Silly me, just had to check before closing down for the night when I was already up too late...

Okay, that's a cliff hanger! What is Sandy doing there? I shouldn't stay up long enough to comment properly, but high points -

I was not expecting a servo! I suppose that's a robot bench disguised as a toy bench? I can't imagine Skye being down with his finishing her, though. Poor Woody.

Penny/Hamilton makes a certain amount of rebounding sense, but Hamilton's got to stop drinking so much. It'll be interesting to see the aftermath of that.

That was Eldon Hicks checking out Dixie! He really likes those Land women (and who can blame him?). Hard to say if that's any better choice than Rhett, but at her age she needs to know she's got a range of choices, so there's that.

Poor Dora and Skye. Asexuals and ardent types have a tough row to hoe when they get together, and he has absolutely no idea how to compensate. She could teach him if she understood the problem but that's not looking like coming clear any time soon. He needs to delegate the explanation to Penny or they'll never get anywhere and it's just going to be heartbreak all down the line. In the end it comes down to, Do they trust her, or not? Because if they don't, she can't live there.

And Rhett! Oh, Rhett! What are we ever gonna do with you?

I predict a dramatic birthday party in Part Two. Because the guest list is just gonna be chock-full of Drama and they'll be coming into a house already saturated with the potential for the stuff.

Surprise! :-D More surprises in store for Part Two, that's for sure. And the drama at the birthday party started the second certain guests walked through the door!

What to say, what to say about our friend at the top of the page that's not too spoilerish...well, one thing is that Woody's not an overachiever; he knows what he knows about his medium of choice, which is impressive, but for all intents and purposes he was still definitely just making a toy (a toy with movable, pose-able parts). But he's done quite a lot of work on her so far so he may not be all that willing to defer to his dad's approval.

Skye and Dora are definitely having a time of it, they have such very different life histories colouring their perceptions. He really did try to bring her in, in his own way, but she wasn't hearing it. Penny would do the explanations, if she was asked, but ironically she's not the best advocate so far as putting a positive and enthusiastic spin on the half-alien thing. She doesn't like talking about it, she's not interested. She's not ashamed but as far as she's concerned, she's a sim, thank you; that's how she was raised, right there on terra firma, she doesn't have any special powers or anything, and her curiosities are all earth-bound. I seldom pay attention to interests so it wasn't something I even noticed until this round because it came up in so many conversations. Of course, she wasn't about to be cowed by Rhett trying to use it against her either. But if Skye could ever get Dora to take him seriously on the subject, Penny could easily do the confirmation and defusing.

Elden does indeed like the look of those Land women! I wasn't ready to commit to a voice for him yet so I cut the rest of their exchange but I'm sure it'll stick with me. (And he already has a bit of a backstory between living with Mama and taking to the road to be revealed whenever he works his way more fully into this story.) He hasn't been around as much in the background this winter so he doesn't know Mary's off the market and Dixie is a bit young for him yet but we'll see...

The liquor was flowing and so were the hormones at The Dugout that night. But I must say that Penny went home feeling pretty damn good. Sandy is the last person she expected or wanted to see loitering around her house the next day.

Sandy looks more like somebody come to mend fences than kick over trash cans (and she certainly has no call to feel wronged, not that that ever stopped a sim), but I guess I'll find out.

When you said the drama started as soon as the guests arrived I immediately thought: "Mary couldn't beg off with Dixie right there for babysitting!" But of course Rhett walking in the door when Skye's home is a provocation to drama in and of itself. And altogether there's no point trying to predict anything; or presume that the drama is limited to one cause, either.

Skye probably should've led with "I'm a virgin" rather than with the aliens (I suppose "But I've never ridden a bicycle!" counts as an attempt, if an inept one) but of course that takes him straight into the part of the subject that makes him most uncomfortable. He probably should try writing it out. They started with letters, and it's such a help to be able to edit yourself. Though he may not get the chance, given that Somebody with no tact at all knows. Rhett has no reason to care, particularly, and would probably assume, if he thought about it at all, that Dora's in the loop; so spilling the beans as part of either a verbal assault on Skye, or one of his attempts to joke his way out of a corner, would not be anything he was on guard against. It needn't be a bad thing in the long run, if that's what it takes. They can't go on indefinitely with Skye feeling assaulted and Dora feeling rejected, and anything that gets them over the hump is desirable.

(If she does slip him that horny goatweed, and it works, he is going to be so confused!)

That Penny is down on aliens is understandable, especially if she remembers Daddy clinging to the telescope trying not to be taken away. If she regards herself and Woody as the products of rape, she could well be a lot more anti-alien than Dora is. Even without that, the lack of apparent interest the aliens have taken in them would be a sore point. Why run an experiment and never look at the result? I sure hope Woody hasn't considered the possibility they are looking at the results, though - his life is hard enough without the notion of invisible alien probes or implants or something spying on his every move.

Valentine keeping an eye on Dixie in the bar is interesting. He doesn't know her in any significant way, and doesn't normally seem to pay any attention to what his customers are up to, except insofar as it affects him and his, so it's hard not to start reading things into that. Regarding Mary as enough his business to bring her little sister into the circle of concern? Remorse over Mary (who wasn't much older when he seduced her than Dixie is now)? Extending daughter protection mode to anybody young enough to be a daughter? Some combination? Of course he might not have been ready to take any action; but a certain kind of man falls into chivalry at a certain age, and whether it's obnoxious or sweet depends on how he goes about it.

Rhett's visit is all kinds of perfect. I can't get over it. Penny is handling him well, and he's not nearly hopeless. As Sandy has testified, he is capable of learning, if that's the only way to get what he wants. Between the two of them they may make something of that boy yet.

No need for a babysitter, not when I've got teleport functionality at my fingertips! Even if Mary had been hesitant about being around all those people (she actually didn't seem to mind much), Penny would've marched right over to her house and helped pack up the twins to get them all to Una's party.

Those are the words Skye hasn't been able to bring himself to say to Dora and he's convinced that his primary concern is with the implications for his children, and that may be so, but there's definitely a bit of personal fear that she will look at him differently as well. A letter would have been a good idea... Much better than Daytona's! Even if Dora can get him over the hump (so to speak), he won't be quite ready to break out the riding crop. Although she does keep a well-worn copy of the kama sutra down in her trunk that he could potentially find very instructive, he's good at studying. Interestingly, (another bit I cut, this time for space) Skye really wanted to talk to Dora but after one too many frustrating conversations, he replaced that with a want to talk to Daytona instead. Dora beat him to it but I can just imagine the ridiculousness of unwittingly making her their shared confidante. She'd be sure to find some way to turn it to her advantage because that's just second nature but, then again, she might surprise me.

Rhett is feeling somewhat chastened just now after the way things went with Penny (glad you liked that part, it's a favourite of mine, just so, so Rhett; and, after everything that he's done, she simply raises her voice to him once and he's the one who falls out of love!) but no telling how long that'll last. If Skye went on the attack he surely would lash out and I wouldn't put it past him to lead with that. So long as Penny wasn't around to hear it, he still feels bad about that.

On the alien front, Woody actually already is terrified of the possibilities, he won't go near that telescope at night and he refused to sleep in his new room until he had a solid roof overhead. It was different that night at the Makeout Spot with Virgie, holding forth about the stars, because Virgie but, yeah, he's self-conscious enough without being worried that they're somehow already watching him. Skye's enthusiasm and overall positive feelings about being gifted with his children have gone a long way toward ameliorating absolute rage in Penny but she's not giving up the grudge against her absentee "mother" even if for now it manifests as indifference.

Yeah, it boggles my mind that I went as long as I did running parties without a teleporter. Even without teleporting in babies and toddlers, once you get a family with three or four grown children, the upper limit on parties is always smaller than the the number of people who would naturally be there. I've got one family in my main hood with nine children, that intermarried with the Newsons - eight guests at a wedding, birthday, or anniversary party doesn't cut it.

I wasn't thinking that the number of people would be a problem for Mary, since the guest list would be made up mostly of people she already knows and loves (she was raised in a mob scene, after all); but that being in the same room as her mother, Valentine, and a baby Valentine dotes on would be nerve-wracking for her, especially if Junior's there, too. It wouldn't surprise me if this were the first time she's been in the same room with Valentine and her mother at once since she fell in love with him, since the Harts seem to have routinely had plates delivered rather than coming over themselves. I've assumed that her parents were the chief people she wanted to keep the relationship a secret from, between Beulah's short fuse and Homer's sidearm.

The main reason my head went there, though, is that the statistical probability of Mary blowing her triangle sky-high by autonomously flirting with one lover in front of the other, God, and everybody is high, even in a vanilla game. And then she gets hurt and bewildered when the slapping starts. I had to decide that mine was honestly confused about where the line was drawn between "friendly" and "flirting." In yours it would almost have to be a matter of her finally snapping under the strain.

Penny can certainly drag her to a birthday party, but good luck getting her to The Dugout! I'm sure Mary'd prefer a Girl's Night Out at the lake, or fruit stand, or the post office, or the moon, or anywhere else but there, if she can think of a reason to avoid it that Penny will accept. But I suddenly wonder where she stands on the drinking matter. Did she dutifully keep strictly out of her father's project even after she grew up? Or are the Lands of the "special occasion" persuasion, so she has a sense of how much she can drink without bad consequences?

The Kama Sutra? Since Skye'd read all the words and take seriously its purpose as a guide to enlightenment that might not work in quite the way that Dora hoped - but if it gets him into an experimental frame of mind and defuses his distaste for "carnal lusts" with no productive purpose, no doubt she can take it from there.

I...can't imagine that Skye could talk to Daytona about this any more easily than he can Dora, but it is interesting that the impulse arose! Daytona probably won't be at the party, since Rhett will - that, at least, is a drama vector that could be anticipated and avoided - but I bet her interest level in the household just went up.

One of the very first alterations I made, even before my computer could technically handle it, was to the cfg file that controls max allowable visitors. I haven't reinstalled in almost 5 years so it's one of those things I'd be sure to forget if I did need to go through that rigmarole again (well, will need to do when I finally swap out my primary hard drive) until I tried to throw a party. Teleporting is also useful for stubborn guests who have no good reason to refuse, or none that you as the player are willing to accept. Of course, no one was turning down Penny! She could've invited the whole town but since it was Una's party "we" kept it sensible.

There was a rather awkward moment where Mary found herself standing between Val and her parents while holding one of the twins; Annie, in fact. It was a little much for her.

I've got some free time today, I'm going to make some headway on Part Two so I can stop talking around it.

Mary has no intention whatsoever of going to The Dugout but she's young and she's got Dixie, Junior, and Penny who are all frequent patrons to bug her about it (Junior less so because she's now Responsibility to him and that's his free time away from all that). She did steer completely clear of Daddy's hooch, that was just for Daddy (although the other kids found their way to it). The closest she came to even handling it was finalising that sale to Elden Hick. That does mean that if she were ever talked into having a drink, and found a taste for it, she wouldn't know her limits right off.

For Skye and the Kama Sutra, well, to be honest, Dora would be more likely to have The Joy of Sex or some such but since the "Kama Simtra" is an alternative controller item for Chris Hatch and Joker's adult mods that's something I could conceivably work in-game and get a picture of :-) And I wouldn't put it past Dora to have kept only an abridged version, with the best illustrations, even though in her younger, questing, days she actually would have read the best translation she happened across. So she might be able to act as a supplementary resource in a different way than she had in mind, at first.

Of course, if they end up deciding to leave things be and 'agree' on Dora's taking a lover her first thoughts would centre on Valentine (her first sane thoughts...outtakes, you'll see) and that would put her into direct conflict with Daytona, which isn't where anyone should want to be.

I think I see now - Homer and Dora are an easy triple bolt, depending on his turn-ons, and she has been known to stalk him. There are so many reasons for that not to happen here it's not even funny.

Okay, so, maybe a little funny.

If the outtake is Rhett, though, that'd be funny in an even more appalling way...You're not making me any less impatient here.

I feel like Penny needs to be walking around with Destiny's Child Independent Women blasting as her theme song. You go Penny!

Speaking of strong women, points for Dora taking the lead even if it wasn't necessarily successful. I feel like feminism is strong in Widespot this update ;D

Also, your level of detail in the pictures is amazing! I'm looking forward to Part Two!

"Girl, I didn't know you could get down like that!" :-D
I'm sure that is exactly what Rhett was feeling. He had to know Penny wasn't a complete pushover but since she let him get away with being less than reliable when they were together he must've assumed he just 'got it like that'. Whaddya know, he was wrong.

Dora definitely didn't come to Widespot to just fritter away her final days!

Thank you so much! I was kind of fixated on making sure this one looked the way I wanted it to look.

Poor Dora – and poor Woody, they are both so starved of affection, I really felt for them, though Dora asking Daytona for advice had me laughing out loud anyway, especially with the advice given. Once again I marvel at the effort you put into every little detail in the pictures (and the hood) with the poses, and the deco and the outfits (love the customtownies!). I know I always tell you the same, but the pictures are getting more and more awesome for each update. Goldie for example, snapping pictures with her camera, added so much reality to that particular section of the chapter – and then you turn around and remind us that they all are in fact sims, you even make them talk about their Aspirations. Great detail there! Also I once again must compliment you for your own personal narrative. You really have a very, very personal “voice”, and this could never get mixed up with anything else, it really stands out. Since I’m not a native English speaker I must ask though what dialect I should imagine them have? I get that the lingo is kind of rural and folksy, but how do they sound?

What a lovely comment, thank you! Dora and Woody are struggling but they've both got their own rather unique ways of taking matters into their own hands. Once Woody's project literally became mine I wasn't content to just make do with whatever I happened to have already loaded so it snowballed from there and really focused my attention. So, for example, Penny and her maxed outgoing points may have thought she needed to be completely naked for a quickie on the roof in the middle of winter but, um, no. I end up posing (and in the case of this round, cobbling together meshes or retextures) in response to what plays out so that even what ends up staged wasn't necessarily scripted, just embellished. As you can see I've been having a lot of fun with that :-)

As for how they sound, hmm, I haven't pinned down a locale for Widespot but the main culprits for an unmistakably regional accent would be the Lands, mostly Beulah and Mary who picked it up from her Mama, and they speak with a US southern drawl. And because they're in such close quarters in this town, it spreads. Daytona often catches herself slipping into it but Lana never would, even though her early background is more akin to the Lands (as they are now) than Daytona's, socio-economically. The older generation are all transplants from somewhere else so I would say it really comes down more to individual idiosyncrasies. Dora has a kind of hodgepodge twang but none of the rest of her family do and likewise Val speaks with a certain cadence and colloquialisms that were most likely acquired over his life without him even realising. He actually ended up sounding more like those "old-head" guys he used to see hanging around his old multi-ethnic neighbourhood than like his parents. (They were just so 'smo-oothe'! They were the original "cat-daddies".) Whereas I very distinctly hear Rhett surprise-cursing in Spanish in the next round even though he doesn't know Spanish, he got that from Angel. Kind of a roundabout explanation, hope it makes sense!

Thank you so much for the sound info – that added another much appreciated layer to the characters. To me, my comments on your updates always feel very shallow – there is always so much to comment on that I kind of never know what to choose and where to start, but I want you to know that I’m awe how much thought you put into your characters and what’s happening and that I’m truly fascinated by them. As I’ve told you before before, I always read yours and Penny’s conversations thoroughly because of all the extra info I get that way; all your thoughts and interpretations combined makes for a very interesting read and a deeper understanding of Widespot and its inhabitants.

Your comments are far from shallow! I can't tell you how I appreciate that you take the time to read and respond. Clicking a like button and keeping it moving is much simpler but here in LJ land we have no other way of knowing if anyone does, in fact, like it or is even reading without someone making that extra effort to say so. And I'm still amazed that you sift through the wall o' words Peni and I get going. I was drawn to Widespot for the novelty of it, playing someone else's characters and adding in the challenge parameters, but, of course, the storytelling took over. Couldn't be helped! :-D Poor sims...I'm sure they'd love it if I'd get with the build-a-city programme and stop prying into their every quirk and putting their little personal dramas on display but them's the breaks when you're a sim.

That aspiration conversation was a last minute filler instead of saying 'and then this guy came to talk to Penny' but I like using those little moments to reveal a bit more character--Hamilton's not big on romance sims right now and in addition to the rebounding business that's another reason he'd be more responsive to Penny than some miscellaneous 'romancer'--while being a bit tongue-in-cheek about the sim-ness of it all ;-)

:)