Mal and Belle: Desperate Housewife Syndrome

This is my 50th post. I was going to make something special to commemorate it, but it’s taking too long, and a late post is no way to celebrate an anniversary. So, it’s back to Mal and Belle.

Belle wakes up late that evening, and is greeted by the fumes of rotting salad.

Only two days in the house, and Mal’s repugnance has already taken hold of the house. In the bathroom, the shower and toilet are filthy and the floor is soaking wet.

The nasty atmosphere takes its toll on poor Belle. Mal doesn’t notice a thing, and Belle is too nice to bring it up.

Mal goes off to bed, while Belle whips up something to eat: waffles.

I notice that Belle is very carefully checking on these waffles. Sensing a potentially humorous situation coming, I start taking snapshots of what happens.

That was perfect. And all without cheats!

So after that quintessentially comedic scene, Belle’s upset that her food is even worse than the salad. But guess what she does anyway?

Belle has a few wishes by this point. The astute reader can already guess what two of them are.

The first wish is to hire a maid. Sure, they don’t have a lot of money right now, but Belle’s not going to let a simple obstacle like that get in the way of a clean house, right?

The second wish is to clean up the bathroom. As Belle gets out the mop, she flashes a disturbing expression at the mirror.

 

Wolfrun, Third Try – Week 29

Well, it worked brilliantly. All through the night, while I slept peacefully, Go Wolfrun stood in his door-less, window-less, TV-less, bed-less, sofa-less, lamp-less house for 169 days. That’s 169 Sim years. When I woke up and checked the date, I was stunned. In the game, Sims live for only 90 years, which meant that not only would all the Sims from week 5 be dead, but the unborn embryo Sims would also be dead, as would their children; their grandchildren, however, could possibly be alive. But 169 years! If Go stepped outside of his time capsule house, it would be an entirely different world from what he knew.

I had to go to class, so I couldn’t check the neighborhood. But I wondered how different everything would be. I wondered how I’d find anyone; if 4 people out of 96 Sims had disappeared after 2 weeks, then after 27 weeks, only half of the Sims from before would be there.

Of course, my math had a few holes in it, but it didn’t matter. As it turns out, I was both right and wrong. It was an entirely different world. But that didn’t mean everyone I knew was gone.

There were a few new names to the neighborhood, like the Dunns and the Austins, but I was surprised that several Sims were still alive. Blair Sw0rd was still alive and pregnant, but her husband Cycl0n3 was not. He wasn’t even in the family tree. Tamara was still alive, except her last name was Hart now, and she was also pregnant. And, like Blair, she had “0 days to Elder”.

Everywhere I went through town, this same pattern was emerging. Iliana Langerak (now Iliana Austin) was alive, pregnant, and almost an elder. Morgana Wolff was alive, pregnant, and almost an elder. Holly Alto (now Holly Bachelor) was alive, pregnant, and almost an elder. Bella Bachelor (now Bella Hamlin-Bachelor) was alive, pregnant, and almost an elder. Monika Morris (now Monika Langerak) was alive, pregnant, and almost an elder. Imelda Alto was alive, pregnant, and almost an elder.

In fact, everywhere I looked there were single pregnant women. At a few odd houses (none of the ones above), there’d be an old man married to the pregnant wife who was one day from becoming an elder. There was one odd case were the husband was at the end of his life, but he never died. So he and his wife lived happily ever after, forever and after.

The most chilling thing, however, is that nowhere in the entire neighborhood were there any children, nor babies, nor even teenagers. It’s like a Twilight Zone episode, where all the women suck up the youth from their unborn babies and remain young forever while the men become dried-out husks and die until the entire town consists entirely of pregnant women. Actually, that’s not a bad premise, but it’s just creepy here. This is seriously not supposed to happen; either the women just shouldn’t get pregnant when they’re so close to elderhood, or they should just give birth to their children and then move on.

I suspect this is a bug with either the Indie Stone Mod or the Awesome Mod, but the two developers are working closely with each other, so I can just tell one of them about it and wait until one of them updates their version. Although the Awesome Mod developer updates it every day, so I probably won’t have to wait long.

Wolfrun, Second Try – Week 5

Revisiting the Wolfrun home, I decided the first thing to do was replace Go’s broken TV with the best TV so that it wouldn’t break down. I sold off the TV, and began selling off everything I needed to get the $8000 needed.

Which was basically everything. All he had was his sofa and his shiny new TV. So I sat him in front of the sofa, turned on his TV, and sat back for a few glorious moments as the game ran on ultra, and Go Wolfrun contentedly watched his TV for days on end.

Then, suddenly, the game went to normal speed when some guy with a laser gun and a baseball cap showed up, complaining about how the bills weren’t being paid, and he stole poor Wolfrun’s sofa.

At first, I just ignored him and went back to ultra speed while Wolfrun stood up and watched his TV (he still had his Comfy moodlet, so I don’t think he really minded), but the Repo Man kept coming back, even though he didn’t take anything, not even the expensive hi-definition TV. But every time he showed up, the game kept resetting to normal speed, and after this happened a few times, I realized, “What a minute, he’s coming because the TV is using up electricity.” The reason I was sitting him in front of a TV in the first place was because that was exactly what the developer of the Indie Stone Mod suggested doing on a wolfrun, but I decided to bugger all and just take everything away. No TV, no door, no windows, no sofas. Just an empty room to stand in.

When week 5, day 2 came around, I paused the game again and took a look around town, to see how the Sims had changed.

Just to remind everyone, this is 29 days since I started; in-universe, it’s been 29 years. The original Sims game takes place 25 years after the start of Sims 3, so this is about the same time period as that.

First, I revisited the Roomies. Tamara was expecting her first child with Xander, who was already an elder. Cycl0n3 and Blair had moved out and married (Blair becoming Blair Sw0rd), and were also expecting. That left the other two, Silas and Emma, alone to hook up with each other.

I looked around, and saw many other romances blooming. Holly Alto, was now going out with Michael Bachelor. Mortimer Goth was going out with Bella Bachelor, sounds suspiciously pre-programmed to me. Contrary to canon, however, Mortimer was in a criminal as opposed to a scientist. Jared Frio and Claire Ursine were now married, and his brother Connor was married to Monika Morris, who was also pregnant.

There were also some less happy stories. The Wolffs, for example, have had another child named Brandon, and when I caught up with them, Morgana was in a very depressed state. Checking their relationships, it seems Thorton Wolff barely had any relationship with his two children at all. Their daughter from 2 weeks ago was now a child, and had gained the kleptomaniac trait. This was clearly an interesting development, and I wondered how they would turn out in the future.

There were also some Sims whose loved ones had just died recently. Yumi Sekemoto, who I didn’t really pay attention to last time, had just died, and his son Leighton was very depressed. Cornelia Goth had died recently, and Gunther Goth was still in a bad mood over it. Actually, his life bar was pretty full already, so he probably wouldn’t be sad for very long. Incidentally, now that he was no longer married, Agnes Crumplebottom had a crush on him. Too bad she was going to be disappointed soon.

Jarrod, the evil genius baby, now had the loser trait, and his artsy outdoorsy brother Weston now had the snob trait. Sort of the total opposite of what I expected from their infant traits. The Altos above were doing pretty well for themselves, though Gobias Koffi was now an elder and still hadn’t any romances, male or female.

So, finally, I went back to Go Wolfrun, changed to ultra speed, and left the game overnight, hoping that without any more TV, there would be no more interruptions to the game speed, and I’d get a lot farther than ever before…

Leaving Sims 3 On Overnight

In its preview of the Sims 3 back on March 10th, IGN touted that the game’s free will system was quite intelligent, and that “[y]ou could leave the game running overnight and wake up to an entirely different situation”. Naturally, when I got it, I wanted to test that statement and see what would happen if I left the game for an extended period of time.

Now, I’ve read comments from fans saying, “Why would you do this? Wouldn’t it be more fun to play the game yourself than to let the computer play it for you?” I say, ludicrous. You can have more than one save slot on the Sims 3, and why not spend it on something that’s just as pointless as raising completely fictitious and unrealistic people?

So, bold and fearless, I started a new game in Sunset Valley. I decided upon the Roomies household to be the active household, because I figured five diversely different adults would be interesting subjects for the experiment.

I just loaded them up, pressed 3 for “ultra speed”, and went to bed. I was dimly aware that pressing 3 would be pointless, as the game would automatically reset to normal speed whenever the carpool came, but I decided, meh, I just want to see what happens.

What happened was: I woke up 8 hours later and came back to find that Tamara had received an opportunity on work, and the game had been waiting patiently for a response. In-game, it was week 1, day 2, the day right after I left it.

Disappointment was an understatement. I began looking up for info on turning off opportunities, but EA had the daftness to not include an option to turn them off. The only way to not get opportunities is to install a mod called the Indie Stone Story Progression Mod and do a “wolfing run” with it. Of course, in order for the ISSPM to work with the latest patched version of Sims 3, you also had to install the Awesomemod from another website and delete the ISSPM core mod package, etc etc. I studiously followed the instructions, made a single man with the last name “Wolfrun”, put him in his own house, added a TV, told him to watch TV, set the game at “ultra speed”, and went off to class.

I came back 4 and a half hours later to find it was now week 3, day 2. That was better, but I was expecting a lot more. Inspecting the house, I found that his television had broken down, and that Go Wolfrun had spent most of his time either reading from the bookcase or sleeping. The game resets its speed to 1 whenever somebody wakes up from sleeping, but since Go’s needs never dropped, I can only imagine he went to bed as a way of mocking me.

Still, I decided to check out the neighborhood and see how things had changed. At the Roomies household, Tamara was gone from the group; she had gone off to marry Xander Clavell. Hard to imagine why, seeing as how he had commitment issues. His bio itself explicitly states he wasn’t planning on getting married, but I guess Tamara was just a manipulative bitch.

I also looked around to see what else happened. Holly Alto got her own place, and the two adult Altos had two children, Imelda and Iris. The Landgraabs also had two children, Jarred and Weston. I’m especially interested in Jarred because his two traits were “evil” and “genius”, and you know putting those two words together is always a good thing. Thorton and Morgana Wolff, even though their bios say that children is the last thing they’d plan on doing with their marriage, had a baby girl named Krissy.

There was also Claire Ursine, who was both raising her daughter Terra and going out with Connor Frio. Jared Frio, meanwhile, was going out with Monika Morris, who I assume is one of the Working Friends Household.

There were other Sims who’d moved in from nowhere; a couple, German and Faye Rhinehart; the Lain family, consisting of two musically-inclined parents, their equally gifted daughter, their more brutish son and daughter; and the Gutierrez family, who I didn’t really bother looking at. There were also some Sims who weren’t living anywhere, like Zelda Mae and Parker Langerak, and Ethan and Lisa Bunch. I tried calling Zelda Mae over and then saying goodbye to her so I could see where she was staying, but she went over to Jamie Jolina’s house and disappeared, even though Jamie lived alone.

So, having inspected Sunset Valley, I went back to Go Wolfrun’s home, and continued the speed run…

Mal And Belle: Mundane Monday

Around mid-day, Mal finally woke up from his sleep.

Mal has the lifetime wish of being the emperor of evil. Therefore, it only makes sense that he wants to get a job in the criminal department.

There wasn’t a job available yesterday, but today, there’s an opening. The classifieds are weird like that.

So while Mal sets down the paper and celebrates by watching TV, work ends for Belle.

After receiving her paycheck, Belle, being good, wants to donate to charity (like Alice famously does). But Belle is tired; getting up early last night didn’t help her much. But I insist that she makes a donation so I can have her do something interesting.

Meanwhile, Mal is watching TV for ideas on potential world domination.

After a while, though, he gets hungry, and gets up to eat something, when he spots…

… the leftover salad from last night.

Having the slob trait, Mal has no qualms about eating the rotting, maggot-infested salad.

After his less-than-nutritious meal, Mal decides to get a head-start on his criminal career with some aerobic exercises…

… followed by some air guitar and gorilla poses.

Mal cools down in the shower, and then plops back onto the couch to watch something… er, non-criminal-related.

Mal and Belle: Wake-Up Call

So, we left off with Mal and Belle sleeping, after their first day.

Around 2 AM, Mal wakes up, even though he is still tired. In spite of common sense, Sims can't sleep on the sofa; the best they can do is nap for 3 hours.

After waking, Mal decides to have a midnight snack.

After that, he decides to get back to reading that romance novel. Mal doesn't feel quite as uncomfortable, now that Belle isn't watching him.

Ho ho, he's in for a surprise.

Belle comes walking in like she's possessed, sits in front of the TV, and starts watching a nature show. Mal puts his book away in great annoyance. Can't a guy just be left alone to read a book?

Eventually, sleep catches up with him, just as day breaks.

So he heads off to bed, grouchy and discontent.

Meanwhile, Belle wants to work on her charisma skill, so she can charm everyone in Congress. She starts working on her serious poses...

... and her innocent poses.

And when the carpool pulls up and honks her, she's off in a flash.

For she has a dream. A dream to unite the town, to end injustice, bring hope to mankind...

 

... to hold a beacon of light to peoples of all nations, creeds, and dress colors, to give everyone a chance to succeed...

... and most importantly, for everyone to be her closest, bestest friend!

And so, daringly, she enters the courthouse, destiny approaching her.

Wait! There's nothing in the courthouse! It's just an empty building! Ha ha ha! You just got suckered, Belle!