#sims3challenge #sims3legacy #sims3story #thesims3

Now that Winston was out of his crib, Victoria and Edmund finally had a good reason to get out of the same room. Winston took over Victoria’s place.

His sense of style didn’t match Edmund’s either, but they seemed to reach an uneasy truce all the same.

Edmund took his role as responsible big brother very seriously.

Of course, he took everything very seriously.

He and Victoria had never gotten along better. Now that they didn’t have to reconcile their sense of style anymore, they were great friends.

Winston spent most of his free time in front of the television: sometimes watching, sometimes playing video games, and sometimes working out. He claimed it was a good life balance. Dylan and Andria were more skeptical.

Bonehilda started training Connery to play dead.

She was uniquely qualified.

It was the perfect day for the beach. She invited a half-dozen of her best friends to join her.

She also managed to drag along her entire family — including Sawyer, who usually just viewed the great outdoors as a source of dirt and microbes.

Morgana Beach had been build up quite a bit in the last generation. When the Samples of old moved to Avalon, it was just a stretch of shoreline. Now it was a a beach park with a clubhouse.

Angelina Winter came with her brother Roderick.

Also Cortney Pierce-Hodgins.

Winston, who was just starting at Chivalrous Preparatory School, did his best to get to know his new classmates.

Dylan found a nice place in the sun to relax with a book.

Sawyer found a place in the shade to play with Gamora.

Wherever her feet touched the ground, she left a trail of flowers behind her — quick explosions of spontaneous vegetation generated by some side effect of her sim/plant biology.

Sawyer thought she was magnificent. Truly a higher order life form. And he had created her.

Victoria took to the water.

She rented a board from the clubhouse and tried out windsurfing for the first time.

It was as if she had always known how.

As if the sea were in her blood.

“I can’t believe I only saw you yesterday!” Abby said, flushing. “It seems like we’ve been apart so long.”

“We… wouldn’t have to wait that long,” he suggested awkwardly. “We could get a place together.”

Abby stared at him for a moment in shock. “You want to move in together?” she asked. “That’s really serious! Do you think we’ve been dating long enough?”

Chaim shrugged. “I know who I want to wake up to every morning,” he said.

Abby laughed out loud. Then she grabbed him.

“I’ll think about it,” she murmured into his ear.

Meanwhile, Edmund sought out Dylan. “I think it’s about time that I learned to drive a car,” he said. “I was hoping you could be the one to teach me.”

“You won’t be disappointed,” Edmund said.

Dylan nodded. “All right then. Let’s go get the van.”

“Wait,” Edmund said. “I have a better idea.” He led his father out to the parking lot.

“You want to learn to drive in Abby’s sports car?” Dylan asked. “How is that responsible?”

Edmund smirked. “I might never get another chance,” he said. “She’s busy. She’ll never notice.”

“She’ll never notice if you return the car in the same state you found it,” Dylan said severely, “and this is not a good start.”

“Relax, Dad,” Edmund said. “We haven’t picked up any speed yet.”

“Yet?” Dylan said.

“You’ve spent the entire party in the clubhouse!” Victoria complained to Winston.

“I like it in there,” Winston said. “Out here, you can get stand stuck in your clothes or sunburned.”

“It’s cooler if you get in the ocean,” Victoria said. “It’s so much fun!”

“Then you end up with salt dried in your hair,” Winston replied.

“Give it a try?” Victoria pleaded.

It was impossible to say no to Victoria when she decided to be persuasive.

Winston tried out paddleboating, but he couldn’t see a lot of point to it.

He had a strawberry ice cream cone.

That almost immediately fell on the ground.

“I’m glad you’re better with the car than I am with my ice cream,” he told Edmund ruefully.

“Too bad, Dad,” Edmund said.

“I’d share, but that would just be gross.”

Eventually, Chaim and Abby unlocked from each other and played in the ocean.

“What’s that?”

The gray creature slipped under the water and was gone.

“Hey, what’s that? A kid?”

The voice was like an ugly grating sound from the childhood he’d tried to forget.

Sawyer turned around to see Whitney Ursine-Wu, the chief bully who had tormented him in grade school.

“You stuffed me in my locker fourteen times and stole my lunch money every day for a month,” he snarled. “Why would you ever say a word to me now that we’ve graduated?”

“Hey, hey,” Whitney said. “I was just curious about the kid. Besides, I’m sure it wasn’t fourteen times.”

“I wouldn’t have done all that if you weren’t asking for it!” Whitney said. It was either a plea or a taunt, but it wasn’t clear which.

“Don’t pretend you have the right to talk to me,” Sawyer shrieked. “You bottom-dwelling microcephalic sea slug!”

Then he did what he’d imagined every night in grade school.

He struck back.

Sawyer was not to be contained. “You stay away from my daughter!” he shouted. “If I see you come close to her again, I’ll slap you with a retraining order!”

Whitney stared at him, slack jawed. His face was turning red from where Sawyer had hit him.

Then he turned and ran away.

Emily Doctor, a resident who worked at the hospital with Sawyer, watched the old bully run away.

“I saw it all from the clubhouse,” she said. “Way to go, Dr. Sample. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Sawyer was breathing too hard to answer, so he just watched her as she walked away.

Victoria’s party continued until the sun began to set and everyone had to go home for dinner.

Not a bad Leisure Day, all told.

Cheers.

———-

I had to write this post !@#$ two times because I rebooted my computer with the *saved* draft still open, and Chrome restored it from some previous cache and saved it over the original. Imagine a whole lot more profanity here. This wasn’t an emotionally draining post, but I had to do a lot of image organizing to get the various threads into something readable.

I have to say that I’m not super-thrilled with the way a lot of the water activities work. Windsurfing, paddleboats, etc. are treated like cars — you pick some place you want to go in the water, and the vehicle appears while you’re moving and then disappears when you get there, leaving you suddenly swimming in the water. Who goes windsurfing or paddleboating to GO PLACES anyway?

A whole lot of the action here was autonomous. I left Abby and Chaim on autonomy almost all the time. They spent almost the whole day standing by the water, making out. It was adorable. I thought they might try to woohoo in the showers, but they never did.

Sawyer’s confrontation with Whitney Ursine-Wu was also autonomous. The two are “Old Enemies.” Whitney isn’t in the medical profession, so their relationship must date from school. I kept waiting for a full-on fight to break out, which I’m sure Sawyer would loose. But Sawyer hit Whitney twice. Whitney fired back a lot of insults, but he never got physical. Then he ran away. I guess Sawyer won just from sheer intensity.

Dylan and Edmund autonomously picked Abby’s car to teach Edmund to drive. I wouldn’t have thought of Edmund as the sports car type, but perhaps he was drawn to the dangerous black styling.

It was a fun, very busy Leisure Day, where I got to try out a whole bunch of bits from Island Paradise.

#sims3challenge #sims3legacy #sims3story #thesims3

The Anton Pierce film Free World Dream, was released mid-summer. It was a heartrending story of a girl’s rise from humble beginnings to become the Leader of the Free World, starring up-and-coming actress Abby Sample in her first headlining role.

The critics loved it. The masses didn’t like it quite as much as the critics, but well enough to go see it and talk about it a lot. Suddenly, Abby became a household name.

She was in demand as a speaker, as a mentor, and even as decoration at local nightclubs — word-of-mouth marketing that she might stop in for a drink brought customers in droves.

It was exactly what she’d always dreamed of, but it was also very intimidating. She spent a lot of time rehearsing in front of the mirror just for casual social appearances.

Sawyer’s life, on the other hand, had narrowed down in scope. When he was not at the hospital, he was with Gamora.

Fatherhood involved all sorts of things that made he short of temper. Gamora was so helpless. He had to work hard to understand her and be understood. It was so social and so outside his comfort zone. When Gamora was in bed, Sawyer would disappear down to his basement lab and refuse to talk to anyone.

Still, the progress was more exhilarating than anything he’d ever experienced. Gamora surprised him with something new almost every day.

When she spoke her first word, “color,” he talked about it nonstop to everyone in the family for a week.

Still, Sawyer worked long hours at the hospital, and he assumed that Dylan and Andria would look after her while he was gone. This didn’t turn out to be terribly difficult. She was the most self-entertaining child either of them had ever seen. She almost never cried. She spent hours singing to her dolls and speaking to them in her own special babble.

And wage his war of interior decor with his sister.

“Trust me,” Andria said. “It’s an elixir of Asian day spa. It should help you stay calm and collected at the awards.”

“You really need to learn to give me warning before you throw one of those things,” Abby said.

At first, it didn’t work.

Abby was so overcome with anxiety that she threw up on the pavement outside the Magical Moving Pictures Theater before she’d even set foot on the red carpet.

All she could think was that every gossip magazine in Avalon would have an article about her losing her lunch.

All right, she said to herself, that’s enough. If you can act in front of a camera, you can act in front of a crowd.

Whether it was Andria’s elixir or not, she finally felt ready to take on the world.

And take it on she did. She even got a chance to give the acceptance speech she had been rehearsing for days, just in case.

Abby Sample was the proud recipient of a Simmy Award for Best Actress.

She slipped away early from the awards reception to returned home to a cheering family.

“What have I always told you?” Sawyer crowed. “You now have the Nobel Prize for acting. You’re a genius in your field.”

Abby laughed. She was already high as a kite. “I never thought about it that way. ‘Abby Sample: Acting Genius.’ I like the sound of that.”

“I always said you were smart. You could have picked something more useful than acting for all of your intelligence, like I am with neuroscience, but at this point you might as well keep going with this. There’s nothing you can’t do in acting.”

Abby couldn’t help but smile. Sawyer was trying. He really was.

While her brothers were congratulating Abby and patting her on the back, Andria was pulling her latest creation out of the oven.

“Don’t forget!” she exclaimed. “We have a lot more to celebrate tonight!”

“Oh, Mom!” Edmund whined. “I told you I didn’t want you to do anything for my birthday!”

“You told me you didn’t want a cake,” Andria corrected him, “so I didn’t bake you one. I baked you a pie.”

It was Winston’s day too.

Andria set the table and called everyone in. “It’s time to celebrate with sugar!”

So they did.

#sims3challenge #sims3legacy #sims3story #thesims3

Avalon itself was changing. The city completed an enormous restoration project on the palace at Camelot, restoring it to its former glory.

The effect was beautiful, but going down to City Hall to file routine paperwork became sort of intimidating.

Edmund’s Sim Scouts troop had a badging ceremony to mark the end of the school term.

Dylan stayed home with Winston, but Andria managed to strong-arm Sawyer into attending with his niece and nephew.

Edmund had been working hard, as always. He earned the highest number of badges in his troop, including a rarely awarded in in Nihilist philosophy.

Dylan continued to work on his nectar.

With varying success.

He gave her a big kiss, which was the best vote of encouragement she could have asked for.

She was off to play the Leader of the Free World.

Like Abby, Sawyer was also shorting himself sleep. Gamora was a preternaturally easy baby, but he still obsessed about every aspect of parenting. In addition to his worries about fatherhood, he knew that his daughter was like no other baby.

He kept a collection of parenting and infant biology books handy to consult whenever he had a question. Sometimes this was in the middle of walking down the street.

Andria was baking again.

For the even that Sawyer had been anticipating for ages.

“Hello, Manisha?”

“Yes? Yes, I know. We haven’t talked since the fight. My family is having a small gathering tonight, and I wondered if you might join us. Perhaps afterword we could compare status.”

Manisha sounded more nervous than angry. She agreed to attend the party. Sawyer was so relieved that he became lightheaded and had to sit down.

When Manisha arrived, Sawyer was was pacing back and forth in the nursery, lecturing to himself, while baby Gamora watched him. Abby set herself to calming Sawyer down while Dylan went to welcome Manisha into the house.

“I can’t describe with words how happy we are to have you back,” Dylan said.

“You always know how to make a girl feel like a princess,” Manisha said.

Then Sawyer came down with Gamora, with Abby close on his heels. It was showtime.

Sawyer set Gamora down at the table, where she could be the guest of honor. She didn’t get a slice of cake. Gamora didn’t eat human food, even pureed. She absorbed nutrients through her skin, much like the roots of a tree.

This was only one of the many ways she was a unique creature.

First and foremost, however, she was a toddler at the moment, and she was delighted at all the attention.

Sawyer hovered by Gamora expectantly, watching Manisha. Manisha ate her cake with singular focus. She never looked at Gamora or Sawyer once.

“Are you all right?” Dylan asked. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m fine,” Sawyer said tightly.

“Well, for heaven’s sake, sit down.”

Sawyer didn’t say anything. He just went to get a slice of cake.

While Andria cleaned the table and Dylan put Winston to bed, Sawyer caught Manisha in the living room.

It felt — wrong. Instead of the sense of physical comfort he was used to feeling with Manisha, he wanted to snatch his hand away.

“I guess your mind stays with you,” he said weakly.

“Look,” Manisha said. “You didn’t tell me that this was going to be a birthday party. You ambushed me. What do you expect me to do?”

“I expected you to make an empirical observation and adjust your hypothesis regarding the nature of our daughter,” Sawyer said. “I hoped to discuss our relationship, if we still have one, and how it relates to our parental responsibilities.”

“Would you just get off it!” Manisha shouted. “You just called me over to guilt me into changing my mind. I’m done being a pawn in your experiments. I’m leaving.”

Sawyer knew he should have said something to defend himself, but the fire in Manisha’s eyes terrified him. All he could do was step back and let her storm past him.

When Manisha was gone, Sawyer watched Gamora quietly playing with her dolls. If she had any idea that it was strange for her parents to shout, she gave no sign. In fact, she seemed more pleased and comfortable than he’d ever seen her.

Sawyer picked up his daughter and carried her upstairs to bed.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly as he tucked her in.

“I thought she was smart.”

———-

Erg. Sawyer and Manisha were not that bad on autonomy this time, but they sure didn’t warm up to each other. Sawyer had a wish to mind meld with Manisha, but his attempt failed. They both attempted romantic interactions and were rebuffed. It was painful to watch. It appears that Sawyer’s going to be a single father.

I love Gamora’s face. She’s a great blend of her parents. She has Manisha’s unusual eyes, which makes me very happy. Looks like Manisha’s eyebrows, Sawyer’s nose and cheekbones. I think those cheekbones might actually trace back to Veronica. I’m not sure on the mouth or face shape. I’ll have to do another comparison when she’s a teen.

It’s so hard to capture Dylan’s adorable Proper bow when he greets someone. Manisha’s arrival sequence is the best I’ve managed so far.

#sims3challenge #sims3legacy #sims3story #thesims3

Abby caught Sawyer when he came home from another long shift at the hospital. “Victoria told me what happened,” she said.

Then he launched into a technical explanation of gene splicing that was way over Abby’s head.

“Hey,” she said, keeping her voice low and soothing. The last thing she needed was to give Sawyer any more sense of persecution. “You don’t have to convince me. I believe you.

“Look, if Manisha wasn’t expecting a baby, then this has to be a big shock. Maybe she just need to adjust to the idea. Give her some time.”

Sawyer paused, thinking about it. Then he hung his head. “I’ll try,” he said.

Abby had never seen Sawyer so forlorn. She wished she could give him a hug, but she knew better. “Look, Sawyer,” she said. “Ask for help if you need it, okay? I care about you.”

“Thanks,” Sawyer said. “I recognize your intelligence.”

Spring transitioned into summer, and the longer daylight brought a steady stream of children home to play with Victoria.

It was a party almost every evening.

He even pulled the ear of some of Victoria’s playmates. Victoria complained later that he was boring her friends.

Middle age finally struck Andria.

She wanted a small family celebration. Victoria insisted on bringing a friend.

Sawyer did his best to take Abby’s advice. When he wasn’t caring for Gamora, he threw himself into his work.

Much to the dismay of his patients. It’s not like Sawyer had an inspiring bedside manner on the best of days.

Andria wasn’t doing much better than Sawyer. Ever since her birthday, she had been sour and short-tempered. She went about her work and tended her farm with the same dedication, but she didn’t seem to enjoy any of it.

She stood in front of the wardobe and tried on outfit after outfit, examining herself in the mirror.

It wasn’t clear what she was looking for. Even Andria herself didn’t seem to know.

Finally, Dylan called her on it. “You look miserable,” he said. “I’m worried about you. Please talk to me.”

“I don’t know what there is to talk about,” Andria said — in that tone of voice that said, I really need to talk about this. “I thought I was being so progressive when I decided to marry you over the Fae Council objections. I thought I was standing up for our right to make our own decisions without living in fear.

Dylan took a step back as if he’d been struck.

Andria caught her breath. “I didn’t mean it like–“

“You meant it exactly as you said it,” Dylan said. “I had no idea you thought such things about me.”

“I know you’re trying your best,” Andria said.

Dylan, who was never aggressive about anything, advanced on her with a glint in his eye. “I am not afraid of our children,” he said. “I don’t think they’re freaks or monsters. Our children have gifts I will never have. They go places I can never go. I wonder ever day how I can protect and nurture them when I will never be able to completely understand them. I don’t understand you either, and I know it. I am always two steps behind my entire family.

“So there it is. My inherent selfishness. I’m not afraid of them. I’m afraid for me.“

He took a breath, but she reached her hand to his lips to silence him.

Then she kissed him with a passion that rivaled their courtship.

She pulled him up to the treehouse and had her way with him.

Dylan didn’t argue, but he didn’t stop worrying about her either.

———-

And here we have it. Another midlife crisis. Dylan’s the only person who hasn’t had one so far. Sawyer’s still a few days away.

I had a lot of trouble writing this post. He had two really personal, anguished scenes in it. I also really wanted to get an idea of where Andria’s crisis was going to go before I tried to write it.

This last scene was entirely autonomous. Andria had a wish to break up with Dylan. Sheesh. If I followed every Midlife Crisis wish to break up, I’d have no happy couples in my game. I’ve heard that sims often wish to get right back together with the sim they just dumped, but that seems like a bit too much without a good story excuse.

At any rate, I decided the wish was a hint that Andria had built up resentment toward Dylan. I decided to pick a fight between them and then see how it fell out. They fought for a while on autonomy. Then Andria dip-kissed him and woohooed him in the treehouse. I decided that whatever troubles they had, they weren’t divorce grade :).

The scenes with Victoria were primarily from a party she threw that was supposed to be a sleepover. The game forgot that part halfway through and sent everyone home. I wanted someone to tell ghost stories, but the option didn’t come up on the interaction menu. ARGH.

Also, Bonehilda autonomously returned to her coffin. I gotta get her out again.

#sims3challenge #sims3legacy #sims3story #thesims3

Sawyer shocked the entire family by his attentive fatherhood. He checked on her frequently, jumped when she whimpered, spent hours talking and cuddling with her.

In fact, he offered more gentle physical contact to his strange little plant creature than he had to anyone in his entire life, especially when he was a child himself.

While he certainly made sure that Andria saw him, it wasn’t fair to say that he was doing it to spite her. His passion for his baby was clearly both real and intense, though he couldn’t have articulated it.

For Gamora’s part, she was very baby-like, despite her oddly textured plant skin and luminous yellow eyes. She cooed, waved her limbs, and grabbed her daddy’s finger like any baby would. But it was hard to imagine an easier baby. She didn’t need to eat and needed no diaper, which everyone found unnerving. She could go days without crying.

Winston was a normal baby enough for both of them.

Victoria and Edmund were not the ideal roommates. Victoria had no interest in Edmund’s stark decorating tastes and insisted on putting up color everywhere.

Their room became more and more a clash of styles.

Sometimes Edmund had to let off steam and sleep in the treehouse.

Andria’s farming started to get noticed. She was called to Camelot Hall and offered an award grant to further agricultural development in Avalon. The grant came with a nice trophy, and Andria couldn’t help herself — she was bursting with pride.

As status symbols went, she had to say that this one moved like a dream.

She rang up Chaim when his shift ended. “You want to take me out for a romantic dinner,” she told him.

Chaim laughed. “I did? Of course I did. You read my mind.”

“Meet me at Vetinari’s in an hour.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Chaim’s reaction as Abby stepped out of her new ride was even more satisfying than she’d hoped. “Holy Watcher!” he cried. “Is that yours?”

“It is now,” Abby crooned. “Would you like me to take you for a spin later, big boy?”

Chaim gave her a shy smile. “Only if you stay under the speed limit. I’m never really off duty, you know.”

Sawyer walked nervously out to meet Manisha.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I called you over,” he began.

Manisha gave him a perplexed look. “Why would I wonder? We always meet at your place.”

“Oh,” Sawyer said. “Well, I guess today is different.”

“Sawyer, are you all right? You’re acting really weird.”

“I’m not weird,” Sawyer said. “I’m exhilarated. You will be too. I want to introduce you to the greatest triumph of our lives.”

He beckoned her into the house.

Manisha gasped. “Sawyer, what is that?”

“I took the liberty of naming her Gamora,” Sawyer said. “I know I should have asked you first, but I didn’t think you’d object. I know that character is your favorite.”

Gamora gurgled. Manisha stared. At last, she said again, “What is it, Sawyer?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Sawyer said. “She’s our daughter.”

“Our daughter!” Manisha said. “What did you do? How could you do this without asking me?”

“You were going to merge our DNA with plant DNA to see what happened. I was expecting a hybrid slug, or maybe a puppy.”

“You’re talking crazy!” Manisha said. “Stop pretending she’s a sim. She’s a plant with some sim DNA who happens to look like a baby. Just send it to the university lab for analysis and write your research paper.”

The raised voices attracted Dylan and Andria. “Is there a problem I can help with?” Dylan asked.

SMACK!

“Sawyer!” Andria shrieked.

“I am not crazy,” Sawyer shouted.

Andria dashed forward and grabbed Sawyer by the arm. “You are coming with me,” she hissed.

“Are you all right?” Dylan asked Manisha. “Can I help? Can I take you home?”

Manisha stared at the floor, too stunned to do anything for a moment. “I-I’m fine,” she stammered. She tried for a weak laugh. “Sawyer isn’t that strong. I don’t need help. I’ll just go now.”

Dylan escorted her to the door and watched her walk away. Then Gamora’s lonely wail drew him back to the den. He cradled the baby in his arms and took her up to her crib.

“I’m sorry, little one,” he murmured. “It’s not your fault.”

———

Abby’s midlife crisis rolled a wish for an expensive car, and that sounded like just the kind of status symbol she’d enjoy, especially now that she’s given up on a high-status boyfriend.

Sawyer and Manisha…. oh my. I had Sawyer call Manisha over to introduce her to Gamora. They didn’t have a maxed relationship, but it was close. Sawyer seemed to be doing pretty well with her; I assumed his Socially Awkward trait was less destructive with a high relationship. I thought that I might move Manisha into the house at this point. I left them for a couple of minutes unsupervised. When I came back Sawyer was slapping Manisha, and their relationship had been trashed to 0. I can only assume that Manisha was not as happy to meet her genetic daughter as Sawyer assumed she would be…. :(.

I know that male sims hitting female sims doesn’t have the same ooomph that it does for real humans, but dang. I can’t say that Sawyer wouldn’t do it, though. He follows his own social rules.