Alternate life: Pets

I'm due for an update on the story blog, but then Pets came out. I could not resist.

As I always do for a new EP, I made a new family from my story characters. This one stars Paula and Alex.


Aw, look at them out for their first ride together.

The animations for the horses are gorgeous. I took a couple of videos that I mean to put up somewhere (probably on Tumblr). The animations are just so awesome and smooth and realistic.

The first ride went okay. Both sims got a skill point in riding their first time out, so things were a little less awkward by the time they got home.

Well almost.


Oops. Rico was in a bad mood, so he tossed Alex. Yay, that's one for their memories.

Rico is supposed to be Alex's horse. Don't they look good together?


But at some point, things went all to hell and everyone ended up deciding who they were going to bond with. (Isn't that always the way?)



Beauty started running around the house, bringing up her racing skill, so Alex has started training her as a racing horse. She actually wants to race, and had a wish to join a beginner's racing competition. Who am I to say no to that?

She broke out into the lead on her first race and managed to stay there and bring home their first win.


They celebrated that night with a hug.

Rico also raced (actually, he entered a competition before Beauty), but he came in third. Still respectable, but he's taken to jumping. And Alex, being this is improbable sims world is doing both, racing and jumping. He's self employed as a horseman, so these shows get them money which they need. (Although I'm cheating up a storm for needs and stuff, I am not giving them money unless they need to take out a loan, which they'd have to pay back, plus interest.)

I also made sim versions of our cats.


They look pretty close, but Trouble, the gray cat, has his stripes backward. My trouble has dark fur and light stripes. Plus a white chin. I'm going to have to fix that soon.

This shot above had my boyfriend and I laughing. The animations looked exactly like the way our cats play. Even had one cat on the ground, swinging a paw as the other prepared to pounce. Such amazing animations!


Another shot of Trouble rolling around in the bathroom. (All that's missing is someone's unmentionables. My cat is a perv.)


Yep, I went there, lol. Alex and Danger.


Good kitty. (Perverted subtext? I don't think I know what you mean.)


Alex, of course, is very much in love with Paula. Try to keep these two apart. (Okay, it's not that hard, since after Alex's long day, he usually smells and is tired.)


I meant Beauty for Paula.

But she hasn't been riding as much as Alex has. She stays at home writing. (It was what she wanted to do on the first day along with ride.) I did make her make a little garden, so she could start growing treats for the animals and making fresh food for the family.

Also, I love this shot. The new world is beautiful!

After a while of keeping the horses locked up, I let them out so they could run around and be free. They stay near the house. The problem is that they get hungry.


Instead of going back into her little pasture and eating her hay, she chose to eat Paula's tomatoes. Bad Beauty!


Plant gone! Helpfully, a tool tip tells you, when you hover the mouse over the plant, who ate your plant. Later on, the other tomato plant got eaten by Rico.



I am in love with Appaloosa Plains! I think I'm going to have to move over the other alternate life families and have them join Paula and Alex here. Wild horses now roam all over the place, plus you're likely to run across dear. Have not see a racoon yet, but I'm waiting!

The Village's First Fire Fighter

To those who know Alex, this is appropriate, right? How cute is he?

Thanks to Laura, I've been in a mood to build something. So I revisited my village. There are things that I don't like about it, plus I happen to now have some really neat hacks by Ani_ at MTS that I want to start using.

Now that we can actually put down lots and do some minor editing in game, I've been tearing up lots, and replacing some of the buildings I put in as place holders. So one of the first new buildings I put in was the fire station that came with Ambitions.


When I first popped in on Alex, things weren't going too well. Apparently while I was playing someone else, Alex got robbed. When I found him standing around in the park, he was not very happy. Stuff of his got stolen, and he was mad at some woman named Malinda Maroof who is apparently one of the homeless NPCs that wander around, because I don't know her.

The man clearly needed a change of pace. So he quit his job.


And flirted with the girl who sells food in the park. Apparently he's the town cassanova. (No seriously, it's a plug in that comes with Twallan's Story progression.)

He reported in for a half day of work as a fire fighter.


And he spent that half day working out because he has no athletic skill. Who knew? Some sims I cheated and gave skill points to. Not him though. Somehow he was missed completely. Poor guy.

So he jogged home.


The woman in the truck is another one of the town firefighters.



But in the park we found Malina Maroof that he was so mad at. She just looks sneaky, doesn't she? Didn't bother stopping to talk to her, but it's interesting to see her around town.

I didn't get pics of it, but Alex lives in a shack by himself with a single bed. It's a small house that didn't even have a bathroom. I added an outhouse in the back.


Alex lives completely alone, very much in the woods. Nearest to him is another run down house that's full of the local prostitutes. So I guess though he's lonely, he's not really alone. Though they're not the ones we want for him, right?

Doesn't he just seem lonely?



So for right now, Ruin saps pretty much all of my extra energy. Well, you know the energy I choose to give to it. It's not like I am always working on it. So I'm just exploring the village and the game and all my mods. As I'm playing, I'm taking notes of what is going on around town, just to test out the story progression.

So right now, using Speechless' method, each day is a month, age wise. With things on high free will, a lot of stuff happens! But I like that. I think part of my problem with TS2 became I slowed down too much. It is fun to play the same sims and develop their character, watch them grow. But that's why I write. To develop characters that I can play with and watch grow, who have secrets to impart to me when the time is right.

So then I figure I play sims to see stuff move forward. I like change, and the game still makes me laugh. Especially some of these pop ups. I'm not good at organizing, so I think I'm going to be a little all over the place because I don't have any set method right now. I'm just hopping around when I see someone I want to catch up on or when I get some particularly juicy notice about someone.

This play session actually started out with someone else.


On the 17th play day of my village, Paula and her mother moved into a more fitting home. I also found out that Paula hadn't been doing her homework, so she had to stay up very late to finish.

She had a few things on her mind. She wants to write a science fiction novel. They don't have a computer at the moment, so she has to do that at the library right now. She also wants to learn to paint.

And lastly, she wants to be friends with somebody. Right now she's enrolled in art school. (This is part of Twallan's Career Mod which allows for some interesting custom careers.) I don't think there are a lot of other kids in her school. So she's probably lonely right now. It's just her and her mother.

Oh, and Henri. But she rarely gets to see him. He is a great adventurer after all.



A couple other interesting notes: Kyrene got married. She became Kyrene Black, but the town bike (Audrey, who also happens to be one of the town prostitutes) seemed to get in the middle of that quick union. They were only married for a couple of months, and they divorced last night. Kyrene had been living with Henri (nothing funny, just staying there while she was getting her feet on the ground in town), and her husband moved in with them.

Well, last night, after divorcing her husband, she moved out and moved in with Jimmy and Aaron! Jimmy had been a romantic interest of hers before she up and got married. This Kyrene is very flighty apparently. And she's now left Henri with a strange house guest.



Last but not least:


I really am not quite sure what services he was offering, but it can't be good. I'm making a note to check on him and Henri next time I pop in.

Another sim!

I have come to believe that TS3 sims can either be really bland or very interesting if you play with their features right.

Maybe it's just me though. Maybe I'm only interested in the characters I create because they're interesting to me. When I nail the visuals for a character in my head, I know it and I can't help coming back to look at them the same way I do after I lose myself in a piece of writing and then can't believe it came from me.


So I made another sim two nights ago. Two more actually, but the other one is lacking something, and I'm not sure what at this moment.

This one came out perfectly. I've run her through test shots, even started playing with her last night, and got a little too involved. Before I knew it, I was actually playing Sims 3. I just can't believe it.

More World Adventures

They started out the morning early. Henri was nice enough to make french toast. While in China.

"Seriously? French toast? Isn't that, like, a slap in the faces of the Chinese? And you're using chop sticks? Seriously?"

He's used to ignoring her by now having to take a lot of test shots with her already. Besides, at least she isn't talking about the red sparkles anymore. Though she still gets a moodlet from him every time she glances at him. WHich is gross, she's 16 and he's close to 50 now.

So he thought he'd take her into one of the ruins. (As something of a reward for NOT mentioning the stupid sparkles.) She's not exactly the bravest. Every sound made her jump.

Though she did get a hang of it after a while. Even stuck her hand in some of the holes in the walls to help him look for secret switches.

She won't be doing that again for a while.


It seemed she needed some toughening up. And Henri sim is the perfect one to do it.

"Uh, like this? Maybe this would work better if I had some proper gym clothes on. I might feel, like, fiercer or something."

It took some time. A lot of yelling on his part. Finally, she was worthy of the white belt.

It seems that when given the white belt, you're also taught exactly how to pose and look awesome with it.

"Did you get the picture with the camera? I wanna put that up on my wall. You didn't? What were you doing?"


Practicing. I told you, he's rather used to ignoring her by now.


If he wasn't sparkling, this would be a fantastic shot!

Fun trivia (so I think): the draw distance on my game is always set to short/minimum because I can't build my world yet. I don't want you to see that Michael and Edith actually live on a hill looking over a "village" that's supposed to be miles away, or that the Southlands is actually just one street in the middle of green rolling hills.

Anyway, I mention that because of the mist in the background of that last shot.