Monday, June 28, 2010

Flirting with Death, Literally

One morning, Eddie woke up early and decided to take a break from being an angsty teen and cook breakfast for the whole family. Isn't that nice? Or... he might have just been really hungry and didn't feel like waiting for Toby or Addie to make food.



Well, better luck next time, Eddie. Now stop looking like Edward Cullen.

He had to improve his writing skill for school, so he sat down at his computer only to have it spit sparks at him. While trying to repair it, he was electrocuted.


Eddie is stubborn though, so he tried again! And... got electrocuted again.


And again.


Okay, so I MIGHT have repeatedly made him try repairing the computer because the electrocution animation amuses me. I was a little worried he might die, though.

Addie finally reached the end of the Adult stage. She was WAY too excited about this. Grudge-level excited.


Truly this is the stuff of nightmares.

I don't think I've ever seen anyone be this excited about turning into an old lady. Come on, Addie, have a little respect for the gravity of the situation, here. You're old now. You're going to turn weak and senile and eventually die. You'll get all wrinkly and smell funny.


Now there's the apprehension and repressed horror I was looking for!

Since she's a senior now, Addie can retire and earn a daily pension instead of going to work. Apparently this is a very big deal in the sim world, because Addie stood there and clapped and cheered until everyone in the house came to gawk at her. But what they should have been gawking at was Shaun, because he walked up to Addie and then stretched into some gangly monstrosity.


I was simultaneously afraid, yet hoping that he would stay that way. As disturbing as he looks, it would also be really entertaining to watch him go about his daily business. You know, like how it's interesting to watch a person with no arms tie their shoes. But he turned back as soon as everybody was done freaking out over Addie's retirement. Just a passing glitch.


As an old lady, Addie sits around in her PJs and watches a lot of Home & Garden and cooking type television. I made her hair black with grey streaks instead of totally grey, because I'm not ready for her to be a really old lady yet. Just a kind of old lady. She's also thinking about starting a garden.

Being retired gives Addie a lot more time to be the mother she was always too busy to be before. She's cooking regularly, and for the second time ever, the whole family was in the kitchen for breakfast at once.


Toby has made it to the top of the medical career; he's a World-Renowned Surgeon now. Given the outfit he comes home in after work, I'm more inclined to believe he's a world-renowned mad scientist.

Stay tuned for Dr. Toby's Sing-Along Blog.


Addie had the desire to visit the cemetery, so I had her bring Shaun and Nathan to see their grandma Agnes' grave. The two boys stood there awkwardly while Addie cried and yelled curses to the heavens. Nathan started talking to himself out of boredom. While he was caught up in what seemed to be a childish argument with himself, Addie and Shaun left without him. Nathan had to walk home.

Then it was time for Nathan to enter the Teen stage. It seems like there's at least one birthday in every post, doesn't it? Time goes by quickly for sims. They invited some friends and family over for cake. Including Starla, the boys' half-sister, who stood in the living room and made crazy faces with flailing hand motions the entire time.


Check out their old babysitter, Rory! He's become an adult, and I must say I approve.


Ah, the moment of suspense. What will Nathan look like as a teenager?


Still exactly like Eddie, I guess. Only minus the awful sports jacket and plus a dark, brooding stare. And that SHIRT. I'm not changing that. It's staying, white pants and all.

While everyone was digging into the cake and delicious dim sum Toby has prepared, I noticed one of the guests acting a little strangely in the corner.

 Oh no, not again...

This family has really bad luck with people dying. It's like they're cursed. Michael Bachelor keeled over and died, and everyone in the room adopted really great expressions of horror and sadness.

"Dude, way to be a buzzkill."

Death appeared, and he for some reason took Mr. Bachelor into the empty unused room in the house. Maybe he wanted Mr. Bachelor to have some privacy while he pitifully begged the spectre of Death to spare his life.


Yeah, you SHOULD feel bad about ruining Nathan's party! Selfish old dude!

Mr. Bachelor begged and begged, but Death grew impatient and basically slapped him into the afterlife. There was no graceful diving into a hole in the ground, like there was with Ichelle. Nope, he basically slapped the kneeling Mr. Bachelor, who flew through the air and then disappeared. When Death pimp-slaps you onto the next plane, you know you are not looking at a pleasant afterlife.

At this point, Addie's feeling sassy. She's pissed that Death and Mr. Bachelor ruined her son's birthday party, and she decides to get revenge by zapping Death with her moodlet manager.



I had no idea what was going to come of this. Would it have no effect? Was this supposed to happen? Was it a glitch? How would Death respond? Would Addie die? What a way to go, though, playing a prank on Death.

Well, it turns out Death didn't ignore it or suck out Addie's soul. He cowered like a little child.


Then he gave Addie a good scolding.

"Are you fucking crazy? Do you fucking know who I am? I'm DEATH! I will command swarms of flies to descend on your loved ones and suffocate them by flying into their orifices! What the FUCK?"

"Don't you take that deep and ominous tone of voice with me, mister! I'm an old lady AND a retired soldier and secret agent, AND a mother! Death doesn't scare ME! Now you ruined my son's birthday party, and I want you to go in that kitchen and apologize to everyone RIGHT NOW."

Death didn't apologize, but to be fair there wasn't really anyone left to apologize to, since an old guy dying really doesn't put people in the mood to party (unless it's Bernie Lomax). Everyone shuffled out the door murmuring things like "Uh, nice party I guess, but I gotta get going..." and "Thanks for inviting me, I had an... okay time." Except for one guy, who threw his hands in the air, whooped, and exclaimed that it was the best party he'd ever been to. I won't be inviting him over ever again.

This was the first time I've ever been able to perform normal social interactions with Death. I don't think it's supposed to happen, and I don't know if it'll ever happen again, so I decided I might as well have some fun with it.

Addie decided to Get to Know Death. She learned he's a Kleptomaniac, Inappropriate, and Absent-Minded. He only insulted and criticized her when she tried to start a conversation. Then he stormed off, thinking about... I don't know, what is that, hellfire?


Addie thought about putting a box on her head, while Toby and Eddie are playing Madden like nothing unusual is happening behind them.


Death sat at the desk, opened up Addie's laptop, fiddled with the mouse, closed the laptop, stood up, and poof! He disappeared. I saw Addie had a negative moodlet from "Losing a Friend," and my first thought was that she was sad because Mr. Bachelor died. But no, it was actually from the negative interactions with Death. She considered Death a friend, and she was upset that they were fighting. I... I don't even... I just don't know.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Simcentric is back!

Okay, so it's been a while since I've updated, because my boyfriend brought home Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube, so that's all I've been doing. I have some screenshots saved from the last time I played, but it's been a few weeks, so I don't remember the circumstances of all of them. I'll do my best to make a coherent post.

Nathan is such a good kid. I was afraid I would regret making him Insane, but I surely do not.

OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ

I love Nathan. He's crazy, but in the adorable way, not in the scary-guy-on-the-street way. I caught him dancing in his underwear first thing in the morning and it made me d'awwwww. Dancing in his underpants in his bedroom is his favorite thing. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting Nathan dancing in his underpants. But that would be child abuse. Also, he likes to paint the same picture over and over.
Then he spent the next few hours sitting in various seats in the house. Just sitting, staring into space. For about 20 minutes at a time, and then he'd move to the next seating object.

Eddie invited his girlfriend Kyle over and she immediately disappeared. I didn't know where she went for a while, but I found her upstairs reading to lil' Shaun. D'aawww.


I think Toby and Addie might be getting a little burnt out on parenting, because they are taking significantly worse care of Shaun than they did of Eddie and Nathan. It doesn't help that they both work now. They keep doing things like leaving Shaun locked in his crib all day or putting him in the high chair but just leaving him there and never giving him food. It's kind of pitiful.

Shaun is expressing distress over a bald, naked, hungry person with a sunburned head and shoulders.

Eddie looks so much like his dad, I keep clicking on him when I mean to click on Toby. I am SO CONFUSED ALL THE TIME. So I gave him a haircut. He didn't seem to like it, because he immediately made a horrible disgusted face.


Then I realized there was a poop-filled potty chair about two feet away. So at least he doesn't hate the haircut. Now that Toby and Eddie both have short hair, he looks even more like Toby, but I don't get them confused anymore. Shrug. Also I think I've mentioned poop in like the last six posts now. It's not a thing, I swear.

Oh oh! And Shaun grew up! He and Nathan are pretty close in age. So Addie picked him up to help him blow out the candles on his birthday cake, and she turned into The Grudge again.


Shaun went cross-eyed out of sheer terror.


And then he became a child! Uhh.


How embarrassing it must be to spend your first moments as a ten-year-old in your little camo briefs in front of all your family. Well, apparently it wasn't too embarrassing, because Shaun just went about eating cake. This is the first time I have ever seen their whole family gathered at the table for a meal. Nothing like cake to bring people together. I bet the British never brought Hitler a cake.


Shaun gained the Good Sense of Humor trait. He's already crackin' up the family with jokes about garbage. Typical ten-year-old boy humor.


Eddie has apparently decided to become the Fat People Police, because he likes to tell people to quit being lazy and exercise more. It's a bad idea to tell your dad what a fat-ass he is and that he should spend less time on the couch. Especially when his arms are that big. But then, Eddie is a teenager. The basic definition of a teenager is "a young person whose head is filled with nothing but very bad ideas."

 
"You're so fat, Dad, you look like an amorphous naked vaguely person-shaped blob."

 
"You're grounded."

Addie has about a million lifetime rewards points I'm not using because she already has all of the bonuses I want her to have. So I started spending them on the ridiculous gadgets you can buy with lifetime rewards points, like the moodlet manager.

 

Here, Addie is hungry first thing in the morning. She's STARVING. The logical course of action would be to go downstairs and make some breakfast, right?

NOPE. That takes too long, plus you have to walk down stairs, and stairs suck. Let's whip out this dubious contraption and zap ourselves to get rid of that pesky "Hungry" moodlet!


Delicious!

Now Addie has the option to zap anyone in the house to make all of their status bars full. But sometimes it doesn't work, and makes the zappee miserable instead by making some of their bars go all the way down. I'm just waiting for someone to get zapped and have their bladder bar turn to zero, causing them to urinate immediately. Come on, you'd have fun with a ray gun that made people instantly wet themselves.

Another thing I bought was that weird thing that reminds me of the machine from The Fly (even though it really looks nothing like it), but makes your sims instantly fat, skinny, or muscular. Eddie is obsessed with exercise and bodybuilding, so he was the first to try it out. I didn't want him to come out looking grotesquely muscled, though, so I tried it on a low setting.

Before:


And after:


Man, I was hoping a naked Jeff Goldblum would step out. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

I can't tell if it made much of a difference in his physique. The next day, Eddie tried it on the max setting, and now I'm pretty sure he's as muscular as a teenager can be.


Which still isn't very muscular, I guess.

The three athletic members of the family had a nice family exercise day. Well, I suppose I should say the two athletic ones and then Toby, whom Addie forced to work out like usual. I don't think Toby has the guts to say no to Addie. She's kind of terrifying, and really muscled, and she might go all The Grudge on him, and THEN WHERE WOULD HE BE.


Meanwhile, Shaun and Nathan are all "Eff that noise, we's pirates." Pirates don't exercise, unless of course you count raping, murdering and plundering as exercise, in which case they exercise quite a lot.


So you know Eddie's girlfriend Kyle? I have this theory that she is a spooky goth lesbian, or at least bisexual, since lesbians don't really do a whole lot of making out with dudes. To test this theory I had them go on a date in the cemetery, because what do teenage goth girls love more than making out among graves in the middle of the night?

Nothing, that's what.

But then a ghost showed up and Kyle sprinted the hell outta there. Afraid of a little old lady ghost, huh, Kyle? Clearly you are not a TRU GOTH.

I'll be honest with you, I have no idea why I screencapped this, but it's the last thing in the folder: