Been a while since we had one of these, eh? I lost track of my funny stuff in the move to Avalon 2.0. But these are too good not to share. The full moon is just golden.

First of all, Zombie Dragonwife decided to come in to Vetinari’s to taste the wine.

Then she sits down with the (beautiful) nectar merchant to sample the fare. The nectar merchant didn’t take it well.

Zombie attack on Clifton Hodgins, who was fishing in our pond for some reason.

Clifton thinks it’s hilarious.

The zombie didn’t expect that reaction.

Now, THIS alien has his punk on.

Avalon Gossip Column:

Oh so much to say. Where were we anyway?

Asriel Weaver-Bookabet and Anita Bookabet have declared themselves enemies. Asriel took his son Timothy, who he had with his dear departed wife Zuzu Weaver, and moved into Chateau Crumplebottom with his sister Arya.

February Callendar passed on, leaving the sum of her estate to her daughter with Spock, Sharon Leonard. This means she disinherited her daughter Rosie Winter. We can only guess what’s up with that.

Maybe February was doing Rosie a favor, since it turned out her household was deeply in debt. Maybe she didn’t like Sharon.

Alice Bookabet has become the town handywoman.

Jian and Dragonwife Wu had a late-in-life son named Bryant.

Sean Flynn was promoted to Con Artist. Huh? Apparently he really was kicked out of the criminal biz altogether and has started working his way up the ranks from the bottom.

Clifton Hodgins and Arma Mentary-Hodgins had a falling out. Clifton moved in Ali Bookabet-Mentary. That left Andria Sword alone in the household with Arma, as mentioned in the previous post. The chain of half-siblinghoods makes my head hurt, but Arma and Andria are not related by blood. They probably ARE legally related, though, since Arma’s mother was married to Andria’s father.

Forest shocked the heck out of me and married Echo Weaver, who was still not dead! They became the Sample-Weavers. Echo and baby Rosalie moved into the vampire manor with him. Then Sean Flynn married Lionel Ursine-Langerak, who took his name, and Lionel moved into the vampire manor.

When Echo finally died, I went to check on vampire manor. Sean and Lionel had managed to have FOUR CHILDREN while I wasn’t looking. I finally turned off fertility for Sean and Forest, changed Forest’s name back to Sample, changed Rosalie’s name to Weaver, and moved her in with her adult cousins. She’ll be safer there. Forest took the whole thing in stride and just refuses to pay his child support payments. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the Flynn family. Sean and Lionel’s little girl looks like she might make a good vampire heiress.

I close with Sky sharing some hot gossip with her fan Sam Pistachio:

Welcome to our second playtest tour of the same world!

Someplace I have a shot of the residents in front of these two lovely houses. They tell the story of two very messed up sims.

You see, Joanne Bookabet and Tomas Sample-Royale have been in love with each other since at least Tomas’s graduation from high school. Let’s just assume it didn’t start any earlier than that, since Joanne is a lot older than Tomas. The problem is that they can’t stand each other. They got together, made passionate woohoo, had huge fights, broke up, filled my queue with stalking notifications, got back together, became engaged, got pregnant, and broke up before the baby was born. (Tomas was carrying the baby because Jo is well into Elderhood at this point.)

Now they move in to the houses next to each other. They can’t live with each other, can’t live without.

So tragic. And messed up.

Also, they ended up with two kids. I checked and thought Tomas’s pregnancy had been wiped out by the move. So I used MasterController to create an insta-baby for them. The next day, I got a notification that Tomas’s had given birth.

Huh.

Now let’s move on to our test household, shall we?

Meet the Weaver-somethingorothers.

Maxwell Weaver-Doctor, elder son of our dearly departed Zuzu Weaver and David Doctor. He’s a YA.

Dexter, their younger son. He’s a teen.

And here’s my simself! Echo Weaver is an elder who is a couple of days past the end of her lifespan but still going strong. Her career has gone well, but her love life is one big catastrophe. She’s dated and broken up with half the males in Avalon and has been engaged about three times.

Poor Echo.

And who is this?

OK, I have a confession to make. Remember when I said that I was getting Forest Sample and Sean Flynn together, but I was going to turn off their ability to make babies because neither of them should ever be near babies?

I deliberately left Forest and Sean as romantic interests because they don’t have the kind of relationship that calls for fidelity. I just set Story Progression to keep them living in the same house.

Sean, Forest, and Sean’s elderly wife Cynthia lived together happily until Cynthia died. Then Sean got together with Lionel Ursine-Langerak, one of two sons of Adjo’s daughter Charmaine and Maya Langerak. So Sean’s now dividing his woohoo time between a 5th generation Sample spare and the grandson of a 3rd generation Sample spare.

(Still with me? Don’t worry, that history lesson is totally irrelevant anyway.)

Forest? He spent a long time dating Jeannette Crumplebottom, his first cousin once removed. Yay for creepy. Then he, um, got together with Echo Weaver. And got pregnant with her baby.

Turns out I forgot to turn off their fertility after all.

So this is Rosalie Weaver, who I rescued from the house of vampires with commitment problems. I moved her in with her cousins and very elderly mother. Her cousins will take much better care of her than Forest would.

And for the purpose of testing, I’m going to age her up to child.

OK, I have to confess that I hate Dexter’s hair with the flaming passion of a thousand burning sons.

Much better.

Echo and the Sims U mascot seem to have a thing for each other.

See? She even noticed him while playing video games.

Let’s have them interact.

“Hey honey… want to teach me to be an annoying university mascot?”

“Are you kidding? You have no idea how much hard work and training it takes to wear this suit! And I barely know you!”

I guess I underestimated mascot pride.

Hey, hey, calm down. She really didn’t care about your job that much.

(There’s some interaction with the mascot where you can ask them to teach you to be a mascot. Don’t do that with a low relationship. Now I’m really curious what it does.)

Rosalie makes friends with papergirl. There are no residents in the town at the moment, so her social opportunities are limited.

And off to test stuff! Maxwell checks out Monmouth Archives, the local library.

The books are just fine.

I just needed a change, and a 40×40 lot for that awesome steampunk complex I was using for the science center got repurposed for the EA store Renaissance Fair.

The science center is still called the Sufficiently Advanced Technology Center for story purposes. That’s the best name EVAR for a science center in the Sims. It’s Einstein. Look it up.

If I ever land Midnight Hollow, the fabulous steampunk observatory science center goes into Avalon immediately.

After going through the LLAMA, Dexter takes a cab to where he’s going.

I’m in love with the LLAMAs, but I only put in two, and they’re causing me a lot of routing grief. People keep taking the LLAMAs and then route-failing when they come out. I should probably remove them. But they’re one of the cutest things ever.

Looks like the grocery store rabbithole rug is working fine. Also the bookstore.

Then, like a good boy, Dexter sits down to do his homework in the middle of the shopping square.

The proprietress of Performance Park is impressed.

Or maybe she’s just hot for Echo.

Then Echo works her wiles on the proprietress of the Fiddler’s Green pub venue.

The two of them really hit it off.

While I was doing something else, somebody started a water balloon fight.

Left alone in the house, Rosalie occupies her time by watching credits scroll on TV.

Then she has a wish to learn to paint, so I let her.

Echo heads to the Lady of the Lake Park.

Echo goes look for fairies. She doesn’t find them, but she does find that the rabbithole works fine.

(I didn’t test the massage table, but routing to it turned out to be a bit tricksy in game. I need to tweak its location a bit.)

I reward her with a massage. The spa is now a rabbithole door, which prevents sims from ending up behind the building when they try to leave. It’s a really tiny spa OK?

After a few tests, the all-in-one restroom is routable. I could probably get rid of this, since I mostly placed it there to give Sky interesting places for public woohoo.

I’m still getting this route fail, and I don’t know what it is. I love Coffee Under the Sea, but it’s possible this whatever-it-is is causing some game lag. When Sky’s career is over, I may have to wave goodbye to this lot.

Echo’s out for another audition, this one at Serenity private venue.

This is a download from the Exchange, and I think it’s really classy.

Yep. They want her to perform here too. Echo’s booking her schedule pretty far in advance now. Too bad this playtest game will be over before she shows up for this gig.

Dexter appears to have had a problem with the LLAMA. For this very reason it’s hard to give those things up.

He doesn’t let his personal tragedy keep him from planting that apple, though.

Maxwell is off on a different mission.

Yes, he adopted a horse!

Maxwell and his trusty steed whose name I already forgot.

Oh, no, to go into the barn, you’re supposed to take a right and go through the equestrian gate, not go through the human door.

There’s so much wrongness in this picture.

Horse is pretty upset with Maxwell about that door.

And Maxwell’s pretty upset about it too.

Never figured out what this route fail is either.

She performs for tips. In an empty park in a neighborhood with no residents yet.

Dexter goes to school for something. Yep. Works fine.

Then the full moon rises over Avalon 2.0…

The proprietress of Performance Park tries to out-zombie a zombie.

Another devours poor Dexter’s garden. I really wish I had the pea shooter now. It was awesome. Advanced order rewards ought to SOMEDAY become purchasable.

And again.

And again.

At this point I realize there’s actually NO COUNTER in this kitchen.

Fixed.

But Echo still can’t cook.

Turns out I have finally run afoul of the SocialJig2Person glitch. I’ve read a ton about these. If a sim resets in the middle of an interaction, it can leave behind an invisible object that prevents sims from routing through the middle of the conversation.

You can see the invisible object in Buy Mode. You can delete it with MoveObjects On. You can also delete them en masse using MasterController, but you’d have to look up the instructions how to do that.

Finally Echo can cook.

I should have known better.

Fortunately, Echo is Brave.

She also has bad eyesight. Poor Dexter and Rosalie.

The horse doesn’t like something about the back yard.

Or maybe it just likes to complain.

Echo heads to watch a game at the stadium, which is now a lovely tournament tent from Dragon Valley.

It is pretty entertaining to send the camera into the tent. That dark box in the middle is the actual rabbithole.

For some reason I didn’t get a shot of it, but I’m now using La Guardia police/military rabbithole from Dragon Valley. I renamed it Tintagel Keep. It is just perfect for this world. I also dropped the charming consignment store Pirate Pete’s Treasure Box in favor of putting a regular consignment register in the alchemy consignment store. Now the ground floor of that building is regular consignment, and the top floor is Alchemical consignment. You’ll see more of that lot coming up. I really like it.

And here we are at the Sample Memorial cemetery. I realized there was no real reason to have a separate cemetery for the Sample spares.

However, it seems to have a problem. The fish are swimming in midair in deep pit. I’m pretty sure there’s supposed to be water….

I don’t have the picture, but I did test to see if you could fish for these guys. No, you can’t.

This turned out to be difficult to fix. This lovely cemetery lot is a download, and I modified it slightly to move the entrance from the long side to the short side. That involved adjusting the pond one square to the left. The lot is at a high elevation in Avalon, and it absolutely would not recognize the pond water level. I eventually saved the modified lot to the library, dropped it in Isla Paradiso near sea level, tweaked the pond, and resaved it. The water remained when I put it back, so long as I didn’t edit the pond again.

Oh, actually, there is one lady. Perhaps she was generated so that Echo would have a volunteer for this trick.

Does this trick EVER WORK??

Fortunately, I’m about to shut down this game, so none of this EVER HAPPENED.

There are a few more things that I tested but didn’t include in this post that you’ll see when I play.

I am really in love with this second draft of Avalon. I’m glad I didn’t talk myself into moving to a different world. At the very least, I’m getting to pull in cool rabbitholes from those worlds.

Oh, hey, I forgot I had a Simantics post queued up. So, for your reading pleasure while I try to turn the 900 (!) pictures from Gen 6 into some posts….

Now that the pond on the Sample estate has frozen over, everyone’s favorite way to get to the arboretum is to slither on the ice.

Dylan stumbles with style.

Ghost Connor has an even better approach.

Go swimming.

I guess when you’re dead, you can’t freeze to death.

Here’s a random winter shot of Hunter and Eliana’s little cottage. Note the large garden and barn in the back.

Reminder that Sky is a ghost.

Wait, a gravestone with arms!

Oh, hi Veronica. What are you doing out during the day?

More inappropriate heart-farts, this time between a paparazzi and Xia as she and Sky are IN THE PROCESS of initiating sarcophagus woohoo.

Said woohoo was extra-intimate.

Fortunately, it doesn’t look painful for Sky.

Perhaps this was also because she’s a ghost? Or it could just be game routing.

And now for the Avalon gossip column:

We have a new simself! Welcome Sam Pistachio of the Dysfunkshinul Legacy! Sam immediately became a professional author. That’s all of our dreams isn’t it? She has gone into non-fiction, and her first book is the critically-acclaimed Baguette: Food or Weapon.

Charles’s immaculately conceived Chinese love child, Charlotte Stemple, married Miyuki Mai-Yo (widow of Jeanna Crumplebottom-Yo, widow of Shanni Sample Crumplebottom; the chain of sugar mommas and girl toys continues…) Miyuki and Jeanna had no kids, but she and Charlotte have been at it like rabbits. Two kids as fast as they can be conceived: girl Monica and a baby boy whose name I didn’t record. That’s a nice pair of gene-sets, so have at it girls.

Blackberry Marmalade and Alexandria Berg Marmalade got married! For the third time, I think. They don’t get divorced, mind you. Just married. Maybe they love weddings so much they can’t stand to get married just once.

Partying aristocracy Garry and Arya Bookabet Crumplebottom finally bowed to pressure and had a son Jasper. (This has nothing to do with me wanting the Crumplebottoms to be hereditary nobility, but neither Jeanette nor Garry bred on their own.) This fellow is the sole heir of the Crumplebottom fortune.

Tomas Sample-Royale and the now-very-elderly Joanne Bookabet have a creepy mutual-stalking relationship that consumes a disturbing percentage of my StoryProgression notifications.

Alice Bookabet and Ignacio Butterfield-Callender (adopted son of Tam and Martin Luther Butterfield-Callender) got married! They are rooming with Emma and Farin Voss-Lorien and are Avalon’s crazy cat people. Get a load of that household shot:

Horsewoman Dragonwife Bard Wu has taken up racing on her noble steed Buffy.

It hasn’t gone well. I get a lot of these:

TTFN!

Out with the old and in with the new…. Forest’s limo gets into a traffic snarl with the school bus as he moves out.

It really looks like it’s night here, and obviously it’s getting close to school time. Not sure what’s up with that. It might be that things are really overcast.

Sean Flynn thinks that Forest’s new living plans are going to be fun too.

Actually, Forest summoned him for a booty call, and I COULD NOT GET HIM TO LEAVE. Not even when Forest went up and asked him to leave. I think I finally reset him.

Sky fails to audition for a gig because the Proprietor is indisposed.

The sim-under-the-ground bug is with us forever, now, I guess, since there are no more game patches. Yay.

And guess who showed up while Sawyer was doing his homework at the hot springs?

She proceeded to have a picnic. Alone. In the snow.

And then catch some rays. At night. In the snow.

Leah’s sense of timing is all her own.

———-

Avalon gossip:

Ceridwen Bookabet sadly kicked the bucket. As soon as she was in the ground, Franco took up with Holly Yo, Shanni’s younger daughter with Jeanna, a woman easily young enough to be his daughter. But it doesn’t last, and he proposes instead to Xia’s mother Jorani Wu. I do hope that her hubby Zane is dead.

Charlotte Stemple was rooming with Ada’s son Tomas Sample-Royale. She decided to move out because they could not “see eye-to-eye on certain  lifestyle choices.” Hmmmm….

Charlotte immediately takes up with Jeanna (Crumplebottom) Yo’s widow, Miyuki Mai-Yo, thus continuing the unbroken chain of old ladies snagging new young girls. In almost no time at all, Miyuki had popped the question, and the two lovebirds were engaged.

Elderly playgirl Jeannette Crumplebottom seems to have spent herself into some nasty debt problems. Considering the size of her trust fund, that’s pretty sad.

Enigma Sample passed on. Poor Hunter. 🙁

“Leah Marmalade has taken over the department where Plum Marmalade works and his now her boss!” That sounds awkward.

Ignacio Butterfield-Callender and Alice Bookabet got married! They’re now Butterfield-Bookabet. I like that name :).

After Forest summons Flynn in the last post, they have wardrobe woohoo in Forest’s room.

When they get out, Sean is in his sleepwear, and Forest is in his alltogether.

Then he shows off his fangs to Sean. This is a much more entertaining interaction than the one about confessing to being a vampire.

He also shows off his blank barbie crotch.

Sean, however, is not impressed by either.

Then he heads off to do something important with his Stride of Pride on.

Meanwhile, Forest decides to take his bare butt downstairs for a snack. Looks like ghost Layla is cooking.

This has been yours in wrongness.

I don’t really have any Avalon gossip I’m afraid, since I kept my notes with the user interface screenshots that got lost in the system crash. I’m keeping fresh notes from current gameplay, so when the story catches up a bit more, I’ll post those.

Not my usual style, but I just had to share….

Just a pic of Jian Wu so that you can appreciate Dragonwife’s catch.

Charles’s only appearance in true ghost form to date was while Sky and Leah were fighting.

Leah is a bit too enthusiastic with Dylan.

Dylan really does seem to have been born with special powers.

Here Sky called the band over to rehearse, and everyone decided that the way to get to the house was to go around the side of the wall and route-fail in a flower bush. I have no idea why the game suddenly decided that the front of the lot was the side away from the road, but fortunately one of the patches added a way to specify, so I fixed it. Though, in retrospect, it was probably the patch that borked things up to begin with.

I also removed some of the flower bushes here so that sims COULD route through if they thought it was really important.

And here’s why I didn’t include Sky going into labor and returning from the hospital.

Here she is trying to satisfy a wish and raise her relationship with Ari enough that she might be able to help with Ari and Adam.

Whoops! I cut the timing a bit too close!

I have no idea why the hospital is so washed out. I have a lot of lighting in the front, but that’s not how I would expect it to reflect. There must be something strange about the textures on the rabbithole. Since everyone seems to have kids at night, I need to try to figure out how to fix this.

Xia looking out for Sky. Or possibly for either of their girlfriends.

Hard-nosed detective here stood between Sky and Xia for half of their conversation, making photography interesting. Guess he couldn’t stay away from the hot lesbian babes.

Leah exhibits questionable parenting.

Here’s Riddle, haunted by the floating eyes of Mystery. I’d intended this to be a closeup of Riddle. I didn’t even realize I was taking the picture from the inside of Mystery’s head until later. Then it really creeped me out!

Ghost baby!

Or maybe not.

Random shot of Emma Voss, recently married to simbin sim Veltig Lorien. They seem to be pretty happy.

Um, I’m not sure I want to know what Forest is discussing with Muscadine.

And last, but not least, Susie is Sky’s biggest fan.

Avalon Gossip Column:

Jian Wu asked Dragonwife Bard to marry him! She was a smart girl and said yes. Hubba hubba. I want those two to get to the babymakin’ so I can see their kids.

Brenna Ursine-Sample, the Sample who everyone just loves to hate, is stalking Jian.

Sebastian Hodgins gave birth to Lynn Sword’s baby girl, named Andria. They are not yet even engaged, but maybe at their age they don’t care. The day after, Sebastian aged up to an elder. His son with Becky Mentary, Cliffton, is a teenager.

Raen Mai and Mitchell Batchelor had a baby boy named, wait for it, Guiseppe. Raen immediately got knocked up again. These guys are going to have a big family, which is nice because they have awesome genes.

Elderly Faith Cagley found love for the first time after the death of her beloved fiance Willem Yo, who she never bothered to marry. That love was equally elderly Spock Leonard. But it didn’t last long because Spock dumped her.

Joanne Bookabet found true love with Hendrick James-Cagley — the ex-husband of Regina Crystal, ex-fiance of Echo Weaver, and widower of Bella Cagley. It was also short-lived because he died a few days after they committed to each other. Perhaps Joanne will set her sights on someone younger next time.

Alice Bookabet is dating Ignacio Butterfield-Callender, the adopted son of the late Tam and Martin Luther Butterfield-Callender.

Karina Ursine-Sample, Adjo’s youngest daughter, has taken up with Eliana’s Baerwyn’s sister Nicola.

Raquel Sword and Weston Mentary are an item.