Squee! Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas!

Daytona was a fine-looking woman in her day, wasn't she? Aegagropilon made me a Mann wedding picture and a huge fierce afro'd picture of Daytona, who you can just see waving a sign and rallying protestors all day before dancing all night, but the only thing she's shared publicly is a picture of Rich's mother on page 21 of the MTS Widespot thread (http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=497084&c=1&ht=&page=21&pp=25#startcomment)so it's not on me to share them.

My main hood has been glitching and crashing a lot during this latest rotation, so I, um, did start the Nose that Conquered the Uberhood. So far all four starting Hart babies are boys - Richard "Third" Mann, Bud Weiss, Silver Beech, and Aiken Hart. I took way too many pictures, but an abridged version will be on my tumblr in a few days. Rhett and Candy have taken the pictures that mean the most to them with them when they moved out. These will be going up all over the Beech house in both my regular Widespot and the Conquering Nose version, quite possibly this afternoon.

LJ really needs to get a grip and a new system for dealing with comments with links in them that they don't like (not even links, just text that indicates the html so what's the problem?!?) instead of flagging them as suspicious and never telling me they exist! Seriously. No mention in my inbox and I never have need to come back to the post page itself unless I SEE there's a comment. Marvellous how that works. I just happened to notice a missing quotation mark that bugged me enough to fix, which refreshed the page. Okay, end rant, this is just such a needlessly ridiculous way to do things that I'll have to bring it to their attention.

In relevant news, glad you liked, you're very welcome! And save room on those walls. It was so hard to choose but I couldn't use all 25 Beech pics, particularly because Sandy is no welcome sight at their house anymore but they'll be great for versions where they're still encoupled.

Elderhood was not particularly kind to Daytona. No legit reason why the pics wouldn't have been on display like for the Harts so I'm more or less just pretending they were always there :-) Wealthy Mann is all kinds of fabulous but I'm afraid my Rich wouldn't acknowledge her*. Must've misremembered, maybe it was the clothes from her dreamwidth. I just know I had an Aegagropilon folder and it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle between test hoods.

Game glitches are so frustrating but at least you made productive use of it, can't wait to see who all fell for the Nose!

Edited to add: *Might be something for future Manns to uncover a broader picture of their roots.

Edited 2014-12-26 10:17 am (UTC)

It seems like whenever I visit somebody on LJ there's something like this, or unexpected unannounced major changes, or suddenly disallowing something, or arbitrary censorship, or some dang thing going on, which is why I've never gotten on it.

I look forward to seeing the rest of the pics when you get the chance. You could have Hamilton deliver the ones with Sandy in them in the same box as her clothes, couldn't you? It'd be kind of passive aggressive, but that's not quite uncalled for and it'd be better than tearing them all up. We haven't seen every wall in that house, so they could do a big spring-cleaning shuffle and rearrange everything so that the family pictures that have always been out pop up on new walls.

I don't know if this would be easier or harder to do, but there's a Maxis picture mesh which is an arrangement of different pictures, which when you look closely is a collection of Bachelor family photos, obviously intended to hang in the Goth home. You could get several different shots onto that one. But I don't think I've ever seen a recolor of that, so it might be awkward to get new photos into it.

I spent all my play time Christmas Day on the Nose trying to get Rhett to meet all the eligible ladies(the trouble with the Genderswapped Uberhood is that it exists all at once, so he's meeting all the wrong people in the neighborhood. I recommend that people build their Uberhood Challenge uberhoods one subhood at a time), and getting Silver Beech grown to toddler. He turns out to be Rhett's clone. I don't see a single one of Sandy's features, there's only two points difference in personality, and he even grew up into the hairstyle I'd gotten Rhett into. It's a good thing Sandy didn't try to pass this one off as Hamilton's! Rhett's gonna teach him to swagger instead of walk.

Well, that is how Sandy ended up with some of them. I didn't see it as particularly passive aggressive and she certainly didn't interpret it that way, she was too busy feeling grateful, among other things. But no more about that ;-) I can't off-hand recall a mesh with the Bachelors but I've got pics on the family portrait mesh of 3 (came with AL I believe), those are the ones Sandy was able to put out at the Harts' and because I've got re-meshed frames somewhere slaved to each individual pic, Virgie has one of those as well, one without her mom in it, thankyouverymuch. As for tearing up pictures, would she do a thing like that? Sweet little Virginia? :-)

I want to finish up with the house I'm on and maybe one more before I start the write up. Storywise I like to have an idea of what happened that season and be able to rearrange pics where what happened 'there' fits in better 'here'; and in practical terms the more I have played the better because it's still going to take some time to get around to whittling down and sorting the passel of pics I end up with. I wouldn't have it any other way, though, I like options and with the way that I play there generally isn't much that I miss.

Is Silver going to be the first staying with Rhett? (I imagine not since he's called Beech.) If she's still with Hamilton and the kid's living there I cannot imagine having a miniature Rhett swaggering around will go over well! (No matter how forgiving Hamilton is trying to be.)

I wouldn't put much past sweet little Virgie when her blood is up - and it always is up as far as I can tell. The girl got her dad's face and her grandfather's hair, but inside she's her mother's daughter, with a little of Grandma for some extra steel. I suspect she'll have to face up to that before the story's over. I await the next installment eagerly, but you knew that.

Silver will be with Rhett. Sandy used her "stomach problem" as an excuse to go to Viper Canyon "to stay in a sanitarium for awhile," and she and Rhett rented a house in Viper Canyon. This way everybody gets to pretend that nothing's going on. Since they weren't married Silver was born with the name of Beech and I don't plan to change it, though presumably he'll be enrolled in school under his father's name. It'll help me keep track of who belongs to who if they all keep their mothers' names last names and share first initials. I don't aim to let Rhett marry any of these women, even if he wants to, until he's got the full set.

It was definitely the right call to take Sandy's kid. Where Silver gets all his expressed genes from Rhett, Penny's boy Bud looks like somebody painted Penny brown. I think the mouth's going to grow up to be Rhett's (it doesn't look thin enough to be Penny's) and at this stage the chin could go either way, but the brows and nose dominate the face so much, he might as well not have a male genetic donor. Which is fine by Skye!

That's funny about Bud, I can imagine Skye was extremely relieved to meet him and not Rhett Jr. It's those near clone moments that always make me wonder if something went wrong with the pregnancy, particularly with a boy since that's how Maxis does it, but then there's the skintone or the hair that proves this kid does indeed have two parents. If the nose does end up conquering in the rest of Rhett's offspring, Skye can take heart that it was his honker that bested the Harts'.

The challenge is hectic enough but I would love to know the aftermath of Sandy's sanitarium stay. A few stolen moments and even a love child are one thing but actually living with another man! That's going to take a whole lot of pretending if she goes back home.

In my game, Virgie's not really much for pretending, except perhaps sometimes when she's trying to convince herself. Even Sandy couldn't go through with the façade, well, she could have but it was killing her. Virgie will most definitely have to reckon with how much of her mother lives in her.

Also: Zipped up a handful of not particularly plot specific pics. Both portrait shots of Daytona above and one of Virginia and Rocky not shown. Still no Hamilton or Sandy ;-)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/dyvbly7hg6bb1rb/MaxisMesh3BeechPics.rar (http://www.mediafire.com/download/dyvbly7hg6bb1rb/MaxisMesh3BeechPics.rar)
If "the Nose" hasn't preoccupied your sim time here's at least a few more options for the Beech walls. I'm not going to bother to edit the main post since I'll probably just lump all the Beech pics together once I've done part one.

Edited 2014-12-28 03:39 am (UTC)

Squee! More pictures!

I've only played two days at the Beech house. Rhett had Sandy move in, then immediately moved to Viper Canyon with her, so she didn't pop until they got there. The day before Silver was due to grow up, I played Friday at the Beech house and had Virginia (who had called Sandy a couple of times at the "sanitarium" and whom Sandy had been missing while she was gone) skip school to invite her mother back; but she couldn't get the option to move her in. Hamilton had to propose the move in after he got home. Today I played Beech Saturday, with Sandy taking everyone but Hamilton shopping in Bluewater Village for some more sophisticated looking clothes. She's asserting herself more, but kept a low profile and served the refreshments when Daytona threw a party that afternoon. When no one else is around she drinks a lot.

However, she keeps showing up in Viper Canyon. I'm only letting Rhett and Silver age one day per session while I'm trying to get Rhett to meet all his prospects, and he keeps running into Sandy instead. She's mostly at the gym. The last time he encountered her he gave up on cruising, asked her on a date, and brought her home to woohoo and see Silver, who is a one-day toddler at the moment. She showed surprisingly little interest in Silver, preferring to bounce on the trampoline till I made him go ask for attention, and they finally made friends, so perhaps when I go in to hang these pictures she'll have a want for her youngest. I'm watching her speech bubbles, and though she talks about love a lot she has yet to mention babies, cheating, or anything else incriminating. I'm sure Virginia suspects nothing. She was much too eager to make best friends with her mother after her absence.

But Silver likes the nanny and Sanjana Ramaswami better. Sanjana's the only one Rhett's dated, and she would not roll a woohoo want, but she did go in and autonomously play with Silver as he worked his charisma bunny. Which puts her way ahead of the others in Rhett's book.

:-) The full pic dump is probably going to seem like a smorgasbord! There is one in particular that I am thoroughly enamoured with and therefore so is Hamilton, but I don't need a dozen awkwardly framed shots just to show it off. (Especially seeing as it's hanging in his bedroom.) Slowly but surely I will get this thing down to a manageable size. I must say that I never thought I'd find Hamilton Beech ever looking in any way like one sexy sim...But the tightie-whities he insists on sporting went a long way to keeping me from running away with his characterisation.

Poor Ham, the fact that Sandy left him, and only him, out of her shopping excursion does not bode well. Nor does a newfound taste for the sauce.

I see Rhett's still got a thing for married women. If he keeps this up he'd better hope that by the time he's running for office they're too embarrassed to form a coalition of cuckolds.

I'm sure you can find reasons to take pictures in Hamilton's bedroom.

Hamilton was at work and their funds are a bit tight. He'll get a shopping trip next time he gets a day off, don't worry. Sandy has always thought he was one sexy sim, and the fling with Rhett didn't change that. His work schedule is insane, though. Though I don't remember her drinking particularly in development, the combination of Hamilton's work hours, the Daytona situation, and the presence of a bar both at home and at the Hart place can be used to make sense of the affair to begin with.

Dressing this cast with only base game clothing was mostly frustrating, but Rhett, Hamilton, and Mary were at least served perfectly by their choice of underthings! Hamilton and Mary obviously buy theirs in packs of eight at the General Store, and Rhett - well!

I gave Challenge Rhett all the Romance perks (which I don't normally do all at once, since gradual accumulation can occur naturally in long-term rotation play) and decided that he would go around flirting with every woman he spoke to, reflexively, without checking for rings. It's Sanjana's misfortune that her husband was in the store when it happened to her. Rhett's turn-ons are make-up and swimwear, with a turn-off for robots. Because his type is breathing. I think the only woman he doesn't bolt a little bit is Silver's nanny, and only because the only flirt option he gets for her is "check out." He has quite a little string built up already, because he brings women home from work daily, but I'm having a hard time getting him with the right ones. I'm going to play it from their ends for a little while. Rotation play is so much easier!

But of course! (Tightie-whities and all.) I made them to be shown so shown they shall be, but I still have to laugh at just how many pics I've got angled in such a way specifically to keep the photos in frame. To the cutting room floor they go, especially as I'm partly ignoring the redecorating that was done, so even while walls change most of the photos were 'always there' and simply put back in place unless they were too Sandy to stay.

Well, as I've said, I'm inclined to think Sandy's got dubious taste in men but Hamilton was the exception (sorry Rhett, but the idea that you're actually good for her is a stretch) and Penny's been finding him pretty damn sexy so we'll see if both women's losses do indeed turn out to be the other's gain.

Messing around with married women is certainly one way for Rhett to end up with custody of these kids. The indiscriminate flirting makes him sound like a menace but he seems better equipped to pull it off (since he's still got Sandy in his pocket and Sanjana on the hook, among however many others) in your challenge hood and I'm sure the FT perks go a long way toward maintaining the mojo (Rhett had to yank his 'bouquet' for Sandy from the ground outside back in my prologue precisely because I wouldn't give him any perks; there will be no smooth talking, surely, until there's an established florist, so he had to make do). In some respects, at least, ChallengeRhett appears primed to make good on the promise of Hart 2.0. Babies aside, my Rhett would be so jealous.

Happy Holidays :)

:-) Thanks! Hope your new year is going swimmingly!