Delve Into Lunacy

I had read somewhere that it was possible to get gender specific features, such as facial hair, to show up on the other gender if you simply switched the gender after adding the feature in the Create A Sim window. So that gave me the idea to create the Freak family where I could have a bearded woman, Bat Boy with the pointy ears like off the cover of Weekly World News, etc. I tried it and it didn’t work so I decided to just create a trailer trash kind of family.

That’s how the Biggins came about. This was the first time I created more than just one guy to start the family with but I basically wanted to start having kids right off the bat. So Clancy is the guy and Gerta is the girl. Both are large body types and I’m going to work on keeping them fat even though Clancy needs the body skill since he went into law enforcement. I set both of them to the family aspiration and luckily when it was randomly picking lifetime wants they both ended up with “Golden Anniversary”. So they should be able to hit that want pretty easily.

Like I mentioned before, Clancy went into law enforcement since I figured that went well with his helmet that he wanted to wear so badly (I argued with him about that helmet for hours before finally giving in). Gerta I don’t plan on ever getting a job since her primary reason to be added to the family right off was to be a womb and live in nanny. Once a kid gets within a day or so of being a child so I can control them manually I’ll have Clancy get her pregnant again. I’m curious to see just how many kids I can get them to crank out this way.

The money situation kind of sucks with these two, but since I went with the trailer trash theme I guess that is more fitting. I’ve gone ahead and dropped a bunch of money trees in their living room so that should be enough to get them by when added to Clancy’s paycheck. My only concern now is beds for all the kids they’ll eventually have. I guess I could chuck them out into the back yard.

Anyway, at this point the Biggins have had one baby girl, named Puddin, that just switched to being a toddler. Surprisingly, it’s the first baby I’ve had in the game that looked somewhat normal. Pretty sad considering each of the other kids had at least one attractive parent whereas both Clancy and Gerta are pretty homely. Maybe she has just successfully avoided the ugly stick so far and things will change once she becomes a child or teenager. I’m hoping their next kid is a boy for two reasons. The first one is that none of the families have created a boy yet and I’d like to hook some of these kids up once they become adults. Secondly I really want them to have a kid named Herbie.

You can find the family album for the Biggins in the “The Sims 2 - Family Album Collection” post.

Since I’ll be updating the family albums for the families I play in The Sims 2 fairly often I wanted to create a post that links to all of the albums and that I can just add to as needed instead of making people search through multiple posts for links to the individual pages. When I add more to it I’ll just create a small post notifying people of the update and have it link back to this post.

WARNING: I’ve removed the censor blur in the game and replaced the default “doll” skin textures with ones that are a little more realistic. Personally, I think seeing nipples and body hair is a lot less creepy than everyone in the game looking like a naked Barbie doll. So for that reason some of these images are more graphic than they would have been with the default game setup.

The Biggins Family (still active)

The Lothario Family (still active)

The Swiper Family (still active)

Well, it’s no big shock when I jump the gun on something and I’ve done it yet again. In my previous post “Maxis & The Elderly” I was ranting about Brandi not being allowed to get engaged to Don because she was elderly. It never occurred to me at the time that he might already be engaged to someone and that could have been why it wasn’t letting Brandi propose. My mistake.

Before I go into what all happened since figuring that little tidbit out this situation does shine a bright light on an aspect of the game that I wish would be changed. You can interact with NPCs to a large degree but at no point does it ever really give the player any real details about the person unless you are controlling them. Using this situation as an example, there is no way I could have known Don Lothario was already set up out of the box as being engaged to Cassandra Goth unless I had actually stopped playing Brandi, gone back to the neighborhood and then played Don. Being engaged or even married doesn’t stop a Sim from falling in love again so it’s hard to tell from their interactions alone. The pre-built story for the neighborhood mentions Don and Cassandra being in love but I don’t recall it mentioning them already being engaged.

Another example is in regards to age. Although some teenagers in the game definitely look younger there are others that I’ve ran across that look like adults…Tosha Go for instance. An adult can’t interact with a teenager the same way that they can with another adult, which is understandable, but you can invest a substantial amount of time trying to develop a relationship with a particular Sim only to then find out they are too young. More details about the NPCs need to be made available to the player especially considering not all NPCs from the neighborhood can even be directly played.

Back to the issue with Don and his engagement. Once I realized he was already engaged I needed to come up with a way to break it off, but since I was already in love and living with Brandi this was going to have to be done delicately so Brandi didn’t catch us. I ended up waiting for Brandi and Dora to go to bed and called Cassandra over. Initially, there wasn’t any option to break the engagement so I just queued up about 12 arguments between the two of them thinking I could hurt the relationship enough that the engagement would just fade away. That brought them both out of being in love but they were still best friends and it didn’t really the hurt the relationship much overall so I knew I had to get more drastic and somehow let Cassandra catch Don cheating on her. Of course that would have to happen without Don pissing off whoever he would be cheating with and also not getting caught by Brandi who would be inside the house the whole time.

So the next evening I plopped Brandi down on the couch to study cooking and promptly called up Cassandra and Kaylee and asked them both to come over. They show up at the same time and I greeted Cassandra first and then queued up greeting Kaylee. Cassandra wasn’t going to make this easy so she immediately ran into the house to watch TV and missed the whole kiss greeting Don and Kaylee had. So I called Cassandra over but then Kaylee tried to run off and it was like herding cats trying to get them both there at the same time. It eventually happened and I quickly kiss Kaylee which brings on the slap fest from Cassandra. Again, it hurt the relationship but it didn’t do the trick and they were still best friends and engaged.

At this point I sent Kaylee home since she had served her purpose for the evening and ran back in the house to catch Cassandra. A few more arguments later and thankfully the option to break up finally became available. So Don finally kicked her ass to the curb both figuratively and literally since he asked her to leave right afterward.

Here’s where I discovered another issue with the game. Don is setup with the romantic aspiration and therefore wants to get his groove on but things like engagement, marriage and kids etc cause bad memories. So one would of thought Don would have been thrilled to no longer be engaged, but like anyone else he spent the next two days sobbing uncontrollably. Oh well, I could finally have Brandi propose to Don and he accepted even though it was one of his fears and has now kicked him into the red on his aspiration level. Unfortunately, the game won’t let the elderly procreate which makes since but I would have liked Brandi to squirt out another kid before she dies.

Regarding Don at this point I’m gonna go ahead and move him through his career despite the fact that I constantly want to kill him. He’s just an insanely irritating character to play. He’s as slobby as a Sim can be and the romantic aspiration is just boring. Unlike Carl however, who is just as slobby, Don truly fits the description. I have yet to see him flush on his own. Every time he showers it floods the bathroom. He won’t put books back on the shelf after reading or clean up his dishes after eating. Carl would normally do all these things with only the occasional slip-up.

I think I’ll go ahead and play the Swipers until Dora heads off to college since by that point Brandi will probably have died or at least be on her last day or two. I’ll then switch back over to Carl and Dina until Carl is dead and then hook Don and Dina up together since the Lotharios are really sucking as far as money goes. Maybe I’ll get Dina pregnant with Don and then finally kill him off since he just irritates me so much. At the very least I’ll probably focus on his fears more than his wants since I want to see him go crazy.

Well, Maxis seems to have a really interesting take on the elderly according to what I’ve seen in The Sims 2. Let me explain.

Tonight I was playing my Swiper family some more and was trying to get Brandi (who is elderly) to get her groove back with Don Lothario (the young NPC stud that comes with the game). So, I had Brandi make Dora dinner, sent Dora to bed and called Don over. Of course it only took a couple kisses before Brandi had a 100 relationship with Don so I send them upstairs for some woohoo (for those that don’t play it is the game’s name for sex) to up her fun meter.

Now normally the two would fall asleep after woohoo so I was ready to wake them up so Brandi could try to propose engagement followed by marriage. Needless to say I was surprised when they both immediately rolled out of bed and ran across the hall into the nursery to play some kicky-ball in their undies. I was even more shocked when I went to get Brandi to propose to Don and the only proposal options that it gave me were to ask him to spend the night or move in.

Note: I’ve updated page 5 of the Swiper family album with visual evidence of their kicky-ball shenanigans.

So I went ahead and asked Don to move in thinking that maybe the guy had to do the engagement proposal. Even if it wouldn’t let him I knew he would be bringing almost $60,000 with him so I could at least move them into a new house. Anyway, he accepted and low and behold it doesn’t even give me the propose option when I click on Brandi. Who knows, maybe he’s okay with sleeping with the elderly but just doesn’t want to make it public by marrying them.

A second thing that seemed weird in relation to the elderly in the game is related to Mortimer Goth (the rich old NPC that comes with the game). As some background for those that don’t play, the game automatically makes the Sims walk a little different based on their condition or age. For instance, pregnant women waddle, young people walk fairly quickly with straight backs and the elderly walk a little slower and kind of stooped over. Well, from the first day that I started playing Scooter Swiper, Mortimer would shuffle by Scooter’s house on a fairly regular basis. Whenever it happened I had Scooter working on a skill that he needed to up before going to work so I never went out and talked to Mortimer.

Once Scooter and Brandi get married though things went crazy. This old bastard starts randomly running (literally, he wasn’t shuffling anymore) into my house and starts shoving Brandi around. The thing is that neither Scooter nor Brandi had him as an acquaintance prior to this so I’m not sure what his deal was. Also, the game won’t let an NPC enter a home unless the PCs first greet them so he’s essentially breaking and entering but the security alarm doesn’t go off like it does with a burglar. One time he even ran in while the two were sleeping, ran upstairs, woke Brandi up and then as soon as she was out of the bed he started shoving her. Once she told him to leave he would go back to his slow shuffle as he walked away.

So what the hell Maxis? Elderly people can screw their brains out then play nearly naked kicky-ball in a nursery but they can’t get hitched? I know the elderly sometimes go senile but to the degree that they constantly commit B&E on a strangers home followed by a few rounds of punch the pregnant lady?

Personally I find it funny, but what message are we sending to our elderly? My grandparents could play this game and think it’s perfectly acceptable to play naked kicky-ball. Not only is that just gross but it’s potentially dangerous. What if they slipped while going for a wicked save and broke a hip? How would I explain it to my grandpa when he’s sitting in the back of a squad car after beating up a pregnant lady with his walker that it’s not okay to do that? You know he’s not going to understand since he saw it in a game and is now conditioned to it being acceptable.

It’s too late to save the elderly of the present from the scourge that is The Sims 2 so we need to focus our energies on protecting the elderly of the future. If you want to keep your children or grandchildren from experiencing the shame and nauseation of someday walking in on you playing naked kicky-ball please contact your congressman and make sure they pass a law banning this game from being sold to or played by anyone that will live long enough to be considered elderly. The future is in your hands. I’d do it myself but I’m currently busy trying to get Brandi and Don to have woohoo again before the dryer stops and I have to fold some laundry.

I had briefly played The Sims and The Sims 2 when they each first came out and never really got hooked on either. After hurting my eye a couple weeks ago I decided to buy another copy of The Sims 2 and give it another go since it was slower paced and I could actually focus on it with my one remaining eye. I’m not sure if the difference this time is that someone else I work with is playing it also or what but I’m officially addicted this go around.

So far I’m focusing on two families. The first are the Lotharios. It began as just a one person family with a guy named Carl. I tried to base him off of Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force but I could only get it so close with the objects that come with the game. Still a real winner though: stained wife-beater, beer gut, comb-over, etc. I set him for the romance aspiration and I have to say it was rather funny watching these hot NPC women go nutty over him.

After he became an elder I decided he should get married and try squirting out a kid. So I had him marry the first girl that would accept that hadn’t caught him cheating on them yet which was Dina Caliente. If you don’t play the game Dina is actually one of the hottest NPC females in the game so they really make quite a pair. They immediately get pregnant and produce what I must say is one of the ugliest babies I’ve ever seen. It’s a girl named Iio and she looks like a Down’s baby that got smacked in the face with a frying pan shortly after birth. I love her anyway though and wish her the best.

I’ve created family albums for each of the families that I play and here’s what I’ve got so far for the Lotharios.

The next family I created was the Reaper family. Again it was just one guy, named Grim of course, and I was going to just have him kill everyone in the neighborhood. Just after moving him into his house though I realized that if I killed everyone then no one would be left for my other families to interact with so I deleted him. Might give him a go in another neighborhood later on down the line.

So at this point I created the Swiper family with initially just one guy named Scooter. This was actually a tribute to someone I work with that I call Scooter. Didn’t think about it until after he was created that it sounds like he steals Vespas, but since he was a criminal anyway I guess it fits. As far as looks I went with the slightly rebellious but still hip theme and his aspiration was fortune since he was going to do the criminal career track.

So Scooter was rapidly getting promoted and got married to Brandi LeTourneau fairly early on since they accidentally fell in love one day while just chatting. I find it was rather funny that they added a NPC with the last name of LeTourneau with an expansion pack that focused on schooling. Anyway, Brandi’s lifetime aspiration was Chief of Staff and despite her already being halfway through the culinary career I had her quit her job and switch to the medical profession. After playing these two for a while I’ve come to realize that I really prefer the money and skill related tracks over the romance one. It’s just more fun to actually accomplish something and build the character versus doing the same thing over and over again with different NPCs.

Anyway, both Scooter and Brandi hit the top of their career tracks and since Scooter had just turned to an elder when he hit his I had him retire so he could raise a kid. They got pregnant and, despite both of them being fairly attractive, they created an incredibly androgynous girl that I named Dora. Actually, until she became a child I was thinking the game had screwed up and told me she was female when it had me name her but had then created a boy. She still dresses and looks like a boy and the only way I know for sure she’s female is her current aspiration level is “Wonder Girl”.

At this point, Scooter has passed on, Brandi has just become an elder and Dora just became a child. I added Don Lothario back to a house and gave him a phone (originally I removed him on accident after creating Carl Lothario since I thought it had thrown him into a random house). Brandi is ultra-shy and sucks at making friends and Don Lothario and some other lady were the only two acquaintances that she had above zero. So Don and Brandi are now in love and once I get their relationship level a little higher I’ll try to get them married and see if the game will allow an elderly woman to get pregnant.

Here is the family album for the Swipers. Since I only came up with the idea of making these in between the time that I had stopped playing the Lotharios and started playing the Swipers I have a lot more screenshots of the Swipers. Regarding the paintings that I have screenshots of, Scooter was maxed on the creativity skills and the only aspiration that kept popping up that he could do was to sell a masterpiece. A few of the times when it asked what I wanted him to paint, Brandi was doing something interesting so those ones I kept instead of selling and started the “Shrine of Brandi” on the wall of the entertainment room of the house.

WARNING: I’ve removed the censor blur in the game and replaced the default “doll” skin textures with ones that are a little more realistic. Personally, I think seeing nipples and body hair is a lot less creepy than everyone in the game looking like a naked Barbie doll. So for that reason some of these images are more graphic than they would have been with the default game setup.

As I play the game more and update the family albums and such I’ll post updated pictures. I’ve also started working on lot objects and created what I think is a rather swanky house, but I’ll include that stuff in another post.