A lot going on here, I'm about a thousand characters under LJ's hard limit but apparently that's too close for comfort. I could publish, as is, but whenever I'm this close I can't edit, not even to take words away, so any typos and that missing word I spotted just are what they are.

Not much in the way of resolution! More like drifting, interlocking montages of what happened with Candy. And I'm no builder (though some of the 'stages' are heavily remodelled) so I wanted to be sure and cobble together a credit list for all the places that Rich took her. The Flamingo will almost certainly make more appearances once the rest of the Widespot folks have access to subhoods, too, and possibly the Foundlings Home, which is Leefish's Simton Town Office at MTS (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=453748) but whether the others will fit with an organic development of the town, I don't know yet. I was originally determined that the casino be the Gomorrah, also found at MTS (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=506916), but whenever I thought I finally, definitely had the master meshes the arches and windows kept flashing. That's how I ended up at TSR and the mobster-ish vibe of Bugsy's Las Vegas Flamingo lot (http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims2-lots-business-home/title/bugsys-las-vegas-flamingo/id/731272/) clinched it. There was the Boutique Prada (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=220237) and Oceanside Shopping Gallery (http://www.thesimsresource.com/downloads/details/category/sims2-lots-community-Shops/title/oceanside-shopping-gallery--no-cc/id/1084082/), where they shopped and ate and swanned off without paying. And the more austere half of the Time Warp Boutiqe (http://modthesims.info/download.php?t=503211) at MTS is where they got married. I think that's it!

Also this:
(http://s1284.photobucket.com/user/Quinndom/media/Outtakes/BabyfaceMalone_zpse33430c2.jpg.html)
He got edited out but he's the croupier that randomly spawned from my miscellaneous template replacements and I kind of love him. Whatever naming mod I've got in gave him a perfectly serviceable name but I call him Babyface Malone. When he's not scowling you'd never suspect that he's a cutthroat S.O.B.!

Edited 2014-06-13 04:53 pm (UTC)

Holey cheese. I'm not any less scared. And I don't think Valentine is, either. But Candy's more scared than any of us, and not just for her. It occurred to me when she first went with him, that she was afraid of what would happen if she kicked up a fuss and Pop came storming in with no idea what kind of fight he was about to get into; and now I'm sure of it. She's lying to Rich to protect herself; she's lying to her family to protect them. "Goldie was never coming here, no freaking way, okay -" Candy doesn't care about too many people, but Goldie surely tops the list!

Trying to go back for the toddler girl surprised me. I wonder when and where and with who we'll see her again - not many "desperate yet unsuccessful" would-be parents around Widespot!

Much to process. See you in the morning, probably.

Turns out Candy's more complicated than she looks. Who knew? Could be just because her situation is. She's not an attentive mother, she's always handing the baby over as soon as he winds up in her arms (even back to his kidnapper) but she wouldn't be okay without a basic belief in his well-being. There is a lot working against her maternal instinct: personality, her position, plus the birth was kind of traumatic for her and she might even subconsciously blame him for her predicament. But what on earth would she have done with a needy toddler if she could've talked Rich into adopting a sister for Richie Rich? Candy just gets caught up in her moments. (I don't know how or who it could be but I had to leave some sort of leeway for a saga of Baby Boy and Girlie. Might be useful that, story-wise, she isn't in Widespot.) Also, key to a lot of what happened is the fact that Candy does have real feelings for Rich, even if the most predominant one is fear. It wasn't only the hair and clothes that kept her in character, it was his presence exerting an influence on her. Left on her own, it was like crashing back down to earth and she remembered what her situation really was.

Candy's definitely still got some convincing to do with her family and keeping Goldie at bay may not be as easy as she thinks. She actually did her very first walkby at the house right after Candy mentally banned her!

Well, of what sim is it not true that she's more complicated than she looks?

I don't like to judge people, but after a close re-read I think it's fair to say Candy's a danger freak. It's easy to look at her and Rich and think "Daddy issues," but Rich's complete lack of any genuine tenderness to put the brakes on his behavior makes him a kind of anti-Pop. You don't expect someone with as few active points as Candy to be an adrenaline junkie, but there she is. No wonder she keeps handing off the baby - just being in the same house as Rich, ready to dance on her tightrope at any moment, must wear her out.

Maybe that's the reason she wanted Girlie. Candy doesn't perform for women, so maybe she wanted somebody in the house she could relax around. But of course she wouldn't have been able to. And now she'll have to lie to Goldie, and what do you want to bet that doesn't come as easily as lying to Pop and Rhett? Goldie knows Candy like nobody else, realized she was missing almost the moment she was gone, and moreover is developing that photographer's eye for detail - no way she won't smell a rat. But in the end - what can any of them do, until and unless Candy chooses to get off the ride for good? Candy (and Lana) are the only ones with any clue about just how bad Rich can be; if she decides to get out, she'll have to be the one making the plan.

I expect the current plan is just to outlive him. But Rich is too mean to die natural. And if he did, where would she get her adrenaline fix? She'll have to learn to pace herself if she's going to outlast him.

I'm not surprised this installment took as long as it did and am a little impressed it didn't take longer. If you had to build a vacation hood, and find all the specific downloads, lots and props and things (I see what you did with the cardboard box there...), and actually send Candy and Rich on vacation, that's a lot more work all by itself than just playing and staging with the existing neighborhood. No wonder you were tired!

That, of course, depends entirely on the simmer :-)

For myself, aside from a handful of favourites, I never got attached to TS3 sims; the puddings were never quite “people” to me like my TS1 and TS2 pixels so their behaviour read more as mechanistic. And, just thinking out loud here, the game does lend itself to stock characterisation (and situation comedies). So Rich, for example, as “the villain”: is he bad just because he is—in the manner of 'he's got no nice points, what'd you expect!'—or is there a psychological history at work reinforcing the way he makes decisions? Ironically perhaps, it's partly Rich's sense of his own complexity that led him to pigeon-hole Candy as a "pure personality", simple and single-minded in pursuit of her inventive but far less intensive goals. While he certainly isn't responsible for creating all the nooks and crannies in her psyche, he's got no one to blame but himself for forcing them to surface.

I love the idea of Rich as the anti-Pop! That he definitely is. Candy's attraction to the danger that is Rich is one of the things I cut as an explicit reference but is, definitely, an impression I was hoping would still come across. Rich capitalises on that and on her sense of fun; she's more use to him as a playmate than as a prisoner but also getting her “in on it” (without actually becoming privy to anything that might really compromise him) is a way for him to maintain control.

I decided against the vacation hood because I wanted the casino more easily accessible later on so I just loaded up one of the terrains I'd earmarked for neighbouring town/business district and threw the lots in there. I also play ahead so the delay was down to real life interrupting. The most time consuming part is always organising the pictures. Even though this is one of the few that's actually confined to what happened when I played their lot, it was a very busy rotation.

It's also the one I had in mind when I mentioned how Rich is able to control his aggression (which ultimately makes him more dangerous) but Lana isn't. And it's why she might soon be in need of an ally, perhaps particularly one in the Hart household, like Sandy, because Valentine will not be pleased when he learns of this altercation with Candy. Kicking his daughter is bad enough, but kicking her when she's down! Lana can't see it that way since Candy stole her life but this will not go over well.

I didn't think hotels would work outside vacation neighborhoods? (If you would at some time like to use Bigg City, or some of the lots in it, as a downtown let me know. I have the infrastructure built and playtested, but the project is stalled out on my not feeling like sorting out the quarrel between my new computer and Any Game Starter. Which is almost as complicated as the sudden quarrel between LJ and all my ID sources.)

If Rich were wise, he would have stayed and observed how Candy played her Pop; but I notice she waited till his back was turned before she started in on it. That would seem to indicate that she's not operating purely on instinct and habit - the first thing I thought when she started in with the sports gestures was "Oh, she's done this before! She knows just how to disarm him!" - but is consciously strategizing under a facade of spontaneity. She needs to manipulate Rich for her own sake and everyone else's, so she doesn't need him to figure out how good she is at it.

Although Candy's mothering style is consistent across games, she has some good solid reasons to neglect Richie in this specific instance, so I'll provisionally give her the benefit. The most obvious one is the same as her reason for not wanting Goldie in the house: if she makes a misstep and displeases Rich, she wants the consequences to fall on her, not on anyone she loves. And Rich is smart enough to know that and to use any affection toward Richie he detects in her against her. The kid's already on thin ice due to the doubt about his parentage. But Candy also presumably figured out back when Goldie was a toddler that caretaking precedes love - so if he looks after the baby, logically, he will love it. She needs him to be invested in Richie, and to believe that she is less invested than he is, to give the kid his best shot.

Of course, she saw Rich throw Junior out; but her own experience might well lead her to rely on the strength of paternal love anyway, just as seeing a plane take flight doesn't cause us to lose faith in gravity. She might also reason that her kid is bound to be superior to Lana's and will grow up to make him proud rather than contemptuous. (It's only logical!) Or maybe Rich will kick off before he has a chance to be disappointed. But if she's hoping handling the baby will mellow him out, rub off the extreme edges and keep him at the level of danger she likes rather than going overboard with the locking up and baby-threatening and stuff - I'm afraid she's in for disillusionment. But I can't deny it's worth a shot.

As for Lana - oh, dear. If she ever figures out that Valentine turning cold to her is down to women who are more important to him than she is, that will hit her right where she lives! I'm afraid she's not likely to draw the moral "I should be nicer to women" from it, either! I ought to feel more sympathetic to Lana - after all, the great love of her life traded her in for a younger model - but she is so selfish, even where she does love, that I'm not making progress. She needs to stop relying on manipulating men into giving her what she wants, and learn to act directly. But I'm afraid the satisfaction of successful manipulation is part of what she wants.

It looks like Valentine will wind up being faithful to Daytona by default from here forward. Take all the fertile women off the menu, that only leaves Beulah, Daytona, Lana, and Dora. Lana's out on two counts now. I doubt Beulah was ever on that menu - even if she didn't have a triple-bolt husband and a strict moral code, she'd still be Mary's mother, so squick, plus he is visibly sick of hurting Mary! He probably could land Dora if he exerted himself, but that'd be stupid, given who he'd be competing with.

Though I suddenly think that Val, judiciously used, makes a reasonable goad for Dora to bring Skye up to snuff with...that'd all be from her end, though. I can't see Valentine risking his Una time to take any active part in such a thing. So it looks like, until and unless some gray-haired groupies start finding their way into the Dugout, Daytona's got the field to herself. Which would mean that at least one person can take satisfaction in the events of this update, though she doesn't know it.

Edited 2014-06-19 04:03 am (UTC)

Yep, they work outside vacation hoods (with Inge's financial system you can even own them, I believe Haven't tried that yet but I had plans to introduce a new character and an owned B&B that got scrapped, maybe next round). I've got regular hotels and motels strewn about in other hoods; the bellhop and maid spawn and you can check into a room or rooms and will be charged, no problem. But in Widespot it was different, the hotel part worked but no one else showed up. I think it's probably a function of population as they definitely do elsewhere. I'm not sure if tourists occasionally take over the other rooms or not but I know townies/downtownies/playables definitely mill about the lot and they didn't here. It worked out because I didn't want any of the residents or truckers hanging around so I teleported in some of my standby townies (and randomly spawned some others for the non-casino scenes, meaning they almost certainly won't look the same whenever they next appear—save perhaps the two sisters of mercy, or as Rich may have influenced them to become, the sisters of mercenary mercy, oh and Peach Treason who was created on purpose and currently hovers between playable and townie status depending on whether Rich decides to hire a monitor/live-in maid for Candy).

Rich took a calculated risk leaving Candy alone with her family, except of course that she'd been rehearsed already. Not the words, he didn't feed her lines, because being or seeming like her own was part of the point. And he didn't bring her back until he was convinced that she had internalised “the rules” as it were, enough to police herself. Rich isn't likely to feel threatened by a Hart, not even when his face connected with Valentine's fist (the bat would've been another issue) but he doesn't want them taking too pointed an interest in his affairs. It must appear that Candy chose him freely and that, on the whole, she didn't make a bad choice. He was impressed by how easily the lie came to her lips, which might later come back to bite her, but that was Candy's calculated risk.

Richie's not in the worst position; if I'm remembering right I think his personality spread puts him into the overachiever category or on the cusp, enough for Rich to take him in hand and mold himself a son. So long as Candy continues to 'resist impregnation', which will reflect poorly on Rich's barely acknowledged worries about his diminished virility, Richie's place is that much more secure if Rich becomes inclined to embrace him as proof against any notion of impotence. It is possible, just possible, that Rich might end up psyching himself out. And, for all intents and purposes, he is Richie's father, even in the family tree, because he adopted him.

Lana, ah, Lana. It's hard to feel sympathy for her but, on the other hand, she didn't cause any of the trouble that led to her new circumstances. That's probably what smarts most of all, she didn't even have any of the fun! She was loyal to Rich but she's the one who was expendable to him. If it hadn't happened, she'd never have believed it possible. On the Valentine front she will lose again and even her back-up “beau”, Rich's “head contractor” not only isn't terribly interested but is more interested in Sandy! A lot more, but none of this is prompting her toward learning any lesson. Plans may not pan out in gameplay but I do have some ideas for Lana...

As for grey-haired groupies, I originally thought perhaps Riverblossom would become the business district someday and while I nixed that idea it's been in the back of my mind to extract Catherine Viejo and Betty Goldstein (and probably their departed friend, Andrew's mother—I can't remember her name even though she's alive and well in my uberhood), making them slightly younger and out for a good time. There's also another single elderly lady (or two) that I'll probably introduce soon, she for the B&B, so Val will have options. Daytona won't be in the clear. As for Dora, I will say that she is attracted to Valentine, and it hasn't escaped her notice that Skye's a mite jealous of him but it's a fine line to walk between arousing him without also arousing insecurities about his inexperience, especially if she were to use Valentine Hart as ammunition.

Oh hell, I came up against LJ character limits again so I'm not going to try an edit but I didn't see that I cut the first bit. I'd love to have Bigg City on hand! I don't know when a downtown will be unlocked but I am going to modify the rules; with my shorter rounds and taxes scaled down to accommodate them it'd just take forever to get to half a million simoleons or whatever it is. But whenever they're ready, no longer being an insular community will definitely shift the dynamics.

Yeah, way too early for a downtown, both under BACC rules and in terms of the story. If escape is easy, the pressure lets up. Send me an e-mail address (mine is penigriffin@gmail.com) and I'll get AGS working so I can make sure the infrastructure-only version has all the final edits on the buildings and send it to you in the near future, so you have plenty of time to figure out what you want to change for use. It's BG+NL only, so has some of the same sketchy quality as the original Widespot infrastructure. Or I could send you a version populated with sims intended for the graveyards, which I know has the updated infrastructure because I was using the graveyard-bait to test the rebuilds. You can always kill them yourself or turn them into townies. (But one is a full alien, noseless and bug-eyed.)

I'm trying to sympathize with Lana. I am. It's just not working! Laying out the bare bones of her situation, it's a sad one, whatever bad things she may be assumed to have done - but the moment she herself enters the picture I lose it. That makes her more interesting, though. And of course she's pivotal for Junior. At the moment, he benefits more than he's torn by his position as buffer between his wife and mother - but at some point, they will come into conflict in a way he can't not notice (despite his supreme capacity to not notice things) and should not ignore. And that's when we'll find out who he really is.

It wouldn't be surprising if Dora, for all her obvious experience and people-savvy, made some serious missteps with Skye, based on her reasonable but false assumptions. She has no idea of the depths of his inexperience, after all! She thinks he fathered Penny and Woody "the conventional way," which means there is or was a mother somewhere, which is obviously too painful to talk about for some reason and may be behind his present state of hard-to-get. A lot depends on what she deduces happened there. Her logical course is to milk Penny (too hard to make Woody talk), who presumably is an old hand at deflection on this topic. If Penny's cover story implies an affair, using Val to try to make him jealous would be far too risky; but if it implies that her mother is dead, she might decide some competition would be good for him. (And potentially fun for her.)

I doubt Candy's worried about her lies to her family coming back to bite her. Worst comes to worst, they won't bite her so hard she can't bear it. The Harts screwed up a lot as parents, judging by results; but they did Unconditional Love right. Look at her in the casino, considering calling Pop because he'd find her regardless; deciding against it because rescue isn't safe (for him; the risks, to herself, of escape she considers acceptable). Whatever the aftermath of the Hot Tub Dome Scandal did to their relationship, however much fussing he does about j-o-bs and responsibility and stuff, however much he yells at Rhett or scolds her, Home will always be there. A nice safe background for exciting danger games, and something to protect when the line from game to all-too-real gets crossed.

Rich's love, of course, is nothing but conditional. Her only advantage, and I hope she's got a good grip on it, is that she understands him better than he understands her. He has always relied on other people being nicer than him, and probably seldom been disappointed. Val wasn't really going to use the bat, which constitutes lethal force given the power he can presumably put into a swing, as long as he didn't see an imminent physical threat to Candy, so Rich could afford to take the hit. (I wonder what he thinks happened at the Hot Tub Dome?) Candy's already considered opportunistically killing Rich once, and dismissed the possibility, first as too risky and second as farther than she's willing to go. But Rich could change both those conditions, which he now takes for granted. He thinks he has her sussed. I don't think he does.

Ooh, populated. Yes, please. The city will need denizens, after all. I've just shot you an email.

Lana was ambitious and more or less in sync with Rich but she loved their son and had no reason whatsoever not to show it (in her way) and Rich certainly did come to use that against her. I don't know if Candy could consciously sustain a program of motherly indifference if it were against her nature; if her heart ached to hug her baby to her she'd hug him, but so far Candy doesn't ever even accidentally bond with the baby. There's a mini-scene I couldn't work back around to, though I wanted to show Richie Rich in his new, settled-in duds. Rich has placed the baby's bouncy facing exactly where Candy is to be found most often, in front of the tv, and he's bouncing up and down, riveted to Candy, and she looks back at him like “what do you want from me, kid? I've done my best to save your neck, the rest is up to you.” Doomsday comes along to watch tv and when Candy finally gets up it's to autonomously play with the cat—although that could be interpreted as a re-direction so that she doesn't get caught up even when Rich isn't around. I am so intrigued to see how Richie grows up and processes this family he's been born into, especially if he or anyone ever learns that his brother is his biological father, a revelation that might come sooner or later depending on how he looks.

Candy can't be honestly surprised that her Pop was willing to go to bat for her, they've been here before. And Val firmly believes that you don't make a threat you aren't, at least, willing to fulfil, which is also why you don't pick up a weapon unless you know how to wield it. Hence his line that Rhett didn't cook. Val knew exactly what his could do and what he could do with it, Rhett simply grabbed the first thing he found but he didn't even have a rudimentary familiarity with it so in a real scuffle not only would he most likely lose the upper hand but the weapon he introduced to the mêlée would be there to be turned against him! Candy knew that much, she left that shard of glass right where it was because she also knew her enemy. The Hart kids led a privileged existence so Rhett is forgiven for being more naïve than he realises. Candy's got more real-world experience because she went looking for it but it could be precisely because she wasn't embedded in “the real world” that her teenage self had no way of sifting out what was “real” and exciting and what was just plain wrong. She spent her life around adults, a certain class of adults, and emulating their excesses was a disaster waiting to happen.

The problem is that even her parents kind of took her at face value, she seemed fine, she could charm the pants off of their friends...they just didn't expect her (or anyone in their circle) to make that so literal, but they forgot to tell her not to. I don't doubt that Angel worked in some serious mother-daughter talks but she was more inclined to honour her daughter's budding sexuality and in her determination to ward off any sense of shame (like she probably grew up defending against) she neglected to reinforce a sense of boundaries. Protecting Goldie is kind of like the Hart family code but another layer for Candy is the fact that she wasn't protected (from) herself. However, she doesn't blame either of her parents, (Val's guilt is between him and his conscience); mostly because her past to her was only maybe a mistake—all that stuff with her Pop and the press, she regrets that stuff, but not necessarily what she did...maybe where she did it. Anyway (to her mind) Goldie's different. She knows now that Goldie has got her first boyfriend (a proper boyfriend, like she likely never had) but Candy is bound to be a little hurt if she learns that when it comes to David she's not who her little sister is inclined to turn to for advice.

It is amazing how much younger our kid siblings are at 16 than we were at the same age, isn't it? (And our children, nieces, nephews, students - whoosh! They're babies!) Something that probably hasn't occurred to Candy, and won't hit Goldie till she sees her sister, is that her running off without a word will have changed their relationship quite a bit. Goldie was the one agitating to go out actively looking for her, who knew something was wrong. Having Candy turn up playing like everything is fine won't sit well, whether or not Goldie buys the act, especially in light of the contrast between the older kids' perennial freedom to make mistakes and the way everybody shelters Goldie.

Who would Goldie turn to for advice about David, if not Candy, though? Pop's too overprotective, it's hard to picture Rhett providing anything but bad relationship advice, Mary's avoiding the house, Mama's dead, and she has no friends her own age. That just leaves Junior, which is hard to picture. Perhaps we'll find out in the upcoming Ottomas update.

Yeah, Candy has the maternal instinct of a sea turtle. The egg got buried, the ocean's right there, she did her job! Which is another reason for her to want Rich to bond with Richie - the more satisfied he is with the son he's got, the less insistent he'll be about her producing another one. It is a shame you couldn't fit in the bit with Richie and Doomsday - maybe it can still find a place. It's awful when you've got something, perfect in itself, that doesn't fit anywhere.

I wonder how Junior'll react to finding out that even his name's been co-opted. And what the knock-on effect of the screwed-up-ness of his relationship with his parents will be on his relationship with the twins. Plus he's the only person anywhere who actually owes Lana loyalty, but she can no more be trusted with it than Rich can. So far he's been able to ignore the tension between the women in his house. The moment it escalates past that point will be his defining one.

Wow, once again I've gone from laughing (sure Candy, check under the bed) to being horrified. An excellent update :)

Why, thank you :-D (You mean he couldn't have rolled down there? You sure?) I laughed out loud when she went through the boxing and baseball animations talking to her Pop after the fight but only once Rich started walking away. It wasn't how I figured that scene would progress but she defused some of the tension.

Coming in late, as per usual, I've had my focus elsewhere (fanfiction) for a while.
What a great chapter! Your narrating keeps getting better for each update, this time it felt like watching a movie; all those elaborate sets and jumps in the time-line - fantastic! Great pics as always.
The relation between Candy and Rich is a bit scary, it gives me the creeps really, so I hope that is intentional. It gave me the creeps when Rich took the baby away as well, so I was very relieved to see him back again.

:-D Thank you! I was really committed to this structure for the last part so I'm glad that it worked, especially because it relies mainly on costuming to signal the transitions.

Rich and Candy are definitely not the model of a healthy relationship, that's for sure. Creeped out, sad for Candy, angry with Candy, worried for the baby--they're all on the spectrum of effects. But I'd be concerned about anyone left rooting for Rich!

Also wanted to say that one of your Sunnydale updates is responsible for Richie Rich's other name, that is, Little Dick. I think it's Cordelia's kid with the mayor, a perfectly reasonable nickname (once upon a time) but it was one of those 'duh' moments for me, like of course that's what Rich would call him.

Oh - I'm flattered that Little Dick Wilkins provided inspiration. :D

And yes - someone rooting for Rich, that would be scary indeed. He makes such a splendid villain though. ;)