#and yes Victor has all the plants now to grow in his greenhouse

[victorluvsalice]

It’s officially Fall Sunday in the Chill Save as of this update, and that means we are wrapping up the Valicer Granite Falls vacation and heading back home! But not without a few final morning hurrahs from the trio:

-->Smiler finished adding mods to Incredible Sports and went for another fish, catching a walleye for plasma pack purposes

-->Once Victor and Alice got up, I decided the three should play a final game of horseshoes together to see the vacation out! (Alice stalking over mid-breakfast, in fact -- I had her release a somber howl to get rid of the spare Fury near the end.) Again, nobody definitively “won,” but they all had a good time, with both Alice and Smiler flirting with Victor between turns. :) Love me a bit of Valicer content.

-->After they were all done with horseshoes, I went looking for some final unidentified plants for Victor to pick up (managing to get him past the first milestone of the Outdoor Enthusiast aspiration), then had him and Smiler do a bit of fishing at a different spot than normal while Alice did a bit of scavenging for werewolf XP. Victor got himself another nice salmon while Alice found some turquoise. Not a bad way to end their time in Granite Falls, I think!

But yes, before too long 8:30 AM rolled around, and it was time to send the gang back home. And what awaited them back there, you ask?

[scaryscarecrows]

Get Along

Takes place during...season 3? Maybe early season 4...I don't remember now. It doesn't matter.

Oswald is quietly scheming at the kitchen table, debating between docks (oh, the turning of tables, he’s always been so fond of that) or a deathtrap (poetic justice, hard to resist) and wondering if there is a way to combine the two. Ivy is outside, fussing in the greenhouse, and the other two are…um…he’s not sure, exactly. But the house is still standing, so everything must be fine.

Right?

Wrong. The kitchen door flies open and Miss Marquis, slightly singed and clearly on the verge of tears, hurtles in.

“Boss,” she says, voice shaking, “I quit.”

He does not look up from his notepad.

“No.”

“But-!”

“No.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her flail towards the door. If he listens closely, he can hear faint shouting. Well. That answers the question of ‘where is everyone’. Good to know.

“They’re going to burn the house down! Or incase it in ice, whichever comes first!”

He is working, GOD.

“Don’t be dramatic. They’re letting off a little steam.”

“Yeah! Steam! Literal steam!” Oh, dear. She’s not actually going to start crying, is she? Please no. “If you were hopin’ they’d set aside their differences and make adorable elemental babies, they haven’t!”

He’s not even going to wander down that path of thought.

He takes a deep breath, counts to five, and gently sets his pencil down. He is not going to commit murder. He is not. He is going to be calm and rational.

Wait. She is, indeed, singed. When did that happen?

“What happened to you?” Her expression of disbelief would be comical if the shouting outside weren’t growing louder. “Never mind…they’d better not harm the rosebushes, Ivy will never forgive them.”

He should direct them towards a plant, actually, just to see what might happen. It could be funny. But he needs them…alas.

The individuals in question are in the front yard, and he really has no idea what the problem is now-they’re not even shouting in full sentences. He’s considering letting them be-the house is still standing, and if they get this out of their system now, it won’t be a problem later.

But then an icy blast narrowly misses him and he can feel Miss Marquis’ ‘I told you so’ behind him.

“What is going on out here?” he demands, making his way down the steps. Bridget looks appropriately cowed, Victor does not.

“This little brat-”

“This old bastard-!”

He doesn’t care. He really does not care.

“Never mind! Kindly try to avoid bringing the house down around us, is all I ask.”

“I cannot work with her,” Victor seethes, and NO, he will not have this level of discord. He forbids it.

Perhaps Bonding Time (as Ivy puts it) is called for. He despises Bonding Time. It gives him a headache and takes him away from his revenge plans. However, if it keeps his house intact, he’ll suffer through it.

“Miss Marquis.”

“Sir.”

“Go and fetch Ivy, and then go get the car. We are going out.”

* * *

As much as it pains him to admit it, they can’t exactly go anywhere decent, and the only place that doesn’t incur new fighting is Dairy Queen. So here they are, in the line, and Oswald is thinking this might be the biggest mistake of his life.

Miss Marquis looks about thirty seconds from leaping out of the car and abandoning them forever, and he can’t exactly blame her. It’s tempting. In the back, Ivy is seated between Bridget and Victor, who are snipping at each other about the temperature of the car. Of course they are. There’s always something.

He blames Ivy, and her insistence that they all get along.

“Boss, I really think I should quit.”

“No.” If he has to suffer, he’s not doing it alone. “You’re fine.”

“But…”

“Stoppit, I’m here, come on!”

There’s the sounds of a scuffle and Oswald quietly reaches for the radio knob. Miss Marquis stares at the large tree in the parking lot as though considering driving into it.

“Boss, maybe you should find a new town to crime lord in. Somewhere nice n’ quiet. Like Chicago.”

There’s a muffled scream in the back seat-Ivy? Maybe?-and Chicago suddenly sounds very nice.

Why isn’t this line going any faster? Who is up there, ordering enough food to feed an army? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?

“If I find blood on the seats, whomever is responsible will be cleaning it out with a toothbrush,” he hisses. The scuffle stops for half a second before resuming, a little quieter this time. Oswald buries his face in his hands and wonders why. All he wants in life is order. Truly, that’s all. And what has life given him? Overgrown mutant children.

He’ll never complain about normal children again, even if they do irritate him.

A limb hits his seat and he can’t find it in himself to twist around and see the damage. He merely reaches for the radio knob again and entertains the thought of blasting them all with a machine gun.

Yes. What a lovely picture. He’ll have someone come and paint the occasion, title it ‘Peace at Last’ or something.

It is that, and only that, that keeps him anywhere near sane until they get to the little speaker.

“Welcome to Dairy Queen, what can I get for you?”

Arsenic, he thinks bitterly. Lots and lots of arsenic.

THE END

[victorluvsalice]

We’ve reached Spring Tuesday in the Chill Valicer Save, and -- as promised last week -- I have fixed the lighting situation in the house! And made a few other little tweaks and improvements while I was at it, because build mode is my passion. :p First though, please marvel over my very impressive shot of lightning striking the tree behind the greenhouse, because I basically NEVER pause the game in time to get a snap of lightning when it strikes in this game. :D

Okay, so -- first things first, the updates from my little trip into build mode:

1. The major update -- I have replaced ALMOST all electric lights in this house with candle chandeliers and sconces from Vampires! Mostly because those are the brightest and best off-the-grid lights I could find in the catalog. The only places that didn’t get this update were Smiler’s party on the upper level of the barn (as I felt it made more sense for that spot to have electric lights), and the greenhouse (as I couldn’t find any other good lights that would fit). Now, when the power inevitably goes out again, the house itself will stay lit, because candles work off-the-grid! My HOPE is that having fewer electric lights will also allow the household to rebuild its power surplus and thus have power for longer stretches.

2. I replaced Victor’s CC Bioshock Infinite upright piano with the actual upright piano from Growing Together -- while I like the CC one, I really liked the colorful swatches on the new “canonical” one, and wanted to use it. It even has slots on top, making it the perfect place to store that MySim trophy Smiler recently picked up. :) I also hung up a painting Victor did recently on his sketchpad, and put down a new rug -- one of the swatches available on Simularity’s new nursery rug set! Yes, okay, the rug is INTENDED for nurseries, as in the name, but the minute I saw that butterfly swatch, I knew it was perfect for Victor. XD

3. After talking to my friend Squid (@gaydragonwizards) about the new moon mirror from Werewolves, I realized it would be a good addition to the seance room, so I hung it up over the rocking chair. I also got the little moon salt lamp and stuck that in there too, atop the bizarre idol shelf. :)

4. And you can’t really see any of these in any of the pictures, but I added a couch to the back porch, made the greenhouse a little bit bigger to accommodate either more trees (or possibly stairs, if I decide I need a second level at some point) and rearranged the trees/plants on the grounds to accommodate that, and swapped out the games table in Smiler’s party room to one of the new Growing Together ones because it had better swatches.

Whew! Mostly little tweaks, like I said, but it did all take some time (especially the greenhouse thing, given I had to figure out where the tree that was in the corner was going). I also took a moment to turn off the Self Discovery mechanic (I mentioned this before, but unless you want the game to pester you on the regular about making Sims Paranoid, I wouldn’t recommend having it on in a Haunted House) and note down everyone’s conversational likes and dislikes:

-->Victor is a fan of Deep Thoughts, Stories, Affection, and talking about Hobbies

-->Alice is a fan of Deep Thoughts, Stories, and talking about Hobbies

-->Smiler is a fan of Compliments, Stories, being Silly, Pranks, and talking about Hobbies and Interests

*shrug* They all have something to talk about that they all like, at least!

Okay, so, now that building and preferencing is all done, what about gameplay? Well, after a bit of early Victor/Smiler flirting, Smiler took advantage of a brief burst of power to head upstairs and FINALLY upload their latest SimsTube video, while Alice did some painting and Victor went out to clear some creepy hands -- just in time for Temperance to appear! Well, we know what to do about HER, don’t we?

[victorluvsalice]

-->“Always something to do” also includes tending the greenhouse, but that’s an activity Victor actually enjoys -- and is very good at, as you can see! :D Look at those giant oversized crops! Fertilizing them on the regular like that really does make all the difference. And yes, we’re still occasionally suffering from plants turning into dirt piles (notably two of the trees in the back), but most of them are thriving! :) It makes you feel good, seriously.

-->While Victor was busy in the greenhouse, Alice and Smiler were doing their own things -- Alice getting breakfast and lavishing a bit of love on her new kitty (who then went upstairs and melded into the wall while using her scratching post -- I, uh, probably need to pull that out a little bit XD), while Smiler headed to the barn to make some mechanisms! To my delight, they’re not getting shocked at ALL these days when they work on that bench, and even made it to Robotics level 8 by the time they were done! Now they can make a Servo, if they so desire! And if they have the massive amount of parts necessary, which. . .yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna be happening anytime soon. XD

-->Victor’s stomach ended up calling him in from the greenhouse to grab some breakfast (or possibly lunch, I forget when this happened exactly), leading to him and Alice sharing a bit of cute flirting. . .before the conversation fell completely flat thanks to him trying to get her into juice fizzing and her being just not interested. Ah well, couples don’t always have the same interests. *shrug* She went to start sorting out the laundry while Victor -- a little stinky from all that time tending his plants -- decided to try out the “deodorizing cream” he’d made a while back! Fortunately it worked perfectly, ridding him of his stench, and he headed straight back out into the greenhouse --

-->Where I ran into something interesting. Remember how I’ve been complaining that the plasma tree Smiler took with them when they moved in with Victor and Alice, and that got replanted in the greenhouse, hasn’t actually fruited in forever? Well, I was going to have Victor just uproot it, but then I thought, “hang on -- in order to complete his Freelance Botanist aspiration, Victor has to graft three plants. And grafting forces a plant to regrow with the results of the graft. What if I grafted something onto the plasma tree and forced it to regrow with both plasma and a different fruit? I know that works, I successfully hybridized an apple tree with a plasma tree cutting before. . .heh, why don’t I take a cutting from the Tree of Emotions and graft that onto the plasma fruit tree, see what happens?”

A Last Exception, that’s what happens. At least the first time I tried it. Also Victor t-posing briefly and the graft not taking, despite it counting toward the aspiration. I tried it again later, only to fail again, then checked the error after I was done -- it looks like the problem is the graft was specifically for vimberries (as that’s what the tree was producing at the time), and the game didn’t know what to do with that, since that’s not actually a type of plant that you can grow. So I’m guessing the Tree of Emotions, since it puts out like six distinct kinds of fruit anyway, is ungraftable. *shrugs* We have learned something new today, folks! Just happy it didn’t bork my save in the process. . .