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.

5.1 The Living Dead

Guess who’s back, bitches!

(Using that phrase purely for power-drama. I think very highly of you all.)

To start with, thank you for your moral support/commiseration/technical advice on that very articulate Error 12 post. I’m happy to announce that WE ARE IN THE CLEAR! And in fact, I’ve nearly finished playing Gumby’s generation, so now comes a crapload of writing. Enjoy!

 

The fate of the family is now rests on… a guy who still creeps around like a grounded teenager.

Gumby: I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Polly.

Polly: Don’t tell me what to do! Go to your room!

Gumby: Okay.

4.13 Oh Boy, That Tickles!

(NOTE: Chapter 4.12 went up less than 24 hours ago, so make sure you don’t skip over it by mistake! I only say this because back-to-back posts are unheard of for me, so I wouldn’t blame you for clicking the first post you see in the Reader Feed. :P)

Goodness gracious, I just looked through the screenshots for this chapter and we have a lot to get through. Don’t scroll ahead because some of it is big and game-changing. If you do scroll ahead, you’re probably the kind of person who skipped to the end of Harry Potter Six, so kindly let me know to un-friend you. What do you mean there’s no friend system on WordPress? The sentiment is there, okay? I will un-friend you in my heart.

But not actually because it’s your life, and this is a legacy for crying out loud, not Harry Potter.

Newsman: And finally, birdwatchers everywhere have reported that the nation’s owls have been behaving very unusually today. Do not be alarmed if a strange man in a cloak drops a scarred infant on your doorstep in the middle of the night.

Balboa: Malissa, dear — what’s the name of your nephew again?

Malissa: Gumby. Nasty, common name if you ask me.

(Now exiting the parallel universe where “Gumby” is a common name.)

4.9 I Love You, You Love Me, We’re a Happy Family

Isn’t that the most accurate description of the Langurds you’ve ever heard?

For the record, if I get this chapter out by Tuesday, I’ll have done seven posts in two weeks. That might just qualify as a miracle.

Where were we? Oh yeah, still at university. For this whole chapter and like half of the next one. I’m sorry, but it can’t be helped when our bright young minds are keeping so busy!

Prof. Richards: You see, a corporation is like a colony of honeybees! Everyone has a task to do, but in the end you’ll just die among the flowers or with your butt stuck in the arm of a pesky human.

I can smell the sarcasm.

4.8 Taste the Explosion

AND WE’RE BACK with another instalment of “We could be on Generation 8 by now but Sam is a lame-o storyteller so let us waste time and frolic.”

It’s a fine day for frolicking, with the sun in the sky and the azaleas in bloom and the world’s dumbest roommates canoodling in the background.

Garrison: I’ll kiss anything that breathes.

Tammy: I make drama for kicks.

Garrison: Let us tango.

Lev: God, I really can’t get away from it.

3.13 Hakuna Matata

Welcome back! I had planned to get this post out earlier, but you know. Plans. Who needs ‘em? Instead of writing, I spent a fantabulous weekend in Ottawa playing quidditch, sweating sunscreen into my eyes, and sitting on top of a refrigerator. Sorry not sorry.

We left off just as Razor, Lord of the Second Generation, was passing into the great beyond. Razor, who spent his life sparring against China’s fiercest, died on a perilous quest to pick flowers. I should have kept it to one screenshot, but the whole thing was such a clusterfuck that I had to draw it out, all slow and painful.

Zombie: FLEESSSSHHHHHH

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.