napoleonherself | Merrick Legacy Spares, gen 3

Note: this is the spares update for, and should be read after, generation 3.

Previous entries are here.

General warning: sometimes I swear.

The heir for generation 3 was Michael, and there was no spouse because he was a Romance sim and could never, ever be tied down, man, it's like this bird you cannot change, you dig me? The mainline kids were Drew, Adrian, Toby, Aldo and Kurt; they all had different moms except for Toby and Kurt who managed to be full siblings. This is the spares update, with Michael's sibs and their offspring. Most of it was written as I was playing, some months ago.

YOUR GENERATION 3 SPARES:

CASSANDRA

JEREMY

DUNCAN

KNUTE

CRYSTAL

TIFFANY

although technically Knute didn't have that skin, he had a different one that I've since deleted, and I never got a single adult picture of him so I had to resurrect another copy of him in a different neighborhood and take pictures there and I don't actually remember what his hair was like as an adult so probably he really looked 100% unlike that picture up there BUT WHATEVER

This is kind of jumpy, because I'm technically playing two generations' worth of spares at Casa de Spare, and some of the pictures wind up going to gen 2. Also because I barely get any pictures of some of the generation 3 spare families.

Four of the gen 3 spares -- Jeremy, Knute, Crystal, and Tiffany -- get shuttled off to Casa de Spare. Any of the six total spares who wanted to marry someone after graduating got moved into their own house... but none of these guys did. Not even Crystal, who isn't on the lot more than about two minutes before...

Jeremy: That should be MY baby that my sister's having right now!

He actually spends a lot of time caring for little Rick during the latter's baby and toddler years, and tucks him in regularly when he hits child.

Jeremy: So... it's almost like he's really mine, right? Crystal is his mom... and I take care of him so I'm his daddy... and that means...

No, Jeremy. This is not Beelzebub. You can't become a baby's parent just by being the temporary caretaker. Also, Rick's dad is a random dormie, not a Demon Lord, and if you start punching the building down then I'm killing you off.

This happens a lot at Casa de Spare. Everyone's having a lovely meal... Crystal and Jeremy sit down together... everyone suddenly has somewhere else to be.

At least Crystal invites Rick's daddy Forrest over for their kid's child transition!

Child Rick. He's mostly a faceclone of his dad, but he does have Crystal's eyes.

Tiffany was also uni pregnant when she moved in; this is her daughter, Linda. Linda has blue eyes from her other mom, and also has The Nose from her other mom, although you can't really see it here.

Now, teen Rick has a magical ability, and that is the ability to look good in basically every single male hair I have. Like, even this ridiculously high-foreheaded Dilandau hair that I downloaded just because Dilandau is far and away the best character in Escaflowne and in fact should have his own show that I would totally watch? Rick pulls it off. (The Dilandau Show, in my ideal world, would be in an hour-and-a-half-long block with the Doctor Herbert West Show and the Xellos (As Voiced By David Moo) Show. I think there was another show that would've made it a two-hour block, but I don't remember anymore. We've watched a fair number of random anime serieseses at Casa de Jenny And Mecha, and my fantasy TV lineup has been building for a while now.) (Actually it might have been Excalibur from Soul Eater now that I think about it some more.) (But I digress.)

At one point the phones at Casa de Spare start going really wiggy. When I send Crystal to the phone to ask Forrest on a date, it decides for me that I want that date to be downtown, and not at the house. When I tell Tiffany to call Services, with the intention of selecting Repairman from the list, it foregoes the list and decides for me that I want to adopt a kid. Which, you know, TEN MILLION SIMS IN THIS HOUSE ALREADY, but whatever.

So that's how we get Meeri here.

Nick, the vampire son of one of the generation 2 spares, likes reading to Meeri. They're not tagged as family, so at this point I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop: Meeri grows up, hits teen, and falls in mad three-bolt love with the dude who read her stories when she was 6. If he starts meebling about her lavender-freesia-scented soul, I'm sending him out to sunbathe.

Hey, it's Michael, from the main house! What's he being so ~~eyeless~~evil about?

Wow, way to be a mad paper-stealing fiend there, Michael. Definitely living up to the legacy of your father. You know, the secret-base-dwelling, doomsday-device-building, giant-death-robot-having criminal mastermind.

Jeremy: HEY

HEY YOU PUT THAT PAPER BACK RIGHT NOW

RIGHT

NOW

Michael: I feel strangely unfulfilled by my act of petty larceny.

Eventually the accidentally-adopted child Meeri grows up and...

[headdesk] [headdesk] [headdesk]

No, no, that's fine, Meeri, he READ YOU STORIES WHEN YOU WERE BARELY OUT OF DIAPERS but what does that matter? I mean, at least you weren't a toddler. Or a newborn.

Here's the worst part, though, and though it isn't 100% obvious in-game, I confirmed it in Body Shop...

They have the exact same face.

[headdesk times infinity]

Oh, and also Crystal had another baby with dormie Forrest, because she hates me. And the baby, Sydney, looks like she inherited the exact same face shape as Rick did, because she also hates me. At least the eyes and skin are different, so I know she's not a clone (Rick got Crystal's eyes; Sydney got Forrest's default green).

Here is Sydney dancing with her uncle Jeremy and her I-don't-even-know-let's-say-aunt Victoria!

Here is Tiffany attempting to repair the garbage disposal. It... goes poorly.

...very poorly.

Sydney grows up into a kid with the bizarre ability to photobomb her own pictures. (Although that doesn't stop auntish Victoria from helping.)

It's kind of an old folks' home around here.

Most of the old folks are permaplat and have quite a ways to go before they die. Victoria's the outlier -- she manages to have a good death, but she didn't get a platinum grave, and she sure as hell went a lot sooner than Tip, Sweetheart, Knute, Tiffany, Crystal, and Jeremy are going to.

o hai

Once Vickie goes, the house is composed of six permaplat elders, one permaplat immortal vampire, and two kids.

I honestly just triple-speed through the school day. Permaplats can take care of themselves!

Jeremy's life-long obsession with his sister continues to mean that he comes into her children's bedrooms in the middle of the night to tuck them in.

Sydney: Don't make me have to cut you, old man. I'll fucking do it.
Knute: Sweetie, that's a fork.
Sydney: I KNOW UNCLE KNUTE OKAY

Sydney: Just watch your step.
Knute: Yeah, so not getting involved here.

Then Nick the vampire gets abducted by aliens.

As does Meeri the accidentally-adopted kid a couple nights later.

Oh lord, their alien halfbreed babies are going to wind up in love with each other, aren't they. That's why Nick and Meeri have chemistry but haven't really acted on it. It's like when a werewolf falls in love with an adoraklutz, only he isn't really in love with her, he's actually in love with [REMAINDER OF SENTENCE UNABLE TO DISPLAY DUE TO BEING TOO STUPID].

Oh, and Sydney grows up Grilled Cheese, thanks to my d8 rolling 8 plus a couple clicks on the aspiration module of the Insimenator.

Ericka has not dated anyone in this household in approximately twenty sim-years.

The alien halfbreeds are born, grow up into toddlers, and then hit child; I don't have any pictures of this because boring. Little Oort gets a bedroom up in the attic, near her vampire daddy.

And Opik moves into the kind of crappy little apartment building I made for her mom.

Not that I have Apartment Life. I'm faking it with reservable dorm doors. Of course, Opik can't lock her own door, but that actually kind of works, you know? All the other adults in the complex can barge in whenever they want under the guise of checking in on her. Also, they raid the fridge.

Tip: Hey, man, you wanna play darts?

Tip: Um... hey, Jeremy, you're in the way here...

Tip: Fine, whatever, I'm outta here.

Tip: See you later, dude.

No you won't! Well, I guess you will when you die in a day or two. But now it's Jeremy's turn!

And his beloved sister Crystal? Nowhere in evidence.

Speaking of sisters, Sweetheart approves...

...of her brother Tip dying.

Sweetheart: This will do nicely.

She cries a couple times later, though, so I guess she can still feel affection toward other people. UNLIKE SOMEONE, CRYSTAL.

LATER THAT NIGHT! In the moonlight graveyard, next to the grave where he will never lie ~~ohmygod so dark you guys~~, Nick the vampire proposes to his girlfriend Tiffany who I don't think I've mentioned but trust me, she exists.

She accepts his proposal, and they share a slow dance as dawn approaches.

Though the date ends kind of awkwardly when the sun comes up and Nick starts to smoke. Ha ha! He's a demon-haunted beast, abhorred of God and man.

Dang, that dartboard kills more old people than Obama's death panels.

Everyone shows up to this death, except Nick because somebody got in his way so he forgot what he was doing. Which was probably a good thing seeing as the sun was still up.

Crystal: Yay death :D

Despite the fact that Crystal's, Tiffany's, and Knute's lifebars all got longer, Crystal still died about an hour after Sweetheart. There were many tears for her too -- people dropped whatever they were doing to come gather around and mourn her passing.

With varying results.

Tiffany: Holy crap, that boy's naked!
Nick: Stop judging my life choices! Bleh!

And then, uh... hrm. Well, I don't seem to have pictures of it for some reason, but eventually all the old people die. Casa de Spare is then populated by:

Nick! The immortal creature of darkness, only remaining son of the generation 2 spare Edda.

Tiffany! Nick's former-townie wife. Not to be confused with the Tiffany Merrick who was a generation 3 mainline kid. I'll probably change this one's name to include a middle name or something, so I can keep them apart in pie menus.

Unity! The daughter of Nick and Tiffany.

Oort! Nick's daughter via alien abduction.

Shoemaker! Oort's son via another alien abduction.

The alien parent was the same both times, for the record. Even though I have a four-PT hack installed. May I just say that D: D: D:

Also, Unity and Shoemaker were born on the same day, aged up to teen on the same day, both rolled Family aspiration and both rolled gay. They even share the makeup turn-on. SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS INDIVIDUALITY IS NOT THAT SCARY.

Moving on...

Sydney! The grilled-cheese-loving bastard daughter of generation 3 spare Crystal. (Syd's brother Rick moved out and had a family and whatever, no screenshots of him apparently.)

Diane! Sydney's former-townie wife.

And then Sydney and Diane's three kids,

Lucy,

Ken, and

Pamela.

Moving Family sims into Casa de Spare is a bad idea, you guys.

Ken: This puddle of melted chocolate is a good place to sit :) :) :)

No, it really isn't.

Finally, there's Stanley, one of Cassandra's kids, seen here in what may be his only appearance! He is the first sim I've ever gotten to permaplat aspiration while they were still a teen. 50 first dates in 15 days. It was grueling. Then when it was done and he grew up to adult I shuttled him off to Casa de Spare~~, never to be seen again~~.

And that's everyone! 11 sims total. That's as many as one plus ten. And that's terrible.

Although I guess it's not all bad.

Just a short walk across a couple of backyards, and a few years back in time, is the modest ranch home where eldest daughter Cassandra and her brood live.

I... don't seem to have taken a ton of pictures of them, for some reason. Here's how the house wound up though. There's totally a kidney-shaped pool off to the left.

I actually start playing Cass's house before anyone else in generation three. Sizemore here is the first child born to any generation 3 Merrick who shows the Merrick purple eyes (which is why he got the first screenshot of the generation). Not one single gen 3 kid expressed them, but they wind up passing them on to their kids a LOT.

Fun fact: Sizemore had NO eyes as a baby. I think I actually grew him up early just to make sure he would have eyes as a toddler, because I didn't want to save if he didn't.

Misty here is the firstborn of Cassandra's kids...

...while Tramennis is second. Sizemore is third.

Sizemore also decides that he hates his cousin Wil, and I have no idea why.

D:

Sizemore, you've never even seen a cowplant in your life! And you're like nine! How is it that you're already set on using what I can only presume is the end product of evil mad science to kill and then consume the lifeforce of YOUR OWN COUSIN?!

Cass gets ACR-pregnant again, but then she miscarries. It hits her so hard that she takes like a week to be willing to skill again. Either that or it was just a bug, because I've never seen a sim refuse to skill for that long when they were in a perfectly good mood.

(Also, nice timing on the crying lady on the TV)

At some point I take a picture of the family because I just think it's kind of cute how they're all watching TV together.

And then basically the entire generation passes without my getting pictures. Spare Cassandra and her husband Jonathan both die of happy old age, leaving a few of their descendants rattling around the house...

Misty, the Romance-sim eldest child and only daughter (ish), is permaplat from having had 20 lovers at once.

Sammy, Misty's child via one of those lovers, is a Popularity sim who wants to have ALL THE FRIENDS IN THE WORLD. Having a big family helps with that a bit.

Tramennis, Misty's oldest brother, is working his way toward the top of the medical career and the shiny permaplat thus bestowed.

Then Cassandra's other three kids have all wandered off to other households. Stanley has already been pictured in Casa de Spare, where he wound up...

Sizemore is living with Rukan here, and they have a daughter named Jillian, but apparently I never actually had them get married so Jillian's last name is still Sridevi.

Sedna is the reason why Misty is the only daughter ish. Cassandra got alien abducted, and had a baby three days later; said baby was a girl, but for one reason or another seemed more masculine than feminine to me. It might just be the PT face template, not gonna lie.

So when Sedna turned into a teen, I flipped the "Treat As Male" switch in SimPE.

Sedna moved in with Professor Tammy, there in the glasses, and they had three beautiful children, ~~Nathaniel and Superfly~~ Tasha, Katherine, and Deanna. I really should not let sparespares have so many kids but damn if I don't just love 'em all.

(Also I love their house. I made the room at the base of the tower a giant library with a wall of floor-to-ceiling bookcases.)

(Oh and also also they then had a set of twins, Wesley and Reginald, who I'm pretty sure are face-template clones of each other. See again my commentary on letting sparespares have so many kids.)

~~family togetherness~~

So that's Cassandra's family.

Now we'll hop across town, down to the south side where the fancy rich-people houses would be if I'd really built any yet.

Nestled amongst the huge lots on Pickman Highway and South Benefit Street is a 2x3 containing a classy little glass-fronted townhouse built into a hill.

Downstairs is the garage and a basement that would be walk-out if I'd put in doors instead of all those windows. (And some mysterious storage space for Insimenator pieces + batbox + ACR controller.) The basement is where stuff like the couch and TV will go.

Upstairs is (clockwise from top left) a deck on the garage roof; a dining room with floor-to-ceiling windows onto the deck; a kitchen; a full bath; and a large bedroom. It's a pretty open floor plan, with a lot of room for socializing, especially on the deck. This is a house meant for yuppie dinner parties, everyone all chattin' about stock portfolios and drinkin' wine.

Up above the dining room is a little loft area that could be turned into a bedroom or study or whatever.

And who lives in this house?

Why, it's Duncan and Dominic!

Before that adorably-staged scene, I first had them get engaged and married.

And Dominic brought money. Thanks, Dom! Now I can buy you guys a bed.

Since Dom was a YA, he aged up to regular adult.

Duncan: I refuse to look at his transition outfit.

What, you don't think the two-tone bowling shoes and purple pants are the best thing ever?

Here is Intense Dominic after a change of clothes and a makeover. He gets this hair because it makes me think of Ted Forth from the Sally Forth comic strip, and my mental version of Dom is about as crazy as Ted, just in a different way. He also gets brown eyes to replace his default green, because green eyes took over the Merrick family for like two generations straight and I got super sick of them. Notice how he's staring into your soul!

Oh, and also, Dominic gets knocked up their first night in the new place. :/ Probably my fault, since I didn't remember that when I move sims in their aspirations tend to get changed to Family, and being Family made him a lot more likely to A) want to Try For Baby, and B) succeed.

Dominic: WAIT A SECOND YOU MEAN I HAVE TO GIVE BIRTH???
Duncan: I have concerns about this process.

In defiance of the laws of god, nature, and -- somehow -- De Morgan, Dominic produces Meridian, who has his hair, his eyes, and a skin color in between his and Duncan's.

Then Duncan eats her face.

Then... she eats Duncan's face, I think? I have completely lost track of what's supposed to be happening with this animation. Gotta say, though, I would've thought that if any of my sims would turn to cannibalism, it would be Jeremy eating all his sister's boyfriends to gain their powers.

Meridian sleeps in the bedroom, so her dads can keep an eye on her.

As a toddler, she asks her dads to read to her, like, constantly.

Which... apparently Duncan enjoys enough that he decides they should have another baby?

GUYS

SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS

THERE ISN'T ROOM IN YOUR HOUSE FOR ANOTHER KI -- aargh. *starts remodeling*

Nnnnot really appropriate breakfast-table conversation, I think, Dom.

Yeah, this is better.

Meridian: Rocket ships!
Duncan: Un huh!
Dominic: Oh man, yeah, rocket ships rule!

Meridian: Do you think I could have a rocket ship some day?
Duncan: Well, sweetie, I don't know...
Dominic: Yeah, it isn't like I'm building one in the basement out of old Mountain Dew cans and string or anyth... err, never mind!

Duncan: Just ignore your daddy Dominic, sweetie. He's CRAZY.

Dominic: Hee hee... yeah.

Meridian likes to make friends with local alien children and then jump on the bed with them.

Although she also gets on well with her baby sister Jovia (whose birth I didn't bother to screenshot, but it did happen).

What fascinates me about these two is that they inherited almost completely opposite facial features from each other. Jovia has Duncan's eyeshape/nose/chin and Dom's mouth, and Meridian has Dom's eyeshape/nose/chin and Duncan's mouth, and I think they might even have different foreheads and cheeks. The only thing definitely the same is the hair and eye color, because Dom's genes for those are dominant.

I liek pickturz.

Anyway, the house now features two bedrooms upstairs, and the girls grow up into teenagers. Meridian apparently never gets a proper teenage screenshot taken!

But here is Jovia.

And since I super like Jovia's bedroom, here, have a picture of it.

And here's another picture of it, with Jovia's corpse on the floor.

Wait, what?

I loaded up my game one day and discovered that the lot had reset (all sims are standing around doing nothing instead of whatever they were doing when you saved), which isn't too unusual. But also Jovia was unselectable and grabbing her throat and coughing herself to death, and that was very unusual indeed.

Also I deleted Meridian's hair and glasses at some point so I need to get her to a mirror. But not right now! Now she has a sister to save!

After this I remember that I let Jovia fulfill her want to get the "hey yo you were abducted by aliens" scholarship in a previous game session, so now she's pregnant.

Man. Her dying like that is probably pretty bad for the baby.

(See, here is Duncan watching her get abducted, and so distraught about it that he is eating leaves.)

Cute family scene! holy dagon how did i not notice how matchy-matchy i made the girls to their dads

Jovia and Dominic actually have very similar personalities, while Meridian's is about two points off of Duncan's. So it's like,

Silly people: [synchronized crazy faces]

Serious people: [quietly eat pancakes]
(Also, hey, there's a teen picture of Meridian. Mentally slot that in about ten pictures back.)

This family has been one of my favorites ever, spares or no, so it's a little sad to see the Ds turn old.

But they make out all right.

D: D: D:

I didn't know they could roll this want if they aged up in a house that had the facelift machine! EAxis, you're horrible!

Anyway they're totally adorable as-is so shut up.

The next morning after the Ds age up, Jovia has her alien baby! Callisto has brown hair and her PT parent's eyes. And now I need to bust the crib out of the garage again.

Sedna wants to ask whether he can come see his new half-sister. XD

Said half-sister grows up surprisingly un-alien. If not for the eyes, the skin, and the teeny-tiny pointed ears, she'd easily pass for a regular sim.

Meridian becomes the second sim I've ever had reach permaplat while still a teenager, by merit of me having her on the phone all the time building up 20 bestest buddies.

Meridian: Omigod, no way!

Err... way.

Her new LTW is the same thing again. Never had that happen before.

At Callisto's child birthday party, her half-bro Sedna comes over and plays with her autonomously, which is full of cute.

...but their word balloons are full of lol.

Sedna: You see, my half-alien physiology means that even though I was born female, my wife and I can still --
Callisto: Dude! Do I look old enough for this conversation yet?!

Anyway, Callisto grows into a child,

Meridian grows into an adult,

and together everyone makes an adorable family scene as long as you ignore the fact that the mother of the littlest one is nerding it up in the backyard with a lightbulb hat on her head.

Jovia spends most of her time skilling, trying to max out her skills and hit that sweet permaplat, and even when she sleeps it isn't in her bed -- Callisto sleeps there now, and Jovia naps on the edge of the bed thanks to Honeywell.

Dunc and Dom are both permaplat already, and hardly need sleep since they're elders, so they like to do things like hold midnight pajama dance parties. Because they are DETERMINED to make me sad when they die.

And, uh... that's it, really. All of the generation 3 spares are now dead except for Duncan, and I'm easing off on playing that household because I want to enjoy the three generations of nuttiness for as long as possible. There are already like 5372947328 pictures in this update anyway.

This game is the best.