Behind the Scenes Picspam BRRL Part 2
(This is continued on from my talking too much in the first part of this picspam in case you missed that)
Finishing off University or This would be a good time for a montage full of Studying and romantic stuff
Apart from the large amounts of being couple that she and David were involved in at the end of University, Tara did successfully complete her LTW, I was extremely pleased. (And while she was doing this I actually got David all the skills I knew he would need for his LTW.) The next LTW she rolled up was to top Natural Sciences. Which she got as well and the fact that she managed to get pregnant while in the natural science career track and get paid an absolute bundle for not going to work for two days, makes Tara at least 70% responsible for the fact that they were able to move out of their apartement so quickly.
Admittedly a lot of it is owed the the "Eureka!" FT perk, I gotta say, I LOVE that thing. Creativity was a breeze to Max because the entire household was obsessed with the Musical instruments in the house. All of them were constantly rolling little "Play violin" "Play Piano" wants. And then they'd build up music and dance enthusiasm and roll the wants even more frequently.
And then came the time for graduating and leaving the house. Let's start with David, who not only managed to glitch his face, but also grow up into one of the BV outfits with the backpack. Very appropriate for an itinerant family like the Dorans.
Tara I was extremely proud of for successfully growing up in purple.
And Justin...you know what I'm not even going to comment on that outfit choice.
Money Money Money, must be funny, in a Rich Man's world or The Apartement Phase
Somehow David managed to rent an apartement without actually having a face, a fairly impressive feat.
But at least once he had somewhere I could put a mirror his face was easily fixed, as was his and Tara's outfits and they immediately got settled into their home. They wasted no time in getting down to important things.
Make up your own caption for this, I'm not touching it...it's just too easy.
They did get pregnant after several tries about 24hours after moving into the apartement, so Tara really was pregnant before they got married. She was actually a very good pregnant sim, totally unjaded by the one time she nearly killed herself.
And they made a very cute couple with her pregnant, I can't lie. And actually I have to admit I kept them in fairly cramped conditions longer than they needed to be for plotty reasons. These two were extremely good at earning money fast.
I mean, very good. I thought I was going to have to jump them between apartements for a bit, so I totally double taked when I saw that they'd doubled their funds in a few seconds thanks to Tara topping Natural Sciences. And then she got paid 20,000 just for getting pregnant with Alice and pretty much sealed the deal.
David got into the criminal career track very fast, and topped it after one day. I kept him in it for a while in spite of the inconvenience of the hours for birthdays and the ridiculousness of the outfit because a) it was good money and b) his new LTW was to top the dance career and just...no.
And I actually love this shot of him going to work with Tara in his mind. "Everything I do, I do it for you" and all that jazz :)
But every single penny in the Doran's bank account was earned by them and I'm actually very proud of them for that. So I rewarded them with their house, which is one of the ones that comes with BC (and which I actually used in the Road Trip chapter as well). I was pretty glad to move them out of the cramped apartement to be honest, especially as it had several odd lighting issues with stuff like the toddler mats but I definitely wanted to have them live somewhere with a bit more space. Though I definitely liked the crazy smustling that sometimes started up in the apartement.
They celebrated the new house by attempting to meld Maddie and Alice into one super child. No wonder they were so close growing up.
Three Little Maids from School are We or Growing up Doran Style
I think it was De who said this over in the RR thread on Boolprop, but it's very odd seeing kids grow up in a chpater or two, when a lot of Legacies are now in the habit of taking at least several chapters per age bracket. Heck I know for my part this time last year Generation 5 of the Bohemians were toddlers or kids or there abouts. One year later they're still teenagers. So growing up these three so quickly definitely was...different.
Speaking of which, if anyone didn't pick up on this, my naming scheme for the generation was for children's books titular characters.
Madeleine for the Ludwig Bemelmans books "In an old house in Paris all covered in vines...the smallest one was Madeleine."
Alice for "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll and...
Eloise for the Kay Thompson books, my favourite of which was always "Eloise at Christmas time" and which actually still sits in my library, on the shelf reserved for my children's books.
Eloise incidentally was almost Mathilda (From the Roal Dahl Book) or Angeline (Ballerina, the mouse who danced). But I decided on Eloise because that way none of the girls would have names starting with the same letter.
On my boys list I had things like Peter (Pan, Rabbit) and Tom (Sawyer). But fate decided that this would be the first all girl generation of Dorans.
I'm not entirely sure why this naming scheme came into my head. I justified it because it fit in quite well with the whole fairy tale theme of the witches, and children's literature (because come on, I couldn't call kids Gretle, Red Riding Hood and Prince Charming). But honestly I think it comes from the fact that until my contract expired mid january I was working in the children's section of a book store, so it's all sort of in my brain now...
Mostly I just sped over a lot of stuff like toddler training and the girls being cute. Because of the speed I was going at Eloise probably did get less attention than her two older sisters, but that's sort of in keeping with things in the story. Alice and Maddie are as close in age as the game will allow. Maddie was born, dropped into her crib, and her parents immediately turned around and conceived Alice, literally within one Sim hour of Maddie's birth.
Eloise just is a bit younger, and the gap between her and Alice a bit bigger. She was constantly around wanting to get in on whatever the two older girls were getting up to but never old enough to really be a part of it, though Maddie often took older sister pity on the little nice one and played with her.
There were little things, like Maddie being obsessed with the baby xylophone that definitely contributed to their characterisation.
Or the fact that Maddie never outgrew this.
Or her rolling up the want to Torment Vee's brothers. This one is Freddie, who is actually a male clone of Virginia, who randomized Bi and rolled Romance and was one of the main people Maddie would grow up to cheat on Virginia with.
They actually discussed the potential of their hooking up very early it would seem.
Although some things just never change.
Speaking of Vee, she and Maddie really were the best of friends from childhood on. Virginia, is Ginger and Heath Butler's eldest child and only daughter.
She cemented her identity instantly by having a single nicepoint, too much outgoing and playful and growing up in a princess dress. And when she teened she ended up rolling Fortune and randomizing gay on ACR. Which was just...too perfect for words.
She followed Maddie off the bus on one of her first days of school. They spent the afternoon attempting to kill each other with the baseball.
Maddie and Virginia actually made a very sweet couple in game, they actually ended up going steady only because Maddie rolled the want to. But Maddie is Romance sim with a numbered LTW, the was no way she was going to be reliable on the fidelity side of things.
For the boys...well Vee was the eldest of a whole pack of brothers and Maddie was bolty with all of the ones who were enclined towards girls. As you can see with her relationship panel. First one there is Freddie Butler, followed by another brother, William Butler, then Virginia Butler, then Marcus Baldwin, Alice's boyfriend, and Rosanna Quinn, Aileen and Matt's middle daughter, who also randomized gay.
Maddie: Hmmmm...nope, not that one. He may be one of Vee's brother's and a a pleasure sim but he's definitely Gay.
She does have some standards.
However I think Vee felt more competitive with Maddie other female conquests than she did with her brothers.
Townie girl leaves a bouquet, Vee leaves a DJ booth. She seems to adhere to the Fortune sim school of "No you definitely CAN buy love"
All in all, the whole situation made for some awkward moments.
But ultimately it did make sense for it to be over her cheating on her with a girl that made Vee break up with Maddie. It was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak.
The straw in question is Ami Patel. When you start Belladonna Cove the Patel family is expecting their first child, I played them long enough to get that baby born way back when and then totally forgot about it. That baby was Ami. I then went and cheated her to teenagehood when the girls were teens. She randomized gay and rolled knowledge on me. So I jumped on her to be Maddie's "Last straw flirt".
Vee had caught Maddie cheating more than once before but thanks to ACR's jealousy coding she didn't freak out about it. However this was the first time she caught her cheating since they'd officially started going steady in game. The result was boingy heats and of course...
Slapping.
And since Maddie lacks nice points she did some slapping back.
Being mean pissed off made Vee more than happy to pick a fight with Maddie.
However she was apparently dedicated enough to her that it wasn't enough to make her reject romantic interactions.
So I cheated her relationship waaaay down so she would systematically reject her advances.
I don't know if anyone has ever seen the teenage break up interaction I never had until last week. Behold:
"Listen this is awkward..."
"Just you and me, it's not going to work out..."
"But-"
"And that's my final say on the matter."
"You know what, whatever!"
Of course Maddie might have been perfectly able to stand up for herself in the argument but she did intermittenly take breaks to cry. I feld a bit bad at this point, not gonna lie.
And then there's Alice. Alice who is just so much a pea in the pod with Maddie that they also had some serious crossover in their Romantic interests. Thank goodness Alice was not bi as well. I swear there was no boy Maddie had bolts for that Alice did not also, if they'd had bolts for the same girl I would've probably had a heart attack trying to keep them from too much...sharing.
Maddie: Oh god, I don't need to see that.
Alice is, I swear, exactly how I wrote her. I knew who she was from the moment I caught her competing at basketball with a college student at Maddie's birthday...and winning.
And after that she never let up. I put one of these in her room for decorative purposes as much as anything. Every single morning she got out of bed and immediately got onto the excercize bike.
And then ALL ON FREE WILL she'd go and check out the effect in the mirror. Thus was born Alice, the ultra competitive tomboy, with a few insecurities and a thing for boys who are well...exactly the same as her.
Marcus, is a toddler in game when Belladonna Cove begins, and beyond just playing a bit with the Baldwins to make them over and get Isabel pregnant with a third baby I hadn't really given them much thought. Until I needed a boyfriend for Alice. For some reason I decided on Marcus, and got him all teened up for her.
They actually made an extremely sweet couple. Marcus is...pleasure or Pop, I've forgotten which and he was totally dedicated to Alice in game. And she never made a move to cheat on him either. In fact she rejected Freddie for a few romantic interactions after she and Marcus started going Steady.
Didn't mean her father trusted him enough to not arbitrarily show up on their dates to keep an eye on her though.
I love this shot, Alice realizes her wallet is missing at exactly the same moment that Marcus decides to assess her hotness.
I really did like them as a couple, but the break up was necessary for plot reasons, and also because it made a point about Alice's gifts and how they are going to work against her when she dates guys who are as hyper competitive as she is.
And then little Eloise had her far more innocent and utimately headed for catastrophe relationship with John, which I will get to in a second.
Eloise really is very sweet in game. She's the one with all the nice points after all.
When I got my turn, fully knowing the reputation for nice Dorans, I jokingly said that I had a good track record or producing freakishly mean sims in otherwise nice families, and Maddie absolutely proved me right. But I wasn't expecting to only get one nice Doran. So Eloise was extra super sweet in game to make up for the 4 nice points her sisters have put together.
This being said, nice has never necessarily equalled push over in my book. I have plenty of nice sims in the Legacy proper, and I would never consider any of them doormats. But with Eloise when the niceness is combined with the fact that she prerolled popularity and had all those outgoing points, and was the baby of the family, she really does really come across as very eager to please, and be included, and slightly more fragile than her sisters.
Her being so hesistant to just jump in with John like her sisters did with their respective boyfriends is symptomatic of all this. But in the end, I had to give them some sort of closure. And speaking of the Green Family...
The Couple I have always Shipped or Samantha and Gabriel Green
I don't expect any of you to remember this, don't worry, but a while ago I did a sim scenes using the Cordial sisters, Gabriel Green, and Chasity Gere. They sprang to mind because there is a picture that comes with BC of Chastity and Gabriel Dancing, and his blurb says something about her being the one who could always make him get up and dance.
ANYWAY, just to put out there that Samantha and Gabriel are one of those premade pairings that I see as needing to happen no matter what, insanity or no insanity and I was certain this incarnation of BC would be no exception. Especially since I knew I needed them to have plot-tastic children for me. That sim scenes also marks the beginning of my obsession with the roof on that house.
It's an AWESOME roof, I love the backdrop for it the way the neighbourhood is set up, I love that it comes with lawn chairs and a radio and what not up there when you start the game, I'm totally in love with that whole house to be honest, but the roof especially. The improbable Urban garden I set up on the roof is 100% based on one my Aunt has in Downtown Toronto. She lives on one of the busiest intersections of the city, right across from a subway stop, and has this huge beautiful lush garden up on her rooftop patio. It's like stepping into a different world, and that is what I wanted to do with the roof at the Greens' when I remoddled if after the wedding.
I didn't give Samanth and Gabriel a whole lot of time in the chapters proper to develop their relationship, but hey leaving it off at the end of one chapter with a first date and then starting the next chapter with a wedding is a totally valid way to wave a wand and be like "And now an indeterminate but totally valid stretch of time has passed" right?
But they've actually been in love since Samantha was supposedly insane. In fact Samantha has been in love with two seperate men since I started doing prep work. Gabriel she fell in love with when she turned up as part of the welcome wagon to the house I moved the Newson kids into.
(Which was also where Gabriel proved he was great with kids and I went "Pediatrics!")
The other was Connor Weir, Geoff Rutherford's straight laced room mate, who she classic danced with all on her own while on a community lot. I just couldn't get on board with this pairing to be honest with you, even if you consider that Gabriel technically already has Chastity (which is another pairing I can't support). Thankfully she managed to not fall in love with the third man who she is set up to be friends with when the hood starts, which is Armand. I wouldn't habitually hook up Kimberly and Armand, but it worked in the context of the story, but I really wouldn't put him with Samantha in any case, though I know that is a pairing some people have done in their own games. For me Samantha and Gabriel belong together, it's jsut that simple.
And as far as Connor is concerned, while I don't normally get on board with slash pairings, I could totally see him and Geoff becoming a couple tbh with you :)
Let the record show that Samantha, sane or not, is a terrible terrible pregant sim. Possibly the worst I've ever played. Unlike everyone else in the supporting characters cast, all of whom had their pregnancies sped up, Samantha got to have hers played through properly. Mostly because I needed to stage that scene with her on the roof being pregnant and I'm not good at pausing pregnancies when they're being sped through.
She tried to kill herself a number of times, both through Starvation and Fire. And yes these fires are seperate occasions, and even though one of them might be after she gave birth you have to admit it's pretty...impressive.
But finally, against all odds she delivered a healthy baby John, and then I sped through her pregnancy with Melusine because I don't like to push my luck. Ok, now we come to a quick note on naming. I always knew that Samantha's first daughter would be called Melusine. Properly speaking Melusine is a Europeean witch, fairy creature thing... But I didn't actually know that until I googled it, because I grew up with one of my favourite Belgian comics being called Melusine about a witch, so that's who she is for me, a red head in a green dress. However I was somewhat ill prepared for a boy. There are no male characters with appropriate names in the Melusine comics. So when John was born I found myself mentally listing francophone comics, and couldn't come up with anything appropriate. Ducobu, Tintin, and Spirou were all out because...come on, and then there was Cedric, which unfortunately came too close to a Harry Potter name for my liking. So John was named...John, after made of awesome vlogbrother and YA author John Green, because I could not resist.
If she'd had two girls...well one of them would like to think that I could've resisted naming her Tabitha like Samantha's daughter on Bewitched, but that might be underestimating how much I enjoy arbitrary cultural references.
Anyway, I knew even before starting the RR that Samantha and Gabriel's kids would ultimately be the lure to get the Doran kids somewhere they needed to be for the final confrontation of doom. I just wasn't sure exactly how until I actually saw who the kids ended up being, on both sides. As it was things ended up paning out pretty perfectly in terms of how John and Eloise fit together. I'll admit I made him Pop so they'd have at least some boltage, but the 3 boltyness, and the amount of tiptoeing cutesyly around each other they did was all them.
And Melusine worked out great to play the part of the abductee. I knew I had to use the fact that Sam and Kimberly were identical to trick someone at some point ("Are you my Mummy?"...I resisted it in the actual update! I had to put it here!) but I wasn't sure exactly how until I came up with the babysitting thing. After that it all fell into place very naturally in my mind.
(Finished in part 3
)
Finishing off University or This would be a good time for a montage full of Studying and romantic stuff
Apart from the large amounts of being couple that she and David were involved in at the end of University, Tara did successfully complete her LTW, I was extremely pleased. (And while she was doing this I actually got David all the skills I knew he would need for his LTW.) The next LTW she rolled up was to top Natural Sciences. Which she got as well and the fact that she managed to get pregnant while in the natural science career track and get paid an absolute bundle for not going to work for two days, makes Tara at least 70% responsible for the fact that they were able to move out of their apartement so quickly.
Admittedly a lot of it is owed the the "Eureka!" FT perk, I gotta say, I LOVE that thing. Creativity was a breeze to Max because the entire household was obsessed with the Musical instruments in the house. All of them were constantly rolling little "Play violin" "Play Piano" wants. And then they'd build up music and dance enthusiasm and roll the wants even more frequently.
And then came the time for graduating and leaving the house. Let's start with David, who not only managed to glitch his face, but also grow up into one of the BV outfits with the backpack. Very appropriate for an itinerant family like the Dorans.
Tara I was extremely proud of for successfully growing up in purple.
And Justin...you know what I'm not even going to comment on that outfit choice.
Money Money Money, must be funny, in a Rich Man's world or The Apartement Phase
Somehow David managed to rent an apartement without actually having a face, a fairly impressive feat.
But at least once he had somewhere I could put a mirror his face was easily fixed, as was his and Tara's outfits and they immediately got settled into their home. They wasted no time in getting down to important things.
Make up your own caption for this, I'm not touching it...it's just too easy.
They did get pregnant after several tries about 24hours after moving into the apartement, so Tara really was pregnant before they got married. She was actually a very good pregnant sim, totally unjaded by the one time she nearly killed herself.
And they made a very cute couple with her pregnant, I can't lie. And actually I have to admit I kept them in fairly cramped conditions longer than they needed to be for plotty reasons. These two were extremely good at earning money fast.
I mean, very good. I thought I was going to have to jump them between apartements for a bit, so I totally double taked when I saw that they'd doubled their funds in a few seconds thanks to Tara topping Natural Sciences. And then she got paid 20,000 just for getting pregnant with Alice and pretty much sealed the deal.
David got into the criminal career track very fast, and topped it after one day. I kept him in it for a while in spite of the inconvenience of the hours for birthdays and the ridiculousness of the outfit because a) it was good money and b) his new LTW was to top the dance career and just...no.
And I actually love this shot of him going to work with Tara in his mind. "Everything I do, I do it for you" and all that jazz :)
But every single penny in the Doran's bank account was earned by them and I'm actually very proud of them for that. So I rewarded them with their house, which is one of the ones that comes with BC (and which I actually used in the Road Trip chapter as well). I was pretty glad to move them out of the cramped apartement to be honest, especially as it had several odd lighting issues with stuff like the toddler mats but I definitely wanted to have them live somewhere with a bit more space. Though I definitely liked the crazy smustling that sometimes started up in the apartement.
They celebrated the new house by attempting to meld Maddie and Alice into one super child. No wonder they were so close growing up.
Three Little Maids from School are We or Growing up Doran Style
I think it was De who said this over in the RR thread on Boolprop, but it's very odd seeing kids grow up in a chpater or two, when a lot of Legacies are now in the habit of taking at least several chapters per age bracket. Heck I know for my part this time last year Generation 5 of the Bohemians were toddlers or kids or there abouts. One year later they're still teenagers. So growing up these three so quickly definitely was...different.
Speaking of which, if anyone didn't pick up on this, my naming scheme for the generation was for children's books titular characters.
Madeleine for the Ludwig Bemelmans books "In an old house in Paris all covered in vines...the smallest one was Madeleine."
Alice for "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll and...
Eloise for the Kay Thompson books, my favourite of which was always "Eloise at Christmas time" and which actually still sits in my library, on the shelf reserved for my children's books.
Eloise incidentally was almost Mathilda (From the Roal Dahl Book) or Angeline (Ballerina, the mouse who danced). But I decided on Eloise because that way none of the girls would have names starting with the same letter.
On my boys list I had things like Peter (Pan, Rabbit) and Tom (Sawyer). But fate decided that this would be the first all girl generation of Dorans.
I'm not entirely sure why this naming scheme came into my head. I justified it because it fit in quite well with the whole fairy tale theme of the witches, and children's literature (because come on, I couldn't call kids Gretle, Red Riding Hood and Prince Charming). But honestly I think it comes from the fact that until my contract expired mid january I was working in the children's section of a book store, so it's all sort of in my brain now...
Mostly I just sped over a lot of stuff like toddler training and the girls being cute. Because of the speed I was going at Eloise probably did get less attention than her two older sisters, but that's sort of in keeping with things in the story. Alice and Maddie are as close in age as the game will allow. Maddie was born, dropped into her crib, and her parents immediately turned around and conceived Alice, literally within one Sim hour of Maddie's birth.
Eloise just is a bit younger, and the gap between her and Alice a bit bigger. She was constantly around wanting to get in on whatever the two older girls were getting up to but never old enough to really be a part of it, though Maddie often took older sister pity on the little nice one and played with her.
There were little things, like Maddie being obsessed with the baby xylophone that definitely contributed to their characterisation.
Or the fact that Maddie never outgrew this.
Or her rolling up the want to Torment Vee's brothers. This one is Freddie, who is actually a male clone of Virginia, who randomized Bi and rolled Romance and was one of the main people Maddie would grow up to cheat on Virginia with.
They actually discussed the potential of their hooking up very early it would seem.
Although some things just never change.
Speaking of Vee, she and Maddie really were the best of friends from childhood on. Virginia, is Ginger and Heath Butler's eldest child and only daughter.
She cemented her identity instantly by having a single nicepoint, too much outgoing and playful and growing up in a princess dress. And when she teened she ended up rolling Fortune and randomizing gay on ACR. Which was just...too perfect for words.
She followed Maddie off the bus on one of her first days of school. They spent the afternoon attempting to kill each other with the baseball.
Maddie and Virginia actually made a very sweet couple in game, they actually ended up going steady only because Maddie rolled the want to. But Maddie is Romance sim with a numbered LTW, the was no way she was going to be reliable on the fidelity side of things.
For the boys...well Vee was the eldest of a whole pack of brothers and Maddie was bolty with all of the ones who were enclined towards girls. As you can see with her relationship panel. First one there is Freddie Butler, followed by another brother, William Butler, then Virginia Butler, then Marcus Baldwin, Alice's boyfriend, and Rosanna Quinn, Aileen and Matt's middle daughter, who also randomized gay.
Maddie: Hmmmm...nope, not that one. He may be one of Vee's brother's and a a pleasure sim but he's definitely Gay.
She does have some standards.
However I think Vee felt more competitive with Maddie other female conquests than she did with her brothers.
Townie girl leaves a bouquet, Vee leaves a DJ booth. She seems to adhere to the Fortune sim school of "No you definitely CAN buy love"
All in all, the whole situation made for some awkward moments.
But ultimately it did make sense for it to be over her cheating on her with a girl that made Vee break up with Maddie. It was the straw that broke the camel's back so to speak.
The straw in question is Ami Patel. When you start Belladonna Cove the Patel family is expecting their first child, I played them long enough to get that baby born way back when and then totally forgot about it. That baby was Ami. I then went and cheated her to teenagehood when the girls were teens. She randomized gay and rolled knowledge on me. So I jumped on her to be Maddie's "Last straw flirt".
Vee had caught Maddie cheating more than once before but thanks to ACR's jealousy coding she didn't freak out about it. However this was the first time she caught her cheating since they'd officially started going steady in game. The result was boingy heats and of course...
Slapping.
And since Maddie lacks nice points she did some slapping back.
Being mean pissed off made Vee more than happy to pick a fight with Maddie.
However she was apparently dedicated enough to her that it wasn't enough to make her reject romantic interactions.
So I cheated her relationship waaaay down so she would systematically reject her advances.
I don't know if anyone has ever seen the teenage break up interaction I never had until last week. Behold:
"Listen this is awkward..."
"Just you and me, it's not going to work out..."
"But-"
"And that's my final say on the matter."
"You know what, whatever!"
Of course Maddie might have been perfectly able to stand up for herself in the argument but she did intermittenly take breaks to cry. I feld a bit bad at this point, not gonna lie.
And then there's Alice. Alice who is just so much a pea in the pod with Maddie that they also had some serious crossover in their Romantic interests. Thank goodness Alice was not bi as well. I swear there was no boy Maddie had bolts for that Alice did not also, if they'd had bolts for the same girl I would've probably had a heart attack trying to keep them from too much...sharing.
Maddie: Oh god, I don't need to see that.
Alice is, I swear, exactly how I wrote her. I knew who she was from the moment I caught her competing at basketball with a college student at Maddie's birthday...and winning.
And after that she never let up. I put one of these in her room for decorative purposes as much as anything. Every single morning she got out of bed and immediately got onto the excercize bike.
And then ALL ON FREE WILL she'd go and check out the effect in the mirror. Thus was born Alice, the ultra competitive tomboy, with a few insecurities and a thing for boys who are well...exactly the same as her.
Marcus, is a toddler in game when Belladonna Cove begins, and beyond just playing a bit with the Baldwins to make them over and get Isabel pregnant with a third baby I hadn't really given them much thought. Until I needed a boyfriend for Alice. For some reason I decided on Marcus, and got him all teened up for her.
They actually made an extremely sweet couple. Marcus is...pleasure or Pop, I've forgotten which and he was totally dedicated to Alice in game. And she never made a move to cheat on him either. In fact she rejected Freddie for a few romantic interactions after she and Marcus started going Steady.
Didn't mean her father trusted him enough to not arbitrarily show up on their dates to keep an eye on her though.
I love this shot, Alice realizes her wallet is missing at exactly the same moment that Marcus decides to assess her hotness.
I really did like them as a couple, but the break up was necessary for plot reasons, and also because it made a point about Alice's gifts and how they are going to work against her when she dates guys who are as hyper competitive as she is.
And then little Eloise had her far more innocent and utimately headed for catastrophe relationship with John, which I will get to in a second.
Eloise really is very sweet in game. She's the one with all the nice points after all.
When I got my turn, fully knowing the reputation for nice Dorans, I jokingly said that I had a good track record or producing freakishly mean sims in otherwise nice families, and Maddie absolutely proved me right. But I wasn't expecting to only get one nice Doran. So Eloise was extra super sweet in game to make up for the 4 nice points her sisters have put together.
This being said, nice has never necessarily equalled push over in my book. I have plenty of nice sims in the Legacy proper, and I would never consider any of them doormats. But with Eloise when the niceness is combined with the fact that she prerolled popularity and had all those outgoing points, and was the baby of the family, she really does really come across as very eager to please, and be included, and slightly more fragile than her sisters.
Her being so hesistant to just jump in with John like her sisters did with their respective boyfriends is symptomatic of all this. But in the end, I had to give them some sort of closure. And speaking of the Green Family...
The Couple I have always Shipped or Samantha and Gabriel Green
I don't expect any of you to remember this, don't worry, but a while ago I did a sim scenes using the Cordial sisters, Gabriel Green, and Chasity Gere. They sprang to mind because there is a picture that comes with BC of Chastity and Gabriel Dancing, and his blurb says something about her being the one who could always make him get up and dance.
ANYWAY, just to put out there that Samantha and Gabriel are one of those premade pairings that I see as needing to happen no matter what, insanity or no insanity and I was certain this incarnation of BC would be no exception. Especially since I knew I needed them to have plot-tastic children for me. That sim scenes also marks the beginning of my obsession with the roof on that house.
It's an AWESOME roof, I love the backdrop for it the way the neighbourhood is set up, I love that it comes with lawn chairs and a radio and what not up there when you start the game, I'm totally in love with that whole house to be honest, but the roof especially. The improbable Urban garden I set up on the roof is 100% based on one my Aunt has in Downtown Toronto. She lives on one of the busiest intersections of the city, right across from a subway stop, and has this huge beautiful lush garden up on her rooftop patio. It's like stepping into a different world, and that is what I wanted to do with the roof at the Greens' when I remoddled if after the wedding.
I didn't give Samanth and Gabriel a whole lot of time in the chapters proper to develop their relationship, but hey leaving it off at the end of one chapter with a first date and then starting the next chapter with a wedding is a totally valid way to wave a wand and be like "And now an indeterminate but totally valid stretch of time has passed" right?
But they've actually been in love since Samantha was supposedly insane. In fact Samantha has been in love with two seperate men since I started doing prep work. Gabriel she fell in love with when she turned up as part of the welcome wagon to the house I moved the Newson kids into.
(Which was also where Gabriel proved he was great with kids and I went "Pediatrics!")
The other was Connor Weir, Geoff Rutherford's straight laced room mate, who she classic danced with all on her own while on a community lot. I just couldn't get on board with this pairing to be honest with you, even if you consider that Gabriel technically already has Chastity (which is another pairing I can't support). Thankfully she managed to not fall in love with the third man who she is set up to be friends with when the hood starts, which is Armand. I wouldn't habitually hook up Kimberly and Armand, but it worked in the context of the story, but I really wouldn't put him with Samantha in any case, though I know that is a pairing some people have done in their own games. For me Samantha and Gabriel belong together, it's jsut that simple.
And as far as Connor is concerned, while I don't normally get on board with slash pairings, I could totally see him and Geoff becoming a couple tbh with you :)
Let the record show that Samantha, sane or not, is a terrible terrible pregant sim. Possibly the worst I've ever played. Unlike everyone else in the supporting characters cast, all of whom had their pregnancies sped up, Samantha got to have hers played through properly. Mostly because I needed to stage that scene with her on the roof being pregnant and I'm not good at pausing pregnancies when they're being sped through.
She tried to kill herself a number of times, both through Starvation and Fire. And yes these fires are seperate occasions, and even though one of them might be after she gave birth you have to admit it's pretty...impressive.
But finally, against all odds she delivered a healthy baby John, and then I sped through her pregnancy with Melusine because I don't like to push my luck. Ok, now we come to a quick note on naming. I always knew that Samantha's first daughter would be called Melusine. Properly speaking Melusine is a Europeean witch, fairy creature thing... But I didn't actually know that until I googled it, because I grew up with one of my favourite Belgian comics being called Melusine about a witch, so that's who she is for me, a red head in a green dress. However I was somewhat ill prepared for a boy. There are no male characters with appropriate names in the Melusine comics. So when John was born I found myself mentally listing francophone comics, and couldn't come up with anything appropriate. Ducobu, Tintin, and Spirou were all out because...come on, and then there was Cedric, which unfortunately came too close to a Harry Potter name for my liking. So John was named...John, after made of awesome vlogbrother and YA author John Green, because I could not resist.
If she'd had two girls...well one of them would like to think that I could've resisted naming her Tabitha like Samantha's daughter on Bewitched, but that might be underestimating how much I enjoy arbitrary cultural references.
Anyway, I knew even before starting the RR that Samantha and Gabriel's kids would ultimately be the lure to get the Doran kids somewhere they needed to be for the final confrontation of doom. I just wasn't sure exactly how until I actually saw who the kids ended up being, on both sides. As it was things ended up paning out pretty perfectly in terms of how John and Eloise fit together. I'll admit I made him Pop so they'd have at least some boltage, but the 3 boltyness, and the amount of tiptoeing cutesyly around each other they did was all them.
And Melusine worked out great to play the part of the abductee. I knew I had to use the fact that Sam and Kimberly were identical to trick someone at some point ("Are you my Mummy?"...I resisted it in the actual update! I had to put it here!) but I wasn't sure exactly how until I came up with the babysitting thing. After that it all fell into place very naturally in my mind.
(Finished in part 3
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