Wednesday 23 August 2006
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Pic of the day: Woohoo! A treasure chest of dreams come true for my Sim couple when they finally get to spend the night together. Mostly they don't, though, because I cruelly keep them apart. That's just the kind of guy I am... Sims2: Too much loveI have played Sims2 off and on (mostly on) since it was released in Norway. (I can't remember if I bought it the same morning or the next day, probably the same morning.) Romantic relationships have always been an important part of this game. The reason is simple: That's how you make babies. Like humans, the Sims are mortal, just more so. At best they have around 80 days to complete their life cycle, but only 30 of these are fertile. And these are Sim days, one hour of which corresponds to one minute in our time. Yeah, you can give them more time with Elixir of Life; in fact, you are supposed to. But the point stands: Without babies, your Sim's life is ultimately pointless. They must pass on their genes and their stash before the Reaper comes, or their house will stand empty with an urn in the bathroom. (For some reason that's where they usually die.) That's kinda sad, don't you think? Not a fate you would wish for your loved ones. (Hey, why are you looking at me like that? The Sims can not, unlike certain other people, share their profound insights with the world through their web journal / blog / diary. When they are gone, they are gone, and only their furniture remains.) Besides, romance is fun. For the Sims, I mean. The vast majority of them want it. Unlike the people you meet in the Real World, you can see at a glance what your Sims want. They have 4 want slots (6 if they have graduated successfully from university) and each of these has an icon of something they want. A new car, improving their cleaning skill, serve a meal, see the ghost of an enemy, be saved from death, have a baby... or fall in love. Some aspirations (directions of life) have more love than others. Family and, of course, Romance excel in this. The big difference is that Sims with the family aspiration don't want multiple partners (usually) but instead want to do more and more with the same partner. But also Sims with completely un-romantic life goals can get snared. Especially when there is Attraction. ***Introduced in the second expansion pack, Nightlife, attraction is measured in lightning bolts, ranging from -1 to +3. (Sometimes I seem to see 4, but this is supposedly a graphics glitch. Or perhaps my Sims just are more romantic than others.) Unlike in humans, attraction is almost exclusively based on personality, life goals, and likes & dislikes. (Some players claim that Sims who like red hair are attracted to Sims with red hair, and so on, which would make sense. But in my experience, Sims who like red hair are attracted to Sims who like red hair, which makes less sense but is probably less computationally intensive. Unsurprisingly my Sims tend to like red hair, since red hair is sexy and pretty. What? We can't help it, we were just born with a superior hair color.) Through careful observation I have noticed that Sims with a high attraction will roll lots of romantic wants about each other, and even on their own spend time together doing whatever they dare at the current stage of relationship. Once they are in love, this goes all the way up to Make Out. (They won't Woohoo on their own unless given Lizzlove's autonomous bed, which incidentally has to be fine-tuned or they will be at it till they starve to death.) Time after time I have created a new Sim (usually eerily similar to my humble self) to found a new dynasty. I sent him to university, where he would at some point discover this amazing girl and have a 3-bolt attraction. They would marry and live happily for a very long time, and they would be so obsessed with each other that I would have to pry them apart to do even the most everyday chores. They would put food in the oven, then go kiss while the oven caught fire. This got their attention, but didn't stop them from doing it again next week. So I made them all vegetarians and threw out the stove. They would invite over neighbors, then go make out leaving the neighbors to insult each other, which they would unfailingly do if they were Kennedy Cox, Benjamin Long, Marisa Bendett, Sophie Miguel or worst of all, Komei Tellerman. But I digress. The point is, I am sure my Sims were happy, but they spent nearly all their time doing mushy stuff. Only by sending one of them to work would the other get some respite. ***This time, I decided to take a different approach. I made a girl, who admittedly has red hair, but was chubby and girly and with a different personality than mine. (She is above average on neatness, activity and niceness, the most useful personality traits. I hate it when the slob Sims do the whole martyr routine before they do the dishes. Not that I do the dishes all that often, but I don't play martyr anymore. "The only good martyr is a dead martyr.") Anyway, a girl this time, and not like me. I did make her a knowledge Sim though. Because, well, knowledge is superior after all. I might not have thought so if I wasn't a knowledge human, of course, but then again in that case I would just be ignorant. Besides, I was starting her at university, and it is a paradise for knowledge Sims. They get their wishes fulfilled just by doing assignments or going to class. Being nice, she also wanted to be friends with the professors, which hardly hurt her grades either. All went well for a while. Until I thought it was time for her to become hetero. I mean, created Sims start out completely gender-neutral. This is not natural: In real life, people may be somewhat ambiguous (especially in college) but statistically 19 out of 20 or so end up being mostly interested in the opposite sex. Especially those who are chosen by fate to found a dynasty to stand the test of time. So, I made her slightly hetero. (The cheap and easy way to do this, for a Sim, is to discreetly perform the "Check Out" option under Flirt. If this is the first time you do it, the action will set your preferred gender, and nobody will notice. At least in theory they won't. In practice, Sims have some sixth sense that tells them the gender preference of other Sims. Or perhaps it is smell, like in humans. What I mean is, nobody will notice that your Sim checks them out.) In any case, after she became officially hetero, there was this one guy who noticed her. He started getting the small cloud of pink hearts when he saw her. Not long after, she started getting the pink hearts too. They began to eat together. I noticed this because she would get dangerously hungry and show no interest in eating, until he went int the cafeteria. At that point she would calmly and with great dignity walk over and pick a meal herself, then sit down beside him. He wasn't any better, quite the opposite: Once while she was sitting in the reception area doing homework at a free desk there, he took his meal with him out there just to eat near her. Later they would take up playing kicky bag, then red hands. I saw what way this was heading. Yup, 3 lightning bolts. Max attraction. To quote good old Chris de Burgh:
this was (Chris de Burgh, Love of the Heart Divine.) The chosen one was the ugly guy with too wide jaws, a buzzcut and a broken (staircase) nose, although in his favor he does have red hair. Not that any of this influenced my decision at all. It more or less gave itself, given that they were both knowledge Sims. Her lifetime goal was to reach the top of the medical career (this is sheer coincidence and has nothing to do with anyone I happen to know in real life. No, seriously) and his goal is to maximize all his skills, basically to learn anything there is to learn for a Sim. They would, I realized, not be able to achieve that by making out day and night. The solution was obvious, if somewhat painful: They would have to live apart.
At separate tables we sit down to eat, (Chris de Burgh, Separate Tables.) And that's how it happened. She moved to a small house downtown, while he continued his studies for a while and later bought a small orchard and vegetables farm up in the deserted rural community of Piddly Creek. As long as they did not see each other all the time, they were able to concentrate on their career and studying and make a few friends too. But from time to time she would think of him at the end of the day and want to talk or dance or flirt with him, and I would let her invite him over for a few hours or sometimes to stay the night. One of those stays led to the birth of their son, whom I ingeniously named Renault after his father, Renaud. Oh, I haven't mentioned her name yet. Megan Reading. So her son is Renault Reading. He looked OK as a kid but grew up to look almost exactly like his father, only with shorter hair. When Megan went to work, she would call Renaud to come over and babysit, while other days she would take a vacation day to be with her son. This went quite well. The boy got along great with his father and actually spent most of his teen years at the farm. Before their son went to college, the couple had their second and last child, a girl. When she started school and her mother was about to reach the top of her career, they all moved to the farm and finally began to live together. As expected, the parents now spend an inordinate amount of time kissing and flirting, serenading and backrubbing. But who cares, she has reached her goal in life. And he can study while she is at work. I'm happy to say that their son has not found a crazy love like that. He is going out with Tosha Go, who is a nice family girl and only moderately attracted to him. She does roll some mushy wants now and then, he never does. And a good thing, too. There can be too much love, you know. (All of this is of course about my Sims and nothing but my Sims. Any similarity to real people, living or dead or forgotten, is purely coincidental and unintended.) |
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