This is one of the most annoying LTWs in the game, in my 'umble hopinion.
Marten is the last of the triplets. He's a Popularity sim, and I think his LTW is to have 20 best friends.
Hanners is an amazingly nice combo of her moms, Marigold is a Brandi clone, and Marten and Vicky are moderately unfortunate in appearance. In fact, Marten is positively batrachian about the mouth.
Now you might ask, "Jenny, how can Victoria have blonde hair? Her moms have brown and black hair, and while Eula could have passed down a blonde gene from Titania, Brandi is a Maxis-generated dormie, and therefore can only have black hair genes!" Well, here's the thing. Genetically? Brandi's a redhead. Apparently she was just dyeing her hair all through college. So Vicky must have gotten a red gene from Brandi and a blonde gene from Eula, and expressed the blonde. All the other kids got red from Brandi and brown from Eula, and brown beats red, so they're all brun(ette)s.
Don't you feel better knowing that?
Eula's adult look is identical to her YA look.
Brandi is pretty much the same as in Uni, except now I can actually give her the clothes I want her to wear.
Yes, The Sims 2 apparently has a "Me So Sexy" emitter. I don't know what that actually is either.
Growing up apparently gave Marigold a bad case of explosion mouth!
Everyone gets a bit older, and then we have...
adult Victoria;
adult Marten (dig that cheekbulge!);
adult Marigold;
and adult Hannelore.
Then there's elder Eula
and elder Brandi.
Here's a comparison shot of both moms with Hannelore. I seriously love how her genetics turned out; Eula inherited Hayden's very broad features, and Brandi has a face so sharp you could cut glass with it, and they met somewhere in the middle for Hanners.
Eula is Captain Hero. Say hello to jerkface Derek's opposition!
I'm not sure why I took this screenshot; the filename is firsteverdatewant.bmp. I do know that I was amused at the fact that he's touching her boobie, but your guess is as good as mine as to what that has to do with the name.
Marigold: Nice hair.
I pick wrong on a chance card, and Eula is fired. There is no more Captain Hero. jerkface Derek's reign of terror is now unopposed. :(
Marigold runs through a lot of matchmaker dates because of her stupid Pleasure LTW. At one point she gets this charming mutant fellow, and pretty much immediately decides to sleep with him.
o/~ Over my shoulder goes one care, over my shoulder go two cares... o/~
Marten and Victoria roll the want to move out once they become adults, so I move them into Edda's house, which you'll see shortly. At Edda's place, I give Marten a party with his various friends, the better to make them best friends so they help with his LTW. I forget that he's attracted to two of them, though.
Filename: thisisawkward.bmp
Fun fact: Marten's professor boyfriend there is Professor Reed something. Marten and Reed. Unfortunately, he's more attracted to the bartender than the professor, which totally destroys my OTP.
From Eula's little household, we now move halfway across town to the monstrosity where Edda and Mark live. I call it Casa De Spare.
Edda: O hai! I had your baby btw.
Michael: :O
After she has Michael's baby -- the same one she was pregnant with in Uni, who turns out to be a boy I name Tip -- she gets knocked up by Joel, the guy whose Uni baby she lost. That one turns out to be a girl named Sweetheart.
Sweetheart: Lady, what's with your wrist?
Mark teaches Sweetheart all the important things. Like dancing.
Ball Of Stink comes to visit for a while!
You know it's a wild party when one guy is cheerfully walking around naked, and everyone else is shielding their eyes while trying to remember what they did and with whom.
Here's Tip as a teen -- he's a Romance sim with a LTW to top the culinary career. He's basically a faceclone of his dad.
Sweetheart is a Fortune sim, and her LTW is to top the business career. I have her go goth as a teen just because I think the black hair looks awesome with her pale skin, and then I leave her goth as an adult because she really wanted to go to college only I didn't let any of the sparespares go to college so I figure she has a lot of angst to work out. She's basically a faceclone of Edda.
Edda has one more kid with Tip's dad -- this is Nick, a Knowledge sim whose LTW is to top the science career. He's a faceclone of his dad and brother.
Yes, Edda gave me three for three on clonekids. :/
Family time!
Sweetheart cheats at chess, like, all the time. She and Nick both need a lot of logic for their LTWs, so they play a lot together, and she cheats constantly. And he falls for it, every time.
One of Mark's many girlfriends is a vampire, and at one point she turns him. I am distressed by the amount of sparkling involved in this process.
After Mark is inducted into the armies of the night, becoming an immortal being of immense cunning and mysterious allure, what do he and his sire do? They have a pillowfight. Of course.
I don't know how this even works.
Mark and Countess Facefulloffeathers go downtown, and he completes his LTW by banging her in a photobooth. Unfortunately, this act is witnessed by the same girl whose heart he broke back in college by kissing someone else after they'd been on one date together. She slaps him.
So I have him follow her around blehing her until she wets herself.
...what? I'm easily amused.
Back at Casa De Spare, Tip is gossiping with his date.
Oh man, so you know my mom?
She lost her baby back in college!!!
Yes, random townie teenager, that's my reaction too. Your mom goes through something like that and you figure it's gossip to impress the ladies with? Eesh.
Casa De Spare has it all: sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. At least when the Romance sims are around, it does.
And, as is traditional, nobody likes Edda.
The extra female elder, who was also in the last screenshot, is Mark's wife. As he neared elder, he kept rolling wants to marry this professor he'd been banging, and then she rolled a want to marry him even though she was a Romance sim just like him. So I figured, why not. Tip was dating her at the same time, but Mark's response to another man making out with his wife is always to Approve, so it works out.
I don't have adult screenshots for Edda and Mark, but I think I basically kept their YA looks forever. Here, though, is
Edda as an elder, and
Mark as an elder.
When Mark was a vampire, Nick had a want to become one himself. So I vamped Nick, cured Mark, and now Nick is a vampire probably forever. I cheated his age up so he could be an adult forever instead of a teen, though.
This is what his wants panel looked like after he aged up -- according to him, everyone in his family should be a vampire.
At first I typed "family" as "fampire", which is probably what Nick intended all along. Sneaky bastard.
This is what it looks like inside the coffin. You're welcome!
Load screen with Mark's wife Lakshmi, vampire adult Nick, and moved-in-from-Eula's-place Victoria. Tip is classy.
As of this point in my game, six gen 3 kids are/were living at Casa De Spare -- Victoria and Marten from Eula's household, and Ruthie's kids Tiffany, Crystal, Knute, and Jeremy -- but most of them don't show up in the load screen.
Lakshmi starts out an elder, and I never get her to her LTW, so she dies pretty quick. And she picks one of the most inconvenient places in the house to do it -- a tiny hallway at the stair landing.
Lakshmi: Oh sweet death, take me now!
Yeah, because it's THAT awful having Mark AND his nephew Tip AND your college-age lover Phillipe attend to your every Romance-sim desire.
Mark: DAMN, my wife is hot when she's dying!
Me: >:|
I worry about this family sometimes.
No, I mean, I REALLY worry about this family sometimes.
Lakshmi's college-age lover Phillipe is the only one to really react appropriately. The others keep getting distracted by shiny things, or toilets, or not being able to work stairs.
Mark: Damn, what was IN that chili?
Sometime after the gen 3 spares move into Casa De Spare, I take house tour screenshots. Here's the house in all its monstrous exterior glory. I had to use cheats to allow building up enough floors to fit all the rooms I wanted.
The first floor has, clockwise from bottom left: living room; Tip's bedroom next to two bathrooms; a nursery and a third bathroom; the kitchen; and the dining room in the bottom right. The brown central area is a hallway, and the whole house is surrounded by a large roofed porch.
Second floor has, clockwise from bottom left: Edda's room; Tiffany's room; a fourth bathroom; Marten's room; and Mark's/Lakshmi's room on the bottom right. The brown area is the hallway again. You can see through to the first floor at the bottom of the picture, since I didn't floor the area around the stairs at all.
Third floor is a sort of finished attic area. Clockwise from bottom left again: landing/ladder area; Knute's room; Sweetheart's room; Crystal's room.
Finally, the fourth floor is a rather-less-finished attic area. Clockwise from bottom right are Victoria's/Jeremy's room (they're cousins, and Victoria is a lesbian + Jeremy loves only his sister Crystal, so it's okay); ladder/landing/storage area; a random junk room that holds extra desks and the culinary career reward for now; and an actual full-of-junk attic area that totally does not at all hide a mysterious surprise.
See? This is what you see when you look in the door to that junk area. Just some random crap, nothing worth investigating further.
Just ignore that peculiar door. (And pretend like it doesn't have a face on it, because a locked door was the only way I could keep everyone else from sleeping in Nick's coffin.)
In the hidden back room, the windows are boarded over for maximum vampire comfort. This is where Nick sleeps; the roses were given to his sire, Mark, by Mark's sire, Countess Whatsherface. I think her name is Nikki. That is like the least vampiric name ever. And it's actually extra-funny to me because I know a Nikki at work and she is the least vampiric *person* ever.
PILLOWFIGHTS EVERYWHERE SRSLY.
Although given how many Merricks are in this house, it's not too surprising to see two or even three pillowfights going on simultaneously. Work days are happy days at Casa de Spare.
Time passes at Casa de Spare, as it is wont to do, but some things are eternal. Sweetheart and her uncle Mark remain best buds, for instance.
Ageless vampire Nick spends his nights skilling and his days working his way up the science career. He keeps going days at a time with his job performance nearly maxed out but still no promotion. My assumption is that his employers are prejudiced against the undead.
Tip... well, Tip doesn't do much these days, because he's perma-plat and I ignore all the perma-plats except to keep them out of everyone else's way. But he's still rockin' that dress.
And Edda has survived every chance card the Celebrity Chef position can throw at her, and is at the age of 79 still doing... whatever it is that people do on cooking show things. I've never watched one.
Here's the thing about time passing, though... eventually it's past.
As it is now for Edda.
This is probably her reaction to the fact that none of her closest family members are in attendance at her death. :/ Her brother Mark's at work; her son Nick's sleeping because it's daytime; her other kids Tip and Sweetheart both managed to get distracted by the telephone.
Oh, well, at least she gets booze.
And some of her nieces/nephews care!
Whoops, poor Nick. Being a vampire who's constantly skilling can be bad for your relationships.
Marten is the only one who cares enough to do any more than cry briefly. He also had a fear of Edda dying, so he briefly lost his permaplat.
Hopping from there back across town to Eula's house, we find that she and Brandi apparently have self-esteem issues.
Marigold, meanwhile, wants to get engaged to the grocery delivery guy, who in turn wants to get engaged to her.
Shinies trump Romance aspirations, apparently.
Oh, and here are Eula and Brandi autonomously woohooing! Why this gets a picture is my elders NEVER autonomously woohoo. EVER. Titania+Hayden never did; Ruthie+jerkface Derek never did; Mark+Lakshmi never did. Not once. I was starting to think my ACR was broken for elders.
After getting engaged to grocery dude Mitch, Marigold rolls the want to marry him. So they have a lovely ceremony which is witnessed by the mailbox.
And about four days later, they have a baby! This is Wil, who inherited his grandma Brandi's eyes, his dad's hair color, and a medium-ish skintone.
I realize that this image, with its walls-down-itude, is so horrible that it simultaneously kicked your puppy, punched your grandma, AND stole candy from an orphan, but: I found the multitude of happy baby memories amusing.
Hanners, asleep upstairs, couldn't care less.
The next day, Marigold has a blind date, because she's been having dates all the time she and Mitch have been married, the better to reach her LTW. And even though Mitch didn't mind Corwin, Joel, Bjorn, Gregg, Mayhew, or the excellently-named Facem06... he flips out when Mare flirts with Randy, here. Maybe he just doesn't approve of Randy's missing hair.
He does, however, approve of his own putting the moves on his wife's sister while said wife sleeps. This was his doing, not mine -- while I'd love the lovely dark skintone I could get out of a MitchxHanners baby, I'm not going to force the issue.
Oh, and Mitch also checks out of his own son's birthday to watch TV. :/
NO. BAD GYPSY.
Buh -- what the -- BAD RICK! You're not supposed to find your cousins attractive!
Rick's mom is Crystal (he gets born in the spares 3 update, coming eventually); Crystal's mom was Ruthie; Ruthie's sister is Eula; Eula's daughters are apparently hot enough that Rick is willing to overlook social mores.
Sigh. This is definitely my household for teh dramas.
Marigold: Hold on, sweetie, mommy has to go kick daddy's cheating ass. [forced smile] [gritting teeth] [planning where to hide body]
So now Marigold hates both her husband and her sister; Mitch, meanwhile, was actually done hating Marigold for dating that guy earlier, although he's still furious at her. And after being slapped around by Mare, Hannelore is also furious. This can't end well... oh well, at least Wil hasn't noticed anything yet.
This is an excellent environment in which to raise a child.
See? You have Hanners around to keep Wil as far from his feuding parents as she can get him, and everything!
Wil seems to be a pretty good mix of his parents, for the record. Marigold's eyes, mouth and chin; Mitch's cheeks and nose. Not sure whose forehead or ears he got.
Marigold achieves her LTW of 50 first dates! Maxis fails on counting. Also, I get a kick out of her memories. There are about three screens' worth of "yay I cheated on Mitch!" alternating with "first date with Foo".
Apparently Marigold and Mitch have forgiven each other now.
Marigold: Hey, remember when I cheated on you?
Mitch: Um... yes.
Wil gets along famously with his... um... I don't even know what relation they'd be. Marigold is Wil's mom; Eula is Marigold's mom; Ruthie was Eula's sister; Cassandra is Ruthie's daughter; Cass has two sons (spares 3 update, coming eventually), and Wil made friends with both of 'em. He brought this one home on the bus.
Eula dies on a Thursday afternoon, surrounded by all her children, her one remaining sibling, and her one grandchild.
It's a touching scene, everyone gathered around to mourn as the Grim Reaper lifts his arm to welcome her home...
...not one of the assembled group able to keep a dry eye in the face of...
...of...
Mitch: I hope they shut up soon.
Dammit Mitch.
Sorry I didn't get you into platinum aspiration before you died, Eula.
Oh hey, Hannelore is pregnant! I wonder who the father is?
Oh. It's Mitch. OF COURSE.
Anyway, they have a baby girl named Tai.
It's actually a pretty busy day at 7 Belknap Court.
Grim's stepping on the baby...
The baby's being scarred for life already at the tender age of about 12 hours...
NO SHE'S BUSY THX.
Oh, and Mitch is an uncaring ass, as always.
Tai: My life is suffering :|
Tai looks to be pretty much a clone of her dad once she grows up, and by the time I decide the household is played through enough, Mitch has cheated on Marigold with Hannelore and gotten her furious at the both of them yet again. Damned Romance sims.
So back on over to Casa de Spare and...
Mark dies! Guess who noticed it happening?
Nobody. Nobody noticed it. Not even me. Oops.
Since the bodies are starting to pile up, I build a nice little family cemetery at the back of the property. Spots are currently allocated for Mark and his wife Lakshmi (both deceased), and for Edda (deceased) and her three children. The green carpet is supposed to be, like, astroturf or something, marking off the place where Nick would be someday buried if he weren't ~~immortal~~.
That's the end of generation two at Casa de Spare, really. Mark and Edda are gone; Edda's kids are left to scamper around doing simmy things.
Elder Tip doesn't wear a dress anymore, because I don't have any elder male dresses. But he'll survive.
Elder Sweetheart, I decide, has probably gotten over her angst at never getting to go to college -- after all, she's been perma-plat for sim-years. So she leaves the goth look behind.
Nick, who will never be an elder, does eventually top the science career despite all that anti-vampire prejudice. The 10PM-to-2AM hours are great for someone who will asplode if he goes out in the sun.
As for Eula's kids who came to Casa de Spare... Victoria is an elder now, and the only one who didn't achieve her LTW. She wanted to top the criminal career; she was all ready to do so, her skills high enough, I think one step from the top, and then, on her last day of adulthood, I chose wrong on a chance card. So she was fired. And neither the newspaper nor the computer had a criminal job for her. So she'll never top the career... which is why I gived her all the wrinkle makeups. I just wish I could find more for download that weren't obviously designed with only light-skinned sims in mind. (I actually did eventually find a bunch, but that didn't help Victoria.)
Marten pissed me off by woohooing with a townie teenager even after I cancelled the action (because adult two days from elder + teenager = eww), so I decided that he had knocked her up, gave them a shotgun wedding, and kicked them both off the property. I'll build them a crappy little house, cheat away most of their money, and remove Marten's perma-plat.
And that's it for the generation 2 spares and their kids! I keep playing some of them, especially the people in Casa de Spare once the gen 3s take over, but none of that goes here.
Next time: I don't know! Maybe the generation 3 spare update, which is also pretty ridiculously long.
