helen-louise's journal

So, I had this situation in one of my ongoing sim stories. Unearthly Tormented and her girlfriend Willow Midlock went off to university, and decided to "date other people" for a while before settling down. Of course, it was my decision: I was getting thoroughly bored with the idea of sims meeting each other as teenagers, going steady, going to university together, and then graduating and getting married. I didn't think that was very realistic (not that much of Sims 2 is, but that was worse than usual!). So I took the Age Transition Fixes - Teens Keep Loves hack out, and swapped in the other version.

However, what happened was that Unearthly dated a bunch of other people, but didn't fall in love with any of them. She just wasn't attracted to other sims, and all her Wants stayed attached to Willow, even though they weren't in love anymore. Meanwhile Willow had quite a heavy relationship going with a dormie called Candice - a girl with high Body skill who liked to beat people up. I'd always planned for Unearthly & Willow to get back together eventually, but now there was Candice in the picture as well.

So, me being me, I chose the "Embrace the power of AND" option. Flipped all three sims over to being Romance sims, let them all fall in love with each other, then flipped Unearthly and Willow back to Knowledge. As I have the Romance mod and all three girls have Playful + Outgoing + Nice > 15, this enabled them to be a polyfidelitous trio. Their mutual love stops slapping from occurring. Willow and Candice both ignore the other two making out in front of them, while Unearthly, who's the most Outgoing, actually nods with approval when Willow & Candice make out in front of her! Compersion, from a sim. Who'd have thought it?!

But then I had to come up with some elaborate plot device in the story to explain the idea of a three-person relationship to people who might not have ever encountered one before. This was rather difficult, so the story got abandoned for a few months while I worked on other chapters that were easier. Today, I decided to come back to it, and this is what I came up with.

Yes, it's really over the top. It's supposed to be!

Unearthly considered her options. It did seem that the "dating other people before settling down" experiment had run its course. She hadn't found anyone she liked better than Willow, and she didn't think she was likely to. However, Willow was now firmly attached to Candice. Did she REALLY want to upset a girl with such a powerful right hook? Plus, there was the fact that she rather liked Candice too...

So she collared Willow and Candice one day after supper. "I've been reading about this new relationship style called lesbian polyfidelity..." said Unearthly, entirely without ulterior motive.

"Lesbian poly-what?" asked Candice.( Read more... )

Dear h-l,

For future reference, your password for The Sims 2 site is the password you'd expect it to be, minus the HYPHEN, as the EA site doesn't let you have punctuation in passwords even though that's the normal way of obfuscating them for security porpoises. Don't waste another 15 minutes of your life trying every single variant of the password. Bah.

Anyway, having found the correct variant to enter the site, I've just posted a new chapter of my evil Ethiopian Challenge story online at the Sims 2 Exchange: Tormented Family Chapter 4 - Profoundly Gets His Man! In which the founder's son, Profoundly Tormented, grows up and picks his partner, and the third generation of Tormented sims are brought into the world. It is very, very silly - as might be expected for any Sims challenge where you're not allowed a kitchen or bathroom or any electrical appliances in the house, yet somehow you have to keep the sims alive and happy. It takes me forever to play this family because I'm always running someone or other Downtown so they can use the facilities - but taking chances is so, so fun ;)

Enjoy! A non-Exchange version will be posted when I get home & have sufficient motivation to do so. But it seems the Exchange isn't being the laggiest thing ever in the history of the universe tonight (at least, I'm seeing it fine even though I'm connected through slow hotel wifi), so you might actually be able to read the story even though it's there.

Mitch and Max were on my bus on Friday.

I was going down to Epsom (about an hour away at that time of day) to see a student. Got onto an absolutely crowded bus, looked up to see a guy who was almost exactly the splitting image of my sim, Max, when he was at college. Not quite so tanned, and teeth less than perfect, but the face, hair and clothes were spot-on. I was amused. Then I realised he was travelling with and talking to another guy with black spiky hair, with blue glitter gel brushed haphazardly through it, and black-framed glasses. He didn't look exactly like Mitch, but his body language and nose piercing said he was a geek who was faking being cool.

So I started listening in to their conversation, the way you can when you're on a packed public transport vehicle. And I realised the Max-guy was flirting with the spiky-haired boy, and the spiky-haired boy didn't realise it. Or rather, he didn't have enough self-confidence in his own attractiveness to recognise that the flirting was flirting-with-intent, and not just random friendliness. And the Max-guy couldn't be too blatant, because they were on a bus after all, and he was a geek too, and not really up to saying what he meant.

And I wondered how long the two of them had been doing that dance, and would they ever resolve it?

Everyone, please point and laugh at me. I foolishly and misguidedly decided to upload my latest Sims 2 story to the Exchange because I believed that it would be QUICKER than uploading it to livejournal, and having to write the HTML. How wrong I was.

The Maxis Exchange SUCKS. Not only is it immensely slow, and the game lies to me, regularly claiming that my story hasn't uploaded when it has. But also, for some stupid reason, you have to start with a new Lot ID every time you upload a new story if you want previous episodes to show up. How daft is that? Surely lots of people write multi-Chapter stories? Not realising this, I managed to overwrite Chapter 1 with Chapter 2, and then the same in reverse. Bah. If I didn't keep backups like a paranoid person, I'd have been really screwed...

So, after much, much hassle, I finally managed to upload the first two chapters of my Ethiopian Challenge story. This is the evil Challenge I have mentioned several times, where the poor sims have to manage without many things we'd consider essential for life. It's so evil - and so fun!

Chapter 1: Meet Extremely Tormented
Chapter 2: No Food And A Baby!

It has a happy ending, so far. No one's died :) The sims do have to die of old age for the Challenge to end, but I will eventually resurrect them, and thus maintain my perfect 100% No Sim Death record.

My gall bladder is teh evil today. But I actually got enough sleep last night despite the pain (there was a bit where I woke up going eurgh and took Tramadol, & went back to sleep), and my student came to the house. It's amazing how much difference that makes. Y'know, having to get dressed and go downstairs is orders of magnitude easier than having to get dressed warm enough for outside, having to pack all my various pills & potions, walk to the bus stop, stand around waiting for a bus, get on the bus, maybe change buses halfway, walk at the other end carrying all my books... then do the same journey in reverse. Charging £3-5 less per hour is worth it for the difference in my coping ability.

alexa_robinson came up yesterday as well, which was nice, even I was too sleepy to talk before she had to leave today. And I'm trying to make plans to see some other friends over the next few days, which'll also be nice if it works. And Richard has been doing DIY things in the house! Hopefully our bathroom sink no longer leaks! He's bought some double-glazing material for improved insulation.

There'll be an update later with my new Sims story, which after quite literally months is almost finished. Thanks to all who helped with wording of various bits. Just got to decide on the last few photos, & it's done. ( Major spoiler... )

I am very jealous of everyone at alt.polycon, but there's no way i could have gone. right now I'm lying down is bed in lots of pain. As I haven't been able to eat, I'm completely stoned on the painkillers. I'll just lie here and be mellow...

I'mworking on my Super Sekrit Project. Fortunately, being stoned aids the creativity process, or something.

The further adventures of Mitch & Max: Chapter 2: Strangetown nightmares. Their first few weeks as independent adults, and what happens when Mitch suggests he & Max should have a baby.

Warning: This story turned out a lot darker than I originally intended - I haven't written a horror story in some years, but this is getting close. Haven't decided whether this is the final draft or not - I could tweak it to be much more horrific. As it is, I was trying for PG-13, although I'm not really sure what falls into that category (I'm not even certain about the British equivalent 12A), and I'm not sure this story makes it even after I'd rewritten the bits that were shamelessly adult (like what exactly Max is covered in after the alien abduction). Parts of the story might be triggery for the recently bereaved, or women who've had a bad experience giving birth, or people who are childless-not-by-choice. (I mean, it might not be triggery at all, because a man giving birth after having been abducted by aliens is probably nothing like the actual real life experience no matter how bad it was, but I thought it was worth mentioning. To avoid the triggery bits, you could try viewing the story from gallery mode.)

( Comments for after you've read it. )