Monday 27 November 2006

Pic of the day: "So your folks are kinda astronauts, right?" At play amid the strangeness and the charm.

My Sims2: Complex lives

The two kids in today's picture are Norma L. Calamari and Bouncer Blacksands. The two of them were almost the same age, and inseparable trough their childhood, always playing together or talking. Norma is one of the few children in the apartment building who has no alien ancestry. She is the daughter of Martin Calamari, the visionary entrepreneur who founded the Hestia Complex for largely borrowed money. (It is now running a huge surplus.) Norma's mother is Helene Calamari, born Kaffimann, twin sister of one of the other Chosen, Hannibal Kaffimann, who has two alien daughters.

Bouncer is son of Muon Blacksands and some unidentified alien, known only as Pollination Technician. Actually is unclear whether this Pollination Technician is a real person or just some genetic template, but he is the father of this generation of alien kids. Which means they are all siblings or at least half-siblings. (Bouncer has a younger sister who is his full sibling.) In short, Bouncer is the half-brother of two of Norma's cousins. That makes them not quite family, but very nearly so.

***

If the family relations in the apartment complex are, well, complex, the romantic situation is on a hair trigger. The first-generation residents are 7 men and 2 women. The women have both married one each of the men, although that was not why they came here in the first instance. They just happened to be very, very compatible. Unfortunately they are so with almost all the men, so there is a lot of hidden crushes just waiting for a careless word to burst out and create mayhem.

The attraction between Sims can be seen visually if you have the NightLife expansion pack. Clouds of small floating hearts will show up when a Sim meets someone they have good chemistry with. The level of chemistry can be read in their relationship panel and has 5 levels, from minus 1 to plus 3 "lightning bolts". It is possible to be best friends even with a negative chemistry, but it takes more work and more caution. Sims with level 2 or 3 chemistry are naturally drawn to each other and will generally drop anything do whatever with the other. They will however not spontaneously do overtly romantic actions if they are already going steady, engaged or married. Instead they spend an inordinate amount of time fighting with pillows, playing red hands or telling each other dirty jokes. -_-;

Triple thunderbolts of chemistry are quite rare, and is generally the one soulmate which you may or may not meet in a lifetime. I have not seen any difference in behavior, mainly because two is enough to drive Sims crazy. Heidi, the wife of Hannibal Kaffimann, has two such bolts with him. And with Kennedy Cox, Guillaume Brademere, Malcolm Hareide, Martin Calamari, and Ray Greene who lives in a nearby house downtown and has four alien kids, the record so far. (It seems unlikely that anyone will beat him either.) Anyway, Heidi is immensely popular and surrounded by guys from before she gets her clothes on in the morning. The irony is that she is not a romance Sim by nature, but rather a fortune Sim, whose joy is earning and spending as much money as possible.

Helene Calamari, wife of Martin and twin sister of Hannibal Kaffimann, has an easier time. She has two bolts only with her husband and Guillaume, plus Bonsainichi Fujimaru, an alien offspring of Kenichi. Bonsainichi is currently at college, and it is uncertain whether he will return to the Hestia Complex or follow Stella Terrano, the mysterious alien girl who is not one of the siblings, out in the desert to found an alien colony.

Greenada Greene is definitely moving in once she is finished with college, though. She has three bolts of mad love with Malcolm, the only known 3-bolt relationship in the community so far. He may be a bit older than her, but he is not about to retire from old age anytime soon. With a love like that, age is not a problem... at least for a Sim.

***

Don't you hate coming into a soap opera in the middle where everyone knows everything and you know nothing? Perhaps if I had written about this from the start, adding each character at a time, it would have made sense. Actually, perhaps I should do that with the next generation and Stella's mad project in the desert. I guess it beats "Today I wrote another 2000 words on my novel". Or does it?