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Quinndominion
quinndominion
05 February 2014 @ 01:04 am
Stats & Outtakes  
R1-1
Way to go, Dora. Work that epic failure.
She's lucky my game crashed before I saved. I might not like her half so much since I'm counting on her to live long enough and open up Education, no matter how much of Skye's special juice she's got to drink. (Neither she nor Lana are stuck in ambition-limiting elder tracks, I switched them out to the appropriate level and I expect great things from them, so incidentally Lana's 2 promotions didn't signal the end of the road for her by far.)

Now this post I actually had ready back in September! I had no idea it would take me so long to write up the round. Anyway:
I really am playing this BaCC style, I swear.
Here, have some statistics:

Residents: Beech (4), S. Beech (1), Hart (3), Land (6), Mann (2), Jr. Mann (3), Ottomas (7), Weiss (5)
Community Lots: The Makeout Spot, Forest Lake, Forest Lake Park/Camp (Daytona), Municipal Clearings (Daytona), The Dugout (Valentine), The Barleycorn Farm Shop* (Ottomas), Woodworks Furniture (Penny)
"Legally", Daytona's not supposed to keep ownership but she figures it makes more sense for profits to feed back into the town coffers and bolster yet more expansion.

*From lot description: "This lot represents the sort of farm shop you find on a random backroad, where some farmer's teenage kid is selling gorgeous produce out of a tin shack." And thus David Ottomas was given a 'job'. For some reason I always think of him as a fortune sim so that'll be his secondary, at some point, because I just can't shake that idea of him. Might make him and Dixie more compatible than their maybe-sorta-like-you-sometimes-so-let's-kiss one bolt but...well, you'll see ;-)

Sim Multiplier: 3 Population:93
Treasury: Um, Daytona's a creative bookkeeper but the season should've brought in $12500 in tax revenue. Sandy Beech was kicked out on the last day of the rotation so her household wasn't played and didn't need to contribute until the next round. The Junior Manns got the short end of Rich's ire, however, because they had been included in his payout but then had to pay their own way out of the nothing that he left them. Bright side, they're in a much lower tax bracket now.

No fires, no burglaries, no illnesses. Damn.
Furious sims: Hamilton, Daytona, Virginia, Sandy, Rhett, Rich, Junior, Lana...
Law career duly unlocked! Now just need someone qualified to learn how to mediate, and then sue, sue, sue!

Also Overachievers: 7 vs. Underachievers: 2
The smartypants are Rich Mann, Skye Weiss, Homer & Beulah Land and their son Scot, and Sandy & Virginia Beech.
The slackers are Candy Hart (no surprise there!) and Dixie Land, who is a maximum underachiever with full playful points and no active and being a fortune sim she might be in for a rough time of it.
There were a couple on the cusps but almost doesn't count. It may later have an influence, though, when I'm deciding on smartification.





R1-2
Dixie's handiwork.
These are a few of the truckers who pass through Widespot. And this is what she did to them.
(Notice the only woman in the bunch, Edie. Untouched.)
They constantly migrate over to the Lands', well able to appreciate a hot meal.
But in the process they've been Dixie'd. I think Harlan and Logan would agree Beulah and Mary's home-cooking was worth it.


R1-3
Junior.
There's nothing weird or wonky about this pic, I just had no place for it and it's just so...Junior. Before his life turned upside down.


R1-4
It's not showing so clearly but that was Daytona wanting to fire Rhett. (And hire Val & Skye. And have a grandchild.)
(Now, I love the fullness overlapping the hood deco trees gives to my forests but in the fall, ugh, this is just ridiculous.
Not only does that stuff not look like fallen leaves but it hovers. How much worse would it look without the grass!)

R1-5
Uh, no, Daytona. Just, no.

R1-6



R1-7
I have no idea what happened to Candy's baby. But I think he's been through enough.
Honestly, the preg morph was fine up until she got up from underneath Junior.
And it was fine as soon as I left the lot. So maybe he was trying to protest or send up an SOS about being born to these two.
"Grandpa" to the rescue?

R1-8
Also, pregnant + no shame at all = when Candy's gotta pee, she pees.
And anyways she's all covered by this grassy stuff, reeds or whatever, so what's your beef?


R1-9
Angel is evil. Sorry. Proof positive in case there were any lingering doubts.
Also a not subtle reinforcement of why I used the Angel Eyes Are Watching? pic for all the prologue posts.
It's relevant to each part of the story although its relevance shifts, especially by Part III, and I wondered f anybody but me would think it ever-so-subtly sinister having her up there 'watching'(?) while Mary miscarried.
Seeing now what she did to her own pregnant daughter it's not that fantastic a leap.


R1-10
Goldie really didn't like seeing Scot and Virgie together.

R1-11
She wasn't the only one. Sheesh, shy sims and pda, one would think there'd be more embarrassment than seething rage.
Jealous much, guys?

R1-12
Peter may not be father of the year...but he does his best.

Sometimes his best is even better than Samantha's.
R1-13
R1-14


R1-15
"Oh come now, Junior; my cooking's not that bad," Lana joked, her hostessing instincts taking over in a pinch to gloss over anything and everything 'untoward'.
(some text cut from the story)

R1-16
How Junior really got food poisoning, right before he got kicked out. So he was walking around sick for quite a while.
Too bad it's not contagious.

R1-17
R1-18
The Mary grin. <3


R1-19
Apparently Daytona decided to pick a fight with her eyebrows.
She lost.


R1-20
Why. the hell. is Dora Ottomas. so. PRETTY??
She's Dora Ottomas for Petey's sake ;-) but Leh's defaults almost undermine what she's doing in Widespot!
She may not win a beauty contest but I'd wager she'd give former Miss SimCity Mama Hicks a run for her money.
I had to age and ug- her up a bit with some eyebags and wrinkles. But then I couldn't resist the dimples.
David inherited them from his Gran.


R1-21
Also, freckles!
(Yeah, Delta's lumpy, she's a Land.)
But freckles!
Scot's got one of Trapping's freckly skintones so his should be easier to spot (or not) but it's probably near impossible
to notice Delta's, especially since the kidlets are hardly the focus of the drama so the story never warrants a close-up.

Here, have another. I actually think she's adorable.
R1-22

Woody, on the other hand, while heartbreakingly sweet...
R1-23
...is scary.
He was actually looking down at Sharla then, trying to put her at her ease (plus it was easier for him to approach a little kid than an equal like David).
Suffice it to say it didn't work. His lipless grinning set her off running like the wind.
Poor boy. Poor lonely, scary, scary boy.



And then we have little Sharla. Oh, Sharla.
She took home the favouritest sim award almost as soon as she showed up.
Just by doing THIS:
R1-24
R1-25
I know, I know, I really shouldn't be so impressed :-D
But, but I have Never seen a child sim do this!!
For any other sim I might not be so absurdly proud. But it was like I flopped that bunny hat on her head and Sharla came to LIFE!
I'm loving that I caught the moment. This one goes in the family album.


R1-26
This looks perfectly harmless now but during gameplay there was something about that look that made me friend-zone these two right away.
Not going to happen. I don't care if you weren't even thinking about it--Don't think about it. Okay? Okay.
Rich and Junior have already done the father-son share and share alike thing, with your daughter no less, Val.
Una's name was meant as a warning not an invitation. (Though, if Rhett had married her, the name One Heart does seem rather sweet...)


And just to prove Woody's really not scary at all.
R1-27
Since I doubt there are any such close-ups elsewhere, here you can see his eyes are kind of blue-rimmed and pinkish, to match his skin.
I think I'd have interpreted him completely differently if I'd left him green. But I wanted him and Penny to be basically sim-coloured but "off" or "wrong" somehow, enough to make some folks uncomfortable.




Round 2 coming soon-ish.
Happy Simming!

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[identity profile] katee412.livejournal.com on February 5th, 2014 09:32 am (UTC)
I'm loving this neighbourhood! You've brought these characters to life wonderfully :)
[identity profile] quinndominion.livejournal.com on February 8th, 2014 08:33 am (UTC)
Thanks Katee! I didn't know I would get so invested, even with Maxis hoods I tend to toss a few of my own sims in, but the Widespot bunch are so much fun all on their own.
[identity profile] peni griffin on February 5th, 2014 01:57 pm (UTC)
Angel, evil? Well, if you say so...If so, she certainly pulled the wool over Valentine's eyes. (Oh, you should've seen those two together! He followed her all over that house, when he wasn't holding court with visitors in the hot tub, giving her backrubs and kissing her up her arm. I hated to kill her off, but it was the only logical way to set up the necessary mess, with her whole family grief-addled and making bad decisions.) I'd assumed that she spooked Candy in an attempt to warn her about Rich. It is certainly possible to read Candy's bio as indicating that Angel married Valentine for mercenary reasons, though. And putting the touch of death onto Mary and Val's baby would be a cruelly effective way to separate them, because if she had it - well, Val is a sucker for children. Especially ones with his nose.

My favorite of those shots is Rich fingershooting Lana as he walks off after the divorce. "Hey, count your blessings. I could've had you killed, you know. See ya!"

People make way too much fuss about Ottomas ugly. I've always thought Dora was pretty once you got her out of that awful getup she ships in. That and the fact that Sharla has a difficult face as a teen, plus the tendency of the toddlers to be a bit hollow-eyed, gives them a much worse reputation than they deserve. I think Peter's a handsome guy, and Samantha's nothing a reasonable person would kick out of bed, either. But of course my taste is a bit nonstandard.

You wait till Delta hits teen. Homer's gonna be getting a shock every time he looks at her - she is the spit of her mama! Beulah's face, Homer's disposition, is a killer combo.

Those eyes on Woody are enough all by themselves to explain his social difficulties. They're far more disturbing than the solid black.

I look forward to the next round. Starting with Sandy, or the family she left behind?
[identity profile] quinndominion.livejournal.com on February 8th, 2014 08:52 am (UTC)
The evil Angel bit was a joke, mostly, she's actually a pretty peaceful ghost but when she gave me that face I had to use it. And she did make the same face after scaring Candy, as though she enjoyed it a bit too much; the fact that Candy was the only one who seemed aware of her presence when she was floating around did have me wondering about the nature of their bond but I don't have any definite thoughts. A smitten Valentine I can absolutely believe, it's part of how I interpret him so I'm glad it plays that way, too. That wedding band he's still sporting pretty much determined for me that he wasn't going to marry Mary. I was quite upset when he showed up on a comm lot without it because I wouldn't be able to get it back if it was gone but he was wearing it again when I got to his lot, so maybe he was experimenting with slowly letting her go.

Rich.

I've gotten Dora to clean up fairly well before but she was practically glowing this time around. (Gender-swapped Dorian, though...yikes!) If I had left her with just the hair/outfit change I'm not sure Skye would be able to hold on to her, Val would've swooped in before he realised what he was losing. They're already a little too interested in one another but no flirty wants yet and no actual heart-farting. I'm not going to friend-zone them, though, so Skye's going to have to be quick about fixing her family-sim attention on him. And that reminds me, there was one pic I forgot.

With the shorter rounds I get to spend more time with them at different stages so it'll be a little while before Delta ages up. But while shorter rounds=less pics=much better for me I'm not sure how it will affect my story. Guess we'll see.

I played the main family first (keeping consistency with Daytona as founder and all) but there's crossover as always and I think it might be better to post Sandy's update first, I'm not sure yet.
[identity profile] peni griffin on February 8th, 2014 02:35 pm (UTC)
My own playstyle is single-day rotations and I think developing the hood that way is a contributing factor to how deeply intertwined the stories are. It allows for a lot of dramatic cross-development and slows down the pacing so that every family in the hood has a chance to react to, upstage, or throw a monkey wrench into new developments. So you may find that the shorter rounds make the story easier to tell; but you may also find it harder to resolve, or that you get impatient and lose investment. I expect you may have to experiment until you find your comfort level.

So are you going to show us the forgotten pic, or just tease us about it?
[identity profile] quinndominion.livejournal.com on February 8th, 2014 07:05 pm (UTC)
I think it's partly a learning curve. I don't generally play rotations at all, instead the stories that emerge tend to dictate where I go and how long I stay. (Age-syncing doesn't matter, they're mostly in stasis until I'm ready to let them move on. My original Pleasantview townies from, what, '05, are still in college and it's not like the hood has left them behind, the rest of the hood is actually kept more or less in sync with them--any infant siblings they left behind are only toddlers now, that sort of thing.) So sometimes I'm kinda caught off guard that it's time to move on already. But the 2-day apiece freeplay that became the 3-part prologue gave me plenty to work with so I think it'll come down to remembering to maximise the shorter timespan.

The forgotten pic was already tossed in, I put it second to last because I still wanted to end with Woody. It's not particularly worth another scroll through but it does round out my sense of what happened, what could've happened, and what was not ever going to possibly be able to happen when my back was turned.

And, plans derailed so I'm going to get to play some today! Soonish might come faster than I expected.
[identity profile] peni griffin on February 8th, 2014 10:08 pm (UTC)
Scrolled back a bit and oh, yeah, I see it. Friendzoning is an excellent idea - Penny/Val has happened in certain play-throughs. They are capable of excellent chemistry. And (tell me if this sort of thing is TMI and I'll stop passing it on; it's hard for me to know when to shut up) during development he did roll the want to fall in love with Penny when they first made best friends. They happened to be sitting in the Hart hot tub at the time. But although the specifics of who got whom pregnant had not entirely solidified at that point, it was already clear to me that Mary would be the one coming round with sympathy and casseroles and being the nearest wife-shaped person for him to grab onto, and I liked the Penny/Mary dynamic too much to disrupt it by getting them involved with the same guy.

I would like to go publicly on record with the fact that the father/son sharing was not my idea. At all. Candy insisted on it, and it did put a multiplier on the mess so after my initial "ick, no!" reaction I let her do it. It took awhile for me to get my sympathy for her back, though. And it makes me glad my mother doesn't play this game, so need never know.

Yay for faster-than-expected updates. I'll be stalking.
[identity profile] quinndominion.livejournal.com on February 9th, 2014 07:07 pm (UTC)
Nothing wrong with a little 'inside information'. I've noticed, since you mentioned Val was originally conceived as a 'dirty old man', that mine is intent on defying that right down to his want panel, only formulating wants for 'age-appropriate' women. I've interpreted that as him feeling a little chastened (and not only by the near-miss with Mary, but also not wanting to be on a level with his kids, competing, as it were--there might be a thrill 'winning' a woman he and his son were both after [a woman not Penny] but he'd be a little ashamed of himself...afterward.) But while there's not going to be a whole lotta May-December shenanigans for Val this 'December', he might change his tune come 'May'.

I like the Penny/Mary dynamic, too. Even though they haven't spent all that much time together in my game, never even crossing paths at the Hart house, it's solid to me. The Penny/Sandy friendship less so; I've been writing around it because among the everyone that Penny's bf with I saw Sandy listed, but I didn't know what it would look like or if it should survive the blow.

There's so many ways to go with the messiness of the Candy/Rich/Junior trio--was it a crazy one-off with Rich that they both agreed to forget and then she showed up, enmeshed in his life, when she got involved with Junior?; was she a commodity gifted from father to son? It's interesting that I also put the 'blame' squarely on Candy, interpreting her as being the only one aware of the double-dipping, before the fall-out, and being completely indifferent to the ick-factor. A man is a Mann is a man...

(All this rambling...probably because my play time was interrupted. But I did get a chance to start sorting pics for the story.)
[identity profile] peni griffin on February 10th, 2014 03:27 am (UTC)
I know what Candy's conscious motivation was in my current play-through, and of course that'll be different for everybody. There's no letting her off the hook for it, not in a town that small - and Angel was the only friend Lana made outside her own family, which makes this even ickier.

It's hard for me personally to avoid the conclusion, since I did see Angel and Val together, that her unconscious motivation was that she was not willing for her first time to be with a ham-handed virgin. She lived with her father's relationship to her mother and she knows romance is a skill. Rich's treatment of Lana was comparable to her father's treatment of her mother. The only other seduceable man in the hood (it's easy to assume that she wrote Homer and Skye off without a second thought) was Hamilton, who couldn't even fend off Rhett.

I've said several times that if I had Rhett's bio to write today it would just say "Mommy issues." But you've got to figure being Valentine Hart's daughter comes with a full slate of Daddy issues, too. With the bar set that high, you're going to be slumming whatever you do.
[identity profile] quinndominion.livejournal.com on February 10th, 2014 09:10 pm (UTC)
I took some liberties with the backstory, further complicating that father/daughter relationship, and making particular use of the fact that having created them to be base-game compatible means that the first woohoo memory in the list is not a "first woohoo" memory. Whether that honour still went to Rich, I'm not telling ;-) (story-wise, it absolutely did not) but it definitely didn't go to Junior, for basically the same reasons you give.

So, "Daddy issues" and "Mommy issues"...yeah, I can see that.

I liked Rhett's bio but that works, too. Not having a 'personal relationship' with Angel, however, I've focused on Candy/Val (and Candy/Rhett re:'Pop'). But don't want to get too far ahead of myself, they can always change the script.
[identity profile] simlili.livejournal.com on February 7th, 2014 01:17 pm (UTC)
As a fellow BaCC player (though not by the same rules), I eagerly read those stats, it DOES make sense to recap them in a separate post!

As a fellow Widespot player, how could I not enjoy those outtakes?

Also, what Peni said: we want to know what happened to Sandy!
[identity profile] quinndominion.livejournal.com on February 8th, 2014 10:17 am (UTC)
The challenge takes a backseat to the story here, but it's there, organising how I play.

The outtakes were fun, I have a lot of pics. I still can't look at Daytona's eyebrow-less face without laughing.

I'm glad you liked it well enough to read through all this backlog! Sandy, and Candy, have been off-screen for a minute but they'll be popping back soon; they've got babies to pop out after all.