Mixed Message Masters

     Sometimes, there are those days when you suddenly find yourself sitting back and reminiscing about all of the major events in your life, and how much they effected the course of your life, regardless if the memory is positive or negative. Angeline knows that feel.

   No doubt that the rest of her family is going through a flurry of emotions as well. Still, whether you are cognizant of it or not, time is one of the most effective salves for all kinds of wounds.

  Of course the day after Angeline's passing would be Love Day.

  Brad and Heather express their love for their mother by comparing her to Ghostface from Scream.

I'd say Ghostface Killah, but Angie don't spit raps on the fly.

She offers cuddles indiscriminately though.

    
     Still, for a holiday the stores just invented to make money off of, the spirit is still there for the family's pets.

  The remaining family members preferred to work like it was not Leisure Day instead. No holiday will get in the way of grinding skills! 

 

     

     Also, I learned that the School of Hard Knocks is run by the Council of Hard-Asses since Gwen's grades dropped for being absent on the day of her MOTHER'S FREAKING FUNERAL.

 
     She got all of her frustration out by flexing her writing muscles. Being an authoress won't be her main bread and butter like it was for her mother, but any money flowing into her house is better than none.

    Today was a major day of developments for the Hollands. Gwen traveled to the local catacombs in a vain effort to score a free genie lamp . . . which, naturally, failed miserably for her. 

    Ian, on the other hand, managed to score his first date and first girlfriend in one go with a randomly generated Sim named Marjorie Skidmore, a classmate of his that had just aged up to teendom. As a side note, I love her name - she sounds like a late nineteenth century Hogwarts student. I'll call her Margie just because I can.

Yes, she has the Insane trait.

    The date wasn't an extravagant one; a simple trip to the movie theater down the block can never be like that. The stalker ice cream truck still wanted to join in on the couple, alongside Margie's mother, Lola, and her younger sister.

     Ian and Margie managed to shake those nosy jerks loose as they snuck into a screening of Corduroy Sunglasses. After the film ended, Ian worked up the nerve to ask her to go steady. Margie accepted immediately, but ended the date right after that, stating that it was getting pretty late for her.

    Our boy went home happily, whilst his new flame quietly sneaked behind the back of theater for some quality alone time with a dumpster.

She's a keeper.        

     Gwen was pretty supportive of this ship, but Heather kept autonomously wanting to yell at or smack Margie. Huh. 

     From this date, Ian finally got his first Lifetime Wish: to be Super Popular -  and thankfully, he had a few friends down already!

4/20 would Photoshop again

   Meanwhile, Brad and Ye continued to make themselves at home. 

    One adult has to be around until Gwen and Heather age up! For one more day! 

Ye wasn't that adult.

    Finally we can get Generation 2 rolling! Starting with a very laggy double birthday celebration and enough cake to trigger a two year sugar rush. Ye was nice enough to go to work before, making this a strictly Holland affair:

    With theit teenage years firmly in the past, Gwen and Heather were treated to makeovers, that for once, weren't inspired by Midnight Hollow contour. In fact, their clothing was downright tropical. As such, it was pretty clear that one place was stuck in the twins' heads: Sunlit Tides.

     As one does before moving to a new home, the old one was demolished in the name of earning quite a little fortune.

 Ian, gawping at the new family funds.

      After giving them hearty birthday congratulations, Ian packed up whatever little he had left in the way of possessions and ended up moving into Fiona and Kara's place, now having to share a room with Nolan for a little bit. No biggie, either one of them will end up in boarding school. 

     With that said, it's time for some house hunting! Which ended up resulting in the one house the girls could barely afford and had enough room for a handful of Sims!

Thankfully, we had some emergency cash in the shapes of rare gems and ingots. We didn't sell the crossed out stuff.

   Before you ask, yes, Heather actually isn't sticking around: as she wants a job in the culinary arts, tht would disqualify her from living with the main family. Good luck and thanks for all the cupcakes, Heather.

     I treated Gwen to a few things of her own, such as legal cheats and a pickup truck.

    Not to mention the two bedrooms I had to convert into nurseries for the incoming wave o' babies:

    Shortly after the remodeling, someone walked up and rang the doorbell -- but wait a sec, it wasn't the female university mascot I usually get . . . !

Awkward conversations!

     No, but seriously, Eugene Carnegie just up and waltzed into our home carrying his daughter Eloise excuse me, Elosie, chucked into one of the nurseries, and made himself at home with some EA product placement  video games. I appreciate that Eugene wants to get it on like Donkey Kong, but dude, you left your toddler roaming around a total stranger's home.

lol

    Too bad that Eugene, being family-oriented, just straight up refused Gwen's advances even after a heat of the moment kiss. Even flirty jokes invoked cringes for the both of them. So we kicked him and his kid out, and ran over to say hello to our neighbors, Alonso Candelaria and Rosalind Cruzita. Alonso welcomed us with open arms once Gwen found out their signs were compatible and that he was a flirt that had commitment issues to boot.

     Before any real flirting could occur, Alonso bid Gwen good night . . . no doubt to cover his tracks before Rosalind could suspect anything was out of sorts. After that, Gwen continued to work on The Heir and the Spare throughout the night. Just as she was about to head off to bed, the game threw me this loop:

     Admittedly, this was due to error on my end. I haven't thoroughly explored all the features that come along with The Sims 3: Generations, so imagine my surprise to see that there were graduations didn't only occur at Sims University. Regardless, Gwen headed out to the Sunlit Tides City Hall to grab a diploma that won't help us in any way. At least Heather showed up, so we wouldn't suffer alone.

     After that mostly pointless excursion (the twins did get two decent graduation related moodlets), Gwen headed out to the Tropic Llama Library in order to do a little more guy scouting. Two moms were nice enough to bring along their own toddlers for the ride.

Just keep rubbing it in, ladies.

     Hazel Hoffman, aka the uncomfortable-looking woman, was nice enough to drag her husband, Hugh, to the library. Thankfully, the game's really weird attraction system worked in our favor. 

      Before long, Hugh left us in the dust so he can actually spend some time with his family. As thus, we returned home only to find that our dear Fluffy is blossoming into quite the hunter. Good for us, that means more things to sell. 

     Eugene, despite his reluctance to flirt with Gwen in anyway during yesterday's visit, was more than happy to reciprocate the feelings today. Maybe being a kitchen scullion in a dinky greasy spoon messes with your hormones.

    Too bad Gwen was about ready to pass out from exhaustion.

     No doubt that ended up killing the mood for baby-making. Eugene promptly peaced out and once Gwen woke up, her first set of bills had arrived in the mail. Neither of the Sims got any action and Gwen still had to pay? What crap.

    In order to prevent anymore passing out, we bought an espresso machine. Capitalism ahoy.

       Alonso dropped by shortly after dinnertime just to say hello. Gwen wasn't about to let this fish swim away! Thankfully, her actions didn't go unappreciated this time; she finally got the Naughty reputation. Casually stringing along two men at once? The scandal! 

     WooHoo-ing in the downstairs shower managed to wash some of the shame away, though. In place of paying with Simoleons, Gwen accepted an offer to write a biography about Alonso so she can get more than pitiful pocket change.

   And only after a few hours of typing up yet another novel . . .

Eternal Sunshine of the Sim-less Mind: Part 2

     While the spares had their own adventures, that didn't mean the Holland clan proper didn't have some sort of progression within their own save files lives. During these past few months, while the other kids had quite a bit of time spent on their own files (thanks, game lagging) the main 100BC game file had an amazing amount of . . . three whole Sims days put into it. Regardless, progress is progress, and I need all the filportant stuff I can get my hands on!

     My first day back into the main file was pretty productive. Within 1 Sim hour, she had managed to finally, finally complete her Lifetime Wish of becoming a Professional Author. 

   While there was no doubt that the book in question, Fertile Bodies , was going to be a Best-Seller, I still preferred the trashy goodness that is Harry Hunger and the Twilight Games.

Don't think I didn't notice that awkward space at the end of Fertile Bodies'  title.
I'm keeping it that way.

  With the extra 32,500 Lifetime Reward points under her belt (what a random number), I bought that one thing from Showtime:

  Ian got a part-time job since he got a request from school to do so. Anything for better grades and some Simoleons is good enough for the Hollands.

  Meanwhile, the family's favorite generically named hairball machine, Fluffy, managed to age up from a cute kitten into a beautiful young adult. Seriously, her coat is freaking gorgeous. 

     Today was great as well, since Angeline managed to snag her second reward for maxing out her Writing skill. It looks good next to her handiness one!

     Also, Gwen met a kid at school with an awesome randomly generated name.

His parents are the laziest geniuses ever.

  
        Today was extremely bittersweet for all parties involved. . . 

     Angeline had generated a wish for a cane (since I had just bought Generations, finally), so I gladly obliged her request. She also spend an awful lot of time around Fluffy that day. Not an hour passed by without at least one hug and pet.

      As soon as Gwen, Heather and Ian left their school for the day, I was notified that Gwen had finally reached honor roll status. Her younger sister and brother would just have to work hard for just one more day! As soon as the girl had reached home, Angie had walked over to her daughter, brightened her day even more with a few words and a hug. She extended this well being to Heather and Ia.

      The family was about to begin having dinner, before Angeline ended up passing away from old age in the family living room.

      Yes, our Generation 1 baby mama is no longer with us . . . at least, not in Sim form. Seeing as she had just finished her sudden goodbyes to her youngest teen-aged children, the Grim Reaper himself appeared so he can send Angeline off into the Netherworld. Angeline's spirit went quickly and quietly, as she had a life that was well fulfilled, what with nine loving children at her side and a collection of books that showed all of Midnight Hollow just what was going inside this mother's mind.

      What was going through Grim's head, however, was a quick game of basketball. No joke, this guy hauled his bony ass to the backyard's hoops and attempted to go against Heather in a game of King/Queen of the Hoops. In the pouring rain in the dead of autumn.

This feels like sort of symbolism I should be getting. 

     Heather was having none of that, so she remained inside, cursing Grim's good name, whilst her sister wept over their mother's spirit.

     It's interesting to note that Gwen was the only one who openly sobbed about her mother's passing. Heather, being a Hot-Headed type of girl, preferred to scream to the sky randomly whenever Angeline crossed her mind, while Ian - while he always looked a little upset - seemed to quietly carry on whatever activity he was doing, albeit with a small pout and furrowed brows. Everyone mourns differently, and evidently, that's true of Sims as well. (These reactions also happened when their older brother, Daniel, and his fiancee, Jeanette, passed suddenly in that house fire.) Still, in a family emergency like this, funeral preparations must begin immediately. 

    Bradley and Ye, the trio's older brother and sister-in-law, decided to briefly stay in the house in order to help the teens deal with this sudden event; the couple's first action was to console and help the teens in anyway they can.

  That's not to say that all of these interactions went over positively:

On a serious note, the animation in the Console social interaction is wonderful.
.Kudos to whoever at Maxis worked on it.

     After having a brief, solemn dinner over roasted turkey and cinnamon rolls, the teens went to their bedrooms, while Brad and Ye began to use the tea table for their own amusement. 

It's like they're posing for a Sims 3 Store banner or a Tim Burton movie poster.

    Mandatory Brad photo shoot:

  His charm seems to have rubbed off on Ye, too:

     After that bout of dramatic tea slurping, the two were about to go to bed when Emma dropped by all the way from Moonlight Falls, and upon being invited in for the night, decided to go straight to sleep in her deceased mother's bed. She hadn't even been gone for 24 Sim hours.

"I like ciphering spirits in my sleep."

   The morning of the funeral arrives with no fanfare. Emma decides to be more of a creep by shifting through Angeline's clothes in order to find something to wear.

"I'm just getting a feel for what it's like in her skin!"

     The twins express their grief some more by giving me some magazine worthy shoots. Ian was too busy shoveling down blueberry pancakes to partake in this family activity, that lazy little Brad clone.

     The funeral itself wasn't much of an event. The other family members arrived, immediately flooded into Ian's small, cramped excuse of a bedroom . . . 

     They only left once I called them to a meal of organic French toast. Leftover organic French toast that Angeline had made the morning of her passing. Also with a side of blueberry pancakes and autumn salad.

     

   Seriously, only our teen trio were the only ones to actually go over to their mother's grave and observe this solemn moment. Their older siblings and in-laws would occasionally express condolences, but that was about it.

  Emma, for instance, gravitated toward the phonograph playing classical music and decided to share a dance with her sister-in-law, Kara. In return, half of the party considered it as witnessing a romantic betrayal, and Em ended up stepping on Kara's foot. (Fiona was in the crapper when this happened.)

   Regardless of any misunderstandings, the Hollands seemed to enjoy this family gathering.

   Gwen went to the mailbox that's out front and got some stuff as well. The reward-handing-out people gave more of a crap about Angie than half of her kids.

    On the bright side, I didn't end up having to plan another funeral. Ye decided to be a heroine and try to fix a broken dishwasher, with no handiness skill and while standing in a puddle.

     Gwen took her sister-in-law's actions as a hint that she should brush up on her own handiness skill. Hey, it helps save lives Simoleons.

    Also, we finally had that one awkward moment where one kid walks in on another one in the bathroom. I'm shocked it too so long.
  

    At least Gwen seems to have some idea on where she should go after all of this madness. . .