My Candy and Junior kid (daughter) is named Tallys Mann, which I pronounce together as talisman. I have an incredible name picked out for the next one, but don't want to share yet. Not usually competitive, but for whatever reason I NEED to be the first to use it. I'm quite sure it hasn't been thought of yet.

Having so much fun with this hood. I have added a clean Academie Le Tour as I have never played it or its playables either. I also added Isle St. Croix as a vacation spot. I didn't want to play the Roth family in RBH (which if you remember my Widespot is added to), so I did some aging of the Roth family, acquired spouses, created children, and then turned the damn bunch of them into a set of tourists. Stella and Morty are elders, Sandra and Stuart Greenwood (townie) have daughters Aubreigh and Arden, Xander and Louanne Roth (townie) have sons Bramwell and Emerson. I like using some families as genetic fodder without having to play them. Some Widespot child or teen will meet a friend or potential love on vacation at some point, probably a Mann, Hart, or Beech.

In my actual game not lots has happened since last update (irl, June is really busy for teachers). Goldie Hart now has a thing for both Woody and Jacob Martin so that will be interesting to see what shakes down. Valentine dated and boinked Jill Smith. Rhett dated and boinked Alexandra O'Mackey and also (typical) made friends with her ex Gabe.

Peni, I tried following you on Tumblr again. Please let me know if it worked this time, because it’s not showing that I am following you on my end. I did manage to follow Aegagropilon though. Tumblr is so confusing to me. I know I need to set my Tumblr up properly, but I’m not sure how to do it yet. I’ll have to look at it again this weekend when I have some extra time.

I love all the clever names everyone thought of.

Lauratje86, I did think of the name China, but I was going to use it with the last name Beech. I chose the name Cocoa for Sandy’s daughter because I liked it better. However, if Sandy had twin girls, I probably would have named the other one China. I thought I would mention that I am also a Terry Pratchett fan.

The last time I played the Harts, Valentine invited Penny over for a booty call. Rhett just got home from work, so she went to the hot tub with him while Valentine waited for her in his bed. As soon as Penny was done with Rhett she went straight to Valentine. I didn’t think Penny was that type of sim. I might need to change her secondary aspiration to romance.

I have been switching between playing the main neighborhood and Academie Le Tour. Dixie is in her second semester of her freshman year. Here’s a picture of Dixie with her college roommates.

Rogue, you now appear in both my "followed" and "follower" lists so it looks like you've got it. It is really confusing at first!

I think it's fair to say that Penny is into experimentation. It's entirely possible that she thought of that evening as a comparison study. I have a bit in my head with Penny talking to Mary (during the development period) about the experiments she's setting up with Rhett, Mary confiding that she's falling for Valentine, and Penny squealing: "All right! You can be my control group!"

I bet Dixie gets hit on a lot by other women, dressed like that! Very stylishly butch, there.

Things are moving pretty slowly in my neighborhood as I'm playing one day rotations and only making one rotation or so a week due to my work schedule.

Uni
At Uni everyone is dating or going on outings. Woody and Goldie occasionally roll wants for each other, but aren't officially dating as he keeps hopping in the photo both with Virginia too. Scot and Virginia became friends again, but he doesn't want to date her. Instead I had him dating a cheerleader, but in spite of several dream dates he never even developed a crush for her. Eventually I had him run into Blossom and ask her out, by the end of the night both were in love and wanted to marry.Dixie is now in her senior year and is still going strong with Donovan. She can't wait to move back home with him. After finding jobs and saving up a bit of money I will let them see about finding their own place.

Beech
Daytona is glad Sandy is gone, but she and Hamilton have been bad influences on Rocky as they never cook and instead drink their supper. Teenagers can't live on juice and coffee, plus he has no parental guidance there as Daytona and Hamilton are too caught up in dating and work to set an example. Sandy's twins aged to children, and even though they live in a two bedroom apartment I have decided Rocky is going to move in with them. If he has to he can sleep on the sofa, but being with his mom who will cook meals, help with homework, and just focus on him and his siblings will help.

Hart
Junior took his kids back from Candy, but Val invites them over every day after school. Candy has made it clear she DOES NOT WANT KIDS. She rolls an anti-baby want every day and is quite glad they are gone. She spends her time running the beauty salon and looking for a date. She is currently seeing Mr. Big. This round she will have the house to herself for a while as Val plans to take all his grand-babies on a vacation to the mountains. He might just come home to find he has a son-in-law.

Mann
The Mann house is overflowing. I have the mod that allows for larger families but dread the though of bells chiming. Rich and Lana love the kids, but need a break, so they went on vacation. They excelled at ax throwing. It was scary. Junior and Mary are going on a vacation of their own, the honey moon they didn't get. As Val will be taking the two oldest girls for a few days Rich and Lana will only have to look after toddler Valli (I got her off sync with the other kids, so she is a day behind everyone else) and baby Richard III. I pray Junior and Mary don't come back with a bun in the oven. Junior had better watch out that none of the Uni students he keeps ACR woohooing with get knocked up or there will be hell to pay. Mary isn't worried about Candy because that was before she married Junior, but if she finds out about Goldie or Virginia she will kick him to the curb.

Land
River is enjoying lazing about this summer. He wakes up late and spends most of the day in his PJs. He invited his girlfriend to come over and as her parents are going out of town she will be staying for the next three days. His parents aren't sure whether to trust their son or not, after all look at what happened to Mary, but neither is willing to quit work to stay at home and babysit. Delta rolled knowledge and spends all her time earning skill points. She works on the car all day and star gazes all night. She has decided that nothing would be cooler than meeting aliens this summer.

Weiss
Skye finally retired as Penny is going to start work. Rhett flirts with every woman who walks into the shop but never takes it beyond flirting. Probably because when he is home Penny rarely lets him out of bed. No bells yet, but it is only a matter of time. Nickle and Dime have grown up into children but don't really care for anyone outside the family. Things will be interesting if they go on vacation with their grandpa Val. Penny also talked Rich into getting her a job as a pickpocket.

Yippee! I’m glad it worked this time.

I’m not sure what Penny is doing, but that was the second time Valentine booty called her and she answered. Maybe Valentine really is that irresistible. He's not doing too bad for an old guy, is he?

Sadly, there are no female or male sims attracted to Dixie yet and she isn’t attracted to anyone either. According to ACR, Dixie likes males and females equally, so I’m not sure who she will eventually end up with. I’ll have to wait and see. It wasn’t my intention to make her look butch, although I don’t mind if she does. I chose the outfit based on her aspiration. I like to dress my fortune sims in nice clothes. Since Dixie is still in college I wanted her to be comfortable, yet still look nice. I also tend to dress female romance sims in short skirts. That should give you a clue as to which aspiration the blonde haired girl in the picture is. This makes me wonder if there is a thread here about people dressing their sims according to their aspirations.

In my Mann household, Rich and Candy got pregnant while Junior and Lana were at work (they all reside together). Later the next day, shortly after Candy started showing, Rich made the mistake of autonomously romantic kissing Candy literally as Lana was one the way across the room to kiss him.

Lana slapped the hell out of Rich and he slapped her back. Junior was out playing with the dog, oblivious. Candy skulked off to eat CC appetizers because nobody can cook and that's mostly what's served. I have made Rich apologize several times, but he's still sleeping on the couch for now. Lana is furious with the both of them, but not instigating fights at this point. She is kept busy with the dog and just turned toddler Tallys. Everyone else ignores Tallys, so Granny has to do something. After all, she is still the daughter of Lana's beloved Junior. Everyone keeps up appearances to protect Junior, like the man-child he is, so they are all still eating meals together like nothing has gone on.

So I'm still putting together the Land family saga. And I may stop at that because (ADD) I'm now obsessing about: restoring my deleted Riverblossom, with the hope of playing the Ottoman family, of COURSE after attaching Widespot as a shopping hood (such a wonderful idea!), and then adding a downtown to get the Tricou teens. Of course all this raises other questions: do I KNOW how to restore a hood? Do I have to re-download the Seasons "fix" (which spawned a glitched Riverblossom - ?) Will my anti-respawn related hacks prevent the Tricous from generating? Or even the Ottomans?

Notownieregen does not prevent family bin sims or that first batch of townies. Only empty templates do that.

Of course, this isn't the right thread for these questions...

I wasn't really ASKING, I just wanted to "check in"; I did go to another thread for questions.

I tried to edit last post, but can't add a picture...

Here is a an important character in the story I'm writing, Hartless Soggybottom. Remember the baby Penny had by Rhett Hart? She put him up for adoption, and he's now a happy toddler. Here he is with his favorite things. Isn't that Rhett's profile? He looks so human, but remember he has Penny's alien genetics.

opps didn't do that right, pic too small

He seems to have pink pets. What sort of household did he get adopted into?

If you're using photobucket, I always had a problem with them limiting the size of the photos I posted, though I never could figure out why. Other people post fullsize pics from there. In any case when you attach it should only be a thumbnail; but this is a little small even when I click on it. Also a tad fuzzy. Did you remember to set your camera option to high?

I'm glad to hear Hartless has an important role to play.

The BEST kind, full of happy kids and doggies, and a really nice lady. The dogs are being bred by his adoptive mom, Paddy Soggybottom. I was trying for something that looked like pink pigs. I created her and her 2 kids, and a "friend" with 2 kids, to make friends for the Widespot characters. Friend died, kids are now teens (and have paired up). Paddy and 2 of the kids are green (frogs=soggybottom, haha). Poor but a great mom, when the kids turned teen Paddy wanted another baby, and knew there was one up for adoption. She doesn't know it is a Hart baby, or that the mom is GREEN! I'm hoping when he grows up he will give her some green grand-babies!

I've been missing Widespot and my simmies! I'm going to redownload it and start from scratch

I decided to add the Ottomas family in my Widespot, I think they'll make a nice addition. Their house is very small on a 2x3 lot across from the Hart's. In the basement is a bedroom (for Grandma Dora and Sharla), a full bathroom, and a recreation room with games, a TV, and fitness stuff. The main level has a kitchen, dining room, full bathroom, and a foyer/living room. The top level has the master bedroom, master bathroom, another full bathroom, a bedroom (for the boys Tommy and I forget the teen's name), and a nursery for the unborn twins. It's packed real tight. I hope my Triplets and Quads mod doesn't kick in, cause that would be awful.
I'm excited to see how these guys will interact with the original characters. I find it funny cause Samantha is pregnant, just like the other Widespot ladies!

The Gavigan and Traveler families have been added to my rotation, and several more community lots have sprung up around town. Dixie will graduate from Uni and marry this round, I'm planning to build a special store for her to try on wedding dresses and such. Mary's wedding was pretty rushed and Dixie is determined to do everything differently from her sister. Plus I found some really neat wedding dress shop stuff i want to add to my game, lol. I'm trying to play more in community lots than I used to because it's fun seeing everyone interact. Scot recently became a witch/wizard, whatever the game calls it. He had been looking for love for ages, and every time he thought he found the right woman ACR had her sleep with someone else. He is currently dating the good head witch, who is also a family sim. If he can keep it up they can marry once they become adults. Candy is working her way through town, kissing everyone but Junior. Junior has a thing for co-eds and stalks Virginia and Goldie. No one has the heart to tell Mary who is blissfully ignorant, but if he pulls the moves on one of her sisters she will find out even if I have to cheat and drag down her relationship on my own. Valentine took a vacation with all six of his grandkids, his daughter with Mary, and Candy. It was a really good vacation and most of the kids are friends. Dime and Pacific tormented each other into friendship which I found funny. So far no one (other than Gunnar Roque) has passed away, but it is only a matter of time.

I love this hood! I downloaded it last night, and made it around to each family for one day, to try and get my head around each family. My mind was boggling at the scandals which intertwined each family, as it is so unlike how I usually play! I'm so excited to play it again just to see how it'll all pan out (and find out who's pregnant by who haha)

[QUOTE=BeckyBoo8]I've been missing Widespot and my simmies! I'm going to redownload it and start from scratch

I decided to add the Ottomas family in my Widespot, QUOTE]

How did you "add the Ottomas" - they were just in your bin? Also: I was surprised that the Widespot subhood had NO HOUSES! Just the families on huge empty lots - and no one had much money. You probably told about this, but I missed it. Not that I mind, I just love building! So they all got what I consider proper houses:

Beech: as the founders, they get a large, old fashioned but "wealth" house.
Mann: the snooty rich family also live in a big house, but more modern. Next to the Beech Estate, both are across the street from well-kept parks.
Hart: Valentine and Rhett moved to a happening bachelor pad, complete with pool table, and bar (which seems to provide most of their "meals", except for the BBG hot dogs and TV dinners). The girls are on their own, but looking for roommates.
Weiss: isolated on the Road Outta Town, it's mostly an underground bunker, haphazardly furnished. He's getting more weird, and haggard from those all-nighters at the telescope. Is anyone out there?
Land: on the largest lot, it's a sprawling old farm house. They moved here from the deep south, as teens, so they've had years to build the house and grounds. They had always tried to avoid people (afraid of disapproval) but started a produce stand on the property, and Beaulah has started baking apple pies to sell. Dixie wants to start a REAL store in town. They now think folks here are right friendly: I hope they never find out that people gossip about them.

NOTE: this is just the SUB-HOOD, not the main Widespot I've now worked a few generations of. Even though it's a side-track, I can't help imagine "stories".

Widespot Subhood is identical to the original, except it can be added to a main hood. I only built the bare necessaries because I wanted to keep it simple; and because it's so hard to build properly with just basegame stuff (the Lands and Weisses in particular were frustrating - I kept wanting things that looked homemade, scrounged, and worn out); and because building isn't really my forte. Almost everyone builds better than I do; my contribution is character and story. I kept reminding myself of that and chanting: "People like to make things over anyway" as I built.

I'm experimenting with a custom downtown now (prepared as if I intend to upload it, but I don't know that I will) and filling it up with enough buildings to look like downtown, and restricting myself to BG+NL, has been exhausting!

The Weisses and Lands of course had to be poor; by my standards I made the Manns filthy rich and the Harts and Beeches comfortable. (If I'd had more decrepit-looking build items to work with, I'd have made an empty fixer-up to be "the old Beech place," the implication being that the house was built on the highway only recently, after the improvements started, and Daytona imposed the kitchen tile on Sandy over the sound of her desperate whispered screams.) The Harts and Beeches could easily get more money than I will ever be able to spend on them if their households go to full employment, which is not what I'm doing in my own game but somebody easily might. I am thinking that my Sandy should get a job at the last minute before she hits elder.

Never apologize to me for working out the story, Grammapat! Story's what I like best. And I tried to leave plenty of room for other people's takes on the backstory.

Yes they were already in the bin.
So far, I have played with the Beech and Ottomas families.

Beech: I took everyone out to the General Store, where everyone got new clothes, hairstyles, and makeup. Except Hamilton and Rocky kept their hairstyles because I liked them. They also adopted two border collies, a black and white female Jessie and a brown and white male Woody (Toy Story was my inspiration, I'm awful with pet names). Then Woody Weiss came and I was like "Oh I completely forgot there was already a Woody" So I just think Virginia wanted to name it Woody after her crush. While Sandy was buying clothes for everyone, I saw Virginia and Woody flirting and holding hands, and it was so cute. And then they had their first kiss I thought the general store was a bit odd for that, but why not? At home everyone went to work and school while Sandy studied parenting after getting her first pop. When the kids returned they caught up on homework and Sandy invited the whole Hart family over. In the middle of the foyer her and Rhett started kissing without me knowing because I was playing on the upstairs level and both Hamilton and Rocky caught her, leading to the inevitable divorce. So she moved out, and it was so cute Rocky was crying and Hamilton was comforting him. Who knows where she'll go now..

Ottomas: Man, this is a crazyyy house! I'm good with big households but I decided to go easy and just let 'em all relax a bit today. They went to work and school, Samantha taught Tommy how to talk, blah blah blah. They also made friends with the Hart family, who welcomed them to the neighborhood.

Penny: like I said, I didn't MIND that there were no houses, since I love building (and in the original Widespot the houses were all changed to some degree and redecorated). I love your "back story" teasers, it gave me somewhere to start. But after that, you can still go anywhere! I love reading how everyone works it out. I was expecting to "discover" some Freudian stuff (like, babies and cheating and breaking up families and death in one story, and happy-ever-after in someone else's"), but it seems like everyone has a mix of "outcomes".

Just remember that only one populated Downtown can be added to any neighborhood. If you try to add a second occupied Downtown, all of the sims will disappear.

That's why OFB subhoods are a better choice for populated subhoods.

Yeah; like Widespot, this is an experiment and it may not amount to anything in the long run. I just don't see why I can't have Mrs. Crumplebottom and some different community lots, too; and I'm interested to see if I can figure out how to add my own Mr. Big/Diva and slobs, and whether I can populate the graveyard(s) without breaking the whole thing, and so on. I've added the unpopulated version to my Widespot, so the highway improvements connect them to something, and that should be all the Downtown they need. If I do make a populated version and I do upload it, I'll be sure to do so with a big flashing warning sign about not attaching it to a neighborhood that already has a Downtown. At the moment it's all infrastructure and very much a WIP.

It seems to me, grammapat, looking at a sims neighborhood as a creative product, that the single most important thing is to know when to stop creating and turn it over to the players. Ideally every character in the hood should be balanced on the point of a pin - individuated enough to be interesting, but able to go in any direction depending on contingent circumstances and player choice. Because choice is the most important game element and the thing the creator cannot afford to abrogate to herself.

I love reading this thread. There are so many different and interesting storylines here. I don’t think I’m very good at writing stories, but I try my best to describe some of the funny and interesting things that happen when I play.

Grammapat, I like your picture of Hartless and the dogs. Does Hartless have the alien eyes? It’s hard to tell in the picture. I remember the picture you posted of Birch Soggybottom. How are the boys related? Are they brothers or cousins?

Peni, I hope you will be happy with your custom downtown when it’s done even if you don’t decide to upload it. It sounds like it’s a lot of work. I think I want to make a custom shopping district for my Widespot. I have never made a custom neighborhood before though. I’m not sure that I’m ready to invest too much of my time into it yet. I also wanted to let you know that I think you did a great job with the houses that you built for Widespot considering that you only had the base game to work with. I appreciate that you left enough room to expand onto all of them. I have added an extra bedroom onto all of them except for the Manns’ house since there is already plenty of room in their house. I did a little redecorating on it though. I turned one of the rooms upstairs into a nursery for Mary’s daughter, although Mary hasn’t moved in yet. As Grammapat already mentioned, I also love to build. I built all of my houses for the family bin sims and my own created families. Building is one of those things I like to do when I have limited time to play, because I can save and quit whenever I want. I don’t have to worry about waiting for sims to get home from work or school.

I recently played one of my own families that I created for Widespot. Their last name is Chang. The father’s name is Jie and the mother's name is Lan. Their daughter’s name is Mei and their son’s name is Jin. The background for this family is that they are originally from Takemizu Village. I haven’t really figured out why they moved to Widespot. I know that Jie’s lifetime want is to be the Head of the SCIA, so I suppose I can play as though Jie and his family moved to Widespot so he could pursue his career. Why Widespot specifically? I don’t know yet. Maybe there is something there that Jie wants to investigate. Here is a picture of the Chang family.

Here's Hartless being held by his big brother Birch. The aren't really related; I wanted Hartless to keep his family tree; so for a story line Paddy just took him in as a foster child.


Thought you would be able to see Birches eyes are RED, but Hartless TOTALLY looks like his dad (normal brown eyes). Who ever said all toddlers were cute!?

Sorry for the double post (was sure someone else would have posted), but I want to start my story. Question is, should I post the rest of it HERE (where I may be doing multiple double-posting), or on the Stories thread? I DO want to help keep THIS thread alive!

My story will be centered on the Land family, but will include some pictures, gossip, etc of the other Widespot characters.

SUGAR LAND
Prologue


I remember the first time I set eyes on the place. It was right cold for spring and the grasses had a blanket of hoar frost. Beaulah said it was right pretty, all sparkly in the morning sun. I picked up my bride and gave her a big kiss.
“You’ll always be the prettiest thing around here.”
“Laws, Homer, set me down!” she giggled.
I loved her giggle. Shoot, there was nothing about her I DIDN’T love. Way back then I never would have believed that, forty years later, I would love her even more.
T’weren’t nothing here but trees and good soil, but we were young and strong and eager to build a life together. Both us grew up on farms so we knew hard work. We knowed each other since we were knee high to a grasshopper, and we took to each other right off. But our folks didn’t take kindly to that AT all. See, back then, in southern towns, black and white folks were cordial enough to each other, but each thought they should marry up with “their own”. Beaula is a delicious chocolate; when I tell her how tasty she looks to me, she says I’m tasty too, but look like pudding with raisins (I have freckles, and no matter how much time I get sun-baked, I don’t brown up).
When we got to be teenagers her parents laid down the law; “Leave that boy be, or we’ll ship you off to your aunt Dooty in Fayettville”. Well, we had put up with getting the stink eye (and worse) from ‘bout everybody, but that was the last straw. We ran off together, me with a tote of clothes, her with the money she had saved from cleaning and cooking for folks. I swan she made the best apple pie, even at 17! And she insisted on bringing a toy bear, said it was her “lovie” when she was a baby and she was set on passing it down to HER babies.