Strangetown, Here We Come.

As I mentioned yesterday, I've been playing ahead in Pleasantview (the version that exists in S,HWC) and doing some breeding. Here's a family that I've only showed off once before in the story, at their wedding. With Cassandra being a family sim, you can imagine that they have a few children by now. I wanted to show them off.

( I suppose it's a little spoilery, but nothing serious. )

In the end, I upgraded my account to paid again. With my scrapbook images being flagged for deletion by the middle of the month, can you really blame me? I'm not ready to let go of my story just yet. (Again, a permanent account would be swell right about now. *smacks forehead*)

To celebrate my continued ability to upload images, here's a little pic to amuse you:

I did some playing today, and got back to my roots with a visit to the Beaker family in Strangetown proper. It was pretty fun. I've enjoyed my wandering through Sim City, Bluewater Village, BellaDonna Cove, etc. (pretty much every hood out there, and even the two islands of Castaway Stories — it's been a long journey), but it's great to get back to Strangetown. All roads lead back to Strangetown, don't you know?

I aged up Vali, so now he's up to date with Mint and all the other Smith/Curious kids, since they'd be about the same age. Playing is always great for generating story ideas, so I might even get around to doing a little short on Vali (he has at least one drabble prompt in the request post that I can recall). He certainly has a lot of story in him.

As if consumed by the flames of her passion for unavailable men, Kaylynn always seems to die by fire in my game.

There was one exception. The first time I played Pleasantview, she was the main household I played with. I moved her in with Don, got her pregnant, then moved her to a trailer in the area of town where the Brokes live. She ended up having one illigitimate child by Don and one by Daniel, moved in her female CAS lover (who had a child by Mortimer Goth), and thus formed a rather big, unconventional, and happy family.

The second time I played Pleasantview, she died in Don's house, while still an NPC. Don left for work, not noticing the ramen noodles left in the microwave. Somehow, they managed to catch on fire, in the way that microwaves do in the universe of Sims 2. Kaylynn was cleaning the house, rushing into the kitchen to panic about the fire, and was consumed by the flames. Don was heartbroken. He was also haunted for years, with Kaylynn's ghost even reacting with jealousy to him woohooing other sims on the property. His alien daughter, sick of being terrified by Kaylynn, eventually rolled a want to bring her back to life. Her plan was to go to college and study for the paranormal career. This goal was never realised, as I restarted the hood before she had the chance.

In my current Pleasantview, the one which exists in the Strangetown, Here We Come universe, Kaylynn was once again lost to a fire.

( This time it was in the trailer park where the Brokes live. )

I'm so sick, you guys. It's definitely the flu, and maybe H1N1 (I had the vaccination shot a couple of days ago, bad lot of good it did me), but I have no way to know for sure, since they stopped testing for it. All I know is I feel terrible.

I have been able to sit in front of the computer, though, and play some sims. I've been picking away at some cc (and maybe I'll eventually post some catch ups) but mostly I've been playing. I played some families I'd never actually played before, including the Ramirezes.



Aren't they cute? They have such odd, yet beautiful looks. I think so, anyway. They have very feline features, don't you think? Especially the eyes. Lisa looks very much like a cat to me.

I thought some of you might like to see a cute alien child, so here's a little extras post. It seems like it's been ages since I posted an extra or an outtake, but I guess I just don't have as much time for it as I used to. This is more of a Veronaville extra than a Strangetown extra, but there you go. See if you can guess the mother/father. The name is a pretty big hint.

( See the cuteness. )

Updating all the images of the older chapters has been surprisingly fun. It's been ages since I've touched any of these chapters, even to check on my own story logic (yeah, I'm just a cowboy like that *struts*), and it's been nice to revisit them. I just reached chapter 10, and witnessed the first appearance of Jaxy and Zoe (Gunnar is there too, but he's so ignored *snicker* Oh, Gunnar, I'm sorry) and also the introduction of... *drum roll* Frances J.



I was pleased to see that most of the things I grew to love about him as I developed the character were present right from the start. I think I expanded on a number of things, but there he was... being his tentative, slightly dour self. I had forgotten that his reaction to meeting Tank had been to literally gasp at the sight of him! Then he thinks about singing god's praises on a mountain top, even though he does not actually believe in god. Yup, same ol' Frances J. aka Worthington aka Frank aka Franny aka Fran aka Francine aka Frances JULES.

He was always meant to have an important role in Tank's life, but that changed completely from my original intention. He also grew wings and flew away from me, demanding that I shine a spotlight on his life and flesh it out. I'm glad he did.

That was nearly two years ago. Can you believe it?

I've been working on some stuff for upcoming chapters and I decided to make a header for the story directory, using one of the more amusing images I captured. It refers to an upcoming (and fairly pivotal) scene, which I was working on tonight, but I also think it works pretty well as a summary shot for the entire story.

( What do you think? )

Also, the story directory is pretty well up to date now, aside from chapters twenty-five and twenty-six not having blurbs (note to self: you really should do that one of these days). An anon commenter asked me about updating the directory a while back, so I just wanted to draw attention to it again.

One of the things that bothers me most about having the story worked out far beyond what I've written, and also being pretty far from getting there (even if I picked up the pace considerably), is wanting to jump ahead to parts of the story that I'd like to do RIGHT NOW. One of these is when The Shifting Paradymes reform, in at least one sense of the word, and get themselves out there as a band. If you read my RR legacy entry, you got a little sneak preview of that, but I'm really wanting to write more about it now, because it'd be fun. For now, I'll have to be content with using them in projects.

Since I wanted some album artwork for a CD clutter cc project (yes, I'm still working on it, on and off), I took some photos of the band.

( I liked this one well enough to share, but it could still use some work. )

I've been working on the next update and I have another image that just dying to share. You really are better off not viewing it if you care about spoilers, but I just can't wait until then. It's an image of PT No. 9's team of four pollinators. I took the idea from the original Multi-PT replacement set and have decided that all PTs operate in a group of four that way, with one for each hair colour. PT No. 9 is the redhead and PT No. 7 (the Maxis default) has black hair, so I needed to come up with two others.

( Care to take a look? )