Despertar

distraction

I bought The Sims 2 for my Mac. I had to. It's the perfect way to pass the time on the subway out here. I switch back and forth between speeds, though, so I need both hands, which makes it kind of awkward to play without a flat surface. I'm learning, though. I'm getting better.

I started a new neighborhood. I don't like it as much as the other current one, but at least I've finally gotten the hang of genetic diversity. I was really tired of families popping out a bunch of identical clone children. A lot of the new citizens are throwbacks to older, failed neighborhoods. Unless you're Jenn, this will definitey bore you. And maybe even if you are Jenn.

[alani]

Mele (BRO) (BRO) (M)
Shen Fawcett (BRO) (GRA) (M)
Kiran (BRO) (BRO/gra) (M)
Kaya (BRO) (BRO/gra) (M)
Keana (BRO) (BRO/gra) (M)

Mele is one such throwback. In my oldest neighborhood, a wiped-clean version of Pleasantview, I had a Hawaiian family where all four kids inherited their father's comically puffy cheeks. Kids always have exaggerated facial features, and that Mele got the worst of it. This Mele is sleek and handsome, instead, except with a hooked nose like a bird's and that awful nappy, wavy hair. Shen is exotic and beautiful, the half-Chinese, half-black complement to Mele's genes. Their three daughters are three different types of beautiful, though none quite as pretty as Shen. Kaya, who is a twin, has huge, wounded eyes. I did their house all in yellows and pinks. I'm getting better at interior decorating.

[allen]

Michael (BRO) (BLU) (F)
Raven Chin (BLA) (BRO) (F)
Angelique (BRO/bla) (BRO/blu) (F)
Devon (BRO/bla) (BLU/bro) (F)
Gavin (?/?) (?/?) (F)

I love when this happens. Whenever I have an official neighborhood, I always designate ten percent of the couples childless. This helps with population control, and gives me a chance to focus on career-building for couples like Michael and Raven, who are both Knowledge Sims in the field of Science. I bought them all the right equipment (expensive telescope, bookcase, comfortable chairs to study in) and built them a silver and black house with sterile-looking banisters and an overall laboratory feel, but I still didn't expect them to advance up the career ladder as quickly as they did. Once a couple maxes out a career field, the pay is really comfortable and the hours usually are, too, but they become unbearably boring to play. As an incentive, I always reward Sims who complete their careers with babies, one for each day they're able to conceive between the final promotion and Sim menopause. In Michael and Raven's case, they had fourteen days left in that period, which gave them time for three births. Devon and Gavin are twins, and we've still got one on the way. I forgot to look and see Gavin's hair and eye colors. I was tied up building a kiddie wing to the house while Angelique got busy on her parents' telescope.

[bayheart]

Samuel (BLA) (GRA) (D)
Scarlet Shelton (RED) (GRA) (D)
Alicia (BLA/red) (GRA) (D)

It's pronounced A-lish-a, and she is a cutie. I am not sure, however, where I got the idea that dark-skinned Sims look good with gray eyes, because they don't. In fact, all gray-eyed Sims have this ghostly, vacant, upward-looking look that is not terribly attractive even on the blond, fair-skinned ones. Anyway, though, single-child families get a little boring, too, but it's a nice balance between total career focus and family time. Also, kids with no siblings tend to have the most impressive skill sets by the time they turn teenager.

[chesney]

Jeremy (BLO) (GRE) (T)
Annica Guaraldi (BRO) (BRO) (T)
Max (BRO/blo) (BRO/gre) (T)

Jeremy is an approximation of the very first Sim I ever created, Alan Chesney, back when I didn't know anything about the game at all. Annica is an exact replica of Alan's wife, Annica. The original Chesneys had six A-named children, two sons and four daughters. They had the first set of twins I ever tried to raise, and the original Annica died of starvation during four of her five pregnancies. The new Chesneys honor the memory of the originals by doing everything right where they did it wrong. Nice house. One kid. Jobs that actually work with their outgoing personalities (Athlete, Politics) instead of against them. Also, when I created the original Chesneys, I didn't know how to rotate the screen, so Alan had a Pinocchio nose that could only be seen from the sides. Jeremy has a perfect nose with a pert tip, like post-op Ashlee Simpson. Max is adorable and was potty-trained within two hours of his first drink of SmartMilk.

[cox]

Trevor (BRO) (BRO) (T)
Naima Rahim (BLA) (GRE) (T)
Jihad (BRO/bla) (BRO/gre) (T)

As I imagine it, Naima's religious family was none too happy to watch their only daughter abandon the tenets of their faith and marry Trevor (another approximate throwback), a guy as Anglo and as agnostic as they came. Trevor's parents, still shaken and suspicious in the aftermath of millennial terrorist activity, were probably equally unhappy with the marriage. Trevor and Naima probably hoped the birth of little Jihad (so named in honor of their own struggle to find independence from their intolerant families) would solder the bond between the two sets of in-laws, but instead, both families probably treated the poor (unfortunately ugly) kid like an unholy hybrid contaminant.

[herrera]

Jason (BLA) (GRA) (M)
Marisela Gutierrez (BLA) (BRO) (M)
Cara (BLA) (BRO/gra) (M)

Poor Cara. I forgot what her surname was when I was naming her. The Herreras are a good example of why it's never a good idea to let two Romance Sims, both in the Slacker career, run a household together. The promotions take forever, the pay raises are unimpressive and, in the end, they only really build one meaningful skill. Well, two. They're good for selling cheap paintings and repairing broken household appliances, and that's it. They hate having babies and they fear changing diapers, which they have to do at least twice a day. They are supremely annoying, but fun to dress like sluts, which is why we keep them around.

[jones]

Tanner (RED) (BRO) (D)
Natasha Douglas (BRO) (GRA) (D)
Jonathan (BRO/red) (BRO/gra) (D)
Kyla (BRO/red) (BRO/gra) (D)
Logan (BRO/red) (BRO/gra) (D)

Raising twins (like Jonathan and Kyla) is always sort of a disaster, in the first generation, before grandparents. Not only do twins require constant attention, more than infants--you have to feed them, potty-train them or change their diapers, bathe them regardless of whether their diapers are clean, keep them out of puddles to prevent having to bathe them more often, watch their energy levels so as to get them into bed before they start howling and play with them--they also make so much noise, when left unattended, that until you have a decent house set up with separate bedrooms, they pretty much prevent their parents from getting any sleep at all. Natasha died twice caring for Jonathan and Kyla while she was pregnant with Logan, and then once more when she was looking after three toddlers all at once. Tanner, who is in the easiest career field in which to earn an initial promotion--Politics, which doesn't require anything but a good mood at first--couldn't even make it to work because he kept falling asleep all the time. I never get why people get so eager to find hacks to enable twins. The only thing more annoying than having twins is, of course, having triplets, which I did, once, and hope never to ever again.

[killick]

Patrick (BRO) (GRA) (T)
Tess Thatcher (BRO) (LBL) (T)
Colton (BRO) (GRA/lbl) (T)
Damien (BRO) (GRA/lbl) (T)

The Killicks are one of those families I just can't bring myself to ever voluntarily play. Two-kid families are pretty much guaranteed to be too distracted to find career success, and until the kids are old enough to play with each other, they require too much social attention to get anything else done, either. Also, I don't really like watching boys grow up, because until they're adults, they are aesthetic messes. It's ridiculous that they all have that Afro in toddlerhood, and equally ridiculous that all the teenagers have those round, puffy cheeks. When they grow up and slim down, they're fine, of course, and a necessary catalyst to the continuation of the neighborhood, but irritating until then.

[kyle]

Ashford (BLA) (BRO) (T)
Kimberly Roan (BLA) (BRO) (D)
Chadham (BLA) (BRO) (M)
Bennett (BLA) (BRO) (M)

I finally figured out why certain guys seem to always be randomly running around assaulting everyone in the neighborhood. I could not for the life of me figure out why Ashford, for instance, was always picking fights with everybody, pulling them out of bed or away from their cooking or painting to shove them and then run away. It turns out this is the (understandable) reaction to being spied on. Whenever a Sim looks through a telescope before nightfall, he is peeping into some unsuspecting victim's window. The oldest man in the house will eventually retaliate by coming over to defend his family's honor. It's so simple. It took me forever to figure out.

[loveland]

Ethan (BLO) (GRE) (F)
Morgan Peale (BRO) (BLU) (F)
Melody (BRO/blo) (BLU/gre) (F)
Amelie (BRO/blo) (BLU/gre) (F)

Morgan is a fairer-skinned approximation of Amelie Dion LaGrande from Emerald Forest. Ethan is basically a replica of Shane O'Hara from the same. Their girls are bland, thin-lipped, washed out. I'm waiting for them to grow up, hoping their faces fill out and that they don't have thick chins like their mother's. There's not much else to say about them.

[mccool]

Charles (RED) (GRA) (F)
Christiana Zorzos (BRO) (BRO) (M)
Kelley (BRO/red) (BRO/gra) (T)
Maddox (BRO/red) (BRO/gra) (T)

Christiana Zorzos was meant as a tribute to Andromache Zorzos from two past neighborhoods, but she didn't exactly work out. She's way prettier than either one, and in fact more closely resembles Kelly Robbins Cox from Emerald Pointe. Kelley and Maddox are a child and toddler, respectively, and are so far adorable, but I'm trying not to get too excited just yet, because it seems like the cutest kids are in the most tremendous hurries to grow up into the awkwardest, ugliest adults. Though in this case, I don't see how that could happen. Kelly, at least, is just about perfect.

[michele]

Lauren (BLA) (GRA) (D)
Chloe Larsen (BLO) (BLU) (T)
Sheadon (BLA/blo) (BLU/gra) (M)
Ashton (BLA/blo) (BLU/gra) (M)

The first family of the new neighborhood. Chloe is an even prettier replica of Chloe Larsen Cox from Pleasantview, right down to the superlatively upturned nose. Sheadon is a medium-skinned clone of her mother; Ashton, the unfortunate spare to Sheadon's heir, favors Lauren, instead. They're both good-looking girls, but I had to do a lot of rearranging when I was working out the chain of betrothal to avoid wasting Sheadon's good genes and accidentally passing on Ashton's lesser ones.

[nakajima]

Daniel (BLA) (BRO) (F)
Laura Grayson (BLO) (BRO) (F)
Eja (BLA/blo) (BRO) (F)
Kaolla (BLA/blo) (BRO) (F)

Daniel Nakajima is an homage to Gavin Akura of Emerald Forest, and Laura Grayson is an albeit prettier throwback to Laura Grayson of the same. Half-Asian couples are always interesting, because the kids are unpredictable. Eja has his mother's eyes with just the hint of his father's slant, and Kaolla's eyes are even more almond-shaped than Daniel's are. What'll be weird is when one of them marries someone else with recessive blondness (Eja, I think, is slated for one of the BRO/blo Loveland girls, actually) and they end up with a kid with blond hair and Japanese eyes. That is also why I love the game so much.

[prescott]

Jai (BLA) (BRO) (M)
Susanna Whitmore (RED) (BRO) (M)
Layla (BLA/red) (BRO) (M)
Dylan (BLA/red) (BRO) (M)

The reason I eventually had to can Emerald Pointe was because I accidentally reused the first-generation given name Beckett on a third-generation newborn in a different family. Unless I someday do a neighborhood where I reuse names on a family tradition sort of tip, I refuse to forgo originality and reuse names. When I first created the Prescotts, I left them in the Family Bin for several days because I simply didn't feel like starting to build another house (which is fun once you've gotten the foundation laid, but a pain in the ass when you're just starting out). The husband's name, at that time, was Jonathan Prescott, and he and Susanna were two of the most attractive people in the neighborhood. While they were waiting in the Family Bin, I played with the Jones family, and when the twins were born, I named the boy Jonathan without a second thought. When I went back to initiate the Prescotts, and realized what I had done, I freaked out, scrapped the Prescotts and started over, renaming the husband Jai. Jai and the new Susanna are not even half as good-looking as their predecessors. It saddens me.

[stephanides]

Richard (RED) (BRO) (M)
Angelica Jaines (RED) (BLU) (F)
Justin (RED) (BRO/blu) (T)
Dante (RED) (BRO/blu) (T)
Sasha (RED) (BLU/bro) (T)

Richard was a mistake. He has wide, thick, comically huge lips, giving him an exaggerated simian look. Angelica is normal, but has a differently shaped head and differently placed features than Richard's. The kids, therefore, are a triple fiasco, Justin and Sasha having inherited their father's monkey lips, Dante having inherited Richard's low nose and Angelica's high mouth and chin. They were the three ugliest children in the neighborhood and have blossomed into the three strangest-looking adults.

[wildwood]

Price (BRO) (BRO) (D)
Amalia Templeton (BRO) (GRA) (D)
Colby (BRO) (BRO/gra) (D)
Taylor (BRO) (BRO/gra) (D)
Ailani (BRO) (BRO/gra) (D)
Ife (BRO) (BRO/gra) (D)

The Wildwoods were only supposed to have three children, but the same thing happened with them that happened to Brandon Miles and Angelica Tetrault from Emerald Forest: apparently they have the "twin gene," because after the first set of twins, they had twins again. Two sets of twins in a household is hell. Two toddlers by themselves are hell. Two newborns by themselves are hell. Two of one and one of the other is hell. Two of each is as bad as it gets, and Price and Amalia were too poor to even hire nannies. The worst feeling in the world is looking down the column of avatars and seeing that all four kids are in the yellow or orange because both parents are passed out from a full night of serial feedings. They're teenagers and kids now, soon to be four teenagers. It's far more relaxing, but six people is still way too many to keep track of in one house.

Heh.