Build A City Challenge - Week Two: Stamen
Ecuscius Sta-No, that's not her! Get out of the way, Nanny!
Ecious Stamen (Originally Mr.Stamen by pixelcurious), pleasure/family sim, and the woman who adopted Adsila and Castor Ottomas. Genuinely loving to the twins, and more than willing to cut a deal with the planet's budding foster child care system to get situated well enough to focus on them while they're toddlers. Originally I had intended for her to found, maintain, and care for the planet's orphanage somehow.
You'll see how well that plan lasts pretty shortly.
Meeting the neighbors went fine - all are either married already or otherwise not interested in Miss Stamen.
They were shaping up to be pretty good friends though, and the visit went very pleasantly.
Ecious wasn't look for love - she had two active, rumbunctious toddlers she adored to keep an eye on. Who would have time for love considering these two adorable troblemakers?
My - and her - plans went right out the window when Rita Grunt arrived to visit an hour later.
The casual chemistry was immediate, obvious, and facepalm-inducing. Who the heck just waltzes in, uses the toilet while you're having a mild stress meltdown, and then proceeds to snuggle you straight out of it?
She even autonomously helped with toddlerpocalypse before macking on Ecious - and getting hit on in turn. Following Ecious's wishes, dating occured and I kept my hands off pretty much unless they both rolled a wish.
That ended up happening a lot.
And I do mean a lot. By the end of the woohoo, I took a gamble and had Ecious ask Rita to move in.
She did.
She even handled early hours toddlerpocalypse that night with grace and dignity - normally words I don't associate with Rita. She didn't even roll the typical Romance Sim fear of a diaper.
Rita loves helping with the toddlers, even teaching them basic skills such as talking and walking. I'm also going to note that any time Rita and Ecious weren't taking care of toddlers, they were all over each other. It wasn't until this shot that I remembered that these aren't Ecious's regular pink pajamas.
I feared, and soon found I was correct - Rita's lesbian hotness had been enough to get the not-quite-normal-simness of Ecious utterly knocked up. The ladies were knocking boots more often than any rational two-bolt pairing should, and I gave in and set Rita's family limit.
What happened next was a whirlwind of stress and adorableness as Rita doted on Ecious and the growing baby.
Constantly together, with Rita doing whatever was possible to make her lover's life easier - she even ended up taking up the brunt of the toddler care while Ecious tried to keep up on sleep.
By the time Ecious was really showing, Rita was head over heels in love, and Ecious had fallen for her lover days earlier. That evening was time for another event too.
Twin birthdays!
It was time for toddlerpocalypse to end, and to usher in a new age, a glorious age of TwinChaos!
. . crap.
Really, Rita did try her best, but there just wasn't time to deal with everybody's needs and take care of enough wants to get the twins out of the aspiration reds. I should feel bad, but honestly . . . this adds neighborhood variety. Let's take a look at their faces, as if you'll remember, Dean has very interesting features, while Samson much more pleasantly average.
Holy crap. Other than her cheekbones, Adsila is taking mostly after her other daddy - not Dean. However, there's still plenty of time for face explosion between now and her adulthood. Heck, turning adult may not flatter her too well. But for now she gets to be a cute (weird) kid.
Castor on the other hand got hit with the Dean Features Stick pretty heftily. Thank you SO much madame_ugly for widening my perspective with your gloriously ugly (and fantastically funny/adorable) sims. I can truely enjoy this kid as he is, rather than being a shallow boofhead about his looks.
As kids, these two are way more fun. Both twins are Cancers, high on nice and neatness and only slightly below average on everything else, but Castor also has a few more points in active as well. And they're both complete characters.
Adsila's much more in-your-face with her personality - and every time she cleans something, she bitches about it at me. I'm serious! It doesn't matter if it's something I told her to do, or something she does autonomously. I get grumping and faces like this. Which is hilarious.
All things considered though . . I'm really glad the kids tend to be neatnicks. Between Ecious's pregnancy and Rita's natural slobbiness, this place would get horrible quick if it weren't for them.
Castor's distinctly quieter than his sister despite their similiar personality spreads, and easy to please wants-wise. While his sister is in my face on her needs, he usually just wanders off and deals with them on his own. To the point where he's platinum almost constantly and still making good grades.
That the kids are more self-sufficient is a good thing for Ecious - having Rita's focused attention is pretty damned good for her. And considering the baby they have on the way . . . By this time I was more than a bit bemused. Their relationship is at 100/100, and neither has rolled the want to formalize their relationship.
Devoted (good thing considering how fast Ecious' needs tank), but neither wants to be engaged, let alone marry. No fears for it either - they may simply never do anything about it.
And all things considered, having a partner whose devoted, would do anything to help take care of you . . there's worse romantic situations to be in. Neither of them wants to marry? I can live with that.
And really, is it worth fussing over when there's BABIES to be had?
Well, one baby. A boy they named Graham, after King Graham of the King's Quest series. Woo, naming theme for this family name!
Graham's pretty average for a baby - doted on by his mothers, but so are his foster siblings now that Ecious isn't under the threat of keeling over due to her rough pregnancy.
Meanwhile the twins are spectating stray dog fights . .
. . bouncing on their bed and really annoying me . .
. . and insulting violins? But on the other hand, she's eating lunch with her foster moms while they're in their underwear.
By the end of the week, quite a bit's happened that I'm not sure I remember exactly when it happened. But I do know that Graham had his first birthday - and he's totally cute. I really hope he has Rita's nose, and it looks like it! He's a tiny Sagittarius, meaner than a mad dog on a skateboard, as slobby as one of his mommies, and stuffed full of points otherwise.
But being statted to be hell on wheels doesn't necessarily mean a sim will be, so let's wait and see.
Rita also opened up a clothing shop - they'll be selling homemade clothing, but I . . honestly don't expect this shop to make ends meet. It's awkward and the game isn't really set up for it to work well. I may end up hunting down shoe sculptures for them to sell as well.
At least I could get it looking super-nice. And hopefully when I send other families here, they can buy clothes properly. There's some age-up outfits that just simply don't suit who they're on.
Let's see . . twins being adorable . .
. . twins continuing to be adorable . .
. . family naptime . .
. . and risks. Just don't get each other knocked up at the same time.
Please?
-----
Tax paid - $454
No burglaries, no fires, no other incidents.
So, end of the week tally!
Tax total = $5,177
Households = 9
Community Lots (owned) = 12
Community Lots (free) = 3
Population total = 43
Fires = 1
Burglaries = 1
Deaths = 0
CAS Sims Earned = 15 total, 8 used
Trollspawn = 12
Sim Multiplier Results = 215
Okay, so that last one's mostly for me and making sure the Gravetenders don't breed out the neighborhood. When it's time for the torch to be passed down in that household, three of the kids will stay, but the rest will be added to the townie pool midway through their teenage years.
Now to go over my headmath and see if I've got this figured out correctly. Starting with four families got me a freebie community lot - the graveyard (and its tenders) from the get-go. The general store I counted as a starting necessity lot, and also a freebie. Since then they've gone up in households by a minimum of four, and I added a restaurant/hangout as the third freebie. Three free lots, no new one earned. No business district unlocked, or the college.
But I've unlocked a career! And I'm closer than I thought to quite a few others.
Criminal = pop reached over 100, opened 2 spots (reserved for someone whose LTW is it if I have one)
Hmm. I have some CAS sims again, but I don't know if I want to bop out another set quite so soon. On the other hand, my sims need to get a-breedin! I'll weigh out what sort of family I can come up with and then decide. See you all for Week 3!