Untitled Sunlit Tides Decadynasty (Gen 2 Pt. 8)

[Trip]

Untitled Sunlit Tides Decadynasty

"Because I'm not sticking with a last name for ten generations, rofl" - Trip, 2019

Rahiti, Part One
Rahiti, Part Two
Rahiti, Part Three
Rahiti, Part Four
Rahiti, Part Five

Palmyra (Technically)

Heiva, Part One
Heiva, Part Two
Heiva, Part Three
Heiva, Part Four
Heiva, Part Five
Heiva, Part Six
Heiva, Part Seven
Heiva, Part Eight

Hua, Part One
Hua, Part Two
Hua, Part Three
Hua, Part Four
Hua, Part Five
Hua, Part Six
Hua, Part Seven
Hua, Part Eight

[Trip]

Rahiti, Part One

Rahiti Fitzpatrick was born on Week 1, Day 6. It's a little late for a founding couple but this was actually the best time I had gotten (usually he came Day 8 in my test runs). Anyways this was the most stressful start to a decadynasty I could have thought of, though it's not like I got lucky later on either...

Ahem.

Maybe you're wondering how I got here.

This isn't Twinbrook after all.

Twinbrook was my downfall.

Actually Twinbrook is a great dynasty town for a lot of reasons. I mean...I completed an immortal dynasty there. It was fun. It was certainly much easier than Sunlit Tides because I didn't have to drive all around a big atoll just to get to work, but I blame the lack of success of my decadynasty tries there (I think I had three) on being too caught up in the original townies and their stories. Years of playing there means years of pent-up lore that gets in the way of...I dunno...making the honor roll and supermaxing painting. It's 100% more stressful than the immortal dynasty.

I bought Sunlit Tides back in university where the $40 to buy the gold version was worth a whole shift of minimum wage work but I did it anyways. Then I opened it once and never again. So there's no familiarity. No deep lore. No actual investment in my founders no matter who I chose...though that last one fell through once I got attached.

Then I got too into the idea of my epic island decadynasty to back out once the world posed a few issues:

• It's not the best town to pollinate in. Very important. For one, it's the only EA town I can think of where three whole households are blood-related (Kahale, Hale, and Wahine) Compared to Sunset Valley, it's sparse on in-town sims (54 vs 66), though it actually has a better "kids to no kids" ratio than SV (SV had 14 families with kids vs 11 without, ST has 9 with kids vs 12 without, but also three more households I mark as "useless" due to being single elderly women or elderly childless couples, something SV doesn't have) But Sunlit Tides could be a town full of beautiful young childless islanders who certainly aren't related and I'd still have a big issue because I had zero background experience to work with. I quickly accepted the inevitability of second-cousin marriages.
• Uh yeah the transport is absolute garbage, takes an hour or more to get anywhere even in a nice vehicle. I'm not just talking about the criminal volcano warehouse and one hangout being reachable only by walking (not driving) up tall volcanoes. The town's very de-centralized and the atoll has certain chunks that are a mixture of some houses and some commercial lots but not all of them. Choose to live close to the library and your commute to the theatre is sabotaged.
• Many of the eligible founding townies live in modest quarters. The Pleasants, the Parrott sisters, and Silas Allender all have pretty nice houses but the rest are bordering on starter material with little room to expand. Funny enough no household starts with less than $10,000 in cash.
• I wanted to do the lifeguard profession but it is actually impossible to do in Sunlit Tides. It has very shallow oceans and even the water at the beaches starts well after the beach ends, so sims can go "deep" into the water but can't swim until they're well-outside the area that the lifeguard patrols (and they won't go outside it). It's so bizarre.
• This one is my fault but I enabled spring and autumn as seasons (to prepare for any world move to a place that isn't in endless summer) and also made a lot of my household sleep outside. And I had an outdoors garden. No one liked that.

Eh so why did I stay?

• It's pretty.
• The town turns supernatural really, really fast for some reason. In multiple trial runs too. I stockpiled elixirs but rarely had to use them because entire households would turn into fairies with the snap of a finger. This actually makes it loads better than Twinbrook (from a pure pollination/townies living long perspective), which turns almost no one.
• I like a challenge.

But it's been a good run.

Decadynasties only exist to do your dream townie pairings and my dream is always the couple that absolutely no one asked for. Sunlit Tides was full of odd ideas and I found the perfect one. It has everything you expect from me: an age gap, scandalous infidelity, townie genes (inevitable right now).

Elders were spotted: Niles and Isadora Fitzpatrick. Didn't I mark them as a "useless" household? I mean, there's single man Keaunu Kailani: the Harwood Clay of Sunlit Tides (not for skills or cool implied backstory but for making weird babies). But I had a workaround for the Fitzpatricks and we'd have plenty of time with Keaunu anyways without making him a founder.

Niles and Isadora were deeply in love and acted really sappy around town when I wasn't playing them. They're not the couple ripe for an affair. I could have just played with the Pleasants after all! But I can't say that Niles wasn't open to the idea of an affair either, instead of just aging Isadora down. Plus, the scandal. Juicy, juicy scandal. Imagine ruining your awesome childfree marriage of fifty years or so by retiring to Polynesia and knocking up an islander.

He had his pick of the young and beautiful for sure but in the end, I chose the fluffy one who was four days away from being an elder herself.

Kaila was the only Sunlit Tides townie I remembered before this because she's fat, cute, and grows flame fruit in her garden. Although she comes with a celebrity point, it went away when I started in her household with the system turned off (otherwise I would have started with Niles, he has more money). She lived in what was basically a metal shack but she had a pretty sweet career (level 5 science) that also put her more than halfway to completing her LTW (Creature-Robot Crossbreeder). And as it turned out it gave me an awesome list of starter contacts.

Including Niles Fitzpatrick, gone from unemployed to her boss.

Working with Niles actually gave me an awesome head start. He mostly has good traits except for Dislikes Children. On principle I should like it because I'm a childfree harpy too but they reject almost every friendly interaction if you're not friends with them already ("Chat" and "Get to Know" are usually safe). But it doesn't apply for being at work in a rabbithole, schmoozing up to your boss as a job action. It didn't make them friends but a lot of my work was done.

But that also meant that Kaila was a free woman for her first day on the island. The unfortunate reality was that both she and Niles had to die. Niles because I didn't want him forever but Kaila was prime tombstone material. I didn't want siblings for my heir so someone had to take up the mantle of managing the lion's share of friends. And they had to be the opposite of what I wanted out of my founders:

• Young.
• Players love her.
• Has founded a decadynasty before.

Pearl Yang worked with Kaila too and also lived nearby. She's actually not as young as she looks (latter half of the YA stage) and her skills are average, but I didn't care. She'd have all the time in the world to hone them. Pearl came with a couple points each in Logic and Charisma, important for both friends and tutoring the heir. Most importantly, she could have a son to give our heir a friend, give our future heirs more spouse options, and so she and Kaila could eventually have a cool single mums club. She also provided a lot of the contacts for our first few parties.

Kaila is a party animal after all and immediately wanted her hen party after Niles moved in (important), kissed, and proposed. He had a good reason to propose but more on that soon!

First, I wanted to give Kaila a few extra days right away so she didn't age up to elder right after having her kid. She took a few life-extending mud baths at that ridiculous spa and sauna on top of the volcano (then I learned that one of the rich households--I think the Kahales--has one and they're basically next door neighbors). I was very unaware that it slimmed down sims too! I appreciated the look of the new Kaila but I also vowed to never do it again to her. She's proud of her body no matter what. <3

(Clearly the mud bath is not legal for current heirs to use but it's also an autonomous action and my greatest fear...famous last words already?)

The bachelorette party was pretty great...maybe not by the game's standards but I had to get a few things done and I got them done.

For dynasties, you're allowed to place lots from Union Cove into your world even though they're technically player made. It's because you can legally play dynasties in UC so why not? Now I wouldn't recommend every lot (no mansions, you gotta love yourself and your computer first) but what is probably UC's biggest performance downfall is also the greatest strength with attention paid to having lots of lots and tightly-themed areas. The beachy lots near the beach fit perfectly into warm/tropical worlds better than, like, a Bridgeport skyscraper. I still used stock EA lots for the junkyard, salon, and fire station but I liked the help.

Anyways, party at The Shack! This became my favorite place for birthday parties because of how unroutable Kaila's house could get with people...not like that ever stopped me.

Kaila's goal was to throw a party, that's it. Also she's pregnant, who'd have thunk? I would never imply that she didn't do a lick of work during the dynasty because she grew a garden, made a lot of money, fulfilled wishes, and did most of the work of raising her kid. But she had an easy night and Pearl had to learn early on that most of the socializing work was on her shoulders. Not only would she not die on my watch, but she simply knew more people than Kaila from the start and had a boss who wasn't Niles.

She had a best friend in Gilberto Gonzalo already and her boss was Keaunu Kailani, who looked a little too happy to be crashing a bachelorette party. From test runs I basically had their female matches picked out already. I know Pearl x Gilberto would have been an easy match so she could have a kid but she already had a romantic interest in Ricardo Gregario. Now those were famous last words.

I wanted our heir and Pearl's kid to be pretty close in age, but I still had a few days to get a household slot free (I was shuffling around some homeless townies and then moved in Silas Allender) and get Pearl's stuff together in general.

Fast forward to Kaila's wedding and right outta nowhere Ricardo gets accused of cheating and a slap to the face.

Checks the Sims Wiki--

Nothing of value was lost, he starts out romantic with both Pearl and Ursula Lemuel.

This was the [art arboretum] from Union Cove and it comes with a rooftop bar, which definitely saved Pearl that night. She hung out with the Parrott sisters and maybe wondered which one was getting impregnated (it was Clementine).

However, Kaila had the most beautiful shotgun wedding ever, and was thankfully gaining her weight back.

So...right...she had a baby boy named Rahiti, who got to start out life as Athletic and Brave and would get the rest of his traits randomized. Rahiti is a lovely Tahitian name that means "rising sun" but what would have fit better was Heiva, "the athlete training for games".

...I had a good idea of what this boy would do.

Like with every sim who dislikes children, I still caught Niles caring for his son a lot. But I also missed the shot of him right after this being angry with his cane once he put Rahiti down. It was a complicated relationship like that.

I didn't need to reach toddler spam but Rahiti was busy with nothing but being cute. His face turned out to be very Kaila, but with Niles' hair and eye color, and skin right down the middle. And again all my pics are of Niles taking care of him. Kaila did the potty training though.

Pearl finally got pregnant, though her son would be about a week younger than Rahiti. That's all fine and good but who's the father? Why am I (honest to god) missing screenshots of them together? And is this really how I want to spend Rahiti's formative years?

The household had a party at Bronstead and Lowry's (last Union Cove lot I swear) and Pearl is the only sim I've seen ever who went into labor and still went swimming instead. I was able to send her to the hospital and all but she had a good half hour of chilling in the pool before I forced her out. At least everyone panicked with me. Otherwise I think it may have been a birthday party for Gilberto? He did age up at it.

Also she gave birth at the same time that Tonya Tamarind did. Her baby-daddy did NOT follow her so that was another missed screenshot opportunity. She named him Cyprien and he got randomized as a Good Virtuoso.

Join me when I write up the next bit because I banged out most of this generation in a weekend (Rahiti's only barrier is...actually getting a spouse. Everything else is done). I might even drag out this Pearl Yang baby-daddy mystery.

Nah, who am I kidding. Cyprien's father was Maru Mango. And unlike some townie dads, he comes back to visit!


Edit 7/17/2019: replaced with smaller images and added some missing ones. Pobody's nerfect.

[KRae]

I'm glad to see a Sims 3 dynasty to follow. I tried Sims 4 at my daughter's house and didn't care for it. I just like the look and mechanics of TS3 better. I don't have Sunlit Tides so you're presenting me with a whole new cast of characters. Thanks!

[Trip]

I'm glad to see a Sims 3 dynasty to follow. I tried Sims 4 at my daughter's house and didn't care for it. I just like the look and mechanics of TS3 better. I don't have Sunlit Tides so you're presenting me with a whole new cast of characters. Thanks!

@KRae love Sunlit Tides so far but store worlds are pricey and I blame no one for not having one. In spite of my gripes about traveling, performance is otherwise pretty alright.

I play both sims games at the moment but for some reason TS3 is easier when I have my puppy on my lap (NO JOKING BY THE WAY)

[Trip]

Ayyyy so I finally got Rahiti moved to the second household this morning. Nothing's stopping me now.

Rahiti, Part Two

Rahiti and Cyprien had parallel birthdays for different ages, because I ignored them both. Rahiti got half a point for aging up at his mum's costume party though! He almost gets it.

Without any access to the makeover station for my heir (frowny face) I was lagging behind on making him over on time, especially as a toddler and kid. A proper first day of school shot would have been so nice. He shared his first bus ride with Gregario Gonzalo (Gilberto and Tonya Tamarind's kid) and since he comes up several times in Rahiti's life, I'm calling him Greg.

Rahiti's one job during childhood was to get on the honor roll, and once Pearl tutored him to an A right after his birthday (they went to the gym because there's one mostly empty room with a nice stereo; this was also Rahiti's one chance to listen to anything but two stereos of Kid's music at home...I hate pollinating I just wanna listen to some darkwave-) he just had to go to school every day. Homework doesn't take long, and no, I don't work on supermax kills for kids if I can help it. I tried to use Rahiti as a test run for the idea that you get skill opportunities the most while you actively skill (painfully untrue for my boy) but also, he was going into an active profession (since it's not lifeguarding you can guess what). Skills made early wouldn't help him at all.

He got to goof off after school and that's okay.

I don't have too many pictures of Rahiti's final childhood wardrobe but I was okay with how it turned out. I hate the color yellow (both he and Kaila share that favorite; Niles and Pearl are both calming blue, and Cyprien liked blue as well until I forgot and dressed him all in white and green) and I also hate my selection of male hairs because even CC doesn't fix everything, especially when I couldn't see Rahiti as not having thick or curly hair.

Also, kids can read the newspaper I guess. To be fair in other games, I usually cancel my newspaper service but I like having the newspaper deliverers as NPC friend options too much (yes this did end up helping me! As well as Cyprien being an only toddler in a house of working adults and a school-age kid. We got to know his babysitter real well). I was the child of two newspaper workers so I actually can relate, lol. This also helps me keep track of which townie babies I'm losing, so RIP to Greg Gonzalo's twin brother, as dead as paper journalism~

Rahiti's life was going pretty smoothly but the first few weeks of a decadynasty are very deceiving. I was doing a story graveyard deep dive to pick up on strategy and pitfalls (there's a lot of broken images in there thanks to Photobucket being...evil...and plenty of old shames probably but I only say it because my old shames are there too) and a lot of dynasties fail or stop once the heir is old enough to get to work on their requirements. Including many attempts by me! But thankfully the house itself reminded me in plenty of ways that things could always go wrong.

Like when we could no longer cook.

That's right Kaila!

I actually wish I knew the cause because I never fixed the issue. In order I:

• Replaced the stove with an identical one.
• Replaced Kaila's bad base game stove with the equally bad but more retro and kitschy Supernatural one (and the fridge because why not)
• Tore down her whole kitchen and replaced with new counters and everything.
• Put the stove one tile to the right.
• Removed the overhanging pans decor from over it (this wasn't originally an issue of course).

Nothing worked and also the kitchen sink became useless too, but at least I had two other sinks in the house (bathroom + the outhouse shack I built, not to be confused with the alchemy shack where Pearl slept). I was so fed up with the non-working stove and everyone trying to make stove dishes they could never complete that I outright removed it. Everyone lived on quick meals, mac n cheese, and hot dogs for the rest of the gen. Kaila's Natural Cook trait wept.

So before I was done with the stove, Cyprien aged up!

For a brief time, Rahiti got a childhood friend in his own house. He had a few outside of it (mostly Parrott and Gonzalo kids, plus an NPC or two. I got a lot of original townie kids eventually but there was a generational gap for sure) and also nothing to do with Cyprien since he was banned from chess, the activity table, etc. but I did indulge in wishes for friendship and the like. Cyprien even wanted to be best friends with Niles, which absolutely did not happen, Niles hated the little guy.

AND isn't that some cool hair? I've had dynasty kids like anyone else, wonder why I never used it...

...ah yeah. I don't use hairs that aren't for all categories (and with no plausible hatless counterparts. Funny enough I have a de-hatted version of that hair for adults but not the kiddos)

Oh hey and Rahiti became a teen! So were other townie kids.

Since my traits for Rahiti and Cyprien were mostly left up to random, I got some interesting ones. Rahiti added Frugal and Good, and Cyprien added Neat. While Rahiti's two new traits didn't affect his life much (though I like having him clip coupons, not so much him turning off the lights), I got annoyed with Cyprien's neatness pretty fast.

He's a kid who cleans the shower instead of booby-trapping it? He will never get a girl now. As well as refusing to use unclean appliances. We are busy running a decadynasty!



Meanwhile the beautiful morning sun shone down through the window onto my boys. Check out my teenage heir! As you can tell, skilling up on athletic was still being delayed for him. He's one of the few teens who didn't need a ridiculous soul patch or baby's first moustache to look alright. I actually was looking forward to Rahiti never having facial hair ever (didn't seem like his thing) until he decided to have the most epic midlife crisis ever, but let's focus on the happier times before that...

It was my first time teaching a teen to drive and not having a Motive Mobile to make it easier. In fact all they had were occasional elixir store hauls (not as impressive as one may think) and the base-game truck. While Niles got a few wishes for Rahiti's wellbeing and that's great, Kaila was the only one who wanted to teach him how to drive. He had a longstanding wish to be best friends with his mum and that's so pure.

Usually I don't indulge childhood/teenage LTW assignments but I figured I'd give Rahiti Swimming in Cash and figure out an LTW for later on. For a while the household wasn't really making much big money, and moving in pollinators might have gave me $5,000 but if I married them out of the house (which I usually did) it would cost $5,000.

Alas I gave Rahiti his boring "temporary" LTW right after I bought out the elixir shop several times and then consigned my purchases (I wanted a Potent Cure Elixir or several). I kind of forgot that I did that.

Anyways trust that he completed it while on the swings after school.

Rahiti was having a nice and uncomplicated relationship with his parents, despite the odds, but while I was gathering up pollinator ideas again (don't worry I'd pull through) I figured that Cyprien's father could move in and give him a half-sibling with a poor townie woman.

So Cyprien and Maru were never close and my only screenshot of his face was of him dying...with sunglasses on. Doesn't matter because Cyprien looks just like Pearl. He had a son with homeless townie Nina Aolani.

But backing up a bit: the "Free Vacation" chance card came up and I decided to take a chance even though it's known to be buggy. It does have a bug, or maybe a feature, of cancelling all wishes for the adults who leave, which kind of stunk because everyone had a high-value one I wanted (Kaila had many, she wasn't Ambitious on paper but she was ambitious in her heart). But everyone returned unscathed at the very least.

Obviously Rahiti could be a terrible son for one little weekend.

Now once Rahiti had an A, I let him "meet classmates" or talk to them every day at school. I knew who existed but the people he knew was a little shorter. I'd let him test the waters with what I had though.

I bought the house a video game console. His closest friend at school was Antoinette Parrott, Clementine and Keaunu Kailani's kid (one of three daughters). Obviously I wasn't wowed over by her looks immediately, but townie offspring is townie offspring. I expected Rahiti to at least get a wish to go to prom with her, but alas no. In my one "full" (read: to teen) attempt before this, the AU Rahiti was close with the Grantham baby (the pre-made pregnancy in this town) and went to prom with them but whoever they were, they died via story progression long before this Rahiti could ever make a move.

The other guy was named Tate, I think. I also think he was a babysitter. Pearl never met him but was bestest friends with Cyprien's old babysitter, Dalma. We never see Tate again.

The only other original townie teen there was Greg Gonzalo again. He also had a little sister who was (and still is) alive, but was a child at the time. Gilberto and Tonya ended up in a really big house so I was looking towards the family (but being open-minded, the Parrotts had a nice house too). For the moment Greg just seemed like a way to get closer to sister Helene.

It wasn't really a roaring party. I swear that pizza was Rahiti's real favorite food because he always wanted to order it. The child there is Aja Parrott, Antoinette's sister and a playdate Cyprien invited over. She unfortunately died as a teen.

Plus it had to be a little wholesome, it was actually Cyprien's birthday too!

Cyprien ended up ditching his fun childhood style for glasses and golf shorts, but the sick 'fro could stay (for the record, Maru had cornrows as an adult). He didn't roll Loser but I always saw him as living in Rahiti's shadow so that one was all my fault. I figured he'd be the real loser at prom, have fewer friends, etc. And he did end up not really giving me any of my friend requirements that Rahiti and Pearl didn't make redundant, but...

...I don't remember much about prom but while Rahiti was Prom King (woo!) he went stag and didn't even get a surprise date. Some of the dialogue was about him getting rejected and into a fight (?!!). Obviously Cyprien didn't get much luck either but he had the excuse of being a new teen.

I figured he was a late bloomer is all.

Oh, and Kaila was an elder.

Her garden was small but getting quality produce, even if the flame fruits were slower to grow (I was getting 3rd gen excellent/outstanding/perfect tomatoes and wolfsbane within weeks). I let her keep a fun and tropical style for her last years. I had no idea how long Kaila would stick around for, everything was up in the air.

So final three shots: you know when I said that Cyprien wouldn't booby-trap the shower?

I finally let him indulge.

Anyways I wanted an in-between generation of townie kids, because townie aging is always inconsistent and I accepted that Rahiti could take a while to move out (spoilers: he did, 13 days to elder) and would risk his peers becoming too old to bear the next townie kids. Rahiti's generation had the Parrott and Gonzalo kids, and closer to Cyprien's age were the Allenders (Silas Allender and Ashley Star had two sons), Gabriela Tsang (Len Tsang and Rosalind Cruzita's only child), and his own half-brother Myron. That was only the surface of untapped potential.

But alas, I needed some more household slots.

And Niles heard me? Lord.

Next time we meet the new pollination squad and do they bring kids? Dogs? Genes I should have vetted better? That and so much more!

[Deklitch]

Lovely puppy, @Trip

I've played around in Sunlit Tides. From memory, there is an ID permitted (or is that the ID permitted lot) lot very close to the library. I took advantage of that in my practices of ID there to meet sims and combined it with the self employed careers so my sims didn't have to take hours travelling to get to work each day. I mean, just because I have to do so doesn't mean I have to inflict that on my sims, do I?

And I hear you about the hairstyles as well.

[Trip]

@Deklitch: I haven't remembered all the ID lots for the town (not my priority right now) but there are some big ones nearby enough. Thankfully either Rahiti or his kid has the chance to be closer to civilization, so to speak.

And I love him! His name is Churro.

[Trip]

Rahiti, Part Three

So...yeah...Niles died. Updates have a way of leaving off at points like that.

He actually got a life extending makeover at some point and I'm glad that he got to see Rahiti at least become a teenager. I made little effort in completing his LTW (Super Popular...I gave it to Pearl instead of course) and he got a tiny headstone to match his first wife's. No screenshots right now but he's buried with her in the town cemetery.

Ah yeah first there were some pictures I missed. Last shot of Rahiti and Niles together, with Niles helping with homework:

And him dancing with Kaila. They were starting to look really alike!

Once Niles and Maru died, the "what's next" stage of household pollination began. Unfortunately some of my top candidates were turned supernatural (so saved for later) or playing hard to get like Alonso Candelaria. I had to look up the block towards the Wahine household, but with a twist.

So story progression did only its most controversial moves for me in this save so far: turned everyone supernatural (mostly good), gave us some pet adoption scenarios (tempting but I ended up using the social worker for that), and killed like a third of my townie babies (hellllllll no). No one seemed to get partnered up beyond what they were set up with/what I did myself, and it took a bit for people to move houses and spice things up.

Except for Tenika Wahine, apparently. Yeah she starts out the game already engaged to Griffin Alto, but also starts living with her parents and younger siblings. But once I got around to Griffin, I discovered that Tenika was living with him. They didn't marry but they had a dog and everything. Unfortunately I split up the household to move in Griffin for a bit.

And the real shock? I couldn't marry Griffin to Tenika because of household slots (I think I had seven people in the house and Tenika was pregnant at the time) so he just got kicked out with his brother-in-law. But a day later maybe, he was back at his old house and living with Tenika again. Wild. True OTP material right there I guess.

Tenika hung out around the house a lot and was generally an alright friend to the family. Griffin was too, I have zero complaints about either of them. I was hooked on the Wahines, even if they're probably the most questionable looking family in the town (but cousins to Leilani Kahale too? Who is an absolute stunner when she grows up and probably the future Miss Sunlit Tides). It's nothing too bad but everyone has a real blocky face there.

Okay, I wasn't hooked, but Pearl had befriended Twikki Wahine at a park some day and again, not wasting time with guys who weren't cooperating.

Anyways Twikki grew up in the worst (best?) wardrobe, gained the Evil trait somewhere whilst growing up, and Pearl still wanted to kiss him (side note but Pearl wanted to kiss everyone...I didn't capture her brief romance with Kaila but that was a real thing that happened). I let her indulge but breaking it off was an absolute mess and their good friendship they had when he moved in didn't last. I've had Evil sims that still are friendly and Twikki was...alright I guess. Len Tsang was much worse because he gained the Evil trait as a mermaid and just did not get along with people.

His assigned mate was Helen Hoffman, which he had two surviving kids with: a boy and a girl. Helen is pretty in her own way I guess but she has big eyes and a tiny nose, definitely Twikki's opposite.

Idk. I usually try to avoid using two or more people from a family in these schemes this early in the game. No regrets though.

I stole Griffin and Tenika's dog for the time that Griffin was living in the house. They had a cute little brown girl named Pinky and Kaila loved her...but she loved Griffin and Tenika more and I felt bad for the thought of keeping her after kicking Griffin out. Pinky got me ready for adopting a dog for the family of their very own, but more on that later! Once I actually get him!

My intention for Rahiti was to throw an epic spouse party but the only three candidates I remember/captured were Antoinette, Helene (as a teen finally!), and the slightly-older Elosie Carnegie. For now I was okay with him still making absolutely zero moves towards anyone, with hardly even a wish to learn another's sign, but it was also getting a little worrying. No unfortunate prom dates? Come on, all my Waverlys had one of those, and they didn't even have teen townies that I actually liked most of the time. I liked Rahiti's friends and even their genes.

But I had to brace myself. I've been alluding to Rahiti's Athletic supermax for a while and that's what it was! My first generation was gonna be on easy mode and there is no shame behind that. He also got to clear whatever athlete-heavy career he wanted, and my spreadsheet was filled with "sports" for a bit. And while I cover some of his supermax later, it was easy. Without even doing any work as a teen, he still supermaxed it a couple days before his adult birthday and a lot of it was done at his job.

Oh no does that mean--

I am sorry, look at my cute little emergency services hero! I've never actually maxed the firefighter profession, even though I have put sims into it (or I have but forgot). So I pre-emptively placed a fire station down and actually not too far from the founding household, but I did consider a variety of decisions before going with my crazy idea.

It was the first day of his job that I realized a mistake may have been made. Let's set the scene: Rahiti's on the treadmill, busting through his cardio challenges first (as long as you do it correctly by running, "Fitness Nut" and "Marathon Runner" feed into each other). He just met random townie #593 who was one of his co-workers, and then the emergency alarm goes off. I'm so ready for firefighting!

The job cancels before he can even leave, end scene.

This happened for two days in a row and calling it quits was imminent.

Granted Rahiti made a lot of progress through athletic skilling, getting to level 4 or 5 of the profession just through that. But I was mad. I went to bed after making the note "get Rahiti an honorary degree and the Workaholic trait, he's gonna need it" for when I woke up. I was getting increasingly sure that he would just have to be thrown into the Sports career after all. Hardly fun, but official dynasties aren't always about what's fun.

But my heart couldn't take it yet and I would give Rahiti one more day at his dream job before going with Plan B.

This time, the alarm went off and he did too. It was a building disaster. It got him a decent amount of job credit. And funny enough, in spite of Sunlit Tides' layout, transport to emergencies never jeopardized Rahiti's job. All but one of his jobs were A's (one got a solid B rating for time). The bug turned out to be only with small fire emergencies, which Rahiti didn't have to rely on as soon as he was far enough up the career ladder to get bigger and better emergencies. It's a nice contrasting step up from being a Ghost Hunter (still possible but poor Tegan Waverly had more bugged jobs as they got bigger).

So my backup was never deployed until after Rahiti had maxed the profession, and by then it was just for ops and to keep him occupied.

The large fires were actually new and a whole lot of fun. I got to rescue people and everything. He used the axe. The jobs went seamlessly and it meant that I didn't have to max handiness, which is good. I don't have a skill list yet.

As you might notice, the cardio exercise was also slimming Rahiti down by a ton. That was my other reason for wanting to get the two cardio challenges out of the way first: give Rahiti more time to be himself and be a fat, jolly jellybean man (or miserable, but that's for later...)

I was happy to get those wide shots of him running too. He jogged to work every day and it took about an hour and a half, which by Sunlit Tides standards was fine by me (this isn't a terrible strategy for firefighters because the job starts pretty late in the day at 10:00 and to be honest, all my fires hit between 13-15:00, you have the time)

Yeah I was shocked that Rahiti wasn't stressed out 24/7 or at all really. While he wasn't the main man for throwing parties because, again, Pearl, I was getting antsy about the spouse situation and at least wanted to prepare for which house he was going to get into. We were going into full traditional courtship bashes except that it was in the shack Rahiti lived in and everyone ate salad and pizza.

Antoinette was still first on my list just because Rahiti had a close friendship with her that only continued to grow. She even got a makeover and honestly shocked me by looking pretty nice. It's all about framing those cheeks really.

My protocol with him was to ask for someone's sign (even if he didn't wish for it, it usually sets things in the right direction) and look for clues. I had a couple parties already and Rahiti was just not feeling it with any of my ladies. Funny enough, my first other plan for him was to look at the newest crop of townies, most of whom aged up to YA by the time Rahiti was done, so I wasn't being silly.

In order we had Hollie Wahine (Griffin and Tenika's daughter), Gabriela Tsang (mentioned before as Len and Rosalind Cruzita's daughter, and a witch!), and Cindy Hoffman (Twikki and Helen's daughter, held by a new YA Cyprien).

Oh, and there were the original townies who were turned supernatural early into the game. Both Ursula Lemuel and Theodora Jayne were still around, like they were trapped in amber. Penelope Pepper and Leilani Kahale were among them too and certainly somewhere on my list.

To my utter shock, Cyprien actually got a lady well before Rahiti could decide on anyone. Some loser he was! I invited vampire Mary-Sue Pleasant to some party and they immediately clicked, which shows that she and Daniel get along in zero universes of course (Daniel's a werewolf and still living with her). I was just happy that Cyprien got an attractive spouse that wasn't even on my radar. Now I absolved myself of any pressure to make Angela and Lilith Pleasant as townies. I refuse to ever write a character that has my legal name, lol.

To end this chapter, I thought that I had an unlikely mate in local fairy and original townie Maggie Strong. She has a cute and interesting face but Rahiti didn't agree. He didn't reciprocate fully. Like I swear, this was not like Rahiti was turning off the whole town. People found him attractive and all once he was an adult, if not at the same rate as Pearl (ladies, one at a time). I wasn't sure what wasn't clicking for him, or if Rahiti could even tell me.

He could. At that very party no less!

[Trip]

Rahiti, Part Four

Griffin Alto had four kids with Tenika Wahine. He actually had the Surrounded by Family LTW but I wasn't going to keep him around to complete it. This meant that he took Pinky the dog with him upon moving out and I was sad and dogless once more.

While this also gave Pearl an inside look at the service NPC household, more importantly I had a dog! He was a long-legged corgi named Tita and would follow Rahiti to his new home one day.

Tita actually got along with the whole household really well, but building up his relationship with Rahiti was crucial to me, mostly because Rahiti absolutely adored the little guy. Rahiti also still wore that male sarong, and would for as long as I had one for him (I don't have an elder conversion of it and I'm scared).

But yeah, we stopped off our last update with a cliffhanger about Rahiti's love life, didn't we? Backing up to the courtship party...

...Rahiti and I made a deal: if he wasn't going to make any romantic decisions and elect to never go on a date ever by his adult birthday, I was going to intervene and probably still with Antoinette Parrott. I think that condition made him very suddenly give me a very clear message.

I was gonna be philosophical here about where my own biases end and where the game's logic (lol) begin, and if player biases ever end at all. I might still be. So it's pretty common knowledge that sims, romantically, start out essentially as blank slates. And going into this, I was feeling uncomfortable painting that canvas, so to speak. So Rahiti and Cyprien were a test run of not initiating romance until they told me to, something I don't always do (there's a long history of me setting orientation for story purposes or using my own dice rolls)

It would be silly to say that my own biases as a gay person never ever can factor into what I think is undirected play because nothing's truly undirected unless you go full ISBI and never even peek at a sim's UI, wishes, and needs. But I will say that Rahiti is 100% gay and it came truly outta nowhere.

So I invited Greg Gonzalo to his party anyways because he at least seemed like a good best friend candidate and parties are just friend machines. I figured that if he wanted Rahiti, he had loads to chances to get him as a teen. But the moment Rahiti talked to him again, he wanted to kiss Greg for the first time, and that sort of delay was far more relatable to me.

Greg was easy to seduce. He loved Rahiti's firefighter muscles (that he didn't have, we were still in full cardio mode) and he was great to hug. They even watched the stars together in Rahiti's increasingly cluttered backyard. But he didn't get his party kiss. There was a lot going on and by that I mean the house was just packed with people and I wanted people to leave.

Rahiti falling for Greg didn't threaten to kill my dynasty but I had to ponder the implications.

At least by the time he got to the new Gonzalo house (which by the way was a huge mansion near the "center" of town) and actually cashed in his wish to kiss Greg, I had a pretty airtight plan for this to work. I won't be the person to tell you that gay heirs are easy, but it won't necessarily ruin your decadynasty. Hear me out.

So here are your new household requirements, whether you're familiar with them or not:

• Marry a townie living in a house in town, and move in with them instead of them moving in with you.
• Within 10 days, have a baby with someone living in your new townie home.
• Bask in your newfound freedom and get a tattoo I guess.

Every dynasty ruleset has been the subject to nitpicking and moaning and revision/clarification, hence why our rule threads are always so long. So there was an important extra added to the babymaking rule: "The spirit of the challenge is to move into a new townie household and have a child with someone in that household" and "it's a flat ban on bringing anyone else in for the purposes of having an heir." (god I miss you Rica) It's not clear in the rules unfortunately, but in my own defense, it was made well before I got any sort of moderator status and I assumed it was actually there for a while.

Pin that one to the to-do list...

Anyways, there's no good-faith interpretation that says that I cannot have an heir marry a same-sex spouse and have a baby with an opposite-sex sibling or roommate that was already there when you moved in. You totally can. It limits your potential spouses and may not always be possible (loveless unions for all then!), but it's a fun and legal scenario.

If you remember, Greg has a younger sister, Helene. Who's absolutely gorgeous and I think had already aged up to YA at that point. I was so happy that my biggest hurdle was waiting for Gilberto and Tonya to die, as they had already been household members unfortunately (Tonya was homeless so there was no way around it).

Rahiti made sure I could never deny him that love. He was too happy. His mood was utterly euphoric for the rest of being a young adult and probably because of Greg.

Now Rahiti's job got into a fairly good rhythm for a week or so, until whenever he topped it. He'd get to the station, exercise, realize all but one of his coworkers failed to show up, and get one of three emergencies: always building, large house fire, or the occasional bugged small house fire that would cancel, but it wouldn't matter.

In fact I was a little sad that Rahiti wouldn't get to enjoy his profession for a little longer because I was having fun. He had absolutely zero help in that regard...except for the new Workaholic trait I guess? I still gave him an honorary degree + trait when I was more uncertain about this. I've never bothered giving Workaholic to profession-bound sims because it felt like a waste of a good trait.

But Rahiti still had work to do so I tried to integrate it into his dates.

Greg wasn't very fit but training him enhanced their relationship...I guess. Even Rahiti had little actual desire to train him. He wanted woohoo. Not complaining, I like an heir who can be direct with me.

I forfeited the chance to get a "First WooHoo with Greg" wish after their wedding but honestly, the 2,500 points is nice but I don't like the implication of it. Plus, I couldn't accidentally click "Try for Baby" to early or anything even if I wanted to.

But you know who did want to?

My final phase of Gen 1 townie pollination was starting, first with Allistair Adams and his longtime romantic interest and fairy Penelope Pepper. Cyprien also met his half-brother Myron for the first time since after his teen birthday, and he was looking just like his own mum, Nina. He was earmarked for the first or second wave of Gen 2 babies.

Myron also found himself stuck in a burning house with only Rahiti to save him. Thankfully he lived. I don't let only children get sacrificed so easily!

And to end this chapter, Rahiti was lagging behind for ops, even though I thought I was doing everything right. He didn't start his skills until he was a young adult. And while he wasn't in a profession that gave ops, athletic has plenty of them. Sunlit Tides also has no combined rabbitholes, in case that still matters (not sure anymore). Or so I thought until he only got charisma and logic (?) ones I cashed in because I was desperate. I'm trying to save up travel days for when I actually need them but Rahiti had to go to Egypt...to finish the "Desert Air...Good?" op first (his first athletic op!) but also to pad out his list.

The jog around Al-Simhara was gorgeous, as usual, and it also helped complete the Fitness Nut skill challenge. He still had to spend days in the gym doing Body Builder, but the worst was behind me because Fitness Nut removed the drawback of getting fatigued. Due to the persistent cooking bug in Kaila's house, it was hard to keep Rahiti full and the fruit and dried food diet was not helping that either. But I didn't care if Rahiti was stinky (because the house did laundry, all he had to do was change outfits to feel clean again) and he was too pumped to be tired most of the time.

But he needed three more ops and my "use three travel ops per heir" voucher saved me.

Rahiti started on some part of the Morcucorp epic saga (I forgot that there was some kind of loose story in the WA worlds) and looked around many chests before it was even dinner time. Meanwhile the General Store merchant bugged out and Rahiti couldn't get a chest in Egypt and used another travel day in China instead, which worked fine. Pearl and Kaila worked on buying elixirs and growing a few specimens of perfect produce, which was good because I wanted a gardening supermax sooner rather than later. In a chest it could be available for future generations as long as someone could enter the house.

Back at home, finishing up the Desert Air jogging op let Rahiti both max his athletic skill AND the firefighter profession. Rahiti also met Martin Pepper so I had lots of tabs on his two fairy nieces (I think the one at their feet is Jan).

And about a day later, Kaila died. While she got a few life extensions as an adult, she also lived to 106 as an elder and I was getting worried it would be longer. Our loss was incredibly important to Rahiti's requirements but to be fair, I was waiting on Greg's parents to die even more.

Next time! It's Rahiti's turbulent mid-life crisis and mine as well.

[Trip]

Bahahahahaha, did one stupid mistake for my decadynasty. :') I'll recap up to failure since this is meant to be educational, and probably keep this thread because the Fitzpatricks will rise again. It was nice to get the feel of what a generation took (it wasn't).

[KRae]

Sorry you had problems. A quick question...is there a problem with leaving a chest out in the yard when you move?

[hazelnut]

Sorry you've run into problems already.  By the way, it's entirely possible to max the lifeguard profession without rescuing anyone, just by building the athletic and charisma skills, in case you want to try that next time.  Disabling some expansions definitely helps with the opportunities, if there are any you can bear to do without.

[Trip]

@KRae: not at all! A little better than keeping it in the basement and having to ask Pearl to get in the house (I didn't get the goodies I left behind but I had to do it before she passed lol) But yeah WA chests have been a valid strategy for ages now.

@hazelnut: Oh I was aware I could have. I just wanted more fun than watching peaceful beaches. For the reboot I am considering turning off Island Paradise, Showtime, and Seasons. Don't have any Showtime professions planned (not feeling like it today!), I can deal with the same climate because South Pacific islands tend to have similar temperatures year-round, and as much as I like the IP clothing and objects, I don't need a town full of mermaids either. I really wish they let us turn those off. I can imagine your base game decadynasty performance isn't the best ever seen but maybe a little better.

Uh, here's a post from a far-off time with zero hindsight. Enjoy!

Rahiti, Part Five

My heart's racing as I write this. Of all the top worst simming moments I've ever had, this isn't failure but it is gay heartbreak. Why the adjective there? Lemme explain.

Setting the scene for Rahiti's adult birthday...

So after maxing out the Firefighter profession, I put Rahiti in Professional Sports because I wanted a source of income for the next household that I also wouldn't have to micromanage. As far as I was concerned, Greg and his sister didn't have jobs. Meanwhile both of the Parrott sisters (Antoinette had a surviving younger sister named Becky) joined Cyprien as a teacher, so not everyone was slacking and they had no excuse. Did I forget to mention that he was a teacher? I did.

Anyways Rahiti actually gained one of the last household best friends through his job (Suzuki Hinata) so that was pretty neat. He finished his athletic supermax just fine too. He got a bonus op from work, so I could at least earmark one of the Egyptian ones as a free-for-all (in case it progresses another opportunity chain...I dunno dude)

And pretty shortly before his adult birthday, Rahiti and Greg went steady as boyfriends.

It was on the day of his Adult birthday that I also got the notice that Gilberto Gonzalo was not long for this world. Obviously I still had to wait for Greg's mum too, but getting halfway there was better than getting nowhere. I had a potent cure elixir pocketed so Rahiti could cure Helene before moving in, as she was but a local werewolf sniffing out adventure. I was feeling really good! I still had Pearl around to make any friends needed during the waiting period and she had many life-extensions at her disposal. Rahiti did all he needed to do.

What did this boy wish for anyways? Probably not for what happened next.

Greg probably wasn't at his party and I wasn't going to overthink it. It was at the bought and renovated Captain Jack's Beach and in the thick vegetation in and around it, it's hard to miss guests and guests who leave early like Greg easily could have.

Rahiti got a "Heartbroken" buff upon coming home. I wondered if maybe an older family friend died at the party or something...but that's not the right buff.

Did Greg cheat? Autonomously break up and I didn't notice? The phone at home is ringing and I hate it when it does that.

Gregario Gonzalo has died of starvation...

You pullin' me leg EA huh

I did not get a screenshot of the notification because I was in shock. I said some naughty words out loud and in my notes but here is the proof I have and can show you: his headstone in the mausoleum:

Rahiti might never love again. He was acting like it and I'd believe it. Should I also mention that his mid-life crisis hit? Sometimes sims of mine get only a few minor wishes and get over it. Rahiti didn't. He was in mourning and the fragility of life hit him as hard as it could hit any 40-something.

The only upsides to his mid-life crisis were the wish values (nice) and confirming that Rahiti was fully gay and not just Greg-sexual. In a beautiful full-circle ironic twist, he wanted to flirt with Ricardo Gregario (dat name), Pearl's ex! She didn't hear of this scenario but Ricky here was more than happy to flirt. He'd be a great rebound partner if he and Suzuki lived with another woman. But they didn't. I even checked.

First, let's list all of Rahiti's mid-life crisis changes that I remember:

• Get a tattoo (yeah sure thing there kid)
• Plan a new wardrobe
• Buy a $10,000+ car
• Grow a beard
• Get more muscular...twice
• Move out (NOT YET)

So I was kind of out of options for Rahiti's gay love life, it seemed. There weren't too many guys in town with sisters, it began and ended with Greg and Helene.

Loveless unions for all, I said. I mean, Rahiti had backup wives everywhere, and a kind watcher who wouldn't sabotage those plans before Greg's death at all. Like our old friend Antoinette Parrott...

...hmmm...

Gabriela Tsang?

Oh no, that's her own kid.

Elosie Carnegie? Katherine Grantham? Also knocked up and taken.

Jesus, Trip.

So the final wave of Gen 1 pollinating was unfortunately planned on all of Rahiti's other potential spouses once Greg and Helene felt like a done deal. In my defense, young adults almost never are victims to Story Progression in my games. The only other one I lost at that age in this file was Edmund Carnegie, and nothing of value was lost, his sister had all the good looks anyways. Anyways our low quality elder men working boys were Alonso Candelaria and original mailman (!!) Papaya Cruz. They both got two girls each: Antoinette and Katherine for Papaya, and Elosie and Gabriela for Alonso. Gabs was the daughter of Alonso's ex-girlfriend, just for reference. He starts off as a filthy cheater though, so he really would be that scummy.

I wanted to avoid giving two or more women to a pollinator but in this case, I wasn't invested in too many of those lines (except for the Parrotts I suppose) and whoever can't be used can go to marry spares and stuff.

But in hindsight, Rahiti should have asked Antoinette for a helping hand first.

For a bit all hope seemed lost, but there were four childless, female, supernatural original townies saved for a rainy day:

• Ursula Lemuel, turned into a fairy.
• Theodora Jayne (who you might have known as a beauty pageant contestant in Ben Oliver, those were the days man), turned into a vampire.
• Leilani Kahale, turned into a vampire.
• Maggie Strong, turned into a fairy.

All four were solid choices, and in all cases, my last two potent cure elixirs would be of use in any of the scenarios. Ursula and Theodora lived together, and I would have wanted both of them on hand. Both Leilani and Maggie lived with one supernatural parent as well, with Leilani's mum Alana and Maggie's dad Julian (both of them were fairies). Both would have uses I suppose, or at least create in-law drama.

I whittled it down to the last two. Maggie, for being the first woman to autonomously flirt with Rahiti, and Leilani because she had a big, gorgeous house to match her big, gorgeous nose. (Not to knock Maggie's situation, her house was fine and she was cute as hell) I wondered if Rahiti would give me a sign towards either of them.

But wait, why not Helene? Aside from her mum not being dead, she was a pretty prime candidate, all alone in her big house.

Sure, yeah, love Helene. But we wanted Greg back.

Like, as in back from the dead.

As not an expert or a particularly successful person, but as someone who completed an immortal dynasty, I knew my ambrosia game was on-point. Kaila had a life fruit plant in her garden. Someone could learn to fish, and someone could learn to cook and I could streamline that skilling down in many ways. But my ambitions are not the point. The point is that Greg and Helene lived together, and resurrecting him would technically be introducing a "moved out" person back to the household.

I know it sounds silly and not at all like how a good dynasty challenge coordinator should act, but this is my reservation: Helene wasn't just Ms. "I just moved here" McCloneFace with me having zero background knowledge on her household history. I knew what happened in the Gonzalo household because the parents lived with us (however briefly), and Rahiti was friends with Greg since childhood. There's no reasonable doubt of them being Schrodinger's Townies.

That being said, this ruling is only for myself because no one's gonna be dumb enough to try this.

Uh, anyways, Rahiti had a very well-deserved drink.

Leilani was his first "date" and he was still heartbroken over Greg. They talked and danced though and had a swell, completely platonic time. He learned Lei's sign, I forget if they were compatible or not, but it didn't really matter to Rahiti. He liked his new friend and that was about it.

I got zero shots of his very similar outing with Maggie because it hit the same beats. Good time, no feelings, not even friendly wishes I could interpret as "Rahiti trusts her enough to deal with this weird life he's signing up for". He gave her a makeover though (Leilani was done a lot earlier).

It was getting frustrating. I even repeated the experiment only for no real pointers. I was exhausted. I put my dog to bed, opened Google's coin flipper (you think I'm joking?) and said heads for Maggie, tails for Leilani. Got tails. Time for bed myself.

After setting my alarm I remembered one actual benefit that Maggie had that Leilani never would and I changed my mind completely.

It's not that Maggie is skilled in anything particularly great, especially since she starts out as a teen. She has no weird coveted gene, no cool basement to her house, no fun powers since I'll have to cure her. She's actually pretty unremarkable besides getting an unlikely place in the Spouse Races (tm) just by being in the right place at the right time.

He even begged Maggie to forgive him for what he must yabba dabba doo...

Julian, her dad, did not like the idea either. But Rahiti liked him. Not as much as he loved Greg...or Ricardo even...but he had just bought a Cherry Casanova and was on the prowl.

Yes I legitimately thought this was a good idea. And I consulted the rules so the law could enable me too. Let's get your concerns outta the way first: yeah you can't start your decadynasty in a multi-generational house, but your spouse targeted parent of firstborn of whatever sort in the household you're moving into? They can be living with their parents, so long as they weren't a part of your active household before. This has been ruled on many times. Obviously I wasn't hammering the point home about Greg's parents for no reason. But I had never controlled Julian. I barely cared about him before this.

There's no need to necessarily marry your next heir's parent. As long as the circumstances allow for it, if they are already living with someone else you could have a child with, then go bananas. I've already brought this up. The rules also always allowed for the rare situation where a townie will ask your sim to move in with them (fun fact but Leilani actually tried this! I said no though). So the expectation for decadynasty marriage isn't about spousal faithfulness one bit. It's a consequence of the game's own limited mechanics for joining another household without Edit Town.

Those two conditions say there's nothing technically wrong with marrying one guy but having your next heir with his childless adult daughter who lives with him. This even gets an official ruling from me of it being okay...weirdo.

Though I had higher expectations for this manuver before I actually moved households. Saving that for Gen 2 though!

Julian was being resistant for a while and probably knew that this was a horrible idea...especially because it meant that his prospective new husband had to have a baby with his daughter. I mean, in our defense, Maggie has been around for way longer than Rahiti and this wasn't going to be any normal sort of family dynamic. She starts off close enough to young adulthood that you can use her as a founding spouse (provided you start with someone else).

I may never know what magic Rahiti pulled to finally woo Julian, but he pulled it my dudes.

Rahiti and Julian had a proposal with a view about a day later, with the same speed his parents had a generation before. He was also getting close to as old and haggard as Kaila was, so I had to act fast!

And by acting fast, I mean Julian ditched him on the first attempt at their wedding. I was trying to make sure Maggie was in attendance so I could cure her too, but she had failed to show up and Julian left the lot. So rude.

In fact Cyprien married before Rahiti did. As it turned out, he was holding onto no friends that Rahiti and Pearl were not already. I perhaps was anticipating this because I held onto wishes to get married AND to marry Mary-Sue for ages, and his mid-life crisis was in full swing and I wasn't ready for another one right after Rahiti's.

I neglected to show Daniel Pleasant as their only witness but I can confirm that the cruel, cruel irony was with us all that day.

Rahiti's collection was complete (didn't feel like having to place his firefighter rewards anywhere in the new home)...

...and he didn't get the big beach wedding I planned for him because I was not going to risk Julian running away again. He aged up after getting cured, but that was fine. And what mattered the most is that Rahiti's new stepdaughter was there! Or babymomma. This was gonna continue to be awful.

We took Tita with us and he had a birthday right after the ceremony.

And Rahiti prepared for yet another wild ride (Maggie lived don't worry).

[Trip]

While it doesn't matter now, here's Rahiti's stats and accomplishments:

Home: 6 Silent Shores
Born on: Day 6 to Kaila and Niles Fitzpatrick
Honor Roll: Child & Teen
NPC Friends: Rachelle Jeffrey (Acrobat), Kristine Kinsey (Tattoo Artist), Antoinette Brothers (Maid), Carissa Parrott (Firefighter), Johanna Leach (Repairwoman), Joann Edmondson (Paparazzi), Cherie Pie (Party Dancer), Dalma Yu (Babysitter), Darin Kaplan (Newspaper Deliverer), Gena Hays (Elixir Store Consignment Specialist)
Best Friends: Suzuki Hinata, Alonso Candelaria, Antoinette Parrott, Leilani Kahale, Penelope Pepper, Alfonzo O'Brien, Elosie Carnegie, Ethel Carnegie, Maggie Strong, Julian Strong
Career: Firefighter
Supermax: Athletic
BlackOps: Free Game, Work/School Learning Project, Push It!, Settle an argument, Fixing the Books, Jog Everywhere, Stadium Cleanup, An Introductory Test*, Agent of Morcucorp*, Desert Air...Good?
Building: Riku's Luau Diner
Property: Captain Jack's Beach
Tombstone: Kaila Fitzpatrick (Medium)
Collection: Metals, $11,326
Adult? Yes!

[Trip]

Final update until I collect my things and start over...if nothing else I had plenty of strategical regrets that I get a "one do-over free" coupon on. Life will be okay! Rahiti's life may come to a close but his saves live on in a hard drive. Maybe I'll even bring back Greg for him.

Palmyra (Technically)

Our scary heiress, vampirized and sealing my fate...just kidding! It's Cyprien and Mary-Sue's daughter Angelina. She got so close to canon and even had red hair like Daniel (wanna explain that one to me Mary??)

It had nothing to do with vampires. Moving on...

To my relief, Maggie and Julian had a fine little two-story house and I could even make three bedrooms out of it (the super-big bathroom upstairs got downsized). While Rahiti was an only child, I was hoping for twins to get my sibling itch out of the way, and so Rahiti and Maggie could get this over with ASAP.

I delayed on heir-making for a couple days for...reasons...but maybe so I don't dive into it immediately. Let's start with the good stuff!

The kitchen wasn't huge, but it had a stove that worked. Granted, using a stove for pure skilling is a bit of a waste when you can read cooking skill books at the library. Am I talking about my heiress? No, I never decided on her supermax (I was thinking fishing but who knows). This was for ambrosia purposes. I assigned Maggie to cooking, since she'd have a lot of time off thanks to the baby. Julian already had some fishing skill and the angler trait to boot.

The furthest I got to in that regard was Julian having a lot of angelfish for bait, and Maggie getting to Level 5 or 6 of cooking. To be fair to her though, she started from absolutely nothing.

I was so overwhelmed with new house stuff that Rahiti and Julian didn't even get a wedding night celebration. Although he had been with Greg before, Rahiti did pop the wish to WooHoo with Julian for the first time. And I wanted it to happen before he did anything with Maggie.

And Tita watched? Why are sim dogs all dogs like this with privacy.

But I love dogs. Tita should have been enough, but he was an elder and after losing my own elderly dog earlier this year, I know what getting a new puppy can do to relieve it. I didn't really have that option because my new boi Churro was unknown to me and barely taking his first steps when Bud passed, but through the power of generated adoptable dogs, Rahiti and Julian could have a sweet pupper before losing Tita.

I don't know what breed Teina was and he didn't even age up before I stopped, so his size is unknown too, but he was absolutely adorable and bouncy!

It was Day 2 or 3 and I still hadn't gotten my heir plans into motion. I guess I needed a townie offspring party first.

Pedro Star elluded Rahiti throughout their lives even though they were pretty close in age. He was Silas Allender and Ashley Star's kid but somehow didn't gain his dad's last name even after they married.

And while Jan Adams (Allistair Adams and Penelope Pepper's daughter) was too young to be a pollination candidate right now but too old to be an immediate spousal choice, I had my eye on her.

I did a few makeovers at the party (Pedro was looking nice with some hair!) but I realized that I wanted my heir and I wanted it now. I don't know how much of a secret I've made of my favorite "try for baby" shortcut but here it is: you know how you can tour some rabbitholes? The theatre, City Hall, and the science lab are all eligible for this, and I think the fortune teller's wagon might be too (didn't have it in town to check). You can also tour with another person or with a group. If you click on the rabbithole building again for interactions while still actively touring it, you might get the option to "Make Out" with someone touring with you. It increases friendship...actually by a lot...and I think it does open up some more romantic options, but it doesn't make your sim and the other one romantic interests. It does not register as cheating for normal sims (I don't count celebrities as normal or desirable)

And yes, after you make out with a sim, you can tour again with them and WooHoo or Try for Baby, no romantic strings attached. Dead serious. It works as well as trying in a bed, but without the hassle. There are only a few caveats because sims won't tour when tired, hungry, or needing to go to the bathroom, while they might woohoo the normal way regardless of motive failure. (Funny enough this is the first dynasty attempt where I really took advantage of it for everyone. Most Waverly townie babies were conceived in a bed) And the other caveat was that it wasn't working for Rahiti and Maggie. The only sim they could make out with was Twikki Wahine, who I guess was seeing a movie (yeah I went for it though, lol)

I was stumped as to why. It wasn't a household space issue because the only household members were Rahiti, Julian, and Maggie (and the dogs). They couldn't even make out. And there was no way it was because Rahiti was listed as Maggie's stepfather...

Except yeah, it totally was.

Actually I gotta hand it to EA for having the foresight to squash any stepparent/adult stepchild relationships because that's usually pretty gross. It's a little less gross for Rahiti because her former fairy aging aside, she was nearly old enough to be his mum, but still, I'd rather be temporarily stopped than letting grosser stuff slip through the cracks.

And did you know that TS4 sometimes allows stepparents and adult stepchildren to be romantic? (ACCORDING TO HEARSAY FROM FRIENDS) Glad you're on this board huh. This is probably why I wasn't thinking of it not working when I decided on Rahiti's new household.

Now this would clear up if I just had Rahiti and Julian divorce. This also isn't where I failed so yeah, I totally had them divorce. Julian was busy with something so I went to Rahiti's relationship panel and chose to send Julian a break-up text.

I've heard of the break-up texts being buggy so please proceed at your own risk but the break-up itself results in just a four-hour bad moodlet for the affected party, though it also tanks any friendship you had with them. With a Potent Friendship Elixir, this can be rectified but I could deal with Rahiti living with his ex. It was better to rip off the bandaid now than to spring it on him once we resurrected Greg, am I right guys?

And fellas, it worked.

Just not for Julian.

I hadn't really gotten a good shot of Maggie's face but I was glad to have her as a babymomma for Rahiti. I'm not surprised she was turned into a fairy because she looks like a cute, plump pixie from the start.

Because Leilani had zero hard feelings about being booted from the dynasty (for now) for petty, gay reasons, she and Maggie made for fast friends. Maggie questioned her and I want to assume that she snitched on her criminal mother, and since the game made Leilani a doctor, Maggie could find out what kind of child she was having.

I wanted boy-girl twins ok. I know you can get that from random chance and have been able to for years, but I wanted to guarantee it. I had a fun themed name pair for them and everything. My "mother's culture" theme went out the window because Maggie left me with zero clues, being the kid of a single dad who looks nothing like her. But as the title says, Palmyra was my girl's name. And Jarvis for my boy. After the US territories of Palmyra Atoll and Jarvis Island, which are mingled with islands owned by the Pacific nation of Kiribati. No one lives on either of them for the record.

Since I was blaring kids' music and bought Fertility Treatments for both Maggie and Rahiti, I moved in our pollinators to prevent triplets because I was not dealing with that. We got Pedro Star, Myron Aolani, and Kiwi Hale. Although I didn't get to the point of them having kids, I picked out mates for them already. Pedro would get Leilani Kahale, Myron would get Hollie Wahine, and Kiwi would get Helene Gonzalo. Myron and Kiwi actually had a successful try for baby with their ladies but it didn't really go anywhere.

And none of them cared that Maggie was in labor.

So I got my girl Palmyra and a wish fulfilled for Maggie, but the twin I expected never came. I'm going to assume that Jarvis was absorbed in the womb and that's that! Rahiti and Maggie tried for another (he had since reconciled with Julian and was his romantic interest again, but that was not enough to stop him from having another kid with Maggie) but that pregnancy didn't progress to much either.

But hey, everything's sounding legal so far, if a little weird. If being weird would fail a dynasty, then I wouldn't have stuck around here. There wasn't really much to fail with anyways with just an infant heir. No honor roll for Palmyra yet (Maggie was just a point away from having enough logic to tutor her, I had my plans~), no more obligations for Rahiti. Stuff like resurrecting Greg was just a fun idea to do whenever, because the dynasty would go on without Rahiti having his soulmate, though my heart wouldn't. Palmyra was very well cared for by the whole household, so no risk of a social worker visit. In terms of bugs, I was doing alright but on the lookout for aging bugs (one struck the household when Rahiti was a teen but I got it fixed).

I wish I could say that it was out of my hands but it was not.

So the dynasty closes off with Kiwi. He and Helene were easy lovers and he even had a baby on the way. To my shock, Helene asked him to move in (not even two weeks after Rahiti got asked the same question!). Since she was pregnant, I shrugged and went for it this time. This is fine. In essence it's the same as moving out household members via marriage while keeping control of the real dynasty household.

Ah you might see where this is going...

A word to the decadynasty players of 2019 (or any dynasty players really): the default option for when a household member is invited to move in with another townie is to make the default family the townie's household. Not yours. And yes, I went past two different screens to confirm yeah you're gonna be playing with Helene's household now, you sure about that one? and still chose to do it. It was a long day of play for me and I only realized my mistake when it was too late.

Now it sounds like a minor thing that could be forgiven in the eyes of a merciful Dynasty Challenge Coordinator but I put my situation in the shoes of another and asked myself what I would say? Would I be nice? Am I ever nice?

I failed because I was dumb. And because I hold myself to the same standard I hold everyone here to.

Still gonna use Kiwi as a pollinator next time though, no regrets.


I might age up Palmyra just to see how she looked when I get home. Otherwise, watch this space for any more attempts.

[Deklitch]

If we want nice, or a merciful Dynasty Challenge Coordinator, we'd have @KRae in that role. Just kidding, you like dogs, so of course you are nice, Trip.

The touring the rabbitholes method of nooboo production is something that I took advantage of with a grown up Sam Sekemoto and twin game created townies. I forgot which one was his girlfriend and so I sent him to the theatre with both and did the tour/make out interaction with one of them, then the other one just to make sure there was some Sam bald heads going down the generations.

[hazelnut]

I nearly fell into that trap with the current dynasty.  (A pollinator moving out?  Can't remember.) I only noticed at the last minute that the game was assuming I wanted to swap active families.  It's horribly easy to slip up  .

Also, Greg starved to death?!  EA, of all the Sims to cull! 

[Trip]

If we want nice, or a merciful Dynasty Challenge Coordinator, we'd have @KRae in that role. Just kidding, you like dogs, so of course you are nice, Trip.

The touring the rabbitholes method of nooboo production is something that I took advantage of with a grown up Sam Sekemoto and twin game created townies. I forgot which one was his girlfriend and so I sent him to the theatre with both and did the tour/make out interaction with one of them, then the other one just to make sure there was some Sam bald heads going down the generations.

Eh I'd consider bringing her on if we were busier! @KRae has been a dream when I haven't been on the forums (though I'm trying to get better)

I've definitely had sims bring multiple girlfriends to the theatre at once (you can't try for baby with two at once but you can have everyone in a group at least to keep them close by). They don't even care! They just don't care!!

I nearly fell into that trap with the current dynasty.  (A pollinator moving out?  Can't remember.) I only noticed at the last minute that the game was assuming I wanted to swap active families.  It's horribly easy to slip up  .

Also, Greg starved to death?!  EA, of all the Sims to cull! 

EA could never kill Greg in our hearts though 😤 I still have all my saves and stuff with him...him being dead of course but that doesn't have to stop me.

Anyways I only bring this thread back up for one reason...

[Trip]

Heiva, Part One

Rahiti is a lovely Tahitian name that means "rising sun" but what would have fit better was Heiva, "the athlete training for games". Ah how the turntables turn!

Okay ladies and germs, blame the delay on failure but I'm not documenting those for you. You're just getting my reasons (accidentally let my heir take a mud bath and a day off his lifespan + one bug that I was at least glad to be rid of, and then not exactly failure but my elixir store register borked before I was prepared for it to) As of writing this of course we're in the success zone. Elixir register? It's golden. Mud baths? Never heard of 'em.

Alright so here starts the tale of Heiva, a witch boy (!!!) born on Day 8 to Niles Fitzpatrick and Kaila Swift again. His mum's unhappy pregnancy made him Brave and Grumpy, rounding out the rest with Athletic, Absent-Minded, and Irresistable. Him and his heavy metals ($248,633) say hi.

Why unhappy? Maybe it's because of all the downsizing I did (it's not), so let's get into that discussion...

1. Turned some packs off. Our EPs that have gone into the aether are Generations, Seasons, and Showtime. Even some of our SPs did with High End Loft and Fast Lane being retired for now. I have my reasoning of course

• Generations: actually I'm kind of regretting this as time goes on because I forgot how many cute and fun interactions came with it. But I don't have to deal with graduations, the chemistry table part of the logic supermax, scolding to some extent, etc.
• Seasons: really annoying pack for Decadynasties. Holidays make the honor roll more of a squeeze, sickness can sometimes up-end your school and work goals if they happen to be late, and if I wanted to make a realistic climate for Sunlit Tides, I'd need an endless summer (I thought that cutting out winter would make spring/autumn warmer but apparently not). So I could just have a weather-free experience instead, but RIP to soccer and slow dancing.
• Showtime: idk didn't want to do the professions
• HELS and Fast Lane: don't really use the items that much

2. No bars or clubs. The only venues I placed were the elixir shop, the fire station, and the retreat venue that came with ST gold because it's not gonna go anywhere else! The autoplaced salon stayed, the consignment shop did not. Now I love bar life but I was noticing some extra lag and MAYBE one of my placed clubs was the culprit. I chose the nuclear option of course. This still doesn't stop me from having a mixology supermax since it can be done with bars placed on other lots.

3. This is minor but I try to limit my pollinators to producing three children. Does it do much for preventing townie baby die-offs? We shall see!

Anyways, game's fired up, all three buildings are placed, and my choices are wide-open because starting with either Niles or Kaila is 100% legal.

Last time I started with Kaila because exactly one test file had her retain her celebrity status when I started with Niles (blech), but later ones didn't give me any such issue. I like her gaudy metal shack on an aesthetic level but it was hard to raise one kid in it, let alone host pollinators. I mean, I did anyways, but you don't know my struggle, man. Granted I could have built a second floor and just didn't, but figuring out where to put a staircase would be a whole extra challenge. No barriers to starting with Niles means starting with Niles this time! Larger, more open house. More cash. Larger lot. And room for a spiral staircase, hallelujah!

Oh right, he has a wife too.

Look man, I don't hate Isadora. I actually tried keeping her around in an earlier attempt and she is nothing but pleasant, an excellent cook (maxed out!), and unfortunately very in love with her husband. But in the name of efficiency, I ripped off that bandaid immediately. Nothing like an 8am divorce to energize me when I wake up.

Them broken up and out of the house also meant that there wouldn't be any drama between her and Kaila and Niles, which struck in an earlier attempt as well. But also, more on that later...

Isadora lived though! She was immediately found at a weekend protest and had much bigger social issues on her mind than her ex-husband.

Meanwhile, Niles wasn't going to beat around the bush about Kaila and she took this pretty well. It's all too familiar by now.

Now it's time to party!

This would otherwise be the time I grab Pearl, but during the mud bath attempt, I of course used Pearl as my nigh-immortal friend-maker but also briefly moved in a certain homeless NPC for the purpose of babies of course. It meant getting a look at this NPC's skills: 9 points in gardening, and maxed out charisma. She's an original townie homeless townie NPC, of course, so this wasn't just random luck. Pearl can't brag of such skills. She's pretty, but she cannot! This time, Pearl was left untouched in town and immediately became a vampire, so we'll be seeing more of her one day.

Enter Tinsley Wilson, who unfortunately starts out with just a week left until becoming an elder. Her "roommate", Adolphe Sapota, was also moved in as a pollinator, but fathering only sons means that his legacy is put on hold for a bit. Anyways, Tinsley could become immediate friends with any stranger just with one charming introduction. She could help out Kaila in her garden and plant any rare/special seeds while Kaila was still skilling up (she starts with only 4 points sadly). And of course, her Inappropriate trait would never, ever come back to haunt me.

So I didn't have to mess around with Niles wooing Kaila anymore, but that didn't stop me from taking days for them to make a baby. Here they are in the last hours of Day 5, and in the last we see of Niles' old bed until I renovate the house. We heard chimes on the first try, Kaila wished for a boy and already had a pocket full of apples, and I remembered to make a nice maternity outfit hell yeah! (I have maternity edits of a lot of EA clothes, you see). Anyways, I can explain my procrastination. My lovebirds need time to THEMSELVES you see I had many necessary distractions--

My first three pollinators were busy and I wanted them out of the house before the baby was born. While I failed to get shots of the aforementiond Adolphe Sapota (who had two boys with Rosalind Cruzita), we have proof of Silas Allender (broke up the Pleasants, actually had four kids with Mary Sue and broke my rules, and also is rumored to be the father of Talei Hale's second kid), and I got Keaunu Kailani back with Clementine Parrott. And he followed my three kids rule! They had one daughter after this.

Kaila became a witch before getting pregnant, to answer any questions about how her son is one. While seed hunting, I found out that collectables on the ground can still be converted with the conversion ritual. It's not worth it to pick up any seeds that aren't special (facts!) but leveling up Kaila's magic skill isn't bad.

Tinsley started on her alchemy skill with predictable results. The house gained a second floor with a couple of bedrooms and Tinsley's own home alchemy station.

And of course that inappropriate trait never, ever came back to haunt me.

Jesus Christ Tinsley I already had you kiss Maru Mango...but Maru's not the one hurting here.

I should note that Kaila was very pregnant by this time. And now cursed with 1,000 bad moodlets and a wish to get married that got a whole lot harder to fulfill. Did that empathy for Isadora build up? Who knows, they never met.

Her friendship with Niles was tanked as well. I tried to fix it before Kaila wanted to end the romance entirely, but no dice. She really was done with him. And any friendship or romance AYYYY-- with Tinsley was down the tubes too. I had so many dreams for this household!

I knew Kaila's hopes and mine of a happy pregnancy and choosing her baby's traits were gone, so she skilled up for work a bit in the final hours of her pregnancy. The Fitzpatricks' pool was bulldozed for a large garden and toddler area, and she fished in her swimsuit. No insane trait here; Sunlit Tides has very shallow beaches and sims often go in the water itself to fish and change into their swimwear for it.

It made labor very embarrassing though.

So begins the story of Heiva then! Born with alright traits despite the circumstances (I can deal with grumpy), and at least no pesky husband trying to get mum's attention.

[Trip]

Heiva, Part Two

Okay so I forgot the best detail about Kaila and Niles' falling out:

They were at a park together and autonomously fought! Niles won by the way.

We had a home fire before Heiva's first birthday and Niles and Kaila (both of them!) came close to death, and before I had the LTHP for a good tombstone too. Things were at least looking up for everyone now.

I couldn't take him as a blond, but I had Niles' original hair color saved for moments like this. Then I realized I would get very bored with his toddlerhood once the necessary skills were taught. I know he's cute but for the sake of relevant ops, I'm keeping Heiva entirely away from skills beyond his necessities (it's athletic for supermax and martial arts to make the next house's collection really worth it). He's not supermaxing logic, he's not supermaxing an instrument, he's not touching writing nor painting, and charisma from the playpen is entirely off limits! The playpen is 100% the best and most cheaty toddler container but I didn't even get one until Tinsley had kids (more on that soon!)

Caregiver of the Year (tm) went to Bae Ling, another original homeless NPC, this generation. Niles stuck to his Dislikes Children trait for once and didn't really pay attention to Heiva unless directed (or for simple things like putting him to bed). Note that I didn't call him father of the year. He ignored his actual kids with Maggie Strong for a while, and was later caught kissing his father-in-law during a visit.

Tinsley was absolutely not putting on "girlfriend of the year" behavior though, during one of her many dates with Maru Mango. Even he had something mean to say about it! She at least used the method of rabbithole woohoo that I love, to be discreet of course. I wasn't exactly sure how it'd be explained to Niles, but maybe me as a watcher could bust in and say "Maru's genes are better tho" and hope for the best.

Now Tinsley and Maru got along fine and she popped a few romantic wishes for him, but her real love was for Niles. She even immediately got a wish to kiss him after moving in at first (which I cancelled because that seemed ridiculous but clearly I couldn't stop her) and their autonomous romance was stronger than any other.

While I always leave Kaila's heir up to her wishes, Tinsley was going to have a boy no matter what and I even had his partner locked in. We had her witch powers (just to make that clear) and a few apple trees in the backyard, so why even bother with anything other than a boy? In a previous attempt, I deliberately made her have twins so I could choose the better of two for pollinating instead of settling, but this time, I figured she would have a singleton. If I didn't like him, he would get a younger brother. And if I liked the first one, maybe I'd subject Niles to parenthood one more time. God forbid!

Anyways, Tinsley went to bed after her date with Maru and woke up to another big date with Niles. Or so I think the order goes. It took ages for her to actually get pregnant.

Niles was none the wiser about anything, and even alright with being a father. A "father" I guess.

But his own kid was doing pretty well. Niles got the wish to potty train Heiva and even let him on the spring rider (thankfully all the "Generations content" that got released as Store DLC still worked!) And Kaila was back at her job and working on her LTW for most of this. Niles had already completed his LTW of Super Popular by then, or was close to it. I dropped the ball with it on my first attempt but he became the prime candidate for this gen's tombstone.

Our house was going to descend into baby chaos though, when Tinsley gave birth to Amedee, and Talei Hale decided to bring her balding sprog to visit. Her name is Ginny, she's just a day or two older than Heiva, my collection of bad CC dies with me, and she totally was not the product of an affair with Silas Allender!

Okay so I'm one of those people who will indeed save right after a birth, make a copy of the save, and use cheats in the copy to see what my babies look like. Amedee is a cute kid! But he was mostly a copy of Tinsley. Tinsley is also a beautiful sim (in my humble opinion but that's the only opinion that matters during gameplay), but I was angling for Mango genes.

That oughta do it.

Niles and Tinsley still had their wishes to get married though.

So here's my blunder: I had Niles throw the party at The Overlook, which is a nice park that gives the Beautiful Vista moodlet too, oh hell yeah. I figured that he could buy it, I'd do the renovations I needed for a wedding/requirements/my own enjoyment but I was also $50,000 short. No canceling now though.

I felt like there was nothing to do, but the park has a stereo and people danced like it was a wedding. Parties are a great excuse to show off townie children but I didn't have any that were past toddlerhood yet. Courtney Grantham is the sole one here and his back is turned to Kaila and the recently-divorced Daniel Pleasant. His sisters are in the background.

In my heart I still wished it could be Kaila's wedding instead. But maybe it wasn't in hers. She was smiling for them. I wondered if maybe Niles was more trouble than he was worth for her, deep down. She had been through early heartbreak with him in one attempt, and another cheating scandal but with Isadora (!!!) in another.

Okay, stuff to close the chapter with isn't gonna be sappy. Last four screenshots go go go-

They adopted a fuzzy baby dog angel named Tama! She loves to sing along to the radio and when Niles plays guitar, and play tug-o-war with him.

Tinsley visited another potential spouse for Heiva: Iris Ling. Moments after Bae and father-in-law Julian Strong shared a kiss right in front of them (Rahiti weeps!)

And we gained a new temporary housemate in Nina Aolani, as in "maxed logic skill original homeless NPC and beautiful person" Nina Aolani...at least she is that in my head. Heiva had a mere five school days to get on the honor roll, after all.

Yeah this was pretty skimpy on funny, weird strategy but who knows the hijinks Heiva will pull now? And what's my current townie baby census anyways? (I started writing it down in the next update don't worry!)

[Trip]

Alright gonna spare you the details of my nasty weekend bug until we get to the updates affected by it. It's a doozy. I fixed it legally. Bottom text.

Heiva, Part Three

Let's cover all the growing up that went on, because there was a lot.

Heiva gained his Athletic trait at last! He stuck with the bright and sunny fashion that he tolerated as a toddler and also was a chubby little boy, as the Swift kids tend to be. While he'd be subjected to the athletic supermax, it was entirely because it's an easy supermax to ease me into a decadynasty and not as punishment for being a fat kid. Heiva could be the size he's meant to be once I finished the cardio challenges anyways.

Oh right, kids' workouts don't count. Is this why this chapter will just introduce potential spouses for Heiva? Of course.

Amedee became cute and bald and a lot like mum. They even share the same favorite color, orange, but I let Amedee express it more.

Tinsley's second son, Auguste, was thankfully the last she'd ever need to have. He had his dad's eyes and his mum's mouth! Two for one! I'm sure this is when Niles had to pick up on something fishy about her babies, but he spared me any of his feelings on it. He actually got to be good friends with Amedee without much interference from me. This is definitely more than he gave for his actual son.

Anyways, we got the baby jail all set up at last.

Lastly, Tama remained a very small dog and learning how to hunt was planned for some time after Heiva was done walking her.

The house was close to full yet kind of boring. Nina had already snagged Gilberto Gonzalo as her boyfriend, and they'd be switching spots as soon as I moved her out and moved Gilberto in. But then again, I mentioned that Nina had duties...

Call them practice for when she was out of the house. I had tried to get her to gain some weight and it worked if you noticed that! She ate lots of food at a party to get there. And then she slimmed down fast. (I actually have a lot of observations about townie weight for the future lol) The story of Nina ends with staying as Kaila's coworker and moving to Pearl Yang's old house. Pearl started to room with the Granthams for some reason.

And the story of Heiva continues with townie babies, because many of them became townie children around when he did. I guess that's my story too. My only lasting legacy on this forum. :') (nah I'm proud of it I promise!)

Let's just census them so far as a reminder and to not clog up the narrative with them:

1. Keaunu Keilani and Clementine Parrott had three kids: Omar, Aaron, and Mitzi
2. Adolphe Sapota and Rosalind Cruzita had two: Harold and Wilfredo
3. Silas Allender had Ginny with Talei Hale, and Tamera, Alvaro, and Marcello with Mary Sue Pleasant (they had a fourth brother who died as a teenager)
4. Bae Ling and Maggie Strong had four who all survived!! Taurus, Cody, Iris, and Nicholaus

I was scared of encountering a running bug with him playing tag so much and used to discourage it, but I decided to let this boy have some fun since I was lacking a lot of things that came with Generations. Also, of course, it made for easy best friends. A teenaged Kiwi Hale down (just kidding! They didn't like each other as teens), many more to go.

Wilfredo Sapota loved to come out to play when his brother, Harold, rarely did. He dragged along Ginny Hale, who would be far more useful to the dynasty, in theory (not in practice thanks to half-siblings on both sides, but I'd let Heiva do what he wanted)

Niles and Tinsley traded off with throwing parties. They'd often do it just for the heck of it, which translates to "oh please I need more friends for my dynasty requirements please please please". Tinsley often caught NPCs upstairs (the wonky aging of service NPCs means that someone's gonna live from Heiva's childhood until moving time, right? To be continued!) while Heiva found Courtney Grantham (Alice x Grant Grantham, pre-made pregnancy) before school the next day. Omar Keilani ignored him for homework.

Courtney has a very "pretty boy" face like his mum and sisters, and I was legitimately unsure if he was a boy or a girl...I mean I was 98% sure he was a boy but a lot of children's stuff in TS3 is as unisex as the name Courtney. This actually isn't my first gender confusion this generation! We'll catch up with Taurus Ling and his or her's girly hairstyles later, because they're a week younger than Heiva.

Ginny showed up for video games this time too!

Heiva invited Omar and his younger brother, Aaron, over for a game of tag, and he even got a hug out of it! He might have felt bad because their dad died sometime around then, and that continued to haunt Heiva about his own dad too! I think, anyways.

Omar and Aaron were thought to be just brothers. While Keaunu and Clementine tried for a third baby and had Mitzi, I couldn't find her at home or anywhere for a while. But suddenly I kept seeing a girl with the family at the park and stuff, and the big challenge now was actually introducing the family to her.

We're throwing a party because we finally found Mitzi!

My anticipation paid off a little because she was cute, if looking just like her mother.

Heiva had only one question to ask a friend at that point.

Harold Sapota (the kid) and Aaron Keilani (the baldie) actually stayed still for a shot, along with a grown-up Courtney Grantham and his older sister Katherine in the background there.

Hector Hoffman also found a way to play video games over dinner...my only skill too.

This was all well and good but there was another wave of townie babies I was waiting for. Putting all my eggs in a basket with Ginny, Mitzi, or Katherine (or Kiwi, Omar, or Courtney; if our boy was gay then he had a much wider range of husbands with eligible houses and childless sisters than Rahiti ever could dream of) wasn't the smartest move when I was waiting for the Ling kids (Bae Ling x Maggie Strong again) and the Allender kids that weren't Ginny to grow up. I kept seeing Maggie Strong carrying around a toddler, so I had to wonder when this would ever happen. Then the other challenge was finding them too once they were grown. Mitzi was proof of that much for me.

Tamara Allender and her brothers remained elusive for an update longer, but someone new was cheering on Kaila as she returned a stereo to Talei, now her boss, and also aged up to elder.

Heiva was a sweet, social kid who was allowed to surprise me. Enjoy the spring rider before I sell it, son!

The townie baby census for this chapter concludes with Nina and Gilberto Gonzalo's two daughters: Corrine and Krista. Their only son was seen once as a child before death.

[KRae]

This is all somewhat confusing to me, but that's okay. I'm just going to go with the flow.

[Trip]

This is all somewhat confusing to me, but that's okay. I'm just going to go with the flow.

Aww at least I'm here to explain! Questions are welcome.

[KRae]

no explanation required...it's just keeping the massive numbers of kids straight.

[Trip]

no explanation required...it's just keeping the massive numbers of kids straight.

Oh boy is it! The worst part is that I tend to move my guys out after their last successful baby/before that baby is born, so there are a few kids who truly catch me off guard because I don't get the notification that they're born.

[Trip]

Heiva, Part Four

Mystery child revealed! It was Iris Ling all along, complete with subtle purple hair. She wasn't the only kiddo cheering on Heiva's birthday, but she definitely became a child to keep an eye on.

Oh wait, that was lost in a game crash, never mind! Heiva aged up normally the next time around.

We even remembered Amedee's birthday this time too.

Heiva added more black to his turquoise wardrobe, and his grumpy trait appeared far more often. Inappropriate Tinsley barely helped with that, though. I was not shocked to see that they disliked each other as time went on.

While most of my supermax work was going to be reserved for Heiva's adulthood, he was going to be bored without starting it. Plus, he could slim down and impress some girls early on, though I wasn't having high hopes for that. All my other attempts were full of heirs who wanted literally everything under the sun except for a teen romance. Yep, even the straight ones.

I kicked back and let Heiva take the wheel. His teen trait was indeed Irresistable. I figured I'd give him that one helping hand.

And if nothing else, Heiva was cultivating an extremely active social life.

Since he lived near Starfish Sands Playground, I had Niles carry a gnubb set there so Heiva could have some team fun (practice for his career of course). He hung out with the Granthams and Hales and Keilanis a lot, since other kids were lagging behind him in age. And the Sapotas, his best friends apparently, mostly ignored him.

Alright here is where I document stuff lost in another game crash. Heiva was hanging out with the Hales and fell for Ginny. While she was probably last on my wife list (again, just the logistics with half-siblings, not to mention the whole unavoidable Hale/Wahine/Kahale cousin web), I think they were both fellow grumps. He and Kiwi got into a spat over it too, not the first nor the last nor even something that was undid by a game crash. Kiwi got saddled with the Mean-Spirited trait at some point. It would be a shame if he fell in love with another household member, wouldn't it be?

But my game crashed. I forget why, probably something dumb of course. He and Ginny were still close friends but the sparks didn't fly again.

Heiva was free to explore again. He seemed to want to try things out with Alvaro Allender (who had a sister so he was on the spouse list!) but Alvaro showed me THE most hilarious animation in the game (maybe): rejecting a blown kiss. Auguste is in the background there with his homework.

Anyways I was stalking the school like a total creep.

Taurus Ling revealed himself to be a boy with a bad taste in hairstyles.

And Iris Ling revealed that she indeed grew up.

Heiva took her and her brothers out one night and the "Kiss Iris for the First Time" wish came instantly. Yes, she was my top pick because she is absolutely gorgeous and her house has a lot of space, but I did little to encourage it. For once, my heirs are in sync with me. My last one wanted to be with Edmund Carnegie, who was not only homely but a vampire who would leave dates early (but of course I let her try).

Unfortunately, Heiva had a chaperone. All of the teens saw through Niles' ruse though, and he got no tips.

He learned to ignore it.

Niles very likely died of the stress of his actual son growing up, leaving behind an eligible tombstone, or urn, so Kaila didn't have to. She "died" (air quotes to be explained later) very close to Heiva's adult birthday, which made this alternative so much less stressful. Tinsley may not have agreed! Dying is hungry work for her.

We obtained Tiffany the pup through not a pollinator, but a momma I moved in and out to split up her household (it was Ursula Lemuel, who shared a house with Theodora Jayne; I don't like having more than one mum in a house) Tiffany was prancing around at the park a lot and I wished I could grab her, only for my wish to come true.

A teenaged Amedee started to make a friend with Kiwi Hale, and probably didn't talk to Heiva much about it. Sorry for the lack of childhood shots. Amedee only became interesting when he grew up because guitar could help us make friends.

Kaila gained a boyfriend, which is usually a good thing, but not always when he's the grandpa of your son's new girlfriend...

Let's leave all the lovebirds alone. Townie baby census!

1. Griffin Alto and Tenika Wahine had only two kids (Griffin has the Surrounded by Family LTW, sigh, but they'd get culled!): Rachel and Arron
2. Ursula Lemuel and Alonso Candeleria had three kids: Casey, Marco, and...I kid you not, another Marco.
3. Daniel Pleasant and Tonya Tamarind had three as well: Claire, Leann, and Allen.

[Trip]

Heiva, Part Five

Julian was definitely and autonomously unhappy with Heiva. This is The Sims 3 after all, it's not like Heiva could do anything more lewd than giving his granddaughter a smooch for now. It may have been about the age gap, because Heiva was about to age up to young adult and Iris still had a ways to go (she also got a makeover, just to make it worse)

Or was it? I just realized this is an ancient screenshot. Hi child Amedee (kid in the orange hat). We celebrate your YA birthday at the end of this chapter.

We finally bought The Overlook and set it up for Heiva's birthday party. If you can cough up the cash, it's an easy property to buy and upgrade in a dynasty, as all it needs are some picnic tables and grills. I added a gnubb set (yea) and a makeover station (can't use it to makeover other sims without a stylist, so that's a huge nah). Heiva was in the bushes talking to the local fairy squad: Ramona Parrott, Helen Hoffman, and Katherine Grantham. Local werewolf and possible secret admirer Hector Hoffman joined in.

Okay so here's a side story about Hector: I noticed that he was living with the Parrotts/Keilanis since sometime when he was a teen. I had my suspicions as to why but I didn't assume anything until I had Heiva ask him about his partner (while he was still a teen)

I almost never get any autonomous relationships through story progression, let alone an autonomous, teenage, gay romance that includes a house move. So happy for them!

Oh yeah, I also added a bonfire. Heiva practiced his lifting with some big logs for fuel, and Kaila reminded us that she's a high-ranking scientist (I think very close to finishing her LTW at this point).

Alonso Candeleria decided to ruin the vibe by getting married (this action actually got interrupted by Heiva, ya know, growing up, but I just consider that karma)

Heiva had a little fun and also immediately got a job in professional sports (I put a newspaper in his inventory to make this fast) Athletic would be easy, the career would be harder, and waiting for his teenage girlfriend to grow up would be the hardest of all.

Amedee became another victim of Kiwi's meanness before hitting him with a gay spell (both Amedee and Auguste are witches thanks to both Tinsley and Maru being witches)...in all seriousness there was some chemistry between them in spite of Kiwi's temper. He wasn't gay in Rahiti's attempt but as karma would have it for Rahiti, he made up for it in every other attempt. Including when he married Pearl's son once. Maybe that was weighing down on my mind a little.

Auguste got the Gatherer trait as a teen, and was tasked with collecting metals (when the two dogs didn't) and smelting them. Auguste got some nice Pluotniums but Tama got a bunch of Supernovium ores. I was hoping for Auguste to get multiple ingots when he smelted them since he finished the metal collecting challenge, but it was a little hit-or-miss for the Supernovium.

Heiva pretended to be a football star while running. I don't know what kind of sportsball the professional sports career is supposed to be, besides all of them at once. Also, those national football jerseys from The Store aren't flagged to be used for career outfits! How can I pretend that Sunlit Tides belongs to a real nation now?

He and Tiffany became best buds, though I was slipping with keeping in touch with his human friends and scratching any romantic itches he had. I was pretty intent with keeping him with Iris, but they were actually only romantic interests, so I lied when I said "girlfriend". Plus, Kaila was still with Julian and that could get awkward really fast.

Heiva also got date calls between work hours and stuff, so I followed up on them.

Leilani Kahale needed a hug after the death of her father.

Courtney Grantham might have considered a second date.

Mitzi Keilani made me ashamed, because her awful athletic wear actually matched colors.

However, Iris was anything but a shut-in and Heiva had to be discreet if he actually wanted another chance with her once she grew up. I didn't show much of her teen makeover but she got a lot of purple to match the tips of her hair. Following Heiva to the gym also meant that Iris lost a lot of weight, but I have a full write-up on sim weight coming up.

Funny enough, for Tinsley being an inappropriate kisser, she was getting the least action of anyone in the house.

Amedee and Auguste weren't born to be celibate either. Obviously Auguste would have kids and carry Maru Mango's squinty eyes into the next generation, but I wasn't going to leave Amedee alone unless he wanted it.

Auguste found Corrine Gonzalo at his brother's birthday party. They were friends from school, even if I liked her twin sister a little better (sorry Krista!)

Uh, moving backwards a little...

Kaila singed Julian with a fire blast one day (gotta keep those skills sharp). Him somehow not showering for a week didn't stop Kaila from popping the question. I actually did intend to marry and move him in at some point. It wasn't going to invalidate Iris as a spouse in any way, through rules or Heiva being his step-son. Or it would, I didn't get to test. Before that date, I got the notice that Julian was going to die, and I had Kaila propose anyways.

And after their movie and possible theatre woohoo, it was right on cue.

Claire Tamarind was there to comfort Kaila, thankfully.

Back to the present-ish, Amedee became a young adult and had only one wish at his birthday party: to kiss Kiwi Hale. Right after a keg stand with him, of course. I'd show a screenshot if I had it, but it was before Amedee got a much-needed adult makeover and it was dark outside. Anyways, Amedee having a husband would actually be great. Kiwi could still be a pollinator without needlessly crossing family lines anymore than I have to (while his whole family was a mess), and the more the merrier in the Fitzpatrick house (not really)

Anyways, the most cursed phone call I got was one with a blank notification message. The only thing scarier in this dynasty so far was, well, actual bugs. I had no clues to go on until I saw that Amedee had the Heartbroken moodlet...woops.

It really was gonna be Rahiti and Greg all over again, huh? And how did he die anyways?

[Trip]

Heiva, Part Six

Oh wait, Kiwi's dead? And I have a house of five witches?

I mean obviously my first thought was the long and hard way to get Kiwi back in the flesh. Kaila and Tinsley were evenly skilled in spellcasting (a.k.a. to the level of dueling and nothing more) so I spent a few days queuing up duels for them. I thought I was getting somewhere until I referred back to the list of spellcasting levels/unlocks and boy, it was gonna be a long journey. If nothing else, though, they mended their friendship. Niles was already a distant memory for both of them.

Also check out Tinsley's elder makeover! One of my favorite ones yet.

However, Tinsley loved to cast love charms on herself. As long as she didn't mess up her NPC friends (Heiva had the best friends for the most part, and she had the NPCs), I didn't care what she did.

Kaila was often the only person around to smooch, though.

And Amedee regretfully told his mother that all her hard work may have been in vain.

He got Oh My Ghost a few days after Kiwi died, and I figured I'd let the weirdness of The Sims take over this soon into the dynasty. Kiwi still loved him but understandably, he was feeling crappy after getting resurrected. And I didn't know he was a mermaid or that he dehydrated...possibly because of the bonfire I placed at The Overlook. Woops.

Kaila took all the credit for this either way.

And so we had Kiwi Hale, who was a mean genius who wanted to be a doctor. His boss was also Heiva's possible future father-in-law, Bae Ling. Bae still showed up as an adult in the relationship panel, but I hadn't seen him around town at all either. I had Kiwi have dinner with his boss so I could answer this question. If he was stuck as an adult, it didn't mean anything good for marrying Iris.

So he turned out to be an elder after all (phew!) and ready to take Kiwi's place in the netherworld.

He also was taken to the dresser and turned out to be visible there. Was it because he was made playable? I had a whole life states dynasty of ghosts and even though I can't remember much from 2013, a few of them looked normal at the dresser but it was a crapshoot as to whom. I think at least one spouse did as well as my second generation heir, but only after her adult birthday. Anyways, it made it easy to make Kiwi look a little...shipwrecked. He had been through a lot after all!

Amedee was more than happy to have him back, in whatever form it took. They could still get married, adopt a kid, fulfill wishes, and be accepted by the family. After the first initial reaction to having a ghost in their house, everyone accepted Kiwi, or at least stopped being disgusted with him.

Now I loved Amedee because he's my sim, but he was pretty useless in hindsight. He was supposed to play guitar and make friends that way (it's a super easy, passive way to do it) but I often left him on free will, which meant playing guitar at home instead. Heiva was holding onto friends as well, if having to call them every few days or throw parties (I'm leaving this to a charismatic housemate exclusively now) His brother at least was a pretty good collector and smelter, even if the dogs did most of the work. But Amedee would also get the house to himself and his husband once the elders passed on, so perhaps he was the real winner here.

Meanwhile, Heiva's life had gone to the dogs!

Also, Iris grew up. She was a little sore after another gym session, but a lot of Heiva's team was too. He wanted to go on a date with his boss, Martin Pepper.

The pitch was to show off how those muscles worked, I think. Anyways, Martin made a lot of faces during his deep-tissue massage and the retreat was absolutely eerie at night. Since the venue is only marked as "Visitors Allowed" and no, you cannot change it for a dynasty, it's usually pretty quiet. Visitors whom?

Saunas are banned for Heiva for now, but things were getting steamy between him and Martin anyways. If he wasn't still getting lots of wishes for Iris, it was more than possible to switch gears and make Heiva a Pepper. Martin had a sister, after all, and I haven't gotten any ugly babies from either of them yet!

But yeah...Iris...Heiva was racked with enough guilt to invite her to the gym again.

She didn't find out about Martin, but her dad died. And Heiva's friend's ghost boyfriend did nothing to stop it! And worst of all, it was a feeling that Heiva understood deeply as well.

Maybe messing around with Iris' feelings wasn't going to be good for anyone.

He apologized about...stuff...or just talked about losing a parent. But it hit Iris in a good place.

And finally, she was a real-deal official girlfriend and I got to see her family tree. No partners for any of her brothers I'm afraid.

So hopefully the rest of this chapter is kind of consistent, because there was a lot of repeating stuff thanks to an aging bug that hit Heiva before his adult birthday. If you want to know my solution: there was none. I manually counted the days to his birthday (like all two of them) and it resolved once he became an adult. Moving houses might have helped too but I was a ways away from that at this point! He was only at level six or seven of his career and that was gonna become my only real regret.

Heiva had a trip to China that I didn't have to repeat, praise the lord. I was waiting on a career op for him that involves going to China and learning martial arts. While I didn't want to supermax it in a decadynasty (with these vacation days?), I knew that martial arts could be useful for the next house's gem collection.

He came with a moodlet manager and also spent some of the time lifting weights, of course. He finished the Timber Terminator challenge for those space rock gems, but not the actual Bodybuilder one that he had to do.

But here he is finishing his supermax at home. The face of victory.

So this is barely covered in the rest of this update or the next but bear with me: Heiva still had to marathon through the rest of his career. It's a rabbithole career, he wasn't required to exercise anymore, he had a lot of our gen's best friends through his co-workers there already, etc. It was not interesting AND took up most of Heiva's time anyways. Pro. Sports had him working six days a week, even if just for a few hours at a time. I wish I could say I had a fun strategy but I didn't.

Here's some fun strategies to mention though:

1. I mentioned off-hand that Tinsley started making NPC friends early, as a bit of an experiment to myself. Because of her maxed charisma, if it didn't pan out then she could easily make more friends later on. Anyways, she made a lot of early NPC friends, hence why you'll see quite a few original NPCs on the list once I post it at the end. My experiment was to see how long they would live. Again, these are largely NPCs she met when Heiva was a child or even earlier.

Now my strategy was to befriend them and then never invite them back again. Tinsley could afford to do this, as her friendships never decayed. She got multiple "x is about to die" notices for many of them, but they continued to live and stay in her relationship panel. They could be called and chatted to, and invited over if need be, even though that may kill them soon after if they are getting the death notice.

While service NPCs might show up at the park, they are definitely held in some sort of stasis. It works to our detriment when we're desperate in an immortal dynasty and need to turn to NPCs for spouses (because they don't age conventionally and will skip to the next stage at will), and it works to our benefit here for keeping NPC friends, it seems. At least I wasn't scrambling at the last minute I guess!

2. Sunlit Tides has three Big Parks (as in the lot designation but they are all also quite big, yes), which is the only lot that service NPCs will visit on their own. I actually was able to meet NPCs at the park and pretty often too, but I think having three parks increased the chances of seeing one. I didn't change any lot designations here, but for towns with only one big park, it might be worth it to change some eligible small parks to big parks per dynasty rules. (@hazelnut brought up how few NPCs were at the park in her base game decadynasty in a private message and maybe this is the explanation, who knows though!)

3. My experiment with limiting couples to three babies as much as possible may have worked. This isn't to say that sims never got culled, but I never quite divulged the sort of rampant death I got in previous attempts where I didn't give myself a limit. We're talking about story progression hitting two or three kids in a family instead of losing one sometimes. It was hard to get out of the immortal dynasty mindset where quantity is king, because breeding just isn't anywhere near as rapid as it can be here, and also I would sometimes spread out one pollinator across several partners, so maybe everything was looked at on a per-household basis. I might be the master dynasty pollinator (I guess) but we're all still learning.

4. Heiva never was starving for ops by keeping his skilling strict before moving (he got a handiness point when he was young, and picked up some cooking skill after getting married, but nothing to scare me yet) and also by having a rabbithole career. I know there have been successful decadynasty heirs who were self-employed but I changed one plan for the next gen thanks to Heiva. Again, the loose approach to skilling before is definitely an immortal dynasty leftover. I actually did play very fast-and-loose with immortal dynasty skilling, with everyone learning athletic, logic, instruments, and charisma throughout their journey. Fewer ops = less incentive to stay strict to get ops. It's the opposite here.

Where was I?

With Kaila and Tinsley both wanting to get married to someone, I decided to save some space and give them a beautiful beachside engagement. I could also spy on Amedee, Auguste, and Kiwi's family trees for a while until either elder died.

Amedee and Kiwi opted for a bedroom engagement instead.

Heiva celebrated his adult birthday.

And...uh...Kaila died?

We also arrive at the final townie baby census for this generation. Only two to talk about.

Suzuki Hinata and Helen Hoffman had two kids: Antwan and Venus. They were both fairies like Helen, though Venus was a rare sim culled as a young adult.

Tamera Allender (Silas x Mary Sue Pleasant) and Harold Sapota (Adolphe x Rosalind Cruzita) had three sons: Ken, Karim, and now the worst child name I have ever seen in the game, Bimble. I also haven't seen Ken and Bimble around, so maybe my anti-culling practices are just an illusion.

[Trident]

Always nice to read more of Trip's Pollinating Adventures. I'm excited to the looks of future kids!

[Trip]

Always nice to read more of Trip's Pollinating Adventures. I'm excited to the looks of future kids!

Just finished up with heir #2 and that question still remains for #3. Get born please.

The Decadynasty and the 4x4 are a pollinator's dream, mostly because moving in and out and aging down non-heirs is largely unrestricted (the 4x4 has even fewer restrictions because you can add former household members back in and age up at will as well but I don't need either that much). Also I attempted the Immortal Dynasty for TS4 back in 2016 and just kind of ran out of steam, but I liked the freedom to edit the appearance of whoever (in the household) I wished, because dragging them to CAS via the mirror/dresser gives you some degree of face and body editing and no one's age gets reset unlike here. I also pollinated around quite a bit, but frankly I don't care about the TS4 original townies much at all. At least in the Decadynasty I usually can fork over the money needed for a non-heir's plastic surgery (just for generic new sims right now), and have some original townies that I like.

In short, I'm having a good time right now.

[Deklitch]

In short, I'm having a good time right now.

I am having a good time reading about you having a good time, Trip.

[Trip]

Heiva, Part Seven

Can you believe it's the wedding chapter? Even if it's not the one you're thinking of (please don't kill me) Then again, yet another one of our engaged couples has given up the ghost, and this time, I can't resurrect her.

Or can I?

Kaila got the death flower from her job, actually. She never grew one. Once Niles died and left behind a medium tombstone, I knew that she could hold onto it unless I decided that enough was enough with her. And fortunately, Kaila isn't an annoying sim.

The party's back on!

So then The Overlook got its addition of a wedding arch and some chairs. I never place enough chairs. I learned that the wedding cake from The Store doesn't work without Generations (or I installed it wrong?) but thankfully before I planned the wedding.

And Tinsley even managed to wear her formalwear for this gay occasion.

Not every couple gets to be watched by their son-in-law's baby momma (Theodora Jayne, the fairy, more on that one in a bit!), their ghostly son-in-law, and the other one's son's future mother-in-law (Maggie Strong, looking snazzy after a makeover!) And not every couple gets to share the event with the marriage of their son and his ghost husband either.

Yeah, I decided to upstage Kaila and Tinsley. Oh well!

I had to place a light right under the arch. Kiwi might glow but Amedee doesn't.

Heiva was still in career limbo, but he's always been a good kid who wanted his new stepbrother and old friend/enemy/frenemy to be together until Kiwi faded into the aether. I scheduled the wedding on Heiva's only day off, so he couldn't have any hard feelings about it.

Iris, who even had her white dress (courtesy of me, I got ahead of myself with the styling station), was less than pleased to be wasting it.

The rest of this update is just miscellaneous tidbits before we prepare for Heiva to leave. Imagine he is progressing up the career ladder right before your eyes~

During the house's perpetual honeymoon phase, I gave the actual house one last makeover to look less..."dynasty". Gone were rocking chairs for pollinators and Tinsley's alchemy station, and gone was Heiva's weight machine. We now had a normal four-bedroom house. Amedee and Auguste were getting into more brotherly fights, though, and I was a little sick of it.

As much as the garden mattered to me and the household's income, they were sitting on $300,000 and the garden was a dirt-covered eyesore. I always wanted to make it into a zen garden but didn't have the right idea until that point. The easels are for Amedee, the martial arts equipment is for Heiva when he visits (it's outside so he doesn't have to wait for someone to be home), and the middle is a resting place for the best dog: Tama. Thank you for all that Supernovium.

Auguste meanwhile had four sons with his fiancee, Corrine. I did not get a marriage shot of them, but she enjoyed the new bikini as much as I he did. Thanks for the plutonium and smelting jobs, not for much else sorry!

I promised to explain Theodora and Kiwi. I was originally saving Theodora for one of Auguste's sons (her genes + Maru Mango's go together nicely) but was getting impatient. This is the first and last I ever saw of Kiwi's many ghostly babies with her. He got to break my kid limit intentionally, because of an inconvenient truth about inactive, in-town ghosts: they disappear when they have to age up.

Okay so I first noticed this in Moonlight Falls, since there are a number of inactive ghosts living in houses like normal sims. And I really wanted one of them in a Moonlight Falls dynasty of mine at some point, but they wouldn't last. I checked the ages of these ghosts and they would disappear on schedule with their next birthday.

This didn't bode well for Kiwi's ghost spawn, of which five (!!) are missing forever (he had two, a human and a fairy, that we haven't seen the last of). And as Kiwi was becoming an adult, it didn't bode well for him either.

Thankfully, his adult birthday hit before Heiva was ready to move out, but by literal hours.

Heiva had yet to propose to Iris, but with her wedding dress still there and waiting for him to actually schedule a wedding party, he could at least get a little closer. They went to one of the beaches and still didn't beat Tinsley and Kaila at a scenic proposal (sorry!)

And most of all, finally and at last, Heiva was a Sports Legend and in desperate need of a day off so he could get married. With eight days until his elder birthday, it wasn't a moment too soon! The team, composed entirely of elders at this point, would just have to win a game without him somehow.

[Trip]

In short, I'm having a good time right now.

I am having a good time reading about you having a good time, Trip.

Now that's the spirit! Maybe not the spirit of this forum though, because there always comes a time when a dynasty isn't fun.

[Trip]

Heiva, Part Eight

Heiva's closing statements start with a very familiar sight for a decadynasty with an adopted baby in tow.

Kiwi and Amedee elected to adopt Kalena and fulfill their mutual wishes for children. And to think I'd let a clone-face sim into my own house without even giving them plastic surgery! (EA really did me dirty by not allowing frivolous cosmetic surgery for toddlers, rude) It could have been a last ditch effort to meet a social worker, but Tinsley completed that ages ago. And I could have just adopted another pet instead.

But nah, I had another strategy: everyone in the house was aging, and without someone young to live there, the house would be empty before I knew it and I would be unable to access the inside. But Kalena would keep the house in my family's hands for a little while longer. I had no idea if I would need to go inside again. Probably not though.

Although she was doomed to forever be generic, she somehow had Amedee's dark skin and the golden hair that Kiwi appeared to have as a ghost. All through chance!

And you can't deny that the ideal family is an adopted daughter, a dad, a ghost dad, and a party-happy stepmum.

This wasn't the last we ever saw of Kiwi, but his closing action in the household was to usher in the Ling/Strong family as part of them with a keg stand. Truly iconic.

Unlike some brides or grooms, Iris arrived on time and in the right attire. I know the strategy of inviting the inactive bride or groom over separate from the party invite is a legit strategy for making sure your spouse actually goes to your wedding, but they won't automatically change into formalwear unless they're on the guest list. Granted I get that not everyone bothers with styling future spouses anyways. Iris was a whole lot younger than Heiva because of it, by four or five weeks for sure, even though they were born about a week apart.

Ah well.

I decided to be reasonable for the wedding and invite only Iris' family, as well as Auguste and Corrine because they're family too. Kalena stayed at home with a babysitter (not our NPC friend babysitter, who was quite old by then) Our count of guests who actually sat or stood in the right place was mediocre.

Cody Ling, one of Iris' brothers, is the one sitting to the back/right of Amedee, and Taurus Ling is furthest off the left, with his bad hair back in business. Corrine is in the violet dress and next to Tinsley.

And Iris? She was gorgeous. Heiva and I truly were in sync this time.

It was a little hard bidding good-bye to Kaila and her crew. At least she was alive and happily married until her dying day, a co-owner of her dead ex-partner's large house, and ready to leave behind a large tombstone that I couldn't use.

Congratulations Heiva and Iris!

Even if Iris may have finally been wondering what kind of bizarre family she married into.


Generation One: Heiva Ling (nee Swift)

56 Paradise Circle

Born: Day 8 (Week 2, Day 1) to Kaila Swift and Niles Fitzpatrick
Honor Roll: Child & Teen
NPC Friends: Jessie Goth (Burglar), Bree Moncrief (Social Worker), Frederick Youngblood (Maid), Carissa Parrott (Firefighter), Shanda Tinsley (Babysitter), Papaya Cruz (Mail Carrier), Tawanna Wren (Newspaper Deliverer), Harold Bowens (Pizza Deliverer), Edna Barrow (Mascot), Donna Moses (Repowoman)
Best Friends: Aaron Keilani, Iris Ling, Mitzi Keilani, Angarika Goyave, Camilla Wilcox, Ginny Hale, Martin Pepper, Taurus Ling, Katherine Grantham, Hector Hoffman
Career: Professional Sports
Supermax Athletic
Black Ops: Stinky Bugs, Stadium Cleanup, Hawking the Foam Finger, Add It Up, Jog Everywhere, Inter-office League, No Sweat!, The Big Game, The Focused Athlete, Meditation Benefits
Building: Riku's Luau Diner
Property: The Overlook
Tombstone: Niles Fitzpatrick (medium)
Collection: Metals, $248,633
Adult? TOO ADULT TO HANDLE (seriously we were closing in on his last week)

As you might see, we're taking the wife's last name for the dynasty line (most of my townie kids are the opposite though). Heiva got his mother's name by default since she was basically a single mother this time, so I'm running with it. I'm leaving the heir's sex up to sim wishes or chance. And what kind of family dynamic does Iris have with her many brothers anyways?

[Deklitch]

For some reason your "TOO ADULT TO HANDLE" line took me to "You can't handle the truth" line from A Few Goofy Good Men.

[Rhoxi]

I'm just amazed that you got a kid named Bimble. Haha, who put that name on the pool??

[Trip]

For some reason your "TOO ADULT TO HANDLE" line took me to "You can't handle the truth" line from A Few Goofy Good Men.

He's handled the truth of "pro. sports isn't the career for a dynasty like this never again" because I made Heiva retire pretty quickly after his marriage leave was up.

I'm just amazed that you got a kid named Bimble. Haha, who put that name on the pool??

I am still absolutely floored that it made it past quality control. I recently confirmed that he died young, which is what I would do if my parents named me Bimble of course.

[Trip]

Hua, Part One

Hua Ling was born on Week 12, Day 1 (Day 6 after moving in), as another witch who was Good and Loved the Outdoors. We later added Angler, Couch Potato, and Daredevil. Dad's tiberium ($396,888) in encased in glass behind her.

But the beginning?

Heiva moved into a household alright. Here's the census data:

- Maggie Ling, née Strong. Original townie, wants to be a Heartbreaker, 88 days old but I can fix that.

- Cody and Nicholaus Ling, adults and brothers. Moved out after I found a wife for Cody. I was petty and did this because they disliked Iris a lot. One was a mermaid.

- Taurus Ling, also an adult. Wants to be a firefighter and save 35 sims, but I doubt it. Feeling like the most likely tombstone candidate.

- Iris Ling, young adult, best dynasty wife ever.

I know my claim about Iris is bold, but I felt so much ease once Heiva married her. Everything about her was useful to the decadynasty. And in fact, I could just keep presenting the spouses like this:

- Traits: Brave, Dramatic, Hot-Headed, Disciplined, and Charismatic. I could keep the hot-headed temper in check, and charismatic is basically a socialization cheat code that happens to be a trait. You can spam the same social however many times you desire.

- LTW: Super Popular, which means a great incentive for making and keeping required friends.

- Skills: started with four points in charisma. Because charisma is self-raising as long as your sim talks to others, any start with it counts. Right off the bat she could get sims very close to the friend level just by using a charming introduction.

- Genes: two original townie parents, and even an original townie grandpa. Was the only one of Maggie's kids to get her purple-tinted hair.

Speaking of hair, all of Iris' brothers got Grandpa Julien's reddish hair. Maggie had black hair with purple streaks before I gave her an elder dye job, and Bae was a blond. What are the odds anyways? Well I asked my brother, who crunches numbers for a living, and he said "Trip please get a real hobby."

Supposedly, according to real XML tuning for TS3, sims have a whopping 50% chance of having a grandparent's hair color. It sounds too high but it might be hidden by the fact that plenty of sim parents might share a hair color with their own parents (Maggie did not in this case). Anyways, the chance of three sims in a family having grandpa's hair is 12.5%. The few, the proud~

I feel like I'm avoiding something. I didn't get started on my heir right away, because tombstones and pollinating loom over me more.

Taurus basically lived at the fire station for the rest of his adult years. He would eat, sleep, shower, etc. on his own, and I had to direct for actual skilling and emergencies. He would go to emergencies but then go somewhere next door to have a coffee or watch TV. Some emergencies were bugged too but we had to deal. Normal firefighter profession stuff! We covered this with Rahiti! But Rahiti didn't get the gnome emergency, which is just such a hilarious concept to me.

Also, he got switched to the Renaissance Sim LTW eventually, because he needed handiness and athletic for his job. A third skill wouldn't be that hard.

I actually had no moral issues with pursuing Maggie's LTW, though. I couldn't get all her conquests on a screenshot, but Rachel Alto and Ramona Parrott were among her first. With a time squeeze, Maggie would break up with them immediately. Sometimes I could even get through two boyfriends/girlfriends in a day (but also I didn't work on it every day)

Otherwise, Maggie was a normal but driven grandma. She got an offer to switch from her job as a police lieutenant to becoming a doctor, which I accepted. Maggie also had a few skill points in logic, so I had a head start with getting someone to tutor my heir. And some motivation to do so, for her new career.

Heiva finally took some time to work on his spellcasting. I wasn't really intent on mastering it yet, but I really wanted him to be able to cast love charms for...ya know...my purposes. When he wasn't annoying his brother-in-law with spells, he visited mum for a duel! Kaila was still doing well, as far as I was concerned.

Amedee was more of a homebody than the rest of his household (read: I was mean and didn't invite him to parties), but he was still playing guitar a lot, and Kalena grew up into a kid with an alright wardrobe. She'd later be a reliable client for Iris to re-style, don't worry.

Oh, and I had to ensure that our heir would have friends their age too. Heiva moved in Courtney Grantham and introduced him to Leilani Kahale.

Our other first-wave pollinator was Omar Keilani, who I swear was doing fun stuff in back of City Hall with Rachel Alto, but I have no photographic evidence. I have him proposing to his werewolf boyfriend by the time he was done, though. In-laws fighting in the back are just a bonus.

And I made a fun observation about sim weight?

This shot of Maggie will provide context, I promise. If you open up a fresh Sunlit Tides and either play the Strongs or meet them somewhere, you'll see that Maggie starts as a chunky teen. Not the fattest a sim can be, but fat. It doesn't matter in The Sims.

I got story progression-related weight changes quite a bit in this save. Or I thought I did but as it turns out, many changes were a side-effect of Heiva going to the gym all the time. There's a "Schrodinger's Cat" effect on sims, where even in an open world they're mostly in a weird limbo unless being watched. Here's a thread from 2010 about it, and here's a slightly more recent and succinct post by @Silverbella about it, especially as it pertains to werewolves and gyms. I'll just quote her on gyms, this stuck with me ever since I read it.

I do this with the gym now all the time.  Every day some static sims are spawned in the gym, and while my game is paused I check to see who's there.  If it's some townie that I'd like to slim down I just click play and leave the camera there, and they then proceed to workout all day.  This is how I got Branch to slim down in my game.

Now I didn't go to the gym just to get inactive sims to slim down. I had a supermax to complete instead. But inevitably some sims would take up the treadmills. Maggie and Iris definitely did. Iris ended up getting more-or-less back to her original weight by the time Heiva married her, and honestly, I had to eliminate her because pregnancy could have easily affected her weight too. Maggie slimmed down before having children, and stayed slim afterwards until she was in my active household. But children aside, I had a stronger feeling that maybe this had to do with Maggie being an original townie, and Iris simply being the child of one.

I forgot to get screenshots of Iris' before-and-after marriage weights but they were about the same. And an after shot of Maggie. But here's the original, fresh-ST-save Maggie. Just aged up:

And her in a previous save, mere days before Heiva and Iris' wedding:

Her weight on Day 10 after their wedding (my only early ref point, sorry) was back to the original. I even got to confirm this with another unrelated original townie but that's for when we meet them.

And did I make anyone lose weight before making an heir?

Nah, they got quick wishes for children with each other and I wasn't going to mess around anymore, I promise. Iris wanted a girl, and Heiva was indifferent.

Unlike with Kaila many moons ago, Iris had a super-boring, happy pregnancy. Heiva lent her an old sports jersey, it had all the extra room she needed.

Iris mostly threw parties. Her lifetime wish was getting close to completion already, and I was already meeting NPCs. I was using the same strategy that I did with the first household, though there may have been some unintended consequences.

So this is Carissa Parrott. She starts out as an original NPC firefighter, and was still alive after 11 weeks of gameplay. I was starting to see a trend with some NPCs. A few were still alive because of a combo of factors:

1. They were befriended by sims living in-town.

2. But they were hardly interracted with, so they'd stay in NPC limbo.

I didn't feel comfortable using Carissa as my firefighter NPC friend again (Decadynasty friends don't have to be unique but it feels more right for them to be). And I didn't need her genes because the town was full of Parrotts anyways. But I figured I'd see how far I could make this NPC immortality ruse last for. As of the beginning of Gen 3, she's still around.

(Also, one of my official NPC friends this generation was a maid named Tyrone Parrott, but there's no relation to any Parrotts in town I promise)

Anyways, Iris went into labor at her party. Nicholaus, her least favorite brother, and sister-in-law Bettina (who she actually was close friends with; Bettina was a generic NPC I gave plastic surgery to) were panicking like family should.

Kaila wasn't calm either, but she got to witness the birth of her first grandchild.

And so we got Hua. I decided to go with Chinese names for this generation, though the next generation of Lings might not follow. I also wanted a "flower" name, and remembered that I have an aunt who is fluent in Mandarin. When I asked her for suggestions, she said "Trip please get a real hobby."

We just went with the Chinese word for "flower".

Iris wasn't alone either. Leilani went into labor on the balcony. I forget which kid was born then. She had four with Courtney in pretty rapid succession: Gregg, Jarred, Rhonda, and Angelique. And to finish the census for the chapter, Omar and Rachel had three: Marta, Ari, and Arnold. Ari and Angelique were eaten by story progression as teens (I learned recently that it was the legendary Bimble Sapota's fate too)

Soon after Hua's birth, I got the message that Kaila wasn't long for the world. She had to work on her last day alive, and disappeared inside her home before dying. I want to think I got the best last shot of her, though. Kaila was a happy, quirky witch and mad scientist. And she got a huge tombstone too.


I'm kind of lagging a generation behind here and I have NaNoWriMo plans looming over my head. I'm gonna try to bang out as much as I can but we'll see if I get sidetracked by literally every other dynasty idea I have sweet jesus- in December.

[Deklitch]

You should do what I did one year for NaNo ... and write a fan fiction of someone playing a Dynasty in Sims 3.

Actually, no you shouldn't, I think I got to 1000 words on it before it bored even me.

[Trident]

Ah, the threat of NaNo, which looms over al of us like the specter of Death. I'm gonna be shooting for 30k in an original work, myself. Good luck with juggling everything!

("Trip, please get a real hobby" got a real laugh out of me! Can't believe your family doesn't realize that playing God is a real hobby.)

[Trip]

You should do what I did one year for NaNo ... and write a fan fiction of someone playing a Dynasty in Sims 3.

Actually, no you shouldn't, I think I got to 1000 words on it before it bored even me.

Finally, an idea for a true tragedy. 😔

I did consider making my next dynasty idea my NaNoWriMo entry (since it's a lot more plot-driven/"literary" than me making a pollination diary here) but I want to branch outside of sims storytelling eventually so that just means shelving that until December. I don't want to leave but I want to have many skills.

Ah, the threat of NaNo, which looms over al of us like the specter of Death. I'm gonna be shooting for 30k in an original work, myself. Good luck with juggling everything!

("Trip, please get a real hobby" got a real laugh out of me! Can't believe your family doesn't realize that playing God is a real hobby.)

30k is a great goal too! I think I'll be good as long as I can put my other projects aside. I do that all the time without it being November.

Nah in all seriousness most of my family understands...my Mandarin-fluent aunt's daughter is a casual simmer too. I'm just very afraid of her figuring out who I am.

[Trip]

Hua, Part Two

Hua's room was unfinished and very open, enough for the whole household to crowd inside just to attend to her. However, Uncle Taurus developed a running bug pretty much as soon as we moved in, so he could attend to emergency diaper changes that easily. I was definitely presenting things out of order, so there's Omar Keilani in the back, waiting for his gay wedding and donor babies.

Heiva and Iris were kicking it back as new parents and letting everyone else take over. Heiva still visited the old house after Kaila passed away so he could break some space rock blocks. Iris madeover sims even though she was still technically on maternity leave. I'm pretty sure her LTW was done around this time. 20 friends comes fast when the house is in party mode several times a week. Also, we had either of them as tombstone candidates if it came down to that, but the early days of Hua's life was all about the two sims I actually wanted to die.

Taurus came home from the fire station only to repair and upgrade around the house. I still wanted him to have a lover, though, as a relationship = happiness, and happiness = a tombstone. But he was being resistant on that front. Maybe Heiva would have to intervene, but not now.

Actually, I was trying to trigger more "become a grandparent" wishes for Maggie. I think Iris or her other brother fulfilled one for her, but what's the big deal with more? They're worth 2,000 a pop! So I invited Nicholaus over to hang out, and Iris tried to get one of her paparazzi friends to see the value in her own hated brother.

Alas, Maggie got to work to an even bigger wish instead, and Nicholaus died childless eventually. What happened to Heiva anyways? He looks different.

Back to that later, what else has grandma been doing?

Because Maggie was still lagging behind on the logic skill for her job (she was on track to be able to tutor Hua in the future though), vaccination clinics weren't a bad way to get her some job progress and meet townies. Not all of them were useful to Hua, but a townie friend is a townie friend. Corrine Gonzalo (now Fitzpatrick) the firefighter, Theodora Jayne getting a vaccine, and Kacey Candelaria in her civilian clothes. I later learned that she was in a relationship with Theodora, pretty tight if you ask me.

Some of Maggie's new conquests were Marco Lemuel, original townie Len Tsang (cured of werewolfism), and another paparazzi. She kind of helped me keep tabs on pollinators, as Marco and Len were definitely on my list.

Hua was a cute toddler before I even knew it. She looked a lot like her mother already, which was all I ever wanted in life. Even her random clothes almost matched, but alas, Hua didn't like pink. Irish Green was her kind of thing.

One mohawk later, and Hua was ready to learn and to snuggle more. Her supermax could get an earlier start than Heiva's, and I would decide to take that risk after telling you all that I wouldn't. But I haven't foreshadowed anything about it either.

...

It's fishing. Haven't supermaxed that in ages. Hua cries at my incompetence.

And she's a witch! Kaila was truly looking after us from beyond.

I wanted to extend Heiva's adulthood but forgot to. He could still break space rocks as an elder, so I had one more chance to keep him alive indefinitely. Fountain of Youth elixirs were becoming super rare at the elixir shop for some reason, and I didn't have Tinsley make any to store in the chest in her backyard (it's an old Decadynasty tip but definitely a good place to keep good produce and elixirs for the future; Heiva's first goal in China was to get one and the martial arts were almost an afterthought)

And so we see Heiva's new hair and shirt. He was looking alright for an elder, even if Kaila's nose wasn't doing him any favors in old age. I was tired of working around his job schedule, so he retired and could find gems all day if he felt like it.

But the collection could always remain on hold for the sake of his little girl, whether he liked it or not.

I'm all about babies right now, even the grown up ones. I talked about my last few townie babies from last generation before, so let's find as many pictures as we can. Iris ran into a few such candidates in her job.

First was Antwan Hoffman, Helen Hoffman and Suzuki Hinata's fairy son. I didn't know what to expect under his father's sunglasses but he doesn't look much like his mum either.

23

She made over Karim Sapota, the first fully second generation original townie spawn (i.e. both of his parents were the children of two original townies). He was hiding under some emo hair, reminding me that this game is definitely a product of the 2000's, but that was a shame because he has these big sweet eyes.

We've seen Claire the blonde as a child, but here she is with her sister, Leann. Yes, they are actually part of a set of triplets. I'm sure they have to clarify that every day.

Daniel Pleasant is their dad. So maybe you're a Carl's Guide dynasty veteran and have truly read everything, because I saw Leann and immediately thought back to @ArianaJade's How to Take Over the World and her born in-game Angela Pleasant's unfortunate face. Leann 100% has that but I always thought it was an interesting feature instead of something to fear, though also something unfortunate enough for me to remember after six years? I think I just miss Ariana. She's a vampire now and Claire and their brother grew old and withered away. I wanted to have plans for them but I don't always think fast.

I had another idea for this last screenshot, but here's Trinity Jayne getting slapped by his now ex-girlfriend, Venus Hoffman (who later died). He's Kiwi's fairy son, with his dark eyes that I swear he had while living. Really lovely sim actually! I swear and not just because he's on the spouse list.

I'm out of screenshots but his younger sister, Winter, didn't stay in hiding either.

[Trip]

Hey, so this isn't a chapter, but an aside about sim genes that didn't fit in but I wanted to say anyways. It's something I see briefly discussed or at least gawked at a lot but not really explained.

I'm gonna warn you, this is nitpicky and pointless and unremarkable as all hell, but I know that it is, so here's a link to the next normal update.

Here's Marco Lemuel at the makeover station. Last townie baby I wanted to show last update until this had to be written. I'm really fascinated with finding male sims who have this facial slider...conflict? It's that thing underneath his lower lip, which is actually his teeth/tongue/inner mouth. Gross. Also not my first rodeo with this.

This is a bug that I've only seen visible in children and male teen/YA/adult townies. It takes an extreme combination of sliders to happen. I was just going to speculate but then I remembered that I can recreate it with a zero-slider sim as my control. Thankfully, TS3 has an abundance of them, even in the CAS bin. I ain't in Sunset Valley but Gage Briody can haunt me forever.

And a little magic later...

Eugh!

The moved sliders in question:

Changed: Mouth Height and Depth, Face Height and Profile

You don't necessarily need them at their extreme points to start to get this glitch. Nor are they the only sliders that affect it. Jaw shape (moving to the left/making the jaw more square increasing it, and moving to the right/making the jaw more round decreasing it) and sim weight (fat masks a lot) are others I found.

For some reason I have yet to see it on female sims that aren't children. Marco's mother, Ursula Lemuel, looked fine. Another female sim who sometimes produces children with this bug is Claire Ursine. Who isn't considered an attractive sim usually, but her face is in one piece. I think that fact about her is often ignored because she is programmed to have a girl who will grow up looking normal, and let's be real, she's often not touched beyond that.

There are some male sims who truly didn't pass quality control and have this to a minor degree (though only visible at some angles). Lincoln Baker of Twinbrook and Calvin Riffin of Appaloosa Plains have a tiny bit of lower lip clipping, which they can potentially pass down to sons. But beyond something you have to look at zoomed in, there actually is one singular worst original townie offender of this, and probably the only reason I've actually had to look at the slider-related cause of this. Is there even an original townie I'm obsessed with? Have I shaken off this reputation?

No, I'm still Harwood Clay's #1 biggest fan, and I will not give up my title. Here's some young Harwood, because you're gonna see too many beautiful people in this decadynasty and may question if I'm still myself.

I feel a little guilty about making a huge deal out of his big, luscious lips or at least the children who get them. Harwood has it in him to make truly gorgeous offspring. I gamble with it every time I'm in Twinbrook, and I use the word gamble because he is one ugly little gremlin man. But that's my philosophy about ugly original townies: no one is irredeemable on every level.

Sometime after I got TS4 I wondered about the philosophy of extreme sliders. Of course, it was a question in my head while I tried to make Harwood. I settled for TS4 Harwood actually being kind of androgynous and pretty because they definitely nerfed a lot of slider capacity in TS4. And sims generally being pretty is one of TS4's selling point, at least from talking to some former TS3 players who are truly never going back. I've never seen a clipping issue that could arise from truly ordinary slider use in TS4 either, so maybe that was their lesson learned too late. But on the other hand, I like the relative lack of boundaries in TS3, even at the expense of animations even working right.

Who knows. I was mostly getting nostalgic for one of my favorite TS3 sims, who maybe you remember, and probably don't. Alhena Ironstar:

She was Harwood's granddaughter, and retained his large eyes, large lips, and not his cheeks or jaw but his global face sliders for profile/face height. Her mum (Alhena was essentially just a clone of her) was the only TS3 child I ever saw who inherited sliders from both parents for a part of the face, instead of how features are inherited as whole parts. I guess I might be on the lookout for that from my decadynasty kids! The coding for sim genes is supposed to be very simple, but that's still a big surprise to me.

I can't gush over her looks forever though, because then I remember her son. He never got the chance to grow up thanks to dynasty failure, but now I think that fate was looking out for him.

It got even worse!

I could have just not closed this with a lovingly madeover Heathcliff but I've been thinking about my old dynasty families. Or at least this one. Not just because of Marco Lemuel's wonky jaw (it started way before then), but nothing like a facial glitch to make me route it back to Twinbrook, huh?

But this dynasty will not route there. At least...not yet. Sunlit Tides is holding up, despite some bumps along the road.

[Trip]

Hua, Part Three

Now my actual favorite baby in this dynasty gen was Maka, a cute white puppy. Heiva actually found a lot of tiberium on his own, but lest I have to supplement with...[shudders]...pink diamonds, a dog had to fill in.

Little Hua absolutely adored him as a tot! Finally someone in the house who's her size.

Unfortunately, Hua aged up both without a party and also without potty training. I can deal with random traits but this one was...Athletic! Heiva weeps! And yes, I replaced it with Couch Potato the moment that the Midlife Crisis LTR was available (thank god this is legal for the decadynasty), which is only for YA and up. It actually made teenhood very precarious for Hua, because she wanted to work out all the time and the only thing I could to stop it was keep an eye on her queue.

She turned out fat like Heiva, but also was definitely in the ranks of cute sim kids like dad once was. Maka grew up alongside her as well. He was the first big dog I ever got in a decadynasty!

And as it turned out, I had a lot of photos of him for when Hua was being boring. She had the usual job of meeting youths around town.

I was really disturbed by her declarations of love at first. Aren't you a little young for this? Can you at least wait until you're the same age as the Jayne kids? But as it turns out, that's just the animation for sims who love the outdoors when they go to the park. And new for me, because I never make me sims go outside.

I had my ideas for Hua's spouse that didn't necessarily involve Trinity Jayne, but he and the rest of his family liked to hang out at the park. Hua made friends with him and his sister, but the screenshots may remain lost. Here's Winter getting madeover instead:

Cute!

Her getting close with the Kahale kids, meanwhile, may have had a few more pictures devoted to it...but maybe later in her life. Unfortunately I'm getting close to having to recount disaster for the Lings, which I'm dreading, and Hua's generation yielded far less filler than her dad's for those moments.

So Maggie's ex, Len Tsang, was cured of his lycanthropy and moved in before Maggie actually made him her ex. I swear she was a sweet woman! Just ruthless with her LTW. But actually finding a purpose for him was going to be much harder than it seemed.

The best way to handle decadynasty babies (i.e. leaving mum out of the household) means leaving things like the sex of babies out of my control. This usually works out and I get a male-to-female sex ratio I can work with. Never do I recall having so many boys born or at least surviving and remaining useful. And a lot of the girls, if they survived to adulthood, had brothers who were more useful in some way. For instance, I used Omar Keilani because his sister, Mitzi, turned into a werewolf and probably would need a Fountain of Youth elixir if I cured her for breeding. Those were in short supply. Courtney Grantham was used because his fairy sister shacked up with Pearl Yang, who was higher up on the breeding list than a Grantham woman because she lacked other family. Some families were boys only, such as Harold Sapota's (himself having only a brother) and Auguste's, but only one was girl-only (Gilberto Gonzalo and Nina Aolani had two daughters after all).

Now the population of generic new female sims was larger, as it tends to be, but I wasn't going to propagate those features if I could help it. What's a watcher to do? Praise the lord that I enabled Pets?

I had fun with Caryn Sowers, a former elixir store clerk with a gross hair color and now a better face.

Sometimes it feels like cheating to alter townies. There aren't any rules about changing them through in-game means but some of the fun of reading others' decadynasties is the wacky townie fashion and not knowing anything about your new spouse and maybe even dreading when a whole dynasty loses any unique features (can't relate!) It's like violating a cultural norm, if not a lawful one, whenever I think my heir's future spouse could use a stylist makeover or I use the power of intermarriage to look at a family tree and get a potential spouse's traits. But then I remember that culture is fake and I can do what I want.

Actually affording the $2,800 for facial surgery was a little hard for the household at that time. Unfortunately no one was a huge cash cow and that would have to wait for Hua. Guess that shows what my values are, huh!

Len and Caryn had one surviving son: Nikolas. He looks mostly like her.

Heiva and Iris were sitting on wishes for a child for a long time, and the age gap between them and Hua was only going to grow if they didn't act fast. And Maggie was getting old and needed to meet another grandchild! Iris even got some new lingerie for the occasion. Stockings were remembered, praise Pam.

Taurus looked menacing with an axe.

And I got the only screenshot of Maggie's one other grandchild: Kim. She was supposed to be around Hua's age but unmodded townie aging is just...like that. I want to mention her because I had a theory that only children would not be culled from households. But the past tense is key here because she died as a young adult, and I'm very scared.

Alright alright, I told myself that I wouldn't start on Hua's supermax so early. But then I thought the headstart would get her some good headway on the Angler career, especially because fishing lacks a lot of the easy high-value sellable items like, say, sculpting or painting. My original plan was to put her in law enforcement for the ops, but I figured that finishing a self-employment career early would at least get that requirement out of the way (especially because the skills for law enforcement are off-limits for her)

The self-employment first/rabbithole career later idea worked out well for Hua, but at the cost of skill ops. She actually only had to use one law enforcement op in the end, freeing up the career for anyone else, but I also used all her alloted travel ops and a little more vacation time than I had planned. Well, it at least confirmed my theories about skill ops.

She could be a cute fishing kid though! They really do pull the cutest faces.

And the birth of Liwei is where I have to rip the bandaid off about disaster. I actually had to redo his birth a couple times, so it's the point where I know it's unavoidable.

Here's a disclosure: in my many years of playing The Sims 3, I never got the "green box bug". It's actually rare that I end a file thanks to true bugs. The closest I got was, no joke, one related to plastic surgery in another decadynasty save. I realized that while teens can get plastic surgery, it's never successful. Or at least it wasn't successful for my heir's teenage stepbrother, even with the expensive option. He'd come out with the wacky plastic surgery failure face with each try, and I figured I'd just
restore it at the hospital and try again later.

Do not do corrective face surgery! Or at least not on teens? It restores the face...to have all sliders set to zero. And I only wanted to make the stepbrother look more like his bio-dad.

Anyways.

The bugs were catching up to me in Sunlit Tides ever since my first attempts here. Aging bugs for the whole household in one save. Another was even wilder: sometimes inactive sim toddlers/children would not age up correctly and not appear in the world. They'd still be in the relationship panel if an active sim knew them and still take up a household spot in their household. But the household would be unselectable from Edit Town. The game would crash if I tried to move in anyone from that household as well. It truly was one of those errors that was fixable only with Overwatch/ErrorTrap. I didn't use it as my solution (I'd hesitate to offer it officially to someone else as well) but I did a test. My solution was to ignore the problem and fail with a mudbath instead. Next attempt had my consignment system break. That NEVER happens to me. My sims are awesome consigners who sell everything within 5 days.

Heiva had an aging bug but as the only sim affected and no solution on the horizon, I waited for a birthday to fix it and it did. Talked about this already. But Heiva's household was much wackier than any bug could be. Hua was in a normal nuclear family with some extended relatives. No one cheated. Even Maggie was just a serial monogamist.

We made up for that with the Green Box Bug.

If you're a lucky duck like I once was and never experienced it, here's the rundown from Crinrict. Or from me: it's when sims in a household become unselectable and unable to be interacted with, and their portrait on the side is empty/a green box.

So here's how severe this was: three sims were affected. Heiva and Iris were down for the count, as was one pollinator and even worse, Maka the dog. Taurus, Hua, baby Liwei, and Taurus' new spouse (shh!) were okay at first, but during my many stabs at saving my dynasty, they too would get "infected". So moving out the offending sims (one solution I read) was actually off the table, and I wouldn't recommend it either.

I make a backup every...time I remember to. Every 1-4 sim days, usually. I'd lose progress of course, but I'm used to that because I'm a CAS addict who doesn't know her game's limits. That was the actual good solution I read, so I sucked it up and fired up my last backup.

Same bug, same sims.

Jesus!

Every file I opened would succumb to the bug. Four backups deep, gone. I even tried my save from right before Heiva got married and the same horrible deal happened, but with different sims. These saves were permanently messed up too. I put my backup into a factory reset folder (well mostly, I had to install Sunlit Tides there of course) and it was broken there as well.

Look guys, I cleared the cache. I cleared the CurrentGame folder. I tried moving the household to the clipboard and back. I tried moving them to a different house (kind of against the spirit of the decadynasty but ya know). I tried selecting another household...and they were fine, but my actual dynasty sims still weren't.

Drastic solutions were on the table now. It was going to be a town move in the middle of a generation, or using ErrorTrap and Overwatch. I mean I had to test both of them, at least.

Here's the funny story: ErrorTrap actually made the issue worse. My sims were so bugged that its solution was to delete them, or at least delete them from the household? Including Hua! That's a line I can't cross yet I'm sorry! (I know NRaas experts sometimes lurk here and I'm willing to be educated on this but in that heated moment, it sucked)

But the EA function for moving towns? Preserved everything. In a test file, they arrived in Moonlight Falls with everyone selectable again. If my breeding project in Sunlit Tides wasn't so extensive (and just getting started!) then I'd even consider it my fix. But I wasn't ready to let go so easily. There had to be another way.

It took a while for me to figure out that every save I opened was going to be gone forever. And it took even longer to accept losing nine or ten days of gameplay, because that was my best bet for an extant save.

I reinstalled my game entirely, saved my CC and store content from the previous folder, and set up my new factory reset folder. And finally, I had a save I could open.

To this day, I don't know what caused my issue. It wasn't travel, as Heiva hadn't traveled since well before he got married. I thought it was my pollinator, as he was an original service NPC who had been living for far too long, but I moved him in post-recovery with no bugs. Same goes for Taurus' spouse. Perhaps it was the Liwei who was born that time? Contrary to popular belief (I'm sayin' it!) there is no sim before birth. My recovered save was towards the end of Iris' pregnancy and I didn't get the exact same sim each time.

Are we good?

I lost a lot in the recovery, redid a lot of it, but here's stuff that couldn't be replicated.

Originally, Maggie died at age 90 after work. She was about 2,000 points shy of getting a medium tombstone that time. Also hello Kiwi! He would fade into the aether not too long after this. My good backup found her at 89 days old again and ready for a second chance.

And you at least get to undo your regrets. I sacrificed one of Iris' NPC friends at first for our original service NPC friend and designated pollinator, Papaya Cruz. And maybe I didn't quite know what I wanted to do with her new face. She looked too sour when I wasn't trying to aim for that.

As it turned out, I was having difficulty meeting another babysitter, so the chance to leave Marlana as one was graciously accepted. We'll see Papaya later, and I'll even include his absurd age upon moving in!

The first teenage Hua was a stellar big sister to Liwei. I don't have as many screenshots of the two of them the next time around. She feels wholesome for now, but she also wanted to get a head start with romance with two different boys: Gregg Kahale and Arnold Alto. I didn't like either of them that much but I tried to invite them out for a date, but never made it to the kissing stage. I figured she would go for that monogamist lifestyle but then again, she is Heiva's daughter. I remember all his dates with non-Iris friends!

And we dodged a meteor. No sims were harmed though.

We will be back to our normal decadynasty proceedings next chapter! That's a promise!

[oshizu]

I binge-read your Decadynasty story earlier today.
Though I'm unfamiliar with the town and its original townies and barely remember TS3 gameplay mechanics, I thoroughly enjoyed listening in on your thought processes as you played through your generations.
Poor Rahiti and the tragic loss of Greg, though. Watching you going through your sidestepping, workarounds, populating machinations--what a ride!

[Rhoxi]

Will you be restarting?

[Trip]

I binge-read Decadynasty story earlier today.
Though I'm unfamiliar with the town and its original townies and barely remember TS3 gameplay mechanics, I thoroughly enjoyed listening in on your thought processes as you played through your generations.
Poor Rahiti and the tragic loss of Greg, though. Watching you going through your sidestepping, workarounds, populating machinations--what a ride!

I'm like that with your TS4 dynasties but I actually play that game too so...it's not like that at all.

I still have not recovered from Greg though.

Will you be restarting?

Nah, I was able to continue but with the loss of nearly two weeks of progress. It really ruined my weekend though! Currently Gen 4 is a toddler with no huge issue, just annoying things I had to overcome (AS USUAL)

[Trip]

Hua, Part Four

Alright I'm coming up for air. Hit 15k words with NaNoWriMo, which is behind schedule but don't tell anyone that I never tried~ (Also I've been a bad writer and have continued to play my decadynasty thanks to it always leaving me on a cliffhanger; Gen 4 is doing OK but he needs some tutoring pronto when I open the game next...)

I recovered enough from Hua's catastrophic error and having to make up time. In fact, I was kind of excited to see what Hua's second teenhood would entail.

Except for having to rebuild her property for the requirements. SIGH.

So Liwei's birth was redone and we still had Grandma Maggie. She started to have trouble getting along with Iris, which I guess was enough of a reason to wish for her death (then she actually hit 75k LTHP and I had a second reason)

Our other tombstone candidate, Taurus, was a lot busier than Maggie and wasn't at the 75k LTHP mark yet. While Maggie lifted that burden off my shoulders, I also didn't plan to have him around for forever and wanted a nice tombstone for the sake of symmetry.

His Renaissance Sim LTW was coming along nicely as he learned alchemy, that was cool.

And he found love?

So Heiva's childhood friend, Ginny Hale, was still around. I liked her a lot for some reason, so I aged her down and hit her with a Bottled Vampire's Bite, in case some spare was in need of a spouse. Little did I know that she lived with original townie and other vampire, Alastair Adams, and that he was the designated door answerer.

They had a whirlwind romance, and unlike if Taurus found a woman, I was more than okay with them getting married and Alastair living with us (provided he was cured, I'm not dumb). It also meant that he couldn't get any LTHP from having children, but it wasn't an impossible hurdle either.

Also, whilst getting engaged in his underwear, it was clear that Alastair had lost weight and kept it off while inactive. He starts off a lot chunkier, much like Maggie. And yes, he also gained it back as he became an active sim. But for now, he got to stay a vampire and out of the house while we dive into birthdays.

Hua was first for her teenage birthday, and I decided to sort-of-surround her with spouses. First and third screenshots show Winter Jayne, Leann Tamarind, and Rhonda Kahale (another Grantham x Kahale kid). They all had brothers at this point. Second shows Jarred Kahale, all grown up and pretty handsome! And while Kalena, Kiwi and Amedee's daughter, would never ever join the main bloodline in a million years, she was a great friend to keep close-by.

Liwei aged up the next day I suppose, looking a lot like his dad.

Maggie lasted into the beginning of Hua's teen years, which meant getting extra tutoring (even if it's easy to get on the high school honor roll without it).

It definitely let the rest of the household do their other, unimportant tasks. Liwei got a haircut and learned how to talk, and Taurus kept the kitchen running. Heiva was perfectly capable of magically upgrading everything, but chose not to.

As I continued to make questionable decisions, Hua fished after school a lot. And got rounded up by the police a lot too, because no adult would stay at a fishing hole with her.

Look, I was needlessly afraid of fishing. The amount of headway that Hua got on her supermax and career was minimal. She maybe caught one deathfish as a teen. It was that ineffective! And supermaxing fishing was the least of my concerns with her as she became an adult. It was finished well ahead of schedule and everything. Even her career was fine, because she consigned all her goods (and maybe took a Liquid Job Booster once, don't tell anyone!)

So fishing as a teen is stressful. Spouse hunting is even more stressful, but at least you get to see some new faces.

I wasn't not considering an older spouse for Hua, as Karim Sapota was a young adult and I loved his chubby cheeks! Iris needed to address that hair again, though.

Otherwise, she hanged out with her teenage friends. We've met all of these ones so far except for Marta Alto, furthest right. She also had a brother.

Our one chaperone to these teen excursions was Trinity Jayne. Jarred Kahale beat him for looks, but Hua's wishes were going to be the final determinant here. She was a little hesistant at first. After all, there were a lot of teens! It was an information overload.

I couldn't help but be tempted by the way Rhonda Kahale (legit one of the most gorgeous children born in my game, not gonna brag tho) looked at her, and in the women's bathroom no less!

Hua's only solution was the decadynasty's only solution too: another party!

In lieu of prom, which I didn't have after disabling Generations (and let's not kid ourselves, rabbithole prom is a little lame), I turned Hua's fishing hole into a teen party locale. We had a dance floor, a minibar, a firepit that would probably kill any mermaids that visited, a juice keg that teens couldn't use, and all-in-one bathrooms that teens couldn't woohoo in. A.k.a. we had everything a kid could want. Hua took a break from the festivities to talk to her other best friend, Gregg Kahale.

She also preferred to walk across coals on her own too. In the background you might see three of Auguste's sons.

It took a few parties and also Girls' Nights Out (where disabling Generations meant that my teen townies could drive, so that's a win I guess) for Hua to tell me what she wanted...again. The good news was that she picked an attractive choice.

The bad news was that she picked four of them. Ugh!

[Deklitch]

I'm at 4020 words in Nano, Trip. Don't forget words written in here during November count as well Say your characters starting playing sims. Why, I had a barbarian fighter write position descriptions, an elven mage complete an assessment task and a dog by the name of Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan send emails in one year

[Trip]

I'm at 4020 words in Nano, Trip. Don't forget words written in here during November count as well Say your characters starting playing sims. Why, I had a barbarian fighter write position descriptions, an elven mage complete an assessment task and a dog by the name of Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan send emails in one year

I used your advice to reach my goal for today actually (I'm tired I'm sorry!) Thankfully my writing group IRL has yet to read what I have! We just do prompts when we meet. So who can judge us?

[Deklitch]

oh, I get judged all the time for doing NaNo. I then read what I write to them, and they judge me even more, but they fall silent, they don't want to hear about Sordoc the Great who thinks that Sordoc the Great is the most perfect individual of all time, one who can wax lyrically about the musk ox and its meany majestic qualities for at least 144 stanzas. What's that Sordoc? 1044 stanzas? That's impressive! (Not really, but ...) Sordoc the Great talks about Sordoc the Great in terms both grandiouse and meaningless, he even spent months in the presence of musk ox, and thought that the time they charged him was them expressing their love to him.

And yes, I do have "Sordoc the Great presenting Ode to the Musk Ox a poem written by Sordoc the Great, Researched extensively by Sordoc the Great and self funded by Sordoc the Great." several times in a novel.

[Trip]

oh, I get judged all the time for doing NaNo. I then read what I write to them, and they judge me even more, but they fall silent, they don't want to hear about Sordoc the Great who thinks that Sordoc the Great is the most perfect individual of all time, one who can wax lyrically about the musk ox and its meany majestic qualities for at least 144 stanzas. What's that Sordoc? 1044 stanzas? That's impressive! (Not really, but ...) Sordoc the Great talks about Sordoc the Great in terms both grandiouse and meaningless, he even spent months in the presence of musk ox, and thought that the time they charged him was them expressing their love to him.

And yes, I do have "Sordoc the Great presenting Ode to the Musk Ox a poem written by Sordoc the Great, Researched extensively by Sordoc the Great and self funded by Sordoc the Great." several times in a novel.

It's just the natural progression of the ways students will pad out essays in school

[Trip]

Hua, Part Five

Hua still flabbergasted me with the sheer audacity...four sims to kiss, really? But I'm cruel and wanted to do it anyways.

Alas, her wish to kiss Gregg was axed. I learned that he was going steady with Kalena, who not only was kind of part of our extended family by association, but also his second-adopted-cousin-by-marriage...not like the game cares really. I needed Kalena for our best friends (or I didn't but it felt nice to include her), and I really like it when the game actually pairs sims together. Good? Good.

And she had to wait to kiss Winter, who aged up to young adult about five minutes after I promised the wish. Doesn't mean no, just means not now.

Besides, her real love was for her little brother. We'll get back to Hua after these messages!

Do you ever try to find proof that you moved in a certain pollinator? Yeah, me too, thanks. I circled Papaya Cruz, our very first mailman, because this screenshot hunt was ridiculous. I talked about his journey pre-catastrophe but that was all moot now.

And Iris celebrated her adult birthday at some point, good for her.

The most interesting part about Papaya was not any of his children really, but his age when I moved him in. Service NPCs are weird. Do I really have to repeat it? We get that already. So I should have expected this absolute madness:

I think he may have been my oldest sim discovered at that point. My previous record was 159 or 162 for Jo Waverly's main mistress, Catherine. Though Catherine wasn't a service NPC and lived in town, so was it more remarkable? Either way, Iris brought Papaya back to 70-something days with a makeover, not risking it! His partner was another former service NPC I madeover, Christen Lujan. She was a police officer, and I already had my police officer friend locked in.

Here's her makeover for the curious. Now that's what I'm talking about! We were a little more comfortable with money by then, so I felt alright about plastic surgery for the townies.

Taurus ended up curing his husband-to-be right before the wedding. Although he was less than a spare and sentenced to death, Taurus still deserved a big gay wedding party with his friends and family. And by that, I mean Iris' friends. I'm not wasting a party.

It was a beautiful ceremony and I didn't even have a place for them to woohoo, let alone room to adopt a child (a thing they both wanted to do, sigh). But I'd let them enjoy the day before figuring that part out. And why does Hua have the circling hearts over her head anyways? Do I really have to turn away from my extra content?

Of course not...not yet anyways.

We ended up turning our backyard into a family graveyard. Tinsley was the first to haunt, much to Hua's dismay. Perhaps she had heard the more salacious stories about her and Niles and the real father of her children.

Great-grandpa Julian was also a frequent enough guest, and he turned into his werewolf form every time he came out of his grave. I mean, I have had dead werewolves before, but I guess I never noticed it, or Julian was simply too stressed out in his life. He became a werewolf on literally his last day alive by the way, like I got the notification and then story progression did its magic.

Now I wasn't taking Liwei too seriously, since he existed just to fulfill some wishes for Heiva and Iris. He wanted to write so I sat his little butt down to do it. I wasn't thinking about a specialty until I saw the absolute worst genre that a child could write:

BOY wait until I tell your parents! But of course he became the youngest trashy novelist ever. We all have our niches.

Iris got a job to makeover Auguste, which I was perfectly fine with. I actually took note of it not because he was once family (Amedee and Kalena both got makeovers without me documenting it), but because of this oddly poetic quip the game gave him:

Beautiful.

I think I'm done here. We still have an heiress, and the extra content starts to become more sparse as she grows up. I pinky promise that, even though fishing was a little boring as a supermax. You know deep in your heart that it is.

Jarred was her first kiss ever, and I wanted to believe it was true love but her wishes for him were sparse. His role as babydaddy was looking likely though, so it was good to know him closely.

Perhaps intentionally, Jarred wasn't invited to Hua's next party, but Rhonda was. Everyone promised not to snitch on her, at least for now (woops!)

So something happened during my reinstall of the game and I got Sunlit Tides' "bloom" effect in full force. It's a little blinding on pure white objects that are outdoors (like the washing machine and dryer, I always get them in white and they go on the deck and I never learn!), but then it created my favorite kiss ever. My favorite not only because Rhonda had stolen my heart too.

And just for completion's sake, here is Hua getting a great massage right before Taurus and Alastair got married. I don't think she had the insane trait to make going to a wedding in a bikini top just a-okay with her, but hey, maybe she realized that this is an odd family.

I wish things could be as easy as they were for Taurus and Alastair. They were fulfilling whatever romantic wishes came their way, or just having fun when I was tired of Taurus upgrading the house and getting rid of the "wire your whole house with sound" upgrade because I could not handle it (I was hoping for Kids' music in the whole house for my pollination project but some sacrifices must be made...)

And I finally figured out their woohoo problem! As annoying as Island Paradise could be, I liked having buyable tents. Really weird to wait nine packs until that.

[Trip]

Hua, Part Six

I'd first like to give a shoutout to Hua and Liwei's hidden sides. In a decadynasty without much of a story, it can be a little hard to flesh out my characters, even if they mean a lot to me. Perhaps there is a lot that you haven't seen of Hua, but I wouldn't know either, because she's been dead for weeks in my game (Adios amigo!)

Hua had a sweet side to her having affairs with a set of siblings and made sure that Liwei's music box was wound up, and even enjoyed it herself. She still shared a bedroom with him too (before and after his toddler birthday, we're going a little out of order I guess).

And Liwei could sometimes show up in a screenshot, which he did very little of beyond this.

So the fabled time for Hua's young adult birthday came. I was still worried about her fishing supermax at this point and wondering how I'd squeeze spouse hunting into this.

I have four of them in the shot right now! We've met everyone already except for post-makeover Winter Jayne, who's in back of Karim Sapota. Hopefully we will see her makeover at a better angle soon because I'm pretty proud of it, and Iris might have been too.

Liwei met one of our backup plans, Nikolas Sowers, the son of Len Tsang and madeover NPC Caryn Sowers. Gets confusing because I forgot to change his surname. Unfortunately for him, he lived in one of the smallest houses on the atoll and his mum (who had lived with us previously) seemed to stick around forever.

And about a day or two later, Liwei became a teen. I bid him goodbye not in the sense that I sent him to boarding school (not an option without Generations) but because he wrote a lot as a teen and had zero romantic life. Fare thee well!

Alright so Hua had a very stupid conundrum that mattered only to me: catching deathfish was going to be the foundation of her career, but nighttime in Sunlit Tides is pretty dark and the cemetery has no real lights, especially around the deathfish spawner. My shots of her actually doing her work were going to suck. But alas, I had never actually caught ten fish and stocked a pond with them. Ever. My immortal dynasty attempts were built off the backs of maybe three Ambrosia servings that were more-or-less replicated to infinity, so catching deathfish was never my biggest concern.

My concern was that I consulted with two main sources about fishing: Carl's own guides (of course) and the Sims Wiki. The latter said that the regular deathfish spawner would only spawn five or six deathfish a night, which is entirely true from Hua's experience. I feared that the same might happen to a stocked pond, but hey, only one way to find out.

Fears unfounded! And check out Hua's young adult makeover. While I try to keep everyone's fashion at least plausible for living in the South Pacific, I made an exception for Hua because the layered look suits her and her outdoorsy lifestyle. Also I don't use a lot of the 70's 80's 90's outfits and come on, I paid money for that!

She immediately got stalked in the yard by Ricardo Gregario (before she took a shower? Disgusting), who actually wasn't not on the spouse list, but as it turned out, Hua hadn't given up her previous life of fast and loose dating and those wish slots were full.

My eyes were on Rhonda Kahale now and forever, even if it took ages for me to give her a makeover. Her clothing matched that day but went horribly wrong on others. She never looked happy either, even though she and Hua had some great dates (according to the game). This was better than Hua had with her brother Jarred (shh!), which all ended in disappointment no matter how hard I tried. It was a shame, because Hua got a few more wishes for him than for his sister, but The Sims knows about the value of consent.

But Jarred would have to be the babydaddy, wouldn't he? Unless we had an underdog of course.

Enter Winter, ironically in eternal summer without Seasons and walking across coals. She was also a very pretty sim, and her new makeover from Iris made me want to be Jackie Onassis...

Uh, rep your local music scene? Anyways.

Winter looked a lot happier than her new rival, even if that means nothing in TS3. She and Hua were having a great date.

And they kissed in the same place that Hua and Rhonda did for the first time! A betrayal close to our hearts now. It even came with one dirty little wish that she got for no one else thus far.

Ah wait have I not talked about the double beds outside Sunlit Tides' spa? I did a quick search of my thread to make sure so only call out my mistake if you can show me where...moving on from that! The spa has two double beds outside. They are seriously awesome. I think they have an energy score of 8 (so really good), and of course you can woohoo on them whilst you, the watcher, gets a gorgeous beach sunrise/sunset if you time it right. Quite a few of my townie babies were conceived there! I didn't say that to Hua because her first time with Winter needn't be sullied by the knowledge that some of her friends started life on those same sheets.

Hua turned out to my heir who, thus far, has used the most travel time. I sent her to Egypt first and realized I had never really explored their fishing areas. How did that ship crash there anyways?

My main goal was getting mummyfish, who have a pretty good yield-to-value ratio. Even when stocked in a pond at home, Hua usually caught more at a time than deathfish, though they were definitely a secondary income source. She also pickd up 100 pomegranates as bait, which lasted her for the rest of her life.

But I was looking towards diversifying my gene pool in Sunlit Tides too, not because the pudding face apocalypse was near (I was doing pretty good!), but just to make sure I had enough distinct(ish) lines to last in the world for a while. A foreign sim who is moved into the homeworld and has townie children makes townie children, end of story! I just needed to follow the rules of not living with the same sim twice.

I had Hua book it to the Amin household. Samir was nice enough to make dinner.

She learned a song from Imsety Amin, who's a cute little bean with a big nose as he grows up. I blame @Turoskel l for uncovering him in her immortal dynasty, and I blame myself for loving large and distinct noses more than life itself. I didn't have too many "favorite noses" in Sunlit Tides besides the Kahale children (still on my list!) so getting help was appreciated! But we had to wait for him to grow up and without returning to Egypt, it was gonna be a mystery. We'll see you later!

Okay so I'm in rant mode again: Island Paradise brought us some awesome taxi boats and Hua had to take one to reach a kind of weird fishing spot. But it got me thinking: why doesn't it just go across the atoll's center? Since Sunlit Tides is just a big circle (I actually just found out that most of the houses have the same street in their address because of the one contiguous road around the island) it has transit times that I still complain about to this day. It's not an issue of the water inside the atoll not being considered ocean (it is ocean and has saltwater fish spawners). Guess it's just programming.

But we were going through her fishing supermax faster than I thought. The ops sadly weren't just tumbling in thanks to Hua's early skill start, but I wasn't going to panic yet.

When Rhonda found out that Hua was involved with two other people that included her brother, maybe I panicked.

[oshizu]

Haha, blatant Watcher favoritism!
Poor Liwei is relegated to the life of a from-childhood trashy novelist, while the "unsullied" Hua never learns the dirty truth about the previous occupants of those double beds outside the spa.
Your decadynasty is so crazy, complex, and fun. I love how you indulge your sims' every wildest wishes.

For a while, I was briefly tempted to try a Sims 3 dynasty challenge.
I used to love Sims 3 until it/I overtaxed my laptop one very hot summer day. And that was the end of my TS3 days.
It's fine. I'm more than happy to enjoy the game vicariously through your decadynasty!

Speaking of...oh no, Rhonda found out? I feel bad for both Rhonda and the Watcher.

[Trip]

@oshizu I read so many decadynasties (successful or otherwise) in preparation and admired the love that could be cultivated for spares and wanted to emulate it...but as it turns out I'm very utilitarian and also never really had biological spares in a dynasty.

I do wonder how everyone else keeps their wish-focused sims mostly in line. Though I also focus exclusively on the craziest ones. There's also a lot of career and skill related stuff going on, I promise!

[Trip]

Hua, Part Seven

We left off with Hua getting called out on dating several people at once, which she did kind of deserve. In her defense and mine: she still wasn't steady with any of them, and only one of them was woohooed with. And that one was not Rhonda.

We had a fix in Hua's pocket though.

The rest of their date that day went well. Rhonda overestimated her spice tolerance, forgave Hua, and was on the track to become the next decadynasty wife. She still needed a makeover though.

But then when I had Hua meet with Jarred to get acquainted with her future babydaddy, he wasn't having any of this arrangement either. He felt used! He really thought there was a spark, even if they hadn't so much as kissed since high school. And now they disliked each other, which wasn't impossible to fix, but I had to consider if I wanted to raise a child in that environment.

And within this all was Winter, who never questioned Hua's courtship. She was the woman that Hua got the most wishes for, the one who she had the best dates with, and the first woman she ever made love to. She was very cute like her mother and her brother certainly wasn't a ugly one either; he skewed more towards looking like Uncle Kiwi. The two of them were pretty lonely in their house after their mum shacked up with her girlfriend, while the Kahales certainly weren't lonely with Jarred, Rhonda, mother Leilani, and roommate Rosalind Sapota (nee Cruzita), who was forever an adult werewolf. Their other brother, Gregg, had since moved in with his girlfriend instead.

It was going to be a tough decision. It was Hua vs. her watcher, and Hua vs. her own interests too. Clearly we had to stay in Sunlit Tides and figure it out like an adult.

Or we just go to China? We'll just go to China.

I finally had an alright plan for Hua's opportunities. She could fulfill her alloted three in China, and once her career as an angler was maxed, she could go into law enforcement for any other remaining ops. I didn't have it slated as a unique career then, and the likelyhood of her having to finish it was nearly zero. Plus, some Chinese fish would help out her supermax, because some base game ones were proving impossible to find in Sunlit Tides (pirahna where are you?)

She had to hunt for treasure and true to form, fish.

The treasure hunting is always fun, but the hunt for a few koi was not. She went to a pond and fished. The scenery wasn't even great, I give it a 3/10 for the experience.

Like in Egypt, Hua scouted out the genetic material in town. First stop that I didn't screenshot was to the Wang house, and I was sad to see that Deng Wang didn't have any descendants and was an elder. He was the one of the scant handful original foreign NPCs that I had some genetic reference for, and also liked (guess I'm a sucker for cool noses?). And yeah, story progression still kind of functions in foreign worlds and university and I can expect kiddos from whichever foreigner I want, I'll explain more if asked.

We'll come back to Deng though so put a pin in that until later!

Randomly generated NPCs in China and Egypt and even generated tourists in your town from them also pull from pre-made face templates and aren't necessarily pudding abominations, which is actually pretty neat and not the worst way to combat same-face syndrome. Though there don't seem to be too many "foreign faces" either and France uses the same zero-slider generating as the homeworld. Food for thought? I'll get a screenshot when I can.

But in the picture she found Niu Wong, the child, and Rui Xi Lu, a teenager who she tormented through magic. Niu turned out to be the one descended from the Lu Family in Shang Simla (their little boy married a Chinese NPC with the Wong surname and took it too) whilst Rui Xi seemingly was not. Again, too young to use right now, but old enough to keep an eye on.

Back at the ranch, uncle Taurus passed away and while close to the criminal hideout? Not suspicious at all. He produced a redundant medium tombstone, but got to be buried close to his mother in the backyard. There may have been a household exodus brewing and he kicked it off.

We'll remember him for entertaining the town's fairies one night. He did not max three skills either. (Seriously I think the only fairies missing from this shot were Theodora Jayne, even though her son's right there, and Helen Hoffman, who we might see soon!)

Alastair still had his old romantic interest, Penelope Pepper. This almost caused some drama between him and Taurus but not quite. I can't say he was really over Taurus. Alastair never changed his last name and would forever be a Ling. That has to say something, right? And not just about my laziness?

He and Penelope had four daughters: Helena, Robyn, Tonya, and the dearly departed Elizabeth. I loved him and Taurus as the house's gay uncles, but if I said that I didn't want his genes too, I'd be lying.

It was an exodus for everyone. Heiva met up with Amedee for the last time. He had long ago been widowed again and made peace with it. Even his daughter's boyfriend moving in wasn't so bad in the end. Amedee was a brilliant musician and an alright painter, had 75k+ LTHP when we moved out (and you don't lose that), and was filthy rich too. Heiva may have passed on the news that Kiwi's other children may be joining the dynasty. At least I'm pretty sure that Amedee knew about them.

Liwei also grew up and quickly fell in love. I can't call him responsible but he was chained to his desk for his entire youth after all.

His love was the older Ginny Hale, now living alone or with some townie roommate. Who cares. Liwei wouldn't join the dark side with her and her vampire kin, but they could have a long marriage with no children for sure--

Ah, we pressed the Try For Baby button didn't we? And you rolled Dislikes Children as your adult trait?

Pedro, his only surviving son, didn't seem to like him either. But as far as I could see, Liwei and Ginny had an alright marriage in an alright house. She lived on well into Gen 4's young adult years too!

It must have hurt to be Hua. Her much-younger brother got married and had a kid before she did, and she wanted a good marriage and a kid just like any self-respecting heir. But she still had two romantic interests.

Well I made the decision before she did. I figured that I could preserve Rhonda's beauty for another generation and made her a vampire just like her brothers. And she got a makeover too, I couldn't resist the temptation.

Obviously, Rhonda was unhappy with the deal because she was promised a starring role as a spouse. I promised a starring role later, it's good enough! And as a new vampire, she was much scarier to Hua than she ever expected.

It was the hardest thing she ever had to do! What else could be going wrong for her? She wasn't even neurotic. Next thing she knew, mom and dad would be having another baby before she could even get her tenth op.

Just say you're kidding, guys-

[Trident]

Finally caught up! Blech, bugs are the WORST in TS3, glad you managed to wrangle a solution. Hau.......sweetie. You can't just meet four people and wish to kiss them all. (Don't pull a Franco, dear.) Good luck breaking up with a few more people, and good luck with NaNo!

[Trip]

Finally caught up! Blech, bugs are the WORST in TS3, glad you managed to wrangle a solution. Hau.......sweetie. You can't just meet four people and wish to kiss them all. (Don't pull a Franco, dear.) Good luck breaking up with a few more people, and good luck with NaNo!

Well at least Hua wouldn't have to deal with her mistakes for an eternity? Tombstones don't grow on trees I think she would have been happy with Rhonda. I was just done with the back-and-forth cheating accusations and Jarred really didn't like Hua well beyond any cheating. All their dates were bad and keeping a friendship was hard. I can have sims woohoo without being romantic interests but they have to be friends! We don't see much of pre-wedding Trinity Jayne, a brother and a teacher (literally), but he and Hua were solid best buds. Though I guess never kissing him helped!

27k words. The 50k goal will be hit one year, one day. I blame some crazy weekends (back-to-back vet visits was this one, though my dogs shall live)

[Trip]

Hua, Part Eight

Alright so someone had a child-related wish to fulfill. I forget if it was Iris or Heiva. Her elder birthday was approaching fast, I decided that one last child was the best sendoff for it.

Heiva had his life extended quite a few times and was hanging around at 96 when his last kid was born. I considered the drama and tragedy of Iris having to raise their little one as a sexy young widow but Heiva survived the birth and got a tattoo or something. For the first time in a while, he and Iris were back to their original ages of being a week apart and were going to stay that way.

This little one was named Gan. His older brother was married with children, and his older sister was going to be a fully-fledged adult in a matter of days. But he'd definitely be the coolest young uncle that Hua and Liwei's kids would know!

Hua was mostly wasting time since her requirements fell into place faster than expected. She supermaxed fishing about halfway through young adulthood, so my fears about it were unfounded. Her ninth and tenth opportunities completed just before her adult birthday, and she worked in law enforcement for two days at most. Her real career, as a self-employed angler, was completed in her last week of young adulthood, if with the help of a Liquid Job Booster. Iris was holding onto all the friends. Her properties were bought as a teen, and that's also when her grandma Maggie died. And I did about as much as I could with sorting out my ten most valuable tiberium spires for the collection.

Really, Hua just needed to be an adult. And get engaged.

It was a beautiful evening in Sunlit Tides and the sun started to set. Hua took Winter somewhere near City Hall for a surprise date.

And unlike every single interaction with the Kahales, it went so perfectly that it would fit into a normal dynasty. I just needed to find a Potent Cure Elixir for the both of them (Trinity was a fairy obviously, but Winter was a mermaid suddenly and I am indeed mermaid-phobic) and we actually had quite a few stockpiled in a chest somewhere.

But first, the ultimate birthday party.

Iris finally became an elder. She shuffled off to the nearest mirror to embrace the purple hair she was born with and dye it all.

Hua also had to become an adult, finally. As it turned out, Nikolas Sowers with his cheese plate was the smartest guest of all...

Fine, you sneaky daredevil, just shower off first.

Disaster averted again, Hua had to become an adult and Gan a toddler. They were both taking it well, because it meant only good things. Mostly for Hua. Gan would be left behind after her move before he knew what happened to him.

Hua decided on a more practical look for the next stage of her life. It was outdoorsy, but probably a lot more comfortable in the tropical heat. As much as she loved Maka, he was close to death and I decided to let that happen out of my control, so he would stay behind as well.

As far as I could tell, Hua loved her childhood home and everyone in it. She had started to mend the lukewarm relationship she had with her parents, and of course, her baby brother was there too.

I couldn't take leaving the little scamp behind either! But we had to. There wasn't as much physical space in Winter's house as I thought.

Even though Winter was the girl next door in the most painfully accurate way (they lived across the street from each other), Hua still gave the house a visit and cured Trinity along the way. He would immediately age up to adult afterwards.

(So about their house: it looks spacious and multi-story but the second floor is just a small loft. I had to do some work to expand that)

Iris unlocked one of my favorite stylist's outfits with her long line of work, even if she never made it to level 10. It turned out to make a great wedding suit for Hua (Winter got the white dress, if an untraditional one). And of course, after a drink for good luck, nothing could possibly go wrong...

...by the way here's the Ling family graveyard. Our tall tombstones are Kaila and Tinsley. Medium are Taurus, Maggie, and Amedee. Small ones are Auguste, Julian (Iris' grandpa), and I forget the third one already.

[oshizu]

I adore that selfie shot of Alastair with his old flame Penelope, where they're both puckering their lips. Too funny!
Oh, Hua chooses Winter while Rhonda is gently cast aside for a future heir.
I remember Hua as a child chatting up Winter's brother at the park. Trinity might be one her longest-standing friends. Or not?

Hua's moving out, she's moving out! Looking forward to her new life.

[CeresIn]

One of the good thing about being on vacation from work is that I can catch up with everything I want to read, I loved reading your mental process while you play and seeing the result of pollination.
Speaking of pollination, I saw some very interesting faces. It's always interesting to see your methods (in fact I learned from them  I still have your guide saved).
Hua is beautiful sim and loved her tomboy jet feminine style and to be honest, I'm glad she'll marry Winter as I always have a weakness for not judgmental sims.
We're lucky that something some form of story progression still works in the travel worlds. Surely you already know this but another source of new townies is moving tourists visiting from China, the other two destinations produce face 1 sims, although Egypt sometimes produces a different one, in my experience the French are always pudding faces.

[Rhoxi]

You mentioned something about always being able to get descendants of your choosing from foreign worlds/university. Do share! 

[Trident]

Congrats to Hau. Looking forward to the wedding!

You mentioned something about always being able to get descendants of your choosing from foreign worlds/university. Do share! 

Seconded!

[Chubling]

 This is so good so far! You have a wonderful way of writing and such a knack for characters.

[Trip]

I adore that selfie shot of Alastair with his old flame Penelope, where they're both puckering their lips. Too funny!
Oh, Hua chooses Winter while Rhonda is gently cast aside for a future heir.
I remember Hua as a child chatting up Winter's brother at the park. Trinity might be one her longest-standing friends. Or not?

Hua's moving out, she's moving out! Looking forward to her new life.

University Life gave us some great animations yet no one talks about how it did. 😔

Yeah I guess Trinity has been here this whole time! It's hard to directly remember Hua's life without constantly referring to screenshots. Not only is she dead but her heir is also dead (#4 just got a big age extension though) He always had decent traits as well...actually most of the Kahale kids did too so it doesn't really matter.

One of the good thing about being on vacation from work is that I can catch up with everything I want to read, I loved reading your mental process while you play and seeing the result of pollination.
Speaking of pollination, I saw some very interesting faces. It's always interesting to see your methods (in fact I learned from them  I still have your guide saved).
Hua is beautiful sim and loved her tomboy jet feminine style and to be honest, I'm glad she'll marry Winter as I always have a weakness for not judgmental sims.
We're lucky that something some form of story progression still works in the travel worlds. Surely you already know this but another source of new townies is moving tourists visiting from China, the other two destinations produce face 1 sims, although Egypt sometimes produces a different one, in my experience the French are always pudding faces.

The pollination guide is good but if I can ever get the will to write a second one, I shall. I mostly just don't like the tone of it anymore. As it turns out I want to think I'm a nicer person than I was as a surly uni student. Hua's generation set the standard for good faces. I haven't felt as satisfied since!

Sunlit Tides is a very accepting place after all! I used to think that using The Sims as a form of pure escapism was dumb and unrealistic (I cringe looking back on trying to insert any sort of external prejudice onto my gay sims in earlier dynasties) but now I realize that no one would actually care in I did that. Of course, "the talk" in a decadynasty (or any of the dynasties) about having to have natural kids comes up but I assume that Heiva and Hua had that one offscreen and everyone was happy. If I do the immortal dynasty again...I wish myself and my sims the best.

China's still looking alright in my save! It's a blend of original genes and generated ones and that's the best I could reasonably ask for. Egypt still has a lot of its original population and its very clear descendants, but I've traveled in it far less.

You mentioned something about always being able to get descendants of your choosing from foreign worlds/university. Do share! 

Ugh! So back in 2013 my dear Ironstars were actually going to test one question out: would kids you deliberately pollinate into a foreign world have their own story progression kids? I think I covered Screwtape having some travel babies but after my family tree broke (probably while his eldest French baby was still a teen) I backed out of that like a coward. And also failed that dynasty a little later but whatever. I'm up for trying it again at last. Not in a decadynasty with limited travel time, but somewhere else like a test file.

Congrats to Hau. Looking forward to the wedding!

I hope I don't disappoint but who knows, there might be a way to, like if everything went right.

This is so good so far! You have a wonderful way of writing and such a knack for characters.

Same to you!