5.9 Well-Preserved Ruins

Let us begin this chapter with the Greatest Tragedy of Them All™.

I’m talking about the fact that the game thinks he has children. And family. And friends.

I’m sorry, I bet you’re all crying now. Things can only go up from here, right?

Buzz (writing): A gentle snow falls like bullets on my metal joints. I see her up in the distance, walking away from me. Then I realize it is just my shattered heart playing tricks on my weary mind.

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.

4.17 Robots in Disguise

Hello again! Seems like all I do these days is blog. Just as it should be, since I checked the archives and apparently this generation alone has taken me over a year to write. How? HOW? That’s 1/3 of the time this blog has been alive. What is it about Katana’s children that have made things so difficult?

Don’t answer that.

Thanks again to everyone who read the birthday posts. I know it was a lot to get through, but the party isn’t over! Oh no, keep your dancing feet warm because it’s Christmas in July! This post would have made sense if I’d stuck to the schedule dammit

Teqeq: Do you like what I’ve done with my hair? I hear chicks dig the flow.

And since Snowflake Day is a time for family, we invited all the relatives we could think of. Birth certificates/paternity tests required at the door.

4.15 Gotta Catch’Em All!

I have waited so long to use this chapter title.

Welcome to the world of Langurd. My name is Sam. People affectionately refer to me as the Soulless Overlord. This world is inhabited far and wide by creatures called Langurd. For some people, Langurds are entertaining. Some use them in their own legacies. As for myself, I study Langurds as a profession.

But first, tell me a little about yourself. Are you a boy or a girl?

Lira: Huh?

Your very own Langurd legend is about to unfold. A world of dreams and adventure awaits you. Let’s go.

3.2 Gung Ho

gung ho [guhng-hoh] – adj.: extremely enthusiastic and enterprising, sometimes to excess. Adopted by US marines from Chinese Pidgin English.

This is my life lately. Why, only today I am “enterprising” to sew a dress, clean my room, do laundry, write four French assignments, and caption these 100-odd screenshots.

Not only that, but this chapter is so ambitious that the only other apt title would be “Five Birthdays, Three Life-Threatening Experiences, Two Destinies Fulfilled, Two Graduations, Two Kind-of Deaths, a Birth, a Party, an Abandonment, and a Wedding.”

Having read that description, you can probably just skip the chapter. But please don’t. I put my blood and tears into these things.

We begin with a father-daughter trip to China, undertaken by each party with a heavy heart.

Razor: O great spirit of Sim-Fu, grant me the strength to defeat the Abitar without glitching into oblivion.

Katana: Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou— Just kidding, I’m only upset about being outside.