5.5 Bittersweet

Question: What’s the longest you guys have ever played for in one sitting? I’m too ashamed to admit mine, but let’s just say I’ve been putting in almost full days lately, and it’s taking its toll. I moved some stuff into my RL apartment today, and when my cat immediately started nosing around the new trash can, I saw “Check Out New Object” hovering in his action queue. Then I sat down with a glass of water and asked myself what life is.

Of course, it doesn’t help that when I’m not playing, I’m writing posts or editing screenshots or formatting blogs. But hey, you gotta live control fake people’s lives while you’re young!

Alternatively, you can live while you’re old like Lira. She seems to have really come into her own since she hit elderhood, and more specifically, since she embalmed herself in the pursuit of eternal youth.

Lira: Stupid bunny rabbit! I wanted an alien!

Still pining after Teqeq?

Lira: Who is Teqeq?

5.4 Accidentally on Purpose

I’ve been having a crisis lately about writing believable characters. I know — this is The Sims, and no one expects it to be an actual simulation of life. However, my ambitions do involve someday writing for a living, and I like to think that this is helping me toward that goal in some way. Is it really very helpful if I keep writing caricature morons with no emotional drive? Can anyone actually relate to this family?

Then, I started watching Arrested Development while editing my screenshots. (Kind of relevant if you consider it’s where Gobias Koffi and the Never Nude trait were born.) Gob was putting on a magic show to The Final Countdown and I thought never mind, this stuff actually sells. The Bluths could be the Langurds’ role models. It’s not like we’ve reached that level of weird, right?

Frieda: I will marry and outlive everyone until I inherit the entire earth! *thunderclap*

Okay, thanks for the reality check.

5.2 Trouble in Paradise

Another chapter so soon?! (You ask in distress.) I’m sorry. I should probably leave a courtesy buffer or something but sometimes the words just keep flowing, y’know?

Last time, Gumby fell in love with Frieda Salas, an evil ghost who wants to kill him and steal his money. Lira had tea with her SimBots and lamented the curse of aging. Mandrake broke my game, and Boa tried in vain to die by jelly bean. I know now that that can’t happen, but for the sake of continuity and my pride I’m going to pretend I am none the wiser.

(Pretend not to be wise? How ever shall I do that?)

Gumby’s second date with Frieda was a raging and unreasonable success. I know the shot I gave you last chapter was a little stingy, so here’s a better look at her face.

Frieda: So hypothetically, what colour would you want your ghost to be?

Gumby: I don’t know. Why?

Frieda: Oh, no reason.

For anyone wondering, this is her real, EA-given colouring. All of the Midnight Hollow ghosts seem to look like this underneath, i.e. so white they must have been genetically engineered by Hitler himself.

4.12 My Baby All Gone

Lt. Surge: Greetings, scum. As the master of this household, I have taken over narration duties for the time being. The coup was easy; Sam is a creature of very little willpower, known to melt in the presence of cats. She lets us sleep in her clean laundry and chew on her headphone cords because she doesn’t have the heart to tell us no. All I had to do was sit up here and make this face, and she immediately bumped my picture to the top of the chapter. Pathetic.

2.7 The Darkling’s Crusade

Is anybody else slightly terrified by this?

‘Cause I know I am. If you’ve read my foreword, you’ll know that I don’t cope too well with these kinds of changes, and neither do my legacies. I tend to get caught between excitement and nostalgia, and then I curl up in a ball of jittery indecision which soon becomes a mushroom cloud of “SCREW IT JUST TAKE MY MONEY.” And let’s be honest here, it’s not like I’m going to finish this thing anytime in the next year. Thus the terrification; I want so badly to finish this legacy but I also know these games will probably be obsolete before I can manage that. So what do?

I guess I should be glad this is the biggest stresser in my life right now. 😛

2.6 Lancelot the Brave

This is coming to you from a retirement village where I am currently hijacking the wi-fi of an unsuspecting elderly couple. Never have I been so proud of myself.

Before I start this update, I thought I’d share some of my adventures in the Land of Distraction. For starters, I had promised myself that I could start building the new legacy house after Chapter Five. The current one, with its artsy glass corridors and towers, was having a lot of routing problems and anyway, it’s just ugly. So I told myself: “Let’s make a nice, simple family home that won’t lag my game or generate foot-tapping vortexes to entrap my sims forever.” With that in mind, I opened up 15 Summer Hill Court in another save file…

…and built a house so elaborate and expensive that it blew the Langurd budget by more than $100,000.

I have a problem.

Anyway, I don’t want to unveil it just yet (too much awesomeness for one chapter, I fear) but I did let my simself take an abbreviated tour, so here are some snippets of that:

Far Inferior Version of Myself: THERE’S A CANNON. WHY IS THERE A CANNON?

In case Gurbin comes back, obviously. But never mind that! Step inside the newest Casa de Langurd, featuring…

2.5 The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors

Sick of me bombarding you with updates? TOO BAD, HERE’S ANOTHER ONE.

I should get an award for this kind of hardcore hermit lifestyle dedication.

Last chapter, proactivity was the name of the game (if it were actually a word, that is). The rest of our spares moved out (and into the home of a happily married couple) and Razabella (lousiest ship name ever?) tied the knot. Then, Ara went into fierce combat with childbirth and popped out the first kid of Generation Three.

Can we keep up the momentum? Read on and find out.

Let’s kick things off with inspiring screenshot, courtesy of Grey Wind:

In the Langurd household, one can find peace in the most unexpected of places.

Tewl: Who dun dis?

Grey Wind: It was I, Master.

Tewl: …Good boy.

The woes of having a front porch: the pet gets praised for “peeing outside” but we still have to mop it up. –.-