Okay, now I want to slap Hamilton - and Daytona! Sandy fit into that family a lot better than the ones still living there want to admit!

Yeah, I think this garden party's going to be worth the wait. But I don't look forward to seeing Penny hurt, and I think it's inevitable. Everybody else will be reaping what they sow.

I think Sadie should go after Scot! She's a little low on nice points, but he's a little oversupplied with them, so it could balance out. I've seen that pairing work well, though I've also seen it crash and burn - a lot depends on playstyle. In any case, even with the pressuring, he deserves something better than Virgie's handing him right now. Their role models are so different, this'll completely blindside him. But it's good to get the reality checks out of the way early.

Zero to five in an afternoon, though? Dang. That's some strong business chops there! Maybe Virgie should be a Fortune sim! Of course some of that's bound to be down to Sadie's awesome register skills. And I expect Gavin was throwing a few stars there, even as dubious as he felt.

Oh, Mary! Did she get paid well, at least? That is a lot of work to get through in an afternoon. And you can bet she doesn't come home to find the house clean and dinner on the stove.

Hey, a hat trick! Junior, Hamilton, and Daytona, too! There certainly is a lot of 'not on his/her best behaviour' going on. Sandy hasn't admitted defeat yet for working her way back into that family, but we'll see if she was really able to summon the nerve to show her face at the garden party. Penny does have Rhett-lessons to fall back on to re-evaluate her position and her priorities so there is some wiggle room for her. Of course, she'd have to put them into effect and stop excusing bad behaviour in the balance against the good feelings she gets when they (and I'll say 'they') aren't in jerk mode.

I first read that as 'Sadie should go after Gavin' (which put a whole different spin on that paragraph for me) and was about to say, oh, she fully intends to, but Scot? Interesting. Mostly because while I don't think I've seen her swoon over anyone but Gavin, Scot does his fair share of heart-farting Sadie. In fact, instinctively I guess, she's the only girl around whom Virgie gets territorial about Scot. Virgie checked her, or called herself doing so, about Gavin, too, but Sadie is determined that she can't have them both!

Virgie may have been misbehaving on her break but I was quite proud of her when she whipped the post office into shape so quickly. I was beginning to think I'd never unlock the business career at this rate and might have to alter the rules to fit my altered rotations and then she did this! The post office, in particular, was the one I was considering selling or giving back to "the town" because I wasn't sure it would function as a viable business.

Mary was well compensated, there was even more work done than was yet shown because, well: Garden Party. But still, she's got to find a new role for herself in this town. But Junior and Lana, attending to their own house? I highly doubt it. They weren't even watching the babies.

It's no wonder Mary dreams of getting away! Being Mrs. Mann isn't like being on vacation anymore, not with the twins and The Lana Situation. It's sad that she's already given up on ever having anything more, and I hope she gets to a place where she can imagine getting what she actually wants again. Once she can imagine it, she can probably do it. Mary has a lot of reserves she doesn't feel entitled to draw on, on her own behalf; strength that can be used up in passive endurance or put to active use forging ahead. Letting other people eat her alive (and not in the good way) is just so unnecessary! When will she realize that she'd have partisans if she let them know she needed them? I think the prospect of having friends around may actually make the prospect of the garden party a little more dreadful to her - so many people to hide her reaction to seeing Val from.

I trust we'll get a better look at Rhett's musical debut later. A lot of the flaws which impede his living comfortably in a small town should work to his advantage as a performer.

The Mann rounds feel very far off when I'm still here futzing around with the Beeches but let's just say the honeymoon is over. Mary's got her husband and her babies (and his mother, lord help her; and Dixie is easily as much trouble as she is a help) but the reality isn't much like the dream. She's even still beholden to her own mama! Being sent off, like she had nothing better to do, to help Ms. Daytona out - not that she minded much. It was a lot of work but also something of a respite. Mary can't help realising that being Mrs. Mann is such a different experience for the others, the ones who married Rich and almost certainly for anyone who married Junior if he hadn't been disowned. And if he hadn't, how likely is it he'd have married her? Mary wonders. While Junior likes manning the store and he's cool with the babies and all, a lifetime of old habits don't break themselves. She's as much proof of that as he is.

Hamilton isn't the worst ally for Mary to have sought. She's become comfortable with him, they're friendly, but not that close. He's someone she could hide behind, or more like hide beside, with little chance that he'd realise what was amiss. (While his mama openly took possession of Valentine. Or the reverse...)

Not a lot of fuss was made about Rhett's debut and his audience turned out to be way too dude-infused for his liking, but now that he got Pop to agree (to letting him perform once a week or so, he's still bound to working for Daytona) Rhett isn't about to miss his moment. So there will be future scenes, just not of that night.

Circling back to Mary for a second, I will say that I "foresee" Mary tapping into some of her strength (I won't even say soonish because who knows when I'll get to it) although it may be in unexpected ways. Unexpected, certainly, to herself and...I can't say who else.

I can't think of anybody who wouldn't be surprised at a show of strength from Mary; maybe Valentine, who presumably wouldn't have ever been attracted to her if he hadn't sensed some of what she was hiding, but even he could be surprised at what she eventually does with it. I look forward to this a great deal, and hope it's Lana and Junior who get surprised, and that they profit from it.

You know if you do a little bit every day at the same time you get through the story faster...just thought I'd mention it...

Yes, Val has at least been on the other side of the odd flash of fury from Mary even if she reins it in right away, like when she went to tell him about Candy and instead of paying attention to the fact that she must've had something very important to say he starts in about how her husband doesn't deserve her. (When she married Junior largely because he wouldn't come up to scratch!) She needs to be able to sustain some of that and more often.

It's never occurred to me to really build sim time into my schedule; downtime usually leads to simming, provided there's enough of it because my game has traditionally taken embarrassingly long to load, 16GB of RAM in the new build go a long way to fixing that, but I still haven't actually played in what seems like an age. Months, at least. Putting the story together is an accessible way for me to play with smaller blocks of time at my disposal...but I'm not sure about actually pencilling it in. In any case, I like the marathon sessions and I got home early so I'm about to embark on another one now :-)

I think Val is often exasperating to his lovers on purpose. No friction, no spark! He's an odd mixture of good and bad for Mary.

A lot depends on how badly you want to tell the story. You've got an audience out here (and you'd do well to remind yourself that a large part of any audience is invisible), if you need to justify doing it to yourself; but even if all that results is the satisfaction of doing it, that's a legitimate use of time. Creativity is a core human attribute. Possibly, THE core human attribute. I don't know what other outlets you've got, or what else you have going on, but we have time for what we make time for, and we cheat ourselves of a lot of what makes life worth bothering with if we don't make time to create and to tell stories in whatever way works best for us.

I'm a little evangelical about this. Also, I want more story.

That is very true but Val may soon (re)discover that there's a limit to just how much tension he can tolerate. Depends on the lover.

Fiction isn't my thing but I've still got deadlines! Of course, that's not really the point and certainly I could squeeze more efficiency out of my days but, funnily enough, I actually think I over-prioritise the sims. There are some pretty prolific updaters in the community; I've been looking at my habitually slow-moving friends feed lately like: really, another one!? But, all told, I still think I update more frequently than most other simstories as involved or just plain long as my chapters turn out to be.

Faster would be great. The fact that I (obviously) already know what happened (and that the in-game story function is how I've played for so long) can lead to procrastination. I personally need a little something more than straight reportage for me to want to fiddle with story posts. So maybe my pace means I lose some of the audience, possibly others will take their place, maybe not, but I am still invested in telling it.

In any case, provided I don't start swapping pics again, in short order: more story!

Your life, so you know best. There's certainly plenty of things that can take priority over a sim story. Just remember that some of us don't know what happened and really want to find out!

It wouldn't surprise me to find Daytona pushing the limits of Val's tension-tolerance. And I wouldn't even classify Lana as a lover! I expect he likes friction best when he's the source of it.

And now I'll go sit on my hands and be patient.

The character limit war rages on but I've finally got to the other side of this particular battle so no further need for patience. Just sleep, for me. And I've just been reminded it's Memorial Day weekend so I may have to be patient myself to find out what you think!

I try to be somewhat circumspect about how much I reveal so you don't go guessing everything that's coming before I get around to writing it but I will say that that wouldn't surprise me either...

Enjoy your holiday!

Okay, I'm super behind in commenting but as always I love your updates. You always provide these glimpses into each character's motivation that makes it difficult not to be on their side!

Thank you for reading along, I'm always happy to know that they're entertaining! The decision-making is often flawed, to say the least, for these folks - and this chapter left Peni wanting to slap a few of them! - but they do make their decisions, sometimes with the perfect conviction of the heat of the moment. Whether they're as bold about standing by those choices when the consequences fall is altogether another matter :-)

Ooooooh Virgie what are you up too?! she is a tease and i dont see things ending up well if she continues like this! but i do like her new look.

Thanks, she finally found a look that she likes :-) Virgie's probably the last sim I'd have expected to end up re-meshing and re-texturing stuff for, with all the cc I hoard, but she's, uh, exploring her options. And Miss Virgie's a little too used to getting what she wants...

Helloo Daytona! That makeover really suits her. Besides the genetics, I think fooling around with different looks is one of my favourite parts of the game. The same features can make so very different people. Virgie really found her style too.

Lots of interesting things happening in this chapter. Being faithful doesn't seem to be very high on anyone's list though. My advice to Virgie would be that she is a bit young to decide yet. She _obviously_ needs to play the field a Little, preferably though without hurting anyone. As for Hamilton, hm... ?

As per usual i love your funny and detailed pictures, and your choice of cc to give just the right details.

Me too. The looks are so integral to characterisation, too, which helps me for differentiating familiar sims like the premades. The Newsons here, for instance, are quite different from other times I've played them and I was rather invested in their look overall and the minor changes signifying time lapses. Same for the next new family coming up - can't say that I've ever seen them quite like they are/will be here before. And while everyone in Widespot doesn't get a makeover for spring, the Beeches were an 'of course', and that includes Sandy. I'm pretty pleased with everybody but Daytona's is still my favourite!

Monogamy isn't really something the Widespot folks do well and I can promise more sexual tensions, shenanigans, jealousies, and revelations to come, that's for sure. It's spring and it's Widespot. Hm, the pics for the garden party have been assembled and ready practically since I posted the last part, maybe sometime in the next few days I can throw a couple of captions together before even I lose interest.

Thanks for commenting :-D